squirmonkey

Definitely open to reclassing, it might help, I'll consider it!

And I'm back! Been kinda busy with life lately but I got a few more chapters in. And boy, did I forget how bad the midgame of birthright is. Chapter 19: The rainbow sage chapter AKA the "Do you know what the button is to look at the enemy stats chapter". Still, the super low defenses enemies make it easy to train up everyone who wasn't 20 yet. I spent a long long time trying to figure out what to do about the high crit unit behind the boss, only for it to then NOT ATTACK DLSFKLJI making the only potentially challenging thing in the entire level moot, and my strategy for neutralizing him pointless. Big womp. Anyhow, we got some promotions Silas... well, he's got Str and Def anyhow. But mostly underperforming, 15 speed at this point is just too little for a cavalier. His niche is mostly rolling up on archers and one shotting them with steel sword. I've tossed him in Great Knight so I can give Sophie Luna and then hopefully she can take over for him. Oboro has grown into a pretty compelling all-arounder, which I feel like is pretty standard for her. She has workable stats everywhere that counts, and seal def is especially nice on a tankier unit. She'll likely continue to be usable for a bit. Saizo is filling the ninja niche well, though I would like more speed. Still, he does decent work with the sting and flame shuriken, and performs the ever vital ninja role of being a backpack that gives +1 movement. Off to master ninja he goes. Kagero... certainly has fewer stats than Saizo, but she has the ones that matter, so she's still useful, and Dual Shuriken helps make up for her skill problem, so she's doing just fine for now. Onward we march! Chapter 20: Why does this level even exist? It's so easy. It's slow, easy, repetitive. Honestly a terrible chapter> Chapter 21: We did fine here. Rinkah and the Bolt Axe made the stone golems pretty trivial since they couldn't hurt her and she could two-shot them with a Rally Magic. The fact that the units pull really slowly mostly makes a tank and spank approach really easy to pull off, since you can pull the stoney bois out of position. The dragon veins are... ugh. I don't want to do a rant about how poorly designed this is, but I dont like it at all. I especially dislike that it doesn't show you where the bridges are going to appear, like it does with every other dragon vein in the game! I feel like the end part of Birthright gets more challenging, so I'm hoping for things to pick up again soon!

Alright! Two more chapters done, here's the news Chapter 17: This chapter is pretty boring. But it was a good opportunity to get some XP into some of my unpromoted units. The big reinforcement wave came just as I wrapped up the second village, which was good timing. There was one moment in the bottom left where I almost didn't have enough actions, but for the most part, the level was quite uneventful. After this chapter, we have two more promotions, both of whom I feel are turning out pretty well Subaki could use a little more Str and Mozu could use a little more Res, but overall I'm pretty happy with Subaki's defenses and Mozu's speed/skill. Chapter 18: I didn't like this level very much. Just lots of boring faceless and annoying reinforcements. I split into two teams and sent one each way. When Leo moved left to hit the dragon vein I used Ryoma to pull and kill Niles without much issue. Then Leo moved back to center and spawned a big wave, big enough that I had to pull back to protect some of my squishier units in some defensible corners near the bottom of the map. I'd expected that Leo would then go to the right and hit that dragon vein, and I'd get a shot at Odin, but he didnt. He went down the left side and attacked with Odin. Because I had my shockingly low-Res avatar on that side, and a ton of faceless in the way, I couldn't get to Odin without risking more damage than I was comfortable with, so I killed what faceless I could and then had Subaki finish Leo with the Beast Killer to cut the level short. So in the end I didn't get the Horse Spirit, which is a shame. Lost: Horse Spirit Two more promotions this level! Takumi is struggling a little bit. He's short of the Strength and Speed and Def/Resistance I'd want for him to be a really potent unit. Fujin Yumi and Raider Yumi can make up for these flaws somewhat, but he could be better. Kaden is working out well. His speed is excellent (I don't have him equipped with either stone in this photo) and having picked up the Beastrune is improving his survivability quite a lot. Lots of health too. More Strength would be nice, but we can't have everything. Aand that's where we're at! I think the rainbow sage level is next, which I'm not really looking forward to, since I hate that map...

Yeah, she's turning out pretty great. More HP would be better, this is what she has after I fed her a seraph robe. I mostly keep the avatar paired under her and he contributes a couple points each to str/speed/skill/def plus the bonus from Supportive. Yeah, the low defense is scary, but honestly units with better defense still go down in 1-2 hits if I'm not being careful, so that's a bit of a wash. She's really shining as an anti-magic unit though, as her towering Res score is the best on my team by a big margin, especially with Kaze gone. She's a little weak in the speed department, but there's no shortage of speed pair ups for her. She's been particularly useful against units with magic attacks but low res, like the bolt axe guy from a couple chapters ago. I've had bad luck with her in past runs, but she seems to be turning out pretty usable this time. It's such a problemm especially since I missed the first dracoshield 😕 . The really low resistance is also scary, there are way too many enemy mages in some of these levels, but fortunately he's fast enough that he almost never gets doubled by anyone who matters. I... I don't know. In a non ironman run I'd normally plan to save the paralogues for quite a bit later in the run, but now with people able to die any old time, it feels much harder to plan for. Honestly though the pairups and child pairing part of the game was never my strongsuit, so I mostly just end up going with what happens naturally based on my very shallow instincts of what pairings will perform well. If you have any suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them! Also, Chapter 16 is the one I just did? Which chapter did you mean?

Haha I don't mind! I'm happy to see the discussion, even if it is a bit off topic. Okay two more chapters down, here's how it's going Chapter 15: Boy this one is eassyyyyy. Between the relatively weak enemies, and the bolt axe and beast killer from the previous chapter, it seems like they just wanted you to have fun mowing people down in this level. The reinforcements were a little annoying, but since the enemies were almost entirely ineffective against my frontline, they didn't end up causing me much sweat. The dragon veins are just silly, I don't know why you'd need them. Finished the chapter up without any issues, dealt out some nice XP, and got on my way. Kaze does his cool A support thing and lives, so that's out of the way. After Chapter 15, Rinkah is my first to level 20, so she promotes. I pick Oni Chieftain because I want the extra Mag for her to use with the Bolt Axe. I don't think I'll probably waste time levelling her in scrolls since she's already so destructive with the axe. I also decide to promote Sakura at this time. She's level 16 and the xp drip from healing is becoming too slow for my patience. She goes into Onmyoji so I can start levelling her in scrolls. I know priestess is popular for her, but since I'm not using the battle rewards, I don't think there's a way for me to get her a shining bow, which takes a lot of the appeal out of that class for me. Finally, Orochi goes into the next chapter at level 19 with 97 EXP, so I leave her a master seal to use in the early part of the next fight. Here's how she turns out after that. Chapter 16: Right away going into this level I see the distant chests and the stairs and I know there's going to be thief pressure, so I push forward pretty aggressively into the first hall. Say, you remember all that work I did getting Kaze and Avatar to A rank so that Kaze would still be alive for this chapter? Yeah I'm feeling pretty dumb about that now. I miscount a tile, and Kaze takes an axe meant for Ryoma on top of an arrow meant for him, and that's the end of him. Like Hinoka he technically lives, but I'm just feeling so silly that he died so immediately after his would-be plot death, he literally died in the first enemy phase 😂😭. Anyway, we keep moving, Saizo is here so we don't have a chest-opening problem, thankfully. I take a little heat from the sorcerer in the first hall, but nothing uncontrolled. We push super fast up towards the top room and intercept the thief who spawns up there before he can even get out of that room. I make a critical mistake as I'm moving into the room with the strategist, and I click Swap on Oboro instead of Switch (fml). This strands Kaden on the frontline in a chokepoint, with his turn already spent, so nobody can even get close enough to help 😕 . I'm lucky that the only real threat left in the next room was a mage, or he'd have been toast. The rest of the map is pretty uneventful. Rinkah catches the last thief and we recover all the loot, Orochi deals with the boss, everybody is happy. Except Kaze, who's dead. Lost: Kaze Avatar reaches 20 after this mission and promotes. His problematic defenses (and the whole, if he dies it's over thing) mean he spends a lot of his time supporting others in guard stance. Still, he comes out every once in a while to hit something really hard, since that's mostly what he's good at. Aand that's all I have for now!

Alright! Since my last post I've discovered a few things, so a quick recap of those first: 1) When someone dies you actually keep their stuff! It just silently goes back to the convoy. So I am happy about that, at least! 2) I forgot about Reina during the opera house chapter, I could have definitely gotten to the chest if I'd used her. 3) I was in the wrong forum! 😅 Thanks for moving me. 4) I have a limit to how much I can post per day, so if you respond to me, and I don't say anything to you, this is probably why. Okay two more chapters done, let's go through them Chapter 13: This one went off basically without a hitch. We had one close call with Hana getting nearly one-shot despite a 14% hit chance, and Silas got into a little controlled trouble near the village in the top right, but otherwise this went very smoothly. Orochi pulled Camilla pretty safely, and the retainers and the rest of the rear guard fell pretty quickly as well. We got all the treasure, not too much of interest happened. I did find myself using Sakura's Rally Luck a bit in this level, to take the edge off some low percent crit chances on enemies I wanted to pull. By the end of the level I am feeling like Hana is not keeping up with the rest of the party, she doesn't have the strength or defense to justify continuing to field her, especially in a frontline position. So she's probably benched from here. Subaki is also falling behind in levels, but with Hinoka gone, I'm still hoping to fix him. I also want his kid, in the hopes that she'll help me out on the fliers front. Chapter 14: This chapter is brought to you by the letter R, as in Retreat and let Ryoma handle it. I got sharply overwhelmed right at the beginning of this level by the cavalry charge from both sides. I think I slightly overused Guard Stance, as I found that in a few places I didn't have quite as many actions as I wished for clearing enemies who'd gotten close. There was definitely a critical moment where I had to throw Ryoma to the wolves and hope he'd be fine (he was, he's a monster) so the rest of the party could back off, or else I'd just lose too many of them. Kagero was spared by a lucky miss, and Silas survived a volley of attacks with 2 HP, justifying my decision to cook a defense meal before this battle. Once the outside was clear, this level turned from staggeringly difficult to lol eztime training mode. Orochi pulled and cleared the Bolt Axe guy, Rinkah cleared the entrance to the castle with basically no issue, and the dragon veins softened everyone else up. I used the weakened enemies as a chance to bring Subaki up to level, and he gained 5 levels over the course of the castle. Would have been more but he couldn't hurt the Generals 😓. They weren't incredible levels, but they were enough to bring him back to usable (he entered this chapter at Level 8, much too low for this point of the game). Though I used Ryoma in this level (and I'm glad I did), I'm currently still keeping Scarlet and Reina in reserve, both because they can't earn support ranks, and because even if they don't get any XP in the next few chapters they'll still be useful, so there's no need to break them out yet, they're my insurance against losing one of my growing units. In the end though, with a little luck and some Ryoma BS, this chapter is clear with no losses! That's where I'm at now, more soon!

Hey thanks! I'll keep an eye out for those strategists 😉 You know, I had Shadow Dragon when I was a kid, but I never played it because I found the graphics so off-putting compared to FE7 and 8, which I adored. Maybe if I end up enjoying this Ironman I'll pick up a copy of Shadow Dragon again and see how I do at a blind Ironman 😰

Hello all! I've been really curious lately about players who play Fire Emblem games in an Ironman style, and I thought that the best way to learn more about it would be to try it myself. I'm playing through Birthright on Hard (I enjoy Lunatic when I'm not doing ironman, but I'm not good enough to ironman lunatic in a sane amount of time), with the following rules: 1) No reloading the game for any reason (unit death, loss of loot, unfavorable level up, etc). In particular, this means that once I press Fight on the chapter, I'm seeing it through to the end. However, losing units before level 6 (where they come back) is fine, and they can still be used. 2) Game over = delete save file 3) No grinding. I know I'm doing Birthright, but I hate grinding. So we're not doing any of the optional levels, DLC chapters, scouting, or castle defenses. So I'll be doing only the main chapters and the paralogues that I choose to do. 4) No DLC stuff. So no dark falcon, dread fighter, or any of the rest of it. 5) No visiting other castles or using other online content. So no buying skills or units from others, and no visiting to pick up food or minerals. However I am allowed to use whatever I can get from my own castle, including any random item drops. 6) No capturing/prison. I don't like this mechanic, so I'm not using it. Okay I think that covers the rules. I'm a little ways into the run, so let me start by talking about how it's going so far! I've made a male +Str/-Lck Avatar. I know that the female avatar tends to be stronger in Fates, but being male myself I usually prefer a male avatar. Chapters 1-6: Embarrassingly, I got myself killed by a swarm of mages the first time through Chapter 5, so I did the whole thing over again, and sacrificed Kaze early to make a nice easy path through the level, knowing he'd be back. Not the most auspicious start, but nothing much to complain about. I put most of my XP into my avatar, and he's gotten pretty good levels so far. Chapter 7: This level was fairly straightforward. I sent Kaze right to pick up the first chest while the rest of the team fought down through the bend. We held out at the chokepoint I indicated in the diagram below to withstand the attack from Silas and his cavaliers, that went off basically without a hitch. Then we cut right just in time to catch the outlaw who'd taken the loot from the chest in the center, and cleaned up the stragglers Chapter 8: I did Chapter 8 before doing Paralogue 1, just cuz I felt like it. This chapter was pretty uninteresting. We swept through and killed anyone without any real problems, danger, or moments of tactical relevance. Paralogue 1 (Mozu): Next picked up Mozu. I know there's some mixed opinions about Mozu, but I tend to be pro Mozu so most of this chapter was spent babying her to get XP in Attack Stance. Nothing too exciting happened except Kaze stealing a bunch of kills with low % crits. Chapter 9: This was the chapter where I started to get why people do Ironman runs. The start of the level went off without a hitch, but I got caught off guard by the reinforcements from the right side. That sudden feeling of "I have one try to fix this, so let's make a good plan" was thrilling, clearly that's a big part of the appeal of playing Ironman. With a good bit of pair up / transfer chaining, I was able to re-arrange that side into a defensive formation fast enough for the reinforcements to not be too big an issue. I got my recruits and took the chest loot off the thieves and moved on. Chapter 10: Here's where I made my first big mistake. While making what I thought was a simple defensive line against what I thought was a collection of ninjas, I missed an archer. Seconds later Hinoka was gone. Of course, she's too important to actually die in the plot, but for my purposes she's toast, and I imagine her gravely wounded for plot purposes (This was especially amusing when she was threatening Zola in the next level). Making the sting of this loss even worse, I lost the Guard Naginata she was holding. Because apparently we're too good to loot the bodies of our fallen comrades, even if they're still alive /shrug. Apart from this slip up, the chapter wasn't too troublesome. This was also the chapter where I remembered I needed to get Kaze and Avatar to support A pretty urgently, and started having them roll around together. My +Str Avatar and Kaze make a decent team, so this wasn't too limiting. Lost: Hinoka Chapter 11: Wow I forgot how hard this level was. I made the classic mistake on this level and played it too slow. Then I got caught by surprise when the entire level collapsed on me. After a few moments of doom and gloom "how can I survive this" thinking, I came up with a plan which I just barely got away with. We fell all the way back to the first whirlwind and used it plus the fact that the fliers can't stand on the impassible tiles to create a workable chokepoint (the red circle). Because the fliers could go over the divider, I had to put body blockers in every space along the divider, as well as in the purple spaces, to serve as my front line. The plan was to assume that enemies would come at us from the blue direction and that if any tried coming from the red direction, the whirlwind would slow them down enough that I could pick them off with an archer. As it turned out, the pathfinding preferred never to attempt the red path, and only attacked from the top and left. Now I had to pick out my placements. For the frontline (purple) I needed units who were tanky, but not fast/strong enough to kill an enemy in one round, so that they wouldn't get chipped to death by counter-killing their enemies too quickly. In the end I landed on Avatar+Kaze in one slot, using the Dragonstone to avoid double counter attacks, and Rinkah+Oboro in the other slot, very defensive but not quite strong enough to finish the enemies. Behind them were my archers, Mozu and Takumi in the green squares, helping to thin the horde more quickly. Finally in the yellow I just needed to have two units there at all times, to make sure no fliers could get past the boundary. Most of the time Azura and Reina stood there. This plan worked beautifully for one round, but then I realized there were 3 units alive with ranged attacks. A dragon with a hand axe, a dragon with Thunder, and the boss with (I think) a steel star axe. The hand axe wasn't too big a problem, I baited him up by giving him a safe shot at Azura, which he took, and then I swapped her for an archer to kill him. The other two were a bigger problem. They were too powerful to let them take shots at the units in the yellow squares, and I didn't have strong enough units to make everyone who would be in range able to survive the attacks. I couldn't find a solution that didn't involve sending someone out to kill them, making a hole in the formation, or just letting them tear us to pieces. In the end, I used both charges of my Rescue staff sending Takumi and Reina out to dispatch those units, and then calling them back to fill the gaps in the formation. The rescue staff was of course sad to lose, but it seemed my best way out. Another beauty of the ironman run, I doubt I would have used the rescue here if I'd thought I could restart. Rather I used it because it seemed like to not use it guaranteed losing my precious units. Overall, a thrilling level, and a great experience. Chapter 12: Okay so I underestimated how quickly Xander would move towards the chest, and played this level too slowly (noticing a theme there? I sure am). Down a flier, I couldn't use the really degenerate strategy of just sneaking someone in to the chest at the last second and flying the Avatar to the exit. So I tried fighting my way along the path, but it just wasn't fast enough. As I approached the chest, I realized that once Xander arrived I'd be in trouble and that I didn't have time for the dragon vein, I'd have to fly Avatar to the exit. So I loaded him up on Subaki and gunned for the exit. The rest pressed on towards the chest. But by the time I'd reached the chest, it was clear that whoever I opened it with wouldn't be able to outrun Xander before he collapsed down on him. Rather than try to fix it, I opted to retreat and fight another day. The retreat went fine, but I didn't get what was in the chest Lost: Whatever was in that chest So that's where I am so far! If you have thoughts/questions/suggestions, I'd love to hear them! If you love Ironman games, I'd really like to hear what you love about them. And if you have cool ironman stories of your own, please share!