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Hello and welcome to my playthrough of Lunatic mode for Conquest. I actually couldn't find a thread like this anywhere, and even if there is one, I'd like to make this to log my personal playthrough of the game. The idea for this kind of thread was inspired by Interceptor's Lunatic+ Awakening guide, and I'll be trying to follow a similar format. Here's his thread, if you're interested: https://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?/topic/40300-lunatic-playlogguidewalkthrough-completed/ So, setting some ground rules: Lunatic. COMPLETE BS rewarding and challenging. Semi-Classic. Classic mode, with soft reset when a character unintentionally dies. L + R + START is a useful shortcut that instantly soft-resets the game. NO S SUPPORTS. No child characters, no extra paralogues for free exp, nothing. The game is beatable without them. No wireless bonuses of any kind. That includes path bonuses, stuff from other peoples' castles, and rewards for castle battles/visits. No buying skills/units online. Buildings are allowed. You can build these on any playthrough, so forging is allowed. Meals are RNG based on who happens to be in the kitchen at the moment, so I'll block them. Tonics are allowed. No random event items. There are some really useful items you can get from talking to the people in My Castle such as Raider weaponry (+3 effective speed for double attacks), Leo's Iceblade (magic weapon with high might), Hunter's Bow (bow, effective against beasts), etc. If you get lucky enough to get one, great! The game will probably be easier for you. I won't be using them, though. Turn counts - irrelevant, but less so than in Awakening. Conquest tends to have better map design that results in maps forcing you to play more aggressively, and complete them quickly. Press Start to skip. The fifth time you restart the map, you don't really care so much what excuse the game has for putting you into this battle. NO DLC. Did you ever spend $40 on a game and then decide you want to pay extra money so you don't have to play the game? That's DLC in a nutshell. Big no in every way imaginable. No resetting for better level-ups. This isn't actually a ground rule - it's something that is actively prohibited by the game. Your units will get the same level-ups every time no matter how much you reset. The basic plan for this run is to have a super-tanky Corrin who will singlehandedly wipe the enemy team. Everyone else is a supporting character. Corrin will be a dodge-tank with high (but still damageable, so enemies will attack her) defense, to get the maximum mileage out of Draconic Hex. I'll go over the units we recruit as we get them. So let's begin! Character creation: Meet Stella, the (female) Sturdy but Unlucky Ninja-at-heart. In actual stat terms, that means +def, -luck with a Heart Seal class of Ninja. Ninja is important for 3 reasons: 1. We want Mechanist for Golembane to deal with Stoneborn/Mechanists. 2. Lethality is a nice skin to have. 3. Knives are a great weapon to have since they're 1-2 range and therefore able to bypass both Counter and Countermagic; also, Master Ninja has a good avoid rate and Shurikenfaire helps with the damage output a LOT. Also, we want to have a female Corrin since we get Jakob early instead of Felicia. Jakob is a bit more useful early-game due to his strength stat (he actually has one) and a better personal skill for late-game. The plan is take Stella up to Nohr Noble 5 for Draconic Hex (one of the best skills in the game), then take 3 levels of Mechanist for Golembane, then swap into Master Ninja for the final class change. Let's begin! Chapter 0 (Prologue) Goals: N/A Reinforcements: N/A New units: N/A This is gonna be tricky, so bear with me here. First, attack the red enemy and he will die. Then, another red enemy will appear. Attack him with Takumi and finish him off with Corrin. Nice job, we've learned how to play Fire Emblem! Chapter 1 Goals: N/A Reinforcements: N/A New units: N/A Don't bother listening to Xander. Just attack him until he dies. Chapter 2 Goals: Give Gunter as few kills as possible, don't let anyone die. Reinforcements: N/A New units: Gunter, Jakob. Gunter is a worthless unit that you lose in 1 chapter due to plot. You get him back later and he's hardly better then. Jakob, on the other hand, is a unit we'll be taking to the end of the game. He uses knives (your only ranged unit for a while), is reasonably fast, and can heal (and heal himself using Live to Serve, which he gets in a couple of levels). Not only that, but he has 6 MOV at the start of the game, which is pretty great. Finally, his personal (-3 damage taken and +15 avoid to Stella if he supports her) is going to carry us later in the game because Jakob alone has the ability to make her into an unstoppable tank of a unit. His other learned skill, Tomebreaker, is also pretty good, especially considering how early in the game you'll get it. Welcome to your first chapter of actual Fire Emblem! This is the first chapter in the game that requires any amount of thought. We can do this one turn by turn: Turn 1: We pop the dragon vein with Stella, opening up the healtile room. Then, we move Jakob and Gunter into the healtile room. Turn 2: The left 3 enemies have two ranged attackers and one Oni Savage (who can take a hit from Gunter). We'll let Gunter block this side off while we deal with the more squishy right side. Gunter goes on the middle-left healtile, blocking the left entrance to the room. Jakob goes in the top-right corner of the room. Here, he can only be hit by Kaze, who can't kill him in one round (even with a dual strike). Stella goes in the middle-right healtile, blocking the room. The single Samurai that could have reached her will ignore her since he will deal no damage, thanks to +5 DEF from Jakob's personal skill and Gentilhomme. Turn 3: Jakob can kill Kaze without fear of being attacked by anyone since he is out of reach of the two other ranged attackers. Gunter moves right to block off the right doorway into the room. Stella moves left and kills the Oni Savage, who is on low health from fighting Gunter. Turn 4: 2 enemies down, 4 to go. One samurai will be right outside the bottom door, so we hit him with Stella and then kill him with Jakob (Jakob needs exp more so than Stella). Gunter moves back to the left doorway to block the passage. Turn 5: Actually, Stella missed the bottom Samurai last turn, so I just moved her right to block the right doorway from the second Samurai (who's trying to sneak back around) and finish off the bottom Samurai with Jakob. Stella is on pretty low health, but she can still take a hit from the Samurai. Meanwhile, Rinkah will be almost dead to Gunter + one hit from Stella, so we finish her off with Jakob (dual strike from Gunter). Then Gunter moves over to support Stella, so she can one-round the upper Samurai on enemy phase. Turn 6: The only enemy left is the Samurai with the Kodachi, so I just one-round him with Stella to get her to level 4. Chapter 3 Goals: Get as much exp as possible, don't give Gunter any kills. Reinforcements: 3 Sky Knights with abysmal stats (but Darting Blow) will appear from the bottom fort once you aggro the Archers near the boss. New units: N/A Hey, you can use Guard Stance now! Cool! Turn 1: I put Stella in range of both of the Samurai on the bridge; paired with Gunter she can one-round them both on Enemy Phase. We want to avoid Hans killing them. Turn 2-4: Hans is going to go kill himself at the top area, so we're just going to ignore that and move down, popping the top dragon vein on our way. Turn 5: Stella pops the bottom dragon vein. I put Jakob in the forest tile right above the dragon vein, and Gunter to the left of Jakob. Turn 6: The Samurai here has Duelist's Blow, so there's a pretty good chance you won't have hit him at all. One Archer will attack Jakob, and he'll be a free kill - the other Archer will have attacked Stella, so he'll still be on full health. Stella kills the Samurai who attacked her, and Jakob kills the Archer who attacked him. This leaves the other Archer to attack Jakob (Jakob lives on 1 HP). Gunter can just kinda... do nothing. Turn 7: I gave Jakob the kill on the Archer here. The basic strategy now is just to heal everyone up using the fort, and then bait the two Archers near the boss without actually letting the boss attack you (with Jakob in Guard Stance with Gunter to avoid the dual strike). Jakob will go ahead and kill both of those Archers on enemy phase. 3 Sky Knights spawn from the bottom fort. Their stats are abysmal, but they have Darting Blow, and the 3 of them can kill Stella all on their own. We just take them out one at a time by putting Jakob and Stella in range of only one of them each. After this, it's time to kill the boss. This is a Seize map, so after we do this we will go and kill the machine gun nest in the top right of the map. The boss isn't too tough - just hit him with Jakob (paired with Gunter), then finish him off with Stella and Jakob. If you miss an attack, no worries - just retreat to the fort and try again, he doesn't heal from the building he's on so you can win a battle of attrition. I gave the boss kill to Stella. Now it's time to take out the top right of the map. We send Gunter up in range of the Archer closest to us to lure the Archer and the guard stance units towards us (the two archers on the forts don't move). Then we put Jakob on a woods tile, just in range of the bottom Archer. Jakob with a dual strike from Gunter can one-round that Archer on enemy phase, and the rest is easy - just pair Jakob with Stella and hit the Guard Stance units until they're dead. Once those two are dead, we go ahead and feed the other two Archers to Jakob since he needs the exp more than Stella. Then we Seize. I lost track of the turn count here. It was probably about 14-15. Chapter 4 Goals: Exp only for Kaze and Stella, talk to Hinoka for a free Concoction. Reinforcements: N/A New units: Kaze. Kaze is a great unit. He's the typical fragile but fast myrmidon, except in this game he's a ninja instead. That's all the better because of how busted shurikens are. It's a good idea to train him up in this chapter since after this chapter you get him back pretty late, so he'll be a bit behind. We're going to put him through a few levels of Mechanist for some much-needed DEF growth, then drop him into Master Ninja for Lethality and Shurikenfaire. He has a pretty bad LCK stat so we might give him a couple of Goddess Icons. This is more of the kind of chapter I expect to see from Awakening - a big Rout map without many interesting features. in this case, what we're going to be trying to do is steal as many kills from Ryoma as possible (he will solo the entire map on his own if you let him). It doesn't matter if Sakura dies, but you want Hinoka to stay alive so you can get her Concoction. There's pretty much no chance of her dying, though, so no need to sweat it. Also, don't give any kills to Rinkah since you lose her after chapter 5 - but don't let her get killed either, you need her for chapter 5. Go ahead and use the Vulnerary Kaze has as much as you like, you don't keep it either. Let's begin! Turn 1: Visit the village with Stella to get a Goddess Icon. Useful since we have a LCK flaw. Everyone else moves up towards the Faceless on the mountain. Turn 2: Stella pops the closest dragon vein to make the closest Faceless attackable. Rinkah attacks that Faceless, then Kaze finishes him off. Put Kaze to the right of Rinkah so the two Faceless above Rinkah have to attack both Kaze and Rinkah once (Rinkah will die to two Faceless). Turn 3: Ryoma just stole one of our kills. I move Stella as far toward the mountain with the boss on it as she can move, then kill the Faceless with Kaze (his STR was sealed, so he needed a duel strike from Stella to pull it off. Rinkah gets the Vulnerary from Kaze and uses it. Turn 4: We won't pop the dragon vein we've been moving towards since the boss will just feed himself to Ryoma (or possibly kill you). Instead, we move Stella in range of the bottom left Faceless, with Kaze supporting her in attack stance. Rinkah will follow. Turn 5: The Faceless that attacked Stella will now be low on health, so I finish him off with Kaze. Then I move Stella up within range of the other Faceless from that group. I actually made a positioning mistake here - I wanted to put Rinkah closer to the bottom left, so she could support Stella in attack stance on the previous enemy phase. This doesn't really matter, though. The Faceless that attacked Stella is low on health, so I finish him off with Kaze (dual strike from Stella). Then I put Rinkah into guard stance with Stella and move them both as far into the mountains as possible, towards the Dragon Vein. Turn 6-9: Some Faceless will kill themselves on Hinoka, we kill the Faceless that attacks Sakura, and get the Concoction from Hinoka. From here, Ryoma will hang out with Hinoka so we don't need to hurry anymore. It's time to take out the boss. We won't hit the dragon vein since the mountains work in our favor, thanks to the Faceless having pretty low hit rates. First we bait the top two Faceless with Kaze, then kill them, and then fight the boss. Dual Guard works very well for us here, allowing Kaze to take a crucial extra hit from the boss. I gave the boss to Stella. Turn count: 18 (I wasted a couple of turns positioning myself). Chapter 5 Goals: Exp for Kaze. Level up Azura before completing the chapter. Reinforcements: When you engage the lower group of enemies, 4 Dark Mages will appear - one from each corner of the map. New units: Azura. Azura is the singer of this game. Her combat stats are terrible, and she's very fragile, but she gives your units a second turn, so it's worth it. Also, aside from DEF and HP, her growths are very strong and she'll end up with capped STR, which can be marginally useful. She's the only singer we get, so obviously we're keeping her. This chapter has the sole purpose of leveling up Kaze and Azura since Stella gains 1 exp from every kill except for the boss. At the same time, Kaze is pretty squishy, so it's tricky to give him all those kills. No need to conserve Sakura's Bloom Festal since we don't keep her after this chapter - and it doesn't matter if Sakura or Rinkah get killed, not that they will. Turn 1: The four enemies closest to our units will charge immediately, so we will want to head them off. The enemies on the right can kill Stella all on their own. Unfortunately, Kaze doesn't have enough DEF or RES to survive both of these guys at once, so we'll send Kaze and everyone else to the left side and leave the right side alone for now. With the help of a Sing, I put Kaze in range of one of the Mercs on the left (right in the middle of the chokepoint), which he barely survives with the help of a Rinkah guard stance. Meanwhile, Sakura is going to be a decoy for us and run to the top right corner of the map in order to lure the Dark Mage on the right away from the rest of the group. Turn 2: Now Kaze is within an inch of his life, but we're in good shape. Kaze stands still and kills the Merc in one shot (he's now at 4/5 dual guard). Azura moves between Kaze and the central rubble mound and Sings him. Kaze then completes his dual guard by attacking the other Merc without moving. Finally, we put Stella directly above Azura, leaving Azura completely surrounded and the enemies with no way to attack her. Stella will take a hit from the Wyrmslayer Merc on the right, but it's fine - she can live it. Sakura is going to run away from the enemy Dark Mage and move towards the rest of our units, staying out of enemy aggro. Turn 3: All the enemies are now dead except for the one Dark Mage. We put Kaze within the Dark Mage's range with the help of Sing, also healing him. Stella stays where she is for now. Turn 4: Kaze finishes off the Dark Mage. We move Stella up towards the top right corner to take out the top reinforcements as they come in. Turn 5: Now, it's crucial to act fast: Kaze has a dual guard that we want to make use of. We heal Kaze and then put him in range of two of the lower Dark Mages, triggering the reinforcements. Turn 6: Two Dark Mages are on 3 HP, and Kaze is on half health. Stella goes ahead and kills the Dark Mage that spawned in the top right. Under no circumstances do we want those two guard stance Mercs anywhere near Kaze yet, so we're moving everyone away from the enemies, towards the top right (there's one Dark Mage that spawned there as well). We put Kaze in the range of all 3 Dark Mages but out of reach of the Mercs. With the help of a Dual Guard he will live. Turn 7: Kaze's now on 1 2 HP (he gained a RES point during enemy phase) and now there's one almost dead Dark Mage and two full health Mercs to worry about. There's also a Dark Mage behind us we should worry about. Fortunately, Kaze has another dual guard lined up just in time to deal with this. Kaze moves up and to the left to attack the full-health Dark Mage that spawned there, then we Sing and heal Kaze to kill that Dark Mage (putting Azura and Sakura out of range of enemies). Kaze now has enough health to live another hit from the (weakened) Dark Mage. Stella can stay where she is. Turn 8: There's a dark mage moving up the left side of the map that we will deal with now. Kaze moves away from the angry Mercs, Azura Sings for him (moving out of reach of the Mercs), Sakura heals him (ditto), and Kaze blocks the top left rubble choke so that the Dark Mage there will attack Kaze on enemy phase. Meanwhile, Stella is a little cornered (the Mercs and a Dark Mage are going for her) so she kills the Dark Mage and stays out of reach of the Mercs. Turn 9: Kaze finishes off the Dark Mage, and gets ready to fight the Mercs. (We heal and Sing for him, of course.) The Mercs are eyeing Stella so she's just going to run away from them towards our team. Turn 10: With the help of Sing, Kaze is going to take the first shot at the Mercs. He has a dual guard up to soak a hit from them. Stella keeps running away from them. Turn 11: The lead Merc (they switched places) is now in kill range for Kaze despite the dual guard the Mercs have set up. Kaze kills the lead Merc, then Azura Sings him for the kill on the other Merc as well. The chapter is now effectively won, but we're going to grind Azura up to an absurdly high level before continuing by Singing repeatedly. Turn 106: After a fun and exciting experience, Azura is level 16. Stella is going to walk up to the boss (after being healed) and kill him. Turn count: 106. At the end of this chapter, Kaze is level 9 and Azura is level 16. Chapter 6 Goals: Catch Jakob up on exp. Reinforcements: N/A New units: N/A We might as well try to min-max exp gain while we're here. The chances of killing Ryoma with anyone but Xander or Leo is pretty slim, and the only units that benefit from kills in this chapter are Jakob and Stella. Therefore, we're going to lure Ryoma away from us by unequipping Xander's sword if we hit Ryoma at all. We'll then feed Takumi and Hinoka to Jakob or Stella, kill Yukimura with Jakob, and then kill Sakura with Jakob as well. Turn 1: Xander moves towards the top right and unequips his weapon. Ryoma will spend the next few turns beating him up. I move Leo in range of Takumi/Hinoka. Nobody else can get in range at the moment. Turn 2: Leo missed Takumi, but that doesn't matter - I go ahead and hit him with Leo from range 1, and then kill him with Stella. Jakob moves up and attacks Hinoka, everyone else moves back. Turn 3: Jakob is now on 3 HP. Leo moves next to Hinoka for Heartseeker, then Jakob attacks Hinoka with Stella in attack stance. With the help of Heartseeker, Jakob kills Hinoka. Elise moves up and heals Jakob. Camilla moves up and gets ready to pop the dragon vein to dry up the river. Xander managed to land a hit on Ryoma last turn. If he lands another one, I'll unequip his sword. Turn 4: Xander is pretty low on health so I use his Elixir. Jakob steps into Yukimura's range, Elise heals him, and Stella supports him for the attack stance. Turn 5: Jakob kills Yukimura with a dual strike from Stella. Xander moves down out of Ryoma's range, and Elise heals him. Now we want to hit Ryoma with Xander 1 more time in order to get him low enough to land a killing blow on Ryoma with Jakob (that's a lot of extra exp!) We don't have a chance of hitting Ryoma on his turn because of Duelist's Blow (hit chance of 25% or so) so we will go ahead and attack him with Xander repeatedly until we land the hit, running away and healing Xander as needed. I lucked out and hit him on my first try. Turn 6: Run away from Ryoma with Xander, luring him down towards our units. Turn 7: Leo moves next to Ryoma for the Heartseeker bonus, then Jakob finishes him off. Chapter 7 Goals: Train Silas and Effie. Reinforcements: N/A Supports: JakobxStella, C New units: At the start of turn 3, Silas and Elise show up on the right side of the map. Effie and Arthur show up in the same place on turn 4. Silas is the early-game cavalier. He's got good STR and decent DEF, but his SPD and RES are pretty bad. His personal is pretty good for early game, but becomes much less impactful late-game. I like him a little better than Peri, but that might be due to personality more than anything else. Elise is our prime healer for the game (Troubadour). She has a pretty excessive MAG and RES growth, good SPD, and pretty bad stats for everything else. We're going to keep using her until the endgame because other healers are hard to come by (Jakob has low MAG, Felicia comes in too late, Flora/Izana are expensive to get). She's strictly a player-phase unit, though. I fully expect her to finish with an HP of less than 25. Effie is a Knight, but her stats don't match it at all. She has a very high STR which is further accented by Puissance (+3 damage dealt if STR is 5 higher than opponent's). She has pretty bad DEF for a knight, and has a pretty good speed growth (she can actually double enemies later on). Given that, General doesn't really fit her because Wary Fighter makes her speed stat worthless. Instead, we'll probably put her into Great Knight. Arthur is a Fighter, and not a very good one. Did you ever get that feeling when that enemy with the Killing Edge criticals you and instantly kills one of your units? Now imagine that every enemy in the game now has a Killing Edge. Sound good? Arther's stats aren't all that great. He can't hit reliably, and doesn't even really do that much damage when he does (especially since we're keeping him locked to bronze weapons so he doesn't get crit out), and we aren't using child characters, so his one saving grace (Percy) isn't even accessible. We're going to not give him a single kill if we can avoid it, and we're dropping him ASAP. The one thing he's good for is his +4 STR from the guard stance bonus. Let's begin! Our plan is to get Stella to below half health to turn Silas into an unstoppable tank, and then use the choke on the bottom right of the map (which has a 4-tile long 1-tile wide bridge) to turtle the enemies until we win. Turn 1: The first couple of turns we only have Jakob and Stella to move. We move them both into the range of the Faceless on the left in Attack Stance. Jakob on the lower side of bridge, and Stella on the upper side. Turn 2: Both Faceless are pretty low now. They can both die to Stella in 1 hit. We're going to move Jakob into the woods as far away as possible since he's pretty low on health, then use Stella to body-block the one tile where he can be hit from. Both Faceless will attack Stella and die. Turn 3: There's a Faceless coming from the bottom side who's in range of Elise. Stella was missed by a Faceless last turn and is still above half health, so we attack this Faceless with Stella and leave her low enough to trigger Vow of Friendship. Silas moves up and finishes off the Faceless. Elise and Jakob move up and support Stella. Stella also equips the Dragonstone to force the other Faceless to attack Silas instead. Turn 4: Effie and Arthur are here! Effie finishes off the Faceless that attacked Silas last turn. Silas moves onto the forest tile in range of the left Faceless. Elise heals Silas, and Arthur goes and pairs up with Jakob who then transfers him to Silas. Stella moves down in range of one of the two other faceless with dragonstone equipped. Turn 5: Jakob finishes off the Faceless that attacked Silas. Elise heals Jakob since he's in range of one more Faceless and is currently on 7 health. Stella backs off from the bottom Faceless, and Silas moves in and takes the one on low health out. Effie stays where she is. Turn 6: Silas finishes the Faceless that attacked him. Jakob comes and heals Silas, Stella pairs up with Effie (no actual need for it but there's not enough room for her on the bridge). Effie blocks off the front of the bridge, with Elise right next to her. Our setup now is as follows: Silas on the bottom, with Arther guard stance. Jakob above him, then Elise above Jakob, then Effie blocking the top of the bridge. This is how we're going to weather the Faceless. Turn 7: Jakob heals Silas, everyone stays where they are. Turn 8: Elise heals Effie, Effie kills one of the two Guard Stance Faceless. Everyone else stays where they are. Turn 9: The boss got Silas down to 1 HP with the Savage Blow + Grievous Wound stack, but Silas has a dual guard lined up so he still manages to live the hit from the other Faceless. Chapter 7 Goals: Train Silas and Effie. Reinforcements: N/A Supports: JakobxStella, C New units: At the start of turn 3, Silas and Elise show up on the right side of the map. Effie and Arthur show up in the same place on turn 4. Silas is the early-game cavalier. He's got good STR and decent DEF, but his SPD and RES are pretty bad. His personal is pretty good for early game, but becomes much less impactful late-game. I like him a little better than Peri, but that might be due to personality more than anything else. Elise is our prime healer for the game (Troubadour). She has a pretty excessive MAG and RES growth, good SPD, and pretty bad stats for everything else. We're going to keep using her until the endgame because other healers are hard to come by (Jakob has low MAG, Felicia comes in too late, Flora/Izana are expensive to get). She's strictly a player-phase unit, though. I fully expect her to finish with an HP of less than 25. Effie is a Knight, but her stats don't match it at all. She has a very high STR which is further accented by Puissance (+3 damage dealt if STR is 5 higher than opponent's). She has pretty bad DEF for a knight, and has a pretty good speed growth (she can actually double enemies later on). Given that, General doesn't really fit her because Wary Fighter makes her speed stat worthless. Instead, we'll probably put her into Great Knight. Arthur is a Fighter, and not a very good one. Did you ever get that feeling when that enemy with the Killing Edge criticals you and instantly kills one of your units? Now imagine that every enemy in the game now has a Killing Edge. Sound good? Arther's stats aren't all that great. He can't hit reliably, and doesn't even really do that much damage when he does (especially since we're keeping him locked to bronze weapons so he doesn't get crit out), and we aren't using child characters, so his one saving grace (Percy) isn't even accessible. We're going to not give him a single kill if we can avoid it, and we're dropping him ASAP. The one thing he's good for is his +4 STR from the guard stance bonus. Let's begin! Our plan is to get Stella to below half health to turn Silas into an unstoppable* tank, and then use the choke on the bottom right of the map (which has a 4-tile long 1-tile wide bridge) to turtle the enemies until we win. *he's actually still barely strong enough to handle what the game throws at him Turn 1: The first couple of turns we only have Jakob and Stella to move. We move them both into the range of the Faceless on the left in Attack Stance. Jakob on the lower side of bridge, and Stella on the upper side. Turn 2: Both Faceless are pretty low now. They can both die to Stella in 1 hit. We're going to move Jakob into the woods as far away as possible since he's pretty low on health, then use Stella to body-block the one tile where he can be hit from. Both Faceless will attack Stella and die. Turn 3: There's a Faceless coming from the bottom side who's in range of Elise. Stella was missed by a Faceless last turn and is still above half health, so we attack this Faceless with Stella and leave her low enough to trigger Vow of Friendship. Silas moves up and finishes off the Faceless. Elise and Jakob move up and support Stella. Stella also equips the Dragonstone to force the other Faceless to attack Silas instead. Turn 4: Effie and Arthur are here! Effie finishes off the Faceless that attacked Silas last turn. Silas moves onto the forest tile in range of the left Faceless. Elise heals Silas, and Arthur goes and pairs up with Jakob who then transfers him to Silas. Stella moves down in range of one of the two other faceless with dragonstone equipped. Turn 5: Jakob finishes off the Faceless that attacked Silas. Elise heals Jakob since he's in range of one more Faceless and is currently on 7 health. Stella backs off from the bottom Faceless, and Silas moves in and takes the one on low health out. Effie stays where she is. Turn 6: Silas finishes the Faceless that attacked him. Jakob comes and heals Silas, Stella pairs up with Effie (no actual need for it but there's not enough room for her on the bridge). Effie blocks off the front of the bridge, with Elise right next to her. Our setup now is as follows: Silas on the bottom, with Arther guard stance. Jakob above him, then Elise above Jakob, then Effie blocking the top of the bridge. This is how we're going to weather the Faceless. Turn 7: Jakob heals Silas, everyone stays where they are. Turn 8: Elise heals Effie, Effie kills one of the two Guard Stance Faceless. Everyone else stays where they are. Turn 9: The boss got Silas down to 1 HP with the Savage Blow + Grievous Wound stack, but Silas has a dual guard lined up so he still manages to live the hit from the other Faceless. Silas missed the boss last round (with bronze lance? really?) but hit the other Faceless, so he finishes off the non-boss Faceless. Jakob heals him, leaving him with enough health to survive another hit from the boss (thankfully the Gauntlet reduced his STR so he can't kill). Effie finishes off the second Faceless from the Guard Stance stack that she dismantled last turn (this is because the other Guard Stance Faceless have a dual guard up so there's no point in attacking them). Turn 10: Effie takes apart the second Guard Stance Faceless. There are now about 5 Faceless above Effie, none of which can deal any damage to her. Jakob attacks the boss from far away, then Silas finishes him off. That's it for the enemies coming from the bottom, so now we can just sit there and wait for Effie to slowly kill all of the Faceless. Actually, we won't do that - instead, we'll move Effie down to the bottom of the bridge, but unequip her weapon and feed the remaining kills to Jakob since he's the lowest level. The end - Everyone is now level 8 except Stella (9) and Elise (6). Silas missed the boss last round (with bronze lance? really?) but hit the other Faceless, so he finishes off the non-boss Faceless. Jakob heals him, leaving him with enough health to survive another hit from the boss (thankfully the Gauntlet reduced his STR so he can't kill). Effie finishes off the second Faceless from the Guard Stance stack that she dismantled last turn (this is because the other Guard Stance Faceless have a dual guard up so there's no point in attacking them). Turn 10: Effie takes apart the second Guard Stance Faceless. There are now about 5 Faceless above Effie, none of which can deal any damage to her. Jakob attacks the boss from far away, then Silas finishes him off. That's it for the enemies coming from the bottom, so now we can just sit there and wait for Effie to slowly kill all of the Faceless. Actually, we won't do that - instead, we'll move Effie down to the bottom of the bridge, but unequip her weapon and feed the remaining kills to Jakob since he's the lowest level. Turn count: 14 The end - Everyone is now level 8 except Stella (9) and Elise (6). Chapter 8Goals: Visit 3 villages for 10k gold, train OdinReinforcements: Lots of enemies from each village the enemy Lancers visit.Supports: EffiexStella, C - JakobxSilas, C - ElisexEffie, C New units: At the start of turn 2, Odin and Niles will come in from the bottom of the map. Niles is an Outlaw. He's the only Nohr unit with the Capture command which pretty much makes him mandatory. He has very good SPD, and decent STR and RES - but bad DEF and mediocre HP. He also has very bad LCK, but that won't be a factor until later. Bows are very strong in this game, so even though his stats aren't the best, he's still a pretty good unit. Our plan is to put him into Bow Knight, because we absolutely need Shurikenbreaker before chapter 25 (also we don't need another staff user). Odin is a Dark Mage. He comes in at a very low level (5) and his stats aren't stellar, but he's much better than Nyx (who is fragile to the point of being unusable). Odin has decent stats, but he's not actually a good mage - his MAG growth isn't actually very high at all. He's got pretty good defenses (DEF better than RES) but his SPD isn't very good. For some reason, he has an obscenely high SKL, which isn't very helpful at all since he already has Heartseeker to augment his hit chance. Fortunately, a lot of enemies in this game have terrible RES stats, so even though he won't ever reach very high power, he can still deal a pretty good amount of damage in early to middle-game. We're going to leave him in Dark Mage and put him into Dark Knight for the mobility, but he'll probably end up being a backpack for Leo in the endgame. On to the chapter! This is one of my favorite chapters in the game. It actually gives you incentives to play aggressively, as opposed to the usual turtle/hit and run that the game often degenerates into. The setup is that there are two Lancers with 3 MOV who are moving from village to village, trying to visit each village before you do. If you get to the village, it closes and the enemy can't visit it. If the enemies get to the village first, it closes for you and many enemy reinforcements (3 Dark Mages and 3 Fighters) appear around it. Visiting these villages is crucial, because if we manage to visit 3, we get an extra reward of 10,000G, which will be very useful in the coming few chapters. What makes this harder is that there are enemies in the way of the villages, and in particular, Flora will use her Freeze staff to try and stop you from getting to the villages. We will be going for the village on the bottom left of the map, and the village at the top of the map, along with the "free" village that is given to us next to our spawn. Setup: Jakob is in the bottom left starting position. Above him is Silas, behind him is Arthur, and to the bottom right of Stella are Elise and Effie. Turn 1: Stella pairs up with Jakob, Arthur and Elise move as far left as possible, Effie pairs up with Silas. Jakob moves as far to the left as possible (and one tile up) and Silas moves to the left and up as far as he can. Both of them drop their pair-ups in the direction they were moving. Turn 2: Odin and Niles show up right where all the other units are. Elise pairs with Odin (to prevent enemy Dual Strikes), then Odin moves up to the space directly below and to the right of the corner of the central ice statue. Effie moves behind Odin, and Stella (Yato Equip) moves to the left of Odin. One Dark Mage will take a bite out of Stella, the other will attack Odin. Jakob has to move to a very specific spot which is in range of all three bottom Dark Mages, 4 tiles to the right and 3 above the left Dragon Vein. With the Arthur +4 STR, Jakob will ORKO all three Dark Mages. This specific positioning also has the benefit of luring one of the enemy Fighters down (he will attempt a Dual Strike which will be blocked by Arthur). Jakob can attack that Fighter next turn while making his way to the bottom left village. Turn 3: Jakob attacks the fighter we lured last round. Odin finishes him off. Effie kills the Dark Mage that attacked her with a dual strike from Stella. Niles moves into Flora's Freeze range and kills the Dark Mage that attacked Odin, with a dual strike from Stella. Silas moves to the left of Niles, in range of the Fighter that we hadn't lured. Stella moves to the right of Niles, and uses a Concoction (Dragonstone Equip). Note that Flora will Freeze Silas (not Niles) because Silas has lower RES. Turn 4: Stella's now on low health, so Silas gets his +3/-3 boost. Silas kills the Fighter who attacked him last round. Effie kills a full health Dark Mage with a dual strike from Stella, Odin attacks and Stella kills the Fighter. Jakob secures the bottom left village. Odin comes back and kills the Fighter who attacked Stella. Silas kills the Fighter who attacked him last turn. Niles moves 1 tile above Stella, which puts him in range of where the top Lancer will move this turn. Stella moves as far up as possible, staying out of range of enemies. Turn 5: Jakob retreats from the enemies that spawned from the leftmost village. Odin switches to Elise and heals Jakob. Stella attacks the top Lancer with Dragonstone, then Niles finishes him off. Effie moves next to Silas (who is Frozen). Turn 6: Effie is Frozen, so I pair her with Silas. The enemies from the leftmost village are moving towards us, so I put Jakob just within the reach of the front two (a Fighter and a Dark Mage with Fire). Elise moves next to him, but switches to Odin (if Lily's Poise is active, the Fire Dark Mage won't attack Jakob at all). Jakob will have a Dual Guard lined up after the Dark Mage attacks him, so the enemy Fighter won't actually damage him. Stella moves upwards and secures the topmost village, in range of the top left Fighter (NOT the Dark Mage). Niles pairs with her. With his SPD boost, she can ORKO that fighter with Yato Equip, and she will barely survive his attack. Silas (carrying Frozen Effie) moves around the central statue, towards Stella (staying out of reach of enemies). He drops Effie. Turn 7: There's a Fighter with HP + 5 and a Steel Axe who's within range of Jakob and Odin. We move Odin in the direction of Stella (staying out of range of the remaining enemies on the right side) and bodyblock the Fighter with Jakob, who can live one hit from the Fighter. Silas and Effie stay where they are, and Stella moves just in range of the top left Dark Mage and switches to Niles, then they separate. Turn 8: Odin finishes off the Fighter that attacked Jakob, staying in range of the last Dark Mage that moved up against Jakob and Odin earlier. Despite being on 13 health, he can live one hit from that Dark Mage. Everyone else stays where they are. Turn 9: Odin moves back from the Dark Mage towards the rest of the group, someone transfers Elise away from him and heals him. Everyone else stands still. Turn 10: Odin finishes the Dark Mage. From here on out, the map is pretty much won - all we need to do now is kill the single Lancer who's slowly trooping towards the village on the bottom right (which we never visited. I'm just going to repeatedly shoot him with Odin until he's dead (weakening him with Jakob first). Heartseeker/dual guard helps here. None of the other enemies move, and there are hardly any of them left. We're going to steadily feed them to Odin and Niles, giving a couple to Silas to get him to level 9. In particular, I gave Flora to Niles. The boss is actually kind of a pain. He has the annoying combination of Nosferatu and Vantage, which makes attacking him on player phase ineffective - but, he's on a gate, so he heals on enemy phase. We whittle him down with JakobxOdin (who has enough RES to survive many hits, especially with Lily's Poise), then finish him with EffiexStella when he's 2 health above half. Turn count: 36. I played really slow after we cleared out the main enemy force. This chapter is a good illustration of how strong a shuriken user with good defenses can be, especially against tome wielders. Jakob pretty much soloed half the map. Stella is level 9, Jakob is level 10. Elise is level 7, Silas is level 9, Effie is level 9, Odin is level 7, Niles is level 9.