Othin Plays FE13!

[Cammy white]

question how is sairi's stats cause i love to use her :D

[Othin]

question how is sairi's stats cause i love to use her :D

Don't know about Normal or Hard, but with her ridiculous stat bonuses on Lunatic, she was one of my best characters. I can't imagine completing the mode without using her heavily.

[Cammy white]

she abuses astra that much? xD WOW thats cool

[arvilino]

she abuses astra that much? xD WOW thats cool

It's not exactly Astra. It's mostly that her speed is so high and her combination HP, Str and Defense are quite high for a Swordsmaster resulting in her having more durability than alot of units on the merit she's almost never getting doubled by enemies on Lunatic while in addition being your unit most likely to double enemies.

[Othin]

Yeah, Astra really has nothing to do with it. It's just about her having crazy Spd backed up by solid stats all-around.

[Ike of Paris]

This game does not have any bad prepromotes, does it?

[Othin]

This game does not have any bad prepromotes, does it?

There are few prepromotes available in the main story, but they're all great. The only one who might get called "bad" is Emelina because her stats just aren't impressive for the map where she joins, which is harder than the Final.

If we're including the past-game characters, some of them can get kind of unimpressive on the higher difficulties because while their maps get much more difficult, they don't get Hard/Lunatic bonuses like the others, so you're taking on a heavier challenge for a unit that's not so impressive anymore. Still, with how difficult it ends up being to train units, they can still be really valuable.

[Westbrick]

Any update on the Final? You're so close, Othin!

[Othin]

I actually haven't been making a whole lot of progress lately; I've been tying up some loose ends on my Hard file so I can delete that file to start Lunatic+ once I finish Lunatic while still keeping my Normal and Lunatic files; I'm not finished with those. I've also been doing a bit of work the past couple of days for Vincent:

http://serenesforest.net/wiki/index.php/Awakening_LM_Enemy_Data:_Shadow_Dragon_SpotPass

I currently have Normal/Lunatic data for Shadow Dragon and Normal/Hard/Lunatic data for Holy War 1; the others are just blank skeletons at the moment, but they're works in progress. I'm going to have to split them by difficulty level to cut down on size; I already did that for Shadow Dragon, which is why I'm linking to the way more interesting Lunatic data. Since it's a pain to get data on both Hard and Lunatic at once and I'm planning on deleting my Hard file soon, I'm not going to go for other Hard data at the moment; it's not as interesting anyway. I'm also going to need to reorganize some links and other stuff to get it all to work properly, but that shouldn't be much trouble.

---

As for my Lunatic file, I actually got back to it just now and played through RvB3, which was easy. So now back to do S21, then S19, and hope my resources can hold up - my gold no longer seems like it can comfortably last this long unless there are more rewards I forgot, which I don't think there are. But I think I can hold together. I'm heading for S21 first, and damn, Renha beats Sairi in every stat except Mag, and she was still holding up as my third best character after Dion and Inverse. Even though I'm going to be taking on two more maps with enemies stronger than the ones in the Final, I think I can handle it.

So it's really just three maps left and then I'm done, at least for the main story.

[Lord Raven]

My copy came today!!!! Wheeeeeee!!!!

[Othin]

My copy came today!!!! Wheeeeeee!!!!

Excellent.

Completed S21 earlier today. Working through the first set of enemies was tricky, with all of them having over 40 Spd and most being right in my face. I had already had to Rescue Renha on Turn 1 on my Hard run to keep him alive; I didn't even try leaving him alone this time. Compounding problems, the set enemy skills changed. Tricksters still had Lucky 7 and Assassins still had Pass, but Swordmasters swapped Sword Expert for Astra while Heroes swapped Axe Slayer for Sol. Wasn't too big of a deal for the Heroes, but it made the Swordmasters incredibly deadly, since so few of my characters could survive it even if the Swordmaster was the only enemy they faced. This was rather annoying.

Half the enemies stayed behind around the boss, sort of like Ch2 only more so, waiting for characters to be in range of a whole avalanche of attacks before any enemy from the group would attack. The two smaller groups to the left and right were easy to defeat, sending someone in to kill two enemies and then fight off the remaining two, and the group with the boss... wasn't much more difficult. It turned out to be a simple matter for Inverse to swoop in, kill an enemy, and fly out of range with Lightning Speed, while the enemies stayed put as long as she didn't end her movement in range of the boss. The boss was especially deadly due to having a massive crit rate to back up Astra, but he had no ranged attack, so he too was easy to kill. Interesting tactics for the AI, but worthless against the right strategies.

I decided to take another detour after this to get Prince Marth. Krom's really been falling behind, and since hurting Gimle is such a problem, Prince Marth can replace him as a Divine Falchion user. He's slower than Lucina, but sturdier, and comparing well to Lucina is damn good, even at this point. Defeating his FE1 team to recruit him was simple and easy with the right tactics.

I want to get Valhart, but S19 doesn't look possible at all at this point. The enemies are way too strong and, with reinforcements, way too numerous to hold off, without any real room to run. My current strategy kills them at about half the rate I'd need to in order to keep the onslaught from backing my team into a corner and running right through it by Turn 6, and I don't see much I can do to speed things up. It looks like I'm going to have to set this chapter aside for the time being and return to the Final to see if I can fare better now.

[Lord Raven]

Are the options in the same order as the DS games? Like, the Configuration settings...

[Othin]

Not familiar enough with those to say. Is there something in particular you want to adjust? I can help you find it.

[Lord Raven]

idk... i just kinda want a list of things :/

[Othin]

Battle animations

(something about attack animations)

Game speed

(something about camera)

(something about map)

AI skip

(not sure about a bunch of these)

Slide pad (analog vs. digital)

HP gauge

(no idea - first sliding scale one)

Background music volume

Sound effect volume

System sound effect volume

Voice volume

Voice acting (on/off)

Speaker mode

That's about all I could make out.

[Lord Raven]

Thanks Othin! Also, I found this guide:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/3ds/643003-fire-emblem-awakening/faqs/64260

That helped a lot too... though his formatting is confusing at points

EDIT: When do you get your first Master or Change Seal?

Edited July 17, 2012 by Lord Raven

[Othin]

Master/Change Seals can become available really early, especially with merchants showing up. You can get one of each in Ch8, but you can also get them earlier.

Returned for the final battle with Gimle, and my completely mixed up test attempt succeeded through sheer luck. It was actually a lot like my previous attempts, only less coherent; it still mainly consisted of Inverse blasting everything with Nosferatu. I ended up blitzing Gimle on Turn 4 because my strategy had fallen apart too much to survive otherwise, and MU managed to slay Gimle in the two rounds available, with help from Marth swinging the Falchion. And when I say winning a screwed up attempt through sheer luck, I mean forgetting to make sure MU would have the HP to survive a Magnificent Flame and then Gimle missing his 80% activation rate for the skill. But hey, it worked.

I also finished up with my Hard file earlier today, so now it's on to Lunatic+. For this round's MU, I made Derrick and gave him +Spd and -Str. Man, I'm going to be glad when I can finally get a chance to make a best stat something other than Spd; being so restricted on these Lunatic runs is getting kind of annoying. Derrick is, obviously, mute. Yes, it's obvious. If it's not obvious, you haven't been paying enough attention.

In addition to playing Lunatic+, I'm interested in studying it. Looking at the Prologue, here are my results so far:

As others have observed, the enemies automatically get two skills added. At this point, they can get Pass, Absolute Hit, Luna+, and Vantage+. The latter two look like the regular skill with a + added to the icon, while Absolute Hit looks like the other accuracy+ skills but with the + on the icon followed by the infinity symbol rather than a number. They certainly want to be intimidating, it seems. The skills don't seem to be equal: I loaded the map several times and it looks to me like Pass shows up about twice as often as the other skills: it appears on about 80% of the enemies, while the other three each appear on about 40% of the enemies. This is on the generic enemies, anyway. Geriba, the stationary boss, is sensible enough to not have Pass: instead, he just picks any two of the other three with rather uniform frequency. He also always has Gamble as a set skill, as on regular Lunatic. Similarly, the generic enemies seem to add a class skill about 30% of the time: Gamble for the Barbarians, Avoid +10 for the Myrmidons, and Magic +2 or Concentration for the Mages. As usual, the enemies don't bother with Mug, but it's interesting that the Myrmidons don't seem to have regular Vantage, either. This isn't actually new: I remember the same results from poking around on earlier maps on my Lunatic run, but they picked up the skill eventually. But let's see how things progress. As I noted previously, on Lunatic, the enemies eventually pick up some powerful inherent accuracy+ skills as set onto all of them, and at the very end, also have some powerful skills set depending on their class. I suspect we may see some of this expanded on Lunatic+.

Regarding my own run, I plan on holding to these same restrictions as from my Lunatic run for the duration of the main story:

-No buying Nosferatu

-No hiring bonus characters

-No replaying DLC maps

-No using Everyone's Room

I also will not allow characters to die, as a personal goal. I suspect these will be enough, if not more than enough. I do not intend to waver on these restrictions. Anything else is fair game, which will open up some useful options earlier than on my Lunatic run, although it seems like it'll be substantially more difficult overall regardless. And Lunatic was difficult enough.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Othin

[Psych]

What are your planned pairings for Lunatic+ and are you using the same people as in your Lunatic run?

[Dark Sage]

I wish they used Lunatic Reverse instead

[Angel Valentine]

Regarding my own run, I plan on holding to these same restrictions as from my Lunatic run for the duration of the main story:

-No buying Nosferatu

-No hiring bonus characters

-No replaying DLC maps

-No using Everyone's Room

I also will not allow characters to die, as a personal goal. I suspect these will be enough, if not more than enough. I do not intend to waver on these restrictions. Anything else is fair game, which will open up some useful options earlier than on my Lunatic run, although it seems like it'll be substantially more difficult overall regardless. And Lunatic was difficult enough.

Yeah, I'm willing to bet that your not gonna be able to finish the game unless you replay dlc, buy nosferatu or get additional units. But then again you never know :D

[Othin]

Prologue wasn't so bad; took about five attempts. The map is, as on Lunatic, split into two waves: the first wave was easy with Freederick abuse, but the second was the one that kept tripping me up. Then there's the boss, who's annoying with Gamble always giving him a tiny crit rate. There's really no excuse for that. But I made it through without getting critted anyway.

I stalled a bit to heal after the first wave, since the second wave doesn't move until entering one of their attack ranges. Each individual wave also took a lot of running around. The skills complicated things, but they were workable, and they really did act more of a spice than as a random "you can't win" button. Especially since Pass was useless to them at this point. Let's see if that holds up.

What are your planned pairings for Lunatic+ and are you using the same people as in your Lunatic run?

Planning is for sane runs.

Yeah, I'm willing to bet that your not gonna be able to finish the game unless you replay dlc, buy nosferatu or get additional units. But then again you never know :D

I suppose I should clarify: I said that upfront because I'm not interested in hearing that shit.

Edited July 20, 2012 by Othin

[arvilino]

You should be fine with those restrictions for the Lunatic+ run up to chapter 6 which may cause some trouble in my experience. In 6 I found the enemies charging on 3 separate fronts is a bit overwhelming to the point I needed to defeat some spotpass teams(Thany,Nyna if you can get Frederick to Crit her with the Killing Edge) due to the Lunatic+ skills especially pass preventing me from choke pointing the middle section of the map with the right hand side being equally annoying to deal with due to the couple of cavaliers amongst the other units.

Though an interesting thing about Lunatic+ is that the DLC chapters and Spotpass teams are actually the same as they were in Lunatic, the enemies there don't get the Lunatic+ skills.

Edited July 20, 2012 by arvilino

[Othin]

You should be fine with those restrictions for the Lunatic+ run up to chapter 6 which may cause some trouble in my experience. In 6 I found the enemies charging on 3 separate fronts is a bit overwhelming to the point I needed to defeat some spotpass teams(Thany,Nyna if you can get Frederick to Crit her with the Killing Edge) due to the Lunatic+ skills especially pass preventing me from choke pointing the middle section of the map with the right hand side being equally annoying to deal with due to the couple of cavaliers amongst the other units.

Though an interesting thing about Lunatic+ is that the DLC chapters and Spotpass teams are actually the same as they were in Lunatic, the enemies there don't get the Lunatic+ skills.

I was expecting to go for some extra help here. The unchanged skills makes sense; I figured that based on how they never changed their skills on other difficulty levels.

But right now, I have some more pressing things to worry about. Chapter 1 actually turned out rather easy: with a bit of luck, I completed it on my first attempt. As I suspected, the Prologue and Chapter 1 got way easier after playing the rest of Lunatic to know what I'm doing, and the Lunatic+ skills didn't make it much harder. Chapter 2, however, is insanity. Without supports, MU gets OHKOed by absolutely anything with Luna+. Frederick sometimes has trouble surviving as much as two rounds, and just about everyone else is worthless. I don't understand how I could survive this even with sacrifices, and I don't want to make sacrifices.

Say, how far have you played in Lunatic+, anyway? Did you notice any patterns in the skills, or a specific lack of patterns? Like enemies of a certain class all seeming to pick up certain skills at certain points?

[arvilino]

I was expecting to go for some extra help here. The unchanged skills makes sense; I figured that based on how they never changed their skills on other difficulty levels.

But right now, I have some more pressing things to worry about. Chapter 1 actually turned out rather easy: with a bit of luck, I completed it on my first attempt. As I suspected, the Prologue and Chapter 1 got way easier after playing the rest of Lunatic to know what I'm doing, and the Lunatic+ skills didn't make it much harder. Chapter 2, however, is insanity. Without supports, MU gets OHKOed by absolutely anything with Luna+. Frederick sometimes has trouble surviving as much as two rounds, and just about everyone else is worthless. I don't understand how I could survive this even with sacrifices, and I don't want to make sacrifices.

Say, how far have you played in Lunatic+, anyway? Did you notice any patterns in the skills, or a specific lack of patterns? Like enemies of a certain class all seeming to pick up certain skills at certain points?

Only chapter 8, I've quit playing my Lunatic+ run for quite a bit to play some other games. Though in regards to the enemy skills in Lunatic+, there doesn't seem to be any pattern or noticible frequency, every enemy from chapter 3 onwards appears have any combination of 2 Lunatic Skills regardless of class or chapter, or even specific unit on the map each time you reset.

Edited July 20, 2012 by arvilino

[Othin]

Hmm. Well, that's not far enough to tell, especially since I didn't notice Lunatic enemies having set skills until Ch24 - although it might have started a bit earlier.

Anyway, I'm also not done with my original Lunatic run: right now, I'm going around completing the remaining sidequests and making new pairings to unlock the others. I've also been getting some really funny results with Donny so far. As it turns out, dumping Speed Cry, Love Cry, and Rainbow Cry along with a good Double allows Donny to go from being killed in half a round to actually one-rounding some Lunatic enemies at base. Although a further Str bonus from Olivia's Special Dance and/or added damage from Dual Attacks are generally necessary to seal the kills. Regardless, with all those buffs in place, Donny's been able to take the front lines on the lower-level battles already. Meanwhile my other characters that fell far behind in the actual Lunatic story are nonetheless crushing the enemies back in these weaker sidequests. Sure looks different from here.

I'm also trying to see what I can do while still remaining within my original rules for the Lunatic run. I don't expect to be able to complete LvD or S23 like this, but let's see if I can unlock and complete all the sidequests without breaking any of those rules. Which will still probably require grinding on SpotPass battles for support points - they're not banned due to lack of Exp gain, but they're still potentially useful this way. Perhaps I should add as a rule for this "run" and my Lunatic+ run - no replaying SpotPass battles. It's basically infinite support points in exchange for weapons, which with the weak battles would be easy. Not game-breaking, but boring. In any case, the sidequests are offering plenty of funds to keep this up.