Box Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 So I beat this game on normal mode. It wasn't too hard except that the enemy turn reinforcements made me have to restart a bunch of times. I enjoyed it though, so now I'm restarting on hard mode to do the other routes. This is the first time where I've felt like I can't actually beat a Fire Emblem game, at least not the way I'd like to. You see, I like to keep a brisk pace when I play because I find the game gets boring when I'm just healing and waiting for the enemies to attack. I feel like I can't do that in this game because my units are consistently weaker than the enemies. I'm still in the Lycia arc. I beat chapter 7 after doing some crazy save state BS and then realized I wasn't enjoying the game anymore. So I restarted and now I'm at chapter 4 and I'm not seeing any way to beat it without getting lucky or playing really defensively. Basically, it seems like it takes my units 4 rounds to beat enemy cavaliers while my units can only survive 3 rounds. Roy's rapier and Marcus's silver lance help a little bit but I still feel I'm just totally outmatched. I'm at the point where I'm thinking of just knocking the difficulty back down to normal so I can see the rest of the game. I'd really like to play on hard mode for the challenge but not if my only option is slowly peeling away at the enemies each turn. That's not fun to me. So yeah I need some help, or at least an assessment on whether or not it's possible to play hard mode without playing extremely cautious. As far as I can tell, I'm using the best characters: Marcus, Alllen, Lance, Deke, and Rutger with other units providing support and chip damage. Lance and Allen got to level 6 each by chapter 4 with C support but are still noticeably weaker than enemy cavaliers. The only other thing to add is that I'm using the numbers patch from the translation patch topic linked to by the main page. It doesn't seem to change much though and what is different seems like it would make the game easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 so first of all i'm not a fan of the numbers patch because everyone perceives different systemic problems with FE6 and the numbers patch is just one user's idea for how to address them. you're not really playing FE6 in that case. chapters 4 and 7 are hard on HM and you are going to have the feeling of slowly doing chip damage. there are a number of ways about this in each chapter. chapter 4: - maximize marcus's enemy phase exposure and use the silver lance - grab the halberd from a chapter 3 chest and gamble on OHKOing the iron lance cavaliers with an axe user - take chapters 1-3 slightly more slowly and concentrate EXP into allen, lance, and deke - lugh can chip for 6-8 HP damage at fairly high hit from a safe range chapter 7: - recruit zealot and treck on turn 2 - maximize enemy phase exposure with marcus, zealot, and rutger - bring a couple of bow users for the wyvern riders - don't leave enemies with less than half of their HP you can reference the videos from my 0% growths playthrough for ideas on specific strategies. i do RNG abuse to make sure that everything hits, but if you have growths, you're far more likely to have success without need for RNG abusing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gringe Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 so first of all i'm not a fan of the numbers patch because everyone perceives different systemic problems with FE6 and the numbers patch is just one user's idea for how to address them. you're not really playing FE6 in that case. Actually, I don't disagree, and I made the numbers patch. I was thinking of removing it from the first post of that topic. It does make axes and lances better, but I think hard mode relies on them having low hit rates. The game is almost unplayably hard on hard mode. Unless I can decrease the hard mode bonuses in addition to the other changes, I don't think that will change. TL;DR: Although FE6 has some balance issues, hard mode basically relies on these imbalances. The numbers patch, as of the latest version, is designed with normal mode in mind and makes hard mode even harder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box Posted January 5, 2015 Author Share Posted January 5, 2015 The strategies you have in that run actually seem pretty useful. Maybe I'll try again since it seems like I wasn't using the other characters as much as I could have. Does hard mode get any easier after Lycia or is it still this hard through the whole game? I imagine it might be easier after you get the chance to use more promoted units but I'm not sure. The numbers patch doesn't seem too bad difficulty wise. I'm not exactly a fan of missing more often. And I was hoping to use Lillina and Gonzales and they seem a lot better in the numbers patch. I guess the only bad thing about it is that you lose bragging rights. I might try again without the patch though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted January 5, 2015 Share Posted January 5, 2015 it gets easier later on; in casual runs chapter 7 is probably the hardest map in the game Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box Posted January 7, 2015 Author Share Posted January 7, 2015 Welp, I restarted without the numbers patch and rolled some pretty OP cavaliers so I guess there's that. How do you generally decide who to give stat boosters to? I have the robe from chapter 4 and I'm not sure who to give it to. The frontline units like Allen and Lance would probably get a lot of use out of it, but if I gave it to one of the frail units it might help them not die. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
General Horace Posted January 7, 2015 Share Posted January 7, 2015 HP gets better and better the more defence you have and you generally want to give it to units that see a lot of combat to increase their survivability even further. Odds are if you give a robe to a unit that gets 2HKO'd will likely still get 2HKO'd by stronger enemies anyway. Roy probably wants one before a bunch of long range magic shows up too, but you'll get another before that point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondon151 Posted January 7, 2015 Share Posted January 7, 2015 defense gets better the more defense you have; HP is a mixed bag. horace is right, but HP can also be good on frail units because it's much more likely for +7 HP to bring them out of being OHKO'd or 2HKO'd than it is for +2 def or +2 res. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vorena Posted January 8, 2015 Share Posted January 8, 2015 Welp, I restarted without the numbers patch and rolled some pretty OP cavaliers so I guess there's that. How do you generally decide who to give stat boosters to? I have the robe from chapter 4 and I'm not sure who to give it to. The frontline units like Allen and Lance would probably get a lot of use out of it, but if I gave it to one of the frail units it might help them not die. It is generally preferred to give it to units where the stats actually make a larger difference. As DD151 said, a unit with more defense would probably want the more defense since it goes to them surviving longer. Suppose you have Lance equipped with a lance with 8 defense and he is facing enemies with 15 attack. And, he has 30 HP. Each enemy does 7 damage and Lance is killed in 5 hits. Now, if you give him the +2 defense and he now gets 6-hit knocked out. Compared to a mage with +2 def they will rarely go from say a 2HKO to a 3HKO. The same thing can be applied to strength and speed increases. Some units are so weak that a +2 strength will not do anything for them. But at the same time a unit with too much strength will probably not benefit from the damage increase at all. In this regard, if you can turn a unit which 3HKOs things into something that 2HKO because it can finally double or has enough strength to kill in 2 hits you are pretty good. Other stats increases might not necessarily get used since they provide such little benefit to the game (lck, skl, res). At least resistance in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box Posted January 9, 2015 Author Share Posted January 9, 2015 That all makes sense. I gave robes to Lance and Allen and the skill book to Gonzo. I'm thinking of giving the dragon shield to Lance instead of Gonzo since Gonzo can dodge better. For the speedwings I'm not sure. I'm thinking maybe Klein but I don't know if he's going to be any good through the end of the game. Shin seems like he would end up better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacLovin Posted January 9, 2015 Share Posted January 9, 2015 Klein's very solid, and is among the best pre-promoted units in HM. Shin's good, use him. You'll want more good bow users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MisterIceTeaPeach Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I've beaten FE6 HM for the first time and I've to admit it was hard even frustating in some points. Not mainly because of the difficulty, but because of the game mechanics. Physical range weapons are crap an the weird RNG pissed me off. I haven't count, how many times my units missed with 70% but the enemies hit me with 30%. The earlygame was pretty tough, especially chapter 6 and 7. Chapter 7 was as a nightmare as I expected. However the game became easier, if my team got some levels. Rutger saved my ass against most bosses. The stats of the enemies seemed to be fair to me. The stats of the phyisical enemies weren't very special except for high HP. Myrmidons maxed skill and speed, mercenaries maxed skill and dracoknights maxed strength. Maybe comparable with FE10 hard mode. Second tier enemies weren't too tough. Noticeable was the high magic of enemy sages and druids. Level 10 druids had maxed magic already, which was very annoying because of the huge range of their staves. Most of my staves like silence, sleep and berserk didn't work against the enemies because of the ridiculous low magic stats of Ellen and Clarine. Bolting was my remedy to kill the enemy berserk users. All in all the difficulty was alright except for chapter 7 and the desert chapter. If the accuracy of axes and lances was better, this game would be more bearable for me. I'll switch to the "Redux Hack", because axes and lances are improved and some chapters and character growthrates are fixed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box Posted January 10, 2015 Author Share Posted January 10, 2015 Well I will say that I thought that Lycia ended up a lot easier without the numbers patch simply because there are a ton of misses on the enemy phase from things like javelins and steel axes/lances. It's not so much that you can rely on misses but that you don't have to heal as much. I still think chapter 7 is pretty dumb though. I felt like I was forced to use a very specific strategy to have a chance at beating it while keeping everyone alive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonLord Posted January 10, 2015 Share Posted January 10, 2015 I'm currently playing FE6 HM, and I'm on Chapter 4. It takes forever just to take down each group of enemies, and every time someone ends up dying cause there was one enemy left with a bow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekkah Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 Physical range weapons are crap an the weird RNG pissed me off. I haven't count, how many times my units missed with 70% but the enemies hit me with 30%. That's not a weird RNG, that's just something that has a low chance of happening + confirmation bias. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Refa Posted January 17, 2015 Share Posted January 17, 2015 Klein's very solid, and is among the best pre-promoted units in HM. This is false. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 (edited) I just beat chapter 21. It's much much easier when you know what to expect from the reinforcements. Aside from that though, I think it's actually a pretty good chapter. It really gives you a chance make use of the legendary weapons in a chapter that matters, which I don't think is very common in the other games I've played. It's really satisfying. Klein was useless like this whole game though. Shin actually did really well in chapter 21 against all the fliers and being able to avoid everything with Murgleis. Edited February 6, 2015 by Box Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacLovin Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 (edited) Klein's useful for his A bows and decent base str/skl. But then Igrene comes and stomps him unless you've AA'd him/turtled. Shin is so good, he even makes fe4 fair! Edited February 6, 2015 by Howard the Duck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Box Posted February 6, 2015 Author Share Posted February 6, 2015 Yeah, I guess Klein wasn't really useless. He had a few moments in the Western Isles, but by the time I gave him the speedwing he was on his way out. I didn't use Igrene but Milady, Percival and promotions overshadowed him pretty quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MacLovin Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 He's a great filler unit for a while tho!. You'll want bows later on btw. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junkhead Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 Shin is so good, he even makes fe4 fair! Shin's that good? He seems okay, when I look at him stat/growth-wise, but not particularly great. Tell me more. Also, what is this "numbers patch"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gradivus. Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 IIRC some patch that makes throne dodge rates lower. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gringe Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 No, it was an attempt by me to change the balance and all general stats and limits based on posts I've read and my own experiences. There are a number of patches like this already, but they all changed a little too much for my taste, so mine was an attempt to be minimalist. I think it went well enough, but there are a few issues, and it's certainly a different experience than playing the original game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junkhead Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 (edited) That's the best way to go, in terms of balance. Change what's unfair, and leave what's alright intact...reminds me of some "hard mode" patches that just make crazy enemies and make the Jeigan weak, or somethin'. Edited February 6, 2015 by The Alice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonLord Posted February 6, 2015 Share Posted February 6, 2015 I'm on Chapter 9 of FE6 HM, and it gets MUCH easier after you finish Chapter 7. That, and Chapter 4 were the most difficult for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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