Video HHM Low Turn Count

[ruadath]

After a break that was a little bit over 3 months, this playthrough has finally resumed!

3 turns, all the items obtained, and good levels for (almost) everyone! Let me know what you guys think, and as always, feedback is very much appreciated!

[ruadath]

Any tips for me before I start routing Darin's Dragon's Gate?

[Irysa]

Lol Turn 1 EP for Florina looks hilariously bad. She's almost certainly 2HKO'd, but what kind of hitrates does she face from those guys?

Also, nice bait to get Fiora over for Florina to recruit on Turn 3.

[ruadath]

Yeah that turn 1 EP is pretty awful; IIRC that was literally the only seed I could find that let her survive at that spot (and is the reason why I had to "burn" RNs by having Florina attack first with the Horseslayer and then giving Bartre the kill along with a level up instead of the other way around). Not only is she 2HKOd by everything, but all of the nomads (except for the Longbow guy) 1HKO her because they have Steel weapons!

There is a much safer and more reliable option of dropping Florina to the spot east of Sain instead of south. I found somewhere between 5-10 seeds where this worked out perfectly well, but the disadvantage of doing that is that the cavs who attack Florina get a Def buff from the forest and are no longer killed by a crit+hit from the Slim Lance; instead, they survive with 2-3 HP.

As for the hitrates:

Steel Sword!Cav: 36 hit (true hit: ~26.3)

Florina levels up here, gaining +2 or 3 Avo (I forget the formula)

Iron Sword!Cav: 48 hit (true hit: ~46.6)

Steel Lance!Cav 43 hit (true hit: ~37.4)

Hand Axe!Pirate: 48 hit (true hit: ~46.6)

Longbow!Nomad: 42 hit (true hit: ~35.7)

2x Steel Bow!Nomad: 47 hit (true hit: ~44.6)

Oh wow, so everything was under 50%. Nothing compared to the RNG abuse in RD/Awakening then, but dodging 6 attacks at about 50% hit rate and landing a couple of ~10% crits is pretty lucky, especially when you consider that she has to get a good level in the middle of that and it's really helpful for Erk to dodge the Iron Bow!Nomad who attack him at 48 hit (he'll almost certainly dodge the Pirate who has like 24 hit or something like that).

[ruadath]

Alright, so the 4-turn clear with Legault recruited is actually surprisingly easy to do, even without the second Paladin. However, the usual train Florina issue has resurfaced, and I would kind of like to resolve it before I post a clear; maybe you guys will have some ideas that I haven't thought of.

Heading east toward Legault is our team of cavs: Marcus, Sain, and Kent (along with Priscilla carrying Lyn in the rear and providing unnecessary healing for EXP). I was really excited (perhaps too excited) to see Marcus smash down walls with the Steel Axe, but it actually turns out to work better for Sain and Kent to destroy the walls and have Marcus charge forward. Erk snipes the nomads and the killer bow guy from the starting area, so they don't get in anyone's way and things are resolved pretty simply.

On the west side is where things are slightly more problematic. The standard Florina/Fiora rescue-drop puts Lowen in position to facetank Cameron; he's fast enough to double the cavs who attack him with the Steel Lance so he leaves space to maneuver on turn 2. Florina kills Cameron with an Axereaver crit (and gets a 6-stat level up so that's not an issue). The problem comes with deciding what to do after that. It's easy enough to have Lowen charge ahead and (after using a Vulnerary) slaughter everything with Javelins, and then crit-kill Darin with the Heavy Spear; I've got enough EXP to get Florina to level 10 with like one more kill after Cameron, so she'll definitely be able to promote.

I would, however, like to place Florina up in the front and funnel all the EXP down her throat instead of Lowen before she promotes. But then rigging all the dodges from the cavs/nomads and stuff is problematic for obvious reasons. I don't think there is any easy way to get around this, but let me know if I'm overlooking something.

[ruadath]

I think I might have figured out how to deal with the issue I mentioned above. It's kind of complicated to explain in full detail, but basically a very injured Lowen will draw the enemies away from a full HP Florina, despite the fact that they only do like 1 or 2 damage to Lowen (who is thus 4/5HKO) and can 2HKO Florina. However, they get a bit lucky with the RNG seed that makes everything else work and actually do manage to kill him... if he has the Javelin equipped. If he has an Iron Lance equipped, however, the 1 additional AS actually keeps him safe. So there are two ways to deal with this, the most reasonable being:

1) use the Goddess Icon on Lowen

Of course, I'm not a reasonable person, and you guys know how much I hate to use statboosters (using the Dracoshield on Kent back in Chapter 17 killed me...) So before I resort to option 1, I'm instead going to:

2) look back at my playthrough and see if I can trade around my Iron Lances differently between chapters in order to end up with Iron Lance that has 4 uses remaining

which can then break on the EP to equip Lowen with the Javelin. I'll add this information to the errata on the first page of the thread if I end up taking this route.

EDIT: OK this seems like it might not be so bad after all! I can't control anything up to the end of Chapter 13, after which we have

Chapter 14: Lowen (38), Oswin (40)

In Chapter 14 both Lowen and Oswin use their lance once, so this doesn't matter

Chapter 15: Lowen (37), Oswin (39)

In Chapter 15, Lowen used his Lance 8 times while Oswin used his 9 times. But I want to flip this around and have them trade lances before hand. Thus the next chapter should now read:

Chapter 16: Lowen (31), Oswin (28)

Lowen uses the Iron Lance he has 10 times, while Oswin's Lance is given to Marcus (who gives it to Florina on the first turn of the chapter) and is used 3 times. I want to flip this around. Sain also joins with an Iron Lance and uses it 5 times during the chapter.

Chapter 17: Lowen (18), Florina (28), Sain (40)

This one is actually done exactly the same as before! However, there was already a change in the errata (which is maintained) and things get complicated here, so let me give a run down of what happens here. Sain gives his lance to Kent, and then lances are traded in the cycle Kent-->Lowen-->Florina-->Kent. During the Chapter, Kent uses the lance he gets 5 times. Florina's lance is traded to Sain mid-chapter when we de-equip her and is not used. Lowen uses his lance a bit, and later trades it to Florina who uses it even more for a total of 9 uses.

Chapter 18: Florina (31), Sain (18), Kent (23)

In this chapter, Florina uses her lance 8 times, while Sain uses his only once (Kent isn't deployed). Therefore, we swap Florina and Sain's lances

Chapter 19: Florina (10), Sain (30), Kent (23)

Lowen takes Florina's lance and uses it 6 times, Sain uses his lance twice, and Marcus takes Kent's lance and uses it once. No changes need to be made here

Chapter 20: Marcus (22), Sain (28), Lowen (4)

And thus we have a 4-use Iron Lance for the chapter. I'm too lazy to actually go back and do all of this trading, especially since it won't affect anything in the playthroughs, so I'm just going to hack in these changes to my save file.

Edited June 5, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

Some progress on this run over the past couple of weeks:

I can now survive turn 2 EP properly without exposing Florina to danger by letting Lowen kill (almost) everything. Florina can still get to level 12, so she isn't harmed by this. However, I am having trouble getting Florina to survive turn 3 EP (where all the Shaman's around Darin attack her while she holds a Javelin). There isn't anything else that happens on this turn that is RNG-reliant, so I'm a bit surprised since they all pull sub-60 hit rates, but I guess the seed I have is just bad... or something. One possible option might be to let her use a Pure Water at some point, though I'm not sure how well this would work out.

In the worst case, I suppose it is not strictly necessary for Florina to grab those kills. She's already level 10 (with 13 Str), which means she does enough damage to one-shot Darin with a Heavy Spear crit. Lowen can't replace Florina for holding the chokepoint, since he has like 1 HP left by this point, but Hand Axe!Hector will probably do a sufficient job (and Fiora/Lowen can clean up on the PP afterward). This sacrifices a level for Florina, but if nothing else works I'll probably go with this option.

EDIT: Just as I suspected, making a post here gave me the insight I needed to finally get a clear. Florina needs a Secret Book, although I think this is unavoidable. Expect a video soon.

Edited June 17, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

Well, here it is!

Lowen's missed Str procs are going to inconvenience me pretty badly at some point in the near future... I can just feel it. FWIW, Sain is 3 levels behind him and a point of Str ahead (although he is 4 points behind in Spd). Marcus finally hits A rank in axes, and Lowen hits B in lances, which was kind of surprising. The most important thing though, is that Florina got 4 solid levels before her "forced" promotion next chapter.

Eliwood is looking pretty solid too, which is pretty amusing considering how poor his early game is. I might end up relying on him quite a bit late game if Lowen can't turn things around and Marcus stagnates.

Let me know what you guys think!

[Irysa]

Couldn't Kent have used the Horseslayer so Sain wouldn't need to crit Javelin the Cavaliers in the way?

Also why did you promote Erk mid chapter?

NIce job with the dual Paladin-less clear though.

[ruadath]

Yes, Kent could have done that, although I didn't have anything better to use the crit for so I just decided to save a Horseslayer (and Javelin) use. Note that the only reason I had Kent equipped with a Javelin (and not an Iron Lance, which would have allowed Sain to kill with a double) was so that he didn't double the Steel Lance cav.

There wasn't really any reason for promoting Erk mid-chapter, but there also wasn't a reason not to; it didn't affect the number of tactician stars I got for the chapter since I already missed too much treasure/exp to 4-star. Speaking of which I finally dropped from have 5-stars in all categories... to 2 stars in EXP (sadness) and 4 stars in Funds. Also up to 37 tactician stars total, which means Tactician bonus has increased from +2 Hit/Avo/Dodge to +3.

EDIT: Actually you might have a point on the Erk thing. Due to missing a ton of the villages and promoting Florina in the next chapter, I'm definitely going to have to settle for a 3-star clear there. If I go back to chapter 18 and have Florina use the Secret Book there (where we have a big surplus of Funds thanks to the extra promotion item), I can actually just barely get 4-stars on chapter 20 by not promoting Erk. The only thing to check is that the extra boost in Skl doesn't make Florina crit anywhere that she is not supposed to. Thanks Irysa!

Once I confirm that this works by examining my clears of Chapter 18 and 19, I'm probably just going to hack in the extra Tactician Star and not bother redoing my clear since it won't change anything. The only benefit of doing so would be to see Erk promoting in the Chapter 21 base instead of the middle of Chapter 20, but I don't think anyone cares that much.

Edited June 25, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

I don't believe it! Crit-killing Oleg in chapter 21 actually provides Marcus with an awesome level up (HP, Str, Skl, Spd, Res... the same one he got in Chapter 14)... except he doesn't have enough EXP to actually level up! He's 7 points short and I have no idea where to get him those extra points.

The first thing that comes to mind is to have Marcus attack Legault on the last turn of Chapter 20 instead of killing the random cav; this results in a net gain of +1 EXP. But it still leaves me 6 short of my desired benchmark... anyone have any ideas where I can fit in one or two extra attacks/kills for Marcus? Or am I just going to have to forego this?

[Brinzy]

Wow, I have a lot to catch up on...

So far I haven't thought of anywhere for you to gain the experience for Marcus, since Oleg will range attack Marcus in retaliation iirc. That is, unless you let him attack Marcus while Marcus has a Hand Axe and then letting him kill. but I have no idea how viable a strategy that is.

[ruadath]

Hey, long time no see!

I'm pretty sure there is no way to get Marcus the extra EXP in Chapter 21 since we are 1 turning it. So we have to look back at the previous chapters. For reasons discussed previously, we don't want Marcus to level up in Chapter 16, so him ending the chapter at 3.99 (which he does) seems optimal. Then in my chapter 17 clear, I don't think there is any way to improve Marcus' EXP gain, with the exception of perhaps the final EP, where he and Hector could be given Hand Axes to counter the mages/javelin knights that attack them. However, IIRC, this caused problems with Priscilla's survival so it's probably not going to happen.

Where it actually might be possible to make modification is in Chapter 18. It might be possible to have Marcus kill the shaman that Lowen does on the first turn instead of the archer, which should net him 3 or 4 extra EXP. However, this might cause problems for Erk's survival, which is very RNG reliant, and even if it does work, it will shift Lowen's EXP value by a significant enough amount that Chapter 19 and 20 will have to be entirely rerouted. I think that this rerouting in Chapter 19 will more likely than not result in the rest of the additional EXP for Marcus.

This could prove worth looking into, but it will of course cause major setbacks since those chapters were rather difficult to route in the first place. It might be worth it though, because good Marcus levels are hard to come by, and with Lowen stagnating (sort of), it seems I can't just promote him after Eubans and let him take care of Marcus' job... so some tough decisions will have to be made.

Edited June 22, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

Judging from the RNG seed at the start of Chapter 22, I think it may be possible to get Marcus a good level there, so it might not be necessary at all to look into doing Chapters 18-20, which is a huge relief. I need some help planning out my shopping for Chapter 21 though (I imagine it will consists of my last visits to non-secret shops), so if one of you guys could give suggestions as to what to buy, that would be great.

[ruadath]

So far I haven't thought of anywhere for you to gain the experience for Marcus...

The answer might actually be that less is more! If I can have Marcus lose enough EXP (I think 26?) that he doesn't level after killing Uhai, then he'll definitely level up after killing Oleg! So how do we go about doing this? I just finished completing a preliminary rerouting the last 2 turns of Chapter 15 so that Hector kills Sealen instead of Marcus, and Marcus finishes the chapter at 3.04 EXP (instead of 3.50). Hector and Marcus will be the only units with different EXP, so I'm hoping the rest of the chapter clears remain pretty much intact. Here is where I anticipate things being different:

Chapter 16: Nothing. Well almost. My new clear of Chapter 15 puts me short 1 use of a Hand Axe, which could be problematic for my campaign since I broke both of my Hand Axes in very specific places to alter the RNG flow. I haven't tested it yet, but I think I could get in this chapter with 1 less Hand Axe. I'll have to see.

Chapter 17: Marcus doesn't level on the first turn after critting the nomad, and instead will level after killing Bernard. He also no longer one-shots the boss with a crit (lower Str), but a crit+hit will do. There will have to be some changes on the final turn, and in particular, I anticipate Lowen and either Florina or Sain (probably the latter) get slightly worse levels, but it shouldn't be a problem, hopefully.

Chapter 18: This should be the same as long as the 1 use less of a Hand Axe thing is resolved in Chapter 16. Otherwise, I'm probably screwed here.

Chapter 19: Marcus won't level after crit-killing Uhai

Chapter 20: Hector won't get a level mid-chapter from killing a nomad. At worst, this can be resolved by burning 7 additional RNs.

UPDATE: So the Hand Axe thing doesn't exactly work out, but there is an easy workaround. Some of Marcus' Hand Axe uses (exactly 4, in fact) can be converted to Javelin uses on the first turn of Chapter 16. So then I just need to find an opportunity for Hector to convert 3 Iron Axe uses into Hand Axe uses before Chapter 18, which sounds very easy. So the only thing holding us back now should be figuring out the levels in Chapter 17. This is done too! I'm looking forward to having a Marcus who procs Str/Spd every level!

One last thing I want to check though, is to see if Hector not levelling in Chapter 20 will allow for any improvements there.

Edited June 25, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

Here is the new Chapter 15 strat. The main differences (everything except for some silly Hand Axe trading at the beginning of the chapter) start at turn 6 (roughly 9:25 in the video) if you want to skip there. I'm willing to rerecord all the chapters after this to showcase the minor differences plus all the other small changes I have made since (which have accumulated in some cases), if you guys want to watch it. Otherwise, I'll just relegate all of the resulting changes to the errata on the first post of this thread.

Let me know if you guys would like me to upload these new videos here or in the comments so I know what to do.

[Irysa]

I suggest recording them all regardless of if people want to see them, but I think you should probably just stop posting updates/etc until you complete all the videos up to where you were and can just batch post them together as you post C21.

Will Lowen get any better Strength levelups out of these changes btw?

Edited June 26, 2016 by Irysa

[ruadath]

I suggest recording them all regardless of if people want to see them, but I think you should probably just stop posting updates/etc until you complete all the videos up to where you were and can just batch post them together as you post C21.

Ok, sounds like a good idea. I'll do that.

Will Lowen get any better Strength levelups out of these changes btw?

I haven't fully tested anything out, but besides some differences in weapon uses, there shouldn't be any changes except for in Chapter 17 where Lowen and Sain will get slightly worse level ups (Lowen will lose a point of Skill and Luck and Sain will lose HP and Skill but get Luck, IIRC). This will remain true as long as I don't reroute Chapter 20 entirely.

I'm a little worried about Lowen but honestly I don't think there is much I can do. The one good thing, however, is that Lowen is still pretty fast (15 Spd at level 11), which means that he has 12 AS with the Steel Lance thanks to his unusually high Con. Maybe this can help offset his low Str a little bit?

[ruadath]

So, a slightly disappointing update here... it turns out that after Chapter 15, my Marcus is actually slightly too low on EXP... 4 EXP too low. This means that he won't level up on killing Zoldam, but will level up after defeating Uhai, which is not what I want to happen.

In order to try and fix this, I'm going to take a look at chapter 15 again and see if I can feed Marcus the extra EXP from somewhere (one extra kill/round of combat should do the trick). Ugh, this is getting to be painful, and perhaps more trouble than it's worth...

EDIT: OK, so by rearranging my actions on the last turn, I can get Marcus one more kill while still getting Hector just barely enough EXP so that he should level up at the appropriate time in Chapter 18... hopefully this means things will finally work out and I can move on with this playthrough!

Edited July 1, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

Sorry, no new videos since these clears are all pretty identical to what has happened previously... but I'll give a status report

Chapter 16: Nothing new or interesting happened here.

Chapter 17: I was a little bit smarter and saved (another) Heavy Spear use by using the Steel Lance instead. The last turn was a little bit different because Marcus leveled after killing the boss and also wasn't strong enough to one-shot him (had to crit +hit). Here is his level:

Lowen and Sain got slightly worse levels as discussed before. I probably should have taken screenshots, but I forgot to.

Chapter 18 (current): So both Hector and Marcus reached their EXP benchmarks to make them level at the appropriate times in this chapter so all is good in that regard. However, Hector's higher Str/Def combined with Sain's lower Def pulls an enemy away from Hector on one of the last EP. Sadly, this doesn't really result in extra EXP for Sain, since due to this guy not attacking Hector, Sain has to kill a lower leveled enemy on the last PP, so he gains a net of 1 EXP.

Will Lowen get any better Strength levelups out of these changes btw?

However, Lowen has the potential to aggro an enemy away from Hector as well, depending on where I position him. If my calculations are correct, this won't affect anything except modifying Lowen's level 10 on Chapter 20, for a net change of (+ Str, -Skl, -Spd). Not sure that is normally a change I would make, but Lowen's Str seems a bigger issue than his Spd here so maybe? Combining this with his loss from Chapter 17 though, this is -2 Skl, so maybe that's a lot. Idk, but the extra Str seems like it could be very helpful (I think he is already Spd blessed enough)... what do you guys think?

[Gradivus.]

what do you guys think?

Continue from C22, drop the planned changes

By the way, I made a small statistic

Runs finished: 1

Runs active or on hiatus: 9

Runs dropped: 2

Percentage of runs finished: 8.33%

Percentage of runs (among active/on hiatus) with messy updates for small improvements (that largely don't affect the turncount): 22.22%

You should seriously only go back if you see a direct need for the different Marcus/Lowen stats, otherwise just rig. You've been manipulating the RNG enough in this playthrough to warrant it, and it's pretty unlikely anyone will care to replicate your strats, except perhaps the earlygame ones (which I still have doubts about), so don't worry about the burning as few RNs as possible thing.

Edited July 3, 2016 by Gradivus.

[ruadath]

By the way, I made a small statistic

Runs finished: 1

Runs active or on hiatus: 9

Runs dropped: 2

Percentage of runs finished: 8.33%

Percentage of runs (among active/on hiatus) with messy updates for small improvements (that largely don't affect the turncount): 22.22%

I'm sorry, I'm trying to fix this by focusing most of my effort on this run and trying to get things done one at a time! And I think (hope) the messy changes are almost over here...

Continue from C22, drop the planned changes

You should seriously only go back if you see a direct need for the different Marcus/Lowen stats, otherwise just rig. You've been manipulating the RNG enough in this playthrough to warrant it, and it's pretty unlikely anyone will care to replicate your strats, except perhaps the earlygame ones (which I still have doubts about), so don't worry about the burning as few RNs as possible thing.

At this point, I would rather just continue along with the "changes" since I'm pretty sure I can make it so that everything works out almost exactly as it did before with minimal effort, and come out with a significantly better Hector/Marcus (additional procs in Str/Spd) with only a slightly worse Lowen/Sain (not missing any Str/Spd procs compared to original). I'm just looking for potential additional improvements to help make things work out a little better, and I think this fix to Lowen's Str could be really useful in the long run. In any case, barring any major unforeseen changes, I don't expect it will take much longer than a couple of days for me to get the playthrough back to the point where I halted (which was at Chapter 21, not 22).

But thank you for your input, I appreciate your feedback, and I'm sorry about holding up the run with these small changes.

EDIT: Updated with Hector's new stats after leveling in Chapter 18

He's actually a point short on Skl and Res compared to his level 10 from the original run (which occurred in Chapter 20), but I imagine the extra EXP gain is well worth it.

Edited July 3, 2016 by ruadath

[Gradivus.]

And I think (hope) the messy changes are almost over here...

It's just this and the RD playthrough as of now, but it should still be avoided in the future.

I think you should simply add annotations to show small differences in your C16-20 clears in the original videos and post an updated stat box after C20 (and spoiler tag the old one so people can compare them, or something). It's pretty hard to understand them without going back to the videos anyway.

[ruadath]

OK, all up to date now (cleared Chapter 20 again).

Name:     Lv.XP  HP STR SKL SPD LCK DEF RES
Hector:   10.64  28  15  10  11  5   13  2
Eliwood:   8.73  25  11  10  12  11  5   2
Marcus:    5.88  35  19  17  15  9   10  9
Lowen:    11.29  31  13  9   14  8   13  1
Erk:      10.22  23  14  9   15  6   4   5
Florina:  12.07  23  15  17  17  14  7   7
Sain:      8.94  25  13  8   11  7   9   0

EDIT: I had the thing color coded to show changes, but it seems to have gotten rid of it upon posting. Also, Chapter 21 routed with no RN burns, though I need to figure out what I'm buying.

Edited July 7, 2016 by ruadath

[ruadath]

Chapter 21! No RNs burned, but two awesome levels and a boss crit-kill!

Thoughts on my purchases? I hope I don't end up needing the Goddess Icon anywhere.... maybe I should have gotten 1 more Thunder (that's what lapogne does)? Also, we finally have a stronger Sain then Lowen... and with Lowen only having a lead of 2 Spd over him, I see almost no reason to continue training him as my "primary" cavalier. The only reasons I can think of are:

- Lowen has better weapon rank and will have access to the Silver Lance immediately upon promotion. But I don't think this i really a big deal, and Sain just hit C rank, so he can at least use Killer Lances (once they're available) and the Axereaver.

- Lowen has a higher HP. IIRC, the Dragon does like 40 points of unavoidable damage or something like that. Sain has only 26 HP right now, so that is a lot of HP procs for him to make before he can survive the Dragon, but I don't think that will really be an issue if I choose to start training?

You guys have any opinions?