Birthright Lunatic - 0% growths LTC (YouTube playthrough)

[Espinosa]

Challenge playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbSv8zSDR9c0I6r0FnHMsH_IDApIK2H-j

I've been having a lot of fun with LTCing the 3DS games on 0% growths, first Awakening and now this. While finding a strategy that doesn't rely too much on dodging accurate attacks and hitting with inaccurate ones is feasible enough, I often find my "reliable" strats being reduced to nothing by the way the enemy AI behaves - a single enemy ending their turn on the wrong tile can mean I have to restart the whole chapter.

This run is my first experience seriously LTCing Birthright, so it's felt pretty fresh and new, and that's always welcome. As usual with LTCing anything, finding ways to shave off that one turn leads to working on a single chapter for a long period of time, and since I routinely record everything and keep the recording as the one file as my save for the next map, my progress isn't exactly the fastest.

It is refreshing to play through the game without relying on growths, as these happen to annihilate whatever challenge Birthright offers. It's no longer possible to faceroll things with just your Corrin, and suddenly effectively using the likes of Oboro and Hinata becomes central to the run's success. Not having to work on getting better level-ups is also nice, and an obvious feature of 0% growths.

Here are the first three videos in the playlist (Prologue to C2; C3 and C4 in the spoiler):

Currently, I'm in chapter 8 trying to get a better cook to give some key units a +2 str meal (perhaps a +2 spd will turn out to be superior; only repeating the map ad nauseam will show which is the case), aiming for a 3-turn hopefully (I think Hinoka should be able to deal with Fuga being the only one who actually doubles him).

Waiting for a better cook, I've been planning some things ahead for this run. Plenty of decisions to think about, such as:

1) Corrin's asset.

Currently I've got Cavalier, which offers two obvious advantages - passing it to a husband of choice via Partner Seal (Ryoma) ASAP and learning Shelter before grabbing Wyvern Lord access from Scarlet. What's the alternative to this decision? Grabbing Dragon instead. Ryoma doesn't particularly care about accessing the class, so the idea is getting both Corrin and Jakob to fly. Who knows (I don't yet!), Jakob being a Wyvern Lord for chapters 8/10 could result in some turns being saved. If Jakob gets both the 1st Heart Seal for a long time as well as a Partner Seal into Wyvern Lord early on, he'll be the party's only flying Shelterbot, which is important for the chapter 21 1-turn for instance.

2) Primary candidates for Master Seals.

Two Master Seals can be bought in the shop, with another one dropped by Zola in chapter 9. That's three potential characters that could be promoted early. When the midgame rolls in, these become very frequent as enemy drops, with more to be bought in shops.

The idea though is, everyone kinda wants a Master Seal and becomes valuable with one - the question is, who wants it more? +2-ish boosts to strength and speed may be nice, but how much are we getting from promoting, say, Hinata or Oboro? On the other hand, Takumi gets +3 mov and flight if we promote him in his very terrain-y join map. Alternatively, Takumi could want a Sniper promotion for better combat stats, but no 1-range counter option, flight or mobility instead, still retaining good movement in terrain thanks to Fujin.

Takumi and retainers aren't the only folks who like an early Master Seal. Saizo and Kagero both become surprisingly valuable with a promotion, Saizo's not being too far away. Supposedly, I may need an A-shuriken user to 1-turn the 5-breakers Faceless boss across the wall later on. Silas is a candidate for one, with 8 mov as a Paladin and mini-Juggernaut raw combat stats when Corrin's engaged somebody in combat for +3 atk/def to Silas.

Then you have pure utility cases, like Orochi who's invaluable as a Capturebot of Birthright. Many of the potential candidates for Capture are at least as good as some of the finest units in our party combatwise to say nothing of utility. Orochi gets +3 mag on promo, but it's likely low priority in the grand scheme of things. There's also Rinkah who could use the extra move shoving things (the bosskill maps start so late that this can wait I think) and of course some of the captured unpromoted enemies could want a promotion.

3) Capturing enemies.

This seems like one of the playthrough's central themes. We must somehow combine all the Birthrouting objective fulfilment with getting Orochi to capture the most useful generics for use in the run. Besides getting mounted units, fliers and enemies with generally good combat stats like Beserkers and Sorcs, there are some areas I feel I could concentrate on:

Outlaws - the C9 ones start at L7 and are thus 3 levels away from promotion. 9 mov Bow Knights way before Shura join could prove to be important for advancing quickly on maps. Whether a Bow Knight made out of a L7 Outlaw is capable of pushing forward in maps like Pleasure Palace is a different topic however (ugh).

Fighters - ideally we want a L10 Fighter to instapromote to Berserk and work our way to lv. 5 when Rally Strength is learnt (no other way of getting it in BR aside from choosing it as MU's Asset). B axes should lend plenty of opportunities to grab a kill with one of the effective weapons, and generic Fighters just generally have good combat stats.

Cavalier - a second Shelter bot could be useful for sending more units forward in a rout map. I imagine Jakob and Silas are sufficient however.

Strategist - it's a mounted unit with high mag (low skill tho) and A rank staves right off the bat. Capture one in spite of their high Res, and you no longer need to use an Arms Scroll on Izana in order to halve the endgame bosses' HP. A Maid is another good option (lower mag, but higher skill and always S staves).

Anyway, as usual I'll be using this thread to log the run and talk to myself about different dilemmas and choices to be made and whatnot. If anyone is interested in making any suggestions or providing useful information, that's appreciated as per usual.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Espinosa

[shadowofchaos]

Have you ever run into the Draw/Entrap bug on Chapter 25 in any practice runs?

Though, considering LTC context, I don't know if you want to be hit with that staff.

The bug occurs from my experience particularly when an Entrap Strategist misses and the AI has already selected a non-movable unit to attack you in the queue. Problem is, it missed and can't reach you. Game crashes.

[Espinosa]

I've had Entrap miss my units before and countless times in that specific chapter. Never had it crash though; has it occurred outside the Japanese version to you as well?

P.S. Actually, being Entrapped to be attacked by Iago is beneficial and could be the key to clearing that map on the 1st turn.

[Espinosa]

Uploaded chapter 5, cleared in 6 turns. As usual, the video description provides an exceedingly detailed explanation of the strategy and other related things.

Finally got a Chef's Hat on Azura, which means I can now reliably get +2 str (/spd) meals done every day. Too bad they are applied to a half of the party chosen at random for now (and for the longest time until like chapter 20).

C8's rout objective is harder than I'd thought, with Hinoka's combat being way worse than I imagined. I might give her a Steel Lance to help her ORKO some mooks, but not starting with a Corrin support kinda spoils her performance against onis and archers on the map.

On the other hand, Jakob with a Hana pair-up is surprisingly speedy and 2HKOs basically everyone on the map. I can also get Silas to OHKO myrms with a Javelin (!) with a fat strength stack involving meals, tonics, Rinkah, Elbow Room and Vow of Friendship, and he does the same to diviners obviously. A smart use of Silas, Jakob and also Saizo/Hinoka/Subaki (who might be even better than Hinoka here due to having a support with MU) is likely the key to low-turning the map, though I'm no longer sure that a 3-turn is feasible at all.

[Espinosa]

Recorded a 4-turn of chapter 8. It was a tight clear with no room for wasting your actions; no 3 turns possible here without growths most definitely. Most of the new units - Setsuna, Azama and Hayato aren't useful for much, but Hinoka's the best flier we'll have until Scarlet and I imagine I want both her and Subaki promoted ASAP.

Silas is the closest to promotion right now surprisingly, though it makes sense with the amount of action he saw. It's hard to believe but if you stack everything on him in a manner that I previously described, pair him up with Corrin with any support at all and have Hinoka within 2 tiles for her personal to activate, he actually OHKOs Oni Savages with a Steel Sword, the same Oni Savages that Kaze deals 1 damage to with a +2 strength meal. It's a crazy world we live in.

I wonder if I might be tempted to promote Silas to Great Knight instead of Paladin for that extra strength to continue OHKOing things for a bit longer, but Paladin's movement is likely more useful. Still, I guess it's only so long that Silas's combat remains relevant? That Hammer GK in chapter 12 is just so much better at combat (which is all the more reason to go Paladin, but I haven't got any idea what stats will save turns until then).

Also beginning with next chapter, Orochi can Capture units and turn into prisoners. I can grab two per chapter as long as it doesn't totally ruin reliability or directly lead to losing turns.

[PKL]

This is gonna be a very interesting run. Having done birthright lunatic just now i can say draft ltcing it is really fun. 0% growths must be a blast too. Looking forward to see it all. Btw i have a bit of trouble choosing asset and flaw for a conquest draft. If you can hop on to my thread and help me out thatd be great.

[Espinosa]

0% growths is generally good in that it stops your LTC run from being a juggernaut solo run. Here, specifically, you no longer put any focus on Corrin's rigged level-ups. I don't draft but I've done runs with limited deployment (girls only/no mounts/etc.) a lot, and having all the units available (just with very limited potential) works wonders for making the game experience more strategically saturated. You've done New Mystery 0% so you should know.

Here's chapter 6 BR cleared in one turn. ruadath has since told me about a way to feed Xander to Corrin, but neither Corrin nor Rinkah are in a rush to grab as much experience as possible right now.

As of chapter 9, I will have access to as many as three Master Seals for chapter 10, so who is getting promoted first starts to matter a whole lot. The best candidates could be... Hinoka, Saizo, Takumi, Silas? Takumi seems like the most obvious one tbqh, since you get a very mobile unit out of it. We'll see what happens, we'll see.

[Espinosa]

Just uploaded the 7-turn clear of Chapter 7:

Jakob gets pretty strong here, learning 3 skills and getting to D rank katana.

[Espinosa]

Chapter 8 (in 4 turns) is up!

Pokemon's kept me busy for the past few days so now I'm wondering which run to focus on next, this one or the random reclass run I'd started in Conquest way back (which is much closer to completion).

[PKL]

Concentrate on this one because 0% growths is awesome. I was wondering how you were gonna bosskill and was all wait did he 5 turn then when u used silas and saizo for other things. I thought you would use saizos pyrotechnics to help with the bosskill but i was wrong. Its crazy to see silas do 24 damage to fuga since hes very bulky...

[Espinosa]

Fuga IS bulky (mostly because of his HP), but Silas just has an absurd strength stack. He can actually OHKO Oni Savages with a MU pair-up and Hinoka in range in this chapter, if he's wielding the Steel Sword.