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Any tips for a Blitzkrieg run?


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As most of you know, Echoes has an achievement system, and one of the harder ones to get is "Blitzkrieg" - finishing the game in at most 500 turns. I want to try to make a go for it but I know there will be a little bit of prep work; so I'm looking for some advice.

 

Now, in general I'd imagine that (heavy) grinding, sidequests, and detours should be avoided, but are there any other factors to keep in mind?

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Actually it is quite possible to do Sidequests with Blitzkrieg in mind. I did that in my 2nd run where I did every single Sidequest while managing to stay below the 500 turns requirements.

There are only 2 things that will ruin the Blitzkrieg achievement; mobs in dungeons and encounters on the world map. These two eat into your turn requirement quite heavily, especially during the later parts of the game where the mobs aren't pushovers anymore. You could try to squeeze in some encounters in the early parts of the game to get your characters promoted ASAP but absolutely avoid fights in Duma Tower.

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The kind of prep-work you'll need to consider will depend on what kind of restrictions you'll be placing on yourself.  Will you be taking advantage of DLC?  Do you want to recruit every character?  Generally speaking, the 500 turn limit is actually quite lenient in practice.  Even without DLC items and going out of the way to get everybody, there's not a lot of theory that goes into a blitzkrieg run that someone who's cleared the game once before should have to engage in.  Avoid unnecessary encounters in dungeons/world map, and be on the move as much as possible in required maps.  You don't have to play LTC-style, or even all that optimally.  Just don't turtle.  All that being said, I do have some more specific advice that may make things easier.

-Invest in Silque to the point where she learns Warp.  She learns Warp at Lv. 7, and you'll want to make liberal use of it.  
-Promote Faye into a Cleric.  Cleric!Faye learns Rescue at Lv. 10, and can combine with Silque's Warp to trivialize frustrating maps like Nuibaba's Abode.
-Train up your fliers.  Clair on Alm's side, and Palla+Catria for Celica, primarily.  High, unimpeded movement would be reason enough, but Falcon Knights also get effective damage against monsters no matter their equipment. 
-Know where all of Mila's Idols are.  Try to time your promotions so you don't have to backtrack and generate more map encounters.  I wasted more turns than I needed to in my own run because of this.

I posted my turn counts for each individual map/encounter along with more information on who I used in a post here if you want to use it as reference.  The only thing I absolutely would not recommend emulating is dumping as much EXP as I did trying to get Silque to Lv. 18.  Genny's Soldier Invoke would have been more than sufficient to accomplishment what Silque's Dread Fighters did.     

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For Alm side:

For the Ram Villagers, Merc Gray and Cleric Faye are no brainers. I'd definitely recommend Mage Tobin, as his high base Speed combined with the Speed fountain in the Deliverance Hideout means he can be immediately useful without growths, unlike Mage Kliff, the canon choice. Tobin's spell list is pretty limited, but he gets Excalibur (the best spell) at level 7, which is really early, and once he's starting to fall off a bit because of growths, he does get Physic as a Sage, giving him some utility. Archer Kliff and Cavalier Kliff are both choices to be considered. Act 4 punishes you for not having an archer of your own quite heavily imo, so Archer Kliff is much more useful in the late game than Cavalier Kliff, but training him is quite a pain because of Kliff's bases. On the other hand, Cav Kliff is immediately helpful with his Mov and the better bases of Cav. He will eventually start taking a backseat more and more, though he will still be useful.

DLNarshen mentioned Clair, but she requires a little bit of luck to use. The Ridersbane is a strong option, of course, but if she doesn't start snowballing that well before Mathilda arrives, I honestly think you're better off with Mathilda. Act 4 has so many archers everywhere, it's hard to field Clair to do anything (Mathilda dies in like two shots if they hit, but at least not one). There are barely any Terror encounters on Alm side until Act 5, and honestly the best use of Clair in Act 4 is just to kill the Bow Knight on Turn 1 in Nuibaba Abode imo.

For Celica side:

A generally good thing to do is to save the Act 2 EXP fountains on Celica side for Act 3. Then, once you get Palla, backtrack to the Sea Cave, feed Palla the two levels, and you can instantly promote her to Falcon Knight. Super Palla trivializes Desert Fort (the one with a billion archers) on her own, and pretty much most of Act 3 is on its knees against her. The turns incurred from skirmishes by backtracking are nothing compared to the amount she can save for you for the rest of the game.

Another thing you should do is get the Blessed Lance on Alm side ASAP, and forge it to 2*, then use a Merchant to pass it over to Celica side. 2* Blessed Lance on Palla will ORKO pretty much every Terror even with her base stats, and it's a really reliable weapon for general fighting too. In fact, I recommend not progressing too far on Celica side until you can pass the Lance over, but it's kinda up to you.

That being said, Saber is still overall the best unit on the route, and you should be focusing a lot of things on him. Kamui finds it pretty hard to compete against him, since he is given availability (and thus EXP) head starts in both Act 2 and Act 3. He'll be a reliable force as a Merc and Swordfighter, but once he hits Dread Fighter (hopefully you do by Dragon Shrine), he will be insane.

Deen is generally considered the better choice compared to Sonya, because Dread Fighter is broken, and Sonya doesn't really offer much, not even utility.

 

If you plan on using DLC, the only Fork route that I'd recommend is Peg Knight Mae in Act 2. With fountain boosts at the start as well, she will shit on pretty much every map very fast in Act 2, skipping through most of the trouble with her flier movement. She'll snowball into your best overall unit on Celica side, to the point you might not even need to do Super Palla. She takes a teeny bit of grinding, but pays for her turns really fast. There is also Mercenary Lukas (Soldier -> Knight -> Villager -> Merc), who will get the Merc line's stupid base Spd with his high Def. I'm not quite certain how big of an impact he will make, though, compared to Pegasus Mae. Merc Gray should be promoting to Swordfighter soon, maybe right after Act 1's last battle, and he will have better Mov and base Spd to work with.

Also, there are various candidates for the Boots, but I personally gave them to Celica. Her combat is very strong throughout the game, but she progressively fails to be relevant, as she can't even initiate combat with her shit Mov. The Boots make her super strong in Act 2, and helps alleviate a bit of her Mov problems in Act 3, but she will still be fairly irrelevant in Act 4. The obvious best use of the Boots is to stack it on an already high Mov character.

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Since the others told you something about the units, maybe I can give you some suggestions regarding the free Villager's Forks.

In general, I would only name these as viable on each route for Blitzkrieg.

Alm:
- Lukas (Mercenary)
- (The Villagers)

Celica:
- Mae (Pegasus Knight)
- Valbar (Mercenary)

Lukas is in a very sweet spot because he can realistically reach his promotion when you reach the Deliverance Shrine. Do the final Chapter of Act 1 with him as a Villager (trust me, that's perfectly viable, his Knight bases will carry him) and then before you end Act 1 Lukas can be then promoted to a Mercenary.

The Villagers can do a similar trick by sacking the Mercenary Spd base and then reclass into anything else but it's less required to do so since they are more than viable after choosing a path. Only Kliff might profit more since his bases are pretty bad but even then his Spd growth is very likely to kick in at some point (though Archer Kliff might profit from this greatly).

Reclassing Mae turns her in a entirely different unit but having an extra flier can be very helpful for your turn counts due to the majority of movement-restricting terrain. She will lose some of her earlygame strength though.

Valbar is a similar case to Lukas, except he is already a Knight, and like him you have a very convenient shrine nearby.

Edited by The Priest
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Moogleboss/Espinosa pointed out how to avoid random encounters.

 

Quote

I did some testing and believe I've found a way to completely avoid random skirmishes.
At first I tried moving Celica's and Alm's parties at different times. However enemies spawn after you move (or wait) a certain amount of times, regardless of which character is moving. I also tried other things until I finally found a strategy that seems to work. 
1. At the very beginning of Act 3 move Alm over to the Deliverance Hideout. No enemies will spawn on Alm's route until you battle Zakson.
2. Start playing Celica's part of the chapter as usual. Save the game every time before you move anywhere on the map. If no enemies spawn, save again and keep on moving.
3. If an enemy battle spawns after you move, reset the game. After resetting the game, enter the Deliverance Hideout with Alm and immediately exit it. This should reset the amount of moves you can take before an enemy spawns. Do not save neither while entering nor exiting the dungeon.
4. Try moving with Celica. No enemy skirmish should spawn the next time you move. Save again and repeat the whole process.
5. Entering and exiting a dungeon does not always reset enemy spawning. In that case try resetting the game and entering and exiting the dungeon more than once.
6. Enemies may spawn while you are exiting a town, the priory or any other similar location. This also includes dungeons, so that is why it is important not to save while entering or exiting the Deliverance Hideout. In such a case reset the game, enter the dungeon, go to the Mila shrine and try going back and forth between the shrine and the main dungeon. This usually resets the enemy spawning as well and this the reason why I recommend  using the Deliverance Hideout instead of the Thieves Shrine, as there are no enemies in between the entrance of the dungeon and the Mila shrine.
7. After you beat Celica's part of Act 3, use the same strategy on Alm's route by having Celica enter and exit the Dragon shrine.

Using this strategy I was able to make it to the priory on Novis Island and back to mainland Zofia without spawning any enemies. This strategy also seems to work with both enemies spawned by the bosses and graveyard enemies. This means you should be able to use the stat fountains as well as the Mila statue found on the island at any time you like.

Please note that I have only tested very little of this strategy and that there might be other flaws. Nevertheless, I hope this information can be of use.

 

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Don't waste your time with Clair. Her bases are abominable and she never does anything of note that anyone else couldn't, she isn't Pegasus Mae.

1 hour ago, Aircalipoor said:

Moogleboss/Espinosa pointed out how to avoid random encounters.

 

 

I don't know if you also used this trick but it doesn't seem to work consistently in Alm's route. The graveyard zombies are also a pain to prevent spawning.

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Thanks for the advice everyone. I guess there is one minor topic that hasn't been covered yet - Atlas' class. I'm thinking of turning him into an archer, since his stat spread is different enough from Leon's and he can deal some chip damage.

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13 minutes ago, Alistair said:

Thanks for the advice everyone. I guess there is one minor topic that hasn't been covered yet - Atlas' class. I'm thinking of turning him into an archer, since his stat spread is different enough from Leon's and he can deal some chip damage.

Problem with Atlas is that he has a severe level disadvantage and his promotions don't solve his awful bases, not even mercenary because Atlas still gets doubled by mercs and myrms. I would make him a mage or archer for the novelty of chip damage but don't expect him to go anywhere. It is also a pain to promote him because it forces a backtrack, aka a zombie fight.

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You don't have any time to be fielding Atlas at all in Blitzkrieg. He has trouble getting started up on a regular run without a lot of babying, and if you're cutting out dungeon encounters and most skirmishes he will never ever see the light of day. He could even be detrimental for you on a map with Witches, if he lags behind and gets sniped.

Edited by SatsumaFSoysoy
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  • 2 weeks later...

If your playing nomal difficulty (that's the middle one right) and just want to get the achievement, then I legitimately reccomend soloing the game with Alm and Celica. It's not particularly fun, but it is quick and effective. Especially if you pick up a few good weapons early on from DLC.

Edited by Jotari
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  • 2 weeks later...

Here's a spreadsheet of all the promotion stats including a weighted column (I favored some stats over others), along with my LTC turn count on Hard in a run I made. I basically picked only characters who had the best growth stats to level. Get the Astral Tempel 3 DLC, it's worth it and you get plenty of good items you can forge, while also giving you XP boost. In terms of the fliers, only Est out of the 3 pegasus knights is really worth leveling up without a Star Jincanth imho for the final battle, unless you plan on forging their weapons, since the other two's growth rate is a bit too low and they are just too fragile to use in melee range (not to mention only blessed lance does enough damage if you don't forge and you have to give them a shield of some sort if you want them to survive late game infinite spawn mobs). In my non LTC run where I did level up Est and Palla, both did not contribute at all toward the final battle. The map design's chokepoints (and need to use illusions) means it's very hard for fliers to contribute, so it is not worth it to dedicate 3 slots of your roster to fliers. Palla also is far too dependent on RNG to not get screwed in stats, and her XP gain rate is the slowest of the girls. Clerics and Mages with Seraphim are really strong for late game as they deal with late game mobs. All my villagers became dread fighters. I used Mila's turnwheel to avoid bad growths (if a unit wouldn't get okay growths, don't level it this battle wait til next battle). Use the after battle bonus XP to your advantage. The other advice I have is the DLC characters are bad for a LTC run (except Emma who is absolutely broke in growths) since they have slower level up rates (require much more kills to gain XP) but you can still use them early on to help Cecelia's side, just don't feed them too many kills. Archers are really strong, you want one in your final team even if their growth rates aren't good. Emma replaced Clair on my Alm run (my clair had terrible growths)

I did all the sidequests with LTC. My Celica party is mentioned in the sheet (under levels the 1-8, note I reclassed Saber to a Mage as he gets Seraphim)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IvreqW91MB-ETrkwEpEyx_TNKkYxytGLD_iGPZH63vc/edit?usp=sharing

Also, I waited until all characters were level 20 before promoting, didn't find early promoting necessary.

In terms of units to favor for late game:

Alm > Clerics with Seraphim > Bows > Dread Knights > Mages with Seraphim/long range spells > Cavaliers/Emma(both have great base growths) > anything else

In terms of units to favor for mid game:

Alm > Dread Knights > Clerics with Nosferatu > Bows > Mages with Aura/long range spells > Cavaliers/Emma (both have great base growths) > anything else

Give a cleric a dracoshield you get early in the game. Faye!Villager up to level 20 can get very reasonable DEF growths, AND Res growths (get lucky). Nosferatu steals health.

Edited by IonicAmalgam
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4 hours ago, IonicAmalgam said:

Here's a spreadsheet of all the promotion stats including a weighted column (I favored some stats over others), along with my LTC turn count on Hard in a run I made. I basically picked only characters who had the best growth stats to level. Get the Astral Tempel 3 DLC, it's worth it and you get plenty of good items you can forge, while also giving you XP boost. In terms of the fliers, only Est out of the 3 pegasus knights is really worth leveling up without a Star Jincanth imho for the final battle, unless you plan on forging their weapons, since the other two's growth rate is a bit too low and they are just too fragile to use in melee range (not to mention only blessed lance does enough damage if you don't forge and you have to give them a shield of some sort if you want them to survive late game infinite spawn mobs). In my non LTC run where I did level up Est and Palla, both did not contribute at all toward the final battle. The map design's chokepoints (and need to use illusions) means it's very hard for fliers to contribute, so it is not worth it to dedicate 3 slots of your roster to fliers. Palla also is far too dependent on RNG to not get screwed in stats, and her XP gain rate is the slowest of the girls. Clerics and Mages with Seraphim are really strong for late game as they deal with late game mobs. All my villagers became dread fighters. I used Mila's turnwheel to avoid bad growths (if a unit wouldn't get okay growths, don't level it this battle wait til next battle). Use the after battle bonus XP to your advantage. The other advice I have is the DLC characters are bad for a LTC run (except Emma who is absolutely broke in growths) since they have slower level up rates (require much more kills to gain XP) but you can still use them early on to help Cecelia's side, just don't feed them too many kills. Archers are really strong, you want one in your final team even if their growth rates aren't good. Emma replaced Clair on my Alm run (my clair had terrible growths)

I did all the sidequests with LTC. My Celica party is mentioned in the sheet (under levels the 1-8, note I reclassed Saber to a Mage as he gets Seraphim)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IvreqW91MB-ETrkwEpEyx_TNKkYxytGLD_iGPZH63vc/edit?usp=sharing

Also, I waited until all characters were level 20 before promoting, didn't find early promoting necessary.

In terms of units to favor for late game:

Alm > Clerics with Seraphim > Bows > Dread Knights > Mages with Seraphim/long range spells > Cavaliers/Emma(both have great base growths) > anything else

In terms of units to favor for mid game:

Alm > Dread Knights > Clerics with Nosferatu > Bows > Mages with Aura/long range spells > Cavaliers/Emma (both have great base growths) > anything else

Give a cleric a dracoshield you get early in the game. Faye!Villager up to level 20 can get very reasonable DEF growths, AND Res growths (get lucky). Nosferatu steals health.

You probably wouldn't be so focused on growths if you did early promote. There's simply not enough exp in the game to get a full team to 20/20/20 (or 20/20/20/20 in villager's case). Early promotion gets you a boost in stats quicker and makes it so most of your level ups take place in advanced classes. Sure, level ups will slow a bit if you're still fighting unpromoted classes, but it's completely worth it compared to ending the game with practically no third tier classes. This is especially true for Archers (who get more range every time they promote) and Dread FIghters (who can eventually loop for crazy good stats as they'll level up every level when they go back to villager yet can still kill the end game enemies).

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8 hours ago, Jotari said:

You probably wouldn't be so focused on growths if you did early promote. There's simply not enough exp in the game to get a full team to 20/20/20 (or 20/20/20/20 in villager's case). Early promotion gets you a boost in stats quicker and makes it so most of your level ups take place in advanced classes. Sure, level ups will slow a bit if you're still fighting unpromoted classes, but it's completely worth it compared to ending the game with practically no third tier classes. This is especially true for Archers (who get more range every time they promote) and Dread FIghters (who can eventually loop for crazy good stats as they'll level up every level when they go back to villager yet can still kill the end game enemies).

I got a full team to 20/20/20?/4 in my Blitzkreig run and then promoted, you just have to know how to feed XP to the right units and take advantage of post battle bonus XP, as well as using XP shrines on the right characters. Only Faye, Alm, and Kliff were kept from the original set by me in my team, so I fed ALL the XP to them until others unlocked. I didn't get them capped in their advanced classes no, it was a focus on unlocking specific spells and abilities (eg rush Rescue early for Faye), and then feeding the rest of the XP to other units. In a LTC you won't have time to loop a Dread Fighter back anyway, not enough XP. Archers can promote up no problem even with level 20, the weapon is more important. For some characters, getting them to 20/16-18 is sufficient since they have high growths and you have a full 10 levels of extra levels, I didn't even need their last tier class (depending again on what skills they learn)

Focus on growths works either way if you promote early or late, you still have 15-16 levels of post-promotion level ups where growths make a big difference.

Edited by IonicAmalgam
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4 hours ago, IonicAmalgam said:

I got a full team to 20/20/20?/4 in my Blitzkreig run and then promoted, you just have to know how to feed XP to the right units and take advantage of post battle bonus XP, as well as using XP shrines on the right characters. Only Faye, Alm, and Kliff were kept from the original set by me in my team, so I fed ALL the XP to them until others unlocked. I didn't get them capped in their advanced classes no, it was a focus on unlocking specific spells and abilities (eg rush Rescue early for Faye), and then feeding the rest of the XP to other units. In a LTC you won't have time to loop a Dread Fighter back anyway, not enough XP. Archers can promote up no problem even with level 20, the weapon is more important. For some characters, getting them to 20/16-18 is sufficient since they have high growths and you have a full 10 levels of extra levels, I didn't even need their last tier class (depending again on what skills they learn)

Focus on growths works either way if you promote early or late, you still have 15-16 levels of post-promotion level ups where growths make a big difference.

But by promoting early, you get boosted stats up to the base of the class your promoting too, which allows your units to clear maps faster, earlier. You're still going to have the same approximate number of levels gained by end game and still have approximately as powerful units, early promoters will just have a higher displayed level. It makes for a much easier middle game and an equally as difficult end game (though post game Thabes will probably be harder unless you go Overclass). I can see sense in it in some cases, like with rescue Faye, or really any class that only has two tiers (Magic classes and Pegasus knights, although the earlier you can get access to Banish the better), but for the most part there's only really benefits to early promoting without many down sides.

That being said though, in Blitkreig you shouldn't go out of your way to promote. Promote only when you've naturally reached a shrine to avoid unnecessary map encounters. That will generally have you promoting half way between the minimum promotion level and level cap anyway.

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5 hours ago, Jotari said:

But by promoting early, you get boosted stats up to the base of the class your promoting too, which allows your units to clear maps faster, earlier. You're still going to have the same approximate number of levels gained by end game and still have approximately as powerful units, early promoters will just have a higher displayed level. It makes for a much easier middle game and an equally as difficult end game (though post game Thabes will probably be harder unless you go Overclass). I can see sense in it in some cases, like with rescue Faye, or really any class that only has two tiers (Magic classes and Pegasus knights, although the earlier you can get access to Banish the better), but for the most part there's only really benefits to early promoting without many down sides.

That being said though, in Blitkreig you shouldn't go out of your way to promote. Promote only when you've naturally reached a shrine to avoid unnecessary map encounters. That will generally have you promoting half way between the minimum promotion level and level cap anyway.

Early promotions at level 10 give me like +3 stats on the higher growth characters if you use Mila's turnwheel to avoid bad growths. It's not a big boost compared to the additional levels from maxing out your level. If I'm halfway between the minimum promotion level and level cap anyway I frequently only get 1 growth or none at all (if I'm only leveling high growth rate characters).

Alm in 10 levels gains 30 stat points on average due to his base growths. It's also an additional 10 levels of getting a possible RES growth.
Kliff in 10 levels gains 23 stat points on average.
Faye in 10 levels gains 21 stat points. Also as a villager she avoids the HP/DEF -10 growth rate, which makes her much more tanky.

Edited by IonicAmalgam
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