Is there any way I can clear chapter 22? Did I get generally RNG-screwed? (Minor spoilers)

[Anacybele]

I ask, because I've made several attempts and no matter what I do, someone dies. Or some other dumb shit happens like Claude missing twice in a row and right after that, Seteth getting criticaled.

One of my few complaints about TH, btw, is the difficulty. That might sound unsurprising to some people for certain reasons, but the truth is, I've never had this much trouble on a game's easiest mode before, at least in this series. Even RD is not as hard on its easiest mode imo and that game was notorious for its difficulty because of the errors its localization team made with its difficulty levels. I've had to restart several chapters in TH and use Divine Pulse quite a few times (though part of the reason for that is Divine Pulse being far too limited in what it can actually do anyway). I could've just tried casual mode, but...I've never been a casual FE player. I like classic mode because I like being able to clear this stuff without losing anyone. I feel it helps me to improve as a player too...at least somewhat.

Anyway, I'm not saying the chapter is impossible, obviously some players have cleared it. And it makes no sense for it to be unclearable anyway. But I can't find a solution. I don't want to think I suck... I mean, I've never been an expert FE player, but I don't think I suck either, even if I do typically play the easiest modes all the time. I don't just throw units out there and hope they win, I do try to come up with good strategies and stuff. I'm probably more of an okay player.

So, what to do? My problems are being completely surrounded by enemies, having to avoid a poisonous swamp, and kill ELEVEN commanders, ten of them before I can actually go after Nemesis himself. Btw, these guys surely being the ten Elites...damn. Interesting twist, I will admit. I kill as many enemies as I can on the first turn since there are just a lot, but I can't kill enough of them, someone is still left in range of other enemies and will die.

If it helps, here's my party. Went Golden Deer. Dragoncat thinks I've merely had a generally RNG-screwed first playthrough, and I think a few people here did get screwed, but I feel like several others are still pretty good. But I'll throw stats and such in here so y'all can see for yourselves and tell me what you think.

Spoiler

Female Byleth - Lv. 44 Enlightened One
HP: 54
Str: 35
Mag: 29
Dex: 30
Spd: 30
Lck: 27
Def: 21
Res: 22
Cha: 40

Claude - Lv. 46 Barbarossa (Can I say how cool this class name is btw? Because it's surely named after Frederick Barbarossa, who could be the namesake for a certain other FE character I adore. ;D)
HP: 64
Str: 33
Mag: 20
Dex: 41
Spd: 43 (You fast enough, Riegan boy? lol)
Lck: 31
Def: 25
Res: 19
Cha: 37

Sylvain - lv. 44 Great Knight (I love this handsome redhead to pieces, but he also ended up insanely good for me. Good luck doing much damage to him without magic!)
HP: 66
Str: 36
Mag: 16
Dex: 26
Spd: 23
Lck: 21
Def: 37
Res: 13
Cha: 34

Raphael - lv. 38 War Master
HP: 69
Str: 37
Mag: 10
Dex: 27
Spd: 19
Lck: 25
Def: 21
Res: 11
Cha: 17

Ignatz - lv. 38 Sniper
HP: 44
Str: 25
Mag: 17
Dex: 35
Spd: 25
Lck: 28
Def: 14
Res: 19
Cha: 11

Leonie - lv. 34 Paladin
HP: 54
Str: 27
Mag: 11
Dex: 27
Spd: 22
Lck: 25
Def: 24
Res: 12
Cha: 19

Lorenz - lv. 35 Dark Knight
HP: 61
Str: 27
Mag: 23
Dex: 29
Spd: 21
Lck: 14
Def: 19
Res: 22
Cha: 16

Cyril - lv. 35 Bow Knight
HP: 57
Str: 22
Mag: 16
Dex: 26
Spd: 28
Lck: 24
Def: 17
Res: 10
Cha: 15

Marianne - lv. 32 Holy Knight
HP: 42
Str: 15
Mag: 28
Dex: 25
Spd: 18
Lck: 23
Def: 15
Res: 28
Cha: 22

Lysithea - lv. 40 Gremory
HP: 41
Str: 9
Mag: 39
Dex: 34
Spd: 30
Lck: 13
Def: 15
Res: 24
Cha: 25

Hilda - lv. 33 Pegasus Knight
HP: 58
Str: 19
Mag: 13
Dex: 20
Spd: 28
Lck: 17
Def: 15
Res: 10
Cha: 23

Ingrid - lv. 35 Pegasus Knight
HP: 51
Str: 23
Mag: 18
Dex: 21
Spd: 36
Lck: 20
Def: 20
Res: 27
Cha: 27

Seteth - lv. 38 Wyvern Rider (I never managed to upgrade him further, though I wish I had)
HP: 61
Str: 37
Mag: 15
Dex: 31
Spd: 28
Lck: 17
Def: 25
Res: 10
Cha: 30

Flayn - lv. 34 Bishop
HP: 38
Str: 13
Mag: 31
Dex: 19
Spd: 22
Lck: 12
Def: 15
Res: 34
Cha: 27

I didn't recruit anyone else. Just never felt like it. Ingrid and Hilda for now have been acting as adjulents. And yes, I've done some grinding, and I even used some items on Leonie, Ignatz, and Lorenz because they were stat-screwed for awhile.

I've done several paralogues and a few quest maps for grinding, and I've equipped everyone with the best possible weapons they can have (like Sylvain has his Lance of Ruin, Hilda has Freikugel, etc). Though unfortunately, Claude's Failnaught is broken and I never got enough resources to repair it. I just couldn't figure out where to get enough. He still does a lot of damage with other stuff though, at least.

And speaking of stats, this is probably a dumb question because I feel like I should know this by now, but what are Cha and Dex for?

EDIT: Dcat told me Cha is the charm stat which I did know about, but somehow didn't know that "Cha" was this stat. Yeah, definitely feel dumb here. xP Dexterity is Dex, I know that, but I'm not sure what it's for. Dcat suggests it's the new skill stat which would make sense.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Anacybele

[timon]

• Screwing will never be enough to stop you from a possible win, at least not on Normal (nor on Hard). I'm not sure why you're having all these issues, but the game really is quite easy, probably one of the easiest in the series. Even then, you're not particulary screwed at a glance, maybe Byleth's a bit weaker than he should, but he's at lv.44 so it's still enough.
•  
• You're definitely not under leveled, maybe you did focus a bit much on a few characters, but the party is still perfectly capable of pulling that off. Maybe actually deploy less than maximum so you don't have weak people running around getting killed (since you want to clear with everyone alive). Though for the future, do promote people to master classes, keeping a lv.38 Sniper doesn't make any sense if you could get BK (and by level 38 you could definitely get enough training in horsemanship). Same for Pegasi and Wyverns.
•  
• Look at your skills and arts and see if you can do something different, the only must have is the prowess for your main weapon, everything else can be adapted for the map (I'm thinking of the breaker skills and the effective arts especially). And consider switching classes as well, I'm not sure what you certified, but Sylvain would probably be better off as a Paladin (as he ignores terrain damage and gets better stats), and maybe give a mount to Byleth if you've unlocked any.
•  
• Pay A LOT of attention to battallions, they're crucial, and if you weren't playing around with them for the whole game chances are you're still deploying E level youths shit or maybe no battallion at all. If you cleared paralogues you have some pretty broken stuff sitting there.
•  
• It's a bit difficult to help because I'm not sure about your actual issue with the map, but the general solution is taking your time, even a lot of time. Turtle up, advance slowly, bait enemies in one by one and use your healers and vulneraries. Also on that particular map kill the guy who's calling the reinforcements ASAP, he's quite accessible. A shame that your Marianne is so underleveled, but if you advance in group she'll be protected and able to heal. And you could even switch her to Bishop for double heals, no need for a horse if you're taking it slow.
•  
• Also the power problem many put on stats can actually be being underequiped. Relics are nice, but by the final chapter every frontline unit should have at least a forged Silver, a Brave (possibly forged) and forged Iron.

 

And finally, just because I see you bringing up this point over and over again, Divine Pulse is BROKEN. And I don't mean that it doesn't work, but that it's the main reason this game is laughably easy. Learn to use it please, you can't reroll 2 actions and expect the battle to change completely, go back a turn or two, rethink it and do stuff differently. By the final chapter you have something like THIRTEEN tries, it's absurd the amount of unpunished mistakes you can make. And I'm not trying to be rude, but if you're having problems with the game it's mostly due to not being able to use that amazing power.

 

On a side note, Dex determines hitrate and crit, Cha is for gambit power and accuracy. Not sure on the actual math though.

[Cysx]

I can mostly give general advice since I've never played on normal: If you're being overrun by enemies, use gambits to immobilize several at once. Claude's battalion in particular, the Immortal corps, is amazing for that as its gambit covers a huge area. You also don't have to deal with the north enemies on turn 1, there's enough place to the south to retreat, and in general, it might help focusing on only the south side where there's breathing room and no swamp; there's also a demonic beasts summoner there, that you want out of the picture asap. Cavalry bosses can die easily enough to Lysithea. You probably know that already, but your Byleth, Claude, Sylvain and Raphael should be able to act as walls if needed.

Hope that helps.

Dex is mainly for accuracy when it comes to weapons. It also affects magic accuracy, but less so. It gives you a bit of Crit for both as well.
Cha is for Gambit accuracy/avoid first and foremost, and gives a slight boost to gambit damage as well.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Cysx

[Kiran_]

Use Divine Pulse. If Claude misses go back, change the square you attack from and change the weapon you use. If Seteth is getting criticaled, go back and move him out of range of that unit that hits him.

I haven't gotten to GD Chapter 22 yet, but the problem looks like your team. If you have such problems with strategy and the game, I would say you're underleveled. I'm Chapter 18 and my entire team (save like your main 3) is higher leveled than yours and more balanced. The biggest level difference is between Byleth (42) and Lysithea (40). You don't seem necessarily stat screwed, though I agree you didn't have the best level ups (my Lv.40 Gremory Lysithea for example has 47 Mag, but the other stats are only 1-3 point differences), but even so, I'm playing Hard/Classic so the difference in stats shouldn't make such a difference if you're playing Normal difficultly. You should still be able to pull it off, but maybe on your next playthrough try to balance your levels a bit more.

From all your posts in both this forum and the Heroes forum, I wouldn't necessarily say the game is difficult, so much as it seems to be a reoccurring problem with you dealing with content. I wonder if you could switch your play strategy a lot? I'm a bit stubborn when I play, so sometimes I try like 5 times to make a strategy work, before I'm like, "Damnit I should just do something totally offbeat" and then it's fine and easy and I'm like, "I should have just switched it up originally. Maybe if trying to rush and kill enemies don't work, you can hold back and position your strongest up front to take the first wave, before moving forward. On BL final chapter, I tried to split my army to go on either side of the final map, and that epicalllllly failed (but I still tried it 2 more times), so I had to just end up keeping them together and choosing a side and then the map was literally a breeze.

If you're getting overwhelmed, use your strongest characters as tanks to form a wall. Use some Gambits to freeze enemies in place. 

I'd also look at your combat arts/abilities. Do you have the right stuff equipped? Also I'd use some Forged Weapons over their relics. Silver+ and Brave+ are godsends.

For the stats, you can just press X (for Details) on the Status screen of a character and it tells you what the stats mean.

 

[wissenschaft]

23 minutes ago, timon said:

 

Dex is the skill stat in other fire emblem games. I have no idea why they needlessly changed the stat name.

On your next playthrough you need to focus on spreading your exp out more evenly. Even now, the final mission should still be beatable.

As for what to do. Take the final mission very slowly. Kill the summoner asap and just move around the map slowly baiting units with your strong units. There no need to rush. The swamp can be drained by killing the mage hero. It will stop nemsis from regenerating. Make sure to save gambits for chip damage on nemsis then nuke him with lysithea.

Edited September 2, 2019 by wissenschaft

[Vince777]

2 hours ago, Anacybele said:

 

Anyway, I'm not saying the chapter is impossible, obviously some players have cleared it. And it makes no sense for it to be unclearable anyway. But I can't find a solution. I don't want to think I suck... I mean, I've never been an expert FE player, but I don't think I suck either, even if I do typically play the easiest modes all the time. I don't just throw units out there and hope they win, I do try to come up with good strategies and stuff. I'm probably more of an okay player.

I challenge this assessment and I'm not trying to be mean but anyone with Fire Emblem mechanics experience should steamroll through Three Houses normal difficulty. I'm shocked that you're struggling but a lot of it comes under light in the manner you use Divine Pulse. 

My opinion is that is quite clearly the easiest game in the entire series. 

I remember playing this map very defensively and backing away and only leaving a single of my unit in range of a single enemy to lure one out at a time. Use the grid that shows the reach of enemies and don't put all of your squad in the middle of it. I don't think it's a good idea to try to kill as many enemies as you can from the get go. Isolate them instead.

 

Edited September 2, 2019 by Vince777

[CyberNinja]

2 hours ago, Anacybele said:

One of my few complaints about TH, btw, is the difficulty. That might sound unsurprising to some people for certain reasons, but the truth is, I've never had this much trouble on a game's easiest mode before, at least in this series

I'm surprised, I don't recall anyone on forum noting the game for its difficulty?

 

2 hours ago, Anacybele said:

Claude's Failnaught is broken and I never got enough resources to repair it

You're on normal right? Do a couple random missions until you get a monster hunt mission, break the beast's armor and you get the material for the relics. I usually end up with 30 or so by endgame.

Looking at your stats, your units are are more or less in range of what I had, some higher, some lower so I can say its not really a stat issue.. Can you tell me what you've been doing with your units in the first 3 turns or so? I know I got my team wiped my first try, but that turned out to just be unlucky and I've beaten the map easily on hard classic every other time.

What are the skill levels of your characters, what abilities do they have to work with and as others have said what battalions are equipped?

[Vince777]

4 minutes ago, CyberNinja said:

 

You're on normal right? Do a couple random missions until you get a monster hunt mission, break the beast's armor and you get the material for the relics. I usually end up with 30 or so by endgame.

If she's on the game's last map, saved on last day of calendar, she probably doesn't have the means to do other side battles anymore.

She leveled up her units oddly with level discrepencies that are higher than 10 between highest and lowest. She loves Sylvain but maybe she should have allowed other units to get some experience. That wouldn't help if she intends to throw everyone in the middle. Some weaker units will not perform well enough. 

[CyberNinja]

1 minute ago, Vince777 said:

If she's on the game's last map, saved on last day of calendar, she probably doesn't have the means to do other side battles anymore.

She leveled up her units oddly with level discrepencies that are higher than 10 between highest and lowest. She loves Sylvain but maybe she should have allowed other units to get some experience. That wouldn't help if she intends to throw everyone in the middle. Some weaker units will not perform well enough. 

I mean she should be able to win the map with just her lvl 38+ units. She could probably win with just Byleth and Claude if she's willing to be patient.

[Vince777]

I believe they changed the skill stat to '"dexterity" just so that it not be confused with the skills characters can gain.

[CyberNinja]

 

3 hours ago, Anacybele said:

And speaking of stats, this is probably a dumb question because I feel like I should know this by now, but what are Cha and Dex for?

The stats tell you what they do if you hover over them, just push x on the stat screen.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

Just take it slow and make the Elites come to you, the only kill that's "urgent" in any sense is the Dark Bishop that will summon more demonic beasts. The swamp eventually dissipates, possibly after destroying a few of the elites (for me it seemed to have happened after I destroyed the one with Bolting up top).

If your flyers aren't good enough and are lacking in Alert Stance+, then you'll want to remove the swamp before dealing with the Ballistae.

What are Nemesis' stats on the difficulty you're playing? On Hard Classic, he can kill most of your party in 1 round easily as he's got 30 AS If I remember that right.

The best way to approach the battle with Nemesis is to attack him with someone that can survive, back away and get healed to survive on Nemesis' turn. On Hard Classic, he moves and I used that to get him off that stronghold tile and drop his avoid.

Claude would probably be your best damage to start chipping away at Nemesis here as he's got the most DEX and he can double the bastard on Hard Classic. Make sure you line up Hilda to give him that +3 damage per attack. Try to set it up so that Nemesis chases Claude to attack him at 2-range with Hilda right next to him, Claude will counter attack and you'll start the player phase with him having something lower than his starting 100+ HP. Continue attacking him with whatever deals decent damage to him and survives to surround him and add hit rate increases via linked attacks. Lysithea with Luna would be a good option as the finisher if she's one-shot by him since that should be 40 damage (48 if you've got Fiendish Blow and MAG +2 on her) and if she isn't one-shot by him, then that's even better.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Dr. Tarrasque

[Eltoshen]

Gambits are insanely broken in this game. They make monsters absolute jokes but you can use them on infantry as well. They have about 2 uses each and you'll hardly find yourself dying if you spam them. Abuse them and the map should be over before you run out. If you want to prevent a unit from moving on the enemy turn to protect your mage for example, use a movement disabling gambit. That, and abuse Divine Pulse, like others have suggested - rewinding more than a turn if you realise you made a mistake much earlier than you realised. I mostly use DP when I do something miniscule like miss an attack or forget to open a chest (sometimes rewinding 4 turns lmao) since there's so many uses. However, if you're struggling to clear a map, use it to roll back 1 or 2 turns if not more.

Edited September 2, 2019 by Eltoshen

[Vince777]

She's on normal mode so she doesn't have to worry about Nemesis moving.

[CyberNinja]

17 minutes ago, Vince777 said:

She's on normal mode so she doesn't have to worry about Nemesis moving.

Nemesis doesn't move on Hard unless you attack him first. That or I somehow killed everyelite, the Agarthan mages, and moved all my units just outside his aggro without triggering his move phase.

Sounds like OP is dying long before the elites are cleared so any report on Nemesis' stats are going to be the bloated stat line.

Kill the Gremory elite and the swamp will disappear, take the bridge to aboid aggro from most of the units if you need to. 

There is no justifiable reason for any of your units to ever end their turn on the swamp unless they're a flyer and thus immune anyway.

Split your army into two groups, the left to kill the Gremory, the right for the dark mage. Byleth and Claude are enough to take the center so long as you take care not to aggro too many enemies at once.

Again what skills/abilities do your units have?

[Anacybele]

Sorry for the late reply, everyone, I had to go to work by the time replies to this thread started coming in. There are so many replies now though that this post would turn into a huge wall of text if I quoted everything.

But anyway, to all the Divine Pulse suggestions, I've been using it a lot, but it hasn't helped much. A few times it did, but more often than not, I still ended up losing someone and had to restart. I do try something different every time I use it, since I'm aware it doesn't change RNG and such. So if I'm using it wrong, I have no idea how to use it right...

Those saying I should've spread my levels out a bit more evenly, yeah, I admit I wish I did, and I really tried to do that. When I did side battles, I really tried to let lower level people gain levels. And Claude is so high level because him being on a wyvern and good to begin with makes him easy as fuck to use, and so he was my only solution to problems sometimes. Sylvain's been a brutal wall for me and I'd have used him as much as I did even if I didn't fall in love with him as a character. xP

I don't have a chance to do anymore side battles, yeah. I saved when I started this one.

I always forget Gambits exist. I need to use them more. I did clear several paralogues, so I have good battalions on hand.

33 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

Just take it slow and make the Elites come to you, the only kill that's "urgent" in any sense is the Dark Bishop that will summon more demonic beasts. The swamp eventually dissipates, possibly after destroying a few of the elites (for me it seemed to have happened after I destroyed the one with Bolting up top).

When I tried letting an Elite come to me, he just took out Byleth easily. But thanks for the warning about the Bishop that summons beasts.

To the explanations on charm and dexterity, thanks for clarifying.

Those mentioning that other players find the game easy, well, if it really is that easy to so many players, maybe I am doing something wrong here... I still don't like to believe I suck though. I'm not used to some of the stuff TH brings though, like Gambits and all, so maybe that's at least part of the problem.

3 hours ago, Kiran_ said:

I'd also look at your combat arts/abilities. Do you have the right stuff equipped? Also I'd use some Forged Weapons over their relics. Silver+ and Brave+ are godsends.

I never got the materials needed to forge those, unfortunately.

1 hour ago, CyberNinja said:

What are the skill levels of your characters, what abilities do they have to work with and as others have said what battalions are equipped?

Give me a few minutes and I'll grab that information. It'll take a bit of time. And someone else will have to reply to this thread so I don't double post.

4 hours ago, Cysx said:

your Byleth, Claude, Sylvain and Raphael should be able to act as walls if needed. 

That would be fine, except Sylvain is the only one of those four that actually has a real Def stat. The other three have crappy defenses.

4 hours ago, timon said:

maybe Byleth's a bit weaker than he should, but he's at lv.44 so it's still enough.

She. I'm using female Byleth. Just saying.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Anacybele

[Vince777]

2 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

 

I never got the materials needed to forge those, unfortunately.

 

Most of these materials you get by completely shattering all 4 tiles of armor on the big beasts. Plus. when you manage that, they'll be stunned, they won't attack the next turn and the armor will never regenerate.

On an ulterior playthrough, you can use the gambits that target several tiles to make it rather easy. 

Edited September 3, 2019 by Vince777

[Anacybele]

1 minute ago, Vince777 said:

Most of these materials you get by completely shattering all 4 tiles of armor on the big beasts. Plus. when you manage that, they'll be stunned, they won't attack the next turn and the armor will never regenerate.

On an ulterior playthrough, you can use the gambits that target several tiles to make it rather easy. 

Oh. I never knew that. Man, now I really wish I did.

[wissenschaft]

To be fair, the last chapter of GD is a bit of a difficulty spike. You really do need to use everything you've got in 3 Houses and if your not using gambits, thats going to hurt you. Using a Gambit sets the enemies hit to attack the person that used said gambit. This means you can make your tanks get targeted through gambits but watch out, you'll want some left over for dealing with Nemesis. 

Also yeah, not knowing how to properly fight demonic beasts will REALLY make things harder. 

Having forged + weapons is nice but not necessary. Having just basic Silver and Brave weapons on the other hand are nearly a must have. Without those weapons its going to be a lot harder.

Edited September 3, 2019 by wissenschaft

[CyberNinja]

5 minutes ago, Anacybele said:

Oh. I never knew that. Man, now I really wish I did.

g)I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you never put your students into assignments (patrols, weeding, horse keeping) and thus never acquired forging materials? Otherwise you should have plenty to forge silver.

[hinode]

Silver weapons are forged with the basic Smithing Stones that you get every week from group tasks and can buy from the Eastern Merchant in infinite quantities. Unfortunately, that's only available when exploring the monestary, so it might be too late for that, depending on how much you have in stock already.

[Anacybele]

10 minutes ago, CyberNinja said:

g)I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you never put your students into assignments (patrols, weeding, horse keeping) and thus never acquired forging materials? Otherwise you should have plenty to forge silver.

I did. I've had some do horse keeping and weeding. Heck, I kinda HAD to put Sylvain in the weeding because that raised his armor rank and he needed a really high one for Great Knight. Not patrols though. I just got basic stuff...

15 minutes ago, wissenschaft said:

To be fair, the last chapter of GD is a bit of a difficulty spike. You really do need to use everything you've got in 3 Houses and if your not using gambits, thats going to hurt you. Using a Gambit sets the enemies hit to attack the person that used said gambit. This means you can make your tanks get targeted through gambits but watch out, you'll want some left over for dealing with Nemesis. 

Also yeah, not knowing how to properly fight demonic beasts will REALLY make things harder. 

Having forged + weapons is nice but not necessary. Having just basic Silver and Brave weapons on the other hand are nearly a must have. Without those weapons its going to be a lot harder.

I see. Thanks. Yeah, my units are packing silver and brave weapons mostly.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Anacybele

[CyberNinja]

1 minute ago, Anacybele said:

I did. I've had some do horse keeping and weeding. Heck, I kinda HAD to put Sylvain in the weeding because that raised his armor rank and he needed a really high one for Great Knight. Not patrols though. I just got basic stuff...

I see. Thanks. Yeah, my units are packing silver and brave weapons mostly.

Well you should have forged silver at least. However since you weren't killing beasts right proper you're out of luck for the good stuff.

[Anacybele]

4 minutes ago, CyberNinja said:

Well you should have forged silver at least. However since you weren't killing beasts right proper you're out of luck for the good stuff.

If I can forge silver, okay then. I'll do that. But yeah, otherwise, looks like I screwed myself in the weapon forging/repairing department... -_-

[Armagon]

What i did was i took out the first two Elites that are there at the start of the map. I moved everyone to the bottom left and waited there until the Flying Beast came in range so i could kill it. After that, i just took the bridge and killed Lamine. Killing Lamine causes the swamp to disappear, which should make things a lot easier. Now, i was playing on Hard so when it came time to face off against Nemesis, i.........actually only won because i got a lucky crit. Personally, i think the final boss being 20 levels higher than the recommended level is bad design but anyway, Gambits are your best friend. If you actually manage to break Nemesis' battalion, i hear his stats decreases significantly.