Maddening mode is out

[Silly]

14 hours ago, Centh said:

A bit of a different topic, but what battalions stand out for the rest of you? It seems to me there's separate tiers for them, which would depend on authority rank requirements. Many of the standouts appear at rank D/C, when it comes to stats. Stride is clearly very powerful and E rank, so an easy S tier. Gambits definitely feel underwhelming early game due to the abysmal hit rates when on maddening mode.

For utility, Stride is purchasable early, usable by everyone, and really good. BL actually gets a second stride battalion at D rank in the shop (post ch 7), and you can get yet another one from the Sylvain Paralogue (B rank).

Retribution is also very helpful, but its only easily accessible for BL (D rank, shows up in shop post ch 7). BE route has a retribution battalion but its A rank, and all routes gain access to another one from the Manuela + Hanneman paralogue, but again it's an A rank.

Dance of the Goddess is good, but comes pretty late. BL gets one in the shop at A rank, and you can get one on most routes in Enbarr by having Manuela or Dorothea visit the Opera (note that BE route does not have an Enbarr chapter).

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For combat battalions, I usually just pick the highest stat sticks. This is attack/defense/avoid depending on what kind of benchmarks I'm looking to hit. Note that flying battalions here are particularly valuable. They usually give desirable stats, and you need them for your flying units. I particularly like the battalion from Ingrid's paralogue (you need Ingrid recruited to get it). It's a flying battalion that is obtainable fairly early on and gives a big boost in a bunch of important stats (7 Str, 5 Hit, 10 Avoid, 5 Def, 6 Res, 8 Cha).

13 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

Some of the Faculty are good. The main issue that I see in NG is that your XP builds slowly, so all of the Level dependent Recruits join later. Units like Catherine and Shamir are still good, but Shamir's speed is probably not enough to double consistently like it was on Hard. I think they're better when you get them because they can replace any of your other units that haven't turned out well, but I'm not sure how well they scale into the late game as I didn't use any Faculty except for Seteth and Gilbert. 

Level requirements can be reduced by support. It's fairly easy to recruit Catherine by Ch 4/5 and Shamir by Ch 6. Just give them a few gifts to get to C or C+ rank.

Early recruiting Catherine and Shamir is also very recommended. The way that the game treats cross recruit bases, you don't get much benefit from waiting.

For an extreme example, Shamir has 14 base speed when you recruit her in Ch 6 as a level 11 Sniper. Her actual base speed at level 11 is a lot lower than this, but when you recruit her, the game bumps up her speed to 14 (the Sniper base), so she effectively gains a ton of speed. If you wait and let the game autolevel her, the first point of speed she gains isn't until chapter 12, at which point she will join as a level 23 Sniper with 15 base speed.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Silly

[DefyingFates]

36 minutes ago, Silly said:

For utility, Stride is purchasable early, usable by everyone, and really good. BL actually gets a second stride battalion at D rank in the shop (post ch 7), and you can get yet another one from the Sylvain Paralogue (B rank).

Retribution is also very helpful, but its only easily accessible for BL (D rank, shows up in shop post ch 7). BE route has a retribution battalion but its A rank, and all routes gain access to another one from the Manuela + Hanneman paralogue, but again it's an A rank.

Dance of the Goddess is good, but comes pretty late. BL gets one in the shop at A rank, and you can get one on most routes in Enbarr by having Manuela or Dorothea visit the Opera (note that BE route does not have an Enbarr chapter). 

That's a lotta great low-Rank Gambits exclusive to BL...it's sounding more and more like they're the easiest route (with or without Maddening/ NG+) combined with them having Dedue and Felix. Would you agree with this?

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I beat the first sidequest (Dedue).

Although the enemies were higher leveled than in the regular chapters, they were not really better in terms of stats.

That said I failed in getting the side objective price (defeating more enemies than Duscur), but I had no problem to survive this although my team was in average six levels lower than the enemy. 

However going for the side objective in this chapter was very hard. 

[LegendOfLoog]

7 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Thanks!

As for Battalion Wrath/ Vantage/ Desperation: is it difficult to get your Battalions into the right HP range without them being dismissed altogether? (Also, does a 0HP Battalion even trigger those abilities?)

P.S. What are the best ways to build Professor Rank besides fishing? Apparently some seeds give more EXP than others?

It's fairly easy, actually. You just have to get around 35 HP points on the Fraldarius Soldiers/King of Lions Corps to get into <= 1/3 of its HP. I actually messed this up a bit for the final map because mine had 3 HP left, but it didn't matter. All I had to do was keep Dimitri away from ballistas, and everything else he would one-shot on Enemy Phase with a high crit lance. On my first try, he actually ran out of Scythe of Sariel uses because he killed over 30 enemies alone. 0 HP Battalions do not trigger the ability because they retreat. 

The Arena actually builds Professor Rank very fast, and since I spent a lot of time there to pay for my Greenhouse addiction, I ended up with around a B+ in Professor Rank before Fistfuls of Fish even occurred near the end of the year. I'm not sure about Greenhouse XP gains, but it's always felt the same to me. Maybe the number planted increases the XP? Not sure on this one.

4 hours ago, Silly said:

Level requirements can be reduced by support. It's fairly easy to recruit Catherine by Ch 4/5 and Shamir by Ch 6. Just give them a few gifts to get to C or C+ rank.

Early recruiting Catherine and Shamir is also very recommended. The way that the game treats cross recruit bases, you don't get much benefit from waiting.

For an extreme example, Shamir has 14 base speed when you recruit her in Ch 6 as a level 11 Sniper. Her actual base speed at level 11 is a lot lower than this, but when you recruit her, the game bumps up her speed to 14 (the Sniper base), so she effectively gains a ton of speed. If you wait and let the game autolevel her, the first point of speed she gains isn't until chapter 12, at which point she will join as a level 23 Sniper with 15 base speed.

That makes sense. Maybe I'll do that next time because by the time I got them, they didn't seem as useful as I remembered. 

As a general note, I compiled a list of enemy stats, items, and battalions for Chapter 22 on Blue Lions Maddening Mode. If anyone wants to take a look at it, here is the link. Any unit who's bolded and has a bracket around them are reinforcements that start spawning when someone enters the throne room. The siege tome mages spawn immediately, and the Dark Knights/War Masters start spawning one turn after. I don't have any information on the reinforcements that spawn in the middle room if you ignore it, so if anyone knows, I'll add that to the sheet. 

Edited September 19, 2019 by LegendOfLoog

[Silly]

10 minutes ago, LegendOfLoog said:

As a general note, I compiled a list of enemy stats, items, and battalions for Chapter 22 on Blue Lions Maddening Mode. If anyone wants to take a look at it, here is the link. Any unit who's bolded and has a bracket around them are reinforcements that start spawning when someone enters the throne room. The siege tome mages spawn immediately, and the Dark Knights/War Masters start spawning one turn after. I don't have any information on the reinforcements that spawn in the middle room if you ignore it, so if anyone knows, I'll add that to the sheet. 

Do you know how much HP Edelgard has on her final bar?

[LegendOfLoog]

26 minutes ago, Silly said:

Do you know how much HP Edelgard has on her final bar?

Just double checked, and she has 159 with one shield left up, 199 with none. Also, the stair reinforcements are just more War Masters with Silver Gauntlets.

[Alexios Blake]

Has anyone completed maddening without New game+? If so how does the new title screen look?

[DefyingFates]

4 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

The Arena actually builds Professor Rank very fast

I forgot about that! I remember using that at the very end of my first playthrough, which meant I wasn't able to benefit from it as much as you. Thanks! It sounds like the money you get from it is worthwhile now that Auxillary Battles have been nerfed?

4 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

As a general note, I compiled a list of enemy stats, items, and battalions for Chapter 22 on Blue Lions Maddening Mode.

That's a crazy amount of detail, thank you! How long did this take to compile?

[Shadow Mir]

4 hours ago, LegendOfLoog said:

The Arena actually builds Professor Rank very fast

Um, are the enemies in the arena boosted or not? Because I learned the hard way that you only have so many (4) rounds to defeat your opponent, and you automatically lose if they aren't defeated by then. And assuming they are, I have a hard time seeing it as worthwhile.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[LegendOfLoog]

2 hours ago, Alexios Blake said:

Has anyone completed maddening without New game+? If so how does the new title screen look?

It's sort of yellowish. It looks pretty nice though.

@DefyingFates Yeah, the real reason Arena is nice is that Explore has so much going for it that Battle doesn't. I would only do Aux battles for gathering non-buyable Ore for forging or if you have a Paralogue. The last two chapters give 2,000 Gold per Arena, so it's actually pretty great. I had around 60k left over on the final map after I repaired everything. The stat sheet took probably an hour or so to do manually since there's a lot of overlap between enemies here, so it didn't really take that much time. 

8 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Um, are the enemies boosted or not? Because I learned the hard way that you only have so many (4) rounds to defeat your opponent, and you automatically lose if they aren't defeated by then.

I don't think so because I had a really easy time clearing it personally. They may be boosted through abilities like Swordmasters having Quick Riposte, but I didn't notice any significant stat increases. 

[DefyingFates]

17 minutes ago, LegendOfLoog said:

Yeah, the real reason Arena is nice is that Explore has so much going for it that Battle doesn't. I would only do Aux battles for gathering non-buyable Ore for forging or if you have a Paralogue. The last two chapters give 2,000 Gold per Arena, so it's actually pretty great.

Thank you! How did you spend your time in the Monastery? I see a lot of people saying they had a lot of tea parties, so if you also spent a lot of time in the Arena, does that mean you didn't do much Advanced/ Faculty Training?

30 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I learned the hard way that you only have so many (4) rounds to defeat your opponent, and you automatically lose if they aren't defeated by then.

I remember that happening once and having no idea why I'd lost. Not fun xD

[Silly]

To be honest, explore is a much more efficient use of time compared to literally everything else you can do. I battle to get paralogues and missions done, but otherwise every other time is explore.

Exploring gives you more weapon exp, because you can motivate your students and get faculty tutoring. It gives you additional stats via gardening. It gives you gold through the arena. It builds support with other units so that you can recruit them more easily. And most importantly, it gives you more professor level, which snowballs in a big way. More professor level means more activity points (which makes explore even better to select), more battle points (so later on when you have to battle for a paralogue/whatever you're making better use of your time), access to adjutants (which means more total exp for your team), and access to better items in the shop.

Most of the time with explore, your priorities are:

1. Garden, because it costs 0 activity points and gives big benefits. You might as well do it.
2. Ensure everyone that you are actively training is fully motivated. This can be via either meals or gifts, if you don't want to burn activity points.
3. In the early game, get faculty tutoring in particularly important weapon ranks (for example, if you are going to reclass into pegasus knight soon and do not have the appropriate weapon ranks, you should focus on faculty that can teach you lance + flying). Later in the game when you already have good weapon ranks there is not too much point in doing this.
4. Fight in the arena for professor exp and money.
5. Build support with students. This is lower priority because you can always spam them with gifts, which takes no activity points.

[LegendOfLoog]

2 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Thank you! How did you spend your time in the Monastery? I see a lot of people saying they had a lot of tea parties, so if you also spent a lot of time in the Arena, does that mean you didn't do much Advanced/ Faculty Training?

Yeah, once I hit A Authority and had A+ in Lances, Flying, and Swords, I didn't think it was worth tutoring that much further because it would take too long. +10 Crit Skills are ok, but I didn't see a lot of space for them. Tea Parties would have been nice with Dimitri specifically because Gambits get around the Battalion Wrath + Vantage strat, but the lowest hit rate that can have is 20. Then again, you can just avoid them, and very few enemies that need to be fought on the final map have offensive Gambits. I think the importance of offensive gambits are relatively low, and the main thing you should look at with Battalions are passive stats and utility Gambits like Retribution and Stride. 

[DefyingFates]

16 minutes ago, LegendOfLoog said:

I think the importance of offensive gambits are relatively low, and the main thing you should look at with Battalions are passive stats and utility Gambits like Retribution and Stride.

So Charm isn't as important and it's better to spend time on the Arena and Faculty Training (at least until you get what you need for your Master Class) than on Tea Parties?

30 minutes ago, Silly said:

To be honest, explore is a much more efficient use of time compared to literally everything else you can do. I battle to get paralogues and missions done, but otherwise every other time is explore.

Agreed. Seminars are completely pointless (which needs to be fixed, but that's its own issue) and there's no point to Resting when you can gift-spam your students/ peers and farm Umbral Steel by fighting monsters.

Edited September 19, 2019 by DefyingFates

[Stroud]

13 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

So Charm isn't as important and it's better to spend time on the Arena and Faculty Training (at least until you get what you need for your Master Class) than on Tea Parties?

Still shouldn't be neglected totally. Especially in chapters against a lot of Monsters its good to have strong offensive gambits. And you get some utility gambits pretty late, outside of stride which comes at the beginning.

At least I can say that I found offensive gambits quite useful occasionally. Especially those which hit a lot of enemies, like Blaze, or Resonating Flames. Lets say its ok to just keep an eye on which character has more charm and should get the gambit accordingly. I have Resonating Flames on Dorothea for example and just found it placed right on her. 

Edited September 19, 2019 by Stroud

[DefyingFates]

12 minutes ago, Stroud said:

Still shouldn't be neglected totally. Especially in chapters against a lot of Monsters its good to have strong offensive gambits. And you get some utility gambits pretty late, outside of stride which comes at the beginning.

At least I can say that I found offensive gambits quite useful occasionally. Especially those which hit a lot of enemies, like Blaze, or Resonating Flames. Lets say its ok to just keep an eye on which character has more charm and should get the gambit accordingly. I have Resonating Flames on Dorothea for example and just found it placed right on her. 

Thanks for correcting me!

When I played, I found Fusillade and other "+" shaped Gambits very useful against monsters (you could cripple one entirely with two if it had full shields, or with one and a regular attack if it had cracked ones). Are they still worth using in Maddening, only worth using on Monsters or obsolete entirely?

[Silly]

Charm is a nice stat to have but it's not super important like speed or strength is. If you don't have high charm you can easily work around that.

With that being said, stacking Charm on Byleth is pretty easy even without spending any activity points, because you get a free tea party every birthday. So by the end of the game Byleth should have more than enough Charm.

[Stroud]

3 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Thanks for correcting me!

When I played, I found Fusillade and other "+" shaped Gambits very useful against monsters (you could cripple one entirely with two if it had full shields, or with one and a regular attack if it had cracked ones). Are they still worth using in Maddening, only worth using on Monsters or obsolete entirely?

I mean in case on Exploration its true that other things should be preferred to tea party. Its ok to just take the birthday's of your units and get the Charm there like said here.

Fusillade is nice on a few maps, but overall I prefer offensive gambits which really hit more fields. Even if they have one use. It should be enough. On some Maps which are almost monster only Fusillade could be nice. But I don't find myself using it as often as the others. Because they also help against common enemies if they are clustered together. 

[DefyingFates]

9 hours ago, Stroud said:

Because they also help against common enemies if they are clustered together. 

That's fair. Now that I think of it I rarely had to use Gambits against non-Monsters. I should probably change that mindset before Maddening drives me mad, huh?

[Spectrum]

I've just started playing it few hours ago and I have to say, this is honestly boring. The exp gain makes it really frustrating. Yes, it's challenging, but being overly underleveled is making the whole difficulty just.. absurd. I don't mind being underleveled by 3-4 levels, but 7-10 is honestly stupid. This is not as enjoyable as I thought it would be honestly.

[Modirufa6317]

1 hour ago, Spectrum said:

I've just started playing it few hours ago and I have to say, this is honestly boring. The exp gain makes it really frustrating. Yes, it's challenging, but being overly underleveled is making the whole difficulty just.. absurd. I don't mind being underleveled by 3-4 levels, but 7-10 is honestly stupid. This is not as enjoyable as I thought it would be honestly.

It's not that you are underleveled in this mode, but rather it's the enemies that are far higher level than usual.

However, their stats doesn't actually match with the level scale, and with the bigger level gap, you basically level up almost at the same rate as in lower difficulty.

The main purpose is to essentially prevent exp grinding and making your units overlevelled.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Modirufa6317

[Spectrum]

2 minutes ago, Modirufa6317 said:

It's not that you are underleveled in this mode, but rather it's the enemies that are far higher level than usual.

However, their stats doesn't actually match with the level scale, and with the bigger level gap, you basically level up almost at the same rate as in lower difficulty.

The main purpose is to essentially prevent exp grinding and making your units overlevelled.

Hmm. Maybe it's because I'm still early in the game, but so far I get doubled all the time. Most of my units die to a single foe. I'll keep doing more chapters and then update.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I think it is exactly as in FE10 where enemy's level is rised by two in the next difficulty level. 

 

[Modirufa6317]

1 minute ago, Spectrum said:

Hmm. Maybe it's because I'm still early in the game, but so far I get doubled all the time. Most of my units die to a single foe. I'll keep doing more chapters and then update.

My tip for the early chapters : give a training weapon to everyone, and don't hesitate to rely on Gambits (they immobilize AND lower their stats).

Many peoples seems to suggest giving a bow to everyone, but in my experience I don't think it's necessary (might even be counter-productive in the long run).

[Silly]

The first few chapters are definitely when your units are the weakest relative to the enemies.

After about chapter 3 or so, enemies don't actually seem to grow too significantly in power. A big reason for this is that their AS remains relatively stagnant for a long time, since they start picking up steel weapons, which means that you don't get doubled for massive damage nearly as often and can actually start to double some enemy types and therefore ORKO them.

Also bows are definitely pretty valuable in this mode. Your units take significant damage when getting hit by enemies, so if you're getting into a reasonable amount of combat you won't have enough healers to ensure everyone is topped off all the time. Chipping with a bow/curved shot allows you to weaken an enemy without taking a counterattack, which takes some of the burden off of your healers.

Most of your weapon exp comes from weekly study anyways, so using a bow occasionally doesn't really affect that much.