Maddening mode is out

[Quirino]

35 minutes ago, Modirufa6317 said:

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)

Bows helped me a lot in beating chapter 2, with which I struggled. Being able to chip with bows, then use a combat art with a strong unit to land the final blow kept damage to a minimum during player phase and allowed me to tank some of the enemies during enemy phase (those who can survive an encounter at least). When the enemy becomes less overpowered after like chapter 3, like Silly mentioned, you can start using hand axes/javelins instead if you want that character to focus on axes/lances. With the enemy count increased, I think the 2 chapters with a bow really won't hurt their weapon exp that much.

[zuibangde]

Rant incoming: 

I thought the game was getting more manageable until the second mock battle between the houses. It was going well until Claude's house decided to rush to Dimitri's side. In Hard mode, the two houses will take out each other until a manageable amount of enemies are left. However, in maddening, Claude's team got completely destroyed and it ended up prompting EVERYONE from Dimitri's side to rush to the centre (where I was at). This included: Sylvain, Dedue, Dimitri, Annette, Mercedes and three/four other generics. That's right...they managed to kill ZERO people from Dimitri's side. Any chip damage that was done was quickly healed up by Mercedes. To make things worse, all of the units (except for the generics) have ranged weapons. Hubert couldn't even take out Dedue without getting himself killed first.

It ended up being even harder than Miklan's chapter because all the units have their stats boosted from killing all the Golden Deers on top of already boosted stats. It took 5 of my 10 units to kill Dimitri and 4/5 of them had less than 10hp left by the time he finally retreated. All the gambits had either retreated from constantly being hit or have a hit rate of 10 - 30%. Ferdinand's gambit was my last hope so he could stop Dedue and his 30STR come charging in. It had a hit rate of 80% and HE MISSED (honestly, at this point I'm not even surprised because I have never missed so much in any FE game before. The most notable example is Petra missing 99% and then getting KO'd).

Dedue came in and basically launched Petra all the way back to Brigid but at that point, I was too pissed to restart the chapter because I'm not going torture myself with this map again (only have 4 time wheel uses and I used it all previously from Ingrid's insane doubling and avoid rate). The only saving grace is that the students don't die permanently from this map.

Hopefully, future maps are more manageable and feels more fair. The fact that Edelgard is my tankiest unit and even Sylvain could double and kill her at full hp is insane. It's honestly stupid that I STILL have to make sure everyone holds a training weapon just so they don't get doubled.

 

Edit: lmao. Ferdinand had a 100% hit rate to kill Mercedes and he still managed to die himself because Mercedes activated Miracle and ended up doubling him (and healing a bunch of HP in the process!). I'm this close to being done with this game.

Edited September 20, 2019 by zuibangde

[Quirino]

Even on hard mode I thought the battle of the eagle and lion (and its equivalent after timeskip) was one of the hardest chapters in the game. I wouldn't beat yourself over losing some units, since they only retreat. I would not be surprised if the chapter was designed with that in mind.

[zuibangde]

7 minutes ago, Quirino said:

Even on hard mode I thought the battle of the eagle and lion (and its equivalent after timeskip) was one of the hardest chapters in the game. I wouldn't beat yourself over losing some units, since they only retreat. I would not be surprised if the chapter was designed with that in mind.

I know I shouldn't get too worked up over it. I guess because I've managed to not lose anyone in this map when playing on Hard mode, I kinda gave myself the same expectation in maddening. But honestly...it just made me frustrated more than anything...and it's not even the 'fun' kind of frustration where you feel challenged and is determined to figure a solution out. The circumstances just felt so unfair. 

Edited September 20, 2019 by zuibangde

[Silly]

Battle of Eagle and Lion is a pretty interesting map in my opinion.

The one major thing that I found annoying is that units that aren't in your "class" are not deployable. This means no mission assistance and you can't use Catherine or Shamir, who are likely some of your better combat units in this game mode. So you're likely rolling into the map with a much worse team than you had on the previous map.

Also, the cool thing is, currently the very rough LTC strategy for clearing the map on Maddening involves suiciding less useful units to aggro both enemy sides into attacking each other. The important thing though is that you need to aggro specific clusters of enemies such that both sides are relatively equal, rather than having one army overwhelm the other one.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Silly

[Escape the Fate]

Re: rant above

I know this isn’t true but I’ve had enough moments like these where I wonder if hit rate/avoid abilities aren’t shown in the forecast percentages. I don’t think they would if someone gets knocked into Deviant Avo mid fight but yeah I’ve had bad luck (on all difficulties FWIW)

[Quirino]

Does anyone know for sure what RN system this game uses? It's probably either 1RN, Fates RN or a new method based on what I've seen so far.

[Stroud]

Reached Chapter 14. Chapter 13 was quite tricky, glad I cared a little more about Petra in the last chapters to at least make her a Wyvern Rider. Otherwise it could have been a Desaster.
Also Conand Tower Auxiliary provides Speed Carrot and Fruit of Life. But its only available after timeskip.

Also Bernadetta turned into my tank, totally worth it pushing her with the right items for that. Maybe not as tanky as others, but more than enough to catch 2-3 attacks and go on vengeance rampage. At least for the chapters I have now. I will keep her for a while as a Paladin. Until I feel that there are not much stats to get. 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Stroud

[Okigen]

Crap I'm stuck at chapter 5. Dimitri accidentally stood in the range of the archer in the inner room and now I have the whole enemy army chasing after me. And everyone gets rgn screwed. I may promote Mercedes to the front line now that she has better stats than Byleth.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Okigen

[Silly]

21 minutes ago, Quirino said:

Does anyone know for sure what RN system this game uses? It's probably either 1RN, Fates RN or a new method based on what I've seen so far.

It's 2RN, like most other modern games.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, zuibangde said:

Rant incoming: 

I thought the game was getting more manageable until the second mock battle between the houses. It was going well until Claude's house decided to rush to Dimitri's side. In Hard mode, the two houses will take out each other until a manageable amount of enemies are left. However, in maddening, Claude's team got completely destroyed and it ended up prompting EVERYONE from Dimitri's side to rush to the centre (where I was at). This included: Sylvain, Dedue, Dimitri, Annette, Mercedes and three/four other generics. That's right...they managed to kill ZERO people from Dimitri's side. Any chip damage that was done was quickly healed up by Mercedes. To make things worse, all of the units (except for the generics) had ranged weapons. Hubert couldn't even take out Dedue without getting himself killed first.

It ended up being even harder than Miklan's chapter because all the units have their stats boosted from killing all the Golden Deers on top of already boosted stats. It took 5 of my 10 units to kill Dimitri and 4/5 of them had less than 10hp left by the time he finally retreated. All the gambits have either retreated from constantly being hit or have a hit rate of 10 - 30%. Ferdinand's gambit was my last hope so he could stop Dedue and his 30STR come charging in. It had a hit rate of 80% and HE MISSED (honestly, at this point I'm not even surprised because I have never missed so much in any FE game before. The most notable example is Petra missing 99% and then getting KO'd).

Dedue came in and basically launched Petra all the way back to Brigid but at this point, I'm too pissed to restart the chapter because I'm not going torture myself with this map again (only have 4 time wheel uses and I used it all previously from Ingrid's insane doubling and avoid rate). The only saving grace is that the students don't die permanently from this map.

Hopefully, future maps are more manageable and feels more fair. The fact that Edelgard is my tankiest unit and even Sylvain could double and kill her at full hp is insane. It's honestly stupid that I STILL have to make sure everyone holds a training weapon just so they don't get doubled.

 

Edit: lmao. Ferdinand had a 100% hit rate to kill Mercedes and he still managed to die himself because Mercedes activated Miracle and ended up doubling him (and healing a bunch of HP in the process!). I'm this close to being done with this game.

Part of me wants to be like this:

But the other part of me is laughing his ass off because of the yellow team getting sent to wipeout city from what has to be a comedy of errors. Did any of them end up being defeated by your units instead of the failed charge on Dimitri's team?

[DefyingFates]

3 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

But the other part of me is laughing his ass off because of the yellow team getting sent to wipeout city from what has to be a comedy of errors. Did any of them end up being defeated by your units instead of the failed charge on Dimitri's team?

Yeah, now that you mention it I have to admit (gameplay implications aside), that must have been hilarious to watch xD

[zuibangde]

 

 

 

 

11 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

But the other part of me is laughing his ass off because of the yellow team getting sent to wipeout city from what has to be a comedy of errors. Did any of them end up being defeated by your units instead of the failed charge on Dimitri's team?

Outside of Ignatz who starts closest to you, the only GDs that I managed to defeat were two/three generics that's decided to go up to the ballista area where I had control over (I was forced to retreat to the woods when the whole remaining BL army rushed to the area at the same time. The woods obviously didn't help because my units were the ones missing their attacks lol...).

Lysithea, Raphael, Leonie and friends rushed to BL side and got wiped out within one turn and I was like really...? I mean what WAS THE POINT of that other than giving BL units a stat boost. 

[AxelVDP]

I've been playing maddening BL without ng+ and dlc/online stuff and aside from the first 4 or so chapters (until death knight first encounter, just because I was hellbent on killing him with my stat screwed units) (everyone was getting doubled, even felix with no weapons equipped since I still lacked Annette's rally speed, and the only unit who survived was dedue with iron shield+3 prt battallion+2 def from the ground tiles)  and I don't find it too terribly difficult.
the moment you reach intermediate classes where you can start minmaxing decently your units and have them fulfill roles the game gets way easier.

Miklan's chapter I got fucked by Gilbert who aggroed the entire enemy army onto me but thanks to a smart use of gambits it was still plenty manageable (to avoid  pass enemy ambushes I just surrounded my squishy units with the bulkier ones and moved them in formation)
the battle of eagle and lion chapter I actually found quite easy, did not lose a single unit there, I suspect tho that I kind of "cheesed" the chapter by recruiting 2 GD units before (Lorenz and Marianne)
Speaking of Lorenz, his paralogue was legit hard, especially since all he could do was serve as a stride bot and minimal chip dmg when enemies were not grouped togheter.
another hard paralogue was Ingrid's but that's mostly due to ambush spawns that made me use up all my pulses

Dedue's chapter was interesting, thank god I had Ingrid as a pegasus knight that allowed me to bait some units away from the kingdom's soilders which made it possible for me to get an extra large bullion as a reward
Sylvain's paralogue was surprisingly easy, was expecting to get bopped hard seeing all these speed demons on the enemies side, turns out that the map was easy to exploit thanks to AoE gambits
Felix's paralogue was not that hard once I figured out how to position my units on turn1, the key imo was having 2 stride users

btw I always complete every side objective, save all villagers, grab all chests, kill every optional boss and get max rewards at the end of the chapter (I don't consider a chapter beaten unless I 100% it basically, so I usually make things harder on me, but that's how I have fun)

I just got my dancer (Marianne) and am sitting at professor level A already (thanks Fishing), I am mostly using my main BL students + Shamir and Marianne, still unsure on what to do with Flayn (unit is Bad but rescue is good) and Catherine (amazing unit but kind of redundant), I trained Cyril too at the beginning since BL is probably the only route where he does not totally suck but will probably bench the guy anyway, wanted to use Manuela too since she's one of my favourite units in the game (not character wise tho) but eh I'm not really feeling her in maddening, she needs heavy babbying before she gets rolling

so far I'm really enjoying the mode tho, was sure a nice change of pace since Hard is wayyyy to easy still

edit: gambits are REALLY good in this mode, especially when you get support with your units so their accuracy gets decent by gambit boosting, I also recommend the use of bows like some posters here already mentioned, tho I would NOT give them to every unit, since resources are scarce early (first 3 chapters or so at least) game and often spent better elsewhere AND considering you can trade stuff around rather easily in this game

Edited September 20, 2019 by AxelVDP

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, zuibangde said:

Outside of Ignatz who starts closest to you, the only GDs that I managed to defeat were two/three generics that's decided to go up to the ballista area where I had control over (I was forced to retreat to the woods when the whole remaining BL army rushed to the area at the same time. The woods obviously didn't help because my units were the ones missing their attacks lol...).

Lysithea, Raphael, Leonie and friends rushed to BL side and got wiped out within one turn and I was like really...? I mean what WAS THE POINT of that other than giving BL units a stat boost. 

Makes me wonder what the hell Claude's plan for winning was... though I get the feeling that maybe it was something as dumb as this, which goes about as well as you'd expect (i.e. Epic Fail):

(Claude's team is the Colts, Dimitri's team the Patriots)

Or making like the Ulong tribe and losing repeatedly. (In case you don't get it, the Ulong tribe is infamous for losing nearly all its members before the merge)

In all seriousness, though, I'd expect two uber-boosted armies clashing with each other to end with casualties on both sides, not a complete wipeout of one whilst the other ends up practically scot free. Even if that is hilarious (and you gotta admit, it kinda is).

[Modirufa6317]

I've noticed something odd with the enemy's AI : it seems to follow some kind of strict abstract order, like making the archers act after the melee units, bosses always act first, and siege weapons/spells always go last... sometime completely disregarding opportunities to kill off a player units.

Have anyone else noticed this too, or is it just my imagination?

[zuibangde]

 

 

 

 

8 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Makes me wonder what the hell Claude's plan for winning was... though I get the feeling that maybe it was something as dumb as this, which goes about as well as you'd expect (i.e. Epic Fail):

In all seriousness, though, I'd expect two uber-boosted armies clashing with each other to end with casualties on both sides, not a complete wipeout of one whilst the other ends up practically scot free. Even if that is hilarious (and you gotta admit, it kinda is).

I think what happened was because GD were the ones that initiated the attack despite not having everyone being within range. Lysithea couldn't kill Dimitri, Leonie couldn't kill whoever she targeted, Raphael couldn't even reach any enemy so he just walked within range of BL...you get the idea. So when it's BL's turn, they just went in and killed everyone. 

I did notice that GD's units are generally easier to kill compared to BL though (from first mock battle and how they managed to be killed within one round by BL). 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Beaten the Ingrid sidequest

Spoiler

Seriously what I was even thinking to play this retarded map on "hero mode"!?

Had to use six of my eight left turn wheels. 

The hell with that chapter!!!

 

[GateCreeper]

So far I'm in Chapter 6 of maddening on BL route and I was wondering if there are any units I should consider benching in this mode.

For instance, Dedue has been great for me early game but he's been falling off quite a bit now that my Dimitri actually has more Def than him (spd too) so I use him as my tank instead.

Ashe has only gotten one str level for me and he's level 9... His mag is at 10 too... don't know how to feel about that.

My Ingrid is severely underleveled, being level 6, and has not gotten a single point of str either.

I'm particularly struggling on Dedue's paralogue because of these three units not being able to contribute. Does it ever get any better?

Everyone else in the BL house is doing fine, Felix being an amazing archer and Dimitri being both spd and Def blessed.

However, can the lacking units explained above still be used or should I replace them with students from other houses? I don't even know where to start when it comes to recruits either. Right now I only have Marianne and Hilda recruited.

[Stroud]

Just trying the Caspar and Mercedes Paralog, has anyone an idea how you can manipulate the appearing of the reinforcement? Reinforcement is like instant Death... Also I guess I really need Retribution for this one. My Ferdinand can bait all the Mages and archers in the middle, but without Retribution he cannot hit back. So I guess I will delay it one chapter. Next chapter I have my first unit on Authority A..

One plan would be for Mercedes and Caspar to have something like Impregnable Wall (Both) And as soon as you know the reinforcement comes that they spam it on each other.. ( They can endure 5 turns).  But sadly I have only one Battalion with it hmmm..

Edited September 21, 2019 by Stroud

[Thane]

I believe my Maddening run has come to an abrupt end. I reached the post timeskip on the Silver Snow route and I see no chance of me ever beating the first map. There are so many enemies and they all double my Byleth, and some even one-round him. Seteth is level 23 and my Caspar underperformed and so I ditched him and he can do nothing, which also makes it impossible for Dorothea to join up with Byleth and Petra.

Am I missing something obvious or is this just the end?

[Stroud]

33 minutes ago, Thane said:

I believe my Maddening run has come to an abrupt end. I reached the post timeskip on the Silver Snow route and I see no chance of me ever beating the first map. There are so many enemies and they all double my Byleth, and some even one-round him. Seteth is level 23 and my Caspar underperformed and so I ditched him and he can do nothing, which also makes it impossible for Dorothea to join up with Byleth and Petra.

Am I missing something obvious or is this just the end?

This chapter was really heavy. I can only say how I dealt with it. I had Petra as a Wyvern which was very lucky. So she could meet up north. Give Seteth a bow to attack more savely and bait north. Don't try to deal with the south, if they start to steamroll its pretty much over. So at first focus on North with Seteth, Petra and Dorothea. After Berni, Linhardt and Ferdinand come its a bit better.

Also Byleth should remain where he is for quite some time..

But I also was a bit prepared and my Caspar is quite strong.. I also don't know what Battalions you have. They mean a lot in this chapter...Sadly you cannot change them at the start of the chapter which would be good.. You don't have a back up short before this one? Where you still can adjust some things?

Edited September 21, 2019 by Stroud

[Thane]

1 hour ago, Stroud said:

I had Petra as a Wyvern

Same, actually, though no Death Blow, which I regret not getting.

1 hour ago, Stroud said:

Give Seteth a bow

Yupp, did that.

1 hour ago, Stroud said:

So at first focus on North with Seteth, Petra and Dorothea.

I'll try that next time, though I believe that is more or less what I was doing before a dozen or so enemies clustered together which made victory impossible. As for battalions, I've got Jeralt's Mercenaries on Byleth, the default on Setet, some other Pegasus Knights for Petra, and a magic one for Dorothea (who's also my dancer). 

The one saving grace is that Byleth's Charm is ridiculously high, but I don't think that'll be enough considering how easily he dies.

[Stroud]

9 minutes ago, Thane said:

I'll try that next time, though I believe that is more or less what I was doing before a dozen or so enemies clustered together which made victory impossible. As for battalions, I've got Jeralt's Mercenaries on Byleth, the default on Setet, some other Pegasus Knights for Petra, and a magic one for Dorothea (who's also my dancer). 

The one saving grace is that Byleth's Charm is ridiculously high, but I don't think that'll be enough considering how easily he dies.

Good. At least I think hope is not totally lost. Petra being a Flier in this chapter is really something important. The thing is that if you start with the enemies in North they come in smaller waves. At least this was the feeling I had. They are still difficult to manage. But its better than the south. They also do not approach Byleth if he stands in the beginning. As they like to target Dorothy. 

If Dorothea has the magic one with huge AoE Gambit its also really nice to have. And she is quite a joker, with her high Charm she also can easily hit. Caspar with Gambits is a lackluster because of his low Charm.. I don't think you use him after, but he is a candidate for impregnable Fortress. As he does not hit with offensive gambits. (But they can't be changed here anyway. So yeah..)
Also try to save up the Gambits from Petra and Seteth as much as you can, which is why the bows are good to bait. 
If you have some stat boost items on Byleth in the Convoy feel free to use them. Take you time. As the enemies only start to roll if they get baited. And you can kind of control in the north which ones get baited. 

Edited September 21, 2019 by Stroud

[Thane]

21 minutes ago, Stroud said:

If you have some stat boost items on Byleth in the Convoy feel free to use them. Take you time. As the enemies only start to roll if they get baited. 

Kind of used them all. And the problem is that once the enemies get baited the pain train starts. Ah well, I'll have a look but I'm mentally preparing this marking the end of my Maddening misadventures. Would've been a bit easier with a lord on my side.