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I recently started GD with no NG+ and it will be my first time playing GD as well and I just finished the mock battle. So I'll probably need some tips for my run.

My plan is mostly stick to my original students as much as possible + with some cross recruits since I want to keep as few benched units as possible. Units I know I'll get are Felix, Ingrid and Petra while I'm on the fence and probably will get Freddy and Linhardt simply for the paralouges for Leonie and Lysithea. Honestly I'm very tempted to drop Freddy since I really don't want to spend my time to improving armour. While the rest is will be faculty/knights. I should say that my main healers will be Marianne, Flayn and possible Linhardt if I'm getting him. Flayn will probably will be one of my more important units. Simply for that rescue since holy fuck I wished I had rescue several times during my CF run. If it wasn't for stride, dance and warp I dunno what I could have done instead.

I also enjoy having varied classes on my units not one wyvren to rule them all kind of deal. So here is my what I'm thinking what my units should end up in with class mastery in mind:

- Claude will end up in his cannon class + bow/wyvern is just awesome following Myrmidon/Fighter > Brigand/Archer > Wyvern Rider > Wyvern Master. I just don't know if I should pick myrmidon for that +2 speed & swap or fighter for +2 strength & proficiency in bow. Same thing when it comes to Brigand v Archer with Deathblow and Hit+20.

-Lorenz: Soldier > Dark Mage/Mage > Dark Bishop/Warlock > Dark Knight. Soldier for reposition and now that I'm looking at the mastery I'm now leaning more towards the mage line... Any input?

-Raphael: Fighter > Brigand  > Grappler > War Master. Another possibility is going through the Armour line. Although Pavise is the only interesting mastery and that 4 mov really is hurting as well. Which is a bummer since I really like the design.

-Ignatz Most likely he will be my dedicated rally bot going through Fighter/Soldier/Myrmidon > Thief/Archer > Assassin/Sniper. Don't know which beginner class fits him best though for a rally bot.

-Lysithea is no brainer: Monk > Mage > Warlock > Gremory. I'll also probably go into Bishop line for Renewal since I dunno what other class mastery I possible I could dip into when I'm done with the main class line.

-Marianne is also a no brainer: Monk > Mage > Bishop > Holy Knight. Hopefully I can play around with Holy Knight this time around.

-Hilda will either end up as Falcon Knight or most likely Wyvern Lord haven't decided yet and this is the progression line I'm thinking of: Fighter > Brigand > Wyvern Rider > Wyvern Lord or Soldier > Pegasus Knight > Wyvern Rider > Wyvern Lord or Falcon Knight.

-Leonie is a no brainer for me as well: Soldier > Cav > Paladdin > Bowknight

Felix is going to stay as Swordmaster and while Mortal Savant was kinda fun when I tried him out during my CF but that spell list and Mag really was a downer. Petra is probably going to be an Assassin since I don't want make her to a Wyvern Rider this time around. I could see making her a Falcon Knight but that probably will need a lot of investment which I dunno is worth it in the end. Ingrid will be Falcon Knight for sure but this time I'll probably go through Wyvern Rider instead of Paladin.

I know it's best to save the other students for later but but don't know when really.

Otherwise what other input do you people have for me?

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39 minutes ago, FoliFF said:

I know it's best to save the other students for later but but don't know when really.

The general consensus here is that it's best to recruit mages ASAP since that way you can make sure they learn Reason and Faith instead of any other focuses (e.g. Dorothea learns Reason and Sword by default). Of course this is only for mages you know you want to recruit. Also, if you grind for some levels with Byleth and/ or Supports with Catherine and Shamir you can recruit them as soon as they become available. Someone crunched the numbers earlier, but tl;dr is that they benefit from being pre-promoted at such low levels (especially Shamir).

As for your Class ideas, I made Raphael a War Master and even without optimising stats and Battalions he had a 67% Crit rate almost all the time (on Hard). Needless to say he served me well 😛

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29 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

The general consensus here is that it's best to recruit mages ASAP since that way you can make sure they learn Reason and Faith instead of any other focuses (e.g. Dorothea learns Reason and Sword by default). Of course this is only for mages you know you want to recruit. Also, if you grind for some levels with Byleth and/ or Supports with Catherine and Shamir you can recruit them as soon as they become available. Someone crunched the numbers earlier, but tl;dr is that they benefit from being pre-promoted at such low levels (especially Shamir).

As for your Class ideas, I made Raphael a War Master and even without optimising stats and Battalions he had a 67% Crit rate almost all the time (on Hard). Needless to say he served me well 😛

Hmm interesting which means in my case it would only mean Linhardt. I was planning to get Shamir and Catherine early but from what I read this means I'll have to gift spam them first. I can also see myself dropping Felix for Catherine since they fill similar roles. Which probably is for the better since I rather use new units on every playthrough. Also War Master looks very sweet and probably one of the better classes with one of the best class mastery as well. I really enjoyed my WM Caspar although it was a slow burn to get there.

I see that I have forgotten Dancers. But to be honest out of my pool of characters it would either be Ignatz, Marianne or Flayn. Most likely Flayn in the case I need a rally and a dance.

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8 minutes ago, FoliFF said:

I was planning to get Shamir and Catherine early but from what I read this means I'll have to gift spam them first. I can also see myself dropping Felix for Catherine since they fill similar roles. Which probably is for the better since I rather use new units on every playthrough.

Recruiting Catherine as early as Ch.5 will make your life a lot easier. You can achieve this with a B-Support (easily achieveable if you start working on it in Ch.3) as this will lower the Lv requirement to recruit her.
Catherine (and Shamir) are the only two units that you can get early on that can deal with Maddening enemies on their own. Especially Catherine is a wicked good boss killer with Thunderbrand.
Early recruiting her is also beneficial for her long-term use. The earlier you work on her Lance and Flying rank the better she can serve you post-timeskip.

Edited by Shiki
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1 hour ago, Shiki said:

Recruiting Catherine as early as Ch.5 will make your life a lot easier. You can achieve this with a B-Support (easily achieveable if you start working on it in Ch.3) as this will lower the Lv requirement to recruit her.
Catherine (and Shamir) are the only two units that you can get early on that can deal with Maddening enemies on their own. Especially Catherine is a wicked good boss killer with Thunderbrand.
Early recruiting her is also beneficial for her long-term use. The earlier you work on her Lance and Flying rank the better she can serve you post-timeskip.

Mate I thank you since for the tip about training Catherine in lance and flying to later get her into Falcon Knight. I guess I was to gunho letting her remain in Swordmaster/MS class with this my team will be more versatile in the long run and a decent mage killer which I feared I might be lacking in. I wasn't planning in the beginning but I'm now dropping Felix so I can invest more in other people. Heck I might consider getting Freddy now although it would only for the paralouge which I dunno if one should do that or not...

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New here but thought I'd post now that I'm all but finished my NG+ run through Maddening (Golden Deer, Classic). Played FE games since 2006 and while always Classic mode in every game (just not FE otherwise to me) I've not strayed much into harder difficulty settings prior to Three Houses. I played all the houses in Hard prior this, and definitely the difficulty for Hard mode in Three Houses is pitched too low. This run has been enormously enjoyable, has never actually felt unmanageable, but has required careful planning and being properly attentive to enemy stats/ranges/abilities. Feels a lot more satisfying to beat levels through tight strategic play, including the near mandatory need to make effective use of gambits, instead of wailing on hapless enemy soldiers in lower difficulty levels. Had I known where the difficulty was pitched beforehand I wouldn't have done NG+, but I guess there is always another run for that.

I feel like I got a bit lucky in the first level after timeskip when two enemies with Pass that could get to Byleth missed their attacks (instadeath if both hit), but otherwise have not had to rely on RNG to beat levels (including the paralogues). I did make sure to have Ignatz and Raphael killed before the timeskip, their growths sucked and I benched them early, since I wasn't sure if it might allocate them to the first level post-timeskip and didn't want to be saddled with deadweight that level. I was expecting Marianne's paralogue to be hard, but actually easy when I realised if Marianne stays put and you don't move into range of the beast that it will leave her alone - several of the paralogues in particular just took a couple of attempts to realise which movements triggered certain enemies to take action.

I only used my house students + Felix, Petra and Mercedes, feel like it would have been easier if I had gone for more flying classes than I did (in particular I would actually use Catherine and get her into Falcon Knight if I were doing it again). Felix was fairly meh the whole time, Petra just serviceable, but Mercedes treated me well. Amongst house students Hilda is an absolute beast, as she was in my hard play through - evasion stat 119 with Alert Stance+ and just draws enemies in a kills them on enemy phase, Claude is also beastly in Maddening just like he was in Hard, Lysithea is ridiculous with Thyrsus, Marianne and Leonie relatively average but good support.

Is there a limit to how many of a stat boosting item you can farm? After time skip I started getting zero speed carrots (5x flowers + pegasus blessings used each time), wasn't too fussed as Hilda's Dex needed some work, but I hadn't seen any reports of their being limits on farming stat boost items? Maybe if I had varied the seeds a bit they still would have come?

Edited by NZtechfreak
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3 hours ago, NZtechfreak said:

Is there a limit to how many of a stat boosting item you can farm? After time skip I started getting zero speed carrots (5x flowers + pegasus blessings used each time), wasn't too fussed as Hilda's Dex needed some work, but I hadn't seen any reports of their being limits on farming stat boost items? Maybe if I had varied the seeds a bit they still would have come?

Far as I know, you can only get one stat booster per gardening stint. I could be wrong, though.

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Got to Chapter 2 of Black Eagle Maddening Mode, NG Classic. Decided it wasn't worth a shiny title screen or my time.

While I probably could figure it out (I beat the first few chapters of Awakening Lunatic +), I don't feel like spending too much time trying to optimize a run when I could be doing other things. Instead, if I do a Maddening run, it'll be on NG+. The NG+ bonuses should even the playing field a bit, especially with the different Battalions and class skills. Also, by then I may actually have the DLC so I can also use that for my runs.

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Currently doing the mission of chapter 9 on GD and honestly it has been fun. Probably more so compared to when I played CF on Hard. Toughest was the beginning for sure but ever since I got the units to intermediate classes it been a good challenge which I enjoy. Only got two paralouge left (Catherine and Hilda) which I'm saving for chapter 10 most likely and I'm now curious how hard the infamous chapter 13 will be. Finally managed to Raphael and Ignatz to their advance classes.

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8 minutes ago, FoliFF said:

Currently doing the mission of chapter 9 on GD and honestly it has been fun. Probably more so compared to when I played CF on Hard. Toughest was the beginning for sure but ever since I got the units to intermediate classes it been a good challenge which I enjoy. Only got two paralouge left (Catherine and Hilda) which I'm saving for chapter 10 most likely and I'm now curious how hard the infamous chapter 13 will be. Finally managed to Raphael and Ignatz to their advance classes.

How has Raphael been doing for you? Because with his lackluster performance in hard, I'm not sure I'd want to give him another chance on Maddening...

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On 10/17/2019 at 6:42 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Far as I know, you can only get one stat booster per gardening stint. I could be wrong, though.

No, as in I wasn't getting any at all over several weeks, that's why I was wondering if there is some kind of limit imposed on how many you get for any one of them in total from gardening.

29 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

How has Raphael been doing for you? Because with his lackluster performance in hard, I'm not sure I'd want to give him another chance on Maddening...

So useless for me was benched in no time, then made sure to kill him off so he wouldn't come back to haunt me in Ch 13 😂

Edited by NZtechfreak
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30 minutes ago, NZtechfreak said:

No, as in I wasn't getting any at all over several weeks, that's why I was wondering if there is some kind of limit imposed on how many you get for any one of them in total from gardening.

Actually, unlike is the case with other items, the chance for stat boosters to be generated is checked after planting. So savescumming can help in that regard (just be sure to plant right before finishing the week and check in first thing when you explore again).

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Just started my third playthrough on Maddening NG, it's also my first time with the Blue Lions and female Byleth.

So far I've been finding it pretty fun, just got past Lonato. However I'm worried slightly worried since Dimitri is the only unit with good hitrates for gambits, everyone else (including Byleth) don't have enough charm.

For my team, I'm planning on using all the BL students for chap 13.

- Byleth will be a pegasus, but raising flying has been annoying so far, all I can do is train with Manuela.

- Sylvain and Ashe are going Brigand for death blow before Sylv goes cav or paladin, Ashe is going Sniper.

- I want Dedue to end up a war master, since I loved them in my previous runs and were great against monsters. Is he still a good tank without going armor knight?

- Ingrid is going either pegasus or cav. I'm wondering if 50% speed growth is good enough for cav with the 5% strength growth boost. Felix is just going for assassin.

- Annette and Mercedes are just there for magic and healing

I'm also not sure who to recruit, maybe Caspar since I flubbed Mercedes' scene with the Death Knight in GD. Apparently she needs to attack the Death Knight to get the scene?

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7 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

How has Raphael been doing for you? Because with his lackluster performance in hard, I'm not sure I'd want to give him another chance on Maddening...

Very inconsistent. He was somewhat useful in the beginning as semi-tank and was blessed in strength so he hit like a truck. However, because of his atrocious speed and his strength became more average by the mid-game he fell off real hard and fast. He simply couldn't keep up. I just finally managed to make promote him to Grappler and with that 8 or 9 points in speed and and several in res tells me how RNG screwed he was.

It is a real shame I really want to keep using him especially as a War Master but that speed is really holding him back. Also his average defense haven't winning him any favours either. Currently 15 in defense, beating only my Byleth while most of my frontliners have 17+. At least he will be an awesome defense adjutant but I dunno if I should keep leveling him up now that he have reached level 20 considering chapter 13. He will be under leveled for sure but I hope by that point he won't be dead weight.

At least my Ignatz was by far my least liked and weakest unit since he was sooo weak early game, doing single digit damage most of the time and was designated rally bot. However, his performance have come around, finally. He can do more reliable chip damage especially against axe user as a semi-dodge tank as an thief/assassin.

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Unlike in the Blue Lions run I could pass chapter 14 with Golden Deers in maddening simply thanks to Barbarossa. He is the most accurate against the falcon knights. Still Petra could ORKO and Hilda oneshot them too, but with way worse accuracy (despite lance breaker). Still Hilda in a forest was a good dodgetank against all the lance users. Thankfully I was able to take out the half dozen of enemies around the boss and the boss itself (Lys even doubled him) in one turn before another wave of ambush falcon knights would have appeared. 

 

Interestingly I could beat Marianne's paralogue in my very first attempt which is funny because I almost desperated in normal. Just put everyone in the forest (dismounted) and they were fine. I think it is even easier not to bring the slow and fragile units to the map. Thankfully Marianne was fast for being a dancer, so enemies had 10% against her at best. 

Edited by Ingrid Brandl Galatea
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1 hour ago, Ingrid Brandl Galatea said:


Does anyone know how to take out the final phase of the boss?

It has quick riposte which means instant death for everyone, if it hits twice.

Is Lys with thyrsus the key to success?

Three ways - grind him down to 50% with gambits, rely on dodgetanks, or enemy phase him with 1-3 range of your own.

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2 hours ago, Ingrid Brandl Galatea said:

Does anyone know how to take out the final phase of the boss?

It has quick riposte which means instant death for everyone, if it hits twice.

Is Lys with thyrsus the key to success?

  • break his barrier during his last life bar with gambits
  • if you have enough power with at least 4 range (archers, thyrsus, S rank long range magic) kill him from a far
  • get him to below 50% without getting retaliated (gambits, 4 range, windsweep, dodgetanks that are unlikely to get hit twice)

I'd advise breaking his barrier that you'll likely need 3 gambits for: 2x magic gambit with a C Battalion or higher & probably Stride too, to get all of your units into position

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Thanks for the tips!

They were succesful:

KVzasY6.jpg

no turnwheel left

I did not know that its barrier could be broken since it did not happen in my first attempt. For the final phase I used all the saved gambits (Byleth did not even had one) to bring its HP down to not to get doubled. Since the boss attacks the resistance (at first I thought it would be fixed damage) Lysithea was really good. She could take two hits although it had a 10% critrate against her (critted her once). I skipped all the chest except for a short axe. I just hope I did not miss something important. Just got the spirit dust of an enemy mage.

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To everyone saying to attack outside of his range, doesn't him having Distant Counter render that a moot point? I didn't know he hit Res though, so that'll be helpful, thanks!

Also, this has been bugging me since first facing him: the game says you need to take out the source of the reinforcements - Indech is the source, right? There's no hidden mage in a corner of the map? Because I've checked all over across my multiple runs...

P.S. I was able to back up my saves recently, so I may do my (Blue Lions) NG run soon, wish me luck!

I'm still waiting to see what DLC Wave 3 is like before buying the Season Pass though, which means I'm also waiting until then for a full replay of all routes.

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21 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

To everyone saying to attack outside of his range, doesn't him having Distant Counter render that a moot point?

It can counterattack from any range like DK can. Though in this case Lys can attack without problems since she should have the resistance to take two regular hits. Annette's rally is also helpful for this fight.

The trick for the third phase is to use gambits till its HP is down <50% not to let it use QR and to double on your own. 

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6 hours ago, Ingrid Brandl Galatea said:

It can counterattack from any range like DK can. Though in this case Lys can attack without problems since she should have the resistance to take two regular hits. Annette's rally is also helpful for this fight.

The trick for the third phase is to use gambits till its HP is down <50% not to let it use QR and to double on your own. 

Thanks for the clarification! I assume it's still a good idea to break his barrier ASAP, though?

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3 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Thanks for the clarification! I assume it's still a good idea to break his barrier ASAP, though?

Depends how many in your team can survive a counter. It can be a good strategy with the giant bosses to attack with everyone who can, gambit with everyone who cannot and gambit last with someone who can take a hit since they'll have aggro. Then turn 2, break everything that remains to stop the aoe and damage freely. Then turn 3 you can do the same as 1, and 4 you need to wrap things up or retreat because the aoe will likely kill someone.

If you pace yourself well and your team is strong enough they should fall by the end of turn 2/beginning of 3.

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What are good strategies how to fight the boss in Claude's paralogue. 

It oneshots / ORKO'es the majority and no one is to able to take two hits except for a rallied Ingrid. 

I could use the same strategy as I used agaisnt against the boss as in Linhardt's / Leonie's chapter, but ambush reolinforcements (of course) ruin it.  

Also my team is only ~level 35 in average, so maybe too low. 

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