Maddening mode is out

[DefyingFates]

1 hour ago, AxelVDP said:

Yup, thankfully I also used mostly my BL units too so I did not have any deadweight that chapter.

At that time I believe I had wyvern rider byleth/ashe, assassin felix, pegasus ingrid, paladin sylvain, bishop mercedes and warlock annette (wanted to make her a dark knight, also my thyrsus user), pretty standard team makeup I'd say. 

Yeah, that is a pretty BL-heavy focus you have there. Neat! Glad it was easier for you than it may have been otherwise 😄

Edited September 29, 2019 by DefyingFates

[Shiki]

44 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Yeah, that is a pretty BL-heavy focus you have there. Neat! Glad it was easier for you than it may have been otherwise 😄

Just going to add here something that somehow many people seem to miss.

Use. Gambits. (and Battalions)

Everytime you face multiple enemies and are at the verge of being overwhelming Gambits can save your hide just being rooting every enemy to the ground and opens up breathing space to nuke down the most dangerous enemy (for Ch.13 specifically the Assassins).
It also blocks other enemies from attacking you since the panicked ones block the tiles for them to move on, even preventing Archers from getting their shots in.

Dimitri comes with his own special battalion which covers a lot of tiles. Byleth really should have the Duscur Heavy Soldiers with the +10 Prt bonus and 2x3-tile Gambit for tanking out damage.
Fussilade is however your best bet for this chapter (Archers and Snipers, I think) because it is not only ranged but the whole map structure on your starting position makes it very effective.
Otherwise standard gambits like Assault Troop for its multiple uses or Poison Tactic are also pretty decent. Especially the latter is something you can give to anyone since the Merchant battalions is ranked E and can help the two from the south to starve of enemies (though if they can hit is another matter entirely). 
Your fliers hopefully have D rank Authority so they can use at least the Pegasus battalions for the Assembly gambit.

Though I will say that Chapter 13 is still bad design as it requires very specific things from the player.
You have to go through Ch.12 first and considering your unit inventory is very unlikely going to be optimal after it you are kinda stuck with what you get (unless you waste turns to reshuffle equipment).
Add to the fact that you are forced to use your original house members (with each house having at least 1-2 dud units) and you get a lot of unwarranted difficulty with this chapter.

[DefyingFates]

17 minutes ago, Shiki said:

You have to go through Ch.12 first and considering your unit inventory is very unlikely going to be optimal after it you are kinda stuck with what you get (unless you waste turns to reshuffle equipment).

To be fair, all your weapons' durabilities are restored here and if you used them in Ch12 they're likely to be good ones. It's still unfortunate that you can't rearrange them, but this specific element of the map isn't too bad. Also, in GD

Spoiler

Claude starts off with Failnaught

, so there's that.

[Silly]

Flying Byleth was very helpful for me in Ch 13.

I'm doing NG Maddening, BL route, and the only combat units from the BL squad that I trained were Byleth, Dimitri, and Felix. Mercedes and Annette also got a fair amount of exp but they're not exactly frontline material.

Regardless, the map wasn't super difficult, simply because a large percentage of enemies don't move unless you get in their range, which means that a strong flier (Byleth) can heavily exploit their AI. You kill one enemy on player phase, and then you reposition yourself with canto on the edge of enemy range, so that you aggro and fight just enough enemies that you don't die. Then the rest of your units can finish off the low HP enemies, Byleth can get healed, and you can repeat this process.

I basically had Byleth do most of the combat, with Dimitri doing the second most. First objective was clearing enough enemies so that the three groups on the left side could all link up. Then a push through the middle-ish to fight the boss.

On the other end Sniper Felix + Dancer Ingrid were largely self sufficient, Felix kills one enemy at a time (even if he doesn't double the Assassins, he can kill them in one turn with a dance), and since the right side of the map is so full of chokepoints, that was completely fine.

[Wazoo]

Just finished Marianne's paralogue, one I particularly dreaded since I'm not using her on my SS playthrough. But it turned out to be the easiest paralogue so far in Maddening, with the Zanado one. Seems like monsters definitely are definitelt lacking in that mode.

 

I'm about to discover the Ferdie/Lysie one, seems painful at first glance. 

[DefyingFates]

5 hours ago, Wazoo said:

I'm about to discover the Ferdie/Lysie one, seems painful at first glance. 

Yeah, that's definitely one of the harder ones.

And what's this about monsters being lacking in Maddening? Did they not get scaled up as much as human enemies for this difficulty? This isn't the first I've heard of monsters being easier than expected here.

[Wazoo]

23 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Yeah, that's definitely one of the harder ones.

And what's this about monsters being lacking in Maddening? Did they not get scaled up as much as human enemies for this difficulty? This isn't the first I've heard of monsters being easier than expected here.

They were, but not as much as the regular units. In regular story battles, they added more monsters so it's harder to beat the maps because of the monsters. But in the paralogues that have monsters in it, they didn't add more, they just buffed them a bit (but then again, the buff is not nearly as palpable as the human units'), so they end up being way easier than the rest of the game.

On another note I just finished the Ferdinand paralogue, it was not as hard as it appeared but still quite challenging, with many chests to get, civilians to save and f*ckers with killer weapons to eradicate. Very entertaining. Not to mention it's nice to get more plot from the Hrym/Aegir side, as someone who did his first run on CF it's cool to know more about all that at long last.

Edited September 30, 2019 by Wazoo

[DefyingFates]

3 hours ago, Wazoo said:

They were, but not as much as the regular units. In regular story battles, they added more monsters so it's harder to beat the maps because of the monsters. But in the paralogues that have monsters in it, they didn't add more, they just buffed them a bit (but then again, the buff is not nearly as palpable as the human units'), so they end up being way easier than the rest of the game.

Thanks! Do they still give more EXP than human enemies? (At least that's how it felt to me on my playthroughs.)

[Modirufa6317]

2 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Thanks! Do they still give more EXP than human enemies? (At least that's how it felt to me on my playthroughs.)

Monsters do get a massive upgrade to their HP in maddening compared to hard (around +30-50HP per health bar), but it only serve to reinforce the importance of properly managing their barriers.

According to an official guidebook (and pretty much confirmed in a different thread), monsters gives the same bonus as human bosses (for each health bar!).

Edited September 30, 2019 by Modirufa6317

[DefyingFates]

1 hour ago, Modirufa6317 said:

According to an official guidebook (and pretty much confirmed in a different thread), monsters gives the same bonus as human bosses (for each health bar!).

I knew it! Thanks!

1 hour ago, Modirufa6317 said:

Monsters do get a massive upgrade to their HP in maddening compared to hard (around +30-50HP per health bar), but it only serve to reinforce the importance of properly managing their barriers.

That's a lot...and yeah, destroying barriers would definitely be much more important in Maddening...

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Found this video randomly. I thought it might be interesting, so I share it:

https://youtu.be/Li49TKFmbUo

It was really impressing mainly because a total underleveled team aside of 2-3 was used. 

It gives me the question, if GD route can be beaten without Lysithea. 

[Shadow Mir]

I've been watching someone (omegaevolution) try to solo the game with Byleth on Maddening. Last I remember, he was hung up on chapter 9.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I watched it too. 

I have to admit in midgame chapters it is not too hard. In my BL run Byleth in a thicket can easily take care of all the enemies, but in the early chapters (especially first battle of the Three Houses) the RNG must be really merciful to pass them. 

[Wazoo]

I'm trying to beat SS's last map, this is so hard ! Most of the enemy units have Miracle (not sure yet if it's triggered by stopping the Dragons reinforcements, if so maybe it's better to leave 2 or 3 units south to slowly kill  the incoming dragons while the rest of the team clears the map). Each RNG matters and I end up using all my pulses before even getting to attack Rhea. Gonna require either more luck or a better strategy. If anyone has any advice for that map I'm listening.

[DefyingFates]

1 hour ago, Wazoo said:

I'm trying to beat SS's last map, this is so hard ! Most of the enemy units have Miracle (not sure yet if it's triggered by stopping the Dragons reinforcements, if so maybe it's better to leave 2 or 3 units south to slowly kill  the incoming dragons while the rest of the team clears the map). Each RNG matters and I end up using all my pulses before even getting to attack Rhea. Gonna require either more luck or a better strategy. If anyone has any advice for that map I'm listening.

Yeah, this map was pretty intimidating on Hard too. I don't know how Maddening reinforcements work, but I found it helpful to just focus on the Southern dragons first. Once you make that region of the map risk-free you can start inching forward, which took a lot of the stress off. Also, it may be better to not deploy the full 12 Units, just the ones you're confident with. When I played I had yet to plug the gaps Edelgard and Hubert left so was using some of my reserves. Who died a lot.

Again, this is all stuff from Hard, but I hope it gives you something to work off of at the very least!

[AxelVDP]

finally finished my (no ng+ no dlc no online) BL maddening playthrough the other day (took a little break), overall I liked it

difficulty is highly overrated I feel, only chapters I found challenging were some of the early game ones, Lorenz's paralogue (no warp cheese + all enemy drops + and done asap), Ingrid's paralogue and chapter 21 (chapter 22 I unleashed Dimitri's full power and breezed through it) (100% crit + vantage + retribution = lol, could probably cheese the entire game with him alone)

for reference, here was my team: https://imgur.com/a/hW2DbrP (forgot to  show in the image but Byleth had S flying, Sylvain S riding and like C+ flying, Ingrid S flying, Dedue and Gilbert S+ in heavy armor) (this is to say that wexp is not a problem in this mode and that you could still easily do gimmicky stuff) (I even trained Alois in the last 3-4 chapters because I had spare resources to use and was getting the feeling I was overlevelled still)

Edited October 8, 2019 by AxelVDP

[DefyingFates]

8 minutes ago, AxelVDP said:

vantage + retribution

Don't those do the same?

In any case, thanks for the anti-horror story! Good to know you can still thrive in Maddening if you know what to do~

[AxelVDP]

8 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Don't those do the same?

In any case, thanks for the anti-horror story! Good to know you can still thrive in Maddening if you know what to do~

I mean the retribution gambit (lasts 5 turns, has 2 uses and 3x2 range), it allows you to counterattack at any range (if you look at my image my Dedue has that battallion equipped)

Edited October 8, 2019 by AxelVDP

[DefyingFates]

26 minutes ago, AxelVDP said:

I mean the retribution gambit (lasts 5 turns, has 2 uses and 3x2 range), it allows you to counterattack at any range (if you look at my image my Dedue has that battallion equipped)

Oh, my bad! I thought it granted Vantage for some reason. This way makes much more sense 😛

[Wazoo]

11 hours ago, DefyingFates said:

Yeah, this map was pretty intimidating on Hard too. I don't know how Maddening reinforcements work, but I found it helpful to just focus on the Southern dragons first. Once you make that region of the map risk-free you can start inching forward, which took a lot of the stress off. Also, it may be better to not deploy the full 12 Units, just the ones you're confident with. When I played I had yet to plug the gaps Edelgard and Hubert left so was using some of my reserves. Who died a lot.

Again, this is all stuff from Hard, but I hope it gives you something to work off of at the very least!

Just beat it! Changed my strategy by retreating in the center of the map, a bit more south than the starting position, gave me more space to take the incoming enemy units one by one. I used Caspar's insane crit rate to spam long range crit hits, that took safely care of many dangerous units. I was terrified of Rhea but with a Blessing gambit and smart use of offensive gambits to bait her attacks, this was actually the easiest part of the fight. Having both the Ochain Shield and the Rafail Gem to negate her crit also helped.

All in al, really enjoyed Maddening, for sure the first chapters are the hardest (not to mention the obvious slap in the face that is Reunion at Dawn), but the paralogues are very challenging and the last battles also bring their fair share of trouble (managing to keep Dedue alive in the Enbarr throne room was no small feat). Overall, it forced me to capitalize on every bit of gameplay to survive and optimize my army, forced me to think of strats I wouldn't have thinked of if I had been able to stay in my comfort zone, which is all I wanted from a harder difficulty setting. Neat. 

[Johnzin]

16 hours ago, AxelVDP said:

finally finished my (no ng+ no dlc no online) BL maddening playthrough the other day (took a little break), overall I liked it

difficulty is highly overrated I feel, only chapters I found challenging were some of the early game ones, Lorenz's paralogue (no warp cheese + all enemy drops + and done asap), Ingrid's paralogue and chapter 21 (chapter 22 I unleashed Dimitri's full power and breezed through it) (100% crit + vantage + retribution = lol, could probably cheese the entire game with him alone)

for reference, here was my team: https://imgur.com/a/hW2DbrP (forgot to  show in the image but Byleth had S flying, Sylvain S riding and like C+ flying, Ingrid S flying, Dedue and Gilbert S+ in heavy armor) (this is to say that wexp is not a problem in this mode and that you could still easily do gimmicky stuff) (I even trained Alois in the last 3-4 chapters because I had spare resources to use and was getting the feeling I was overlevelled still)

I am curious, did you grind on aux/quests? Looking at your pics your lowest level character is as high as my Byleth who had the exp gem on the entire time.

Edited October 9, 2019 by Johnzin

[DefyingFates]

9 hours ago, Wazoo said:

Just beat it! Changed my strategy by retreating in the center of the map, a bit more south than the starting position, gave me more space to take the incoming enemy units one by one. I used Caspar's insane crit rate to spam long range crit hits, that took safely care of many dangerous units. I was terrified of Rhea but with a Blessing gambit and smart use of offensive gambits to bait her attacks, this was actually the easiest part of the fight. Having both the Ochain Shield and the Rafail Gem to negate her crit also helped.

All in al, really enjoyed Maddening, for sure the first chapters are the hardest (not to mention the obvious slap in the face that is Reunion at Dawn), but the paralogues are very challenging and the last battles also bring their fair share of trouble (managing to keep Dedue alive in the Enbarr throne room was no small feat). Overall, it forced me to capitalize on every bit of gameplay to survive and optimize my army, forced me to think of strats I wouldn't have thinked of if I had been able to stay in my comfort zone, which is all I wanted from a harder difficulty setting. Neat. 

Glad to hear it, congrats!! Was my comment useful in any way?

[AxelVDP]

5 hours ago, Johnzin said:

I am curious, did you grind on aux/quests? Looking at your pics your lowest level character is as high as my Byleth who had the exp gem on the entire time.

nope, no grinding, only aux battles I did were when I had extra activity points after doing all my paralogues/quest battles (example, at A+ I could do 3 battles a week, if I had just 1 paralogue left to do I'd do it and then 2 aux battles, I never went out of my way to do them), tho I did use 2 of those aux battles to grind Dedue/Gilbert weapon ranks (vs enemy fortress knights with a broken lance)

[Wazoo]

1 hour ago, DefyingFates said:

Glad to hear it, congrats!! Was my comment useful in any way?

Yeah thanks, it helped me to think of a less agressive strategy 

When are you gonna start your own Maddening run? 

[DefyingFates]

18 minutes ago, Wazoo said:

Yeah thanks, it helped me to think of a less agressive strategy 

When are you gonna start your own Maddening run? 

Yay, I'm glad I could help you!

I'm clinging to the naive hope that IS patches in more saves/ Nintendo adds offline save backups before starting Maddening. Either that or DLC Wave 3, one of the two 😛 Thanks for asking!

Edited October 9, 2019 by DefyingFates