Recruiting Ferdinand and Caspar..

[BergelomeuSantos]

Very well, this is my first time playing the game and..Well, it seems like I'm pretty much screw'd on those 2 units. (I'm on Blue Lions, by the way)

It looks like I'm near the time-skip (since the prologues have a timer). I'm not really trying to recruit everyone, I just payed equally attention to every student and their liked gifts, so..pretty much 80% of the game wants to join my house. I have a B rank with everyone but Dorothea and Raphael (and the guys this topic is about), so supports shouldn't be a problem. However, since Ferdinand and Caspar can't have a B Rank on pre-skip, they are way harder to recruit. Stats (15/20) aren't really the trouble here, since the only ones that ended up badly were Res and Lck.  The real problem is the goddamn Armor and Brawling Ranking (which are..D+ and C+? The Switch is charging right now, I can edit it later).

What should I do to recruit them with more ease? Armor Knight with Fists?

[Chaotix]

43 minutes ago, BergelomeuSantos said:

Very well, this is my first time playing the game and..Well, it seems like I'm pretty much screw'd on those 2 units. (I'm on Blue Lions, by the way)

It looks like I'm near the time-skip (since the prologues have a timer). I'm not really trying to recruit everyone, I just payed equally attention to every student and their liked gifts, so..pretty much 80% of the game wants to join my house. I have a B rank with everyone but Dorothea and Raphael (and the guys this topic is about), so supports shouldn't be a problem. However, since Ferdinand and Caspar can't have a B Rank on pre-skip, they are way harder to recruit. Stats (15/20) aren't really the trouble here, since the only ones that ended up badly were Res and Lck.  The real problem is the goddamn Armor and Brawling Ranking (which are..D+ and C+? The Switch is charging right now, I can edit it later).

What should I do to recruit them with more ease? Armor Knight with Fists?

Depending on how far along you are, you might just be screwed, unfortunately.

The paralogue timers do indeed give you a hint on when the timeskip occurs.

Armored Knight is hard for Byleth to qualify for unless you also happened to be training Axe rank. Unfortunately, pre-timeskip only Gilbert and Alois can train you in Armor Rank. It's kind of a pain to get it to D+ and you really have to be planning for it from the beginning.

Gauntlet rank is a bit easier because Byleth has a strength in it, and there are more potential trainers - I think Rhea, Alois, and Catherine off the top of my head.

If you can pass the Armor Knight exam, by all means grind auxiliary battles with gauntlets. If you're on Normal mode you can do this indefinitely.

If you can't pass the Armor Knight exam, the only thing you can do is Explore and do faculty training at every possible opportunity, and hope that it will be enough. Make sure you've bought the Armor rank bonuses from the statue rewards. Each faculty training will give you +20 rank exp (or +30 if you get a "Great") plus bonuses, so you can math out in advance if it's even possible to get your ranks that high.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Chaotix

[Dandy Druid]

15 minutes ago, Chaotix said:

The paralogue timers do indeed give you a hint on when the timeskip occurs, and on top of that you cannot recruit units at all in the final month pre-timeskip.

You can recruit in the last month pre-timeskip (I recruited 4 people in the last month before). Some people can only be recruited in the last month depending on the route. However, it's much harder to do that because you don't have too many opportunities to raise support or weapon levels.

[Chaotix]

3 minutes ago, Dandy Druid said:

You can recruit in the last month pre-timeskip (I recruited 4 people in the last month before). Some people can only be recruited in the last month depending on the route. However, it's much harder to do that because you don't have too many opportunities to raise support or weapon levels.

Is that right? Wonder where I read that you couldn't. I'll edit my post, thanks.

[BergelomeuSantos]

27 minutes ago, Chaotix said:

Depending on how far along you are, you might just be screwed, unfortunately.

The paralogue timers do indeed give you a hint on when the timeskip occurs, and on top of that you cannot recruit units at all in the final month pre-timeskip.

Armored Knight is hard for Byleth to qualify for unless you also happened to be training Axe rank. Unfortunately, pre-timeskip only Gilbert and Alois can train you in Armor Rank. It's kind of a pain to get it to D+ and you really have to be planning for it from the beginning.

Gauntlet rank is a bit easier because Byleth has a strength in it, and there are more potential trainers - I think Rhea, Alois, and Catherine off the top of my head.

If you can pass the Armor Knight exam, by all means grind auxiliary battles with gauntlets. If you're on Normal mode you can do this indefinitely.

If you can't pass the Armor Knight exam, the only thing you can do is Explore and do faculty training at every possible opportunity, and hope that it will be enough. Make sure you've bought the Armor rank bonuses from the statue rewards. Each faculty training will give you +20 rank exp (or +30 if you get a "Great") plus bonuses, so you can math out in advance if it's even possible to get your ranks that high.

Well, I just checked up on my status..

It seems like I only have 2 months before the time-skip. My armor ranking doesn't seem to give me much trouble but..I just noticed that I have a E+ on Axes..yep. I should have paid more attention to my Byleth's skills levels (his higher skill level is at freaking C+ with swords while all of my units have at least one B+! ).

My idea WAS getting training from Gilbert and the others instructors of Armor, but I couldn't find them anywhere at my last Explore Session. I also made a little mistake and got into a Battle before seeing if I could pass Knight (I DO meet one of the requirements, so I should be fine with a few save-loads, right..?)

Also, I'm on hard mode. No easy skill levels for me..

I believe that I got 1 or 2 armor related bonuses from the statues, but none from axes (and only one for gauntlets?).

Edit:Ah, I also have the ''Knowledge Gem''. Should this be of help as well? I always have equipped with Byleth, but it didn't change much from what I see.

Edited September 12, 2019 by BergelomeuSantos

[Chaotix]

1 minute ago, BergelomeuSantos said:

Well, I just checked up on my status..

It seems like I only have 2 months before the time-skip. My armor ranking doesn't seem to give me much trouble but..I just noticed that I have a E+ on Axes..yep. I should have paid more attention to my Byleth's skills levels (his higher skill level is at freaking C+ with swords while all of my units have at least one B+! ).

My idea WAS getting training from Gilbert and the others instructors of Armor, but I couldn't find them anywhere at my last Explore Session. I also made a little mistake and got into a Battle before seeing if I could pass Knight (I DO meet one of the requirements, so I should be fine with a few save-loads, right..?)

Also, I'm on hard mode. No easy skill levels for me..

I believe that I got 1 or 2 armor related bonuses from the statues, but none from axes (and only one for gauntlets?).

There's one month where all of the Knights of Seiros are off-campus hunting for the murderer of a certain important story character. I assume that's where you are at now. That's another reason why it's a pain to raise armor rank.

The requirements for Armored Knight are Axe C and Armor D, so with only E+ axes I don't think you can even attempt it. However the good news is that means you do have Armor D already. It should be possible to get it up to D+ with the remaining time you have left for faculty training and you won't need to worry about Armored Knight.

Gauntlets are easier because you can equip them on any non-magic, non-mounted class. I would certify Byleth for the Fighter and Grappler classes once you can, and then only use Gauntlets for the next few missions and paralogues. As long as you are also Faculty training Gauntlets with Rhea, Catherine, and Alois (once you finish Armor training), you should be able to hit C+ in time.

[BergelomeuSantos]

10 minutes ago, Chaotix said:

There's one month where all of the Knights of Seiros are off-campus hunting for the murderer of a certain important story character. I assume that's where you are at now. That's another reason why it's a pain to raise armor rank.

The requirements for Armored Knight are Axe C and Armor D, so with only E+ axes I don't think you can even attempt it. However the good news is that means you do have Armor D already. It should be possible to get it up to D+ with the remaining time you have left for faculty training and you won't need to worry about Armored Knight.

Gauntlets are easier because you can equip them on any non-magic, non-mounted class. I would certify Byleth for the Fighter and Grappler classes once you can, and then only use Gauntlets for the next few missions and paralogues. As long as you are also Faculty training Gauntlets with Rhea, Catherine, and Alois (once you finish Armor training), you should be able to hit C+ in time.

Yes, that's precisely where I'm at the time. Didn't mention it because of possible spoiler for anyone who might have the same trouble in the future.

I'm starting to hate axes, I tell you. Since I didn't reclass into axe wielders before beginning this paralogue, I'm using the good'old Mercenary.

I just got Axes Rank D if that's enough for Armor Knight. Should I start on gauntlets? Oh, by the way, they're on Rank C and Armor is almost a D+. 

[Chaotix]

You should have enough time then that you don't really need to worry about it.

Take the exam for Grappler rather than Armor Knight, and use that to train up your Gauntlet rank (you get a big bonus to gauntlet exp with it). And just do faculty training to get Armor rank to D+ since you're almost there. 

[Ivan Tridelan]

You could, if you want, go into auxiliary battle one week, grind C rank axes, battle again (assuming you have Professor Rank C+ for 2nd battle) grind gauntlets.

Yes, you can grind skill ranks on Hard, that's what adjutant status is for. Take some physically weak unit, put Byleth (with weapon to train equipped) as Adjutant to said unit, find an auxiliary battle with an Armored Knight and whale on them for 90+ turns. I have gotten A+ Heavy Armor on Bernadetta, Lysithea, Marianne and Dorothea with this method in order to get auto 17 strength/defense at 20 on units that otherwise have crappy numbers in both stats.

Or you could just do this for gauntlets, and use Faculty Training (reset until you get Great result if you're short on time) to get D+ Heavy

Edited September 12, 2019 by Ivan Tridelan

[BergelomeuSantos]

8 minutes ago, Chaotix said:

You should have enough time then that you don't really need to worry about it.

Take the exam for Grappler rather than Armor Knight, and use that to train up your Gauntlet rank (you get a big bonus to gauntlet exp with it). And just do faculty training to get Armor rank to D+ since you're almost there. 

Hm..I see. My only hope is that Grappler can be achieved by Rank C Gauntlets.

Thanks for all the help! I really appreciate that! These 2 units could be very valuable to my team after Sylvain abandoned the knighthood (I made him follow the brigand path instead of the cavalier one) and Felix becoming a Swordmaster with only C on Gauntlets.

[Chaotix]

13 minutes ago, BergelomeuSantos said:

Hm..I see. My only hope is that Grappler can be achieved by Rank C Gauntlets.

Thanks for all the help! I really appreciate that! These 2 units could be very valuable to my team after Sylvain abandoned the knighthood (I made him follow the brigand path instead of the cavalier one) and Felix becoming a Swordmaster with only C on Gauntlets.

Ah dang, I actually meant to say Brawler, not Grappler. Brawler is the Intermediate class that requires only C rank, Grappler requires A rank. I got the two mixed up, my bad.

Also definitely check out Ivan's adjutant grinding exploit above if you need it!

[BergelomeuSantos]

Well, I did promised myself to not (hard) grind in this game (at least not in the first playthrough). But I'll definitely check it out on any New Game+ run that I might got myself into (or that Lunatic mode with the new name).

 

Edited September 12, 2019 by BergelomeuSantos

[Humanoid]

You're overestimating the requirements here. Assuming you've maxed out on pre-timeskip supports with both units:

Ferdinand asks for D+ Heavy Armour and 6 Dex.

Caspar asks for D+ Brawling and 6 Str.

With two months left, this is plenty of time to accomplish both. Bear in mind you have until (and including) March to recruit them, despite the various paralogues expiring in February. Both of these units paralogues are post-timeskip however so you don't miss out on anything by recruiting them as late as possible.

Small caveat in that March is only half a month, you only get two weekends and one teaching session in it.

 

EDIT: If you get really desperate, I believe you can save scum the Faculty Training to get Greats instead of Goods.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Humanoid

[BergelomeuSantos]

40 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Ferdinand asks for D+ Heavy Armour and 6 Dex.

Caspar asks for D+ Brawling and 6 Str.

Wait, really?!  Only 6 points?! Jeez, so that's how I recruited Lysithea so early..

Well, I came back to give the update:

I should say sorry for actually mistaking my Brawling Rank. It was D, not D+/C. With that said, I didn't have the chance to go Brawler.

However, I did get lucky and passed on a 67% Armored Knight certification. Since my Armor Rank was at mid-way at D, it took only one battle to get the ranking to D+.

Since I didn't need any Axe Levels, I used only gauntlets and easily got into C.

I recruited the fuc-

Seriously, I was about to punch the bag next to me when Ferdinand started the recruitment dialogue with the same line as the reject recruitment (is this supposed to be torture?!).

Without knowing, I ended up recruiting all the other students. That should be good enough for my first playthrough, right?

[Humanoid]

Copied the tables from the main SF recruitment page below for convenience. You can check whether your support is C+ instead of C (or B+ instead of B) by looking at the unit in the dining or choir menu.

You can see that Ferdinand and Caspar only require a C skill and 10 in a stat to join if you have no support whatsoever with them, and this reduces to D+ and 6 when you have C+ support.

Lysithea's requirements are a bit higher in that she wants B in Faith and 15 Magic. However, a C+ support reduces this to C in Faith and 9 Magic. Going further to B+ support means her requirement is reduced to D in Faith and, uh, 3 Magic.

____________

Support Level	Skill Level required
None	D	C	B	B+
C	D	C	C+	B
C+	D	D+	C	C+
B	E+	D	D+	C
B+	E+	E+	D	D+
A	Any	Any	Any	Any

Support Level	Level or Stat value required
None	10	15	20	25	30
C	8	12	16	20	24
C+	6	9	12	15	18
B	4	6	8	10	12
B+	2	3	4	5	6
A	Any	Any	Any	Any	Any

 

Ferdinand	Noble	2	Need 10 Dexterity and C in Heavy Armour
Linhardt	Noble	2	Need 10 Magic and C in Reason
Caspar	Noble	2	Need 10 Strength and C in Brawling
Bernadetta	Noble	2	Need 20 Strength and C in Bow
Dorothea	Commoner	2	Need 25 Charm and B in Authority
Petra	Commoner	2	Need 10 Dexterity and C in Riding

 

Felix	Noble	2	Need 15 Speed and B+ in Sword
Ashe	Commoner	2	Need 15 Charm and C in Lance
Sylvain	Noble	2	Need 25 Charm and C in Reason (If protagonist is female, automatically joins)
Mercedes	Commoner	2	Need 15 Magic and C in Bow
Annette	Noble	2	Need 10 Magic and B in Faith
Ingrid	Noble	2	Need 15 Dexterity and D in Flying

 

Lorenz	Noble	2	Need 20 Charm and C in Reason
Raphael	Commoner	2	Need 20 Strength and C in Heavy Armour
Ignatz	Commoner	2	Need 10 Dexterity and B in Authority
Lysithea	Noble	2	Need 15 Magic and B in Faith
Marianne	Noble	2	Need 10 Magic and C in Riding
Hilda	Noble	2	Need 30 Charm and C in Axe (If leading the Black Eagles, cannot be recruited until Chapter 12, after   )
Leonie	Commoner	2	Need 15 Strength and C in Lance

Edited September 13, 2019 by Humanoid