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Non recruitment runs


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I play this style and I enjoy it. I like seeing the main characters fight each other on the field rather than cross recruit and bench. It gives me more story feel and emotional impact just staying with the house I chose and seeing the familiar faces on the battle field. And their unique quotes.

It also depends on which difficultly you're playing on. Maddening mode, it's good to cross recruit between houses with some characters but you can just replace unleveled characters with professors/some of the church depending on route. 

I would recommend though looking up what paralogues you haven't played yet because some require cross recruit. If you already played those, I just skip them. 

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I did my first run without recruitment (Golden Deer). It's probably the easiest to, because one paralogue (Lorenz) gives a reward that is very useful on multiple units (Thyrsus, for Lorenz or Lysithea).

If you choose to do the Black Eagles, however...

Spoiler

...come end of chapter 11, certain Church of Seiros members will never join you (one even leaves your party), while others will stay, and it's perfectly possible to have them fight each other.

 

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My first GD Hard/Classic run was almost like that. Out of all the other house recruits I only really used Petra, as Dorothea and Ingrid couldn't contribute enough after their joining time. While Petra was nice, Catherine could also fill the same role on your team. Lorenz was the weakest, Lys was obvious Thrysus nuke, Raphael was a freaking wall, Ignatz was the long range archer (pretty good one actually), Hilda went late Wyvern, Leonie going on the mounted route, while Marianne became a great dancer.

I think Blue Lions can also do pretty well - Ingrid is the best flier, Felix is pretty fast and strong, Sylvain is excellent as a lance cav, Dedue and Dimitri can tank pretty well, and Mercedes is by far the best healer. Ashe and Annette are not great - while Annette can be a heavy hitter with magic and magic axes, she's incredibly frail; I don't know where to put Ashe honestly, but he could do some archer stuff.

Black Eagles also has some potentials, but not the best in that regard. Edelgard is strong, Hubert is good, Petra is fast, Ferdinand has good potential with his personal skill, but Dorothea, Bernadetta, Caspar and Linhardt can be problematic. Or maybe someone knows better how to make them into an op team.

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2 hours ago, Garlyle said:

I don't know where to put Ashe honestly, but he could do some archer stuff.

Ashe's inbuilt lockpick, and the deadeye skill from being an archer allows him quite a bit of usefulness in a Blue Lions only run. The biggest question is whether to have him in Sniper for Hunter's Volley, or whether to have him in Bow Knight for the extra move, range and canto. Either way, deadeye's +5 spaces to range added onto the Sniper/Bowknight's range allows for you to have something akin to a mobile ballista in your party. Why worry about an enemy when you can literally pick them off from so far away they can't do a damn thing? Lockpick saves on having either keys or a thief, so it's also a very handy thing.

Bernadetta, likewise has Deadeye... but she also has that very handy crest that allows her to attack twice with a weapon sometimes. This allows her to double an enemy that shouldn't be able to be doubled. Throw in this with doing something to damage her (like using a damage tile) to set off her persecution complex, and the right bow... and she suddenly becomes quiet useful. Indeed in the latter part of my Black Eagles run (which of course was Hard/Classic like my other runs, as Maddening wasn't out then and I haven't been assed to return), she became MVP for the last third of the game (Edelgard taking the early game and (cav) Ferdinand taking the midgame due to his movement allowing him to get places faster than others).

With that said, I'd argue either one of them superior alternatives to Ignatz... who is already pretty great. As it goes the biggest enemy an archer has in this game is a unit like the Death Knight with all range counter.

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I did this for my first playthrough. It's fun. Really, if you recruit more than 3-4 units from outside your house you are going to end up benching a few units anyway. Enough units for a full team plus 3 adjutants is plenty - especially when, unless a unit was stat-screwed, most adjutant units aren't going to see the light of day anyway.

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10 minutes ago, De Geso said:

I did this for my first playthrough. It's fun. Really, if you recruit more than 3-4 units from outside your house you are going to end up benching a few units anyway. Enough units for a full team plus 3 adjutants is plenty - especially when, unless a unit was stat-screwed, most adjutant units aren't going to see the light of day anyway.

I agree. Though, personally, I dislike the way that Paralogues encourage full recruitment runs. 

 

The game makes you choose between story gravity (because you're supposed to run into the heartbreaking experience of killing these characters) and experiencing the full scope of the game's content and rewards.

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38 minutes ago, Etheus said:

I agree. Though, personally, I dislike the way that Paralogues encourage full recruitment runs. 

 

The game makes you choose between story gravity (because you're supposed to run into the heartbreaking experience of killing these characters) and experiencing the full scope of the game's content and rewards.

There are only a handful of post-timeskip paralogues that require cross-recruitment. In fact, I can only think of Mercedes and Caspar.

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I've never done a non-recruitment run. I recruited Ashe, Dorothea, and Felix in my first GD playthrough, and I recruited everyone in my other playthroughs cuz I'm kind of a pacifist, and it's also much easier to recruit everyone with NG+. If I wasn't recruiting other students in my first GD playthrough, I probably wouldn't have benched Lorenz and have him become a Dark Knight, and I'd probably also would have begrudgingly used Cyril as an extra flier (at least until Seteth joined)

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Didn't think about complete non-recruitment run (by virtue of lacking a Switch 🙂 ), but I did think of a run where you recruit everyone you don't encounter as an enemy or NPC post-timeskip. Which basically means that some are on every route (Marianne, Lorenz though, you have to beat some sense into even if recruited), some miss only one route (Raphael, Hanneman and Manuela miss AM, Ashe, Alois and Shamir miss CF, and so on), and pretty much every Black Eagle aside from Caspar (who gets an exception and is recruited on AM due to additional scenes his paralogue unlocks) is stuck being a Black Eagle.

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5 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

Ashe's inbuilt lockpick, and the deadeye skill from being an archer allows him quite a bit of usefulness in a Blue Lions only run. The biggest question is whether to have him in Sniper for Hunter's Volley, or whether to have him in Bow Knight for the extra move, range and canto. Either way, deadeye's +5 spaces to range added onto the Sniper/Bowknight's range allows for you to have something akin to a mobile ballista in your party. Why worry about an enemy when you can literally pick them off from so far away they can't do a damn thing? Lockpick saves on having either keys or a thief, so it's also a very handy thing.

Bernadetta, likewise has Deadeye... but she also has that very handy crest that allows her to attack twice with a weapon sometimes. This allows her to double an enemy that shouldn't be able to be doubled. Throw in this with doing something to damage her (like using a damage tile) to set off her persecution complex, and the right bow... and she suddenly becomes quiet useful. Indeed in the latter part of my Black Eagles run (which of course was Hard/Classic like my other runs, as Maddening wasn't out then and I haven't been assed to return), she became MVP for the last third of the game (Edelgard taking the early game and (cav) Ferdinand taking the midgame due to his movement allowing him to get places faster than others).

With that said, I'd argue either one of them superior alternatives to Ignatz... who is already pretty great. As it goes the biggest enemy an archer has in this game is a unit like the Death Knight with all range counter.

I don't see the use of Deadeye - sure, it has massive range, but the massive accuracy drop you take if you try to leverage said range kills its usefulness. I'm not okay with using 5 durability on an attack that's most likely going to accomplish a fat load of nothing.

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45 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I don't see the use of Deadeye - sure, it has massive range, but the massive accuracy drop you take if you try to leverage said range kills its usefulness. I'm not okay with using 5 durability on an attack that's most likely going to accomplish a fat load of nothing.

With Hit+20 the accuracy loss is mostly mitigated, and Hit+20 is hardly bad in other scenarios.

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7 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

With that said, I'd argue either one of them superior alternatives to Ignatz... who is already pretty great. As it goes the biggest enemy an archer has in this game is a unit like the Death Knight with all range counter.

Bernadetta maybe, but Ignatz is just a flat out better version of Ashe lol. He has the same spd and str growth and comes with an actual personal skill that greatly increases his reliability on hitting targets early on. (Ashe’s personal is essentially useless considering a lot of enemies usually drop keys upon defeat and they can also be purchased from the shop for 100g each which is super cheap). Ignatz is also a very good support unit, he gets Rally Speed which is one of the best Rally in the game at D rank Authority which is really early, he also learn Seal Strength as a budding talent which allows him to weaken stronger foes from afar. In addition Ashe has availability issues on VW and SS route, he will leave your party for 3 chapters which is enough to set him behind in levels. Ignatz’s strength in Authority also allows him to use stronger battalion to boost his stats earlier than Ashe.

Deadeye is one of the worst Combat Art imo the hitrate is atrocious and it costs you 5 weapon uses to cast.

Edited by Ari Chan
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1 hour ago, De Geso said:

With Hit+20 the accuracy loss is mostly mitigated, and Hit+20 is hardly bad in other scenarios.

You call mitigating 1/4 of the 80 (1/5 of the 100 as a Bow Knight) hit penalty you'd take from using Deadeye at max range "mostly" mitigating it??? Sorry, but I don't buy that. You're still gonna have to grapple with laughable hit rates.

Edited by Shadow Mir
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Just now, Shadow Mir said:

You call mitigating 1/4 of the 80 (1/5 of the 100 as a Bow Knight) hit penalty you'd take from using Deadeye at max range "mostly" mitigating it??? Sorry, but I don't buy that.

I don't care.

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10 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

You call mitigating 1/4 of the 80 (1/5 of the 100 as a Bow Knight) hit penalty you'd take from using Deadeye at max range "mostly" mitigating it??? Sorry, but I don't buy that. You're still gonna have to grapple with laughable hit rates. 

Well, you could use it from less than max range. You'd still be able to use it from a safe distance most of the tie. Furthermore... there's also the small fact that even a miss is going to aggro units in situations where it can be used to your advantage. Example? Getting the Death Knight out of his box  and straight into your unit's range so you can kill him with a brave weapon without risking an attack in Fort Merceus. This can be achieved by targetting the mage in the box with him.

If you need a little more hit there's also a certain ring that'll help with that.

Also the issue of durability usage seems to hardly matter to me. I mean you set aside a specific, easily repairable (say a steel+ bow) item. The way this game throws gold at you, you'll have enough to repair it any time you need.

 

 

11 hours ago, Ari Chan said:

In addition Ashe has availability issues on VW and SS route, he will leave your party for 3 chapters which is enough to set him behind in levels. Ignatz’s strength in Authority also allows him to use stronger battalion to boost his stats earlier than Ashe.

I'm going to question what availability issues on alternate routes has to do with a "no recruitment run", as I was comparing performance in their own routes. This would be the equivalent of arguing that Lysithea is worse than Annette or Dorothea because she is absent for a while in Silver Snow.

I simply feel Ignatz isn't as useful in VW as Ashe is in AM as, besides the points mentioned, there's other naturalized bow users in his route that take up some of the slack. Not the least of which is the lord for said route. Though he is overall better as a bow knight than Leonie.

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Unless you're actively trying to hit a unit hidden in a forest, or a swordmaster/assassin,  deadeye's accuracy will never go below 50%, even at max range (and that's without counting all the boosts from abilities).

Beside, in most situations, the archer won't have anything better to do anyway.

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9 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

Well, you could use it from less than max range. You'd still be able to use it from a safe distance most of the tie. Furthermore... there's also the small fact that even a miss is going to aggro units in situations where it can be used to your advantage. Example? Getting the Death Knight out of his box  and straight into your unit's range so you can kill him with a brave weapon without risking an attack in Fort Merceus. This can be achieved by targetting the mage in the box with him.

If you need a little more hit there's also a certain ring that'll help with that.

Also the issue of durability usage seems to hardly matter to me. I mean you set aside a specific, easily repairable (say a steel+ bow) item. The way this game throws gold at you, you'll have enough to repair it any time you need.

I guess, but if it's only useful for aggroing enemies, that's not enough for me to think it's worthy of one of my three combat art slots over combat arts that have more use. And my point about durability is more because I'm not one to knowingly make an investment that has a high chance of not giving any profit (in this case, using 5 durability on Deadeye only to miss). It doesn't help matters that Ashe is the worst unit of the Blue Lions (imo, at least).

7 hours ago, Modirufa6317 said:

Unless you're actively trying to hit a unit hidden in a forest, or a swordmaster/assassin,  deadeye's accuracy will never go below 50%, even at max range (and that's without counting all the boosts from abilities).

Beside, in most situations, the archer won't have anything better to do anyway.

See above. Because I fail to see Deadeye as being worth a combat art slot over more useful combat arts (read: literally anything else).

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47 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I guess, but if it's only useful for aggroing enemies, that's not enough for me to think it's worthy of one of my three combat art slots over combat arts that have more use. And my point about durability is more because I'm not one to knowingly make an investment that has a high chance of not giving any profit (in this case, using 5 durability on Deadeye only to miss). It doesn't help matters that Ashe is the worst unit of the Blue Lions (imo, at least).

See above. Because I fail to see Deadeye as being worth a combat art slot over more useful combat arts (read: literally anything else).

Combat art slots are not exactly a tight resource lol, most of the time I'd say you'll just need 2 combat art per battle (especially on characters such as Ashe, bow and axe guys rarely need lots of combat arts), so Deadeye is not occupying a slot that could be used for something else, and having the option of hitting at up to 5 range (to aggro stuff, to potentially debuff with seal skills, etc) can be useful on every map

tho I will admit that in maddening enemies usually have way to much avoid even factoring in hit+20 and support buffs to offset the shaky accuracy, but still, as I said, you don't really have competing combat arts for that slot so might aswell keep it on

 

on Bernie you could make an argument about dropping deadeye for something else (encloser is really good, curved shot extra hit can always come handy so it has competition with vengeance which be really good too with the right setup and mayyybe a movement skill)

in general, on maddening I don't think you should use more than 2 weapon types at the same time, you NEED prowess skills to have decent hit, and using 1-2 weapon types means you also don't have to choose between lots of different combat arts

 

some characters also get brave-like combat arts that basically outperform every other effective-damage combat art at your disposal (only reason they are not TOTALLY outperformed is because hitting 1 attack at non 100% accuracy is more likely than hitting 2 attacks at the same hit% - also I forgot, to break monster barriers in one hit), which means more free combat art slots

 

(tho this is not entirely related considering only Bernie and Ashe get deadeye afaik)

Edited by AxelVDP
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22 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

It doesn't help matters that Ashe is the worst unit of the Blue Lions (imo, at least).

So we're going to ignore the fact that Dedue, as good as he is pre-timeskip, falls off harder post-timeskip than any other character due to reduced availability and the fact he'll have difficulty getting Great Knight (thus damaging his movement)? Not to say he's bad. Point is that being the worst Blue Lion is like being a silver medalist in the Olympics. This is hardly a case like Nomah in Gaiden/Echoes who I didn't even recruit in my first playthrough and lost nothing of value.

 

29 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I guess, but if it's only useful for aggroing enemies, that's not enough for me to think it's worthy of one of my three combat art slots over combat arts that have more use.

I think the use for aggroing stands when dealing with enemies with brave weapons in the late game. More so if the Maddening mode enemy damage outputs are as high as I've heard. Perhaps there's cases where other options are preferable, but given Ashe and Bernadetta only learn three bow combat arts as is, and are frankly, better suited to ranged combat, I can't imagine any other combat arts being particularly useful to them save possibly the basic Shove (as fighter is likely the basic class they'll go through) without New Game + antics. Maybe Vengeance on Bernadetta.

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