Hell and Back: The Maddening Mode Club

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

Speaking of battalions and the time skip, is battalion endurance set to maximum? I know weapons are repaired, but...

Battalions are repaired, and everybody will be equipped with whatever they had during chapter 12. Thankfully, when battalions withdraw due to too much damage, they still remain equipped, so you don't have to worry about running out of endurance in chapter 12.

[Enryx25]

I've done one NG Maddening playthrough (AM) and one NG+ Maddening run per route.

I plan to do all 4 routes (still Maddening NG+) again with the Ashen Wolves (Constance in CF, Balthus in VW, Hapi in AM and All 4 in SS) so I can 100% the game.

[Burklight]

22 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Online travelers and that scouting mission and adjutant stuff. I'm not an expert on these things, but I know there's a way you can grab class masteries on units with little effort if the right partner shows up in your game. Buying rare items might be pretty ridiculous too, I dunno if they allow stat boosters or what. And the scouting missions lead to a flying E rank battalion with blessing and endgame competitive stats just...what?

Can you elaborate on this? I checked the database and the only E ranked blessing is Essar Research Group, which I'm assuming isn't what you're talking about.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

11 minutes ago, Burklight said:

Can you elaborate on this? I checked the database and the only E ranked blessing is Essar Research Group, which I'm assuming isn't what you're talking about.

That is the one I am talking about. Though I was incorrect in it being a flying gambit, and they're called four-man recon training, not "scout missions". I still can't find a good guide or writeup detailing the process of obtaining the gambit. Some sources claim it takes three weeks of sessions, others claim it takes three months of doing it.

[Sire]

I tried Crimson Flower NG Maddening, but only got to Chapter 3 or so before deciding it would take up too much time for a shiny gold screen. I probably could pull it off, but the time required to properly min-max everything is a bit too much and I have plenty of casual playthroughs I would like to do. (I did Awakening Lunatic+ Classic for the first five chapters deathless, so I think that's enough high difficulty FE for me.)

There's also the matter of playing Maddening on Classic or Casual, as either will give you the special screen as long as you beat it on Maddening difficulty.  If I do head back and do proper NG Maddening, it'll likely be on Casual for the sake of time.
* * * * *

Meanwhile, I did clear CF NG+ Maddening. Pitting the NG+ bonuses against the higher stat enemies was enjoyable, as enemies are a bit of a pushover on Hard with all the NG+ benefits. However, as I like to mess around with various builds, Hard is the best place to do it since Maddening requires more min-maxing to make significant progress.

[whase]

I was thinking doing my one-class only runs was getting too easy on hard mode, with 70k+ renown to spend. Figured I should do a one-class run on maddening... using Mortal Savant class line as only classes... on Edelgard's path... I couldn't get through chapter 16 and gave up (practically all my units got one-shotted and doubled by almost everything). 

Currently doing a dark knight classpath only run to get to know Hapi better, after that I'm going serious mode and try maddening without NG+, currently still working out every little detail in advance. Going Blue Lions since I hear it is easiest (still not using Felix and Sylvain since I don't like them, making the challenge a bit harder).

[Silver-Haired Maiden]

52 minutes ago, whase said:

Going Blue Lions since I hear it is easiest (still not using Felix and Sylvain since I don't like them, making the challenge a bit harder).

Ooof, reading that you won't use Felix physically hurts me xD He was one of the team carriers on my Maddening BL playthrough, without him I don't know if I would've made it through some of those maps.

[whase]

5 minutes ago, Silver-Haired Maiden said:

Ooof, reading that you won't use Felix physically hurts me xD He was one of the team carriers on my Maddening BL playthrough, without him I don't know if I would've made it through some of those maps.

Yep, I know he's strong, and I'm handicapping myself by not using him. I hope my planning of every little detail together with recruiting characters like Ferdinand and Bernadetta will help make things better. I hope I'm smart enough to pull it off but look forward to the challenge.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

I had my save files for Maddening routes sitting around Chapter 2 for a few weeks before Ashen Wolves hit. I am not going to use DLC skirmish maps, nor the items you get for free (Chalice of the Beginning sounds incredibly strong). CF, AM, GD i´ll do without recruiting any students of the other houses except Ashen Wolves, staff or knights. Only exceptions is Silver Snow, where i´ll recruit every recruitable character.

Currently in the process of going through Crimson Flower and recruiting Hapi was possibly my best idea yet. Dark magic, especially Banshee is so incredibly useful.

[Boomhauer007]

Beat NG VW and NG+ AM/CF, not sure if I'll ever go back. NG is a not fun grind, and you have to artificially limit yourself a lot to make NG+ hard. Maddening felt like they knew the player had access to too much busted stuff, so their solution was just crank enemy stats to maximum and put STR back in, and call it a day. While this is true of most games with high customization, maddening really highlights how superior certain builds are to others and it's not fun feeling bottle necked. You're basically forced to player phase everything unless you're dodge tanking or gambit cheesing, and that's just not my thing.

I'm still not convinced ch 13 was play tested by anybody. 

[Smokie1437]

Did Maddening CF, then NG+ AM, currently at NG+ GD (now with DLC stuff).

Not an FE veteran so I can't compare it to other games but I quite enjoy the challenge, I don't feel maddening is too bullshit overall, I feel like every campaign is just puzzle solving. Seems ridiculous at the start, then you figure out how to play the map, then it's easily doable. So yeah it's like solving puzzles and I really enjoy that. I love having to think for minutes about how to play a round and then finding a solution. Although same-turn reinforcements are definitely bullshit and dealing with it isn't even fun because the solution is always the same, turtle turtle turtle.

NG+ sometimes feel like it makes things too easy, as does the DLC stuff, I mean the stat boosters alone are like wtf... and the extra battles make you keep up in levels too much when maddening is supposed to be about enemies being super over-leveled. As for NG+ I limit myself to skilling up Professor level and whatever is necessary for student recruiting, but I still feel that makes things a lot easier. I kind of want to do another run without NG+ just to see how much better I can deal with it using the knowledge I have now, but unfortunately a real new game is also so grindy that I can't really summon the motivation.

[Relytive]

On 2/19/2020 at 12:07 PM, Boomhauer007 said:

Beat NG VW and NG+ AM/CF, not sure if I'll ever go back. NG is a not fun grind, and you have to artificially limit yourself a lot to make NG+ hard. Maddening felt like they knew the player had access to too much busted stuff, so their solution was just crank enemy stats to maximum and put STR back in, and call it a day. While this is true of most games with high customization, maddening really highlights how superior certain builds are to others and it's not fun feeling bottle necked. You're basically forced to player phase everything unless you're dodge tanking or gambit cheesing, and that's just not my thing.

I'm still not convinced ch 13 was play tested by anybody. 

This is a common frustration. The game would be excellent if you had the option to turn off statue bonuses, because the monastery support/prof level grind is nothing but a time sink with no skill involved. I did BE and BL no NG+, and will likely only do NG+ in the future with support/professor rank unlocks for recruitment being the only exceptions to renown usage.

Honestly, as long as you don't over abuse the extra activity points, and buy busted class mastery skills/weapon ranks, the difficulty remains respectable if not similar to NG (and don't use previous battalions, buy silver/killer weapons off the bat, etc.). My CF route run currently comparitively to my NG no + clear has a team pretty identical in levels/power at chapter 15, but artificially limiting it yourself is an annoying, but necessary means to not completely burn yourself out spamming gifts, tea times, and running around the monastery in the first part for an hour each month.

Tl;dr, if you want to save yourself time and monotony after beating a route or two on NG, just use an NG+ file and don't touch anything other than professor level and b support ranks with recruitable units in the journal, and it's more or less the same experience... also, on a fresh ng file, don't unlock the 10% exp bonuses. My current one has two from NG, so I'll probably at some point make a file with no statue investments or none of the 10% multipliers unlocked for future playthroughs.

[Rengor1997]

@Glennstavos And that's a wrap on yet another run.

Now to take roughly 3000 years to upload the videos though my bad internet.

Spoiler

 

[DragonNexus3608]

I'm currently doing my first one on Sliver Snow with NG+ it's actually really fun. I'm not overleveling cuz i want the difficulty and i'm just using it mainly to save the students.