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Preferred prof. progression and time-management


Owns
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Hello everyone. Today I wanted to ask everyone what they think is the ideal progression for the professor rank and characters.  Do you have a specific target by when you expect to reach A+ professor rank? What about characters you plan on recruiting to be part of your main team, how early do you recruit them? How often do you do aux battles and/or other activities around the monastery? What about seminars?

I just finished my first maddening run (Azure Moon) and felt like I could improve on the time-management side of things. I've heard talk of minimizing aux battles or even never doing them at all as the 'efficient' way to progress but didn't understand how that could be? I typically did 2-4 battles per month during my run and sometimes it did feel excessive. Until i gained the ability to do 3 at a time then I only did 1 week of battles per month. If you never do any aux battles then how do your units gain class mastery?

With regards to prof. rank, I think i took my time a bit too much and only reached A+ in part 2. I recall people mentioning achieving this far earlier in the game. My understanding is that the main reason it's desired to rush this is to be able to get Byleth faculty training asap, but if you do a low investment build on byleth (like sticking to swords for example) then you hardly need any training at all. In my run I don't think I spent any points on byleth's training until I reachd part 2. All my units were in advanced classes for the last battle of part 1. When I did start training byleth in flying classes during part 2, I think I had her in Pegasus Knight by the 2nd month and Falcon Knight by the 3rd or 4th or so. The only grinding I did was actually to master Enlightened One, not the flying or lances when I let Byleth solo (with support) 1 or 2 aux battles with a knowledge gem to quickly get Sacred Power.

I did fishing a few times during the run, usually saving up bait for Golden Fish or Fish of Mystery Events. I did 1 fistful of fish days too. These were for gold and Goddess Messenger fish to cook with. To my surprise, I think Fistfuls of Fish gave me more gold fish than the Golden Fish events, but I don't know if they always appear on those days or if I just got lucky. I wonder if delaying the fishing this way is what belated my prof rank?

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Getting A+ in early part 2 sounds normal to me. You can get it earlier, but it involves lots of fishing, which I consider a huge waste of (real) time; I generally only fish if I'm some very small number of prof exp from the next rank up, or if there's some other reward for doing so (quests).

I generally spend most actions on Explore, except to do paralogues and key quest battles like the ones which open up new shops. This keeps motivation maxed and lets me keep gaining skill exp without a massive time investment that doing aux battles would have, and feels less grindy to me (I'm not a fan of optional non-paralogue battles in games like Sacred Stones or Awakening either).

I do faculty training to keep Byleth's build going and to allow timely recruitment, but not too much, since it hurts your prof rank. Part 2 gives you a bunch more time so going for Alert Stance+ or other high-end skills then is more practical if you really want, for all that I rarely bother.

I would generally encourage you to do what you want. My most recent run of the game was almost zero monastery, Maddening NG, just to prove it can be done, and it went fine aside from hamstringing my Byleth supports. If you find something enjoyable, do it. If you find something unfun and too time-consuming, don't - you don't have to.

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Well in terms of real-time management I'm definitely the wrong person to ask, but I can probably think of some helpful things to say.

First, professor rank obviously snowballs as you get more activity points to get more exp(also the monthly student question base gains double at >=D rank and I think >=C rank, so 300->600->1200), and thus getting a good start can be the difference between reaching A+ before ch10 or after the timeskip. The best way to get prof EXP early is to cultivate 5* seeds at the greenhouse(you get 100 exp per * of the randomly picked seed afaik, aka only plant 5* ones, even just one if you're running low); there are two issues with this:
- You can get those immediately during month 1(and then harvesting makes them self-sufficient, usually) but it's luck based and thus might involve save scumming.
- Stat booster seeds aren't 5*, they're 3*. I don't farm boosters so I don't actually know for sure how big a deal breaker this is, but I always assumed it was pretty bad.

While most people seem to keep their bait for fishing events, I like using it to close out levels instead. The end result is roughly the same, but you get to use more activity points earlier, and can potentially get bullheads; speed cooking can make early maddening a completely different game.

Beyond that, it's little things.The hidden monastery items are obviously something you should go for every time, I'll assume there's a good guide for them out there by this point. The student question should be answered correctly especially if it's the difference between levelling up or not(it will rarely be). Choir, Cooking and Meal give more exp if students enjoy them. Also, Tournaments give the highest Prof exp per activity points at 300.

Now as to why you should even bother, well while it's obviously helpful for Byleth and recruiting(plus motivating students without running out), there's a bit more to it; it gives you more control and access over Prof guidance, which will amount to anywhere between +50% to +20% tutoring exp(+100% on a bane). Then there's getting earlier Silver, Brave, Killer Gauntlet and Bolt Axe/Magic Bow forging(all unlocked at B+ prof rank), and the +1 motivation per meal at A rank, which allows you to mix and match characters and ingredients much more liberally. It's also nice to reach the monthly money cap(5000, at C rank) asap since you lack good sources of revenue early on. And then Adjutant slots are also tied to it, with one being unlocked at C, B and A ranks; those are great for a ton of things, just in general. Obviously if you go for aux battles a lot, more Venture points is nice(C+ and A+).

----

As for preferences, well basically seminars are sub-optimal in a vast majority of cases I'd say, so I don't go for them unless there's no tutoring that week to build motivation for and I need to get several characters going on a low weapon rank, since that's what those do best.
I don't do Aux battles but I might in the future, if only because getting two intermediate masteries on people other than Lysithea is very tempting. In general they're close enough to grinding that I don't want to, however. I can't say I've ever felt too gimped in terms of class mastery as a result, but I never warpskip(and like to eat arrows in ch 5 if you catch my drift), so grain of salt here.

And what else... A+ rank I think I typically reach around month 8. Not certain, though.

Edited by Cysx
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On 7/19/2020 at 12:38 AM, Dark Holy Elf said:

I would generally encourage you to do what you want. My most recent run of the game was almost zero monastery, Maddening NG, just to prove it can be done, and it went fine aside from hamstringing my Byleth supports. If you find something enjoyable, do it. If you find something unfun and too time-consuming, don't - you don't have to.

Wow, never even considered this. Not something I think I'd want to do but nice to know it's possible. Yea, I agree with sticking with enjoyment. Part of the enjoyment for me is to do things efficiently and I'm always curious about what kinds of optimized approaches people have come up with. Whether I follow the same or not is another matter lol.

Thanks for the detailed response @Cysx, you've given me a few things to consider. It's almost always better to put investments up front that allow you to reap the benefits later, so I guess raising the prof rank early falls under that logic.

On 7/19/2020 at 6:32 AM, Cysx said:

- Stat booster seeds aren't 5*, they're 3*. I don't farm boosters so I don't actually know for sure how big a deal breaker this is, but I always assumed it was pretty bad.

In my last run, most of my gardening was geared towards getting the ingredients for my favorite monthly dishes. Namely Magdred Kirsch and eventually the Zanado Treasure Fruit. Ironically, I was saving Zanado treasure fruit for the last battle but ended up not using it because I didn't know the last month had 2 battles in a row. Was expecting another monastery phase in between haha. Clearly though, permanent stat boosters are better than a temporary monthly boost, I beat the game alright in the end anyway. I did purchase all the boosters in Anna's shop though. But I thought all seeds have a chance of giving stat boosters? I'm sure that Angelica Seeds, the 5* you get in ch. 1, give Rocky Burdock.

I want to try out the minimal Aux battles approach in my current GD run and see how it feels. Maybe doing Aux battles only in the last week of the month when I feel it necessary, because I do find them grindy. I guess if I stick to simple character builds, there's less need to use aux battles for class mastery. I recall that the characters who did follow simple builds mostly did master their classes with no hassle. So far, (first 3 chapters) it feels good and didn't have any difficulty with the missions. Actually everything feels significantly easier than during my last run now that I'm more experienced with Maddening and squeezing out every little advantage possible.

On 7/19/2020 at 6:32 AM, Cysx said:

seminars are sub-optimal in a vast majority of cases I'd say, so I don't go for them unless there's no tutoring that week to build motivation for and I need to get several characters going on a low weapon rank, since that's what those do best.

Yea, this seems to be the case. I use a seminar early on by Seteth to help with an early Auth boost. By the time you're ready for Master classes, then i tend to have a couple of units needing to raise lances to get into Dark Knight or Wyvern Lord for example, or sword skill for Falcon Knight. Someone with >A rank doing a seminar could give a decent boost to multiple units at a time in that case.

Edited by Owns
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39 minutes ago, Owns said:

Ironically, I was saving Zanado treasure fruit for the last battle but ended up not using it because I didn't know the last month had 2 battles in a row.

This applies to Crimson Flower as well. Also, I don't think stat boosts from cooking will be applied to the second chapter in the consecutive chapter scenarios. I could be wrong though.

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4 hours ago, Owns said:

But I thought all seeds have a chance of giving stat boosters? I'm sure that Angelica Seeds, the 5* you get in ch. 1, give Rocky Burdock.

Well, apparently so! Truth be told I don't even use the ones I get randomly. At this point a good part of the game is analysis for me, and using stat boosters on people can conflict with that in a bunch of ways. So yeah, I just didn't know that:p

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

This applies to Crimson Flower as well. Also, I don't think stat boosts from cooking will be applied to the second chapter in the consecutive chapter scenarios. I could be wrong though.

No, that's correct.

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Little update, reaching C+ by chapter 5 was pretty nice as it allowed me to do both battle quests obtained this month in 1 day (Maintaining Your Training; and Clearing The Way which brings new merchants). I love when things work out this way in alignment with the game's design. Getting the 5k monthly funding sooner is pretty nice too. I also spent more points on meals this time around, as opposed to purchasing gifts to get everyone's motivation up which means I have more money than during my last run, something I struggled with.

In Chapter 7 there's 2 more battle quests and the earliest paralogues become available. I still only had 2 battles points per day, not enough to do all 3 but I think that's okay considering the recommended level for the paralogue (Lorenz's) is higher than even Chapter 8's mission. In chapter 8 you get 1 more battle quest from Felix (Something to Prove) and I think that's the last battle quest of the game, leaving room for paralogues or picking aux battles based on rewards/ore one might be after. I finished Ch. 8 with a B+ Prof. rank, which means I still only have 2 battle points to spend per day.  I didn't spend all AP's on stuff that raises prof rank, so I could've been further ahead at this point with more focus if I wanted to. I also did 2 days of battle in one of the chapters. Would be nice if I could reach A+ next chapter, will see. Edit: There is another battle quest obtained in Ch. 10: The Cream of The Crop.

All in all, progressing this way actually feels really good and more efficient. My unit levels are a bit lower than they were in my last run but I haven't had any problems with the missions. In fact, everything feels easier this time around. I think this is largely due to me having more experience now, but I also just feel like GD's units really strong. Not to go off topic, but I attempted to make a character-class builds calculator in the past and one thing I noticed is they have the largest number of characters with the highest growth stat in 'something', more than the other houses. I feel they have worse crests than BL, and to some extent personal abilities, but their stats and utility skills are just so good. Am I alone in thinking this about GD characters?

Edited by Owns
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8 hours ago, Owns said:

In Chapter 7 there's 2 more battle quests and the earliest paralogues become available. I still only had 2 battles points per day, not enough to do all 3 but I think that's okay considering the recommended level for the paralogue (Lorenz's) is higher than even Chapter 8's mission. In chapter 8 you get 1 more battle quest from Felix and I think that's the last battle quest of the game, leaving room for paralogues or picking aux battles based on rewards/ore one might be after. I finished Ch. 8 with a B+ Prof. rank, which means I still only have 2 battle points to spend per day.  I didn't spend all AP's on stuff that raises prof rank, so I could've been further ahead at this point with more focus if I wanted to. I also did 2 days of battle in one of the chapters. Would be nice if I could reach A+ next chapter, will see.

All in all, progressing this way actually feels really good and more efficient. My unit levels are a bit lower than they were in my last run but I haven't had any problems with the missions. In fact, everything feels easier this time around. I think this is largely due to me having more experience now, but I also just feel like GD's units really strong. Not to go off topic, but I attempted to make a character-class builds calculator in the past and one thing I noticed is they have the largest number of characters with the highest growth stat in 'something', more than the other houses. I feel they have worse crests than BL, and to some extent personal abilities, but their stats and utility skills are just so good. Am I alone in thinking this about GD characters?

You can easily one-turn Lorenz paralogue on maddening if you have one or two flyers (one really strong, or two ok units if one have a ranged attack) and Stride. With Stride and having flyers in the middle of the starting location (f!Byleth as a pegasus knight will do), you can reach the boss on turn 1 and he's pretty frail. Other items on the map aren't really worth it compared to grabbing Thyrsus and the Gloucester Knights asap 🙂

I love the Golden Deer students, they are overall really good as a group, with a ton of synergy: Hilda and Leonie personal skills combine really well with other units like Byleth and Claude early on, Ignatz is one of the more reliable units in the entire game thanks to his rallies, debuffs and high hit/crit rate, Lysithea gets Warp really early and is pretty strong in the mid-game (she struggles early on and falls off in late game because of the enemies inflated stats). You have less crested units than in other houses, but they compensate like you said with strong stats, skills and boons in flying and bows, two of the strongest skills to have in this game.

My last GD run I did no auxiliary battle at all (only quest battles and paralogues), did not reach A+ professor rank before timeskip (A to A+ is really long). I also warp-skipped a lot of maps and ended up underleveled on the final map (most of my units were in the 32-35 level range instead of early 40), but it did not cause any issue to finish the run. This is pretty interesting to do, because your skill ranks will progress much faster, at the expense of a couple of levels. Main issue was reaching class mastery since I could not farm auxiliary battles for them, so some units took much more time to build.

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Pending on my route, I can either use the time for faculty training and or get professor points with meal sharing, choir, etc. If I am close to leveling up in professor rank, I fish with whatever bait I have until I level up. I usually tend to get to professor rank B+ or A by the end of part 1. By early to mid part 2 I max out the professor rank and never look back

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8 hours ago, Myssdii said:

You can easily one-turn Lorenz paralogue on maddening if you have one or two flyers (one really strong, or two ok units if one have a ranged attack) and Stride. With Stride and having flyers in the middle of the starting location (f!Byleth as a pegasus knight will do), you can reach the boss on turn 1 and he's pretty frail. Other items on the map aren't really worth it compared to grabbing Thyrsus and the Gloucester Knights asap 🙂

Definitely agree with this sentiment. I would say though that it takes a while to get other good swords (apart from the Rapier available from Ch. 8 and Byleth's weapon, there's nothing in Part 1,  although you'll get Blutgang and Sword of Begalta by Ch.14-5 I guess) so if you use sword users then the Devil Sword might be worth it.

EDIT: Forgot about Thunderbrand being available in Church routes, so lol don't mind me.

16 hours ago, Owns said:

Am I alone in thinking this about GD characters?

I definitely feel the same way - my smoothest run was with the Deer, and I think it might be because of how good bows are in this game, and for their route. But yeah, as others have said their stats and growths really help. 

16 hours ago, Owns said:

I still only had 2 battles points per day, not enough to do all 3 but I think that's okay considering the recommended level for the paralogue (Lorenz's) is higher than even Chapter 8's mission.

Yeah in some ways it's a blessing, because it forces you to space out the paralogues. I found that they get easier literally for every week that you delay doing them (like I attempted the Lorenz paralogue without Warp/Stride tactics, couldn't do it at the beginning of the month but was able to just before the end of the month) but are quite hard when you first get them.

Edited by haarhaarhaar
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People often say house X is stronger than house Y (often when they already happen to like the characters of House X more 🤔 ) but I don't really see it myself. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument that the Lions have a slightly easier start due to Felix's and Dedue's personals both being really good for chapters 1-2 but besides that every house has a decent mix of units and most tier lists I've seen agree that they interweave pretty nicely, with some near the top and others near the bottom. I do think GD is the easiest route lategame just because its unique lategame maps are easier than those of the other routes, though.

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37 minutes ago, haarhaarhaar said:

Definitely agree with this sentiment. I would say though that it takes a while to get other good swords (apart from the Rapier available from Ch. 8 and Byleth's weapon, there's nothing in Part 1,  although you'll get Blutgang and Sword of Begalta by Ch.14-5 I guess) so if you use sword users then the Devil Sword might be worth it.

EDIT: Forgot about Thunderbrand being available in Church routes, so lol don't mind me.

You can have access to Silver Swords at this stage of the game through forging, there is also the quest where you can fetch an item for either Catherine or Shamir that gives either a Silver Sword or a Silver Bow that is around the same time if I remember correctly. Unforged, the Silver Sword is just one point of might lower than the Devil Sword, but lighter and more precise.

The Devil Sword also needs Agarthium to forge/repair, which is insanely rare. I like the Devil Axe because its might is way off the charts when you get it in the game, but the Devil Sword is just... meh... Also, swords in this game are less stronger than other weapons, usually I find myself with only one or two sword wielders at best, mostly dodge tanks (because of the low weapon weight), Levin Swords users or crit spamming with the Cursed Ashiya Sword from chapter 13.

If you like it, go, but Lorenz paralogue is just so tedious to do without rushing to the boss. The Devil Sword is not worth it in my opinion.

14 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

People often say house X is stronger than house Y (often when they already happen to like the characters of House X more 🤔 ) but I don't really see it myself. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument that the Lions have a slightly easier start due to Felix's and Dedue's personals both being really good for chapters 1-2 but besides that every house has a decent mix of units and most tier lists I've seen agree that they interweave pretty nicely, with some near the top and others near the bottom. I do think GD is the easiest route lategame just because its unique lategame maps are easier than those of the other routes, though.

My feeling is that if you take each house individually without taking recruitments in account, the three play very differently and gives different tools to the player.

BL is more like a juggernaut type army: really strong and solid units core (Dimitri, Sylvain, Felix and Dedue), with some supports and utility around it. GD has more tools for movement, strike and retreat type of gameplay, with bonus stacking from multiple sources. BE is more diverse with really strong individual units, but less overall synergy between them (probably because they must adapt to two very different routes).

The feeling of "this house is easier than the others" probably comes from the way you play the game. My personal opinion is I find GD to be easier to play than the others, and for now I've struggled more with BL. BE is kind of a mix bags of things I like and don't like, I've yet to play Silver Snow in maddening though.

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1 hour ago, Myssdii said:

You can have access to Silver Swords at this stage of the game through forging, there is also the quest where you can fetch an item for either Catherine or Shamir that gives either a Silver Sword or a Silver Bow that is around the same time if I remember correctly. Unforged, the Silver Sword is just one point of might lower than the Devil Sword, but lighter and more precise.

The Devil Sword also needs Agarthium to forge/repair, which is insanely rare. I like the Devil Axe because its might is way off the charts when you get it in the game, but the Devil Sword is just... meh... Also, swords in this game are less stronger than other weapons, usually I find myself with only one or two sword wielders at best, mostly dodge tanks (because of the low weapon weight), Levin Swords users or crit spamming with the Cursed Ashiya Sword from chapter 13.

If you like it, go, but Lorenz paralogue is just so tedious to do without rushing to the boss. The Devil Sword is not worth it in my opinion.

Yeah all very fair points. My last run was CF, and I remember just managing to get a couple of crucial kills with Devil Sword Soulblade Lysithea, which probably improved my memory of the weapon. But yeah you're right, it's hardly crucial. 

In general I don't do boss rush tactics unless I'm really tired/there are no optional goodies left, and yeah, it definitely makes Lorenz's paralogue more draining, especially when you're at a low level. 

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