This game's difficulty is slept on

[♠Soul♠]

I'm on Endgame: Grima, and I feel the game is far harder if you simply abstain from abusing Pair Up. The enemies start becoming really bulky by around the Valm arc (past Ch.14 or so), and you can start telling once they start promoting. If you don't have considerably more levels or stats, you struggle a lot more to 1RKO unless you're someone like Wyvern Panne or an overleveled Avatar. It takes a lot of Atk to consistently 2HKO a couple of enemies at times. For example, my Maribelle and Libra (both have pretty high Magic) struggle to 2HKO stuff like Generals and Berserkers through sheer HP numbers (these Berserkers have literally 8 Res by Endgame...).

I played the game a lot more in the past, but this is my first time truly beating it without Pair Up. A lot of the time, it feels like the enemies were outright designed to be killed through Dual Strike, and stuff like this becomes even harder when you factor in an overwhelming enemy density on certain chapters (i.e Ch.19, 20, 25, Endgame, etc.).

And, honestly? The game feels pretty achieving when you stop abusing broken mechanics. Makes you see the game itself isn't the pushover, but that Pair Up is simply broken.

[Eltosian Kadath]

Just out of curiosity, what difficulty? I remember some of those early chapters being an utter nightmare on my Lunatic, no pair-up to attack or defend LP.

Speaking of which I am working on reviving that, although it has been a while (just over a year... jeez I do not remember it being that long ago...), as it got killed when my old laptop died with a chapters worth of images, and most of a write-up on it.

[♠Soul♠]

14 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Just out of curiosity, what difficulty? I remember some of those early chapters being an utter nightmare on my Lunatic, no pair-up to attack or defend LP.

Speaking of which I am working on reviving that, although it has been a while (just over a year... jeez I do not remember it being that long ago...), as it got killed when my old laptop died with a chapters worth of images, and most of a write-up on it.

I'm playing Hard Mode, which is especially slept on...I forgot to mention that, it seems.

From the little I've played into Lunatic, not only is Pair Up completely fine, but you basically need it. I did an old trick where you overlevel The Avatar early on and he/she basically becomes your new Frederick, and you have to feed kills to your other units. Worked pretty well, and at no point I really felt like I was abusing any cheap tactics.

[SSbardock84]

I recall Pair Up being essentially a requirement in Lunatic and Lunatic+. I don't recall having any difficulties with Awakening Hard Mode. It felt like an average difficulty for a FE game. I don't think I used Pair Up much in Hard, because I barely used it unless I was trying to raise Support levels or obviously, like I said, in Lunatic and Lunatic+ modes it was a must.

[Aethelstan]

Hard mode is the perfect FE experience imho. Even without grinding you should be able to use any character you recruit if you like them. Though some will take a decent amount of hand holding.

Pair up is mostly not necessary on hard and honestly sometimes you're better off without it because it gives you more actions per turn. 

You absolutely need it on lunatic. The enemy stats will always be too high for single units to reliably handle unless you grind. Even Frederick isn't perfectly reliable in the early game if he's unpaired.

[Samz707]

Eh, not really.

For me this game's difficulty is this:

Small Stages that force my units to fight together when not-paired up, units constantly get dual strikes I can't predict and then they get piled on by dudes that attack when normally their friend would have blocked them off except the levels and the constant onslaught of enemies means I NEED to hold them back at 1-2 tile-wide choke points but then there's the random dual strikes.

Dual Strikes are literally what's preventing me from getting far in the game because they add one of the most terrible, obnoxious and rage-inducing mechanics I've ever experienced in a strategy game, the fact they thought these were okay legitimately baffles me, my number one leading cause of resets is literally them because I'm not losing a unit to a mechanic so counter-intuitive, they might as well have just made it so Units can randomly hit nearby allies on a miss and it'd honestly be less obnoxious.

In addition, the enemy stats in the early-game feels like it punishes you for actually trying to use any new units, so I have to go broke buying reeking boxes so I can just get EXP so my units don't die near instantly or constantly turning my 3DS on/off just to get a random battle. (Because constantly having only a 50-ish chance to hit as the standard for my army while the enemy has 80 totally doesn't turn most fights into RNG heavy BS.)

Also, Enemies have a crit-chance since the start of the game, why, what fun is having to replay the first level because I legitimately got crit'd on the first stage. (This has happened to me more than once.)

It's pretty much what makes this game an absolute unfun chore to play and made me hate it back when it was my first game and why I still can't bother playing more than a single battle without wanting to smash my 3DS. (As well as how the random battles are terrible for actually grinding up your weaker units when you spawn surrounded by Wyverns/Mages that can 1-2 shot them and there's a ton of them.)

Edited December 1, 2020 by Samz707

[Florete]

On 10/29/2020 at 6:32 PM, the actual real soul said:

Makes you see the game itself isn't the pushover, but that Pair Up is simply broken.

Pair Up is an integral part of the game's design. It's not really accurate to say the game's difficulty is 'slept on' when the basis of such a statement is removing a core mechanic. It would be like saying Sacred Stones is hard if you only use Iron weapons; yeah, that'll certainly give you more challenge, but it's not an accurate representation of the game's difficulty.

[Aethelstan]

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In addition, the enemy stats in the early-game feels like it punishes you for actually trying to use any new units, so I have to go broke buying reeking boxes so I can just get EXP so my units don't die near instantly or constantly turning my 3DS on/off just to get a random battle. (Because constantly having only a 50-ish chance to hit as the standard for my army while the enemy has 80 totally doesn't turn most fights into RNG heavy BS.)

What difficulty are you playing on? You shouldn't be having those hit rate disparities as the standard for your army even on lunatic. Weapons triangle is a huge deal in Awakening, try never attacking with a physical unit unless you are at least neutral towards the weapon they are using. This is particularly true for Vaike. Also a lot of new recruits need to be hand held for a bit but grinding isn't necessary on Normal or Hard unless you want to. And some units like Cherche are very capable in their join chapters They often won't be able to one round enemy units by themselves the chapter you get them, but if Frederick, Chrom, or Robin is able to leave an enemy weak, use the new unit to deal the final blow.

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Small Stages that force my units to fight together when not-paired up, units constantly get dual strikes I can't predict and then they get piled on by dudes that attack when normally their friend would have blocked them off except the levels and the constant onslaught of enemies means I NEED to hold them back at 1-2 tile-wide choke points but then there's the random dual strikes.

Dual Strikes are literally what's preventing me from getting far in the game because they add one of the most terrible, obnoxious and rage-inducing mechanics I've ever experienced in a strategy game, the fact they thought these were okay legitimately baffles me, my number one leading cause of resets is literally them because I'm not losing a unit to a mechanic so counter-intuitive, they might as well have just made it so Units can randomly hit nearby allies on a miss and it'd honestly be less obnoxious.

Another tactic you will have to lean on heavily in the early game is keeping your units in range of as few enemy units at the start of the enemy turn at a time as possible. Sometimes this means progressing through chapters very slowly or even retreating back from your starting position in some chapters like 6. Awakening is meant to be played somewhat more conservatively than many other games in the series. You need to worry more about surviving an enemy phase than necessarily having a great player phase.

I don't think that dual stirkes are conceptually different from criticals. You have a small chance to do more damage than usual. It's something you have to factor in.

Some really good early game pair ups are Lon'qu/Vaike (they give each other speed/strength which the other desperately wants), Chrom/Sully, and Frederick/Sumia. Robin also pairs well with magical units.

Edited December 13, 2020 by Aethelstan

[Samz707]

42 minutes ago, Aethelstan said:

What difficulty are you playing on? You shouldn't be having those hit rate disparities as the standard for your army even on lunatic. Weapons triangle is a huge deal in Awakening, try never attacking with a physical unit unless you are at least neutral towards the weapon they are using. This is particularly true for Vaike. Also a lot of new recruits need to be hand held for a bit but grinding isn't necessary on Normal or Hard unless you want to. And some units like Cherche are very capable in their join chapters They often won't be able to one round enemy units by themselves the chapter you get them, but if Frederick, Chrom, or Robin is able to leave an enemy weak, use the new unit to deal the final blow.

Another tactic you will have to lean on heavily in the early game is keeping your units in range of as few enemy units at the start of the enemy turn at a time as possible. Sometimes this means progressing through chapters very slowly or even retreating back from your starting position in some chapters like 6. Awakening is meant to be played somewhat more conservatively than many other games in the series. You need to worry more about surviving an enemy phase than necessarily having a great player phase.

I don't think that dual stirkes are conceptually different from criticals. You have a small chance to do more damage than usual. It's something you have to factor in.

Some really good early game pair ups are Lon'qu/Vaike (they give each other speed/strength which the other desperately wants), Chrom/Sully, and Frederick/Sumia. Robin also pairs well with magical units.

Lon'qu and Vaike is actually what's been getting me killed in that stage with Ememryn's assassins, since I try to have them lock-down a two tile-wide hall way, except Lon'qu would consistently dual strike with Vaike, so the enemy is now dead, which means Vaike is now dead since his 1-range friend behind him that normally wouldn't' hit him, well, hit him and now Vaike's dead, and grinding Vaike invovled making him a stat-backpack as he's simply trash for me consistently. (I've never had this much trouble with FE6 Axe users but Vaike puts them to shame in sheer amounts of missing and still being made out of tissue paper.)

Yeah in my experience, Awakening just revolves around stats, it's more "can you out-stat the enemy" rather than any sort of actual out-smarting like in other FE games, to the point where there's literally temporary stat-boost items.

There's no real way to limit enemies, literally 90 percent of them are charging towards you and certain stages in random battles literally start with you in the middle and a horde of flying enemies surrounding you, there's absolutely no way to keep your frail, unlikely to dodge units out of harm's way when this happens, you're just screwed and either have to only use good units or reset. (Since you can't even back out of random battles if I remember.)

I found Grinding very needed simply to have my units survive more than 1 attack or even get a consistent hit-rate. (Hell I was able to breeze through that chapter, not by getting better tactics but by just grinding for a few level ups for everyone, which is a horrible feeling in a strategy game as frankly I despise grinding generally and I like it in FE because you actually just level up playing normally with the arena ultimately being more of a money thing.)

Awakening flat-out punishes you for using new units as you gain them, which is terrible in any game outside of new-game plus modes (Since at least there you're at least expected to use "Meta" knowledge.) and nothing's more "fun" than turning my 3DS on/off several times because I'm too broke to get a reeking box, getting a random encounter...and it's entirely 360 surrounded by Wyverns, making the battle luck-based as there's no way to really stop enemies dog-pilling me and making it so I can only grind my already good units with only being able to give a handful of them EXP to bad units via being stat backpacks, which is never going to be enough to get them out of being trash.

It's honestly gotten to the point where when I finally work up the nerve to play Awakening again, in about a year or two, I might just restart, put it on normal and casual because I'm sick of constantly getting screwed by at best 50/50 coin tosses for if my units die when a random battle, that I need to play because my units are trash starts with me surrounded by wyvern riders so it's literally just a massive coin-flip of dodge-tanking damage with characters who can't consistently dodge-tank. (Since actually taking the hits very much isn't an option after 1 maybe 2 hits.)

Edited December 13, 2020 by Samz707

[Aethelstan]

First, when we say pair up, we don't mean two units standing on two seperate tiles next to each other. You can have two units occupy the same tile as a kind of super unit with one person leading and one person supporting. This raises the lead's stats based mostly on the supporting character's class. If two characters are next to each other but not paired up, they can still dual strike and dual guard each other but there is no stat boost for either of them. If you aren't pairing up that may be why it seems like the enemy's stats are so high, they are meant to compare to the stats of paired units, not individual ones. Especially on harder difficulties. The game assumes you are using pair ups a lot. So that two tile wide hallways should be choked up by four units. 

For Chapter 6 I personally usually open the southern door to Emmeryn's room myself and barracade everyone in there. Chrom blocking the left entrance so he is close to Gaius and Lon'qu/Vaike and another pair blocking the southern entrance. I rescue staff Marth into the room so he's out of the way. 

When you get a new character that's too weak for direct hits or just low on HP after fighting, you can have them be the support in a pair up so they aren't exposed to attack directly. If you pair up Vaike and Lon'qu and have Lon'qu lead, there will be no way for Vaike to get hit as long as Lon'qu is alive. Same for new units. Pair them to someone stronger immediately. Or if you have a new unit lead the pair up with say, Frederick or Kellam supporting, they may get enough defense for them to be fine as a lead for a bit. The trade off is now for those two units, you only get one action per turn between them. For Lon'qu/Vaike specifically, if Vaike is leading he will get a lot of skill and speed stats from Lon'qu which helps fix his low hit and avoid rates.

You don't have to use Lon'qu with Vaike, that's just one I like. Vaike can get the extra skill and speed he needs from Chrom or Sumia in pinch (Sumia can't support with him but she still gives a lot of speed to whoever she is paired with). If you use pair ups you shouldn't have to grind anyone on Hard mode except maybe Donnel. 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Aethelstan

[Samz707]

8 hours ago, Aethelstan said:

First, when we say pair up, we don't mean two units standing on two seperate tiles next to each other. You can have two units occupy the same tile as a kind of super unit with one person leading and one person supporting. This raises the lead's stats based mostly on the supporting character's class. If two characters are next to each other but not paired up, they can still dual strike and dual guard each other but there is no stat boost for either of them. If you aren't pairing up that may be why it seems like the enemy's stats are so high, they are meant to compare to the stats of paired units, not individual ones. Especially on harder difficulties. The game assumes you are using pair ups a lot.

When you get a new character that's too weak for direct hits or just low on HP after fighting, you can have them be the support in a pair up so they aren't exposed to attack. If you pair up Vaike and Lon'qu and have Lon'qu lead, there will be no way for Vaike to get hit as long as Lon'qu is alive. Same for new units. Pair them to someone stronger immediately. Or if you have a new unit lead the pair up with say, Frederick or Kellam supporting, they may get enough defense for them to be fine as a lead for a bit. The trade off is now for those two units, you only get one action per turn between them. Splitting them back into two units counts as your action. (The skill Galeforce can eventually change that dynamic but not till late game if you don't grind). For Lon'qu/Vaike specifically, if Vaike is leading he will get a lot of skill and speed stats from Lon'qu which helps fix his low hit and avoid rates. Again you get none of those stat boosts for them just being next to each other. They have to be paired up.

You don't have to use Lon'qu with Vaike, that's just one I like. Vaike can get the extra skill and speed he needs from Chrom or Sumia in pinch (Sumia can't support with him but she still gives a lot of speed to whoever she is paired with). If you use pair ups you shouldn't have to grind anyone on Hard mode except maybe Donnel. 

Simply put, in my experience, if it's not someone that buffs defense, Pair-up is never actually worth it  if there's more than a handful of enemies left you can easily predict, I just used that as an example to show how the pair-up mechanics can get you killed even when you're trying to avoid them. (I'd say there's about 7-8ish moments where Pair-up definitely helped and 20 times where they've forced a reset on my current playthrough and I'm on chapter 7.)

Pair-up is pretty much only worth it with units that are completely trash to use on their own and at that point why not bring someone who isn't trash on their own.

• It's harder to wall-off healers/archers and other fragile units when your unit count is cut in half.
• Separating units effectively uses up both their turns so you're screwed if you need them both as separate units right now.
• The stat boost, if it's not defense, is almost never worth it since now the enemies have one target that can attack from all angles to dog-pile them/easily run past them to stab a healer, (While in my Vaike/Lon'qu example, they could only attack in one direction.) in addition to that stat boost usually being marginal at best, a few extra points of speed don't help when Vaike has trouble hitting the target and now he's going to get dogpiled.
• Dual Strike is awful, it adds a completely random variable that you can only see on the battle forecast, so it throws a big monkey wrench in actually predicting when enemy units will die, which in Fire Emblem is a very, very bad thing when it comes to trying to survive the enemy phase, dual strike is extra worse since you have to effectively actively fight your own units to get them in awkward positions where they can't dual strike but still block off 1-2 tile hallways and even THEN now your units can be attacked from multiple angles now. (and as a personal note, I absolutely hate random invisible RNG for a mechanic like this, yes I know you can see it on the battle forecast but when you're baiting Wyverns and such you have no way of seeing it.)

The problem is, with everyone paired up, Lissa is effectively useless since I have no way of safely using her when I effectively only have 4 units for most of a battle, since she'll get dog-pilled when I have her heal someone and there's no way to block the enemy off, since I only have 4/5 units so I end up just spamming healing items for healing. (which means I'm broke.)

It's only really changed started to change recently after I've had a ton of random battles to grind and that's more due to grinding than pair-up itself and this is with me using randomly-obtained weapons like Glass Bows and Ephraim''s Lances, if I didn't have these I would have actually gotten soft-locked and had to grind just to have a chance of winning sooner and a strategy game where you're heavily reliant on random drops isn't a very good one in my book.

Maybe I have the wrong idea since I've seen it constantly recommended as a good "Beginner's game" but FE Awakening forces me to be constantly broke forging/buying new weapons and grinding as much as possible just to have a fighting chance at any chapter. (and since the only way to grind at will is a super-expensive item, that doesn't exactly help.), I effectively have to be trying my absolute hardest and I'm just on Hard and haven't even gotten to chapter 10 yet, I pretty much feel like I have to use my limited finances (Why can't we just grind in the arena?) even more conservatively only on anything vital.

Edited December 14, 2020 by Samz707

[Aethelstan]

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Simply put, in my experience, if it's not someone that buffs defense, Pair-up is never actually worth it  if there's more than a handful of enemies left you can easily predict, I just used that as an example to show how the pair-up mechanics can get you killed even when you're trying to avoid them. (I'd say there's about 7-8ish moments where Pair-up definitely helped and 20 times where they've forced a reset on my current playthrough and I'm on chapter 7.)

Pair-up is pretty much only worth it with units that are completely trash to use on their own and at that point why not bring someone who isn't trash on their own.

Pair up absolutely has uses beyond defense and defense is not even the most imporant use. The most important use is speed. Pair up can move units out of the threshold where they would be double attacked or sometimes move them over the threshold to double attack enemy units. It also makes units more dodgy. Chrom/Sumia or Sully/Sumia should dodge most early games enemies more often than not. As I said before Vaike benefits a lot from extra skill, Sumia usually wants someone buffing her strength,  all the early game magic users benefit from Robin in particular. If someone is holding a chokepint ever, you almost always want them paired so they can be a strong as possible while they hold it. The list of combat uses goes on and on.

You also bring up another use for pair up in your post. Many units struggle to kill in the early chapters of the game but pair up can increase their damage output until they are strong enough to be useful on their own. Frederick and Chrom are both great for this. Chrom in particular because he's usually the unit that does the recruiting and he can pair with them immediately after the conversation, giving big buffs to speed and strength.

The game expects you to be using the mechanic and it's balanced around that. If you pair up your units, they will be strong enough to get their own exp from campaign and you won't need to grind. I have beaten Awakening on Hard with no grinding multiple times. There are even people on this fourm who have done it on Lunatic. I promise you it's possible. But it requires using pair up liberally.

 

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Pair Up is an integral part of the game's design. It's not really accurate to say the game's difficulty is 'slept on' when the basis of such a statement is removing a core mechanic. It would be like saying Sacred Stones is hard if you only use Iron weapons; yeah, that'll certainly give you more challenge, but it's not an accurate representation of the game's difficulty

I think this sums it up pretty well. Choosing to not use pair up is like choosing to never deploy Frederick or something. It's an extra layer of difficulty you put on yourself.

[Samz707]

1 hour ago, Aethelstan said:

Pair up absolutely has uses beyond defense and defense is not even the most imporant use. The most important use is speed. Pair up can move units out of the threshold where they would be double attacked or sometimes move them over the threshold to double attack enemy units. It also makes units more dodgy. Chrom/Sumia or Sully/Sumia should dodge most early games enemies more often than not. As I said before Vaike benefits a lot from extra skill, Sumia usually wants someone buffing her strength,  all the early game magic users benefit from Robin in particular. If someone is holding a chokepint ever, you almost always want them paired so they can be a strong as possible while they hold it. The list of combat uses goes on and on.

You also bring up another use for pair up in your post. Many units struggle to kill in the early chapters of the game but pair up can increase their damage output until they are strong enough to be useful on their own. Frederick and Chrom are both great for this. Chrom in particular because he's usually the unit that does the recruiting and he can pair with them immediately after the conversation, giving big buffs to speed and strength.

The game expects you to be using the mechanic and it's balanced around that. If you pair up your units, they will be strong enough to get their own exp from campaign and you won't need to grind. I have beaten Awakening on Hard with no grinding multiple times. There are even people on this fourm who have done it on Lunatic. I promise you it's possible. But it requires using pair up liberally.

 

I tried using pair up liberally on my first playthrough attempt, I died due to dual strikes constantly making me suddenly not-safe when I thought I was safe and everyone ended up with bad EXP aside from Robin and Frederick, to the point where 50-60 chance for me to hit and 70-100 chance for them to hit was kinda the norm and I got soft-locked since there was no way I could realistically clear any battle consistently.

So it was just a ton of "Oh great, Dual strike screwed up and got someone killed out of my control." and "Why can can not even a single duo of units take anyone consistently that doesn't have Frederick in it?"

Chrom only got good in my current playthrough because I used random battles to get him to level 20 and it still took to around level 15-ish for him to merely do enough damage and hit consistently against non-Wyverns.

Maybe I got extremely unlucky with level-ups but in my first playthrough even trying to use pair up as much as possible, I just got soft-locked until i got enough random battles as everyone would almost certainly get hit and die if more than a 1 enemy attacked them at once, My units were all simply trash even trying to use pair-up and all Pair-up really did was sometimes let them survive 1-2 extra attacks or double, which only helps so much when you're 100 percent chanced to get hit and it's a coin flip if you even get to hit at all.

There's simply too much random BS in this game and it feels like it all has to go your way, the random tiles that can give a small EXP boost or great weapons, your units randomly getting surges in stats from the barracks, your units randomly finding great weapons in the barracks and it all combines together to make a very unfun strategy game experience because it feels like I'm utterly screwed if it doesn't go my way, (My current playthrough actually went alot smoother because I got an Ephraim's lance in the first level so it feels more like I got lucky rather than actually improving at all.) it feels entirely up to the luck of the draw rather than my actual skill.

Or then you have the side-chapters, which are frankly BS as you're protecting  the worst green units in the entire franchise, weak villagers that charge into danger, I give up on actually trying to save them because you're forced to constantly waste rescue staff charges trying to get them to stay in safety and not run across the map into danger, at least other Green Units can somewhat fight while these villagers can easily get one-rounded, it's not fun to be given essentially impossible side-chapters when I'm first given them.

Granted today I did actually find out you can use temporary stat-boosters before battle so that probably would have helped admittingly.

Edited December 14, 2020 by Samz707

[Aethelstan]

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I tried using pair up liberally on my first playthrough attempt, I died due to dual strikes constantly making me suddenly not-safe when I thought I was safe and everyone ended up with bad EXP aside from Robin and Frederick, to the point where 50-60 chance for me to hit and 70-100 chance for them to hit was kinda the norm and I got soft-locked since there was no way I could realistically clear any battle consistently.

If this is happening to you repeatedly, you are moving your units in range of too many enemy units at once. You can see the total enemy attack range and individual enemy attack ranges. In the early game, except for specific choke points, it's very easy to never be in range of more than two enemy units at once because enemies are pretty spaced out. The Valm campaign is different and throws a lot of people at you at once but you should be pretty well leveled by then. In Awakening you often need to progress through chapters slowly, until most enemies are cleared out. Sometimes that's moving just one or two spaces at a time so only one or two enemies can reach you. Sometimes you need to move backwards if fliers are on their way. Never go deep into the enemy range where several can attack the same unit and over. Most will not be that durable until you learn skills like Aegis and Pavise.

Press x to see the enemy attack range and move characters so they are just barely one tile into the range. When that happens just the very closest enemy should be able to reach your unit. In Awakening you should spend more time letting enemies come to you than the reverse.

Frederick should get very little exp. You want to use him to bait and weaken, not cast the final blow. Giving him bronze weapons can help if he's too strong otherwise and they are cheap. I mostly don't use the tonics (again Donnel is the exception because he is truly annoying to train until he starts to snowball). They can certainly help but aren't necessary. Neither is forging, though again it helps. I just prefer saving as much cash as possible for promotion items and some of the more expensive staves.

[Samz707]

19 minutes ago, Aethelstan said:

If this is happening to you repeatedly, you are moving your units in range of too many enemy units at once. You can see the total enemy attack range and individual enemy attack ranges. In the early game, except for specific choke points, it's very easy to never be in range of more than two enemy units at once because enemies are pretty spaced out. The Valm campaign is different and throws a lot of people at you at once but you should be pretty well leveled by then. In Awakening you often need to progress through chapters slowly, until most enemies are cleared out. Sometimes that's moving just one or two spaces at a time so only one or two enemies can reach you. Sometimes you need to move backwards if fliers are on their way. Never go deep into the enemy range where several can attack the same unit and over. Most will not be that durable until you learn skills like Aegis and Pavise.

Press x to see the enemy attack range and move characters so they are just barely one tile into the range. When that happens just the very closest enemy should be able to reach your unit. In Awakening you should spend more time letting enemies come to you than the reverse.

Frederick should get very little exp. You want to use him to bait and weaken, not cast the final blow. Giving him bronze weapons can help if he's too strong otherwise and they are cheap. I mostly don't use the tonics (again Donnel is the exception because he is truly annoying to train until he starts to snowball). They can certainly help but aren't necessary. Neither is forging, though again it helps. I just prefer saving as much cash as possible for promotion items and some of the more expensive staves.

Personally I feel tonics and forging are basically mandatory, even now my units still suck somewhat. (Chrom and Virion easily out-damage Vaike by a signifficant margin for instance despite Vaike being an axe-user.)

I am trying to play slowly but A: the side-chapters try to force you to be fast for a good reward and B: Most of the story missions involve every single enemy charging for you and you can't really slow down 12 dudes barreling straight towards you in chapters like Foreseer.

And then you have Chapters like Incursion where you have to move or you'll get ambush spawns dumped on you.

And again I'll see a 1-2 tile wide chokepoint and try to hold there but then Dual Strike kicks in and then I'm dead so I just had to grind to the point where Dual strike won't get me killed.

 

Edited December 14, 2020 by Samz707

[Ottservia]

2 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Personally I feel tonics and forging are basically mandatory, even now my units still suck somewhat.

Dude I play this game exclusively on lunatic they are not mandatory. If you think they are then you’re doing something wrong 

[Samz707]

21 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Dude I play this game exclusively on lunatic they are not mandatory. If you think they are then you’re doing something wrong 

Vaike is still pretty abysmal for me and in general none of my units feel like they're remotely competent even when paired up.

I had to give Vaike a axe with a ton of forge on it just to have consistently over 50 chance to hit when I got stuck because at best he'd have 60 chance to hit, with pair-up bonuses, even now if he's not paired up and using that forged axe, it's still a literal coinflip for not very good damage on a unit that has only actually recently from grinding gotten decent defense.

A 60 chance to hit with support bonuses is pretty abysmal and literally makes using him a coinflip oh and he still does trash damage that most of my other units surpass, despite being armed with a low-accuracy high-damage weapon, he lacks the actual high-damage part. (Virion manages to out-damage him and Virion is only 3 levels higher than him with an unforged bow.)

I use pair-up and combat is a cluster-mess of RNG with dual strike and if I don't my units all suck unless I grind/use a ton of stat-boosters, I've only even gotten to use pair up in my current playthrough due to my units being grinded out and it's not a fun experience.

I've looked at walkthroughs but all of them either A: are vague text or B: do all the DLC right away so they don't exactly help me see what I'm doing wrong since they just power through the stages I'm struggling with via the stat advantage and just Lerroy Jenkins everything.

I'm trying to play Awakening actually using my units and not just doing a Robin Solo Emblem playthrough but that's pretty difficult when everyone is kinda some of the worst units I've seen in the series.

Edited December 14, 2020 by Samz707

[Aethelstan]

I mean if you've fed all your early game exp to just Frederick and Chrom it's totally possible your other units are now very badly underleveled. I have no idea what you could be doing that has Vaike's hit so low. The only people that should be happening against are myrmidons and other speedy people with swords, who you should never try to attack with Vaike anyway. In first few chapters after you get him he should have an easy time hitting the axe and lance wielders especially paired up with Chrom or Lon'qu. And with the hammer you are basically fed the exp for all the early knights you come across.

I have never used a forged weapon during the main campaign ever. I've only done that for Lunatic post game DLC runs. You don't need to solo the game with Robin. I actually tend to hold Robin back a bit because veteran means she needs way less kills than the others to shine.

If you listen to what we are telling you, beating hard mode with no grinding, no tonics, and no forging is very doable and flexible enough that any unit you recruit can be a main part of your army.

Absolute musts:

Avoid letting Frederick kill as much as possible. Other people need the exp much more than him. When people start promoting is when it's safe to start letting Frederick level a bit. But still don't go crazy. He's not that great long run

Use pair ups a lot. Not everyone all the time, but a lot. Robin should *never* be unpaired early game because of Veteran. Focus on pair ups that give stats to the leader they really need.

Do not move units too deep into enemy range. You want one or two enemies in range of counterattacking at a time. Sometimes that means letting a treasure go or a village get destroyed. You can go for those on a future playthrough when you feel more comfortable with the game. I promise they are also possible with no grinding, just challenging. For that Anna paralogue with the village, Chrom/Sumia is usually how I do it but that's not the only way.

[Samz707]

1 hour ago, Aethelstan said:

I mean if you've fed all your early game exp to just Frederick and Chrom it's totally possible your other units are now very badly underleveled. I have no idea what you could be doing that has Vaike's hit so low. The only people that should be happening against are myrmidons and other speedy people with swords, who you should never try to attack with Vaike anyway. In first few chapters after you get him he should have an easy time hitting the axe and lance wielders especially paired up with Chrom or Lon'qu. And with the hammer you are basically fed the exp for all the early knights you come across.

I have never used a forged weapon during the main campaign ever. I've only done that for Lunatic post game DLC runs. You don't need to solo the game with Robin. I actually tend to hold Robin back a bit because veteran means she needs way less kills than the others to shine.

If you listen to what we are telling you, beating hard mode with no grinding, no tonics, and no forging is very doable and flexible enough that any unit you recruit can be a main part of your army.

 

Vaike is around level 9, he's gotten better but still not exactly good.

For reference, a (I think level 11 before I promoted her?) Lissa with the war Cleric promotion (and a single level up after that) and an unforged bronze axe is actually only slightly worse than him on the same enemy (and this is with Vaike's  axe I stuck a bunch of forging on, I don't really think Lissa who's literally just picked up an axe should really be able to compete with her only doing slgihtly less damage on the same target. (Both were paired up, Lissa with Robin and Vaike with Virion) 

So I think my Vaike is just heavily stat screwed since I don't think Robin's Pair-up bonuses are enough to make that not absurd. (considering how this was actually Lissa's second battle after promoting yet she's able to almost just be as good as Vaike when it comes to axing dudes.)

[Ottservia]

8 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Lissa with the war Cleric promotion

> Lissa

> war cleric

well you see there’s your problem.

[Samz707]

33 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

> Lissa

> war cleric

well you see there’s your problem.

Well she's managing to compete with Vaike somehow despite me promoting her early on as my first promotion.