Ways to kill Medeus in FE1?

[Jotari]

So is the Falchion mandatory in the first game? Or can I kill Medeus with a wyrmslayer/Gradivus/Tiki? I'm trying to do a Marth solo and I'm wondering if Flachion is necessary (which would require it to be a Marth+some mage solo thanks the Starlight).

Edited December 5, 2020 by Jotari

[Interdimensional Observer]

Running the simple numbers, from what SF has listed.:

Medeus: 12 Def + 23 from Earthstone = 35 total. Terrain gives no Def.

Str cap is 20 of course. We thus need a weapon of at least 16 Mt then. The weapons which qualify are:

• Mercurius- 18 Mt. But as it is exclusive to Marth, why not use Falchion instead?
• Devil Sword- 17 Mt. The only option for Heroes to use.
• Gradivus- 20 Mt. Has 17 uses, so you'll need 9 of them to kill Medeus (do thrones not have HP regeneration in FE1?, SF doesn't mention it).
• Devil Axe- 20 Mt. But, any of your four axe users are unlikely to 20 Str, and this has only 9 uses.
• Firestone- 16 Mt. The Divinestone is not effective on Medeus and has but 12 Mt.

I don't know if magic used at range 1 works, because all SF says is that Medeus negates ranged attacks, which I assume includes Parthia (17 Mt). But given Res doesn't exist and how easy it'd be to kill Meddy with Gotoh, I'll assume magic won't work at any range. Not sure if the Pachyderm (18 Mt) ballistae works at range 1 either.

So, those five weapons are your only options not Falchion that I'm sure would work. None truly compare to the effective 30 Mt of Falchion.

-Didn't notice the part of what you said about a Marth solo. Mercurius will do the job then.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Running the simple numbers, from what SF has listed.:

Medeus: 12 Def + 23 from Earthstone = 35 total. Terrain gives no Def.

Str cap is 20 of course. We thus need a weapon of at least 16 Mt then. The weapons which qualify are:

• Mercurius- 18 Mt. But as it is exclusive to Marth, why not use Falchion instead?
• Devil Sword- 17 Mt. The only option for Heroes to use.
• Gradivus- 20 Mt. Has 17 uses, so you'll need 9 of them to kill Medeus (do thrones not have HP regeneration in FE1?, SF doesn't mention it).
• Devil Axe- 20 Mt. But, any of your four axe users are unlikely to 20 Str, and this has only 9 uses.
• Firestone- 16 Mt. The Divinestone is not effective on Medeus and has but 12 Mt.

I don't know if magic used at range 1 works, because all SF says is that Medeus negates ranged attacks, which I assume includes Parthia (17 Mt). But given Res doesn't exist and how easy it'd be to kill Meddy with Gotoh, I'll assume magic won't work at any range. Not sure if the Pachyderm (18 Mt) ballistae works at range 1 either.

So, those five weapons are your only options not Falchion that I'm sure would work. None truly compare to the effective 30 Mt of Falchion.

-Didn't notice the part of what you said about a Marth solo. Mercurius will do the job then.

I'm not sure Mercurius can. Medeus isn't on a throne, but I think he still heals anyway.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Wrymslayers do no damage, even with their MT tripled against Medeus. With the Mercurius, you're looking at 6 damage each phase, assuming no crit. I don't know off the top of my head how much he's healing each turn (fort healing in FE1 always seemed inconsistent to me) but I can tell It'll be a slug fest. A stat capped Marth should manage against him and the chapter's many reinforcements. If you're really worried, drop a save state back on chapter 22 in case the game really isn't beatable without Falchion. I'd hate to have to go against your marth solo's rules when it turns out you didn't need to in the first place. Then again, if the idea of playing around with Falchion sounds fun to you and you don't want to have to potentially replay chapters 23 and 24, make an exception for blasting Gharnef with Starlight. 

[Hobusu]

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I don't know off the top of my head how much he's healing each turn (fort healing in FE1 always seemed inconsistent to me) but I can tell It'll be a slug fest.

According to the digital manual Nintendo put out with the Switch release, Castles, Thrones and Fortresses all heal 3-10 HP per turn. In theory you could get lucky and have Medeus only heal 3 HP per turn, but the odds of that happening multiple turns in a row seem pretty low.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

4 hours ago, Hobusu said:

According to the digital manual Nintendo put out with the Switch release,

*angel choir*

Quote

Castles, Thrones and Fortresses all heal 3-10 HP per turn. In theory you could get lucky and have Medeus only heal 3 HP per turn, but the odds of that happening multiple turns in a row seem pretty low.

Well I'm sure it's still just healing on the start of that unit's turn. Marth is still chipping Medeus for 6 HP every phase, so even in the case of Medeus healing 10 HP, that's a net 2 damage. My first run of FE1 was not a marth solo, but I was going at him with gradivus before switching off for Marth to do some damage. Since trading over the gradivus and the starsphere takes two turns, you gotta keep piling on that damage.

This would be blasphemy if we were talking about the DS game, but I'm convinced the right call in FE1 is to get the Falchion. Starsphere is nice, especially since you can't hammerne things like the Gradivus, but the Falchion really makes the fight with Medeus easier, and Marth is an S tier unit worthy of that sort of favoritism.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Glennstavos said:

*angel choir*

Well I'm sure it's still just healing on the start of that unit's turn. Marth is still chipping Medeus for 6 HP every phase, so even in the case of Medeus healing 10 HP, that's a net 2 damage. My first run of FE1 was not a marth solo, but I was going at him with gradivus before switching off for Marth to do some damage. Since trading over the gradivus and the starsphere takes two turns, you gotta keep piling on that damage.

This would be blasphemy if we were talking about the DS game, but I'm convinced the right call in FE1 is to get the Falchion. Starsphere is nice, especially since you can't hammerne things like the Gradivus, but the Falchion really makes the fight with Medeus easier, and Marth is an S tier unit worthy of that sort of favoritism.

I think you're forgetting Marth will have to take some turns to heal too. And Mercurous only has a limited number of uses, so Medeus might be able to outlast the slugfest.

Also I'm not sure at this point if Falchion is even an option. Is warp necessary to get the light and star Spheres? I've already lost Lena and the warp she comes with (didn't bother recruiting her at all so Nabarl cut her down). Tiki is also out of the question as I didn't bother recruiting Bantu, but just for consideration, is she a viable choice for Medeus?

I'm finding a Marth solo to be more challenging than I expected. While his stats are strong enough to take on hoards of enemies with few issues, he just doesn't have enough move to reach chests and villages before thieves destroy them. I've just done Minerva's chapter now. Really hoping I can get the boots in the Archanea chapter as that would make a big difference. Also need some Draco shields, as his lv20 defence is only 10 for me. Which is fine for now, but I know it will need to be much higher than that for end game.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

39 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I think you're forgetting Marth will have to take some turns to heal too. And Mercurous only has a limited number of uses, so Medeus might be able to outlast the slugfest.

Medeus is packing 30 attack power, if Marth's stats are all capped, then he's tanking 5 hits before the one that kills him. And Medeus hit rate is ~50 against Marth equipped with Mercurius. Let's say Medeus is hitting 50% of the time, and his average healing per turn is 6. So it's marth's six damage and 52 hp versus Medeus' 10 damage and 45 HP. Odds are pretty good that Medeus wins unless Marth is getting repeated crits. There's also no elixer to fully heal marth, and I'm guessing we've banned staff users.

Yeah, when I attempted the marth solo last year, I just presumed I'd be getting the Falchion, which is 15 damage per hit, not really remembering that you need somebody who's not marth to see combat in order to obtain it. Bummer. Some rule has got to be broken. Either you're using Gato in the final chapter and hoping he isn't mobbed and killed by reinforcements that appear near the start, you're nabbing the falchion, or you're going to be stuck trying over and over to see if Marth wins the fight after however many rounds of combat. 

Quote

Also need some Draco shields, as his lv20 defence is only 10 for me. Which is fine for now, but I know it will need to be much higher than that for end game.

In my experience, defense was the monkey's paw stat. FE1 enemies are smart enough not to attack you if they can't do damage, but they will still physically block you off from moving forward. So I found chapters to run smoother when they could deal damage to marth. My fear at the time was that one of the chapters with infinite reinforcements would just softlock the run as Marth gets stuck in a loop of getting one kill on player phase as another enemy moves into that spot.

Edited December 6, 2020 by Glennstavos

[Jotari]

On 12/5/2020 at 9:54 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

Running the simple numbers, from what SF has listed.:

Medeus: 12 Def + 23 from Earthstone = 35 total. Terrain gives no Def.

Str cap is 20 of course. We thus need a weapon of at least 16 Mt then. The weapons which qualify are:

• Mercurius- 18 Mt. But as it is exclusive to Marth, why not use Falchion instead?
• Devil Sword- 17 Mt. The only option for Heroes to use.
• Gradivus- 20 Mt. Has 17 uses, so you'll need 9 of them to kill Medeus (do thrones not have HP regeneration in FE1?, SF doesn't mention it).
• Devil Axe- 20 Mt. But, any of your four axe users are unlikely to 20 Str, and this has only 9 uses.
• Firestone- 16 Mt. The Divinestone is not effective on Medeus and has but 12 Mt.

I don't know if magic used at range 1 works, because all SF says is that Medeus negates ranged attacks, which I assume includes Parthia (17 Mt). But given Res doesn't exist and how easy it'd be to kill Meddy with Gotoh, I'll assume magic won't work at any range. Not sure if the Pachyderm (18 Mt) ballistae works at range 1 either.

So, those five weapons are your only options not Falchion that I'm sure would work. None truly compare to the effective 30 Mt of Falchion.

-Didn't notice the part of what you said about a Marth solo. Mercurius will do the job then.

 

On 12/6/2020 at 1:54 AM, Glennstavos said:

Wrymslayers do no damage, even with their MT tripled against Medeus. With the Mercurius, you're looking at 6 damage each phase, assuming no crit. I don't know off the top of my head how much he's healing each turn (fort healing in FE1 always seemed inconsistent to me) but I can tell It'll be a slug fest. A stat capped Marth should manage against him and the chapter's many reinforcements. If you're really worried, drop a save state back on chapter 22 in case the game really isn't beatable without Falchion. I'd hate to have to go against your marth solo's rules when it turns out you didn't need to in the first place. Then again, if the idea of playing around with Falchion sounds fun to you and you don't want to have to potentially replay chapters 23 and 24, make an exception for blasting Gharnef with Starlight. 

 

On 12/6/2020 at 4:12 AM, Hobusu said:

According to the digital manual Nintendo put out with the Switch release, Castles, Thrones and Fortresses all heal 3-10 HP per turn. In theory you could get lucky and have Medeus only heal 3 HP per turn, but the odds of that happening multiple turns in a row seem pretty low.

SO update for evryone, I finished by Marth solo run today with a little help from Wendell using Starlight. I was going to test to see if other weapons could deal damage to Medeus, but I ended up critting him and killing him instantly with Falchion. Might go back later using turn rewind to test things out though I don't have many Mercurius uses left after Gharnef's chapter. One hiccup was the Mage Dragon infront of Medeus. I was really surprised to see Marth was only dealing 3 damage per hit to him. And with the curates using Fortify every few turns it was taking really long time to kill him. Eventually how to leave the room and snipe one of the clerics with a Levin Sword (couldn't get the second one as they kept moving inwards to an inacessible point whenever I approached, not sure why. Almost seemed like the AI was being smart and learned from me killing the first one). But then I was dealing 15 damage to Medeus. So I guess the Falchion doesn't deal effective damage to dragons in the first game??? Either that or that one mage dragon has some kind of special suped up dragon stone. It has the same displayed defense as Medeus. If it's because Falchion doesn't deal effective damage then it would have been better to use a wyrmslayer. But if Falchion does deal effective damage I have a hard time imagine you'd have enough uses on Mercurius and the Devil sword to kill both it and Medeus before you run out of uses.

 

But more importantly I just wanted to post somewhere showing my delight that Kaga is still properly credited in the game's ending. I never expected him not to be to be honest as it'd possibly be illegal to not credit him, but it still cheered me up to see his name in a Nintendo product released this year.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

So I guess the Falchion doesn't deal effective damage to dragons in the first game??? Either that or that one mage dragon has some kind of special suped up dragon stone. It has the same displayed defense as Medeus. If it's because Falchion doesn't deal effective damage then it would have been better to use a wyrmslayer.

Looking here on SF, it says Falchion is effective on Medeus, but doesn't say anything about other Manaketes. A Wyrmslayer is, and that'd be 18 Mt compared to the 10 of Falchion.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Looking here on SF, it says Falchion is effective on Medeus, but doesn't say anything about other Manaketes. A Wyrmslayer is, and that'd be 18 Mt compared to the 10 of Falchion.

Yeah, that's what I suspected. It wouldn't make any sense for the last mage dragon in the game to inexplicably be more bulky than the final boss. I sho have carried a Wyrmslayer too then.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I just assumed the Falchion was a wyrmslayer with more MT. What a fickle game.

Congrats on the solo clear. I've learned so much more about how this particular game resists this challenge. I still stand by FE1 as the strongest lord in the series. Don't @ me with your Sigurds. That is a grown man playing a children's game and should not count.

[Jotari]

9 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I just assumed the Falchion was a wyrmslayer with more MT. What a fickle game.

Congrats on the solo clear. I've learned so much more about how this particular game resists this challenge. I still stand by FE1 as the strongest lord in the series. Don't @ me with your Sigurds. That is a grown man playing a children's game and should not count.

I see your NES Marth and raise you NES Alm.

 

So I've played around now trying to see if it's possible to use Mercurius to finish the job. Before I was thinking Medeus could out last Marth as Mercurius has limited uses, but if we're keeping the StarSphere then that's a non issue since it has infinite uses. However I still don't think it's possible (or well probably since theoretically Marth could proc a crit on every single attack) and that's namely down to the infinite reinforcements. I can take away about half of Medeus's HP using three uses of the Geo Sphere, but then Marth's down to dealing 6 damage to Medeus per combat and he heals 7 per turn. Since Medeus is also dealing 10 damage to Marth (he was dealing 11 to me since my Marth only had 19 defense) and the only way of healing is using Vulnerys, that means per player phase enemy phase, Marth is dealing 5 damage to Medeus and Medeus is dealing 10 damage to Marth. So Medeus already has the edge. But then factor in the mage dragon and the hero who keep respwaning infinitely and they will very definitely chip away at Marth's HP and kill him pretty quickly combined with Medeus. I thought maybe I could deal more damage with the set 7 damage of Levin Sword, but Medeus does indeed negate the Levin Sword even at close range.

Nevertheless I might actually attempt it as mad as it sounds. The turn rewind feature of the Switch Version does not store rng  values, so it is possible to abuse that feature to ensure Marth gets enough necessary crits to get the win...maybe. I'll have to see how quickly they can chip away at Marth's HP. I only had 5 uses left of Mercurius so I couldn't do more extensive testing. But I do have a bookmark from the Altea Chapter so I will go back to that point in the game and replay it again, this time without getting Starlight.

[Emperor Hardin]

On 12/5/2020 at 1:32 AM, Jotari said:

So is the Falchion mandatory in the first game? Or can I kill Medeus with a wyrmslayer/Gradivus/Tiki? I'm trying to do a Marth solo and I'm wondering if Flachion is necessary (which would require it to be a Marth+some mage solo thanks the Starlight).

Any weapon at melee range can kill Medeus, Parthia, Pachyderm and Tomes are out. Gradivus works but make sure the unit wielding it is attacking Medeus at melee.

[Jotari]

Well I managed to kill Medeus with Mercurius and the Light Sphere and Geo Sphere (deals 10 damage to him where's Marth can only deal 6 by attacking). But it's not realisitcally possible as a Marth solo. I had to have Wendell chucking Physics at him and rigging a crit. Between the hero, mage dragon and Medeus, Marth is suffering 18 damage per turn and he can only heal 10 damage on player phase (which means he's dealing -1 damage to Medeus overall without any crits happening). You could plug up those stairs if that doesn't violate your solo rules though. But a pure solo would require a lot of misses on Medeus and the Mage's dragon's part (hero seems to have 100% hit) and a few crits on Marth's part. I didn't have max skill though so Mercurius crits might be easier than they were for me. Hard to tell when there's no visible crit rate.