What are the best units to use in Radiant Dawn?

[Shadow Mir]

2 minutes ago, sinfonic18 said:

Well, I have 2 Paragons equipped to other units not Astrid and Geoffrey, so I think I took it off of Astrid... But Geoffrey's? I don't think I did. Which now looking back was... Very stupid of me. BUT I just found out recently that you could reuse the skills you removed from units!

Okay. I was checking because Geoffrey disappears again, except this time it's until the last chapter before the endgame.

Edited July 17, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[GonzoMD1993]

On 7/14/2021 at 2:33 AM, sinfonic18 said:

I'm going to have to use Nolan sadly because I have no other option. Good to know he can do something at least. Is there any possible way I could transfer Aqqar to the DB? That doesn't matter though, because he should be able to KO them with a regular crossbow. My nolan is terrible though and I'd rather be safe than sorry. 

There aren't that many chances to transfer items between armies, and at 3-11 it's no longer possible to transfer anything from the GMs to the DB. Once you get to part 4 all the convoys will merge, but you don't have a way of getting the Aqqar to the DB to use it at 3-12 and 3-13. When it comes to KOing fliers though your Nolan will be fine with the cheapest crossbow. Crossbows ignore the user's str stat and instead rely on their high might, which is why just about every flier in the game that isn't Tibarn or Naesala dies in 1 hit to even the weakest crossbow (since effective damage is triple might). 

As a side note, there IS a chance to transfer stuff from the GMs to the DB, but it can only be done at 3-6, it's super impractical and the GMs don't even have any items that you'd particular want to transfer to the DB. You can give items to Lethe in 3-4, and when she shows up in 3-6 as a boss (she's in the fog of war, but if you stall for long enough she will eventually make it to the starting area) you can have Sothe steal items from her. It's not worth the trouble, but it's cool to know it's possible.

Since you're approaching part 4 I'll drop some more tips here that you might find useful. The biggest thing to note of part 4 is that all of your convoys will merge and you'll get back all of your units. However, you will be immediately prompted to split your army in 3. Each group will have to tackle 2 maps, and after you're done with all 6 of them all of your units will join up again for you to do your final preparations for the endgame. The first group is commanded by Micaiah and goes to 4-P and 4-3, the second group is commanded by Ike and goes to 4-1 and 4-4, and finally the third group is commanded by Tibarn and goes to 4-2 and 4-5. These are some bits of information about how the split works and some suggestions about how to distribute your units:

-Despite the fact that you have to split your army in 3, the convoy is still mysteriously shared. Lets say you find an item in 4-P and drop it in the convoy; that item will be available for Ike's army to use in 4-1. That said, in all maps you only have access to the inventory (and the equipped skills) of the people of the corresponding army. For example, if you equip a Paragon to someone in 4-P then you won't be able to reassign it to someone else in 4-1; you'd have to wait until 4-3 before you can remove it.

-There are some units that are locked to a specific army. Each army gets 1 Laguz royal (Micaiah gets Naesala, Ike gets Nailah, and Tibarn... well, he's Tibarn) and a Heron (Leanne with Micaiah, Rafiel with Ike and Reyson with Tibarn). There's a couple more of locked units, including some new ones. To name a few, Sanaki and Skrimir are locked to Micaiah's army, Titania to Ike's and Elincia to Tibarn. Then there's a few that you might think would be locked to a specific army due to plot reasons but they actually aren't. For example, Janaff and Ulki go with Tibarn by default but you're free to reassign them.

-I think you can't go too wrong with the default distribution of units, and the powerful locked units like the royals mostly guarantee that you can't softlock yourself by making one of your armies too weak. That said, it's probably still a good idea to distribute your best combat units somewhat evenly and to send units that have a specific advantage in a specific map to the corresponding set of maps. For example:

>Micaiah's army will go to the desert map (4-3). This means that fliers are very useful here. You have a few by default (including Jill and Naesala, although Jill isn't locked to this army), but sending a few more can help a lot. Haar and the hawks are good options to send here. Haar in particular is a good pick because there's a lot of of 1-2 range in the desert, including some crossbows that the hawks won't like too much (although they're still really good at facing 1 range enemies and rescue dropping). I do personally think that sending Haar and Jill together is a bit overkill, but I can't deny that it's very efficient. 

>Ike's army will go to a fog of war map (4-1), so Janaff has an interesting niche utility here. His personal skill gives him bonus vision in fog of war maps, and this is the only map in the game where he gets to use it. It's not a massive amount more than some of your other units, but he does give 5 tiles (or 6 when unshifted) of vision vs the 2-4 of everyone else. I wouldn't say that you need the extra vision, by any means. But I think it might be nice to be able to see a little further ahead, specially if you're playing blind. I think there's a couple of crossbows here though, so that's a downside of this idea (although it IS possible to have Janaff stand in a safe corner where he can provide vision without being exposed to combat). Also, IIRC the way that Torches work is that they add +5 tiles of vision (decaying 1 per turn) to the unit that used it, so if you give it to Janaff that's 11-10 tiles of vision.

>Ike also goes to the only map with chests, so this is the best map for Heather. You do have plenty of chest keys at this point (including some from the bargains shop of this map), but there's nothing else for her to do in any of the other armies so this is her best group.

>Generally speaking, Tibarn's army needs the least amount of fire power. 4-2 is one of the smaller part 4 maps, and 4-5 is the only Kill Boss map (the other part 4 maps before the endgame are all Rout). Having a couple of good units here does help to clear 4-2 before you get flooded with reinforcements from the starting area, but Tibarn can easily kill the 4-5 boss turn 2 or 3 without doing anything fancy and without much risk (although he does need a Nihil scroll to guarantee the boss doesn't proc his mastery skill, which doesn't OHKO Tibarn but it's still scary).

>On the other hand, 4-5 is the single best map in the entire game to grind units if that's something that you're interested in doing. If you've made it this far then it's 100% unnecessary to grind anyone though. Even if your team is somewhat weak, you only get to pick 10 units to take into the endgame (excluding some forced units like Ike and Micaiah) and you can pad half of those with royals if needed be (Tibarn, Naesala, Nailah and Caineghis. You also get Giffica, who despite not having Formshift, has stats equivalent to Caineghis' AND comes with an item that lets him stay permanently transformed anyways). That said, if there is a unit that you really, REALLY want to train just so that they can destroy the final 5 maps of the game, this would be the map to do it. You can very easily kill the boss and end the map in 2 turns, but if you don't, then reinforcements will spawn around the boss every turn infinitely.

>EDIT: I wasn't gonna go in too much detail about specific part 4 maps, but while I'm on the subject of Tibarn's army I think that it's worth mentioning something about Elincia. She's actually a pretty good combat unit in this game, and the Amiti is significantly buffed compared to PoR. If you send a limited amount of units to Tibarn's army she'll definitely see some action since it's a rout map and every unit with good combat you can get will make it easier. That said, she doesn't reliably ORKO at base so she probably needs a few BEXP level ups if you want her to really KO stuff. Speed is the most important thing she's looking to get. IIRC, she just barely misses out on the speed threshold to quad some of the enemies. She can still do plenty of work at base, but I think she's worth investing some BEXP into, specially in normal mode where it's pretty plentiful. But the most important thing to note about her is that if you plan on using her at all, you MUST remember to remove her Mercy skill. For whatever reason, even though she didn't have either Mercy or a Mercy scroll in part 2, she automatically gains it at the start of part 4 and the game doesn't tell you about it. The skill does exactly what it sounds like it does: she can't kill, period. She just leaves every enemy at 1 hp. If you actually want her to help you rout the map you have to remove it.

The TL;DR version on splitting your army at the start of part 4: you can leave most of your units on their default armies, but distributing your best (non-locked) combat units somewhat evenly across the 3 groups is probably a good idea. I'd definitely recommend to send at least 1 of Jill or Haar to Micaiah's army. If you're not too pressed for extra combat power in the other 2 armies sending both of them with Micaiah is a good plan. Combat-wise I think Janaff and Ulki might be better off in Tibarn's army (particularly if you don't send too many of your trained units here), but they offer more utility in the desert and an argument could be made for sending Janaff with Ike for extra vision range in 4-1. Tibarn's army needs the least amount of extra help so feel free to send your best units with the other armies. That said, relying solely on Tibarn to clear 4-2 might be difficult. He can safely kill everything in the map other than the 2 crossbows at the end (which thankfully don't move from their starting position), but there's a good few 1-2 range enemies that Tibarn would have to kill on player phase, and if you take too long a bunch of reinforcements will begin spawning from the starting area, so sending at least 1 good unit with 1-2 range here is probably worth it. One thing worth noting is that in part 4 killing the boss will NOT stop reinforcements from spawning (If I'm being honest, I don't remember if there are any rout maps in RD where killing the boss does stop them. I'm just mentioning this because I'm used to killing the boss stopping reinforcements in other FE games and every time I play RD I find it annoying that in these long rout maps there's no way to prevent reinforcements other than clearing the map fast).

Anyway, that's all I can think of for now. 

Edited July 18, 2021 by GonzoMD1993

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, GonzoMD1993 said:

>Micaiah's army will go to the desert map (4-3). This means that fliers are very useful here. You have a few by default, but sending a few more can help a lot. Haar and the hawks are good options to send here. Haar in particular is a good pick because there's a lot of of 1-2 range in the desert, including some crossbows that the hawks won't like too much (although they're still really good at facing 1 range enemies and rescue dropping). I do personally think that sending Haar and Jill together is a bit overkill, but I can't deny that it's very efficient. 

Speaking of, the first chance to get a Laguz Gem, which I mentioned earlier, is here; just make sure the boss (Numida, to be specific, as Lekain starts on the map, too, but he leaves eventually) is NOT the last enemy you kill, because it's on the space where he is. Also, Stefan is here, and a specific unit needs to stop in a specific square to find him. Again. There's also the fact that you get some help from an old friend who helped you in the past, but this time he's an NPC. There is also other stuff worth picking up, in particular the Dragonfoe scroll and the Baselard (the SS rank knife)... in short, better get a guide.

Edited July 17, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[GonzoMD1993]

14 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Speaking of, the first chance to get a Laguz Gem, which I mentioned earlier, is here; just make sure the boss (Numida, to be specific, as Lekain starts on the map, too, but he leaves eventually) is NOT the last enemy you kill, because it's on the space where he is. Also, Stefan is here, and a specific unit needs to stop in a specific square to find him. Again. There's also the fact that you get some help from an old friend who helped you in the past, but this time he's an NPC. There is also other stuff worth picking up, in particular the Dragonfoe scroll and the Baselard (the SS rank knife)... in short, better get a guide.

Yeah, it'd be better if OP looked at a map of the desert when he gets there. I understand not wanting to use guides on a 1st playthrough, but for the desert map looking at the treasure location beforehand is the only way to know what's available and where to get it. Dragonfoe is probably the most important thing to find. Unless he goes for a 1 turn strat on 4-E-3, dragonfoe makes that map a good deal easier.

@sinfonic18 Here's the desert map for reference: https://serenesforest.net/radiant-dawn/miscellaneous/hidden-treasure/maps/part-4/. Do keep in mind though that, for whatever reason, Rouges/Whispers have less than a 100% chance of finding treasure from the ground when at bad or worst biorythm, even though in every other game that I know of thieves (and their promotions) have a 100% chance of picking up treasure. So if Sothe fails to find an item you're not necessarily standing on the wrong tile. Biorythm is fun mechanic (kappa xd).

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 7/17/2021 at 2:16 AM, sinfonic18 said:

Well, I have 2 Paragons equipped to other units not Astrid and Geoffrey, so I think I took it off of Astrid... But Geoffrey's? I don't think I did. Which now looking back was... Very stupid of me. BUT I just found out recently that you could reuse the skills you removed from units!

This was my "rude awakening" when playing FE9 after FE10 - discovering that the skill I'd just taken off a unit could not be reassigned. 

Anyway, how's the playthrough going? I know this was a while back, but did you finish?

[sinfonic18]

On 10/31/2021 at 5:10 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

This was my "rude awakening" when playing FE9 after FE10 - discovering that the skill I'd just taken off a unit could not be reassigned. 

Anyway, how's the playthrough going? I know this was a while back, but did you finish?

Oh, wow. I haven't been on this site in like a month and didn't even see this. I wasn't ignoring you! I apologize I have been having some things going on in my life that have been taking a lot of my time away but anyway I have finished 4 playthroughs of Radiant Dawn since then and about 7 of POR (I wanted the transfers and every time I played I went to POR before).

Yeah... Fire Emblem pretty much takes up all my free time anymore XD 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

2 hours ago, sinfonic18 said:

Oh, wow. I haven't been on this site in like a month and didn't even see this. I wasn't ignoring you! I apologize I have been having some things going on in my life that have been taking a lot of my time away but anyway I have finished 4 playthroughs of Radiant Dawn since then and about 7 of POR (I wanted the transfers and every time I played I went to POR before).

Yeah... Fire Emblem pretty much takes up all my free time anymore XD 

Nah that is fine haha. I honestly forgot about this thread.

Anyway, 11 total playthroughs in under half a year? Munchin' manaketes! For me, three FE playthroughs make for a busy year. I have to assume you're quite enjoying the Tellius games, at least.

[sinfonic18]

On 11/18/2021 at 8:38 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Nah that is fine haha. I honestly forgot about this thread.

Anyway, 11 total playthroughs in under half a year? Munchin' manaketes! For me, three FE playthroughs make for a busy year. I have to assume you're quite enjoying the Tellius games, at least.

I didn't forget about it, I just had all the information I needed so I didn't think continuing the thread on forever was necessary. 

Haha yeah FE has consumed pretty much all my time off the past year. But in reality, it was actually 8 playthroughs of the Tellius series since the 3 other POR playthroughs were just to get stat bonuses in RD. So I've played both of them equally. Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, POR and Radiant Dawn are definitely my favorite Fire Emblems released in the west. (Three Houses is but it's post Awakening)