How slow are the supports in Sacred Stones?

[Samz707]

Thinking of starting this soon, are the supports as slow as FE7 and 6 or do they generally require less turns? (and are there any times where I'm penalized for waiting for supports?)

[Benice]

Sacred Stones supports are generally a decent bit faster to grow, but still hard to get without trying, with a few exceptions.

As for penalties for waiting... well, you won't miss any gaidens. A lot of maps have side objectives that incentivise not turtling, but suplort grinding can generally be done worry-free.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

The manner by which you accumulate support points is the same as previous games, but they toned down the amount of support chains that advance just one point per turn. In Sacred Stones there is only one conversation that progresses that slowly (Tethys x Rennac), compared to the ludicrous 23 of FE7 and 62 of FE6. Trust me, you will feel the difference. I actually had no idea that FE6 even had supports by the end of my first casual playthrough 10 years ago, because they're so slow.

Sacred Stones is also the only FE game I can think of where you can finish the entire support library in a single playthrough. It's an open map game with multiple save slots and no route split-exclusive. So what you would do is initiate the support conversation in say the first floor of the Tower, grind up the next stage of the conversation and finish the map. Continue until you reach A, all the while saving that game to a second save slot in order to "record" that conversation to your support library. Return to your first save slot and repeat for the next pairing. As long as you avoid initiating any A rank conversations, you can do this at the end of any playthrough in order to earn that sweet sweet 100%. That's a breath of fresh air compared to attempting to finish the support library of FE7 over 10 or so careful playthroughs, but still it's a process that will take you many hours of mindless grinding.

 

Edited September 15, 2021 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Samz707]

4 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

The manner by which you accumulate support points is the same as previous games, but they toned down the amount of support chains that advance just one point per turn. In Sacred Stones there is only one conversation that progresses that slowly (Tethys x Rennac), compared to the ludicrous 23 of FE7 and 62 of FE6. Trust me, you will feel the difference. I actually had no idea that FE6 even had supports by the end of my first casual playthrough 10 years ago, because they're so slow.

Sacred Stones is also the only FE game I can think of where you can finish the entire support library in a single playthrough. It's an open map game with multiple save slots and no route split-exclusive. So what you would do is initiate the support conversation in say the first floor of the Tower, grind up the next stage of the conversation and finish the map. Continue until you reach A, all the while saving that game to a second save slot in order to "record" that conversation to your support library. Return to your first save slot and repeat for the next pairing. As long as you avoid initiating any A rank conversations, you can do this at the end of any playthrough in order to earn that sweet sweet 100%. That's a breath of fresh air compared to attempting to finish the support library of FE7 over 10 or so careful playthroughs, but still it's a process that will take you many hours of mindless grinding.

 

Yeah I don't plan to grind for them all, but I would like to at least get a decent chunk of them while actually playing.

So I'm glad that seems possible.