Advice for Chapter 12 CF? I think I'm soft-locked here.

[Samz707]

I spent most of my time in the Monastery doing battles...but I didn't actually bother grinding my Professor rank so I only got 1 battle a day (Simply because I really, really wasn't up for constantly running around the Monastery and I might have believed too much people who said you could beat the game not worrying about it.).

It seems that has bitten me in the ass, hard and I'm honestly worried I'm soft-locked here since my units are really not holding up against the enemy, I can barely hold my own and have to use almost everyone just to get past the inital ambush and I'm just flat-out done for once the reinforcements show. (Because dumping 4 minibosses on the player is fair and Byleth's Creator Sword has only 4 out of 20 uses left and repairing it isn't an option.)

No one is the recommended level of 25.

In order:

Byleth: 24

Edelgard:21

Hubert:18

and in general all of my other units are around the 22-24 range.

My non-CF recruits are Felix, Sylvain, Marianne as well as Shamir/Alois and Manuela and Hannerman.

No one does decent damage, at best they're killing enemies in 3-4 hits, with Steel weapons (And Ferdinand/Petra need even more and only can generally survive 1-2 hits, they have practically completely fallen off by this point, Petra is level 21 with only 8 in Defense for instance, honestly everyone seems to have gotten screwed Defense-wise, my only high defense is Edelgard at 20 and Byleth at 19, Ferdinand is 15 and Caspar is at 10.), Petra for instance will only manage 5-6 points of damage generally on an enemy with a Steel Sword.

I can just barely scrape by the initial foes and I have absolutely no idea how the game expects me to deal with the massive horde of enemies that come later. 

 

[LoneStar]

I'm guessing this is on Hard? And a previous save file is out of the question. What classes are your units in?

The only thing I can say is maybe sell some stuff, get Silvers and try to use your strongest characters only. The others can probably provide support through White Magic and Gambits. There's Impregnable Wall, for example, that's on one of those Black Eagle battalions.

[Samz707]

28 minutes ago, LoneStar said:

I'm guessing this is on Hard? And a previous save file is out of the question. What classes are your units in?

The only thing I can say is maybe sell some stuff, get Silvers and try to use your strongest characters only. The others can probably provide support through White Magic and Gambits. There's Impregnable Wall, for example, that's on one of those Black Eagle battalions.

I have previous saves...but I'd really not go back and even then I think I Only have 2-3 months at most.

I did remember that the game doesn't actually default to my strongest units. (I have Felix who wasn't auto-deployed at all but is far, far stronger than Petra and Leonie is far better than Ferdinand and Shamir is far better than Hannerman) so I'm going to try with those.

[Barren]

While it may be a bit late to point out considering how far you’re into the game already, but there are a couple of tricks to pull to bump up your squad’s stats by certifying them into certain classes.

For example, if you certify someone as a armored knight, their base defense goes up to 12 at level 10. They will also gain an additional defense bonus as a class stat modifier if they stay in the armored knight class which would be increased to 16 . Plus later on if you certify someone into a fortress knight at level 20, they get their base defense increased to 17. If they stay in the class at level 20, their defense will jump up to 27.

Same with Warrior which grants someone 19 strength at level 20. Wyvern Lord at level 30 by bumps up a unit’s speed to 20 then if they stay in the Wyvern Lord class their base speed jumps up to 24.

You can pull this off with any character.

 

As for Felix, Leonie and Shamir, yes they are great units and if possible definitely deploy them.

Edited December 24, 2021 by Barren
More info

[Original Johan Liebert]

If you're having so much trouble you might be/probably are on hard or maddening, but there's a menu option to retreat which lets you keep exp from the battle you retreat from on normal. Sorry if that's no help.

(I don't think I've ever used it so I'm not clear on the details, but I think you access it from the battle menu)

Edited December 24, 2021 by Original Johan Liebert

[Samz707]

22 minutes ago, Barren said:

While it may be a bit late to point out considering how far you’re into the game already, but there are a couple of tricks to pull to bump up your squad’s stats by certifying them into certain classes.

For example, if you certify someone as a armored knight, their base defense goes up to 12 at level 10. They will also gain an additional defense bonus as a class stat modifier if they stay in the armored knight class which would be increased to 16 . Plus later on if you certify someone into a fortress knight at level 20, they get their base defense increased to 17. If they stay in the class at level 20, their defense will jump up to 27.

Same with Warrior which grants someone 19 strength at level 20. Wyvern Lord at level 30 by bumps up a unit’s speed to 20 then if they stay in the Wyvern Lord class their base speed jumps up to 24.

You can pull this off with any character.

 

As for Felix, Leonie and Shamir, yes they are great units and if possible definitely deploy them.

Yeah they were far better than the default Black Eagles the game selected by default. (Maybe it's because I left Petra as Thief but despite late-joining, Felix was far far better and Ferdinand just sorta never really took off despite my efforts.)

It also helped Death Knight actually managed to take out more than just one dude and Seteth this time around, so he took out several fliers which made things much easier as well so I managed to beat the chapter.

 

Edited December 24, 2021 by Samz707

[SnowFire]

3 hours ago, Samz707 said:

I can just barely scrape by the initial foes and I have absolutely no idea how the game expects me to deal with the massive horde of enemies that come later. 

Which difficulty level is this?  Normal, Hard, or Maddening?

The "reinforcements" that appear in the second half of the map are unavoidable (I think they didn't spawn early because they slowed down the game or something), but the reinforcements that spawn near the start are avoidable - you have to take out the three commanders within the first 10 turns.  This is highly recommended since those turn 10 reinforcements are incredibly deadly, by far the worst thing that can happen on the map.

If you really are soft-locked, I don't think it's because you didn't grind enough aux battles, for what it's worth (since you brought that up).  Grinding aux battles is unusually ineffective in 3H without the DLC - XP gain is highly tied to enemy level and falls off fast if you're overlevel, with the exception of healers, so aux battles are more useful for cleaning up class masteries on classes you don't really want to deploy in a "normal" battle.  I suspect the fault was more in some of the default builds being "traps" - stuff like Swordmaster on Felix isn't actually that good, for example.

The Eagles aren't that tanky in general, with the exception of Edelgard (or Alois?), so I wouldn't be so sure you were stat-screwed.  Petra & Ferdinand can be dodge-tanks though, which will end up being better than most concrete tanks anyway.  As already noted, if Petra has 8 Defense, she'll hit something much higher when she qualifies for an Advanced class - do you have a save earlier in the month to actually take the exam?  Most Advanced classes have 12 base defense to catch her up.

Nobody doing damage is a bigger concern - that sounds a little weird, Steel weapons aren't that great in 3H but they should definitely manage 2HKOs unless you're fighting Fortress Knights and the like.  Not sure what happened there.  It's a bit late now, but rather than aux battle grinding, the more important thing Professor Rank locks is some forges - if your Prof rank is high enough, you can definitely have Silver and maybe even Brave weapons for this battle from the forge.  Nothing to be done about it now, I suppose.

Edited December 24, 2021 by SnowFire

[Dark Holy Elf]

Silver weapons are storebought, so you can grab those for anyone who has a B rank. While you're shopping, make sure you pick up the Impregnable Wall battalion if you haven't yet; it can be a big help.

You should really have most people in Advanced classes by now (which should make 8 defence impossible, as they all have a base of at least 12, except the DLC classes). That said IIRC you can't actually take exams in CF Chapter 12, so you'd have to retreat to an older save. And generally I'd suggest that rather than retreat to an earlier save, that you just turn down the difficulty and think about how to build units better the next time you play the game (assuming you plan to play another route).

[LoneRecon400]

Here's an example of beating this chapter on Maddening using a scuffed team.

Pretty much any map can be beaten with a combination of turtling and using the mechanics to their fullest. I'd recommend trying to play maps out differently by defeating annoying enemies before they become a problem as with this map.

[lenticular]

Honestly, my advice would be to drop down a difficulty notch. There's a lot of daft posturing within fandom along the lines of how everyone should play on Maddening/Classic and that anything below that is a failure and not a True Fan™ and it's all nonsense. Play on whatever difficulty is most fun for you. I'll particularly point out that several of the later chapters in Crimson Flower are comparable in difficulty to chapter 12, so if you're having trouble there then you're likely to continue having trouble later on.

Also, if you're used to FE games with infinite grinding (eg Sacred Stones, Awakening, Birthright, Shadows of Valentia) then you can get that from Three Houses on Normal difficulty. Normal difficulty gives you the option of auxiliary battles that don't cost any battle points, letting you do as many as you want. As @SnowFire points out, this will only take you so far because of the way that xp scaling works in Three Houses, but it's an option if you want it. Normal difficulty also gives the option to retreat from battle at any point while retaining any xp you've earned in that battle. It's not exactly fun to use this over and over, but it's an option to pick any potential softlock and might be preferable to reverting to an old save and replaying a bunch.

[Barren]

9 hours ago, Samz707 said:

Yeah they were far better than the default Black Eagles the game selected by default. (Maybe it's because I left Petra as Thief but despite late-joining, Felix was far far better and Ferdinand just sorta never really took off despite my efforts.)

It also helped Death Knight actually managed to take out more than just one dude and Seteth this time around, so he took out several fliers which made things much easier as well so I managed to beat the chapter.

 

As already pointed out, the Black Eagles doesn’t have the best start in terms of defense since your only tank by default is Edelgard. Later on Ferdinand can be one if you choose the armor route, but as a Fortress Knight he’ll have a miserable time getting around maps but that role can be alright in certain situations. Of course if you want the most out of Ferdie and even Petra for that matter, they should end up being fliers. In part thanks to Ferdie’s ability confidence which combos beautifully with avoid +10 and alert stance+.

Their advantage over the other two is that they are more magic oriented so Hubert, Linhardt and Dorothea already have access to their offensive magic (Hubert with Miasma, Dorothea with Thunder and Linhardt with Wind once you tutor him for a bit in chapter 2). Plus Hubert may along the way during the battle learn Mire which can be nice for softening up enemies for your physical attackers to pick up and easy kill with a CA i.e Tempest Lance or Wrath Strike. Dorothea can be a pseudo healer with Songstress so have let’s say Byleth, Ferdinand, and Petra protect her while enemies approach, eat a hit and then get some HP back. It allows you too make better use of vulneraries this early in the game.