How to unlock these support conversations in Blazing Sword

[Yatagarasu]

This game has been out for years and my question might come late...anyway😅
I have always wondered how to unlock some of the late game support conversations, especially Vaida-Merlinus and all of the Renault's support conversation.

Renault joins at chapter 30/32 so even if you spam the end phase button to unlock the next support level there won't be enough chapters left to get to the A rank.
I think it's the same with Karla since she comes 1 chapter earlier but the preparation map is only 5 turns (minus 1 turn for her to appear)
As for Merlinus, it would be possible for him to reach A rank with Vaida if he didn't leave the group before the final chapter!

So, out of curiosity, how do you unlock these supports without cheating?
 

 

 

[Acacia Sgt]

If I recall, both parts of the final chapter count separate for supports, so you can still get Renault to A rank that way. If not, Hector Mode has one additional Gaiden/Paralogue chapter.

As for Vaida-Merlinus, it should be doable. Cog of Destiny, ValorousRoland/TheBerserker, and Victory or Death you can take your time.

[Shaky Jones]

You don't. The game wants you to cheat. Happy support grinding.

This is, assuming by cheating, you mean turn abusing to get supports in one chapter each. All supports are possible without literal hacking and such, but it might as well be locked to cheats from how ridiculous the lategame demands for it are. You'd think that Renault's supports would be fast, but he has no base support points with anyone, and the point gain rate is very slow. You physically cannot recruit Renault and gain a support with anyone on that same chapter if you wish to unlock the final gaiden chapter with its 20 turn limit req. In other words, you either choose his join time, or the last kishuna map for his C support with anyone, in which you must spam end turn for several minutes. This leaves you with only endgame, but its technically a 2 part map. The room with the final boss can be abused for supports separately from the first half with Nergology. Since the final boss does not move until aggravated and does not summon reinforcements, you can easily stand in place for a long time to finish off an A support with Renault, but now you've probably just ruined the vibe of endgame by staring at the possible destruction of Elibe while your units play uno with each other. You'd also have to turn abuse Nerdgal's portion, which has only a few reinforcements, so it makes you wait a LOT. If you're really interested in his lore, you're probably better off looking it up, unless you're a completionist. Karla is mostly the same as Renault. She joins one chapter earlier, but with the 5 turn limit, she's basically under the same boat as Renault, with Bartre being the only exception with their fast support gain, making it barely possible to reach C in Victory or Death while still unlocking the gaiden chapter.

Since Merlinus can't be brought to the 2 part endgame and the preparations chapter is too short, you essentially have only 3 chapters you can grind 3 supports with Vaida on before its impossible. Cog of Destiny, Sands of Time, and Victory or Death or The Value of Life. Victory or Death has the gaiden limit and since Vaida Merlinus support gains are extremely slow, 20 turns is once again not enough. The chapter after Cog of Destiny is your lord's personal chapter, another one that Merlinus cannot be brought in, so your options are limited to just enough chapters to gain the A rank you need if you're willing to turn abuse for 80 turns each (according to the SF fe7 support log at least). 

Tl;dr: Endgame is classified is 2 different parts, so Renault and Karla can gain B and A there as long as you gain C in either Victory or Death, or the Value of Life. Vaida and Renault have CoD, SoT, and VoD to gain supports. Spam wait. Be mad at the game. Read words on screen. Chuckle. Hate yourself for wasting all that time. Congratulations.

[Acacia Sgt]

Oh, right, Merlinus can't be used in those chapters.

I guess if the points can go over the limit, you could get all of them in CoD, and just trigger the conversations later. Or at least for B, and grind again to A during the last Kishuna chapter in Hector Mode or VoD for Eliwood Mode.

8 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Tl;dr: Endgame is classified is 2 different parts, so Renault and Karla can gain B and A there as long as you gain C in either Victory or Death, or the Value of Life. Vaida and Renault have CoD, SoT, and VoD to gain supports. Spam wait. Be mad at the game. Read words on screen. Chuckle. Hate yourself for wasting all that time. Congratulations.

Sands of Time is a Defend chapter (11 turns), so you can't grind there.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Acacia Sgt

[Shaky Jones]

4 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Sands of Time is a Defend chapter (11 turns), so you can't grind there.

Shoot. Forgot about that. Huh. I can only imagine that supports points can carry over past the 80 point req for each support convo then. Coulda sword that wasn't the case, but you wouldn't be able to gain points via preparations or VoD (assuming you go for Gaiden). Thats only 25 turns, which i dont believe is enough, and I'm pretty sure Merlinus can't be brought to the lord promo chapter or endgame. Even the added SoT turns isn't enough. I think I mistook the support point lock with the fact that the game doesn't let you initiate 2 supports with the same people in a row on one chapter. Still a lot of waiting, but less strict on deployment.

[Acacia Sgt]

2 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Shoot. Forgot about that. Huh. I can only imagine that supports points can carry over past the 80 point req for each support convo then. Coulda sword that wasn't the case, but you wouldn't be able to gain points via preparations or VoD (assuming you go for Gaiden). Thats only 25 turns, which i dont believe is enough, and I'm pretty sure Merlinus can't be brought to the lord promo chapter or endgame. Even the added SoT turns isn't enough. I think I mistook the support point lock with the fact that the game doesn't let you initiate 2 supports with the same people in a row on one chapter. Still a lot of waiting, but less strict on deployment.

I think so. In the GBA games, only Binding Blade has a cap in how many support points you could gain per chapter, with the trade-off being you could trigger more than one support rank per pair. So yeah, it can be possible to gain more than 80 points in CoD, so you can get the B rank in either SoT or BP, and A rank in VoD or TVoL.

[Jotari]

9 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

but now you've probably just ruined the vibe of endgame by staring at the possible destruction of Elibe while your units play uno with each other.

Athos was full of shit. No way that one dragon could destroy all of Elibe. First buff dude with a wyrm slayer and a team of mages would have taken it down once it hits the mainland.

[Capt. Fargus]

20 hours ago, Jotari said:

Athos was full of shit. No way that one dragon could destroy all of Elibe. First buff dude with a wyrm slayer and a team of mages would have taken it down once it hits the mainland.

Could be he said that with the assumption there’d be more dragons where the one came from...

[ARMADS!!!]

Well, while still obviously ridiculous, still is possible to get these supports during the game, and you can even do this without grinding points on part 2 with the Dragon in front of you. Do it like this:

 

 For Vaida and Merlinus:

•  Cog of Destiny: support C + you wait more 60 turns to get the points to trigger the next convo (yes, it's possible to do this, I checked myself just now before answering you to be sure that I'm not giving you incorrect information).
• since you can't bring Merlinus on Valorous Roland/The Berserker, you then wait for the next chapter, Sands of Time and trigger their B support (that you already got the points for in Cog of Destiny). You can try to squeeze some extra support points in this chapter if you want to but you don't have to.
•  Battle preparations: You can try to squeeze some extra 5 points of support here but you don't have to do it too.
• Victory or Death: If you're on Eliwood's mode you can freely get their A support here, but if you're on Hector's story and wants to go to the next gaiden chapter then you'll have to finish the chapter in 20 turns, you can still try to squeeze some support points here but again it's not necessary.
• Value of Life: Unfortunately you'll have to get their A support here, I haven't played this chapter yet so I'm not sure if it's a good chapter to grind supports or not, but if you managed to squeeze support points on the past 3 chapters then you can have gotten a maximum of 36 up until the beggining of this chapter, meaning that there's 44 points left (which is still a lot but yeah...).
• Light Part 1: If you haven't gotten their A support yet, then you can do it in this chapter (the best moment to grind supports is after you kill every morph with the exception of the two on Nergal's room that are close to him, if you don't get into these two's or Nergal's range no one's gonna attack you anymore so grind every support you want now! AND don't forget to, after triggering the B convo for whiever pairing only had the C until now, get the support points to be able to trigger the A support on Part 2 without having to wait all those turns when you get there! That's also te best moment to get the special conversations that don't require extra support points between Hector and Eliwood, Hector and Oswin, Lyn and Eliwood and Hector and Lyn...If you're playing on Hector's mode) If you get the support points during this time frame, you'll at least be able to beat Nergal and then the Dragon on part 2 without any interruptions (with the exception of, on part 2, Pent and Louise's special conversation + any support convo that you just got the points for in Part 1, but at least you won't have to wait for several turns). In fact I even think that this time frame was purpousefully made like this so you can get supports (It could have been better? Of course! But still is a way, probably the only way, to get throught the supports without being interrupted between the battle with Nergal and the battle with the Dragon)

 

 For Karla: 

• Battle preparations: While you'll have, yes only 4 turns with Karla, her supports are at least all faster than Vaida and Merlinus', specially her supports with Bartre, if she stands next to him for 4 turns she'll already get 16 points (and they start with 5, making it 21), for her supports with Karel she can get 8 points (and they start with 25, making it 32), for everyone else (Florina and Vaida) she'll just get 8 points.
•  Victory or death: If you're on Eliwood's mode or don't care about the gaiden chapter then you finish getting the C support here, otherwise you'll have 20 turns which is enough to get the C support with Bartre (on the last turn of this chapter if they're next to each other all the time, try to let Nils close enough to them in case you end up not being able to leave the pairing next to each other for a turn so Ninian can refresh them to always be next to each other), with Karel you'll be 4 points short of reaching the C support(if they're next to each other all the time), while with the rest she'll just have 48 points at most.
• Value of life: You can easily get her C support with Karel here (then get the points for the B support, still in this chapter, so you can trigger it right away on the next chapter, which again, I just tested and is possible), or get her B support with Bartre in 15 turns (and if you weren't able to get their C support on Vitctory or Death, then get it now, and also get the points for the B support to be triggered on the next chapter), or get her C support in 16 turns with the rest (and again, get the points now to trigger the B support on the next chapter).
•  Light part 1: Same as Merlinus and Vaida, you wait for that time frame that I mentioned earlier (that is the second and third things written in bold text on this post) and trigger Karla's B support (that you got the points for on the past chapter) with anyone, or A support with Bartre, and then (if it wasn't the B support, obviously) you get the support points for the A support, still on the time frame between defeating every morph (but the two morphs next to Nergal) and entering Nergal's range. (alternatively, if you don't want to get the points for the B support on Value of Life after triggering the C support, you can get them in this chapter, again on that godly timeframe and then, after triggering the B support but still before battling Nergal, you get the points for the A support).
•  Light part 2: Now you just watch the supports that are left, without having any interruption between Nergal's battle and the Dragon's battle.

 

 For Renault:

 It's the same as for Karla except that he takes more turns for most of his supports + can't squeeze 4 extra turns of support grinding on Battle Peparations (so it isn't possible for him to get any C support in Victory or Death even if you managed to somehow recruit him in turn 1), anyway, it follows the same line:

•  Victory or Death: Try to squeeze some support points here if you want to. The last turn to recruit Renault is turn 11 so you can get at least 9 turns worth of support points if you have him always be adjacent to someone (again, use Nils to guarantee that renault always ends his turn next to his chosem support partner), but you don't even have to grind here it's just if you wanna make things faster.
•  Value of Life: C support + get the points to trigger the B support on the next chapter.
•  Light Part 1: Trigger support B right away + get the points for the A support (all on that time frame I mentioned earlier, right after defeating every Morph but the two next to Nergal and Nergal and before entering Nergal's range, or rather before approaching Nergal's room)
• Light Par 2: Just watch every support remaining, without having to spent a shitload of time getting support points now, without having any interruption between Nergal's battle and the Dragon's battle.

 

 If you do this, the only ocasion that will still require you to grind supports on Light Part 2 is any Renault support if you haven't played Value of Life (so yeah, it's impossible to not be interrupted on the final chapter if you wanna get Renault's A supports and playing Eliwood's mode). 

Edited February 4, 2023 by ARMADS!!!

[Paper Jam]

Merlinus/Nino needs the same prodecure as Merlinus/Vaida. Battle Before Dawn is a survive chapter, and Merlinus is unavailable in Night of Farewells, so the earliest Merlinus and Nino could get their C support is Cog of Destiny, and then they have to stay together enough turns after that to unlock B support on the first turn of Sands of Time... Well, you know the drill.

The final chapter is technically two chapters, so if you got any of Renault's C supports in Victory or Death or The Value of Life, you can get his B support in the first part of the final chapter (with Nergal as the boss), and then his A support in the second part (with the Dragon as the boss).

Edited February 11, 2023 by Paper Jam

[Paper Jam]

On 1/19/2023 at 7:15 PM, Capt. Fargus said:

Could be he said that with the assumption there’d be more dragons where the one came from...

That wasn't an assumption; it was a fact. More than one dragon did come out of that gate, and all three of them roasted Athos medium-well before Ninian put two of them on ice.

Edited February 11, 2023 by Paper Jam