Walhart Conquers Lunatic+ (The Original Lunatic+ Playlog/Walkthrough)

[darkkfan]

Ok, so I've been talking about my Lunatic+ run for a while now, and I got to Chapter 5 before I decided to do a LP. This is mainly due to the lack of documentation and walkthroughs, so I'm afraid this will sound more like a walkthrough than an LP, but I've never done an LP before so I'll try to include things that highlight my personal experiences as well as strategies that worked for me in beating this mode. I am trying to log my play through rather than give a walkthrough even though I do use the second-person tense as if it is a walkthrough. That is why I use my Avatar's name "Syrena" instead of generally using "MU" or "Avatar". I realize this is because I am not very good at writing LP's but hopefully I will get better and until then it will still sound like a walkthrough (I may be good at playing Fire Emblem, but I clearly have much to learn about documenting and writing about my playthroughs). So please don't tell me that I could have done something better or that it is possible with a certain skill (although you are free to post your own strategies too). An example is when I use dying blaze in prologue 1. Please don't say that my strategy is poor because it relies on getting that particular weapon. There are plenty of ways to account for it and adapt my strategies and I am not going to list them all. I realize that my strategy is not the only one and often is not the most efficient (since I am not concerned with turns), but I still want to document my experiences with Lunatic+ while making them of some use as a walkthrough. I am going to try to backlog the first 4 chapters from memory, so the stats might be off a little but that'll get better once I get up to Chapter 5.

The Rules:
- no nosferatanking
- no dlc until post game
- no recruiting spot pass characters
- no renown items
- no spotpass items
- not fighting spot pass characters (no, not even for support grinding)
- no buying items from spot pass characters
- even summoning spot pass characters or using wireless functions in anyway is banned (just to make sure I've covered all that)
- no recruiting characters from Avatar logbook
- Paralogues are allowed at any point
- event tiles are allowed as long as you do not purposely reset just to manipulate them
- merchants are allowed as long as you do not purposely manipulate them (by leaving the 3ds on for long periods of time/checking back more than necessary etc.)
- barracks are allowed as long as you do not purposely manipulate them (by leaving the 3ds on for long periods of time/checking back more than necessary etc.)
- RNG abuse for level up purposes is banned
- staff abuse is allowed (at least for the earlier chapters), as long as you do not purposely take damage without any strategic benefit aside from staff abuse, because your limited amount of money limits your ability to staff abuse especially early in the game
- Likewise, I guess allow myself to abuse Olivia, since it's similar to staff abuse and fits with my "I don't care about turns" philosophy. It could get kinda ridiculous if I just kept second sealing her to dancer and grinding more, but I don't plan on doing that. I may restrict this later for that very reason, but for now I'll keep it since I don't plan on using Olivia or pairing her with Chrom.
- no skirmishes (they get impossible anyway but the first few chapter skirmishes are theoretically possible although I've never tried them)
- no turn limit (because although I respect LTCers, I've never really played for turns because I like the strategic challenge of beating the game by dealing with each enemy group rather than rescue/warp/jeigan skipping)

Syrena: Green Haired +SPD -LUCK Female MU (because I need that speed cap on Great Knight Walhart!Morgan)

Prologue:

You should be good on this chapter as long as neither barbarian group has both Counter and Luna+ w/Hawkeye. My strategy also required that neither left barbarian had Luna+ w/Hawkeye for Chrom baiting, but this wasn't necessary.

Mostly used Frederick with silver lance. Had him move north and OHKO the myrm. Had Chrom(Syrena) bait the first barbarian and then switched to Syrena and blasted him w/thunder to get her the kill.

Frederick one shotted the mage and 2nd myrm and weakened the 2nd barbarian for Chrom to kill. Had Frederick bait the second group of enemies with the silver lance still, killing both myrms, and pulled the left barbarian away with Chrom while having Frederick one shot the sage after retreating out of his range for a heal.

Got Syrena another level by using the strategy I used earlier where Chrom(Syrena) counters on EP and then Syrena blasts with thunder on PP and kills on EP. Had Frederick(Chrom) try to weaken the boss, but Chrom accidentally Dual Attacked and killed him so no EXP for Syrena :-(.

Got a Celica's Gale on this map (it's about time I finally got some of the luck headed my way) but won't be able to use it for a while.

Chapter 1:

The only thing you need to worry about is the Hammer barbarian having Hawkeye, although I'm sure there are some unpleasant combinations like the boss having Luna+ w/Hawkeye or counter (if that's even possible this early in the game, I don't recall seeing counter until CH.3) that I didn't have to deal with.

Moved Silver lance Frederick one square to the right of the fortress and had Chrom(Syrena) try to bait a barbarian. Had everyone else rush north into the trees.

On turn 2, paired Virion with Sully and retreated Chrom, having Frederick take Syrena's bronze sword. Had Sully(Virion) run north to Frederick and switch, trading Virion's elixir. Had Lissa toss Chrom a heal.

Next turn, finished off that pesky barbarian and moved everyone but Frederick out of range and had him charge into the fortress with his bronze sword. Apparently Virion chipped something and might have even killed a stray that wandered too far north because he now has 71 exp. Frederick should survive, but he had to use 1 elixir for me. I baited the Archer to the north with Syrena and killed with Chrom.

Frederick killed most of the remaining enemies with his sword and Chrom got the bosskill. After this map I had Chrom's C support with Syrena, Lissa, and Frederick (his C support with Frederick is hilarious as I well remember from my recent Lunatic play through), as well as Lissa and Frederick's C support.

Chapter 2:

This chapter is a pain. The westernmost barbarian shouldn't have Hawkeye or else 80% chance of death for Frederick. Also, it helps if he doesn't have pass since he can sneak through and kill someone if he does. Otherwise, we're looking for low amounts of Hawkeye and/or Luna, since Frederick is gonna have to take some hits.

Have Frederick(Chrom) attack the westernmost Barbarian with bronze sword. It's ok if he doesn't kill him, but if the barbarian hits Fred on the counter that is bad.
Pair Vaike with Lissa (unit furthest left), move as far as possible to the right, switch, and drop Lissa to the left. Pair Syrena with the cab that is furthest east (Stahl just for convenience), move the cab as far left as possible, switch and drop Stahl. Pair Virion with sully, move sully as far west as possible, drop Virion below.

On turn 2, move Frederick onto the forest and equip a lance (silver is fine) and have him use a vulnerary or elixir if he needs to. Pair Miriel with Vaike and trade Frederick the iron axe.

On turn 3, move Frederick onto the mountain and equip the iron axe, probably using an elixir. You can probably have Chrom/Syrena finish off one or two enemies on the player phase. Move your weakest unit that you plan on training (mine was Miriel), onto the event tile, and I got a Dying Blaze, which should come in handy later.

Had Frederick lure the rest of the enemies into attacking him on the fort, and lured a few towards my other people so Miriel and Syrena could get some EXP.

Freddy can bait the boss with a bronze sword, attacking him like twice, and then taking him to the southeast corner where all the rest of my people were. Was going to weaken him so Miriel could kill, but Dual Attack proc'ed again and Frederick got the kill. After this map I got Chrom's C support with Vaike and Lissa's with Syrena.

Chapter 3:

Aahhh, I can remember this one a lot clearer. If the closest Archer has Counter, then dead Frederick, if he has Pavise+ then you probably won't be able to kill him in time. If the western knight has counter, you're screwed. If the hammer barbarian has Hawkeye, then he'll kill Fred. And if you are seeing more than two enemies on the lower east side with counter, then you should probably reset.

Ok, here goes. Chrom talks to Kellam, equips rapier (because I forgot to do that earlier), and pairs up. Kellam runs out of enemy range and transfers Chrom to Frederick, but not before giving Frederick his Javelin and vulnerary. Miriel goes to generic cav 1 and Syrena to generic cav 2. Lissa is going to want to pair with Sumia for movement. Vaike can pair with Kellam because why not.

Then. have Frederick attack the archer closest to him on the left with Silver Lance, killing him. Frederick should survive EP and the only enemies left should be a full HP archer and a weak knight. Miriel might be able to kill the knight by herself or she may need Syrena to weaken, but either way he's dead and Frederick can move into his space to kill/weaken the archer (note, if the archer has counter, Frederick might need a heal first from Lissa(Sumia).

Anyway, Frederick runs east into the range of the first merc and archer, equipped with javelin, maybe using a vulnerary if he needs it.

Next turn, retreat everyone except Frederick, who can probably take on the next group with his iron axe, although you may want to avoid the last merc.

Retreat Frederick and ambush the remaining enemies. Now you can heal up, take the event tile, and take a breather. Seriously, go get a glass of Lemonade or something because that's the hardest part of this chapter as long as you don't do anything stupid. Open both doors and bait each knight with Frederick and be careful of counters, killing the knights with Miriel or Syrena. Look for counters and decide which side to agro first. I went for the east side first, and baited the Hammer dude and Archer with Chrom(Frederick), you can retreat him down the stairs and finish them off while preparing for the next group to arrive. You can keep running with Freddy from this group as long as you are careful of skills, so you can manipulate the kills easily.

Get the next event tile, heal, and go for the boss. I had Chrom(Fred) fight her with his rapier, but you can have whoever you want kill her really. I kept wanting to get Sumia exp in this chapter but as Lissa's chauffeur, it really wasn't in the cards. I picked up a master seal off an Anna merchant after this chapter's completion.

Chapter 4:

I remember this one being easy in my Lunatic run-through, and the lack of enemies makes it easier even in this mode, but since I'm determined to train Sumia and Miriel, this one is going to require lots of resets. First off, only one of the first two barbarians can have counter. Same deal with the mages and the last set of fighters. If marth has counter, this is bad, but I've only seen that once or twice over dozens of resets. Pavise+ and Aegis+ can make deciding who to kill with difficult, so this may change each time. As usual, Hawkeye + Counter and Hawkeye + Luna+ are bad combinations. A forged +1 or +2 mt hammer helps one shot the knights here to get around counter, although if you aren't training Sumia you can probably substitute Vaike as a pair partner.

Ok, so match the counter barbarian up with Freddy, moving into the spot that almost touches the other barbarian's range immediately north of the start. You may need to move Marth first, who should be equipped with the Falchion and should trade the iron sword to Frederick. Refrain from pairing anyone up for now and go.

Next player phase, you should have one barbarian with around 6 hp that sumia can kill, but pavise can ruin that idea. A paired Miriel(Syrena) can usually kill the other barbarian (dying blaze did it for me) who usually has around 18-24 hp, although if that doesn't work, Chrom or Fred, whoever can take the Mage's 20-22 Attack best, will have to finish the job. Watch Miriel's RES to make sure she can take the hit, although Sumia should be fine. Have Lissa heal someone (Fred or Chrom probably) and end the turn.

Next turn, depending on how the mages move, you should be able to have freddy one shot one (preferably the one with counter if there is one) with silver lance and trade-equip his hammer. The rest of your party should be able to gang up on the other mage.

Next turn, have freddy kill the other knight (I think I had chrom paired with him by this point), and move everyone else to the side where freddy is.

Have him agro and kill the fighter, while being careful to keep him healed and keeping everyone else out of Marth's and the fighter's attack ranges. You can probably have Syrena bait and kill the fighter, although you'll have to leave that to fred if he has counter. Fred can take 2 hits from the boss with his iron lance equipped and can weaken him for Sumia or Miriel to get the kill.

I got an Orsin's hatchet here and a nice Soothing sword, the latter of which I had never seen before, two weapons that should come in handy. Following this map I got Miriel and Syrena's C Support.

Paralogue 1:

You probably could try doing this before Chapter 4, but Lon'Qu makes this chapter a lot easier. For skills, we don't want the barbarian closest to Lon'Qu to have counter or Hawkeye. Pavise is fine, but Hawkeye isn't. If any of the other two or three barbarians near him have counter or Hawkeye, it's a reset. In the north, the barbarian immediately north of Chrom can't have Pavise or Aegis unless you get a lucky crit or your chrom has at least 12 speed. The closest thief can't have Pavise. If the thief that will run for the killer lance has pavise, that is probably bad too if you really want the killer lance (i didn't get it because I thought he needed to get in the corner to run away for some stupid reason).

Here goes. Have Frederick run north and one shot the thief with his silver lance. Miriel(Syrena) can blast the barbarian in the north from the forest with dying blaze and Chrom can finish him with the killing edge. Now, if Chrom's strength is lacking, you can either buy a strength tonic (recommended) or a forge for him. Or if he has good speed, pairing Sumia would let him double the barbarian. In any case, I paired Vaike with Lon'Qu because he could really use the strength. Although I had gotten a +4 Spd on Lon'Qu from the barracks so as much as I want that ChromxSumia pairing (to pass Lucina the General and Dark Flier classes), it's probably better to pair Vaike with Chrom and Sumia with Lon'Qu to ensure that Lon'Qu can double the barbarians.

Miriel should just barely survive the archer's hit as long as he didn't have Luna+ (if he did, attacking with Syrena would have fixed this). Lon'Qu should move to the forest two squares from the bottom of the map and brace himself for attack. He might be able to finish the Barbarian on the player phase, but it shouldn't matter because he won't be getting hit anytime soon. Make note of the barbarians' range; if Chrom didn't kill the one that attacked from the west on enemy phase, finish it with either Chrom or Freddy (after giving Freddy a heal). Kill or weaken the archer that attacked Miriel with the other unit and finish it. Be careful of the west archer's range (I had freddy equip his orsin's hatchet to help kill him but this isn't necessary at all).

Watch Lon'Qu slice up the next 2 barbarians and send someone (Chrom or Freddy) to help him on the next player phase. You should be able to kill all of the remaining enemies here on this turn and then heal Freddy before sending him after the thief. Giving him Lon'Qu and a bronze sword will help keep him alive later. Heal everyone else and gradually move them west. Wait for the thief to grab the killer lance and then head south before killing him. You can either cut him off a turn early or OHKO the other thief first before moving north to kill the one with the lance. The second strategy is probably the best.

Anyway, retreat Freddy and have your weaker units get the kills, possibly even netting Donnel some EXP (having Vaike as a double partner helps with the damage, but you will still have to tolerate ~70% hit rates). Sumia is a speed demon even this early in the game and can double the archer even without Chrom as a double partner. The rest of the level consists of boring baiting and killing with your weak units like Sumia, Donnel, and Miriel. Although, I'd advise using Chrom(Frederick) instead of Frederick to bait the hammer barbarian, especially if he has Hawkeye, which happened to me in my play through. For the other archers and barbarians, freddy will suffice though. I managed to get Donnel a level here, killing one of the baited archers. All of this baiting will get Lissa a lot of levels, and I got her to 10 around here, when I promptly promoted her to War Cleric. I thought about holding off on it to use it on Chrom instead like I did on my Lunatic play through, but I decided having another durable unit who could take 2 hits plus having a durable healer was far better. Her stats don't look too bad, either.

I tried to have Miriel kill the boss but due to him having Aegis, Lon'Qu got the kill. I got myself a Slack bow and Glass bow from this map's event tiles, both of which I instantly sold along with all of Virion's other stuff since I don't plan on using him. On the world map, I got Lissa a shiny new heal and bronze axe, though. I then went to supports and unlocked Lissa and Frederick's B support as well as Chrom and Frederick's B support.


These stats are now 100% accurate from this point forward

Chapter 5

Before this chapter, I picked up a Master Seal from a traveling merchant, but I had to sacrifice my +1 mt forged hammer to get enough money. Probably a move I will regret later, but whatever, Chrom is getting close to the point where he can promote. I also had to pass up a Second Seal and Wyrmslayer from the world map merchants due to not having enough cash, but oh well. Chrom also got +4 DEF and Skill from the barracks.

I tried this chapter a few times and failed. A few days later I picked up a seliph's blade from barracks and chrom's boost disappeared. I sold tons of crap to get a physic from a traveling merchant, a huge pickup but costly as well. I also picked up a HP tonic from a traveling merchant and a Defense tonic from the shop that would allow Chrom to survive a setup in which the west myrm had counter. I made sure he used both of them and had the Master seal in his inventory.

I've tried a number of strategies including a defensive one where everyone turtles, an offensive one where everyone rushed west, and a reverse one where Chrom goes North and Fred West. All of these failed miserably. The bright side of this is that I have a lot of information on what to do to salvage your attempt if a different combo of skils shows up or someone hits/misses when they aren't supposed to. The gist of my successful strategy is Fred (Kellam) going North while Miriel (MU) hangs behind to clean up counters and the such, although this strategy needs to be adapted if anyone has pass. As for the west, I found that aggressively sending Chrom with the killing edge works best. He should pair with sumia and take out the western unit with the worst skills on the first turn. For me, he could handle two counters as long as he has a defense boost, hp boost and Lissa physics him, although if the dark mage has Hawkeye this is ruined. Pavise+counter in the west group is bad because it means chrom will kill himself on pretty much 100% of his crits. As far as other skills, you can really get around some unlucky setups once you survive past the first turn with this strategy, as I was able to. If both the northern myrm and barbarian have combinations of counter and pass, I might need to pull some shenanigans like attacking and trading with Miriel or freddy attacking with the hatchet. In any case, here is the one that worked:

First turn, Chrom pairs with Sumia, heads west and switches, with Chrom (Sumia) attacking the northern of the two bandits who had counter. He doubled and killed him with the killing edge, and took no damage (if he had taken damage I would have just had Lissa physic him instead of rescuing first turn). Frederick (Kellam) throws his Orsin's hatchet at the northern hawkeye barbarian, weakening him (if the barbarian has counter, this also ensures that Freddy will not be hit by it). Because the myrmidon near Freddy had pass, I moved Lon'Qu (Vaike) into his range to lure him (Lon'Qu was equipped with the Soothing Sword, which was the only sword I had left besides Chrom's killing edge and Freddy's Seliph's blade and the falchion of course). After having Ricken join Maribelle and Maribelle running southwest, I rescued Maribelle (Ricken) and ended my turn.

On the first enemy phase, the western myrm attacked Chrom and was weakened by him. A barbarian attacked Chrom and died. The hawkeye barbarian attacked Frederick and was killed by his counterattack. The pass myrm from the north attacked Lon'Qu and the two exchanged blows. The hawkeye dark mage from the north suicides by attacking Freddy (this was why I made sure the hatchet was equipped last turn).

On the second player phase, Freddy had a clear path to move to the forest west of the north fort, equip his shiny new Seliph's blade, and use my only vulnerary if necessary (this sets him up for a great enemy phase). Chrom kills the west myrm that attacked him and Lon'Qu kills the pass myrm that attacked him. All that remains to the west now is the dark mage and an elfire mage that decided to make my life more difficult by moving towards Chrom. Anyway, Maribelle is safe to heal Lon'Qu and Lissa can physic Chrom (or just run over there and heal him if she can). Miriel (MU) moves west to help out.

The dark mage will attack Miriel (i'm not sure why he wouldn't attack maribelle but hey it's fine with me), MU happened to dual guard but that wasn't very important. My Miriel had a Wind tome for ease of killing dracos and to fix her meh accuracy, but I probably could have kept my forged +1 mt thunder instead. Fred OHKO'd the counter hawkeye myrm that attacked him on EP and a luna bandit attacks Fred, hitting him much to my annoyance, but Fred doubles him and kills him on his counterattack. The easternmost draco will attack Fred, he had Pavise for me but that didn't stop Fred from killing him with a crit. The other draco will also attack fred (the reason why I moved Fred onto the forest instead of the fort) and died after missing Fred with Luna.

I debated about moving Fred onto the fort on my next player phase, but it was too risky considering that both the barbarian and the myrmidon near him had pass and luna (that's the first of the two or three extremely unlucky combos that I survived in this chapter). He's running out of weapons and I don't want to waste anymore of Seliph's blade, Silver Lance, or Orsin's hatchet yet, so I have Lissa give him her bronze axe, which I bought her to help her boost that axe rank. She also heals him. I had Chrom take the fort to give him a good chance of dodging at least one of the nosferatu dark mage and the elfire mage. Lon'Qu also ran over towards the mages. Miriel moves out of the elfire mage's range, but lures the dark mage. Maribelle switches to Ricken to give him a chance to counter.

On the enemy phase, the pass+luna myrm and barbarian move closer to Fred. The pavise dark mage attacks Ricken and gets a face full of Elwind on the counterattack. The luna elfire mage attacks Lon'Qu and hits for a nasty 19 damage.

Next player phase, Chrom kills the elfire mage with his killing edge (he's great with that thing) and escapes unscathed. Lissa heals Lon'Qu, who goes after the pavise dark mage and weakens him. Miriel kills the pavise dark mage and ricken moves out of range, switching back to Maribelle. Fred stays where he is and braces for the onslaught, equipping his bronze axe.

Fred takes a beating from the luna myrm and the luna barb and weakens both of them on Enemy Phase. The short axe barb goes after Lissa and misses.

Here, Chrom gets a little bit cocky and decides to run north to fight both dracos (luckily, neither had counter) and the myrm reinforcement that hasn't appeared yet, equipping the falchion. I had gotten to this point once before, where Chrom died on a 44% hit chance on Enemy phase. In any case, Fred can run southwest to the edge of the myrm's range and attacks the short axe barbarian. Lon'Qu kills the barbarian with the short axe and miriel runs out of range like the coward she is. Maribelle takes the sw fort to prevent reinforcements. Lissa heals Fred.

On the next Enemy Phase, the luna myrm will die to Freddy's counterattack. The hawkeye myrm that appeared from the western central fort attacks chrom and sumia dual attacks, helping to weaken him. Chrom weakens the Pavise Draco with his falchion on EP and a luna draco suicides on Chrom's blade.

Lon'Qu finishes off the Luna Barbarian and Lissa physics him because I traded Elwind earlier which messed up the positioning. Miriel takes Lissa's elwind (which I should have just left on ricken until this turn when miriel takes it) and kills the pavise draco. Chrom kills the myrm with his falchion because more dracos are coming and freddy moves to the space behind Chrom.

On the enemy phase, a myrm will attack Lon'Qu and Chrom will weaken another Pavise draco.

Come player phase, Lon'Qu can kill the myrm and Miriel can finish off the Pavise draco with either wind or elwind. Maribelle took the elwind back just in case.

<terrible moves>Note: my next few moves on this turn are terrible, see the note in the next paragraph: Lissa takes the fort and physics Chrom. Freddy hatchets the counter hawkeye barbarian that was next to the fort (another ugly combo) and Chrom takes the fort, killing the barbarian with his falchion

Note (in Retrospect):
In hindsight this was actually a terrible move. I did it because I wanted to cut off the fort reinforcements because I didn't know what would come out of it skillwise. I had no idea that reinforcements were over or that the dracos would all aggro like that. I probably could have saved some physics uses if I had known this and possibly held out on promoting Chrom. I'm not sure if I would have wanted to, though, he's a complete beast right now after getting some good levels in that chapter. I also probably could have saved some physics if I didn't sell all my vulneraries to buy stuff. In retrospect, I would have just lured the barbarian without aggroing the dracos and positioned fred with vulneraries to fight half the dracos and Chrom to fight the other half of them. But hey, whatever, at least I'm done with this godsforsaken chapter.</terrible moves>

Now you're going to see what I meant. On the next EP, a counter draco suicides on chrom, who takes 25 damage in the process, and the entire wave of dracos aggroes and furiously advances on Chrom with the boss moving too.

Fred throws his hatchet at the draco, getting a lucky critkill. Even if he hadn't killed him I would have been fine but it saved me a bit of trouble. Maribelle takes the fort if it is safe and Chrom promotes with his master seal to survive the wave of dracos. Lissa wastes another physic on this player phase because of my blunder.

On this EP, a Luna draco suicides on freddy who is getting lucky kills left and right at this point.

This is my second bad luck situation. The two closest dracos to Chrom and freddy both had counter. Chrom kills one of them with his falchion and survives with 12 hp (the boss can do 11 damage to him and has pavise and hawkeye). In order to ensure that Chrom can kill the other counter draco on his first counter of EP, Fred throws his Orsin's hatchet at the counter draco. Lissa (Miriel) stays out of range and physics him because he would have been killed by the counter on EP if I hadn't. Everyone else runs out of range.

The boss attacks Chrom who survives with 1 hp as expected (now do you see why I promoted him?). The counter draco suicides on Chrom too as expected, making me feel like both a genius for getting out of that predicament alive and an idiot for getting into it in the first place.

Lissa physics Chrom again and Chrom attacks pavise hawkeye Orton with falchion, getting an unnecessary critkill.

Now the hard part is over and I am in the clear… or so I thought. I noticed that of the three enemies left, both the myrm and the barbarian have counter and the myrm also has luna and the barbarian also has hawkeye (actually I didn't see that the myrm had luna until it was too late and it almost ruined me). Chrom and everyone else join up with the group and head east of the enemies' range, careful not to aggro them. Lissa heals everyone with kneader (i know it's kinda cheap but hey a few more exp points). Sumia gets a tree branch from the event tile and Miriel takes back her rightful Elwind.

Miriel (MU) lures the dark mage using her Elwind. He misses her on EP and Lon'Qu uses the last use of his sword to weaken the dark mage on my next player phase. Sumia gets her babied kill and Lissa does heal duty.

Now for the last two. Freddy attacks the hawkeye counter barbarian with his orsin' s hatchet, which has seen better days at this point with only like 3 uses left. The barbarian attacks Freddy and dies on EP and the luna counter myrm hits fred hard. Fred had 21 hp and was supposed to do 20 damage to the counter myrm on EP but he missed. He would have survived with 1 hp had he hit. Whew!

Stricken from his near brush with near death, freddy runs away. Lissa heals him and the myrm chases after him. Miriel blasts the myrm and Maribelle takes kellam from fred to try to weaken the myrm so sumia can get the kill, but Fred gets a luna proc. Fred seems determined to steal the last kill on the map yet again. His hatchet is broken but at least this map got me a hand axe to replace it with.

I breathe a deep sigh of relief as this chapter is completed…. FINALLY!

At 32 turns this was hardly a LTC (not that I am playng for turns, I'm not, I just want to add this note to make this walkthrough as helpful for LTC players too), but this strategy should be mostly consistent with an LTC strategy up until the point after I aggro the dracos.

Post map, I snatched up a second rescue from a merchant, bought an iron sword on sale, and sold my bullion. I got some support convos too. I got Miriel and Syrena's B support; I laughed when Miriel started talking about gravity as a mysterious, unknown force. Nice touch devs although I'm not sure where Ylisse fits on our timeline (if they know about gravity it must be around the 18th century but where are the guns)?

I got another soothing sword from the barracks (it can replace the one I just broke!). Weird, I go a whole game without seeing one and then I get two on two consecutive chapters. Oh well. I am going to start keeping inventory so you guys can see what my items are since I've been doing a lot of buying and selling as well as getting stuff from the barracks.

At this point, my promoted Chrom could probably solo the next few chapters with either Freddy or Sumia as a pair up partner, but my other units would fall behind and I have a feeling I would get screwed over eventually. At this point, the party I am going to use consists of Chrom, Syrena, Frederick, Miriel, Sumia, Lissa, and Maribelle as well as Kellam and Vaike just as pair up partners. I am a bit concerned about Syrena; her Magic is terrible and her other stats are underwhelming. I have heard about how vital it is to train MU so I will probably by babying her for a bit just to get her up to par.

Inventory- Cash=2892:

Iron Sword x1 (40)
Killing Edge x1 (18)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (20)
Soothing Sword x1 (10)
Seliph's Blade x1 (8)
Silver Lance x1 (9)
Bronze Lance x1 (50)
Finn's Lance x1 (20)
Bronze Axe x1 (47)
Hand Axe x1 (25)
Wind x1 (41)
Elwind x1 (30)
Celica's Gale x1 (20)
Heal x1 (25)
Mend x1 (19)
Physic x1 (4)
Rescue x2 (4,5)
Kneader x1 (15)
Vulnerary x1 (3)
Rift Door x1 (1)

Chapter 6

So I really got lucky with the boosts from the barracks which made this chapter a lot easier (although I had my fair share of bad luck multiple times, one of which came when I had the whole map cleared out except for one stupid dark mage which critted with a 1% chance and killed him). Anyway, after buying a few tonics I had the following bonuses:
Fred +4 lck and +4 def (barracks)
Chrom +2 def (tonic)
Lon'Qu +6 str and +6 def (1 tonic each + barracks)
Miriel +4 spd and +4 skl (barracks)

My general strategy here is to start Chrom (Sumia) and Fred (Vaike) plus Maribelle on the left and have Fred charge up the middle while Miriel (MU) and Lon'Qu (Kellam) take on the east side of the map with Lissa's healing support. Of course, if too many counters show up especially on the right side of the map, you may need to run Freddy over there which will cause Marth to get swarmed and dramatically decrease your chances of success.

The boosts made my heavily Lon'Qu-dependent strategy much easier and allowed Miriel to survive a round of attacks from the thief, but I still think this map would be easier than Ch.5 even without these.

For skills, you can pretty much get around anything by strategically moving fred around as long as the west fighter closest to Chrom doesn't have pavise+counter or counter+hawkeye and the east fighter closer to Lon'Qu doesn't have luna+counter.

Here goes:

On turn one, Chrom (Sumia) lures the counter pavise fighter while avoiding Gaius' range and equipping the killing edge (a falchion would normally suffice but I wanted to get a higher success chance due to the fighter's skills). Fred (Vaike) runs towards Marth and kills the fighter using either an iron lance or a forged iron sword (the idea is that he can ohko the thief on EP but that went down the tubes on this run because he had pavise). Maribelle heals Fred or mends him if necessary and Lon'Qu lures the two fighters with luna for skills by rushing into their range with his soothing sword equipped. Miriel (MU) can be positioned to lure the thief.

On EP, the counter pavise fighter suicides on chrom's crits and sumia dual attacks. Miriel weakens the thief using elwind and both luna fighters suicide on God!Lon'Qu. Fred weakens the thief but fails to kill him because of pavise.

On turn two, Miriel can kill the thief and Lon'Qu lures one of the cavaliers while avoiding the range of the counter cav. Fred can use his prized Seliph's blade to kill the pavise thief (instead of the silver lance because the res bonus will help on EP). Lissa heals Lon'Qu (with her kneader, which pretty much simulates what her heal staff would do if you didn't level her like I did) and Chrom recruits Gaius. Panne moves between the two northern pillars and Gaius pairs with her. Maribelle runs north and hides in Emmeryn's room.

On the next enemy phase, the hawkeye dark mage hits panne and the elwind dark mage hits chrom. A fighter suicides on Marth and a luna dark mage misses Marth. A counter thief is OHKO'd by Fred and Fred is hit by a dark mage. Lon'Qu brings the cav that attacked him below half health.

Miriel can kill the weakened cav with elwind and fred can kill the counter cav that approached using his hand axe to avoid the counter. Lon'Qu moves out of range and Lissa heals Miriel. Meanwhile, on the other side of the map, Maribelle is still a coward and hides above Emmeryn. Chrom moves onto the pillar next to Panne, takes her concoction, equips the killing edge, and uses the concoction. This will prepare him to fight the counter cav on EP (some luck required). Panne runs as far east into Emm's room as possible and switches to Gaius for ease of treaure-chest opening next turn.

On the next EP, Marth gets swarmed by 2 dark mages, one of which have luna, and both of which miss. Another dark mage misses Chrom. A fighter suicides on Marth and a dark mage suicides on Fred. The counter cav suicides on Chrom luckily, because Chrom is then hit by a hawkeye dark mage.

Chrom moves to the doorway to Emm's room and uses the concoction, still having his killing edge equipped to deal with yet another counter cav on EP (this one has luna too, greeeeeeeeat). Fred kills the elthunder dark mage with his Volant Axe (the hand axe would have probably worked just as well but that Volant Axe is so much cooler). Miriel avoids range and Gaius claims the chest.

On enemy phase a thief will be weakened by Marth, a pavise dark mage weakened by Fred, and the counter luna cav suicides on Chrom. A hawkeye pass dark mage runs past Chrom and attacks Emm.

Miriel weakens the hawkeye counter fighter, who Lon'Qu then kills with his almighty Tree Branch. Lissa physics Chrom and Chrom kills the hawkeye dark mage that attacked Emm, still using his killing edge. Maribelle heals Emmeryn and Gaius claims the event tile. Fred kills a pavise dark mage with his iron lance.

Another thief suicides on Fred (I should call him Thiefsbane) and another dark mage attacks the Holy Exalt.

On player phase, Thiefsbane kills a counter dark mage with his hand axe and Chrom kills a dark mage with his falchion. Maribelle heals Emm yet again and Lissa physics our wounded hero Thiefsbane. Miriel and Lon'Qu run east to get in on the action.

On EP, a pavise luna fighter is weakened by Chrom.

Next player phase, Thiefsbane equips his Volant Axe and lures Pavise Validar. Gaius opens the door that Marth is still guarding and Miriel switches to Syrena, who blasts the Pavise Luna fighter with Wind. Sumia gets another milked kill by finishing off the Pavise luna fighter. Lissa moves closer to Thiefsbane and Lon'Qu moves east.

Pavise Validar attacks Thiefsbane and Fred misses with his Volant Axe.

Thiefsbane moves to the edge of Validar's range to lure him and Lissa heals him. Everyone else runs south out of range.

Fred/Thiefsbane hits Validar on EP this time.

On the final player phase, Maribelle mends Thiefsbane and Lissa heals him to full health. He then attacks Validar and doubles him while picking a god and praying that he doesn't get hit by Vengeance. Lon'Qu kills Validar with his iron sword, ending this chapter.

Post-map I got ChromxSumia's B support (my first pie-er emblem a-bakening support for this run) as well as FredxMaribelle's C support which made me laugh. As much as I hate her, Maribelle might actually be a good fit with our Thiefsbane. I sold the secret book, wind, and the iron lance from last chapter's loot and bought Lon'Qu a master seal because he is getting close to promotion.

I am probably going to add a tentative list of my planned pairings soon in the first post. I plan on going paralogue 2 next, although I am still worried about Syrena, who hasn't leveled up in at least 3 maps.

Inventory- Cash=37:

Bronze Sword x1 (48)
Iron Sword x2 (39, 40)
Killing Edge x1 (12)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (19)
Soothing Sword x1 (5)
Seliph's Blade x1 (4)
Silver Lance x1 (9)
Bronze Lance +1 mt x1 (50)
Iron lance x1 (36)
Finn's Lance x1 (17)
Bronze Axe x1 (47)
Hand Axe x1 (19)
Volant Axe (5)
Wind x1 (39)
Elwind x1 (25)
Celica's Gale x2 (20)
Heal x3 (21, 30, 30)
Mend x1 (17)
Physic x1 (2)
Rescue x2 (4,5)
Kneader x1 (11)
Beaststone x1 (50)
Concoction x1 (1)
Vulnerary x1 (3)
Master Seal x1 (1)
Rift Door x1 (1)

Paralogue 2

So I am gonna try to get Syrena some levels in this chapter because she is falling behind. I'd also like to promote Lon'Qu. My general strategy consists of rushing Fred and Chrom towards Anna to try to save her village while Lon'Qu and Syrena/Miriel take care of the other enemies. Unfortunately, I am unable to get the physic staff (one turn away) but that isn't a big deal since I can buy one with that rift door I have (plus I still have 2 uses remaining on my old one). I probably could have gotten Lissa up there faster and had her toss Anna a physic to save the village, but even though this chapter was easy I didn't feel like redoing it so whatever. As far as skills the only thing is that neither of the two bandits north of the starting position can have either hawkeye or counter (although I managed with some luck when one had counter and the other hawkeye). Otherwise, this chapter is a breeze.

First turn, Fred (Kellam) hand axes a barbarian on the bridge) (he doesn't double and kill him because of that 16 speed). Lon'Qu (Panne) lures a hawkeye barbarian with his forged +1 mt soothing sword (which lets him orko a barbarian on a tree since a skirmish was preventing me from buying a tonic). Chrom (Sumia) kills a barbarian near the one that Fred weakened, using his Falchion.

On the first enemy phase, the hawkeye fighter suicides on Lon'Qu (I got a lucky dual guard here otherwise I would have had to restart due to hawkeye). A mage suicides on hand axe Fred (the mage also missed him). Another mage hits Lon'Qu and the weakened fighter suicides on Chrom. The archer misses Anna, who kills a pavise barbarian on her ally phase.

On the second Player Phase, 3 counter barbarians go down. Lon'Qu 2hko's one and survives with 1 hp, which Maribelle promptly mends back up to health. Fred hand axe kills another counter barbarian, this one with hawkeye too. Chrom falchions the third counter barbarian (this one also has hawkeye) and Lissa heals.

On EP, the archer hits Anna this time. Another mage suicides on Fred (perhaps he should be Mageslayer for this chapter) and a mage attacks Miriel and misses her. Anna kills a barbarian on Allied Phase.

Lon'Qu can kill the mage on player phase and the counter archer can be milked for exp through a close range attack from MU and letting Sumia net the kill. Fred makes a desperate but ultimately vain attempt to save Anna by charging gallantly towards her position with his hand axe drawn. Maribelle mends Lon'Qu and Lissa moves towards our spiky-brown haired swashbuckler (if she had moved the turn before she would have been able to toss Anna a physic but hey you can't rewrite history).

Alas, the archer kills Anna on EP and another archer suicides on Fred.

Maribelle can heal Syrena on player phase. Fred runs north towards village (whose doom is impending). Syrena lures the archer which moved last turn and Sumia flies Chrom over to help out Freddy.

EP: A barbarian destroys the poor physic village and the archer attacks Syrena. A barbarian attacks Fred and is weakened.

On player phase, Fred hand axes a counter luna barbarian and Lon'Qu kills the counter archer using his tree branch (gotta conserve those uses). Maribelle heals Chrom, who moves northeast yet again.

2 barbarians, including the weakened luna counter barbarian, suicide on Falchion Chrom. Chrom is hit by an archer and fred weakens another barbarian (if only he had one more spd).

Next player phase, both of the enemies that attacked our two heroes last EP and survived feel my vengeance. Chrom kills the archer and Fred kills the barbarian. Everyone runs north (everyone but Chrom, Maribelle, and Fred moves towards in the NW corner). Lissa heals Lon'Qu.

Enemy phase passes with the boss moving menacingly. Maribelle mends Fred on player phase and Lissa heals Syrena.

Next (relevant) pleyer phase, Fred moves right towards the last remaining enemy aside from the boss and his former group: a counter hawkeye barbarian. Chrom lures the boss and Maribelle heals Chrom.

Lon'Qu lures the counter barb from the boss' group, equips his iron sword and promotes to Swordmaster in order to survive. Lissa heals Lon'Qu.

The counter barbarian suicides on Lon'Qu on EP. Lissa heals Lon'Qu again on player phase and Lon'Qu kills the other barbarian from the boss' group, this one having hawkeye and vantage. Fred handaxes the counter hawkeye barbarian on the far east side of the map. Maribelle runs out of the boss' range and Chrom moves south to lure the boss away. If Chrom keeps his falchion equipped and stays in forests whenever possible, it should be almost impossible for the boss to hit him.

The last remaining barbarian (unless you count Victor) suicides on Fred and Victor attacks Fred and takes some damage.

Next player phase, Syrena blasts the pavise archer at close range and Lissa heals Lon'Qu. Fred avoids the boss' range and Chrom moves further south.

On EP, Victor misses Chrom (big surprise right) and Syrena weakens the pavise archer. She kills him on player phase and Lissa heals her while Chrom continues to lure Victor (who is looking more like Loser right now)

When Loser finally approaches the bulk of my force, Lissa takes Panne to ensure that Lon'Qu doesn't kill the boss. Lon'Qu attacks Loser with his tree branch and Sumia gets the mooch kill (which Fred couldn't steal this time since he was on the other side of the map).

Just to give a general idea of who I plan on using now, since Lon'Qu is promoted and no longer needs the speed I will probably pair him with Kellam (who I still am not training). Chrom and Sumia will continue and I will try to give Sumia mooch kills here and there to keep up. Fred is really liking that spd boost from Panne as a pair up partner (I might plan on training Panne and reclassing to Wyvern but we'll see). Lissa and Maribelle will likely tag along but of course won't have pair up partners. Miriel and Syrena round off my team and give each other some good and versatile pair up bonuses. Support pairings will be posted shortly.

Inventory- Cash=1517:

Bronze Sword x1 (47)
Iron Sword x2 (34, 40)
Killing Edge x1 (12)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (16)
Seliph's Blade x1 (4)
Silver Lance x1 (9)
Bronze Lance +1 mt x1 (45)
Iron lance x1 (35)
Finn's Lance x1 (12)
Bronze Axe x1 (47)
Hand Axe x1 (8)
Volant Axe (5)
Wind x1 (34)
Elwind x1 (21)
Celica's Gale x2 (20)
Heal x3 (13, 30, 30)
Mend x1 (12)
Physic x1 (2)
Rescue x2 (4,5)
Kneader x1 (11)
Beaststone x1 (48)
Concoction x1 (1)
Rift Door x1 (1)

Chapter 7

This chapter was probably the easiest so far. There's really not much to worry about as far as skills and I even managed to get around another hawkeye hammer barbarian (Fred=god tier). You just want to get as few counters as possible but that's pretty obvious.

My general strategy here was hardly a strategy at all really. I just sent my three powerhouses ahead paired with their appropriate units and equipped with iron swords (falchion for chrom) while avoiding provoking the counter wyrms earlier than necessary. I sent my weaker units along behind for support. Luckily I remembered about the three wyvern reinforcements that appear on the left side of the map around the third turn. Once the reinforcements appear, my units all change direction and run back west, killing the reinforcements while evading most of the other wyrms to avoid getting ganged up upon and subsequently butchered.

Watch Lissa. That's all I have to say before I begin.

On the first player phase, Lon'qu (Kellam) attacks the pavise archer using his iron sword (this moves him into the range of the counter wyrm). Fred (Panne) moves above Lon'qu, trade equips Lon'Qu's killing edge so he can deal with the counter wyrm on EP, and hand axes the pavise archer, killing it. Chrom, also staying out of the range of the counter wyrm, trade equips Fred's iron sword and uses the falchion to kill the hawkeye barb closest to the starting position. Syrena (Miriel) lures the pass barbarian but avoids the range of the wyrm. Maribelle avoids range and Lissa (Vaike) tosses a luck rally because why not.

On enemy phase a bunch of stuff happens. Syrena weakens the pass barbarian. Chrom misses the luna thief even though he had like a 80% chance to hit (I have the worst luck, in case you haven't noticed yet). The hawkeye hammer barb suicides on Fred, but not before doing a ton of damage. An archer attacks Chrom and a wyrm suicides on our blue haired protagonist. A pavise wyrm is weakened by Chrom and the counter wyrm suicides on Lon'Qu.

On the second player phase, Maribelle heals Lon'Qu and Fred kills the pavise barb. Syrena kills the pavise wyrm with elwind and Lon'Qu kills the pavise thief with a lucky killing edge crit (which makes up for the fact that Chrom missed the thief last EP). Chrom kills the archer with falchion and lissa mends fred.

Nothing happens on EP. On player phase, everyone avoids the range of the other two counter wyrms (the closest ones that are still alive). Lissa mends chrom, Fred handaxes the counter thief, weakening him. Chrom equips the falchion, Lon'Qu the iron sword, and one of them trade equips Fred's iron sword. Syrena runs out of enemy range and is healed by Maribelle. Cordelia pairs with Maribelle.

On the next EP, the archer missed Lon'qu, Chrom kills the weakened counter thief, a barbarian suicides on Fred, and a short axe barbarian attacks Lissa.

The next player phase starts. Lon'Qu kills the counter barbarian with his newly acquired steel sword, and survives with 1 hp (not for the last time in this map either). Chrom uses his falchion to kill the short axe barbarian (who had luna). Fred kills the counter archer with his hand axe. See the next paragraph for more info about this player phase.

At this point, a weakened Lissa, Chrom, Syrena, and a defenseless Maribelle are all stuck inside the range of a counter wyrm. I probably could have avoided it, but I'm not too sure of that. In any case, I had to pull some serious shenanigans to get everyone out of this alive, and here's where Lissa really started to shine. Lissa rescues Syrena, and trades her bronze axe to Chrom. Lissa blocks one square of enemy range. Syrena moves out of range. Maribelle runs to that one square behind Lissa and heals her.

The counter wyrm attacks Lissa, who shrugs off the blow.

Fred uses his last handaxe to weaken the counter wyrm, who Miriel kills. Lissa heals Chrom and Maribelle heals Lon'Qu.

On the next enemy phase, it looks hopeless. The reinforcements appear and everyone and their next door neighbor aggroes. By the next player phase there are three wyrms in a group and another outside the boss' range who is still close enough to attack the units who kill the reinforcements.

Have Fred kill that wyrm with his iron sword. Miriel can blast the pavise wyrm (careful to stay out of range of everyone except the soon-to-be-dead reinforcements). Lon'Qu kills the hawkeye wyrm with his steel sword (and survives, yet again, with 1 hp). Chrom kills the luna wyrm with his falchion and Lissa, being the warrior she is, kills the weakened pavise wyrm without even bothering to get out of enemy range (not moving her ensures that she can be healed). Maribelle heals Lissa and everyone should be safe and out of range except God!Fred and Goddess!Lissa (their Owain would be ridiculous if his growths weren't so split).

A note here about Lissa. When I promoted her to Battle Cleric back in chapter 5 I expected that extra tankiness to be really useful. It hasn't been up until this point and it was looking like a total waste of a master seal. But now, It is looking like a great move since her being able to take a ton of hits was huge in this chapter.

A brief note about Miriel, who just got C rank tomes and can now use those 40 uses of Cellica's Gale that have been in my storage forever, nice!

Anyway, on EP, Lissa weakens the hawkeye luna wyrm on EP and a counter wyrm suicides on Fred (who almost kills himself with Luna).

On player phase, Syrena moves next to the hawkeye wyrm and kills him with elwind. Fred moves next to Miriel, switches to Miriel, and blasts the boss with wind (she could have ORKO'd him with Cellica's Gale but I decided to try to get Sumia the mooch kill but failed). Lissa mends Lon'Qu to full health. At full health, Lon'Qu has 29 hp, but needs 30 to survive a hit from luna hawkeye Vasto. Thus, I fail to get Sumia the kill and end up having Chrom take it.

A random interjectory note about pair up partners. Chrom (Sumia) and Syrena (Miriel) are pretty much set for now because Chrom's speed is relatively low (plus, I am doing ChromxSumia, even though I'm not attached to the pairing, I don't hate it like some people do and I really want a Lucina that can eventually get Galeforce+General). I should probably start using Ricken for Lissa instead of Vaike, but luckily I stuck with Vaike (which gave Lissa some much-needed durability in this chapter). Fred (Panne) is great because Fred loves that SPD and the STR can't hurt. Lon'Qu can use the defense from Kellam, but I am thinking about switching him out for Panne and giving Fred Gaius next map, because having a Lon'Qu that can double pretty much anything with 25 SPD seems pretty insane.

Post map, I got Chrom and Sumia's A support as well as Lissa and Vaike's C support. I sell the Steel Axe, Bow, and Bullion from the last map and buy another physic and master seal off of the Anna merchants. I'm not sure who I'm going to use that master seal on, probably Syrena (or maybe Gregor once I get him) but I haven't decided yet.

If I were making a Luna+ tier list at this point it would probably look something as follows:

God Tier:
Frederick

Very High Tier:
Chrom
Lissa
Lon'Qu

High Tier:
Miriel
Sumia
Maribelle

Low/Mid Tier:
MU
Everyone Else

Inventory- Cash=1653:

Bronze Lance x1 (49)
Bronze Lance +1 mt x1 (43)
Iron Lance x1 (35)
Steel Lance x1 (35)
Silver Lance x1 (9)
Javelin x1 (25)
Finn's Lance x1 (9)
Bronze Sword x1 (46)
Iron sword x2 (24, 40)
Steel sword x1 (31)
Killing Edge x1 (9)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (16)
Seliph's Blade x1 (4)
Bronze Axe x2 (43, 50)
Wind x1 (33)
Elwind x1 (16)
Cellica's Gale x2 (20, 20)
Heal x2 (25, 30)
Mend x1 (8)
Physic x2 (2, 10)
Rescue x2 (3, 5)
Hammerne x1 (1)
Vulnerary x1 (3)
Concoction x1 (3)
Master Seal x1 (1)

Paralogue 3

This chapter should have been easy. I almost had it beat on like my third try, but got screwed over by the RNG hit chances. Before I finally beat this map, I had gotten screwed over on 3 separate occasions by around 30% hit chances, all of which when I had the map dead to rights (3 or fewer enemies remaining including the boss). It was kind of like Chapter 6 in that it was an easy chapter that was made much harder than it should have been by bad luck.

My general strategy here is to send Chrom (Sumia) to take on the northwest group first while sending everyone else east to take on the group there. I then send Fred (Gaius) back west over the bridge on turn 2 and send Chrom south, swinging Lissa and Maribelle back and forth to heal as necessary while Miriel (Syrena) and Lon'Qu (Panne) clean up the east side of the map. If more counters had spawned on the east side of the map than the west, as they did in one of my almost successful runs of this map, I would have kept Fred over on the east while Chrom basically soloed the whole west side of the map with Maribelle for healing.

Again, there's not much to worry about here for skills. The southwest knight shouldn't have counter or you'll be wasting quite a few turns and rescues trying to figure out how to kill him (it involves positioning Fred and Sumia carrying Chrom at the edge of his range and then softening him up with Fred's javelin). Also, if the nw fighter has counter, neither the nw merc nor the nw pegasus knight can have it.

I bought Miriel a magic tonic so she could ORKO the knights without wasting uses of Cellica's Gale. I still ended up needing quite a few of that tome though, which made Miriel a powerhouse almost on the level of Lon'Qu and Chrom (no one can compete with Fred). Maribelle also got +4 MAG from barracks and Chrom got +4 DEF.

First player phase, Miriel (Syrena) kills the pavise fighter east of the starting location with Celica's Gale. Lon'Qu (Panne) kills the east merc with his iron sword. Fred (Gaius) kills the aegis knight east of the starting location against the river, with his silver lance. If this knight didn't have aegis, I could have reversed Miriel's and Fred's roles here, saving 2 uses of Celica's Gale and 2 uses of the silver lance. In any case, Chrom (Sumia) kills the nw fighter and Lissa luck rallies (why not?). Maribelle moves south out of enemy range.

On enemy phase, a knight attacks a defenseless villager. The northern pavise knight attacks Lon'Qu. A counter pavise archer suicides on Miriel (the perfect victim for Miriel's Gale). A merc suicides on Chrom and the luna counter archer misses our lord. A hawkeye PK suicides on Chrom.

On player phase, Lon'Qu kills the hawkeye fighter. Syrena kills the pavise knight. Chrom kills the counter luna archer with his bronze lance. Maribelle mends Lon'Qu and Lissa heals Fred, who moves southwest and crosses the bridge with his iron sword equipped.

The knight kills the villager on EP and a counter fighter suicides on Fred.

Chrom moves south next player phase. Maribelle mends Chrom. Lon'Qu avoids enemy range and syrena lures the aegis archer (this is a bad move here, she should just move a few spaces west of his range and not worry about anything, and I would have had one more rescue usage). Lissa heals Fred, who javelins the luna fighter south of the villagers.

On enemy phase (due to my idiocy), the aegis archer attacks Syrena. The luna fighter suicides on Fred and a hawkeye archer attacks a villager.

Next player phase, Lon'Qu kills the fighter on the eastern bridge. Miriel attacks the archer with Celica's Gale in a desperate attempt to kill the aegis archer who could ohko both miriel and a weakened Syrena. Alas, this fails and Lissa is forced to move north 2 spaces out of the archer's range and rescue Miriel. Chrom kills another counter archer with his bronze lance and Fred javelins a counter merc, depleting this counter mook to exactly half health. Maribelle rescues the villager with full health (so many rescues lost in this chapter).

On the enemy phase, a PK kills the weakened villager and a knight attacks Fred. The aegis archer attacks Lon'Qu and a counter merc suicides on Fred.

Once player phase comes around, Lon'Qu kills that pesky aegis archer and Maribelle mends Chrom. Chrom kills the counter PK with his tree branch (if the PK had hit with a 68% chance, Chrom would have survived with 1 hp, thank gods for the tree branch here). Fred runs out of enemy range to try to get others some mooch kills and Miriel runs south. Due to another one of my mistakes and trying to get another mooch kill, I was forced to run Lissa north and rescue the villager AGAIN to keep him out of enemy range.

Nothing eventful happens on EP. On player phase, Lon'Qu can visit the village. Syrena kills the knight with her wind tome. Maribelle mends Fred, who javelins the hawkeye knight. Chrom and Lissa move south.

The knight attacks Fred on EP. Sumia kills the knight with her Glass Lance on Player Phase. Syrena lures the remaining PK with her elwind (which probably holds the record for most-traded weapon here between Miriel and Syrena fighting over it all these maps). Maribelle runs north and rescues the villager again (I probably would have been able to prevent all this rescue wasting if I wasn't so tired when I did this). Lissa heals Syrena. Chrom runs south. Fred takes a concoction from convoy and eats it. Lon'Qu runs from the boss.

On Enemy Phase, Syrena weakens the PK as expected. Come player phase, Fred runs to the sw corner and kills the counter fighter with his iron sword. Lissa attacks the PK, weakening it further for Syrena to mooch kill. Syrena gets C rank after killing the PK, making her another, albeit an inferior, user of Celica's Gale. Lon'qu runs from the boss again (what a coward) and Maribelle heals him. Sumia flies north and switches back to Chrom.

The boss chases my party on EP. On Player phase, everyone runs south and congregates just south of the western bridge. Lissa heals Fred and Maribelle heals Chrom.

On the final player phase, Miriel attacks with Celica's Gale to try to get Sumia a mooch kill. But, as with most of Sumia's potential kills and most bosskills, it is stolen by an 8% crit.

WIth that, the chapter concludes. Hopefully Chapter 8 will seem easy after that but I remember it being mildly annoying during Lunatic, so we'll see.

Post-map, I sold that useless blessed bow and got Lissa and Frederick's A support (no, I am not pairing these two because the whole sisterxbodyguard thing doesn't really appeal to me). I got Miriel and Lon'Qu's C convo (which made me give some thought to this pairing since these two seem equally oblivious). Lastly, I got Lon'Qu and Panne's C support (these two seem equally cold, but despite him becoming a beast--no pun intended--during my Lunatic run, I realized just how bad Yarne actually was, so that's a no for these two).

I haven't decided who to use the seraph robe on. Miriel and Sumia have very low HP to the point where they are practically ohko'd by everything, but it could help Syrena, who I am pretty much stuck using whether I like it or not (for the record I would just drop her now if she didn't get great skills as a grandmaster) though her offense is terrible compared to everyone else. Lon'Qu would be almost unstoppable with it, too. For that matter, I'm not sure who to use the master seal on either. I'm going to put up polls just because I'm that indecisive, although I reserve the right to disregard them if I think of a good reason to.

Also not sure if I plan on using Libra when I get him because he doesn't offer much that Lissa doesn't, besides being a decent axe user (and my only one aside from Fred), but I'm probably not going to bother putting up a poll for this one. I'm considering keeping Maribelle in my party, although she'll probably end up as the "odd one out" with situational deployment in certain chapters, but we'll see. One thing's almost certain, it's not worth giving her the master seal over Syrena or Gregor. I really don't see any benefit to giving it to Sumia either, since she's at the lowest level and her role right now is pretty much just a glorified pair up partner/chaffeur for Chrom.

Looking back at my inventory, it seems that I used 5 uses of rescue on that one chapter alone. Some of those were because of my stupidity or because of bad luck (most were a combination of the two) plus that stupid suicidal villager. In any case, I'm sure glad I bought that extra and I might even consider buying another one to replace it.

Inventory- Cash=2700:

Bronze Sword x1 (44)
Iron Sword x2 (11, 40)
Steel Sword x1 (31)
Killing Edge x1 (9)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (15)
Roy's Blade x1 (25)
Seliph's Blade x1 (4)
Bronze Lance x1 (49)
Bronze Lance +1 mt x1 (39)
Iron Lance x1 (30)
Steel Lance x1 (35)
Silver Lance x1 (7)
Javelin x1 (14)
Log x1 (20)
Glass Lance x1 (2)
Miniature Lance x1 (10)
Finn's Lance x1 (9)
Bronze Axe x2 (42, 50)
Wind x1 (31)
Elwind x1 (11)
Celica's Gale x2 (10, 20)
Heal x2 (19, 30)
Mend x1 (4)
Physic x2 (2, 10)
Rescue x1 (4)
Hammerne x1 (1)
Vulnerary x1 (3)
Concoction x1 (2)
Elixir x1 (3)
Seraph Robe x1 (1)
Master Seal x1 (1)

Chapter 8

Ok so this chapter was a joke, as I expected. I did it on my first try without resetting at all, which is significant compared to the fact that some chapters have taken over 100 resets (a slight exaggeration, but not as much of one as you may think). I did get a little lucky with counters, but skills aren't a huge deal here. I did manage to beat a hawkeye pavise nosferatu dark mage, which is always annoying and set me back a few turns, but that doesn't matter because I don't care about my turncount and must have spent dozens of turns setting up later in this chapter. Fred got a +4 spd and +4 def from the barracks here that let him double some myrmidons, but that's not a big deal since he would have killed them all anyway without taking any damage on EP.

My general strategy here is to fly chrom south to get to the west village (which for some reason I thought needed to be saved from destruction when there is actually no threat of that at all). While Fred heads to the NE one. Lissa trails behind Chrom most of the map and then Lon'Qu and Miriel hang behind to clean up stragglers on the west side of the map. At this point, one can take as many turns as possible setting up and then take on the wave of enemies around the boss.

First player phase, Sumia flies Chrom directly south (from the westernmost starting spot, over the hill and out of the range of the northern counter cavalier and the counter fighter. Nowi (Gregor) avoids range and Fred (Gaius) kills the pavise myrm near the NE village with his miniature lance (I love this thing!). Lon'Qu (Panne) lures the NW counter luna dark mage and Miriel (Syrena) avoids range while Lissa luck rallies.

On the first EP, the counter luna dark mage misses Lon'qu. Fred weakens a pavise dark mage. Another dark mage misses Chrom. Fred weakens a counter pavise cav. A cavalier suicides on chrom.

On player phase, Sumia kills a nosferatu dark mage with her glass lance (Sumia comes in handy in this chapter as expected due to the desert terrain and abundance of dark mages). Lon'Qu kills a counter fighter. Miriel kills a pavise counter cav with Cellicas Gale (one of my mistakes in this chapter was having Syrena with Cellica's Gale equipped when performing dual attacks- it helped once against an aegis fighter but it wasted a LOT of the precious tome). Fred kills a counter pavise dark mage with his javelin. Lissa heals Lon'Qu. Nowi runs north and maribelle moves south.

On EP a luna dark mage attacks maribelle. The hawkeye nosferatu dark mage attacks sumia.

Fred visits the village on player phase. Syrena kills a luna counter dark mage with Cellica's Gale (CG). Lon'Qu moves south and Maribelle rides east. Sumia runs north to Lon'Qu and uses Panne's concoction. Nowi runs north again and Lissa runs south and tosses a luck rally

On EP, a hawkeye aegis fighter suicides on Syrena (here's the point where having CG equipped on the dual partner actually came in handy). On player phase, Lon'Qu attacks the pavise hawkeye nosferatu dark mage (call him PHNDM because that's a mouthful) with his steel sword. Chrom then kills PHNDM with his seliph's blade. Lissa heals Lon'qu and Nowi runs north. Maribelle heals Fred and Fred positions himself to lure the counter fighter with his iron sword. Syrena runs west and switches to Miriel for better MOV.

The counter fighter suicides on Fred as expected on EP and a counter dark mage attacks and misses Lissa. On player phase, Lon'Qu kills the counter DM with his iron sword. Lissa attacks the hawkeye cav, whom Chrom kills with the bronze lance. Maribelle mends Fred and Fred proceeds to kill the luna cav on his side of the map with the bronze axe (what is up with all this cav-killing with bronze weapons?). Miriel kills an aegis myrm with CG.

The next enemy phase produces one dead myrm and one happy GK butler. On player phase, Lissa heals Lon'qu and everyone moves south. The next like 8 player phases consist of Miriel claiming a steel lance from an event tile and a whole lot of healing and setting up with nothing of any importance going on. The only interesting things I do are things I could have done a while ago: Lissa uses hammerne to repair the near-broken physic staff, Miriel takes a master seal in preparation to use it later, and Miriel takes and uses the first seraph robe.

Nothing really happens until Chrom visits the west village and equips his falchion. A fighter suicides on the exalt's blue-haired brother, who is hit for meager damage by a wind dark mage. On player phase, Miriel lures the dark mage with Elwind equipped and Maribelle heals Miriel.

Miriel weakens said dark mage on EP and Sumia mooch kills him with a log on player phase. Maribelle heals Miriel, Gregor takes the newly acquired Master Seal and promotes to hero and lissa heals gregor. Everyone moves south

You'll notice if you mark everyone's range that there's a point on the sw pond where Sumia can javelin a fighter without fear of being attacked. She kills him with Chrom's help and Gregor takes Lon'Qu (I like this combo because it gives Gregor much needed speed and gives Lon'Qu some SPD and STR which he can use) and lures the myrmidon (not the one with the killing edge). On EP the myrm (steel sword I think) suicides on Gregor and everyone aggroes.

On player phase, Lissa attacks the luna dark mage. Sumia kills the weakened DM. Miriel offs the killing edge myrm with CG. Maribelle heals Gregor, who kills the counter aegis DM and survives with 1 hp (see people that extra 5 hp on Lon'Qu would have made a difference).

Everyone heals up, Sumia visits the remaining village in the SE and we surround the boss. Sumia equips the miniature lance and positions herself to counterattack the boss (who has aegis and counter) on EP. Sumia weakens him with her counterattack (on EP) and Miriel blasts the boss with Elwind come player phase. Lissa heals Miriel, who hits level 10 after she blasts the boss next EP (ok so I "boss abused" like 20 exp for Miriel so she could promote, sue me ). Miriel moves out of range and promotes to Sage. Sumia positions herself to counter the boss on EP with the javelin. The boss suicides on Sumia and the chapter is over.

Post-map, I got ChromxSumia S support (not sure why everyone hates this pairing, it seems sweet to me, no pun intended). I got Lon'Qu and Lissa's C support. I also gave Lon'Qu the energy drop and bought some heals and stuff.

Inventory: Cash=2676;

Bronze Sword x1 (44)
Iron Sword x1 (40)
Steel Sword x2 (27, 35)
Killing Edge x2 (9, 30)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (15)
Roy's Blade x1 (25)
Seliph's Blade x1 (2)
Bronze Lance x1 (49)
Bronze Lance +1 mt x1 (35)
Iron Lance x1 (29)
Steel Lance x2 (35, 35)
Silver Lance x1 (7)
Javelin x1 (8)
Log x1 (19)
Miniature Lance x1 (3)
Finn's Lance x1 (8)
Bronze Axe x2 (35, 50)
Ladle x1 (20)
Glass Axe x1 (3)
Wind x1 (31)
Elwind x1 (7)
Cellica's Gale x1 (12)
Heal x3 (29, 30, 30)
Mend x1 (3)
Physic x2 (10, 10)
Rescue x2 (4, 5)
Vulnerary x1 (3)
Concoction x1 (1)
Elixir x1 (3)
Second Seal x1 (1)

Chapter 9 forward in second post.


Pairings:

Children Pairings (THESE ARE PAIRINGS):

ChromxSumia
LizxLibra
OliviaxLon'Qu
MaribellexGaius
SullyxVaike
CordeliaxFrederick
GregorxCherche
AvatarxWalhart
PannexStahl
MirielxHenry
TharjaxDonnel
NowixVirion

Pairings Possible During Main Story (based on who I plan to use):

ChromxSumia
LizxLibra

OliviaxLon'Qu
MaribellexGaius (maybe?)

CordeliaxFrederick
GregorxCherche (I probably won't decide to use Cherche, so I probably won't get this one during the main story)

MirielxHenry (I probably won't decide to use Henry, so I probably won't get this one during the main story)

Please, please, please give me your feedback. I know these are kind of long, I never was one for brevity. So please tell me what I should include, what I should leave out, and whether you like the combined LP/walkthrough style. Would you rather me do it more like a walkthrough or more like an LP? How would I accomplish this? I could really use your input since I've never done one of these before.

Edited May 30, 2013 by Walhart

[Redwall]

Boss abuse is not efficacious in Lunatic(+) since after a certain number of hits on a boss, you pretty much stop gaining EXP, so there's no real need for that provision.

Your content is interesting, but it might make it easier to read if you split your writeups (for example) by turn, or simply by using more than one or two paragraphs to describe an entire chapter.

[darkkfan]

EDIT: The OP is too long for more content, so from now on updates will be in this post.

Also, the Chapter 11 section of the playlog/walkthrough will be the last one that will be written in the exact style that I have employed thus far. In the future, I will try to retain the same characteristic detail unique to my experiences while cutting down on enemy-specific detail in favor of general strategy and brevity.

Chapter 9

Before entering this chapter, I got really lucky with the barracks and world map. I got a superior lance (which comes in handy in this chapter) and an Aversa's Night (should be useful in postgame when I don't have to worry about all these restrictions). A master seal and a seraph robe both appeared on the world map from Anna merchants, and both were on sale, so I sold my second seal and snatched both of those up. I gave the Seraph Robe to Lon'Qu immediately (Syrena, I promise I'll give you this master seal).

This is the first map in a while that's kept me on my toes past the first and second turns. With skills and the such I got really unlucky in my successful run (almost everyone had either pavise or counter, plus luna and hawkeye appeared at very inconvenient times), but I also had quite a few things go my way (dumb moves by the AI and at least one lucky dual attack). In any case, for most of this chapter I felt like I was living on borrowed time. Again, I used way too many rescues but I can deal with that I suppose.

Despite the difficulty spike compared to the last few chapters (this chapter may not require too many resets, but it requires you to think and adapt your strategy every turn to stay alive), the skill combinations here aren't too bad. Sure they created some problems and required me to waste some resources (one instance in particular comes to mind that cost me a rescue), but the only thing that's a big problem here is if the wyrm that is directly south of the starting location has counter (not the east one near the starting location against the wall, he can be dealt with).

The general strategy here is to kill the most threatening enemies in the first group on turn 1 (the mage, a counter wyrm, any of the soldiers if they have counter, and for me the archer with luna and hawkeye). You want to go as long as possible without rescuing Libra. Anyway, after dispatching the enemies in the first group and rescuing Libra, you are going to want to deal with Libra's group quickly and then set up for the reinforcements. The easiest way to neutralize the wyvern reinforcements is to send your sword users north and have everyone else hide in the south. Once the wyrms appear, you can cut them up without fear of retribution as long as you are careful of counter and hawkeye, since the wyrms will have serious issues hitting your (promoted) sword users. To deal with the next few waves you will want to draw out the wyrms (again with your sword users) and form a wall protecting the weaker units, and avoid the ranges of the others until you are ready to strike. I was able to draw out the mage and Tharja and trap them with Libra and Lissa on the west side of the bones while I killed off the soldiers and archers.

Without further ado I present my least reliable (if perhaps not my dumbest) walkthrough/log yet:

Preliminary pair-ups: Chrom pairs with Sumia, Frederick pairs with Cordelia (these allow Chrom and Fred to pretty much kill anyone in the initial group except the far wyvern. Panne pairs with Gregor. Gaius pairs with Lon'Qu.

On the first player phase, Cordelia flies over to the luna mage so Fred (Cordelia) can OHKO it with his Silver Lance. Lissa moves south and rescues Lon'Qu (because the initial group was a lot more dangerous than they should have been due to numerous counters and the archer having luna and hawkeye). Lon'Qu (Gaius) kills the east counter wyrm with the Seliph's blade. Sumia's range and terrain bonuses allow her to reach the luna hawkeye archer, who Chrom (Sumia) kills with the Falchion. Gregor (Panne) kills the central vantage soldier in the north with his glass axe. Now I realize that I have only Miriel, Maribelle, and Syrena remaining and Maribelle is too far away to physic the injured Lon'Qu or pair with Miriel. So what does she do? Well, Maribelle decides to take the Syrena Express. She hops on Syrena, who moves to Miriel and transfers Maribelle to Miriel. Miriel then runs east (out of range), and switches to Maribelle, who physics Lon'Qu (see what I mean, all these shenanigans just because the stupid archer had luna and hawkeye).

On EP, a soldier attacks Fred with his javelin/spear/whatever (loving that 44% chance to do 0 damage). The luna soldier misses Lon'qu. A luna archer hits Libra, as does a luna DM (hey game, do you think you have enough luna?). A pavise wyrm attacks lissa and she does negligible damage back.

Phew, that was exhausting. And it was just the first turn.

On the second player phase, Maribelle switches to Miriel, who kills the pavise wyrm with her cellica's gale (without Syrena's spd boost Miriel can't double otherwise). Fred takes out his superior lance and kills a counter soldier. Gregor kills the lousy javelin soldier with his killing edge (shoulda bought him a strength tonic so I wouldn't need to rely on this crit here; Note: Insta-promoted Gregor can 2HKO ch9 wyrms with a strength tonic). Lon'qu finishes off the luna soldier with his iron sword. Chrom kills a pavise soldier with his bronze lance (Sumia's dual helped). Syrena moves south and Lissa rescues Libra (who is in danger from the counter soldier and luna everything that is around him). Libra recruits himself and the enemy moves.

On the next player phase, Chrom moves south towards the hawkeye soldier. Maribelle pairs with Libra. Miriel moves north. Syrena pairs with Miriel (they missed each other). Lissa heals Gregor, Fred avoids range, and Lon'Qu and Gregor move north. The EP has a luna DM missing Chrom (note: chances are any recurring two word phrase is too long for me to type out every time; if you haven't figured it out yet what are you doing on SF? I'll type out what the abbreviations mean for you, CG- Celica's Gale, EP- Enemy Phase, DM- Dark Mage).

On player phase (nobody calls it PP), Libra mends Fred. Fred attacks a luna DM with his javelin (fails to kill him for some reason, probably because he didn't do enough damage). Miriel heals Libra. Gregor and Lon'Qu move south (why did I have them move north and then south when it would've sufficed to say they just avoided range, you ask?…that's a good question and one I don't have an answer to). Lissa kills the luna DM that Fred weakened. Chrom kills the Luna archer in the south with his bronze lance. On EP a soldier suicides on Chrom.

On player phase, healers do healing and Lon'Qu, Fred (should switch to Cordelia), Chrom (should switch to Sumia), and Gregor charge north, swords drawn.

EP:
Unfortunately, Gregor was just barely in the range of a bunch of the reinforcements after they appear and, luckily for me, he didn't get squashed by counter. A pavise wyrm attacks him, 2 short axe wyrms miss him. Another wyrm suicides on him, and lastly, a hawkeye wyrm attacks Gregor.

Due to my stupidity, I didn't switch Chrom to Sumia or Fred to Cordelia, so they were stuck useless and out of range and I was forced to waste 2 rescues and rely on the dumb AI (which could have finished me if it wanted to).

Player phase:
Making due with what I didn't do (try saying that 10 times fast), Chrom moves north and kills the west counter wyrm (and the only one in range). Libra trades for Lissa's rescue and rescues Miriel. Miriel kills the easternmost wyrm (with counter and hawkeye) with her CG (Elwind wasn't good enough for some reason, or maybe I was just so rattled at this point that I didn't care anymore). Lon'Qu attacks a pavise wyrm with his killing edge (no crit for me). Gregor kills the pavise wyrm, but Fred has no space to get up there to fight the counter wyrm. Of course, being the idiot that I am (I swear I just must have like blacked out for a 5 minute period there and made like 4 dumb mistakes in a row, and I rarely make dumb mistakes at all believe it or not), that doesn't stop me from rescuing Fred up there (this actually looks like a good move later) even though he can't do anything but move north and javelin the northern myrm.

EP:
At this point, I've thought that it was over at least 3 times in this run alone, and this is yet another instance in which I was ready to hit the reset button. There were two wyrms alive each with short axes. One of them had counter (and full hp) and my Chrom had less than 10 hp. Bad combination. The wyrm could have killed Chrom with counter and it would've been game over. But luckily, the AI is programmed to attack with range even in such a situation (one of the few instances of the Luna+ AI making a mistake). The pavise wyrm attacks chrom from range (20% of hitting) and misses. Meanwhile, the counter wyrm that could've had Chrom's head, attacks lon'qu with a hand axe (20% of hitting) and misses. </dumb AI> A hawkeye mage suicides on Miriel and everyone aggroes.

On player phase, Chrom kills the pavise wyrm that attacked him, using the Falchion. Fred javelins the counter wyrm that attacked Lon'Qu. Gregor kills the counter wyrm with his last glass axe. Miriel runs south and kills a counter luna wyrm from the southern group with her elwind. Libra mends Chrom. Lissa rescues Miriel and Lon'Qu moves to the edge of enemy range and lures a pavise luna wyrm with his killing edge equipped.

EP:
Lon'Qu weakens the pavise luna wyrm.

On the next player phase, Lon'Qu retreats out of everyone's range except the wyrms. Chrom and Fred move diagonal from and above Lon'Qu, respectively, to form a wall blocking the weaker units from the wyrms' range. Lissa heals Lon'Qu, Gregor runs out of range, and Libra heals Miriel (I didn't realize that Libra would be in range of the wyrms but better he than Miriel).

On EP, A Luna wyrm attacks and misses Libra (this could have been fatal if Libra had critted). The luna pavise wyrm attacks Fred.

On player phase, Lon'Qu moves above the luna pavise wyrm, kills it with the iron sword. Syrena kills a luna wyrm with elwind (had to make sure Tharja didn't commit suicide by attacking Miriel, plus Syrena got some EXP). Chrom moves north out of range and switches to Sumia and Fred switches to Cordelia (this'll give me the mobility to kill the archers next player phase, see I do demonstrate my powers of foresight most of the time). Libra stays below Syrena (this is at the point where I realize I can block Tharja and the mage from having access to anyone else and force them to attack one ResTank or another). Lissa heals Gregor, and Gregor moves to the safe spot to the right of Syrena.

EP: Tharja blasts Syrena. The hawkeye mage blasts Libra.

On the last dangerous player phase, Gregor moves right and attacks the luna soldier with the killing edge, no crits :( and Miriel kills a counter pavise soldier with elwind. Lon'Qu attacks a hawkeye soldier with his killing edge (again no luck on the 30-40% crits even though I just got 4 of them and the chance of not getting any of those is like 18% assuming the RNG works conventionally). Libra moves east and kills the weakened hawkeye soldier. Lissa moves south above Tharja, blocking hers and the mage's range, and physics Gregor. Fred moves below Lon'Qu and kills the top counter archer with a javelin. Fred is not weakened where a hawkeye mage can kill him and a hawkeye pavise archer is running around rampant and can kill a weakened Lon'Qu. I wave goodbye to this one and try to salvage my chance of success by flying Chrom south to attack the hawkeye pavise archer from the south (thus blocking the hawkeye mage from being able to hit Fred) and proceed to attack with ROy's Blade, fingers crossed for one of two 17% crits to proc. Lucky once again, Sumia's dual attack kills the fiend and I am safe and sound for the rest of the map (ok it really isn't that lucky since there was only like an 18% i would get into this situation in the first place and like an 8% that I would die here, but it is yet another example of me getting unlucky and being screwed and then getting lucky and surviving).

*Breathes another deep sigh of relief*

EP:
The luna soldier suicides on Gregor and the hawkeye mage blasts Lissa. Tharja attacks Lissa.

Player phase: Chrom moves north to circle around behind Lissa, Libra heals Lissa, and Lissa unequips herself so as not to kill Tharja (tossing a Luck Rally because it's fun). Repeats this cycle until Tharja is within talking distance of Chrom.

When Chrom finally gets up there, Lissa moves away and heals Fred, Chrom recruits Tharja, who moves away and allows Libra to kill the hawkeye mage (I'm not taking any chances at this point).

Everyone heals up on forts, Syrena claims the event tiles (unpaired, because then I have a better chance of getting EXP or a weapon because no stupid relationship building convos), and we surround the boss.

The boss has pavise, not pavise+ because it is a default skill on him rather than a Lunatic+ skill (haha let's all laugh at this loser), but he also has aegis (that's aegis+ of course), and luna (once again that's luna+, the + is assumed unless otherwise specified).

Fred takes 2 rounds on the schmuck with his superior lance (which did, in fact, prove to be the superior lance) and Syrena kills the boss with elwind.

Just looking at my characters' stats, I noticed a few things. First off, Lissa has the most HP at 43. Who would have thought? Also, Gregor and Lon'Qu's stats (at least the important ones anyway) are identical, aside from Gregor having +1 HP and Lon'Qu being up by a whopping +6 spd. Normally, this would mean that Lon'Qu is the superior character, but when you consider that I devoted a LOT more resources into him as far as training and statboosters, this ends up being a testament to Gregor's usefulness as a character.

I love Libra. He's basically a clone of my Lissa, but still, look at this guy's stats. They're practically equal to Lissa's (RES is even higher) even though Libra is 10 levels lower and prepromoted! You can bet this guy will be sticking around as my secondary healer (between Lissa, Libra, Miriel, Maribelle, and later Anna, half my team will be healers- sweet!).

Post-map:
Gregor and Lon'Qu have their C support convo. I sell a nosferatu (because no nosferatanking allowed) and some other stuff. I gave Lon'Qu the dracoshield (sure, I've used a lot of resources on Miriel and Lon'Qu but it sure paid off in this chapter-- especially for Miriel).

I'm probably going Paralogue 3 next because it seems easier and I don't need that master seal ASAP anymore (I'm gonna promote Syrena as soon as it is convenient, that is as soon as I can do so without being halfway or more to the next level). I am going to make Lissa a Falcoknight, most likely, to fill a potentially useful niche of mounted healer/rescuer. I wouldn't be surprised If I don't get around to reclassing her until the chapter 12 seal though, since I really want Renewal first.

Inventory: Cash=1784;

Bronze Sword x1 (44)
Iron Sword x1 (36)
Steel Sword x2 (25, 25)
Killing Edge x1 (24)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (15)
Roy's Blade x1 (23)
Bronze Lance x1 (41)
Bronze Lance +1 mt x1 (29)
Steel Lance x2 (35, 35)
Silver Lance x1 (6)
Javelin x1 (25)
Log x1 (19)
Miniature Lance x1 (3)
Superior Lance x1 (4)
Finn's Lance x1 (8)
Bronze Axe x2 (32, 50)
Hand Axe x1 (24)
Killer Axe x1 (26)
Ladle x1 (20)
Elthunder x1 (35)
Wind x1 (29)
Elwind x1 (1)
Celica's Gale x1 (6)
Aversa's Night x1 (10)
Heal x4 (20, 30, 30, 30)
Mend x1 (20)
Physic x2 (8, 10)
Rescue x1 (4)
Vulnerary x2 (3, 3)
Concoction x1 (2)
Elixir x1 (3)
Master Seal x1 (1)

Paralogue 4

Before this map, I got Lissa's and Maribelle's C support and Panne x Gregor C.

This map is slightly harder than Chapter 9 if you take it on as early as I did. It really isn't that bad, though, as long as you don't get too screwed over with counters and hawkeyes. If the myrm within the walls near the starting location has counter, than between dodging and chrom's dual attack/guard, sumia will have a 7% of dying, not too big of a deal. If the barbarian in the walls has counter and hawkeye, you are going to need to count on Lon'Qu proc'ing a 30% crit gib, so that is a problem and you should probably reset. If either of the two mages that can hit Lon'Qu on turn 1 has hawkeye, then you will have a 30-50% chance of dying depending on the mage in question.

The thief is going to make a run for the arms scroll in the nw corner. I sent Fred up there to try to intercept him, but I was set back a turn by a bad skill combination so I didn't end up getting him. Again, not too huge of a deal, IIRC the thing only sells for around 1250 gold anyway and it doesn't serve much other purpose.

As far as positioning, I just made sure Fred (Panne) and Miriel (Syrena) were on the left side and that Lissa could rescue Anna on turn 1 if necessary. I bought Gregor a defense tonic to help him survive if the myrm in the center passage has luna, but I didn't end up needing that.

General strategy is to kill the enemies in the wall with Chrom/Sumia and Lon'Qu (Gaius) on the first turn while Miriel (Syrena) and Fred (Panne) kill the enemies on the left side of the map while Lissa rescues Anna. After that, it is just a game of carefully avoiding the ranges of the swarm of enemies that attack you while Fred runs north to pick off ranged attackers. With regards to your main force, you can either attempt to kill all of the enemies in the central corridor and pivot around that spot (this basically means killing everyone in the corridor and forming a wall against the people incoming from the east. Alternatively, you could simply retreat everyone west until conditions are favorable to sweep in and finish off all of the dangerous enemies in one turn.

Anyway, here goes:

Sumia (Chrom) kills counter hawkeye myrm in walls with steel lance. Lon'qu (Gaius) kills the nearby counter barb with killing edge (unnecessary but helpful crit hear allows Lon'Qu not to take any damage. Fred (Panne) OHKOs the luna vantage myrm from side with his silver lance (Panne's pair up bonuses allow Fred to OHKO the myrm without a strength tonic, which is useful if the myrm has counter). In any case, it seems that I got the one skill combination that causes Fred to take damage from this myrm even though he can OHKO him. Miriel (Syrena) moves behind Fred and the kills counter barb on left side with elthunder. Cordelia moves Gregor (Cordelia) below the myrm in the central passage to block his range. Lissa heals Sumia and Libra rescues Anna after trading for Lissa's rescue staff.

On EP, a hawkeye pavise vantage barbarian is weakened by Fred. An arcthunder mage hits Gregor. An archer attacks Miriel, misses and dies. The arcfire mage misses Lon'Qu. Finally, the hawkeye myrm that Gregor tried to block also had pass, so he attacks and severely weakens Libra. Ally Anna kills the hawkeye pavise vantage barbarian that Fred weakened.

On the second player phase, Sumia kills the arcfire mage. Libra heals Fred, who runs north with his javelin equipped attempting to bait as many people as possible. Gregor avoids range and Lon'Qu blocks Libra from enemy range. Miriel heals Gregor and Lissa blocks Libra and heals Anna.

EP: Luna archer suicides on Fred. An Arcthunder mage hits Lissa. The hawkeye myrm attacks Lissa and Lon'Qu's dual attack luckily saves her from death. Ally Anna kills a counter mage.

The next player phase is when the big push comes. Chrom recruits Anna and kills a counter hawkeye barbarian with his tree branch (gods I love this thing). Miriel burns her cellica's gale to kill a counter aegis barbarian. Lon'Qu offs the hawkeye myrm. Gregor kills a hawkeye mage. Anna attacks the luna hawkeye archer from the right. Libra kills the Luna hawkeye archer. Lissa moves above Anna and heals her. Fred avoids range.

EP: Vantage luna myrm misses Anna. Hawkeye mage hits Anna.
Player phase: Fred runs north, Syrena kills the vantage luna myrm with CG. Libra heals Lon'Qu, who kills the hawkeye mage. Everyone else runs north and is healed.
Next player phase, everyone except Fred moves north but avoids range. Fred baits the right counter hawkeye archer with his javelin. Everyone heals and Chrom and Gregor switch to their fliers.
EP: Thief takes arms scroll, hawkeye counter mage suicides on Fred.

Next player phase, I moved north sooner than I should have, thinking that the thief might have to move back west to escape. This wasn't the case, he will exit north where the boss is. I promoted Syrena finally and I transferred Lon'Qu to Cordelia, who flew north and killed the counter barbarian. Lissa physic'ed Lon'Qu, more healing ensues, and Sumia flies west to take on the lone mage.
EP: Mage hits Lissa. Archer hits Lon'Qu. Mage hits Lon'Qu.

Player Phase: More healing. Lissa heals Lon'Qu, who kills the northern aegis arcfire mage. Gregor runs north and attacks the pavise archer that attacked Lon'Qu with his bronze axe (this is all he had left because at this point it is a good idea to give Lon'Qu an iron sword so he can kill counters and still take another hit). Sumis kills the western arcwind mage and everyone else moves north.
EP: The archer attacks Anna.

On Player phase, Syrena kills the archer with her iron sword. Everyone heals, Anna and Gaius each grab one of the chests outside enemy range, event tiles are claimed, and everyone getsthier appropriate pair up partners back.

Syrena baits and kills the southern archer in the east group and everyone swings around to approach the remaining eastern group from the south.
Anna (Gregor), Lissa, and Cordelia (Lon'Qu) are positioned at the left door and Fred (Panne), Sumia (Chrom) and Gaius on right.

On the next player phase, the thieves open their respective doors. Lon'Qu kills the luna counter barbarian on his side with the iron sword (that's why I had Gregor give it to him earlier). Fred OHKO's the vantage counter myrm on the right side again with the silver lance. Sumia takes a shot at the pavise mage with her miniature lance and kills him with the help of Chrom's dual attack. Lissa heals Lon'Qu and Syrena moves north.

EP: A myrm and a luna barbarian suicide on Lon'Qu. The boss misses Lon'Qu.
Player Phase: Everyone retreats. Lon'Qu baits the boss. Anna baits the mage on the left, and Syrena baits the mage on the right.
EP: Two dual guards in a row mean that neither Anna or Syrena take damage from their mage, a nice bonus but not necessary. The boss, of course, misses Lon'Qu.

Player Phase: Anna kills the pavise mage on the left. Syrena kills the vantage arcwind mage. Lissa retreats west.
EP: The boss misses Anna. A pavise myrm attacks Lon'Qu and a barbarian suicides on Lon'Qu.
Player Phase: Lon'Qu and Anna run north, Anna heals Lon'Qu. Everyone else runs up the right side of the map.
EP: The pavise myrm dies on Lon'Qu's blade.

Player Phase: Lon'Qu and Anna move north towards the remaining NW chest, Chrom baits the boss with an iron sword.

Next player phase, Anna snags the NW chest and Chrom continues to bait the boss until both he and Fred can attack the boss on the same player phase.

Eventually, Fred attacks the boss (who has pavise and pass in addition to the usual skils) with Roy's Blade. Chrom Attacks the boss with falchion.
EP: The boss misses Fred

Player phase: Chrom attacks the boss with the tree branch and Syrena kills the boss with Elthunder.

Post-map I got the Panne x Frederick C support. I sold the bullion and talisman and bought a second seal. I am looking for some master seals to promote Maribelle, Sumia, and Tharja. Sorceror Tharja might act as a good pair up fodder for either Syrena or Miriel and allow those two to operate independently. I especially need to promote Sumia, though I'm not sure what to promote her to yet. Dark Flier gives Galeforce eventually, but Falcoknight gives better pair up bonuses for Chrom and makes her a better magekiller.

Inventory: Cash=9246

Bronze Sword x1 (41)
Iron Sword x2 (20, 40)
Steel Sword x2 (7, 35)
Killing Edge x2 (23, 30)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (10)
Roy's Blade x1 (22)
Bronze Lance x1 (37)
Bronze Lance +1 mt (29)
Steel Lance x2 (29, 35)
Silver Lance x1 (2)
Javelin x1 (21)
Log x1 (19)
Miniature Lance x1 (1)
Superior Lance x1 (4)
Finn's Lance x1 (8)
Bronze Axe x2 (29, 50)
Iron Axe x1 (38)
Hand Axe x1 (24)
Killer Axe x1 (26)
Ladle x1 (20)
Elthunder x1 (29)
Wind x1 (25)
Elwind x1 (1)
Aversa's Night x1 (10)
Heal x5 (4, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30)
Mend x2 (18, 20)
Physic x2 (6, 10)
Rescue x1 (3)
Kneader x1 (8)
Vulnerary x2 (3, 3)
Concoction x2 (2, 3)
Elixir x1 (3)
Second Seal x1 (1)

Chapter 10

This chapter was actually fairly annoying, even with the crapload of tonics I bought before hand. Before starting the chapter, I witnessed Frederick and Cordelia's C supports. Chrom got +4 str from barracks and Fred and Chrom each got defense tonics. In addition, Sumia got a SPD and DEF tonic, Miriel got a SPD tonic, Gregor got a STR and Syrena a MAG. I know that's a lot, but it potentially helped Sumia's dodge and allowed Gregor and Miriel to snag a crucial kill under a specific circumstance.

Skill-wise, if the north wyvern rider above the bones has luna or str+2, sumia is gonna need to count on a 40% hit to miss her in order to survive. For the central group of enemies (near the wyrmslayer thief), if the wyrm has counter than neither the northern soldier nor the northern barb can have counter.

The general idea here is to send Fred along the southwestern edge of the map to kill the two thieves there. Sumia is gonna fly Chrom to kill the Bullion that is gonna retreat to the northwest corner of the map, while the rest of the party takes out the central group. After dealing with the eastern group that moves in, Lon'Qu and Chrom are going to hold the SE fort by the time reinforcements arrive while Fred and the others take out the reinforcements while sitting on the central southern fort.

I actually beat this on like the 2nd try with this strategy, but before that I was stubbornly insistent on using a worse strategy and it took me quite a few tries before I decided to change to the strategy that worked.

First player phase:
Fred (Anna) charges west, kills the master seal thief with javelin and sends the master seal to convoy. Having Anna as a pair up partner and the thief not having pavise go a huge way towards making this, and by extension getting all the rewards in this chapter, much easier. Now, Sumia (Chrom) flies north on bones, avoids range of ground enemies, avoids range of left wyrm, equips finn's lance, takes master seal from convoy and promotes to falcon knight. In the central group, Gregor (Panne) OHKO's hawkeye counter thief (wyrmslayer). He can barely pull off a OHKO with Panne and a STR tonic. Lon'Qu (Cordelia) kills the barb in the central group with killing edge (this is done because the soldier has counter and can likely kill him). Miriel (Gaius) moves behing Gregor and takes all of his equipment (see the above reasoning). Libra (Syrena) moves under Miriel and Lissa moves east and luck rallies.

EP: Lon'qu weakens counter soldier. The barb misses Gregor. And, as expected with Chrom's 80%+ dual attack rate, the counter wyrm that attacks Sumia meets an untimely death at the hands of our Royal Ylissean couple.

Next player phase, Chrom has to kill the counter hawkeye thief (bullion) in one hit and survive a counter and a few hawkeyes on EP. Roy's blade fits the bill and Chrom kills the thief with that sword. Fred runs west with the killer axe equipped. Gregor takes his equipment back and kills the barb. Lissa mends Lon'Qu, who baits the pavise barbarian from the east group. Miriel kills the wyrm that flew in with elthunder and Syrena kills the soldier with her thunder tome.

EP:
A ton of stuff happens here, mostly for Chrom and Fred, which is why it is so important that you set up correctly last player phase. A pass pavise barb attacks Lissa. A counter soldier suicides on Fred (who is all set with his killer axe). A barb suicides on Fred and a short axe barb misses Fred. A hawkeye soldier suicides on Fred. Also, a hawkeye short axe wyrm hits Fred. On Chrom's end, a short axe barbarian misses Chrom and barbarian suicides on Chrom. A counter barb suicides on Chrom and a Lastly, a luna short axe barbarian suicides on Miriel.

Player Phase: On this turn, we take on the eastern group. Syrena kills a pavise barb with thunder. Gregor kills the aegis barb. Miriel kills a hawkeye pavise soldier. Lissa moves onto the southern fort, physics Fred. Chrom kills a hawkeye wyrm with falchion and Fred kills the Seraph Robe thief with his javelin.

EP: A luna barbarian is weakened by Fred. The counter soldier (short spear) weakened by Syrena.
A luna short axe barb hits Chrom and a hawkeye short axe wyrm hits Fred (all these ranged attackers got on my nerves but they weren't doing too much damage).

On player phase, Fred hand axes a luna counter barbarian. Chrom runs south, equips falchion, uses elixir. Syrena kills counter soldier. Miriel heals Lissa and Lon'qu runs east, trades for wyrmslayer.
EP: The short axe barbarian misses Chrom and the hawkeye short axe wyrm suicides on Fred.

On player phase, Chrom runs south, falchion equipped. Fred and Lon'qu move east and Lissa heals Fred. On EP the short axe wyrm attacks Fred.

Everyone runs east, Fred runs onto central fort. Lon'qu moves onto the Southeast fort, equips wyrmslayer. Chrom moves to the left of Lon'Qu.

On EP a ton of reinforcements appear. A pavise counter short axe barbarian is weakened by Fred. A short axe wyrm is weakened by Fred. A hawkeye wyrm is weakened by Fred. A luna wyrm attacks Lissa and a hawkeye short axe wyrm attacks Lon'qu. A wyrm suicides on Chrom.

Player phase: Time for wyrm cleanup duty. Syrena kills aegis wyrm. Gregor kills a hawkeye wyrm. Miriel kills pavise wyrm. Fred hand axes pavise barb, kills. Chrom kills a hawkeye wyrm on right side and Lissa avoids range.

On EP: A short axe barb attacks syrena. A hawkeye soldier suicides on Gregor. A short axe luna wyrm misses Chrom and another wyrm suicides on Chrom.

Player phase: Miriel blasts the counter aegis wyrm. Syrena kills the vantage barbarian with iron sword. Fred kills counter aegis wyrm with hand axe. Gregor runs east. Lissa heals Gregor and Lon'qu kills a luna wyrm with wyrmslayer.

EP: A wyrm suicides on miriel
Player phase: Syrena moves onto central fort. Everyone else avoids range.

The next few turns consist of Syrena carefully killing the pavise aegis barbarian and Fred uring one of the few remaining groups of enemies.
A pavise aegis soldier attacks Syrena. Syrena kills the pavise aegis soldier with iron sword. Everyone heals up on forts and Fred lures soldier and luna barb with iron sword.

Player phase: Fred javelins counter soldier. Sumia kills counter soldier. Syrena weakens luna barb with iron sword. Lissa heals Syrena and Miriel kills pavise barb. Lon'qu kills vantage soldier and Gregor kills a barbarian.

Everyone heals up on forts again and eventually we take on the boss, who has hawkeye.
Fred lures luna hawkeye boss with hand axe
Lissa luck rallies to counteract the effects of Gamble and prevent an unlucky crit (I finally found a use for Luck rally!). Fred finally class changes to General and Gregor kills boss with steel sword.

Post-map: I bought a physic, speedwing, and master seal from some Anna merchants. I sold the beaststone and bullion to fund this shopping spree. I got a few conversations, namely Miriel x Gaius c
and Cordelia x Lon'qu c. I promptly started using all these goodies. I used the seraph robe on Syrena, the speedwing on Fred, and promoted Maribelle to valkyrie.

Inventory: Cash=2031:

Bronze Sword x1 (36)
Iron Sword x3 (11, 40, 40)
Steel Sword x2 (33, 35)
Steel Sword +1 mt x1 (29)
Wyrmslayer x1 (24)
Killing Edge x2 (19, 30)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (10)
Roy's Blade x1 (19)
Bronze Lance x1 (37)
Bronze Lance +1 mt x1 (27)
Steel Lance x2 (28, 30)
Silver Lance x1 (2)
Javelin x1 (12)
Log x1 (19)
Miniature Lance x1 (1)
Superior Lance x1 (4)
Finn's Lance x1 (2)
Bronze Axe x2 (28, 50)
Iron Axe x1 (35)
Hand Axe x1 (9)
Killer Axe x1 (21)
Ladle x1 (20)
Thunder +2 mt x1 (38)
Elthunder +1 mt x1 (17)
Wind x1 (25)
Fire x1 (45)
Aversa's Night x1 (10)
Heal x6 (30x6)
Mend x2 (17, 20)
Physic x3 (5, 10x2)
Rescue x1 (3)
Kneader x1 (8)
Vulnerary x2 (3x2)
Concoction x2 (2, 3)
Elixir x1 (2)

Chapter 11

Before the battle I got Libra and Syrena's C support. I bought Fred a SPD and DEF tonic. Also picked up a +4 STR and SKL boost for Syrena from the barracks. Also picked up a Kris' Confect and an Eirika's blade. I gave one Kris' confect to Fred and handed Chrom Eirika's Blade to prepare for this chapter.

As far as skills, the only major problem is if the right arcthunder mage has hawkeye, then you will be reduced to a 50% survival rate (~10% if the sage also has hawkeye). On the left side of the map, skills aren't a huge deal as long as both the closest fighter and merc don't have counter. If the hero has counter it will set you back a turn, as will it if the other fighter has counter. But the big issue with skills is the reinforcements; you have to be aware of when the reinforcements are and position your units accordingly because you never know when one will spawn with counter.

This chapter is actually pretty difficult and is considered a "difficulty spike", but it really isn't too different from Ch.10 where most of the difficulty lies in trying to get all of the items while avoiding getting swarmed by reinforcement spawns.

General strategy here is to have General Fred with Lon'Qu paired take out the left group and then the thief after he grabs the bullion. The important thing is that you DO NOT aggro any of the enemies around Gangrel, because this will cause them to charge toward you and that is not good. Sumia (Chrom) and Syrena (Gregor) do a decent job of handling the right mage group. The rest of the units can hang out between the two groups and take out the NW reinforcement group including the speedwing hero when they appear. Again, the important thing here is that you retreat your healers and weaker units like olivia out of the range of the forts by the end of turn 3 to prevent anyone from getting killed by reinforcements. After this point, it is basically just a matter of controlling who the reinforcements can hit and avoiding the dangerous ones with counter. You can retreat your units north if necessary as long as you don't run into the second group of NW reinforcements. I somehow ended up with Anna and Olivia stuck in range, so I had to waste a few elixirs and rescues keeping them alive. After the reinforcements are all dead, the rest is easy as long as you make sure to position your units in the exact squares to lure the appropriate members of Gangrel's entourage. Lastly, it helps to draw the remaining units away from Gangrel while retaining enough firepower to surround and kill the pestilent scumbag.

Without further ado, here is the chapter:

The first thing I suggest you do is mark the range of Gangrel and the surrounding pair of mercs, fighters, and mages. As long as you do not aggro these units, you will be fine, but the second you move into this range you will aggro Gangrel and all hell will break loose. In fact, one of the central forts is positioned so as to try to trap you into aggroing Gangrel. You are going to have to resist that if you want to beat this chapter and get all of the goods.

On the first player phase:
Sumia (Chrom) moves toward the right group, avoids range of arcwind mage, lures pavise arcthunder mage and pavise arcfire sage, equips mini lance. Lon'Qu (Fred) moves toward the left group and Olivia (Maribelle) dances for him. At this point, fred lures the counter pavise merc and luna hero with his finn's lance (2) and Superior Lance (4) equipped in that order. This is necessary to ensure that Fred ORKO's the hero in case he also kills the counter pavise merc and thus has to deal with the pavise aegis fighter. If the Hero had counter, this 2HKO would have been necessary for Fred to live.

On EP: Fred weakens the counter pavise merc and the Luna Hero suicides on Fred. The pavise mage and pavise sage suicide on Sumia (Chrom's dual attacks are immensely helpful here).

On the next player phase, Libra heals Fred. Miriel kills the counter pavise merc. Fred Hand Axes the pavise aegis fighter. Olivia dances for Fred. Fred takes the fort and hand axes the counter aegis fighter again, killing him. Lissa heals Sumia and Chrom lures the pavise wyrm to the right and syrena lures the counter pavise short axe wyrm.

On EP, a hawkeye fighter and a hawkeye luna short axe wyrm suicide on Fred. Syrena weakens counter pavise short axe wyrm and a pavise wyrm suicides on chrom's aether.

Next player phase, Syrena lures a luna arcwind mage, sumia kills the pavise counter short axe wyrm with mini lance. Anna grabs the goddess icon chest, Lissa rescues Anna, and Libra heals Fred. I'm not sure why I wasted a rescue staff use on the goddess icon chest, because I could have safely grabbed it before luring Gangrel. It was probably just a remnant of my old strategy, during which I didn't know not to aggro Gangrel, that I didn't rethink when I switched to this strategy.

In any case, Fred kills counter wyrm with hand axe. Miriel takes fort, heals Libra and
Olivia runs north and switches to Maribelle.

Reinforcements spawn from the left and right forts. The left forts spit out 2 fighters and a merc and the right forts spit out 2 mages.

On Enemy Phase, a luna merc suicides on Fred, Syrena weakens the luna arcwind mage, a hawkeye fighter suicides on Libra (who pulls out an unnecessary but helpful 8% iron axe crit), and the arcfire mage suicides on Sumia.

On player phase, we deal with the remaining reinforcements and have a turn or so free before the next group appears. Sumia kills a counter luna mage, Syrena kills the luna arcwind mage, Lon'qu kills luna vantage fighter with steel sword and everyone else runs north and heals up.

On EP, reinforcements spawn from the NW forts that include the speedwing hero and armorslayer merc. We want those goods.

Nothing else happens on EP and on the next player phase, Fred kills the counter thief with javelin, careful not to aggro Gangrel's posse. Sumia lures a hawkeye counter arcwind mage. Syrena is transferred to Miriel, who lures the luna short axe fighter and Anna lures a hawkeye pavise merc.

Wyrm reinforcements spawn from the southern forts.

On EP, A hawkeye counter arcwind mage suicides on Sumia, a luna short axe fighter suicides on Miriel and a hawkeye pavise merc is weakened by Anna.

Next player phase, Chrom lures a counter wyrm by moving next to and killing a pavise aegis mage. To minimize the risk of death from being within the range of 3 forts, Fred retreats west and equips the killer axe. Syrena kills the counter hawkeye merc. Anna moves toward Fred, separates cordelia onto the westernmost fort. Libra rescues Olivia and Olivia dances for Lissa, who rescues Syrena out of the range of the hawkeye pavise hero.

Reinforcement spawn from the left and right forts.

EP: A hawkeye luna mage attacks tharja and a counter wyrm suicides on chrom.

Player phase: Lon'qu kills a counter luna wyrm with killing edge. Anna uses Lon'qu's elixir. Syrena kills the weakened hawkeye mage with Roy's blade. Lissa heals chrom, who kills a hawkeye pavise fighter with Eirika's blade. Olivia dances for Syrena, who kills a counter mage from range with thunder. Libra heals chrom and Tharja takes Miriel, switches and heals Syrena.

Unpromoted reinforcements spawn in the NW and two wyrms spawn again in the southern forts.

EP:
A hawkeye pavise hero attacks Lon'qu.

Player phase: Fred kills a pavise luna merc with his javelin. Anna takes the fort and heals fred while Chrom baits north counter merc with falchion and everyone else retreats north.

Reinforcements spawn from the left and right forts.

EP: A counter merc suicides on Chrom. A hawkeye pavise hero weakens Anna. These two will be seeing a lot of each other and the hero will be a serious nuisance for the next few turns.

Player phase: Fred kills the counter fighter with his killer axe. Libra heals chrom, who kills a counter hawkeye mage with Eirika's blade. Olivia dances for Libra. Miriel heals chrom and Lissa pairs with Libra to get the extra range necessary to physic Fred. Libra moves east and switched to Lissa who physics Fred (IIRC she has an extra 2 magic so whatever). Anna runs north and uses an elixir. Syrena moves west.

EP: A merc suicides on Fred. A vantage fighter suicides on Chrom. A hawkeye pavise hero attacks Anna. A luna wyrm and a counter wyrm also suicide on Fred.

Player Phase: Sumia kills a luna counter mage from range with mini lance. Syrena kills a hawkeye arcthunder mage with her iron sword. Anna retreats east and Lissa physics Fred, who takes the fort. Miriel heals Anna and Maribelle heals Syrena

EP: Fred weakens the hawkeye pavise hero.

Player phase: Miriel heals Syrena, who moves west and, with a dance from Olivia, lures the hawkeye pavise hero with the iron sword. Fred moves to the forest and switches to Lon'qu, who can barely take a hit, rather than wasting another physic.

EP: The pavise hawkeye hero attacks syrena.

Player phase:
Syrena blasts the pavise hawkeye hero with thunder and kills it.

Now we can take our time before confronting Gangrel. Lissa heals everyone up and we surround Gangrel's troublesome troupe.

With careful positioning here you can rig it so you have the best matchup against each of the four characters at the front of Gangrel's group while still avoiding exposure to multiple enemies for one unit.

Fred (Anna) lures the counter merc on left.
Syrena (Miiriel) lures the pavise mage on left.
Sumia (Chrom) lures hawkeye arcfire mage on right.

Lon'Qu (Gregor) should have lured the merc on the right but I overestimated his move so I wasn't able to get him into position.

EP: All the lured enemies suicide on their respective units: The counter merc suicides on Fred; the pavise mage suicides on Syrena and the hawkeye mage suicides on Sumia.

Player phase:
Sumia lures Gangrel. I am loving this matchup with the WTA plus Sumia's high RES against Gangrel's Levin Sword, plus Chrom is almost guaranteed to dual attack once. An unequipped anna lures the luna counter fighter to left side of map, rather than risk death due to a ~30-40% hit chance followed by counter. Everyone runs north and is healed.

EP:
As expected, Gangrel suicides on Sumia. Yay! She finally got a bosskill! And this one wasn't a mooch kill either. Looks like Sumia is finally coming around. Having Chrom's Dual Attacks certainly helps a lot.

Player phase: Anna retreats, Gregor transfers Lon'qu to Syrena, Syrena and Tharja blast the counter aegis merc, whom Chrom kills. Libra heals Anna.

EP:
A pavise aegis fighter attacks Tharja.

Player Phase: Syrena blasts the pavise aegis fighter. Olivia dances for Syrena, Syrena kills the pavise aegis fighter with Roy's blade. Fred, in a characteristic Fred fashion, steals the last kill by critting the counter luna fighter with his javelin. Oh well, at least it wasn't the boss this time.

Post-map:
I bought a ton of special staves and stuff plus a second seal from the Anna shops; I also bought a dracoshield. I gave Syrena the Spirit Dust, Miriel the Speedwing, and Chrom the Dracoshield.

Inventory: Cash=162:

Iron Sword x2 (35, 40)
Steel Sword x3 (37, 25x2)
Steel Sword +1 mt x1 (27)
Armorslayer x1 (25)
Wyrmslayer x1 (22)
Killing Edge x2 (14, 30)
Levin Sword x1 (25)
Falchion x1
Tree Branch x1 (20)
Roy's Blade x1 (16)
Eirika's Blade x1 (13)
Bronze Lance +1 mt x1 (21)
Steel Lance x2 (23, 35)
Javelin x1 (6)
Log x1 (19)
Superior Lance x1 (2)
Bronze Axe x1 (28)
Iron Axe x1 (34)
Killer Axe x1 (14)
Fire x1 (45)
Thunder +1 mt x1 (29)
Elthunder +2 mt x1 (7)
Wind x1 (20)
Aversa's Night x1 (10)
Heal x6 (4, 30x5)
Mend x2 (17, 20)
Physic x3 (3, 10x2)
Rescue x3 (5x3)
Ward x1 (5)
Hammerne x1 (1)
Concoction x1 (3)
Master Seal x1 (1)
Second Seal x1 (1)
Kris' Confect x1 (4)

Below are my thoughts on my units so far as of the end of chapter 11 (these are just based on my personal experience and are by no means intended to be universal. This is not a Luna+ Rate the Units or Tier list by any stretch of the imagination, simply me giving my thoughts on how my units have turned out and how useful they have been for me)

(also note that I will not update this section if I feel like writing my thoughts on my units later in the story, but I will simply add another section in the appropriate location to show how these thoughts have changed)

My Thoughts:

Party Members:

Chrom:

Chrom was a staple member of my earlygame party and despite his higher-than-average level he shouldn't be surpassed by the other members of my team for a while. Being able to ORKO wyrms, especially those with counter, is a huge help in certain situations. He doesn't mind having to share EXP with his wife Sumia because they serve two opposite roles-- Chrom kills axe users and most physical enemies but hates Magic while Sumia hates axes and eats Mages for breakfast. I'd expect Chrom will become significantly better once he gets the lance rank to use Javelins. His speed was a little lower than expected, as was his defense, but Chrom has plenty of STR making him basically just a sword version of a Warrior/Berserker. He gives pretty mediocre pair up bonuses aside from the whopping bonus to speed he gives, which is largely wasted on Sumia anyway.

Overall: Good stats across the board, Falchion is useful, plus he is a good investment of earlygame EXP if you don't want to overuse Avatar: 8.5/10

Syrena:

After a painfully slow start, Syrena is starting to get rolling. She took a lot of babying and was pretty bad before promotion, but I guess that's my own fault for underusing her and giving her less than ideal modifiers. Her usability spiked once she got C tomes because of those Celica's Gales (for those of you who claim that barracks are broken for this very reason, I realize this is only goig to fuel your fire). Her strength and speed, not to mention defense, mean that she can actually be a pretty good physical unit and I've seen some pretty good crit chances from her with that skill. She has terribly low luck, resistance, and magic for her level, however. The first two aren't too much of a problem since most of my army struggles from RES issues and there aren't that many crit mooks in this game (Luna+ likes counter mooks instead, of course). Her pathetic magic, however, has prevented her from taking off with Veteran and has actually reduced her ability to hit from 2 range to being not much of a factor even with counter on enemies. Luckily, Veteran combined with some decent levels lately have made her salvageable. Hero and Assassin are looking like good reclass options after I nab rally spectrum, but I'd kind of hate to waste that MAG stat. I'm not planning on Galeforce rushing any of the later chapters, but who knows and it is a decent skill anyway but oh well. I might add a poll for this later. But I digress.

Overall: My own fault for not overusing her early, but she needed a ton of babying to catch up. I'm sure she'll surpass everyone eventually, but for now: 5.5/10

Frederick:

Fred is God. He's basically Ylisse's Walhart. I can't even express enough how integral he has been. His almost immediate A ranks across the board combined with his variety of ranged attack options make him a one man wrecking machine. Even with his allegedly bad mid-game, he shows no signs of stopping any time soon. He is an absolute tank and will be nigh impervious to physical weapons once he gets Pavise. His levels have been ridiculous and his experience gain isn't really that far behind everyone else. His STR, DEF, HP, and even SPD are monstrous. Magic is his only weakness due to his poor RES. And, as I've mentioned before, he already has a lvl 15 promoted skill plus A ranks in Lances and Axes (and swords if I reclass him again), two weapon types with little to no competition among other members of my team. I anticipate that he will be a key member of my team for most of the game. If, as most people are saying, he ever does slow down, he will make a great pair up partner with his STR and DEF bonuses plus his Dual Guard + skill.

Overall: Fred has absolutely dominated the game so far. I can understand why the game is called Frederick Emblem, especially on Luna+. His only issue is his RES: 9.75/10+bias=10/10

Lissa:

Hmmm... Lissa... Well, I expected her ability to use axes to be a whole lot useful, but it hasn't really done anything and I don't expect it will since I plan to reclass to falco next chapter. Her extra durability has saved me once, but otherwise I should have gone Sage over War Monk. Luck Rally is useless. In any case, her stats are pretty good due to her level lead on most of my other units, and even her STR and SPD are pretty good for her (although they are admittedly pretty bad for her level compared to other units). She is invaluable in the first few chapters, but after that the majority have forts so she isn't too indispensable. Picking up early physics dramatically transformed her usefulness and allowed her to have another extremely useful role. Her RES is below average for a healer, but otherwise she is extremely durable for a healer. Of course, Libra is basically just as good but you really can't have too many healers and physic users in Luna+. Plus, once you get Libra, the majority of the battles where a high MAG and staff rank staffbot would be useful are already over.

Overall: If it weren't for the physic use I'd give her a 6.5, but her ability to transform earlygame strategies with Physic and Rescue makes her a whole lot more valuable. I'll go with: 8/10

Miriel:

I'm actually pretty diappointed with Miriel. I had to baby her at first and use quite a few statboosters on her and I'm not entirely pleased with the results. Her SPD means she can't double much without a SPD pair up partners, many of whom don't provide magic boosts which she could also use. She isn't a very good RES tank, and while her ranged offense helps on Luna+, it is pretty much dependent on SPD tonics and pair up partners for effective use. I mean, she does benefit from the fact that aside from Avatar, there aren't many other options for ranged attacks, most of which have even worse SPD issues. She paired with Syrena nicely, but that totally defeated the purpose of having two ranged magical attackers. She can do good chip here and there but can't kill much without a dual attack or crit, especially when Aegis+ is in the equation. I'm not even sure I would have been able to train her without the Cellica's Gale use, which came at the perfect time for her to really shine in the wyrm-ridden desert chapters. She is really the best option for a ranged attacker (again, aside from Avatar), at least until Tharja comes along. Sorceror Tharja would have even better stats in the essential categories and would require a lot less work. Sure, Elthunder Miriel can pull a nice crit out here and there due to her above average skill, but I needed to train her a lot and pour a lot of statboosters into her just to pretty much make another Tharja. Although, the ability to use staves to heal and rescue has helped on more than one occasion.

Overall: She's your best option for another good earlygame ranged attacker, and while she'll need a lot of babying, her offense will come in handy in certain situations involving counter, but it is hardly worth the effort when Tharja and Avatar exist: 6/10

Sumia:

Again, Sumia needs a lot of mooch kills. In fact, pretty much every one of my chapter walkthroughs contains the phrase "Sumia mooch kill". She is OHKO'd by anything with a weapon before promotion. However, she does add some nice bonuses for Chrom in addition to mobility, but if we were only considering her as a pair up partner she wouldn't be in this section. She makes a really nice magekiller in a world where pretty much no one that isn't named Libra has any RES to speak of. Her SPD is ridiculous and she will consistently double mages throughout the first half of the game. Unfortunately, her DEF is pathetic, but if she is ever fighting anything physical especially with Chrom as a husband than you are doing something wrong. The important thing is that her STR doesn't fall too far behind, but in any case she will probably be relying on dual attacks and crits to ORKO even most mages. Luckily, she has high skill and arguably makes the second best wife of Chrom after FemVatar. After promotion, her magekilling skills increased even further and although her using staves isn't too practical, it may come in handy later for rescue shenanigans. In any case, she gives nice RES and SPD bonuses that Chrom could seriously use.

Overall: Pretty much your stereotypical glass cannon magekiller. Will take a lot of babying but her levels will take off in the desert chapters and those that are mage-heavy. Her best use lies in her ability to support with Chrom. 7/10+Chrom Support=8/10

Lon'Qu:

Ahhh... Lon'Qu. He was invaluable in the axe crazed earlygame and is actually pretty easy to train considering. A perfect glass cannon, he has little HP or DEF without statboosters. Even if he gets a little bit SPD screwed he will double pretty much everything. His STR will have a bit of trouble keeping up with Chrom, for instance, but he will always have a nice SPD edge that helps provide a much needed pair up bonus to those who are less speed blessed (I would usually make a subtle hint that this is referring to Fred but I am pretty sure Fred and Lon'Qu actually have the same SPD at this point). Late earlygame to midgame his durability and low offense will start to be a significant drawback since the inability to 2HKO some units, especially fighters, is a bit of a problem due to counter. He is still worth bringing along and can make mincemeat of axe users and wyrms without counter, and is a great candidate for the wyrmslayer, but his usefulness lies in the earlygame. I probably screwed him over by promoting him to SM instead of Assassin, but I am really liking the SM pair up bonus plus Astra+Killing Edge is nothing to scoff at and is way better than Lethality in terms of reliability. However, it should be mentioned that Astra is a pretty bad skill on Luna+ since it is pretty much suicide when facing counter enemies. Inuany case, Lon'QU would also make a good pair up partner for Gregor, who is more balanced but with much lower Skill and Speed. I would say that Lon'Qu is to Gregor what Miriel is to Tharja, but Lon'Qu's SPD lead over Gregor makes him a better combat unit, not to mention that Lon'Qu is easier than Miriel to train, although he cannot be instapromoted like Gregor.

Overall: Glass cannon and avoid tank. Shines in Axe heavy earlygame. More SPD but less STR and DEF than Chrom and less balanced than Gregor. Usefulness starts to drop off when he can no longer 2HKO units with counter: 7.75/10

Maribelle:

Very poor stats at this point. Pretty much the same as Lissa but Lissa gets an EXP lead and is probably already established as your primary healer by the time Maribelle comes along. On the plus side, she does have a mobility advantage and is able to fill the role as a secondary healer until Libra comes along. At the very least it is useful to have her ferry Olivia around, but there is really no reason to pour experience into her. Just use her as needed and dump her when you can't bring extra units. Her magic is mediocre and, like Lissa, her speed is terrible. She does have much better RES, but she certainly shouldn't be fighting anyone, especially not mages who she can barely even chip after promotion. Demoiselle could probably help but half the time I don't even remember it exists so whatever.

Overall: Fills the gap as your secondary healer between Lissa and Libra, but once Anna comes along you can really just bench Maribelle except when you need her mobility: 3.5/10+Demoiselle=4/10

Gregor:

Gregor is no run of mill guy. Oh wait, that's exactly what Gregor is. Gregor has average stats across the board and is essentially just a poor man's Chrom. He can be a substitute for an untrained Lon'Qu, but at that point you could really just wait and pick up Anna. Gregor's true benefit lies in the fact that he can be insta promoted for players that haven't been training many sword users and pick up Sol a few chapters later. Armsthrift has potential, but with his low Skill it isn't activating much unless Gregor is trained, and at that point you might as well have trained Lon'Qu in the first place. I'm really not being fair on him, I realize. With all of the special treatment I've given some of my other units, Gregor would be a machine. But the whole point of Gregor is that he doesn't really need special treatment to keep up with the rest of your team. He's not going to stand out, but he shouldn't fall too far behind either.

Overall: Fairly balanced/mediocre stats across the board. Low Skill and Res. Luckily, he is in the best class in the game and comes at a point where he can be easily instapromoted and incorporated into pretty much any party. The game even gives to a master seal in the chapter he is recruited in. 5/10+Hero=7/10

Libra:

Libra is pretty useful. He fills the durable healer niche if you haven't trained Lissa. He also provided some much needed axe rank since Fred was my only other axe user (Lissa's E rank doesn't count). He has high Magic for rescuing and phsyic'ing as well as enough DEF and a ton of RES for tanking. His SPD is a little bit lackluster but it is a whole lot better than Lissa's and Maribelle's. He gets Lunatic bonuses which help him even more. His attacking ability is meh but it is better than Lissa's (although not quite as good as Sumia's) and could make for a decent magekiller. He probably would have been better if I didn't give all of my competent axes to Freddy. In any case, my Lissa is a good 10+ levels higher than Libra with almost identical stats (although I'd take A staves and E axes over C Staves and C Axes any day), I think that speaks for itself. In short, Libra is a ready made high level healer to maintain your party's health against the hordes of counter and Luna+ enemies. Unfortunately, he comes a lot later than Lissa, but with higher stats to compensate for the 9-10 ish chapters of utility.

Overall: He doesn't get the points for earlygame utility like Lissa, but he does come readymade with decent durability and even a viable combat option, something that Lissa could only dream of: 8/10

Anna:

I expected Anna to be a whole lot more useful, honestly. She has even worse strength issues than Lon'Qu, meaning that she can't fight anything with counter ever. And her Res, while slightly above the level of most physical units, isn't great enough to make her a magekiller. She does have a lot of utility though, which is the main reason why she exists, and why the trickster class in general exists. She gives great SPD bonuses, plus the added staff utility and don't forget that she can open chests. This last reason is why she deserves a spot on every Luna+ team, because you likely aren't training Gaius and there is no reason at all to reclass anyone to thief. She has good mobility especially in the desert, but suffers from a severe shortage of support options.

Overall: Great Utility plus a combat ability that comes in handy once in a while. No support options to speak of, but having another durable healer doesn't hurt. Her main feature is Locktouch, her ability to open chests without wasting a slot on Gaius. 6/10+utility=7.25/10

Pair Up Bots:

Kellam:

Decent Pair up early I suppose, his usefulness runs out after CH.5 when SPD becomes prized as a pair up bonus. Useful for some Ch.3 and Ch.5 strategies I guess.

Vaike:

See Kellam, but replace Ch.3 with Ch.2

Panne:

A pretty good pair up partner early, especially for Fred and Lon'Qu. SPD and STR are both important pair ups and she provides the most in both areas before people start promoting. Her only drawback as a support partner, aside from the fact that she can't promote, is that keeping her equipped for dual attacks is very expensive.

Gaius:

Not the best pair up partner, but the +3 SPD can be semi-useful as a last slot pair up partner filler early. Chances are you will be using Panne to pull off some OHKO strategy with Fred, so Gaius helps provide the extra SPD to whomever might need it, at least until Cordelia comes along.

Cordelia:

A very good pair up partner throughout the first half, she warrants a slot even in CH.11, after the likes of Panne and Gaius have long since overstayed their welcome in your party. In addition to the +4 SPD and a fair bit of RES, she provides mobility that is extremely useful in desert chapters and when snagging the Goddess Icon chest in Ch.11. She is a good pair up partner for Fred in the Desert chapters since she gives him some much needed mobility, plus that SPD can never go to waste on Fred.

Tharja:

Tharja probably would have had a full fledged spot on my team if it weren't for Miriel. As a pair up partner she provides MAG and SPD, but not enough to compensate either Miriel or Syrena for the loss of the other for pair up purposes. Dark Knight is probably better for Pair Up purposes, since the differences in pair up bonuses to combat stats aren't huge and the +1 MOV probably outweighs them. The +1 mov (and +2 mov when switched to DK Tharja) are useful on Miriel and Syrena, who generally aren't the "moviest" members of your party. She can be instapromoted to keep up with the trend of promoted pair up partners that develops around Chapter 10 or so.

Updated List of Units I plan on Using w/Pairings:

General Pair-Ups (THESE ARE NOT PAIRINGS)
Chrom (Sumia)

Frederick (Anna/Lon'Qu)

Gregor (Lon'Qu/Anna)

Syrena (Miriel/Tharja*)

Miriel (Tharja*/Cordelia*)

Lissa (Libra when necessary)

Libra

Olivia (Maribelle)

*asterisk denotes that this unit will not be trained and will be used solely for pair-up boosts.

Edited May 26, 2013 by Walhart

[eclipse]

1. Did you recruit Donnel?

2. I can read your stat tables just fine, but if you really want to make them pretty, turn off the WYSIWYG editor (it's in your settings somewhere).

[Paperblade]

I'm baffled at how you get so much EXP.

Edit: Oh apparently that's from memory

Edited February 23, 2013 by Paperblade

[Integrity]

I'm actually quite enamored of this style. Break up the paragraphs a bit and I'll be happy as a clam.

Keep it up.

[Peppy]

Made some pretty nice progress so far.

I wish you luck for the rest of this playthrough!

[darkkfan]

Boss abuse is not efficacious in Lunatic(+) since after a certain number of hits on a boss, you pretty much stop gaining EXP, so there's no real need for that provision.

Right, I knew that but added it anyway for some reason. I removed that provision

Your content is interesting, but it might make it easier to read if you split your writeups (for example) by turn, or simply by using more than one or two paragraphs to describe an entire chapter.

Ok, thanks for your feedback. I don't think I have turn-specific data for every chapter, but I'll definitely split up the paragraphs when I am less tired. It's like 3:00 am where I am right now!

1. Did you recruit Donnel?
2. I can read your stat tables just fine, but if you really want to make them pretty, turn off the WYSIWYG editor (it's in your settings somewhere).

Oops, yes I did recruit Donnel, I forgot to include that. I'll update it when I fix the other updates (like the WYSIWYG tables and splitting up the paragraphs). He got to kill the last barbarian coming in from the west and killed a couple baited archers later.

I'm baffled at how you get so much EXP.

Edit: Oh apparently that's from memory

Yeah, the levels are a bit weird since I don't remember them exactly. The stats after paralogue 1 onward will be accurate though. The only person who got a lot of EXP IMO was Lissa and that's for reason's I've stated.

I'm actually quite enamored of this style. Break up the paragraphs a bit and I'll be happy as a clam.

Keep it up.

Great to hear! I'll get around to that sometime today

Made some pretty nice progress so far.

I wish you luck for the rest of this playthrough!

Thanks for the encouragement! Edited April 16, 2013 by Walhart

[shadowofchaos]

Geez. Thank you so much on Chapter 3. I didn't know that you could open up one door, kill the knight, and then move all the way to the other door and kill the knight there without triggering all the enemies to go aggressive on you.

I was able to do one full lap to whittle down the troops HP with Frederick while running away to heal. XD

Edited February 23, 2013 by shadowofchaos

[Crimson Red]

^lol I did that same thing on my Lunatic+ run, it sounds crazy but one enemy makes all the difference. Then I ran around in circles (because lolchokepoints when they like all have the Pass skill) and slowly sniped enemies with Fred's stolen javelin from Kellam (because the hammer dude with counter is hell). Luckily my Frederick got good level-ups (though I'd have restarted even if he didn't >_>') so he was able to do most of the work. The boss went down with a borrowed hammer IIRC (not taking any risks here lol). Having a Roy's Blade from one of the event tiles from the chapter before was helpful too though I kind of wish I had an Eirika's Blade, which I GOT, but I had to reset so I ended up losing it.

Anyhoooow this seems pretty helpful, keep up the good work~

[darkkfan]

it might make it easier to read if you split your writeups (for example) by turn, or simply by using more than one or two paragraphs to describe an entire chapter.

I split up the paragraphs, but some of them (especially Paralogue 1) are still looking kind of thick, so don't hesitate to tell me if I should split them up more or differently. I did it mostly by turns, especially for the first few turns which are the most crucial, and then by sections, with one devoted to the boss and the event tiles as well as any world map shopping that I did.

Geez. Thank you so much on Chapter 3. I didn't know that you could open up one door, kill the knight, and then move all the way to the other door and kill the knight there without triggering all the enemies to go aggressive on you.

I was able to do one full lap to whittle down the troops HP with Frederick while running away to heal. XD

That's something I discovered on my Lunatic playthrough. It definitely helps, especially if one of the knights had counter like what happened to me on this playthrough. Glad to know I was able to help!

^lol I did that same thing on my Lunatic+ run, it sounds crazy but one enemy makes all the difference. Then I ran around in circles (because lolchokepoints when they like all have the Pass skill) and slowly sniped enemies with Fred's stolen javelin from Kellam (because the hammer dude with counter is hell). Luckily my Frederick got good level-ups (though I'd have restarted even if he didn't >_>') so he was able to do most of the work. The boss went down with a borrowed hammer IIRC (not taking any risks here lol). Having a Roy's Blade from one of the event tiles from the chapter before was helpful too though I kind of wish I had an Eirika's Blade, which I GOT, but I had to reset so I ended up losing it.

I found that pass isn't really that bad since you can still choke the corridors after opening the doors if you just line up all your characters with a competent range attacker that can take an archer hit (probably MU) behind Freddy, with Lissa in the space behind her to heal. I hate when you get a good weapon from the event tiles and then have to reset due to something later. But hey, it helps to balance the game a little bit more. If you don't mind my asking, how far did you get on your Luna+ run and what, if any, restrictions did you use?

Anyhoooow this seems pretty helpful, keep up the good work~

Thanks and I will! Edited April 15, 2013 by Walhart

[darkkfan]

Guys, great news! After trying for over 2 weeks (granted I did put the game down for a few days and really only averaged a half hour to an hour per day worth of trying), I finally beat chapter 5. I typed up my log of the chapter in abbreviated form and will be putting it into LP/walkthrough form at some point today. So expect an update in the next few hours!

Also, I have been using the barracks pretty much once every few days and it has made it possible for me to get past chapter 5. Not to mention a few nice pickups I had from Anna merchants (I'll tell you the details in my next post). Consequently, I am thinking of adding an inventory section so you guys can see what I get.

Edited March 10, 2013 by Walhart

[darkkfan]

Updated with chapter 5 walkthrough, stats, and inventory! Again, sorry it took so long but that chapter was not very cooperative!

Edited March 10, 2013 by Walhart

[darkkfan]

Chapter 6 and Paralogue 2 update coming some time tomorrow.

Edited March 24, 2013 by Walhart

[darkkfan]

Updated with Chapter 6 and Paralogue 2. Wondering if people still look at this thing since I know it got good feedback at first but maybe Chapter 5 just took me too long because people don't seem that interested. Maybe they are and no one is saying anything, but I thought I'd ask if people are still watching this thread just for reassurance.

[euroteres]

I had enough trouble with chapter 2 on the two times I've played it in lunatic. My mind doesn't want to comprehend the amount of insanity it must cause on lunatic+...

[darkkfan]

I had enough trouble with chapter 2 on the two times I've played it in lunatic. My mind doesn't want to comprehend the amount of insanity it must cause on lunatic+...

Yeah that's how I felt about most of the chapters after finishing my Luna run before starting Luna+. So far on Luna+, Chapter 2 was probably the second most difficult so far (maybe chapter 6 was harder just cuz of my bad luck idk) with Ch. 5 being by far the hardest. Seriously, if you thought ch.2 was hard, try Ch.5 on Luna+ with an underleveled (or at least not totally broken) MU. It wasn't fun.

[Khainiwest]

Yeah that's how I felt about most of the chapters after finishing my Luna run before starting Luna+. So far on Luna+, Chapter 2 was probably the second most difficult so far (maybe chapter 6 was harder just cuz of my bad luck idk) with Ch. 5 being by far the hardest. Seriously, if you thought ch.2 was hard, try Ch.5 on Luna+ with an underleveled (or at least not totally broken) MU. It wasn't fun.

I'm currently at chapter 17 and I'm trying to grind my characters up...counter mooks get much more prominent, which means that they will suicide with your character. I had to stop because my units even at level combined 45-60 get stomped like ants...

[darkkfan]

I'm currently at chapter 17 and I'm trying to grind my characters up...counter mooks get much more prominent, which means that they will suicide with your character. I had to stop because my units even at level combined 45-60 get stomped like ants...

Yeah, I'm determined to do it without grinding (which is pretty much the whole point of this walkthrough) but I must say I am not looking forward to the later chapters. As for the counter mooks, hopefully I'll be able to use my strategies on them (attack them from range or just 2hko them) but if those don't work then I'm not sure what I'll do.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Updated with Chapter 6 and Paralogue 2. Wondering if people still look at this thing since I know it got good feedback at first but maybe Chapter 5 just took me too long because people don't seem that interested. Maybe they are and no one is saying anything, but I thought I'd ask if people are still watching this thread just for reassurance.

I'm definitely interested in this. I always like reading challenge logs and this one especially so because I'm trying to do something similar. The rules I'm following are pretty much the same as yours with one exception I set out for myself, but haven't utilized yet: renown awards. I was going to let myself used 270 points as a base (pretty much assuming a vanilla Lunatic run without any Paralogues or Spotpass combat done) and then add points as normal as the run proceeds. However, I haven't had to use it yet and am actually kind of loathe to now that I've gotten a bit into the run. I'm currently stuck on chapter 5 and can definitely see why it was a sticking point for you. I've been kind of unlucky with event tiles (yay, I can totally use all these Wolt's Bows, right?), barracks (mostly irrelevant pairing convos) and shops (was hoping for a Master Seal, but I've only gotten one shop period, which netted me a Concoction and a Second Seal I'm not quite sure what I want to do with). Fred's only got one use left on his Javelin, so I'm constantly falling behind in my rate of killing. I got to the very end of the reinforcements at one point and there was just one dragon knight more than I could handle, so I had to let him hit someone. Unfortunately, Luna+ pretty much meant he was going to kill anyone other than my FeMU (Fred was down to half health, so he was in trouble too) if he hit, so I was counting on either of a low dual guard or low (or fairly reasonable in Lon'qu's case, which is probably why he wasn't targeted) dodge chance. Neither worked out for me.

I'll be very interested to see how you do chapter 12, as I know that if I do manage to get past chapter 5, I'm not going to be looking forward to it at all (I've finished Lunatic+ with some minimal grinding allowed to get the weaker characters out of range of being one rounded). Also, I'm totally impressed that you've gotten so far using Syrena as little as you have. I've had to lean on my FeMU (and Fred) a lot to get where I am (FeMU's and Chrom's situations are more or less reversed in my playthrough compared to yours).

[darkkfan]

I'm definitely interested in this. I always like reading challenge logs and this one especially so because I'm trying to do something similar.

Great, glad to hear this has had some impact!

The rules I'm following are pretty much the same as yours with one exception I set out for myself, but haven't utilized yet: renown awards. I was going to let myself used 270 points as a base (pretty much assuming a vanilla Lunatic run without any Paralogues or Spotpass combat done) and then add points as normal as the run proceeds. However, I haven't had to use it yet and am actually kind of loathe to now that I've gotten a bit into the run. I'm currently stuck on chapter 5 and can definitely see why it was a sticking point for you. I've been kind of unlucky with event tiles (yay, I can totally use all these Wolt's Bows, right?), barracks (mostly irrelevant pairing convos) and shops (was hoping for a Master Seal, but I've only gotten one shop period, which netted me a Concoction and a Second Seal I'm not quite sure what I want to do with). Fred's only got one use left on his Javelin, so I'm constantly falling behind in my rate of killing. I got to the very end of the reinforcements at one point and there was just one dragon knight more than I could handle, so I had to let him hit someone. Unfortunately, Luna+ pretty much meant he was going to kill anyone other than my FeMU (Fred was down to half health, so he was in trouble too) if he hit, so I was counting on either of a low dual guard or low (or fairly reasonable in Lon'qu's case, which is probably why he wasn't targeted) dodge chance. Neither worked out for me.

I considered allowing renown awards in a manner like the one you described but I figured the early second seal would be a little too good (although it probably isn't that great now that I think about it). I mainly just sell the items from the barracks except when I get good ones or ones with niche uses (like kneader on promoted Lissa to save heals or like Dying Blaze on pre ch.5 Miriel). Fred's javelin sounds like a problem, and one I didn't have to deal with due to an Orsin's hatchet grab, but it shouldn't make it impossible (I suggest perhaps grabbing a few tonics or maybe giving Fred a pair up partner who can boost his res?). As for the second seal you bought, you could either use it on Panne to reclass to Wyvern or on Freddy once he hits level 10, but either way you are gonna have to wait to use it and are probably going to regret buying it once the physics/hammernes/master seals start showing up in shops (trust me, an early physic user does wonders).

I'll be very interested to see how you do chapter 12, as I know that if I do manage to get past chapter 5, I'm not going to be looking forward to it at all (I've finished Lunatic+ with some minimal grinding allowed to get the weaker characters out of range of being one rounded).

Yeah I haven't thought much about specific chapters that might give me difficulty in the future, I just assume they are all going to be very difficult from here on out. Just looking at Chapter 12 I will probably try the minimalist approach and just bring my strongest characters (which at that point will probably be Lon'Qu, Chrom, Fred, and maybe Anna or Libra), but there's probably something wrong with this strategy that I am overlooking

Also, I'm totally impressed that you've gotten so far using Syrena as little as you have. I've had to lean on my FeMU (and Fred) a lot to get where I am (FeMU's and Chrom's situations are more or less reversed in my playthrough compared to yours).

Haha thanks for the compliment, but I'm afraid it was more of an oversight on my part than something done deliberately. In fact, I probably should have used Syrena a lot more since I've heard that with a reclass to mercenary or to sorceror after a grandmaster promotion can make her absolutely gamebreaking and at level 6 at chapter 7 I don't see that happening any time soon.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

I considered allowing renown awards in a manner like the one you described but I figured the early second seal would be a little too good (although it probably isn't that great now that I think about it). I mainly just sell the items from the barracks except when I get good ones or ones with niche uses (like kneader on promoted Lissa to save heals or like Dying Blaze on pre ch.5 Miriel). Fred's javelin sounds like a problem, and one I didn't have to deal with due to an Orsin's hatchet grab, but it shouldn't make it impossible (I suggest perhaps grabbing a few tonics or maybe giving Fred a pair up partner who can boost his res?).

Not impossible, no, but probably more luck based since I have to bank on making kills elsewhere to prevent my weaker units from having to take on more than one guy at a time. The Res isn't quite as much a problem (I've got plenty of healing items) as being unable to counterattack, since then I'll have to use a player phase turn to get rid of the Dark Mage (or, I guess, lure it over to FeMU). I am using a Def Tonic on FeMU, but it doesn't seem to be necessary on Fred. I've been trying to think of ways the Str Tonic might help, but it's not enough to change how fast I kill most enemies.

As for the second seal you bought, you could either use it on Panne to reclass to Wyvern or on Freddy once he hits level 10, but either way you are gonna have to wait to use it and are probably going to regret buying it once the physics/hammernes/master seals start showing up in shops (trust me, an early physic user does wonders).

I did wonder if I might regret spending the funds on the seal. I do think I have enough floating funds that I could nab a Physic if it did show up. Or a Master Seal if I pawn a couple things off.

I have been considering going Wyv with Panne, although I'm a bit iffy on using her. I tried her on my run that allowed grinding and while she was insanely strong offensively, I constantly had to worry about anything magical that got near her since her avoid isn't particularly reliable. Although I guess I could use her like I did in that run: fly in deep, completely crush a key target and then rescue staff her out. I might have to give Fred some more thought, though, since I didn't really consider giving it to him. Another thought is that my FeMU is almost 20ed out, so I might reclass back to Tactician for more stat gains (I looked at Mage and Dark Mage and there's some rather large base stat loss, despite how good Hex and Anathema are). Kind of a silly way to use it, but no one else it going to be up to level soon, so I'm killing time until the Master Seal in chapter 8 (watch Anna spawn with one now) and since FeMU is kind of my main combatant now, I'd probably be wasting a lot of EXP with her capped at 20.

Yeah I haven't thought much about specific chapters that might give me difficulty in the future, I just assume they are all going to be very difficult from here on out. Just looking at Chapter 12 I will probably try the minimalist approach and just bring my strongest characters (which at that point will probably be Lon'Qu, Chrom, Fred, and maybe Anna or Libra), but there's probably something wrong with this strategy that I am overlooking

The main thing that got to me with the map was so many units with high mobility and Counter rushing in as fast as they could made things dicey. The Paladins' general durability was pretty gross too. I'm mostly worried that if I do get there, even my strongest won't be quite ready.

Haha thanks for the compliment, but I'm afraid it was more of an oversight on my part than something done deliberately. In fact, I probably should have used Syrena a lot more since I've heard that with a reclass to mercenary or to sorceror after a grandmaster promotion can make her absolutely gamebreaking and at level 6 at chapter 7 I don't see that happening any time soon.

Regardless, one doesn't get that far that way without good play.

I'd been pondering reclassing to Merc, but I hate leveling with just swords so much and with my other units not as up to par, I don't think I can afford to not have my FeMU with 1-2 range for that long. Sorc is an option, but I want to avoid Nostanking if I can.

[Klokinator]

Only thing is, I wish this had pictures...

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

So I got chapter 5 last night. After you mentioned the Strength Tonic, I gave another go at fitting it into my strategy. It still didn't change my kill rate for the majority of units, but it was just enough to tip the scales (and our MUs do like tipping scales). I realized a Fred paired with Vaike (who had 10 Str, since I had gotten him a level up in Paralogue 1) and a Strength Tonic had just enough damage to exactly one-shot Myrms with the Killer Lance. This helped four times during the map, the third of which was that key point when the tail end of the reinforcements were threatening to overwhelm me.

I had two Wyvs, 2 Myrms and a Barb incoming. The Barb and Wyv on the east side I could ignore for a turn as long as I pulled the troops back a bit. Which still left two Myrms and a Wyv that was just one square out of range of my FeMU.What I ended up doing was switching my healers to their respective mages and trading my FeMU's basic tomes to them (I had to nab the Elwind for her so she could reliably take down the plethora of Aegis+ Wyvs that generated) and had them each poke the same Myrm in turn. This brought him just low enough for Lon'qu to finish him off with the Killing Edge without a crit. Fred one-shot the other Myrm with his Killer Lance. This left the Wyv, which my FeMU still couldn't reach. However, Sumia could. So I moved FeMU as north as possible, swapped to Chrom, then moved Sumia up, transferred FeMU over and swapped again. Bye-bye Wyv Lord.

Oh and I ended up Second Sealing FeMU back to LV1 Tactician about 3/4 through the map when I had a breather. The extra levels have already started to pay off. Now I should be able to have her hold the main enemy force and hopefully isolate a few enemies so I can train Vaike (aiming for an early-ish axe proficient Hero and his only level up so far was a near perfect one) and Lon'qu (he's impressed me enough this run that I'm thinking I'm going to use him as my Wyv Lord over Panne, especially given that he's level 5.99 and has Paralogue 2 to get ahead of Panne)

Still been a bit down on meta-luck. Over the course of all my attempts, I didn't see another Anna shop until after I beat the chapter. While she did have another Rescue, the other stuff was just Iron weapons I could get from the Paralogue 1 shop. Oh and the game also decided it would be funny to add four skirmishes to the map, so I can't access the majority of tome selling shops at the moment (they might be gone when I finally get a chance to play, since a couple have been loitering since some of my earliest attempts at chapter 5).

[darkkfan]

I have been considering going Wyv with Panne, although I'm a bit iffy on using her. I tried her on my run that allowed grinding and while she was insanely strong offensively, I constantly had to worry about anything magical that got near her since her avoid isn't particularly reliable. Although I guess I could use her like I did in that run: fly in deep, completely crush a key target and then rescue staff her out. I might have to give Fred some more thought, though, since I didn't really consider giving it to him.

I've never used Wyvern Panne personally and I probably won't on this run either because I am already pushing it as far as trying to train so many people and Syrena wants all the kills she can get at this point. I heard that reclassinf Panne is godly because of the low Taguel bases but that never really made sense to me because of the boost that the beaststone gives to stats (I'd take +3 str and +5 spd over +5 str and +5 def any day, although Panne's speed is already high and beaststone does have a low mt but then again so do bronze axes).

Regardless, one doesn't get that far that way without good play.

Thank you, thank you! You're too kind! :)

I'd been pondering reclassing to Merc, but I hate leveling with just swords so much and with my other units not as up to par, I don't think I can afford to not have my FeMU with 1-2 range for that long. Sorc is an option, but I want to avoid Nostanking if I can.

It really depends on how good your MU's physical stats are (for example, with her high str and low mag, syrena would love a reclass to merc). I can really understand how getting armsthrift and a relatively quick sol would turn her into a powerhouse. Hopefully a MU reclassed to Merc should have picked up a few sword ranks in tactician so she wouldn't be stuck on bronze swords, too.

But hey, staying in tactician isn't bad either since I'd be reluctant to do a playthrough without Ignis and Rainbow Cry.

As for nosferatanking, I haven't yet decided what I'm gonna do about it yet. In theory, it gives you a good chance of surviving without using any strategy so that's the downside, but that's exactly the opposite of what Luna+ does to you with counter so I'm not sure yet. I probably won't have to decide for a while, and it shouldn't be too relevant since I'm not really considering any sorc reclasses or using Henry/Tharja at this point.

Only thing is, I wish this had pictures...

Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, I don't have shadowofchaos' hardware and snapping pics with my digital camera would be poor quality and inefficient.

So I got chapter 5 last night. After you mentioned the Strength Tonic, I gave another go at fitting it into my strategy. It still didn't change my kill rate for the majority of units, but it was just enough to tip the scales (and our MUs do like tipping scales). I realized a Fred paired with Vaike (who had 10 Str, since I had gotten him a level up in Paralogue 1) and a Strength Tonic had just enough damage to exactly one-shot Myrms with the Killer Lance. This helped four times during the map, the third of which was that key point when the tail end of the reinforcements were threatening to overwhelm me.

I had two Wyvs, 2 Myrms and a Barb incoming. The Barb and Wyv on the east side I could ignore for a turn as long as I pulled the troops back a bit. Which still left two Myrms and a Wyv that was just one square out of range of my FeMU.What I ended up doing was switching my healers to their respective mages and trading my FeMU's basic tomes to them (I had to nab the Elwind for her so she could reliably take down the plethora of Aegis+ Wyvs that generated) and had them each poke the same Myrm in turn. This brought him just low enough for Lon'qu to finish him off with the Killing Edge without a crit. Fred one-shot the other Myrm with his Killer Lance. This left the Wyv, which my FeMU still couldn't reach. However, Sumia could. So I moved FeMU as north as possible, swapped to Chrom, then moved Sumia up, transferred FeMU over and swapped again. Bye-bye Wyv Lord.

Oh and I ended up Second Sealing FeMU back to LV1 Tactician about 3/4 through the map when I had a breather. The extra levels have already started to pay off. Now I should be able to have her hold the main enemy force and hopefully isolate a few enemies so I can train Vaike (aiming for an early-ish axe proficient Hero and his only level up so far was a near perfect one) and Lon'qu (he's impressed me enough this run that I'm thinking I'm going to use him as my Wyv Lord over Panne, especially given that he's level 5.99 and has Paralogue 2 to get ahead of Panne)

Congrats on the win. Compartively, Chapter 6 and especially Paralogue 2 should seem really easy. I'm assuming you already blew out the silver lance? Moving Lon'Qu to Wyvern sounds like a good idea if he gets good speed but with pretty bad base speed for a myrm he could really use the boost from a level 10 promotion to Swordmaster like in my run. Since you probably aren't training Sumia and Miriel like I am, you can probably get away with using Lon'Qu and Panne if you want.

Still been a bit down on meta-luck. Over the course of all my attempts, I didn't see another Anna shop until after I beat the chapter. While she did have another Rescue, the other stuff was just Iron weapons I could get from the Paralogue 1 shop. Oh and the game also decided it would be funny to add four skirmishes to the map, so I can't access the majority of tome selling shops at the moment (they might be gone when I finally get a chance to play, since a couple have been loitering since some of my earliest attempts at chapter 5).

I've had my tonic shops blocked by skirmishes a few times, forcing me to use some costly forges. Alternatively, I suppose I could have just waited until they left, I have no problem justifying that move.