Interceptor
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I don't know why people expect Lunatic+ to be some kind of happiness-flavored theme park. It is supposed to be the ultimate test for experts, and that's exactly what it is. If you want to create perfect eugenics pairs, make Donnel the king of your Army of Misfits, or mash START on Enemy Phase until you hit the end credits, that's what the other modes are for.
Lunatic+ is not "luck-based". The careful observer will note that all of the potential extra skills activate/work 100% of the time, and only the distribution is random. Once a chapter starts, the skills are what they are. The game board has been placed, and it's time to solve the puzzle. Few of the configurations are TRULY impossible, just really difficult, and things get easier as you go along and have more flexibility in terms of units.
I've noticed that people who have trouble with this mode, have at least one of these three things in common with each other:
- A non-existent or busted strategy (i.e. long term plans)
- Poor turn-by-turn tactics (i.e. knowing how to deal with Lunatic+ skills)
- Inability to make sacrifices (i.e. using consumables, or allowing units to die)
Lunatic+ is not perfect in terms of difficulty curve, but it's 90% of the way there, and generally a pretty good test of your prowess. It's not for everyone.
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Another issue with -LCK flaw on Fem-vatar is that it also cascades down to the second and third-best units in the game: Morgan and Lucina. You hurt caps, bases passed down, and growths. Each of those things is small individually, but it does add up.
Fortunately, Chrom is one of your best answers to crappy LCK, since he's an absurdly convenient Pair-up partner for his family when it comes to that stat.
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I'll go ahead and change that. But my god i use armstrift so much. would the -lkc affect me that much?
It will hurt, which is why I'd suggest +DEF/-SKL instead. That's what I used in my playlog. It does hurt your accuracy early, but you can power through that with WTA and Pair-Ups.
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All i can say is that i love/hate it a lot and i normally get stuck on chapter 2 and i've restarted a few times completely so that fred/chrom get level ups. I am prolly not doing this right but i would like a bit of assistance for chapters 2/3 since they are hell. I think im okay with dual shield units and luna/vantage anything this early on. But Hawkeye/Luna is easily the worst. Also Counter Archers are hell.
I'd suggest looking at the link in my sig, and also checking out SoC's video guide for getting past the initial chapters.
The most reset-heavy RNG-prone challenge is Ch. 2, so generally you want to spend the first couple of maps prepping for it.
If it matters, my avi is +skl - hp because im weird and i know hp maxes at 80 still but i dont want any of my other stats to drop.
It does matter; that's a really hard stat combo to make work. And just FYI, all of the stat flaws reduce your max stats. HP flaw takes 1 away from all of STR/MAG/LCK/DEF/RES, in addition to the lower base. +DEF/-SKL and +DEF/-LCK are the easiest ones to make work for Lunatic+.
Also i am a dlc hussy and love grinding so after i beat the hard stuff i think i'll be good to go? hopefully?
Once you can grind, you're all clear for Lunatic+. It's very easy to make a team that can deal with Counter etc. once you have unlimited access to weaponry and level-ups. So if you are going to grind, I'd suggest making a plan that will get you there.
Off-topic, but I really grew to hate the random level up bonuses and random skills activation. That's kinda stupid on a strategy game, if your strategy has to account for random chance (usually it goes on the form of "I'll soften this guy up with this strong unit first and GOD DAMN IT STOP CRITING IT YOU DOLT!").
Part of the strategy in Fire Emblem comes when you have to think on your feet and make adjustments based on random events that happen. This is one of the things that makes Lunatic+ such a cool challenge.
I wish the stats were point-bought with different costs depending on each character's stat weight, and skills would be activated on command by expending MP or something.
Well, there's always fixed Mode in FE9, I guess.
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Whew...finally got through Ch. 2. I think I'm going to go have a cry somewhere now lol.
Good news: it's
a suppositoryall over now, and the game doesn't get any worse reset-wise than Ch2.I'll definitely keep Nosferatu & Sol in mind...that'll probably go well with a +Mag Avatar. I'm going to guess that it still requires decent thought regarding unit positioning, just due to the painful nature of enemies' skills? I ended up Nosferatanking my first regular Lunatic run (it was a slippery slope deal...) and it got sort of tedious just running in and pushing Start
.Correct, positioning is still important. Just to set expectations properly here, Nos/Sol are counters that have flaws in Lunatic+.
You can't take more health than an enemy possesses, Sol is proc-based (AKA luck-based), the stronger you are the harder Counter hits in return (and thus the more your healing falls behind), and enemies without Counter still do a ton of damage (because of Luna+ and Hawkeye). Amongst other things. Skip down to around where I pick up LAURENT! in my playlog, and you'll notice that even though he is a total shit-stomping badass, I still had to be very careful about clusters of enemies that had a lot of 1-range attackers.
tl;dr life leech is strong, but it's no panacea. If you mash START like in vanilla Lunatic, you'll be losin' a lot of dudes.
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Develop a way to deal with Counter. That's going to be a thorn in your side in Lunatic+, for the most part. There are a bunch of ways to do it; I prefer bows because it's a perfect countermeasure, but Galeforce is also a pretty strong way to deal with it. Also, over-leveling a +DEF asset Avatar (preferably with the Water trick) will go a long way towards reducing the difficulty/resetting in the early chapters.
Check out the link in my sig for a Luna+ walkthrough. Even if you don't follow the path I took, I think you'll find some useful tips that will help.
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Interceptor, your guide has helped a lot in getting past the BS that is Lunatic+ until the Outrealm Gate appears (heh, no shame).
Glad to hear it; I don't judge. Lunatic+ is ridiculous, and everything is fair game when trying to beat it.
Thanks a lot for the guide, using archers is a really good idea! Beating lunatic+ without it would have been really painful.
I ended up coming across this thread just before chapter 5, but my set up let me test these. For chrome, going lord->archer->bow knight was definitely worth it, he was the only archer user in my army when I class changed, so using him was easier than anyone else at the time (I also used avatar, donnel, and sully, avatar and donnel were both mercenaries at the time). Bow knights really are amazing, at one point I basically had the mongol army...
I tried to go sully-> great knight, but I never gave her enough experience to get to level 15, because donnel was strong enough without it and leveling her was kind of painful, she really wasn't worth it.
Also, I was able to get Donnel to level 10 after chapter 5, and really got him going after chapter 7 (after that he was basically as strong as my avatar, and his child was as broken as Lucina or Morgan), but he wasn't really useful during chapter 6. Getting him to level 10 did give me a ridiculous amount of healer exp., so I was able to use sage Lissa to beat chapter 6, otherwise it would have been really hard. Maybe feeding him par 2 would make him usable in level 6, but I'm not sure. Overall, he was really good, definitely better than Gregor in your playthrough, but I don't know if the amount of effort to get him going was worth it.
Nice to hear a success story for Chrom. It seemed reasonable to run Lord->Archer->BK, but there was no way to know for sure without trying. Did he last all the way until the end of the game for you, or did he fall off late?
Shame about Sully. I guess that the only reasonable DG+ unit remain Frederick.
I did give some thought to using Donnel, but just couldn't pull the trigger in the end. There's a good argument for it, though. While Gregor does have ease of use in his favor, he just has such a limited window of opportunity to take advantage of it. Donnel is by far the superior parent, too. The speedbump is Donnel's training: not only does it take longer, but he has no easy access to 2-range to grease the wheels a bit, and it's hard to get your hands on Arms Scrolls consistently.
I suppose the one nice thing about training Donnel is that he's so weaksauce early, that he doesn't suffer from Counter to the extent that other units do.
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True words. A big part of success in Ch.3 is the initial clear of the lower-level, and having Avatar being able to tome-counter as many enemies as possible on that critical first action goes a long way towards that.
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Indeed, there's nothing inherently inferior about that asset/flaw combo other than a lower base to work with. But if the preamble to that is 55 soft resets in Prologue/Ch1... I don't know where Vegas sets the line for Ch2 resets, but as long as it's a two-digit number, I am taking the over.
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Besides GF? Merc -> Bow Knight -> Sniper. Good luck making it past Ch. 2 with +SPD/-LCK.
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@Czar I trained him as much as I could.( I would soften up enemies with Fred at least until he died[casual]). And bronze sword avatar or Fredrick?
Same rule applies to Lunatic+ as it does to Lunatic: don't over-use Frederick. He doesn't have a future in this mode as a primary combatant, so focus on growth units like Avatar.
And what would the best child character be after Morgan? Or does it depend on parents?
More like it depends on what you need. I consider Lucina (with Avatar as the mother) to be the best child after Morgan, because she can get Veteran and have a wide selection of classes to pick from. After that, it's a crap-shoot. I have a soft spot in my heart for Laurent, personally, based on what he did for me in my playlog.
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The trick to dealing with Pass: deploy so many people that the enemies have no clear tiles to land on if they walk through. Fill their entire reachable range with bodies. You can use the corridors as chokes to make this possible.
Check guide in my sig, some more tips for Ch3 spelled out there.
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Why do people say Mercenary is a good reclass for Lunatic? I'd assume otherwise with the swordlock and the fact that odds are you might not have bothered with sword rank... and it doesn't help that Levin Swords, in addition to being C rank, are rare. (While you CAN buy tham from Spotpass, they're 1600 gold, which is a lot early on)
It's a good reclass for Avatar, who will certainly have the rank for it. Merc offers Patience and Armsthrift in addition to the Levin Sword bit. Easy promo to Hero. And if you're going Lunatic+: Bow Knight.
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Here's the "one thing" that "I just want to know": is there any point whatsoever to an argument about what "grinding" means? Is the result of this thread's discussion a factor for the definition of the word in the OED? Is there a governing organization that handles videogame terminology accreditation? Does the loser have to leave town in disgrace?
I have always viewed the word "grinding" -- as it pertains to videogames -- to be a useful shorthand way to describe a concept, like "walling" or "weakening". If it fails to get the point across, or there is some sort of confusion or dispute, then I'll
smash the red alert button, escalate to DEFCON 1, draw my sword and to go to waruse a different goddamned word. In this particular situation, I tend to draw a distinction between various kinds of abuse (dance, staff, water, etc) and "grinding" (repeating DLC, Risen fights, boxes), because the English language is cool like that and lets us be as precise as we need to be. -
Do you mean the alternatives aren't reliable? If so, that was my point. If not, I was not aware of other viable core-strategies, so perhaps this is indeed simply my own lack of ability to play the game. What do you have in mind besides bows, turtling, grinding, resetting?
That's four things.
Bows are just a means to an end: attacking enemies beyond the range of Counter, and protecting people on Enemy Phase from killing themselves. You can get there with other methods like Galeforce, an alternative 2-range attack (like tomes or Levins), OHKOing with crit/skill activations, trading away weapons for Enemy Phase, healing through the damage with Nosferatu/Sol, Rescue-bombing, etc. Lunatic+ rewards creativity. I just used Bows because they are simple and were synergistic with my chosen style for the playlog.
Some options are less reliable than others. I chose only the highest-reliability options on purpose, but you can have variety by introducing some chance/chaos. The decision of which is more important, is up to the player.
Simple. If you are the sort of player that doesn't want anybody to die, you skip out on recruiting Athena. The idea is to preserve as many units as possible (emphasis on the possible). Though yeah, this is just common player-rule. Certainly not binding, but an unspoken rule many of us adhere to. It is war, but the sort you can play to perfection!
You appear to have missed the point. There is only one way to recruit Athena, and that's on the backs of dead units. You literally miss out on content by having a perfect record. The implication here, is that death is a natural part of the game. This is Fire Emblem. We don't need to go into franchises that are NOT Fire Emblem. There's no alignment meter here, just life and death.
People who aren't willing to take advantage of what's offered to them, undermine their cases against Lunatic+, by muddying the waters with nonsensical scrub rules.
Certainly. The developors realized that they might've made the game too easy, thus opted to make the enemies serve as a potential threat no matter how much players relied on exploits (counter, pavis+, aegis+, hawkeye) and made it to where players couldn't rely on previous knowledge of the level set up thanks to randomness of the skill distribution. Unfortunately, they didn't realize that this really limited the players options in how to reliably complete the game. I agree that the random skill selection combats common FE strategies, but don't believe it was (or ought to have been) their intent to massively limit the way the game could be played.
This explanation is not reasonable.
We know what actually happened: two skills got imported as-is (Pass and Counter), the other five are modified skills that had the RNG-factor eliminated. It's very hard to look at what these skills do, and come to the conclusion that the devs didn't deliberately try counter specific strategies. After all, when it comes to skills, they could have done basically anything that they wanted, so what they did NOT do also tells you a story:
- Stat-bombs: No Rally skills (and we know that enemies know how to use these), no random +stat skills, no -faire skills. This is a very easy way to add difficulty on top of base Lunatic.
- Skills with random activation: No troll Miracles, Lethalities. No Sol, Aether, Ignis, Vengeance, nothing. Not unless the class would have already had the skill anyway.
- Breakers, Conquest: Nothing that bypasses the triangle, or eliminates the ability to use special weapons strategically.
Instead, we got Pass, Counter, Aegis+/Pavise+, Vantage+, Hawkeye, and Luna+. All of those skills pressure various popular strategies (meatshielding, super-units, dodge-tanking, DEF-tanking, babying, etc) in such a way that you have to react on the fly (because of the random distribution). If you don't recognize the intent here, I'd say that either you're not really looking hard enough, or we've just witnessed the craziest coincidence in the history of the series.
Nah, I don't think you believe that.
Telling me what I do or do not believe, is a great strategy for earning a one-way ticket to my Shit List.
To demonstrate, lets say there's a free weapon that can be acquired in chapter one a limitless number of times. Lets say the weapon automatically allows you to kill any enemy 100% in one round, has limitless uses and also makes the wielder invincible. Do you think it's a good idea for the developors to include such a weapon? After all, one doesn't have to use it, no? I'm all for everyone having fun and don't buy into elitist BS, but you'll find that accessibility is not the only consideration made when developing a game. Otherwise, why stop at grinding? Grinding, after all, requires time. Not everyone has time. Why not just include "auto-level up" feature that lets you level up to your hearts content in an instant? I'm sure we can agree that there has to be line drawn somewhere.
Why stop there? Go for the ultimate absurdity: begin the game, push START to immediately win.
In reality, none of the BS you described actually exists. If you're at the point where you have to justify your position by citing unicorns and fairy dust, consider the possibility that your argument isn't actually any good in the first place. There's no evidence of a slippery slope here. Fire Emblem simply does not do anything like you've described at all, so if you're going to complain, maybe wait until they actually do something objectionable. Grinding is safely tucked away within the Outrealm Gate, Spotpass, and in pay-to-spar boxes. This is well out of the way of people who want nothing to do with it.
And no, I must contest the idea that I simply don't want other people to have fun.
That's fascinating, since available evidence suggests otherwise. There are people playing FE who enjoy the act or result of grinding, and your OP basically advocates slapping that cookie right the hell out of their mouths unless they play in your sandbox. This is classic SHFG.
The game already penalizes people who grind in the higher difficulties (to some extent), by limiting Spotpass/Risen returns. They wisely chose not to cause the shitstorm of the century by inhibiting people from using their paid DLC. We can safely stop right there without going further.
If I'm correct about some of the optional elements not being good, perhaps developor resources would be better spent elsewhere. I for one woud've liked to see better storyteling!
Not likely to get that out of a code monkey. "Developer" isn't some kind of universal currency like gil. You might have coders, artists, writers, managers, etc that can't necessarily be re-purposed for something outside their area of expertise. One of the reasons that Lunatic+ is the way that it is, might be because the art assets required for it were relatively minimal.
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Again, I just don't find the "it's suppossed to be unfair" argument persuasive. Don't get me wrong, I like a challenge. It's why I play the mode in the first place. I just want a better design. Having to reset over and over until you get the "right skills" on enemies is silly. [...] I think all classes should serve a purpose on all difficulties as oppossed to the bow-fest that is Luna+.
If you have to keep mashing soft reset on Lunatic+, your strategy is probably busted or you are making critical tactical errors. Flipping the table whenever you get too much Counter density is a sign that you haven't properly prepared yourself to deal with it in the first place.
Lunatic+ is a pretty unforgiving mode when it comes to punishing mistakes, but there are multiple ways to get past the obstacles that it places in front of you. I chose to use turtling and bows for my playlog, but that's because I specifically set out to have high reliability in every chapter as a pre-requisite for any decision I made; that is NOT the only way to take down Lunatic+.
I will admit that Interceptor is correct as far as self-imposed rules are concerned. Admittely, a large part of the difficulty I've had in almost every FE game was keeping all of my characters alive. [...] One of these days, I may just let Stahl and Mirel bite the dust in CH2 since they don't impact the story anyway and I don't care about Laurent.
Baldur's Gate? Don't look at other franchises, look at Shadow Dragon. How am I supposed to recruit Athena if nobody is ever supposed to die? Why do "replacement" generics even exist in the first place? Chrom and MU aren't killing characters, here. Enemies are. Sacrifice for the greater good. War is hell. This is Fire Emblem, welcome to the party.
Though I commend Interceptor for his time/patience, I can't say I believe the developors put as much time/focus into Luna+ as he suggest.
Come up with an alternate explanation for the Lunatic+ changes, if you're going to say that you don't "believe". Those are not just random skills: the pool is very distinct (they had tons of skills to choose from, but only used these specific seven), and most of them don't even exist in the normal modes. Every one of them counters a typical Fire Emblem strategy; I can list them out with examples, if necessary, though I think for the most part it's pretty obvious what they are supposed to do.
Finally, this "if you don't like it, don't play it argument" couldn't be any more unpersuasive. There are a lot of things I don't like in RPGS. Fetch quests, even of optional variety are high on the list. Just because something is optional does not mean its immune from criticism, especially if we're shelling out our hard earned money. If players don't like something, perhaps the devs should use their resources on something else as oppossed to falling back on the "it's optional" excuse. Or perhaps devs should simply work on improving what a group of players don't like (i.e. making the game better).
This is pure Stop Having Fun Guys nonsense, and needs to be called out at every turn, for the greater good of the gaming community.
For instance: grinding. I recognize that grinding exists in this game. I also recognize that many people enjoy having the option to grind for removing difficulty, making perfect eugenics pairs, seeing pretty green stats, building Apotheosis teams, and general shit-stomping fun. But I don't like grinding. Problem? ANALYSIS TIME.
Am I forced to grind? No.
Can I play without the grinding mechanics getting in my way? Yes.
Does it help make the game accessible to more Fire Emblem fans? Probably.
Verdict: Zero effs given. Call me when something either 1) gets in my way, or 2) meaningfully hurts the reach of the franchise.
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Indie devs won't know what fucking hit em
I'll take this to mean that you understand that there's a difference between a 1st-party corporate developer, and a neckbeard scratching an itch on a toy project. We will call it progress.
When you have to use "make a new button graphic" as an indicator of the time it took to make the mode, it kind of shows the huge difference between Lunatic+ mode and anything else as prominent in the game.
What it actually shows is the difference between someone who thought carefully about what would be required to make a new game mode, and someone who just mailed it in. You also need new graphics for the Lunatic+ skills. Wait, I'm getting a vision, I can see the future...
"five seconds in MSPaint"
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I hope you're not under the impression that I was literally talking about 10 seconds or anything of the like.
Here's the impression I'm under: that when it comes to the software development process at large companies where professionals collect paychecks for their work, you have a lot of naive opinions.
You trying to use those as points is not convincing at all.
You being unconvinced by Czar_Yoshi's explanation, says more about you than it does about him. I had forgotten about a couple of those things, including the need for new art assets.
Fact of the matter is that it's unlikely the time used to make lunatic+ mode would have been particularly productive anywhere else.
This may indeed be the case, and my gut says it's likely, but it's no "fact" as a conclusion of anything that you've said here.
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Jeez Shadow, that's a lot of lines just to put someone down.
And yet it doesn't compare to a two-page black hole of arguments, that basically amounted to nothing.
[...] but Lunatic+ (full disclaimer: I haven't played it, and have no intention to ever do so) just looks like Lunatic Mode + give every single enemy 2 extra random skills. It probably took them all of 5 seconds to implement it.
Well, I *have* played it, and the changes were a little more substantial than that. Not all of the extra skills are available right away (you don't have the full pool until Ch. 3), some bonus skills turn into replacements (Pavise for Pavise+ on Grima, for example), and they still need to add support for the mode in the UI.
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Well, that was a fairly pointless interlude. I hope everyone learned something useful. I know that I didn't.
I picked up Awakening because it's a Fire Emblem game. It's the only thing that's kept me in the Nintendo orbit, and I'll keep opening my wallet until they stop the franchise. I picked up all the DLC for this game, even though I have no interest in it (and haven't played 90% of it to this day), just to support FE.
My mind continues to be blown -- brains splattered on all interior walls -- by the people who advocate removing optional content for no other reason than personal preference.
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Made an account just to say how fantastic this guide is.
Currently on ch 12 with a MaMU. Thanks. Bow Knight is amazing.
Thanks for the feedback, glad that you've found the guide useful. I agree that Bow Knight is amazing; Lunatic+ is where the class really shines. Even Bowbreaker is great on this mode.
I think I actually found a new, fairly reliable trick to getting Avatar to Level 8.3 in the Prologue, via killing absolutely everything except the Mage. Is this a new method, or has someone else found a similar trick? I don't want to make a thread about it if someone already has, you know?
Never heard of it. What does "fairly reliable" mean? How much skill manipulation does it involve? I'm sort of curious even if it's sketchy, because getting to level 8 is a big deal.
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Rather, I think FE AI is incompetent mostly because smart AI in general is much, much harder to code and optimize than most people realize (this from my admittedly limited understanding).
This, basically. I wrote an SRPG as a capstone project in college, and designing an intelligent AI is a lot more difficult than people generally understand. AI is pretty straightforward for toy games like tic-tac-toe or checkers or something, but once you get elbow-deep into something complex that requires moves, counter-moves, and planning several steps in advance... that gets ugly. More complex the ruleset, uglier it gets. Look at what we get for something like chess, for example.
And of course, the natural extension of that is the second part: optimization. Look-aheads are very expensive once you get beyond the surface level, so even if you can design a decent AI you might not be able to afford the cycles for it. I'm impressed that they put the "move someone out of the way for a kill" behavior in this game, considering.
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Turtling, overleveling the Avatar or die and using only bows to avoid the Counter skill.
This is probably on the Mount Rushmore of Lunatic+ strategies in terms of reliability, but there are more ways than just that to win. Particularly if you either have a high tolerance for resets, or if you are lacking completely irrational "scrub rules" that hold you back.
I fail to see how sacrificing characters being the most viable strategy makes a difficulty mode well designed.
Or rather, I don't see how keeping all characters alive requires reseting and praying to the RNG that there aren't too many enemies with death skills makes it well desgined.
Please. This entire franchise is predicated on the notion that death is permanent, but not game-ending (unless you are a Lord or critical character). They rarely get away from that in the modern FE era. Keeping every character alive in a game is OCD nonsense, like "routing every map" or "collecting all Vulneraries" or "turning every stat green". Going for it is a handicap with no particular upside. Using Stahl as a decoy in Ch.2 is considerably more productive than having him sit on the bench as a level 2 dumbshit Cav for the entire game.
Shadow Dragon set this one up: death is a part of the game. Success sometimes means being as cold-hearted as Marth.
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By directly reclassing Swordmaster to Hero. Or is this not allowed in Lunatic?
It's allowed, it's just a lot of internal levels to eat on your way there. You're undoubtedly going to hit a wall where EXP is glacial even with Veteran. Unless you're ignoring other units, you may find that you don't make to to Grandmaster until pretty late in the game.
Am I the only one, who dislikes the idea of lunatic+?
in Fire Emblem: Awakening
Posted
The thing is, you don't have to do that, and in fact it's not even a great strategy to use Frederick and Chrom early. Avatar is a better investment than either of them, because of Veteran and the ability to choose Asset/Flaw stats.
I just blew the dust off my 3DS, and ran through earlygame Lunatic+ quickly. I'm rusty, but took out Prologue in one shot, Ch. 1 in two (made a movement mistake), and now I'm on Ch. 2 with a level 10 +DEF/-SKL Avatar. All I have to do is get the Fred/Avatar pair to the fort (which is possible with one or two sacrifices), and that's a wrap for that one.
There is some luck component early on (hit rates, crits, Luna+ density etc) but it quickly falls by the wayside. It just requires a good approach. Lunatic+ is pretty straightforward about what it is: a challenge for experts.