ruadath

Actually, I just realized that this is completely possible! You can have enemies trade their weapons over to Guy, which then increases your funds rank when you recruit him! Do you think it is worth it for me to restart to do this, and would you consider this to be "cheating"? If not, to what extent am I allowed to use the mine in Chapter 13 (it could be used to trivialize the enemy force by having them drop all their weapons)? Am I also allowed to use the other mine later on to help with funds later on (even if its not strictly necessary)? What about to get Vaida's Uber Spear? I'd appreciate some feedback on this, as I can't move on with the playthrough until this issue has been sorted out.

Chapter 2 completed. It's essentially the same as in my previous run, and I'm feeling lazy right now, so I won't copy it over yet, but you can find the strategy by looking at the previous thread. Name: Lv.XP HP STR SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Seth: 2.02 31 15 14 13 13 12 8 Eirika: 2.33 17 5 9 10 6 4 1 Franz: 2.41 21 8 5 8 3 7 1 Gilliam: 4.39 BASE Vanessa: 2.84 18 6 8 12 4 7 5 Moulder: 3.22 BASE

I don't think so... I don't believe any of the enemies in the chapter have droppable items/weapons, and you don't have Merlinus yet to dump extra items. Could you think of another way to do it? But then again, I was hoping to do this run without resorting to any glitches...

Oh, really? That's quite interesting; I usually always follow the standard route of sending Matthew SE, Guy SW (and up from there), and having everyone else press up north towards Puzon and the village, so this was entirely new for me. In fact, I was not even aware that there was a general strategy of running away on the last few turns, as it was never something I would have found useful (I always wanted more EXP, although I suppose it could be a good tactic if your forces were getting overwhelmed by the constant onslaught of enemies). One of the things that made this level was tricky was actually precisely the fact that I didn't send anyone to the SE corner (Guy hung around in the middle). This meant that there was no one to distract the bandits around there, and thus Marcus had to rush to the NE village to prevent them from getting there as early as Turn 3 or 4! It's quite amusing that I am doing a max tactician star run, and yet Chapter 14 will be only the second chapter that I am able to 5-star. I believe the lowest number of turns the chapter can be completed in is 4, but this requires Marcus to essentially solo the NW half of the map, which is rather quite impractical for my EXP rank (I need 850 for the chapter). I'll probably be looking to clear the map in 6-7 turns; it would be nice to extend my surplus of turns again before Chapter 15 puts me back in the red. Thankfully, I don't really have to worry about funds this map; Erk and Priscilla's initial inventories exactly meet the requirement of 10,000 gold for the chapter, which means that the Iron Blade and Erik's Horseslayer give me (roughly) an addition 2,000G to work with. Add to that the fact that there are several Vulneraries on this map (though I'll probably only steal one of them) and this means I have the opportunity to let Hector Wolf Beil a few cavs. Besides that, I probably want to focus on using Dorcas a little bit; hopefully he'll be strong enough to hang out at the back and take care of all of the soldiers around there, perhaps with Bartre's/Oswin's help. I'd also like to use Rebecca where possible, though its highly likely that she won't be able to keep up on this map; I need her to get to rank B in bows by the time Chapter 20 rolls around, and despite heavy favoritism with having her take kills, she still hasn't hit C yet.

I don't really know if this is necessary, but I suppose I'll provide the starting EXP values for Seth/Eirika from the prologue: Name: Lv.XP HP STR SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Seth: 1.49 BASE Eirika: 1.32 BASE Anyway, onto the playthrough. Here is the starting position. Turn 1: Seth rescues Eirika and move 1 east of the fort. Enemy Turn 1: An enemy fighter moves onto the fort and attacks Seth; he gets countered to 2 HP. Another fighter approaches. Turn 2: Franz and Gilliam show up on Turn 2. Gilliam attacks the nearby soldier from the north and Franz finishes him from the west (Iron Sword); he misses the first strike but hits the second. Seth burns 1 RN, then drops Eirika onto the westmost forest. Enemy Turn 2: A soldier attacks Eirika and gets crit-killed. The other soldier attacks Franz, and gets ORKO'd by him. A fighter then attacks Franz and gets injured; another fighter attacks Eirika and gets crit-killed on her second attack. Turn 3: 1 more RN is burnt, and then Seth crit-kills the boss with his Steel Sword. Gilliam finishes the soldier in his range; then 4 RNs are burned and Franz kill the remaining fighter to level up. Turn 3 (cont.): Eirika then seizes to complete the chapter. And the end of chapter unit breakdown: Name: Lv.XP HP STR SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Seth: 1.98 BASE Eirika: 1.96 BASE Franz: 2.08 21 8 5 8 3 7 1 Gilliam: 4.39 BASE

Thanks!

So after getting stuck in previous attempt at LTCing FE8, I'm making another attempt. This time, I will annotating every chapter except the prologue (since the 1 turn strategy for the prologue is already well documented). Expect to see Chapter 1 posted in a few minutes.

So after getting stuck in previous attempt at LTCing FE8, I'm making another attempt. This time, I will annotating every chapter except the prologue (since the 1 turn strategy for the prologue is already well documented). Expect to see Chapter 1 posted in a few minutes.

Another map with a difficult, impractical starting formation; our heavy hitters (that we want to use) are stuck at the bottom of the map and can't get up to hold the bridge quickly enough. Oh well, we'll just have to work with what we have. Turn 1: Eliwood moves up and attacks the myrmidon with Iron Sword. Hector rescues him from below, and then Lowen finishes him off (Iron Lance). Bartre attacks the archer, Oswin rescues Merlinus, and Rebecca finishes the archer from where Merlinus was standing. Turn 1 (cont.): Marcus moves up and breaks the snag leading to the village from the south with his Iron Lance, and the rest of the party arranges themselves like so: Enemy Turn 1: Lots of snags get attacked/broken. A mercenary doubles Bartre and bandits strike Lowen and Marcus (the latter bandit gets killed). Guy successfully evades the bandit who attacks him and doubles him. Enemies move onto the main island from the western side and give Dorcas and Bartre a hard time with ranged attacks. Ouch. Turn 2: Marcus visits the village. Oswin moves east and out of the way, dropping Merlinus west. Dorcas stays where he is and attacks the mage, and then Rebecca moves south 1 to finish him off. Serra moves up to the forest to heal Bartre. Turn 2 (cont.): Lowen attacks the archer from the east (Iron Lance), Bartre kills the merc who attacked him and Guy finishes off the bandit who attacked him. Hector drops Eliwood north. Matthew stays where he is. Enemy Turn 2: Eliwood dodges a bandits attack and counters. Dorcas gets hit by an archer, but the archer clogs the western bridge, which is good. Matthew gets struck by a Hand Axe, and Eliwood gets shot by a nomad. Turn 3: Eliwood kills the bandit who attacked him, and Guy attacks the Hand-Axe bandit from the south. Serra heals Bartre, who then attacks the nomad north of him. Lowen strike the archer once again to finish him, and then Rebecca finishes off the nomad from below. Lowen is looking pretty solid! Better than Kent, perhaps... We'll have to see about that. Turn 3 (cont.): Marcus moves back across the bridge and south. Hector wields Wolf Beil to OHKO the nomad north of him. Dorcas takes out the Hand Axe bandit the Guy weakened. Matthew moves south of Eliwood and Oswin south of Rebecca. Enemy Turn 3: Myrmidon charges Lowen and gets hurt. Another myrmidon slices up Bartre but fails to dodge his counter. Marcus dodges a hand axe, and a nomad misses Eliwood. Turn 4: Guy moves to the forest east of him and crit-kills the nomad. Marcus kills the nomad near him from above. Bartre kills the myrmidon, and Hector moves up to double and kill the bandit with Wolf Beil from the forest. This is a great level for Bartre... but just a normal level up for Hector :) Turn 4 (cont.): Rebecca shoots the Myrmidon from the forest, and Lowen kills him from the west. Dorcas takes care of the western myrmidon, and Serra heals him from behind. Oswin moves west of Bartre, and Matthew moves onto the bridge north of Eliwood. Finally, Eliwood moves south of Hector to get his C-level support. This provides a good avoid boost for both of them and will be useful throughout the challenge. I always loved this comment. Enemy Turn 4: Another bandit suicides on Marcus. A bandit attacks Guy (misses), and one attacks Dorcas (Dorcas misses). A couple of hand axes are thrown in vain at Eliwood (thanks to his recent support), and Guy dodges a nomad's shot Turn 5: Dorcas rescues Merlinus from the forest. Matthew steals the Vulnerary from west of the bandit. Marcus rescues Matthew and pulls him back below the bridge. Serra heals Bartre,who then waits in front of the bandit on the west bridge. Rebecca moves down to where Serra was to target the bandit, and Guy kills the bandit who attacked him for an incredible level up. This is... unbelievably awesome! Guy is surely going to be a great unit for us. We've also accumulated enough EXP at this point, so its now time for us to retreat. Turn 5 (cont.): ...and everyone else retreats en masse like so (Lowen equipped with Iron Sword! Oswin rescues Serra.): Enemy Turn 5: Guy crit-kills a bandit in a counter. A few more bandits unsucessfully attack Guy and Lowen. Bartre misses a counterattack. Turn 6: After one more kill, we'll have enough EXP for 5-starring that rank, so the retreat continues. Guy moves 1 north and kills the nomad. Bartre attacks the bandit on his left, and everyone else positions themselves as follows Enemy Turn 6: A few attacks; not much interesting. Turn 7: Rebecca kills the retreating bandit, and everyone continues further south. Enemy Turn 7: A few more attacks, and then we're done! A stats summary: Name: Lv.XP HP STR SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Hector: 6.21 24 12 6 8 4 12 1 Oswin: 9.24 BASE Matthew: 7.17 23 8 7 16 3 5 2 Serra: 5.95 19 6 7 12 10 3 7 Eliwood: 2.86 19 6 5 8 8 5 1 Marcus: 1.96 BASE Rebecca: 4.91 18 7 7 9 4 6 2 Lowen: 5.97 26 10 6 10 5 8 0 Bartre: 5.49 32 12 6 6 6 5 0 Dorcas: 6.66 33 8 9 7 4 4 0 Guy: 4.96 26 9 14 14 6 6 2 We have a 3 turn surplus on tactics (lost 1 due the defense chapter mechanic) and a total of 15 tactician stars And a preview of our overall tactician rank (available at the start of chapter 14): We have 4 stars in combat since we just barely made the combat rank in chapters 11, 12, and 13x and didn't make it in chapter 13. Oh, also, in case anyone is wondering, Hector, Lowen, and Rebecca are tied for most kills at 11.

I'm finally finished with Chapter 13x! This proved to be quite difficult due to the fact that I was trying to limit the number of characters I am using, but eventually I found the mixture of offense and defense to accommodate getting Marcus to the village with minimal trouble and getting everyone else appropriate EXP distributions etc. I'll have a post with more details soon!

I agree with that analysis; at this point of the game (assuming you played Lyn Mode properly), you already have access to 3 paladins (Marcus, Kent/Sain, other/Lowen) and you really don't need another one with terrible bases/growths. She doesn't even join late enough that she helps with the EXP rank, and by the time she can help with that, her stats are too mediocre for her to do so.

I've decided to restart this challenge, thanks to both figuring out a couple of new ideas to gain more EXP on the early chapters and the fact that I now an familiar enough with this forum to post proper annotations to each level. But a question for you guys: What's the proper etiquette with regard to restarting? Should I close this thread and start a new one, or just continue writing here?

Just play on easy mode, which can be beaten with <10 hours of effort, depending on how familiar you are with the game. It will still be annoying, but that is the fastest way.

Perhaps it's this. I suppose I'm completely fine playing PSP games on console, even though the screen is rather small, but would find it annoying to do the same on a computer with the same screen size. So maybe the screen size looks fine on the GBA, just terrible on the larger screen of a PC?

Any updates on this? Also a couple of quick comments/questions? - I agree that FE9 (maybe even 10) would be more fun on Hard Mode - Can undrafted characters be used in base conversations?

I've always played the GBA Fire Emblem games on emulators (namely, VBA), and the same for similar TBS games like Advance Wars. When doing so, I always double or triple the screen size to get a much nicer view of the game. What is it like to play on console? I can't possibly imagine having the same kind of experience while staring at a screen that's barely 2 inches long. What do you guys think? I'd love to hear a comparison from anyone who has done both.

For reference, I basically got the Wii for Radiant Dawn and thought it was worth it (Radiant Dawn was amazing, gameplay wise at least, and the story wasn't terrible except for the few plot holes). But I don't really know about the 3DS and Awakening in comparison...

I'm a huge Fire Emblem fan (aren't we all), and I've played FE4-FE10 and loved all of them, having beaten each multiple times, and having done all of the various ranking challenges, etc. I've been thinking recently about getting a 3DS to play this game, but I've heard from various people (on this forum and off it) that Awakening has serious plot and gameplay issues, and that it might not be worth the price. What are your opinions on this?

I'd imagine that the following list is generally pretty good to start off with: Ike: A Soren/ B Oscar Oscar: A Kieran/ B Ike Boyd: A Mist/ B Titania Titania B Boyd/ B Rhys Gatrie: A Shinon/ B (Marcia or Astrid) Mia: A Rhys Rhys: A Mia/ B Titania Kieran: A Oscar/ B Marcia Jill: A Haar/ (B Mist?) Geoffrey: A Elincia

I'm at a bit of a dilemma for how to approach Chapter 13x. Since its a defense chapter that cannot be ended early, I can do no better than 3-stars. As in the previous chapter, this gives me some leeway in what I set out to accomplish for the chapter, and in fact, as long as I grab the 5000G from the village (and maybe a steal from Matthew). I can afford to hole up somewhere and avoid as much EXP as possible (to conserve low levels for later). I'm not sure if I want to do this though, and it feels like such a strategy would be rather quite forced...

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I'm really happy with this run, because like you said, saving 7 turns on a map this early on is a huge help for later on. You probably could have pulled off something like this. Even though I have been manipulating the order of my actions to achieve good level ups, it probably didn't matter too much for this level. In particular, the only thing that I can see that might have been necessary is a strong Hector (10 or 11 Str) in order to take out the cavalier in 2 hits. Except for that, a base Bartre could have taken out the northern enemies in 2 hits (or 1 with help from Marcus), Marcus was base, and the units on the eastern side of the map still needed to gang up (2RKO, sometimes even 3RKO) to take out those enemies and were focused more on gaining EXP than kills. I guess having a high-leveled Matthew helped, since enemies didn't want to attack him because they (rightly) guessed that he would just dodge every attack. Thanks! As you said earlier, I'm hoping to use the turns later on (if necessary) to gain extra EXP; also, just having less EXP in general makes it easier to get more. As for levels, I haven't really put a ton of thought into it yet. I will definitely continue using Lowen a lot since he will get benched sooner or later (I think, unless he turns out exceptionally good). Since I haven't bought anything, I'm running a bit short on reasonable weapons to use, so Hector is almost definitely not doing anything next level; similarly I will have to decide between Eliwood and Guy. I'm not sure who I will choose from those two since I plan to use Guy throughout the playthrough, so it might be wise to conserve EXP on him. I'm definitely going to try and keep Matthew from getting EXP because he has earned too much; I plan to use him throughout the playthrough to steal things, and he is definitely not getting promoted, so I can't have him kill stuff as he only has 13 levels to go. Other than that, I think it might just be an even distribution among the units (not Oswin, for similar reasons). I might try and give Dorcas a bit more than usual, now that the rest of Eliwood's army is not EXP-starved and the fact that he is probably going to be benched in a few chapters for a long time. Do you have any thoughts on this?

The starting position of this map is somewhat random, from what I've heard; here is what it looked like for me. Turn 1: Oswin breaks the Snag with the Iron Lance, Hector moves SE of Oswin, Marcus moves W of Hector and trade-equips Hector's Hand Axe, then rescues him and moves across the bridge. Bartre moves west onto the forest and equips Iron Axe. Turn 1 (cont.): Serra and Eliwood move SE toward the gap on the eastern part of the map. Dorcas move north of the mountain (1 NW of the gap, 1 SE on Rebecca's starting position) Rebecca moves south and fires at the bandit from above the forest before Lowen rescues her from above and then moves to occupy the spot she was standing on (equips Iron Sword). Matthew moves in behind and drops Rebecca behind (above) him. Enemy Turn 1: The weakened bandit attack Lowen, misses and gets hurt. Same thing goes for a PK and Bartre up north. Dorcas gets struck by an archer. The Javelin cavalier up north attacks Marcus and takes some heavy damage from his Hand Axe (hence the reason for the trade earlier). Notice that the enemy is still yet to take any losses (now you can see why my combat rank failed!) Turn 2: Matthew moves 1 W onto the mountains to double the enemy archer. Rebecca moves one south to finish the archer off (first kill, finally!), the Serra moves onto Rebecca's position and heals Dorcas, who then proceeds to move around and hit the PK with his Iron Axe: By the way, Matthew gets another sweet level up! That Res proc will be particularly useful when Matthew has to run around maps stealing treasure later on and has enemy mages/sages blasting him with long-range tomes. Turn 2 (cont.): Lowen finishes off the bandit below him with another strike, and Eliwood moves 1 NW of Matthew; this position is important since it prevents the PK from getting to Serra. Bartre kills the enemy cav, Oswin moves 1 west and trades his Iron Lance to Marcus (I also gave the secret book to Oswin to hold onto sine Marcus's inventory was getting a little bit full). Marcus then rides forward and breaks the next snag with the Iron Lance. Enemy Turn 2: The injured northern PK attacks Bartre again, this time hitting, but also getting killed. The southern injured PK suicides similarly on Eliwood. Another PK flies up to hit Lowen, and the archer targets Eliwood for a kill, but fortunately misses. Another PK strikes Marcus and gets hurt pretty badly by the Iron Lance. Turn 3: Rebecca takes out the PK from the SW, then Bartre trade-equips Hector (rescued by Marcus) with his Iron Axe and takes out the PK with his Hand Axe for a level up. Turn 3 (cont.): Marcus rides as far as he can around the western side of the castle and drops Hector (equipped with the Iron Axe) south of him. Oswin moves W onto the forest. Dorcas moves as far W as he can to aggro the western enemy PK. Matthew moves one SE of him to prepare to go onto the fort next turn. Eliwood moves around the mountain and doubles the archer from the east, before Lowen rides around south to finish him from the forest (with Iron Lance). Serra heals Lowen. Enemy Turn 3: A cav charges Hector, misses, and gets hit in return. Dorcas successfully aggros the PK, but gets hit a poor level up. Oh well; I wasn't expecting much of him anyway. He also gets hit by a Hand Axe bandit. Turn 4: Oswin moves west toward toward the village. Serra heals Dorcas from the east, Lowen strikes the (closest) Bandit from the south, and Dorcas also strikes him from the east. Matthews moves onto the fort. Turn 4 (cont.): Rebecca moves above Matthew and finishes off the bandit. Hector kills the cav, and Eliwood kills the PK. Turn 4 (cont.): Bartre moves south as far as he can. Marcus hits Boise from up close with the Hand Axe (we want him to get attacked again on the enemy phase.) Enemy Turn 4: A bunch of enemies (including Boise) attack Marcus; he kills a PK and an archer and injures others. A cav strikes Lowen, who levels up. He also gets attacked by various other units from Long Range, but dodges all of them. Rebecca gets attacked by an archer; she doubles him in response. Marcus has taken quite a beating, and so has the Hand Axe! While we're looking at the character screen, let's also take a moment to appreciate Guy's excellent HHM bonuses! Look at that, he's practically on par with our level 8 Lyn! Turn 5: We've spent roughly 500G (Hand Axe's and Bows are expensive!) in weapon uses, but thankfully Guy's initial equipment, the Torch, and Mine total to 2600G for a 3-star in funds. We'll need to pick up all of those this turn and also get to 650 EXP (we're at roughly 550) before we clear the map. Rebecca takes out the archer who attacked her, Dorcas attacks the bandit east of that archer, and Lowen finishes him off. This clear a path for Matthew to recruit Guy. Turn 5 (cont.): Serra heals someone, Eliwood and Oswin visit villages. Bartre grabs his Iron Axe back from Hector; I'm probably going to bench (figuratively, of course) the latter in the next chapter so he doesn't need it. Marcus finally finishes Boise with his Iron Lance. Then Hector seizes to clear the map! This gives us a net surplus of 4 turns over the Tactics Rank! 12 stars so far by the way. Name: Lv.XP HP STR SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Hector: 5.78 23 11 6 7 4 11 1 Oswin: 9.24 BASE Matthew: 7.06 23 8 7 16 3 5 2 Serra: 5.51 19 6 7 12 10 3 7 Eliwood: 2.29 19 6 5 8 8 5 1 Marcus: 1.79 BASE Rebecca: 3.64 18 6 6 8 4 5 1 Lowen: 4.30 25 9 6 9 4 7 0 Bartre: 4.22 31 11 6 5 6 4 0 Dorcas: 6.24 33 8 9 7 4 4 0 Guy: 3.00 BASE UPDATE: A very minor change to the end of this strategy; since I don't plan on having Matthew fight in the next chapter, I had Guy trade with Matthew after he got recruited and grab his Iron Sword.

Alright, Chapter 13 clear! Sorry this took so long to get done, but I've unfortunately been busy with family stuff this weekend and had little time to game/blog. Anyway, a brief synopsis on the chapter before I start with the actual playthrough (I'll postpone the unit stats breakdown until afterward, though): Rank: So, as my previous post mentioned, it is actually impossible to 5-star this map due to the funds requirement being impossible to meet. This allows us to sacrifice a bit more of our rank (and still obtain 4 stars) in order to low turn the chapter. In particular, I finished the chapter in 5 turns for a surplus of 7 turns on the chapter! This brings my net turn in comparison with the tacts rank to a surplus of 4, which is something I have never achieved before! My plan was to obtain a 3-star on funding (1800 G) and a 2-star on EXP (600 EXP) which would be enough for the overall 4-star on the chapter. Things actually went slightly awry since I failed the combat rank (4-star; I never noticed how hard it was to keep this up in the early chapters of HHM before! Since you can't ORKO enemies and you have lots of indirect attack enemies hitting your team, the 40% requirement is actually quite difficult!) but made up for this with a 3-star on EXP (650). Obviously, I recruited Guy and visited both villages for the Merlinus sidequest (Chapter 13x). General Strategy: In order to rush this chapter in 5 turns, Marcus has to rescue Hector and run him through to the gate, taking out the boss himself; this isn't actually all that bad since it prevents Hector from gaining much EXP this chapter, which is good for prolonging his use on the team. The party basically splits up into 2 teams: Hector, Marcus, Bartre, and Oswin go around the back of the enemy to reach the boss quickly, while everyone else heads south to gain EXP and help Matthew recruit Guy. This chapter also featured a nice set of strategic trades to give people the right weapons at critical times, which I am a little bit proud of. Anyway, playthrough will be posted soon (hopefully)!

What are the supports on this file? In particular, got Ike x Soren A?

Hey guys, what are your thoughts on rushing Chapter 13? Since I can't attain the Funds rank, I can at most 4-star the chapter... which means (assuming I get the max Survival, Combat, and Tactics rank, which is pretty much given) I can afford to completely rush the map (5 turns, maybe?) as long as I can also recruit Guy, visit both villages, and earn 600 EXP (or alternatively, instead of this last EXP requirement, make one of the steals with Matthew and only spend 200G worth of weapon usage, but making the steal might require an extra turn). What do you guys think? Is the saving on tactics worth it? Or should I just play through it normally?