ruadath

Yeah I agree with you guys, generally. I ought to say though, Binding Ties (the Ally Phase music) is one of my favorite tracks in the game.

And here we go! I'll provide the actions in order this time around, since there is no (well, minimal) RNG manipulation. First, the starting position. Turn 1: Matthew maneuvers himself to create a pocket inside of the... fort?... for Serra to hide in and keep safe from the numerous Pegasus Knights running around. Oswin goes east and attacks the PK with the Javelin, and Hector finishes her with the Wolf Beil. He gets a sweet level up too! Turn 1 (cont.): Down south, Marcus trades his Iron Sword to Eliwood and heads for the Village. The rest of the teams positions themselves like so (Doracs is on the fort, Bartre on the house) Enemy Turn 1: A bandit attacks Lowen and misses; he counterattacks with the Iron Sword. The same happens with Matthew. A bunch of PKs then move in to attack. One misses Hector, another misses Bartre, and one hits Hector. They all get hurt in the counterattack, the ones facing Hector particularly badly due to Wolf Beil. This is useful, since they will now flee toward the forts in the middle of the map to heal on subsequent turns, lightening the burden on Hector and Oswin, and providing some much need EXP to Eliwood's group. A Hand Axe bandit hits Hector pretty hard for 5 damage, despite having only 27 hit, which means that Hector will have to be careful (read: lucky) for the rest of the chapter. A couple of archers strike Lowen and Hector as well, leaving the latter with only 11/21 HP. Turn 2: A bunch of enemies have now swarmed around Hector. Matthew finishes off the bandit that attacked him, and Oswin moves 1 NE to hit the Hand Axe bandit with his Iron Lance for a good chunk of damage. We need to finish him off this turn, before he runs onto the mountains and becomes impossible to hit. Serra stays in the same spot to keep safe from all the enemies. Turn 2 (cont.): Eliwood moves 2 east and attacks the bandit that attacked Lowen (with his Iron Sword; he won't be using the Rapier at all this chapter). He takes a meaty hit in the counterattack though, which means that, like Hector, he will also have to be careful (lucky) for the remainder of the Chapter. Turn 2 (cont.): Lowen moves around to finish him off from the east. Rebecca moves 1 E and snipes the PK which attacked Bartre. She crits (!) though it was hardly necessary as she would have finished him anyway. Marcus grabs the Secret Book from the village and begins to make his way back to the battle. Dorcas attacks the archer from the east, and Bartre finishes him from the SE with the Hand Axe. Hector takes out the Hand Axe bandit from above. 10 enemies remain. Enemy Turn 2: Like I said earlier, the two injured PKs stop bothering Hector for the fort in the middle of the map. The mercenary down south slices up Bartre for some heavy damage (Bartre gets doubled) but gets hit in the process. Enemy Turn 2 (cont.): A bandit moves in to attack Eliwood, but misses, and another one does the same thing with Lowen. The SE PK knight moves in to attack Dorcas. She also misses, and takes a good chunk of damage. The armies on the south side are now lined up nicely. Back up north, another PK hasn't learned the lesson set by her brethren and gets to meet Wolf Beil (albeit, not after reducing Hector to 8 HP). The archer also attacks Hector again, but misses, fortunately. Turn 3: With the northern army having thinned out a bit, Matthew and Serra are free to move. Matthew heads east and doubles the archer from the forest (he gets to C swords, by the way); Oswin moves back 1 SW and kills him with the Javelin. Serra moves in behind him to heal him. She is in the range of the wounded PKs, but they won't attack her beacuse they are busy tending to their wounds. Hector hits the PK who attacked him just before with the Wolf Beil again, killing her. Another great level too! Turn 3 (cont.): I burned an RN or two here (I think), then Eliwood attacked the bandit who attacked him again, weaking him further. Dorcas move around and attacked the mercenary from the east. Lowen finished off the mercenary (Iron Sword again), then Bartre moved around and killed the bandit east of Lowen with his Iron Axe. Rebecca takes out the PK and Marcus moves forward. Enemy Turn 3: Zagan begins moving toward Hector. The bandit moves to the fort and attacks Eliwood again. A PK suicides on Hector; he crits (Wolf Beil!) but didn't need to anyway thanks to proc'ing Str. Only 4 enemies left! Turn 4: Lowen moves 2 west and finished off the last southern bandit. Our first non-Hector level up! I'm not quite sure how the wounded enemy AI works, but if they sense you are about to gang up on them they will strike out and suicide against you. I didn't want that to happen, so I made sure to position the rest of my units (who were getting ready to kill the two PKs in the middle next turn) sufficiently far away as depicted. Bartre (SE of Rebecca) was rescue dropped by Dorcas and Marcus. Turn 4 (cont.): Back up north, Matthew moved down (as you can see in the previous picture), and Serra moved east toward Hector. Hector remained still to wait for the boss. Enemy Turn 4: Zagan attacks Hector. He misses, thankfully, as Hector would have died otherwise. Turn 5: I admit it, I did some RNG manipulation here for some good levels, but nothing extreme. First I burned 2 RNs, and had Rebecca move straight west and take out the western PK. I then burned 2 more RN and had Serra heal Hector. Oswin then rescued her to keep her safe from Zagan Bartre took out the remaining PK with his Hand Axe. No RNGs burned before this. Matthews sells the Red Gem. Hector attacks the boss. Enemy Turn 5: Zagan attacks Hector. He finally hits this time, but its too late for him. Serra has already healed Hector so he can take a hit, and Hector's counterattack finishes Zagan. And that's a wrap! NOTE: Strangely enough, my level ups with Hector were different this time around from when I first ran this. Everything else is the same though, so I guess I'll just run with this version since it is documented and modify the stats table above. Less speed... but more Strength and Defense! I'm all for it! They were still godly, by the way.

After procrastinating for a while with failed attempts to low turn FE8, I finally got around to doing Chapter 12. I'll probably post screenshots/etc at some point but for now, here is a summary: Funds: picked up the Secret Book, sold the Red Gem, didn't buy anything. Hector used Wolf Beil exclusively (18 uses remaining). If this seems odd to you, the idea is that I have a huge surplus in this chapter but nothing gainful to use it on. Therefore, it is a good idea to 1) take the loss on the Red Gem and make a profit with the funds on one of the secret shop chapters and 2) use up Wolf Beil in preparation of Hammerne-ing it later. Tactics: The number of turns allowed for this chapter is 8; it is possible to complete in 4 with extensive use of Marcus. I settled for a 5 turn without using Marcus. This leaves me with an overall deficit of 3 on the Tactics rank. Combat: This is usually a non-rank, but I just barely scraped through, with 16 W/ 40 B! Exp: I got over 600 EXP on this chapter, so nothing to worry about here. The stats breakdown is as follows: Hector's Army: Name: Lv.XP HP STR SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Hector: 5.48 23 11 6 7 4 11 1 Oswin: 9.24 BASE Matthew: 6.93 22 7 7 15 2 5 1 Serra: 5.07 19 6 7 12 10 3 7 Hector and his troops are awesome! Eliwood's Army: Name: Lv.XP HP STR SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Eliwood: 1.41 BASE Marcus: 1.00 BASE Rebecca: 2.17 18 5 5 7 4 4 1 Lowen: 3.08 24 8 6 8 3 7 0 Bartre: 3.10 30 10 5 4 5 4 0 Dorcas: 5.85 32 8 9 7 4 3 0 We can see why he needed some rescuing now! Nevertheless, I'm very happy with the level up Rebecca, Lowen, and Bartre got (and of course, Hector's 3 godly levels). Let me know what you guys think! I'll be posting some screenshots soon (hopefully).

Ah, shoot. Well, I guess I'll just have to forego Farina then. Does the Silver Card work on non-Secret Shops? Edit: Oh right, it obviously does. That's a great idea, and probably what I will plan on doing. Thanks for all of the help!

Right, but I'm looking to 5 star all the chapters in HHM where possible. The only ones I know that can't be done for certain are the HM exclusive chapters (zero requiements) and Chapter 13 (not enough funds without Matthew/Serra counting as joining). Edit: Oh wait, never mind you're completely right; I don't know what I'm talking about lol (forgot this was HM exclusive, duh). A quick note, though: a C-rank is 2 stars, so I would't be able to do that for this chapter. Or, unfortunately, I just realized, any of the HM chapters; breaking even is a requirement.

Breaking even is usually pretty easy to do in those Chapters, but in particular, I am thinking of 25, because I'd like to recruit all characters (Farina). I could use the Hammerne Staff trick there, but that would sure be a waste... especially since I would have to either make to uses or find a way to really wear the Spear down in the Secret Shop chapters. Edit: Actually since Farina has roughly 2k worth of starting equipment, the Brave Bow would suffice instead and leave with with ~1k to complete the chapter.

That was one of my plans for like 28x. I think the weapons I will wear down and repair will be Wolf Beil, Brave Bow, and one of Rapier of Spear. One needs to balance cost of weapon versus number of chapters available to wear it down (in particular having either Chapter 12, which has a huge surplus of Funds, or the secret shop chapters). I think it's just that Jasmine has the Gem, not Paul.

If I remember correctly, White Gem+Ocean Seal+Guiding Ring+Hero Crest+Body Ring is already 88,000. Add to that Luna+Eclipse+Light Brand and you are at roughly 100,000. You don't even really need to get the Light Brand, and I'm also not counting Hawkeye's Killer Axe.

OK, yeah, that was my plan. Although I'll have to be a bit careful about not spending too much as well; funds requirement for 5 star is roughly 90000.

Does anyone know whether or not to meet the zero funds requirement for a HHM exclusive chapter one has to "break even," or is it automatically satisfied?

Yeah, that is probably it. But there is no difference between the data for the respective stories.

Finally cleared Chapter 5. My EXP distribution wasn't nearly as nice as General Horace's, so I ended up having multiple level ups both turns, on the enemy phase... and Artur kept getting killed. I had to change the strategy slightly to fix this but I still managed to get a 2 turn clear, albeit with not nearly as nice level-ups as GH. Stats posted below: Name: Lv.XP HP STR/MAG SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Seth: 3.28 32 16 14 13 13 12 8 Eirika: 4.53 19 7 10 12 8 4 1 Franz: 4.84 23 10 7 10 3 8 2 Gilliam: 4.58 BASE Vanessa: 5.40 20 8 11 14 6 8 6 Moulder: 3.77 BASE Garcia: 4.71 BASE Colm 2.15 BASE Artur: 3.35 19 7 7 9 2 3 7 I don't think they should, but if the poor level ups turn out to be a problem, I may have to restart from before this chapter. EDIT: I probably will redo this chapter instead of moving on.

No report yet, but... The desert chapter 23: Living Legend. I'm not even sure that it is possible (not to mention feasible) to grab all the items, get 1200 EXP, and finish in 9 turns. 700 EXP for the sidequest is usually difficult enough, and I usually go a little overboard in turns. That chapter might be a bit of a nightmare. I have some ideas for how I might approach it, but I'll flesh out the details regarding that later. Also the chapters with absrudly high EXP requirements may prove annoying (Victory or Death requires 6150! EXP, and also Chapter 29 and Final). Surprisingly the Funds rank is proving less notorious than I thought it would; the only one that seems impossible (please correct me if I am wrong here) to get 5 stars on is Chapter 13; the 5 star requires .8*4500=3600, but Guy's starting equipment (1600), the Torch and Mine (1000), and two stealable Vulenraries (600) on the map amount only to 3200.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. There is nothing I can do about them, I just have to make them up in the same manner that Melth did; I believe that I will be using his turn count as a rough guide for my playthrough. Can't do that, need to train everyone (at least a little bit) for the experience rank. Not too sure yet about tactics/exp, but there are definitely some chapters were funds will not allow me to 5-star. I've got a bit of calculations to do before I even start on Chapter 12, which I will report in a "War Room" post sometime soon.

Thanks, Soul! It's quite alright, actually; I've been focusing on my FE7 Max Tactician Stars run, and just cleared chapter 10 (in fact 11 too!) today. 58 stars on Lyn Mode! Very happy with that and excited to press on. I might not come back to this for a while, or at least will be doing it at a slower pace.

Alright, Chapter 11 complete. As I said before, it is a zero-requirement chapter, so we get 3 stars regardless of what we do. That being said, it is important to keep track of our overall Tactics rank. I am currently 6 turns in the red; thankfully there are plenty of opportunities to make that up in the first few chapters. I was initially planning on uploading a video, but I used the exact same strategy as in MoogleBoss's LTC, so I simply refer you to that video if you want to see what I did. In terms of spoils, Matthew killed the northern archer for his Vulnerary and stole the Red Gem from an enemy thief. As is normal, here is a stats summary: Name: Lv.XP HP STR SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Hector 2.87 20 8 5 6 3 8 0 Matthew: 6.43 22 7 7 15 2 5 1

I'm (at least planning not to do) RNG abuse since I believe that it is very possible to get all the stars in HHM without doing so, unlike in Lyn Mode. I may or may not be posting videos, have not decided yet. It might be a mix, depending on which chapters I think it would be worth it. Although I really do like the screenshot style, so I think I'm leaning toward that right now. Thanks!

As Melth did with his excellent playthrough, I will be performing some "War Room" posts, during which I will explain strategies, tactics, and even general information that are relevant to the upcoming battles. Now that we are into Hector Mode, making plans well in advance will be extremely important, as a single mistake early on has the potential to have major ramifications later in the playthrough. This first "war room" will cover the details of the what we are trying to acomplish in this challenge. Obviously, you are all familiar with the requirements of S-ranking the challenge, so I won't bore you with the details of that here. However, due to the fact that we are going for Max Stars, there are several additional constraints that you might not be aware of: Visit every gaiden chapter. This is self explanatory; the more chapters we complete, the more opportunities we have to get tactician stars Meet the 5-star requirements (when possible) for every chapter. In case you are not familiar with tactician stars, this is how they are doled out. In particular, with regard to the latter point, this means that the zero requirements Chapters will not really help us at all, since they don't allow for us to make up lost EXP or Funds from other chapters, since we have to meet those individually. Instead, they only provide us with a defecit of turns that we have to make up in the regular chapters. Well, that's all I have to add for now. Chapter 11 should be fairly straightforward; its a zero-requirements chapter, so I'll just be aiming to clear it in 6 turns.

I never used those characters, lol. (Have always been a Nephenee and Mia/Edward fan)

Goal achieved! Here is the ranking screen! As far as I know, this is the first playthrough to achieve both 58 stars and Nils level 7! (and Sain promoted at Lv 13!) Also provided in this post is the breakdown of final stats for Lyn Mode: Name: Lv.XP HP STR/MAG SKL SPD LCK DEF RES Lyn: 8.15 22 9 12 16 10 5 1 Sain: 1.11 33 20 9 17 8 13 4 (promoted at 13.00) Kent: 7.01 26 12 8 12 3 8 2 Florina: 7.32 21 11 9 15 11 6 7 Wil: 3.17 20 7 6 6 6 6 0 Dorcas: 5.57 32 8 9 7 4 3 0 Erk: 4.42 20 7 8 10 5 3 5 Serra: 4.85 19 5 7 11 9 3 7 Rath: 7.13 BASE Matthew: 6.00 22 7 7 15 2 5 1 Nils: 7.00 20 2 0 16 16 10 10 Lucius 3.00 BASE Wallace 12.00 BASE

Finally got around to doing this. I've decided to go with images and turn-by-turn descriptions since it is easier for me to give commentary than with a video. (A note for anyone following along: the description of events on the enemy phase is often given out of order in order to fit the narrative better) Turn 1: Florina brings Lyn south (veering slightly west) and equips the Javelin. Erk (with Nils help) makes his move, charging into enemy lines; Matthew, Kent and Sain (carrying Serra) follow behind him. He gets a solid level up (sans magic growth) from the Mage attacking him on the enemy turn Turn 2: Florina kills the archer who attacked her from the south (Iron Lance). Serra heals Erk, Sain and Kent advance, and Matthew kills the archer (with Nils help, who levels up), leaving him on 99 exp. to level up on the enemy archer's attack. Erk kills the retreating soldier. Never mind, the archer doesn't attack Matthew, but goes for Erk instead (and dies). I'll probably let the shaman level up Matthew then. A mercenary attacks Florina. Turn 3: It starts to rain. Florina drops Lyn west, and then heads east onto the forest. I'll give a picture of them since I haven't yet. Nils helps Serra heal Erk, everyone else advances. Another merc attacks Florina. Lyn finishes off the merc that attacked Florina on the enemy phase and gets this beautiful level up: Turn 4: Everyone in the north group advances, Nils vacuously plaing for Serra. Lyn moves onto the mountain to aggro the bandit. Florina waits to finish off the merc to level up. Turn 5: One should note that at this point the EXP requirement is in the bag; we have already gained 282 EXP so far. Whoever kills Lundgren will get at least 100, and Nils has to play 8 mort times (80 EXP) to hit level 7, which puts us above the 450 requirement for this chapter. Funds was never really an issue for this chapter, so all that is left to do is finish the battle at the end of Turn 12. People advance this turn, Nils plays for Serra, Matthews moves in to aggro the shaman. Florina settles on the fort, preparing to wipe out the cavalry reinforcements, and Lyn gets out of the way. Matthew levels up, as predicted. Turn 6: Kent takes out the Shaman, Sain visits the village, Nils plays for Serra so that she can heal both Matthew and Kent (she levels up). Everyone else advances. Another cav charges Florina and dies on the enemy phase. Turn 7: People continue to move forward; Florina and Lyn pull back so that the remaining cavs can be taken out by Erk/Kent when they get there. Nils plays for Serra and she heals Florina. Turn 8: Kent hits a cavalier with a Javelin. Erk finishes him off and gets to level 3. Serra heals people. Nils plays. Cavalier charges Erk on enemy turn, gets doubled and killed. Turn 9: Ditto. Turn 10: With the last cav gone, its time to charge Lundgren. Erk moves into position to to take out the knight when he charges. Now there's only Lundgren Turn 11: Matthew gets out of the way so Serra can heal Erk. Lyn moves forward a bit then lets Nils play for her. Kent attack Lundgren with Javelin. So does Sain. Erk blasts him with Fire and levels up. (Lundgren dodges one of everyone's two attacks by the way, and doesn't counter since he has the Silver Lance equipped). Here is a picture of the map, by the way. Lundgren witches to the Javelin and attacks Erk. Excellent. Turn 12: Serra heals Erk. He attacks again. So does Kent. He levels up. Lundgren now has a measly 2 HP left. Lyn puts him out of his misery and levels up. Nice touch! Nils finally reaches his goal of level 7: and Lyn seizes to complete the chapter. Finally, done with Lyn mode! Let me know if you like the image-text stye playthrough, if you would have like to have seen anything done differently, or any other comments!

Obviously, I haven't gotten to any of the difficult parts yet, but so far I've only been looking at Chiki's turn counts and the general benchmarks on his thread. I haven't read any of his advanced strategies yet. Like I said, this is more of a personal challenge for me rather than a competition, and obviously it would be no fun to simply watch Chiki's videos and mimic every action of his to get the desired result.

For reference, my "friend" is actually my younger sibling who lives with me. Under normal circumstances, I would have been happy to perform the resets myself (I've done worse things for the FF9 E2PG challenge, if anyone here knows what that is), but I just didn't want to get pulled away from the other challenges I am currently running (FE7/FE8/FF9/Disgaea) which I found more interesting (and are also currently higher priority for me in terms of completion). Regardless of that, I'm not trying to make any enemies. If you guys disapprove of behavior here, then I sincerely apologize and will take down this thread. I'm new here and don't want to offend anyone. Maybe I will join that Tellius Saga draft StrykerZ is doing instead.

I never claimed to be a good LTC player; in fact I haven't done any LTC runs before. I'm just trying to effect the lowest turns possible in a run and logging my progress as I go along. It is more of a personal challenge to myself, rather than an attempt to take any credit away from you, if that is how you are interpreting it.

By the way, does anyone know if someone has done something like this before? I saw an old thread on gamefaqs by GreatEclipse a few minutes ago, but wasn't sure if anything conclusive came of that run.