Avalanche

If it helps. the Dragon Vein you can trigger moves ONLY the enemies and the wind itself will subside until YOUR next turn. As long as you have someone hit the Dragon Vein when the wind would otherwise screw you up, it makes things quite a bit more bearable.

I don't remember anymore becoming available in the Main Chapters (unlike the Chapter 9 one in Conquest) until you upgrade the Shop again. Sorry...

From my experience with Birthright, new challenges appeared more frequently than they did in Awakening. I noticed that once I finished a Story Chapter, I generally had a new challenge ready to go.

You know, Lowest Level does sound like a lot of fun. Heck, I might even try it on my Birthright Hard run. I'm assuming placing a limit on how many challenges you participate in could make things even more, well, challenging! Felicia and Jakob (At least for their first 20 Levels) should probably count as Unprompted, just to make keep things in line with their EXP intake.

Advice is in Bold.

For the most part, these look solid. A few comments; - Charlotte x Keaton makes a great Velouria, but locks Charlotte out of an extra Partner Seal Class (she already has Fighter) and Keaton and Velouria really only want Tomebreaker from Maid/Butler - Selena is about as low as I would let Percy's Strength go (he only has a 30% Base Growth and Selena keeps it stagnant, while also only giving a +1 Mod. Plus, everyone involved only get's 2 new classes instead of 3) - Takumi x Mozu is starting to become my Optimization OTP despite never having seen their Supports.

Since I just finished Chapter 20, I figured I'd leave you with this tip; Use the Dragon Vein's, preferably every turn. Even if you don't move the enemies in a very meaningful way, (at least on Normal Mode) it will remove Wind that will move YOUR units. It's an absolute godsend and made the Chapter way more bearable for me, simply having the consistency of my units placement was what saved me headache.

Find out that my phone is poop.... It's uploaded now.

Because I find this adorable.

Holy crap, really? That's actually hilarious.

I'd say your first formation looks a bit better. Every Pairing looks solid and most can be done as soon as the dad joins.

To echo what everyone is saying, Exp in Conquest is limited. You only get the main Chapters, Invasions and the Child Paralogues to earn Experience in. By Endgame, you can deploy 16 units, so form your A Team around that number. Depending on your difficulty, feel free to raise a few more (on Normal) or less (on Hard or Lunatic)

He's weak to standard anti beast stuff, so yeah, Beast Killer is fine. Still, Normal mode Xander is pretty easy. He was slow enough for my Corrin to double and 1 turn clear the chapter with no tonics or pair ups.

Any physical character does fine with Keaton and his kid (their basically just Keaton 2.0). Charlotte and Effie are popular since they give the child a whopping +7 Strength Modifier. However, as long as you don't pair Keaton with a Mage, his daughter will work fine.

Sure, go for it. Hana is better as Takumis partner (he loves extra Speed) and Hana!Kiragi works fine. Mozu!Hisame does face class overlap (he already gets MoA via Samurai), but is fine otherwise.

Unfortunately, I'm only on Chapter 14 of Conquest now (I really hate my job, barely any time for Fates...), but I can definitely say you will want to Pair characters for the Main Story, don't worry about Optimizing the kids much. For example, I early Promoted my Arthur to Berserker solely to be a great Pair Up statbot for Effie. You can take the same approach for both Charlotte (for Xander) and Nyx (for Leo). From what I've seen, your Pairings look fine. If you want, here's what I'm rolling with (bare in mind that I'm on Normal/Classic) Female Corrin x Jakob Azura x Kaze Silas x Selena Arthur x Effie Odin x Elise Keaton x Camilla Leo x Nyx Xander x Charlotte Benny x Beruka Niles x Felicia (I really should have used Mozu, but whatever) Laslow x Peri

The pairing that I've seen work the most for Jakob is sadly relegated to Birthright and Revelation: Kagero. She makes a crazy strong Dwyer and all 3 of them can use any Hidden Weapon class in the game.

Your Pairings are really solid, but one change I do recommend is moving Azura to Jakob and Mozu (who I don't believe you Paired at all) to Takumi. Azura makes Jakob's son quite powerful (far more so than Setsuna at least) and Jakob give's Azura's son decent Growths and Wyvern Rider for some completely unknown reason. For Mozu's part, she get's Spear Fighter from Takumi (if you decided to keep her a Villager she can use her Lance Rank in a 100% better class) and Kiragi can at least pretend to have a niche by way of Aptitude (doods like the most obsolete kid, so he'll take ANYTHING to separate him from his old man...). Also, I would actually encourage you to take a Strength Boon over Speed. Reason being that you can actually make Selkie a decent attacker (remember, Growths for kids are now only derivative of the variable parent, not both like in Awakening) instead of making the fastest (I think?) Hoshido kid even faster.

As long as the kid is physical, Charlotte is great for them. I think she's technically Siegbert"s best mom and Xander's best pair up if that helps. Everything seems pretty good, but I'd maybe replace Oboro with Charlotte for Jakob and give Oboro to someone like Kaden.

Comments to be updated soon

Honestly, In terms of being a tool available to both you and the enemy, Attack and Guard Stance are almost as important as the Weapon Triangle in my humble opinion

I don't think any of them will just not recruit themselves, but I think you can let some of them they come as NPCs die? I never really tried tbh. If it's really that big a sticking point for you, I agree that Guard Stance is a life saver and shouldn't be underestimated. It saved my butt plenty and I beat Birthright on Normal too.

I know your adverse to using the kids, but would you mind just doing their Paralogues? There are some that are nice for the Exp, especially now that your late game. Jakob's sons in particular is nice, since you can kill the boss on turn 1, so you can control when you want to end the map.

I'm not at my 3ds to check, but I'd wager about 45 hours. I've beaten Birthright and am on Chapter 14 of Conquest. Work is awesome... 5 shifts in a row is just what I need...

Paralogue's scale based on how far you are in the game. If you decide to take them on around Chapter 20 or so, they will join with an Offspring Seal (a special Seal that boosts the Child to a predetermined level and also scales their Weapon Rank and Skills)., so they can be ready to fight from the word go. This also allows for greater Skill variety (Hinata's kid can inherit a Swordmaster or MoA Skill and Seal into the other Promotion for example), with the trade off being that the enemies get tougher. I wouldn't recommend going for them any later than Chapter 20 or 21 personally.