Shoblongoo

I would even skip birthright tbh and just play conquest. The gameplay and map design on the nhorian path is literally the only thing in Fates that they polished up to an acceptable level of quality before the release. And if you ignore everything else, its great. if everything else in Fates was polished up to the quality of conquest's map design and gameplay, it would have been hands-down the best game in the history of the franchise. But they very obviously cut every corner with the story and with the other paths--the plot reads like an afterthought, cobbled together with less effort than was spent on nude models for the bathhouses and the changing rooms + tit-jiggling animations for orochi and kagero. Birthright is a hollow shell of a gameplay experience that really can't stand on its own and had no business being released on a separate cartridge from Conquest; splitting Fates into 2 games and making the unpurchased route dlc was a pure money-grab to make players spend more money for the full fates experience . And revelations just straight-up feels like they ran out of time + released an unfinished product. (and still had the gall to charge $17.00 for) Don't reward I.S. for money-grubbing and releasing unfinished games. ...Enjoy the diamond-in-the-rough that is the Conquest Campaign. ...Pass on the rest of the turd sandwich. ...Don't put money into the DLC. MAYBE put a few dollars into the DLC maps that let you access outrealm classes and extra gold, when you do your Lunatic run. Particularly the one that lets you get the Witch's Mark and lets you reclass your females to Witch--access to the Warp skill greatly opens up your options for tackling some of the tougher late-game chapters, and Nyx gets a HUGE boost in viability from being able to reclass between chapter 9 and chapter 10. my two-cents. hope that helped.

I have recently replayed the GBA games, and refreshed my recollection on this subject. Ilian Mercenaries appear recurrently in the service of Lycia and Etruria throughout both FE6 and FE7. Bern: not-so-much. Bern presumably is not keen on using foreign mercenaries, as it has its own first-class military and an abundance of battle-ready soldiers. They specifically have no need of pegasus knights, what with their giant fuck-off airforce of wyvern riders. In the FE7 period, however, the Black Fang forces based in Bern (and which are explicitly stated to operate in opposition to the corrupt nobles of the Bernese government) have pegasus knights among their ranks. So at least during the Black Fang period, there was work for Illian mercenaries in Bern. Lycia and Etruria remain a steady source of employment at all times. Something that really stands out about Illian mercenaries and that appears to be a commonly known fact in Elibe is: Illian mercenaries have a reputation for never, ever betraying their employer. -This comes up when Farina is making the case to Hector that shes worth her asking price in FE7 -This comes up again when the Ilians hired to fight for the Lycian Alliance in FE6 refuse to break their contract, even after Bern is looking like its about to perform a full rout on the Ostian front and Hector has been slain and their service to his lordship has arguably ended. (they say their client is Lycia, not Hector, and they keep fighting) -This comes up again when Tate switches sides on the Wester Isles (she justifies herself as not betraying her employer because General Klien turned against Etruria's occupying forces and her client isn't Etruria; its general Klien) ..this professional reputation is what makes Ilians so highly sought-after as mercenaries... Vs taking on...sayyyyy...a mercenary wyvern rider...or a lone swordsman from Sacae... The presumption might be that the rider turned mercenary because he was deemed unfit for military service in Bern. Or that the swordsman is a known criminal who had to flee the justice of his clan. That these are morally suspect fellow. That if you're hiring such mercenaries, you're rolling the dice on whether they fight for you or just stab you in the back + run off with your gold. ...but with an Ilian...you know what you're getting. You're getting service. You're getting loyalty. You're getting the professional reputation of the guilds. It being the case that mercenaries by their nature are of fleeting loyalty--always looking for the net highest bidder--a well-earned reputation for trustworthiness would be a most precious commodity in the soldier-for-hire-trade. Something that would demand instant recognition, respect, and interest from prospective employers. And something that, if Ilian mercenaries have worked as exceptionally hard to cultivate and protect as the games suggest, would viably give them a very marketable niche on a continent with a sizable market for soldiers-for-hire.

Done. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10804347/1/Robin-for-Exalt

Life-and-death and quixotic make units better on player-phase and worse on enemy phase; use them accordingly on units like sniper mozu or sorceress nyx, that put in all their work on player phase and should never ever ever be exposing themselves to taking hits. Note that the damage bonus from life-and-death stacks with QuickDraw, aggressor, and tomefaire/bowfaire etc. altogether; they can get a glass-cannon attacker up to an absurd +26 damage before you even get to stats and weapon might.

I will also vouch for Benny x Beruka; S-rank supports that flow naturally from the C through A and don't feel completely forced are few and far between in Fates. They're cute together. Plus; big dude, little chick. You know they're into some freaky shit.

Yeahhhh...Xander is never going to get anywhere close to max magic. You still have one ebon wing left, right? If you like dark fliers and you really want to use Odin, he does pretty good for himself with that class. Better then a grandmaster at any rate.

...well you've already decided to make Xander bad by putting him in a class where he loses his tankiness and can't wield Siegfried. If you're really commited to the gimmick; use an arm scroll to immediately put him at C class lance, and give him a bolt naginata.

I don't mind them adding dumb-down options for the newbies and the casuals, so long as the game still has higher difficulty modes for experienced players. I'm never going to use casual mode. But if the game isn't forcing me to use it, I have no reason to get worked up about it being there. What I care about is cutting corners on storytelling and map design, while more and more resources go into turning Fire Emblem into a soft dating sim. That's what's going to ruin the franchise.

I like what they add to the game, and agree that procs are healthy for stat balance because it makes the skill stat a bit more useful. The one thing I would like to see is more proc abilities running off the luck stat. And maybe more variance in what they do, as most procs are just some variation of "do extra damage." aegis and pavise show there are other directions you can go with it.

What's this about Kaze sucking in revelations??? He joins with a weapon class above E-rank and immediately usable base stats; that alone makes him one of your more viable units (assuming your going for a no-grind run. With grinding, there is no such thing as an unviable unit in revelations). Revelations is very kind to him, as he's one of those units that really appreciates having access to both armories to max out his utility. With nhor's hunting knife he can reliably double every mounted unit (up to and including the fastest falco Knights) in the game at 1-2 range with effective damage. With hoshido's dual shuriuken he can reliably dodge-tank against axe users. The value of his speed is really being undersold here, because everyone is just talking about dodge-tanking and ignoring doubling. Its not just about how reliably you dodge. It's about how often you're at that magic number where you attack twice in one round against a slower opponent (Saizo misses out on some important doubling benchmarks that kaze consistently hits). Kaze's proc rate is deceptively high compared to saizo's because when you're attack twice in one round you are getting two rolls of the RNG to fish for a proc instead of one (not that u should ever be fishing for procs as a strategy, but it seems to be a thing people are taking into consideration in their evaluations). Kaze will proc more than Saizo, despite the skill gap, simply because he's getting more doubles and thus more opportunities over the course of a map to activate a proc. The value of Saizo's skill is likewise being oversold (super high skill really isn't that useful, unless you're an axe user. You just don't want to have super low skill). Finally, I would like to share my observation that Kaze with a dual shuriuken is a very solid answer to malig Knights, who very few units can handle on both the magical and physical end (this is a niche shared with dual naginata hinoka. Although she has to switch to spear master to pull it off as well as kaze, because as a flier she can not abuse evade bonuses from terrain). They don't have the skill to hit him with their axes, and even with reverse weapon triangle disadvantage, kaze is not threatened by their tomes. This is something saizo and Kagero cannot do.

The only thing that can be said for Saizo's "bulk" is that he's not so frail you have to worry about him getting one-rounded every time you make a careless play. He's not a tank. He's not as squishy as the other ninja's, but he's still a unit you need to keep in the back while you put a Hinata or a Benny up front. The extra defense is there, but he's not getting the kind of utility out of it where it helps him more than the lack of Kaze's speed or Kagero's strength hurts him. Yes...other units besides Kaze can eat mages... Kaze still does a perfectly good job of it. I'd rather have a unit who performs a useful role also performed by other characters then a unit who doesn't really distinguish himself in any specific role. Saizo's just one of those jack-of-all-trades; master-of-none units. I like having units that specialize in doing something and doing it really well.

...Ehhh... I have it as Kaze >>> Kagero > Saizo Kaze on top, for the above stated reasons. Kagero in the middle, because the raw damage output from her high strength + serviceable speed is at least better then anything Saizo is bringing to the table. (She's squishy. But an offensive unit can afford to be squishy when their primary weapon hits at 1-2 range.) Then Saizo on bottom. Because as a general rule, characters with high skill + middling strength, speed, and defense are bad. Its a bad spread. ...you can't tank ...you can't double ...your damage is low ...but you hit everything without missing...yay... There are a handful of characters that make it work. It works on Beruka because as a Berserker, all she needs to do is hit with the Killer Axe while taking the -10 accuracy penalty from gamble. And if she connects, she's probably going to OHKO with a crit. It works on Takumi because the Fujin Yumi is stupid. (and when I say "it works on Takumi" I mean "Takumi works in spite of it") It ruins Tsubaki. And it doesn't really do anything for Saizo.

In terms of having a workable economy, here is how it would have to work. Ilia itself lacks the agricultural resources to sustain its own population. To remedy this, it must engage in trade with its neighbors. We may presume that the plains of Sacae are plentiful in grain and grazing animals. We may further presume that any agricultural surplus from Etruria, Lycia, and Bern would be available in international commerce. To trade with its neighbors, however, Ilia itself must have something that it can offer as an exchange of value. Some highly sought-after good or service. While the games tell us that Ilia is a generally poor country and has a severe scarcity of farmland, it is never explicitly stated that the land produces nothing of value. They have a northern coastline; that's a source Sea salts. Maybe whale oil. (a vibrant fishing industry could partially make up for the lack of usable farmland) Ore from the mountains has been mentioned as a possible commodity. However, we see in FE6 that the Western Isles are most heavily valued by Etruria as a source of mining wealth. Indicating that this is already an occupied niche in the Elibean economy, with high barriers to entry for poorer countries, and Ilia probably isn't generating a great deal of trade with mineral wealth. Much of Ilia should be covered in evergreen forests. Fur pelts and timber could be viable commodities. Now the only thing explicitly mentioned as an external source of revenue is mercenary work. A service; not a good. Ilia is a service-based economy. But that's not to say they don't also trade goods to get goods. Only that revenue from the mercenary services they provide is the greater source of wealth, and whatever resources Ilia is getting from trading its own goods is quantitatively inferior to what they are purchasing with the revenue from mercenary contracts. ...We may further presume that because Ilia is so dependent on trade to feed its people, there is a great deal of merchant activity between Ilia and its southern neighbors. ...We may further presume that this merchant activity would be a target for bandits. ...We may further presume that the need to protect merchants from bandits would generate more mercenary work, which would in turn generate more revenue, which would in turn generate more merchant activity, which would in turn generate more mercenary work... (it becomes a self-sustaining cycle) So there is a workable foundation for an economy there. It's nasty, brutish, and dependent on constant warfare + the need of wealthier nations to pad their ranks with foreign soldiers. But its not the most ridiculous thing in Fire Emblem.

"Zealot is explicitly stated to become the country's first king, so before that the country wasn't politically unified."...not necessarily...there's another way to interpret this statement... Because of the power of the pegasus knights and their value to the Ilian economy, Ilia has always been a land where women held power. Thus it would have always been ruled by QUEENS. Zealot being the first king could be a reference not to the fact that this was the first time Ilia was politically unified under a monarchy, but rather, that this was the first time the Ilian throne was occupied by a man. That's always how I've thought of it. Ilia is ruled by a Queen, and maybe a handful of nobles in the queen's services. But its a weak central government that holds power over a handful of population centers and production sites deemed important to the crown's interests; caring nothing for the well-being of Ilia's greater population and feeling no particular need to exercise power over the hinterlands of Ilian territory. Leaving the mercenary guilds as the primary givers of social order and protection-of-law across the neglected countryside, where no Queen could ever be bothered to establish governorships or station knights and watchmen.

The idea that the country is poor and barren and that people turn to mercenary work to survive is believable, for the setting. Where it gets wierd and you have to start wondering "...how does this work???" is with the gender roles. You have this middle age level civilization where every neighbor country follows the "men are leaders and warriors; a women's place is beneath her husband") model. Then u have this 1 country where all the fighting is done by women on flying horses, while the men stay at home to tend the fields. how does that work???

Kaze by far, imo. He's the perfect mage killer and res tank; so, so good at what he does. "Throw Kaze at them" is usually going to be a catch-all answer to any mob of magic users threatening your army. Low strength doesn't even hurt him that much. His primary targets are low def tome users, and effective damage from hunter's knives on the nhorian side and sting shuriukens on the hoshidan side + poison strike and debuffs goes a ways towards supplementing his damage output against heavies. oh yeah...and he doubles everything... paired up Swordmasters on lunatic conquest get doubled by kaze Kagero and Siazo dont res tank. Struggle to double against faster targets. And generally fail to fill any special niche that would give them utility comparable to kaze.

...okay...short, sweet, and simple....got it... maybe this one then https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10751475/1/Challenge-Accepted

Heard about this on Ghast Station's youtube channel; made an account just so I could participate in this contest. Will be submitting my (almost complete) FanFic: Robin for Exalt. Don't know if I'll get around to writing the final 2 chapters anytime soon. But it currently stands at 28 chapters, 227 favorites, and 384 (mostly positive) reviews. If thats what I've got, thats what I've got. ...I really should get around to writing those final chapters...

Not gonna lie: I thought they were laying the foundation to take us back to Tellius when they teased out Priam in Awakening. Would love to see another Tellius game, but I don't trust the current writing team to pull it off. They would need to get rid of everyone responsible for the fates train wreck and start from scratch, to do it right.

Best way to salvage Odin is to pop a ebon wing and make him a dark flier. You get an immediate boost to your magic and speed, the +2 speed skill, and your future growths are skewed in favor of +speed. Which patches up his biggest issue as a dark mage: he's SLOW, and he struggles to do real damage. As a dark flier he keeps tomes as a usable weapon class. Which is nice, because you don't have to completely grind all the way up from E rank before he can start putting in work. Lances let him function as a hybrid magic/strength user, similar to grandmaster. But as a grandmaster he still suffers from low speed. Dark flier really plays to all his strengths, and mitigates his worst weaknesses.