Horakthi

The game is known for missing with ridiculously high percentages and getting hit with low ones.. I didn't mean that it wouldn't help at all, but it's still going to annoy the crap out of anyone. Of course caps are a huge deal in this game. Asvel caps speed before promotion even though he gets a +5 bonus just from promoting. This is the game where caps are the biggest deal.

Not really. It's as if the RNG is biased against you. And the caps are only 20.. they cap when you're unpromoted for some units. I suggest training Asvel's Fire rank enough to use Meteor. I also suggest restarting some chapters for some goodies, like 17A for the Warp staff (I used Olwen's Bolting and Dean's Dragon Lance crit to catch the Dark Bishop boss with Warp) and 21x for a Sleuf remove to Silence all 3 Warp using bishops at the same time. A remove in 24x would help as well if you Rewarp Sety into the center room to kill the Berserk wielding Dark Bishop. It might be a bit too annoying though.

I don't think this is a very good idea. It'd be extremely frustrating to constantly have to restart chapters because of crappy RNG, which happens more often than not on this game. But if you're prepared to lose a couple of limbs, go for it.

I also forgot to mention that in an efficiency run, you'll have a hard time pairing up Claude with Fury. Fury is greatly restricted thanks to Claude's move. But Claude!Sety is really good. Please tell me what you're arguing for instead of using my own points to prove yours in your first post rather than just now. I was arguing for using other units all the time, maybe more units than usual, but whatever. You haven't said anything that indicates what you're debating for in your first post. I'm not the only one saying Arthur is almost soloing the game by himself, you know. Several people here indicated that. I wasn't misunderstanding anything. People made it sound like Arthur and Celice were the only people needed for the entire game. Shanan and Levin!Sety have more avoid than Levin!Arthur, by the way. Of course I didn't mean that the chance literally increases after an attack, my bad. I meant that the chance for dodging 10 hits in a row is still 35%. Dodging 5 in a row is 59%. And so on. I think it'd be much more effective to use around 5 more units and spread around resources such as experience and items more, which I've already explained, but whatever.

I forgot to reply to this. How is it slim if you decide to go beat the entire game with Arthur? He has around 95 evade at endgame? There are plenty of dark mages in chapter 10 and Epilogue, and plenty of units with Hero weapons. This is why you shouldn't go through the entire game with just Arthur and Celice. Basic probability says the chance of getting hit becomes more and more likely as you dodge more. So there's going to be hundreds of battles for Arthur, it's going to be pretty likely.

I was already arguing for using other units.. I think you should read my posts more carefully. I think Balcerzak summed up some of my points, but people here made it sound like Arthur and Celice were going to solo the game by themselves and Arthur was going to get every item. I know you're arguing against some of my points, but in your run you were using multiple units like I suggested in the first place already. Needing ridiculous amounts of favoritism <<< not needing it. Arthur has the same move as Arden for 5 chapters, and he's basically the worst character in FE history. I can't help but think that there's some bias involved.

Narrow paths like that exist all the time. I can think of the path to Mease, the path to Freege and the path to Barhara. Both of the paths to Dozel if you're quick too. "Remainders can be picked off by mounted units" I was under the impression that the most efficient strategy was to go through the game with just a handful of characters? If he does that consistently then Celice is hardly going to get any experience and it's not going to be good for him when he goes to Velthomer to kill Manfloy, for example. This is getting a bit ridiculous. I would have never imagined that debates consist of incredibly biased favoritism. I thought the point of the game was to speed through with Arthur. Using a Thief Sword is going to slow you down if you don't one round stuff on the player phase. If he goes after Bandits, which are the only enemies that give him significant cash, that's going to slow him down even further. So Arthur is going to go down to the village to get the Thief Ring? Or is he going to buy it? That's 20k. I'm sure if we're soloing the game, he'll want to repair Holsety often. He's not getting the Thief Ring easily. That supports my argument rather than yours, because I'm all for using Fee.. I was under the impression that Arthur was going to plow through the game as quickly as possible with Celice. Fee won't have much time to spend with Arthur, so this'll be difficult to do. Leen is probably going to get the leg ring after Celice promotes. If he gets slept on the enemy phase, then that'll prevent him from attacking when he gets gangbanged by enemies, which is a disadvantage if he's your main fighter. I believe that the Sleep Staves go first. So you're giving Arthur a Holsety, Bargain Ring, Magic Ring, Barrier Ring and a Pursuit Ring? That sounds like the most efficient way to beat the game is to solo with him. Everyone on the game can be useful if we manipulate the RNG. I could make Sophia useful if I kept on restarting until she dodged every hit with 99 accuracy. This argument also means that averages don't count for crap since we can restart the game as often as we want.

Celice / Shanan / Faval / Leaf / Sety / Delmud / Lester / Aless / Arthur / Nanna / Altenna / Fee / Lakche / Patty would be much more effective, in my opinion, that just rushing through chapters with just Celice and Arthur. You can remove Lester and Delmud if you think it's too much, but I think Lester has a lot of one rounding potential with the Hero Bow. There are multiple disadvantages of using only two or three characters that I can think of: 1. There are many narrow passages in the maps that are filled with enemies. If you plow through these enemy passages with your team, you can save a turn instead of having Arthur wait and let him kill everything in one turn. 2. There are thousands of 1-2 range users and they'll love to go attack Celice or Shanan, and not Arthur. These enemy units will block your way and minimise how quickly you can move to the opposing castle. You can't just "keep Celice away", either. He has to reach the castles as quickly as possible, so this is inevitable. Even if you do, that brings me to my next point.. 3. Arthur's Holsety is expensive, even with the Bargain Ring. FE4 has a crap load of enemies and Holsety would break very often if you only relied on him. 4. Arthur has low Resistance, so if he gets slept, he's screwed. You likely won't be able to Restore him either because he might be too far. 5. Arthur IS possible to kill, because of his shoddy caps, especially in the later chapters. I'm not considering save state abuse here.

I hate quoting parts and posting to multiple people, so I think I'll just make a general post here. I do understand how efficient playthroughs work. I think it's a difference in playstyles that make you think I don't. I think it'd be much faster if you used around 10 units to go through chapters rather than just Arthur and Celice, or the odd Leg Ring Shanan. In that playstyle, then I'm sure I would want to avoid soloing parts of a chapter with Arthur. Maybe we need to establish what the fastest playstyle is first before deciding what really is efficient and what isn't? I will admit that I had forgotten about the Thief Sword prior to posting my argument about the Bargain Ring. However, I don't think the Thief Sword is much of a gamebreaker at all - it has horrible might, meaning that Aless will hardly be able to cause any damage (FE4 enemies have huge HP, after all). Cantoing and equipping the Mistoltin after using the Thief Sword is a good idea, of course, I didn't know that was even possible. However, bandits don't grow on trees and they don't get one rounded by Aless if you do end up attacking them, which would mean you'd need to use another unit to help finish the bandit off, which can slightly diminish your efficiency. I think that Arthur may be the best candidate for the Bargain Ring because Levin can get it from a village easily and pass it down to him, but it doesn't change the fact that there's still demand for it - unlike other situations where favoritism can be preferred. Furthermore, about the Thief Ring, if we really are going to plow through the game with a small team of efficient units (Celice, Lakche, Shanan, Arthur, Fin, etc.) I don't think it'd be very wise to send Aless down to the Thief Ring village. As far as I can recall, the ballistae are like walls and the dragon knights more so like portable ones - I think one would want to use as many units as possible to plow through these to reach Mease as quickly as possible. They have Javelins (as far as I can remember) so they'll love to go after Shanan of all people. I'm sure you would want to bring Aless to get through the enemy units even quicker - which is why I think Fee would be a better idea. Aless can reliably one round everything, which is especially why he's important. Furthermore, the path to Mease is very narrow, so you'll have a harder time passing through to the castle. In my experience, about Faval getting action in the player phase, the AI attacked Faval from 2 range very often even though they could attack from 1 range. This also happened with Bridget and Midir in the first gen. I don't think it's just me that happened to but I think the AI may favor going after Faval. PEMN, but I'm pretty sure if the AI is programmed that way then he can be another candidate for the Bargain Ring as well. I'd like some confirmation on this if possible. By the time chapter 10 arrives, the Magic Ring is superfluous to Arthur. He doesn't need it anymore because the enemy HP and res is so high that he would be unable to one round them, as far as I can recall, even with a Magic Ring. He would have to rely on his 70% chance to ORKO, again. I didn't imply that Sety should take the Magic Ring from chapter 10 - Silvercrow did. I believe that I have to respond to this directly. I agree that this sounds ridiculous at first glance. However, the reason why I suggested the Pursuit Ring for other units was because Arthur didn't need it as much as other units - even though 70% is still relatively unreliable compared to other Pursuit users. If you don't end up passing the Pursuit Ring to Leaf, though, then I agree that Arthur deserves it the most. I was under the impression that Balcerzak was using save states and RNG abusing? If that's true, then I really don't think you can use that as an argument. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it should be done. I was never an advocate of using save states, which is why I quit my ranked run so early on.

I agree, since earlier I mentioned Olwen getting Ambush. I would agree with Levin!Arthur, but there are other units who giving a Pursuit, Bargain Ring or whatever would definitely still be a smart idea.

The Thief Sword has horrible might and hit. That's a terrible way to gain cash, and it puts your unit at greater risk. You don't even gain much cash from fighting with the Thief Sword anyway. 1k or 2k per battle? It's not worth it. The Thief Ring appears at Chapter 8 and only Fee can get it. It costs 40k to buy. I highly doubt any of them will be buying that if Patty is giving all her money to Arthur. Arthur can also fight well with just an Elwind to conserve his Holsety uses, thanks to Continue and Critical. The village is rather far away from the Miletos - Grandbell border, and coupled with Sety's low move, that's a bad idea to get. I guess Arthur himself could get it if you REALLY don't have anyone else to give to, though. Unless you're suggesting to favoritise Arthur enough to give him two Magic Rings? No. The Elite Ring is too valuable not to have in chapter 6. Leaf is definitely more entitled to the Pursuit Ring. Just because something is "possible" doesn't mean we should do it. So we should only deploy Arthur? I'm talking about your other power houses too, the ones that are also gamebreaking. That very same Tinny wants a Magic Ring too. Unless you're thinking about save state abuse, I find this really hard to believe. That sounds quite hard to do without save state abuse. Furthermore, if you do use only 3 units for the final chapter and not any other units, there will be more units blocking your path and they'll slow you down. 2-range attackers love to go after Shanan. How is he "clutch"? He's completely unnecessary for chapter 8 where you have plenty of units to kill Ishtar. Beating Ishtar is a risk based challenge in the first place. His move might even be too low to reach Ishtar. The most useful thing I can think of is Melgen in chapter 7, and Blume if he can reach him. Arthur, with his low move, isn't really necessary at all. I think he's much more useful lategame than early.

I explained everything I could think of so far, so hopefully I did a good job. I've been curious about Levin!Arthur for years (and I finally could be bothered playing), and I just think that he was a bit lackluster compared to what I thought he would do. So I registered to see what people think.

It seems that everyone's arguments for Arthur's efficiency involves a great deal of favoritism. I can't imagine why on earth Arthur is so entitled to receive all of this favoritism, when in general favoritism is so frowned upon in debating insofar as I can see. If a units needs so many items and resources and favoritism in order to reach his maximum potential, why is this considered a plus for him? Rereading the posts that everyone here made, it seems that Arthur is entitled to all of these things: 1. A Bargain Ring 2. A Magic Ring 3. A Pursuit Ring 4. Soloing half of the earlygame chapters 5. Entitled to receive money from Patty There may have been others mentioned that I'm forgetting. Why aren't other units entitled to these goodies? Shanan, Aless, Altenna and Faval want the Bargain Ring just as much as Arthur. Maybe not Altenna and Faval because the Gae Bolg slows down Altenna considerably and Faval can only attack on the player phase, but there's no way that Shanan and Aless don't want the Bargain RIng. Aless has high move and he'll be getting an incredible amount of combat action. The AI is programmed to target Shanan the most out of everyone, in my and other people's experiences. Why aren't they just as entitled as Arthur to receive the Bargain Ring? I agree that Levin is the best candidate in gen 1, but just because he wants a Bargain Ring doesn't mean he should get it. I agree that people don't want the magic ring much, but Tinny could definitely want it if she wants to one hit KO people with Wrath (then again, she probably won't be used in an efficiency run, but she needs it greatly in a ranked run). Sety will want the Magic Ring as well to Silence / Sleep some of the higher magic bosses such as Ishtar later on. If we're going with Noish!Sety or Claude!Sety, there's no denying that he still wants the Magic Ring in either case. Arthur STILL has a 70% chance to ORKO things at late game and a Magic Ring isn't really going to improve that. Furthermore, if you give a Magic Ring to Sety, he will recover 5 more HP for everyone with Reserve, which can definitely be significant in higher risk cases. There's no way on earth Arthur is entitled to get the Magic Ring. Even in chapter 6 when he comes in, he'll hardly be doing any fighting because of where he starts anyway, so it won't be useful to him there, unless of course you decide to solo that part of the chapter with him.. I guess it's useful in chapter 7, though, but it's only one chapter out of 6. There are plenty of people who want the Pursuit Ring. It's a good idea to pass down the Pursuit Ring to Leaf because it'll make training him a lot easier and it'll pay off in the end. I'd rather give the Pursuit Ring to someone if they'll have a much easier time training rather than improve already high odds to one round stuff... Even earlygame Patty would want it more than Arthur, since, again, Arthur has a high chance to ORKO things anyway. Tinny can't get Pursuit through promotion either, so if you have to use her in a ranked run, then she'll definitely need it more than Arthur. Johan can also be much better with a Pursuit Ring and a Hero Axe, although he's admittedly not very good. Still, plenty of people have a higher demand for the Pursuit Ring. To add to all of these points, even if Arthur has the highest demand for all of these items out of anyone else, they are extremely expensive. In total, they cost 100k coins, and coupled with repairing Holsety, that's an incredibly significant amount of cash - it's 100 extra Holsety uses. Which brings me to my next point. Arthur is in no way entitled to receive help from Patty if he does have the Bargain Ring - Shanan, Aless, Altenna etc. would want it more than him if he does have the Bargain Ring. Arthur will go broke no problem if the favoritism continues. If he uses Holsety 100 times in a playthrough (which I think is an underestimate) that's 200k coins that he needs for the entire game. Even without the Bargain Ring if it's going to be passed down, that's 160k coins. Don't you think the favoritism he receives is a bit ridiculous? The only way I can think of is if Patty helps him through the entire playthrough, which is ridiculous - she's so hard to train in the first place. And I don't think that Arthur being somehow "entitled" to solo entire parts of a chapter makes him any better. The fact that he needs so much experience from your units and prevents them from improving is a point against him, not for him. It certainly will end up making your units weaker in the long run if they don't get as many kills - Arthur isn't so good that he can solo the entire game by himself, after all - the Holsety is too expensive and even with the Holsety, his caps are horrid and lategame he won't be as effective (especially against Ishtar and the pegasus sisters, and the Dark Warlords). There are plenty of tough armor knights with Hero weapons in chapter 9 and 10, and letting Arthur solo them is just a bad idea. Shanan is probably the unit least affected by the favoritism that Arthur receives. Comparing Levin!Sety to Levin!Arthur (note just in case people jump on me, I'm just using this to prove a point, I agree that Levin!Arthur is superior in ranked), all Levin!Sety needs is a Leg Ring (you could say that Leen wants it too, but I was under the impression that we can do favoritism here) and he'll be an even better combat machine than Arthur. I can entitle the Leg Ring to Sety just like you can entitle Arthur to half of the good resources in the game (and half of the enemy units in gen 2...). But I won't argue that Sety is entitled to the Leg Ring, because Leen wants it too. But by everyone's logic though, I'm allowed to entitle it. I can understand certain kinds of favoritism, such as Olwen receiving the Ambush manual: but that's a different situation. In that case, there's no doubt that no one really cares about the Ambush manual. Asvel? Pfft, it'll hardly make a difference. With just the Ambush manual, Olwen pretty much goes from meh to amazing. That's with just a single item without sacrificing the efficiency of your other units. You can say that this case is the same, but hopefully I did a good job in proving that other units want Arthur's resources as well. I think that resources should be divided equally among units. With the consideration of how many resources and enemy units Arthur needs to improve himself, I think that this is a negative for him rather than a positive, because it'll bite your ass later in the game when Arthur isn't as special - hell, maybe he'll fall asleep and you won't be able to Restore him. The fact that he takes so many resources will weaken your team in the long run. I don't think this is a very good idea, but maybe it's just me. Even if Arthur does want each of these resources the most, why should he get every single one of them? Why not divide between your units to make them more balanced? 3 chapters is half of the second generation. PS: I responded to you, Silvercrow, but I suppose you didn't see that I edited my post?

Half of your post involves favoritism for Arthur's sake. I really doubt that Arthur is that special if he needs a lot of favoritism (even if it pays off) to work at his best. There are a lot of units that want exp as well, which I think is a point against him, rather than a point for him. Furthermore, it might disadvantage you in the later chapters if you decide to focus on Arthur and not other units - the earlier chapters are especially important, after all. The fact that Arthur is good for taking on Ishtar isn't really something very special. Everyone has to take on Ishtar with a risk - she can kill Arthur if she activates Continue, and she can kill Shanan in a hit. Shanan will have to activate Meteor Sword or Continue to reliably kill her, Aless will have to crit her, Faval will actually have to hit her, etc... He does well against Arion though, I won't deny that, but Levin!Sety does even better than he does. Then again, Arthur will be promoted this time around, so he can reach him more quickly. The pegasus knights aren't reliably one rounded, either. Like I said, I'm not arguing that Levin!Arthur is the best pairing for efficiency. I'm just wondering why people think he's so amazing and failsafe when he has some huge issues. Celice has to go all the way to Darna.. Shanan has plenty of time to reach Alster. Aless has a massive 10(?) move in the path from Darna to Melgen. I'm sure he can reach Melgen very quickly. Maybe you forgot that there are partner units blocking Melgen before conquering Yied, and Alster before conquering Melgen? As I mentioned earlier, I'm not so sure about this - if units other than Arthur are much weaker than usual in the final two chapters, then you'll have a harder time with them. Furthermore, Arthur isn't infinite use either, because Holsety is quite expensive. I was talking about ranked runs, so I think the argument is valid. I didn't consider Leaf because I assumed he'd be promoted at that time.

You seem to have misunderstood the point of the thread. I am not debating that Levin!Sety is better than Levin!Arthur. I clearly state, at the end of my post, that Levin!Arthur would be superior in a ranked run, but I think it's vastly overrated compared to what some people here say. I won't deny some of his advantages, of course. Shanan and Aless can move out while Arthur recruits Tinny. He's not really necessary here so it doesn't improve your efficiency per se. So no one else is getting exp? The Pursuit Ring is a bit of a waste on Arthur when he has a 70% chance of ORKOing a bunch of enemies. Patty also has other people she'll want to give money to, like staff users, other holy weapon users.. why priortize and spoil Arthur so much? There's Johan and Tinny that I can think of off the top of my head.

I just restarted chapter 6 in order to try out what you said, and if you do that then he's going to solo all of those axe knights. That wouldn't be very good for your units, since they want exp. But still, he can be used to kill the boss.

I just replayed FE4 with Levin x Tiltyu in an efficient, low-turn count playthrough and despite hearing how good it was from all sides, I can't help but think that it's quite overrated. 1. When Arthur first comes in Chapter 6, the only enemy he can actually attack is the bandit on Sophara. Of course, he's absolutely godly when he comes in, but he only has 5 move - in a ranked run, I highly doubt that he'd be able to reach other enemies in the chapter, especially the axe knights that come after you. They have high move and they'll be able to reach you quickly, so this doesn't really give Arthur any time for combat. Arthur also starts far away from the action, and with his low move, he'll have a hard time reaching anything. Although Julia and Rana have low move as well, thanks to where they start from (and hopefully Rana will have Libro) they'll be near your team. Yes, you could give Arthur a Leg Ring, but I think Celice would do much better with it because he's needed to quickly reach castles. If you decide to send Arthur south by himself to Rivough while all your units are at Ganeishire, he'll hog all the experience for himself which wouldn't be very wise. He can kill the boss, at least, but it's not necessary. 2. In Chapter 7, Arthur definitely won't be able to reach the Yied castle. To be honest, that doesn't really matter much, because he can finally shine when he reaches Melgen castle, where Ishtor is. Although he'll still have trouble keeping up with your team with his low move - at least he can get a headstart. At Melgen, he's finally likely to take hits, so it's not very wise to send him there alone, either. He'll also have a hard time reaching Blume because of his silly move. Aless and Shanan working together are good candidates anyway, so he's not really needed for Blume. 3. The next chapter, Arthur's move issues prevent him from reaching Lenster's knights very well, but I suppose a Warp (if you do have one) would help here since Lenster is a player castle if I'm not mistaken. He can also reach the outermost of Muhammad's knights. If you do Warp him, he can reach Ishtar. This is very risky and he can get killed - Faval comes before Ishtar so you can simply kill her in a hit with the Ichival, so he's not very necessary here. You can also alternate between Shanan and Aless. I highly doubt he'd be promoted by now, because he wouldn't have enough money to buy the Elite Ring AND repair the Holsety. After Ishtar, he'll once again have issues reaching Blume and the rest of the chapter. You can also get Levin!Sety late in this chapter. 4. In Chapter 9, 10 and 11, he's promoted and I won't deny that he's great. He still does have issues though - he will likely reach his low caps early and he lacks Pursuit. I'm sure that there are other people you can give the Pursuit Ring to in his place since he does just fine without Holsety (even then, the Pursuit Ring costs 40k coins, and between repairing Holsety, it might not be wise to get it), although he's not as good as Levin!Sety at killing bosses. If my math is correct, then he has a 30% chance to not activate Continue or Critical - which is significant, since he won't be able to one round 1/3 of enemies (I'm not too sure about the math here). He also has issues with the Sleep Staff in chapters 10 and 11. If I recall correctly, his resistance isn't high enough for him to negate Sleep. Furthermore, Levin!Sety will likely have resistance high enough to take sleep thanks to the Sage class's cap - although, again, I'm not sure about this point. While I agree that Levin x Tiltyu is likely better for ranked runs simply because Tiltyu's other mates are all just ok or crappy, I just feel that it's a bit too overrated for my liking because it has some significant issues. I'm just interested to see in what everyone has to say.