Espinosa

What exactly IS Takumi doing in the lategame? I understand that Camilla's map is full of fliers, but what does he do after that? Be the one who kills the boss? Shouldn't Ryoma / MU be prioritised for that experience?

No, she should be building lance rank as a Villager to make a better Kinshi Knight later on.

You can also rush the boss from the side entrances after aggroing the lancers and the merchant to come to a decoy down south, this way completely avoiding them.

I'm sure some of the traits of one of the best units in the game are having high attack and defence while using staves and using brass lances upon promotion.

Impossible to find out because I reset a lot, but I'd wager it's a few hundred hours.

Rinkah also learns Shove. Shove. NOW I WONDER IF THAT SHAVES OFF A TURN SOMEWHERE

Not using pair-up at all is the reason why you're failing. I'd recommend buying a bunch of strength, defence and maybe speed tonics too.

Do you pair your units up like you did in Awakening? That's defensive stance. Pair Ryoma up with a Paladin or Great Knight and he will enjoy better bulk and mobility. Doubling and proccing Astra, he should be able to build up Dual Guard very quickly, evading many of the attacks that do get through the shield. You can practically afford to field just Ryoma and a good Avatar + their supporters in the lategame.

The Hoshido endgame is when you should start getting 1-2 turn clears by just assassinating the boss straight away.

Thing is, everyone is sorta good at being a pair-up bot. Besides weird cases like Mozu with her atrocious +skl/lck bonus I guess. Charlotte and Rinkah are the obvious two for the raw stats but something like a +1 mov boost can also make a huge difference. But yeah, Jakob is underrated because people might have not played Lunatic yet (he obviously dominates the lower difficulties even moreso), and Gunter and Benny probably should've switched places too.

A Birthright Girls only? Why not, but I want to complete my Awakening growthless LTC first. All that routing is sure to really get on my nerves though. I just completed chapter 10. I agree that Mozu is nothing exceptional when raised though there's certainly a lot of merit in good physical 1-2 range off good bases. Mine didn't get that much time to self-improve, but still got two levels while helping Selena take care of the archers in the east (she requires a +2 str pair-up partner that's not Beruka). I'm really close to hitting D rank daggers with her right now, which should really improve her offence. I think this might be the right time to give Selena a Heart Seal and start working on her lance rank to get her to the point where she can use forged steels for a somewhat tolerable offence. I decided to keep Camilla a Malig Knight until L5 (will probably feed her an Arms Scroll for chapter 19).

>Takumi above Hinoka in S > Kaden and Kagero above Jakob > Effie in S I expect we'll have a lot to talk about when we start the tiering discussion business for real. ...though I gotta say Effie is p broken as a Dark Falcon, but basically everybody with good enough availability can get out of their rut with a DLC reclass.

Nobody is marrying Niles because I shouldn't be using pair-up with male units. Otherwise I would be fielding Arthur in every map for the absurd +4 str/+2 spd. I don't really see Bow Knight being very valuable without Adventurer's Pass, and I don't see any utility in working out of E rank bows. Even Hinoka has Iote's Shield... Camilla is obviously OHKO'd by Takumi since Fujin's damage triples against her, but she only needs to connect two attacks to summarily KO him. Dual guard properly prepared can void the first attack, so with an Azura dance or a prior enemy phase counterattack Takumi will fall. Fujin's +10 avo bonus makes connecting Steel Axe attacks on him unreliable though (I gotta see if Iron will 2HKO, because I'm pretty sure that's the case for Oboro protecting the Dracoshield village). Been playing the map and without a full party I can use it's not as easy as it normally is. Need to find the right balance between self-improvement and reliable defence still. Meanwhile, here's Paralogue 1 completed in 7 turns. I don't mess around and try to get Mozu ready for action ASAP.

What items would those be? Accessories?

FE7. A lot of units died or weren't recruited and Rebecca turned out to be the unit with the best offence in my army in the final chapter, not counting Athos. Raven was also good but... he was promoted in the last map...

They're all right. They're just not MU or Nosferatu tanks. Comparable to tome users in earlier FE titles, except no longer necessary for Warp/Rescue with longer range.

I think it was Awakening that started this trend? Chest Keys/Door Keys are nowhere to be bought and the chapters they can be obtained in are often quite out-of-the-way and often optional. I don't like that this trend continues.

Well, you could waste time unnecessarily in much older games to trivialise the game for yourself, like milking an earlygame boss for experience or grinding up supports to A within two chapters in the GBA games. But did you really need to and was it a good display of skill? Absolutely not. In Awakening, the problem was with Veteran and lack of balance when using Pair-Up, and that went well beyond finding cheap ways to make the game easier.

Ah, that's a bizarre new mechanic. Never noticed it on my past runs because I always used the keys in the chapter where I got them. Pity you can't buy them and keep them for future chapters.

For my Girls Only LTC run, I finished chapter 9 having Azura trade her Chest Key to a fellow unit so that she would open the Rescue staff chest with it. I then realised I could've saved the key for later usage by using Niles instead, as I could afford fielding him and Silas while avoiding them entering combat. I had Niles open the chest with his Lockpick this time, presumably saving Azura's Chest Key. However, in My Castle after the battle, Azura's Chest Key is still gone and Niles has the Rescue staff in his inventory and I definitely couldn't have passed the Chest Key to Niles/Siles because they didn't require a dance to get to the chest on time. What gives? Could anything in the post-battle conversations explain this?

Yato's drawback is that it doesn't counter at 2-range.

If you didn't play slowly, you wouldn't see any "endless reinforcements". In addition, your units wouldn't be dying if you didn't constantly expose them to attacks with an extremely high likelihood of getting them KO'd. 50% hit is way too high to be assumed to never connect.

A Dread Fighter reclass makes her perfectly usable.

Voted both; curious what the results are like.

Special edition for me. Conquest has the best gameplay (far less routing and better map design) while Birthright's variety of new classes is refreshing.