ZanaLyrander

It seems really inconsistent. At C rank, I tried to teach two different combat arts to two different people, by spamming that combat art constantly throughout a mission. For one, they learned it on the very first run. For the other, it took like seven runs. So I have to assume there's some large element of random chance involved, it certainly doesn't seem consistent.

Man, looking back, seeing Ferdinand's supports with Shez and how he's constantly going on about giving one's all, it's kinda tragic that he and Annette are mutually exclusive characters, those two would get along like a house on fire. Everyone else gets tired just watching them. It is kinda crazy to me that Azure Gleam has 10 route exclusive characters while Scarlet Blaze has 6, and Golden Wildfire only has 3. Azure Gleam has more characters that are exclusive to that route than the other two routes put together. It kinda undercuts the accomplishment of recruiting new characters while playing Azure Gleam: like, when I recruit someone from one of the other houses in AG, I'm like "well I'm glad I didn't have to kill you or anything, but I'm sorry to say you will never see use because I already have 10 frigging characters that I won't be able to use for a long time after this run, so I'm gonna use them while I have them."

Huh. While looking over which characters learn which abilities, I had an idea for an odd choice that I'm definitely going to try out on my next run. See, in my current run, I've been getting a lot of use out of Bow Knight Leonie, who I have setup with The Inexhaustible for the Combat Art cooldown reduction, Armsthrift for Combat Art durability cost reduction, along with Deadeye, Flame Volley, and Essence of Fire. It's a fun setup that basically turns Leonie into a combination Sniper Rifle and Shotgun. And as I was looking over the Blue Lions for my next run which is going to be another Azure Gleam run, I noticed there is a character who can do this exact same build, having access to all of these abilities and combat arts: Dedue. So, yeah, I guess I'm gonna go with Bow Knight Dedue for my next run, why the heck not?

Yeah, even if you spam spells and combat arts, you really only need like 300 something durability. If you're using one of the legendary weapons with Relentless Barrage or Relentless Magic, you probably need like 400 or more for some of the longer missions. Like, Lysithea's relic tome has like 400+ durability at this point, but I've seen her almost run out, she goes through it fast.

Hmm, I may have to give that a shot. What counts as 'fully upgraded'? The highest I've gotten a weapon to is +80, how high does it go?

Ah, okay. Now I see what you meant by 'secret' class. They're abilities the game doesn't tell you about until you get them. Interesting, thanks for the explanation.

Okay, I'm just confused by how that's different from a normal ability. Ability lists are different for each character anyway, so what abilities you get for mastering a given class already vary from character to character.

For the abilities that are listed for each character's learnset, what differentiates an 'innate' ability from the others? I've noticed that each character has one ability listed as innate on the wiki, but what exactly does that mean?

Okay, so the blood transfusions normally are inherited. Surprising, but intriguing. And yeah, that makes sense, without the shit that Lysithea and Edelgard went through you can't have two crests, and it makes sense that the Crest of Flames would take precedence over the Crest of Seiros. I wonder if that means Byleth's kids could hypothetically have either the Crest of Flames or the Crest of Seiros, I would assume so. On the subject of Crests, it is a little annoying that the Crest Stones you purchase with renown are accessories now, unlike how they worked in Three Houses. Perhaps unavoidable since characters no longer really have an inventory, but having to use up your only accessory slot in order to utilize one of the Crest Stones is disappointing. I think they needed a secondary accessory slot that can only be used for Crest Stones or Merc Whistle items, it really feels like there's rarely a reason to use the Crest Stones unless you want to equip a Hero's Relic on someone with no Crest.

I've got a bit of a lore question. I don't remember if this was ever clearly established in Three Houses or Three Hopes, but... how were the Crests of Seiros and the 4 Saints passed on? Like, those with the crests of the 10 Elites are stated to be the descendants of the 10 Elites. But... like, I'm assuming Flayn has never had kids, right? I'm assuming Lindhardt isn't Flayn's descendant, right? So is it all through blood transfusions, like how Jeralt has the crest of Seiros because Rhea gave him her blood? But if so, do those blood transfusions pass on to their descendants (it didn't in Jeralt's case, Byleth doesn't have the crest of Seiros)?

Damn, you're right, I hadn't even considered that. I tend to avoid those self damage abilities because they seem risky, but Edelgard could use them no sweat, the healing she gets from Seiros' Favor is bonkers. I've seen her heal for more than 14,000 hp from a single cast of Hades into a crowd of enemies during a mock battle. And for context, I've also discovered that the stat cap for HP, even with the limit remover from the Tactics Instructor, is 12,000 + any bonus from your current class. So she healed for more HP then she could possibly have with one cast. In this build, Edelgard has only two states: dead, and full health, there is no middle ground. You either kill her in one shot, or not at all.

Another unusual class choice I stumbled upon recently is Mortal Savant Edelgard. Sure, it means Amyr goes unused, but the benefits are tremendous. It allows Edelgard to actually take advantage of her very high magic stat, and powerful spell list (one wonderful thing I learned recently is that Hades is both a Dark spell and a Fire spell, meaning it can benefit from either Essence of Dark or Essence of Fire). In addition, Edelgard has the crest of Seiros. And I have discovered that equipping her with the Sword of Seiros and Shield of Seiros basically makes her immortal. She rapidly heals over time, and heals off of every attack, and her healing is massively boosted. She can recover from just about anything. Not to mention there is some delicious irony in Edelgard using the Sword and Shield of Seiros in her war against the Church of Seiros.

Well, honestly it really comes down to weapon attributes. Even an iron weapon can be forged into steel, then silver, then brave if it had attributes you want to keep (though it typically won't, iron weapons tend to have low level weapon attributes). Though I admit, after so many runs, I rarely even use brave weapons when I have so many Hero's Relics, Sacred Weapons, and regalia weapons. Still, a brave weapon with good weapon attributes is still very nice to have. In terms of good attributes, leaving aside the unique ones that are only on certain types of weapon or only on the legendary weapons, the [Stat] Factor attributes seems fairly effective, and for anyone who's going to be using a lot of combat arts/spells, the Boost Combat Arts/Magic attribute is really nice (speaking as someone who keeps Shez as a Dark Knight most of the time, finding a Gradivus with Boost Combat Arts/Magic lvl 3 and Speed Factor lvl 3 was a godsend). A lot of folks also swear by Reckless Power, though personally I like to use combat arts and magic a whole lot, so I stay away from it, I want more durability than that. But if you don't plan to use a lot of combat arts or spells, Reckless Power is crazy strong. Those are the ones I usually look for, though I suppose Boost Mounted Damage on a good Lance, Axe, or Bow would also be something to look out for as well. Unfortunately we're still in the process of figuring out how big these boosts actually are, the game is very vague in terms of the actual magnitude of most effects that boost damage.

I have wanted to try Hrotti + a crest stone on Raphael just for shits and giggles. The idea of Raphael becoming a powerful mage through sheer muscle power amuses me greatly.

Huh. That's a good point about Catherine. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I got Gatekeeper pretty early into AG, and I did Azure Gleam last. If our theory about having to unlock all the other characters was correct, yeah, I shouldn't have unlocked him until chapter 9, but I'm pretty sure I got him earlier than that.

People keep calling it Crimson Blaze or CB. Is there a localization difference or something I'm not aware of? Because everywhere I look it's Scarlet Blaze. Anyway, Scarlet Blaze does kinda take place all over the place, which in some ways I kinda like, it demonstrates the difficulties of the Empire's military campaign, spreading themselves so thin and engaging on so many fronts. But you do have a point that they seem to be able to get around Fodlan awful quick.

Ah, interesting. So that at least confirms that it doesn't happen until you've finished two routes, and have started the third. Sounds like that theory is probably true.

I suppose you could use Lancebreaker in place of the horse slayer if your character can learns that ability. But yeah, you can't be prepared for everything usually.

Oh yeah, it's usually not a big deal. It only becomes a problem on the rare auxiliary battles where you're only allowed to deploy male units, and even then, unless the map is riddled with snipers for some reason, still not a big problem. As an aside, the battles that only allow male or female units are... weird and kinda immersion breaking honestly. I don't mind them in terms of gameplay because it makes me switch up my team and experiment with other characters, but from a story perspective... why are we doing this again?

Not exactly. He kinda unlocks automatically early on in your third run of the game, so people are theorizing you unlock him by unlocking all the other characters, but I don't think anyone knows for sure. It kinda happens without ceremony tbh.

Huh. It just occurred to me that as a result of Dark Bishop being effective against cavalry instead of bows, male units don't actually have any master classes that are effective against bows. I mean late game that's not a huge problem given that a lot of bow users are bow knights, and thus cavalry, but that's still a noteworthy weakness.

Yeah, Gremory's combos are kinda unsatisfying to me, they lack impact. The finishers are good, but the basic attacks look and feel so pathetic, tiny little pewpews. When I play Gremory I'm typically just spamming spells and mostly ignoring the combos aside from when my spells are on cooldown, which typically isn't long given their faster cooldowns. Dark Bishop's combos have a nicer feel imo, but even they sometimes feel lacking in impact.

Yeah, that was an odd choice, but at least it gives female units access to a class that beats tomes. There are a few oddball classes like that, like Dark Bishop beats cavalry rather than bows.

So, a weird thing happened. When you're playing on New Game Plus on a route you've already completed, the Record Keeper allows you to revisit battles from further ahead in the campaign, since you've already done those battles in your previous playthrough, which is a really nice feature honestly. I decided to take advantage of this, and replayed the main mission of Golden Wildfire chapter 14, because I wanted to S rank it and get Suttungr's Mystery. But when I did so... something weird happened. So, yeah, TL;DR, while the Record Keeper allows you to replay chapters you completed in previous runs of your current path, be warned that it apparently doesn't save your choices from said previous run, and you may end up spoiling yourself on events that would have occurred had you made different choices.