Flores Salicis

My partner and I visited Petra last year, and the Nabateans are really fascinating. They had an irrigation system that was more sophisticated than the Romans' at the time (kind of necessary when you live in such harsh dessert conditions), and of course building structures like the so called Monastery and Treasury (named despite the fact that archaeologists doubt that was their actual function) into the cliff sides was no easy feat. Anyway, one of the weird things about the Nabataean civilization is we have graffiti from the, we have some inscriptions, we know they were a literate society, we even know things *about* their language - both written and spoken....but for such an advanced civilization, we have no extensive collection of documents *by* them. Really fairly minimal amounts of graffiti, very scarce number of papyri, and secondhand references about them from the many other civilizations that interacted with them - it's all unusual for an advanced civilization . I told this to my partner, who responded that clearly, they were aliens - which is a joke theory among some archaeologists as well. Someone at IS must have come to the same conclusion.

House Nuvelle is a nice touch since in Hubert's paired with Petra it's mentioned that they had a shared house in Nuvelle, and IIRC that's the port city where the Dagda/Brigid alliance invaded Fodlan (and presumably is the port city through which Adrestia has conducted trade with Brigid & Dagda prior to the hostilities).

That was exactly the vibe I got from his A support with Mercedes too -

This game really has a thing for terrible fathers, don't they? I mean, when I saw his C support with Mercedes, I thought it was bad enough that

Dorothea has incredibly mediocre growths in magic; she's chosen as a dancer *because* she's not a particularly good mage with utterly mediocre magic growths, bad speed, and no utility spell in Faith beyond Physic, which multiple other units can provide while providing other utility as well (including another caster in her own class). By your own definition, she'd be a unit to cut in Black Eagles. Flayn is also chosen because most of her Faith spell list is fairly useless until you get to Rescue/Fortify (which takes quite a while, and Rescue is far more niche than Warp and is a Mag/4 spell so....have fun investing in an otherwise bad unit to make it useful?) . Anyone who wants Fortify is going to get Mercedes (and probably could have recruited her before you even get Flayn, since she has the superior Faith list and better growths, so there is literally nothing Flayn really offers.....unless you make her a Dancer! Again, literally the definition of a bad unit you don't want to invest in, which is precisely the kind of unit you want to make a Dancer! So that's why I don't understand why you keep talking about using a dancer to salvage a bad unit. People *make* units a dancer precisely *because* they aren't salvageable. Also...the move thing is kind of irrelevant? Dancers get 6 move. It literally doesn't matter who you choose to be a Dancer. They'll all wind up with 6 move. This is not quite comparable to who is your rallybot since, rally is not tied to a class. Hence, why I don't know anyone would leave Annette in an infantry class when she can become a wyvern rider with a bit of effort (you will have to feed her some kills, especially in the beginning, since rallying - unlike dancing - does NOT provide EXP).

You said that a person having to be next to someone to perform a support act (rallying/dancing) is no good. So I'm just trying to understand if what you're arguing is that the class is bad by virtue of this fact, or that it requires a specific kind of character to be capable of performing this task.

Are you trying to just argue that the dancer class is no good, period?

Yup. Also why I advocate Lorenz over Raphael (your worst VW units). Lorenz shows up super early; Raphael (in VW) and Bernie (in SS) are in that top right group that shows up super late (and is completely safe anyway). I think Raphael never reached beyond...level 3 or 5 or something in my Golden Deer Maddening Run, so I just left him parked at his spot forever. I haven't felt sadistic enough to do SS in Maddening, but even on Hard SS's Chapter 13 was not exactly a cake walk.

He and Dorothea spawn where Lorenz and Ignatz spawn in Golden Deer (and where Gilbert and Ashe spawn in Blue Lions).

I'd say not Raphael because he shows up so late in that isolated to the right corner and requires your other 4 students to show up and at least one of them/you/Claude make their way at least half way through the map. The first few turns are the really hard ones, and you're stuck with Ignatz and Lorenz in one corner. Ignatz is pretty useless, but at least if you make Lorenz your dancer, you can move up and have him do something useful for you, Hilda, Leonie, and Claude. God knows having him give Byleth/Claude two turns every Player Phase made the first part of that Chapter 13 much more manageable.

...Who would you pick that's not a liability for a job? Someone who can hold their own against enemies or provide other useful support in the form of healing or warping or something? Then why are you making them a dancer in the first place? Again, you're going to be forced to use all your students to some extent for a couple chapters. After that, if you've bothered with your professor level at all, you'll have adjutant slots where you can stick them to passively gain the rest of the handful of levels to raise the charm. Unless you're in NG+ and buying support levels to instantly recruit a bunch of people to your class, there's probably not much in the way of competition for those adjutant slots. It's not costing you anything. By the time they become a dancer, they'll gain plenty of levels very quickly. Although frankly, at that point, literally nothing else matters about them. I mean, that's the point of a dancer. Literally no stats matter. Nothing about that character's attributes matter. A tea party is guaranteed charm twice a month for each character as long as you hit Great or Perfect. You only don't gain charm (assuming you hit Great/Perfect) if you've exceeded more than two tea parties. Byleth can hit that pretty easily since they can have ton of free tea parties with everyone who has a birthday in a month, but I'm not sure how else anyone is hitting it unless you really like to spend lots of activity points having tea with the same people. And it's not that hard to look up a tea party guide. The one on Serenes Forest is very good!

I was never able to find a firm answer on this either...OTOH The Ocean View paralogue is a very easy one and can be done to get a +2 charm stat booster before the White Heron Cup, and I think I gardened one or two Golden Apples very early chapters before you can reliably get pale blue flowers in sufficient quantities. Also if you have the DLC, the pre-time skip DLC auxiliary maps have the lackluster stat boosters, but one of them is the one that gives Golden Apple. I'm not sure I understand your logic here? An underperforming unit is exactly the logical choice for a dancer because a dancer literally requires nothing other than some bare minimum amount of charm to win the contest. They barely require investment in the form of experience. Who are you planning on replacing said disappointing unit with as a dancer - unless you're arguing a dancer is not a useful unit to deploy? Someone you recruit from another house to be a dancer? It seems an unnecessary amount of effort to recruit someone else from another house....to do something that literally any unit can do (and means you won't have a dancer on Chapter 13). An actually *good* unit from your class? That's creates opportunity costs since they have a productive alternative you'll have to decide between on player phase.

Everything Jakkun said. It really doesn't take that much investment to get Lorenz/Ashe to ~16 charm given a couple of tea parties, a few levels (and really, in the early chapters, he'll be deployed anyway for lack of anyone else to deploy, and later, you can just stick him as an adjutant on a frontliner), and the occasional charm statbooster you come across. It's fine for your dancer to be very under-leveled relative to everyone else, because dancing is great experience in maddening - I'm guessing dancing experience was not nerfed, much like healing experience. Dancing every turn - especially if you frequently dance Byleth - can mean your dancer literally outlevels even Byleth in no time.

Gardening for speed carrots is probably the better option than Premium Magic Herbs, but you get quite a few Spirit Dusts (3-4, I think?) throughout the game, and there really isn't anyone else competing with her for it with healing spells at MAG/3 and whoever is your healer likely having a worse spell list than her. With just those, it's hard to imagine she doesn't hit 50 base magic.

Imaginary friend scenario.

I thought the implication was that she smuggled in the army by disguising them as merchants, etc, over an extended period of time. There's that line when you explore the monastery of someone saying "Why are there so many people around the villages here? Is there a festival I forgot about???" If they're in disguise of merchants/regular people, they presumably could use the Bridge of Myrddin going through Alliance territory without causing suspicion. As for part 2, perhaps they army they have at present in the monastery is insufficient and they need to take the bridge to provide an easy way to get reinforcements for a larger army to invade the Alliance.

The only use for Exhaustive Strike is his paralogue with Mercedes where you need him to kill the Death Knight to get the Scythe of Sariel. Exhaustive Strike + Steel Axe+ makes him capable of killing the Death Knight without having to pump (too many) levels into him at the expense of another better character. (This is assuming Maddening difficulty of course)

You definitely do not want to give up having an actual dancer just to get the +20 sword avoid for dodge tanking. Dance lets your strongest units go twice every turn - a feature that is not replaceable via any other means; at best you'll have to settle for a one-use dance gambit (which can hit 4 characters, but that's a far cry from getting to dance a character every single PP). Getting the avoid necessary for dodge tanking is fairly simple without using the +20 sword avoid - you realistically don't really need more than 1-2 dodge tanks, which can easily be built with any good wyvern lord with an evasion ring, Alert Stance/Alert Stance+, the relevant weapon prowess, and knowing how to gardening speed carrots (or just resetting the relevant DLC auxiliary map until you get the speed carrot in Part 2, if you're playing with the DLC). And of course you'll need to make sure said flier has good charm stats as well so you aren't wrecked by gambits.

Felix and Dimitri are both fairly easy to make Bow Knights if you plan on it from the start (Felix has strength in bows, Dimitri has strength in riding; C rank weapons are so trivial to obtain its barely worth mentioning, though Dimitri does have strength in lances) and they are both *very* good at being bow knights. Annette is fairly easy to make a wyvern rider/lord, which makes her a useful flying rally bot. It's best to move up towards the top first anyway where Ashe & Gilbert spawn (If you don't move Annette or Mercedes at all, you can actually keep them safe for relatively long). You can also make sure to put impregnable wall battalion on Mercedes to help ensure their survival if somehow you trigger an enemy into moving towards them (Annette can be used as the bait). If Gilbert is pretty useless but he can at least soak a move or two while you & Dimitri make your way up to pick up your dancer Ashe.

Only one I can think of missing is the venomstones, which those demonic beasts that do the poison attacks can drop. But I really don't know who is forging venin weapons...

The bird monsters. Also the golem ones, like the ones in Rhea's paralogue.

Oh! That makes more sense. I'm actually not sure that they're available for stealing at all in Crimson Flower - at least for things like Felix's Aegis Shield or Mercedes's Rafail Gem, IIRC, those couldn't be stolen at all. I seem to recall someone saying that was true for Rhea's Shield of Seiros as well; not sure about the OChain Shield.

Pretty sure Shield of Seiros and Ochain Shield are normally obtained on paralogues that you do not get access to on the Crimson Flower route. Seteth's item from the paralogue is the weapon Spear of Assal.

That's not necessarily true. In the feudal system, you have a hierarchy for nobility as well. A high ranking noble (A marquis (marquess in England), a duke, a count, whatever) frequently would have lower ranking members of nobility who were *their* vassals, paying them rent and owing them military service, etc, then even lower members of the gentry who had the same obligations to the lower nobility, and so on and so forth until you got to the serfs/peasants. House Rowe, given that they betrayed the Empire and turned over such a militarily strategic fort to the Kingdom would almost certainly have been awarded a spot amongst the most high ranking nobility - and frankly, any noble family that was responsible for defending a border typically was awarded that sort of status for obvious reasons. House Gaspard could very well be a vassal of House Rowe in which case Ashe, as an adopted member, would certainly have obligations to House Rowe.

Lysithea also tells you in her A support on any route.