Atano

Over the last few months, I have been doing some ironman runs of FE: Three houses. I have seen a lot of people saying that it is one of the worst FE games to iron man. I can agree to some degree with the arguments people make, but this game gives you a lot of utilities that the previous games do not have. Gambits like Impregnable wall or Blessing makes it a lot easier and safer to iron man than I imagined. Dodge tanking is also a reliable way in this game if you are willing to sacrifice your dancer. First, I needed a set of rules. Obviously resetting and Divine Pulse were not allowed. I decided to ignore all the DLC content like DLC stat boosters, DLC missions, etc. and see how it goes. In my first BL run, I used the following set of rules: Game over ends the run No resetting No Divine Pulse. No DLC missions: E.g. Feeding animals tutorial, Teatime with Rhea etc... No DLC items. E.g Vajra-Mushti, Chalice of Beginnings, DLC Stat boosters, Renown, etc... No DLC classes. No DLC Aux battles (yellow aux battles) No NG+ No Anna or Ashen Wolfs recruitment (Anna's secret shop is allowed, main story mission) Maddening difficulty (In my later runs, I also turn off the online features which makes EXP distribution a bit more important in the early game.) Here is a list of all my iron man runs so far. I have streamed everything, including monastery, tutoring, aux battles and paralogues. The following links are reddit posts where I describe my teams and listed every mission that I did in the runs. Blue Lions Iron man Golden Deer ironman Black eagles (CF) iron man Golden deer, no recruitment iron man Black Eagles (church route) iron man Blue Lions, no recruitment iron man Overall I'm having a lot of fun doing those runs but I still have some things that I want to improve. Using aux battles makes it easy to get abilities like Hit+20, Death blow, etc. in the early game which makes the whole run a lot easier. My final goal is an iron man run where I don't use aux battles at all. But currently, we're doing a PMU Golden deer iron man run on my channel. Has anyone of you tried to ironman Three houses and what was your experience with it?

I did a GD iron man too a few weeks ago. Your builds are completely different than mine. Good luck on your run.

There's no 'No grinding' rule on the list because I have no clue how I would define 'grinding'. Are paralogues considered grinding? The key rules of any ironman run are: a Game over ends the run and no resetting. Additionally for FE3H, no DP allowed. Any further rules are just restrictions that I use to make it more challenging. Some items are nice to have for an ironman, like the Ochain Shield, Rafail gem, Thyrsus and others. If paralogues are considered grinding, this would make an ironman even more difficult as it already is. The game is unforgiving for losing a unit mid/late game. Avoiding crit or increasing attack range is a nice utility to make an ironman run more manageable. In my last two iron man runs, I tried to avoid excessive grinding. (I did an exception for Seteth. I gave him Reposition before chapter 12. He basically solo'ed his own training mission, the one with Lvl6 units) I'm not grinding weapon ranks in aux battles. E.g: pressing end turn with a rusted weapon until turn 99. I only do aux battles/paralogues every last week of the month. I might do an exception before chapter 12 if I need/want to do some additional paralogues. What I currently allow in my runs: Fishing to get extra money. Professor rank is not that important but a nice side effect. I only do one fishing session in the run and that's usually like 45-60 minutes of fishing. It's super tedious and I'll try to avoid it in my current CF run. Doing Aux battles/paralogues every last week in the month to get money/meat/ore/items/relics/battalions. Using units as an adj. to get an ability that I want. This makes your team for a short time weaker, but in the long run stronger. E.g. Lysithea learned Hit+20 because I used her as an adj. for some time. Giving that unit a knowledge gem speeds everything up. For the safety of the run, if I need to rely on my tank to keep my units safe, I put him in a choke point and let him deal with the threat. E.g. Using a formation so that thiefs can't use their ability Pass, etc.. (I really hate thiefs with pass early game) If no choke point is available, I'll spam the Impregnable wall gambit. Focusing on a specific unit if I want a certain ability on it. E.g Leonie needs A-bow rank asap -> make her an archer/sniper to get extra bow rank in aux battles/paralogues. Change her class back to FK/WL in important battles. If Lysithea/Flayn have nothing to do, they will use a rescue/warp. Getting levels on your warp/rescue user to increase warp/rescue range is important. Money is probably one of the most important resources, even if you get plenty of it during the run. Certifications can get expensive. You simply can not get everyone's weapon ranks high enough to succeed all the certifications on the first try. My Leonie missed a coin-flip 5 times in a row for her Wyvern Lord Cert. That's basically 15k gone. That's why I think you can't completely avoid aux battles. You can certainly reduce them. My runs are not optimised for that and I'm still trying to improve my runs. At the moment, I like to play slow and I avoid taking unnecessary risks. This might change in the future. But first I want to finish every route, before I try to over-optimise and minimise the use of aux battles. At the end, I just want to have some fun.