Othin

I can never stand the animations on regular speed. Wish this game had an option to make them always fast-forward on their own.

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=34997&view=findpost&p=2115734

Yeah. Thanks!

What is the name for the generic enemies in the final sidequest? I don't know enough kanji to figure out what the first character translates to, and I don't know how to find it to copy it into a translator.

They're unlocked; you keep the Fame. You can go to the Fame section anytime from the Wireless menu to claim any rewards with a Fame requirement less than or equal to your current Fame. You can only claim each reward once per file.

The ST series is feasible to complete early due to the low enemy levels, although each successive one is noticeably harder. KvK and RvB are designed for later in the game, especially on the higher difficulties; on my Lunatic run, the easier two KvK maps presented a substantial challenge even after Ch17, and RvB is even harder. The LvD series is of course the hardest of the past-game groups, designed specifically for postgame. The three monster maps vary a bit: Gold and Silver and Entombed Heaven are designed to be incredibly easy (the enemies don't even attack), so you can complete them anytime, while Infinite Divine Weapons is quite a bit more difficult. It's harder than the Normal versions of KvK and RvB, but it doesn't scale with difficulty, so on Lunatic, it's actually easier than the later maps, with a difficulty level somewhere between KvK and RvB. Looking at the Series 2 DLC, it gets a bit more like what you're expecting. The Ultimate Training maps are even harder than LvD, and from the looks of things, the as-yet unreleased Future of Despair maps go far beyond even that. However, the Other-World Resort maps are just weird, with mostly weak enemies becoming particularly threatening due to odd skill sets that just get stranger on the higher difficulties. At least, that's what the first one is like; the other two haven't even been announced yet, but it seems like they'll be similar, yet even more difficult. In any case, I've gotten through Ch9 on my Lunatic+ run and I'm still hesitant to touch the one released OWR map, despite going through the first two ST maps. I should clarify that the DLC maps aren't affected by the differences between Lunatic and Lunatic+; neither are SpotPass battles with past-game units. The endgame SpotPass sidequests, however, do add the skills. And it seems like Future of Despair adds the fancy Lunatic+ skills even if you're not actually playing Lunatic+. Or, to put it another way, we can look at the difficulty star ratings for the different series: Spirit Talisman: * King vs. King: ** Red vs. Blue: *** Light vs. Dark: **** Ultimate Training: ***** There is a bit of variation: the last map in each of the first four is the next star rating higher, and probably in Ultimate Training as well. The other map sets either vary, don't have enough information, or both, so there's no way to generalize. Of course, there's still questions about what the star numbers mean, especially since they tend to be inconsistent; Infinite Divine Weapons in particular is four-star yet on the higher difficulties is easier than a three-star map. But it should give a good idea of the gradual progression nonetheless.

No. ST1 is the first DLC, with Marth. S1 is the first sidequest, with Donny.

Depends. Again, the merchants appear in real-time, so if you take a while to get through it, there's more of a chance. Exp is not reduced on the harder modes. I did take a couple of detours to play ST1 and S1, though, and I promoted both immediately at LV10. There's rarely much of a point to waiting, and certainly not in this game.

You can get Change Seals after Ch16 from the regular shop, but it's a bit of a wait. There's a lot of value in getting things early: normally, you get your first Master Seal in Ch8 and have a limited amount until you can buy more after Ch12, but merchants can sell them from when they start showing up after Ch3. I was able to make Lunatic+ substantially easier by grabbing a couple of Master Seals from the merchants and promoting MU and Liz before even entering Ch5. You can get Change Seals from merchants starting at the same point, but they aren't quite as important unless you're experimenting with class choices. You have to complete a DLC map again in order to get the reward again, so getting 20 Limit Breaker scrolls does require completing LvD F 20 times. As for the actual difficulty of the map, it's the hardest map in the first series, designed for postgame teams only. I haven't recorded the Normal mode data yet, but see for yourself what it's like on Hard: http://serenesforest.net/wiki/index.php/Awakening_HM_Enemy_Data:_Light_vs._Dark_F

SpotPass battles with past-game units show up when you go to the Wireless section on the world map menu; you can summon them at will. StreetPass battles with other FE13 teams, however, show up whenever you activate StreetPass with a nearby 3DS, appearing much like merchants and skirmishes. It doesn't matter if the person doesn't have FE13; they'll have a random team in that case.

Yes. Same thing with Krom.

Of course, once you get Limit Breaker on everyone, you can get them to 50+ Luck no problem and have 100% Weapon Saver for even more characters able to use any weapon unlimited times. But that's more of a long-term thing.

When you connect to SpotPass, you download all the SpotPass data that's ever been available so far: all the characters, all the maps, etc., permanently. From that point on, you can summon the characters from previous groups anytime you want. However, for the current group, whatever that is at the given time, you start with only one character unlocked. 24 hours after you visit the list for that group, you unlock the next one, and so on. The order is random, but depending on some setting on your game, seems to be set for all teams: I always have character #10 first, then #9, for example. (#10 is the main lord; #9 is usually the villain.) Once you download the next team, however, all the characters from the past team become available and stay available.

SpotPass sidequests are sidequests downloaded free through SpotPass; after downloading and activating them, they show up on the map and can be played after unlocking the Final. You can only play them once per file, like regular sidequests, but you can recruit an interesting secret character in each one. As with all sidequests (and story chapters, for that matter), you unlock a shop on its map location after completing it, and these in particular have rare and powerful items; in particular, Paris's sidequest, the hardest non-DLC map in the game, has a shop that sells Levin Swords, Noble Rapiers, Short Spears, Short Axes, and Longbows, available after completion. The traveling merchants appear over time, like with skirmishes, only you can't buy an item to summon them. They each sell three items out of a longer list depending on the location, sometimes at slightly reduced prices. Affording the items isn't any trouble, but the fact that the merchants are so slow to appear and usually have other items instead means it would take a ridiculous amount of time waiting in order to get many stat boosters, when you could just grind and level up way faster. Trying to max out stats with stat boosters is just a bad idea. As for money, it's everywhere. You get a ton from the story, and more from every skirmish. And a couple of unique weapons are infinite-use anyway, so you'll never run out. As for regular shops: http://serenesforest.net/wiki/index.php/Awakening_Shops

Well, in order to go Great Lord --> Sniper --> Great Lord, he'll have to reach LV10 as a Sniper first to change back, which means leveling up and probably getting some stat gains. Aside from those stat gains, though, yes. However, his Exp gains will be lower, unless they've already reached the minimum. For an explanation of the mechanics behind this: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=33640&st=300&p=2107332entry2107332

He will be LV1. Characters always become LV1 upon using a Master Seal or Change Seal or any other class-change item. You can even use a Change Seal to turn back into a LV1 version of your current class, but only at maximum level (LV20 normally, LV30 for single-tier classes). Stats don't necessarily decrease. Rather, they change accordingly to the difference between the two classes base stats. You can plug in the classes and find how it'll change from any class to any class here: http://serenesforest.net/fe13/classchange.html The specific way this works is that characters always have absolute stats, and then their class base stats are added on top of that to create their actual (displayed) stats. Through class-changing, you can end up with values that would violate the stat caps; in this case, the stat is reduced to the cap, but the game remembers what it would have been if not for the cap and uses that to calculate stats on future class changes. Let's say Sol is a Swordmaster. His displayed HP is 80, the maximum; his absolute HP is 60, while his class base HP is 20, adding up to 80. If he uses a Change Seal to become a Myrmidon, his HP would be lowered to 76 because Myrmidons only have a base HP of 16; however, Myrmidons, as an unpromoted class, have a maximum HP of 60. So going from Swordmaster --> Myrmidon in this case, he'll instead get -20 HP. However, if he then promotes back to Swordmaster, the game will remember his 60 absolute HP and give him back his +20 for a total of 80 once more.

Interesting about the Anna locations. Checking into it, it looks like there's still a random list, but for those locations, the list is limited to stat boosters (including Arms Scrolls) and Hammerne staffs. Other locations appear to have different lists; the early maps, for example, mainly have basic weapons like Iron, but can also have Master/Change Seals. I'm going to have to look into this more to get specifics to add to the shops list. That's also interesting about Raimi; she's one of the few bosses you could boss abuse against, but you can't even do that. And Double Exp definitely needs more investigating.

DLC is good for grinding postgame. Skirmishes can be good on Normal, where you can easily summon them where and when you want them, but they're not too convenient. On Lunatic, skirmishes eventually end up being promoted enemies with nearly all their stats capped, so if you can fight those, chances are, you don't have much grinding left to do. And yeah, you can keep leveling to become extraordinarily powerful, which is what makes grinding more broken than ever before. It's actually possible to get more stat boosters from random merchants, but it's not at all necessary. And especially with the Limit Breaker skill from Ike's DLC, you can get characters strong enough to tear through any challenge... so far. We've seen images of absurdly strong enemies from upcoming DLC that get even stronger than the strongest player characters could possibly get - generic enemies with multiple special enemy-only skills and most stats going 15-30 points above their usual caps. For player characters, Mark can potentially be set up to exceed a regular stat cap by up to 11 points, but just one stat. The Limit Breaker skill increases caps by +10 each, for a total of 21, still falling far short. So for those maps, especially the hardest of those, you're expected to grind as far as you possibly could and still will have a huge challenge awaiting. Other maps, not so much. My imported maxed-out Limit Breaker MU from my Normal mode run can solo even the Lunatic Ultimate Training maps without much trouble, although meeting the special objective requirements alone is another story... Still, those enemies are fierce and took a bit of skill rearranging to beat even for a character for whom 50 is an average value for most stats. But then, that was with just one of him. I should mention that even though they won't handle the most heavily-grinded characters, there are still plenty of scenarios set up that you're not supposed to have any chance at beating without grinding - specifically, the Light vs. Dark and Ultimate Training maps, as well as Paris's sidequest.

It's not that DLC hurts the challenge to simply play through once; it's that playing it over and over again destroys any possible challenge. Just don't replay DLC maps within a playthrough until you complete the main story if you want to maintain the challenge. Random monster skirmishes are available, and start showing up on the world map around the same time as DLC becomes available. They appear and disappear over time based on the real-time clock, and you can summon them at will with an item you can purchase, choosing which area to influence the enemy levels. On Normal, this item is cheap, costing less than the money you get as drops from enemies in the skirmish, but on Hard and Lunatic, the item gets prohibitively expensive. On Lunatic, the skirmishes change to have their levels be determined based on overall game progress regardless of the location, and they scale absurdly fast, such that without huge amounts of grinding already, by the time any skirmishes appear, they're far out of your reach at that point. You can also set up skirmishes with past-game characters through SpotPass; it's the main method of recruiting SpotPass characters. You can summon any of the teams you've downloaded any number of times to fight them, and like with skirmishes, they increase strongly in difficulty as the difficulty settings increase. However, on Lunatic (and Lunatic+), they become effectively worthless for grinding, as each battle becomes only worth 1 Exp and no WExp, and as always you get no items from the battles to replace any weapon uses you spend there. So while there are three possibilities for grinding, DLC is the only one that really remains practical on the highest difficulty levels. It's entirely possible to play it without abusing it, but for any of them, you can abuse them and erase the challenge of the game. Once a character gets strong enough, they can hack through any of the maps again and again for free Exp, getting way too strong for that point in the game.

DLC maps become available following Ch4. http://serenesforest.net/wiki/index.php/Awakening_Enemy_Data:_Entombed_Heaven I don't think you'll have trouble fighting off these enemies at any level, really. There are no arenas in FE13, and few bosses sit on healing tiles. As for the harder difficulty levels, there's no point in playing them if you're going to go out of your way to override the challenge, but do what you wish.

DLC maps can be replayed unlimited times, so if you want unlimited Exp, just run through those. Far less tedious than other methods. On the higher difficulties, most DLC maps get challenging enough that you won't be able to have weak characters do much there at all: Spirit Talisman 1 is the easiest "normal" DLC, yet on Lunatic, some enemies there have 20+ Speed. However, the "monster" maps in the first series don't scale with difficulty, so if you buy Gold and Silver and/or Entombed Heaven, you'll have an easy time grinding against the weak enemies there. Gold and Silver is mainly used for getting money; the weak enemies won't give much Exp (or money), but Entombed Heaven has plenty of Exp to offer low-level characters, so if you want to grind for huge amounts of Exp for weak characters, get that one.

Yeah, that's why everyone jumped to assume her. Looking strictly at the pattern, she's the only one that makes any sense. But she also has a SpotPass version already released, and no character so far has ever had a DLC version released with a SpotPass version already available. But thinking it over, it seems plausible that that only applies to the ones that were specifically advertised as the focus of the DLC rather than a disconnected bonus like the UT Talismans, leaving her still as the most likely possibility.

Or the guy whose Handaxe is already in the game. *cough* The thing is, there doesn't seem to be any fourth character who wouldn't seem really bizarre following the Whitewings other than Minerva. She doesn't make sense, but anything else would just seem odd. Perhaps it's not a hard rule, like how they generally avoided class overlap with DLC but not always? And Minerva isn't going to be an advertised reward; not on the same level as the Lords, anyway. They'd have just three weapons, tops, so not unusually broken based on that. They could hypothetically have absurd stats, though. Something else occurs to me. We've seen items that enable skills or classes, but is it not possible that we might see DLC weapons directly as some rewards? Something like the Sword of Seals, or Garm, that doesn't yet exist at all. If you could get more from redoing the map, it would be unlimited without needing to show up in IDW.

And you have me to give you the massive amounts of data.

Personally, it's pretty much tied with Berwick Saga for my favorite. It's that great.