Othin

Standard high-level Swordmaster fare: Avoid +10, Vantage, Astra, and Sword Expert.

No Luck change, or just didn't reach it?

We'll see the announcement at around this time tomorrow and the update at around this time next Wednesday.

I've been training a full team on my Lunatic run without Nosferatu. Starting condition is hugely important here: characters that can't keep up through a quick promotion just fall behind. Of course, Frederick and Libera don't need promotions at all, and are fantastic because of that. Granted, I haven't yet beaten Ch14 after spending much of today on it. So I can't really claim to have made any progress into the Nosferatu-available half of the game without it, either. I got really close at one point, but I screwed up my formation when I tried to have MU use Rainbow Cry and couldn't rearrange my defensive line. I do think Rainbow Cry will help once he learns it in this map and can get to situations where he can use it more practically to help characters competently fight the enemies for once. Also, getting that skill means I can make him a Dark Knight afterward, and the mobility will help.

I was thinking that a few hours ago. And two weeks before that. I guess the FE1 team can be counted as international because of FE11. Either way, right now, they have two remaining Japan-only teams (FE2/3) and four remaining international teams (FE7/8/9/10), plus one that doesn't fit into either category and is almost certainly the final one (Villains). So the odds are definitely in favor of an international release. We'll have to see if that actually matters this time.

I didn't find it hard to recruit him on Turn 1. Although having an Olivia strong enough to laugh at the enemies helped with that. At one point, she backed up Renha with a Dual Attack and did more damage than he did.

Yeah, talking with Sairi worked fine.

The Swordmaster is a generic Corpse General boss. And yes. The following weapons are not yet available outside of IDW: Excalibur Mistletainn Gaebolg Thorhammer Holsety Holy Tome Naga Armads Nidhogg Rangell Double Bow We've seen four released for SpotPass download, and we'll probably see another seven more. Not clear how we'll get the remaining three. Hauteclere is only available without DLC as a price for Basilio's Dual Tag, so it's likely that for whatever weapons they don't release in this way, they'll show up as other Dual Tag prizes. It's possible that one or more of the items listed is already a Dual Tag prize; I can't check myself and I don't know of any site that lists the prizes for all the downloaded Dual Tag teams.

I have Leaf so far. Others are listed here: http://serenesforest.net/fe13/recruit_spotpass.html Othin's absence is odd because he has a weapon named for him in the game: all the others with named weapons appear as SpotPass, except Chris who has a named item. I suspect the two of them will show up in the two remaining monster DLCs as bonuses, like Eltshan did in IDW. Renha shows up as an NPC in another Corpse Soldier map; haven't tried it yet to figure out his recruitment method. The boss is a Swordmaster who equips and drops the Sol Katti; interesting that it shows up this way. It's also quite powerful; on HM, it has capped Str, Skl, and Spd - unusual for even HM enemies to reach caps.

And the new SpotPass set is out. Got Renha's map, and it seems the new SpotPass team is... FE5. Damn, they really don't want to release teams for the worldwide released games, huh? I still have my NM and HM files, and they're the ones I use for stuff like this, so I'll use them to see what I can find here.

Well, the point of the fake Shield of Seals was to keep Fauder's attack from killing Krom. That was Ch23, and they had to switch the shields before that; Fauder took during Ch21.

Apparently Basilio made it after he was defeated by Valhart, since Fauder thought he was dead. I heard that Basilio was able to do it or arrange for it because Fauder wasn't trying to watch him anymore, but that doesn't sound right; it's not like he could have had spies keeping an eye on everyone, especially if MU could talk with him and switch the shields without being detected.

Or you can re-order it to be her last skill after learning others. But yeah, that sounds like it should work. Great thinking!

They get transported to FE13's DLC.

All Stats +2 is a passive skill that he just needed to put into effect sometime before the battle and would stay in effect the whole time with no indication of its presence. Boosting items like Chris's Home-Made Sweets can be used before battle and retain their effect throughout the upcoming map. So yes, it is.

Yeah, the problem is the lack of cover. You can stick yourself in the corner, which walls you off on two sides, but then you have to block off the other two sides, while I only needed one on Lunatic. A 2x3 formation with Double would let you protect everyone, but it would be extremely difficult to keep all the ones on the outer wall alive. Shrinking the outer wall to make it a 2x2 formation would give you better chances, and you can fit eight characters into that formation with Double, but you have nine characters forced on that map, so you'd have to sacrifice someone to do that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzpSXV4WSSk&feature=relmfu Hmm. 99 HP, yet on top of the grinding, there's clearly a ton of luck abuse involved. Gimle's activation rate for her skills is 80% on Lunatic, yet she keeps not activating Great Shield, then misses with her crazy powerful attack that would obliterate Krom. Let's see about those raw stats that would even make it even possibly work in the first place. Krom needs 100 Atk and 50 Spd to do 25x2 damage. As a Great Lord with maxed Str/Spd and Divine Falchion with its effective bonus, he should have 89 Atk and 42 Spd. A Grandmaster can then give up to +7 Str and +7 Spd, so then he'd need another +4 Str and +1 Spd, which can be arranged with the combination of All Stats +2 and Chris's Home-Made Sweets. So yeah, it's possible, but requires a ton of trickery. Not relevant for non-abusing playthroughs.

Kill the enemies that have Physic? --- See, what we have here are three related but different situations. Nosferatu solution: Drop Nosferatu tomes into storage between chapters and leave them there, or just sell them Seth solution: Remove Seth from deployment list between chapters Sigurd solution: Keep Sigurd on the field to seize but take away his weapon and/or keep him away from combat at all times and then have him run up to the gates and seize them If Nosferatu and Seth are allowed when forced, then only Sigurd requires playing sub-optimally within the maps themselves, where you actually do have to actively play against yourself. Sigurd is clearly a more problematic situation than the other two. Now, this indicates that we could compare no-Seth runs as representative of FE8's difficulty, and in terms of evaluating the game's overall enjoyment factor and things people might likely be interested in doing when playing the game, it certainly seems to make sense. "But wait!" you might be asking. "Couldn't we also ban Franz and Vanessa and any other powerful non-forced characters and the same from every other game?" Well, we could, but consider the impact. FE8 has 35 characters. Cutting out, say, three of them would erase 8% of the character options, and that's not even necessarily representative because those three have particularly notable presences in availability. Meanwhile, we're talking about removing two of FE13's items. Looking at tomes alone, FE13 has 30, and the total items available is far higher, with many being more common throughout the game than Nosferatu and especially Inverse's Darkness. So while erasing two related tomes would not cut out a whole lot of options and content, cutting out characters, especially multiple ones and ones with high availability, would really get excessive and not be as reasonable. If it's a contest between FE7 HHM with all characters but seven banned and FE13 Lunatic with just two items banned, and the bans place both as equal in raw difficulty (not likely), I think FE13 is the one I would prefer to play. --- Doesn't Gimle always have Evil Dragon Scale? That shouldn't be a point of contention. Max HP should determine the difficulty more definitively: 80 for Normal, 88 for Hard, 99 for Lunatic.

I've played only a tiny amount of FE12 Lunatic. So no, I'm not an expert on the comparisons, but my point where was that MJ is not, either. And yes, you're right that that means I can't conclusively know about the enemy-favor ratio in FE12 Lunatic. But while what I've seen, heard, and figured out of it is not enough to tell me its difficulty precisely, it is enough for me to feel confident in guessing that the enemy-favor ratio is not higher than in FE13. Is you last paragraph directed at me or in general? I haven't played Lunatic+ yet, personally, but from learning about it, I was afraid of issues like this in the earlygame even before Westbrick's attempts. On the other hand, I do think that those issues should fade soon: past the first half of Ch3, you get more freedom, which should be enough to manage things, even when the skills still intensify a massive challenge. It does seem like from that point on, it should be exciting for the reasons you described, and I'm interested in playing it for the sake of that part of the game. I also plan to allow myself some more leeway on other restrictions for my Lunatic+ run that should make things even more flexible, probably just enough to accommodate the crazy skills. See, this is the guy whose word I'm trusting for the time being.

Hmm... Adding Moulder to Honorable Mentions. Also Florina because I'm evil.

Okay, so let's say we're talking about FE12 without the Rainbow Potion. That makes for a more fair comparison. In any case, I'm not inclined to take your word for it regarding the comparison unless you've played FE13 Lunatic. And no, the DLC isn't really relevant. There are some designed for grinding, but they'd fall more under skirmish territory and therefore be generally assumed irrelevant for serious runs. You can also replay the character DLC for that same purpose, but that falls under the same classification in that case. As for the scoring system, it's nice as an incentive, but not necessarily required when you can keep score yourself. Speaking personally, my main concern is the overall ratio of enemy-to-player strength when not abusing things. That's what determines if there are real combat tactics to do without having to actively play against yourself. FE13 has some outliers like Nosferatu in that strength ratio, but those outliers are easily removed if desired, and when you do so, the result is the most impressive enemy-favor ratio in the series.

Has she played Lunatic yet? Show her Lunatic.

Something I just thought of: if you want to make sure you don't kill an enemy on the enemy phase and get exposed to another attack, unequip the weapons from any allies in Double. Random unwanted Dual Attacks caused so many problems when I was trying to use the strategy I described and didn't think of that, although I'm not sure how applicable it is to whatever strategy arvilino is describing. I've thought about Casual Mode, but it sounds boring. SD's H5 is much easier than "regular" FE13 Lunatic. From what I understand, even FE12 Lunatic winds up easier if you filter out the gamebreaking elements of FE13 Lunatic, which isn't really be a fair comparison, but it seems to me that the filtering needed for FE13 is much less invasive than any filtering you could do for FE12.

I mean vertically. There should be a cliff in the lower left area that's difficult for the enemies to cross. Walling that off requires blocking three squares, one on top of the other. I used Frederick, Krom, and MU, with the two Cavaliers usually supporting Krom and MU. If you do this in the column right next to the far left, you have one column where you can put your other characters. The way the enemies move, they tend to keep approaching from the right and running into the wall. Pass will cause problems. You'll likely need to use a Cavalier to block the top - forming a 2x3 formation blocked off on two sides by edges of the map and leaving Krom, MU, and one Cavalier each open to one attack per turn and Frederick open to two. If all else fails, and you're willing to make a sacrifice, go for a 2x2. KF LM K = Krom F = Frederick L = Liz M = MU With map edges blocking off the bottom and left, Krom and MU will each be exposed to one attack per turn while Frederick will be exposed to two. You have five other characters, but you can only protect four more in Double, so yeah, this entails sacrificing someone, but just one character. This doesn't seem sustainable, though, especially with a lack of ranged support to help with Vantage+ enemies.

Hmm... If you go all the way to the lower left, so that there will be limited places for them to end their movement even if they do walk through your units, I can't help but wonder if you might have some options. Maybe worth a try? I remember that guy Kouli on Gamefaqs was saying something about making videos of his Lunatic+ runs. I don't know if he recorded everything, though.