Othin

So, those promoted enemies in Ch12... they're turning out to be a bit of an issue. The first two Paladins charge you from the start with their squads, and there are also a bunch of Knights around. I was able to kill the first two Paladins and form a wall on Turn 2 to hold off the remaining enemies, but I wound up with Olivia and Mariabel right behind the wall with nothing I could do to keep one of them from being OHKOed by the surviving Knight with a Short Spear. Also, one of the Bow Knights started moving on Turn 2, and might be even more of a threat because of how scary ranged attacks are. I think I can spend Turn 3 dealing with the remaining unpromoted enemies before getting ready to fight the Bow Knight on Turn 4 when he'll reach my team, but then there's another Bow Knight that'll probably start moving on Turn 3 and approach on Turn 4 as well, so this will be a challenge. I feel like I'm probably going to burn through my remaining Rescue uses here, but looking into things, turns out that in addition to Master Seals, this chapter's shop sells Rescue staffs, so after this map, I'll be able to get as many of those as I can afford, as well. I'll probably buy three so my healers can all spam them. Never really used them on the other difficulty levels, but they're getting extremely useful here.

Okay, that makes more sense. So it doesn't replace the originals, then. I was going to say, it sounded strange, especially since I've seen it on skirmish enemies in Lunatic.

Yeah, that's the point. The class is part of the incentive to buy the DLC.

The Bride's Bouquet is the reward for each time you complete RvB2, where you fight the FE6/7/8 teams and need to rout all of them. So yes, that includes defeating Eirika. There is no other way to access the class.

The DLC classes show up in the character DLC, while if Chris shows up (likely), he'll be in the monster DLC, like Eltshan.

No, it sounds like you understood it perfectly. So MU gives +10 Hit, then adding Frederick gives +10 Avo, then adding Liz gives +10 CEV. Liz needs to actually be adjacent for that, though, not just in Double with Frederick. And yeah, the chart shows it all.

For this run, I think I'm going to just stick to the story maps, as you did. After completing the main story, I'll go around and do the extra stuff; I'm working on filling out the Support Library, so that means pairing everyone in some new combination on every playthrough. I also want to see and try out those other sidequests and DLC maps on Lunatic. For this reason, I'm planning on keeping the file for at least a few weeks to when the remaining major stuff like Paris is released. I'm still using my Normal and Hard files, so I'll need to wait until then to start a Lunatic+ run. For Lunatic+, I'm planning on keeping the no Nosferatu / Inverse's Darkness rule. I'll also maintain the rules I've been using in this playthrough of not using Everyone's Room or the Wireless feature, and tack on a rule about no buying items from merchants. However, for Lunatic+, I plan on completing whatever sidequests are available, as well as allowing myself one run of each of the core DLC maps: ST, KvK, and RvB. So I won't necessarily be going for the highest challenge all on one run, at least not this time. I'm really interested in seeing how the bonus content might fit into a run like this, but I'm not going for it on my current Lunatic run. And I still don't trust Lunatic+ to play fair enough to be worth restricting myself unnecessarily.

I killed the Hero and the Sage fairly early; the Sage was particularly easy because I was able to bait him with Libera on the first turn and finish him before the other enemies started doing much. He was powerful, but not too threatening alone. The Hero was scarier, especially when I had left Krom in his range to lure him and hadn't even considered the possibility that he might get doubled, which he did. Fortunately, he survived. I should note that I only actually restarted once. On the other hand, I took about an hour on the successful attempt. Only 13 turns, but those were some long turns. And yeah, you definitely had the level advantage.

Concentration is a regular Mage skill. It's normally learned at LV10+, but it seems enemies aren't caring about that, especially if the Barbarians already have Gamble. From what I understand, enemies start with Luna+, Vantage+, Pass, Accuracy +10, and Absolute Hit as their options, then add Great Shield+, Holy Shield+, and Counter starting in Ch3. I don't think it changes after that point. And yeah, that's entirely because of the support mechanics. With no support conversations, MU should get one support level for every character adjacent. Just MU gives him the level one bonus of +10 Hit; having both MU and Frederick adjacent instead gives him the level two bonus of +10 Hit and +10 Avo. So that's why the enemy's accuracy went down by 10.

Well, I would hope one would have some better ideas before deciding to make three tiers in the first place. A while ago, I was working on some ideas for a three-tier branching setup based on Berwick Saga's mechanics. Being a superior base system, there was a lot more to work with and differentiate classes with varying weapon types and tactical skills, but I set it up to have a class structure more like FE; Berwick Saga had some stranger stuff with playable classes often tailored to suit individual characters and therefore often flatly stronger or weaker than others in a vacuum without the individual character traits to balance them out. I rather like the results; I guess I should finish it and post it. Might be able to clean things up with some ideas borrowed from FE13. One thing that's kind of odd is final promotion numbers. I set each class to have two promotion options, like usual, but then for the third tier options corresponding to a given base class, some classes have three options while others have four. It's pretty much a 50/50 split: I wanted something more consistent, but that would've entailed either forcing classes to have similarities that didn't really suit them for the sake of being able to make the options overlap or creating more options than would make any sense to avoid overlap. There were also some frequency issues that needed work... hmm.

I don't think it's ever been made out to not entail enemies having a constant number of those skills, just a matter of the variability as a result of what different skills they cna have in that number. The Mage skill is Concentration, which gives +10 Crit when no allies are within 3 squares. Having two support levels active should give +10 Avoid, which Krom should get if he's doubled with MU and moves next to Krom. Was the Avoid increase more than that? And wow, I took a while on the Prologue, but... not that long. Do you know how many attempts this took? I'm especially curious about your attempt numbers for the next few maps.

Aww, that's disappointing. I like how "just bosses" is the default in Berwick Saga; shame it's not an option here.

Hmm. Speaking personally, that's pretty much what I had already heard about it, and it still sounds really random. In particular, Accuracy +10 isn't remotely on the level of the rest, so whenever you see it, it means the enemy is substantially easier than if they had, say, Vantage+ and Luna+.

I'm trying to understand your explanation. Are you saying there are constraints on the frequency of each skill, or what?

Ch11, Ch23, S20. All chapters that involve fighting a major villain and seem like they should by all rights be Defeat Boss maps, but then you rush and kill the boss and it turns out you still have a bunch of enemies left to deal with. Not such a big deal on Normal, except for S20. A bigger deal on Hard. On Lunatic... better hope you remembered it from Hard. I can't see myself actually killing Lunatic Gangrel before routing the rest of the enemies, but I can certainly see myself trying to rush him and dying horribly if I had forgotten. One nice touch: I turn animations off for Lunatic because of the time and resets involved, but they still go on for major boss battles like Gangrel, which just makes them that much more exciting. There are several options; I'm guessing one leaves them on for all bosses, but I haven't tried it yet.

Only the skills? I still can't find a remotely reliable strategy to get through Ch2 on regular Lunatic.

Ooh, this sounds exciting. Hope you can find some good way through the first few maps. Those seem like the most frustrating part.

So I just finished Ch11 Lunatic, and... wow. That was without a doubt the most intense chapter I've played in an FE game. It starts out surprisingly tame. For the first time in Lunatic, most enemies are willing to be baited on their own instead of charging in packs. This peace lasts for a few turns. Then the reinforcements start showing up and charging, bringing other enemies with them. And then they just keep coming. I blocked off the three forts in the upper left and was able to keep any enemies from getting up there, but I couldn't hold the other forts, and kept having to back off while killing enough of them that I could push back before running out of room to run. See, the middle fort, near a couple of others, is just at the edge of Gangrel's range, along with a couple of his Mages. And Lunatic Gangrel is terrifying. 32 Mt with his forged Thunder Sword and 29 Spd. For a Ch11 boss. Without bonuses, he had the speed to double my entire team, with the exception of my +Spd MU, and the power to 2HKO everyone except Libera. Both were regardless two-rounded and didn't have the power to hurt Gangrel much at range, where he could attack. Fortunately, I didn't have to worry about holding that fort, because the last group of reinforcements appeared around Turn 8. Unfortunately, that's when Gangrel started moving with the rest of his team. More fortunately, I remembered at this point about my Barrier staff and how it now works at a distance. I used MU to distract Gangrel while carefully dealing with the other enemies; with the boost from Barrier he could survive two hits, although he needed to use Concoctions pretty much continuously to survive. And being isolated, he didn't have an easy to get more once his ran out. So this continues for a couple of turns with MU countering Gangrel for tiny damage: Thunder did 8 damage to his 49 HP, and accuracy was less than I would've liked. Meanwhile, I move Krom into position. Krom with MU in Double was able to get just enough Spd to avoid being doubled; any other character wouldn't give the +6 Spd necessary. With a Barrier use, Krom was able to avoid the 2HKO and therefore could have survived the enemy phase if necessary. Didn't come to that, though; Krom cut through most of Gangrel's remaining HP with a single hit and MU finished him off with a Dual Attack. This was fortunate, since Ronku had been in Double with MU, and getting MU to jump on Krom meant leaving Ronku in Gangrel's range. I would've had to use Rescue on him, which I didn't want because I had already used it twice while falling back earlier in the map and only had two uses left. So now I go on to Ch12. I was not surprised to see the increasing number of promoted enemies, since they were there on my two previous playthroughs as well. I was more surprised to see that most of them were using forged Silver weapons and have over 20 Spd. Also, there are about six enemies with forged Beast Killers. That's 39 Mt against horses and other stuff, before applying Str. Good from a balance perspective, since I had worried that there didn't seem to be enough of them to balance out horses. I was going to say it's good for me, too, since ever since making Frederick a Dragonmaster, I haven't had any horse-mounted characters on the front lines. But realizing that they have the same Mt and more Hit than an unforged Silver Lance, I don't think I have any advantage at all. This mode is really living up to its name. To illustrate their power, the Paladins both double and OHKO Velvet. Granted, while I've been using her since she joined, she's mainly been in Double and therefore hasn't gained many levels. But still. Master Seals are in high demand. I've promoted Krom, MU, and Sariya, and promoting is especially important in this mode for staying ahead of the enemies, although Sariya is still having some issues. Liz and Mariabel are both LV10 and need them, and Serge will when she joins, as well. Good thing they become available in shops right after this map.

So many Tier 3 classes look just like renamed Tier 2 classes with no distinct characteristics.

For StreetPass stuff, you have a menu where you can download stuff from the world map. That lets you summon any available characters, as well as obtain items and activate the new sidequests. Each item and sidequest is only one time each per file, but you can summon characters again after recruiting or otherwise dismissing them. You can only keep one copy of each character, though, DLC variants excepted. (And main story excepted as well, in the case of a certain character.) You can also only have 20 bonus characters on a file at once. Also worth noting that you can replay the DLC maps unlimited times within a file for Exp and items, but you'll still only be able to keep one copy of the character (which, again, can coexist alongside their SpotPass counterpart) and they'll still count towards that limit of 20 bonus characters. Guest MUs obtained through StreetPass also count. As for growth rates, they actually don't fit so cleanly into the MU pattern. The proof of this is DLC Marth: with Good Growths, his Luck growth rate is over 100%, while an MU with Good Growths would have at maximum a Luck growth of 85%. So it's really not clear what their actual growths are.

In theory, perhaps with regard to games in general. However, we know that there are eight more fortnightly free updates of SpotPass teams being distributed, and any way you look at it, the paid updates that are paired with them don't have enough content left for eight more updates. So while that might apply to other things, it doesn't apply here. On the other hand, the paid DLC and the SpotPass sidequests have a much more massive chunk of content in them than other stuff, introducing an entire map, complete with dialogue and a character. The two are alternating in their updates, and we know we'll see three more fortnightly SpotPass sidequest updates, while the minimum number of fornightly paid DLC updates remaining is also three. So it fits perfectly.

Currently, almost all the characters with items named for them are available in FE13. Past-game ones like Titania are available as SpotPass. The monster maps seem to be including past-game characters that didn't make it into SpotPass. With Othin and Chris being the only characters with items named for them who didn't make it into SpotPass, it makes sense that they'd show up there to complete the set. The versions lack redesigns and are really just like SpotPass versions, so any characters that already exist as SpotPass aren't going to appear there.

Are we looking at the same series of threads?

All children characters can form S supports with any opposite-gender children other than siblings. You can't pair them all with each other, though; unless you pair one with MU, one will be left out.

The way I see it, there's two kinda of support: major support and minor support. The major support, as I see it, is the full maps: the SpotPass sidequests with their secret characters and the paid DLC. The minor support is the SpotPass characters, items, and Dual Tag teams. So it makes sense that they would set it up to end the types of major support at similar times and then extend the minor support for about twice as long before ending it as well. The full FE3 SpotPass team appeared in KvK1, and checking it, the leader is indeed King Marth, not Prince Marth. No matter what, we're going to see some character DLC announced this week, along with the 3-star monster map. They've gone with character DLC every update so far; they're not going to stop that and give us four weeks between character DLC. The schedule I'm predicting is: RvB3 + Monster 3 (Eliwood and Othin) LvD2 (Sigurd) LvD3 + Monster 5 (Ike and Chris) If there's a standalone map, it'll show up with LvD2.