Hey guys! I've been a longtime lurker on this forum and enjoy doing efficiency playthroughs. That being said, I'm currently planning a playthrough of Fire Emblem Sacred Stones using a code to make it so the RNG is always 0. That means that any event with a nonzero chance of occurring will always occur. This means that hit rates, criticals, and growth rates are always 100%! This code works for all three GBA games. So this may make the game seem trivialized, and in some sense, it does. Early game is a lot easier now because your units are doing three times the damage. Franz gets extremely broken due to his D lances and high move and fast growth, easily outstatting Seth after 5-6 levels. Seth is still necessary for low turning much of early game, as he is the only character that can reliably have a crit chance on every character. Vanessa's shoddy offense gets slightly boosted, allowing her to become a flying tank if fed kills. However, this also complicates things. Characters whose durability relied on them being dodgetanks are no longer reliable, meaning Joshua is much more difficult to use now. Additionally, the skill system in this game is the reason why a playthrough in Sacred Stones is much more interesting. While it seems like this makes your units seem more broken (100% Lethality and Great Shield procs), this makes certain parts of the game a lot more difficult. This means that clearing Chapter 8 is impossible as the boss Tirado is immovable unless a Sniper or Assassins kills him. There are no Assassins that early in the game; the only potential Sniper available at that point is... Neimi. Yup, Neimi, a character that lives at the basement of most tier lists, is necessary in order to advance in the game. You have to baby the hell out of her to get her to 10/1 if you hope to ever get past chapter 8!
In my test runs, I'm having a hell of a hard time getting her to level 10 to use the Orion's Bolt. A lot of the standard low turn records are not met due to having to feed her kills. I think getting her to level 9 by chapter 8 and promoting in chapter is the only way to efficiently do it.
Tirado has 15 Def (because enemy growths are 100% too!) and 3 Def boost from the throne meaning that he has an effective 18 Def with 42 HP. He also has 6 speed, perfect for doubling.
Neimi at level 10 assuming perfect growths has 13 Str before promotion. The promotion bonus gives her +3 Str, and equipped with an Iron Bow gives her 22 Atk, with a good chance of critting, meaning she'll do 24 damage to him per round, enough to kill him in two turns (he has a Javelin).
Well, hopefully this allows for some discussion! If anyone's interested, I got the code from a forum search, but here it is. 83000000 0000 83000002 0000 83000004 0000