LordFrigid

If it gets to the point where you don't die, but need healing, you might be better off just using a staff rather than going for Lifetaker. And yes, Armsthrift is a nice option for training/grinding in post-game, and you can take it into Apotheosis if you want to, just pointing out that it doesn't really directly influence combat. Re. Vengeance/Vantage - I was referring more to the viability than the possibility...Outside of Apotheosis it probably works alright.

That's actually 1-(.85^5) ~ 55.6% I think; .85 being the chance to NOT Aether on any of the five hits, subtracted from one to get the chance of proccing an Aether in there somewhere. Nice choices on the child units, btw. I've ended up running Morgan/Cynthia/Severa/Lucina for my last few runs...though trying to orchestrate all the Galeforce passdowns (rushing Sumia to 15 DF within 10 Chapters, particularly) was.......interesting. Do you have Physic access yet? If you want, you can drop Avatar in the middle of everything, unequipped, (seems like you have enough Def to take a load of hits), against a wall if having 1-2 less enemies able to hit you helps, and on your turn 1) Physic her as necessary and 2) Send a weaker unit to the very edge of the enemy range. That should pull off enemies in small, manageable groups. You could also just send them in kamikaze style but Rescue them out after they've netted themselves a kill.

If you want to have the option to heal, you might consider Sage. Loses Dark Magic (though I'm guessing since you listed Dark Flier that's not a gamebreaker), but has a higher Mag and Skl cap to help out with your procs (plus Tomefaire). Is that an in-game skill set or a post-game skill set (curious b/c Limit Breaker)? Generally Armsthrift is not a post-game skill as it doesn't directly help you kill stuff faster or prevent you from getting killed, but for in-game it seems like a decent investment if you can stand running through Mercenary. The skill set seems alright to me, though if I were in your shoes I would personally do something more like: 1. Tomefaire 2. Limit Breaker 3. Galeforce 4. Ignis 5. Luna (Quick question of my own, since I play mostly MaMUs...do FeMUs do Vengeance/Vantage? Or is that meh? I'm guessing the lack of a DS+ S-support with magical capabilities sort of ruins it.)

Admittedly I haven't played Paralogue 16 in a while. How overleveled is your Avatar? You don't have to throw her in the middle if you don't want to, sticking her on the edges of the enemy ranges (might take a few moments to count the squares) and having her pick off a few people, then taking down the rest on your next turn should be manageable if she can take the hits. Or if you have the capability to kill 17 enemies in one turn, you could send her in and unequip her. Ch 5 is sort of a pain, but otherwise it's not too bad. If you're knowledgeable about things like reinforcements and enemy movement patterns (i.e. do they sit around until you're in their range, do they start moving on a certain turn, etc.) that's a plus, but not strictly necessary. Edit - Welcome to Lunatic Mode, btw!

Just wanted to say thanks again for your guide & advice; got through Chapter 3 employing a strategy which was essentially what you detailed, with more brevity (since my Avatar's def is a little meh). Good to hear re. Nosferatu/Sol, I might give that a go if the other methods aren't working out for me.

Whew...finally got through Ch. 2. I think I'm going to go have a cry somewhere now lol. I'll definitely keep Nosferatu & Sol in mind...that'll probably go well with a +Mag Avatar. I'm going to guess that it still requires decent thought regarding unit positioning, just due to the painful nature of enemies' skills? I ended up Nosferatanking my first regular Lunatic run (it was a slippery slope deal...) and it got sort of tedious just running in and pushing Start . P.S. I really like those middle 2 pictures in your signature...just had to say that.

Awesome, I'll check it out (further, that is...I browsed the intro and the first few entries before starting. It REALLY helped me get through the Prologue)! Interesting to hear Re. Galeforce...on the Lunatic run just gone (still post-gaming technically, but got a little bored so I started up Lunatic+ to spice things up a bit) it ended up turning into a Severa/Cynthia/Lucina/Morgan Galeforce-ROFLstomp (plus some Hit-and-Run from Sumia & Cordelia), so I may end up trying that (or maybe some weird combo attempt? Since they all have bow-wielding classes available to them right off the bat anyways). I did manage to have the Avatar use the water trick with decent effectiveness (He ended the Prologue with 10 Mag and 9 Spd, which turned out to be just right for the first turn of Ch. 1).

Just began my first ever Lunatic+ run...a mode which some time ago I had resolved to not inflict upon myself ... whoops. Getting the Prologue right was a !@#$%, but Ch. 1 wasn't TOO horrible...though I'm guessing I'm in for a rough time in a few minutes when I start Ch. 2 lol. Are there any general tips about Lunatic+ before I get too far into it? Admittedly thus far I've just been playing it sort of the way I do regular Lunatic runs, and the only thing I've picked up from browsing around is that bows are amazing.

On Lunatic, I normally don't do DLC maps before postgame. Three things I don't mind doing though: I don't have any qualms with taking advantage of the random Risen skirmishes (sort of a "take what the RNG hands you" approach. Unless it hands a killing blow to a unit ); I don't mind taking Renown Awards (though I only have up to Gradivus...and don't use the majority of the weapons anymore, bar Celica's Gale on turn 1 of Ch. 5); and I don't mind using the Water Trick in the Prologue. Most of the skirmishes I actually skip over...but occasionally you get one like a flier-less enemy team at Breakneck Pass that's just too good to pass up. [spoiler=Boring Progress Details] No-grind definitely gets easier as you play through it more, though. My first playthrough was literally Frederick-dependence until ch. 6 or so, then Avatar-dependence for the rest (the majority of which was Sorcerer!Avatar). Heck...I dropped Mercurius on Frederick for Ch. 5 on that one. On my current one, Frederick played an important role in Chapters 2 and 5 (and he used a Bronze Sword in both), but otherwise sat on the sidelines or acted as safe poke for kill-feeding. Sumia got Galeforce before Chapter 13 (I wanted to see how an early Galeforce!Lucina worked out...doing ok so far), partially with the help of the aforementioned flier-less skirmish at Breakneck Pass (Javelins ftw). I used Stahl because I was considering using Cynthia (again, early Galeforce deal), and getting an S-Support for Cordelia would get earlier access to her Paralogue...this had the happy side-effect of giving Cordelia a modest amount of defensive bulk, allowing her to almost singlehandedly deal with all the reinforcements on ch 14...I've never done a full rout on that chapter before this run. I decided to give Virion another try...and even though he's about as slow as a snail caught in molasses at the South Pole, I'm finding that bows (particularly Longbows...*drools*) are well worth it. I'm trying to train up Chrom, but I've never really been good at that for w/e reason. Between training all of those units, my Avatar is in the unusual postion of being fairly on par with everyone else. So, from my point of view...progress has been made. I LOVE having to think/strategize about what I'm doing, it all comes down to your personal style & preferences though. Never played Lunatic+ ... I'm not sure if I ever will. I'll have to think some more on that...

Yeah, regular Lunatic...I'm not sure I want to try Lunatic+ . Interesting to hear re. Sully; on my last run I tried working with Stahl...it failed...maybe I was just using the wrong cavalier.

Out of curiosity...when you play Lunatic, how common is it to have it turn into a "send in the Avatar and watch the enemies burn" deal by the Valm-ish part of the game? On my 1st run through, it turned into a Nosferatank spree around ch. 12, on my 2nd and 3rd I went for an avoid/VV setup and that kept the "Push Start to Win" away for a little bit longer, but not by much...for a couple of the later chapters (namely 17 and 22) I was able to use a proper team that had me feeling like there was still SOME strategy involved in what I was doing, but that's about it. I'd like to be able to use a fairly small team throughout the game (large enough so that I actually have to think some about what I'm doing, but small enough so that people don't get TOO underleveled), and I was just wondering if there were any tips floating around on how to do that. I think part of the problem is I have an irrational dislike of having any unit below full hp if I can help it... A couple details that may or may not influence any responses...I play with a Male +Mag/-Def Avatar, and the only restriction I set on myself for Lunatic playthroughs is no DLC.

Went +Mag/-Def on my last run (Lunatic/Cla). +Mag because I like magic stuff. -Def because I wanted to see if I could.

Finally cleared up my first Lunatic/Classic Mode (both in Awakening and any FE title in general) run over the weekend! Chapter 5 was evil, since I probably dealt with it in the worst way possible...but oh well. I had originally wanted to run with a small team of fairly evenly trained units with limited DLC...and that worked out ok until about Chapter 12 (my "small team" wasn't small enough )...I Nosferatank-ed that (with my +Mag/-Def Avatar) and it was pretty much a slippery slope from there. Might try it again sometime to see if I can improve on my strategies and NOT Nosferatank Ch. 12-19 (I got bored with Nosferatank-ing and started DLC-enhanced "postgame" at that point)...but I'd like to go after Apotheosis first, just to see if I can... Don't plan to get anywhere near Lunatic+...but that's what I said about Lunatic when I was on my Hard/Classic run so I guess we'll see... If there's one thing I could say that I learned from doing Lunatic...it would probably be that Vantage is your really good friend. I had sort of overlooked it in my previous playthroughs, but it was a very welcome addition to this run.

I actually reset to do a Lunatic run...but you can always check out The Pairing Thread. I don't really feel qualified to speak on the effectiveness of pairings, since my first & second runs I just threw random people together...and my third run (the hard/classic I was talking about) I made a big ol' game plan for pairings, skills, etc, but got bored after finishing the last chapter and reset to try Lunatic.

Agreed with the above...I recently finished up a Hard/Classic run (granted, I'm not at the point where I'm bored enough to try doing restrictions...unless not having access to DLC maps counts as a no-DLC restriction) and trying to train too many units definitely started hurting at around Ch. 12-ish. Not to the point where it was unplayable, but it was a little rough for a few chapters while I worked on over-leveling some of my units (relative to the rest of the army). I didn't find gold to be too much of an issue, but then again I pretty much equipped all my tome-users (which happened to be the majority of my fighters) with basic stuff like Thunder and Wind . And physical characters never really got anything above Steel. Exceptions, of course, were if I happened to pick up something from fights, etc. When are you defining as "later chaps"? I think the last map I really "struggled" with was Demon's Ingle (Yen'fay). After that point I had enough Galeforce users to brute-force my way to victory...which was a mixed blessing...I had it relatively easy for the last maps, but training up a !@#$load of Dark Fliers on the way there really hurts because of the Archers and Wind Mages scattered...well...everywhere. Not my smartest decision lol. Donnel, from my experience, had pretty sweet defense after some kill feeding. His res. still sucked though.

Wow, nice work on the comeback . GL w/ Ch 23, seems like you're poised for a (relatively) strong finish! Awakening was my first FE too...didn't have the guts to go Classic on my 1st run...

As I understand it... 1) -faire skills on support units will apply to the support unit (if they meet the equipment requirement), so you'll only get functionality out of it if the support unit procs a dual strike (which has a relatively high chance, depending on supports). 2) I really don't know the answer to this one, haven't read a whole lot about it, and what I have read is sorta contradictory. I've seen people say it does nothing and people say it affects the support unit's hit. Whether it affects avo is a non-issue. But it won't do anything to the lead. 3) You won't get offensive skill procs on dual strikes. 4) Dual Guard+ will work whether the lead or support has it equipped. Also: Helpful link for #s 3 and 4.

I'm pretty sure I read that somewhere in the game too, but it's also mentioned in the scanlation thingamabob (http://serenesforest.net/gallery/fe13comic.html). Specifically, Lucina's Tale P. 1.

So, a few days ago I decided to start playing this game...I've never beaten the "hardest mode" of a Fire Emblem game before (did Normal & Hard in Awakening, would like to do Lunatic at some point; and did Normal in Path of Radiance) and figured...I have enough experience with this that I can do a blind Lunatic run and not get obliterated riiiiiiight? WRONG. I started out as a mage stop laughing I like magical stuff and got all the way to Prologue 7, at which point the game was like: "You're a mage? LOLNOPE!". So I restarted as a Mercenary, and now I'm on Chapter 6 (I did grab a few pointers from the wonderful world of YouTube for a couple of the chapters). At this point I'm just doing whatever...no LTC really (sorta self-explanatory). I feel like I'm learning quickly (probably faster than if I was playing an easier mode...I was probably lured into a false sense of security based on my previous FE lower-difficulty experiences), but I've still got a ways to go, so I'll just put up playthrough stuff and if you could critique it, that'd be awesome. Or you could just laugh at my many blunders . I didn't actually realize I could record stuff until I hit Ch 4, so Prologues => Ch 3 is pretty much from memory. Working on putting together the videos for Ch 4 & 5 now. [spoiler=Playthrough - Prologues => Ch 3] Prologue 1 Not much to say here...took out that guy in the middle, took out Jagen. Wooooooo...exciting. Prologue 2 Also not a lot to say...took on Luke first, then healed up at the forts and moved on to Rody. Prologue 3 Did a bit of a triangle formation, stuck Rody in the rightmost fort, Luke out front, MU at the top, and Ryan in the middle. Healed off damage via the forts for a number of turns, then took out the last troop before baiting out Caeda with Luke to seal the deal. Prologue 4 (Athena) I sequestered myself in the top left corner and used Caeda and Luke (mostly Caeda) to take the enemy on one at a time (YES! FACE THE DEVASTATING POWER OF COWARDICE!!!) while Ryan poked at the enemy from behind the wall (still don't get how archers and mages shoot through walls). Prologue 5 I stuck Athena on the edge of the map (where only 1 bandit could hit her) to bait out the 2 closest enemy bandits. I finished them off with Merric and MU, letting the Archers live. I positioned it so Wrys was in the path of just 1 archer, and left the rest to the AI. Archer 1 hit Wrys, archer 2 hit <Insert Name Here>, and in the next turn I finished them off. Healed everyone up, then proceeded to bait the final 3 non-boss enemies. Killed the boss with <Insert Names of People Here> (probably MU, Caeda, or Luke). Prologue 6 (Draug) More baiting. I plastered everyone against the far right edge to keep them out of the way of the Archer & Mage, then baited those two out after finishing off the melee people (except the boss). Baited the boss with Luke, weakened him with Merric, and finished him with...someone...Ryan or MU...don't recall exactly. Prologue 7 (Cain) Strat pointers taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zqez8IDuloo ... though I did end up deviating a bit in turn 2, sending Luke and Athena to deal with the Archer in the lower left instead of letting him approach. Everything else was pretty much the same though...I think... Prologue 8 Gosh darn it Katarina, why? Anyway...started by forming a wall (Caeda->Luke->MU->Marth->Cain) with Wrys, Ryan, and Merric in the back. That worked for a bit, until the mages started moving. At which point I realized 1) I couldn't reach them 2) My team's res is !@#$. Restart. Did the wall again, but pushed out a bit after the first few turns so that when the mages moved, I could fall down upon them like thunder from the heavens. Got to the save point (which I did not know was a save point until I walked upon it), then baited out the final wave with Caeda (on the left) and Merric (on the right). Before that I was trying to do some weird Caeda-only bait but the enemies had too much hp for that to work. Chapter 1 So...all the units I was putting effort into training (Merric, Caeda, Wrys...although the only effort with Wrys is making sure he's not in the range of the enemy...) left except for Luke and...well...me. Ryan is ok xp-wise, but not great, Rody is pretty much screwed at level 1, so...yeah. Took more strat pointers from a run by the same person as the vid linked in Prologue 7, essentially doing a wall move for the first Part, and turning the second part into a "stick the MU in the fort and hope he doesn't die" thing. Missed Malicia because on one of my unsuccessful attempts I had tried to visit the big village with one of my Cavaliers (Luke?) and nothing happened, so I assumed big villages were unvisit-able. *headdesk*. More on that in Chapter 3. Chapter 2 Reclassed a lot of people to Archer/Sniper. After a few botched tries, I finally weathered out the rain of enemies. Lured away a few of them with Catria by sending her off to the left while the main force went straight into the trees to engage the enemies that decided (rightly) to not chase her. Missed the Lady Sword because to heck with trying to get it and survive, missed Cord because see Ch. 1. Baited the Wyvern Riders with MU (went with a high-risk, high-reward maneuver and put him in the range of 2 of them...the boss and the right-middle one, resetting until he survived), Luke (Left Fort), Marth (Right Fort), and Catria (the left-middle one). Proceeded to poke with the archers until the melee units could finish them without dying. Chapter 3 Super-High Turn Count at its finest! I went all the way around the island, and after THAT I spend about thirty-odd turns waiting out the ammunition on the ballista thing (Pirate MU goes in, takes some shots, leaves for healing, goes back) before finally finishing it off. Also, this was the Chapter in which I finally discovered that Marth alone can visit the large village places, so I got a Bridge Key, Julian and Bord. Yippee. Chapter 3 (Gaiden) More luck dependency...but this time with LOWER odds than hoping enemies miss the MU! (Those ones were about 50% enemy chance to hit). I had Marth hit the top general (the only one he can reach) and had Arran (still a Sniper) hit the middle general. Prereq. for continuing past that point was that BOTH of them killed their opponents via critting (16% and 13% chances, respectively), otherwise reset. Linde & MU took on the bottom general, Catria (reclassed to Cavalier because archers) took on one of the enemy archers while Palla flew up to the top mountain, safely out of range of archer #2. Moved Wrys to safety (I almost forgot to do that). Archer #2 attacks Marth. Catria moves in as far as possible (otherwise she won't be able to reach the Knight pursuing Wrys) and switches weapons to Javelin (she is now in the range of the Archer pursuing Wrys). Moved Palla as far as possible while still being safe. Took out the remaining Archer from Turn 1 with...someone. Moved Marth onto the 1st fort, and moved everyone else toward the 2nd. Moved Wrys farther along to safety. Archer attacks Catria, both live (Catria missed with the Javelin, only 70-80% hit chance I think...), Knight moves further toward Wrys. Palla moves into the range of the Knight while Catria finishes off the Archer. Wrys makes his last possible move into safety. Bait successful! Knight attacks Palla, leaving Wrys sweating in terror, but alive. Finished the Knight with Catria, moved onto the fort with Palla, healed Palla with Wrys. Baited out the rest of the enemies one by one.

Male Parent: Henry, from a pure aesthetics standpoint I'd say I like his ever-present smile, and his cloak. Mostly his cloak. I have a bit of a thing for cloaks . Personality-wise I like that he gets all protective (even if he does go into slaughter/vindictive mode in the process), and he's pretty quirky. Female Parent: Maribelle, because she looks and acts the part of a haughty noble...true to her role and all that. Child: Morgan (F), because she's always so happy. Also fairly quirky like Henry, and overall just seems like a go-with-the-flow type of person.

What sort of playthrough is it...do-whatever-the-heck-you-want or are there restrictions? Also...in what sense are you stuck, just not enough firepower? If that's the case and you're not opposed to an intense, 1-skirmish grind session and you haven't trained Olivia at all you could grab a Reeking Box and a Second Seal, block off the enemy, Dance her up to lv. 30 and change her to a Dark Flier (or whatever you want I guess, I just threw that out there for Galeforce). Depending on where you have her, should take about 200 turns...probably end up something like 25 str, 14 mag, ~30 skl & spd...not that I would know. I think I've heard of people doing something similar to train up staff-only folk. Granted unless you roll with Javelins (that'd need an Arms Scroll too I think...) the str prob. won't do a whole lot of good against the all-enemies-can-have-counter thing... Or maybe you hate grinding and have all the firepower you could possibly need...in which case you should pretend I never existed...waves arms mystically and backs up into a smoke cloud.

Hehe, thanks, I tried to model it after the "Your Profile!" post, without the boring-ish quality of just listing it. My family actually has a lot of the Nintendo consoles...the only real issue is they're all at home, and I'm at college lol. Maybe I'll get to try something out over Winter Break. I DO bake pie, but not really that often, and they're all dessert pies. Also, my repertoire is currently limited to apple , might get to expand it to include Pumpkin tomorrow though.

Hi everyone, I'm LordFrigid (though you can call me Michael if you want...) and I'm fairly new to the forums. A bit about my super-brief history with Fire Emblem...I got into it over the Summer (this year) after playing my brother's copy of Awakening, which I thought was amazingly fun. Being the fairly strategic and somewhat perfectionist person that I am, it wasn't long before I was hunting down information about pairings, team setup, & such via Google, eventually winding up here. Despite that, I do like to play the game with my personal preferences in mind probably spent as much time watching support convo. vids as I did lurking forums...fortunately my preferences and things that are considered "good" often match . In terms of favorite FE:A characters, I think I'd have to go with Morgan(F) & Henry, since they're both pretty hilarious and care-free and stuff like that. I'd like to try other FE games, but as a college student on a pretty limited budget if I did, it'd have to be through...unsavory...means (starting a part-time job soon though, so maybe that can change ). Anyways...I'm a 3rd year college student in the U.S., and enjoy things like drawing, reading fantasy novels, baking the occasional pie, the color blue, and excessively (and often incorrectly) using the ellipsis...My username LordFrigid comes from a drawing I did (of a Cryomancer decked out in Ice Armor), inspired by a character in a book I read (Lord Vile from the Skulduggery Pleasant series, a Necromancer decked out in Shadow Armor). So that's me in a nutshell, it's nice to meet you all!

I'm at the end of play through 3 on Hard mode...did my 1st 2 on Normal since Awakening is my 1st Fire Emblem Game. I personally don't mind grinding, it's just that it's so...tedious. I don't do DLC (although I'd like to give some of the maps a try at some point), so that leaves Reeking Boxes and Spotpass. Reeking Boxes I don't find too bad, but 4800G each was not going to happen...and after a few attempts, I decided summoning SpotPass teams over and over bores me. So I ended up just plowing through the main storyline (and watched as some of the units I gathered early game started to languish from disuse lol...). I think I'll restart again either on Hard or Lunatic (probably Hard) to 1) see if I can get some more balanced leveling in the building and 2) play around with pairings & such in an effort to (finally) create a StreetPass team (just to see if I can really, I've never even checked to see if there are any Awakening players where I am...). Honestly though, I'd just play however you want, not like anyone's going to know unless you shout it out to the whole world .