Czar_Yoshi

It's worth half a playthrough. You'll have an easier time than you did last time up until the point you reset, and then it'll be right back to normal (you'll be better prepared, but still might not know what to do). I'd only put Olivia through Dancer once. If you really want better stats on her, it's not too difficult to manipulate her level ups by breaking the last enemy's weapon on a fort, and using it to burn RNs every time Olivia is ready to level up (only on a digital copy, of course).

So basically this is a single-player draft?

Nowi won't do very well on Lunatic+, but if you want to use her Gregor is her best bet. Panne likes Fred and Stahl. Olivia!Lucina's GK is tied with her, actually. Sorry, I thought you put Owain at 75 Spd in your previous build- what I meant was that Bride gives the same +Spd boost as Paladin. Don't like Berserkers? Go Warrior or, in Fred's case, General.

Generally they're either Snipers or DFs. P.Falchion isn't really a big deal (and GK is a terrible class for endgame). Panne x Gaius? If you're not using GF Noire, there's absolutely no reason not to use Gaius!Kjelle, who's fairly close to being another Lon'qu!Severa and has potential to be one of your best units. Gaius has nothing for Yarne either besides mods (which Fred is better in), so at the very least you'd want to switch Gaius and Fred (Gaius!Noire makes a nice Bride, which will give Owain his 75 Spd and a +Mag support to boot). Cordelia in general is a very strong choice for lategame Lunatic+ due to having Sol+GF and giving excellent starting classes to your children, and isn't very hard to get going if you get her a nice weapon and support. If you're willing to Dance spam to boost Olivia's stats and save your Seed of Trust to shave a chapter off her B support, she can also be a strong choice thanks to starting Morgan as a Tactician and being a good unit to keep around in general. Sumia is also very powerful later on, with much earlier access than the other two, but marrying her yourself means Chrom can't have her which Lucina doesn't like. Finally, Lissa is very easy to build support with and can get far ahead of the pack in levels with a lot of patience, but her starting class for Morgan is completely useless.

How would you like to go down in history as the guy who broke your greatest national treasure? Chrom's dad was a jerk, but he thought he was in the right, and his Knight Templar viewpoint would hold damaging the Falchion (or any other artifact of Naga) to be quite blasphemous.

OK, so a) this is a very gameplay oriented forum that won't judge you for your pairing preferences (unless you talk really loudly about them), and b) Avatar is one of Nowi's tamest supports, so I'd honestly encourage doing it for anyone trying not to be creepy. Sumia is one of Avatar's best first gen options (along with Cordelia and Aversa) though she still carries all the normal caveats of marrying first gen (no 3rd gen Morgan and a benched Nah). A Def flaw will work slightly better than Str in the long run, but +Mag/-Str is still pretty good. You could also consider going +Spd. Non-GF Noire hasn't been fully explored, but I think she'll work well with Frederick, Virion and Vaike for both non-Apo postgame and Apo. Personally, I'm using Fred in my 100% DS team. I use the extra turn on GF to attack pretty often too, but it's fairly rare that I attack something that's right next to my first target- usually I press further into the block of enemies to pick a target (normal postgame, so I get more fights on EP. Apo, so there are more nearby units for the rest of my team to reach- it's a pity to waste turns because there were no targets in range).

Gen 1 only, no Avatar and no S supports is the fairly definitive set of restrictions for encompassing bad teambuilding, and it's honestly not that different from No Holds Barred aside from needing more healing Staves (with fewer procs and lower DS rates, most of your kills will come from doubling, so you'll take a lot of damage).

A single playthrough worth of experience is more useful than a lifetime of advice regarding planning errors in this game. If you try it again, you'll get more out of your units and it'll be worth it in general.

Future Past will roflstomp you without a near-maxed team and everybody paired, and the story won't make much sense until you've beaten the game. Scramble is pretty much whenever you're strong enough to beat the map, though you'll get more out of all of them the more units you have recruited and most of the ones for Hot-Spring Scramble come very late in the game.

It's nice for offense, but it can be completely ignored through strategy alone (it has no defensive boost, so if you kill the user before they can attack, it does nothing). All the Lunatic+ skills are like this- they have a guaranteed effect in some circumstances and absolutely no effect elsewhere, and nothing in between (notice how Lunatic+ has no Miracle/Breakers). So it's annoying, especially if you're not prepared to deal with it, but I don't think it's broken.

Both Inigo's and Severa's Paralogues sell Second Seals. If you can clear one of them next, you'll be good to go.

It's certainly possible. Naga doesn't say anything about when or why Falchion was sealed. But Chrom doesn't seem to realize that it's sealed until Naga tells him so, which would seem odd if it was sealed so recently. It's not a critical plot hole, but it would have to be taken into account by anyone writing that into a prequel.

Because Anri was around some 1,000 years after Falchion was made (and Falchion was carved, not forged). Honestly though, what FP is is probably better than that. Would you rather have a story starring a relatively small, weak cast of characters who ultimately lose and run away, or a story about the distant future of your own party in Awakening in an ALttP style "you got a game over" timeline? I know I'd prefer the latter. But as long as the game isn't called FE13-2: Lucina Returns, I won't be too mad if it was the former.

Being overpowered is a different thing from being overcentralizing. In Awakening, everyone has access to the tools needed to be good (which is mostly a product of the "overpowered" pairup system, by the way). In FEs with Canto, units who have it have it and those who don't are screwed. Also, power bloat != being overpowered. Otherwise you'd look at Paper Mario and see the most underpowered game of all time, and at Final Fantasy or Earthbound or something and see something ludicrous. I personally think the difference in translation quality alone is enough to play the DS versions over the Super Famicom ones.

Well, if it's possible to swap out enough media assets to change one of the currently supportable females into an Avatar-F, it should be equally possible to use one with a son and swap him into Morgan, so even if you can't get both Avatars/Morgans to load at the same time, it's still possible. Plus, I have a feeling this kind of thing will come way before loading both Avatars (which could even cause things like Cht.23 to crash due to trying to force both Avatars onto one tile... It won't be as simple as changing one flag).

FE7? Anyway, Awakening played the whole protagonist-centered morality without a shred of irony or self-awareness. If another game around Awakening's time was made (more likely a sequel, but anything would do), it would either have to completely share Awakening's morality- in which case I wouldn't like it- or the devs would not only have to acknowledge Awakening's story as fundamentally flawed, but practically disown it as the new story would be hard-pressed to do anything but poke holes in it (and not in a loving way, either). Were I on the dev team, I can say right now that that's a pretty unappealing option. There's not really a middle ground. Either we get something bad, or we get something good- but the good option is one the devs won't choose. So it'll take a bit of doing to sell me on the concept of a really good extension of Awakening by the same team. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it happen, and even have some epileptic trees about how the devs could feasibly expand Awakening into something more meaningful without stepping on it in the process. I just don't think it will.

Where did you find Sage Aversa? Seconding Walhart as the best.

No, procs don't activate on Dual Strikes. Morgan will either want to go Peg -> DF -> Merc -> Hero, or Peg -> Merc -> Hero -> DF. It depends whether you'd rather have AT or GF early. Alternately, if your Avatar has AT and passes it, you could go Peg -> Tact -> Peg -> DF. This may cost you some stats missed thanks to base caps (probably at least 15 levels' worth, if you promote at Peg 10), and is more Seal intensive (you can buy them soon, but they're still expensive) but will be the fastest way to get everything on Morgan and won't trash her exp gain quite yet. Paladin is the stronger option if you want Lucina to lead, GK works better if she wants to spend her EPs in the back. If you ever plan on putting her through GK, though, do it now.

S.Apo has 90 enemies (including Wave 0). If we assume that every enemy takes no more than 6 hits to KO (this is a very high estimate- most will go down in 4 or so on No Holds Barred), you'll need at least 540 weapon uses. Split that up evenly among 8 Attack pairs and you'll need 67.5 weapon uses. Obviously, you're not going to perfectly distribute your kills, and units in the back will be using weapons faster than ones in the front, so you'll need to have significantly more than that- I'd say 30-40 uses for leads (one Brave/two Celica's) and 60 uses for the support (two Braves/three Celica's) will be enough. Double Galepairs will want 60 on both, and units with higher Mov are likely to see a little more use than units without. So if you have a full five for each unit, I'd say you're definitely prepared- you probably need no more than five spares in the Convoy (if there is a pair that completely dominates your useage and burns through all five, it might be easier to restock from Chrom than by taking someone else's weapons). Note that that's all purely theoretical and you'll get a much better idea of what is needed after a few playthroughs of Apo. IR is a massive pain, on my first postgame file I ground it for about 3 weeks and only got one DB (plenty of Troll Axes, though). I'd highly recommend sticking to forged Longbows on anything not equipped with AT. Nowi's stats don't really fit well with any of Avatar's options for conventional sets- either you wind up with all mods being meh, or you miss out on some really important stat. If you're trying to do Apo, +Skl/-Def is probably your best bet, for maingame you can try +Str/-Lck or +Def/-Skl (+HP/-Lck is actually a good option too). Marrying Nowi leaves your Avatar in the dust either way outside maingame Hard/Lunatic because she's got an atrocious skillset, expensive weapon and is overall one of the worst wives in the game with children and growths taken out of consideration.

If you're using Lissa and a Logbook unit, give Lissa Spd/Mov/Mag/Res/Heart and the Logbook unit Spc/Str/Def/Skl/Lck. Apo plays a little differently from the other maps in the game in that you can't survive fighting much stuff on enemy phase. There are things that will come at you with 100+ Atk, and you just can't sponge more than one or two of those hits. You need to do the bulk of your combat on Player Phase, so I'd advise dropping all pairs who don't have at least an A support and one Galeforce and replacing them with high level Sages and Valkyries from Spotpass to use Rescue.

I don't advise randomly copying pairings unless you know what they're for, and a little more about how they're played (he didn't list classes, skills, or child x child pairings). I can tell you that no holds barred Apo wasn't the only thing his pairings were designed for, and I can also tell you that someone who knows the basics of player-phase offense Apo play will have an easier time clearing it with a team consisting of 1st gen units only with no Avatar or S supports than someone with an excellent team who doesn't know how to use it. Bows in general are terrible in Normal/Hard/Lunatic maingame, and the best weapon type in the game in Lunatic+ and Apo. Snipers are somewhere around the second best class in the game for Apo due to Longbow access. BKs are very good at what they do (only 8 Mov Bow class in the game) but otherwise have bad stats so stay away from them if you're just going to use them as an all-round unit or not play to their strengths. Virion!Severa makes an excellent Wyvern Lord with LB/GF/LF/Veng/All+2 and a Berserker pairup. If you don't want to do that, she can be a strong Sniper with an Assassin pairup or Dark Flier with a Sage pairup. She's pretty versatile. It's your topic, you can take it wherever you want.

It's never necessary, but it sure is fun. I'm the kind of player who loads up TTYD Cht.3 and can never decide whether to change my entire set each battle (including shop visits) to be built around Grubba's restrictions, or just barrel through with the same set over and over again until he conforms to what I want to do (taking his money in the process). To add one more thing to the "aesthetics in high-level teams" thing, specifically avoiding a pairing you don't like is much easier to work into a team with no harm done than specifically trying to include one that you do like- or at least much less likely to cause a big hullabaloo. in some cases trying to avoid these pairings even brings out new strategies- avoiding Inigo x Nah is a big part of why Nahs do anything except stats only hard support. As a Hero? That's a pretty good base set, but if you can do it without dropping any KOes, you might want to look into swapping either SF or All+2 for Deliverer (and possibly AT). All+2 would cost you 75 Spd, so only do it if you're strong enough to 6HKO Anna and Thronie (with the Vengeance boost incurred from attacking them, you very well might be). Deliverer is the top choice because having low Mov on your most powerful pair stinks, and AT is for Ragnell which is a nice toy when you're fast.

Vengeance/Luna is one of those comboes that is actually harmful to your performance in some cases, and it certainly will be useless with Vantage on a female with no Faire. If you were to run Stahl!Severa, she'd typically stack Luna/Astra and be a Hero, Sniper or Paladin. Wyvern Lord is great on both of them, but Hero is also a strong option for Lon'qu!Severa in that, with All+2, she reaches 75 Spd even with a pairup that doesn't boost Spd (Fred!Inigo@General, Stahl!Gerome@Warrior and Virion!Yarne@Sniper come to mind as good candidates). I wouldn't recommend one over the other for general usage, though. There are cases where you've got two otherwise equal choices and aesthetics is simply the easiest way to decide. Then there are cases where you've got one pair that's marginally better than another, and you decide to show off your damage mitigation skills by finding ways to make the difference not matter, essentially using aesthetics to make building your team more interesting. I did this a lot in my 100% DS team- I had some extra resources and chose to spend them on making my team pretty. And then there are cases like Stahl!Severa and Inigo x Nah that are just so hideous and appalling that you don't even take them into consideration. After all, if aesthetics had no impact on your enjoyment of the game, you'd stick to playing it on paper...

Alright, so several ground rules about the current metagame that it's good to keep in mind. 1. Pessimism gets nobody anywhere. There's nothing in Awakening, bar some challenge runs, that's prohibitively difficult for anyone without proper guidance. Several things, specifically Apo (which is the same thing as TSON, TSON was the Japanese name before it got localized), get their difficulty blown way out of proportion because the first people to try them had no idea what to expect, tried to use the then-current meta of Sol+AT, and got stomped by all the Luna+. 2. There are no "bad" units or pairings in Awakening. Everyone is capable of getting 40+ caps in all stats with LB (except GKs), everyone is capable of using Pairup and Rally and being Rescued, and overall performance differences between different children can drop under 10% between bets and worst fathers. The meta is strictly a game of good and better, and while you can find people like me coming up with situations in which that extra 1 Skl makes a life-or-death difference in a strategy, there's always a safe (and much more obvious) way out if you don't have it and don't want to check if it makes a difference or not. 3. The main story can be beaten easily in under an hour if you turn off battle animations and skip enemy phases and cutscenes. With DLC and proper strategies, individual units can go from Lv.1 to having all stats capped with LB and a full skillset (including getting any DLC skills they'll be using) in an hour each. Thus, making new files for new teams really isn't a big deal, so don't feel any pressure to have one team that can do everything (if you do want one, that's cool, but don't try to make it your first postgame team). 4. During maingame, combat is largely centered around enemy phase, so survivability is king and being able to KO what comes at you is secondary. This means Def and Spd are the most important stats, followed by Res and Str/Mag. During Apo, combat is largely centered around player phase, where you kill as much as you can each turn and then run away so you don't get mobbed. This means Str/Mag and Mov are the most important stats, followed by Spd and Skl. Most of the DLC maps are EP oriented, but there are a few others where PP is more important. For a demonstration of how futile Def is in Apo, there is an enemy with 99 Atk and Luna+. With an HP tonic and capped HP, you'll have 85 HP, so you'll only need 30 Def at minimum to take one hit. Even if you lack LB, Rally and a pairup, you'd still need to be in a class with rock-bottom Def and have a negative Def mod to be OHKOed. But, to take two hits, you'd need 114 Def, which isn't attainable by anyone in the game. In short, Def is completely useless. So, skillsets. I'm still not entirely sure whether you're going for Apo or not, but typical Apo sets are: Female: LB GF/Deliverer Faire/DSt+ Luna/Ignis/Vengeance Aether/Astra/All+2 GF, DSt+ and Aether are always used if present. Ignis is preferable to Luna, but both of them are equal to Vengeance. Astra should never be used alongside Vengeance. Male: LB Agg Faire GF/All+2 Luna/Vengeance/Str+2/Hit+20 GF should always be used if present. Vengeance is equal to Luna (Ignis is also an option, but usually inferior to Vengeance). Hit+20 is preferable to Str+2, and one of the two should be used if GF isn't present. For non-Apo postgame, you'll want to typically use: LB Sol/Lifetaker/Renewal GF/Deliverer Aegis/Pavise/Breaker/Lucky 7 Paragon/AT/Despoil Skills obviously depend on what you have and are much less rigid than Apo, but my preferred sets usually wind up looking like this. One movement skill, one healing skill depending on what my movement skill is, one defensive skill, and one skill with a non-combat effect (more money, faster training etc). These are usually switched around depending on what you're fighting and not a strict mold at all. Sumia!Lucina has has more Spd/Skl and the same mag as Olivia!Lucina, so she's better magically in every way that counts (DF@LB/GF/DSt+/Aether/Luna). Inigo's good fathers are Chrom, Fred, Stahl, Ricken, Libra, and Henry. Fred!Gerome has no Faires and is thus one of the weakest of all Geromes. I strongly recommend not using him. The recommendations I make are usually suited to individual people's challenge runs/other preset pairings that I have to work around and rarely universal. My newest team (still doing calcs, not built yet): Katarina, Palla, Catria, Est as Rally/Staffbots Sumia x Chrom Sumia!Lucina x Libra!Owain Henry!Inigo x Fred!Noire Gaius!Kjelle x Vaike!Yarne Chrom!Cynthia x +Skl/-Def Avatar Lon'qu!Brady x Stahl!Nah Virion!Severa x Gregor!Laurent Morgan x Ricken!Gerome

Non-S supports don't make a very big difference in Apo. If you're going to be support grinding, do it somewhere where you can take it all the way to S for your support log. With a full team, you'll generally want to play it safe with some pairs getting rescued and some running away until there are few enough enemies that you can kill everything in one turn. Hair failure and it turns Severa into a fairly generic Luna/Astra skirmisher unable to take advantage of Cordelia's main assets (she's pretty much another Donnel!Kjelle with slightly more Str. There's nothing strictly bad about that, but it's a big opportunity loss. If you want a Luna Severa, use Vaike and get 1 more Spd/Str. If you're fine with Vengeance, use Virion/Lon'qu and run Wyvern (or, in Lon'qu's case, Hero with a Warrior/General support). Outside of Apo, though, Stahl gives Paladin which is a nice class (though Severa's not lacking in good ending classes for non-Apo postgame so it's not terribly important). Severa's only other remotely common father to give that is Ricken.