Czar_Yoshi

Keyword "should"- 66 Spd is the threshold for not getting doubled, and with 25 minimum from LB/Rally/Pairup/Tonic (stuff everyone can get/should have with enough prep time) you only need 41 from class base, mods, other skills, and a pairup that doesn't give nothing (Hero, Assassin, Berserker, Paladin, and DF are all great options), which is fairly hard to miss. But if you're not prepared, then anything can happen. Assuming all stats are capped... When supporting, -Mag and -Res have no effect on physical units, and whether supporting or leading -Def lowers your hit by 0.5, physical DG by 0.75 and magical DG by 0.25, and in very rare cases it can change the number of hits you're killed in. DG doesn't matter and sometimes won't even have an effect, that little Hit won't matter on a unit with Avatar's class set, and in the rare case where you would die from the Def drop, have another unit fight instead. I don't doubt that you did fine with -Lck, but Awakening's metagame is a game of good and better. Outside of nogrind of higher difficulties and challenge runs, nothing is actively bad- even Maiden!Lucina and Gregor!Inigo are better than their dads. But there's still a large (often 10+%) gap in stats alone between well-optimized units and poorly optimized ones, before taking skills into account, so it does pay off if you're going for better than good (and is often necessary in challenge runs). Basically, why settle for having 1 less Str than you could have otherwise?

Maybe. But you can get them with just one use if you pair them up first, which I recommend doing (1 Rescue charge is probably less valuable than an Elwind and a Mend- you won't get that stuff back).

Indeed. I'm checking that topic daily waiting for map sprites to be ripped (already got a ton of system icons, whoo) to give me a reason to get to work on that Apo simulator I've been meaning to make.

Hehe. No offense meant. I'm just derailing this topic for TC until he comes back.

As a note, when preparing to enter battle the game will show you who's going to fight alongside you with a little circle around their feet.

Having a Lck flaw also reduces your Str and Mag by 1, which hurts practically any build. Better to take a flaw that only lowers useless stats. BEHOLD! http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=50170&page=1 The growths are ciphered like FE12, so we can't just go through and read them easily, but people are working on it. Priam has growths now. That's a start.

There's one for 210 Renown, and all of the Scramble Pack DLC maps have three held by enemies. But it doesn't take much to get the two paired. I think three dances will do it. If one was going for ingame optimization, it would be far better to save the seeds for places where their property of ignoring the limit for support gains per chapter is useful (such as using them to get an important B support in one chapter after C instead of two). If you want. But don't actively avoid marrying anyone else who you otherwise would.

Not for much longer. Vincent already dug out a mostly complete set of growths from the ROM, and it's very similar to what we have now.

Yeah, this http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=40300 and this http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=48207 That's the best there is at the moment.

One other unit after Cht.2, and as many as you can handle after Cht.6. They're going to be weak enough that you can't just give them one chapter and have them ready to go. Miriel doesn't get in gear 'til Cht.6 (and even then, she has to take advantage of the terrain), and Sumia takes until Cht.8 or whenever she promotes. I haven't played too much with the other units, but I'd guess Stahl starts to shape up in Cht.5 and Sully in Cht.7, based on the enemy data. The only units that really can catch up in one chapter are Panne in Cht.7, Chrom in Cht.7 (advantageous terrain, lots of slow axe-using Wyverns, even many levels under he can practically solo the chapter), Nowi in Cht.8 (because of her growths), and to an extent Cordelia in Cht.8 due to terrain advantages and weak DMs. But nobody except Avatar, Nowi and the children will ever really get ahead of the curve. Chrom can do the Water Trick too with some fancy footwork. I posted the details for it in Interceptor's Cht.2 thread, if anyone is curious.

Doesn't matter. In Apo, pretty much everything 2HKOes you anyway, so it doesn't change the number of turns you die in. You should also never be getting doubled in Apo. It's a tougher flaw to take ingame, but that's because of the effect on your bases and growths. By the time you cap Def, it probably won't matter again. For ingame (Lunatic(+)), Def and Spd are good assets and Skl and Lck are good flaws. For postgame, Mag and Spd are the best assets (Str and Skl are close seconds) and Def is the best flaw, though Lck works too.

...Now I'm imagining Frederick doing this, and I can't tell if I like it...

Sorry if I was a little harsh. I'm not saying you can't have a good first playthrough if you look into the game a lot beforehand, but it does fundamentally change the experience. You can have dozens and dozens of second playthroughs, but you only get one chance at a first, so you might as well take it. There's also the wee little bit where people who haven't beaten the game yet come to The Pairing Thread and ask me to teach them stuff they could easily learn from a single normal playthrough, but that's my problem...

In an alternate universe, you'd burn tens of thousands of enemy troops alive without warning, not even bat an eyebrow, and then tell jokes about it as it was happening? That's really creepy.

Actually hackforges start appearing on generic enemies as early as Cht.18, iirc. The bosses come with them a chapter or two earlier.

Bragging backfire aside, what does that have to do with what what they were saying? Protip: don't brag about the same thing in consecutive posts unless you can count on one hand the number of people who have pulled it off. And even if you can, make sure it's relevant first. Have you ever seen me use the number of times I've cleared S.Apo as a qualification in an argument?

Ignore all that. Awakening is a game with very sensitive first playthroughs- you never really get another one, so it's important to make your first one count by not grinding, and not looking up how to do things. Seriously. Don't ruin this for yourself. And don't worry about getting stuck due to ignorance, either- Normal is "learn-to-play" difficulty, and Hard is only a small step up.

Then it would be possible to destroy it with strats similar to vanilla Lunatic- skill randomness is why it's so hard to make consistent, catch-all strats, and if you take that away then break it once and you've broken it forever. Now, maybe you could alter the rate at which the skills are introduced (1 of Luna+/Vantage+/Pass/Hawkeye until Cht.3, 1 of anything until Cht.6, 2 of anything from then on), or switch enemies down to Hard stats- those would keep the adaptation/strat-wrecking aspect while making earlygame more palatable and putting more options on the table while lowering the overall difficulty a bit. Personally I'd be more interested in the first option (no impact on postgame skirmishes), but the second could be interesting as a separate mode from Lunatic+.

Nope. That's completely normal for Lunatic.

TC, you're in the supermajority. This forum has one of the highest concentrations of "serious" FE players around, and every other person still has a waifu/husbando. Just go on Miiverse/Youtube and you'll have trouble finding someone who doesn't have one for a purpose other than trolling people who do.

Because it's one of the least harmful flaws earlygame, and if you can't get past the earlygame, then you can't abuse AT. Well, think about how much time resets on BBD cost (remember, no skipping EP) and compare that to how much time it costs to reset on the select screen because an enemy has a skill you don't like. Then take into account that there's absolutely nothing you can do to increase your odds of success in BBD, but in Lunatic+ you can't die until you either make a mistake or reach EP, so there's always the possibility of finding a new strategy that increases your odds of success. That's why I play it, though I wouldn't say tolerate so much as enjoy. A Lck flaw is interesting in that it doesn't actually lower your odds of success all that much, but it's extremely in-your-face about deaths it may have caused. I still try to avoid using it, though.

True... But those high-Def/Res foes are still the most important targets. When in doubt, take things on a case-by-case basis. Using averages for enemy stats in Apo is bound to produce oversights somewhere.

It's a bad idea to make modes that are supposed to be difficult difficult? OK. But I doubt you're going to convince any game devs of that.

Same reason Micaiah and Diadora are now DMs. Either the programmers were lazy designing the magic system and light got turned into "not anima" or magic works differently in Awakening's world.

Sumia!Lucina does just fine at magic. I did that because I want Cynthia to have a father that frees up Henry for someone else (Nah benefits a great deal from him). Owain already has Tomefaire, which is something I' trying to maximize distribution of, by he still wants a proc and Stahl gives that while being an otherwise OK dad for him. Severa has a proc and needs TF, Virion gives that while also being an awesome father for her. Nah will be a Valkyrie and Noire a DF.