Czar_Yoshi

Since this has been bumped about 5 times now, I might as well bite. There are three things in games that make things hard: strategy, execution, and luck. Strategy includes everything that falls under the realm of prior knowledge, whether it was gained from listening to someone else or a failed attempt. Thracia's Fog of War falls into this category. So does knowing that Warp is broken. Execution is mostly missing from FE games and is pretty self-explanatory. Then there's luck, which apparently amounts to "cheap difficulty" or some test of patience. So, if luck can be overcome through patience and you can pull together enough prior knowledge to have an answer to every situation, it would seem the only way to make something legitimately hard is with a randomly generated challenge to overcome prior knowledge (AKA FE13 Lunatic+, which outside of Cht.2 is not as luck based as people make it out to be). Unfortunately, this gets passed off as luck because it's random. Make up your minds, people. What would constitute as "real difficulty" in a FE game?

Tactician can only promote to Grandmaster. If you want to be a Sorc, you'll need to reclass to Dark Mage and then promote to Sorc, or promote to Grandmaster, reach Lv.10, and then reclass to Sorc. I'd advise just staying Grandmaster (and switching to Sage for more Mag or Dark Knight for more Mov later) because Sorcs look hideous, are broken, and sap a lot of fun from the game, especially on first playthroughs.

If you can, try not to promote until Lv.20. After that, Avatar is probably the best to promote as long as you don't want to do any other base classes (Mercenary comes to mind, but with your weapon ranks that wouldn't be wise).

To be fair, his negligence of Plegia resulted in a maniac coming to power who resurrected Grima and tried to make his best friend kill him. And yet when he found Avatar, there were only two fighters in his squad, counting himself. Those other units won't do much good if they're back in Ylisstol. With the kind of weapons they're carrying, most of them don't do much good even after they come (looking at Sully and Stahl here). If Plegia really had a civil war (not unlikely), that's all the more reason for Chrom to keep an eye on it. Gotta make sure some hostile jerk doesn't come to power. Aversa survived, after all, and Chrom new perfectly well that she was up to no good and alive after the first war.

Not to mention that the guy who did end up raising him was a treacherous coward who let him run around as part of a two-man army.

Oh, whoops. Forgot about Def. I mostly play Lunatic(+) and -Def isn't so friendly there, so it was kind of under my radar.

Are you referring to that thing that looks like a napkin in their collars? I noticed that too. For what it's worth, when I first was looking through KoI, I mistook Cordelia for Lucina. Their resemblance is a lot greater than just the hair color, though I don't have pictures. Cordelia's eyes are different, and she has that hairband/tiara thing as well, which isn't in her final design.

Olivia!Lucina x Donnel!Yarne Libra!Owain x Ricken!Kjelle Chrom!Inigo x Gregor!Noire Vaike!Brady x Henry!Cynthia Lon'qu!Severa x Avatar-M (+Spd/-Def) Kellam!Gerome x Stahl!Nah Severa!Morgan x Gaius!Laurent That's what I'm using now. A cookie for anyone who can tell me what I'm doing with such odd pairings.

Agreed. As for me, I think Validar is overrated.

Grinding? Anyone who can hold a staff. IS really derped by making Rescue be E rank and give so much exp.

Huh? It's usually one of the best, and the only one other than HP that doesn't touch your Spd or your Skl.

Actually, throughout most of the games they appeared in, Manaketes/Dragons have had issues with slow reproduction and persecution by humans. Those are much more likely causes of their disappearance. Tiki is safe from the last one because an entire continent revers her, but Nowi and Nah have troubles there. In the ending of Mystery of the Emblem, Tiki went back to live with humans, kept safe by the power of the Emblem. The main problem with Awakening's story is that it tried to do too much in too little time, and tried to tell the story through cutscenes alone. It worked out fine (mostly) with the gameplay where they took the best of each past FE, but the story? Nope. Case in point: the Valm arc is a rehash of Thracia 776's story. Flavia and Basilio = August and Dorias, Chrom's army = Seliph/Celice's army, Say'ri = Leif, Fort Steiger = Lenster castle, and there are similarities between Yen'Fay/Hannibal or Altenna, Excellus/Raydrik, Walhart/Travant and so on. The problem is that it's told in 6 chapters (12 and 14 don't count because they're not in Valm) instead of 25 plus sidequests. There's no room to do anything. Also, Thracia used gameplay to back up the story with fatigue, fog of war, and different objectives, while all of Awakening's chapters were simple "kill boss" objectives. Then there's the issue of recruits, Thracia had a ton, all of whom were somehow affected by the war, and Awakening had two, one of whom was optional and only relevant for one chapter. Some liberation war. The first arc was also similar to FE6 (Ylisse = Lycia, Ferox = Etruria, Plegia = Bern) only it consisted primarily of running back and forth looking for reinforcements, which is boring. So the two biggest reasons it failed, in my opinion, are that they tried to do too much in too little time and that the story was completely separate from the gameplay. In Genealogy, the map design is not only interesting and varied from a gameplay perspective, but when you zoom out, you can clearly see the features of the continent, while in Awakening, you often aren't even fighting in the same direction as you're moving on the world map.

Vaike!Nah has 0 Spd. However, these are the pairings I would suggest.

If she's going to be a Hero, Axefaire is definitely your best bet. Despoil is nice for training, but I only use it when there's 0 chance of needing any of the other skills, and Heros can use Axefaire quite well. I'd say the best way to describe those is anti mainstream without being terrible. Fred x Lissa is the only eyebrow raiser, both of Owain's offensive mods will be silly, he'll be slow, and he won't have a standout defensive niche other than PavGis and decent Skl.

So, uh, you're playing Lunatic, right? Just checking. Try Lunatic+ when you're done. There's plenty of stuff in there aimed at stopping solos, though the problem of the earlier chapters being harder than the later ones still persists.

Seth normally gets very little exp, but bosses give so much exp in this game that if you deploy him and only use him for killing bosses, he'll be right up with everyone else, and very useful in the last two chapters. I'd advise at least bringing him even if he does almost no fighting.

Wait, Axefaire? Who's her father? Probably yes because Severa makes a good Hero.

Just so you know, even with DLC it's a huge pain to get more of specific Legendary weapons, which are fun to play with when grinding and sometimes handy later (specifically the Double Bow). I'd advise putting Gregor on Gerome, without Galeforce he's going to be pure support and you'd be trading PavGis (won't do anything), Luna (won't do anything) and DG+ for AT, Berserker (very useful), and Vantage/Sol (makes training easier, but won't do anything later). I support Avatar X Nowi. Morgan will be slow (still decent with a Spd asset), but Nah has a lot to gain and they work out aesthetically (I like Morgan appearing roughly the same age as her sibling).

But the kids' recruitment stats grow slower than the parent's stats, so they'll be higher if you recruit them and then let them do three chapters than if you do three chapters then recruit them.

Most of the stuff you hear on this forum is in regards to the postgame, the main game is completely different. That said, you should probably ditch Donnel and focus on promoting Lissa to Sage. Heal with her whenever possible instead of merely when you need it and you should have her to Lv.10 in a chapter or so.

You can't collect streetpasses on one 3ds and pass them on to another wirelessly, no. But you can put Awakening (a physical copy) in your old 3ds, get some streetpasses, and then put it in your new one and they'll still be there. Mine is a Launch 3ds and it's showing enough wear on the analogue stick (after I've been holding up or down and return it to neutral, it takes a second or so to respond) that I wanted a new one for when Smash 4 comes out. It was also making some tricks on OoT3d harder than normal.

Yeah, I had been wanting to get a capture card for some time, but my old 3ds (got it at launch) was getting very rickety and I figured that for such an investment I might as well buy a whole new 3ds (streetpassing myself is another perk), and since I had the opportunity I tracked down a FE one.

You have Dread Fighter, but not Limit Break. Why? Vantage and Lifetaker/Aggressor have poor synergy together. If you're trying for an EP tank with Vantage, take Vengeance over Ignis, Counter over Lifetaker, and replace Aggressor with something like Tomebreaker, Res+10 or Aegis. You might want to swap Wrath for something like Tomefaire as well. If you're going for a player phase killing machine, take Ignis (or Luna depending on the map) over Vengeance, and replace Wrath and Vantage with things like Tomefaire that boost your offense. Galeforceless boys are usually stuck with support duty however, so you may want to replace your proc (Ignis or Luna) with DG+. For a pure support, I'd go Aggressor/DG+/Armsthrift/Tomefaire or Axefaire/Tomebreaker or Swordbreaker or Anathema. Tomebreaker is there if you use Celica's Gale as your weapon of choice because enemy Sorcs commonly have Tomebreaker and it fixes your accuracy issues, Anathema is there if that's not a problem and you just want a general accuracy boost. Swordbreaker is so Axes can hit swords if you choose to use a Brave Axe. swap between Tomefaire and Axefaire depending on whether you'd rather use Celica's Gale or a Brave Axe.

What's that? Someone who comes with -1/0 defensive mods is more defensive than someone who comes with 1/0? They both have innate Pavise/DG+ and the same number of Breakers as well. If you really want Galeforce on everyone, use Donnel x Sully, Gaius x Tharja, and Avatar x Nowi. Problem solved.