Czar_Yoshi

Awakening has 4 difficulty modes- Normal, Hard, Lunatic, and Lunatic+. Each one can be played on Casual (you can save mid-battle and dead units return at the end of each map) or Classic (what you played). To unlock Lunatic+, you need to beat Lunatic, but if you only beat Lunatic Casual you'll only unlock Lunatic+ on Casual. That said, Hard mode is a small increase from Normal, Lunatic is a huge increase from Hard, and Lunatic+ is completely unfair. To be perfectly honest, playing them makes it feel like Normal is actually Easy, Hard is actually Normal, and the game skips Hard and just throws Lunatic at you. The main differences between Normal and Hard are that enemies have a little more attack and HP, have forged weapons later in the game, and the big one: reinforcements move as soon as they appear, without giving you a turn to react to them. Your units also grow a little slower after reclassing several times, but there are a few more enemies so the EXP mostly balances out. So basically Hard is your "medium higher difficulty". You'll be fine as long as you don't throw your money away, don't try to train too many units, keep your important ones alive, and recruit a few of the children. Some tips for FE8: Bosses (and certain enemies in cht.18) give crazy amounts of exp in this game, so much that you can just give Seth every boss kill and he'll stay up with the rest of your team (despite gaining practically no exp from scrubs), ready to do anything when you need help (and his help is pretty incredible). After a few chapters, the game forks, and you get to choose whether to accompany Eirika (the starting lord) or Ephraim (playable in cht.5x and 8). After a few more chapters, they join up and you get to use both of them. Unlike Awakening, Sacred Stones has plot promotions (your lords can promote after a certain point in the story). These promotion points occur shortly after the lords rejoin. Because there are no Second Seals in Sacred Stones, your units will have the highest stats if you get them to Lv.20 before promoting them. Thus, in the first few chapters you should focus on packing exp into whatever lord you aren't going with, so they can promote immediately (assuming you want to use them both later, which is advisable because they have very strong prf weapons. Thieves have the ability to steal held items in this game (items, not weapons). As long as they're faster than their target, you can walk up and use the steal command to grab stuff. Usually, this will get you vulneraries (which you can sell for cash), but occasionally there are gems (bullion) and two bosses even have powerful defensive items that you can steal to weaken them. But be careful, because enemy thieves can and will steal from you. Manaketes are weak to arrows in this game. Keep that in mind, or you could get mauled.

Congrats! Since you have FE8 already, it should definitely be your next game (and it's fairly similar to Awakening in that it has branching promotions, a world map, skirmishes...), but don't forget that Awakening has a ton of replay value for subsequent playthroughs, especially if you marry your units.

And if that tome is Valflame, he'll heal even more (+10 mag instead of +5).

Why no forging? Does "no bonus items" include items purchased from SpotPass/StreetPass teams, or just free renown/bonus box stuff? Does DLC mean all wireless features, or just no Outrealm Gate? I'm pretty sure the game's unit rating doesn't take into account HP. Keep that in mind. Similarely, it does take into account stat boosts, so if you remove Nowi/Panne's stones their rating drops a ton. Anyway, have fun once the promoted enemies start appearing.

DLC Anna. She has a camera, takes autographs, dyes her hair, is aware of character popularity polls, sells FE merchandise... Back on topic, I don't outright loath Tharja, but I do resent that her outfit is not only passed to all other female Dark Mages, but drawn in Micaiah's DLC artwork. Henry and Virion have custom outfits in their base classes, so it's not absurd to ask that Tharja have one too and let the rest of the DMs have their hoods and cloaks from past games.

From now on, all the chapters are Kill Boss, so I'd advise making a beeline for them and ignoring everything else. The bosses all have weaknesses as well, so you shouldn't need any more exp than you already have. If you got your 3ds before the price drop, FE8 (Sacred Stones) is one of the ambassador games, and I'd recommend giving it a try. It would also be worth your time to replay Awakening without letting your units die- every time you get two units to an S support, an extra chapter with an extra character opens up.

I'm new here, but have plenty of tips, if they're what you're after... The main thing to remember about Lunatic(+) is that the first 6-7 chapters are the hardest, because you need to clear them in apparently suboptimal ways to make sure your team can handle the late game. If you do them right, you'll come out with all the tools you need to give whatever unit you want whatever kills you want later on, which is how you get your hands on the right skills to pass down and destroy the latter half of the game with. A few do's and dont's for those chapters: Do use a Def asset. Do give every single kill to Avatar bar maybe 3 up until cht.3. He needs them for cht.2, and to be most useful for the next few chapters. Do try to carry over at least 1,000 renown, the Second Seal, Leif's Blade, and Bullion (L) help a ton. Do spam the healing bosses with Falchion. They stop giving exp pretty fast, but you can use them to build a ton of Chrom supports which could come in handy later. Do reclass Avatar to Mercenary at lv.20 for Armsthrift. It helps a ton if you want to kill the risen later. Patience is good too. Do give him/her the Leif's Blade. It has high crit and causes free money to appear from thin air. Do fight all the risen you see until you are 100% sure you can't handle them. They're strong, but give tons of exp. Breakers and Superior weapons help tremendously. Don't have Avatar fight without a pairup. Veteran is incredible. Don't worry about turn counts. Between cht.5 and 9, Avatar's def will be high enough to hold a choke with a healer behind him/her, which you can abuse to break their weapons and give them to whoever you want. Also, your clerics will get a ton of exp from this. If you reclass Lissa to Troubadour at Lv.10 and promote her to Valkyrie at Lv.20, she can deal heavy chip damage without stealing any prior kills to train on, and get Rally Res which is good against Mages. Don't forge stuff until you have 100% armsthrift (with a pairup). Forges are expensive and reduce the number of times you can hit the foe, reducing your exp gain. Similarly, don't throw all your cash early on at expensive weapons like Celica's Gale and Spears. They don't last long. Don't neglect Chrom until cht.13, or he'll ruin Lucina's bases. You'll know if you did all that right because you'll come out with a ton of cash and the ability to do anything with anyone. Case in point: I fed every kill in cht.12 bar two Bow Knights to my Sumia, who left cht.11 as a Lv.10 Pegasus. She promoted at Lv.20 had Galeforce in time to pass it to Lucina. If you're very patient and really want to get rid of the risen, pair Avatar up with someone who gives a ton of Avo (I used Swordmaster Olivia) and use Lethality. After enough tries and with the right strategy, they'll go down. Defensive terrain helps a ton.