Worried about softlocking

[lvrossem]

I'm currently on my first maddening playthrough at chapter 13, and I think I've made some irreversible, poor decisions:

- I invested 25k into Brodia at the end of the Brodia section, so i did not really benefit from it aside from getting the Brave Sword
- I invested a lot of exp, a master seal and a second seal into Sage Anna, but she is outclassed by all other frequently used units so I prolly won't benefit from her moneymaking
- I started using Sommie way too late
- I did not invest in SP for Canter in earlygame, or for later good skills like speedtaker. I spent way too much BF on bond rings and not enough on bond levels.

Is it advised to just restart? Bc I don't feel like carrying this burden through most of a maddening playthrough only to have all the shitty decisions catch up to me later and make the lategame impossible. Thanks a lot!

[lvrossem]

+ I also invested 5k in Firene, which is also a real waste it seems like.

[samthedigital]

Your money will probably be tight in the short term. Just make sure to sell all of the unnecessary items you have.

45 minutes ago, lvrossem said:

I invested a lot of exp, a master seal and a second seal into Sage Anna, but she is outclassed by all other frequently used units so I prolly won't benefit from her moneymaking

If she's not working out you can bench her and use some of the other units. Her money making skill is not really her main selling point anyway. It's not the end of the world though; the game hands a lot of new units that you can use in place of the ones that aren't performing.

48 minutes ago, lvrossem said:

I did not invest in SP for Canter in earlygame, or for later good skills like speedtaker. I spent way too much BF on bond rings and not enough on bond levels.

If I remember correctly fishing is a good source of gaining bond fragments. I've found that the game hands out enough of it, so I have never needed to resort to that or any of the other monotonous grinds. If you feel you need them though the option is always available to you. You also don't really need to invest into the early game units. You could go with Alear alone and still make it out OK... Merrin, Kagetsu, Ivy, Pandreo, Panette, etc, etc, are all fantastic and can inherit Canter after chapter 17.

52 minutes ago, lvrossem said:

Is it advised to just restart? Bc I don't feel like carrying this burden through most of a maddening playthrough only to have all the shitty decisions catch up to me later and make the lategame impossible. Thanks a lot!

You'll probably save time if you continue your current save file. That being said there's nothing wrong with retrying if you really don't want to continue and want to do better.

[Jotari]

You might find resetting easier if you think you can do the early game again quickly, but I don't think you've hit a soft lock. The game should be funny winnable, provided you haven't also got all your characters killed or something. For what it's worth though, I think Chapter 13 is rather difficult in general. Chapter 12 is more of a breather chapter after the whole Cathedral business. After Chapter 13 you have the Solm palace battle and then the Seadall chapter, both are more managable than Bandit Fog of War. By then you'll have gained Byleth and Corrin, and at the start of the next chapter, Eirika, which are very powerful tools to make the following chapters managable and things only really start to get more difficult again when you hit Grandlon and approach the end game.

A good money making exploit, if you have the Fell Xenologue DLC, set it to the easiest difficulty and wait for a low enemy skirmish to show up. A trained Anna can solo the easier skirmishes (but not the harder ones) and gain a few grand of gold per map in addition to the regular rewards.

Edited January 6 by Jotari

[lvrossem]

Thanks for the replies! for more context, I'm not using DLC and also going for a no deaths run. I'm just gonna focus on my upcoming exams this week and then decide 🙂

 

[lvrossem]

for who cares: ended up resetting and untimately completed the next maddening attempt after 110 hours, final stretch was grueling

[Xander]

None of the things you listed in the OP could cause a soft lock.

Edited April 11 by Xander

[Barren]

There are benefits and consequences to donating to regions like Brodia and Solm. The update patch gives you more money for example, around 30K.

 

Pros for donating in general obviously includes getting some more ingredients for cooking and ingots for forging. Not to mention that you get more of these prizes the more you donate to that region after a chapter or prologue fight so it does pay dividends.

 

Cons would be that it does cost you more money the more you donate and some of these donations can feel pretty wasteful. Like getting the Firene donation level to 3 just for a steel lance and slightly more resources than normal it’s not worth going out of your way for especially since you can just buy a steel lance for a lot less. You can even spend some of that money on forging assuming you have the right amount of ingots. 
 

If Anna isn’t working out for you then you could bench her. It is the Fire Emblem way after all. I’m assuming you’re either not playing on fixed maddening mode, or maybe she’s been performing poorly as you said.

 

Sommie activities don’t really impact much for the very early portion of the game until you unlock more activities to do. So I would say when you get Ivy then wyvern riding and fishing are good enough ways to farm bond fragments.

 

Missing out on Canter isn’t the worst thing in the world as you only lose Sigurd between the end of chapter 10 til the end of chapter 17. And you would be able to accumulate SP fast enough or invest in skill books incase they might be needing some. Though Canter is a very handy ability to get that only a few characters can really take advantage of.

 

If you want to start over, you can. At least you’ll be able to take what you learned via mistakes and put into practice. Good luck.

Edited May 18 by Barren
Grammar