Which Fire Emblem games are friendly to ironman?

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

After finishing an ironman run of Radiant Dawn I'd like to do more of these?

Which games are mostly recommendable?

 

I was thinking of FE8 and 9 on hard mode, but I guess there are more possible games.

Edited July 24 by MisterIceTeaPeach

[Etrurian emperor]

Shadow Dragon and FE6 seem very iron man friendly since its got large casts and the units are relatively replacable. 

[Shaky Jones]

Most To Least Friendly Ironmans: 

1).   Path of Radiance: Bonus xp lets you easily train new units if old ones die. You already beat RD, and PoR is much easier than the sequel. Pretty easy overall. This is with hard mode in mind though. Maniac? Play a better game. Nobody likes maniac.

 

2).   Sacred Stones: It's Sacred Stones. I don't need to clarify. Heck, I'd probably add in a rule to avoid Seth and Valni if you chose this and it'd be on the easier scale of FE choices, but it's up to your confidence level.

 

3).   Shadow Dragon: In a way, this is the easiest in the series when it comes to ironmans, due to the design of this particular game essentially begging players to ironman it, as was Kaga's will (I already went into detail on your previous post, but large cast, low growth rate game, generic unit replacement, gaiden chapters if really bad at game, forge = win, etc, simplicity = chill ironman). That said, FE11 is one of the harder games in the series if playing on one of the higher difficulty levels, of which there are many. If your knowledge of FE11 is limited, I'd go Hard 2.

Given how challenging RD is, you could probably handle H3 or H4, but again, I don't know if you know FE11, and ambush reinforcements can be a nuisance. That's the only real thing going against it, although 90% of them are in relatively predictable forts if that means anything.

4).   Birthright: Out of the Fates games, Birthright is the most forgiving. The cast size is pretty small, but BR is generally easy enough that you're unlikely to lose that many units and you always have children units to obtian through paralogues.

This is mainly if you like Fates already and want to step your toes into ironman'ing before doing the dreaded Conquest ironmans that I keep getting recommended streams of every other day.

5).   Mystery Of The Emblem: Book 1 is just Shadow Dragon with some cut chapters and less units, but still enough that you'll be fine. I don't see a reason to pick book 1 over Shadow Dragon on DS, but it does exist if you really feel like being a full elitist. I'm obligated to put it here.

Book 2 is the new content where the shards being massive growth rate boosters significantly help the ironman element of this game, and it's different enough from FE12 to where it can be its own enjoyable experience, as long as you're willing to put up with SNES jank. 

6).   Shadow Dragon And The Title That Is Way Too Long For Being The First In The Series (FE1): This would be above Mystery given that it features more units, but there is sadly no proper luck stat in this game, meaning you have a random chance to die from an enemy crit. Again, everything that makes the Marth experience good to ironman is present in the remake. Just play that.

Most people who play FE1 ironman it by default because this tends to be one of the last games you play just for the sake of saying you played them all, and you might as well add some challenge now that you're a series veteran.

7).   Binding Blade: I find that FE6 tends to be one the most popular games for ironman'ing, although it suffers from being...FE6.

Bad hit rates, ambish spawns, status stave spamming. It's really annoying if you don't know exactly what you're doing, and even when you do know, you're probably losing a couple of units in the first seven chapters because Marcus keeps missing his silver lance strikes and Wolt just missed the chapter 7 draco and the entire run is dead. Past that point though, the game becomes a lot more forgiving, and being very similar to Shadow Dragon in its design (similar units, unit number, low growth game, etc), you have many replacement units who, despite FE6's hard hitting enemies, don't have the hardest time catching up.

It's definitely not a run for people brand new to ironmans, but it can be the most fulfilling one, if that makes any sense. I'd try it out one day, but not today (Well I did myself, I mean you). The wackiness of FE6 really...adds to the experience, I'll say.

8).   Awakening?: Obviously you can't ironman on lunatic. That's just a Robin solo where forgetting about counter means the run is lost. Obviously you won't ironman on normal because why are you even playing the game in the first place? On hard, it.... works? FE13 is a weird game. I personally enjoy it when doing restricting challenge runs (Ironman, no grinding, no reclassing, no pair up, limited shop, etc), but as far as playing it normally, you probably could steamroll on hard and render using other units pointless, kinda defeating the purpose of an ironman, and Awakening is also a game with a small cast, but far less balanced than Birthright, which already isn't really balanced. But I guess there's much worse options, so 7th it goes, I think.

I wouldn't recommend it. Besides, FE13 arguably has the worst ambush spawns in the series. Arguably.

9).   New Mystery of The Emblem: FE12 is often considered to be one of the hardest games of the series. Naturally, on maniac or lunatic mode, you are getting destroyed unless you have clear knowledge of the game, practically knowing everything inside and out, knowing exact needed thresholds to get by certain chapters. I played FE12 over a dozen times before trying a maniac ironman and I still struggled on some chapters, but it is my favorite game in the series, so I still enjoyed myself. 

If you don't know the game, don't even try any ironman. I remember dying a fair number of times even on my first hard mode run. Yeah, I was still kinda new to the series, but it's probably not worth the risk. Some ambush spawns in FE12 are nasty. If you do know the game, then hard mode ironmans are probably on the semi easy scale. You do technically get a TON of units, and FE12 does feature replacement generic units like in Shadow Dragon, but many of said units are really bad and will not accomplish anything on higher difficulties, with even hard probably given some of these units a buck for their 1 luck.

10).   Genealogy: My knowledge of FE4 is extremely limited. On one hand, it's considered to be one of the easier FE games. On the other, it has an extremely small cast size, so each death means a lot. Gen 1 does have Sigurd/Quan solo, and gen 2 has forsetti, so as long as you do the right pair ups, you probably could trivialize an ironman. I can't really fairly rank this game because I don't like it at all. You can use the revive staff, but it costs 50k per revive. Do Arden gaming or something, I dunno. Please just play Shadow Dragon.

11).   Revelations: On one hand, similar to FE12, this game has a lot of units, but almost all of them are completely unusable past normal mode. This is coming from the guy who relishes in using bad FE12 units on lunatic runs. But like, 1/3 of all characters do 2 damage on their join time, and then get like 12 xp. There is grinding, but unlike Sacred Stones, it feels practically mandatory. The game gives you virtually no money, since you get 1k per grind battle, so I guess the game's assuming you'll do all that.

The 2nd half has a massive difficulty spike, especially on lunatic, and it clearly expects you to just use the overpowered royals, kind of invalidating the whole "you can use anyone from both routes!" gimmick. So yeah, you can ironman Rev....but you're playing Rev. I don't even hate Rev, but like, you can't ignore it's faults.

12).   Gaiden: This game suffers from having a very small cast, similar to Genealogy. The main defense for Kaga's ironman mentality is that the game has multiple revive shrines that can be used multiple times each (I believe the remake reduced them to 1 use per shrine). That said, it's Gaiden. Do you actually want to play Gaiden?

13).   Yo Mama So Far, Her Shadow Covers All of Valentia: This game has a hard mode. But it does have combat arts. SoV isn't a hard game by any means, but it relies primarily on the newly invented Mila's Turnwheel to compensate for mistakes over new units, meaning you'd have to be pretty confident that you'll barely lose units with only a handful of revive shrines being available.

Really, the the main appeal of ironman'ing the game is hearing the rare dialogue for certain events or seeing some of the grim character endings some people get when companions die.

14).   Thracia: The last of the Kaga FE games, the funny cult classic. If you're blind ironman'ing this, you have the world's biggest balls. How the eternal flames did Kaga expect people to play this without a guide? The game does have a decently sized cast, but the fatigue system forced you to use a good chunk of them regardless. You do at least once again have growth boosters through the scrolls, and they negate criticals, so you don't need to worry about that, but then you get killed because you're in a pitch black map and a literal randomly generated ambush druid shows up and slaps you silly.

Thracia is a cruel game. Do not ironman unless it's your 3rd+ run and most of the difficulty that is Thracia's seemingly random BS fades away. Afterwards, it can actually be a pretty great experience....most of the time. It's a game you need to master to fully appreciate. It's also complete nonsense, but that's Kaga for you.

15).   Conquest: There is debate for this being much higher in the sense that it's one of the most "fair" games in the series. If you're talented, you could beat CQ flawlessly. That said, you need a lot of bloody talent, good Lord this game is stressful. I feel CQ is self explanatory. You have to be an FE master to ironman this game, or at least specifically have played CQ a ridiculous amount of times. It is NOT ironman friendly in any sense other than it does not feature BS insta kill moments like many of the previous games, but it probably would give me far more gray hairs to attempt. One berserker crit to my capped carry, and I might as well start over. 

Yeah you could play on normal mode, but lets be real. If you're choosing CQ, you're doing so because you crave a true challenge. 

16).   Blazing Blade: Hector Hard mode, compared to other hard modes, isn't THAT hard. However, it's the only difficulty I ever see discussed or played in this damn game and it's hot garbage when it comes to ironman. You get very limited deployment slots, almost like the game WANTS you to only train like 6 people to steamroll with. Later maps get changed to be complete BS, like the desert map now being FoW, Cog Of Destiny being entirely magic class enemies only, some of which wielding 20+ crit luna tomes that WILL OHKO you if it procs a crit, Genesis being actual human torture, and realizing you're stuck playing FE7. 

It's the the WORST thing compared to some games previously mentioned, but the main thing that makes this game awful to ironman are the instant game over procs:

In the desert map, Pent can literally die before the player can do ANYTHING to make it there first. 

In the Zephiel map, Zeph can also die far too early for the player to reasonably make it there. In both of these incidents, the player is forced to rush through a FoW map they can't see through to help a unit that can straight game over them from pure rng, meaning you'll probably lose your flier to hidden archers.

If you use any of the 3 lords, their deaths will cause a game over. If you don't use them all, they'll be forced deployed late in the game and can cause you a game over.

Don't ironman FE7. 

17).   Radiant Dawn:   Congratulations, you're one of like 17 people to have completed an RD ironman. You tell me what makes it easy. Clearly I'm in the wrong here.

 

Last Place: One Two House!: 

This game has the worst ambush spawns ever. Ever. By far. Awakening is only worse due to not having divine pulse. But you can't use divine pulse in an ironman, can you? 3H is the biggest case of "we completely gave up on the ironman element of FE". You are clearly meant to use Byleth and your house students throughout the entire game. The pulses are meant to make sure you don't ever actually lose anyone. You get a ridiculous amount of uses for them, but maddening decides to make it so the only way a talented player will realistically lose most of them is to throw the most unfair BS ever.

Reinforcements in the game were NOT designed around same turn spawns. Many spawns are meticulously crated to spawn in many different ways to ensure they spawn close to the player when they perform a certain action. When you make this an ambush spawn, that means you REALLY need to go out of your way to not get instantly sniped by their appearance. In fact it's so convoluted, that wiki sites STILL struggle to tell you who spawns when to this day, 5 years after release! I'll be on my 9th playthrough and still get jumpscared by an ambush spawn!

And unfortunately, maddening is basically another Awakening lunatic. Aka, stat inflation. The game does give you far more resources to counter it compared to Awakening, but then you have to deal with lategame enemies literally having an average of 50+ crit. I'm not joking. Then some routes like Azure Moon feature 55 crit ballistae with like 60 might! What were they thinking!? War master? 20 crit! Aura? 20 crit! Death! Crit crit crit! Give all the enemies the killer weapons! That's good game design! 25 * 4 damage! Everyone doubles you! 5 billion reinforcements!!! ISN'T THIS FUN!!!???

And this isn't even mentioning the infamous hunting by daybreak! I'm not even going into detail about that. I'm gonna pop a blood vessel at this rate. Someone else rant about it.

All of this is talking about maddening. I guess you could just do hard, but it once again falls under "what's the point" and it doesn't stop 3H from being very poorly designed around ironmans. You literally don't get any units past part 1. Zero. Nada. Unlucky.

 

So yeah, play Path Of Wrath, then Silly Balls, then I'd highly recommend Earth Dragon. Everything else can probably wait a fair bit. I'm not a fan of PoR myself, but maybe you can do something funny with Brom. Really, I just want you to let me know when/if you try Shadow Dragon so I can pester you into using Cord. Good luck.

Edited July 24 by Shaky Jones

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I've only iron manned one FE game in my life and it was FE3 Book 1. Not a bad choice, but my decision to go blind/guide-less certainly made it harder as I attempt to piece together how certain mechanics work. Personally I get more enjoyment out of challenge runs when I do know the game's mechanics and am prepared to apply them from the get go.

2 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

6).   Shadow Dragon And The Title That Is Way Too Long For Being The First In The Series (FE1): This would be above Mystery given that it features more units, but there is sadly no proper luck stat in this game, meaning you have a random chance to die from an enemy crit. Again, everything that makes the Marth experience good to ironman is present in the remake. Just play that.

Your units absolutely have a Luck stat in FE1. It's the enemies that are rocking 0 luck across the board. FE3 gave a handful of bosses a luck stat (like Michalis) but FE11 put them back to 0. The version of the game that has you at most threat of the enemy crit rates would be FE3, since your base crit is your Skill stat, and enemy sword users are rocking double digit Skill.

I noticed you neglected to mention FE7 as the only other FE game to have 0 luck enemies. It's a big problem for Iron mans because unexpected crits on enemy phase can cause your units to see more combat than you'd counted on. But overall I'd say less of an issue in the Shadow Dragons because enemy density is so low compared to FE7 (it's the player's 16 units vs 20-ish enemies in almost every map, not counting reinforcements whomst can be "shut off" by defeating the boss fast enough in FE11).

Edited July 24 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Shaky Jones]

25 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Your units absolutely have a Luck stat in FE1. It's the enemies that are rocking 0 luck across the board. FE3 gave a handful of bosses a luck stat (like Michalis) but FE11 put them back to 0. The version of the game that has you at most threat of the enemy crit rates would be FE3, since your base crit is your Skill stat, and enemy sword users are rocking double digit Skill.

I believe its not that luck doesn't exist in FE1, but that it doesn't actually do anything about crit avoid. At least when you look it up on wikis, crit dodge calculations dont start until Mystery. I remember hearing others rant previously about FE1 being BS over unavoidable crits and even I remember random crits in FE1. 

30 minutes ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

noticed you neglected to mention FE7 as the only other FE game to have 0 luck enemies. It's a big problem for Iron mans because unexpected crits on enemy phase can cause your units to see more combat than you'd counted on.

Wasn't really something I cared to think about, but if it gives me more reason to insult FE7, sure.

I mainly notice this issue in Shadow Dragon only on endgame, specifically the midd west box that the top row pf enemies rush down towards, at least if your plan is to choke the point.

 

Oh well. Point still stands. Fe7 bad. FE11 good. Fe1 hectic. Just play the DS version and use Cord.

[samthedigital]

Lunatic+ is a nice and beginner friendly difficulty.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

9 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

17).   Radiant Dawn:   Congratulations, you're one of like 17 people to have completed an RD ironman. You tell me what makes it easy. Clearly I'm in the wrong here.

I have to be honest here it was not hard at all for me.

Yes, the extended Game Over conditions in early game and carrying Micaiah through 1-9 can be troublesome, but after part 1, no chapter was really too bad.

In part 3 I mainly avoided using Sothe to take any risk of dying, same goes for Micaiah and Sanaki in part 4.

The run went really smoothly at the end.

 

Also now I'm even more tempted to try ironmanning Thracia, but so many things have to be considered like the simplest things like bringing lockpicks in stuff.

In general I thought it was the hardest game to ironman (maybe after maddening Three Houses because of ambush spawns) because of always taking a risk of getting hit. 

 

Also true, FE6 should be doable too due to the big cast of (not bad) units.

5 hours ago, samthedigital said:

Lunatic+ is a nice and beginner friendly difficulty.

Sadly I haven't unlocked this difficulty.

[Shaky Jones]

6 hours ago, samthedigital said:

Lunatic+ is a nice and beginner friendly difficulty.

You know, we do need more LP's going on in Serenes. How would you like to volunteer do to an Awakening Lunatic Plus ironman, have the poster follow it and do good ol Archer Chrom.

46 minutes ago, MisterIceTeaPeach said:

Yes, the extended Game Over conditions in early game and carrying Micaiah through 1-9 can be troublesome, but after part 1, no chapter was really too bad.

"RANULFFF! Don't run towards the man with the laguzslayer!! RANUUULLFF!!!"

Game Over

47 minutes ago, MisterIceTeaPeach said:

In part 3 I mainly avoided using Sothe to take any risk of dying, same goes for Micaiah and Sanaki in part 4.

>Be me

>stat screwed Nolan

>Edward gets OHKO'd by tiger

>Leonardo

>didn't spent 900 turns grinding up Fiona

>Illyana dipped to eat grass with Ike

>only good unit is Meg

>bad biorhythm

>FoW map

>7 laguz swarm me

>use beastfoe

>2 hit points off kill

>can't see enemy ranges

>lion runs through swamp tiles and eats Micaiah

53 minutes ago, MisterIceTeaPeach said:

Also now I'm even more tempted to try ironmanning Thracia, but so many things have to be considered like the simplest things like bringing lockpicks in stuff.

I wanna ironman Thracia too one day, but I've only played it once. Can Marty sweep Galzus or will I miss one too many 99s and get warped to a minefield?

55 minutes ago, MisterIceTeaPeach said:

n general I thought it was the hardest game to ironman (maybe after maddening Three Houses because of ambush spawns) because of always taking a risk of getting hit. 

Thracia has a handful of things going for it. Kaga did at least try to make most of his games ironman-able. He sucked at a lot of it, but there's far more of an attempt than damn 3 Houses.

Blazing Blade is still far worse for ironmans and I'd personally sooner try Thracia than Conquest because at least enemies in Thracia are weak and you have the scrolls for easy catch up. If I lose the Arthur I spent thousands making the funniest build for, it's Joever. Niles is basically your main lord. Give me that Gazack Haitaka Rally Man random staff bot sage and Saizo Hall bait. 

59 minutes ago, MisterIceTeaPeach said:

Also true, FE6 should be doable too due to the big cast of (not bad) units.

Just make it past the first 7 chapters and it's an honestly fun experience, well about as fun as dealing with Fe6 getting a bit quirky at night anyways. Ogier > Diek anyday.

Seriously, so many FE vets will just lose their run on the dreaded chapter 7. There really is nothing you can do about that. It's just luck of the roll. I loved losing Wolt because I couldn't land hits on those damn chapter 4 cavaliers. That was definitely my fault. Shoulda just trained Roy to have enough STR and DEF to solo the entire chapter will 100 hit. FE6 is so frustratingly fun, and I love that in the worst way possible. 

1 hour ago, MisterIceTeaPeach said:

Sadly I haven't unlocked this difficulty.

Just whisper into the 3ds's mic: "Let me wake up Let me wake up Let me wake up Let me wake up Let me wa-"

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Shaky Jones said:

You know, we do need more LP's going on in Serenes. How would you like to volunteer do to an Awakening Lunatic Plus ironman, have the poster follow it and do good ol Archer Chrom.

As much as I'd like to I would just shamelessly copy another person's work, and that would feel too much like cheating to me.

2 hours ago, MisterIceTeaPeach said:

Sadly I haven't unlocked this difficulty.

To be serious for a moment I find that Lunatic can be fun to ironman, but I wouldn't personally recommend you do one if you don't know the game well enough.

[Parrhesia]

You might have more luck ironmanning custom campaigns, which often take measures in place to account for it; FE11/12 style convoy bouncing on death is pretty common, cast sizes tend to be large and offer redundancy, ambush spawns are frowned upon. One particular one, Iron Emblem, was designed with ironmanning in mind, with a wholly generic cast.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 7/24/2024 at 3:06 PM, Shaky Jones said:

1).   Path of Radiance: Bonus xp lets you easily train new units if old ones die. You already beat RD, and PoR is much easier than the sequel. Pretty easy overall. This is with hard mode in mind though.

As much as people complain about 2x weapon effectiveness (myself among them), I do think it's a boon for Ironmannability. If "Game Over Condition Elincia" had to deal with triple-Might Crossbows, then this would be a lot more risky.

On 7/24/2024 at 3:06 PM, Shaky Jones said:

If your knowledge of FE11 is limited, I'd go Hard 2.

And foresake Frey? I'd sooner see Altea in ruins.

On 7/24/2024 at 3:06 PM, Shaky Jones said:

7).   Binding Blade: I find that FE6 tends to be one the most popular games for ironman'ing, although it suffers from being...FE6.

Big caveat that, if you're insistent on getting the "true ending", then it turns into a pretty awful Ironman. As there are like a dozen potential conditions to satisfy to get past Zephiel.

On 7/24/2024 at 3:06 PM, Shaky Jones said:

The 2nd half has a massive difficulty spike, especially on lunatic, and it clearly expects you to just use the overpowered royals, kind of invalidating the whole "you can use anyone from both routes!" gimmick. So yeah, you can ironman Rev....but you're playing Rev. I don't even hate Rev, but like, you can't ignore it's faults.

I really enjoyed this Ironman (on Normal, but Hard would probably be feasible as well). It gives you enough units to replace and progress without dipping into the babylogues (which IMO are non-starters in an Ironman, as almost every kid is a Game Over condition, sometimes as green units). Plenty of the adults suck, but none I would call unusable, thanks to stuff like Pair-Up and Forging. And you get enough good units that any one of them dying isn't gonna totally bankrupt your strategy.

Also Rev gives you Mister Fuga, making it the best route by default.

On 7/24/2024 at 3:06 PM, Shaky Jones said:

You literally don't get any units past part 1. Zero. Nada. Unlucky.

Kid named Lysithea on CF

No objection to "3H is actively hostile to Ironmanning", though, that's pretty incontrivertible. Unless you adopt an attitude of "I can excuse rewinding, but I draw the line at hard resetting". Which, to me, is at least theoretically justifiable, but hardly anyone is gonna agree, so-

On 7/25/2024 at 1:33 AM, Shaky Jones said:

RANULFFF! Don't run towards the man with the laguzslayer!! RANUUULLFF!!!"

Oh my Ashera, he has Airpods in!

...Wait, who was bringing a Laguzslayer in Radiant Dawn?

[Zapp Branniglenn]

In defense of FE6 and 7, I find those games are always shoving good to great units into your party in the latter half. Losing an early growth unit feels like such a non-issue. And there isn't a death in the first half of either game that would make me consider stopping the run. Maybe FE7 Marcus, but I'm racking my brain trying to figure out where Marcus conceivably dies. Meanwhile losing Ceada or Lena in Chapter 4 of Shadow Dragon would prompt me to start over from the top. Even after all those hours tanking hand axes from the bosses. Losing my only good flier and only source of Hammerne puts the rest of the run at a huge handicap.

[Shadow Mir]

5 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

It gives you enough units to replace and progress without dipping into the babylogues (which IMO are non-starters in an Ironman, as almost every kid is a Game Over condition, sometimes as green units).

Special mention to Asugi (whose fleeing is a defeat condition; just ask @Alastor15243) and Ignatius (who might as well be, given if he goes, the village he is guarding, which is the defeat condition, is wide open! Furthermore, he starts well away from you, just because)!

1 hour ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

In defense of FE6 and 7, I find those games are always shoving good to great units into your party in the latter half. Losing an early growth unit feels like such a non-issue. And there isn't a death in the first half of either game that would make me consider stopping the run. Maybe FE7 Marcus, but I'm racking my brain trying to figure out where Marcus conceivably dies. Meanwhile losing Ceada or Lena in Chapter 4 of Shadow Dragon would prompt me to start over from the top. Even after all those hours tanking hand axes from the bosses. Losing my only good flier and only source of Hammerne puts the rest of the run at a huge handicap.

Tbh, I'd say losing Caeda also means losing the Wing Spear. And that would be really awful...

Anyhow, I cannot emphasize this enough. BE VERY VERY CAREFUL OF NON-ZERO CRITICAL CHANCES!!!

[Eltosian Kadath]

I have delayed a while in responding to this, mostly because @Shaky Jones did a rather excellent breakdown, and most of my point of disagreement with the list would be either a philosophical difference; I would put things like FE6 and FE11 higher and those like FE8 and FE9 lower as I think a good game to ironman should be hard enough that you are likely to lose a unit or two and engage with the mechanic, but robust enough that losing your best units isn't the end of things; or would just be expanding on what they said (like pointing out just how many promotion items are tied to thief access being another reason FE7 is not a great game to ironman).

Although the real answer at the end of the day is the best games to ironman are the ones you know and love the best. I didn't have a gameover with Thracia 776, and Conquest (technically that was a linked ironman, but I don't think that makes a big difference here), but did with Path of Radiance and Sacred Stones, and in both cases those were mainly down to me not caring enough about those games to really remember details about them that would trip me up, whereas I knew Thracia 776 and Conquest well enough to ironman them rather comfortably and have fun with them (like intentionally trying to see the Dead Lord faces in Thracia 776, or buying an old bond unit and fielding a generic or two in Conquest for funsies).

[SnowFire]

A few quibbles with Shaky Jones' writeup (which is a great starting point and impressive work!  Just...)

• Agree with others that FE7 should be a little easier.  Yeah, Luna crits are rough, but FE7 also has a high density of quality replacements.  As long as you're not sending a Lord into Luna gambling range, and Zephiel doesn't suffer the worst luck possible, it's not quite THAT bad.  And some of the infamous maps can simply be skipped.
• Flip side, if you're doing the best ending, FE6 is slightly more BS.  Granted, that's also a game where a "soft Ironman" might be reasonable where the death of mandatory characters gets replaced by some other penalty, e.g. loss of a random character + reload. 
• I don't see Engage ranked, but it's probably a fairly generous Ironman.  Lots of strategies are based around Emblems, not specific characters, and you can't accidentally lose Emblem Rings (just plot-lose them).  There's also some cheese strats that are fairly reliable if you want to stoop to that.
• The 3DS games all have an asterisk with DLC, as playing with DLC can make some of those Ironmans a lot easier.  Like for one trivial example, Echoes has 2 Villager's Forks available (1 of them totally free, not even a budget issue) which are super-busted - if nothing else, you can do something like promote Kliff to Myrmidon, level him a little, then Fork over and back to Mage and have a way speedier Kliff than usual.  Awakening & Conquest you can grind safely on Lunatic via the DLC.  And so on.
• While talking about Echoes, I think it's friendlier than portrayed.  There are a few traps (if you let enemy forces attack YOU, then they get the first turn and you're not allowed to arrange your deployment, a completely BS mechanic that can result in "turn 0" losses) like teleporting Witches, but.  For Normal, just powerlevel Alm & Celica - they're loss conditions, but if overleveled and fed fountains, nothing will be able to kill them.  For Hard, level Alm & Celica still, but just also powerlevel your favorite Myrmidon as well.  You can kinda break the stat curve and enemies will just stop dealing damage to them, and an overlevel Dread Fighter loses the one possible weakness of powerful enemy magic attacks.  To make it tricky, you'd probably need some sort of "build your team equally" rules and also restricting grinding.
• I think Three Houses may be slightly overranked?  This might be an artifact of me being very confident in my 3H skills and not as confident in my FE12 skills (while Shaky Jones seems the reverse), but if you abuse the busted 3H mechanics, the game really stops being able to threaten you.  You will need to know all the reinforcement rules by heart, of course, and you probably skip some of the problem Paralogues.  But assuming you can sneak past Reunion at Dawn on non-CF (and there are some AI tricks that make this more reliable), this should be hard-but-possible.  (Meanwhile, beating FE12 Lunatic just normally is something that I dun wanna bother with, never mind Ironman.)

[Shaky Jones]

I make one post for too much of my time and well over a week later, I remember I made it.

On 8/2/2024 at 3:11 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

As much as people complain about 2x weapon effectiveness (myself among them), I do think it's a boon for Ironmannability. If "Game Over Condition Elincia" had to deal with triple-Might Crossbows, then this would be a lot more risky.

I'm very much a "Path of Badiance" kinda bone. I mean, what the Yune even is the "pAtH of RadianCe"? I've never been a fan of the era of FE [7 thorugh 9] where the games felt "dumbed down" for the sake of not frightening the west who are being gaslit into playing the games that don't actually feature Roy from Melee.

That said, this does make them great beginner games for people getting into the series, which I do think is important to have in such a large franchise that's known for being "unforgiving" through ye old Kaga beloved perma death. If you're going to try to honor that vision, PoR does a pretty good job at making that manageable. First time players won't have to stress too much at the notion of "Man you're telling me if I make one mistake, I have to do ALL that again?". Of course now we just have casual, but I can somewhat respect the simplicity that PoR has for the sake of easing newcomers while introducing cool mechanics like the base system, bonus xp that also rewards fast play, and Brom. That's the most important part. 

Even though FE7 as a game in general tries to be very forgiving, and compared to FE6, it absolutory is, but it completely turned a corner at every feature that made old FE games ironman friendly, aside from the 2x thing, which I really don't like. At least FE9 did much better in that regard.

On 8/2/2024 at 3:11 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

And foresake Frey? I'd sooner see Altea in ruins.

Wait, you people don't all use the Gaiden inclusion patch? I thought it was a joke.

On 8/2/2024 at 3:11 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Big caveat that, if you're insistent on getting the "true ending", then it turns into a pretty awful Ironman. As there are like a dozen potential conditions to satisfy to get past Zephiel.

It's one of those things you'd whisper among friends, aka your schizo ghost crew. FE fans don't have friends.

"Yo did you beat the ironman you said you started?"

"Aw, yeaahh, but I got the bad ending. I was tryna do something funny and have Cecilia be my Forblaze user, but she got slapped by one too many dracos. Right at the end too!"

"Dude that suuucks, but congrats on the run. I keep getting filterdd early on because I always have like 3 people left post chapter 7. I heard [INSERT NAME HERE] actually got the good ending. How crazy is that?"

"Please wake up."

"I must atone for my sins..."

On 8/2/2024 at 3:11 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

really enjoyed this Ironman (on Normal, but Hard would probably be feasible as well). It gives you enough units to replace and progress without dipping into the babylogues (which IMO are non-starters in an Ironman, as almost every kid is a Game Over condition, sometimes as green units). Plenty of the adults suck, but none I would call unusable, thanks to stuff like Pair-Up and Forging. And you get enough good units that any one of them dying isn't gonna totally bankrupt your strategy.

Maybe it's just a lower difficulty thing. I've only played it on lunatic, and I've seen some gameplay on hard and it's mostly pretty bad with the non royals. Like I remember Rinkah already doing like 2 damage on her jointime versus 22 HP enemies, and that's just so unfun. I like Fates for letting me pair up to train weak units, but it's annoying when that's 90% of the cast and it feels mandatory for people that don't want a Corrin + royal solo. Forging's so hard without excessive grinding because Rev's economy is that of a great depression. I swear you get like 2 dollars and then nothing until you're 2 chapters deep in the Valla arc, over halfway through the game. 

I'd play almost any FE ironman over Rev, not even because Rev would be hard. It's just be extremely annoying if I do anything other than using the same 7 units and probably steamrolling because poor balance.

On 8/2/2024 at 3:11 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Kid named Lysithea on CF

Lysithea: "Huh, maybe I should listen to what Edelgard has to say. We're at least a little alike in some ways...I should hear her out before I throw my life away"

Edelgard and Hubert:

And then they never speak again.

On 8/2/2024 at 3:11 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

No objection to "3H is actively hostile to Ironmanning", though, that's pretty incontrivertible. Unless you adopt an attitude of "I can excuse rewinding, but I draw the line at hard resetting". Which, to me, is at least theoretically justifiable, but hardly anyone is gonna agree, so-

"Aw man, I wonder if Rhea will be a last minute Gotoh! Maybe I'll get Holst in VW or Count Bergliez in CF!"

3H Devs Seeing Judith:

On 8/2/2024 at 7:21 PM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

In defense of FE6 and 7, I find those games are always shoving good to great units into your party in the latter half. Losing an early growth unit feels like such a non-issue. And there isn't a death in the first half of either game that would make me consider stopping the run. Maybe FE7 Marcus, but I'm racking my brain trying to figure out where Marcus conceivably dies. Meanwhile losing Ceada or Lena in Chapter 4 of Shadow Dragon would prompt me to start over from the top. Even after all those hours tanking hand axes from the bosses. Losing my only good flier and only source of Hammerne puts the rest of the run at a huge handicap.

FE7 is weird because it's not a super hard game and it was practically made for steamrolling given the low deployment slots + overpowered prepromotes, which technically make it easy to ironman, but not a good one. You realistically want your ironman to have multiple options for when you make a mistake or get unlucky, not just "My units are too OP to die". That's just a bad game in general. 

Even if you have multiple options, that's not the hard part. The hard part is all the instant game overs. It doesn't matter how good Pent is. What good is he when Zephiel dies on turn 5 or when Pent himself dies on turn 1 as a green unit, which can happen.

FE6 is the game I believe many (even a few here) often claim is one of the best ironmans. I don't particularly disagree with the notion, however, I wanted to play the opposite field a little because i feel the flaws of FE6 are often ignored for this topic when not everybody asking to ironman is very hardcore and tolerate losing multiple units to bad rng and outright missing the true ending.

On 8/2/2024 at 8:38 PM, Shadow Mir said:

Tbh, I'd say losing Caeda also means losing the Wing Spear. And that would be really awful...

Wait, you people actually use Caeda? I thought it was a joke.

This is more of an inside bit to myself because I always ban Caeda nowadays. Wing spear is too OP for this game, and it ruins the appeal of using all the silly units. Pretty sure even on my first H5 ironman, I forced myself to use archer Ceada. She was still decent. Heck, I hope more people immedietely lose her at the start of an ironman. Maybe then you'll actually look around the room and realize how good Cord is!

On 8/3/2024 at 3:24 AM, Eltosian Kadath said:

I have delayed a while in responding to this, mostly because @Shaky Jones did a rather excellent breakdown, and most of my point of disagreement with the list would be either a philosophical difference; I would put things like FE6 and FE11 higher and those like FE8 and FE9 lower as I think a good game to ironman should be hard enough that you are likely to lose a unit or two and engage with the mechanic, but robust enough that losing your best units isn't the end of things; or would just be expanding on what they said (like pointing out just how many promotion items are tied to thief access being another reason FE7 is not a great game to ironman).

Thank you fifth letter of the alphabet.

There is a difference between a good ironman and a friendly one. You can even make another small distinguish between friendly and easy or good and easy. 

I was mainly prioritizing ironmans that are simple and easy to get into while not being completely redundant in its purpose. Otherwise, I could just list all modern FE games on normal, or even Awakening and 3H hard because they're so easy to streamroll. That technically makes it an easy ironman, but not friendly, because nothing about the game's design is trying to be anything special in the ironman category. I think PoR on hard, which incredibly easy to me now, could be just the right challenge for many others getting into ironmans while providing ways to counter potential losses of your best units through bonus xp. You also need to account for the person who made this post specifically having done RD just now, so PoR is the most natural choice in this context anyways.

Personally, I do kinda want to put FE11 higher. I do think it's the best ironman game, and you can choose the difficulty so that's perfect. But I know more people have a habbit of choosing something like FE8 first. Maybe I shoulda swapped them. Again, friendly vs good. I believe SD is 100% better in the "good" category, but FE8 is more friendly because it has grinding and no ambush spawns, and I like considering for the inexperienced players hesitant to jump into the category. Really, ambush spawns are what kills FE11 from being number 1.

But you have to admit, FE6 with its low promotion items is incredibly annoying when ironman 'ing. It's always annoying. I always want to play mods that just turn them into master seals. Let me use all warriors and snipers dammit. Or all 3 generals without waiting til 3/4ths of the game is done to actually do something with them.

On 8/4/2024 at 9:17 PM, SnowFire said:

A few quibbles with Shaky Jones' writeup (which is a great starting point and impressive work!

I truly am the smartest FE fan.

On 8/4/2024 at 9:17 PM, SnowFire said:

Agree with others that FE7 should be a little easier.  Yeah, Luna crits are rough, but FE7 also has a high density of quality replacements.  As long as you're not sending a Lord into Luna gambling range, and Zephiel doesn't suffer the worst luck possible, it's not quite THAT bad.  And some of the infamous maps can simply be skipped.

Imma be real with you. I've never played Genesis. Not on Hector Hard anways. You can't make me.

Given how unlucky I am, even something with really low odds is still a big red flag if it's uncontrollable. I don't want rng to end my run with my input meaning NOTHING.

Heck, I remember all the moments in FE4 where the game expects me to dodge to look cool with my holy weapon (i.e: Shanan Patty vs loptyr losers in ch7), and then I died 5 times because they kept hitting me with their 9 percent hits. Kaga's only excuse for this game design is "don't get hit" No vulns. Same goes for running to Ishtor and his bolting. You should dodge, but I'm Shaky Jones. I'm going to get hit. Having save points isn't an excuse. It just makes it possible to proceed.

On 8/4/2024 at 9:17 PM, SnowFire said:

Flip side, if you're doing the best ending, FE6 is slightly more BS.  Granted, that's also a game where a "soft Ironman" might be reasonable where the death of mandatory characters gets replaced by some other penalty, e.g. loss of a random character + reload

Soft ironmans are an odd topic, but I agree. FE6 is a somewhat BS ironman, and that's kind of the beauty of it. It's why I said in the post that it's not a great starting ironman, but once you're used to it, it can be the most fulfilling one. Probably my favorite ironman game next to Shadow Dragon.

On 8/4/2024 at 9:17 PM, SnowFire said:

I don't see Engage ranked, but it's probably a fairly generous Ironman.  Lots of strategies are based around Emblems, not specific characters, and you can't accidentally lose Emblem Rings (just plot-lose them).  There's also some cheese strats that are fairly reliable if you want to stoop to that.

Still too new in my head. Only played it once. I have no idea what it'd be like. If I lose Lindon, it's Joever.

I'll take your word for it. Mind telling me where you'd rank it?

On 8/4/2024 at 9:17 PM, SnowFire said:

The 3DS games all have an asterisk with DLC, as playing with DLC can make some of those Ironmans a lot easier.  Like for one trivial example, Echoes has 2 Villager's Forks available (1 of them totally free, not even a budget issue) which are super-busted - if nothing else, you can do something like promote Kliff to Myrmidon, level him a little, then Fork over and back to Mage and have a way speedier Kliff than usual.  Awakening & Conquest you can grind safely on Lunatic via the DLC.  And so on.

Sage Kamui goes hard.

You could grind on Awakening lunatic with DLC. Would you though? C'mon, Shadow Dragon is right there. Play the real Archanean game.

This is coming from someone who actually likes Awakening, but I'm not a fan of grind abuse in Awakening. It's so hard to find the right spot of when to stop when the scaling of FE13 and growths are all over the place, and then you gotta account for the wild children units...

On 8/4/2024 at 9:17 PM, SnowFire said:

While talking about Echoes, I think it's friendlier than portrayed.  There are a few traps (if you let enemy forces attack YOU, then they get the first turn and you're not allowed to arrange your deployment, a completely BS mechanic that can result in "turn 0" losses) like teleporting Witches, but.  For Normal, just powerlevel Alm & Celica - they're loss conditions, but if overleveled and fed fountains, nothing will be able to kill them.  For Hard, level Alm & Celica still, but just also powerlevel your favorite Myrmidon as well.  You can kinda break the stat curve and enemies will just stop dealing damage to them, and an overlevel Dread Fighter loses the one possible weakness of powerful enemy magic attacks.  To make it tricky, you'd probably need some sort of "build your team equally" rules and also restricting grinding.

I probably did rank Echoes too low in some aspects. From the most baseline criteria, it is pretty bad because the number 1 thing you often imagine on a list is "how many units does that game have" or how many usable units more like. That said, it does have grinding, most units are fairly competent, and it's not a hard game. Probably some bias there. I'm not a fan of SoV. 

Yeah, make some rules, maybe limit yourself from using all pitchforks just to make dreadfighter emblem, and you probably have an okay ironman run going for you. I already used Nomah and Mycen though, so I've exhausted any reason to go back to this game.

On 8/4/2024 at 9:17 PM, SnowFire said:

I think Three Houses may be slightly overranked?  This might be an artifact of me being very confident in my 3H skills and not as confident in my FE12 skills (while Shaky Jones seems the reverse), but if you abuse the busted 3H mechanics, the game really stops being able to threaten you.  You will need to know all the reinforcement rules by heart, of course, and you probably skip some of the problem Paralogues.  But assuming you can sneak past Reunion at Dawn on non-CF (and there are some AI tricks that make this more reliable), this should be hard-but-possible.  (Meanwhile, beating FE12 Lunatic just normally is something that I dun wanna bother with, never mind Ironman.)

FE12 lunatic ironman is one of the worst choices because of the final boss alone. On maniac, it's brutal, but manageable. Hard is mostly fine.

3H is one of those games where I feel that any discussion not about maddening is pointless. On maddening though, yeah I can't see any defense. I know FE12 units have a reputation for being worse than actual FE fans being sent to war, but I'll take that over NOTHING. And at least FE12 doesn't give half of every enemy in the damn lategame a 30 crit weapon (obligatory "what about thoron" incoming)! Reinforcements in FE3H are just on another league of bad. You can't wiki this shit! Nobody knows!

The only defense is making an entire team of dodge tanks, which honestly just incredibly depressing and sounds boring as [INSERT LEAST FAVORITE FE]. And Reunion at Dawn is truly something else. That ALONE puts it at F tier for ironman. What were they thinking!?

[SnowFire]

1 hour ago, Shaky Jones said:

Imma be real with you. I've never played Genesis. Not on Hector Hard anways. You can't make me.

Given how unlucky I am, even something with really low odds is still a big red flag if it's uncontrollable. I don't want rng to end my run with my input meaning NOTHING.

Heck, I remember all the moments in FE4 where the game expects me to dodge to look cool with my holy weapon (i.e: Shanan Patty vs loptyr losers in ch7), and then I died 5 times because they kept hitting me with their 9 percent hits. Kaga's only excuse for this game design is "don't get hit" No vulns. Same goes for running to Ishtor and his bolting. You should dodge, but I'm Shaky Jones. I'm going to get hit. Having save points isn't an excuse. It just makes it possible to proceed.

If you truly can't stand ever risking a Luna crit, there are still options.  You can train a Sniper (or just use Louise) and chip with Longbow first, and you can use Brave weapons or just a stat-blessed Raven or the like to go for one-rounds.  Granted, this may mean going slower for some of the timed missions so not friendly if you're also going for SS rank Tactician or the like, but still, should be doable.  (You could also power-level Priscilla such that her Luck gets so high she stops being able to get crit'd...  Luna is 20 Crit, Valk Luck stat cap is 30, and Priscilla has super Luck growth.)

Quote

Still too new in my head. Only played it once. I have no idea what it'd be like. If I lose Lindon, it's Joever.

I'll take your word for it. Mind telling me where you'd rank it?

If you know what you're doing - probably equivalent friendliness to Shadow Dragon.  Similar to SD having multiple levels of Hard to pick from, you can also vary how hardcore you are some by how much Somniel / DLC bonus abuse you grant yourself.

Excelblem did an Ironman Maddening no Somniel Ironman run, where you aren't inheriting skills at all and aren't Forging and are only passing around Emblem Rings, and it was difficult but doable:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOeva3nmrCz128dzI6eX_fCDKzsP0X3a2

Obviously 99% of players wouldn't impose such a crazy restriction, but given that this was doable, it suggests that more generous conditions are absolutely doable.

Quote

You could grind on Awakening lunatic with DLC. Would you though? C'mon, Shadow Dragon is right there. Play the real Archanean game.

This is coming from someone who actually likes Awakening, but I'm not a fan of grind abuse in Awakening. It's so hard to find the right spot of when to stop when the scaling of FE13 and growths are all over the place, and then you gotta account for the wild children units...

To be sure, one problem Awakening has is that the line between "haha I am invincible all the enemies rush my paired unit and die screaming" and "oh no this is impossible" is rather thin.  But hells yeah I think Awakening is one of the most legit games in the series to DLC grind on and not feel bad about.  Why Awakening has the whole Risen skrimish mechanic but then scales it such that it's a rich-get-richer mechanic on Lunatic, I don't know, as it's more fun to build a balanced team then to further concentrate power into just a few units.  DLC grinding lets you safely raise lowbies which is more "interesting" IMO then the style where a Cordelia / Sorc Robin pair-up or the like goes bananas.

Quote

I probably did rank Echoes too low in some aspects. From the most baseline criteria, it is pretty bad because the number 1 thing you often imagine on a list is "how many units does that game have" or how many usable units more like. That said, it does have grinding, most units are fairly competent, and it's not a hard game. Probably some bias there. I'm not a fan of SoV. 

To be clear, while SoV does have grinding, powerleveling can happen even without dungeon grinding.  If you watch speedruns, then simply giving most of the experience to your chosen units (a la FE7 powerlevel strats) in the baseline maps is generally enough to break the stat curve.  (The speedruns do use the Turnwheel a little so you wouldn't want to go quite as hardcore as they do, but the general point stands.)

Quote

3H is one of those games where I feel that any discussion not about maddening is pointless. On maddening though, yeah I can't see any defense. I know FE12 units have a reputation for being worse than actual FE fans being sent to war, but I'll take that over NOTHING. And at least FE12 doesn't give half of every enemy in the damn lategame a 30 crit weapon (obligatory "what about thoron" incoming)! Reinforcements in FE3H are just on another league of bad. You can't wiki this shit! Nobody knows!

The only defense is making an entire team of dodge tanks, which honestly just incredibly depressing and sounds boring as [INSERT LEAST FAVORITE FE]. And Reunion at Dawn is truly something else. That ALONE puts it at F tier for ironman. What were they thinking!?

To be clear, yeah, I'm talking Maddening 3H.  And idk, on my most recent Maddening run, I quit because it was too easy, and I simply wasn't using any Divine Pulses except for, like, petty reasons (e.g. unit gets a bad level-up when the map is almost about to end) which would be no loss to give up.  In an Ironman run, you can also delay some of the problem Paralogues with good rewards to outlevel them some and make them more reliable.  (And again, to be sure, I agree 3H was absolutely not made for an Ironman, but knowing the reinforcement rules by heart goes a long way to making it more sane.)

Dodgetanks with an Evasion Ring are indeed a rather boring way to get it done, but they work.  If you know your stat thresholds very well, then Vantage / Battalion Vantage + Wrath strats will also take the day reliably - if you hit 100 Crit and have a character with sufficient Strength to Crit-KO everything, that + Retribution will just clear out all the human enemies in Part 2 maps mathematically.  As for Reunion at Dawn, I prefer to play straight-up as it's more exciting, but for an Ironman, if you check some of the help threads, there's some AI manip.  Basically if you have Byleth & the Lord turtle for a bit on the extreme left side, some of the thieves won't rush in.  (Obviously more problematic in Azure Moon as Dimitri can't fly there.)  It's still a real bummer if all your White Clouds work goes down the tubes due to a lucky archer shot or the like, but it's definitely doable Ironman.

[Shadow Mir]

11 hours ago, SnowFire said:

(You could also power-level Priscilla such that her Luck gets so high she stops being able to get crit'd...  Luna is 20 Crit, Valk Luck stat cap is 30, and Priscilla has super Luck growth.)

All units have 30 luck cap in that game. Reaching it, though, is another story.

EDIT: Serra and Priscilla are the only units I can feasibly see getting anywhere near it... and they both have issues.

Edited August 9 by Shadow Mir

[SnowFire]

11 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

All units have 30 luck cap in that game. Reaching it, though, is another story.

EDIT: Serra and Priscilla are the only units I can feasibly see getting anywhere near it... and they both have issues.

So a non-correction correction, got it.  As I said, Valkyrie's Luck cap is indeed 30 (and is the relevant one since Priscilla is our super-Luck character, most other characters don't get close to cap).  Also, checking, a wiki says that the Druids on Genesis have 6-9 Skill, so 20 + 3-5 = 23-25 Crit.  So 23-25 Luck suffices.   This is even easier if your Tactician element lines up or, more likely, that your luck-stacking unit has any sort of Support nearby - by this late in the game a B rank is very reasonable even on a ranked run with no stalling, and you can easily get 5-10 Critical evade off that, rendering this trick viable for some less Luck-happy characters if they have the right sort of friend.  (For Priscilla herself, her native Wind does indeed have Crit evade, so a mere B-support with Raven should offer +10 Crit Evade if you're willing to staple him around, meaning you need way less Luck.)  And this is all assuming you've waited for the Magic Seal to pass - you can of course try to gank the Druids while they can't counter.  Or use Longbows / Brave weapons as mentioned before.  Or just send in expendable units that you don't care if they die.  A high crit evade unit is just one option for dealing with Luna in an Ironman.  (Oddly enough, you didn't mention a more reasonable concern - that if Priscilla's HP is bad enough, she might just die to a non-crit.)

As for Priscilla, yeah, she's definitely got issues.  She needs to get over Raymond and stop throwing herself into the service of random armies on dangerous quests on the wild hope that he might randomly show up.  (If you meant as a unit, Priscilla is usually considered FE7's premier healer if Pent isn't taking a break and does well in tier lists, and is probably even better if you're not power-leveling an enemy phase juggernaut.  Certainly not an unreasonable unit to invest into.)

[Shaky Jones]

23 hours ago, SnowFire said:

If you truly can't stand ever risking a Luna crit, there are still options.  You can train a Sniper (or just use Louise) and chip with Longbow first, and you can use Brave weapons or just a stat-blessed Raven or the like to go for one-rounds.  Granted, this may mean going slower for some of the timed missions so not friendly if you're also going for SS rank Tactician or the like, but still, should be doable.  (You could also power-level Priscilla such that her Luck gets so high she stops being able to get crit'd...  Luna is 20 Crit, Valk Luck stat cap is 30, and Priscilla has super Luck growth.)

FE12 Bows:

FE7 Bows:

 

I've gone on full rants over how FE7 luna enemies are legit one of the dumbest things in the entire franchise. I can't even take solace in that my Will has a purpose with a longbow because I'm too busy ranting over how garbage bow units are in this game where quantity is far over quality and you get like 6 xp per kill that you can only do 1 of per turn and I don't even get triple effective privileges. Thank you game.

As far as ironmans go, it's an incredibly stupid issue that shouldn't even exist as a problem in the first place. If it was just like 1 promoted enemy who has it for like 2 chapters, whatever. But FE7 likes to throw reinforcements by the dozen and then you'll get like 3 mages with luna back to back, and then promoted druids will have luna with 20+ magic, meaning even capped units get OHKO'd. How about...just don't give the weapon crit! I can't even have a conversation without turning it into why I hate FE7.

 

23 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Excelblem did an Ironman Maddening no Somniel Ironman run, where you aren't inheriting skills at all and aren't Forging and are only passing around Emblem Rings, and it was difficult but doable:

I remember Excelblem ironmaning FE12. This makes him one of what can only be 5 people who've beaten a lunatic ironman. 

And then you realize he spent an entire stream arena abusing to get 1 million smackeroos for game breaking forges that nobody would realistically do, so ironically this stream mainly proves how un-viable FE12 is to ironman, specifically on lunatic. I remember seeing a guy on discord who loves DSFE and they ironman'd reverse lunatic. They also grinded to destroy the economy of Archanea. How unfortunate. If it means anything, I'm doing an FE12 lunatic ironman in my spare time with only 1 death by chapter 12, and the plan is the play the game normally. I'll probably lose on chapter 20 or endgame though, let's be real.

I wonder if he did anything funny for Engage. Isn't he still tryna beat RD? I swear he started that a while back. I wonder how the OP did it.

On 8/8/2024 at 1:31 PM, SnowFire said:

Obviously 99% of players wouldn't impose such a crazy restriction, but given that this was doable, it suggests that more generous conditions are absolutely doable

This perspective sometimes feels like a slippery slope.

In this context, I'll agree, but people have beaten Reunion at Dawn with 0% growths, but that absolutely does not excuse the piss poor game design around it nor does it mean that anyone should be expected to chug through it without an optimal set up (mainly dodge tank). Many will still insist that this chapter straight up softlocked their run, and even if there's some statistical chance that they could've made do, the odds of rng success is probably like 0.003%.

0% growths is probably the most brought up topic when it comes to design proof in FE. Heck, I started an FE12 map analysis post (that I admittedly haven't updated in far too long), and I tend to go in assuming generally poor growths and reclassed bases over "use your capped Kris" though I will mention that from time to time when it's incredibly convenient for certain strategies to trivialize some maps/infamous segments of a map. That said, most people shouldn't be held up to the standard of 0% growth ltc players. Just because they can do it doesn't mean that should be the standard set gameplay everyone should meet up to, even on the highest difficulty. If the setup is simple enough, it can be justified. If an FE11 map is seemingly overbearing, but a few reclasses with 1 good forge can solve an unlucky team isn't too much to ask for (although I disapprove of warp skip discussion as it's essentially not playing the game at all, which I find to be pointless unless the map is truly the worst experience, like Wooden Cavalry H5), but anything that requires intense knowledge of the game and precise usage of prepromotes with AI abuse and rng rigging with the goal being to ignore half the map is not a good way to sell your strategy game imo. If I was stuck on a map and told to do all that, I'd be annoyed and ask "So how do I actually get through without Rutger solo?". Answer: Wade Lott Bartre Gaming. 

This isn't particularly related to what you're saying, nor am I trying to say you're flawed with your given statement, but I felt like airing this out to practice voicing out my thoughts on the matter. It's hard to pinpoint what I think is okay and not okay to use as "evidence" of something being viable. I first played an FE12 no Kris lunatic just to prove that fe12 lunatic isn't Awakening bad stat bloat that needs avatar solo to progress, and I do feel that is correct, but I'm sure even if I recorded the whole thing and posted it, that won't stop many from feeling that it's not realistically doable to handle the extreme intensity of lunatic without a powerhouse to destroy drones of earlygame dracos. That's almost why I also started my map post discussion. To talk about different ways you can handle the chapter while hopefully saying "Use Kris" as little as possible. When is it okay to claim that the general populous is in the right or if they're just not trying hard enough? Sure ironmans are supposed to be a challenge, but if a game requires 10 playthroughs' worth of knowledge and being 3 steps ahead of enemies just to avoid that 30 crit avoid threshold, I think it's just a bad game to ironman (or just a bad game), even if there are ways around it. Knowing a game and ironman'ing it as the ultimate test to yourself is often a great experience, but in some cases it really can be just too hectic or annoying. Obviously, it all depends on the person, but I've always been a believer that things are not all subjective. Some games obviously are worse than others, both through categories and as a whole. I'll stop rambling now.

On 8/8/2024 at 1:31 PM, SnowFire said:

To be sure, one problem Awakening has is that the line between "haha I am invincible all the enemies rush my paired unit and die screaming" and "oh no this is impossible" is rather thin.  But hells yeah I think Awakening is one of the most legit games in the series to DLC grind on and not feel bad about.  Why Awakening has the whole Risen skrimish mechanic but then scales it such that it's a rich-get-richer mechanic on Lunatic, I don't know, as it's more fun to build a balanced team then to further concentrate power into just a few units.  DLC grinding lets you safely raise lowbies which is more "interesting" IMO then the style where a Cordelia / Sorc Robin pair-up or the like goes bananas.

Hard run restriction run is easily the best way to play Awakening and I don't think I can ever play it any other way ever again.

On 8/8/2024 at 1:31 PM, SnowFire said:

To be clear, yeah, I'm talking Maddening 3H.  And idk, on my most recent Maddening run, I quit because it was too easy, and I simply wasn't using any Divine Pulses except for, like, petty reasons (e.g. unit gets a bad level-up when the map is almost about to end) which would be no loss to give up.

Eyy, I do that too. I do no divine pulse runs only to use it anyways because I refuse to get + dex when I know I have like 60% magic or didn't get speed in one too many levels. 

On 8/8/2024 at 1:31 PM, SnowFire said:

In an Ironman run, you can also delay some of the problem Paralogues with good rewards to outlevel them some and make them more reliable.  (And again, to be sure, I agree 3H was absolutely not made for an Ironman, but knowing the reinforcement rules by heart goes a long way to making it more sane.)

You know, my last 3H run was almost an ironman. I used no pulses and only reset 3 times.

All 3 of them were on the Ingrid paralogue. 11 runs and I still don't know how or when the reinforcements show up. Why did I even play it? Luun isn't even that good. Am I stupid?

It is a shame that you'd probably skip most paralogues because so many of them are just dreadful in game design when it comes to immediate game overs, but yeah, most of 3H's biggest travesties come from optional maps.

On 8/8/2024 at 1:31 PM, SnowFire said:

Dodgetanks with an Evasion Ring are indeed a rather boring way to get it done, but they work.  If you know your stat thresholds very well, then Vantage / Battalion Vantage + Wrath strats will also take the day reliably - if you hit 100 Crit and have a character with sufficient Strength to Crit-KO everything, that + Retribution will just clear out all the human enemies in Part 2 maps mathematically.  As for Reunion at Dawn, I prefer to play straight-up as it's more exciting, but for an Ironman, if you check some of the help threads, there's some AI manip.  Basically if you have Byleth & the Lord turtle for a bit on the extreme left side, some of the thieves won't rush in.  (Obviously more problematic in Azure Moon as Dimitri can't fly there.)  It's still a real bummer if all your White Clouds work goes down the tubes due to a lucky archer shot or the like, but it's definitely doable Ironman.

One thing I'll say is that if I were to commit to a 3H ironman right now, there is an 80% chance that I'll succeed without issue. I'm pretty confident in my 3H skills that I can get by most scenarios given that my no pulse runs often have their own restrictions regarding classes and builds. I hate dodge tanks and wrath solo builds so I ban them and often ignore it when discussing 3H (how can I criticize anything if I'm just told "just dodgetank it". That doesn't make AM endgame forgivable, what were they thinking with ambush boltings). I also only allow 1 of each class per run so no sniper sweep and I ban falcon masters and wyverns entirely so aside from the intermediate flier for darting blow, I can only obtain canto from shitty cav classes like GK Marianne or Holy Knight Ashe. Also like I said earlier, no pulses. These provide me with the most challenge and fun while I'm actually engaged with the game design and I finally care about all my gambit choices to make it by without pure solos. 

Unfortunately, this then leads to seeing the ugly sides of the maps with 40/20 vision. You have to turtle some lategame maps hard. As I mentioned many times before, enemies have stupidly high crit. What's the solution? Rafael gem and Ochlain shield. These 2 items negate crits entirely. Unless you use thyrsus range or sniper memes, this is your only realistic way to not risk the enemy dark knight from proc'ing their 27 crit chance weapon from insta killing you. But then I'm slowly taking a single path while constantly trading these 2 times amongst my team because the moment I let go of it, I get crit'd and die. Every time. Before then, I usually lost like 5 to 8 pulses per chapter because I just accepted rng bullshit was part of the game. At least now I have a way around it, but man does it slow the pacing a lot. You can't even progress naturally in maps that don't look like crit hell, because there's always someone who has something ridiculous up their sleeve. In the Rhea paralogue, the middle of the map has 2 bolting users that don't seem too bad, but they have 47 crit. So you're basically forced to wait until you do either the Ferdinand paralogue or the Mercedes one and then you bait them with your one holder and use that one gambit that lets you counter from any distance. I guess you also have the miracle+ gambit, but this only works once. 

The last 20% comes from the inevitable garbo reinforcements I simply cannot remember all of and the earlygame archer crit. I mean you really can't do anything about earlygame archers and their 9 crit. I remember thinking I was big brain by unequipping Byleth's sword one time to have no weapon weight to avoid being doubled by an archer, but that made me lose crit avoid from the basic sword skill everyone has and I asked myself why I didn't choose to play Shadow Dragon for the 15th time.

Yes they crit me.
 

Despite all that, I still insist that it's easily the worst, even if I'm more confident that I could beat a 3H ironman over something like Conquest.  I mean if you didn't notice, those 2 crit negators I mentioned? You can't get either of them in CF, the one rout you avoid the dreaded Reunion chapter in. There's no easy way out. You HAVE to deal with BS no matter what. The amount of slow painful building I have to do to make the most rng proof army for an ironman of this game that can still get randomly screwed over is so tedious that I'd sooner lose 3 consecutive RD runs over this. I know I'll just get jumpscared by flying beast reinforcements in the Hubert chapter (right outside Empire capital before Edel) that I still don't know how they work (doesn't help that it's different depending on route). And somehow I never mentioned this once this entire thread. 3H is a bloody long game. That's a lot of time wasted. For FE8 and FE11, they don't take too much time. There. Friendly ironmans. 

[samthedigital]

2 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Certainly not an unreasonable unit to invest into.

If you're grinding a bit she certainly seems like a great option. It's not like money and staves aren't in abundance in FE7 anyway. As an added bonus she gives Raven crit avoid.

[Eltosian Kadath]

I am seeing a lot of armchair talk about FE7 ironmans, and in my ironmanning experience, my No-Lyn Mode Hector Hard Mode ironman has been by far the roughest ironman I have completed, and Shaky Jones's placement felt about right to me. There are so many little thing about that game's design that makes it particularly difficult to ironman, from shockingly inconsistent reinforcement rules, potential game overs you have no control over, a lot of promotion items tied to specifically thief access (made worse by the second thief being near impossible to recruit without a thief), some uncomfortably long stretches without shops, and those are all thing I get to before Luna and its crit rate.

 

On 8/8/2024 at 11:23 AM, Shaky Jones said:

 

Given how unlucky I am, even something with really low odds is still a big red flag if it's uncontrollable. I don't want rng to end my run with my input meaning NOTHING.

Heck, I remember all the moments in FE4 where the game expects me to dodge to look cool with my holy weapon (i.e: Shanan Patty vs loptyr losers in ch7), and then I died 5 times because they kept hitting me with their 9 percent hits. Kaga's only excuse for this game design is "don't get hit" No vulns. Same goes for running to Ishtor and his bolting. You should dodge, but I'm Shaky Jones. I'm going to get hit. Having save points isn't an excuse. It just makes it possible to proceed.

This is reminding me of my FE8 losses, which can best be describes as I have the worst luck with status staves, to the point that I often think of two losses as I only brought one staff bot capable of restoring on the two Berserk staff chapter, then I only brought two staff bots capable of restoring on the two Berserk staff chapter (fun fact the AI will Berserk units incapable of using weapons...), and the winning run was when I brought three units capable of restoring to the two berserk staff chapter.

 

On 8/8/2024 at 11:23 AM, Shaky Jones said:

Still too new in my head. Only played it once. I have no idea what it'd be like. If I lose Lindon, it's Joever.

I'll take your word for it. Mind telling me where you'd rank it?

I have done two ironmans of the game on hard (one of those was a linked ironman on the boards LP section...that I still need to update the last chapter of, I just keep getting distracted and putting it off), and in my opinion it is in the top 5 for ironmanning. Its just a blast to play in general, and is a lot more robust to ironmanning than you would expect from a game with a turn wheel mechanic, but it does have some minor flaws keeping it from the top. Emblems give you a lot of wiggle room to recover from minor mistakes, or deal with what would otherwise would be very difficult situations the games give you, which really helps to make it ironman friendly. New Recruits are plenty strong and can easily replace any units you lose, (even if you recruited them a few chapters ago), and it isn't unheard of for people to just suggest you drop older units for new recruits in general play, although I will note that recruits do stop a few chapters before the end, which isn't ideal and I even suggest you play an ironman of Engage with the final deployment limit in mind (so recruits that come with increases in deployment limit can be stretched out into latter replacements), but still rather manageable as things like tonics, and the Roy Emblem (which gives the holdout skill to help with survivability of under-leveled units, and the ability to temporarily act like they are 5 levels up), to help some behind recruits catch up. The easy to maneuver class change system makes it easy to find a way to replace the roles your units were previously fulfilling, although magic fliers and dragon classes being limited to unique classes isn't ideal again. This is a small thing, but having a bit of minor dialogue about a character's death at the end of the chapter they died in is also an interesting detail that also rather encourages ironmanning as well.

[samthedigital]

47 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

There are so many little thing about that game's design that makes it particularly difficult to ironman, from shockingly inconsistent reinforcement rules, potential game overs you have no control over, a lot of promotion items tied to specifically thief access (made worse by the second thief being near impossible to recruit without a thief), some uncomfortably long stretches without shops, and those are all thing I get to before Luna and its crit rate.

The reinforcement rules and stretches without shops sound like issues that can be resolved with game knowledge. It's something to consider given that not everyone is going to approach an ironman the same way.

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

The reinforcement rules and stretches without shops sound like issues that can be resolved with game knowledge. It's something to consider given that not everyone is going to approach an ironman the same way.

By that logic Thracia 776 is one of the easiest ironmans. Sure looking up the shop might be easy enough, but knowing which of FE7's chapters have ambush spawns, non-ambush spawns, blockable reinforcements, unblockable reinforcements, middle of turn tripwire spawns, and end of turn tripwire spawns is some real detailed game knowledge to have, and often isn't well documented.

[samthedigital]

1 minute ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

By that logic Thracia 776 is one of the easiest ironmans. Sure looking up the shop might be easy enough, but knowing which of FE7's chapters have ambush spawns, non-ambush spawns, blockable reinforcements, unblockable reinforcements, middle of turn tripwire spawns, and end of turn tripwire spawns is some real detailed game knowledge to have, and often isn't well documented.

From memory fireemblemwod is good enough; I'm not sure if it's a perfect resource though. That being said I am mostly speaking from my perspective. I personally wouldn't approach an ironman without that intimate knowledge.