Which Fire Emblem games are friendly to ironman?

[Shadow Mir]

On 8/9/2024 at 3:45 PM, SnowFire said:

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.)

What, The. Everblooing. FUCK. Mate.   You make it sound like only that class has a 30 Luck cap... Also, the issues I had in mind were the fact that, being a healer, getting her leveled up was slow as hell, and also the fact she has WTD against Luna. On top of that, trying to fight mages with mages prolly ain't getting you anywhere fast... what good is Priscilla not facing Crit when she takes something ridiculous like 8 hits to take out a Druid, while they do her in in only two, or even one if she gets screwed in HP??

Edited August 12 by Shadow Mir

[Dark Holy Elf]

I enjoyed Shaky Jones' list and honestly most it sounds right to me (depending on exactly how we're rating the games for ironmannability, as mentioned). I am amused that apparently the three FEs I've done ironmans for are in fact three of the bottom four.

On 7/24/2024 at 12:06 PM, 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 admit, I'm not sure why RD is considered specifically bad to ironman? It doesn't have ambush spawns, there are lots of characters who join up to speed / ready to go at various points. Is the argument that the first few DB maps have a punitive loss condition of "any unit dies = game over"? I can see that, but worst comes to worst you restart the run after having invested like 10-20 minutes in it tops.

Three Houses, now, I agree that one is obviously not really designed with ironmanning in mind, but if you've played it way too many times and remember all the ambush spawns it's not tooo bad, because FE3H gives you such a ridiculous amount of player tools which can be used to prevail even with underlevelled or weak units, at worst.

On 7/24/2024 at 12:06 PM, Shaky Jones said:

In fact it's so convoluted, that wiki sites STILL struggle to tell you who spawns when to this day, 5 years after release!

The wiki with .org mostly seems accurate last I checked?

On 7/24/2024 at 12:06 PM, Shaky Jones said:

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!!!

Very few enemies have 50+ crit. War Masters can indeed reach that level, but honestly, if a War Master attacks someone they're probably gonna die anyway, crit or no - you have loads of ways to prevent them from attacking since they're only 6 move and 1 range. The main exceptions are the ones who man onagers, and as you note, those are certainly dangerous and require specific plans to overcome. Some options include the anti-crit accessories, a dodgetank (they have relatively low hit), Impregnable Wall/Sacred Shield to cover their advance, or Stride/siege tomes/similar to get in range and attack them before they get a turn. Otherwise, I looked through the last few maps of AM and the only other enemies who reach 50 crit are the a couple named enemies and an assassin with a wo dao.

I kinda enjoyed mitigating the more modest crit of other enemies. I really learned to love Goddess Rings and Special Dance - if I were using Manuela or Flayn or Alois I'd probably have used their anti-crit tricks as well.

I will readily concede I only had fun on my run because I know the game very well and was looking for a test of that, as it were. But then, that's why I do ironmans of any FE, personally.

[Shadow Mir]

On 8/15/2024 at 5:19 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

I have to admit, I'm not sure why RD is considered specifically bad to ironman? It doesn't have ambush spawns, there are lots of characters who join up to speed / ready to go at various points. Is the argument that the first few DB maps have a punitive loss condition of "any unit dies = game over"? I can see that, but worst comes to worst you restart the run after having invested like 10-20 minutes in it tops.

Off the top of my head... Multiple defeat conditions in most chapters is an issue. Especially 1-5, where Jill is likely gonna be a dummy and do something to kill your run. 1-6 part 2 is another one, as again you are at the mercy of RNG and an NPC unit. 1-9 is really awful, too. I would also imagine part 3 DB would be hellish if you lost units. 2-2 is yet another issue, with fog and multiple loss conditions, one of whom is guaranteed to get one-rounded if they get attacked....But of course, all this is just me. 

Edited August 18 by Shadow Mir

[Dark Holy Elf]

5 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Off the top of my head... Multiple defeat conditions in most chapters is an issue. Especially 1-5, where Jill is likely gonna be a dummy and do something to kill your run. 1-6 part 2 is another one, as again you are at the mercy of RNG and an NPC unit. 1-9 is really awful, too. I would also imagine part 3 DB would be hellish if you lost units. 2-2 is yet another issue, with fog and multiple loss conditions, one of whom is guaranteed to get one-rounded if they get attacked....But of course, all this is just me. 

• 1-5... I guess? I generally haven't had much problem with that one but I've heard it's possible to lose via luck alone, so that's a fair point.
• I don't think 1-6-2 Fiona is losable via RNG alone, it'll only be a concern if you're going slowly. The only time I've ever felt remotely threatened is on a playthrough where both Jill and Volug were banned, which won't be the case here.
• 1-9 is fine if you have a levelled Micaiah with the Resolve and perhaps a Seraph Robe. There's an argument that you should leave Micaiah underlevelled/frail in "efficient" runs, sure, but ironman is different. You want her able to survive attacks, and if she can you really shouldn't have trouble with that fight on non-challenge runs (I've soloed it with Micaiah, so obviously it's no issue if you're actually allowed to use Zelgius to block chokepoints and kill things).
• 2-2... today I learned that Leanne is a loss condition, I've never had that come up in all my playthroughs. Just keep her behind your more durable units and keep an eye on your laguz gauges and you should be fine.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 8/18/2024 at 7:12 AM, Shadow Mir said:

I would also imagine part 3 DB would be hellish if you lost units.

Building off of this, III-13 has an absurd loss condition: "if the enemy breaks past this magical green line at the top of the map, it's Game Over!" Especially notable that enemy Hawks can disregard ledges, while enemy Tigers can spawn near the upper left corner. The game seems to recognize you don't have enough units to mount an effective defense, so you get a ton of yellow units... whom you can't directly control. So they can behave stupidly in a way that grants a free Game Over.

On 8/18/2024 at 1:22 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

1-9 is fine if you have a levelled Micaiah with the Resolve and perhaps a Seraph Robe. There's an argument that you should leave Micaiah underlevelled/frail in "efficient" runs, sure, but ironman is different.

How is the player supposed to know any of this is coming? And specifically, that they're supposed to remove the Resolve skill from Tauroneo's kit? If you haven't already prepped for this map, your options are basically nil, as the game (obscenely and absurdly) removes every other playable unit's inventory, including skills, from the base camp access.

Like, yeah, the player can prep for I-9. But they can also prep for plenty of other "terrible to Ironman" maps, like "Hunting by Daybreak", "Battle Before Dawn", and "Arcadia". The fact that they require ample knowledge and preparation, while also imposing harsh limitations and/or easily realized defeat conditions on the player, make them suck to Ironman.

On 8/18/2024 at 1:22 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Just keep her behind your more durable units and keep an eye on your laguz gauges and you should be fine.

Reinforcements spawn from the start of the map on turn 6. You can keep Leanne behind the frontlines the whole time, out of the (apparent) enemy line of sight, and still lose her.

On 8/15/2024 at 6:19 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

a dodgetank (they have relatively low hit)

Can't get crit if you don't get hit!

This is another case where I'll shill for defense-stacking. If an enemy has massive crit, but is only dealing single-digit damage (preferably 0), you can safely draw them in and soften them on the counter.

[Dark Holy Elf]

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

How is the player supposed to know any of this is coming? And specifically, that they're supposed to remove the Resolve skill from Tauroneo's kit?

Because they've played the game before, which I would personally assume when talking about ironman runs. I would agree that RD is a bad game for a blind ironman run, but I didn't get the impression that's what we were talking about. (I also have no real interest in talking about such runs. A blind ironman where you abandon the playthrough upon a loss condition is basically insanity as far as I'm concerned. More power to anyone who enjoys them, but that ain't for me.)

If you've played the game before you know there's a fog map with Micaiah and Big Z. You would also logically conclude, I would hope, that making sure Micaiah is durable is a worthy goal, to offset any player error or lack of knowledge about exactly where enemies are in the fog. You also know Tauroneo leaves for five consecutive maps after 1-6, so you're swiping his Resolve anyway; it's a colossal waste to not make use of it during that time. Since one of Micaiah's weaknesses is sometimes getting doubled, Resolve works as an easy antidote for that (it's not necessary if she's rolled well for speed gains, of course). As a bonus, she's even the only unpromoted unit who can use it, IIRC, and most promoted units are fast enough to not need it, but not yet dodgy enough to be reliable dodgetanks with it.

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

If you haven't already prepped for this map, your options are basically nil, as the game (obscenely and absurdly) removes every other playable unit's inventory, including skills, from the base camp access.

While I agree that this is a poor design choice, I would consider it a much bigger issue for a first or even second playthrough non-ironman playthrough in which a player is struggling with 1-9 and incurring resets on it than I would a playthrough intended to demonstrate mastery of the game. Though again, I think we may just have differing opinions about the contexts in which we do ironman runs.

Remembering this detail is much easier than remembering every single potentially dangerous ambush spawn in Awakening, DS FE, and Binding Blade, though, regardless.

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

Reinforcements spawn from the start of the map on turn 6. You can keep Leanne behind the frontlines the whole time, out of the (apparent) enemy line of sight, and still lose her.

• Six turns is a lot of time for you to be far from the starting point, especially considering that it's a short map: the game considers the target time of the map to be seven turns, based on Bonus Exp. (I would consider that number fairly typical as well. Your map-clearing speed may vary.) In my playthroughs, surely including my ironman one, I rarely interact with these reinforcements, or even come close to doing so.
• There is a lit brazier at the start of the map where they spawn, so you get a warning those enemies are coming, and can make a plan for them even if you are moving at turtle laguz speed.

[Jotari]

51 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Because they've played the game before, which I would personally assume when talking about ironman runs. I would agree that RD is a bad game for a blind ironman run, but I didn't get the impression that's what we were talking about. (I also have no real interest in talking about such runs. A blind ironman where you abandon the playthrough upon a loss condition is basically insanity as far as I'm concerned. More power to anyone who enjoys them, but that ain't for me.)

If you've played the game before you know there's a fog map with Micaiah and Big Z. You would also logically conclude, I would hope, that making sure Micaiah is durable is a worthy goal, to offset any player error or lack of knowledge about exactly where enemies are in the fog. You also know Tauroneo leaves for five consecutive maps after 1-6, so you're swiping his Resolve anyway; it's a colossal waste to not make use of it during that time. Since one of Micaiah's weaknesses is sometimes getting doubled, Resolve works as an easy antidote for that (it's not necessary if she's rolled well for speed gains, of course). As a bonus, she's even the only unpromoted unit who can use it, IIRC, and most promoted units are fast enough to not need it, but not yet dodgy enough to be reliable dodgetanks with it.

While I agree that this is a poor design choice, I would consider it a much bigger issue for a first or even second playthrough non-ironman playthrough in which a player is struggling with 1-9 and incurring resets on it than I would a playthrough intended to demonstrate mastery of the game. Though again, I think we may just have differing opinions about the contexts in which we do ironman runs.

Remembering this detail is much easier than remembering every single potentially dangerous ambush spawn in Awakening, DS FE, and Binding Blade, though, regardless.

• Six turns is a lot of time for you to be far from the starting point, especially considering that it's a short map: the game considers the target time of the map to be seven turns, based on Bonus Exp. (I would consider that number fairly typical as well. Your map-clearing speed may vary.) In my playthroughs, surely including my ironman one, I rarely interact with these reinforcements, or even come close to doing so.
• There is a lit brazier at the start of the map where they spawn, so you get a warning those enemies are coming, and can make a plan for them even if you are moving at turtle laguz speed.

I agree broadly about what your saying, only, is resolve really a y good on Micaiah? It's a great skill bit it has a HP requirement, which Micaiah can easily reach with sacrifice (though not on the Black Knight chapter), but, I imagine her ability to avoid being doubled thanks to resolve would be rather moot given most enemies would be able to one shot her when she's at leas than half HP.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

On 7/24/2024 at 9:06 PM, Shaky Jones said:

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!

The best ambush spawn is in Miklans chapter on the upper right side, which triggers when you cross over the line where the columns stands... which you´ll do to trigger the first set of stationary enemies there. So if you didn´t make a nice long line of semit sturdy units capable of withstanding, I belive 16 AS Thiefs with Pass(?), say GG to someone.

[samthedigital]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

I agree broadly about what your saying, only, is resolve really a y good on Micaiah? It's a great skill bit it has a HP requirement, which Micaiah can easily reach with sacrifice (though not on the Black Knight chapter), but, I imagine her ability to avoid being doubled thanks to resolve would be rather moot given most enemies would be able to one shot her when she's at leas than half HP.

This ironman ended because a level 18 Micaiah got one shot. If Micaiah had Resolve and a robe she would have likely survived. I can't be 100% confident though because all the resources that are quickly accessible omit enemy stats in 1-9. I have no idea if it's a good strategy or not though; I won't comment on that.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

This ironman ended because a level 18 Micaiah got one shot. If Micaiah had Resolve and a robe she would have likely survived. I can't be 100% confident though because all the resources that are quickly accessible omit enemy stats in 1-9. I have no idea if it's a good strategy or not though; I won't comment on that.

That's exactly my point. The archer kills her in one shot, resolve only activates below half HP. So as a defensive tool it's not going to make a difference since anything that can two shot kill a 100% Hp Micaiah can one shot a 50% HP Micaiah. It could be good on her offensively though.

[samthedigital]

21 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's exactly my point. The archer kills her in one shot, resolve only activates below half HP. So as a defensive tool it's not going to make a difference since anything that can two shot kill a 100% Hp Micaiah can one shot a 50% HP Micaiah. It could be good on her offensively though.

As I stated my point was that Micaiah would have likely survived if she had been given a robe and Resolve. She gets hit below half HP instead of dying, activates Resolve, and doesn't get doubled.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

As I stated my point was that Micaiah would have likely survived if she had been given a robe and Resolve. She gets hit below half HP instead of dying, activates Resolve, and doesn't get doubled.

Can resolve activate mid combat?

[samthedigital]

Just now, Jotari said:

Can resolve activate mid combat?

It works that way in Path of Radiance (there are some funny interactions iirc), and I am pretty sure that it works the same way in Radiant Dawn, yes. If I'm wrong feel free to correct me; I haven't played in ages and it was taking me too long to find a video to see it in action.

[Dark Holy Elf]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

I agree broadly about what your saying, only, is resolve really a y good on Micaiah? It's a great skill bit it has a HP requirement, which Micaiah can easily reach with sacrifice (though not on the Black Knight chapter), but, I imagine her ability to avoid being doubled thanks to resolve would be rather moot given most enemies would be able to one shot her when she's at leas than half HP.

Resolve activates mid-combat, preventing you from being doubled (and/or allowing you to double). Thus, as long as Micaiah's HP is high enough to avoid being killed in one hit (this is where a Seraph Robe can help, depending), it will prevent anything on that map from one-rounding her.

Needless to say this makes this map much easier. You can argue this is a bad use of resources on a normal run, but on ironman I consider it a no-brainer.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, samthedigital said:

It works that way in Path of Radiance (there are some funny interactions iirc), and I am pretty sure that it works the same way in Radiant Dawn, yes. If I'm wrong feel free to correct me; I haven't played in ages and it was taking me too long to find a video to see it in action.

 

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Resolve activates mid-combat, preventing you from being doubled (and/or allowing you to double). Thus, as long as Micaiah's HP is high enough to avoid being killed in one hit (this is where a Seraph Robe can help, depending), it will prevent anything on that map from one-rounding her.

Needless to say this makes this map much easier. You can argue this is a bad use of resources on a normal run, but on ironman I consider it a no-brainer.

I did not know Resolve could act that way. And, honestly, even for a casual run I don't think Seraph Robe is too much of a wasted resource on Micaiah. Even non iron man players don't exactly want Micaiah to take a stray hit and die at the end of a chapter losing 40 minutes of play time (plus more Sacrifice HP, if you ever somehow actually need to use Sacrifice for it's HP restoring effect). And Resolve isn't a wasted resource at all given no one else is going to be using it during the chapter (though the fact that it removes all other units from the barracks for prep does mean you need to stick it on her for the preceeding chapter, that was a it of a dick move, though it does work from a narrative angle).

[Shadow Mir]

On 8/18/2024 at 12:22 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

I don't think 1-6-2 Fiona is losable via RNG alone, it'll only be a concern if you're going slowly. The only time I've ever felt remotely threatened is on a playthrough where both Jill and Volug were banned, which won't be the case here.

A Myrmidon has crit on her... yeah. And you probably ain't killing him before he gets a chance to attack her, and potentially kill your run... with you being able to do bugger all to prevent it! (Iirc, Volug moving his max move every turn cannot make it before then, as this happens on turn 2)

Edited August 20 by Shadow Mir

[lenticular]

I think there can be different motivations behind doing an ironman run, and that these are sometimes at odds with one another. The two main ones are what I'll call an experiential ironman and a mastery ironman. For an experiential ironman, the expectation is that you probably should be losing units along the way. Part of the fun is the emergent narrative this creates, and the challenge of having to think on your feet and adapt when you lose someone. For this way of thinking, if you go through the entire game and nobody dies then what was the point, really? This way of playing is generally the motivation behind a blind ironman run, is often better played as a soft ironman where you ignore game-overs (or impose some other penalty on yourself but carry on anyway), and generally works well on lower difficulty settings.

Then there's the mastery ironman, which is all about making the game more difficult to really test your expertise. In this case, you're probably playing on the game's hardest difficulty. If you get a game over then you reset. The difficulty and the risk is the whole point. And if you manage to get through the whole game without losing anyone, then that's great. That just means that you played exceptionally well.

Obviously, it's not a straightforward binary split and most people who ironman are going to want some element of both of these things, but the ratio and weightings are going to vary a whole lot from person to person. And what makes a good ironman is going to depend a lot on what you want from it. There's a lot of stuff that sucks if you're doing a blind ironman, but is completely inconsequential if you know that it's coming, for instance. It sucks if you have Kaze randomly die on you for no reason, or if you get caught out by Foreign Land and Sky, but these are only really a problem on a first playthrough. If you've played Birthright/Three Houses a dozen times before and you're doing an ironman to show your mastery over the game, then there's no way you're going to get caught out by either of these things. For a mastery style ironman, most FE games are fine. Ambush spawns? Yeah, just learn where they are. Small cast? Who cares when you can just play well enough to not lose anyone. The only thing that I'd say really hurts this sort of ironman are "there was literally nothing you could do" style of deaths and game overs (eg Pent dying in the desert in BlaBla).

For a more experiential ironman, I'd say the most important thing is to have a large cast and a steady stream of replacement units. If you lose someone to unfair nonsense then it's frustrating, for sure, but war is hell and you signed up for losing people. And if you're getting lots of replacement units then it's very recoverable. If you're not doing a soft ironman then nonsense game-over conditions are also a big no, but I generally think that soft ironman is the way to go for any game that you aren't extremely familiar with, so that's not something that I personally care about too much.

[samthedigital]

On 8/20/2024 at 1:47 PM, Shadow Mir said:

A Myrmidon has crit on her... yeah. And you probably ain't killing him before he gets a chance to attack her, and potentially kill your run... with you being able to do bugger all to prevent it! (Iirc, Volug moving his max move every turn cannot make it before then, as this happens on turn 2)

Tauroneo with Nihil can kill the boss before the Myrmidon has the chance to act.

[Shadow Mir]

14 hours ago, samthedigital said:

Tauroneo with Nihil can kill the boss before the Myrmidon has the chance to act.

Well. I stand corrected, then. However... as this wastes a lot of experience... would this really be worth it in the context of an ironman run...??

[samthedigital]

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Well. I stand corrected, then. However... as this wastes a lot of experience... would this really be worth it in the context of an ironman run...??

In fact there's an ironman run that uses this exact strategy minus the Nihil scroll since it doubles as a speedrun.