Last/current/future playthrough pairings

[Mousefire]

So yeah, just as the title says. Post past, present, and future sets of pairings

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I'm going to be doing a playthrough with pairings I haven't tried, and I'm going to do these

AyraXFin-For prayer on the sword kids

LachesisXNoish-Fin is tied up, and I already did LachesisXBeowolf and XLex

FuryXAzel-Why not?

BriggidXLex-For a Patty that can take a hit

TilyuXLevin-I can't believe I haven't tried this pairing yet

I need some help picking Aideen and Sylvia's pairings. I've already tried all of the pairings Sylvia has a ch. 5 talk with. For Aideen, I've tried Fin and Midir. I don't want to pair her with Jamka

[chrysalid]

Noish/Lach looks painful, I'd rather do Azel or Alec if I'm skipping the obviously good ones (Beo and Fin) for pursuit. But I guess you can pursuit ring Delmud and he'll be very good (he'll have pursuit, continue, charge, and critical after promotion, and pretty good defense, about as deadly as it gets without Astra or a holy weapon), and Nanna can just be Relive on a horse.

Briggid/Lex and Fin/Aira look good. I always want to pair Fin but the range of mothers is pretty small if I don't want to waste huge amounts of turns, but Aira is around long enough. The swordkids are hard to screw up enough to matter.

Levin/Tiltyu is so good I have a hard time not doing it.

Azel/Fury is fine, Sety is brokenly good with any magic father and Fee will be pretty cool in player phase with a magic sword I guess. Bad AI means javelin units will attack magic swords at range for some reason so she can obliterate a few things on counter too. She's still strong enough to be a mage hunter with a lance even with a low-strength father, and fast enough to double non-wind mages with a javelin counter I think (she'll miss a lot).

If you do Claude/Aideen you can get the Rescue staff in chapter 5 and pass it down straight to chapter 6. It's on a crappy 5-move unit but I bet there are still a lot of fun tricks you can do with it until you can promote Leaf. Lester will completely suck and be in iron bow hell for a long time, sadly. Be sure not to pass down Brigid's steel bow so he can at least buy it in chapter 7.

X/Sylvia is an afterthought, the dancer doesn't really care who the father is if it's not a ranked game and Corple is just a Libra-bot. If you're already using Azel, Claude and Levin there's no one to give him the magic base to pump up the Libra shots. You could try Dew, bargain might give them a slight leg up. The substitute characters are much better, even before considering that they get the barrier sword and berserk staff, if you haven't used them yet.

Edited April 11, 2010 by chrysalid

[Nice]

Ayra x Fin - Huh? I thought Ayra's kids didn't need Prayer?

I'd suggest Ayra x Noish (Critical can activate simultaneously with Astra = ORKO almost everything )and Lachesis x Fin :)

Briggid x Lex is good.

TilyuXLevin is god

Do you try Sylvia x no one? Laylea's charming and Barrier sword are great.

I haven't tried other parings yet so I can't comment much.

[SuperTroll Maxim Lapierre]

First things first, even the "sub-par" pairings are better than the subs in general and they also aren't that sub-par either.

I'll suggest:

AideenxBeowulf. Better stats, but you'll have to wait a couple chapters before getting better bows. Sell Brigid's Steel Bow so you can have it in Ch. 7.

SylviaxDew. They all kind of suck though, except for Levin.

Ambush+Sleep Sword is your friend with Lex|Briggid's Patty.

Lakche gets +5 skill, I think, from a convo with Fin.

Edited April 11, 2010 by Sidney Crysby

[BBM]

Try Lex x Lachesis. Nanna is meh, but Delmud is your best non-Holy Weapon user, with the Pursuit Ring.

For Fury, you can try Noish as well. Noish!Fee is h4x, and Noish!Sety isn't bad either. Hmm... Hawk, Sety's sub, is better than a Sety not fathered by Levin, Claude, Azel, or Noish, so you can try that as well. Of course, Femina blows.

[Mousefire]

Try Lex x Lachesis. Nanna is meh, but Delmud is your best non-Holy Weapon user, with the Pursuit Ring.

For Fury, you can try Noish as well. Noish!Fee is h4x, and Noish!Sety isn't bad either. Hmm... Hawk, Sety's sub, is better than a Sety not fathered by Levin, Claude, Azel, or Noish, so you can try that as well. Of course, Femina blows.

I did LexXLachesis on my last playthrough and it was epic, but I want to try new pairings.

Also, I want a Sety that can do major damage to enemies without a critical

[Thor Odinson]

For a Sety that does good damage without Crit, or even Holsety, go with ClaudexFury. The one I have capped Mag before level 30, and still managed to cap SPD despite not having Levin!Sety's ridiculous base speed thanks to bases from Fury. He does some serious damage with just Wind/Elwind. And in terms of healing power (disregarding move) he's your best healer, coming with the Reserve staff and whatnot. +Valkyrie staff. +General awesomeness. +Complete Magetank, with the third highest RES in your party, beaten only by Narga!Yuria and Tyrfing!Celice.

It also makes Arthur a lot easier to train assuming LevinxTiltyu, since Sety is ridiculously easy to train pretty much no matter what.

However, it makes Fee's strength even worse than normal with ridiculous Mag for a physical unit. If you do use ClaudexFury, make sure that Fee has a magic sword once her MAG surpasses her STR as it did with mine. She will also be ideal for picking off dark mages off cliffs due to their lack of DEF and her RES. Good to send in as a healer in Darkmageland too since sleep staves will have a hard time hitting her. (But then again, both my Nanna and Lana usually have physical unit fathers so their RES end up ridiculously low)

I have to try AzelxFury sometimes to comment on it, but I'm liking Claude!Sety so far.

Levin!Sety is still solo machine/god in himself.

Edited April 11, 2010 by Luminescent Blade

[Mousefire]

For a Sety that does good damage without Crit, or even Holsety, go with ClaudexFury. The one I have capped Mag before level 30, and still managed to cap SPD despite not having Levin!Sety's ridiculous base speed thanks to bases from Fury. He does some serious damage with just Wind/Elwind. And in terms of healing power (disregarding move) he's your best healer, coming with the Reserve staff and whatnot. +Valkyrie staff. +General awesomeness. +Complete Magetank, with the third highest RES in your party, beaten only by Narga!Yuria and Tyrfing!Celice.

again, I'm putting emphasis on pairings I haven't tried. ClaudeXFiry is indeed epic though

[Thor Odinson]

Well, you didn't say anywhere that you had tried ClaudexFury so I assumed you have not.

But then again, my careful reading skills are next to none. Especially in English.

[chrysalid]

I'm itchin' to try Lex/Tiltyu, I think LexArthur can do some insane reinforcement abuse in Chapter 6 with the magic ring and promote in the Chapter 7 arena or close to it. Then he gets Tron...

[Mousefire]

I'm itchin' to try Lex/Tiltyu, I think LexArthur can do some insane reinforcement abuse in Chapter 6 with the magic ring and promote in the Chapter 7 arena or close to it. Then he gets Tron...

It sucks. Arthur can't kill anything even with wrath

[Narga_Rocks]

I'm itchin' to try Lex/Tiltyu, I think LexArthur can do some insane reinforcement abuse in Chapter 6 with the magic ring and promote in the Chapter 7 arena or close to it. Then he gets Tron...

I don't remember for sure but I think towards the end (like chapter 9 or 10) you start needing Tron + magic ring in order to actually OHKO (so only one of Tinny/Arthur will be able to pull it off) because of their low mag growths, and don't forget that Tron only has 70 hit and Arthur's cap in skill is a mere 22. 44 + 70 = 114 hit only. Of course, you can raise that with Celice/Nanna/Delmud(/Laylea) (all 3 (4 if sylvia was unpaired or died)). I'm sure you can probably arrange 100% hit rates some of the time to prevent death. Just keep in mind that they have low hp/def bases and low def caps so even with max def they may be OHKOd by lots of enemies while at wrath health. As a result, their chance to die from anything is chance to miss * chance to get hit. 80% hit rate for and 30% against means a 6% chance to die. Repeated over many enemies and you can probably calculate CODs for yourself.

It's a fun pairing, of course, but not all that great. Fin x Tiltyu is also a fun pairing (max spd and luck + prayer + pursuit + wrath is always fun) but takes more effort to use to its fullest. But a double crit with magic will kill pretty much anything even without Tron and B rank spells have better hit.

[chrysalid]

Geez, that sounds cool too, although it couldn't pull off the early reinforcement abuse I was thinking of or promote Arthur for quite a while.

I have a ranked game to finish first, anyway, don't give me ideas.

[Narga_Rocks]

Geez, that sounds cool too, although it couldn't pull off the early reinforcement abuse I was thinking of or promote Arthur for quite a while.

I have a ranked game to finish first, anyway, don't give me ideas.

Well, the magic ring has a bigger issue on Fin!Arthur. Fin has to buy it before leaving chapter 3 and you are without it afterwords. On the other hand, I think the enemies at the beginning fall to double crits even without it. The magic ring just let me 2HKO without crits, if I remember correctly. I could be off, though. The main problems, and two you probably don't encounter with Lex!Arthur, is that getting enemy hit to fall to 0 and getting his hp back up above 10 ready to fall to 2 or 3 again. I can't pull it off, but I'm sure others can. Also, sometimes Tinny gets enemy hit to 0 even before prayer and they don't attack her at all. At least, if she has any type of terrain at all. 50 + 30 = 8 avo, so terrain pushes her way up. (that's max spd and max luck using elwind, by the way). I tried to get her to gain levels guarding a castle (I think before promotion, and she was majorly luck screwed that game) in chapter 9 and the dragonriders all had 0 hit and thus left her completely alone.

The good thing with prayer is that the enemy doesn't know it's there. If they did they'd know they have 0% hit and avoid him/her completely. They don't realize it though and thus think they have 20% or whatever and happily suicide into the unhittable double-critting mage-kids.

Best part? If you miss one of the crits and the enemy lives the child doesn't die.

Edited April 12, 2010 by Narga_Rocks

[chrysalid]

Well the reinforcement abuse I was thinking of was letting Fee or Arthur attract Johalva's army back towards Sophara. The axefighters in the army have 42 HP, zero resist and -12 avoid. If Arthur has 8 base magic, an 8mt tome and the magic ring, that's a OHKO with wrath. If he kills Johalva's entire army, Johalva goes into retreat mode to get more units out of Sophara. Johalva will always take his turn after his squad's units, so if Arthur OHKOs the entire group every turn it's available he can just ping-pong Johalva in and out of Sophara, and he can do it until he breaks the wind tome (no pun intended) at 9 kills every other turn (I think). All with absolutely zero risk, zero healing, no charisma or leadership stars needed, and it's not like I have to piss away 30 turns to do it, you'd have time for that even in a near-speedrun. I haven't worked out the amount of XP that will give him with Elite but I'm guessing it's not far from promotion. Plus you get a 50-kill wind tome for, uh, Lana or something. When Arthur loses his OHKO juice you can swap all the OHKO gear to Tinny, and by then you have a leg+knight ringed dancer and maybe a Rescue staff Leaf to move her around easily.

[Narga_Rocks]

Well the reinforcement abuse I was thinking of was letting Fee or Arthur attract Johalva's army back towards Sophara. The axefighters in the army have 42 HP, zero resist and -12 avoid. If Arthur has 8 base magic, an 8mt tome and the magic ring, that's a OHKO with wrath. If he kills Johalva's entire army, Johalva goes into retreat mode to get more units out of Sophara. Johalva will always take his turn after his squad's units, so if Arthur OHKOs the entire group every turn it's available he can just ping-pong Johalva in and out of Sophara, and he can do it until he breaks the wind tome (no pun intended) at 9 kills every other turn (I think). All with absolutely zero risk, zero healing, no charisma or leadership stars needed, and it's not like I have to piss away 30 turns to do it, you'd have time for that even in a near-speedrun. I haven't worked out the amount of XP that will give him with Elite but I'm guessing it's not far from promotion. Plus you get a 50-kill wind tome for, uh, Lana or something. When Arthur loses his OHKO juice you can swap all the OHKO gear to Tinny, and by then you have a leg+knight ringed dancer and maybe a Rescue staff Leaf to move her around easily.

Yeah the elite makes a difference. Also if they have -12 avo and he has 90 hit wind tome than even with 0 skill he'd still manage 100% hit. Of course, Arthur ORKOs with magic ring and pursuit, but I think even on a tree they'd still have non-zero hit rates on him and there is no elite.

[chrysalid]

Ah, and of course you can repurpose Arthur with a hero sword and power ring at that point, letting him do double 74-point, 144 accuracy crit ambush counters against melee enemies... with capped defense... *drools*

No, no... must finish ranked game