How hard is Lunatic Mode compared to Shadow Dragon's H5 mode? Could a 0% growths run be possible?

[FionordeQuester]

Well, if Medeus doesn't move, and he doesn't recover an insane amount of HP, beating him should theoritically be possible. You get 3 Energy Drops over the course of the game, and probably 1-2 Spirit Shards, not including what you can find at a Secret Shop, so if you maxed damage on a forged weapon, and got maximum weapon rank, you could potentially go about slowly damaging him until he's weak enough for Marth to kill in one hit. Of course, he has a lot of HP, so it's still much easier said than done. Not to mention, money will probably be a real issue here.

I don't know who I would stat boost up to being able to stand up to Medeus, but it's definetly not going to be Marth. First, what I need is a resource out there that tells me the exact bonuses that all the classes give to characters. Like, how much strength does Swordsman add? How much strength does Berserker add? Stuff like that.

Edited October 2, 2010 by FionordeQuester

[eclipse]

http://www.serenesforest.net/fe12/class_base.html

http://www.serenesforest.net/fe12/promo.html

Should answer your question.

Edited October 2, 2010 by eclipse

[FionordeQuester]

One last question. Lunatic Mode doesn't get rid of Secret Shops does it? Or nerf them in any way?

Edited October 2, 2010 by FionordeQuester

[Fei Mao]

One last question. Lunatic Mode doesn't get rid of Secret Shops does it? Or nerf them in any way?

There are still secret shops in lunatic the only one you can't reach is the dragonstone secret shop (since there's no warp staff in lunatic mode) and also there's no silver card in lunatic since it gets replaced with a vulenary.

[FionordeQuester]

I see. Then I don't see why damaging Medeus would be impossible. Ymir and Michalis alone have high enough base strength that with some Energy Drops and some money dumped into a forged Longbow, they could slowly damage Medeus without fear of retribution. I'm not sure whether or not Michalis can class change into using bows, but I know that Ymir is able to.

As for what else I could do...wait for it...well, here's the chart of maxed base stats...

Paladin

60

25

21

28

25

25

30

25

Sniper

60

24

20

30

29

30

23

20

Hero

60

25

20

30

26

30

25

22

Swordmaster

60

24

20

29

30

30

22

23

Horseman

60

24

20

28

30

30

23

23

Barbarian

60

30

30

30

30

30

30

30

Sorcerer

60

20

30

28

25

30

20

25

Sage

60

20

30

28

25

30

20

25

So that's eight classes that, if the game gives you capable enough units, and enough Speedwings, they may just have a chance to chipping away at Medeus without any damage.

Edited October 2, 2010 by FionordeQuester

[grandjackal]

Will all that be enough to do Lunatic at 0%? The in-game arena would be near-pointless, so there'd be more funds for forging. Rainbow Potion won't break caps.

For a good amount of my game I didn't even bother with the in-base arena and it got me to about the lategame. I had a lot of money to spare, and only in lategame did I ever really have to spend it. In your case, that is plenty to forge with. It's also plenty of money for the in-base stat booster shop.

However, I'm not sure about a 0% growth run because a problem comes up at around the time you lose your shards and are stuck with the Star Orb. It's around this time you lose units that just show up and are able to pwn face (Sirius/Arran/Paula can carry you earlygame, George and Maric the midgame while you're in the valley, lategame has no such units. In fact, for the most part I just found myself killing/forgoing them just to get through the game quicker). Hardin alone makes a 0% run troublesome. Chapter 19 comes to mind as well, since it requires either A. 2 max speed Dracoknights with the Star Orb (Trade-off of course) and access to Hammers, or B. Said Draco working with a maxed Str Falcoknight and at least 25 AS and access to Armorslayers to kill the boss on turn 1 (Coincidentally causing Vyland not to show up, which means no recruiting Sedgar and Wolf).

A 0% run of lategame sounds pretty hard, but for early and midgame it sounds pretty easy to manage. Rainbow+Shards can equal up to +6 Str,+6 Def, and/or +4 Spd (at least +4 Str and Def wth +2 Spd breaking caps because that's how shards work), and that effect can be powerful. Star Orb and Rainbow is basically +4 to everything, but going non-growth this can still be a bit bothersome. BUT, you do think outside the box. It could be possible, I'm just vastly unsure. Try doing stuff like manipulating crit factors for your weapons lategame with your forging. Can't eat a counter/a double attack if a critkill smokes the guy.

There's always the clock bonuses, but I wouldn't rely on them!

Who needs the clock anyways!?

Well, if Medeus doesn't move, and he doesn't recover an insane amount of HP, beating him should theoritically be possible. You get 3 Energy Drops over the course of the game, and probably 1-2 Spirit Shards, not including what you can find at a Secret Shop, so if you maxed damage on a forged weapon, and got maximum weapon rank, you could potentially go about slowly damaging him until he's weak enough for Marth to kill in one hit. Of course, he has a lot of HP, so it's still much easier said than done. Not to mention, money will probably be a real issue here.

1. All the shards are gone by the fight with Medius and are stuck on Marth in the form of the Star Orb being stuck on the Shield of Seals.

2. You have any idea how much gold you're gonna need to make a strong enough forge to take Medius down without the Falchion? A max Str Berserker with Hauteclere does a great big 10 damage to 99 HP. A Crit's not even 1/3 his HP. While theoretically yes it's possible, you would need to stockpile a loooooooot of gold to make a forge mighty enough to punk out Medius like that.

Even then, you would need max speed on a Berserker. With 6 Wings being available, that's 12 speed, but again this requires a lot of money. (15,000 Gold). You'd then need the energy drops, the appropriate unit to drop it all on, and then the most insane forge you can think of. Whoever's attacking Medius should always have at least 3 attempts to land a crit. If you can make a forge strong enough with all of those boosts on top of it that one crit can mean garunteed death then yeah, it's possible. However, even I who think there is a lot of resources to keep our gold nice and good still wonder if enough gold can be made to deal with it. Well, since I suppose you would only need 1 attacker using 1 weapon, you could basically sell everything you have just to forge this almighty Medius Buster.

Who knows though. Just letting dondon know though that if you're wanting to do a 0% run, the cash might be more important than the stats. If you always have the money to buy/forge what you need, then a 0% run might be possible. Lategame's still gonna be a major bitch though.

Though it does make me remember there are naturally gotten stat boosters.

I don't know who I would stat boost up to being able to stand up to Medeus, but it's definetly not going to be Marth. First, what I need is a resource out there that tells me the exact bonuses that all the classes give to characters. Like, how much strength does Swordsman add? How much strength does Berserker add? Stuff like that.

If we're talking a 0% growth run then yeah, Marth's probably the last guy I would think of. You'd need to basically give him every wing, energy drop, robe and shield in the game to go up against Medius. Well, let me think about that..He'd need every wing in the game, no doubt there. 20 Str from drops with the 36 mt from Falchion on Medius is 56 Atk which is 16 damage, meaning he'd need to land 2 crits in 3 attacks. If you're willing to rig crits, that should do it (but you'd probably tear your hair out). Reducing it to needing 1 crit would be easier, so a 7th Drop would be required. He'd need 4 Robes to survive an attack.

You get 65,000 on Bullion alone, and you start with 10,000 at chapter 1. He needs 8 Wings, about 6-7 Drops and 4 Robes. You get 3 of each stat-up for free, so he needs to buy 5 Wings, 1-2 Drops and 1 Robe, which costs 35,000 to 40,000 gold, meaning we got about 35,000 to 40,000 gold to spare. Rainbow Potion would save us 10K by reducing the number of Drops and Wings needed by 1, which gives us 45K to 50K to play around with.

Let's compare this to the guy with the most Str, Spd and durability at base, which would be...Michalis. With Rainbow Potion, he'd only need 1 Drop to be bought, and needs no wings or dracoshields to be bought. This means he only costs 5K. Forging a Silver Axe for +14 Mt is...*Does a test, forging a silver axe* oh, you can't actually forge that much. You can only forge +10 mt at best, meaning Michalis can only do 14 damage max. With the 3 attempts you have on Medius, this means at best you will do 96 damage through 3 crits, which don't quite kill Medius. This forge costs above 40K as a note.

Unless you can get Marth close enough to Medius that he can land the finishing blow with Falchion afterwards (with +2 Str and Falchion, he can do that at base with just 3 damage left. Even without the Star Orb, he'd do 4 damage, so you could save money by forging 1 less might on that silver axe) after Michalis gives his life, it might actually be cheaper just to throw everything on Marth at the end and try to proc a crit with 3 attempts than try boosting up whoever else, since even Michalis can turn out to be more costly and he's the best bet you have on a 0% run outside of a spoiled Marth to take out Medius just because of that damn forge.

So dondon, try to focus more and the most economic play you can muster. As a note, for chapter 22 onwards you have Nagi for Dragonslaying. I think she might need a Drop or a Str Band/Rainbow use to OHKO dragons, but it's gonna be more effective than raising Tiki obviously. Just make sure you can play around with a lot of money at all times.

[FionordeQuester]

Hmm, I think you accidently posted after I did. Anyways, you make it sound like I only have three turns to beat Medeus or something. Is that what you're implying? With the whole "three chances" thing? I don't think he'll be beatable in one turn.

Also, I don't think Marth even has the Speed stat needed to survive a round with Medeus, even if I gave him all the Speedwings I could.

Speaking of 0% growths, I really wish this forum allowed you to retitle things.

Edited October 2, 2010 by FionordeQuester

[Fei Mao]

Hmm, I think you accidently posted after I did. Anyways, you make it sound like I only have three turns to beat Medeus or something. Is that what you're implying? With the whole "three chances" thing? I don't think he'll be beatable in one turn.

Also, I don't think Marth even has the Speed stat needed to survive a round with Medeus. He has 25 max Speed, Medeus has 30. That, more than anything, is why I'm so opposed to him.

Speaking of 0% growths, I really wish this forum allowed you to retitle things.

Marth's shield of seal gives him +2 speed so he'll have 27. (Nvm he'll only have 24 speed, 26 with speed bond) IMO it'll be insanely difficult or impossible to chip Medeus slowly since infinite dragon reinforcements spawn near him(and you can't block the spot they spawn from) so you're attacker or attackers chipping Medeus will certainly die on that enemy phase. If you do manage to get all the energy drop in the game (3 from finding them 3 from secret shop) Marth will have 22 strength(20+2 from the shield) and Falchion has 12 MT. (22+(12*3)-42(Medeus def+throne))=16 damage normally 48 on critical so he'll need to crit three times as stated above. (one from his attack, staff user again staff him, and another staff user again staff him.)

Edited October 2, 2010 by Generic Officer

[FionordeQuester]

I don't see why the infinite Dragon reinforcements would be a problem if I managed to get to Medeus to begin with. I mean, I'd probably have forged weapons to instantly kill them by then. I mean, I've had to have been killing them somehow up to this point, and I'm assuming that you'd have enough healers between the maidens you'd recruit to keep everyone shipshape.

Edited October 2, 2010 by FionordeQuester

[eclipse]

Speaking of 0% growths, I really wish this forum allowed you to retitle things.

1. Hit Edit on your first post.

2. Click Use Full Editor.

3. Retitle to whatever you want it to be.

[FionordeQuester]

Thank you Eclipse.

[LycopolisKing]

Marth's shield of seal gives him +2 speed so he'll have 27. (Nvm he'll only have 24 speed, 26 with speed bond)

Wait, what? Isn't that true? A capped Marth has 25 speed +2 from the shield= 27 attack speed, which would make him undouble-able by Medeus.

Oh yeah, 0%.

Edited October 2, 2010 by Maria's bro

[Fei Mao]

I don't see why the infinite Dragon reinforcements would be a problem if I managed to get to Medeus to begin with. I mean, I'd probably have forged weapons to instantly kill them by then. I mean, I've had to have been killing them somehow up to this point, and I'm assuming that you'd have enough healers between the maidens you'd recruit to keep everyone shipshape.

Yes you can kill them instantly kill them in melee with an expensive forge but the problem is when you get near Medeus all the dragons that spawn there will kill someone on their phase (they have 1-2 range in lunatic mode reinforcements can move on enemy phase if you didn't know that) so you can't really instantly kill them in range, so unless if you do kill them all during your phase more dragons will swarm you especially in a 0% growth run where these dragons will double and kill someone.

Here's a video so you can see some of their stats.

Edited October 2, 2010 by Generic Officer

[FionordeQuester]

Hmm...I forgot about that Lunatic thing about reinforcements moving first. I guess that's something I'll have to figure out later.

Could you please tell me how you'd normally deal with that on a normal playthrough?

Edited October 2, 2010 by FionordeQuester

[grandjackal]

Hmm, I think you accidently posted after I did. Anyways, you make it sound like I only have three turns to beat Medeus or something. Is that what you're implying? With the whole "three chances" thing? I don't think he'll be beatable in one turn.

You kinda have to. As pointed out, the reinforcements are a pain, but just fighting through the initial wave is a pain in the ass.

Also, I don't think Marth even has the Speed stat needed to survive a round with Medeus, even if I gave him all the Speedwings I could.

You'd need to give him nearly every wing, save one for a Rainbow/Speed Band use. Then on top of it, 4 Robes just to not get OHKOd.

Hmm...I forgot about that Lunatic thing about reinforcements moving first. I guess that's something I'll have to figure out later.

Could you please tell me how you'd normally deal with that on a normal playthrough?

In a normal playthrough as in Normal Mode? Well fighting through the initial wave isn't hard, and you'd deal with it about the same way you would in the original game.

If you mean normally in a Lunatic playthrough, here's how. Taken a bit from the above video, but improvised.

Required: 4 Rescue Staff uses, 3 Again staff uses, Marth is a badass.

Basically do what the above video does, except don't move Marth (it's kinda pointless). Have Sirius and Julian move to recruit their bishops naturally, having one of them rescue Maric to talk to Ellis. Have Maric use Rescue on Marth. If you hadn't trained Minerva, Rescue her instead for Maria. If you have, she can reach Maria normally like Sirius does. It's possible you could have up to 3 staff users free. I would recommend using Maria to Rescue, leaving Ellis, Lena and Nina free for Again Staff use.

Since Julian's saved the game, you basically can't screw this up. Have the one main staff user on your team have an Again Staff, while the other's in the convoy so one of the 3 freed up Bishops can pull it out. Have Marth attack. Heal. Again. Marth attacks again. Have your last bishop take the again staff from the last user and have Marth attack one last time. This is what I meant by 3 attempts, since Again can give him 3 attempts in 1 turn. In those 3 attacks, he only needs to land one critical hit. If any of those attacks lands a crit? Finish him. If all 3 fail? Reset and try again from the save point.

Thanks to the save point, killing Medius isn't all that hard. It's figuring out how the hell you approach him that's difficult.

...Now upon thinking that over, I realize you only need 2 Rescue uses. Well, guess that means there's a bit more Rescue use freedom beforehand that I was unaware of that could have been of great help.

Edited October 2, 2010 by Amaterasu

[Paperblade]

Hmm...I forgot about that Lunatic thing about reinforcements moving first. I guess that's something I'll have to figure out later.

Could you please tell me how you'd normally deal with that on a normal playthrough?

Step 1: Obtain Time Walk in Staff form (AKA Again Staff)

Step 2: Max out Marth's Speed and make him able to take a hit from Medeus and enough Str that he 5HKOs.

Step 3: Play Greased Lightning (seriously, the song is about 3:15 and my video is about 3:16, this is perfect)

Step 4: Recruit Bishop chicks, and then spam heals/Time Walk on Marth as he picks off Medeus. Restart if you don't get any tippers and you lack enough Time Walks. The chapter is 2 turns long and has a battle save, no complaining.

[grandjackal]

Naw man, you should play The Metal by Tenacious D over Greased Lightning. Come on, you're a hero climbing a cliffside to reach the castle that houses what is basically satan to do battle with him and what is technically the anti-pope.

So metal.

...The live version, not the recorded version. Live version sounds better.

Specifically, this one.

[Parrhesia]

Nah. Listen to literally ANYTHING by Blind Guardian. ...well, perhaps not 'anything' but c'mon, these are the guys that made a song called 'The Bard's Song -- The Hobbit' sound goddamn awesome.

And they're German, which is always a plus for anything metallic.

Edited October 2, 2010 by Furetchen

[fatgamecat]

Q: Lunatic mode is too difficult!! How do I make the game easier?

1. Complete Hard mode (must get the best ending) to unlock male class limits. This lets you do helpful things like make Aran into a general and gives you a much more flexible male My Unit.

2. Use Everybody's Situation. You can get some ridiculously good items (Roro's Axe, Camus's Lance, Kleine's Bow, and Ogma's Sword are some of the best weapons in the game and you can get multiples of them), temp buffs, and free XP. If you have an emulator, you can 'cheat' by setting your windows clock ahead a day at a time and reaping tons of everybody's situation rewards.. this doesn't work on a real DS, though.

3. Use the wifi features such as the free Rainbow Potion, or Hero Weapons, Again, and Rescue staves in the wifi shop.

4. Find someones save file that has already completed Lunatic mode so you can access stat boosters in the base store.

5. Save/load for growths from save points often. You can really only feasibly do this for one unit per save point, but it adds up.

6. Skip some items/recruits - most of the recruits are crap past Merric anyway, and if they don't have an item you want, just kill them. Ignore turn counts and take as long as you want to complete maps.

[FionordeQuester]

I plan on taking as long as I want to beat maps, but other than that, I'm not going to do most of that stuff. I want to do a 0% growths run without any of the advantages you get for beating the game once, or from going to an online store. All units will be recruited, if I can help it. Everybody's Situation sounds helpful though.

Edited October 2, 2010 by FionordeQuester

[grandjackal]

I plan on taking as long as I want to beat maps, but other than that, I'm not going to do most of that stuff.

Problem with that being Lunatic doesn't like it when you take your time. Some maps will give you a break spot, but most will throw a powerful amount of reinforcements to take you out.

I want to do a 0% growths run without any of the advantages you get for beating the game once, or from going to an online store. All units will be recruited, if I can help it. Everybody's Situation sounds helpful though.

A 0% growth run without the Rainbow Potion simply sounds as though you're making it purely harder on yourself for no reason. That, and without looking through lategame, it might not even be possible.

As for everyone recruited...It's possible, but some maps will drive you insane (chapter 19).

[dondon151]

I like the idea of the Rainbow Potion because this is likely one of the only times in H3 where 77 uses might not be able to actually last you the entire game. More resource allocation decisions, etc.

You could also theoretically abuse "Everybody's situation" to the point where you never actually have to buy weapons (except for Javelins and Hand Axes, I guess).

Edited October 4, 2010 by dondon151

[fatgamecat]

Consider that you don't get warp staves to 1 turn half the game, unlike H5. I'd say you'd have a lot of trouble with any chapter that throws tons of reinforcements at you such as 16, 19, and 20. You'll also have trouble with chapters where Astram is chasing you or Ch 22-24 where you're expected to clear the map before the endless waves of dragon reinforcements catch up.

I know you want a challenge, but I think you'll find that you want every advantage you can get, including male class limits removed, base store stat boosts, and abusing the heck out of everybody's situation with an emulator by setting your windows clock ahead.

Maybe throw some generic units in there too because at 0% growths they will show up with better stats than most of your cast later in the game. And I would suggest loading up one person with a lot of stat boosts and supports so they can be your 'key' unit like My Unit is on a regular lunatic run.

Edited October 5, 2010 by mjemirzian

[LycopolisKing]

Is the Rescue staff removed from Lunatic as well as the Warp?

[Fei Mao]

Is the Rescue staff removed from Lunatic as well as the Warp?

There are still rescue staffs warp gets replaced with fortify.

Edited October 5, 2010 by Generic Officer