Let's Watch a Noob try to play FE4

[FutureCam]

Wow, this place has changed since I was last on. Anyway, I recently decided to actually try and play FE4.

...Then I read up on the pairings system and my mind essentially self-destructed.

So, dear people who actually know what the hell they are doing, I am merely going to use the pairings you provide me (One each).

If I missed anyone (Don't think I did), tell me.

Adean: Midir

Ayra: ?

Lachesis: Claude (Might as well give it a shot...)

Sylvia: Lex

Fury: Noish? May change later. Depends what I feel like.

Brigid: Dew

Tailtyu: Levin

After this has been decided, the chaos shall begin. Enjoy it, you inevitably sadistic fellow players...for if someone dies, I shall not be reloading from a save state. No plot armor here, folks.

EDIT: Alright, let's get cracking...

EDIT2: It's not really my 'first' playthrough. I gave it a casual shot a year ago, didn't get any pairings other than those given to me, and generally didn't do most of it right - I believe I quit at around Chapter 8. So this is my first 'real' playthrough, with attempts at actually getting to the end. Just clarifying.

EDIT3: Due to the unfortunate premature death of Holyn at the hands of several ArchArmors in CH2 (ONLY 52% HIT ON THE FATAL ONE, DAMMIT!), Ayra is now looking for a new partner. Suggestions?

Edited August 12, 2011 by FutureCam

[Celice]

You can't really be ruined by pairings, and I think there's enough conversations to pair most people up. You could just pay attention to who wants to talk with who, and you should end up doing fine.

The pairings have impact, but as far as making the game harder... getting you through the game won't necessarily impact you. It'll just change how you'll use certain units.

[FutureCam]

Really? Because browsing through old posts, it looks like it's kind of a big deal...

[Psych]

Claude x Lachesis

[Anouleth]

Some pairings are kind of impossible to screw up. Skasaha, Lakche, Lana, Faval, Leen, Sety, and Fee can do fine with any father unless you deliberately go out of the way to give them their worst possible parent and don't let them inherit good items. Try to pass down holy weapons and try to pass down pursuit and try to pass down Hero weapons and you'll be good. And even with the worst imaginable pairings, you get really good units like Leaf, Fin, Celice, Shanan, Oifaye, and Aless.

Obviously if you're doing a super-optimised run, pairing is a big deal. But if you're playing casually you have a lot of freedom. What's a much bigger deal is finding certain hidden items. Many of the best items in the game are acquired from conversations, or by moving certain units to certain locations on the map (which are not told to the player and are often completely unobvious).

[Maji]

Disclaimer: I have only played through FE4 five times, others played it way more, so I am far from what you may call a pro, be warned, and others may disagree with my pairings, if so, they're probably right. Dx

I'll try and not be technical, as I know when I was a noob, when people start talking about "Lester getting Pursuit and Rana being good" I was like "who the hell is Lester?" mainly due to me not wanting to read too much into Gen. 2.

Aideen/Midir- Nice and easy to obtain and the outcome is pretty satisfying.

Ayra/Holyn- Major blood bonus, and Moonlight Sword *

Lachesis/Beowulf- Offspring will be strong, as well as it's a rather easy pairing to achieve.

Sylvia/Alone or Lex: Some people just kill her off and use the Valkyrie on her in Ch. 5, but for a first time player, not using a Dancer might not be recommendable. I once went with Lex (found this one out by chance), and there's a lot to say about a Gen. 2 Dancer who can keep up with levels and have a decent Def to boot.

Fury/Claude: You'll have access to the Valkyrie in Gen. 2 as well as a flying healer.

Brigid/Dew- The Gen 2 Thief will be able to siphon HP thanks to Sunlight Sword, and both kids will have good growths to boot.

Tiltyu/Levin Providing you get Holsety in Ch. 4 (don't make the same mistake I did when I first played FE4 and miss Holsety D; ) you get haxx weapons from the first chapter in Gen. 2.

*- IIRC, Moonlight Sword interferes with Shooting Star Sword?

[Celice]

Really? Because browsing through old posts, it looks like it's kind of a big deal...

It's sort of like this. Most of the arguments for something against the other? Dividing peas on a plate, and calling them armies. There are differences and certain pairings offer more than others, like stats, weapons, and growths. The comparisons differ largely between one another, but their overall impact does not differ. It's looking at something that's, for sake of illustation, a 1% margin, but dissecting that into a hundred pieces. It's entirely valid to do so, as it reveals the impact of that 1% (pairings, in this case) has. But it's not going to influence anything larger than that 1%.

*- IIRC, Moonlight Sword interferes with Shooting Star Sword?

I think they activate separately in the vanilla game. They can't intercept one another... sadly. But I'm not forevers-sure.

A lot of the Charm of FE4 is spoiled by players learning what's to look out for. A pure, blind first run can make the second play way better, because you have a better idea of what to do, and of certain things to pursue. Having a first play set-up for you, and strategized ahead of time, tends to sort of depreciate that first-experience. It's ultimately up to the player to decide what they want to know ahead of time--but you are missing out on an aspect by asking for clarification. And, it's not like you're playing Ogre Battle, where all the secrets and tricks are way out in the middle of the boons. FE4 is pretty obvious most of the time on where and what you can investigate.

Edited August 11, 2011 by Celice

[Shin]

LevinxSylvia! DewxAyra. Both turn up around the same time, they'll get good stats and Sol means they can tank to some extent.

[CT075]

hey wait a sec if you're me then you should know what all the good pairings are already

I would recommend just doing whatever feels natural as far as pairings go. You don't have to go a lot out of your way to do most of the better ones (with the exception of LevinTiltyu or BriggidHolyn).

[a.f.k.a. Howard Hughes]

Noish/Fury

Noish has quite awesome skill set (good enough stats to not care about lack of holy blood) and Sety dont give a shit about who his father is anyway. Might as well focus on Fee's awesomeness. Im still facepalming over Levin!Fee's Strenght

Noish/Aira because I came once I saw Lakche/Skasaha with Pursuit, Nihil, Meteor Sword, Critical, Charge

Edited August 11, 2011 by Ho.M.the.Money

[Shin]

Noish/Fury

Noish has quite awesome skill set (good enough stats to not care about lack of holy blood) and Sety dont give a shit about who his father is anyway. Might as well focus on Fee's awesomeness. Im still facepalming over Levin!Fee's Strenght

With the conversation, they usually end up on par :P.

[a.f.k.a. Howard Hughes]

With the conversation, they usually end up on par :P.

I might sound like complete moron but what conversation?

EDIT Oh that one late/10

Edited August 11, 2011 by Ho.M.the.Money

[FutureCam]

Prologue PT1

**

(I'll most likely be doing a capture-by-capture log and not a chapter log. Thank the lord for Savestates)

**

Alec and Noish get sent west to save the villages, while Sigurd goes south to start heading towards the castle. Arden gets left behind, as he will in 90% of chapters, although I'll probably shove him in an arena a few times anyway.

Enemies turn, Midir gets OHKO'd, as usual, while Sigurd and Alec get attacked, with Sigurd killing his opponent and Alec reduces his to about half health.

Lex and Azel show up, with Azel eliminating the bandit on the nearest village and Lex saving it.

Alec kills his current foe, with Noish one-rounding the bandit on the village closest to Chalphy. Sigurd goes further south, taking out one of those pesky archers.

Sigurd gets attacked four times, one-rounding each of them, and dodges the hand axe and archer that followed up, levelling up in the process, getting STR, SKL, SPD, LUK and RES. Lex takes a hit, but replies with gusto.

Cuan, Ethlin and Fin show up. I send Fin west with Noish and Alec, while Cuan and Ethlin go south to help Sigurd. Sigurd pulls back a little to regroup and get healed. Azel finishes the bandit that attacked Lex, and Lex goes charging into the next two, using the extra move after his attack to get onto the temple.

Lex gets attacked by the hand-axe guy and the regular bandit, killing the regular bandit and taking the hit from the axe. No worries, temple will heal him.

Cuan and Ethlin double-team the local bandit, while Sigurd weakens the one with the hand axe. Alec charges boldly on, Noish and Finn a few squares behind him, ready to back him up if he gets attacked because I forgot to check the bad guy's range. -_-'

Azel weakens the hand-axe bandit, dodging the return blow, and Lex finishes him off before dashing to the village in the top-left corner.

In the enemies turn, Ethlin dodges the three missile attacks aimed at her and Sigurd kills the bandit that attacked him. Nothing else of note happens.

Sigurd kills the weakened hand-axer, Cuan attacks the other one, and Ethlin heals him. Azel starts to head south, while everyone else keeps moving in their same direction as last turn. The enemy launch an arrow and hand-axe at Ethlin, who dodges, and one bandit attacks Alec, who dodges and weakens him. Back in my turn, Lex weakens the bandit in the northwest village, and Alec finishes the bandit and moves onto a forest tile. Noish and Finn move forwards, with Noish in attack range and Finn just out of it. Down south, another hand-axe bandit bites the dust while the archer dodges Ethlin and Cuan's attacks. Damnit.

Alec takes a lot of hits, but lives and deals out some pain of his own, leveling up in the process, gaining STR and DEF. In my turn, he kills one of them and then runs the hell away. Noish and Finn move in, with Finn killing a wounded one and Noish taking on a fresh guy. Both move into cover afterwards.

Lex kills the bandit, but leaves the village open so someone else can grab the cash, moving down to assist. Azel also continues down.

Ethlin kills the archer, and Sigurd and Cuan start the mad dash to save the Speed Ring village. Who would be a good person to give that to, anyway?

After a boring turn of innefective ranged attacks from the bandits, Sigurd and Cuan take out one of the three guarding DiMaggio while moving to the village. Ethlin moves to catch up, poking a bandit to level up, getting STR and...oh wait...nothing else. The Noish/Finn tag team takes out another hand axe user, leaving an archer left there. Lex begins saving the village next to them, and Azel moves even further down. The 8hp Alec gets out of the archer's line of fire.

I just realized Lex leveled up twice, so here's his statline:

Anyway, Lex and Noish kill the archer, Finn goes onto a church, and Azel and Alec move up to help with the last village. Sigurd kills the bandit on the Speed Ring village, but doesn't save the village. Cuan and Ethlin take out another bodyguard.

Noish levels, but I go screw it, and decide to give a screenshot of the end-of-capture stats of everybody instead of the individual levels. Cuan levels, and the final bodyguard is dead. Moving in to kill the boss. I notice the lack of ranged attack and low MDEF, and act accordingly. Azel kicks his ass over the course of a few turns, finally hitting LV2.

Before I capture, I must ask...who should get the speed ring?

End of Capture stats: (Left to right: STR, MGC, SKL, SPD, LCK, DEF, MDF)

[Darros]

Fin should get the speed ring so he can double hunters.

[FutureCam]

Prologue PT2

**

Alright then. Finn moves down to grab the speed ring, and Sigurd captures the castle. Everyone else regroups around the center-ish villiage. Ethlin hands out heals.

Enemies turn. You know, I think I've forgotten something from my first playthrough of this level - OH DEAR GOD THAT'S A LOT OF AXEFIGHTERS.

Must hurry can't let Alvis XPSteal must hurry...

Sigurd shoots up, while the rest of my forces attempt to take cover in the forests and wear them down. Alec and Noish take the lead, with Cuan and Midir providing ranged support. Azel slowly works his way up, with Ethlin hanging back behind Cuan for Love Crits and healing. After a rather tense turn, with Ethlin taking quite a bit from ranged attacks, Sigurd and Azel do a big damn hero. Noish CritiKills something.

The turn I'm too busy trying to make sure no-one dies on me to take any decent notes, but some landmark moments include Azel taking NO DAMAGE from the archers as they go after him (Three consecutive dodges. F YEAH.) and Cuan getting more LoveCrits than I thought possible (Two, but still, in my experience LoveCrits almost never happen). After that, though, the army of doom was dismantled and I marched on Evans, a fight that can be described as "Throw a Silver Sword Sigurd at it until it dies."

Which I did. With gusto.

END-OF-PROLOGUE LEVELS AND STATS:

Highlights: No-one died, the units worked well together.

Problems: I think I under-used Fin and Lex in this chapter. Got to work on that.

MVP: Ethlin. She didn't do much in combat, but she provided a fistful of love-critical-Javelins from Cuan and without her healing abilities the fight against the horde of bandits would have gone south very, VERY quickly. If you're counting combat, I'd probably say Noish or Alec, as they took out a lot of the bandits in the first two turns of the wave.

EDIT: You'd think it would be Sigurd, but as soon as he got the Silver Sword he'd become an XP Sink, so I actually held him back for most of that fight.

Edited August 11, 2011 by FutureCam

[FutureCam]

Chapter One

**

Okay, this isn't going to be as in-detail, because it's a fairly boring part.

But one thing I did that most of you will probably find strange: I went for Marpha first. Not to capture it, but to decimate their army so I don't get bogged down like I did in my last playthrough. Of note, if you stick Dew on the solitary forest tile, the only thing that can hit him is the Captain at 6% and the archers at around 10%, so by leaving him there you keep that massive horde in one place while Dew gets a ton of money and XP, while healing himself somewhat reliably with Solar Sword. THEN I sent Alec to lead Aira on a merry-go-round while Sigurd captured the fort and recruited her.

After that, it was Azel, Alec and Noish tag-teaming Kinbois, with Noish delivering the final blow - although I'll probably make someone else take the Skill ring. Yes, I really like using Azel as a boss killer - if only there was a Nihil ring...

EDIT: After a bit of thought, would Dew/Aira produce anything interesting/fun? I like the idea of swordmasters that can heal themselves...

**And the rest...**

After the by-the-book process of recruiting Jamka, I used a regular pincer tactic to defeat the silenced Sandima. IE: Cavalry led by Cuan to take the non-forested route, while the infantry led by Jamka took the forest route. After much begging, my more Jugdral-savvy GF told me where to find Lex's hero axe, for which I am eternally grateful. I used Dew and Jamka to kill Sandima, planning to sell Jamka's magic ring as he will NEVER need it. I was thinking about giving it to Ethlin to boost her healing and her Magic Sword attacks - if this is inherently bad, I'll pass it on to Azel.

END OF CHAPTER LEVELS/STATS (Apologies for the multiple screens...):

Positive things: By the end of it, Dew was LV5. I'm saving up so that the Pursuit Ring can be given to him, and therefore Patty if I continue with the planned Dew/Brigid pairing.

Negative things: About ten tonnes of axemen threw themselves at Sigurd instead of my other troops, causing him to steal a ton of XP. Fortunately, I still recovered, but I'm going to put him on the back burner for now.

MVP: Combat-Wise, Sigurd. Utility-wise...it's a tie between Alec for leading Aira on that merry chase, or Edain for her Relive staff.

Arena Report: All of them went in as deep as they could before leaving. Yay, arena abusing.

Weapon report: Sold Cuan's steel lance to Fin since he can double with it thanks to the speed ring, and gave him an iron one. Gave Dew a slim sword to increase his dodging. Noish and Alec both now have an Iron Lance and a Steel Sword, giving them flexibility in the weapon triangle.

**

Edited August 11, 2011 by FutureCam

[Psych]

I would suggest Dew/Ayra and then either Holyn/Briggid with Patty with Thunder and Hero sword, or I guess you could try something like Midir/Briggid.

[MasterJP28]

I would suggest Dew/Ayra and then either Holyn/Briggid with Patty with Thunder and Hero sword, or I guess you could try something like Midir/Briggid.

Lester needs Pursuit, so Midir is for Aideen. Jamka makes a better pairing to Briggid thanks to Continue. Patty gains Pursuit upon promotion.

[Joerachi]

Lester needs Pursuit, so Midir is for Aideen. Jamka makes a better pairing to Briggid thanks to Continue. Patty gains Pursuit upon promotion.

Funny thing is that if Patty wants any hope of being ok, she needs pursuit before hand.

Edited August 12, 2011 by Joekitty

[Dark Sage]

This is why I pair Briggd with Beowulf. That way, Patty can get Pursuit, Charge and sword inheritance.

Ranged stealing is always fun.

[FutureCam]

Chapter Two: Or, when the SH%T hits the fan.

**

The first part of this chapter went well. Then I attacked Mackily, and Holyn AND Alec died to those stupid ArchKnights after I trapped myself in a bottleneck. After that, though, everything proceeded as it should - I passed on the Hero Lance to Fury, gave Dew the Pursuit Ring (Still gonna pair him up with Brigid, so giving Patty the pursuit ring is a nice touch too) and Levin got the Shield ring through pure chance. Beowulf got the Armor Cutter and put it to good use at Mackily, but spent the rest of the level relationship bumping with Lachesis.

Good Stuff: Lex hit LV20 and promoted. Dew has an Elite ring and a Pursuit ring and is rapidly approaching promotion. Noish is becoming exceedingly valuable, and I got really lucky with the RNG in Fury's run at the arena, getting to a Star rank. She then took out the ballista, thanks to a series of highly innacurate shots, before relationship bumping with Noish.

Bad Stuff: Holyn and Alec died.

MVP: Levin. Dear sweet merciful Llolith, LEVIN.

**

So, before heading on, quick question: If I ressurect Holyn with the Valkyrie staff, does he still have the love points kept with Aira, and will his conversation for the boost and Brave Sword still remain a choice? (I think that conversation is in the same chapter...)

[CT075]

I think love points are reset after death. Maybe. I'm not sure.

And I'm nearly 75% positive that you can't have the Hero Sword conversation after seizing the first castle in chapter 3.

LexAira is better anyway you're supposed to be me you should know that

[Zak Something]

I think love points are reset after death. Maybe. I'm not sure.

They aren't reset after death.

[FutureCam]

Chapter Three: Onwards, to ...Dew soloing Orgahil?!

**

This pretty much opened (After slaughtering the arena with everyone) pretty slowly. Move up, take out, Levin solo'd the armor knights while Fin, Noish and Fury took out the other guys. The rest headed north. I kept Lachesis back a bit, preparing for Eltosian. After Fury took out the thunder sword boss, I moved the mounted units back down quickly while keeping the foot units up north for the dragon knights and Orgahil. I managed to talk to Eltosian almost as soon as he got to Augusty, and after that, it was a simple matter of all of my mounted units beating the ever-loving crap out of him.

Shagall was brought down by a warped-in Levin tag-teaming with Fin, while the STR bonus village went to Dew. I moved my units back up before I captured the second castle, and from there everything continued as per normal, except...

...Dew killed the Leg Ring guy. The rest had 0% hit chance, and he just slowly cut his way through them. I sent Fury over the ocean to help out Brigid/Tailtyu/Claude. After that was sorted, before attacking Orgahil, I had Claude warped back to Augusty so he could use the Valkyrie staff, bringing Holyn back to life. After Holyn fought his way through the arena, he moved up to give Ayra the Hero Sword.

Dew got his Wind Sword, and Brigid got her Ichival. This was happening at the same time as Fin (Must get XP for gen2...) taking out the guards and going to LV15 while Levin killed the boss.

**

Good things: I forgot to mention this in my CH2 report, but Lachesis got her Knight Ring. Holyn brought back. Dew hitting LV20, basically ensuring that he'll be able to do stuff in conjunction with Brigid next level. He's keeping the Pursuit ring to pass it onto Patty.

Bad things: My Lachesis is only LV12. I may need to sell her Dew's Elite Ring to get her as a Master Knight.

MVP: Dew.

[MasterJP28]

True. Beowolf does offer a good skill set. And Leaf does need the Pursuit ring early on. If you can afford to give Patty the Pursuit ring instead of Leaf, Holyn and Dew also become great parents for her.