Othin Plays FE13!

[Trickster]

quick question: can you activate astra with magic?

[Remnant Sage]

You can activate Astra with any weapon type, so magic works too. I don't think it works with Slime though. I'll have to try it at some point.

[Leif]

Well, with All Stats +2, anything with a 48 Luck cap can have 50 Luck all the time, so I've been making use of that. Double helps too, but most of the time when I'm doing much with the characters at max stats, I'm doubling them with various characters to build supports, so counting on that doesn't really work.

Why not rely on double? It always grants a support bonus plus stat increases. More, it would free up a skill slot so that you could replace All Stats +2 with something more useful.

For example. I planned to double My Unit with Swordmaster!Wood to get the +3 luck bonus and +4 Speed bonus. My unit would have Weapon Saver, Life Absorb, Vantage, Miracle, and Vengeance. That way he can be granted a 50/50 chance to survive a fatal blow. If he were to survive that fatal blow, he would have +79 attack (if he maxed HP) with Vengeance (which would pretty much activate all the time if he equipped a Thor's Hammer). Vantage would go off all the time and would allow my unit to destroy any enemy unit that shows up.

Edited June 11, 2012 by Leif

[Othin]

Why not rely on double? It always grants a support bonus plus stat increases. More, it would free up a skill slot so that you could replace All Stats +2 with something more useful.

For example. I planned to double My Unit with Swordmaster!Wood to get the +3 luck bonus and +4 Speed bonus. My unit would have Weapon Saver, Life Absorb, Vantage, Miracle, and Vengeance. That way he can be granted a 50/50 chance to survive a fatal blow. If he were to survive that fatal blow, he would have +79 attack (if he maxed HP) with Vengeance (which would pretty much activate all the time if he equipped a Thor's Hammer). Vantage would go off all the time and would allow my unit to destroy any enemy unit that shows up.

I use Double, but I can't rely on having specific characters available for Double. If I want a character to be building a support with, say, Degel as a General with 13 Luck, then they're going to want her in Double and aren't going to get much of a Luck bonus to ensure Weapon Saver activations.

For most of this, skills aren't a huge concern; I don't need every slow. All Stats +2 is great, anyway.

[Othin]

So I just finished Ch11 Lunatic, and... wow. That was without a doubt the most intense chapter I've played in an FE game.

It starts out surprisingly tame. For the first time in Lunatic, most enemies are willing to be baited on their own instead of charging in packs. This peace lasts for a few turns. Then the reinforcements start showing up and charging, bringing other enemies with them. And then they just keep coming. I blocked off the three forts in the upper left and was able to keep any enemies from getting up there, but I couldn't hold the other forts, and kept having to back off while killing enough of them that I could push back before running out of room to run. See, the middle fort, near a couple of others, is just at the edge of Gangrel's range, along with a couple of his Mages.

And Lunatic Gangrel is terrifying.

32 Mt with his forged Thunder Sword and 29 Spd. For a Ch11 boss. Without bonuses, he had the speed to double my entire team, with the exception of my +Spd MU, and the power to 2HKO everyone except Libera. Both were regardless two-rounded and didn't have the power to hurt Gangrel much at range, where he could attack.

Fortunately, I didn't have to worry about holding that fort, because the last group of reinforcements appeared around Turn 8. Unfortunately, that's when Gangrel started moving with the rest of his team. More fortunately, I remembered at this point about my Barrier staff and how it now works at a distance. I used MU to distract Gangrel while carefully dealing with the other enemies; with the boost from Barrier he could survive two hits, although he needed to use Concoctions pretty much continuously to survive. And being isolated, he didn't have an easy to get more once his ran out.

So this continues for a couple of turns with MU countering Gangrel for tiny damage: Thunder did 8 damage to his 49 HP, and accuracy was less than I would've liked. Meanwhile, I move Krom into position. Krom with MU in Double was able to get just enough Spd to avoid being doubled; any other character wouldn't give the +6 Spd necessary. With a Barrier use, Krom was able to avoid the 2HKO and therefore could have survived the enemy phase if necessary. Didn't come to that, though; Krom cut through most of Gangrel's remaining HP with a single hit and MU finished him off with a Dual Attack. This was fortunate, since Ronku had been in Double with MU, and getting MU to jump on Krom meant leaving Ronku in Gangrel's range. I would've had to use Rescue on him, which I didn't want because I had already used it twice while falling back earlier in the map and only had two uses left.

So now I go on to Ch12. I was not surprised to see the increasing number of promoted enemies, since they were there on my two previous playthroughs as well. I was more surprised to see that most of them were using forged Silver weapons and have over 20 Spd. Also, there are about six enemies with forged Beast Killers. That's 39 Mt against horses and other stuff, before applying Str. Good from a balance perspective, since I had worried that there didn't seem to be enough of them to balance out horses. I was going to say it's good for me, too, since ever since making Frederick a Dragonmaster, I haven't had any horse-mounted characters on the front lines. But realizing that they have the same Mt and more Hit than an unforged Silver Lance, I don't think I have any advantage at all. This mode is really living up to its name.

To illustrate their power, the Paladins both double and OHKO Velvet. Granted, while I've been using her since she joined, she's mainly been in Double and therefore hasn't gained many levels. But still.

Master Seals are in high demand. I've promoted Krom, MU, and Sariya, and promoting is especially important in this mode for staying ahead of the enemies, although Sariya is still having some issues. Liz and Mariabel are both LV10 and need them, and Serge will when she joins, as well. Good thing they become available in shops right after this map.

Edited June 12, 2012 by Othin

[BBM]

Was the objective of the chapter to Rout or Kill Boss?

[Remnant Sage]

Chapter 11's a rout map.

[Othin]

Ch11, Ch23, S20. All chapters that involve fighting a major villain and seem like they should by all rights be Defeat Boss maps, but then you rush and kill the boss and it turns out you still have a bunch of enemies left to deal with. Not such a big deal on Normal, except for S20. A bigger deal on Hard. On Lunatic... better hope you remembered it from Hard. I can't see myself actually killing Lunatic Gangrel before routing the rest of the enemies, but I can certainly see myself trying to rush him and dying horribly if I had forgotten.

One nice touch: I turn animations off for Lunatic because of the time and resets involved, but they still go on for major boss battles like Gangrel, which just makes them that much more exciting. There are several options; I'm guessing one leaves them on for all bosses, but I haven't tried it yet.

[Dark Sage]

One nice touch: I turn animations off for Lunatic because of the time and resets involved, but they still go on for major boss battles like Gangrel, which just makes them that much more exciting. There are several options; I'm guessing one leaves them on for all bosses, but I haven't tried it yet.

FE12 does the same for Medeus and Hardin IIRC.

[Velth]

One nice touch: I turn animations off for Lunatic because of the time and resets involved, but they still go on for major boss battles like Gangrel, which just makes them that much more exciting. There are several options; I'm guessing one leaves them on for all bosses, but I haven't tried it yet.

nope, the only bosses that have animations on no matter what are gangrel, renha, valhart, inverse, fauder and gimle what the animation options do in order of appearance are

On

animations on only for your units(all phases)

animations on only for player phase

individual

Off

and the option under the animation one is staff animations and it turns it on/off

[Othin]

Aww, that's disappointing. I like how "just bosses" is the default in Berwick Saga; shame it's not an option here.

[cheetah7071]

That's odd, while I found C11 to be a pain, it was mostly due to the heroes and sages, not Gangrel himself. Not really sure what the difference is; maybe my guys were just higher level?

[Othin]

I killed the Hero and the Sage fairly early; the Sage was particularly easy because I was able to bait him with Libera on the first turn and finish him before the other enemies started doing much. He was powerful, but not too threatening alone. The Hero was scarier, especially when I had left Krom in his range to lure him and hadn't even considered the possibility that he might get doubled, which he did. Fortunately, he survived.

I should note that I only actually restarted once. On the other hand, I took about an hour on the successful attempt. Only 13 turns, but those were some long turns.

And yeah, you definitely had the level advantage.

Edited June 12, 2012 by Othin

[Westbrick]

That's odd, while I found C11 to be a pain, it was mostly due to the heroes and sages, not Gangrel himself. Not really sure what the difference is; maybe my guys were just higher level?

I think that's been pretty clearly established!

Anyway, Ch.11 seems like a pretty tough romp indeed without dark magic. Looking forward to some of these later write-ups! Are you planning to do children maps?

[Othin]

I think that's been pretty clearly established!

Anyway, Ch.11 seems like a pretty tough romp indeed without dark magic. Looking forward to some of these later write-ups! Are you planning to do children maps?

For this run, I think I'm going to just stick to the story maps, as you did. After completing the main story, I'll go around and do the extra stuff; I'm working on filling out the Support Library, so that means pairing everyone in some new combination on every playthrough. I also want to see and try out those other sidequests and DLC maps on Lunatic. For this reason, I'm planning on keeping the file for at least a few weeks to when the remaining major stuff like Paris is released. I'm still using my Normal and Hard files, so I'll need to wait until then to start a Lunatic+ run.

For Lunatic+, I'm planning on keeping the no Nosferatu / Inverse's Darkness rule. I'll also maintain the rules I've been using in this playthrough of not using Everyone's Room or the Wireless feature, and tack on a rule about no buying items from merchants. However, for Lunatic+, I plan on completing whatever sidequests are available, as well as allowing myself one run of each of the core DLC maps: ST, KvK, and RvB. So I won't necessarily be going for the highest challenge all on one run, at least not this time. I'm really interested in seeing how the bonus content might fit into a run like this, but I'm not going for it on my current Lunatic run. And I still don't trust Lunatic+ to play fair enough to be worth restricting myself unnecessarily.

[Cammy white]

well lag

Edited June 12, 2012 by Cammy white

[Cammy white]

may i ask do u really need to beat eirika to get a bride class

[Othin]

may i ask do u really need to beat eirika to get a bride class

The Bride's Bouquet is the reward for each time you complete RvB2, where you fight the FE6/7/8 teams and need to rout all of them. So yes, that includes defeating Eirika. There is no other way to access the class.

[Cammy white]

aw so u really need to pay for a unusual class

[Othin]

aw so u really need to pay for a unusual class

Yeah, that's the point. The class is part of the incentive to buy the DLC.

[Othin]

So, those promoted enemies in Ch12... they're turning out to be a bit of an issue.

The first two Paladins charge you from the start with their squads, and there are also a bunch of Knights around. I was able to kill the first two Paladins and form a wall on Turn 2 to hold off the remaining enemies, but I wound up with Olivia and Mariabel right behind the wall with nothing I could do to keep one of them from being OHKOed by the surviving Knight with a Short Spear. Also, one of the Bow Knights started moving on Turn 2, and might be even more of a threat because of how scary ranged attacks are. I think I can spend Turn 3 dealing with the remaining unpromoted enemies before getting ready to fight the Bow Knight on Turn 4 when he'll reach my team, but then there's another Bow Knight that'll probably start moving on Turn 3 and approach on Turn 4 as well, so this will be a challenge.

I feel like I'm probably going to burn through my remaining Rescue uses here, but looking into things, turns out that in addition to Master Seals, this chapter's shop sells Rescue staffs, so after this map, I'll be able to get as many of those as I can afford, as well. I'll probably buy three so my healers can all spam them. Never really used them on the other difficulty levels, but they're getting extremely useful here.

[arvilino]

So, those promoted enemies in Ch12... they're turning out to be a bit of an issue.

The first two Paladins charge you from the start with their squads, and there are also a bunch of Knights around. I was able to kill the first two Paladins and form a wall on Turn 2 to hold off the remaining enemies, but I wound up with Olivia and Mariabel right behind the wall with nothing I could do to keep one of them from being OHKOed by the surviving Knight with a Short Spear. Also, one of the Bow Knights started moving on Turn 2, and might be even more of a threat because of how scary ranged attacks are. I think I can spend Turn 3 dealing with the remaining unpromoted enemies before getting ready to fight the Bow Knight on Turn 4 when he'll reach my team, but then there's another Bow Knight that'll probably start moving on Turn 3 and approach on Turn 4 as well, so this will be a challenge.

I feel like I'm probably going to burn through my remaining Rescue uses here, but looking into things, turns out that in addition to Master Seals, this chapter's shop sells Rescue staffs, so after this map, I'll be able to get as many of those as I can afford, as well. I'll probably buy three so my healers can all spam them. Never really used them on the other difficulty levels, but they're getting extremely useful here.

Yeah the promoted enemies can be pretty nasty, they basically have near double the statistics of the unpromoted ones. The Beast Slayer that you get in this chapter and if you have it the one you get for 400 fame come in handy. If you do Gaiden 4 Anna's quite nice to use for this and the upcoming chapters since her high speed and magic paired with the Levin Sword is pretty effective aswell if she's fast enough(though Paladins do have a bit of Res).

[Othin]

Well, I'm avoiding sidequests and any use of the Wireless function, including Fame. As for the Beast Slayer here, I'm sure it'll be useful, but the problem is surviving long enough to get it to someone who can use it well...

[Othin]

And dragged myself through Ch12. It's amazing how different maps progress in Lunatic compared to other modes with the huge AI changes. So many of them turn incredibly defensive; I never left the bottom half in this one and barely left the bottom quarter.

I'm getting more and more viable units as I'm getting to promote a bunch of characters that join at high enough levels and therefore they can take a hit and hit back, and yet the maps really aren't getting any easier because the enemies just keep up that pressure to need even the increased resources I have. It's crazy and awesome.

Hmm. I forget whether Ch13 is Rout or Defeat Boss, and this difference is particularly important on Lunatic with a map with a ton of reinforcements. I know some of those reinforcements are promoted here, but I guess I'll just need trial and error to figure out when they appear where on this mode.

[cheetah7071]

And dragged myself through Ch12. It's amazing how different maps progress in Lunatic compared to other modes with the huge AI changes. So many of them turn incredibly defensive; I never left the bottom half in this one and barely left the bottom quarter.

I'm getting more and more viable units as I'm getting to promote a bunch of characters that join at high enough levels and therefore they can take a hit and hit back, and yet the maps really aren't getting any easier because the enemies just keep up that pressure to need even the increased resources I have. It's crazy and awesome.

Hmm. I forget whether Ch13 is Rout or Defeat Boss, and this difference is particularly important on Lunatic with a map with a ton of reinforcements. I know some of those reinforcements are promoted here, but I guess I'll just need trial and error to figure out when they appear where on this mode.

13 is the boat chapter, right?

I'm pretty sure it's rout.