Westbrick Plays FE13 Lunatic+!

[Othin]

Ah, right. Not particularly dangerous, but we can add it to the list of possible Prologue enemy skills. I wonder if the skills enemies can have on Lunatic+ will change from chapter to chapter?

Krom&MU apart from Frederick put the hit% at 58, while next to him it was at 48. I'm still not entirely familiar with how the support mechanics operate, but this seemed like a rather large jump.

Concentration is a regular Mage skill. It's normally learned at LV10+, but it seems enemies aren't caring about that, especially if the Barbarians already have Gamble.

From what I understand, enemies start with Luna+, Vantage+, Pass, Accuracy +10, and Absolute Hit as their options, then add Great Shield+, Holy Shield+, and Counter starting in Ch3. I don't think it changes after that point.

And yeah, that's entirely because of the support mechanics. With no support conversations, MU should get one support level for every character adjacent. Just MU gives him the level one bonus of +10 Hit; having both MU and Frederick adjacent instead gives him the level two bonus of +10 Hit and +10 Avo. So that's why the enemy's accuracy went down by 10.

[Westbrick]

And yeah, that's entirely because of the support mechanics. With no support conversations, MU should get one support level for every character adjacent. Just MU gives him the level one bonus of +10 Hit; having both MU and Frederick adjacent instead gives him the level two bonus of +10 Hit and +10 Avo. So that's why the enemy's accuracy went down by 10.

So then would having Liz also next to Krom have raised the support bonus to level three? I assume there's a limit here.

EDIT: Scratch that, I misunderstood what you were getting at. For those who don't know what we're talking about, it's the first chart on this page:

http://serenesforest.net/fe13/dual.html

Edited June 12, 2012 by Westbrick

[Othin]

No, it sounds like you understood it perfectly. So MU gives +10 Hit, then adding Frederick gives +10 Avo, then adding Liz gives +10 CEV. Liz needs to actually be adjacent for that, though, not just in Double with Frederick.

And yeah, the chart shows it all.

Edited June 12, 2012 by Othin

[Westbrick]

~Chapter 1~

My initial strategy here is somewhat sub-optimal, but works well with a little luck: Krom&MU on the fort tile have a 50% chance of getting hit by the bandit, but can two-round him; I would place Frederick on an adjacent tile, but he can't reach from his starting location. If the bandit gets Absolute Hit, however- which has happened twice for me now- then all bets are off.

So I've got turn one under control... But that doesn't seem to matter, because there's a bandit unit with a hammer and Luna+ who one-rounds Frederick at maximum HP. This seems like a project for tomorrow.

[cheetah7071]

I recall Fred&Krom on the fort only faces like 30 displayed hit from the hammer bandit. If he has a hit-boosting skill then of course that doesn't apply, and I could easily be misremembering the numbers.

[arvilino]

Concentration is a regular Mage skill. It's normally learned at LV10+, but it seems enemies aren't caring about that, especially if the Barbarians already have Gamble.

From what I understand, enemies start with Luna+, Vantage+, Pass, Accuracy +10, and Absolute Hit as their options, then add Great Shield+, Holy Shield+, and Counter starting in Ch3. I don't think it changes after that point.

And yeah, that's entirely because of the support mechanics. With no support conversations, MU should get one support level for every character adjacent. Just MU gives him the level one bonus of +10 Hit; having both MU and Frederick adjacent instead gives him the level two bonus of +10 Hit and +10 Avo. So that's why the enemy's accuracy went down by 10.

That's odd maybe I'm unlucky but I haven't seen Accuracy +10 on any Lunatic+ enemies.

Edit: Oh wait, checking some of the skirmish enemies, they can get Accuracy+10 in addition to the 2 Lunatic+ exclusive skills and class skills.

Edited June 12, 2012 by arvilino

[Othin]

That's odd maybe I'm unlucky but I haven't seen Accuracy +10 on any Lunatic+ enemies.

Edit: Oh wait, checking some of the skirmish enemies, they can get Accuracy+10 in addition to the 2 Lunatic+ exclusive skills and class skills.

Okay, that makes more sense. So it doesn't replace the originals, then.

I was going to say, it sounded strange, especially since I've seen it on skirmish enemies in Lunatic.

[Raven the Obsidian]

Wow, this sounds like absolute hell. Good luck with this, man D:

[Titamon]

Are you using Miriel?

[Othin]

Personally, I found Miriel helpful for a while on Lunatic for her ranged attacks and hitting Res, but she couldn't fight enough to get the Exp to keep up well and stay useful.

[arvilino]

I found that Miriel was good in Lunatic+ chapter 3 since at base she can double the Armoured Knights if MU is paired with her. Like said Othin she's nice for a bit in Lunatic, but she ended up dropped because I found she never really gets out of getting OHKO'd by physical units(maybe if you can get he to level 10 and make her a Dark Knight she can).

[Westbrick]

Quick update: there's certainly going to be a greater variability of luck on Lunatic+ than I initially gave it credit for, at least early on. Example: that brigand with a hammer who can one-round Frederick occasionally comes equipped with Absolute Hit, which makes the chapter essentially impossible to complete. Frustrating.

Current attempt tally (including yesterday): 12.

[Othin]

Yeah, this is the sort of thing I was talking about.

I remember my first time playing through that chapter, I kept retreating a lot to keep Frederick away for him, but eventually ran out of room without killing enough stuff, and wound up restarting a lot on that map. There might be a good way to pull that off and avoid the need for the dodge, but I'm not certain.

[Westbrick]

~Chapter 1 Cont.'d~

...I confess, I'm getting real tired of this. My strategy is down pat: because the enemy units storm you from turn one, there's no time to be patient, so I a) send Krom&MU to attack the bandit to the south, b) use some doubling tactics with Liz to get Frederick in range of the myrmidon without the myrmidon ending up on the fortress tile. Then it's just a matter of doubling Soiree with Frederick, plopping Freddy onto the fortress tile, and splitting enemy forces.

The trouble here comes in the form of variability. The hammer-wielding bandit ends up with Absolute Hit about half the time, and still manages a 25% hit chance even against a bronze sword. Furthermore, all non-Freddy units have trouble getting their hit particularly high, so I'm restarting even more off unlucky misses. Ugh. Thankfully, it's just a matter of pressing on until the pieces fall in my favor.

Current restart count? Including resetting for enemy skill-related reasons, 34. 34. This mode doesn't even care it cheats. And I hate it

~Chapter 1: Fin~

Chapter completed. Finally. No casualties, some great level-ups, everything went well. Only took four additional tries, 7 turn total.

As I begin preparation for Chapter 2, however, a few of Awakening's flaws, even more than in Lunatic, are coming to light here in Lunatic+. Many remind me of FE5 in terms of how unnecessary and artificial the "challenge" can be: why don't I have access to a formation function during the early chapters? Or access to item management? I sincerely doubt the developers were unaware of how nightmarish these first few chapters can be, so why limit my access to basic game mechanics during these stretches? Oh, and it's great to see enemies with critical hit rates consistently in the 5-10% range, which have already damned what would have been successful chapter runs a couple times now for me. This was a problem in Lunatic as well. Really makes you appreciate those 0-Luck Fire Emblem 7 enemies, since really, these criticals add frustration without contributing to the strategy.

TOTAL TURN COUNT:

Prologue -> 27 [7 restarts]

Chapter 1 -> 7 [38 restarts]

Edited June 12, 2012 by Westbrick

[Stark]

Impressive... when I play Lunatic +, I'm going to abuse the hell out of everything at my disposal, so it will be interesting to see a playthrough that doesn't abuse Resire/Inverse's.

[fatgamecat]

Unless there's some DLC I don't know about, you still have to go through a couple chapters on Lunatic or Lunatic+ without access to the difficulty destroying nosferatu combo.

On the other hand, there's no scoring system, so any condition beyond "beat the game" is a player defined challenge. That includes low turn counts, keeping all your allies alive, etc. You should probably mention those in your list of conditions if you're going for it.

Anyway, good luck (seems like you need more than an average amount of it for a FE). Kind of reminds me of trying to score well in FE6. You plow through a bunch of enemies to reach a boss sitting on a 30+% dodge throne, then it's an RNG gamble whether you'll defeat them in time to preserve your speed score.

Speaking of RNG, I've been playing Gungnir (recently released Sting SRPG) and it's got plenty of RNG in it as well, especially when you play for score on the highest difficulty.

[Othin]

I suspected Ch2 would be the most hair-pulling point of Lunatic runs unless someone can come up with some trick to beating it. Personally, what bugs me most about it is that whenever you retry that map, you have to reset from your save on the world map and mash Start to skip a bunch of conversations. I'm not quite as bothered by the lack of formation option if they specifically want you to work with that formation, but the lack of item management has less of an excuse, since you can do some item management earlier, but you need to do it right.

When I was playing through that map on Lunatic, what caused even more issues for me than enemy criticals was my own criticals. When you're relying on one enemy staying in place to block off other enemies from attacking, they're a death sentence.

As for Nosferatu, you get a book of it in Ch9, but you can't buy more until Ch13. So any heavy skipping with it isn't going to work until then. I'm inclined to say the scariest parts of the game are over by then, but aside from the incredible frustration of Ch1 and Ch2, I didn't find Ch12 to be any easier than any of the past chapters on Lunatic, and Ch14 doesn't look any friendlier.

Edited June 13, 2012 by Othin

[Westbrick]

Speaking of Chapter 2...

~Chapter 2: The Finale~

...this might well be my last Lunatic+ write-up. Not because I'm unmotivated or sick of the game or anything like that, but simply because I cannot beat Chapter 2.

For those who don't have the game and haven't watches any LPs, let me paint a picture of the situation for you: much like the Prologue, Ch.2 is effectively split up into two enemy waves, one at the lower and one at the upper portion of the map. Like the Prologue, enemies from the bottom wave will surge you starting from turn one, whereas the upper wave will remain stationary until an invisible line is breached. Unlike the Prologue, however, your units aren't deployed in the far corner of the map with some cover to take advantage of; instead, all of your units are fielded at the bottom-middle, with a half-dozen overpowered enemies on both sides and about four safe squares total, which naturally don't last past turn one. There are a handful of forrest tiles to take advantage of, but no fortress tiles.

On a vanilla Lunatic run, this is probably the most difficult chapter to complete, as the player has very limited control. For example: Frederick&[cavalier] (which provides a crucial +2 defense), placed on a forrest tile in the middle of the map, is not guaranteed to survive more than a single round or two, meaning he'll need an Elixer in his inventory and a little luck; unfortunately, any turns taken off to use the Elixer could spell the end of the run, as the rest of your team- huddled at the bottom-left corner of the map- can ill afford too many stray enemy units making their way over. Then there are small things that are entirely out of the player's hands, such as how one of the myrmidons moves; sometimes, he'll be in range to be baited by Frederick, while other times, he'll have to be dealt with by the scrub units in your army. And that's just the bottom portion of the map.

I make this tangent to demonstrate how frustrating and luck-dependent this map is even on regular Lunatic. Now give every enemy some combination of Luna+, Vanguard+, and Absolute Hit. It's a nightmare. Frederick is lucky to survive a single round of combat: if he equips a silver lance, he'll be Luna'd for half his total HP by the bandits, whereas if he equips a bronze sword, he'll be Luna'd for a third of his total HP by the soldiers. And since Freddy can really only bait four units at a time, the rest end up marching towards the bottom-left and spelling death for your army. Let me add that I've been very fortunate with my level-ups so far, and Mia can already consistently double; even still, she's hard pressed to survive more than a single round of combat.

Speaking without exaggeration, I've attempted this map probably three-dozen times now and still haven't managed to get past the third turn. I hesitate to use the word "challenging" to something that is so plainly out of the player's control, but if anyone has some strategies for me to try, by all means, post them here. Anything is worth trying at this point.

[Othin]

I was worried about this.

On Lunatic, I survived that chapter by having Frederick, Krom, and MU form a wall in the lower left, but things kept going wrong even without the added skills. Pass in particular would likely destroy the strategy completely.

Edited June 13, 2012 by Othin

[Westbrick]

I was worried about this.

On Lunatic, I survived that chapter by having Frederick, Krom, and MU form a wall in the lower left, but things kept going wrong even without the added skills. Pass in particular would likely destroy the strategy completely.

Hadn't considered this, but yeah, Pass is going maim this strategy. Another strategy I've tried to employ is the "sacrificial lamb" approach, where I send a handful of units to slaughter towards the right side of the map as distractions. Unfortunately, since no one I don't plan on using can survive more than one round, this does little to help.

Are you aware of any Lunatic+ videos? Because barring a statistical miracle or some cunning strategic approach I'm missing, this seems borderline impossible.

[Othin]

Hmm... If you go all the way to the lower left, so that there will be limited places for them to end their movement even if they do walk through your units, I can't help but wonder if you might have some options. Maybe worth a try?

I remember that guy Kouli on Gamefaqs was saying something about making videos of his Lunatic+ runs. I don't know if he recorded everything, though.

Edited June 13, 2012 by Othin

[Westbrick]

I suppose I can try, but that sounds like it'll end up with many casualties. I assume you mean a formation like this, right?

WXYZ

Where W and X are expendable units, W is on the bottom-left tile, Y is Krom&MU, and Z is Frederick&[cavalier]. That way, only Freddy is exposed to two attacks at once. The problem with this is that even if W and X are doubled pairs, one-two units is likely dying per turn. If you've got an alternative formation in mind, let me hear it and I'll give it a shot.

Edited June 13, 2012 by Westbrick

[Othin]

I mean vertically. There should be a cliff in the lower left area that's difficult for the enemies to cross. Walling that off requires blocking three squares, one on top of the other. I used Frederick, Krom, and MU, with the two Cavaliers usually supporting Krom and MU. If you do this in the column right next to the far left, you have one column where you can put your other characters. The way the enemies move, they tend to keep approaching from the right and running into the wall.

Pass will cause problems. You'll likely need to use a Cavalier to block the top - forming a 2x3 formation blocked off on two sides by edges of the map and leaving Krom, MU, and one Cavalier each open to one attack per turn and Frederick open to two.

If all else fails, and you're willing to make a sacrifice, go for a 2x2.

KF

LM

K = Krom

F = Frederick

L = Liz

M = MU

With map edges blocking off the bottom and left, Krom and MU will each be exposed to one attack per turn while Frederick will be exposed to two. You have five other characters, but you can only protect four more in Double, so yeah, this entails sacrificing someone, but just one character. This doesn't seem sustainable, though, especially with a lack of ranged support to help with Vantage+ enemies.

[Polaris]

Holy shit this game

It sounds like they want you to take advantage of Casual Mode, at least for your initial Lunatic runs. I'm guessing that the older games like SD's H5 are easier than this?

[arvilino]

If I remember correctly(was a bit ago and I had university exams inbetween when I did it and now) when I did chapter 2 on Lunatic+ instead of the Lower left hand side of the map I think I had my units go round to the right, with someone place so that Miriel can double with them to get out of the way on turn 2.

Frederick-Krom (due to them having C-rank support at that point and Kroms dual attack plus) with the Elixer(A bit of a pain if you don't get Viole to give Frederick it and MU to give him the Bronze Sword) basically attempt to clear out as many enemies as they can while surviving(Krom should wield the Rapier for the extra crit chance) each turn, placement of Frederick each turn heavily depends on the enemies skills, feel free to use 2 of the Elixer uses because you won't need it for chapter 4 and there's only one situation where you'll need it for chapter 3.

Your other units basically just have to handle the Myrmidon on the right at the start and the Soldier that's towards the top right hand side of the forest, shouldn't be too much of an issue since you've got MU(which in my case was a +magic one which wasn't as helpful as I'd thought it might be), Miriel and Viole who can all attack indirectly.

I don't have any free saves to re-check this though so I might have forgotten a few details, but it definitely is possible without losing any units.

Edited June 13, 2012 by arvilino