Do I need a mage?

[Silith]

I remember reading somethign about needing to have a mage to use a certain item (Lightsphere)

I'm in chapter 16 and haven't really trained a mage outside of having used Wendell. Am I boned?

[Peppy]

You need a mage if you want to kill Gharnef. You don't have to kill Gharnef but you have to kill him if you want Falchion.

[Integrity]

What difficulty are you on? Gharnef doesn't show up until the 20s somewhere (fuck if I can remember the numbering in fe11) so you could have enough time to train a mage up.

EDIT: To clarify on the OP: the Spheres are usable by anybody. Starlight is the spell you can get with them, which can only be used by a mage, which is the only spell that can kill TruGharnef for the Falchion, none of which is technically required to beat the game since there's no bad ending anyway.

Edited December 19, 2012 by Integrity

[secondworld]

If your Wendel is good enough and you have physic staves, you may be able to have Wendel take on Gharnef and heal him when necessary.

[Konnor97]

It's chapter 23, and yeah, you might want to start training a mage. Starlight is C rank, but that shouldn't be that hard to get once the mage gets going. Starlight has 13 base might, so as long as the mage has good enough magic, Gharnef shouldn't be that bad.

[Ema Skye]

If you kill off enough units in Ch.16 and Ch.17, you can get Etzel in 17x who's better than an untrained Wendell at this point.

[whase]

Just reclass a unit you're already using to mage or dark mage and train him/her to magic weapon level C.

This game has arms scrolls, doesn't it? use those. And with possibly some stat boosters for mag stat, you'll be fine.

[Comet]

You only need a mage if you want to kill garnef and get starlight. Along with what everyone else said, you could arena abuse merric of linde. Both when trained will destroy Garnef.

Or you could not make starlight at all, and get the weaker falchion from nagi.

[eclipse]

. . .or you can forget Falchion entirely, and go man mode later on.

If you well and truly want to beat Gharnef, then yes. If you don't care, then you can run past him and still complete the game. I prefer keeping the spheres, because they're so good.

[Silith]

It's impossible for me to kill off enough people in the next two chapters. Mainly because I need most of them to beat the chapters. I'm on H5.

The only other problem is with my Generals. Draugh and Roger are pretty high level and can probably solo the chapters each but they are hitting caps so I thought of switching classes on them but the lace-rank is not used on any other classes. Myabe I should make them Horsemen to use their bowranks at least? (Sounds like a horrible plan though)

[Hawk King]

H5 Gharnef has 44 HP, 23 AS, and 10 RES.

Both Sorcerers and Sages have a base of D rank tomes so with a little training, or just an arms scroll you can get C rank tomes for any of your units easily. Sorcerers have a base MAG of 3, Sages have a base MAG of 4. Add that to Starlight's 13 mt and you can do 6-7 damage with any promoted unit freshly reclassed.

With just 2 Spirit dusts a sage will have 8 MAG which is enough to 4HKO Gharnef. 12 MAG will 3HKO. And 19 MAG will 2HKO.

So pick any of your units who has at least 20 SPD as a Sage. Or start training Catria or Est as a Mage since they have fantastic growths as mages. Palla's SPD growth will only be 15%.

[Silith]

Thanks guys. I really wanna play the new translation patch of FE:3rmk but I still have this one half finished and untouched since Diablo 3 came out.