The Lunatic Club

[PKL]

Getting through Lunatic + has made me think Chapter 2 Lunatic is wimpy lol. I blazed through it o_o

[Blademaster!]

Getting through Lunatic + has made me think Chapter 2 Lunatic is wimpy lol. I blazed through it o_o

I got the same feeling playing hard mode. Haven't tried lunatic yet though after beating it on +.

[shadykid]

Getting through Lunatic + has made me think Chapter 2 Lunatic is wimpy lol. I blazed through it o_o

no hawkeye, no luna+, no vantage+?

no problem

[Sinned]

Haha, oh my... I will shamelessly admit that Lunatic was too much for me.

As soon as I got my game, I set my difficulty to Lunatic-Classic, trudging head-on, thinking that I could take it. In Map 4 (Where Miriel and Vaike enter), I was getting my butt kicked very badly and could progress no further ;;

I do want to try my hand at Lunatic-Classic again though! Possibly after beating my current playthrough > u <

It's just so hard to actually get through Map 3 without having to rely purely on luck, hoping that that one enemy unit with a hammer misses Frederick haha.

Fred plus bronze sword = missed hammer bro. Elixir in chapter 1 (virizon trade to fred) = easier chapter 2(chapter you got stuck on).

[shadowofchaos]

Honestly, I have nowhere near the skill you guys have when it comes to FE...

But seriously, my luck doesn't help.

Not only did resetting give me more counter mooks... it did so three times in a row.

I just feel freaking depressed.

[pinkbubblegum]

Fred plus bronze sword = missed hammer bro. Elixir in chapter 1 (virizon trade to fred) = easier chapter 2(chapter you got stuck on).

Hehehe. I'll try this again after finishing my current run. I kind of want to save those elixirs for Chapter 3 though, since I feel like Frederick will need it more there haha.

I'm super adamant to try and get through Lunatic-Classic huuuahhh! D<

And if I survive that, I'll try Lunatic+-Casual haha... ha...

Edited March 18, 2013 by pinkbubblegum

[GinRei]

Finally made it past chapter 4 on Lunatic-Classic. Chapter 2 (The Shepards) was easily the hardest chapter. I think I got lucky in Chapter 1, since Frederick silver lance + Avatar Lightning dual attack finished off the Hammer user before he even got a chance to swing. Chapter 4 threw me for a loop too, since I wasn't expecting Marth to just suddenly start charging me. Lissa kind of went into panic mode.

[Interceptor]

I'm wondering whether that would even be worth it to get the other skills for her during the main game in Lunatic. She's bound to get more level ups as a Manakete on the merit of being able to be involved in more rounds of combat(due to higher Defense/Res) per turn. Additionally would the evasion boosting skills really be that useful on a slower tanking character as opposed to a faster one like Panne for example?

Well, so far she is not missing the skills at all. Right now, in Ch.18 (after the difficulty bump from promoted enemies), I have to say that Nowi is actually tougher than Avatar at this point. She's level 21.71 on her second pass through Manakete (I re-Sealed her at level 30 the first time), and while her level-ups have finally slowed down, this is what she's looking at for stats:

              HP  STR  MAG  SKL  SPD  LCK  DEF  RES
Bases          80  39   20   31   30   41   39   35
Stone               8   5    3    2    0    10   7
Gregor              2   0    7    7    1    5    0

Total          80  49   25   41   39   42   54   42

Wat. The biggest badass on the map has 54atk with a forged Silver Axe, which tinks her. The Sage with the largest brass balls and a forged Thoron has 45atk, which hits her for 1 damage, at 36 listed Hit. She is one SPD level-up or Tonic away from doubling every non-Boss Swordmaster on the map, and she's ~76% to ORKO them anyway because she leaves them at 15HP for a Gregor finisher. Nowi has 57Atk, which is actually just 5 short of OHKOing all of the Sages.

When people start getting capped stats, I guess it might get problematic. Nowi doesn't have a lot of headroom left. Only 3 more SPD from growing (she's 3 under the Manakete cap), 1 more SPD from Gregor (when he hits 30 base), another 2 from upgrading the Dragonstone, and then I am limited to tonics and Rally. The only skill that I can see helping here, would be the +2 STR from Rider.

By the way, I don't understand the Pannewagon. She has serious RES issues and problems with people that have effective MT on her. It makes her difficult to use effectively when she's simultaneously weak to bows, magic (especially Wind), and beastkillers. She fast and strong, but she's like a porcelain doll.

[PKL]

By the way, I don't understand the Pannewagon. She has serious RES issues and problems with people that have effective MT on her. It makes her difficult to use effectively when she's simultaneously weak to bows, magic (especially Wind), and beastkillers. She fast and strong, but she's like a porcelain doll.

Her offensive growths are ridiculous, 70ish in str and spd. She also sports above 100hp and 50 def as a Rider. How did you even train Nowi btw? Her base spd is awful. Heck, her bases as a whole are lol.

[Interceptor]

I understand that she's fast and strong; I use her whenever I Must Absolutely Kill This Unit. The problem I have with Panne is that I can't use her for Enemy Phase unless I take a half an hour to make sure that there are no:

• Bows
  
• Beastkillers
  
• Wyrmslayers
  
• Wind magic
  
• more than one non-Wind caster
  

... in range of her, otherwise if a coin flip goes the wrong way, Frederick is a widower. And if I use her base class, she loses 2-range counter in addition to losing the weaknesses. Just seems like a roleplayer, a bench character, rather than an MVP. I don't get the hype, really.

Nowi was trained with tonics and forts. Her joining chapter is rough (she can get a couple of weakened kills, tops), but Speed is available thereafter, she has instant C with Gregor, etc. In Ch9 she can handle a couple normal units before killing the trailing Dracos while sitting on a Fort, Ch10 similar deal (sit on a fort and train while your other units kill thieves and rush boss), and by Ch11 she can hold her own. But just in case: also has forts.

tl;dr tonics, Pair Up, and Fort are OP.

EDIT: I also gave her a Wing and a Robe, iirc, to get her started and handle some of the borderline situations.

Edited March 18, 2013 by Interceptor

[arvilino]

I sort of prefer to pair Panne with Lon'Qu in that case. the Myrmidon/Assassin Pair Up Bonuses, S-rank support and the even Rhythm, Tantivity and Quick Burn skills basically make her avoid sky rocket(Rally Speed from Cordelia, Spectrum from MU and Luck from Libra boost it to even higher ratings), Beast Killers(or lances for that matter) will almost never hit her.

I don't know if anyone else who uses Panne in lunatic does this, but I always make sure she's level 10 by the end of chapter 8 to re-class into a Wyvern Rider.

Edited March 18, 2013 by arvilino

[Paperblade]

You really shouldn't have to worry about Beast Killers or Wyrmslayers since she has WTA over the former making them lose like 20 hit and has Swordbreaker for the latter

Also enemies never reach fully capped stats, your Nowi is probably good to go for the rest of the game considering you should be able to get Dragonstone+ soon

Edited March 18, 2013 by Paperblade

[Mondoflow]

Just finished Lunatic mode yesterday. I'll give a quick recap for anyone interested, I suppose.

First few levels had me abusing Frederick basically to the exclusion of everyone else. I did manage to get my Avatar (Male, +def-str) some experience, though. I didn't even attempt to use anyone else but Chrom for a while, who I was really struggling to get some experience on.

On chapter 5, I reclassed my avatar to a mercenary and finally started getting Chrom some kills. Neither Chrom nor my avatar had any kind of permanent pairing yet, but I was frequently sticking Kellam with people for the defense bonus. I was still pretty heavily abusing Frederick, too, which continued for a while yet.

I picked up Panne and started using her a little bit, pairing her with Chrom thinking that would actually lead to something, but it turns out they can't actually support each other. I was under the impression at first that there weren't any limits on supports, but apparently Chrom is limited to only four people. When I picked up Cordelia I paired her up with my avatar for flying movement shenanigans when possible.

I picked up Nowi in 8, paired her with Kellam permanently, and began leveling her pretty hardcore. Once her dragonstone ran out I reclassed her to a Wyvern Rider (because I wasn't yet able to purchase new dragonstones).

Around this time I started using Nowi, Chrom, and my avatar exclusively, paired with Kellam, Frederick, and Cordelia, respectively. Lucina came along via Sully, but since she was still at the level 2 she started at, she wasn't as useful as Frederick, even with an S rank support. No major class changes, just standard expected promotions to Wyvern Lord, Great Lord, and Hero. If you're wondering why my avatar was a Hero despite having a negative strength modifier, it would be because I forgot what my flaw was. I went through the whole game with a gimped strength (even as a hero my magic stayed above my strength until level 10 or so, promoted), but still manged to do pretty well. I eventually reclassed my avatar to a general and Chrom to a paladin.

When Morgan's stage unlocked I reclassed Cordelia to a mercenary to get her Armsthrift, and thus Morgan started off with both Sol and Armsthrift, my two favorite skills in the game (though I really hate being limited to swords at any point, because they're definitely my least favorite weapon in the game...). Morgan's support pairing jumped all over. At first I had her paired with her father, then I had her paired with her sister. Then later I paired her with Nah. Speaking of which...

I forget the chapter, 22, I think? The chapter with a bunch of unreachable sorcerers with mire. I'm a big completionist so I always recruit everyone I run into, get all the chests, and generally kill all the enemies, too. But with all the mire going around attempting to open a chest would get my thieves killed. I decided to reclass Kellam to a thief and go recruit a Nah that had lockpick. Her level was probably my slowest completion. I got her from 10 to 29 in that level alone, but only by having someone slowly take all the mire hits from the sorcerers, and going as slow as possible to draw out enemies one at a time. I never did figure out how the wall worked, but if you do it right you can get Nah to kill both early zombies and the general, and then slowly aggro each enemy in the first walled off section from the other side of the wall, allowing her to kill that entire group. When you first step foot in that section, though, you need to have your stronger character handle as many of the enemies pouring in as you can. This is the first stage I got really fed up with Counter, because if a unit with Counter attacks you you'll be forced to attack back, at which point you'll take a full counter hit (which, for me, was usually 40-60 damage) and probably die. The only way I found around this was to use a ranged units and sit at the maximum possible range for the warriors specifically. Attempting to take a defensive position of any kind that might assist in dealing with the other enemies attacking you isn't going to help any. This strategy may also involve a lot of kiting to make sure you're actually at max range, if there are multiple warriors with counter (and there always are). Once I finally finished this paralogue I used Nah as support for Morgan, which pushed her luck over 50 and made the forged Aversa's Night I had a permanent fixture (one of the reasons I find Armsthrift so broken).

Things were pretty smooth past that up until chapter 25, which is the first chapter that I rushed for the boss to kill it. I didn't do anything to fancy, though, I just sent Morgan on her own leisurely pace while my other three units (Chrom, Nowi, and my avatar) tried to survive against all the stuff coming towards them in the starting area. Once chapter 26 rolled around I had to abandon my team altogether, they just couldn't handle any of the enemies (my avatar might have been able to, but he wasn't especially useful otherwise with only 40 strength and no good pairing). I attached Chrom to Morgan and let them sit next to the boss until it died. My weapon, combined with Sol and Armsthrift, made me mostly invincible. Damage to the boss was enough that I could kill him in one turn if I attacked and Chrom supported enough, but Chrom missed constantly. So instead I always got him down low enough that I could kill him in one more attack, only for him to be healed by physic staves that I couldn't reach easily. Eventually they stopped healing for some reason (my guess is they kept moving towards me and decided to attack me instead of heal once they were in range.) and I got the boss down.

In total, I played only Champions of Yore once each, did a single early skirmish, skipped Paralogue 3 for no real reason and did Morgan, Nah, and Severa's paralogues. I didn't buy Nosferatu ever, didn't use most of the DLC even once, and overall I don't think I did too much to really cheese the game. I did make some mistakes that I might remedy in the future, mostly regarding pairings and children. I'd really like to add Lucina to the roster, for one, even if only as a support that can attack Grima. I might like to make heavier use of Nowi and Nah, too, if possible, for the same reasons. If I'm going to send my avatar down the path of the mercenary I really don't want a flaw that reduces my strength, skill, and defense. Stat caps in general could be handled better for Morgan and other children. I also really think it's important to have a leveled pair up character for the bonus stats. With enough defense/resistance from skills and pairings I think even my sol-less units would be able to stand up to most units. (Though Nowi, being my only unit without some version of in combat healing, actually did fare really really well up until the last few chapters.)

[Redwall]

I decided to reclass Kellam to a thief and go recruit a Nah that had lockpick. Her level was probably my slowest completion. I got her from 10 to 29 in that level alone, but only by having someone slowly take all the mire hits from the sorcerers, and going as slow as possible to draw out enemies one at a time. I never did figure out how the wall worked, but if you do it right you can get Nah to kill both early zombies and the general, and then slowly aggro each enemy in the first walled off section from the other side of the wall, allowing her to kill that entire group. When you first step foot in that section, though, you need to have your stronger character handle as many of the enemies pouring in as you can. This is the first stage I got really fed up with Counter, because if a unit with Counter attacks you you'll be forced to attack back, at which point you'll take a full counter hit (which, for me, was usually 40-60 damage) and probably die. The only way I found around this was to use a ranged units and sit at the maximum possible range for the warriors specifically. Attempting to take a defensive position of any kind that might assist in dealing with the other enemies attacking you isn't going to help any. This strategy may also involve a lot of kiting to make sure you're actually at max range, if there are multiple warriors with counter (and there always are). Once I finally finished this paralogue I used Nah as support for Morgan, which pushed her luck over 50 and made the forged Aversa's Night I had a permanent fixture (one of the reasons I find Armsthrift so broken).

Ugh, Nah's Paralogue is such crap. I never actually finished that one--didn't have the patience to turtle everything and deal with the vanishing walls.

Accuracy troubles with Grima can be handled really easily by parking Henry or Tharja right next to him. Anathema and Hex should allow Chrom's accuracy to go way up, and giving someone a Brave weapon (when Chrom is the secondary unit) further increases your expected damage by giving you up to four Dual Attacks with the Falchion.

[Mondoflow]

Accuracy troubles with Grima can be handled really easily by parking Henry or Tharja right next to him. Anathema and Hex should allow Chrom's accuracy to go way up, and giving someone a Brave weapon (when Chrom is the secondary unit) further increases your expected damage by giving you up to four Dual Attacks with the Falchion.

There are probably a few things I could've done to assist that. For example, pairing Chrom with someone he actually had support with, or leveling Chrom more (he was always fairly weak for me, as are the lords in most games), or using the skills and weapons you mentioned. In the end, I manged, but it was a bit messy due to my lack of planning for the fight.

[Legault!]

Those pictures Paperblade posted are mine, by the way. Hope you all appreciated the hilarious MU name.

Lots of discussion here, but there's a little too much talk about irrelevant units like Panne / Nowi and too little about Chrom / MU. Those are the only two units you need. General strategy for beating Lunatic in around an hour:

-female MU

-S-Rank Chrom

-give all free kills in the first five maps to MU

-before Ch.5, sell all the rest of your weapons and forge some gnarly tomes for MU

(-optional: SpotPass a second seal and prepare for MU!Dark Mage fun times early)

-use the Ch.8 Second Seal to reclass MU into a Dark Mage

-solo the game up until Ch.13 with MU / Chrom and Frederick / Kellam; MU can basically do this alone by now

-sell the farm and buy fifty Nosferatu tomes

-win the game

The final boss is a little tricky. Forged Waste + S-Rank Chrom support works reliably enough.

[Interceptor]

That sounds like fun, except by "fun", I mean the other thing: "tedious".

[Legault!]

That sounds like fun, except by "fun", I mean the other thing: "tedious".

Lunatic without exploits like Nosferatanking manages to be even more tedious, surprisingly. Evenly raised teams get creamed on later maps, so the only options are a) grinding, or b) dishing all experience to 3-4 units.

Lunatic is just sort of a bad mode. Lunatic+ makes it look pretty good in comparison though.

EDIT: I have no idea if this site is okay with curse words. Post now rated E for Everyone.

Edited March 18, 2013 by Legault!

[Othin]

Coarse language is fine. Sites that don't like it automatically filter it.

[Interceptor]

Lunatic without exploits like Nosferatanking manages to be even more tedious, surprisingly.

Only if one finds tactics without exploits tedious; that may be the case for you, but not for everyone else. Some people find it fulfilling to beat the game by using less-efficient strategies that require more thinking.

It's already been established that the "best" way to blow through Lunatic is with an Avatar solo, that still leaves a lot of room for other things in a 30+ page thread. If that's OK with you.

[Legault!]

Only if one finds tactics without exploits tedious; that may be the case for you, but not for everyone else. Some people find it fulfilling to beat the game by using less-efficient strategies that require more thinking.

It's already been established that the "best" way to blow through Lunatic is with an Avatar solo, that still leaves a lot of room for other things in a 30+ page thread. If that's OK with you.

I apologize for sharing some of my thoughts on Lunatic in a topic dedicated to Lunatic. If you're willing to put away that snarling elitism for a rainy day, we might even be able to have a civil conversation. I was just about to explain to you, for instance, how Lunatic with "less-efficient" strategies isn't even feasible. But I'd like to get your permission first.

[dondon151]

there are also probably faster iterations to an avatar solo (in terms of turncount) that haven't been explored yet.

[Redwall]

Lunatic LTC with unrestricted unit deployment involves a lot of flier-ferrying/Rescue chains, and I can't see Nosferatu helping much outside of Chs. 23 and 24, both of which are rout maps with rather strong enemies. And yeah, training other combat units is, I think, something that would feature in the absolute fastest LTC run. But if we're restricting ourselves to an Avatar+Chrom solo, I think Nos-tanking would result in the lowest turncount possible under that restriction.

Edited March 19, 2013 by Redwall

[Legault!]

Lunatic LTC with unrestricted unit deployment involves a lot of flier-ferrying/Rescue chains, and I can't see Nosferatu helping much outside of Chs. 23 and 24, both of which are rout maps with rather strong enemies. And yeah, training other combat units is, I think, something that would feature in the absolute fastest LTC run. But if we're restricting ourselves to an Avatar+Chrom solo, I think Nos-tanking would result in the lowest turncount possible under that restriction.

Lategame maps (and even certain midgame maps: Ch.12, 16, 19, 20) are ferociously difficult. I can't see them being beatable without some type of exploit (Veteran!MU, Sorcerer, maybe a high-leveled Aether!Chrom).

[Elieson]

<br />Lategame maps (and even certain midgame maps: Ch.12, 16, 19, 20) are ferociously difficult. I can't see them being beatable without some type of exploit (Veteran!MU, Sorcerer, maybe a high-leveled Aether!Chrom).<br />

<br /><br /><br />

Then that's the player's fault, not the game.