The Lunatic Club

[Emerald Ink]

I'm trying to do all the paralogues in order - a pretty silly self-challenge, in retrospect, but one I'd like to follow through on. I'm switching between the EXPonential Growth and Golden Gaffe maps, so money's pretty much a non-issue.

[Czar_Yoshi]

All Paralogues in order is a perfectly viable run, provided you're using spotpass teams/DLC to build support. What's a lot more interesting is doing them in reverse order.

[Emerald Ink]

Yeah, the DLC is doing wonders for my supports. I apparently just need to raise everyone's levels and weapon exp more. I'm hoping Inigo will be able to help out with the Griffon Knights with his Killing Edge and paired with Sumia!Lucina.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Unless it's Lunatic+, Inigo should be able to take the whole bottom side by himself with a good support/bases and Galeforce. Trade him an Eirika's Blade if his offense isn't good enough, and have his pairup be a Galeforce unit as well if he needs to take one less hit.

[dudedudedudeo]

All Paralogues in order is a perfectly viable run, provided you're using spotpass teams/DLC to build support. What's a lot more interesting is doing them in reverse order.

Apotheosis first? That be hell

[Roivann]

Apotheosis first? That be hell

That's a xenologue. Paralogues are the gaiden chapters that show up in game, like the children's recruitment chapters. Edited July 8, 2014 by Rollertoaster

[Czar_Yoshi]

Well, I was talking about Paralogues, but you could try all DLC in reverse order as well (counting Secret and Normal as separate maps, of course). I wouldn't try it on anything harder than Hard/Cla though. I wonder if it's possible to do all DLC in reverse, all Paralogues in reverse, no Skirmishes/Spotpass battles and no Saving all in one run. I should try to route that out sometime.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Czar_Yoshi

[The1Weltall]

As for your last question, you can try it but since you're fielding them anyway, they might as well get some exp. It usually takes 8-10 chapters to go from nothing to S, that's a long time to lug around a support that doesn't do anything. If you are going to do that, it would be much better to carry defensive units since they give more useful boosts than dodgetanks (especially since Cordelia and Miriel are squishy). Gregor is a strong candidate to go over Lon'qu, he comes later but gives +Def and comes at Lv.10. If you want to use Stahl, he can work well on Cordelia on Lunatic.

Planning is very well and good, but hard experience is worth hundreds of plans (up to a point). This is especially true as far as money management goes.

Thanks for your answer. I've looked into the bulkier alternatives -- turns out they all come with their own handicaps, so as it stands now, I'm likely going to bite the bullet and just go with my initial couples. The basic idea behind them, if you didn't notice, is to inherit a certain pretty useful skill each (Vantage to combine with Vengeance, Locktouch to have someone for chapter 21 that doesn't have to enter a crapshoot with the Mires). All alternatives basically require a Second Seal and/or more dedication put towards it.

Like, Gregor could certainly be a solid pick for Miriel, but I somehow don't like to use him generally (often feels like he hardly grows, don't know) and he joins somewhat late in comparison to her; Lon'qu could already be closing in on S by the time he joins. And by that time, getting some Def won't be more important than before that, because Miriel's role is supposed to steadily shift to Staff-bot once she's a Sage.

Cordelia, on the other hand, may be a bit more open... There's THEVaike as an alternative Thief. I have no doubt in getting his level into the teens is feasible, but getting him all the way up to 10 from there so he can at least promote, well I doubt that being any less than an ordeal. If anything, Lon'qu might be better for it because of no weapon rank reset, but then these antics would be required to cost two Second Seals in total, and that's definitely too much without planned Anna shop luck. However, I'd actually still like to hand Vaike's Axe straight to Fred, since he wouldn't forget to bring it, haha.

So I've started this no-Avatar playthough just yesterday, at the intended pace of roughly 1 map per day -- which means, I'm just past chapter 1 now. It's almost amazing how easy they felt to me now. The difficulty in them was totally not keeping weaklings alive but rather optimizing the exp gains, haha. Chapter 2 tomorrow will be the first "test" then (and naturally, I've forgotten yet again to trade the Elixir in preparation, baller) but I'm expecting to get through it just fine eventually, by the mercy of Short Axe Gamble.

What I'm fearing the most right now, probably no matter what, is chapter 12. One would think a balanced party makes sure you have enough units to fill all jobs required, but the amount of Beastkillers and promoted Bow users just scares me. Basically most units one would normally use for locking up the middle are weak to at least one of those. I'm planning with Great Lord Chrom to have one stable defender there (need someone else for the Paladin's group on the left then though; usually I used Chrom for them), but my best idea for the other slot is nothing more than unequipped Fred with +Spd Support, assuming Panne doesn't become ridiculous enough to just eat the supposedly strong hits like carrots. Oh, and how does the right side even work? In past playthroughs, it felt pretty random to me if some of their units would walk around the open right or just go for the narrow middle like everyone else, assuming no one is in their range. Do we know how their movement pattern works; is there a way to manipulate them to go for the center guaranteed or is it all RNG?

Edited July 9, 2014 by The1Weltall

[Interceptor]

Thanks for your answer. I've looked into the bulkier alternatives -- turns out they all come with their own handicaps, so as it stands now, I'm likely going to bite the bullet and just go with my initial couples. The basic idea behind them, if you didn't notice, is to inherit a certain pretty useful skill each (Vantage to combine with Vengeance, Locktouch to have someone for chapter 21 that doesn't have to enter a crapshoot with the Mires). All alternatives basically require a Second Seal and/or more dedication put towards it.

Like, Gregor could certainly be a solid pick for Miriel, but I somehow don't like to use him generally (often feels like he hardly grows, don't know) and he joins somewhat late in comparison to her; Lon'qu could already be closing in on S by the time he joins. And by that time, getting some Def won't be more important than before that, because Miriel's role is supposed to steadily shift to Staff-bot once she's a Sage.

I know you don't like Nosferatu hijinks, but something worth considering for your future Lunatic+ designs is that a Gregor-fathered Laurent is pretty amazing. He has access to all of Vantage, Armsthrift, Vengeance, Tomefaire, and Sol. It is nothing less than a cornucopia of badassery. Gregor's RES is bad, and his MAG growth is not helping his son, but that's about where the downsides end. He comes already at level 10, and is a good candidate for an early Master Seal if you aren't intending to build him fully. Is Gregor time.

Fun story: I once took an Armthrift-enabled Laurent through Chapter 21, using a couple of Mire tomes that I bought from Gharnef. With patience, you can beat all of those rat bastards at their own game, one by one.

alternative Thief.

Anna wants to know why you need a specially-trained Thief. She comes in the perfect package.

What I'm fearing the most right now, probably no matter what, is chapter 12.

If you look slightly to the northwest of the initial blockade, you'll note that there's a 1-wide passage bracketed by 2-wide walls. You can turtle with a small number of units in that alleyway, just put a strong tank on either end. The extra-wide walls prevent your squishies in the middle from getting attacked by multiple ranged units (you can actually put a couple healers here if you like).

Cherche is a problem, but if you stick a +1 MV partner on her (like Fred or Anna), there's a spot in the northeast sea where she can chill out, safely not in range of anything on the map.

Do we know how their movement pattern works; is there a way to manipulate them to go for the center guaranteed or is it all RNG?

I don't have any specific data on this chapter, but generally you want to avoid giving an enemy two equidistant ways to get to you; they'll pick one or the other in that case. Try to make the middle the shortest route.

[The1Weltall]

I know you don't like Nosferatu hijinks

Do you? Have I actually said it here somewhere? :D

To be fully honest, I actually have a somewhat funny story with that tome. I once did Hard Classic using only male units, and Henry was just being bad starting chapter 17. Then I tried Nosferatu and he magically (literally) became useful again, along with someone who helped his Spd-screwed ass not get doubled. That worked up until him basically soloing the chapter 20 main hall except for Walhart himself, but then chapter 21 with its fast Berserkers happened and I dropped him for the rest of the game. What I took from this is that Nosferatu doesn't necessarily turn bad units into good units (like, Henry ultimately died to his nonexistent Speed), but it's obvious that someone like the Avatar is a pretty good unit and would very well be absolutely invincible with that thing. Something like Dark Knight Morgan with Galeforce + Lifetaker (the super-star of my first Lunatic run, along with Tikitaka) was more fun in that regard -- he was the same demigod you would expect him to be, but the RNG could have just killed him with a perfect sequence of hits if she wanted to, haha.

Other than that yeah, Gregor may very well be considered for L+. (I've already had a glimpse at your log; an army of Bow-men trolling this Counter madness sounds too good, haha.) One thing after another though, and I in fact generally like to do my playthroughs as differently from each other as reasonable.

Fun story: I once took an Armthrift-enabled Laurent through Chapter 21, using a couple of Mire tomes that I bought from Gharnef. With patience, you can beat all of those rat bastards at their own game, one by one.

Haha, how long did it take you? I looked into doing that just for the hell of it with the same Henry from the story above, and I was just like...no way in hell. Looks like Armsthrift is a pretty vital part in routing them being feasible at all.

Anna wants to know why you need a specially-trained Thief. She comes in the perfect package.

I used her on my previous Lunatic run. A lot even, she was insanely Mag-blessed and thus my primary Staff-bot. But still, even with Dark Flier Avatar behind her, she could be 4HKOed or so by the Mires and they had like 30% displayed hit. I was feeling dirtily lucky when I didn't see her die at all, yet she actually had to use up a whole package of...I don't remember if it was a Concoction or an Elixir, but she really couldn't just be flown straight from treasure to treasure without doing anything else. Bottom line is, Anna's all fine for "casual" play, but I wanna try to find ways to make this map less annoying to play -- and one way could be to get a lockpicking child that doesn't care about being crossfired all day. (Kinda a shame that Anna has no Babbyanna (thinking of it, that would be quite cute :3) or that there's no other kid that simply starts as Thief. Lockpicking not being tied to this awful class in this game is a pretty cool thing, just somewhat annoying you do have to go out of your way to get it onto someone well outside of the Thief tree...)

If you look slightly to the northwest of the initial blockade, you'll note that there's a 1-wide passage bracketed by 2-wide walls. You can turtle with a small number of units in that alleyway, just put a strong tank on either end. The extra-wide walls prevent your squishies in the middle from getting attacked by multiple ranged units (you can actually put a couple healers here if you like).

Well, good stuff. I just had to look it up now, because I didn't even remember that part of the map precisely enough. Though it does come with the risk of one Bow Knight's group coming from behind, or are they actually cut off from that area? Whatever, will have a very close look at it once I get there, thanks. Classic me, not noticing things like that literally for a year...

Also, I just added up my turn counts from the previous run just for the hell of it. A whopping 484 turns. Plegia was ~300, Valm was ~140, Grima was ~40. Prologue alone was fucking 112, nice water trick with Bronze Sword, lol. Now I did the Prologue in 11, with Fred only taking 3 instead of 2 kills, go figure... I expect to roughly cut that total count in half with the new run, simply because I'm not doing said water trick, Tiki grinding, Dark Flier kite-soloing, hopefully chapter 21 stalling and whatever else cost a lot.

Accompanying to that, I wonder... Has someone calculated exactly how many turns Olivia has to Dance for her second skill?

[Emerald Ink]

I have successfully gotten past Paralogue 6 and have my Inigo rockin' the light blue hair. He's probably one of the only kids that it doesn't look ridiculous on. Now to give everybody Second Seals and get back to grinding. I'm taking everybody who can get Knight and/or Barbarian through those trees as quickly as possible just to get them over with.

[Interceptor]

Do you? Have I actually said it here somewhere? :D

Well, you did say that you didn't want to "lol Sorcerer Nosferatu press Start etc", so I just extrapolated.

Other than that yeah, Gregor may very well be considered for L+. (I've already had a glimpse at your log; an army of Bow-men trolling this Counter madness sounds too good, haha.) One thing after another though, and I in fact generally like to do my playthroughs as differently from each other as reasonable.

C'est la vie. Some day it will be Gregor Time. He does make a good bow-guy.

Haha, how long did it take you? I looked into doing that just for the hell of it with the same Henry from the story above, and I was just like...no way in hell. Looks like Armsthrift is a pretty vital part in routing them being feasible at all.

It took 85 Turns, although that overstates how long it took overall, since the vast majority of those Turns were just "blow up someone with Laurent, End Turn". Maybe a half hour? Armsthrift is basically required (you need 80+ uses of it to kill all of the Sorcs in Lunatic+, and that's two tomes worth even with 40 LCK), and a good crit chance helps considerably when it comes to saving uses as well. I guess technically you could "live off the earth" with this strat and avoid Spotpass, since a Mire tome drops in this chapter, but it'd be a heck of a lot trickier.

I used her on my previous Lunatic run. A lot even, she was insanely Mag-blessed and thus my primary Staff-bot. But still, even with Dark Flier Avatar behind her, she could be 4HKOed or so by the Mires and they had like 30% displayed hit. I was feeling dirtily lucky when I didn't see her die at all, yet she actually had to use up a whole package of...I don't remember if it was a Concoction or an Elixir, but she really couldn't just be flown straight from treasure to treasure without doing anything else. Bottom line is, Anna's all fine for "casual" play, but I wanna try to find ways to make this map less annoying to play -- and one way could be to get a lockpicking child that doesn't care about being crossfired all day. (Kinda a shame that Anna has no Babbyanna (thinking of it, that would be quite cute :3) or that there's no other kid that simply starts as Thief. Lockpicking not being tied to this awful class in this game is a pretty cool thing, just somewhat annoying you do have to go out of your way to get it onto someone well outside of the Thief tree...)

This is all true, but the only item really worth risking your ass for in Ch 21 is maybe the Fortify staff, and you already have one of those from Ch 17. Anna kinda works in a pinch, especially if you can effectively Physic her from afar. Plus, you should have some keys left over, so any super RES-tank can handle the tough assignment.

Well, good stuff. I just had to look it up now, because I didn't even remember that part of the map precisely enough. Though it does come with the risk of one Bow Knight's group coming from behind, or are they actually cut off from that area? Whatever, will have a very close look at it once I get there, thanks. Classic me, not noticing things like that literally for a year...

One of the things that I picked up from my L+ run, is finding excellent places to turtle on just about every possible map. That one looks something like this in practice:

The left block has two facings, the one on the right has one, and your unit in the middle can only be attack from a limited number of 2-range places. Since I was running Bows, the 2-range enemies very quickly killed themselves off on Enemy Phase, which left a pretty safe set of units left to deal with.

You can't run total glass on this map (the healer will get winged occasionally), but other than that it's a pretty good place to button up. You can extend the middle zone if you either have someone who can take three facings (push the right guy out more), or you have three beefcakes (in which case you push the left out more, and have two guys exposed).

[Czar_Yoshi]

I used her on my previous Lunatic run. A lot even, she was insanely Mag-blessed and thus my primary Staff-bot. But still, even with Dark Flier Avatar behind her, she could be 4HKOed or so by the Mires and they had like 30% displayed hit. I was feeling dirtily lucky when I didn't see her die at all, yet she actually had to use up a whole package of...

http://serenesforest.net/general/truehit.html

That's why she didn't die. 30 listed Hit ~= 18.3% chance to actually get hit.

If you really want all the chests in Cht.21, just hang onto all the Keys from earlier chapters and use them there. There should be enough, provided you didn't use any earlier (well, except for the one required one in Cht.3).

[NoCashOtaku]

Stuck on chapter 3 of Lunatic+ Classic. Knights somehow always get counter and Aegis, Archers have Pavise and Luna+, Raimi somehow got the same skills as the knights, and soldiers somehow get Luna+ and hawkeye.

[Interceptor]

^ Where does your strategy break down? Are you clearing the left-hand side first, then dealing with RHS, then taking on the top?

[Xander]

Stuck on chapter 3 of Lunatic+ Classic. Knights somehow always get counter and Aegis, Archers have Pavise and Luna+, Raimi somehow got the same skills as the knights, and soldiers somehow get Luna+ and hawkeye.

If you're clearing the left hand side first you should just make sure no more than two of the enemies near the starting position have luna+ and the knight and soldier don't have counter, as well as the knight above the door on the LHS and the boss. Then you should just recruit Kellam on turn 1, pair him up with Chrom, trade the Javelin to Fred, separate Chrom, pair up fred and Vaike and attack the soldier with the Javelin on turn 1 while keeping everyone else out of range. On turn 2 kill the knight with Avatar who should be paired up with one of the Cavs and pair chrom and Sumia to take out the archer that doesn't have the door key. Frederick should then kill the archer that has the door key. Lissa should have healed Fred on turn 2 and 3 (though I assume you could figure that out for yourself) and on turn 3 Frederick should equip the Silver lance and open the door while everyone else moves up. Turn 4 have either MU or Chrom with Rapier pair up with Frederick and move him up a bit so that he can reach the boss and hit her with silver lance next turn. If you've done this properly and don't get boxed in or too low, you should be able to complete the chapter in 5 turns with a dual strike. The first four chapters on Luna+ can all be solod by Frederick assuming you have DLC or spotpass to train your other characters later. Sorry that was so long but hopefully it helps.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Xandere

[Oversleep]

Hello mates. I recently beat Chapter 16 on Lunatic+ meaning I have access to Second Seals, therefore I started grinding and changing everyone's classes for them skills. The thing is I don't know which skills should Olivia!Lucina get and what should be her final class. Mind helping me out?

- Galeforce

- Aether

- Rightful King

- Luna

- Aegis

Other skills I had in mind were Swordfaire and Vantage. As for her final class, I was thinking Great Lord since it has the highest Skill cap.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Uh... Olivia!Lucina has Swordmaster, Sniper, Bow Knight, Assassin, and Falcon Knight which all have higher Skl than Great Lord F. You might want to check your sources again.

Typical Olivia!Lucinas use LB/GF/DS+/Aether/Luna and are Paladins, Snipers, Assassins, and occasionally Great Lords.

[Oversleep]

Yeah, my bad. I meant Great Lord is the one with the highest cap of the classes I had in mind. I didn't count LB since I didn't buy R&R yet. But when I do purchase it I will swap RK for LB. Thanks.

[Czar_Yoshi]

If you don't have LB, use Swordfaire/Lancefaire instead.

[Vorena]

Have there been any recent extremely reliable strategies for clearing say the first 5 chapters of L+ yet that does not involve me having to L+R+Start so often?

Edited July 23, 2014 by Vorena

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Have there been any recent extremely reliable strategies for clearing say the first 5 chapters of L+ yet that does not involve me having to L+R+Start so often?

Interceptor's guide outlines some pretty reliable strategies here: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=40300

He's also recently developed a much better chapter 2 strat, which can be found here: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=48207&page=2#entry3166668

[Interceptor]

About that Chapter 2 strat, make sure that you hit those level/stat benchmarks by the end of Prologue. It makes the later chapters much easier. I haven't taken the +SPD Robin past Chapter 3 (previous PTs have always been +DEF), but it shouldn't be an issue; the generic strategies will work, other than your opening move, which has to be more conservative.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Interceptor

[isetrh]

I've already beaten Lunatic once, but that was using just the AvatarxChrom family, and I had to reclass my Avatar to Sorc to get her to survive long enough for Morgan and Lucina to kill Grima. Could I get some advice to beat Lunatic without using tactics like Nosferatanking and Avatar solo, besides grinding? I've tried training Panne since I read she was good, but I couldn't get her to survive Chapter 7 without grinding. I'd like to beat Lunatic with maybe 3 or 4 pairs if it's possible to train that many.

Edited July 27, 2014 by isetrh

[XeKr]

The key is that, despite the enemy stats increasing very fast in Lunatic, your characters’ stats increase even faster (as long as you don’t promote early, or are Frederick, etc). So every character has a period where they need to be babied, but they’re all usable after that. The Veteran characters are so good because they get past that initial bump so fast. Classes like Manakete are similar given how fast they level after reclassiing. etc

Panne is generally recommended because Taguel class bases are so low, yet her personal bases are quite high, so her stats as a Wyvern are very high. Plus her growths are generally extremely high and Wyvern is a nice class with synergistic avoidstacking skills.