The Lunatic Club

[Czar_Yoshi]

You've tried tanking unequipped using Interceptor's strat?

What about the exp from Par.1?

[Terrador]

Seconded; tanking with no equipment in the corner is pretty much the strat for that map. Try it out; you'll be pleasantly surprised. I pulled it off with really not many people at all--Kellam and Sumia dead, in particular. Ishtar was the only remotely good unit not named Frederick, though Chrom was almost passable.

[isetrh]

I am working on getting through with this method. At first I didn't think that it would work since Interceptor used really specific movements, but since you guys suggested it I've been working on adapting it to my own units. I was planning to wait to post until I cleared the chapter, but I'm posting now because I'm thinking of leaving for a while after making such an ass of myself on that tier list thread (I will still be lurking, and check PMs).

Edited October 18, 2014 by isetrh

[Terrador]

I am working on getting through with this method. At first I didn't think that it would work since Interceptor used really specific movements, but since you guys suggested it I've been working on adapting it to my own units. I was planning to wait to post until I cleared the chapter, but I'm posting now because I'm thinking of leaving for a while after making such an ass of myself on that tier list thread (I will still be lurking, and check PMs).

For what it's worth, I only knew Interceptor turtled in the corner, and ad-libbed the rest of it in something like three attempts with half my team being dead. I'm sure you can pull it off; just do Paralogue 1 first.

Your mileage may vary on this one, but I really don't think you made an ass of yourself in that thread at all. You underrated Fred somewhat, wanted to do something as a legitimately funny stunt, and called an ass on being an ass. Don't crawl into the shame-cave, and if you want to do a parody tier list, go to FFtF and throw in a whitetext or something explicitly stating it's a joke.

[isetrh]

For what it's worth, I only knew Interceptor turtled in the corner, and ad-libbed the rest of it in something like three attempts with half my team being dead. I'm sure you can pull it off; just do Paralogue 1 first.

Your mileage may vary on this one, but I really don't think you made an ass of yourself in that thread at all. You underrated Fred somewhat, wanted to do something as a legitimately funny stunt, and called an ass on being an ass. Don't crawl into the shame-cave, and if you want to do a parody tier list, go to FFtF and throw in a whitetext or something explicitly stating it's a joke.

Yeah, I'm working on it. Already did Paralogue 1. The problem I'm having now is that the Mages keep killing Fred. I do have a savestate where none of the Wyvern Riders have Counter, so I might resort to that.

Thanks, I guess I'll stick around. I have an essay due in an hour, but after that I'll look for what rules FftF has (if any) and write the tier list. It should be up in 3 hours or so.

[Thor Odinson]

As long as you have MU and Fred you can probably finagle something with the third unit. I used Lon'qu paired with Sumia and the Renown Tiki Tear in substitute for an actually trained unit. It's just you need to minimise Fred's area of ranged enemies contact once all the Wyverns are dead. One mage isn't gonna kill him, but two will. I actually forgot to do that the first time and got wrecked by mages too, so the second time around I did this weird pairup-transfer thing that swaps him and MU's locations, as well as their partners, in place, using Lissa in the middle, thus only opening him to the one melee enemy and any mages, which he can survive. MU did the actual two-ranging here.

Edited October 18, 2014 by Thor Odinson

[Alastor15243]

So I'm trying Lunatic No grind for the first time, on casual. I've got a level 15 +Skill -Lck male Robin who I intend to marry to Sumia!Lucina. I'm on chapter 3, and I need to decide what my main party's gonna be like. Lissa is a given for healing and Owain (Both because Owain is awesome and because he'll give me the quickest possible access to Cynthia on the map). Of course, of Owain's viable fathers, Ricken comes the soonest, but I've heard he's really hard to use on Hard and especially Lunatic modes. Henry of course comes significantly later, but what about Libra?

Any suggestions? What are some general tips for handling party building in lunatic no grind?

Edited October 20, 2014 by Alastor15243

[Terrador]

Tip #1: Have a small party. Five combat pairs should be about it, including children. Given ChromxSumia, LucinaxAvatar, MorganxOwain, Lissaxwhomever, that's already four pairs, also known as kiiiiind of a lot. In general, just use a small team and don't feed Frederick everything.

[Alastor15243]

Tip #1: Have a small party. Five combat pairs should be about it, including children. Given ChromxSumia, LucinaxAvatar, MorganxOwain, Lissaxwhomever, that's already four pairs, also known as kiiiiind of a lot. In general, just use a small team and don't feed Frederick everything.

I haven't fed frederick anything actually, all of it for the first three chapters, prologue to the end of 2, has gone to Robin. He's level 15 now. I heard it's pretty much impossible to use anybody but Frederick or the avatar before chapter 3, so I went with that. Also, does the fact that I'm playing on casual make it less strict how small I need to keep the party, since death isn't permanent?

[Blaze The Great]

Ok I haven't paid much attention to my Lunatic run in quite some time but I am about to go back to it. I am on Chapter 12 and I have two problems. 1) Cordelia, even with 18+6 defense from Frederick, keeps on dying. 2) I'm missing Miriel's offensive power. She is I believe level 12 Troubadour. Should I reclass her back to Mage now or wait until she promotes?

My strategy for Ch 12 involves Chrom, Annilese (Female MU), Cordelia, Frederick, Anna, and Cherche. I'm bringing Anna because she is more dodgy than Libra and she can also get a defense boost from Cherche. Basically, I kill the Armors the first turn. Second turn, I move up and to the left, under the impassable terrain. My formation looks like this:

XX

XX

XX

CAC

Chrom with Annilese, Anna with Cherche, and Cordelia with Frederick from left to right. Tips?

[Irysa]

(Both because Owain is awesome and because he'll give me the quickest possible access to Cynthia on the map)

This is actually false btw, Severa's Paralogue also lets you get to Cynthia immediately.

Also, try pairing Lissa with Libra. That's rather easy to do given they can spam rescue on each other after a certain point.

Edited October 20, 2014 by Irysa

[Alastor15243]

Okay now I'm stumped. At what point exactly does it become safe to start training units besides Robin? I tried a bit in chapter 3 and managed to let them get most of the kills, but now I'm at chapter 4 and they can only do chip damage and barely survive one hit. Was chapter 3 too late? Was I supposed to somehow start before then? I thought it was imperative to make your Robin strong enough to withstand the onslaught of chapter 2, and I barely managed to do that in time. How exactly are you supposed to train your other units?

[Elieson]

Never

It depends on who you want to train. Most of the cast pre-Chapter 5 is difficult to train, primarily because of speed/durability issues. You would be best off focusing on Robin and Chrom, and investing in Tonics. Try pairing up Fred with Sumia (both give the other exactly what they want for stats), and as time progresses, look into units like Nowi(with Gregor pairup) and Panne(with uhh, maybe Lon'Qu pairup).

If you haven't already trained Stahl or Vaike yet, it's probably too late to easily throw them into the fray.

[XeKr]

I haven't fed frederick anything actually, all of it for the first three chapters, prologue to the end of 2, has gone to Robin. He's level 15 now. I heard it's pretty much impossible to use anybody but Frederick or the avatar before chapter 3, so I went with that.

You can also use Chrom if you feed him all the kills instead of Robin. That's everyone but Sully.

Ok I haven't paid much attention to my Lunatic run in quite some time but I am about to go back to it. I am on Chapter 12 and I have two problems. 1) Cordelia, even with 18+6 defense from Frederick, keeps on dying. 2) I'm missing Miriel's offensive power. She is I believe level 12 Troubadour. Should I reclass her back to Mage now or wait until she promotes?

My strategy for Ch 12 involves Chrom, Annilese (Female MU), Cordelia, Frederick, Anna, and Cherche. I'm bringing Anna because she is more dodgy than Libra and she can also get a defense boost from Cherche. Basically, I kill the Armors the first turn. Second turn, I move up and to the left, under the impassable terrain. My formation looks like this:

XX

XX

XX

CAC

Chrom with Annilese, Anna with Cherche, and Cordelia with Frederick from left to right. Tips?

You could reclass Miriel to Dark Mage and use Tharja's Nosferatu. Or promote if you have a spare Master Seal.

Another good tip for C12 is to forge the Beastkiller from Renown if you have it. Or at least plan how to take advantage of the one that drops in the chapter.

Okay now I'm stumped. At what point exactly does it become safe to start training units besides Robin? I tried a bit in chapter 3 and managed to let them get most of the kills, but now I'm at chapter 4 and they can only do chip damage and barely survive one hit. Was chapter 3 too late? Was I supposed to somehow start before then? I thought it was imperative to make your Robin strong enough to withstand the onslaught of chapter 2, and I barely managed to do that in time. How exactly are you supposed to train your other units?

Chapter 3 has a chokepoint to train and you can kite in a circle. Paralogue 1 also has passive enemies and chokepoints (after surviving the initial wave). You can usually get one of Lon'qu/Sully/Stahl more competent to fight well in C5. After that the chapters don't really increase in difficulty until C11 or so (C9 maybe the first time you play on Lunatic) so it's fairly straightforward to train a few units.

Edited October 21, 2014 by XeKr

[Alastor15243]

You can also use Chrom if you feed him all the kills instead of Robin. That's everyone but Sully.

But how do you feed Chrom all the kills on lunatic? I thought the only reason Robin could do that was because he could both hide in the river and snipe the enemies with thunder in the prologue.

[Terrador]

But how do you feed Chrom all the kills on lunatic? I thought the only reason Robin could do that was because he could both hide in the river and snipe the enemies with thunder in the prologue.

You can't feed him everything, but you can get pretty close. It's much easier to train him early on Lunatic than L+, since he can actually lean on Fred's DEF boost and not get Luna+ into a million pieces for want of 1-2 range. For Prologue, I imagine it's entirely possible to chip most everything with Lissa/MU, then have Fred!Chrom kite the chumps around.

[Alastor15243]

How are Paralogue 1 and Chapter 5 supposed to be done? I've got a level 20/1 Grandmaster Robin, and a level 5 Sumia with a C support with Frederick (and a silver lance and a half of ammo for him with dual strikes), a roughly level 5 Lissa I've had paired up with Miriel for the magic boost, and a level 5 Chrom with a C support with Robin. Everyone else is untrained, I'm on casual mode, so I can afford to do risky stuff.

...Speaking of casual mode, has anybody tried doing casual mode treating the event tiles as save tiles from the DS remakes, only saving after you land on them?

[Czar_Yoshi]

Okay now I'm stumped. At what point exactly does it become safe to start training units besides Robin?

One other unit after Cht.2, and as many as you can handle after Cht.6.

They're going to be weak enough that you can't just give them one chapter and have them ready to go. Miriel doesn't get in gear 'til Cht.6 (and even then, she has to take advantage of the terrain), and Sumia takes until Cht.8 or whenever she promotes. I haven't played too much with the other units, but I'd guess Stahl starts to shape up in Cht.5 and Sully in Cht.7, based on the enemy data.

The only units that really can catch up in one chapter are Panne in Cht.7, Chrom in Cht.7 (advantageous terrain, lots of slow axe-using Wyverns, even many levels under he can practically solo the chapter), Nowi in Cht.8 (because of her growths), and to an extent Cordelia in Cht.8 due to terrain advantages and weak DMs. But nobody except Avatar, Nowi and the children will ever really get ahead of the curve.

Chrom can do the Water Trick too with some fancy footwork. I posted the details for it in Interceptor's Cht.2 thread, if anyone is curious.

[XeKr]

But how do you feed Chrom all the kills on lunatic? I thought the only reason Robin could do that was because he could both hide in the river and snipe the enemies with thunder in the prologue.

There existed numerous ways to beat Prologue (and Lunatic) before we turtled on the water. Even Frederick taking the Myrms/Mage kills and Chrom the rest typically gives him the stats to tank C1 on the fort, and then most of C2 on the mountain. As mentioned, there's also ways to use Chrom's waterwalking.

Robin is the best, but not the only way to approach Lunatic.

How are Paralogue 1 and Chapter 5 supposed to be done? I've got a level 20/1 Grandmaster Robin, and a level 5 Sumia with a C support with Frederick (and a silver lance and a half of ammo for him with dual strikes), a roughly level 5 Lissa I've had paired up with Miriel for the magic boost, and a level 5 Chrom with a C support with Robin.

I would use Paralogue 1 to try and train either Chrom or Lon’qu. Just bait enemies a few at a time and use the narrow hallways.

For Chapter 5, try to figure out a way to get a strong fighter (ideally with Swords to deal with the Barbs/Wyvern swarm. But needs at least some Def for the Myrms.) on the fort in the middle level. Use the Rescue Staff to save Maribelle+Ricken, or take advantage of Sumia’s flight. Hold off the left enemies with a dodgy unit, or the rest of your team together.

Re: training units: Lon’qu can fight Dark mages (lacking Anathema/Hex) and Axe users from base, pretty much, though he likes favorable terrain. I’ve also trained both Sully and Stahl primarily during C3/P1, and they did the majority of the fighting in C5 (by sitting on that middle fort for a few turns).

So I see it as train 1 of Chrom or Robin in Pro+C1 to fight in C2. Use C3/P1 to train another unit (probably one of sword-users) to help in Chapter 5. Then people like Panne join with already nearly workable bases and the team can grow from there.

Edited October 21, 2014 by XeKr

[Thor Odinson]

I usually stuff Chrom (and Sully on my first run, fuck ya'll favoritism powers) starting chapter 4 because that's when stuff gets easier (though I try to give him a few kills between P-3 so he's not at base), and Chrom's rapier access is nice on armors if you get someone to pre-dent it for him (usually Fred). On my current run I spent 4, para1, 5 (falchion on a fort is great vs wyverns), para2, 7, and para3 stuffing Chrom's face, and by the end of that he's 17.33, solid on his own, while training some other units as well (in my case it's an avatar run). You can definitely spare exp from there for other people you'd like to train, but those are the relatively easier chapters (5 isn't /that/"easy" but the enemy composition is just really good to train Chrom with) to do training in.

Edited October 21, 2014 by Thor Odinson

[Alastor15243]

Thanks for the great advice, but I'm still a tad confused: how would I both use para1 to carefully train Chrom AND get the rescue staff from the chest there in time?

[Thor Odinson]

The thief takes Killer Lance. You can take as long as you want and it'll still be there.

[zaknafein]

Planning to do Lunatic after all this time. Is there a good asset/flaw that won't be awkward for post-game? +mag/+str is probably too greedy, but will I really be pressed early on if I go +spd/skl?

I plan to pair Chrom x Sumia and Robin x Lucina. I'm hoping I can make it work without grinding. It seems like the popular thing to do is lean on Robin/Frederick/Chrom and get Robin to Merc-> Hero.

Also, is there a more organized list of strategies for Lunatic/Lunatic+ chapters? I don't really want to dig through this 140 page thread.

[Thor Odinson]

+str -res masterrace, I did my first run of every mode with that

Honestly as long as you don't do -def, -hp, or -spd earlygame isn't that bad. +spd is nice since it lets you double faster. My current run is +spd -skl and the doubling capabilities makes chapter 1 feel like a joke.

Interceptor's signature has links to how to do chapters 2 and 3 reliably in L+ and he has an entire L+ playthrough too. I kinda just played it by ear after 2L and 5L+, though, on my first runs of the respective modes, but if you need a reference I think the best bet are those.

Edited October 21, 2014 by Thor Odinson

[Czar_Yoshi]

Also, is there a more organized list of strategies for Lunatic/Lunatic+ chapters? I don't really want to dig through this 140 page thread.

Yeah, this http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=40300 and this http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=48207

That's the best there is at the moment.