The Lunatic Club

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

I'm through Chapter 11 now! Took me long enough to figure out what Chapter 10 needed: creativity and not being greedy, like any other L+ chapter. Had to use Paralogue 3 to get the Blessed Bow, even though it wasn't particularly important for the exp. Sumia is 4 levels from Galeforce, and Avatar can tank all day as a Bow Knight. I promoted Chrom just now, as he reached lv 10. With Chrom B-rank, Avatar is starting to approach 100% AT. Got two Anna shops with Second Seals and one Hammerne. I had to sell things just to buy them and ended up with 4 gold, but now that I have the large Bullion from clearing Chapter 11 with Interceptor's method, I'm doing a lot better.

Should I bother training Chrom in lances? He isn't ever going to be a front liner, so having Javelins doesn't matter.

It's worth getting him to at least D so he can use Beastkillers during the Valm arc (A will net him more hit and damage with it, though). If Sumia's your main tank, just spend a chapter or two with him with a few lances of various grades equipped and have him equip it before an EP where it'll be generally advantageous.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Okay... I just beat chapter 3, and I have one question: Just where did the challenge go? I mean, I know people like calling 3 the hardest chap in the game, but the drop in difficulty is startling.

Lunatic(+) has a really wonky difficulty curve- Cht.4 is a breather chapter. It comes back in Cht.5 and 6 (not as bad as 2 and 3, still very hard), then you get 7-10 fairly easy to train in. 11 is mostly average. The difficulty goes back up between 12 and 17 and stays high until 22, unless you're Rescue rushing in which case all those chapters are very easy except 21. 22 Depends on how you've trained your units, 23 and 24 are back to very difficult, 25 is a joke and the endgame is either easy or impossible again depending on your team.

[XeKr]

I'm asking for personal experience, not can it be done. I know it can be done on Lunatic--the jury's out on L+ as of yet.

The implication is that I (and a few other SF members) have done it. >_>

It is fun, however I just don’t think it’s that remarkable. If attempting such a challenge, you probably didn’t just Robin solo most of Lunatic (or at least recognize it’s nowhere near necessary), and you basically just play the same way as usual (at least I did). Robin’s primary advantage (not to belittle the actual worth of Veteran) is getting overwhelmingly strong the fastest, but most of the unpromoted cast can reach that with some more kills.

It’s clearly doable in Lunatic+. But “reliably”? That depends on your standard for reliable (for example I don’t consider the current L+ C2 strat reliable, as good as it may be).

Edited October 28, 2014 by XeKr

[isetrh]

I burned my last Rescue charge on Paralogue 4, not realizing how important it would be for Chapter 12. I do have a back-up save from three maps ago (Chapter 11 and Paralogues 3 and 4, and I got both Paralogue 3's Seraph Robe and Chapter 11's Speedwing). Should I go back to that, or can Chapter 12 be done without Rescue?

Edited October 28, 2014 by isetrh

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Should be doable without. You may need to reset a bit more to reroll enemy skills, but there's no point in the chapter where it's integral. Keep an eye on Anna shops while you're making attempts too, because she might just sell one.

[Interceptor]

It’s clearly doable in Lunatic+. But “reliably”? That depends on your standard for reliable (for example I don’t consider the current L+ C2 strat reliable, as good as it may be).

The current L+ Ch2 strategy is more reliable than you think, but that part of it isn't emphasized because it's not a useful goal for most people. It was designed to work in a world where every enemy has all four L+ skills; that's clearly not going to happen in any real run, but regardless it allows a generic strategy that works for all configurations.

Strictly speaking, in a real world scenario there are any number of branch points where you can modify what you're doing based on the skills that enemies actually do have. But that's tremendously time-inefficient. Rote memorization of the movements can get you a clear of the bottom half in less than seven minutes.

There's definitely a way to make it more reliable, but when your chanciest move works ~50-60% of the time and only costs you 30 seconds on a failure, there's no real impetus for it.

[isetrh]

I'm pretty much through Chapter 13 now (just milking the last two enemies for all they're worth). I decided not to train Chrom in Lances since his Rapier is lasting a long time and I'm not sure he needs Beastkillers. Chapter 12 was indeed salvageable--just needed to unequip Sumia (my Gregor substitute).

I have three Second Seals, so that's pretty great. One for Sumia who's approaching lv 20 DF, and one for each of Lucina and Laurent. Could I get some input on reclasses?

Lucina to Archer: Not really sure for her, but this does give her Bows immediately and help her get to BK quickly. Or should I take her through other classes first? One possibility could be Archer-->Sniper-->BK, or there's also the Cavalier line...

Laurent to Dark Mage: I think this is what I'm supposed to do with him? Makes sense to me. Mire and Nosferatu.

Sumia to General or Falcon Knight: Not sure which of these is better (or something else entirely?). Falcon Knight gives Movement, Speed, and an excellent Staffbot to steal Miriel's job. General seems like a good pairup for helping train the kids, and helps Sumia to give Cynthia the Strength and Defense she'll want when she appears after Chapter 18.

Thanks!

[Thor Odinson]

I'd do GK before General tbh for Sumia. The one extra weakness isn't really a weakness because not may enemies actually use the beastslayer, and it's only 1 point of defense for 2 points of movement. Also GK pairup gives movement as well. Falcoknight is a solid contender against the GK and I can't really tell you which would be better for Sumia in particular since I've never used her in L+, but unless you want Sumia to be rallying up defense all day long which, granted, rally def is really nice, I feel GK outclasses General in pretty much every way. Granted, my own L+ run was done with everyone frontlining as bows, but I really like GK on Lunatic vanilla if that says anything.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

In general, the enemy tends to fail to take advantage of weaknesses (with the exception of fliers and bows/wind magic, which get spammed from chapter 13 onward). The amount each of Wyrmslayers, Beastkillers and Hammers wielding by enemies during the main campaign probably don't even reach double digits. Non-bow/-wind magic effective weapons become more of a rare inconvenience to watch out for in the late game once the early game Fred vs Hammertime stops being an issue.

I'm pretty much through Chapter 13 now (just milking the last two enemies for all they're worth). I decided not to train Chrom in Lances since his Rapier is lasting a long time and I'm not sure he needs Beastkillers. Chapter 12 was indeed salvageable--just needed to unequip Sumia (my Gregor substitute).

Beastkillers are way strong against effective foes than the Rapier, though. Granted, the Rapier is 15 vs both armour and beasts, whereas Beastkiller is just 27 vs beasts and you will be able to get your hands on a Noble Rapier, which is 24 vs armour and beast. However, Beastkillers allow him to keep using them if you change him out of Great Lord, (to say, Paladin, which is considered one of the best support classes around) and speaking from experience, Valm spews so much cavalry that a support Chrom can still easily burn a Rapier, a Noble Rapier and 2 Beastkillers during Walhart's first chapter.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I'm pretty much through Chapter 13 now (just milking the last two enemies for all they're worth). I decided not to train Chrom in Lances since his Rapier is lasting a long time and I'm not sure he needs Beastkillers. Chapter 12 was indeed salvageable--just needed to unequip Sumia (my Gregor substitute).

I have three Second Seals, so that's pretty great. One for Sumia who's approaching lv 20 DF, and one for each of Lucina and Laurent. Could I get some input on reclasses?

Lucina to Archer: Not really sure for her, but this does give her Bows immediately and help her get to BK quickly. Or should I take her through other classes first? One possibility could be Archer-->Sniper-->BK, or there's also the Cavalier line...

Laurent to Dark Mage: I think this is what I'm supposed to do with him? Makes sense to me. Mire and Nosferatu.

Sumia to General or Falcon Knight: Not sure which of these is better (or something else entirely?). Falcon Knight gives Movement, Speed, and an excellent Staffbot to steal Miriel's job. General seems like a good pairup for helping train the kids, and helps Sumia to give Cynthia the Strength and Defense she'll want when she appears after Chapter 18.

Thanks!

I can say from experience that, even if you're not 1-turning maps, having lots of highly mobile staffbots completely wrecks Valm. I council Falco for Sumia, though if you have a particular want for DG+ and will be training her a lot then GK works too (remember, this is her second promoted class on Lunatic. She probably won't be ready to switch again 'til endgame).

Laurent definitely wants to go DM. Lucina should probably go either Cav -> GK or Peg -> Falco- Bows are cool but she wants a few more skills first.

[isetrh]

I looked at the actual numbers for Great Knight and General and was surprised to see that they match up pretty closely when not at caps. Still going with Falcon Knight for Sumia.

I guess I should train Chrom in Lances then. I'll give him my leftover Bronzes. I think he's staying as a Great Lord though--he gives my Avatar perfect AT and I would rather not give that up.

Miriel and Ricken didn't manage to get to S rank in Chapter 14, so Laurent will still be a while. Probably easier to try to train the kids one at a time anyway. Sumia should be a pretty decently levelled Sniper by the end of Chapter 15, and then it can be Laurent's turn.

Thanks for all the help!

Edit: Didn't see Czar_Yoshi's post. I already changed Lucina to Archer... I could take her through Sniper, then switch to GK or Falco, maybe. Other than that, I will follow your advice, thanks!

Edited October 29, 2014 by isetrh

[Czar_Yoshi]

If Lucina's bases are low enough, you can take her through Peg/Cav after Archer instead of promoting, if you have a spare Seal.

[isetrh]

I have plenty of seals, but Lucina is already capping stats at lv 19 Archer.

[Terrador]

I have plenty of seals, but Lucina is already capping stats at lv 19 Archer.

If you have a prior save, why not just take Lucina to Archer 10, reclass, THEN promote?

[isetrh]

If you have a prior save, why not just take Lucina to Archer 10, reclass, THEN promote?

I don't have a prior save. Those are her stats after my last save. Thanks though. I won't make the same mistake with Cynthia, if she's still usable with her availability.

[XeKr]

The current L+ Ch2 strategy is more reliable than you think, but that part of it isn't emphasized because it's not a useful goal for most people. It was designed to work in a world where every enemy has all four L+ skills; that's clearly not going to happen in any real run, but regardless it allows a generic strategy that works for all configurations.

Strictly speaking, in a real world scenario there are any number of branch points where you can modify what you're doing based on the skills that enemies actually do have. But that's tremendously time-inefficient. Rote memorization of the movements can get you a clear of the bottom half in less than seven minutes.

There's definitely a way to make it more reliable, but when your chanciest move works ~50-60% of the time and only costs you 30 seconds on a failure, there's no real impetus for it.

Late reply but anyways..

I agree with you wrt to the triviality of the resetting, but (to me) there remains an irrational nagging whenever it’s easier to reset/brute force a map in FE than to figure something out strategically. It’s similar for entering/exiting maps for skill distributions later. Resetting is, in my mind, traditionally considered or associated with a “loss” in FE play (probably because that’s how some of us learned to play FE with permadeath). Still, it’s acceptable that L+ was arguably designed (at least in part) to challenge these and other standard conventions.

Regardless, my specific qualm more regards the stat benchmarks, combined with completing the previous chapters (which afaict can be done reliably enough even for me, but is nontrivial to figure out how each time if not bruteforcing, especially wrt to feeding the most kills to Robin for the best C2 chances). Though I’m fairly certain my standard is exceptionally strict there.

[57317665314631426351713713]

YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS! Lunatic, COMPLETED! Although I'm happy/sad to report that the rest of the game after chapter 3 was a cakewalk. After chapter 3, I only has to reset 3 times. Granted, I didn't do the radiant hero and I grinded like a madman, but hey, what can you do.

Edited October 30, 2014 by OkamiUmbre

[Czar_Yoshi]

YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS! Lunatic, COMPLETED! Although I'm happy/sad to report that the rest of the game after chapter 3 was a cakewalk. After chapter 3, I only has to reset 3 times. Granted, I didn't do the radiant hero and I grinded like a madman, but hey, what can you do.

Not bashing grinding, but what exactly were you expecting?

[Tables]

Not bashing grinding, but what exactly were you expecting?

YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSS! Lunatic, COMPLETED! Although I'm happy/sad to report that the rest of the game after chapter 3 was a cakewalk. After chapter 3, I only has to reset 3 times. Granted, I didn't do the radiant hero and I grinded like a madman, but hey, what can you do.

Agree with Czar here. Honestly, if you get past chapter 3 and haven't been playing Frederick Emblem, then you're probably not going to ever need to grind. Enemy stats increase so slowly compared to yours (seriously, just go compare chapter 2 Soldiers to chapter 10 ones - they're around 4 STR/SKL/SPD/LUK/DEF better and 9 HP/2 RES - that's like around 7 levels of growth for 12 chapters later into the game), that you just end up overpowering them pretty quickly. Yes, the enemy quantity and weapons improve, but that doesn't tend to matter as much when your stats exceed theirs and the gap is increasing.

[zaknafein]

Cleared lunatic. Adjusting to lunatic from hard was absolutely brutal up through CH5. Chapter 2 in particular took quite a while to piece together. I had to really utilize the pair up system and turtle hard because without grinding, most units just get decimated if attacked more than once.

I don't think I had issues until the lava stage onwards. Fliers caused all sorts of problems when trying to keep a thief alive.

Also, WTF GRIMA? I had to cheese him with dance and rescue to kill him before I got completely surrounded. I could've sworn he was a sad joke on normal/hard mode. Same thing with the Aversa map full of Mire and forged weapons all over the place.

Edited October 31, 2014 by zaknafein

[Thor Odinson]

Yeah the difficulty between hard and lunatic is

quite a jump

probably would've benefitted with a maniac mode of sorts between them, but alas.

Never hurts to have more options!

On an unrelated note...

I wonder, what's the usual approach to chapter 24? I usually just facetank it out with Sol, but after facetanking it 4 out 4 times with Sol, once in a corner, I wonder what tends to be the other way to complete this chapter. I think the only non Sol unit who never costs me a reset that chapter for me was GK Sully on my first Lunatic Run, who had effectively 55 defense before terrain and then sat herself down on a fort (Paladin Fred pairup with 20ish defense and a tonic, 47 capped GK defense) and chugged an Elixir whenever need be, but I'm sure there's other ways (most likely involving galeforce) and I'd like to know them.

Edited October 31, 2014 by Thor Odinson

[57317665314631426351713713]

Not bashing grinding, but what exactly were you expecting?

Agree with Czar here. Honestly, if you get past chapter 3 and haven't been playing Frederick Emblem, then you're probably not going to ever need to grind. Enemy stats increase so slowly compared to yours (seriously, just go compare chapter 2 Soldiers to chapter 10 ones - they're around 4 STR/SKL/SPD/LUK/DEF better and 9 HP/2 RES - that's like around 7 levels of growth for 12 chapters later into the game), that you just end up overpowering them pretty quickly. Yes, the enemy quantity and weapons improve, but that doesn't tend to matter as much when your stats exceed theirs and the gap is increasing.

By grinded like a madman, I meant that I had tried to get everyone even level-wise, which in turn resulted in a lot of grinding. But seriously, the drop in difficulty is astonishing. I only started grinding at chapter 16, and I could beat all chappies beforehand easily. (Started grinding there in preparation of Tiki's paralogue.) The only mission I had trouble with really was Grima, and that was a cakewalk after I realised that I needed to use a x4 weapon (four chances for Chrom to hit with Exalted Falchion).

Edited October 31, 2014 by OkamiUmbre

[Czar_Yoshi]

I wonder, what's the usual approach to chapter 24? I usually just facetank it out with Sol, but after facetanking it 4 out 4 times with Sol, once in a corner, I wonder what tends to be the other way to complete this chapter. I think the only non Sol unit who never costs me a reset that chapter for me was GK Sully on my first Lunatic Run, who had effectively 55 defense before terrain and then sat herself down on a fort (Paladin Fred pairup with 20ish defense and a tonic, 47 capped GK defense) and chugged an Elixir whenever need be, but I'm sure there's other ways (most likely involving galeforce) and I'd like to know them.

If you don't want to turtle Cht.24, you pretty much have to just transition all your GF units to Dark Fliers (Tomes for Rexcalibur + not caring about movement penalties). There's not really a turn-by-turn strat because team composition varies so wildly by then.

When doing that, though, you have to be careful to either have one of your DFs already be Lv.10+ upon finishing, or leave some other GF units not yet reclassed. Having a Falco or two, especially with GF, is very important for Cht.25 (since all the Route maps are done, there's no further need for exp so the map should just be skipped).

[Thor Odinson]

I guess i could try that next time I do Lunatic/+ and not do my usual Sol thing. I figured it was something like that. I don't usually play DF heavy since I prefer tankier units I can just chuck around (hence why GK is my favored class), but it's not the end of the world if I don't.

tbf 25 I can always one turn even without the falco as long as I had 2 healers with enough rescue range and fliers with enough movement. I had no fliers that were being used in 25 on my L+ run, so what I did was have base-promoted Cherche pair up with Anna (need~25mag), have Libra rescue Cherche to the farthest he could with some extra units blocking his other possible rescue locations, have Basilio Rally Str MU before hand, MU pairs up with (Base) Sumia, and Cherche flies Anna down as far as possible, rescue sumia, Sumia carries MU rest of the way and MU straight up oneshots due to being +str. I could probably go for a doubling with a speed tonic if she was in Bow Knight, but she was Sniper and had enough power anyway. Just requires a lot more setup than the GF Falco method.

The only time I failed to oneturn was on my recent run, because it was an avatar run with predetermined class sets I only had one healer. Surviving 1 turn to do a 2turn wasn't too bad though.

Edited October 31, 2014 by Thor Odinson

[XeKr]

You can play the map very offensively on player phase, even without Galeforce, since (iirc) every enemy is weak to effective damage, plus many are relatively slow (Great Knight, Wyvern) or fragile for ohkos (Valk). So forge-up, go to town.

Edited October 31, 2014 by XeKr