The Lunatic Club

[isetrh]

I'm trying to do a L+ run with limited grinding as I make my minmax team. I'm currently just past Chapter 4. Anna showed up with a Rescue Staff, and my Lissa is kind of bad, so I'm thinking of doing Chapter 5 first so that I can train Maribelle in Paralogue 1 to replace Lissa.

My problem is a lack of good tanks. My Avatar has 8 Defense, and Frederick can't take Magic. Neither one wants to sit on a corner and eat the extra attack every EP.

I could suck it up and do Paralogue 1 first, but I don't know how much the exp will help. Everyone besides Fred and Kellam have single digit Defense, and I don't see three or four levels making them suddenly tanky. I'm wondering if tanking isn't a viable strategy at all with my stats, but I don't know how else to do it.

Can anyone who has done L+ with a non-tanky Avatar give me some advice?

[eclipse]

1. What's Avatar's full stats?

2. What asset/flaw was used?

[isetrh]

+Mag -Def

17.64 Tactician

D Swords, B Tomes

33 HP, 15 Str, 19 Mag, 14 Skill, 17 Spd, 8 Def, 9 Res

Sumia is also strong (actually does have double digit Defense, my bad), because I gave her stat boosters to be useful in Chapter 4.

4.43 Pegasus Knight

D Lances, ~2/3 to C

30 HP, 12 Str, 5 Mag, 15 Skill, 14+2 Speed, 12 Luck, 10 Def, 11 Res

Also, with the arbitrary grinding limitations I decided on (200 PoR-style BEXP per Chapter clear, applied through DLC), I could raise a low-levelled unit a little over 10 levels.

[eclipse]

IMO you'd be better served going -Skl, since Avatar really needs the durability. In terms of your stats, the glaring things are Magic (+3 over average) abd Speed (+2 to +3 over average). Everything else is pretty close to average.

Next time, pour that stat boosters into Avatar.

[isetrh]

The only reason for -Def is that I'm going for postgame. I figured I might as well do something resembling a L+ playthrough on the way. I guess I should just start skill grinding, and do a proper playthrough later with a better suited Asset/Flaw and pairings. Thanks.

[Czar_Yoshi]

It's a postgame file so -Def is really important.

Edit: HOW did I get ninja'd at 4:00 AM?

Anyway with that Mag and Tome rank, you can actually play this offensively- grab a Thoron from Spotpass, give it a +5 mt forge with cash from the Supreme Emblem, and you'll have exactly enough Mag to OHKO Wyverns, Barbs, and Myrms with it (you'll be 1 off getting DMs but they don't matter because they attack at range). From here you're pretty much safe from Counter, so playing aggressively becomes much more of an option.

Most likely for this, you should have Avatar x Sumia (C support helps, but isn't required) fly north, block the path and KO whichever of the Barb or Myrm is more threatening. Fred with a Chrom support and Gradivus equipped should be on the middle of the bottom three forests with Lissa right behind them and Vaike x Lon'qu nearby for a snipe if needed. That setup was good enough for me (without a 1HKO-powered Thoron) to do an offensive clear of Cht.5 and save Maribelle/Ricken with no Rescue- since you have it it should be a bit easier. After EP 1 you'll have to yolo it but stuff usually goes nicely regardless of skills that way.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[isetrh]

It's a postgame file so -Def is really important.

Edit: HOW did I get ninja'd at 4:00 AM?

Anyway with that Mag and Tome rank, you can actually play this offensively- grab a Thoron from Spotpass, give it a +5 mt forge with cash from the Supreme Emblem, and you'll have exactly enough Mag to OHKO Wyverns, Barbs, and Myrms with it (you'll be 1 off getting DMs but they don't matter because they attack at range). From here you're pretty much safe from Counter, so playing aggressively becomes much more of an option.

Most likely for this, you should have Avatar x Sumia (C support helps, but isn't required) fly north, block the path and KO whichever of the Barb or Myrm is more threatening. Fred with a Chrom support and Gradivus equipped should be on the middle of the bottom three forests with Lissa right behind them and Vaike x Lon'qu nearby for a snipe if needed. That setup was good enough for me (without a 1HKO-powered Thoron) to do an offensive clear of Cht.5 and save Maribelle/Ricken with no Rescue- since you have it it should be a bit easier. After EP 1 you'll have to yolo it but stuff usually goes nicely regardless of skills that way.

Great, thanks. I never got around to maxing Renown, and I bought a few too many of Anna's goodies, so I can't afford a +5 forge. If I sell some stuff I can get a +3 forge though, and I have a Magic Dust. I'll be pretty much broke, but as long as I can get through Chapter 6 there should be a stretch where forges aren't vital.

Actually, I could early promote the Avatar with one of said Anna's goodies, making OHKO thresholds easier to meet. Decisions...

[Bovinian]

Unless you're trying to train them for combat, you might be better off just dropping both early-game healers after Chapter 9 in favor of Libra and Anna. They don't require valuable seals to reach a point where they won't immediately die if left in range of an enemy.

Are you using a male or female MU? If female, I presume you'll be going into Dark Flier at some point during the game, since this is a postgame file? This might not really be relevant due to your stated grinding limitations, but it's possible for FeMU to solo Lunatic+ Risen skirmishes under certain conditions for extra EXP, provided you bring enough weapon uses and healing items. There are certain chapters (5, 7, and 10 off the top of my head) where a Dark Flier FeMU can perform essentially a variation of the Prologue water trick and snipe melee-locked enemies at 2 range from cliffs. You have to get lucky with enemy distribution though, as Snipers/too many Wyverns can be annoying. I did this a few times on my no-Outrealm Lunatic+ run as it allowed for a limited and decently challenging alternative to mindless grinding for a couple extra levels.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Bovinian

[Irysa]

I think I'm going to scrap my current Lunatic run and instead try one of XeKr's challenges in No Second Seals for the ingame clear, besides the single Renown one used to turn Avatar into a Troubador ASAP. That should keep this more interesting. Although I might be limited by some suboptimal ingame marriages since I want to turn this into a postgame file. And I'll really miss having Rally Spectrum. Gah.

Considering I basicaly abstained from using them for the most part on my first run and had a decent level of challenge, and thoroughly enjoyed it, I guess this makes the most sense. I did do Morgan from Myrm to Cavalier and Cynthia from Peg to Cavalier, and Morgan was really dominant, Cynthia less so, but it shouldn't be that big a deal. Oh and Robin went back to level 1 Grandmaster around chapter 18, although she was basically a Rally Spectrum/Pair Up bot for most of the second half of the game, so that was kinda irrelevant aside from doing a tiny bit of combat on Chapter 21 (since I wanted to get all the treasure).

Oh right, I reclassed Lissa around into Falcoknight for some quick endgame clears. Eh. Maybe I should say I can only use whilst promoted, back into a promoted class. Or something like that. I know Tiki + a speed pairup can quite easily handle basically all the lategame, and the only map that is somewhat taxing to rescueskip without a Falco is probably 25.

Probable things that I'll want to do:

Get Sumia to pass down Galeforce to Lucina. Definitely not neccessary and might be kinda annoying actually, it's kinda hard to give her kills consistently until Chapter 8. I managed level 20 in Chapter 11 in my previous run with lots of characters, and I kinda didn't train her as hard as I could have. Hmm

Sorcerer Libra? If I allow for some promoted unit reclassing (since it results in less face explodey growth), and Avatar is going to be a staffbot married to Libra, Sorc Libra should be pretty awesome. Though I could abstain on that I suppose since it might make it too easy. Really the intent here isn't to make it SUPER restrictive or to adhere to a rule of No Second Seals 100%, just more like trying to get more enjoyment out the game. I think Libra's somewhat lame absoloute bases should hold him back from being too absurd.

I really want Rally Speed. - If Sumia's going Dark Flier Cordelia can go Falcoknight I guess? It's not too hard to get Lissa into Falcoknight for it if I do allow that though.

Don't recruit any male kids - Lest I turn them into Galeforce Orphans for postgame. This will actually kind of suck, but Morgan would be a Priest anyway so I'm not missing out on a huge amount. Actually I'll have to avoid recruiting Severa too, since I kinda wanted her to do Axefaire stuff. Fuck, reconsidering, I can't recruit any kids aside from Cynthia, since there's nothing Chrom can give her that's male only. Drat.

Maybe I need to separate this and just do a non postgame file run for fun to experiment with more of the kids and other possible units/pairings, with the same abstinence from second seals to avoid snowballs. Then blitz through the game on Lunatic for the Apo stuff and grind.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Irysa

[AfrostLord]

Just finished my first lunatic run. Started off with a lot of soft resets and using just Frederick, had to sacrifice everyone but MU, Lissa, Chrom, and Frederick by the time I recruited Donnel. Then I just kept destroying Mist's spotpass team over and over, until Donnel got to 15. Used the second seal, quickly got him to 10 again off of 2 reeking boxes and a random risen encounter (at this point he could barely clear them with frederick's help), got a lucky master seal from Anna, and then Donnel ascended.

Donnel proceeded to singlehandedly (no, seriously, just him and the mandatory Chrom attached to him) tear apart the game until around chapter 21. I didn't really know how stats and levellups worked, but I noticed Donnel only had 19 resistance at level 20, so he was getting absolutely destroyed by mages from outside his range. Frederick was also level 20 at this point, having been doing most of the spotpass killing (Donnel leeched off the glowy spots), and I'd never used a seal on him since I didn't know that would let him get more exp, so even he couldn't do anything at this point. I tried recruiting my MU from my Normal run, but that didn't really help since he was just 10/20 with regular tactician/grandmaster skills. I realised Donnel couldn't solo the game anymore (and also realised how to make characters powerful), but I couldn't actually grind anyone properly since I did not want to go back to spotpass hell. And then I realised dancing bypassed the spotpass exp restriction. I got Olivia to level 30 twice through dancing (it got really painful near the end, exp decayed to 1 per dance and it was better to just kill stuff at that point). Then I turned her into a dark flier and...she couldn't do much. I had to grind her some more for some weapon exp, but she was still pretty weak. Then I realised...staves also bypassed the exp restriction. Rescue could be used at the lowest staff level and gave a TON of exp. Max luck armsthrift Donnel with Leif's blade through spotpass a whole bunch of times, bullions for rescues, powerlevelled Lissa and MU (whom I had left alone as a level 8 tactician, had to get him to 10 and turn him into a priest). Now I could BARELY get past the levels, but I still needed to get lucky with misses and such.

I kinda left the run alone for a while at the validar chapter. Started another normal classic, ended up with a max stats sorcerer MU with Vengeance, Lifetaker, Armsthrift, Ignis, and Tomebreaker. Went back to lunatic, got the 64k needed to recruit him thanks to Donnel, and he made quick work of the last few levels. And then there was Grima. I didn't expect him to be so ridiculously bulky (or have a wall of soldiers around him). My max stats MU dealt barely any damage with the book of naga. Tried grinding for a bit, ran Olivia through the sidequests since I could now actually clear them, got her to level 15 for galeforce. Also got a waste tome and fully enchanted it.

After lots of trial and error, I found a precise series of steps that allowed me to kill Grima if I got lucky. Had to pair up max stats MU with Olivia, Rescue her with Lissa (as valkyrie, paired with Donnel), have her kill the first soldier, and then fly back with galeforce since the soldiers around grima apparently only attack you if you're really close. Also, paired up my first MU (the 10/20 grandmaster) with level 1 pegasus knight Lucina (I wanted galeforce but I did not want the grind, gave up on her long ago) and fly over to the group. Also sent chrom with frederick to the center of the map so he'd survive turn 1. Turn 2, I use rally spectrum on my grandmaster, after having never used rally at all before, which considerably makes my attacks stronger and allows my important units to double grima. I had to get a couple of lucky hits on grima with ignis and vengeance (58% accuracy with waste, olivia did no damage to him). This usually got him to half health or a bit lower. Then I hit him with Lissa and prayed - she does 11 (x2) with Mjolnir, while donnel hits for 5 twice two times with brave sword. Lissa also had ~17% crit. I kinda laughed a little when the crit stuff came up.

I felt so accomplished...and then it tells me that I unlocked Lunatic+ mode.

...I just closed the game.

[omega zero]

Just finished my first lunatic run.

Donnel solo huh?

Anyways, have you read through any of the Lunatic and Lunatic+ playlogs on this forum? Because once you know the general strategies it isn't too hard to clear Lunatic without sacrificing and without grinding.

[eclipse]

Give Lunatic Classic a shot! The ability to save anywhere is great, if you're learning how Lunatic itself works.

Also, congratulations on making Donnel viable (even with a bunch of grinding)!

[Czar_Yoshi]

I felt so accomplished...and then it tells me that I unlocked Lunatic+ mode.

...I just closed the game.

Before you do that, create a throwaway file and take a look at the enemies in the Prologue.

And then consider that two hours before you posted this someone just beat Lunatic+/Classic with no Spotpass/DLC/Risen/Saves and limited Renown.

Seriously though congrats on your clear, it sounds like you worked quite hard on it. I'd definitely recommend doing some runthroughs on Hard/Classic to actually be able to enjoy the game's aesthetics and mechanical freedom without dozens of 70 Atk enemies breathing down your back.

Edited April 19, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[Cat1803]

So, I'm doing a test Lunatic+ run and I'm trying some new things.

One of those things is using Sully and Kjelle in-game.

I figured getting and using Kjelle would be manageable since her Paralogue is among the easiest, but I was wondering what I should be promoting Sully to and what Kjelle's classpath should be. I will be pairing Sully with Gaius since I'd also like to make this a postgame file and both girls could use the +Spd (Sully's in a pairup, Kjelle via inheritance). I was thinking of promoting Gaius to Assassin early and having Sully promote to Paladin. I could theoretically Sully through Myrmidon to promote to Assassin (which would likely be her end class as is), but my MU will be in Merc and Miriel will be in Troubadour at the same time and I'd at least like her to have Javelins. I've considered promoting Sully to Great Knight for Luna and Dual Guard+, but I don't think she can take the Speed hit.

Any suggestions?

[Knusperkeks]

Any suggestions?

I don't have a terribly large amount of experience with Sully, but in one of my runs, I put very much effort into her earlygame (she was planned to be Chrom's spouse from the start). I ended up giving her a second seal very early and reclassed to Myrmidon. Everything was fine for the first half of the game, but after the Valm arc started, I couldn't deploy her as a frontline unit anymore - she was stuck with supporting Chrom out of fear of dying.

I believe that Cavalier and it's promotions will be more benefitial for what you want to do, partly for reasons which you already mentioned. Wyvern Rider is also interesting since she gets innate Discipline.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I like Sully going Cav -> Paladin -> Wyvern. Going GK too early will slay her Spd; she really needs to run through at least one promoted class with decent Spd before touching slower things, and Wyvern works better than GK once she can take the Spd.

Edited April 19, 2015 by Czar_Yoshi

[Cat1803]

I'll promote her to Paladin and go from there. Hopefully she'll catch up in Speed soon, but at the very least she's appreciating Gaius's +Spd. She's a little Spd-screwed but is still doubling most things anyway.

I'm assuming I should have Kjelle inherit Aegis? What should Kjelle's classpath be? I'm assuming I should get her out of Knight ASAP.

[ultmatelifeform]

Well I actually think Generals are really great units so keep Kelje as a General and pair her up with her mother as a Paladin to be able to move and switch to Sully whenever you need to go great distances. With a max of 51 attack + whatever sullys support bonus is than they can be devastating. Agias is a good skill to inherit and with General she would get passive ( I think ) Verify me on that someone. Then most attacks wount do full damage if it activates when you want it to. That would make your General not die as easaly. Or you could pass down Luna, Sol or another good attack skill.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Depending on what Kjelle's base stats look like (whether she can go through one or two base reclasses before promoting), either pass Aegis and go Knight -> Cav -> Peg or pass Discipline and go Knight -> Peg. If Sully gets far enough, you could even pass Luna and go Knight -> Cav -> Paladin but that's not too likely. Definitely make Dark Flier your first promoted class if possible though, you can have GF on her within 2-3 chapters of promotion that way. I'd also advise Gaius passing down Mov+1 (Sol is nice, getting it on him isn't).

With a max of 51 attack + whatever sullys support bonus is than they can be devastating.

This is Lunatic+, not vanilla Lunatic. Generals don't work here- they'll fail to double to get kills, and since pure Deftanks get wrecked by Counter/Luna+ they can't do that either. They've got no niches as a result and simply wind up being low Mov units unable to outrace anything, which means they'll just get hunted down and destroyed by anything on a horse.

[Cat1803]

I was going to avoid Generals since they're slow and low Mov, so the paths Yoshi suggested sound good.

As for Sol on Gaius, I was planning on having him go through Hero anyway since it's a strong overall class and I like the support bonuses he'd provide for Sully. I'm guessing there's a better alternative? I've also been considering Axebreaker since I find it a strong skill in Lunatic(+), especially since Kjelle will mostly be using lances. Is there something better for him then?

[Czar_Yoshi]

Well the main issue with Gaius passing Hero skills is that he'll have to reclass to it from a promoted class (since going Thief -> Fighter early on is completely unfeasible in Lunatic+). Going 20 -> 15 -> 5 (for Sol) already takes a very considerable exp investment (consider that Sumia, a hard lead who's very good at mopping up kills and comes three chapters earlier than Gaius, can't even make 20 -> 15 if more than ~3 other units are trying to go that far), let alone 20 -> 15 -> 15. And Gaius is primarily going to be supporting, too, since Sully has a significant advantage in weapon types/ranks, Mov/Def and comes much earlier so she'll be trained and have good stats too. For reference, a Chrom who hard supports an Avatar-F solo reaches about 10/20 -> 20(base) -> 20(promoted) by endgame off DS exp alone.

So Hero's skills are both very good on Kjelle, I just don't think you'll be able to reach them (and even if you can, the amount of exp it would deny to more worthy units just isn't worth it). Besides, he already has Mov+1 easily in reach as a very potent option.

[Cat1803]

That all makes sense. I'm guessing the best way for Gaius to go is Thief (20) -> Assassin? I did once have a test run where I got lucky and had a bunch of early Second Seals and got Fighter Gaius to D Axes via Dual Strikes but it was a complete pain. He's much closer to a ranged option by being nearly to C in Swords, at which point I can give him Levin for training.

As an aside, will postgame Kjelle be fine without Axebreaker?

[Czar_Yoshi]

Yeah, Kjelle will be just fine without Axebreaker postgame.

[Irysa]

The site support tables are being inconsistent with my ingame results again.

In Prologue, Avatar-M fights with Chrom as a pair up partner 5 times, and also gets a bunch of support points from standing next to Chrom whilst killing stuff during the water trick. Yet, at the end of Chapter 1, I don't have a C support option. Once again I'm left pondering the support leeching theory since Frederick is standing next to them all the time. Chrom also somehow doesn't get C Frederick despite fighting with him 6 times in Prologue as well.

In Chapter 1, Avatar is off killing stuff on a fort with Fred whilst Chrom is pulling weakened units with Sully, so they aren't building any there, but it really shouldn't matter. I can get to C Chrom Sully just by doing the 4 battles thing easily in C1, same for AvatarxFrederick. :\

EDIT: And I know the support table thing doesn't correspond to "battles fought" in 1 to 1, I read the last post Tables made on the subject. I mean that Avatar-M and Chrom should be capping out at 12 battle points easily in Prologue, which gives them 3 total support points, which should be enough for a C support.

Edited April 21, 2015 by Irysa

[ultmatelifeform]

I actually still like to use generals despite the abysmal speed but I did use a avatar log book general. He actually wasn't often duel striked. To each their own I suppose. They did work for me on lunatic + but then again they were from the Logbook.

On a different note, I have cleared Lunatic +. It was... Well i'm not sure i'm ready to do it again. My R button in broken now from all the resets but it was worth the satisfaction that the game can't even cheat to win. Im not sure it really counts since I relied so much on the Avatar logbook units I made from reclassing over and over, but I am not insane so that nice. I somehow managed to clear a lot of chapters in one turn such as chapter 13, chapter 19, 15 and 25. Im not sure how much this counts because I was on clasic and used Outrealm but I think It counts. So thats that. I won. Somehow.

One final note. How many people have completed lunatic +. I just want to know as a sort of ranking of being one of the best. ( as much a I probably didn't do it the right way). If you already have a list then please direct me to it.