The Lunatic Club

[Terrador]

Weapon Triangle gives a corresponding advantage and disadvantage based on the rank of the advantaged wielder, but always deprives the disadvantaged party of their weapon rank bonuses. Swords, unlike lances and axes, give a whopping +3 MT (may be +3 ATK in FE:A; haven't tested this personally) with an A-rank bonus, so taking that away turns the 23-ATK juggernauts of Chapter 2 into 19-ATK "weaklings".

And if you're having trouble with Chapter 21: hit it with Rescue and Galeforce to one-turn and reduce the difficulty. Ideally, you would have a staff unit with Galeforce and high Magic paired up with another Galeforce unit, push them most of the way up the map, Rescue in another combat pair, and have them do the same. I did it with two Rescuers and one Galeforce pair (with abnormally high Movement; if memory serves, it was 10/Pass and 8). Even if you can't one-turn, you should be able to find a safe place for your pair to wait before your charge on in and kill Algol. Basically: rush the crap outta this map.

[Elieson]

combines with

to reinforce Terrador's point.

[Czar_Yoshi]

give a whopping +3 MT (may be +3 ATK in FE:A; haven't tested this personally)

It's Atk, Falchion does 48 damage to Grima and it's normally 15+3.

[isetrh]

I was thinking that before I do my first Lunatic+ run I might do a vanilla Lunatic run using the same team to get a feel for how they work together, anyone I should add or remove, how to allocate exp, etc. Is this kind of thing helpful, or are the two modes so different that I would be wasting my time?

Edit: Also, I'm planning to use Miriel, Sumia, and possibly Chrom. I know the good places to train Miriel and Chrom from Interceptor's playlog, but are there any particular maps where Sumia can get a lot of exp?

Edited October 8, 2014 by isetrh

[Czar_Yoshi]

They're very different. EXP values and the like will remain the same (so will money), but you'll have to come up with different strats for training after Cht.2 because most of the vanilla Lunatic ones don't work very well anymore.

Also, (and this is a danger even when doing the same mode), random stat fluctuation can and will occasionally ruin a strat, and early Seals from Anna are huge game changers but can't be counted on.

Sumia can train well in Cht.7 if you get her Atk up enough. It's fairly easy for her to OHKO things there- 24 Atk and 14 Spd gets you the DMs, 21 Atk and 24 Spd gets the Myrms, 25/26 Atk and 18 Spd gets you the Cavs, 27/29 Atk and 16 Spd gets the Fighters, and 30 Atk/17 Spd for the boss. She won't be reaching all of those, but with a forged Javelin and a decent Chrom support even a low leveled Sumia should be able to get the DMs and Myrms. If her Lance rank is high enough, she can use Par.1's Killer Lance (if you get it) as well, and she should be able to take a hit from anything lacking Counter (check, though). An A support with Chrom will also have around 70 DS, so she has that too in case of Pavise+ or not enough Str. Finally, if her Lance rank is high enough, it can be worth investing in a Spear instead of a forged Javelin for her to use.

[isetrh]

They're very different. EXP values and the like will remain the same (so will money), but you'll have to come up with different strats for training after Cht.2 because most of the vanilla Lunatic ones don't work very well anymore.

Also, (and this is a danger even when doing the same mode), random stat fluctuation can and will occasionally ruin a strat, and early Seals from Anna are huge game changers but can't be counted on.

Sumia can train well in Cht.7 if you get her Atk up enough. It's fairly easy for her to OHKO things there- 24 Atk and 14 Spd gets you the DMs, 21 Atk and 24 Spd gets the Myrms, 25/26 Atk and 18 Spd gets you the Cavs, 27/29 Atk and 16 Spd gets the Fighters, and 30 Atk/17 Spd for the boss. She won't be reaching all of those, but with a forged Javelin and a decent Chrom support even a low leveled Sumia should be able to get the DMs and Myrms. If her Lance rank is high enough, she can use Par.1's Killer Lance (if you get it) as well, and she should be able to take a hit from anything lacking Counter (check, though). An A support with Chrom will also have around 70 DS, so she has that too in case of Pavise+ or not enough Str. Finally, if her Lance rank is high enough, it can be worth investing in a Spear instead of a forged Javelin for her to use.

Thanks! I guess I'll just go straight for L+ then. Thanks for telling me about Sumia on Chapter 7. I will reset a little for her Str, Spd, and durability a little if I get the chance before Chapter 7 so she can take better advantage of it. Edited October 8, 2014 by isetrh

[Czar_Yoshi]

Reclassing Chrom to Cav helps a lot if you can do it as well.

[Rydia]

Oh my gosh... than you for the long explanation but I knew how the weapon triangle works... I ust didn't know that the three letters meant, I've been stuck with the italian terms for too long. And thank you for the complete explanation, thought :P

Can I please get a gold medal because after showing a friend Awakening's ending I let him start his own file... and he saved over my lunatic plus file? Well, he did as I asked, thought, he 'didn't touch the lunatic mode'... even if what I meant was 'you can delete my difficult one' X°D

So, yay, restarting! And stuck at chapter 2 because I have an insane rate of Luna+ and Vantage+ spawn *w*''' This will take a while. I am a true idiot.

Edit: I just realized I made a double post but I can't find a way to delete it. I am so sorry.. D:

Edited October 9, 2014 by Red Fox of Fire

[isetrh]

After getting a lot of advice from Czar_Yoshi, Interceptor, and others on this forum, I'm going to start my first Lunatic+ playthrough. I know Lunatic+ is supposed to be really hard, so I was considering allowing myself five levels of DLC grinding per unit, but I don't want to make the game too easy for myself. It's already a bit different from a regular playthrough, so I'm not sure if it will be harder or easier.

Advantages over a typical first L+ playthrough:

-Renown up through 30k (I will have it to 50k in another hour or so of grinding, but I have postgame plans for the Boots)

-I will let myself support grind to get Laurent.

-I will be using Streetpass Seals if I get the chance. I have irl friends with the game, and I could also look into HomePass.

-Advice from you guys on planning my team

-Interceptor's playlog and Chapter 2/3 strategies

-I am not above Staff grinding, and plan to use it to level Miriel both to pass DSu+ and just to get her stronger.

Disadvantages

- +Skill-Def because it's optimization

-Chrom has to marry Sumia instead of FeMU because optimization.

-I probably won't get Morgan ingame, because his dad is Gregor!Yarne, and even getting him would be a pain.

-Ricken!Laurent instead of Gregor!Laurent (though he does still get to marry Lucina)

-Boots are going to Kjelle and Noire, so they won't be much help ingame.

So how hard does this playthrough look? Should I let myself grind a little? I don't want to dumb it down so much it isn't fun, but on the other hand I don't want to flounder due to the limitations of optimization on my first L+ run. Thank you!

[Thor Odinson]

-Def will probably be the toughest part imo. You can get away with training a few other units in no grinding, at least.

What I did personally was just run through L+ properly with no grinding first with lowmanning, then made a separate file for my postgame team (in that one I had MU marry Basilio) and just cleared it really fast (galeforcing bow units do wonders in that mode if you do grind). Takes 2 saves, but it gets both the experience of playing L+ pure nogrind, and having a postgame team on L+.

Edited October 11, 2014 by Thor Odinson

[isetrh]

-Def will probably be the toughest part imo. You can get away with training a few other units in no grinding, at least.

What I did personally was just run through L+ properly with no grinding first with lowmanning, then made a separate file for my postgame team (in that one I had MU marry Basilio) and just cleared it really fast (galeforcing bow units do wonders in that mode if you do grind). Takes 2 saves, but it gets both the experience of playing L+ pure nogrind, and having a postgame team on L+.

Thanks! I was actually thinking of doing no-grind for my second run, but maybe I should reconsider that order. I'm kind of impatient to get my team made though...

[Thor Odinson]

whatever order is fine, really, as long as you're willing to free up the save slots.

[isetrh]

whatever order is fine, really, as long as you're willing to free up the save slots.

Yep, I've got plenty of save slots. I usually only keep one save at a time, though it will be two once I have a proper postgame team in one of them. Thanks.

[isetrh]

I'm attempting again to complete Lunatic+ for the first time (currently halfway through Chapter 3!) and not doing no-grind, but restricting myself to five EXPonential Growth levels per character. The Gen 1s I'm planning to train are Robin, Chrom, Sumia, and Miriel. Will I screw myself over if I change Miriel to a Troubador after Chapter 4? I want to get her to DSu+ asap so she can pass it to Ricken!Laurent.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I would keep her in offensive classes until you're ready for the Paralogues- they (especially 2, but 1 as well) are excellent places for grinding staffbots.

If you do want to grind her on Cht.4, there's a slightly complicated maneuver you can do: first reset until Marth doesn't have Luna+, then kill everything but Marth and lure Marth into a corner. Box Marth in, and use Marth as a source of endless damage to heal- Falchion doesn't break.

You can do this anywhere there's a fort, actually, by making the last enemy have Counter and breaking their weapon on it, then hitting them over and over with Chrom for infinite damage to heal, but this way's faster to set up, harder to accidentally end, and gives exp faster.

Also, if you decide to do this during Cht.4, try to manipulate for a Master Seal so you can get Miriel promoted asap and have her carry your team as a Valkyrie. Robbing Avatar of that early Second Seal will slow you down a lot otherwise, but Miriel with staff exp boosts can get you through until you find another one.

[isetrh]

Thanks! I'm not sure I could even get Miriel to level 10 by Marth, so I will definitely wait until Paralogue 1. I'm going to cheat slightly and see if I can get a Streetpass Second Seal so I can class-change both Robin and Miriel.

If I can get a Master Seal too, would it be a good idea to promote Sumia at level 10 to get GF by Chapter 13 more easily?

[Czar_Yoshi]

Sumia... Maybe. I try to keep her in Peg as long as possible. Keep in mind that DF is a really good ingame class and if she doesn't manage to pass it down in time, it's actually not that big of a deal.

Miriel doesn't actually have to be Lv.10 until the end of Cht.4- she can train on the enemies there. It would still require an insane amount of luck to actually do that in Lunatic+ though (I did it in vanilla Lunatic on my Risen run, and it was pretty close).

Edited October 14, 2014 by Czar_Yoshi

[isetrh]

Sumia... Maybe. I try to keep her in Peg as long as possible. Keep in mind that DF is a really good ingame class and if she doesn't manage to pass it down in time, it's actually not that big of a deal.

Miriel doesn't actually have to be Lv.10 until the end of Cht.4- she can train on the enemies there. It would still require an insane amount of luck to actually do that in Lunatic+ though (I did it in vanilla Lunatic on my Risen run, and it was pretty close).

In that case I'll get Sumia to level 20 before promotion. She pretty much has whatever she can take in Chapters 7-13 to herself, since Miriel will be Staff grinding for her levels.

That Miriel strategy does sound awesome, but I'm not going to try anything that crazy on my first playthrough.

[isetrh]

I got through Chapter 4, which was my first experience with actually beating an L+ map with my own strategy, and I can tell that 5 levels grinding on each character would break the game, but I'm still going to need some grinding to make things work, so I'm thinking of doing it like BEXP, alloting myself 100 DLC exp for each map cleared. Will L+ retain its challenge if I do this?

Currently waiting on either Anna or a Streetpass for a Second Seal for Miriel, since the guy who I was counting on was sick and I can't make sense of HomePass...

[Terrador]

L+ is never "press Start to win". By the time you can grind, Counter exists; you have to use your brain, period. Though if you ram a bow user way WAY into the uber-durabilities...

[Czar_Yoshi]

Maybe. The difficulty curve of L+ is already really strange, there are a lot of very hard places and a lot of very easy places. 100 exp would be a little difficult to ration out though, I'd go with something like 1 clear of CoY3 per chapter and in exchange you have to play with a full team. Or something.

[isetrh]

Thank you both for the advice! My phone doesn't like multiquoting, so:

Terrador

I know L+ always takes some thought, but if it gets to the point that I don't have to worry about training my units I think I've partly trivialized it. I don't know though. I haven't (successfully) played L+ before so I could easily be completely off.

Czar_Yoshi

I don't really see how it's hard to ration? Do you mean because it's hard to reach exactly the right number? I was planning to be sort of approximate.

Edited October 15, 2014 by isetrh

[Czar_Yoshi]

Lunatic+ actually always gets to the point where you don't have to worry about training your units- everyone's mostly capped by Cht.23-24, both on your side and on the enemy side, provided you didn't Rescue skip too many chapters earlier. Unless you're using LB, those maps are just straight slugfests between you and the enemy.

The Risen in EXP can be really trolly about giving you the right amount of exp sometimes. It's not a huge deal, but it's also annoying and I prefer grinding on maps with rewards anyway.

[isetrh]

Huh, okay then. Still, I don't want to get my units too OP too quickly (though I did kind of feed Sumia a few Renown stat boosters).

I didn't have much trouble training Miriel to lv 10 on EXP, but maybe I'll find some other map better later on. Besides getting Miriel ready to reclass, the grinding will mostly be backup if something goes wrong, like Sumia not reaching GF or a child unit coughRicken!Laurentcough having a hard time getting started.

Thanks for all the help! I will probably be back when I start getting kids and have no idea how to reclass them.

[isetrh]

I'm back a lot earlier than I expected. Chapter 5 is giving me hell. About one in four tries I manage to clear the initial waves, but then the Wyvern Riders just slaughter me--at least 3, usually 4+, of them always seem to have Counter. Any suggestions on how to beat it? My units are:

Robin @ Mercenary lv 5.08 (sealed from lv 16 Tactician)

HP 38

Str 18 +Barracks

Mag 14

Skill 26

Spd 19

Lck 20

Def 17

Res 5 +Barracks

Sumia @ Pegasus Knight lv 7.89 (broken because I gave her Naga's Tear, Power Drop, and the +Def shield thing whose name I can't remember)

HP 29

Str 13

Mag 7

Skill 18

Spd 15 (+2 from Spd+2)

Lck 13

Def 13

Res 11

Chrom @ Lord lv 3.03

HP 22

Str 9

Mag 1

Skill 9

Spd 10

Lck 7

Def 8

Res 1

Frederick @ Great Knight

HP 29

Str 13

Mag 2

Skill 13

Spd 10

Lck 6

Def 15

7 uses of Silver left

Miriel @ Troubador lv 7.76 (sealed from lv 10 Mage)

HP 34

Str 3

Mag 16 (+2 from Mag+2)

Skill 13

Spd 16

Lck 17

Def 6

Res 9 (+2 from Res+2)

Others are at base. By the rules I'm using I could grind someone one level if it would make a difference. Everyone but scrubs has the relevant Str/Def Tonics, not included in the stats I listed. I have a Tiki's Tear.

Edit: Forgot some stuff. Lissa is at 8.82, 11 Mag. And Robin and Sumia are at C rank weapons. Fred has A in Lances, D in others. Chrom.has D Swords. Robin has C support with Miriel and Chrom, B with Fred. Sumia has C with Chrom.

Edited October 17, 2014 by isetrh