The Lunatic Club

[Czar_Yoshi]

You'll get another Heal from the Knight on the bottom right of Cht.3. Use Lissa as much as you can before that, though having at least ten uses going into Cht.3 is helpful.

If you're opportunistic, there should be plenty of chances to feed her later once Heal becomes buyable. Lissa does do very well when fed on Lunatic(+) so I consider it a worthy investment.

[zeroarcanus]

Oi, I've just finished my first lunatic playthrough.

Robin x Sully

Kjelle helped me a lot in this playthrough. Also she's so cute with turqoise hair :3

[SSbardock84]

Congratulations! To me thats an awesome accomplishment, I still need to beat my level. I just haven't played in a while.

[ultmatelifeform]

Nice on you lunatic run Arcanius! Ive just done all of the paralogous on lunatic + except Priam's. I haven't played much because I bought a cartridge of Shadow dragon and the blade of light, printed out a translation guide and learned that the battery save is broken. :(

I must beat the game because it is my nerdey quest to beat every fire emblem game made now. This is going to take a while. ( hits reset) Back to level 1 again.

Edited September 28, 2015 by ultmatelifeform

[Czar_Yoshi]

I must beat the game because it is my nerdey quest to beat every fire emblem game made now. This is going to take a while. ( hits reset) Back to level 1 again.

Good luck with BSFE.

[ChickenWings]

Thank you Kuroi and thank you moving dog gif (kidding Interceptor)! Your guides really made the the first few chapters of Lunatic+ easier!

Edit: Thanks Yoshi for the tweaks to the guides!

*uses Superior Bolt and goes ape sh*t on everyone in chapter 4*

I'm definitely using DLC, but I do regret not going casual.

Edited September 29, 2015 by ChickenWings

[ultmatelifeform]

Hey no shame in DLC. I certainly abused it on my first go. Thats really lucky to get katrina's volt at that point. I was so sad when I got hectors axe and nobody could use it. I did go ape Sh*t with cecilia's gale though because I bought 4 from spotpass cecilia or some event tile weird thing. Don't really remember how that happened really. Anyway's may the contrived plot device be with you.

[ChickenWings]

Hey no shame in DLC. I certainly abused it on my first go. Thats really lucky to get katrina's volt at that point. I was so sad when I got hectors axe and nobody could use it. I did go ape Sh*t with cecilia's gale though because I bought 4 from spotpass cecilia or some event tile weird thing. Don't really remember how that happened really. Anyway's may the contrived plot device be with you.

I'm not ashamed at all. It's Lunatic +. It's like playing the lottery, only when you lose you get stabbed in the face. And you lose a lot.

[ultmatelifeform]

Yeah that was just about what I said. I said that I was like a game of russian roulette that has 5 bullets and one open instead of 1. I admit that I did way to much golden gaff and EXPonental growth. You should get all the renown awards if you haven't already for the stat boost items. Includeing a Nagas tear and boots that increase movement by 2.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Thank you Kuroi and thank you moving dog gif (kidding Interceptor)! Your guides really made the the first few chapters of Lunatic+ easier!

Edit: Thanks Yoshi for the tweaks to the guides!

*uses Superior Bolt and goes ape sh*t on everyone in chapter 4*

I'm definitely using DLC, but I do regret not going casual.

Hey, you're welcome. Just glad the amount of work we all put into this stuff helps other people out.

If you guys are looking for more RNG-reducing stuff, break into the Bonus Box and Spotpass teams. The mt of the lances and tomes there can be just what Fred or Robin need for one-shots that bypass Counter. Also, consider Arcwind or Rexcalibur for dealing with fliers (since Forseti won't last forever).

[Bandit]

You'll get another Heal from the Knight on the bottom right of Cht.3. Use Lissa as much as you can before that, though having at least ten uses going into Cht.3 is helpful.

If you're opportunistic, there should be plenty of chances to feed her later once Heal becomes buyable. Lissa does do very well when fed on Lunatic(+) so I consider it a worthy investment.

Completly forgot about him, thanks for the reminder!

I fear I may have overused her Heal staff since I think it only has about 15 uses left, she did get some decent levels (and random strength that will never be of any use, so good for her?). I can't wait until shops open up, I know I won't have much money overall since no DlC, Bonus Box or Spotpass/Streetpass teams does limit how much money I can ever get but being able to feed Lissa HP will be useful.

Prolouge 1 will also be nice since I don't have to worry about recruiting Donnel. It's not hard, just tedious. And definently not worth it for Lunatic.

Thanks again for all the help guys, I really do appreciate it. This has made it a lot less stressful than my first try without guides...

[Radiant head]

So tempted to just buy Ike and stomp. Thankfully it's getting slightly easier after the initial chapters.

[Czar_Yoshi]

and random strength that will never be of any use, so good for her?

Lissa always does that, it's the way of Lunatic(+). If you bother to pick up Owain, he'll appreciate it as a passdown.

So tempted to just buy Ike and stomp. Thankfully it's getting slightly easier after the initial chapters.

If you need a stomper, Travant and Ashnard are extremely good at it and I recommend them (they're mostly identical except Ashnard comes with higher Res, while Travant comes with A Lances).

[zeroarcanus]

The first mage encountered in Prologue sometimes does not attack Lissa, especially when you pair her with Frederick, the mage keeps on attacking robin, with this method I managed to milk even more exp and got to level 3 by killing three enemies with Robin.

Also, I didn't waste any vulneraries thanks to constant free healing of Lissa. I think it's completely random if he decides to attack Robin or Lissa, I've tried unequipping weapons and swapping pairup characters but none of them seems to work on who he decides to attack. Though, if you gain +Res after attacking him once and leveling him up, he immediately attacks to Lissa.

For her healing staff, I always use almost half of it at Prologue, barely use one at Chapter 1 and use about 5-6 at Chapter 2. I think it's quite hard to use it up all.

+Speed -Skill seems to be working well for me at normal lunatic, though I'm not sure about Lunatic plus since there are a lot of enemies that have luna+ which makes defense less effective.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Using it up is a real danger if you try to get more out of the Prologue (Lv.7 or 8, depending on Mag growth) and try to do Cht.1 without relying on dodges.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

The first mage encountered in Prologue sometimes does not attack Lissa, especially when you pair her with Frederick, the mage keeps on attacking robin, with this method I managed to milk even more exp and got to level 3 by killing three enemies with Robin.

Also, I didn't waste any vulneraries thanks to constant free healing of Lissa. I think it's completely random if he decides to attack Robin or Lissa, I've tried unequipping weapons and swapping pairup characters but none of them seems to work on who he decides to attack. Though, if you gain +Res after attacking him once and leveling him up, he immediately attacks to Lissa.

For her healing staff, I always use almost half of it at Prologue, barely use one at Chapter 1 and use about 5-6 at Chapter 2. I think it's quite hard to use it up all.

+Speed -Skill seems to be working well for me at normal lunatic, though I'm not sure about Lunatic plus since there are a lot of enemies that have luna+ which makes defense less effective.

+Spd/-Skl is what I use for Resetless Lunatic+ and it generally does pretty well. The base Hit loss is actually pretty small. Thunder just has iffy Hit with any combination. This is quickly rectified by Fire in C2, then by stuffing Robin full of EXP after that. With this run, I generally risk breaking the Heal too early if the Prologue Elthunder Mage has Luna+ and/or Mag+2 and the boss has Luna+. This will usually cause two Heal uses to be required for each hit Robin takes. The end of C2 is where this tends to make me have to economize, since 2 Heal uses is generally enough to get through C3's left side and into the stairwell.

[ultmatelifeform]

As there is a heal staff available in the shop of chapter 1, If you can just last until chapter 4 you should be good. I recommend using all the bonus box stats items on Robin. With +speed, Nagas tear and speedwings you will duel strike just about anything. At some point you might want to reclass to a drak mage, pegasus knight or another class to get skills. The early levels are good for this because they are not quite at full capacity yet.

[zeroarcanus]

This is getting even more interesting as I play. When I started Lunatic, I thought the game was insanely difficult, Then I started Lunatic+ and said the same, After managing to beat chapter 4 on lunatic+, I realized my ability to deal with rng and tactics got significantly stronger.

For example, In Chapter 3, after you deal with the first wave and you move to the upper wave, and after killing two knights; you can send a cavalier to the opposite side of the map which you want to attack from. Put him/her right next to their aggro zone. Once you aggro them from your attack side, three of the enemies will move towards the alone cavalier.

Next turn, you will have two or maybe even two enemies to deal with at the attack side(Assuming you've killed the first enemy you've aggrod). While doing this, you take cavalier south and move it towards your attack side. After you killed the 3 enemies(mercenary, fighter and archer) there should be approximately three turns until the trio at south arrives.

By the time they arrive, you should be able to put robin/frederick into a forest tile.

This strategy for Chapter 3 worked on Lunatic+ so much more than I've imagined.

[Czar_Yoshi]

I recommend using all the bonus box stats items on Robin. With +speed, Nagas tear and speedwings you will duel strike just about anything.

If you're using +Spd, you should be able to double everything by a very wide margin anyway. I tend to save mine for whenever they'll break a threshold on another unit I'm training (usually Sumia in Cht.5), and if I haven't put them to use by the time I'm getting the kids, they go to whoever won't be doing a second base class.

This is getting even more interesting as I play. When I started Lunatic, I thought the game was insanely difficult, Then I started Lunatic+ and said the same, After managing to beat chapter 4 on lunatic+, I realized my ability to deal with rng and tactics got significantly stronger.

That's good. Normal/Hard/Lunatic do very little to prepare you for Lunatic+ (they even go as far as to drill strategies into you that will actively get you killed/put you at the mercy of the RNG there), so playing Lunatic+ and having enough patience to not try to brute-force your way through is the best way to get good at it.

A big part of the difficulty, however (both Lunatic and Lunatic+) is that they're very unforgiving of long-term planning mistakes. As much as I know about them, I've still had situations where I've managed to get a large team significantly ahead of the difficulty curve and can stomp any zerg rush through pure offensive pressure... But don't have any cash to buy Javelins and Winds with and am stuck using up valuable Legendaries that I'll need for the last few chapters. If you periodically restart the game while going through Lunatic+ (and just rely on Kuroi/Int strats to get through the first four chapters), you'll notice an even bigger improvement in your ability to be prepared for things and adequately respond to them. Just be patient with the difficulty and remember that 90% of the RNG occurs before you select your units, positions and inventories.

...And also keep the enemy data on hand so you don't get wrecked by reinforcements. No amount of tactics can protect you from an unforseen ambush when any given enemy can ORKO one of your units when engaging on their terms.

[ultmatelifeform]

ZeroArcaneus: Thats great. The game always seems to keep one upping you when you go from lunatic to luna+. Sure was a big shock to see how much harder they could make the game when I was awful on lunatic. I remember that moment when I first figured out chapter 3 when skipping lunch. (I still say that does not count as skipping sense it is lunch) Never avoid siting down and resetting the map to get a spot you can work with. And reinforcements are the worst thing that can happen in my opinion.

Czar_Youshi: I never did a +spd robin on lunatic + because I was too afraid of being OHKOd by people on the first hit. I will need to try that after New mystery of the emblem. I agree and second everyting you said on the force and needing to use legendaries.

Really is nice having supreme emblem isn't it.

[Czar_Yoshi]

Very little can outright OHKO you in Lunatic(+) because of comparatively high base HPs. Even a Luna+ Fighter in the Prologue can't OHKO -Def base Robin holding Thunder. Avoiding getting 2HKOed is quite a challenge, though- Def just doesn't make that much of a difference very early on.

[ultmatelifeform]

Well A luna+ boss, Unlucky Crit or just having bad defensive gains can be bad. Or just a counter unit can kill you. I still havent done a -def unit so I havent tried too hard to test an OHKO. I think I did a +HP build but I dont remember now.

Edited October 2, 2015 by ultmatelifeform

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Generally speaking, the bosses aren't going to be much more powerful than their strongest mook, since they usually have 1~2 range, their boosted Str tends to just put them on par. For a C1 Hammer guy to threaten OHKO with Luna+, Robin needs to be exceedingly unlucky with level ups. We're talking 21 HP and 6 Def and that's also provided Robin doesn't use her/his sword, have a Def pair bonus or stand on a Woods/Fort tile. As chapters go on, getting OHKO gets less and less likely. Gamble, Zeal and Elthunder crits are very real threats, though and typically so without even needing Luna+. Rank 3 supports can counter that, but that tends to be a fair investment of bodies before supports really get rolling (when it's most useful), so it's not always the best or even a good move to utilize it. Barring special circumstances, like Lethality or crits getting Miracled against the few very high HP War Clerics/Monks or Sages in the game, Counter shouldn't OHKO. It does, however, tend to put a huge dent in a unit's buffer for dealing with all the other abilities or even just the raw Attack being thrown around by turning a unit's offense against it.

[ChickenWings]

Up to how many characters can you use without spreading the exp too thin? (Not including healers and dancers.)

[Czar_Yoshi]

It depends how good you are. Two combat pairs is usually the best way to go, but if you know in advance where you can train who, who needs to be what level by where, etc it's possible to get all the way to the deployment cap while staying ahead of the curve.

That's on Lunatic+. On vanilla Lunatic it's fairly similar, though more lenient in how you can build your team while still fielding a lot of units. The biggest obstacle highmanning tends to face on either mode is Grima, since no amount of fancy footwork and tactics can get past so much raw defensive stats and a time limit. I'd still stick to two or three pairs here unless you know what you're doing.