Fiona and Meg

[Ashen Tempest]

So far, I'm at the Endgame of Part 3 of Radiant Dawn. The previous chapter was a huge pain due to the minimal training that the Daein Army gets compared to the mostly pre-promoted Greil Mercenaries. Particularly poorly trained are Meg and Fiona (the only characters I haven't promoted). I tried giving them a few finishing blows on a few laguz enemies, but they didn't develop very well. Should I just give up on them? This is my first playthrough of the game, so I might give them a second chance on my second play.

[Shadow Mir]

I'd just give up on 'em now.

[Baldrick]

The Dawn Brigade is underlevelled in general. I'd recommend focusing on improving the stronger ones rather than trying to raise everyone else.

[Agro]

If they're not promoted by now, they'll probably never promote. Just don't bother, and if you really want to use them next time, make sure they're promoted by the end of Part 1.

[Ashen Tempest]

Ouch. I seriously wish I had anticipated Ilyana leaving the Dawn Brigade. She and Aran were the only ones I had promoted by the end of Part 1. Leonardo, Edward, and Nolan are fairly leveled enough to handle themselves, but had I known not to use certain characters, they definitely would have turned out better. Anyway, are they worth giving a chance on a second playthrough? I was only thinking of leveling now because I thought I'd need more people later in the game, but I think I can manage with a few decently leveled characters.

[LycopolisKing]

The sad thing is, both Fiona and Meg have the potential to become some of the most potent units in the game. I don't even like Generals, but when Meg started leveling on me I started using them, because she does extremely well. Fiona is even better, as she has two frankly fantastic blank skills, and has the benefits of being mounted.

She has great growths and will have great Speed and Defense - and she heals herself each turn. Fiona has won MVP on at least two of my RD play throughs, and is one of my favorite characters in the game - plus, she's Black!

The hard part is getting them enough EXP to be useful in the short amount of time that you have. If you're opposed to grinding and babying, this simply won't happen. Both of them are rather hard to train - especially Fiona, as she comes in even later than Meg - but the payoff is better, conversely.

So, I'd say give them a chance if you can on your next run.

But to answer your main question, Yes, it's far too late to try to train them now. Part 4 doesn't play around with weak units.

[Comet]

The sad thing is, both Fiona and Meg have the potential to become some of the most potent units in the game. I don't even like Generals, but when Meg started leveling on me I started using them, because she does extremely well. Fiona is even better, as she has two frankly fantastic blank skills, and has the benefits of being mounted.

She has great growths and will have great Speed and Defense - and she heals herself each turn. Fiona has won MVP on at least two of my RD play throughs, and is one of my favorite characters in the game - plus, she's Black!

The hard part is getting them enough EXP to be useful in the short amount of time that you have. If you're opposed to grinding and babying, this simply won't happen. Both of them are rather hard to train - especially Fiona, as she comes in even later than Meg - but the payoff is better, conversely.

So, I'd say give them a chance if you can on your next run.

But to answer your main question, Yes, it's far too late to try to train them now. Part 4 doesn't play around with weak units.

And for babying Fiona, you only have about 2 or 3 chapters to baby her when she starts with lackluster base stats. I recommend giving her an iron lance forged with max hit and power.

Oh, and being on a horse is actually BAD for her movement-wise because all chapters she is in until part 3 are either inside or have a river.

[The Fush]

I never used Meg and Fiona in my first runthrough of the game. When it came to 3-4, I just disabled them and fought without them. I knew they'd be liabilities otherwise.

[Agro]

Oh, and being on a horse is actually BAD for her movement-wise because all chapters she is in until part 3 are either inside or have a river.

If she's inside she has the same movement as any foot unit so that's not really something you can hold against her.

Also WRT Fiona, forge a Steel Lance, because an Iron Lance's Mt will wane too quickly. A forged Steel Lance will be useful for quite a while. Give it some extra accuracy if you want, and if you're really desperate to use her, you can boss abuse with Jarrod and/or the Armour Knight boss that was in the prison chapter. Just make sure you bring enough Iron/Steel lances (unforged) and Heal staves for Laura to sustain it. If you can get her to promote by the end of Part 1 she'll have a much better time come Part 3, although she may still struggle. You may want to give her a forged Javelin too, since Micaiah's chapters heavily favour indirect attacking. I probably wouldn't worry about adding hit to it, though, since she'll have the height advantage in 3-9.

She'll likely do most of her levelling in Part 4--stick her with Ike's group, since Ike's chapters are the easiest. By that time she should be able to wield Silver weapons so you can forge a Silver Lance if necessary. If you're going to baby anyone, do not put them in Micaiah's group.

Similar principles apply to Meg, though she has much better availability and you can even get Brom to recruit her over to the Greil Mercenaries in Part 3, boosting her availability. Be mindful of her low speed cap, which will severely hamper her performance as a General. Again, a forged Wind Sword (mostly with more accuracy) is always nice, and you can always give her Resolve if no one else needs it.

[Shadow Mir]

If she's inside she has the same movement as any foot unit so that's not really something you can hold against her.

Also WRT Fiona, forge a Steel Lance, because an Iron Lance's Mt will wane too quickly. A forged Steel Lance will be useful for quite a while. Give it some extra accuracy if you want, and if you're really desperate to use her, you can boss abuse with Jarrod and/or the Armour Knight boss that was in the prison chapter. Just make sure you bring enough Iron/Steel lances (unforged) and Heal staves for Laura to sustain it. If you can get her to promote by the end of Part 1 she'll have a much better time come Part 3, although she may still struggle. You may want to give her a forged Javelin too, since Micaiah's chapters heavily favour indirect attacking. I probably wouldn't worry about adding hit to it, though, since she'll have the height advantage in 3-9.

She'll likely do most of her levelling in Part 4--stick her with Ike's group, since Ike's chapters are the easiest. By that time she should be able to wield Silver weapons so you can forge a Silver Lance if necessary. If you're going to baby anyone, do not put them in Micaiah's group.

Similar principles apply to Meg, though she has much better availability and you can even get Brom to recruit her over to the Greil Mercenaries in Part 3, boosting her availability. Be mindful of her low speed cap, which will severely hamper her performance as a General. Again, a forged Wind Sword (mostly with more accuracy) is always nice, and you can always give her Resolve if no one else needs it.

You can't forge steels until 1-E.

As for Meg, the whole part about eing able to make her defect is false. And there's the fact that wind edges are unforgeable.

[Samias]

Being in a horse indoors means she can't climb ledges, which sucks because ledges really speed things up.

Anyway, don't feel bad about not training Meg or Fiona. Meg's got bad mobility and Fiona has so few chapters to train and poor bases and poor strength growth. The game is simply just easier by training Edward, Nolan, Jill and Aran, but generally the entire Dawn Brigade has difficulty training to catch up to the Greil Mercs. In part 4 you will be redistributing your units the way you more or less like. The team distribution also has some fixed units that basically make the game fool proof from here on out.

[cloudropis]

If you wanna abuse a little, really, not a grind-fest a la Disgaea I'm talking about 1-2 hours top you can Glare priests with Nailah and whack them with Bronze Weapons, rescuing another unit to have speed halved and not doubling. They'll automatically recover HP every turn thanks for their equipped staff and will be pretty durable, becuase Petrify status adds 10 defence.

Recommended chapters:

1-6-1. Leave the priest at the end alone and sorround him, then whack him. I don't suggest doing that, no Glare means one attack per turn because he's frail. Just give a level to units near level up.

1-...8? Swamp chapter, leave alone a priest near the boss and the onw who spawns at the left, leave only them in the map and Glare the former, whack him until the buddy arrives. Leave a single spot open so the other priest can heal the petrified one, refilling his health each turn, then go mad with Bronze. I usually promote Aran-Nolan-Edward there.

1-E. NOW IT'S THE TIME. There are two priests in the middle, petrify one of them. They have phisic equipped so they'll recover 20HP every turn, so you can go mad with Bronze without much waiting for health refill (the other priest doesn't heal him anyway). Leave the boss alone and whack like no one ever whacked before. I suggest to spend two bronze weapons for character, bar the one with paragon. This is the time where you can train MEG and FIONA. Just give them forged weapons so they can do more than 16 damage, battle save to get Strenght level ups so you can use Bronze weapons after a certain point, BUY A LOT OF BRONZE LANCES OR REMOVE SAVIOR FROM FIONA or she'll just waste uses when she'll double.

None of this is extremely boring, so you should get all the benefits. With this method, basically any DB's member is usable with little effort. You should at least promote Fiona and get the others to Lv5 Promoted, maybe Meg is a little bit underlevelled. Just give her BEXP or early kills the little frame where she's useful.

EDIT Fiona is not bad at all if properly trained, while Meg just doesn't cut it. She's good growths, best affinity of the game, mobility, 34 speed cap, good magic and innate Imbue. I recently finished the DB part, stat-wise she's my best wall for the group.

Yeah, deal with it: Fiona-is-my-wall. :P

Edited April 11, 2013 by cloudropis

[Ashen Tempest]

Then I guess I'll just give them a shot on the next game. I only heard that a second play gets a different ending, but I'd rather not spoil that for myself. At least, not until I've beaten it the first time. Anywho, thanks to all of you for the help.

[cloudropis]

There are also two other major differences... I'll just say WHAT are they.

two bonus characters.

There are some more things but meh, just some plot like you said. I'll just say, if you didn't import a PoR save and do it now. Possibly with an A support between

Ike and Soren

[Errorik]

Fiona and Meg are garbage. Meg is decent 'end game' but getting her experience during the dawn brigade chapter is not worth it. Fiona is just trash.

[Mr. Haar]

You should have given up on those two the moment you recruited them. They have good skills to take, though.

[shadykid]

You should have given up on those two the moment you recruited them. They have good skills to take, though.

eh, Fortune isn't really that useful

[Missile]

Fortune gives you 3000 gold at least

[Ema Skye]

If you want to use them, you get enough BEXP in Part 4 to make them usable (unless this is Hard Mode).

Edited June 10, 2013 by Dinfinitysignfina

[Steampunk]

If you take the time to level Fiona up in Easy (or possibly Normal if you like to live dangerously), she can turn in to a good wall unit. The Dawn Brigade needs all the defense/resistance they can get, and her HP recovery skill only helps her absorb attacks. It takes a bit of work to get her there (since her offence is pretty rough), though so you may not want to bother. Also bear in mind, the more time you put in to developing Fiona, the less time you'll put in to developing Jill, Aran, Nolan, etc. Basically, you can bust your hump to get Fiona up to par, or you can just focus on characters that are already good to go and make them even better. She makes a good punching bag, but you're probably better off focusing on other units.

Haven't ever gotten Meg to endgame, so I can't say much about her. I'll just say I really don't get the point of characters that show up under leveled and under powered who disappear for a while. Really, why are they even units in the game? Just make them NPCs for plot reasons instead of filling up the roster with units nobody wants to use.

[Disco]

I have never put the effort into Fiona (that I can remember, anyway) but I did a couple female only runthroughs where Meg turned out to be quite useful! She even made it to my endgame. But outside of that context I pass on Meg/Fiona. There are plenty of equal/better units who don't need the extra attention, so unless you just enjoy using those characters, meh.

Edited June 12, 2013 by Disco

[Kngt_Of_Titania]

I never really got Fiona to work, but Meg (and Gatrie too) just get an awesome skill in third tier. Luna is absolutely amazing. Meg is weird in that her growths don't really fit with her class, and she gets Fortune but has absurdly high LUK anyways.

On NM, I only had her at 20/10/0 by that laguz chapter in part 4, and I had fun with it and had her solo the entire chapter with concoctions and silver swords -- ended the chapter around 20/20/20 and just destroyed everything once she promoted -- Luna procs, everything without Nihil dies. Just explodes in a gigantic cataclysm of blood.

Which is why I always thought Meg didn't deserve to be in the lowest tier -- she has a ton of faults, yeah, but she does at least reward your efforts quite handily, at least more than some other characters in that tier do. It's kind of a shame that FE10 efficiency is about gaming fliers, trading units for straight out better ones with awesome stats to boot, and having "good enough" combat.

[Sain_FEH]

I did an all girls Endgame in my most recent play and I'm doing Dawn Brigade only endgame this time through. What I've run into with Fiona and Meg is this:

1) As stated, they just take so much extra babying because the Daeins get the shaft on XP.

2) Meg's growths are very un-knight like, but sometimes she turns out OK at best. Her speed may get up there and she has good resistance for an armor unit, but never gets the strength or defense you want.

3) Fiona on the other hand can become very tanky. She easily maxed her Def and Res for me and had OK speed. But her strength and skill are horrible so she misses alot and hits for crap unless you forge for her. She was good for blocking up narrow passages but other than they not much. With Imbue, she's tough to kill if you can build her, but she's typically not worth it.