So what's the "proper" way to play this game?

[BatmanWannabe]

Hey guys. Got FE13 on launch, and I was able to play about halfway through on Hard. Then my idiot brother lost my 3DS (thankfully my game card wasn't inside it at the time), and roughly 2 months later I finally found it again! But it's been so long, I'm gonna go ahead and restart my game.

Sorry if these questions have been posted elsewhere. The thing I wanted to ask, now that everyone's had a few months to dig into this game, is what's the proper way of going through this game? I've played all the other FE's, but this one seems to put heavy emphasis on grinding as well as class changing. These elements weren't really there before, and so I was pretty comfortable and used to the idea of say, my Thief becoming an Assassin and that's the end of that.

But nowadays I read topics all the time of people saying, "reclass your Gaius into myrmidon for vantage, then x, then y, then back to Assassin for final". When I played, I stuck everyone on one class and didn't really use change seals. I was afraid that levelling everyone up to 10 all the time to reclass was making them too powerful. It was making Hard Mode easy. But isn't that what's going to happen if you reclass a few times with a character in order to get the good skills?

Anyway, after years of avoiding arenas and towers and stuff, I feel kinda weird grinding up these characters and changing their classes, but since this is the way the game is supposed to be played, what am I doing wrong? How do I approach?

Yeah sorry for the ambiguous questions. I'm not uneasy, I just want to know how a proper FE vet from SF would approach this game. How would/do you guys level up your characters and reclass and stuff?

Thank's so much in advance. I'm looking forward to getting some quality input.

Edited April 18, 2013 by BatmanWannabe

[Faye]

Play the game how YOU want, dude. oAo There is no "proper" way to play any game.

[BatmanWannabe]

Well I know that oДo

I didn't mean to imply that there was one strict way to play, but I just wanted to know how you guys go about with the reclass system. Do you just level your guys up to 10 in skirmishes, then reclass and repeat ad infinitum? I know skirmishes scale by location, but it made story missions way too easy. Felt like I was doing something wrong.

Then again people seem to be saying this is the easiest FE of them all or something, so maybe it's just me

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

The proper way? The one with which you have the most fun.

Honestly, it's possible to beat every difficulty without grinding. Every class is viable on hard, so if you want to avoid grinding and just stick to the one class line, I say go for it.

Edited April 18, 2013 by Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi

[Thor Odinson]

Do whatever feels right for you. I personally dislike grinding during the main game, so I plan on holding off until postgame for any grinds. Other people like grinding and they have fun with that. So do whatever you like, really.

On my run I trained a very centralised group of units so I had enough exp to put reclass to use. MU is the most easily reclassable since they have the most availability with high exp gains, and with my team makeup I was able to reclass my main combatants at least once(MU is 6 levels to her second reclass, even). You don't have to if you don't want to, but it's not like you can't, either.

Edited April 18, 2013 by Thor Odinson

[General Horace]

For levelling up characters and such, it really depends on the character. Some characters like Panne really appreciate a second seal at level 10 - she's a killer wyvern rider.

But really, the way I always play FE games the first time through is only promoting units if I'm having issues with a chapter, otherwise whenever I feel i like it.

Ultimately as others have said, its all up to you - just have fun :)

I find it odd people call this the easiest FE game, although I haven't played Normal Mode.

Edited April 18, 2013 by General Horace

[BatmanWannabe]

Oh cool thanks for the responses. When I played before I just went crazy grinding and class changing, it killed the fun for me.

On a harder difficulty like Lunatic, I'm sure I'll get more of a streamlined experience in line with what I'm used to from other FE's. This game takes all the best elements from all of them, but in my opinion it's pretty different as well. Just takes a little getting used to, I suppose.

[Shadow Mir]

Yeah, I'd agree, just have fun. Also, to say this is the easiest FE is a bit of an overstatement - I'd say it's at least harder than Sacred Stones, and a few others.

Edited April 18, 2013 by Levant Fortner

[Thor Odinson]

I haven't done Lunatic, but I'm finding Hard piss-easy. I do hear the difficulty jump from Hard to Lunatic is pretty huge, though.

[BatmanWannabe]

Yeah that's what i've been hearing as well. I think the only "problem" I have with reclass is the fact that it seems like if you reclass after you've already promoted you get the benefit of promotion gains too, from what I can tell, which makes them super powerful.

So I guess the way to counter that is to raise somebody to 10, reclass, then promote them whenever, or just reclass again. Their stats will be like as if you never reclassed at all, but you have the benefit of the skills and the new class. I hope I'm getting that right.

EDIT: when i say problem it doesn't really bother me. It just seemed that characters post promotion after reclass just retain a bit of their stat boosts. Unpromoted characters when reclassed don't have those boosts, so it's a bit less wonky. Then again it's been 2 months since i've played so maybe i'm remembering things wrong

Edited April 18, 2013 by BatmanWannabe

[Weiss Schnee]

Oh, Lunatic's hard, all right. You'd have to employ strategies you didn't think of using before.

It's a good challenge, though, and it feels pretty fullfilling you finish the mode on your first time.

Personally, I usually grind my characters even if it's unnecessary on the easier modes. I reclass at ten, and when I've gotten every skill I needed, that's when I promote them. It's fun doing it to the characters I don't usually use; it kinda feels awesome seeing those characters turn into badasses. c:

[BatmanWannabe]

Yeah that's what I was trying to say. If you reclass at 10, you gain the skills, but their stats end up evening out once you finally do promote right? Similar to how they would be if you just trained them to 20 anyway and promoted without reclassing, I think. So it's not like reclassing 5 times will make them into superpowerhouses, aside from the 10 or so skills they would have accumulated.

Unless you promoted, then reclassed everytime or something.

[euklyd]

I've played all the international games except Shadow Dragon, as well as FE4 and FE6, so while I'm not a veteran here, I know what I'm talking about (Usually. I think ). On Hard, I re-classed very few people and did just fine, while on Lunatic I was re-classing everyone left and right, and by the last third of the game it was almost as trivially easy on Hard mode.

So you might not want to go overboard (although I found that fun as well, just not for the challenge)

Honestly though, play however you like. You should be fine however you play on Normal and Hard, so don't worry about it.

If you want to curb-stomp the final boss though (on Hard, not Lunatic), then re-classing is the way to go. That was satisfying, post-game.

[Othin]

Just figure out what works for you. If you don't like the results of grinding during the main story, don't grind during the main story. Trivializing the game is about the only result that can come from that.

[BatmanWannabe]

This just makes me think of how eventually efficiency runs will be for this game. I don't know about a tier list since it seems trivialized in this game, but efficiency or LTC players probably won't have the ability to reclass a bunch of times. Probably won't use the children either.

Yeah that's what ended up happening to my earlier run, Slick. People were taking no damage and hitting back ridiculous numbers.

Edited April 18, 2013 by BatmanWannabe

[Lexington]

Yeah that's what i've been hearing as well. I think the only "problem" I have with reclass is the fact that it seems like if you reclass after you've already promoted you get the benefit of promotion gains too, from what I can tell, which makes them super powerful.

I'm not 100% sure I understood that correctly, but you do not keep the promotion gains if you go from a promoted class to an unpromoted class.

The modifiers are applied according to the new class.

You can check it out here: http://www.serenesforest.net/fe13/classchange.html

For example, if you go from Great Knight to Myrmidon, you get -10 HP, -7 STR, 1 MAG, 3 SKL, 5 SPD, -10 DEF, and -2 MOV added/substracted from your current stats.

[BatmanWannabe]

Oh huh. So does that mean, even if you reclass a bunch of times, your stats end up evening out similarly to someone who didn't reclass at all?

[Lexington]

Oh huh. So does that mean, even if you reclass a bunch of times, your stats end up evening out similarly to someone who didn't reclass at all?

Well, if you do not reclass at all, and promote at level 20, you only have 38 possible level ups to gain stats.

With reclassing you could basically have infinite level ups until everything is capped. (but you already mentioned that you don't like grinding)

Still, if you go to level 20 in your unpromoted class and do not have a lot of stats capped, you might want to switch to another unpromoted class (or back to level 1 of your current class) instead of promoting, since promoted units get less exp.

[Comet]

When I did my run, I always used the rescue staves they're too broken in this game. I just rushed all of hard mode, except for the ship chapter. That was a bit scary.

[euklyd]

Well, if you do not reclass at all, and promote at level 20, you only have 38 possible level ups to gain stats.

With reclassing you could basically have infinite level ups until everything is capped. (but you already mentioned that you don't like grinding)

Still, if you go to level 20 in your unpromoted class and do not have a lot of stats capped, you might want to switch to another unpromoted class (or back to level 1 of your current class) instead of promoting, since promoted units get less exp.

This. That is the reason it is possible to curb-stomp the last third/half of the game, with (some) grinding, or just by focusing on relatively few characters. If you don't like grinding, then you'll still end up with MUCH higher stats from just re-classing once, even.

[BatmanWannabe]

Aight guys thanks for the help. I think I understand all of this much better now, so now I have an idea of how I'm gonna approach this game.

I'm sure playing on Lunatic mode eventually will be a true challenge. And I don't even want to think about Lunatic+

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

Lunatic mode can be summed as Pick a God, which is Frederick and pray that he bless Avatar with his Veteran Power >_>

Or if you are like me(read: a noob) Logbook Dagda abuse

[Shadow Mir]

I'm sure playing on Lunatic mode eventually will be a true challenge. And I don't even want to think about Lunatic+

A challenge that is built mainly on character select forcing and fake difficulty, that is. And if I were you, I wouldn't even THINK about touching Lunatic+.

[Redwall]

there are literally two characters who are "mandatory" in vanilla Lunatic: Frederick and a finalboss-slayer. Obviously you'll need other guys to carry you through the main game, but their contributions are not unique; for example, you can beat it without Avatar (as someone else on the boards has done).

[riariadne]

There is no proper way to play the game.