Lunatic Grinding and Overall Enjoyment

[WyvernSurfer]

I've recently started up a Lunatic playthrough after I finished my first playthrough on Hard and beat chapter 4 with some practice of the art of Frederick. At this point, the Outrealm gate is free to use. The first few chapters were somewhat satisfying at first but then got tedious. I find it kind of boring to use Fred most of the time while desperately trying to feed MU. From what I've heard, the point of the game where other units can hold their own and can be used normally is pretty late at mid-game. Until then, Frederick is the shield (and spear) of the game. This raises the question of how I should continue.

Now you're probably going to ask why I'm playing Lunatic to begin with and not just replaying on hard. For me, a lot of the games I've played with the hardest difficulties tend to beat me down when I start but gradually become less mind-flayingly infuriating and more challenging to a point where it's more fun than the easier difficulties.

I've searched for some answer but I'd thought I'd just ask upfront.

From your personal experience, is the game more fun with or without some grinding or wireless help?

Edited May 13, 2013 by WyvernSurfer

[Redwall]

there's no one-size-fits-all answer; some people like grinding, and some do not. Perhaps you should first try playing without grinding and see how you like it, since you can always just grind if you wind up not enjoying no-grind Lunatic, whereas you can't un-grind if you later realize that the game may have been more fun for you if you hadn't ground.

[BlueFire]

I like playing the extra paralogues and xenologues once or twice in a playthrough, but when playing a map becomes repetitive, it's no fun for me. If a game gets repetitively/boring I typically just play a different one and come back to it later.

[Comet]

You can also have MU as the shield if you feed him enough kills to get going in the prologue.

[Othin]

I've found Lunatic quite fun to play without grinding, but if your team isn't prepared for it, you may prefer doing just a bit of catching up first.

[Tables]

Fred becomes no better than average about chapter 6, give or take - still in the first quarter of the game. I'm at chapter 12 in my Lunatic run (no grinding but completed three easy DLC maps), and Fred is totally worthless except as a support bot now (and heck, I have better support bots as well).

[Scarlet]

Fred becomes no better than average about chapter 6, give or take - still in the first quarter of the game.

I must be doing something wrong, then, as I'm at exactly chapter 6 in my current Lunatic run and Fred's still a god amongst mortals (although he gets murdered by anything using magic), while everyone else gets their face torn off just by having an enemy look funny at them (yes, including Chrom and MyUnit).

Then again, I most likely did overuse Fred a bit too much, so feel free to ignore me.

[Tables]

Maybe ch6 was slightly too early. Certainly my Fred was looking pretty eh by that point. I think he was level 4, for reference, and Avatar had just promoted.

[Talvisota]

Since I wanted specific kids with all the right skills I did use grinding.

I made sure to drain each parent of all 50 internal levels before I recruited the kids to make sure they got the best start they could.

(Once it got to 50 they became too boring to train up further)

Then again this is really down to the way I enjoy playing the game. I prefer the kid characters to the regular characters, so I'd rather

put more time into getting the kids I like and play with a slightly smaller party as a result.

It ended up with me using 5-6 characters as my main group- each of them being permenantly paired with one of their parents.

If I don't like a character nothing will convince me to use them so I tend to be picky. Quality not Quantity.

Edited May 13, 2013 by Talvisota

[BlueFire]

Since I wanted specific kids with all the right skills I did use grinding.

I made sure to drain each parent of all 50 internal levels before I recruited the kids to make sure they got the best start they could.

Then again this is really down to the way I enjoy playing the game. I prefer the kid characters to the regular characters, so I'd rather

put more time into getting the kids I like and play with a slightly smaller party as a result.

It ended up with me using 5-6 characters as my main group- each of them being permenantly paired with one of their parents.

If I don't like a character nothing will convince me to use them so I tend to be picky. Quality not Quantity.

I'm similarly picky with my characters (to the point of making kids' hair colors to my liking), but I don't play Lunatic. But I hear that focusing on a few characters is actually a good decision to make a playthrough easier.

[Othin]

I made sure to drain each parent of all 50 internal levels

I don't think you understand what internal levels are.

[Talvisota]

I'm similarly picky with my characters (to the point of making kids' hair colors to my liking), but I don't play Lunatic. But I hear that focusing on a few characters is actually a good decision to make a playthrough easier.

Yeah for me the difficulty curve was definitly most intense near the start.

Once my plans started coming to fruition and I got together a vanguagrd team with effective skills, solid stats and forged weapons etc the game became much more managable.

On the Internel Level buisness:

Yeah I know that's not how it works, what I mean is once the Parents got to 50 it just became too much of a bore to train them up further.

I felt like i'd done enough once I got to there and there wasn't any need to push on indefinitely.

Edited May 13, 2013 by Talvisota