Lunatic+ playlog/guide/walkthrough - COMPLETED

[Agent Khaine]

I was wondering where this wonderful thread went. Back to Lunatic+, failure here I come!

[......]

This and ShadowofChaos's videos actually helped me get passed some hard levels in Lunatic+ mode.. Thanks! :D

Edited February 28, 2014 by ......

[Interceptor]

I was wondering where this wonderful thread went. Back to Lunatic+, failure here I come!

Feel free to spitball here or in the Club thread if you get stuck on something. Planning ahead helps a lot.

This and ShadowofChaos's videos actually helped me get passed some hard levels in Lunatic+ mode.. Thanks! :D

Glad to hear that it was helpful!

[Aetherick]

Made an account just to say how fantastic this guide is.

Currently on ch 12 with a MaMU. Thanks. Bow Knight is amazing.

[FionordeQuester]

I think I actually found a new, fairly reliable trick to getting Avatar to Level 8.3 in the Prologue, via killing absolutely everything except the Mage. Is this a new method, or has someone else found a similar trick? I don't want to make a thread about it if someone already has, you know?

Edited March 3, 2014 by FionordeQuester

[Interceptor]

Made an account just to say how fantastic this guide is.

Currently on ch 12 with a MaMU. Thanks. Bow Knight is amazing.

Thanks for the feedback, glad that you've found the guide useful. I agree that Bow Knight is amazing; Lunatic+ is where the class really shines. Even Bowbreaker is great on this mode.

I think I actually found a new, fairly reliable trick to getting Avatar to Level 8.3 in the Prologue, via killing absolutely everything except the Mage. Is this a new method, or has someone else found a similar trick? I don't want to make a thread about it if someone already has, you know?

Never heard of it. What does "fairly reliable" mean? How much skill manipulation does it involve? I'm sort of curious even if it's sketchy, because getting to level 8 is a big deal.

Edited March 3, 2014 by Interceptor

[FionordeQuester]

Never heard of it. What does "fairly reliable" mean? How much skill manipulation does it involve? I'm sort of curious even if it's sketchy, because getting to level 8 is a big deal.

Well, you need to either no more than two Luna enemies with a non-Vantage Mage, or have no more than one Luna enemy with a Vantage-Mage. Assuming you have this combination, then the strategy is this...

Turn 1: Have Freddy pair up with Avatar, go all the way east, and drop the Avatar off into the water. Pair Lissa up with Chrom, have Chrom go all the way to the right, give Lissa's Vulnerary to him, and have him unequip his weapon (so that he doesn't damage anyone). Enemy should attack Chrom.

Turn 2: Have Freddy kill the Mage from the bottom, move Avatar up, have Chrom approach Freddy from the bottom to give him both Vulneraries and take his Silver Lance (so that Freddy doesn't damage anyone). What you do next depends on whether or not any of the myrmidons have Luna. If none of them do, Transfer Lissa to Avatar and Pair Up with Freddy. If even one of them does however, and you didn't pick a +Spd Asset, then do the opposite of that.

Turn 3: If Freddy needs to heal, heal up. And if he has Chrom, throw him into the water. Otherwise, have Avatar go up and throw Chrom into the water to the east, and have Freddy give Avatar Lissa if he can.

Turn 4: Have Freddy Pair Up with Chrom if he can (after which, Chrom is free to move west, since the enemies won't reach Avatar in time), otherwise, stall for another turn as Avatar passes Lissa to Chrom while he gets out of the way.

Turn 5: Get everyone to safety if you haven't done so already. After that, you're free to fry them all, although you'll probably need to go through 4-5 Vulneraries baiting enemies since you're um...kind of cramped :/

So what do you think?

EDIT: BTW, someone REALLY needs to make quote boxes and the like easier to work with. It's driving me nuts!

Edited March 4, 2014 by FionordeQuester

[shadowofchaos]

EDIT: BTW, someone REALLY needs to make quote boxes and the like easier to work with. It's driving me nuts!

Turn the WYSIWYG editor off.

[Czar_Yoshi]

The main problem with that plan is that it puts a ton of extra uses on the Thunder tome, and you really don't want it breaking before the first wave of Cht.2 is done. If you can get it to last, it's fine, but it's something to consider.

It looks like most of the extra exp is coming from the chip damage and not the kills. I wonder, if the Elthunder mage could be beaten in the normal strat without a Lissa pairup (probably from a lucky DS from Fred), would your atk be lowered significantly enough to make a difference in the number of levels gained?

[FionordeQuester]

I suppose you COULD do Freddy pair up for the mage if the mage is weak enough, although the Mage usually seems to have stuff like Mag +2, Luna, Focus, and all that stuff.

As for the Thunder tome...eh, I think it'll last until Chapter 2 at least. As far as I can tell, you only really use it on one enemy on the first turn of Chapter 2. Otherwise, what does it do against the first wave that the Thunder tome doesn't?

Edited March 4, 2014 by FionordeQuester

[FionordeQuester]

Well shoot...after more testing, it seems having two Luna+ dudes will ruin the strategy whether the Mage is a Vantage one or not (guess Freddy got lucky with a Dual Guard once). Not sure if there are any other limitations that I wasn't aware of.

On the bright side though, I'm finding out ways to conserve Vulneraries. Seems that, if Freddy only manages to Pair Up with Chrom on Turn 5, and you send Chrom down instead of up, and pass two turns, you might find a way of only having to heal Avatar with two vulneraries if you're lucky enough to have it so that the top Myrmidon on Turn 7 doesn't have Luna+. Leaves enough wiggle room to kill the first two enemies, bait the weak Myrmidon as Chrom and Avatar switch places, have Chrom lure the strong/other weak one to the other side again, and readjust from there...

Edited March 4, 2014 by FionordeQuester

[Airship Canon]

The main problem with that plan is that it puts a ton of extra uses on the Thunder tome, and you really don't want it breaking before the first wave of Cht.2 is done. If you can get it to last, it's fine, but it's something to consider.

It looks like most of the extra exp is coming from the chip damage and not the kills. I wonder, if the Elthunder mage could be beaten in the normal strat without a Lissa pairup (probably from a lucky DS from Fred), would your atk be lowered significantly enough to make a difference in the number of levels gained?

Ch 1 is mostly Bronze Sword: The Swordening, [only using the tome on the Archer or maybe the boss] so a few extra uses on the tome isn't going screw things up.

That said, if there's a way to make the L+ early game completely Asset/Flaw independent [i.E. taking DEF flaw without notable penalty] somewhat reliably (more so than Frederick Emblem), that'd be awesome.

[Aetherick]

Thanks for the feedback, glad that you've found the guide useful. I agree that Bow Knight is amazing; Lunatic+ is where the class really shines. Even Bowbreaker is great on this mode.

Just crushed grima.

I used a pretty different team.

MaMU

Chrom

Lucina

Cynthia

Sumia

Lissa

Anna

Olivia

Morgan came too late to make a huge difference. Chrom was a decent lord (10)->archer-> sniper, being able to fill gregor's role in tanking (with fred pairups) and plugging chokes in the earlier chapters.

I trained sumia in all those paralogue training missions (and chapter 10 + 12) and managed to get galeforce before ch13, so I could get two aether galeforce children. Turned her into a great knight after to try to get dual guard+ as she can kill someone and then switch back to chrom for enemy phase.

No mire user made chapter 21 a hard boss rush, although galeforce helped in that. A lack of armsthrift (besides avatar) made me extremely poor too lol.

Blessed bow tanking is hilariously good.

Thanks again for the awesome guide! Those chokepoint locations and general strategy tips really helped.

Edited March 11, 2014 by Aetherick

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Wait, Morgan came too late, but you used Cynthia? o.O

[Aetherick]

Wait, Morgan came too late, but you used Cynthia? o.O

I wanted to marry MaMu to Lucina for the extremely high dual strike chance for grima. And there's not enough chapters to get to S without lucky seed of trust or event tiles/barracks to build support

Edit: basically the valm arc was over by the time I could recruit Morgan, and the last couple chapters were mostly boss rushes for me

Edited March 11, 2014 by Aetherick

[Airship Canon]

Wait, Morgan came too late, but you used Cynthia? o.O

That sounds like he went for a 3rd Gen, but didn't know how to do that right. [That'd... involve saving paralogues, namely 2,3,4 and unlocking at least 1 other kid. (and it'd basically have to be Lucina]

You also kinda need the Seed of Trust from Renown.

(Do P2 after C13 [seed]: C; P3, P4: B; [Kjelle/Laurent/Owain], C14: A; C15, P9: S)

[xcel]

Interceptor, your guide has helped a lot in getting past the BS that is Lunatic+ until the Outrealm Gate appears (heh, no shame).

[kusimanse]

Thanks a lot for the guide, using archers is a really good idea! Beating lunatic+ without it would have been really painful.

And now, far too late, the post-run debriefing -- AKA the Retrospective -- where I go over what worked, what didn't, what was a surprise, etc. It's also a good excuse for more lists. Anyone can feel free to weigh in with their thoughts as well.

• I probably didn't use Chrom effectively in this run. For a while I kept up with his training, but by the time the Valm arc landed he was just a throw-in unit still stuck in tier 1. He would have benefitted by going Bow Knight like Lucina, except through Archer instead of Mercenary. The basic point is that I either need to train him properly or abandon him at Lord level 10; the in-between status just gave me a unit that drained early EXP but never became a strong contributor.
• I'd really like to find a way to get Dual Guard+ going somewhere. DGs are the best way to avoid late-game damage, but plowing through 14 levels of Great Knight means leveling without being able to negate Counter, and there are no units that are a natural fit for it. Frederick is the closest candidate, but also one of the worst statistically. Ideally I'd like to have it on Lucina, but Chrom cannot pass it to her. Sully/Stahl/Kellam have the best statistics, need no reclasses, and also make the best parents, but they have to rely on walls and javelins to get there. It may not be worth the effort in the long run.

I ended up coming across this thread just before chapter 5, but my set up let me test these. For chrome, going lord->archer->bow knight was definitely worth it, he was the only archer user in my army when I class changed, so using him was easier than anyone else at the time (I also used avatar, donnel, and sully, avatar and donnel were both mercenaries at the time). Bow knights really are amazing, at one point I basically had the mongol army...

I tried to go sully-> great knight, but I never gave her enough experience to get to level 15, because donnel was strong enough without it and leveling her was kind of painful, she really wasn't worth it.

Also, I was able to get Donnel to level 10 after chapter 5, and really got him going after chapter 7 (after that he was basically as strong as my avatar, and his child was as broken as Lucina or Morgan), but he wasn't really useful during chapter 6. Getting him to level 10 did give me a ridiculous amount of healer exp., so I was able to use sage Lissa to beat chapter 6, otherwise it would have been really hard. Maybe feeding him par 2 would make him usable in level 6, but I'm not sure. Overall, he was really good, definitely better than Gregor in your playthrough, but I don't know if the amount of effort to get him going was worth it.

Well, you need to either no more than two Luna enemies with a non-Vantage Mage, or have no more than one Luna enemy with a Vantage-Mage. Assuming you have this combination, then the strategy is this...


Turn 1: Have Freddy pair up with Avatar, go all the way east, and drop the Avatar off into the water. Pair Lissa up with Chrom, have Chrom go all the way to the right, give Lissa's Vulnerary to him, and have him unequip his weapon (so that he doesn't damage anyone). Enemy should attack Chrom.

Turn 2: Have Freddy kill the Mage from the bottom, move Avatar up, have Chrom approach Freddy from the bottom to give him both Vulneraries and take his Silver Lance (so that Freddy doesn't damage anyone). What you do next depends on whether or not any of the myrmidons have Luna. If none of them do, Transfer Lissa to Avatar and Pair Up with Freddy. If even one of them does however, and you didn't pick a +Spd Asset, then do the opposite of that.

Turn 3: If Freddy needs to heal, heal up. And if he has Chrom, throw him into the water. Otherwise, have Avatar go up and throw Chrom into the water to the east, and have Freddy give Avatar Lissa if he can.

Turn 4: Have Freddy Pair Up with Chrom if he can (after which, Chrom is free to move west, since the enemies won't reach Avatar in time), otherwise, stall for another turn as Avatar passes Lissa to Chrom while he gets out of the way.

Turn 5: Get everyone to safety if you haven't done so already. After that, you're free to fry them all, although you'll probably need to go through 4-5 Vulneraries baiting enemies since you're um...kind of cramped :/

So what do you think?

EDIT: BTW, someone REALLY needs to make quote boxes and the like easier to work with. It's driving me nuts!

This is really useful on just Lunatic, especially if you're willing to sacrifice units on level 3 so that the heavier use of the tome doesn't matter as much.

[Interceptor]

Interceptor, your guide has helped a lot in getting past the BS that is Lunatic+ until the Outrealm Gate appears (heh, no shame).

Glad to hear it; I don't judge. Lunatic+ is ridiculous, and everything is fair game when trying to beat it.

Thanks a lot for the guide, using archers is a really good idea! Beating lunatic+ without it would have been really painful.

I ended up coming across this thread just before chapter 5, but my set up let me test these. For chrome, going lord->archer->bow knight was definitely worth it, he was the only archer user in my army when I class changed, so using him was easier than anyone else at the time (I also used avatar, donnel, and sully, avatar and donnel were both mercenaries at the time). Bow knights really are amazing, at one point I basically had the mongol army...

I tried to go sully-> great knight, but I never gave her enough experience to get to level 15, because donnel was strong enough without it and leveling her was kind of painful, she really wasn't worth it.

Also, I was able to get Donnel to level 10 after chapter 5, and really got him going after chapter 7 (after that he was basically as strong as my avatar, and his child was as broken as Lucina or Morgan), but he wasn't really useful during chapter 6. Getting him to level 10 did give me a ridiculous amount of healer exp., so I was able to use sage Lissa to beat chapter 6, otherwise it would have been really hard. Maybe feeding him par 2 would make him usable in level 6, but I'm not sure. Overall, he was really good, definitely better than Gregor in your playthrough, but I don't know if the amount of effort to get him going was worth it.

Nice to hear a success story for Chrom. It seemed reasonable to run Lord->Archer->BK, but there was no way to know for sure without trying. Did he last all the way until the end of the game for you, or did he fall off late?

Shame about Sully. I guess that the only reasonable DG+ unit remain Frederick.

I did give some thought to using Donnel, but just couldn't pull the trigger in the end. There's a good argument for it, though. While Gregor does have ease of use in his favor, he just has such a limited window of opportunity to take advantage of it. Donnel is by far the superior parent, too. The speedbump is Donnel's training: not only does it take longer, but he has no easy access to 2-range to grease the wheels a bit, and it's hard to get your hands on Arms Scrolls consistently.

I suppose the one nice thing about training Donnel is that he's so weaksauce early, that he doesn't suffer from Counter to the extent that other units do.

[kusimanse]

Nice to hear a success story for Chrom. It seemed reasonable to run Lord->Archer->BK, but there was no way to know for sure without trying. Did he last all the way until the end of the game for you, or did he fall off late?

Shame about Sully. I guess that the only reasonable DG+ unit remain Frederick.

I did give some thought to using Donnel, but just couldn't pull the trigger in the end. There's a good argument for it, though. While Gregor does have ease of use in his favor, he just has such a limited window of opportunity to take advantage of it. Donnel is by far the superior parent, too. The speedbump is Donnel's training: not only does it take longer, but he has no easy access to 2-range to grease the wheels a bit, and it's hard to get your hands on Arms Scrolls consistently.

I suppose the one nice thing about training Donnel is that he's so weaksauce early, that he doesn't suffer from Counter to the extent that other units do.

Chrom was able to keep up the whole way, but I did give him every stat boosting item I got outside of +magic attack, because donnel/avatar/children already had ridiculous stats. Also, an avatar or lucina pair up gives him a great stat boost as well as a high double attack rate, which really helps kill stuff.

Is Frederick really all that usable? I feel that he will run into the same training problems late game, and early game he shouldn't be hogging exp. Its just that when sully got to level 5/6 great knight my team was already rolling, and donnel didn't really need the dg+ support, he already had broken stats.

Donnel's real problem is being useless in chapters five and six and a high paralogue turn count, although I wonder if he might be usable by chapter six if he is given par. 2. Because his attack is so low at first he gains a ton of weapon exp, he had something like c spears after chaper five, and he got either sword c or almost there just on chapter 7 (I don't really remember), just turtleing and unequipping after player phase (I had an armscroll but didn't use it...). When he is a villager, even if he crits counter just means more healer exp, haha.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Fred falls off around mid-game. In one of my runs, using a Sumia S pair-up, I was able to keep him somewhat viable as someone who could weaken enemies until about chapter 15ish. He could conceivably be used in chapter 16, I guess, but once the enemy army swaps over to chiefly promoted enemies, he's kind of screwed. He still makes a semi-decent temp pair-up purely for stats bonuses to kids who are being brought in and don't have a partner yet, though. All-in-all, I doubt he'd be able to go anywhere near Endgame as a lead unit.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi

[Agent Khaine]

Okay, so here's my progress so far...

Paralogue: it only took me 673 tries.

Chapter 1: I was wondering what I was on after beating this in only three attempts.

Chapter 2: 432 tries later, after not sacrificing a single unit, I've moved on.

Chapter 3: I've given one try, and realized I should probably ask for any advice beyond what's mentioned in the first posts just to save stress.

My units:

Chrom Lv. 1; HP 20, Str 7, Mag 1, Skill 8, Spd 8, Lck 5, Def 7, Res 1,

Khaine Lv. 10 (MU); HP 27, Str 12, Mag 10, Skill 8, Spd 9, Lck 11, Def 12, Res 6,

Lissa Lv. 3; HP 18 Str 2, Mag 7, Skill 4, Spd 5, Lck 9, Def 3, Res 5,

Frederick Lv. 3; HP 20 Str 14, Mag 2, Skill 12, Spd 12, Lck 7, Def 16, Res 3,

Virion Lv. 2; HP 19 Str 6, Mag 0, Skill 9, Spd 5, Lck 7, Def 6, Res 1,

Sully Lv. 2; HP 20 Str 7, Mag 1, Skill 8, Spd 8, Lck 6, Def 7, Res 2,

Vaike Lv. 3; HP 29 Str 9, Mag 0, Skill 8, Spd 6, Lck 4, Def 5, Res 0,

Miriel Lv. 1; HP 20 Str 0, Mag 6, Skill 5, Spd 7, Lck 6, Def 3, Res 4,

Stahl Lv. 2; HP 22 Str 8, Mag 0, Skill 7, Spd 6, Lck 5, Def 8, Res 1,

This does not account for the additions of Sumia and Kellam, and one will have to be left out of the fight for this chapter.

Now, their weapons:

Chrom: Rapier 30, Falchion

Khaine: Thunder 12, Bronze Sword 30, Wolt's Bow 25

Lissa: Heal 13

Frederick: Iron Sword 33, Silver Lance 14, Bronze Sword 50, Iron Lance 40

Virion: Iron Bow 38

Sully: Bronze Lance 47

Vaike: Iron Axe 40

Miriel: Fire 43

Stahl: Nothing, Frederick took his Bronze Sword.

That's pretty much all there is, if you guys have any notable insights, let me know.

[XeKr]

You may want to rely on Frederick a bit more (for the start of this chapter) since he can reach up to 21 Def with Kellem, and your Avatar's Def isn't that great. Then use the chokepoints to level some of your other units.

[Agent Khaine]

Yeah, MU hasn't leveled up too well for me. Good to know about the combination with Kellam, though in several of the tries I did (since posting), Sumia-Frederick was an OHKO against at least one member of the hostiles on the left. I'll give Kellam-Frederick a few dozen tries.

[XeKr]

It depends a lot on enemy skills, since obviously Frederick+Kellam is super-tanky if there’s little Luna+/Counter. If they have more of those offensive skills instead, then it’s more advisable to try and run through them quickly on player phase. Then, it might be useful to have Frederick+Sumia and others unpaired, so you have Chrom (Rapier)/Miriel/Avatar/etc all for chip (and maybe positioned adjacent Frederick so he can help with Silver Lance Dual Strikes, bypassing Counter/Pavise).