Hating myself: A Lunatic+ CLA playlog (Chapter 2)

[Tables]

I'm not the best FE player ever, so this should be interesting. I'm going to be playing with no grinding, no DLC, but anything else is fair game. My goal is merely to win, not to LTC or play efficiently in some way or anything.

Made my Avatar. Tried to make Melia Antiqua, but pretty much failed. Not least because +Def/-Luk is about the furthest from what she should have, but oh well.

Premonition: Attempt 1

Got the worst possible luck with Validar's skills.

Prologue: Attempt 1

Every enemy in group 1 spawns with Hawkeye. This doesn't seem too bad, really. Both myrmidons have Luna+... that DOES seem pretty bad. Otherwise a vantage and two passes, seems tolerable. Every enemy in group 2 has Pass, and most have Hawkeye. Again, seems pretty good.

Fred moves out and kills the Myrm. I could swear his hit rate is usually lower, but oh well. He's gonna take a few nasty hits, but will survive. Chrom lures a Barbarian and Fred gets crit'd. Dammit. He's still alive though. I do a few checks and realise I need Fred to come back and kill that Barbarian. So he does and... oh, right, Vantage+. This'll take some getting used to...

Prologue: Attempt 2

More mixed enemy skillset. A good number of Luna+'s, along with Hawkeye or Vantage+. Eurgh.

Fred misses a Barbarian on the enemy phase, but fortunately one of the Luna+ Barbs (53% hit) misses Chrom, and Melia throws a dual strike in. Think I should have this, if I'm careful.

Group 1 goes down, with a decent amount of damage taken. Group 2 will be dealt with from the river., since that's the safest place to be. I don't really know exactly what I'm meant to do here, so I pair up Melia with Fred and Chrom with Lissa (so everyone is out of harms way) and lure the mage. That mage is incidentally terrifying, considering he 2HKOs and has 5 crit, and is 4HKO'd... he does go down without critting, at least. The rest fall to 1-2 range, and Melia levels up a few times, getting DEF every time. 11 Def is pretty durable, not too far behind Fred.

The boss had Luna+, Gamble and Vantage+. Yuck. Chrom!Melia took him down with minimal issue.

And I thought Lunatic Prologue was bad.

Chapter 1: Attempt 1

The hammer fighter has Luna+, Vantage+. Whelp. Asides from him the skills don't look too scary.

Melia onto the fort, Fred support. Melia proceeds to take every 35-55%ish hit to the face and dies turn 2. So much for tanking both physically and avoidwise.

Chapter 1: Attempt 2

The only skills I really care about are Luna+ and Hawkeye. Four Lunas, three Hawkeye, one combo. That guy with both is right by me at the start as well, and comfortably 2HKOs Avatar, exactly 2HKO's Fred (3HKOs on a fort). Urgh...

Fred takes a pocket Chrom so he can double that Fighter, and luck goes my way: Chrom Dual Guards and Dual Strikes. Nice. Fred also grabs a Soothing Sword, sounds VERY useful potentially. Not sure where to go from here, I tried to weaken enemies as safely as possible, but against 8 very angry Lunatic+ enemies, that's not really possible. Fortunately, Virion's arrival gave me an idea: I could just run away. So I did, slowly whittling enemies down as I did. Unfortunately a tactical blunder on turn 4 (where I planned to change Melia's pocked to Fred and then heal, but overlooked the fact I had only one space for two units) lead to this promising attempt dying out.

Whelp, this is hard. I think that's enough being slaughtered for one day.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Tables

[1% critted]

Inb4 chapter 2 has 10 attempts.

Nice more Luna+.

[Shengar]

You seriously gonna write up all of your attempt or just the one that most memorable to you?

[Interceptor]

Inb4 chapter 2 has 10 attempts.

I'd take the "over" on that, even with an overleveled stat-blessed +DEF Avatar. Ch2 is just stupid.

[Scarlet]

Good luck with this; Lunatic+ Chapter 2 is quite possibly the most retarded thing I've ever seen in a Fire Emblem game.

[Shadow Mir]

I'd take the "over" on that, even with an overleveled stat-blessed +DEF Avatar. Ch2 is just stupid.

I'd like to make an over 9000 joke, but I'll refrain.

[Tables]

You seriously gonna write up all of your attempt or just the one that most memorable to you?

Probably get more sparce as time goes on. Especially as chapters get more complex, or I'm not sitting by my laptop. Right now I wanted to actually get down more than just a few paragraphs.

Good luck with this; Lunatic+ Chapter 2 is quite possibly the most retarded thing I've ever seen in a Fire Emblem game.

My body is ready. I suspect there's a decent chance the run never even gets past chapter 2.

Edit:

Chapter 1: Attempts 3-~8

Oh gosh why am I even doing this? I have no idea what exactly to try and do here. It looks like Counter, Pavise and Aegis don't appear yet, which means 1/2 of the enemies have Luna+, 1/2 have Hawkeye, on average. And that's enough that trying to tank is just... not viable. But I don't have any other options I can really see. Lots of enemies also have pass, so I can't easily hold a line and heal.

I've experimented with a few different things... sending Melia!Fred onto the top fort, sending Fred!Melia instead, Chrom luring or not luring an enemy turn 1, using the bottom fort instead of the top one... I never seem to get past turn 2 without things looking extremely grim.

The thing scaring me most is that chapter 2 is going to be harder, and chapter 3 probably almost as hard again.

Chapter 1: Attempt ~9

A decent skill distribution. Only three Luna+'s (one on the boss) and I think about 4 Hawkeye's, not too sure, but none together. Lots of Vantage+ though.

Lissa trades her Vulnerary to Melia and stands by Chrom. Fred pairs up with Melia and Fred stands on the fort. Things go okay. Virion, Sully and Chrom kill one together on turn 2, while Fred switches with Melia (hammer guy is in range). A lucky dual strike takes down one of the dangeous Luna enemies, and I realise, Melia can actually tank safely until the boss is in range. Doing so leaves most other enemies almost dead, so I lure one more with Chrom, kill him, and then it's quickly just the boss as an issue. Fortunately staying on the forts is safe enough, and I finish him off with Chrom after weakening him with Melia.

Melia is level 8, stats: 26/8/8/8/11/6/14/5. Nice defence, that's for sure. Chrom is level 2, Lissa level 3, everyone else is at base level.

I'm terrified to go on. But... okay. Place your bets on how many attempts chapter 2 takes. Or if you are't really sure, roll a d100 and report back with the result, it'd probably be an okay guess.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Tables

[Tables]

Let's just put a few Chapter 2 attempts up.

Chapter 2: Attempt 1

Every enemy in the first wave, except one, has Luna+. Umm... reset? Nah I'll bite. The difference between resetting after 1 turn and resetting now is slight, after all.

I rush Fred forward on... uhh... active scouting duty. He never comes back. Neither does Chrom.

I think I screwed up giving the Elixir to Chrom... I think I want Melia to have it...

Chapter 2: Attempt 2

3 Lunas and lots of passes. Sounds okay. Still don't really have a clue what I should do, though.

Probable strategy: Have Fred draw some amount of fire, while hiding in thickets to increase survivability. If possible, loop around onto the forts. Melia goes onto the mountains for survival, luring some other amount of fire. Unfortunately I don't know exactly how much they can each safely deal with. I suspect it's significantly less than the actual amount of enemies.

A first run of this strategy fails miserably. Melia survives, with 1 HP, and crits one enemy. But that's nowhere near enough, even with everyone else, to deal even vaguely with the other nearby enemies. Sending Virion with Chrom!Fred was a really obvious mistake. Fred was left with 3 enemies, and all of them OHKO Virion. Yeah...

I think I need to do some tweaking. The next possible strategy is to instead send Fred!Meliar out, if there's few Lunas. Although, she's still taking 5+ damage from a lot of enemies, so even that's far from reliable.

[Interceptor]

If it gets really bad, I suggest using a blood sacrifice or two. Stahl is a good choice. Because he sucks.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Interceptor

[Redwall]

I like to start by chipping the nearby Mercenary with the Avatar and finishing with Frederick (or vice-versa, if it doesn't have Luna+). Alternatively, if you have a C support with Chrom, you should be able to double the Barbarian with the Avatar. Either option buys you a bit of time. Sully should ferry Lissa to the left and drop her into a forest so that Lissa can scoop up Miriel on turn two.

[Tables]

Chapter 2: Attempts 3-8ish

I had a very good run, where only three of the first wave spawned with Luna, and they were spread out. I managed to chip and kill one with the main group, while Melia and Fred with pairups beat the rest. Then I had a look at the second wave. The two guys by the bridge both had Luna, and would kill Fred or Melia (or even Fred!Melia) if they hit, with good accuracy (one had Hawkeye, the other was a Mercenary). So... kind of screwed. I tried going into the river and chipping the left most soldier, but that aggroed the entire group, and although I'd set up contingencies, it wasn't enough.

Asides from that, I've learnt a few things. Luna+ is the thing that makes the early chapters hard. Vantage+ is annoying, but only a minor hinderance. Pass has barely affected me so far. Hawkeye is annoying on fighters but mostly avoid isn't reliable enough in early chapters anyway. Luna+ turns 5HKOs into 2HKOs, and is totally terrifying. If two enemies close to each other have Luna+, you're in serious trouble.

Other attempts haven't gotten as far as the one noted above. Generally I get overwhelmed too quickly, and then/because some risk I take doesn't pay off (and not taking that risk would be certain death).

I've been trying the Mercenary killing method, it seems like a good idea. Just gonna have to work on advancing from there. Doesn't help that Melia has something like a 65% hit rate against him.

[Interceptor]

Welcome to hell. That's Luna+ for you; I think that they should have introduced Pavise+ and Aegis+ one chapter earlier, to make it less common.

[Tables]

I don't know how bad those two are, but I can't imagine they're worse than Luna+. They start coming (along with counter) in chapter 3, right?

[Interceptor]

Yup. Next chapter introduces Pavise+, Aegis+, and Counter to the mix. You have usable choke points, though.

[Scarlet]

I think they simply shouldn't have added as many enemies to Chapter 2 on Lunatic and above as they did. Seriously, Chapter 2 is borderline bullshit even on vanilla Lunatic, what with more than half the map instantly aggroing you.

Personally, I quit Lunatic+ on Chapter 3. I just don't have the patience to deal with the entire map spawning with Counter.

[Tables]

IS seriously needs to work on the concept of "difficulty curve." You know, early game being easier than late game, with things getting gradually more difficult as you go? They haven't managed that since... FE8, I think.

The first step is to fix the EXP formula and growth rates, so lowmanning isn't massively superior. But this is going off on a tangent. I may expound my thoughts in a thread at a later point.

Had one more attempt. Failed. Temptation to restart on Newcomer is rising. At least then I can save every turn that things look good.

[Interceptor]

Lunatic+ actually has at its core, a way to stop low-manning. If you look closely at what the bonus skills do, they basically all serve to counter every strategy that people normally employ in other modes. But they undercut themselves a bit with Veteran, and Counter is too hamfisted a solution to the problem (but a good start). I think that Lunatic+ with a few earlygame tweaks would be a legitimate challenge.

There's no shame in using Newcomer for Lunatic+, IMO. If it really bothers you from a philosophical perspective, maybe only use the save/sacrifice features for Ch2, and then play the rest of the game as if it were Classic. Anyone who got on you for doing that has either never played Lunatic+, or is a huge jerkwad.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Interceptor

[Tables]

Lol I mostly play Newcomer, it was more going for the hardest difficulty for the lolz. And yeah, I know that the skills do that - I've said before but I'll say again, if Hard+ was a thing, I would absolutely love to play it. I do agree the skills encourage a bigger team - Well, some of them, at least. Pass is another shot in the foot in that way I think, since it makes training weaker characters up even more annoying.