Resetless Lunatic+ Run COMPLETED (Deathless) (With Complete Guide)

[Barrel]

"-If Robin has high Res (30+), consider swapping Tomebreaker to Slow Burn."

Apparently Slow Burn isn't even useful in that context: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/3z5wim/what_is_the_most_useless_skill_in_any_of_the_games/cyjj9kn

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Thanks, but I'm aware of how Slow Burn works. The chapter probably shouldn't stretch out to 16 turns (or, if it does, the enemy won't have meaningful hit chance due to the elimination of most 2-range enemies and the non-axe melee being body blocked). The reason I suggest it is because my strat stacks up Avoid to the point that even Robin starts causing hit issues for the sword users (they'll have ~50 against Robin and ~30 against Morgan). There's very few Valkyries in this map, so if their Attack isn't actually all that threatening, then stacking another 5-8 Avoid against multiple sword and lance users is potentially more helpful. Granted, it's a small trade-off, which is why it's not a definitive note.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

So, in case anyone was having issues with the video links, Twitch went ahead and decided to change a bunch of the URLs without telling me (despite supposedly being permalinks). I've since updated the links, which affected the second run with deaths, as well as the first, second and fifth deathless runs. For some strange reason, the first run with deaths both retains its old-style URL and still works. I'll never understand you, Twitch.

Also, I've got a bit of new content in a quick highlight of my weird C6 gambit from a bit over a week ago.

Due to the C2 tomes being blocked by Risen and blowing through a ton of resources just to get past C5, C6 was looking pretty bad. This, despite Robin having 20 Def after Tonic. The whole play was supposed to go like this: Rescue Lucina up to block the choke point to Emm, but not healing her. This would result in Lucina damaging the Counter Fighter, then dying from the Counter, which prevents her from murdering Gaius's face. Gaius then feebly tries to stab a rather bulky Lissa, which sets me up to Rescue Robin, recruit him kill the Fighter, then block the choke. Unfortunately, Robin was also facing a lot of Counter on her EP. Half of the gambit worked. Guess which one.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

So Twitch finally went ahead and updated the URL on the very first run with deaths, breaking the links. I've since fixed that, but Twitch messing around with all this stuff without a word has had me a little spooked, so I put together a Youtube that I hope to eventually archive things to. I'd hoped to debut it now, but I've been running into issues with Twitch's exporter in that it instantly fails with highlights past a certain age. I do have back-ups of the runs on my hard drive, so if worst comes to worst, I can upload it that way. However, they'd large files and my ISP puts a cap on bandwidth, which would put a major damper on doing things that way. I'm hoping something will come of me contacting Twitch support first. In any event, I'll link it here when I get it going.

In other news, I've been going back over strats and I think I have a better way of dealing with the C2 Risen than an early crit Thunder. Well, better in the very short term, anyway. I think there may be some fairly heavy consequences when it comes to post-C5. Basically, thanks to Mag+2, Mage can meet the Mag benchmark that Dark Mage would with a Flux. Mage even has an additional point of Mag, Skl and Spd, meaning it has overall superior offense and should C4 also get a Risen, it's possible for the Mage to still make the benchmarks with a forged Fire. The Thunder will cost a bit more to forge, but will have +5 Hit over the forged Flux without having to forge its own Hit up. Now, the downside to this is significant durability loss of 2 HP, 2 Def and 1 Res, when my runs have a reputation for not being generous with Def growths. On top of that, Mage and Sage get worse skills. Losing Hex kinda sucks, though it's not a huge deal and taking Mag+2 over it is kinda worth not having to bank on a one of a couple low-percentage crits to take down Aegis+ enemies (which, if I fail to kill them, tend to be the reason I end up getting swarmed by Counter). Anathema versus Focus is a big loss, because that +10 Hit is very valuable to both Robin and Chrom. Focus's Crit boost allows Crit Thunders to still function when I need them, though. Rally Magic might allow for some oddball Rescue shenanigans, but more likely will just be useless and discarded compared to Vengeance (granted, Vengeance has seen a reduced role in the normal route, anyway). Tomefaire will give me some extra protection against having my Mag growth RNGed, but Tomebreaker is really valuable as a survival tool. This may pose additional risk in later chapters, such as C18, C22, C23 and C24.

Still, it gives a run that has been RNGed by Risen a much better chance of surviving the early game, so it's worth considering as a desperate weapon for desperate times. I hope to do some testing either this weekend or during the week next week to make sure I haven't missed anything in my theorycrafting.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Quick update: things have come up that have kept me from putting in the time to test out the theorycrafting, but I realized I had an opportunity when it came to Youtube. That is, the end of month period is coming up, so I can sneak some big uploads without having to worry about my bandwidth usage for the month. So my new Youtube channel is slowly gaining archived videos. Currently, I've both runs with deaths up (as well as my recent blind Lunatic Conquest run) and should hopefully get the first two deathless runs up over the next couple days. Once those are in place, the other runs should hopefully easily export from Twitch. If they do, they should be added in rapid succession (one export takes about half the time to upload and one tenth the time to do editing on compared to me having to use my local recordings). For those who prefer Youtube's player over Twitch's, keep an eye on the Resetless Compilation playlist.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Hey, look, I'm actually doing a run again: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi

[Playsta]

Made it to chapter 3 without dying, then I got a bad role with counter on nearly everyone. Worst part is, what killed me was a pavise + and counter plus crit against myself. 22 of my own dmg in face. The lord is testing me.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Hey, that's still a pretty good accomplishment. Up to C7 has some of the trickier tech in the run.

Things like that are also why I'm generally pretty wary about taking on Pavise+/Aegis+ with Counter and why Solidarity or having support rank 4+ can backfire. It's usually best to avoid fighting Counter in melee at all if it can be helped (the main exception being the forged Wind-type tomes versus enemy fliers). Which of the enemies got you?

[Playsta]

Hey, that's still a pretty good accomplishment. Up to C7 has some of the trickier tech in the run.

Things like that are also why I'm generally pretty wary about taking on Pavise+/Aegis+ with Counter and why Solidarity or having support rank 4+ can backfire. It's usually best to avoid fighting Counter in melee at all if it can be helped (the main exception being the forged Wind-type tomes versus enemy fliers). Which of the enemies got you?

Well the 4 enemies to the right at the start of the map, my avatar had gotten molested with no def growth (Had 6 defense at lvl 12, but high speed and magic). They all had counter, so had to bait the spearman and archer so I could get some starting dmg on them. It would have worked if I had not critted myself. I did not feel like I had any other option, since the counter dmg would have been to high. (The last archer also had Luna) So yeah, got pretty fuckt. xD

Edited March 8, 2016 by Playsta

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Do you mean to the left? The right-side enemies have five units. I can see how that would have been an issue, though, since meeting the survival threshold for an offensive strat against the two Archers would be nearly impossible with 6 Def, even if you gained 11 HP. Assuming only the one Archer had Luna+, it might have been doable to go on the Soldier with a bit of finagling to get Kellam onto Robin (Robin/Sully start where Robin attacks the Soldier at range, then Fred transfers Kellam to Robin before finishing off the Soldier), but only if the forward-most Archer doesn't have Pass, since then Vaike would be needed to bait the Knight away to prevent Fred self-destruct. Hope you have a bit better luck next time.

[Playsta]

Do you mean to the left? The right-side enemies have five units. I can see how that would have been an issue, though, since meeting the survival threshold for an offensive strat against the two Archers would be nearly impossible with 6 Def, even if you gained 11 HP. Assuming only the one Archer had Luna+, it might have been doable to go on the Soldier with a bit of finagling to get Kellam onto Robin (Robin/Sully start where Robin attacks the Soldier at range, then Fred transfers Kellam to Robin before finishing off the Soldier), but only if the forward-most Archer doesn't have Pass, since then Vaike would be needed to bait the Knight away to prevent Fred self-destruct. Hope you have a bit better luck next time.

Ah yea, meant to the left. I always go + magic - luck, so shitty stat ups are bound to happen. Its kinda awesome to oneshot everything though. Tempted to go + def instead. Usually don't go + speed, since I get enough speed to double (most of the time).

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Ah, I see. One-shotting is definitely helpful versus Counter. Getting to that power level can be pretty difficult, though. In any event, sounds like you typically have better luck than me, since sometimes even with +Spd, I find myself short on meeting doubling thresholds (usually against Mercs and Thieves, sometimes Soldiers if gains are being pretty ornery). +Def is what I initially considered for my Asset, but I found my Spd was too inconsistent when it came to planning out what ended up being my current strats. Sometimes I wish I could have some kind of hybrid of both, since I've had more than a couple runs where Robin has reached Hero and barely had more than 20 Def (and, of course, Morgan and Lucina had to have the exact same issue).

[Playsta]

Ah, I see. One-shotting is definitely helpful versus Counter. Getting to that power level can be pretty difficult, though. In any event, sounds like you typically have better luck than me, since sometimes even with +Spd, I find myself short on meeting doubling thresholds (usually against Mercs and Thieves, sometimes Soldiers if gains are being pretty ornery). +Def is what I initially considered for my Asset, but I found my Spd was too inconsistent when it came to planning out what ended up being my current strats. Sometimes I wish I could have some kind of hybrid of both, since I've had more than a couple runs where Robin has reached Hero and barely had more than 20 Def (and, of course, Morgan and Lucina had to have the exact same issue).

Yea, also tried a - def once (never again). I actually got to chapter 5 this time, but because of my hype in Donnels chapter. I forgot the cute rescue staff... Sometimes I really wish you could buy all items from the beginning.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Playsta

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Oops. Yeah, little details like that that have big impacts is why I have rather verbose notes in the first place. In practice, I once looted the Rescue and then forgot to give it to Lissa during C5 prep. I tried anyway, but it completely borked the strat because I had to have Lissa retrieve the staff from the convoy. Ever since then, I've made sure to loot the Rescue right after Donnel gets his Archer kill and put it into Lissa's hands the turn after. It's not quite the same problem, but the solution has both scenarios covered.

[Vascela]

KTT, this topic on gamefaqs might be worth a read. It's about the support system and why you may or may not be reaching appropriate ranks on time. Of course, it might not be the exact reason or a separate case altogether.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/643003-fire-emblem-awakening/73511376

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Wow, that all seems to simple when laid out like that and pretty much explains the phenomenon. I'm impressed that Cerby got that figured out, though, because the system is not transparent about it at all.

So let's see what a typical Prologue would get me under this system. There's one attack with Chrom to get the first Barb kill. Then Fred kills the Mage above Robin, getting them 1 point. Three times with Fred and once with Lissa for each mook, which is 18 for Fred, 6 for Lissa and then 8 for Chrom. This is obviously skewed if there are misses, but we'll assume there aren't any. This puts the standings at:

Fred - 19

Chrom - 11

Lissa - 6

The second water trick then typically gets 4 combats with Lissa and about 5 heals. Plus 2 heals prior to starting. That's 19 points. Unless Robin is really Mag screwed, we're looking at 2 with Fred, 1 with Lissa for each melee mook. So that's 24 for Fred and 12 for Lissa, plus 12 for Chrom. Updated standings:

Fred - 43

Lissa - 37

Chrom - 23

Then for the boss, we're looking at 2 heals to even get started. Then there's usually 3 combats, with around 6 heals. That's 11 for Lissa, 3 for Fred and 9 for Chrom. Updated standings:

Lissa - 48

Fred 46

Chrom - 32

Points this close means that Lissa and Fred can easily swap between the 3 and 2 slot. Chrom is stuck with the 1 slot. This means that Chrom must absolutely take the 3 spot in C1, which usually isn't too hard. I just need to be careful with use of Sully. If Lissa gets stuck with the 2 slot in Prologue, then she'll need the 1 slot in C1. This can be a little more difficult because Fred will have 7 points and Lissa has no chance of overcoming that on heals alone. So she'll need to be beside Robin whenever possible when kiting the Barbs. Meanwhile, Fred and Sully should stay away.

I'm not sure if that math is entirely right, though, considering I've gotten the Chrom and Sully Cs at the same time. This is only really possible if they both somehow get the 3 slot. Unless Chrom gets both 2 slots in a row. But I have no idea how Chrom would make up that deficit in the Prologue.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Well, it's been a while, especially since I forgot to post a notification during the last attempts, but I'm doing runs tonight. https://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi

[Terrador]

Congratulations on your win last night, mate! Shame I couldn't catch it all, but let's be honest--what can kill you after you recruit Morgan?

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Thanks! As for what can kill me, Counter and complacency is the main danger (and I've dropped several runs doing this). Bad level ups to make everything dicier than it needs to be. There were a few attempts and one successful run where I was way below average Def. In the successful run, both my Robin and Morgan barely had more than 20 Def for the greater majority of the game. Some of those maps really ended up on a knife's edge.

Other than that, there's some enemies that are legitimately dangerous. C22 has the Bow Knight and Sorc. The former is really dangerous with Luna+ and especially so if he also has Counter. The Sorc has nearly one-rounded me before with Luna+ and Hawkeye. Hawkeye with Vengeance can also be dangerous. C23 and C24 can have enemies be problematic as a group. Aside from the usual Counter suicide bombers, Attack has gotten high enough by this point that anyone remotely accurate with Luna+ (mainly Assassins, Sword Pallies and Lance Wyverns) can do a lot of damage. Similarly, anyone with an axe and Hawkeye can be a problem. C23 specifically also has the Ruin Sorcs, who often come with Anathema (allowing them low, but listed crit against either of my pairs) and Vengeance. If they also have Hawkeye or Hawkeye/Luna+, I have to treat them with extreme caution. C24's most commonly annoying and potentially deadly enemy is the Great Knight. They're pretty much guaranteed to have Luna, so if the game gives them Hawkeye, they become very dangerous RNG bombs that can do a ton of freak damage.

So I guess to sum it up: attrition, in more ways than one, is my greatest enemy.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Okay, so getting all the videos updated to Youtube took much longer than I wanted. Probably didn't help that I've also been uploading Fates videos as I go and that the Twitch exporter likes to give me grief, even on the newer videos and especially when it comes to uploading multiple videos at the same time. To its credit, though, it was really cooperative yesterday, so now the Resetless Compilation has been fully updated, including my eighth deathless run.

Speaking of Deathless Run 8, if the 11:20-ish time wasn't enough to indicate the rust (although, at least I didn't even up with anohter 14-hour run...), some highlights of the run are C2, where I had a pretty amazing first wave, despite the enemy having a heavy Luna+ composition, where RNG was balanced between Robin dodging a bit, Virion whiffing a crucial attack, and Vaike cleaning up for Virion's slacking. This was then followed by me botching the wave 2 river positioning and somehow pulling through (Miriel DSing was a big help). I then almost dropped the ball in C3 on the left-side pull, but with a bit of weird finagling, involving Miriel not whiffing a ranged battle with one of the Archers (maybe she's decided to stop being a traitor and mend her ways!). Additionally, the terrible C5-C6-C7 trio were out for blood. Counter was everywhere in all the maps to the point where I had to use 3 Rescues on C5 and all my forges were more than halfway broken and going into C6. Robin saw the reaper flashing before her eyes at the start of C7 because she came out of EP with 1 HP left. Never a better time for that last Elixir charge. The RNG wasn't entirely bad, though. My mid-game leveling RNG just kind of went berserk to the point where I capped out Spd very early and my Mag very quickly ended up being something stupid like +4 to all benchmarks. Of course, the game turned things around to try to give me a heart attack with some of the worst C23 and C24 enemy configurations I've seen. However, we pulled through and Morgan finished things off with what's apparently becoming the traditional Grima crit.

Anyway, enough rambling, get your links below:

Twitch: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Youtube Playlist

Edited April 18, 2016 by Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi

[Friyeeday]

Heh, I appreciate the sentiment (and have always known I'm a masochist), but I'm still just in the routing stages (which I plan to do at least partially on stream once my current more standard run is done). I won't consider this truly started until I'm on stream, failingtrying to execute it in real time. >.>

Yeah, this is a bit of a baby steps thing. Ideally, I'll find strategies to recuit everyone and keep them from dying. There's no guarantee that there will be anything reliable enough, though. I'll have to go over and route each chapter first before I decide whether to go for that or not, as there's a decent laundry list of problem chapters for that, the first of which is for chapter 2. Interceptor's strat is pretty solid, but there's still a luck factor where if the Robin/Chrom gambit fails, not only is Stahl quite likely to die, but I'm not entirely sure if Lissa can position to help Miriel reach the left side Soldier without putting herself in danger of being OHKOed by that same Barbarian. I'll have to have a look at it and see if I can tweak it. Alternatively, if I find a really solid strat that I like that safely clears the enemies while still feeding Robin the majority of the EXP (Robin or Chrom paired to Fred can end in Fred actually steamrolling many of the enemies, which is really bad in the long run), then I may just eat the luck factor because it's honestly quite reasonably low luck factor and it would be fast to get back to chapter 2.

Chapter 3 is one where I have my own strat that works pretty consistently on the first turn, but is also slower in dispatching the lower-left than Interceptor's, which can put me in trouble. I'll have to see if I can find a happy medium between the two.

Chapter 4 has one potential issue that may end in someone needing to take a bullet for Robin: Marth with Counter.

Chapter 5 is... well, Maribelle and Ricken trying their hardest to suicide, quite honestly. My current idea is to have Fred and Robin and nothing else but other cavalry push north hard, then divert west, running circles around the central cliff area. The Wyvs and fort reinforcements can possibly throw a huge wrench into that, though.

Chapter 6 will involve Fred standing in front of the door, drawing fire, face-tanking unequipped if there's a high density of Counter (which runs a high risk of him being overwhelmed unless I have Elixir uses left, or possibly getting the Paralogue 2 Physic so as to combine that with Vulneraries). Because Marth is a moron and won't heal unless under around half and deals so much damage that self-explosion is almost inevitable. And if Marth goes down, those Thieves possibly stop having an attack target, which means they open the door and it's game over from there.

Chapter 9 is a possible huge issue too, unless I can get Lissa to a pretty high Mag level for turn 2 (maybe 3) Libra Rescue-age, since the Soldier by him can solo him if it spawns with Counter.

Yes, I'm always on Classic when doing a proper run. I'll probably use a Casual save for routing so as to make it easier to figure out how to manipulate enemy movements from position X. Also, you can watch me suffer directly, as I'll be streaming the full run once I get to it.

If Chrom or Robin get crit-gibbed, then run over, and I have to restart the entire game. This goes for if Emm gets her face eaten too.

This is an insane level of commitment

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

I've made some revisions to the Chapter 6 portion of the guide. This adds some conditional optional safety strats for the Fighters nearest Fred on turn 2 and set of Cavaliers that come in from the left. For the former, if the group has one Counter enemy without extra tanking abilities, Fred can take him out of the fight, which frees up Lucina to further weaken the right-side Cavaliers who are more accurate and might also have Counter. For the Cavaliers coming in off the left, I've noticed that due to the volume of other enemies Robin is fighting, the frontmost Cavalier especially can be a deadly Counter or Luna+ bomb. As it turns out, unequipped Gaius can reliably draw one away and under certain conditions, it's possible for the Emm room team to even gank said Cavalier. So, yeah, lots of extra safety here.

I had some theory for Miriel pair-up strats here, but I haven't been able to make the support progression work due to few opportunities and other characters taking priority in the earliest chapters. So unless something new comes up, this idea is shelved for now.

I've been looking at alternative C7 strats, but nothing has really stood out so far. I've been experimenting with fuller deploys, but under the conditions where they'd be needed, they tend to end up being as much liabilities as helpful. I'd hoped to be able to update this at the same time as the C6 text, but way things look, I'll probably be at this for a while.

[Seafarer]

So I've been following this for a while, and joined just to say how fantastic these runs are. Seriously, this is amazing.

One thing you appear to have overlooked (probably because it doesn't make much difference): in the second half of Prologue, it's actually quite easy to bait the Myrmidons into tome range by running Robin back down to the southern bit of water. It's no big deal, because one Myrm can't kill Chrom, but I thought I'd point it out.

Is there any chance of you doing a run with 0 starting Renown? I'd kinda like to know if it's feasible.

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Thanks, glad to hear you enjoy them.

Do you mean going back to the section where I fought the first wave? I don't think I quite need that level of safety, but nice find, nonetheless.

As for a run that uses 0 starting Renown, I think the chances are pretty low. The feasibility depends on what, exactly, you define as an acceptable level of feasible, as well as if other things are allowed back into the pool. Aside from trying to keep the run as consistently recreatable as possible, the 260 Renown was kind of a compromise for banning out Anna shops and shiny tiles. This provided some solid concrete bonuses without having to rely on the RNG to spawn good Annas or shiny weapons. Any way we swing it, going to 0 Renown would make the run more RNG. If Anna and/shiny tiles were allowed back in, we'd need good spawns or drops to get Robin up to a similar power level. If neither is allowed back, then the run would become resetting for good levels because Robin would need to be a damn good 20 Tactician to keep handling what she needs to. Sure, Fred might see more use and the route would change a bit (namely, instead of Tact 20->DM 20->Sorc 15->DF, Robin would go Tact 20->GM 10->DF...), but in the end, it'd just more RNG pressure on Robin to get good levels. And trying to use any of the other scrubs would just increase the RNG pressure, because they have similar growths, but not nearly the same rate of EXP gain.

So, yeah, it would probably be feasible, but it would be markedly more frustrating to get a successful run through the early game.

[Sodium Hydroxide]

A thought I randomly had for Ch1, while reading a thread in the general FE forums on dodgetanking (http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=64011):

If Robin gets either abso​lutely amazing HP/Def in the Prologue (25/12?); or a lot of Spd and Lck, with very little to no Hawkeye/Luna+ on the Ch1 map, I think it may be worth considering trying to have her dodgetank the whole chapter with a Chrom pair on a Fort (+20 Avo, and heals for if/when you get hit), using the Bronze Sword to WTA the Axes. Doing so would allow a guaranteed Chrom/Robin C for Ch2, even with crits on every watered enemy in the Prologue, ensure Solidarity on Robin (maybe even level 11 or 12), and also give Chrom more chance at earlygame Dual Strike EXP. The downside is making the run more dependent on RNG than it already sometimes is, even if it's assumed that the enemy skill layout allows for it; while also denying Fred some EXP that could help with Ch6, or the turtle strats of Ch5 and Ch7 (but is a Robin that blessed likely to need to turtle?). Because of the first downside, I doubt it'll be viable with resets off the table, but who knows?