About to play PoR for the first time , What do I need to know?

[ClLoulD]

I typically give the speedwing to either Boyd or Kieran depending how level ups are going, however you might find someone else more suitable if they get screwed by RNG. In my current playthrough I've given the speedwing to Mordecai but he has no 1-2 range and his weapon is forever steel tier.

You can give the Seraph Robe to Ike but I would wait until after he promotes as his cap is 40hp for his first class, if you hit 34 or higher you will be wasting part of that seraph robe by doing so; you may also consider giving it to Marcia who if trained turns out to be a fantastic unit.

As for the Godess Icon, meh anyone with low luck; I tend to give it to a certain Swordsmaster who joins with abyssmal luck but again that is your choice.

As for RNG, tis a fickle bitch! The amount of times Poleax's have hit me at 28% hit chance is ridiculous...

Edited October 10, 2015 by ClLoulD

[Tragonight]

Sorren hit 3 times once and never again....

That's him activating the Skill Adept. It allows his to strike twice in a row. In addition to a third attack if he were fast enough to double, and a fourth if he were lucky enough to proc it twice in one battle. It's based on the Speed stat, IIRC.

[YoshiYogurt]

Another thing with this game is that the battle forecast is hard to read. Can't tell if the attack is before or after defense or what.

Need to mess around and see where Skills are shown....had no idea Sorren had a skill yet.

[Tragonight]

Go to the character's stats screen and scroll left or right a few times. They should be somewhere around there.

Or go to Manage Skills in the base.

[YoshiYogurt]

So supports in this game are brutal. Only 5 per character, kinda seems ridiculous after coming from awakening's infinite support system.

If I use an Oscar support on Ike, does it only take away one of Oscar's 5 or does it take away 1 for both Ike and Oscar?

Just gonna save it until next chapter (im on 8) until I learn what to do with them...

Also grabbed the Miracle skill from that fort...not sure who to use it on, sort of a worthless skill...especially since each character only has so much room for them...

Also have 910 Bonus EXP points already. Seems like a lot so maybe im doing something right....9-10 free level ups is cool. I could even reset until I get what I want, it's not beneath me lol

Edited October 11, 2015 by YoshiYogurt

[Lord Raven]

It's actually not 9-10 free level ups (it's less) unless you abuse it, but that actually doesn't sound like much for that point in the game.

Edited October 11, 2015 by Lord Raven

[YoshiYogurt]

It's actually not 9-10 free level ups (it's less) unless you abuse it, but that actually doesn't sound like much for that point in the game.

Yea turns out it's not that much actually like you said. I went really slow on some chapters since I like to take my time.

It should still be around 10 level ups , most of my units are at like 40ish experience so they don't need the full 100 points for a level up

[Lord Raven]

I posted this a while back if you're OCD about your BEXP distribution.

Level EXP BEXP
1-2   4   3
3     5   4
4     6   5
5     8   7
6     11  10
7     21  20
8     100 100
9     19  19
10    9   9
11    6   6
12    4   4
13    3   3
14-15 2   2
16-1+ 1   1
2+    12  18
3+    4   6
4+-5+ 2   3
6+    3   5
7+    6   11
8+    100 200
9+    4   8
10+   2   4
11+   1   2
12+   100 250 (or 2 EXP = 5 BEXP)
13+   2   5
14+   4   11
15+   6   18
16+   1   3
17+   2   7
18+   100 400
19+   1   4

Basically the amount of EXP you need to give them in small increments to optimize your BEXP. You don't need it but it's nice to see sometimes.

[YoshiYogurt]

Haha, you can tell i have some slight OCD since I keep asking frikin questions non stop. Fire Emblem is such a great franchise since it makes you care about your units so much.

Could you explain why you would need to optimize Bexp? Can't I just throw it at whoever I think could use some stat ups? Why does the level they are at or normal xp they have matter?

I heard in Radiant Dawn you should save it all till the endish or when a unit maxes at least 1 stat since you only get +3 stats always from a Bexp level up.

Edited October 11, 2015 by YoshiYogurt

[Phoenix_Kensai]

So supports in this game are brutal. Only 5 per character, kinda seems ridiculous after coming from awakening's infinite support system.

If I use an Oscar support on Ike, does it only take away one of Oscar's 5 or does it take away 1 for both Ike and Oscar?

It takes 1 away for both Ike and Oscar. Each character can have up to 5, as you said, essentially meaning they can A rank one character and B rank another (or some combination of lower ranks). This is true of every game from 6-10, I think, and was done because support bonuses stacked and A rank supports sometimes affected the story (mostly in the form of character endings).

Oscar and Ike are probably one of the most powerful support pairs in the game, thanks to their affinity bonus being pure evasion, but feel free to focus on your favorites character-wise rather than worrying about mechanical benefits. The game doesn't really have proper character endings like most others, and there's only one support I know off the top of my head that affects the ending at all (and it's pretty minor). but Path of Radiance isn't the hardest game in the series. If you're planning to play Radiant Dawn after, though, you might want to know that getting Ike and Soren to support rank A in PoR and transferring your data is one requirement for unlocking a special scene in the sequel.

[YoshiYogurt]

there's only one support I know off the top of my head that affects the ending at all (and it's pretty minor). but Path of Radiance isn't the hardest game in the series. If you're planning to play Radiant Dawn after, though, you might want to know that getting Ike and Soren to support rank A in PoR and transferring your data is one requirement for unlocking a special scene in the sequel.

Yea, I'd really like to unlock any speical endings or scenes so thanks for warning me about that. Might get Ike and Sorren A support just for that

What's the support that affects the PoR ending? all i can find via google is that Ike will have an extra conversation

So looks like I'm going to do all the supports that give me bonus stuff in RD, incredibly anal about this kinda stuff

Edited October 11, 2015 by YoshiYogurt

[Phoenix_Kensai]

...Oh, looking through the script, it seems every A support for Ike affects the ending dialogue in some way. So don't worry about that.

And according to the page on Serenes, you can only unlock that conversation in Radiant Dawn on your second playthrough, along with a bunch of other things that don't require a data transfer. So... you can use the same Path of Radiance file for both, or you could play through both games a second time to unlock everything, as I did.

I think that conversation is the only major thing that requires a data transfer. I have heard of a bunch of small things that can be affected, but unfortunately, I don't know if there's a good list anywhere online. I'd recommend just focusing on your favorites, since small stat bonuses transfer to Radiant Dawn with capped stats and A supports.

[Lord Raven]

Could you explain why you would need to optimize Bexp? Can't I just throw it at whoever I think could use some stat ups? Why does the level they are at or normal xp they have matter?

You can. My chart allows you to make the most use out of your BEXP. Like in some cases it's better to give units BEXP in 1 BEXP increments than just giving them 100 EXP right away. The chart tells you said increments.

For instance, look at level 1. Ordinarily, you would spend maybe 85 BEXP to get that unit 100 EXP or something to that extent, but if you give the unit BEXP in 3 BEXP (4 EXP) incremeents you only end up spending 75 BEXP instead.

If you have a unit at Level 19 or so, if you want to give them 100 EXP at once you spend 138 BEXP. Instead, if you give it to them in 1 BEXP intervals, you only take 100 BEXP to get the level up.

It's honestly not necessary at all, but if you want to do it then go ahead.

I heard in Radiant Dawn you should save it all till the endish or when a unit maxes at least 1 stat since you only get +3 stats always from a Bexp level up.

People say this but it's no big deal. You gotta pick and choose sometimes, like Soren can max some stats early due to high bases so he'll want some BEXP to up his pretty mediocre speed, and Ike can max Str/Def/HP early so that you can BEXP up his speed. Other characters, like Haar, have such high parameters in Str/Skl/Def that they're worth BEXPing from the start even if that means that his speed takes a hit for a little bit. It's kind of a common sense thing.

There's no way to optimize BEXP use in RD though, they made sure of it. In FE9 if you apply BEXP in the intervals listed on the second column of my chart then you don't end up "wasting" any BEXP.

[GrantBitman]

Thanks about the BEXP hint Lord Raven, that's going to come in very helpful.

@YoshiYoghurt - I used Miracle on Ike I have a feeling that it's going to combine well with Aether which he can learn when he promotes (although not for another 10 chapters or so) . Mia's vantage skill is good too she gets to counter-attack before an enemy attacks her which has saved her for me many times. Characters can learn more then one skill as long as they have space and some work quite well together like vantage and wrath/adept.

As for statboosters I think I'm going to keep hold of them for a long time because you never know whether or to whom the RNG will give stat increases.

Edited October 12, 2015 by GrantBitman

[YoshiYogurt]

I didn't realize Bexp wasn't a 1:1 ratio with the xp you actually receive with it...

[GrantBitman]

I didn't realize Bexp wasn't a 1:1 ratio with the xp you actually receive with it...

Yea I didn't realise that until after my units promoted and they were taking tons of BEXP to go up a level. doh!

[ClLoulD]

Haha, you can tell i have some slight OCD since I keep asking frikin questions non stop. Fire Emblem is such a great franchise since it makes you care about your units so much.

Could you explain why you would need to optimize Bexp? Can't I just throw it at whoever I think could use some stat ups? Why does the level they are at or normal xp they have matter?

I heard in Radiant Dawn you should save it all till the endish or when a unit maxes at least 1 stat since you only get +3 stats always from a Bexp level up.

I can tell you the BEXP function in Radiant Dawn is completely different to how it is in Path of Radiance. There are a many uses for Bexp and one of the more popular ones is investing in units like Marcia to finish chapters quicker, however you have stated you aren't rushing LTCing this run which I can understand. Use BEXP to buff up a few units that may need it to promote or aren't performing as well as they should be, I myself used a fair amount of BEXP on Mia during my playthrough I'm currently running and she did not disappoint.

Of course it's all RNG, but think of it as more of a balancing tool for your party than anything else.

Edited October 12, 2015 by ClLoulD

[YoshiYogurt]

The amount of times Ike has gotten himself killed by critting an enemy is getting ridiculous. Having such a good run on a chapter and Ike tries to show off only to take too much damage and die because he's critting pretty much only when it will kill him. Kinda want to blow my miracle scroll on him because he has done this at least 4 times so far and no one else ever dies

Edited October 13, 2015 by YoshiYogurt

[Tragonight]

The amount of times Ike has gotten himself killed by critting an enemy is getting ridiculous. Having such a good run on a chapter and Ike tries to show off only to take too much damage and die because he's critting pretty much only when it will kill him. Kinda want to blow my miracle scroll on him because he has done this at least 4 times so far and no one else ever dies

... Wtf? I'm pretty sure the Devil Axe didn't exist in FE9, and even if it did (and Ike could somehow use it?), you must have some hellish luck for Ike to be killing himself with crits.

Oh wait, I think I understand now. You throw Ike into a large fray of enemies and expect him not to kill them all on Enemy Phase, to minimize the amount of times he'll be attacked?

[YoshiYogurt]

... Wtf? I'm pretty sure the Devil Axe didn't exist in FE9, and even if it did (and Ike could somehow use it?), you must have some hellish luck for Ike to be killing himself with crits.

Oh wait, I think I understand now. You throw Ike into a large fray of enemies and expect him not to kill them all on Enemy Phase, to minimize the amount of times he'll be attacked?

Yea that's exactly it. Screws up your strategy when you plan something out and don't take crits into account.

[Tragonight]

Yea that's exactly it. Screws up your strategy when you plan something out and don't take crits into account.

Does he even crit with Iron Swords? Strange, I've never had this problem...

[GrantBitman]

Yea I had that happen a few times I seem to get critical hits and then the enemies keep coming rather then when I actually want the criticals

[Shadow Mir]

Yea that's exactly it. Screws up your strategy when you plan something out and don't take crits into account.

Death by awesome (or alternately, death by ownage).... Pretty irritating, if I do say so myself.

[YoshiYogurt]

Is Tanith supposed to be so bad? Level 10 Falcon Knight with stats behind my level 2 Marcia

She is rated very well be people but she only has 10 levels to get better. Probably not even gonna use her.

[maybe]

Is Tanith supposed to be so bad? Level 10 Falcon Knight with stats behind my level 2 Marcia

She is rated very well be people but she only has 10 levels to get better. Probably not even gonna use her.

Tanith seemed really good for me. Marcia was getting shit level ups though, so I ended up ditching her pretty early on. I even wasted a stat booster on her too, so getting Tanith was nice. Jill was getting screwed too and had multiple empty levels, so I thought it was nice to have a flier who's instantly decent. She seemed high enough leveled for me to use.

also her reinforce skill kicks ass

sure they're dumb no matter what orders you give them and they steal exp but it kicks ass