Well, I guess I'm done for now...

[Avalanche]

Honestly, In terms of being a tool available to both you and the enemy, Attack and Guard Stance are almost as important as the Weapon Triangle in my humble opinion

Edited February 29, 2016 by Avalanche

[StrikeZero]

the Mess hall is great for extra stat boosts but it only boosts half your armies stats based on the ingrediants but it does tell you which units, just pay attention to whose cooking, like Silas or Rinkah aren't the best cooks, but Mozu and Jackob always pull through for me. and as for Gold/EXP, its optional but since your playing Birthright you can Scout for challenges, its why my guys were high leveled like that because i spent so much time building supports and having kids, but again up to you.

you should also take advantage of re-classing, some units might surprise you, like i was stuck in conquest so i plan to restart conquest after practicing more in Birthright and i turned my Felicia into a Hero class, and man she kicks a lot of ass.

as for the smithy your guess is as good as mine i don't even know how it works.

for the kids, they don't impact the story in any way, the only dialogue aside from My Castle dialogue is support dialogue with the parents and other kids but its your choice. honestly my problem with the kids is that it felt rushed, like the Deeprealms having time move faster is cool but, and it would probably take away from the support dialogues, it would've been nice to see the game utilize the day and night cycle for the kids, like every day the parents/parent goes to visit their kid as they get older each day and finally getting the paralogues during like day 5 or whatever, its small cut scenes like these that would make the kids more enjoyable to recruit.

[Anacybele]

I know kids don't have anything to do with the story, that's exactly why I don't like them in this game. They felt forced and shoehorned in.

[Dai]

Still don't see a reason not to use their paralogues for exp. So what if some of them are automatically recruited at the end? Just don't use them. Honestly, you seem to simply refuse to do the simple things that people have suggested that would really make it easy for you to succeed.

[StrikeZero]

I know kids don't have anything to do with the story, that's exactly why I don't like them in this game. They felt forced and shoehorned in.

won't argue that, the games like "they got married and had a kid, after 10 days they became adults" like wow guys, again easing us into the kids with cut scenes or SOMETHING would've been really nice.

[Thor Odinson]

Huh. Well, he must've gotten kind of magic screwed for me...

Also if you're keeping him as a ninja of course he's not gonna grow mag that fast, since class growths are a thing. I went Dark Flier->Onmyoji. Mine has 26 and that feels on the low end for him considering he's been DF since lv10 (he should have 60% effective mag growth as Dark Flier), but he effectively runs around with 34 after pairup and mag+2 and that's not accounting for Tomefaire.

[Radiant Dragon]

-Counter no longer triggers during opposite phase.

Wait, is this true? Like, I can smack an enemy with Counter on the Player Phase and not take ridiculous amounts of damage in return?

[Djing]

Attack Stance and Guard Stance seem better in this game since I have control over when they trigger. Awakening's pair up is impossible to rely on until you S-rank and even then its still RNG.

Also Saizo has the third highest Magic growth among the first gen in Birthright, behind only Orochi and Sakura.

[Skarthe]

Wait, is this true? Like, I can smack an enemy with Counter on the Player Phase and not take ridiculous amounts of damage in return?

Other way around. If an enemy with Counter smacks you on Enemy Phase and you hit them back, you don't take Counter damage.

[Infinite Dreams]

Yessss, I definitely felt like the game got a LOT harder towards the end! Especially on Lunatic mode, ouchie. I wanted to get through Birthright in a few days because I was excited to start Conquest, so I wasn't really grinding or getting the kids besides my own and Ryoma's.

I found the Lava level (which took me forever, omg I would have screamed if someone died at the end) and everything after it quite challenging. By the time I got to Chapter 25, I was getting frustrated (and wanted to beat the game that night), so I said screw it and just paired up Ryoma with his wife (Hana) and Corrin with her hubby (Subaki) & didn't use any of the other units for the rest of the game. Ryoma is a god.

[Radiant Dragon]

Other way around. If an enemy with Counter smacks you on Enemy Phase and you hit them back, you don't take Counter damage.

Ah, that's still awesome, though. Does Magic Counter (or whatever it's called) work the same way?

I found the Lava level (which took me forever, omg I would have screamed if someone died at the end) and everything after it quite challenging. By the time I got to Chapter 25, I was getting frustrated (and wanted to beat the game that night), so I said screw it and just paired up Ryoma with his wife (Hana) and Corrin with her hubby (Subaki) & didn't use any of the other units for the rest of the game. Ryoma is a god.

Glad I'm not the only one to find the lava level very frustrating. I activated the Dragon Vein for the second statue and somehow managed to flood the island my units were on, and saw no way to make a path to the rest of the level. So I just paired Izana with Scarlet and flew them over so Izana could ORKO the boss. Only took five turns, I think, but missed like 90% of the available EXP.

[Griffonite]

I activated the Dragon Vein for the second statue and somehow managed to flood the island my units were on, and saw no way to make a path to the rest of the level

What the game wants you to do in that situation is have some units stand on all of the holes that the enemies spawn from. After that, the other dragon vein reappears.

Here's a tip for anyone who picked lava: pay attention to what the statues are holding, particularly which side it's on.

[Usana]

A Speed tonic plus a good pair up partner can easily garner you +7 speed. That is a rather significant boost to evasion for Ryoma. For my Ryoma that is the difference between 27 speed and 34 speed(He's level 8 Master of Arms currently and is S ranked with Kinshi Azura). That is basically an increase of 25%. Even just the pair up bonus is about a 19% increase. Combine that with negating dual strikes and pair up is VERY useful if you are trying to tank a wave solo.

Anyways if I know I am going to be tanking solo like that using a Level 3 mess all(which boosts the whole army) can easily net you a +2 def/res and a +1 to another stat. Just keep recooking until you get a good dish. Burns ingredients but for tough fights it is useful. Throw in an HP/Def/Res Tonic and you got +5HP/+4Def/+4Res for one fight. Combine that with the aforementioned +7 speed and Ryoma tanks like a champ on hard(Azura Falcon would give 1 more point of speed and Azura Swordmaster would give 3 more speed). So yeah S rank Azura + speed tonic can potentially = +10 speed. You can't tell me that wouldn't make a difference in your Ryoma's survival. The biggest issue here is that it takes Azura off the field and singing is very handy. However, Setsuna also grants +3 S Rank speed and since S ranking with Ryoma grants samurai access you could use Setsuna instead of Azura and get the same basic result. Actually B Support Setsuna still gives +2, but without samurai access she can only get Master Ninja for +4(+8 Total with speed tonic).

Or to look at it another way, even with out a speed tonic Azura/Setsuna can grant Ryoma the equivalent of 12-13 levels worth of speed(Ryoma's speed growth as Swordmaster is 65). Let that sink in.

Edit- You could use the mess hall for +2 speed(a total of +12 speed. . . I am not sure how much evasion that equates to but it probably equals 'Nyah, Nyah, you can't hit me'!). However, since the mess applies to everyone I usually prefer Def/Res. Most other folks will be getting hit so reducing that is a priority over giving 2 more speed to Ryoma.

Edited February 29, 2016 by Usana

[Nym]

I'm only in chapter 10 of Conquest right now

Attack stance is useful for feeding kills for my team (Odin, Mozu, etc)

Guard stance is better for surviving hits

[FEF]

Guard stance is generally better of you're not sure what you want, are holding tight spaces where your unpaired army is too big to actually make use of everybody anyway, are playing on lower difficulties, or are just playing safe in general.

Once you get up to the harder difficulties and chapters, though, attack stance becomes vital for one-rounding enemies before they can swap places with you, hit you with nasty debuff/poison skills, etc.

[enzomkII]

I hit the same wall, two trips to Boo Camp solved my problem though. Ryoma and MU (with decent skills you can get online) can do the job well enough. That said, I enjoyed the game a lot until I hit this wall.

Now I'm on Conquest. I was decided to go with hard/classic like I did with Birthright, but I was stuck the whole Sunday on chapter 10 and I read it gets MUCH more difficult towards the endgame... soooo I changed to normal/classic and I'm happy with it. I wish it could be a little harder (chapter 13 atm).

[Shadow Knight]

I hit the same wall, two trips to Boo Camp solved my problem though. Ryoma and MU (with decent skills you can get online) can do the job well enough. That said, I enjoyed the game a lot until I hit this wall.

Now I'm on Conquest. I was decided to go with hard/classic like I did with Birthright, but I was stuck the whole Sunday on chapter 10 and I read it gets MUCH more difficult towards the endgame... soooo I changed to normal/classic and I'm happy with it. I wish it could be a little harder (chapter 13 atm).

Hit a wall on Conquest's endgame. The jump from Chapter 21 to Chapter 22 is pretty big especially on hard classic. In 21, all of my units were really good. My Benny could take like crazy. But in 22 just about every unit except for xander and mu were useless.

I don't mind 22, its a fun chapter and the main problem was the turrets. But the jump in stats is pretty annoying. enemies in 22 had a stat difference of 7 compared to chapter 21. Now a Benny paired up with an Effie gets otked. I've got some grinding to do.

[Anacybele]

Well, grinding a bit did help, that's for sure. My team could survive better and I managed to beat the chapter this time. I did use pair-up, but I don't think it actually helped a lot. It did help a little, but my units were still taking a lot of damage. I had to get Hans down asap.

Loved seeing Ryoma crit Hans while saying "You deserve worse!" Because man, that was SO true in that moment. I love Ryoma. <3

Poor Lilith. ;_;

[Thor Odinson]

Bumrush is definitely the better way to do 24. I tested turtling's viability (granted, Lunatic) in 24 and it's a hahaha nope

[Anacybele]

Yeah, you can'd dawdle for long in this chapter, that's for sure.

[Griffonite]

Well, you CAN but it's definitely not the optimal strategy. I personally took like 30 turns on 24 (hard/classic) just because I wanted to get some exp for my units.

[Anacybele]

Huh, well, I don't think I would've been able to do that.

But now I might need to grind again if I'm to get through chapter 25... My units got taken out easily again, although I was able to take out a bunch of enemies beforehand. And they were doing pair-ups too. So that wasn't helpful. I kept saying it doesn't help much...

[Shadow Knight]

Just beat conquest hard classic. Paired Xander and MU ( A swordmaster) and two platooned it. Pairing can be very powerful in this game. You can create tanks who just walk through enemies

[Thor Odinson]

Well, you CAN but it's definitely not the optimal strategy. I personally took like 30 turns on 24 (hard/classic) just because I wanted to get some exp for my units.

On Lunatic it's pretty unviable. I have some pretty tanky units (Guard Naginata Shiro has like 38 def) but there's just not enough places I can really choke against fliers and my squishies get rekt pretty easily, even with dragon veins active. On the other hand, when I did a blitz (the first wave of fliers barely showed up when I finished) it was pretty easy. That chapter is basically Ryoma emblem on a nutshell.

Also, Shiro makes great use of Caeldori's Swordcatcher against those Heroes.

For 25, I don't know the layout of normal all that well, but I think you might be able to pull off a bait-and swarm on normal (take a tankish unit to bait a couple dudes in, then just overwhelm them with offense). Ryoma can basically solo middle room, since it's just a bunch of berserkers and like a sorc. If you have 3 tanky enough units you can try choking. Guard Naginata is good. If you can't blitz it and need to tank, Hinoka can reclass to Spear Master.

I also recommend investing in a dual katana for ryoma because as far as I remember after he's done dealing with berserkers there's gonna be some generals. switch to dual katana to fuck up their day.

Edited February 29, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Griffonite]

I just did 25. I don't know about normal, but on hard there's a valkyrie with entrap staves (works like rescue, but for enemies). If she's there on normal, you could probably pair Ryoma up and move him to the edge of her staff range, then after the teleport have him make a b-line for the boss.