Preparations for Conquest Lunatic: I'm Shaking LOL

[Lucina's Husband]

So, I am doing a Conquest Lunatic Run with a +Magic, - Luck Avatar. I don't plan on using DLC or buying skills, EXCEPT for the LINK BONUS items and Anna's two gifts. This basically boils down to two Ebon Wings, two Dread Scrolls, Paragon, the Witch's Mark, and 2 boots. I plan to give an Ebon Wing to my Corrin and the Witch's mark to his child wife.


I will DEFF be using Corrin, Azura, Camilla, Leo, Xander, and Elise, which leaves me plenty of choice for the remaining 10.

My favorite remaining Nohr characters are:

Selena, Odin, Charlotte, Flora, Laslow, Beruka, and Felicia. In terms of children, my only must haves are Kana, Shigure, Nina, Siegbert, and Forrest, though I suppose if I plan it carefully, I should be able to access all of them.

I plan to use Witch Nina X Dark Flier Corrin to cheese the Nohr endgame in style, but don't know what I can do to get to that point.

Here are my questions.

1. What should my final 16 units be? Do I even need to use all 16 deployment slots? I'm currently at the beginning of chapter 9. Corrin is Level 11, Niles is 9.5, Silas is 9.25, Effie is 9.35, Arthur is 7, Elise is 7, and Felicia is 7. Odin is untouched, so I am assuming he will be benched. Essentially, Selena is my fave of the Awakening trio, so if I bench Laslow and Odin for better units, but still go out of my way to baby her, I will be very happy.

If I do use 16 units for endgame, I was thinking of doing these pairings:

Corrin X Nina

Niles X Felicia

Xander X Charlotte*

Leo X Nyx*

Camilla X Keaton*

Elise X Odin*

Selena X Silas*

Azura X Laslow* or Kaze*

The * represent characters who will essentially be pair up mules with my endgame plan being to replace them with children in most cases. (Siegbert, Forrest, Velouria, Ophelia, Sophie, and Soleil or Midori or Shigure).

2. When is the best level to promote them? 20 or another time? Should I promote Elise earlier so she can start building Tome rank?

3. What are the earliest/latest points I can do the child paralogues? i always know that Siegbert's gives me a royal headache. How many of the children should I use? Thinking about doing Nyx or Felicia Nina!

4. I always make the mistake of grinding stave users with Mend near bosses to get a high levelled or promoted Elise to oneshot problem characters. Is there a more efficient way to go about this?

5. The chapters that always give me nightmares have typically been 10, 12, sometimes 13, 16 (do I go for the experience or the gold?), 17, 19, 20, 24, 25, 26, and ENDGAME.

6. If I get stuck, will changing the Difficulty to Hard be a lifesaver? Or should I stay on Lunatic and grind support points using MyCastles if I get desperate to generate more paralogue chapters for exp/items?

7. Who should get the Dragon Herbs, the Boots, the remaining Ebon Wing, and the two Dread Scrolls?

8. When should Corrin get the Ebon Wing? I was thinking of keeping him as a Nohr Prince through Chapter 10 so he can use the defense boost, then reclassing to Dark Flier at the beginning of Chapter 11, so I have time enough to build his Tome rank before chapter 13.

[Inference]

Recent data suggests Ophelia's Paralogue can be done about as soon as Odin is married, provided she's paired with Odin or another Dark Mage during her recruitment chapter and her pair-up partner brings an HP/Def/Mag tonic + Nosferatu for her to use.

That's about as hard as the game's going to get. Chapter 10 and on, Ophelia one rounds almost everything. The accuracy boost Corrin provides is crucial, as it allows her to effectively ignore WTD and barge through even lance-heavy sections of the game with little fear of missing.

[Dualazi]

1) Final units are up to you, I'm not gonna build an entire list since I'm not sure of your preferences. The royals are always good though, but I would decide if you like the risk/reward of having Azura with you for her dancing, because if you don't I'd bench her early for someone else.

2) I wait till 20, staves are cheap (a heal is roughly 1.5 gold bars, which you can get from feeding Lilith, so spam them once you have decent cash reserves. It's worth more imo to do it that way then to potentially have to blow 12k on an eternal seal. The tome rank isn't super important, it's easy to get to D-C by the end, and that's all you need since they're primarily supports and healers.

3)Child paralogues are available any point after chapter 6 I believe, as long as they have S rank. how many children you use is up to you and your army comp, but I would unlock as many as humanly possible for extra xp/loot. Ophelia in particular is of critical usefulness, aside from being a jaw-dropping unit in terms of quality, her paralogue gets you a free lightning and Calamity Gate, which I believe you cannot get anywhere else in conquest. Seriously, you NEED this for ninjas/spearmasters.

4)Not sure if staves vary in proficiency by their quality, though I would hope so. Ultimately if you can pin a unit that can only do a couple points of damage, I would use heal staves. One mend costs 1000gp for 15 uses, and for the same gold you could get 40 uses of heal. In xp in particular I suspect this is the better deal.

5)10 is very doable, and there are numerous strats for it here and elsewhere. I personally find 20 (Winds of Change) to be the absolute worst. I hate everything about that map.

6) I'd grind paralogues, since you can't turn the difficulty back up. I think you're find though that it's pretty fair overall, you'd really have to work to get truly stuck. Keep your chin up on the harder maps.

7) I dragon herb'd my MU, as I need them to be the rock of the army just in case. Haven't used boots on anyone, so your call. I used my Dread scroll on Laslow, and my god, he destroys everything. Might just be lucky rolls, but that class gives him an amazing even spread of HP/STR/SPD/SKL. His defenses won't be great, but it probably won't matter when everything is dead.

8) After level 10 (LEVEL, not chapter) would be my recommendation. Dragon fang is too good to give up, but then you can snag the +2 speed/relief from dark flier right quick. It's also immensely helpful to have a DF on chapter 10, in my opinion, since they can easily help with snagging houses quickly and they can use orbs as well.

Some side thoughts from my own recent playthrough:

- Breed Mozu with someone of your choice quickly. I got Sophie basically as early as you can (chapter 11 I think) and she was absolutely unstoppable. I'm currently in chapter 21 of Conquest Lunatic, and she beats Xander stat-wise in every category, by an average of 4 or so. Aptitude+early recruitment is just insane.

-use Odin. He's arguably the best mage in Conquest, because his middling magic stat is very easy to fix with pair ups, tonics, and food, and his natural bulk and accuracy make him a brilliant abuser of nosferatu. On the rainbow sage map I think I had him clear the entire left side by himself because he could 1-2 shot everything and no damage stuck to him.

- Tonics are gamechangers. I mostly turned my nose up at them on my hard playthroughs, writing them off as a waste of money. They're anything but, and allow you to hit a lot of key breakpoints that will make your life so much easier.

These are based on my own subjective experience, and I can hardly claim to be talented at this game. Hope this helped, though.

[Yunanuy]

Don't spread EXP too thin! Basically, many of your units should simply be pair-up or staff bots (several healers are always good) so figure out who these are and promote them whenever for better GS bonuses. You don't want them stealing valuable EXP from someone after all. I found focusing on 5 "main units" helped a lot, the rest will be pair-up fodder when needed and staff/rally bots.

Make sure you don't rely on GS too much though. Lunatic CQ's playstyle is more offensive than defensive, and many of the times you want to be able to kill a group of enemies instead of taking hits during EP (enemy phase).

Many would suggest promoting Niles to Bow Knight, but like you I used Selena and her getting Shurikenbreaker was a lifesaver for the Ninja-heavy maps, and having another staff user through Niles is great, not to mention Pass finds a lot of use!! Make sure you capture Rallyman in Chapter 23 (Takumi's chapter), he has Rally Strength, Speed, Defense & Resistance and might be just what you need for the final chapters.

Also, don't think of Elise as one of your offensive units. She can pack a punch, but is still a healer and probably the best in CQ because of movement and her personal skill (which is amazing if you need someone to tank a hit or two during EP). Nyx makes for a great Nina.

Lastly, save your boots till the very end because whoever is going to reach Takumi needs that extra move (or give them to the Rescue bots), if you end up cheesing it like you said, Avatar or Nina probably wants the boots. Same with the Dragon Herbs. They only give +1 to all stats so they're not as big of a gamechanger as you'd think, but if one of your main units had some bad level ups you should give it to whoever you think needs it the most. If you're not using Odin, he works well in Ch 10 for the turret alone. You can drop him after that unless you're pairing him with someone. And like Dualazi said, tonics is where it's at. One magic (and/or speed) tonic can be the difference between Camilla having a meh Tome or suddenly being able to ORKO someone.

Stick to Lunatic, and don't give up! It's extremely satisfying once you do finish it. Good luck!!

[Inference]

3)Child paralogues are available any point after chapter 6 I believe, as long as they have S rank. how many children you use is up to you and your army comp, but I would unlock as many as humanly possible for extra xp/loot

I took his query to mean, "When can x child paralogues be feasibly done in the early game?" Understand that despite them all being available to unlock immediately after the branch, which I assume is common knowledge by this point, the paralogue enemies start off reasonably tough and blitzing for loot only adds to the difficulty in certain missions. Ophelia's for example, requires your team to take a reasonable amount of enemy phase without being overwhelmed to stand a chance of getting to the villages before the Outlaws do. Nina's paralogue is essentially the same way; I always try that one before Ch. 10 to give Anna the Shining Bow.

I've found that the best way to do Ophelia's paralogue early is to load Ophelia with tonics, pair her with another mage, and let her carry. It gives you both the loot and a substantially lower overall difficulty curve for the entire rest of the game, an ideal scenario for newcomers who want to learn the nuances of Conquesr Lunatic.

Edited July 4, 2016 by Inference

[Dualazi]

Ah. I assumed incorrectly he was asking when you could even attempt them, probably because they're so disparate in terms of difficulty that's it's really hard to say without knowing more about their specific army comp at that point. I'd agree with your strat for Ophelia's overall, it's worth noting that a second dark mage (like Odin, MU, or reclassed Camilla) can also hold quite well in the eastern fort, since the dodge bonus helps with Nos's penalty and the regen covers what drain might miss.