Mordred Posted November 10, 2022 Share Posted November 10, 2022 (edited) Oh yea tournaments give 100 exp more I forgot about that. Also you get about like 100 exp, usually a little less, from the Flayn fishing, so it's the same as failing a tournament or eating/singing with someone who dislikes it. If you save scum after each fish you could probably get up to 500 exp from Flayn fishing assuming you get a fish that gives exp with each bait. Edited November 10, 2022 by Mordred Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted November 15, 2022 Author Share Posted November 15, 2022 And we're back! The next logs will be the pre-skip paralogues interspersed with chapter battles - I haven't decided how frequently I'll post given this, but I will write up each paralogue individually (maybe pared down a bit). Chapter 6 Spoiler MVP: Byleth Turn Count: 17 Divine Pulses: 2 I always find it funny how everyone in the monastery starts pointing fingers at each other with the flimsiest of evidence once Flayn goes missing. Anyway, I finally recruit Ferdinand this month, meaning I now have all the units I plan on actually fielding in my endgame party. If I pushed for C+ supports, I could recruit Shamir as well and have all my endgame adjutants, but it's not particularly urgent and I don't want to waste gifts/activity points on it. I'm still spamming Explore, and I hit B+ Professor Level this month. Not all of my units are ready to take certifications - it's mostly Archer and Brigand, Mercedes is the only mage who actually becomes a Mage. Catherine gets Pegasus Knight first time at a 67% chance of certification, but it takes Byleth five goes with the same chance (literally trying every free day this month) before she gets her PK certification. There was only a 1% chance she'd fail four times in a row, so that's fun. No Dimitri this map, which is annoying because he's still only Level 8. Annette is only Lvl 6, so I'm desperate to field her. She joins Sylvain, Ashe, and Catherine as the group going right for the chests, while Byleth, Felix, Dedue, Cyril, Lysithea (who now has Dark Spikes) and Hapi go the main way. Constance and Ingrid are my adjutants, Mercedes and Ferdinand are sitting this one out. Apart from that, set-up is just simple stuff. In the first large room, I'm finally able to use my first PBV. Combined with One-Two Punch from Dedue, Felix's new support range as an archer, and Byleth's now-stellar combat, and I make fairly short work of these enemies. My worries about Byleth's hit rates are now (mostly) a thing of the past - they're not yet inspiring confidence, but her solid supports with just about everyone now mean she's hitting regularly even with Axes. I head perhaps a bit too aggressively toward the second room, and the way the enemy lines up means I can't kill them all in one phase - specifically, I'm struggling with defending against a quick mage on an Avo tile. I burn a Divine Pulse here, gambling on Byleth ORKOing her with a Training Axe+ but she misses, so I pull it back and have her gambit instead. Threat neutralised, I head up and through the doors - the two mages do some chip against me but I have enough in the tank to deal with them. I realise only after I've killed him that the dark mage is locked in place in that room so that I can attempt to kill the Death Knight without accidentally ending the map - or maybe it just moves after you've moved past? I'm not bothered to find out as I head into the central chamber, mainly trying to distribute EXP so everyone in beginner classes doesn't level too much beyond Level 10. On the right, Catherine kills the first armor with Armorslayer, and everyone heads forward. The general pattern is Catherine baits an archer, and Sylvain and Ashe move in to kill it while Catherine goes ahead. Annette doesn't have enough Mv/range to join in the combat so is stuck on healing/rallies until the teleportation room, where she catches up to Catherine for Recover. Ashe opens the door and Catherine takes position - but only the cavs go for her, the archer goes for Annette. Which is fine, Annette can survive it and kill the archer next turn, while the others go after the cavs. Sylvain switches on the warps, and Ashe heads for the south chest while Catherine pins and overwhelms the last cavalier. After another big heal, she heads over to the north armor to kill it (ideally, I'd have liked to feed the kill to Annette, but I can't be arsed to wait for her to get there) while Sylvain heads to the area north of the central chamber to kill the mage there - I time it so he arrives just as my main group reach the central chamber itself. Byleth's group do the work clearing the enemies that can move in this room, although Catherine and Annette join soon after (Sylvain gets there too late to make a difference, Ashe is going for the north chest so is out of the fight). It's time to take on the Death Knight. I position everyone just outside his range, and then have Byleth open the door to his room and canto away. It turns out Lysithea is a few points short of OHKOing the Death Knight, so I'm going to have to gambit-chip him. I could have given her the Spirit Dust I got last chapter from the convoy, but it feels like a waste given that this is Lysithea. A cavalier blocks one of the two gaps between pillars my units can move through, so Felix kills it, and Dedue heads round to Blaze the Death Knight. I only need one more point of damage to put him in kill range, so I send my units round the other side to kill the mages for EXP, being careful to leave one alive. I then attempt to gambit him with Byleth, but she misses (displayed hit 90). Genuinely, it feels like the statistical extremes are where Byleth lives. Only Catherine and Lysithea can move in range - Catherine technically could OHKO him with a Foudroyant Strike crit, but it's far from surefire and I don't want to bet, so I roll it back and reposition so that I have multiple gambits to throw at the Death Knight. Annette lands hers, and Lysithea gets the killing blow - her crest activates, so all the gambit shenanigans ended up being unnecessary anyway. Go figure. What worked: Just about everything I wanted to work worked this map. Among everyone, Catherine shone brightest - I couldn't equip a battalion on her due to lack of resources, but that in turn meant her personal came online, and allowed her to tank the archers and ambush spawn far more effectively than she otherwise would have. Combined with abusing mount/dismount and her movement, she allowed her group to push up at a brisk pace and finish the map with plenty of turns to spare. What didn't work: Annette is only Level 8. Admittedly, sending her on the route with fewer enemies when she has low Mv, then wanting her to go from Level 6 to 10, was unrealistic. But her status as healer/part-time rally bot means that the gap between her combat and others widens every chapter, and I really don't want to have to baby her down the line. Fun Fact: I have a ton of notes from this chapter, ranging from little bits of foreshadowing to genuinely clever writing. But I will restrict this feature to highlighting the Mountain Mystics - a mercenary group that serve as this month's tournament opponents. They also happen to be a group of all-female Brigands. No analysis to be found here, I just quite like that... who are we kidding, I was never going to stop at just one thing. This month had Dorothea's and Petra's birthdays, and the localisation changed lines in both. Petra's is the more egregious - both her pre-A-support comments if you choose to observe her after her tea time are kinda skeevy in the original. I think again it's supposed to be for laughs, as her lack of familiarity with the language and customs is what makes her comments more suggestive. But offering to strip is at the very least off-key for a tea party - that particular line definitely didn't need to be there. As for Dorothea, her second pre-A-support comment is that even she is getting embarrassed when you stare at her chest. I mean, I got embarrassed hearing her say it - I've never thought too hard about the tea party mechanics, figuring it's relatively mild on the weeb scale (my family have seen me play Tokyo Mirage Sessions and Catherine, so I thought I was immune to game-based embarrassment). But when you step back, it is genuinely strange that there is content tied to staring at our students' chests, and I guess the localisation realised that it's too on the nose in the case. On the flipside, I found Catherine's tea time actually charming (sorry for the pun, I'm tired can't think of another word), so it isn't all misses. Chapter 7 Spoiler MVP: Byleth Turn Count: 16 Divine Pulses: 5 First things first - I hit Professor Level A at the beginning of the month, and A+ on the day of the chapter battle. This was with minimal fishing (8 bait on the day I unlocked fishing, 12 bait on the first Fistfuls of Fish). If I had used all the bait I had available to me this month (at least 125), I likely could have gotten A+ with a free day to spare at the end of the month. Similarly, if I had devoted all my Activity Points to tournaments once they were unlocked (no meals for motivation, no faculty training at all) I could have saved a free day. In both cases, the costs didn't feel worth the reward. This is far and away the most efficient I've ever been about raising professor levels, and on the whole it feels good. Apart from seeing something I've planned pan out, it has meant that I haven't really had financial worries during the early game, when they're most pressing, and I'm able to make the most of lots of opportunities early (although I haven't really yet). On the other hand, Byleth's weapon ranks are low, my party is under-levelled (except Byleth, who is at par after last chapter), I haven't made a dent on paralogues or battle quests, and I've still spent a solid chunk of real time on the monastery. I can rectify all these things going forward, but I don't know yet whether/how much resource-efficiency I will have achieved. I also got Shamir and Flayn this chapter - I still needed to C-rank Shamir to recruit her, but I decided I'd better start levelling Seiros Archers prior to paralogues, and C-ranking her is still cheaper than buying an Intermediate Seal (which is also still limited availability this chapter). My success in the monastery was also balanced a bit by my failure in this battle. I didn't remember Gronders being a particularly tough map - but unlike any other time I've done it, my units are (in some cases quite) under-levelled, and I had done very little recruiting. If I'm not playing Golden Deer, then I've normally recruited at least half their house by this point (Lysithea, Lorenz, Ignatz, Leonie), and if I am, I'm still likely to have recruited liberally from the other houses (Sylvain, Dorothea, Caspar, and crucially Felix). With only Ferdinand and Lysithea on my team this time, I faced the toughest version of this map I have so far, and came up wanting - at first, anyway. Tbh, my fatal flaw was playing too aggressively and forgetting how the AI moved, but I'm sure these other things impacted it as well. My team was the original Blue Lions, but replacing Mercedes with Hapi, and adding in Constance. Mercedes, Lysithea, and Ferdinand were adjutants, the church units were force-benched (and I won't be fielding Flayn, or anyone else outside their paralogues). I sent Archers (that is, most of my frontliners) up first to kill the first cav and bait the others, looking to beat Bernadetta next turn, while squishies stayed out of her ballista's range. After beating the others, I can close in on Bernadetta but I can't beat her, so I start advancing people anyway. Bernadetta gets another shot in, and Ignatz's group start advancing, before I can finally down her and take over the ballista. Then things start going poorly, as Lorenz and his cavs, Leonie, Hilda, an archer, and a couple of Pega Knights/a cav on Edelgard's team all start advancing on me roughly at the same time. The party is still split in half between the people who charged Bernadetta and who waited behind, so I'm engaging on multiple fronts, when really the Golden Deer have more than enough firepower to keep me occupied. Byleth has to advance to beat Ignatz before he downs a heavily wounded Dimitri (thanks, Bernie), but she won't be able to deal with all the cavalry around by herself, so everyone has to follow her. The other group, meanwhile, burnt three DPs just trying to deal with the Empire soldiers during this period. The difference in movement meant there was no escape, so I had to advance and try and freeze their movement with gambits - but Ingrid's was the only one that even had a chance of hitting. One DP so that hers hit, another DP to try to kill the Pegasus Knight left free with Sylvain/Ashe, a third DP so that Dedue using the ballista could get in on the action, which finally meant they could survive that turn. All this means I'm pretty ragged by the time Hilda gets near and Leonie arrives. Lorenz is still alive and well and another archer lurks looking to pick someone off, while half my army are too far away to do anything about it. I have no choice to send Dedue off the ballista to kill the archer, and try and figure out a way to survive Lorenz and Leonie (only Byleth can effectively gambit Leonie or Lorenz, and my mages can't get close enough to damage them). But neither of them turn out to be the issue - Hilda (who has Darting Blow? Genuinely the house units' loadouts are broken) is able to ORKO Dedue. He's still alive because this is a practice battle - but to me there's no difference. More pressingly, I can't really see a way out of this without giving up at least one other person. So I soft-reset the map ("Divine Pulse" no. 4). I don't change that much. Stride on Constance instead of Kingdom Magic Corps, and that's all. I Stride my frontliners, who go over and kill the two nearest cavaliers - Felix is able to chip but not kill Bernadetta. She'll attack with a longbow if you're in range, and her hit rates are abysmal from afar, so leaving Dimitri just within her range proved to be a blessing this time. The rest of my army can then move up quicker, and I move some of the front group down in preparation for the Empire Pegasus Knights. I also make sure not to seize the ballista even after I beat Bernie, so that I don't get unnecessary aggro. The battle pans out much the same way, except Lorenz heads back towards where Raphael is about to engage Caspar, north of the hill. And that makes all the difference. Ignatz overextends trying to take the hill and Felix ORKOs him, with my front group further back they can help hold off the Empire units, and in turn my mages are able to help beat Leonie without getting hurt or in Hilda's range. Hilda herself is a tougher proposition, but Dedue's One-Two Punch is significant chip, meaning the rest can be done with archers. Caspar attacks Raph, who ORKOs him in turn, before Dorothea wipes him out. Edelgard OHKOs Marianne, and Lorenz significantly chips Hubert - perfect for Ashe to finish him with the ballista I have finally taken control of. This is where the ballista shines, in kill-stealing - although when Felix takes over it, he crits Dorothea, allowing Byleth to swoop in for the kill and away because Edelgard looks very scary. She instead moves towards Claude, so I have to lure her towards me - Dedue volunteers, what a great guy. Everyone masses around Dedue (I burn a Divine Pulse here to change positioning so I can heal him extra), and I just have to chip away at Edelgard from afar, until Ashe of all people finishes her with a Smash crit. Ashe, I hope some of that Cindered Shadows mojo is coming your way. I attack Petra with the ballista just so she comes to me, and Byleth aggros Linhardt (who gets wiped on the counter by a Training Axe+ and the Chalice, poor schmuck). Petra is also legitimately dangerous, so I leave her to my mages, and Dimitri and Byleth go to aggro the archers. Ashe goes for the Killer Lance chest and is effectively retired. Despite Dimitri sitting in the forest, two out of three archers hit him (all three had displayed rate 28) leaving him perilously low, but everyone else can just about reach and wipe them out. Claude is less intimidating than some of the others, even though Close Counter means it's pretty hard to avoid taking damage from him - I give Annette the finisher so she finally hits Level 10. Phew. What worked: Having spent so much time on tournaments, it would be remiss of me not to point out how much superior Felix and Catherine are to literally anyone else you could put in tournaments at this stage of the game. In a House Sword tournament populated entirely by named characters, Catherine was hit by every single one and took 3 damage (from Edelgard). It's actually rude. What didn't work: I guess lots didn't work on the combat side this time, but gambit hit rates were unacceptably poor on everyone except Byleth and Ingrid. Not much I could have done about that, but I'd like that to change soon. Also, Annette finally got Rally Speed, which was useful, but making her rallying more valuable means she earns less EXP. Hopefully I get the Experience Gem early next month and can start adjutant-ing her with it, because right now her combat is definitely bottom of the pack. Fun Fact: After several years of playing this game, I only just noticed that Jeralt and the narrator for the chapter interstitials share the same VA. Another really considered choice from the devs, which actually reframes the interstitials for me - it's now more like a father narrating the story of the seasons and what they're for to his child, rather than just a narrator giving the player some good old fantasy context. If you'll allow me to get pretentious for a moment, this framing device goes right the way back to Hesiod's Works and Days (it's between brothers in that one, but the tone is fairly paternalistic), probably even earlier, and the Chapter 10 interstitial will definitely hit a bit harder when I get to it. Those interstitials were already one of the highlights of the game for me - if anyone knows where to find a good-quality hard copy collection of all the pictures, let me know in the comments. I also had the general image that the War Phase is darker than White Clouds, and in many ways it is - but there's plenty of darkness lurking beneath the surface of White Clouds as well. Such as the nameless NPC in the Abyss, who tells you about how a Crest-bearing noble took a fancy to her, and killed her entire family (including husband and child) when they tried to protect her from them. We didn't need more evidence about the shittiness of nobility in this game, but the DLC is definitely going to give it to us anyway. On 11/10/2022 at 7:09 PM, Mordred said: Also you get about like 100 exp, usually a little less, from the Flayn fishing, so it's the same as failing a tournament or eating/singing with someone who dislikes it. If you save scum after each fish you could probably get up to 500 exp from Flayn fishing assuming you get a fish that gives exp with each bait. I briefly gave this a go (I didn't need to, it was just out of curiosity), but I couldn't get a non-tournament fish at all. Tbf I only used about 10 bait, but it did make me doubt my memory of getting PEXP from this. I tried alternating between Good and Perfect on the different icons, but nothing. If I had to save-scum a lot in order to get a small fish's PEXP out of this, I'd probably be losing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mordred Posted November 17, 2022 Share Posted November 17, 2022 (edited) On 11/14/2022 at 6:32 PM, haarhaarhaar said: I briefly gave this a go (I didn't need to, it was just out of curiosity), but I couldn't get a non-tournament fish at all. Tbf I only used about 10 bait, but it did make me doubt my memory of getting PEXP from this. I tried alternating between Good and Perfect on the different icons, but nothing. If I had to save-scum a lot in order to get a small fish's PEXP out of this, I'd probably be losing it. You can, just make sure you only pull the small blue ones and essentially let anything bigger pass. It's still like a 20% chance for it to be a fish that gives PEXP. Honestly, not worth the effort and last time I tried to be efficient/optimal about it I wanted to end myself. It is the definition of insanity. Edited November 17, 2022 by Mordred Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted November 17, 2022 Author Share Posted November 17, 2022 Paralogues are a bit quicker to do than the labour-intensive monastery, but doing lots of battles in a row is quite tiring. Which is why I've managed to turn around this episode of the log quicker than usual. For paralogues, I won't write in a Fun Fact unless I find something really interesting. Sothis' Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Ferdinand Turn Count: 9 Divine Pulses: 0 Cyril gets +3 to Str from the Rocky Burdocks I've saved up. I've got some stat boosters left over from gardening and battle rewards, but I won't use them all just yet. Everyone puts their best gambits on - Hapi, Lysithea, and Catherine are adjutants, Sylvain and Felix are dropped. I completely forgot about Hapi's personal which would have cheesed this map - but it ended up being easy enough without her. Despite only becoming available this chapter, this was a fairly straightforward paralogue. Byleth can fly, so evading the starting monsters is easy enough. Ashe goes for the Knowledge Gem, the whole reason I started with this paralogue, while everyone else works together to beat the wolf on the stairs. Crucial to beating these first couple of wolves is Ingrid's Assembly, which allowed more units to get in on the action without fear of another wolf attacking. Although as it turned out, the three starting wolves don't attack anyone except Byleth until you attack them - so even if you leave someone in their range they don't bother. Beating the wolves triggers the birds and the boss to move towards you, as well as reinforcements from the north side. The birds from the south side are the major threat, and Ashe is not quite out of range (I should have given him the March Ring) - thankfully, a combination of Draw Back and Shove is enough to save him. This allows me to gambit and destroy the southern trio, while staying out of range of the boss and reinforcements - Cyril's PBV is now just able to ORKO the birds' last health bar, which is useful. One more turn to finish off the birds and move away from the reinforcements, and the boss is close, so I break his barriers and whale on him, putting him on his last health bar. On the last turn I break the barriers of the reinforcements, although I'm not quite able to finish them off as I need to spare resources to kill the boss. Cyril gets the honours with PBV. What worked: Ferdinand was MVP because the Blessed Lance from last chapter allowed him to deal big damage to monsters most turns. I also broke every monster's barriers (although with barely any gambits left to spare). What didn't work: I'm pleased to report I had no complaints! Dedue's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Byleth Turn Count: 9 Divine Pulses: 0 Although it wasn't top of my list, this was another high-priority paralogue because it meant I could drop Dedue. Don't get me wrong, Dedue has been doing absolutely stellar work for me - but with this, I no longer needed to raise or tutor him, since he won't be part of my endgame team and I will never have to field him compulsorily again. Byleth, Ingrid, Catherine (all pegasus knights), Cyril, Dimitri, Mercedes and Hapi all accompanied him to save his fellow Duscurians. I put Battalion Wrath on Dimitri just to try it out, but apart from that nothing special in prep. Because I did this map two chapters after it became available (and because I fielded three fliers), it also felt fairly easy. The main problem was how to deal with the closest pods of enemies - specifically, tanking the brawler and the archer (who could both ORKO Cyril and my mages) while getting ready to beat them quickly. In the end, I sent Cyril, Dimitri and Dedue into the grass to protect Hapi behind them - the aggro was mostly directed towards Dimitri (for plot reasons?) despite Cyril being the softer target. Still, Cyril took a lot of damage. Mercedes couldn't make it over in time to help out against the archer pod, but Dimitri gambited the quick mage, the archer, and the sword user next to Cyril, while Cyril and Dedue each killed an enemy hurt from the previous phase, and Hapi killed the archer. In the meanwhile, Catherine and Mercedes beat the two armors on the path below, and Ingrid dismounted and gambited the archer behind them so he couldn't target Byleth/Catherine (and to blockade the path). Byleth dealt heavy chip to a nearby cavalier before retreating to safety. Then the three fliers proceeded to wreak general havoc - all of them were doubling, and roughly (sometimes not quite) hitting kill thresholds. I'd often dismount Catherine so she could use gauntlets - she's also running swords and bows at the moment, but I don't particularly want her to keep using swords. Ingrid aggro-ed the units on the other side as the rest of my army went down the path, while Catherine and Byleth went ahead to the bottom and cleared everyone out there. A moment of concern as Ingrid's aggroing sent the nearby Duscur soldiers towards the Kingdom ones, and they stole a kill, but thankfully the Kingdom lot retreated not long after. My Extra Large Bullion would be secure. Dimitri is able to make it to the armours guarding the boss to aggro them, but two lucky hits from them and his battalion retreats. Still, the boss is nothing to worry about - Ingrid finishes things off as Dedue is still far away. Dimitri gets a nice fuck you from the Duscur general as well, and thus ends the paralogue. What worked: The Kingdom soldiers are quite strong for this map, but Duscur did surprisingly well against them, thanks to two crucial crits (with crit rates sub-10 both times). Not only did that slow their advance and allow Duscur to get a couple of kills, but I was personally very happy to see it. Who knew I'd be rooting for the red army to get crits against my allies. What didn't work: On the other end of the crit spectrum, Dimitri's Battalion Wrath secured 0 crits before his battalion retreated (crit rates were always 40+, he saw a decent amount of combat). In part, that was because my set-up was half-hearted (nothing on Dimitri, even the battalion, boosted Crit) but I was still surprised. Also, his crucial gambit to defeat the pod near the beginning was a bit dodgy hit-rate wise - I'm not too worried about that though, since he's about to become my Dancer. Chapter 8 Spoiler MVP: Ingrid Turn Count: 7 Divine Pulses: 0 I recruited Hanneman and Manuela this chapter and B-ranked Lorenz, thinking I'd do their paralogues during this month as well as the two above. However, Hanneman/Manuela's paralogue turned out to be too tough to complete this chapter. If I had sent all three of my fliers to protect Manuela, I'd leave Hanneman too exposed - but not sending all of them wouldn't have been enough to protect Manuela. I didn't have anyone with Rescue or Warp yet. And my fliers weren't powerful enough (nor did they have enough Mv, as it turned out) to ORKO the boss. So I was forced to leave it alone. And I forgot to save-scum for Lorenz's approach, so I didn't do either of their paralogues, which I consider high-priority. Instead, I completed the battle quests that had been piling up - I was way too powerful for all of them, but it did allow units who hadn't fully mastered Beginner classes to do so safely and quickly. I also figured that if I couldn't have the Experience Gem quickly, I'd at least want the renown to increase my overall EXP gains via the statues. The monastery this month was mostly for raising Byleth's weapon ranks - she's closing in on Lvl 20 already, but isn't ready to try classing into Brigand, let alone Wyvern Rider. As for this month's map, I wasn't worried, because I have three fliers. Frankly, one flier for the left side is enough to make saving the NPCs doable, but with three I can hugely cut down on the time spent moving to and between objectives. Byleth, Dimitri, Ingrid, Catherine, Hapi, Mercedes, Ferdinand, Cyril, Felix and Lysithea are on the team, Constance, Annette and Ashe are the adjutants. Lysithea went through Pegasus Knight to pick up Darting Blow during her time being an adjutant this chapter, and Catherine is going down the left side, so she takes Thunderbrand and the March Ring with her. Ingrid has a Chest Key for the corner chest, and with that we're ready to go. The first turn is for Hapi to Stride. Mercedes and Cyril tag-team the rampaging villager in the bottom left corner, and Catherine deals a Thunderbrand crit to the second madness victim harassing a villager - I'm careful to position her so she doesn't trigger the Death Knight yet. Byleth, Felix/Dimitri and Lysithea beat the nearby enemies as they move to the right side, while Ingrid opens the chest and heads up the right. The villager enemies are still fairly tanky, and manage solid damage to Jeralt's green units, and to Dimitri. But Mercedes and Hapi are on standby with Physic. Felix goes back into the central area to help Ferdinand and Cyril out, while Dimitri, Byleth, Lysithea and Ingrid head down the right path, beating the two key enemies as they go. Thyrsus would have been nice here to keep Lysithea in the fight, but it's fine without. Catherine does the same for the key enemy near the barricade (again, being careful to avoid Solon's archer buddy, who would aggro that entire group). Finally, the Death Knight arrives, and Solon and co. start running to join him. Catherine dismounts to beat the final key enemy with gauntlets, while Byleth's group set up to kill the Death Knight, and Felix's group heal/clear out any remaining villagers. Once again, Dark Spikes can't quite kill the Death Knight, so Ingrid and Dimitri gambit (Dimitri is using Dedue's battalion, which properly hurts the Crescent Sickle cavalry even with his average Charm) before Lysithea finishes him off. I make sure to beat the whole group next turn to pick up the Crescent Sickles, and Byleth picks up the Horseslayer from the chest. Solon's group now start making their way back to their starting area, where Jeralt, Catherine and Felix's group are congregating. It means I meet them slightly awkwardly, in a passageway with forest tiles and only 1 tile wide, but just about everyone is able to get some attacks in before Felix gets the kill on Solon. What worked: Again, things went very well here. A lot of my frontliners are in Archer at the moment, meaning higher range than non-Archer enemies and reducing lots of risk. Also, Ingrid is often doubling with a Steel Bow+ - seems like my favouritism earlier on is making Pegasus Knight even more potent on her. What didn't work: I hope Lysithea starts being able to OHKO the Death Knight once she gets Fiendish Blow - I'm not sure how much help I'll be able to give her in Chapter 12. Fun Fact: An Abyss merchant offers you an item for an unspecified massive sum, then has a look at your funds and leaves. According to the Internet, even if you have ridiculous funds on you at the time (apparently somebody found an exploit that netted them a ton of Killer Knuckles they could then sell, and went over one million G), the merchant still leaves. So there probably isn't a broken mystery item hiding there. But, I wonder, if there were such an item, what would it have to be to persuade me to part with a literal ton of gold? There are already plenty of ways to break the game. Also, a shout-out to Petra's VA, who is able to sell me completely on Petra's homesickness in two lines of broken Japanese in the monastery. Amazing how much she could do with so little. 5 hours ago, Mordred said: You can, just make sure you only pull the small blue ones and essentially let anything bigger pass. It's still like a 20% chance for it to be a fish that gives PEXP. Honestly, not worth the effort and last time I tried to be efficient/optimal about it I wanted to end myself. It is the definition of insanity. Yeah, that's even worse than I was expecting - count me out! Thankfully, I barely needed any fishing to hit A+ early this run. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted November 20, 2022 Author Share Posted November 20, 2022 Big log today, as I had to break the back of the piled-up paralogues this game-month. Lorenz's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Byleth Turn Count: 1 Divine Pulses: 0 I normally don't do quick clears, especially for Part 1 paralogues, but I took a look at the enemies here, and remembered how much of a pain it is to play defensively on this map, so Stride-skipping it is. Constance Strides everyone except Annette and Hapi. Felix, Ashe and Ferdinand go out for a quick bit of EXP. I field Ingrid and Catherine as fliers - Ingrid gets rallied by Annette, and Catherine gets a Rocky Burdock, so they can hit kill thresholds for the two locked enemies in each corner of the map, carrying an Advanced Seal and a Devil Sword respectively. Byleth gets the March Ring so she can one-shot Acheron with a Training Axe+. One Thyrsus please, thank you very much. Lorenz joined during the week, so I'm happy to report he has received absolutely zero investment, apart from B-ranking his support I guess. What worked: Flying. Enough said. What didn't work: I think Felix may need some attention soon - he's been stuck in Archer for a while, and neither his Str nor Spd is amazing. His combat's still decent, but he's not the frontliner of my dreams he usually is. All the focus on Axes (which don't lend themselves to doubling) may be part of the issue. Keeping an eye on it. Sylvain's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Dimitri Turn Count: 8 Divine Pulses: 4 Having done Dedue's and now Lorenz's paralogue before getting the Experience Gem, my priority list of paralogues has been pretty thrown off, so I just decided to do the paralogues in order of recommended level, since most of my party were now roughly Lvl 15 or so and I'm a bit worried about their levelling. Sylvain's also had lots of rewards (and I left the Lance of Ruin in Ch. 5), so here we are. Byleth, Felix, Sylvain, Ferdinand, Constance and Mercedes sit in the south-west corner, while Dimitri, Lysithea, Ingrid, Cyril and Catherine are on the east side. Hapi, Annette and Shamir (making her first appearance as a Guard Adjutant) are my adjutants. I have to hit all four escape points at roughly the same time, because I'm not running any fliers this map so no one can cover if a thief gets away. Dimitri now has Axebreaker, so heads north by himself to deal with the boss and enemies on that side. Everybody else in that starting position head south to deal with the mage group - Cyril gets the kill with PBV after some Curved Shot chip, and a Divine Pulse because he originally missed one attack and I couldn't afford him getting stuck for a turn due to Banshee. Byleth, Ferdinand, Mercedes and Constance all go to deal with the enemies directly north of their group, while Felix and Sylvain kite a couple of the enemies west of them, due south on the map - I'd like to funnel all the thieves to that side so most of my army can converge on them at once. Byleth's group are almost done on their side, mostly thanks to Mercedes, meaning the armoured boss is the only one left, which Cyril's group are moving towards from the other side. But Felix and Sylvain bite off a bit more than they can chew, so Constance drops back to help with an armour. Sylvain has to gambit here so that all three can survive the turn, and the turn after the enemies floating near the thieves get close enough to threaten. Irritatingly, Constance, Felix, and Sylvain are all missing the brawler, who is capable of ORKOing all of them. Even after three Divine Pulses, the RNG gods reject my pleas (nobody's displayed hit was below 80 at any point), and the most I'm able to do is chip with Constance. Which means the brawler attacks Constance next turn, getting two hits in before Constance lands the counter - which was a bit too close for comfort. The thieves now all move south as predicted, but Cyril's group is close enough to beat the final boss without issue, and the rest is just hoovering up the thieves and a couple of straggling enemies. What worked: Dimitri with Duscur Heavy Soldiers cheesed the brawlers in his area (0x4 damage display!) but still reduced the boss in the north-east corner to 28 displayed hit. Dimitri's defence was I think below-average for Lvl 16 (when he started the paralogue) so that's pretty impressive. I won't be running this battalion on Dimitri long-term because he's going to be a dodge tank, but it's more than proven its worth - maybe @Dark Holy Elf was right and I've been underrating this battalion, especially for when it's first available. What didn't work: Constance's speed is abysmal enough that she can't double armours with Fire. She was able to in Chapter 4, and she's only 1 point of Spd below average for her level - but that's still enough that she's relegated to chip. She'll get Fiendish Blow soon which will put her into OHKO thresholds, but I hope this isn't an omen for her combat pre-Aura Knuckles. The problem stands out even more because Mercedes has been massively Spd-blessed without any help from me, and it's pretty nuts to see Mercedes cheese her side of the map without even relying on Live to Serve while Constance, who should be contesting best offensive mage in the game, is left having to white-knuckle enemy phases. Ingrid/Dorothea's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Ingrid Turn Count: 14 Divine Pulses: 3 I always think I have a good memory for how levels in this game go, but often I misremember the 'feel' of maps - that is, how I feel as I play through them. For example, going in I underestimated how much this paralogue annoys me, even though previous run-ins have pretty much etched into my head the different reinforcement spawns and their triggers. Byleth, Catherine (both in Brigand for Death Blow), Felix, Ingrid, Constance, Lysithea, Dorothea, Ashe and Ferdinand are my party - why on earth didn't I bring Physic? I must have had a reason - oh well. Everybody deals with the enemies east of the chest first. Dorothea then Strides everyone except Ingrid so they can all make it to the group that have amassed north of the starting point - shutting off the merchant and his reinforcements early as I loop round the major ambush point is key to beating this level while staying sane. Even after engaging that group, I have enough in the tank to send Felix and Catherine round west to interfere with the trio of enemies lurking at the edge of the main group's range. The merchant produces two swordsmen every turn with solid AS, which is already a bit broken, but having broken the back of his guard early I'm able to deal with it and push forward, and get the crucial kill the following turn. The first set of reinforcements (from your starting point) have arrived, but Felix and Catherine are returning from the west side so act as a rearguard along with my mages, while Byleth and the others head around to north of the major clearing. Which is where I make my first mistake, of letting Byleth try to tank everyone - it was close, but the enemy Warriors hit too hard, so the turns roll back. I take it slower this time, and the group of archers behind them as well, meaning that by the time they're dead, the second set of reinforcements has arrived, which my rearguard again has to stop to deal with, not quite catching up with Byleth. The Prayer Ring bearer heads towards Ingrid - I'm careful not to let her into the clearing, instead taking shots at him from the lava pool and retreating - but there's a Miracle effect that stops him from dying? It must be the Prayer Ring, but I've never seen that happen before, so I use a Divine Pulse just to confirm whether that actually happened. And it did - he survived the ORKO. Wow, you learn something knew every day. Anyway, I kill him, claim the ring, and move on to the escape point, while the Devil Axe bearer and his pod moves into the clearing to try and chase down Ingrid. Terrible move, because Ingrid can fly - and she can ORKO the Devil Axe bearer and return to safety, which she does. I figure I can probably push for the escape clear even though my rearguard hasn't caught up, but after the new set of reinforcements the enemies are too spread out for me to handle at once - especially because I have fewer offensive gambits as usual (I'm running the Nuvelle battalions at the moment). If I stand my ground I'll get overwhelmed, so it's either rush for the escape hatches, or retreat back onto the lava tiles while I wait for my rearguard to catch up - by which point the Devil Axe bearer's former pod and the southern reinforcements will catch up. No thanks - I try and CA Ingrid into position to clear, but she's one space short. So I have to Divine Pulse, put Stride on my rearguard, push and pull Felix into position so he can run all the way over and shove Ingrid, so then I can manoeuvre Ingrid to be able to reach the escape hatches. God I wish I had Reposition right now. Ferdinand takes a potshot because he can, but that's mission clear. What worked: Ingrid was the pick of the party for consistently ORKOing things (and for being a flier with bows), but everyone put in a shift. Even Ashe, whose job was supposedly chest-opening. Which meant Dorothea stayed a Stride-bot and almost never needed to contribute offensively. What didn't work: Underestimate those warriors at your peril - they really pack a punch. Also, seeing the number of enemies at the end of the map really made me lose the will for another batch of paralogues this month. As you'll see below. Fun Fact: Ingrid has no battle dialogue with the merchant, even as a kill quote. Or have I misunderstood, and he isn't actually the suitor in question? Either way, I like the idea of Ingrid not even giving him the courtesy of a go fuck yourself, although I'm sure it's just laziness from the devs. Manuela/Hanneman's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Ingrid Turn Count: 3 Divine Pulses: 2 Those stats above don't really reflect exactly how much of my time, thought and planning went into clearing this. As I mentioned, I tried this last game-month, and was miserably unable to clear it. Since then, my three key fliers (Byleth, Catherine and Ingrid) have gotten a bit stronger - but I still don't have Warp or Rescue. I do now have Dancer Dimitri, though, and an idea of how to beat this map, which is why I decide to attempt it again. Ingrid gets a Rocky Burdock to make sure she can double any of the key targets (she now has 25 Str, 7 points of which has been from stat boosters). One possible approach is to send my fliers over to Manuela and then just have them try to clear out the enemies there, and take my time with the map. The issue is the Pegasus Knights in the north, who will attack Manuela if she is in range. If I try to kill them before they get close, an infantry unit will slip through and kill Manuela (because she cannot survive any enemy on this map except the mages), but if I leave them, they will just go around my flying guard and kill Manuela. This means my only other option is to kill the boss by Turn 3 (because in the enemy phase of Turn 3, enemies will reach Manuela and she will die). But I also want the other goodies - the Experience Gem, held by an archer near Manuela, and a Rapier held by a sniper in the same area as the boss. The Rapier will be super useful for Byleth/Dimitri in upcoming paralogues, and it's generally a resolution of mine to get every goodie I can out of a level, so I'm committed to getting them all - but the Rapier-holder is further away from my starting position than the boss, and setting up to kill both of them in the same turn is what causes me so much difficulty. Anyway, Hapi and Hanneman kill the enemy Swordmaster in front, and my fliers tag-team the mercenary nearby, making sure not to end their turn in range of the Assassin, who could still ORKO them. Dimitri dances Ingrid so she can kill an axe-user, and ends his turn as dodge-bait for an archer and the assassin, which he does successfully and without taking damage. Manuela's sole duty is to Silence the mage on this platform, which she does. Hanneman is supposed to chip the Assassin but adjutant Annette steps in (for the second time!) and gets the killing blow, so Hapi chips the mage instead. I then try and set up my fliers so they are all close enough to each other for one Stride (Hanneman is my Strider) but also in range of all of their targets. My original plan is Byleth gets the Experience Gem (which isn't in doubt, as she is in range and easily past ORKO thresholds), Catherine ORKOs the Rapier wielder, and Ingrid attacks the boss, Dimitri dances her and she kills the boss. However, while Catherine can just about make it to the Sniper with the March Ring, her hit rates against her with Thunderbrand aren't great (63 displayed) and she whiffs an attack, so I have to rewind. I try the turn again starting with Ingrid in a hope to reload the RNG, only to realise that Ingrid's Canto doesn't reach Dimitri after she attacks the boss, so I have to rewind to the previous turn. If I give Ingrid the March Ring, Catherine won't be able to get within a space of the Sniper and thus can't reach ORKO thresholds - but nobody can ORKO the boss, so I need one of my fliers to get danced by Dimitri in order to finish things this turn. The solution turns out to be Assembly - moving Ingrid a space back and pulling the boss off his tile. Alongside the March Ring, Ingrid is just able to make it to the stairs, where Dimitri can dance her. Ingrid then goes to ORKO the Sniper - she takes a big counter in response, but it isn't fatal. Catherine then goes up and is now able to kill the boss with gauntlets. Mission clear - but I spent a solid while both on the prep screen and in the map itself, poring over how best to manage this. What worked: Obviously Stride and flying was necessary, but Dimitri's +2 Mv from the DLC allowed him to get right the way up the stairs to dance Ingrid. More generally, having the Dancer meant I could do this without Warp/Rescue or spending a turn trying to tank several enemies. In future I may just have Dimitri dip in and out of Dancer where necessary. What didn't work: Previously, I completed this paralogue by using Rescue on Manuela and then basically routing the map. Stride-flying is also possible, but I'm not sure that it's as apt a solution, especially because you then have to split the party and risk Hanneman and whoever's with him getting overwhelmed. So, if you don't have Warp/Rescue/a flier to Stride, is this level just supposed to be undoable on Maddening? That's surely not right. Basically, I'm saying I don't think the level design works on Maddening (though I think on lower difficulties Manuela has more survivability). Raphael/Ignatz's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Catherine Turn Count: 1 Divine Pulses: 0 I'm getting tired of all the battling in a row, and this is another one which can get irritating if you take it seriously. So I'm going to cheese it - but with a twist. As far as I'm concerned, one of the key rewards from this paralogue is the Wootz Steel from barrier-breaking the wolves - so I'm going to try and get that as well as kill the boss on turn 1. This requires a bit more set-up to achieve. Key here was that Ignatz starts on E+ Authority, meaning two weeks of passive focus on Authority gets him to D. Which allows him to equip Kingdom Cavalry, the Blue Lions-exclusive Stride battalion, while Raphael equips Seiros Holy Monks. On Ignatz's side is flier Byleth, dancer Dimitri, Felix and Hapi, while Raphael gets Lysithea, Ingrid and Catherine (all in Peg Knight), as well as Annette and Constance. After the two use Stride, Hapi, carrying Thyrsus, moves her max range and hits one of the far barriers of the central wolf. Byleth and Felix tag-team an archer in between their starting point and that wolf (on a forest tile). Dimitri moves through the path they've made and fires off Fusillade to break its remaining barriers. Meanwhile, Lysithea (carrying Blue Lions Brooch) and Ingrid fly over to the north wolf's starting point, and each fire off an Assembly (using Seiros and Kingdom Pegasi battalions) to break its barriers. Constance does some chip for fun, and Annette rallies Catherine, who kills the boss with Thunderbrand. What worked: The stat penalty from dismounting meant even rallied Catherine couldn't kill the boss with gauntlets, so Thunderbrand was a massive help. What didn't work: Felix couldn't ORKO that archer. Hopefully I can get him through Brigand for Death Blow soon. Felix's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Catherine Turn Count: 1 Divine Pulses: 0 If you're sensing a pattern, it's because I deliberately chose this paralogue as one I knew I could cheese - I've gotten a taste for dairy now. I could also have used this battle point to do the Balthus/Hapi paralogue, which is a lower recommended level - but all the DLC paralogues are a pain, and I'd rather delay that if I can. Here, as before, the problem was not having Warp/Rescue available, and not being able to reliably one-shot the boss (I could do the damage, but with exceedingly poor hit rates). So I needed to send two fliers to him, but could only dance one. The starting positions are a bit irritating, because I can't get more than a few units in a single Stride. Ingrid got the role of support flier (who won't be getting danced). So, Felix Strides the side which is closest to the boss. Lysithea (in Peg Knight) draws back Ingrid, Byleth and Cyril shove her - with the March Ring, she's now just in range of the boss. She hits him with a good old Assembly. Annette rallies Catherine. Just because I can, Ashe Strides Constance, who goes over to the bandit holding a droppable Steel Sword and one-shots him. The droppable items in this map are a Steel Sword and a Door Key - I know what I said about wanting every possible reward, but I'm happy to let the Door Key go. Actually, that's not entirely true - I have a look, and Catherine can kill the Door Key holder, but she then won't be in range of Dimitri's dancing, so I'll have to leave it behind. Catherine is now able to take over the boss' old tile, and knock him out with gauntlets for an easy clear. What worked: Assembly did. Fliers don't have much in the way of good gambits, so as not to break the game even further. But I've always liked the enemy-manipulating gambits for much the same reason I like the movement CAs, and liked Shove in past FE games as well - for a tile-based tactical game, FE has historically had remarkably little manipulation of the tiles themselves, or a unit's spatial relations to the map, and it's a glaring omission given the format. Obviously, there's Warp and its ilk, but I mean more low-key stuff. I like units being able to move allies and sometimes enemies around in small ways, because it involves (accessible) calculation, and the subsequent strategies you can pull off feel earned and creative. What didn't work: Having literally just extolled the benefits of smaller movement manipulation, I will concede that Warp/Rescue would have saved me a lot of staring at my Switch. It's not exactly a bad thing, just a reminder that if I'd saved some of the effort put into this month's paralogues and devoted it to thinking ahead about when my units could get Warp/Rescue, I could have avoided this faffing. Chapter 9 Spoiler MVP: Dimitri Turn Count: 8 Divine Pulses: 1 As you might be able to tell from the above entries, I did a lot of monastery recruitment this month. Lorenz finally joined in week 2, and before that I got Dorothea, Ignatz, Raphael, Yuri, Balthus, and Anna. I wasn't expecting to do all their paralogues this month, but I wanted to be able to change my mind about which paralogues I did without feeling guilty about missing a reward or wasting a battle point or something. Also during this month, Byleth and Dimitri hit Level 20, and Dimitri classed into Assassin (Byleth failed twice at 44% for Wyvern Rider, I can't say I'm surprised). Dimitri became my Dancer earlier in the month as well, meaning his build is officially online. The spread of levels is looking more respectable too, ranging from Lvl 15 to Lvl 20 for the 14 units that I'm currently fielding in battles. But, if I hadn't shortcut my way through four of those paralogues, my levels would be much better, and I'm conscious there's not a huge amount of time for the Lions to master their Intermediate classes before Chapter 13. Incidentally, I got Sylvain for the Goddess Tower - I clicked on everybody the Gatekeeper offered to me, so I'm not sure why Sylvain came up. Maybe I clicked on his name last? I remember this map being generally quite easy, and I wasn't wrong. The NPCs actually act competently, even Jeralt, who will canto completely out of enemy range if his health drops below a certain threshold (it looked like 20%? somebody will be able to confirm). Dimitri, Ferdinand and Ashe head right, while everyone else (Felix, Sylvain, Cyril, Lysithea, Hapi, Constance, Byleth) goes left. Dimitri has Stride (Gautier Knights) but won't be using it, and Byleth is my only flier, but I'm not worried. The left group, led by Felix and Sylvain, smash their monster barriers straightaway, while Dimitri goes to bait the monster on the right. Both groups head up their respective alleys - after killing their first monster, Ashe heads down for the Healing Staff chest while Dimitri and Ferdinand go to help the student in the north-east corner. Byleth is occasionally helping Dad out, with Hapi on hand for Physic. Lysithea is downing absolutely everything - she gets three crits off Swarm on three separate monsters, each time being the killing blow. Hapi barely has the space to use her personal - for one monster I spend a Divine Pulse so Hapi can target a space where the barrier is already broken. Constance gets a crit through a barrier to finish off the health bar of the north-west monster, Felix gets another ballista crit to break its barriers. I barrier break everything except the north-east monster, because Ferdinand ran out of gambits before he could finish the job. It's only Umbral Steel though, so I'm not worried about it. The boss/central monster is also not too tough - Sylvain gets the finisher. Dimitri did most of the work for the monsters on his side (Ferdinand helped with Blessed Lance but he could only do finishers or he'd get killed, Ashe did very little actual fighting), which is why he gets the MVP. What worked: Dimitri is strong, fast, and his Avo is through the roof, relative to where we are in the story. In short, he's functioning how every enemy Assassin does - and I'm loving it. What didn't work: Cyril is another unit whose growth might have been hindered by my paralogue-skipping - the main issue is he's just not strong enough. Perhaps I should go back to farming Angelica for Rocky Burdocks, because this might be a recurring issue in my army. Sad Fact: A Mysterious Woman in the Abyss (you may remember her from my Cindered Shadows logs) tells you that she has been ordered to leave, as she has been deemed a follower of an evil god - she says it's a misunderstanding. She is also forced to leave the Abyss in the side story (she doesn't say why). I can confirm she is gone as of Chapter 10. May Sothis be with you, Mysterious Woman. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted November 24, 2022 Author Share Posted November 24, 2022 A lack of (real-world) time and attempting a DLC paralogue are the reasons this log has taken me so long. In fact, I spent so long on that paralogue that I ended up making extra notes about it, which I'll put in a separate section. Balthus/Hapi's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Lysithea Turn Count: 4 Divine Pulses: 8 This is the easiest of the DLC paralogues. I attempted it on the last week of Chapter 10, a solid three chapters after it became available. I made sure not to field anyone below Lvl 17, its recommended level - Catherine/Byleth were Lvl 20 and Dimitri was Lvl 21. And I had an (admittedly incomplete) dodge tank in Dimitri. The fact that it still handed my arse to me is testament to how tough it is. I probably could have delayed this paralogue for longer, because I will be battling twice next month anyway - but I was running out of paralogues I could actually do at this point, and didn't want the available EXP to go to waste like it will with the Alois/Shamir paralogue. Going in, I was aware that this would be a tough paralogue, so I did a test run (this bit is Divine Pulse no. 1). The test run made abundantly clear that, while my units could probably handle the starting enemies, the reinforcements would definitely overwhelm me. They are mostly stronger than the starting enemies, with at least one Sniper per pod, and they act on the same turn, meaning that nobody nearby will escape them. And you can't outrun them, because one of the triggers for their arrival is trying to get away from their/your starting point - so they will never be more than one turn of movement away from you. If I wanted to clear the map at all on this game day, I would have to beat the map within 4 turns (the other reinforcement trigger is Turn 5) without several of my units leaving their starting areas. Quite a lot of map-crunching ensues. The map is Enbarr Town, and your deployment spaces are dotted across the map. Byleth, Hapi, Balthus, and one other deployment slot are outside the town - if they cross the bridges connecting them to the town, reinforcements will trigger. This means they can't participate in the fight against the boss, because I won't have the space to beat the starting enemies and partial reinforcements before Turn 5, when the rest of the reinforcements will arrive anyway - and not even Hapi's Physic or the siege weapons have the range to interfere directly. Two deployment slots sit either side of the boss' starting point, but units put here also cannot leave their starting area without triggering reinforcements. The remaining four deployment slots, dotted around the town part, allow units to move freely, but there are also enemies spread out in town who they need to deal with to rout and clear the map. To top all that off, the boss transforms into a Demonic Beast once he's beaten, with full barriers and three health bars.This is the most pressing issue of the map - will I be able to stack the action economy enough that I can beat the boss in human and monster form by Turn 4, when most of my army either can't move freely or spawn too far away? Sylvain joins the Byleth group on the left side, with a Mini Bow, Talisman Shield and Nuvelle Stewards. Balthus has had enough passive training (no active instruction) to pick up Healing Focus and D Authority, so he gets Kingdom Cavalry. Byleth is running swords this map as a Brigand (she has finally got the Wyvern Rider cert, but the lack of good gambits on flying battalions would make that a sub-optimal choice for this map). Peg Knight Catherine and Thyrsus Lysithea go in the two restricted deployment slots in town, either side of the boss. Archer Ingrid is just south of Lysithea, Ferdinand (in Cavalier for the Mv) is south of her. On the other side of Enbarr is Assassin Dimitri, packing a Rapier, the Chalice and Thunderbrand, and Felix south of him. Turn 1, Sylvain gambits the mages nearby - I brought Nuvelle Stewards specifically because its gambit has the power to one-shot the targeted mage, and Sylvain can kill the other one on Enemy Phase. Byleth, Hapi and Balthus rearrange so Byleth is baiting a nearby axe-wielder and everyone is out of range of the enemies north of them. In town, Dimitri is going to attempt to tank the archers closest to him with a Rapier and Chalice, protecting Felix, who gambits the cavaliers nearest his position. Ferdinand and Ingrid also gambit the enemies south of them, and Lysithea kills the priest in Ingrid's group - ostensibly they're the least dangerous target, but they have Renewal so I don't want to let them hang around. Catherine dismounts and slugs the archer south of her to death. But things immediately go wrong in Enemy Phase, as Byleth gets hit (displayed hit rate 40 after Axebreaker), and both archers hit Dimitri (displayed hit rate 30) - after Poison Strike, he's on 1HP with no chance of healing. I have to Pulse this - this time I move Dimitri further north so he aggros one archer and both armours, Felix equipping a bow so he can fight the other archer. Byleth group has to act in the same way as before, because if I leave this axe-wielder alive now I won't be able to rout by Turn 4. This time around, nobody hits Dimitri and he kills all three enemies he kited, and Felix manages to counter-kill the cavalier closest to him and the archer that comes after him, although he's below half-health - Byleth also takes damage again, but Lysithea manages to counter-kill a sniper while avoiding his attack, so swings and roundabouts. Turn 2, Sylvain approaches the two remaining enemies between him and Byleth (after she killed the axe-wielder) - I'm relying on Sylvain to beat them by himself. Balthus strides Byleth and Hapi - Byleth goes north to gambit three of the four enemies with Blaze, and Hapi kills one of them. Felix, Catherine and Ingrid kill the last enemy nearby, and Ferdinand gambits his enemy pod again. Lysithea snipes one of the warlocks next to the boss (thank you Darting Blow!), and Dimitri goes to bait the boss. Once again, things go wrong on Enemy Phase, as a wounded Byleth is unable to tank a gambited enemy and the un-gambited sniper, whose aggro line changed after Byleth took further damage. I Pulse it, this time making sure Hapi kills the enemy Byleth directly gambited so only the Sniper can attack on their phase. But I jump the gun, because the boss' gambit (displayed hit rate 35) also hits Dimitri, and catches Ingrid in its AoE. I have to pulse again, this time leaving Dimitri outside the boss' range - I'm just going to have to rush him next turn. I survive enemy phase - but now there's an extra enemy I hadn't planned for in Byleth's area, and Balthus can't reach any of them - meaning somebody will die this turn. One more pulse, to change the position Balthus Strides from, and that's turn over. Turn 3, Sylvain attacks an axe-wielder with the Mini Bow - but it turns out his forecast says he can't double? He was doubling in my test run - I realise that the level up Sylvain had gotten before must have included Spd, but didn't this time around. This might ruin the run - but for now, I have to commit, and hope there'll be a solution later. Byleth, Hapi and Balthus clean up the enemies to the north. Felix now attempts to gambit two of Ferdinand's pod of enemies, and misses (displayed hit 85 - I gave him the BL Brooch and adjutant Annette specifically for this goddammit) - I reload, attempt to change the RNG by having Ferdinand attack, but Felix still misses. That's two Divine Pulses burnt over nothing. I change approach, Felix killing one enemy, and Ferdinand kills another, putting himself in between the last enemy and Felix - the terrain here puts Felix out of range. Then Lysithea attempts to chip the boss, and misses (displayed hit 92, I'm losing my mind). I Pulse, Catherine attacks the boss with a bow and uses Canto to get exactly two spaces from the other warlock accompanying him. As it turns out, the reinforcements are triggered by ending your turn outside the area, not simply leaving it, so flying Canto is absolutely clutch here. Lysithea snipes and this time kills the boss' human form, forcing the transformation. Ingrid gets as close as she can and sends up a Fusillade, which hits the monster and the warlock. Dimitri then uses Assault Troop to ensure he gets the bird's aggro, and can break the monster's last barrier (yes, I'm still thinking about gettable rewards even now). Enemy Phase doesn't go great, but isn't so bad it requires a Pulse yet - the bird hits Dimitri (displayed hit 40, it may as well be 100), the warlock hits Catherine but Catherine does kill her, Sylvain and his two enemies are rough but not dead, and Ferdinand is now rough. Turn 4, Sylvain's situation is more worrying than the boss problem, because even Stride Byleth (who is carrying the March Ring) is one space short of a Curved Shot kill. If I don't kill both enemies here, Sylvain likely dies and I trigger reinforcements, which means run over. The solution (I literally celebrated on noticing this) is that Stride Byleth is now just in range of the ballista. Byleth kills one enemy, Sylvain kills the other, Hapi Physics Byleth (I may as well get the EXP) and the left side is clear. Onto Enbarr. Felix and Ferdinand easily combine for the enemy near them. They won't be able to contribute to the boss fight, but I should be fine. Lysithea crits with Swarm, ending the bird's first health bar - it's a bit of a waste, but she's been critting a lot with Swarm and the Spd penalty is helpful. Catherine one-rounds the next bar with a Steel Bow+ (making sure to end her turn in her area). I fish for a couple of crits on the final bar with Killer Bow Ingrid, but they don't come, so Dimitri ends the battle with Thunderbrand. Thank God. What worked: There was very little slack for clearing this map, and I relied heavily on gambits for my survival. Pretty much every gambit was important where I used it, except ironically the Assault Troop I spent two Divine Pulses failing to land. A stand-out was Fusillade - its shape and range was key given enemy placement and positioning, and two uses for both Ingrid and Ferdinand made it very relevant. What didn't work: Dimitri's dodge tanking. He was running Jeralt's Mercs, which is only 5 Avo shy of Gautier Knights, my best dodge tanking option available and tied best Avo boost in the game. I know this time it was a case of a lot of poor luck, but the only enemies he effectively dodge-tanked were the two armours, who would have had hit rates below 20 even without SA+20 equipped. Dimitri's build isn't finished yet, but I don't remember having similar worries about War Monk Byleth (who admittedly came online a bit later). Fun Fact: We know Monica is long dead, and I did this paralogue after Kronya reveals herself. But Monica's father (the boss) is convinced that Vajra-Mushti, gauntlets with no apparent healing properties, will save her. Why would he think this? I think the most straightforward answer is that TWSITD is dangling the possibility of Monica's survival/return to him, if he procures this rare item for them. If that's true (I'm not sure if there's any other evidence for this), then his whole arc is pretty bittersweet. Some musings on Balthus/Hapi's paralogue (because the above wasn't enough apparently!) Spoiler I spent a ton of time on this map this week, and it got me thinking about how this map was 'supposed' to work. Story-wise, what I assumed to be Baron von Ochs' (the boss') soldiers confront Balthus and Hapi about their interference in a cutscene, causing the battle. At the beginning of the map, the Baron and his attendants are worried about thieves. I originally assumed he meant the player army, who his men had just confronted. But the reinforcements that arrive on Turn 5 all make comments along the lines of "we want the treasure". If the reinforcements worked for the Baron, then they wouldn't say this - so they must be a third faction independent of us and the Baron. And it is entirely possible that it is these thieves that confronted Balthus and Hapi about interfering at the beginning, and even the majority of red units at the start of the map are the advance force of thieves. If the starting enemies were the Baron's people, they wouldn't be so spread out. This wasn't my first interpretation, because the Baron and his attendants are red units too - and if there were multiple different factions, we'd normally expect a red army/yellow army distinction. But this could be made sensible if the devs wrote the plot in one way, then decided they didn't want stray enemy units attacking the Baron/his attendants. On a mechanical level, I think this map was trying to ape some of the dynamics of CS Ch. 4, with its reinforcement spawns and chase structure. My assumption is that introducing these powerful reinforcements either by Turn 5 or by moving away is designed to get your units to run and meet up with each other ASAP, a decision guided by the disparate deployment points you're originally handed. In this way, you get a madcap sprint towards the centre of town, trying to fend off enemies. The centre of town also allows you to cut off the Baron's route (not that he tries to escape in a mechanical sense), and provides a scenic way for you to have a big showdown - like the long tradition of action scenes in movies going through crowded bazaars and city streets, getting separated and reuniting at inopportune moments. In practice, though, the separate deployment points lead to something else entirely. If you actually wanted to achieve the above scenario in this map, you'd have to under-deploy (likely just having the units on Byleth's side and the near side of Enbarr) so everyone could meet quicker and without triggering all the reinforcements, and then fight from there. Putting a unit in every deployment slot leads to experiencing a tactic I often want to use - the pinnacle of Player Phase combat, and something you're definitely not ready to do in this paralogue, what I call the 'high press'. In football, teams execute a high press by putting pressure on individual opponents all at once in their own half, normally before they are able to build momentum behind the ball. When the high press is executed well, it closes off the opponent's options while they have possession, and eventually forces either a poor decision or a one-on-one situation - if the pressing team come out on top here, they have won possession and are quickly able to mount an attack on goal. I believe level design for Player Phase tactics, across just about every FE game, to be gunning for or responding to something very similar, where each of your pressing units moves forward to challenge an enemy or enemy pod, aggro-ing and defeating them before they are able to combine or create disadvantageous situations for the player. By repeating this process, enemies aren't able to organise threateningly, and you rout/win maps. It's not the only Player Phase tactic (alternatives include turtling and warp-skipping, which have their place and a football analogy I won't bore you with), and of course there are Enemy Phase tactics as well, but the high press is the one that encourages the player to build most of their units diversely and for high Player Phase offense, which I think many players actually do and the game encourages. This is especially true on lower difficulties, where it is easier to win rounds of combat. One of the basic difficulties of Maddening, and the harder difficulties in previous FE games, is that you can't afford to press high because the enemies are so much better than you, and you have to find workarounds until you can or until you develop another way of fighting enemies. How does all this relate to the Hapi paralogue? Well, there is an enemy pod in between almost every deployment slot, meaning that each individual unit is immediately under pressure. And the reinforcement spawn is designed to stack that pressure, assuming that moving away or hitting Turn 5 means the original pressure has slackened. What is eye-catching about this paralogue is how, by virtue of the starting positions, enemies are using the high press against you from the start. Even if my whole party was in advanced classes, they'd still struggle if isolated and ganged up on by Warriors, Grapplers and Snipers - and I basically wouldn't be able to field mages without them dying unless I covered them successfully and quickly. This map's difficulty lies in making you taste from the start how it feels to be an enemy army, which may make it unique amongst the paralogues. Seteth/Flayn's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Catherine Turn Count: 13 Divine Pulses: 1 After that last marathon, I was slightly nervy about this paralogue because only my most powerful units are at the recommended level. I field Dimitri as Dancer because I don't want him stealing kills, Catherine and Byleth are in flying classes, Sylvain and Ferdinand are infantry, and then Hapi, Constance and Annette round out the party as they don't have Mv penalties. I deployed my three highest level characters - but even without using them a ton or Seteth at all, this was a pretty easy map, and certainly felt like the walk on the beach that it was. The scariest enemies are the Assassins - Ferdinand with his personal and Lancebreaker can just about tank one, but to be safe I'm dodge-tanking or Canto-chipping them. The first turn I bait the pod directly to the north and the assassin to the east, and leave the west group alone. I won't deal with them till the end. None of the bosses are particularly tough, although the first one (with the Levin Sword) is perhaps the least threatening. My army go up onto the path, and I use the fliers to aggro the enemies on the beach so I can then kill them from range. I let an assassin near the second boss get into foliage, so I have to gambit him, but it's no issue. Dimitri runs out of Dancer exp here which suits me fine - his level ups in Dancer have been great so far, but I don't want him to get too far ahead of everyone yet. It takes a while to get people across to the altar for the final boss - I spend my only Divine Pulse here, as Sylvain gets stuffed by an Aura crit. The terrain impedes the remaining enemies as much as me, making it a simple proposition to let them come to me and then feed them some lovely magic. Because I've done the map anti-clockwise instead of moving straight up, there's no chance for the escape tiles to appear, let alone for the priests to run. Catherine got MVP because she did most of my aggroing - I didn't want Byleth to steal too much EXP, especially since Catherine hasn't had any teaching this month. What worked: Annette is finally alright. Fiendish Blow and so-so crit rates on Wind/Cutting Gale mean the gap between her and my other mages is no longer worrying, and her levels are in line with everyone else. Now it's time to fix Ashe. What didn't work: This was a pretty gentle map in the end. It's almost a tradition of mine to Triangle Attack whenever I do this map, because I normally have at least one unit who's mastered Pegasus Knight by the time I do it, but after equipping Triangle Attack I forgot to actually do it. Chapter 10 Spoiler MVP: Sylvain Turn Count: 9 Divine Pulses: 1 As well as Byleth's certification into Wyvern Rider, Hapi got Bishop, Lysithea got Dark Flier and Catherine got Assassin just before the chapter battle. Hapi's and Lysithea's classes weren't in the build plan, but they were the ones they passed for, and I'm not unhappy about it at all. Warlock doesn't really help Hapi, and it's only a matter of time before Lysithea gets Valkyrie. In the meanwhile, both of these classes are good for them, and could well make endgame. I also discovered Hapi hasn't gained a single point of Def since she was recruited at base, meaning Bishop gave her a +8 to Def. LOL. I think when I hit the timeskip I will do a special section of the log looking at my party's stats and weapon ranks, just for fun. In other news, I recruited Hilda at the beginning of the chapter, in case I couldn't do Hapi/Balthus' paralogue. I also beat a DLC tournament quest, through what I think was sheer luck. The first opponent, an Armour Knight, may have been too tough for Byleth, but somehow she died without all her HP going, and there were a couple of other obvious glitches through the tournament. I got a tidy sum and a Brave Lance out of it, so it's nice to see the glitch favouring me. I spent most weekends on Explore, either in the Sauna or training Byleth - I want everyone ideally to promote and to master their second Intermediate class before timeskip, so every little helps. For the weekend I spent battling, the last point was on the battle quest that became available this month - not a challenge, but it means I should be able to get another statue unlock next month. The chapter map is also very doable. I bring along Byleth (in Brigand) and everyone I'm actively raising (no Catherine, but Dimitri, Ingrid and Mercedes are in the adjutant slots). Hapi Strides, and my army split into two groups to barrier-break the closest beasts. Which aggros the pods of enemies behind them, mostly to no issue - I accidentally leave Felix in a position where both cavaliers can hit him so I rewind that. Ashe opens the chest the turn before I bait Kronya with Byleth (in a miscalculation, I sent my Strider Hapi with the other group). Kronya gambits Byleth, but Annette and Cyril beat her easily enough. Irritatingly though, the extended-turn phenomenon means Byleth is still gambited in the restart. Hapi is right in the back corner of my formation, meaning she can't Stride any relevant units, so I basically just waddle forwards for a turn, killing a leftover beast from before Kronya died. I don't have the gambits for both new beasts, and I've stayed up way too late, so I just decide to Warp Sylvain in to kill Tomas - a couple of rounds with the Lance of Ruin leaves Sylvain saying "So long!" to Solon. Sorry, I had to. As well as regretting that last pun, I also regret not just doing the map normally, as I could have probably gotten everyone to Level 20, giving them a couple extra weeks to attempt certifications. It's not a big deal, it's just a bit wasteful. What worked: Dark Flier + Thyrsus Lysithea is overwhelming opposition. It's almost a good thing she doesn't have class Tomefaire, because it'd mean I couldn't stop her from outright killing things I want her to chip. What didn't work: Death Blow is not helping Ashe out that much. Which I knew would happen, but I'd like him to hit Wyvern Rider before his paralogue, and serviceable combat would go a long way for that. Fun Fact: Presenting the Winners of Best Monastery Lines for Guardian Moon 1181 **clapclapclapclapclap** 3rd Place: Hubert says he's not really a guy for condolences, which I appreciated a lot more than the various iterations of "Aw, this sucks" we got this month. 2nd Place: Dimitri offers to kill anybody... for you. What a sweetheart. 1st Place: Anna gets her first unique monastery dialogue since Ch. 3. All it took was having a family member die. Now that I know that, sign me back up for Crimson Flower. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanty Pete's 1st Mate Posted November 24, 2022 Share Posted November 24, 2022 On 11/19/2022 at 9:52 PM, haarhaarhaar said: Fun Fact: Ingrid has no battle dialogue with the merchant, even as a kill quote. Or have I misunderstood, and he isn't actually the suitor in question? Either way, I like the idea of Ingrid not even giving him the courtesy of a go fuck yourself, although I'm sure it's just laziness from the devs. I interpreted the "Merchant" mini-boss as an employee of her suitor. Of course, the game could've clarified this one way or the other, if they bothered to give her antagonist an actual name. Or specified what criminal activity he actually committed. Weird how their trip home inexplicably takes them through Ailell, the Valley of Torment. You'd think they'd mention it post-skip, but I guess they forgot all about that field trip. TBH I generally like to "rush" this one, not bothering with the Merchant and just cutting a route south. With Stride support, Ingrid can go from outside of "enemies auto-spawn" territory to the westernmost escape point. Which will cause a ton of enemies to take the field... only for the map to immediately end. On 11/19/2022 at 9:52 PM, haarhaarhaar said: The solution turns out to be Assembly - moving Ingrid a space back and pulling the boss off his tile. Alongside the March Ring, Ingrid is just able to make it to the stairs, where Dimitri can dance her. Ingrid then goes to ORKO the Sniper - she takes a big counter in response, but it isn't fatal. Catherine then goes up and is now able to kill the boss with gauntlets. Mission clear - but I spent a solid while both on the prep screen and in the map itself, poring over how best to manage this. Ooh, that's pretty cool. I didn't actually know that repositional gambits affected boss units, too. I love quick clears that take a lot of thought and prep. 4 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said: Fun Fact: We know Monica is long dead, and I did this paralogue after Kronya reveals herself. But Monica's father (the boss) is convinced that Vajra-Mushti, gauntlets with no apparent healing properties, will save her. Why would he think this? I think the most straightforward answer is that TWSITD is dangling the possibility of Monica's survival/return to him, if he procures this rare item for them. If that's true (I'm not sure if there's any other evidence for this), then his whole arc is pretty bittersweet. Very weird that they made him a Trickster with Vajra-Mushti, when War Monk would've fit the weapons better. I think he's also the only enemy Trickster who shows up in the game. Enemy Valkyries show up a couple times, but I don't think War Monk/Cleric or Dark Flier are used at all. Anyway, that theory makes some sense. Really do have to feel sorry for him. At least he never had to meet "Monica" himself... that would be traumatizing. 4 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said: How does all this relate to the Hapi paralogue? Well, there is an enemy pod in between almost every deployment slot, meaning that each individual unit is immediately under pressure. And the reinforcement spawn is designed to stack that pressure, assuming that moving away or hitting Turn 5 means the original pressure has slackened. What is eye-catching about this paralogue is how, by virtue of the starting positions, enemies are using the high press against you from the start. Even if my whole party was in advanced classes, they'd still struggle if isolated and ganged up on by Warriors, Grapplers and Snipers - and I basically wouldn't be able to field mages without them dying unless I covered them successfully and quickly. This map's difficulty lies in making you taste from the start how it feels to be an enemy army, which may make it unique amongst the paralogues. Yeah, I like this analysis. I do think they "overtuned" the difficulty a bit (I personally consider this the hardest paralogue in the game), but there is some merit in a "the player's army starts scattered" presentation. I do wish it was better integrated in the story - like, if they had a "let's split up, gang" moment in the narrative. 4 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said: As well as Byleth's certification into Wyvern Rider, Hapi got Bishop, Lysithea got Dark Flier and Catherine got Assassin just before the chapter battle. Hapi's and Lysithea's classes weren't in the build plan, but they were the ones they passed for, and I'm not unhappy about it at all. Warlock doesn't really help Hapi, and it's only a matter of time before Lysithea gets Valkyrie. In the meanwhile, both of these classes are good for them, and could well make endgame. I also discovered Hapi hasn't gained a single point of Def since she was recruited at base, meaning Bishop gave her a +8 to Def. LOL. Funnily enough, in terms of class bases and modifiers, the Bishop class has better physical bulk than Assassin or Sniper. 30 HP and 12 Defense are the bare minimum for Advanced classes, and Bishop gets +1 HP on top of it. 4 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said: 3rd Place: Hubert says he's not really a guy for condolences, which I appreciated a lot more than the various iterations of "Aw, this sucks" we got this month. In Black Eagles routes, he gets a slightly longer line, wherein he DESTROYS the Agarthans with FACTS and LOGIC. ...Ahem. But personally, I appreciate how abruptly his out-of-house dialogue cuts off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted November 25, 2022 Author Share Posted November 25, 2022 18 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: I interpreted the "Merchant" mini-boss as an employee of her suitor. Of course, the game could've clarified this one way or the other, if they bothered to give her antagonist an actual name. Or specified what criminal activity he actually committed. Yeah, that makes sense. And even in the Japanese it's just "dirty money" - so no hints there. 18 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Very weird that they made him a Trickster with Vajra-Mushti, when War Monk would've fit the weapons better. I think he's also the only enemy Trickster who shows up in the game. Enemy Valkyries show up a couple times, but I don't think War Monk/Cleric or Dark Flier are used at all. Anyway, that theory makes some sense. Really do have to feel sorry for him. At least he never had to meet "Monica" himself... that would be traumatizing. Yeah I wondered about the Trickster thing as well (and you're right, barring the Wolves in CS Ch. 1 he's the only enemy Trickster you fight in the game, there are a couple of Valkyries in CS Ch. 2, and no other War Monks/Dark Fliers). My guess is the mismatch was deliberate, to highlight the lack of synergy between Crest non-bearers and wielding Relics - like how Miklan is an Armour Knight wielding the Lance of Ruin, when I think all other enemy Armour/Fortress Knights wield Axes. 18 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: I do think they "overtuned" the difficulty a bit (I personally consider this the hardest paralogue in the game), but there is some merit in a "the player's army starts scattered" presentation. I do wish it was better integrated in the story - like, if they had a "let's split up, gang" moment in the narrative. Yeah, since we only see Byleth, Balthus and Hapi in the cutscene, it makes it seem like everyone might be together instead of searching for her separately. My hardest paralogue is probably Yuri's, because of the logistics of keeping Gerth alive as you fight the billion enemies, but this was really tough - depending on how things go this month with paralogues, I may have to update my personal rankings. 18 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Funnily enough, in terms of class bases and modifiers, the Bishop class has better physical bulk than Assassin or Sniper. 30 HP and 12 Defense are the bare minimum for Advanced classes, and Bishop gets +1 HP on top of it. Which is hilarious. Hapi's Defense is now about mid-tier for my army, which says quite a lot tbh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted December 1, 2022 Author Share Posted December 1, 2022 (edited) It's been a hot minute, but I promise I haven't been loafing around. I've finally completed paralogue season - and I was hoping to have beaten Ch. 12 before I wrote this log, but my game-plan went awry (more on this next log). So I need a bit more time for that, and I figured I'd write this section of the log up rather than dragging my feet more. Here we go! Alois/Shamir's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Constance Turn Count: 2 Divine Pulses: 0 This run aside, I tend to do paralogues the honest way, slowly slogging through them. But I've only taken this paralogue seriously once, the first time I did it - and it won't surprise you to find out I couldn't stop the wyverns from landing in town then, and didn't get all the rewards as a result. Never again, I vowed - and the fact I'm doing this in the last available month means I'm more than able to cheese it. As anyone who's run it knows, the endless reinforcements on this map make a rout a pretty punishing exercise, and the wyverns (is this the first time you face wyvern enemies in-game?) will just make a beeline into town, ignoring your units if they're too far away, which they probably will be given your starting positions. So I'm setting up for a Stride-clear. Alois doesn't even bring weapons. Shamir strides Lysithea and Sylvain - Lysithea heads towards the boss, grabbing a kill from an enemy near Byleth's starting position on the way. Sylvain heads towards the other city entrance. Alongside Cyril and Ashe (and with help from Dimitri's sweet sweet moves) they clear out the enemies near them. Mercedes and Constance (now in War Cleric) beat the dangerous assassin near them, and Byleth gambits the other enemies nearby. On turn 2, the Sylvain group can only just about reach and kill one wyvern, which is what they do, while the Byleth group mop up enemies near them, before Lysithea gets the boss-kill. Short and simple. What worked: War Cleric Constance now has enough power to work as a hybrid, and enough bulk to survive one enemy, provided they don't double her. I know gauntlets/Fistfaire is doing a lot of heavy lifting, but her physical combat is now better than Death Blow Ashe. Ashe, you suck. What didn't work: Repeating for the back - Ashe, you suck. I originally wanted to dance him not Sylvain, but two actions from Ashe still couldn't kill any of the infantry nearest him. Beyond getting him levels, there's very little I can do about his suckiness now. Ashe/Catherine's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Catherine Turn Count: 5 Divine Pulses: 5 The remaining paralogues on my list all have varying degrees of fear factor, based on how they've gone in the past, which is why I delayed them to the last month. The fear factor this time came from trying to play defensively when you can't see what's coming (which I did the first couple of times I tried this, not even realising I was missing out on rewards by not searching for the bosses). I wanted Ashe to be in Wyvern Rider for this map, but he didn't quite make Level 20 before this weekend. Even so, I decided not to delay this paralogue any further, because as of last paralogue I officially confirmed Ashe's combat won't be redeemable this run, so I can basically write him off after he gets promoted. As per usual in FE defense maps, the game punishes you for tightening up and defending - so this time I figured I'll attack from the get-go. My first target is the northern boss, who generates pegasus reinforcements (tied with the assassins for most dangerous enemy on this map) - Ingrid goes back into Peg Knight so she can get the kill. Assassin Catherine gets into a great position to light up a torch, and Ingrid kills the boss. But I can't kill both the pegasi next to the boss this turn, and while Lysithea (after some movement CA manipulation) can reach them with a gambit, her hit rates are crap. I soft-reset (Divine Pulse no. 1) and give Ingrid Battalion Desperation. Her battalion won't survive the map, but their sacrifice will mean she should be able to kill the boss (without counter) and tank the pegasi afterwards, which she does. Sylvain, Felix and Ashe go east. Byleth, Assassin Dimitri, Ferdinand and Cyril head south-west for the other reinforcement-generating boss, Hapi sticks around with Rhea. This provokes all the enemies except those with the south-east boss - which is good for me, because I actually brought Torches and can see most of them. Sylvain and Felix are able to finish the cavaliers that came towards them, while Ashe gambits the cavaliers that tried to slip through. Ingrid and Lysithea kill the remaining fliers and head to support the Sylvain group, and Catherine leaves her side alone (they're mostly armors) to help Sylvain as well. Byleth group get attacked by mages - Constance, in her first guard adjutant role, saves Ferdinand from eternal damnation. With that turn, and its aggressive play, having gone so well, I start to get careless, and am punished for it. Dimitri later gets gambited (displayed hit 35), which I pulse away - but the RNG gods decree that the Assassins lurking in the dark head straight for Ferdinand and Cyril, who are in mortal danger. I spend another two pulses figuring out permutations on keeping them alive, and having them provide support so Dimitri can go get the boss-kill. In the end, Lysithea warps Ingrid close enough that she can shove Ferdinand (who pulled back earlier), so he can get back in the fray to send up a Blaze, pinning the remaining enemies and allowing Dimitri to stop protecting them. Felix gets the eastern boss pretty easily with gauntlets, and I send most of my units towards the last boss in the south-east. Then Rhea gets swarmed by Pegasus Knights and armours - which was fine, because the AI ignored Hapi in favour of Rhea, who can take a hit. Until Rhea decided to swing back and died on the counter. I have to rewind that, and give her a good heal on the previous turn, as she had already done some fighting. Rhea deals with them fine now, and it's just a case of mopping up the last boss (Ferdinand ORKOs him with a Brave Lance) and cleaning up the enemies around Rhea. As it turns out, one more armour was lurking in the dark, so Rhea gets the map-ending kill. What worked: I grudgingly admit that Torches made a big difference on this map (I don't think I've ever even attempted it with Torches before). After that first Torch for Ch. 3, I didn't spend any money to get the Torches I had on this map (Catherine had one from a previous drop, Cyril picked one up from an enemy here), so this feels more like a win. What didn't work: The fragility of the bosses, and the Torches actually, made me a bit greedy. All of the Divine Pulses I spent here (except arguably the soft-reset) could have been avoided. Fun Fact: I knew the dialogue for Seteth/Flayn's paralogue changes a bit if you do this paralogue before it, but as it turns out the converse is also true - Catherine references the enemies you fought in that paralogue in the lead-up to this battle. Nice bit of synergy there. Hilda/Cyril's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Byleth Turn Count: 5 Divine Pulses: 4 Ah yes, the paralogue where Cyril attempts to prevent more slavery. I've never hugely gotten the appeal of Hilda as a character, and her response of "nah that's not me tho" just reminds me of why. The fear factor of this paralogue comes from the inevitable enemy pile-on near your seize tiles - I don't think I've ever gotten through this paralogue without avoiding that, and it can be quite tough to survive. So I plan out my first turn or two pretty carefully in the map screen, giving Felix the Mv+1 item I picked up from Ashe's paralogue. Optimisation dictates it should have gone to a flier or Dimitri, but part of Felix's patchiness thus far has been that I haven't been getting him enough kills, so hopefully this'll start to fix that. Cyril (now in Wyvern Rider) and Lysithea pick off the two wyverns to their north, while Ingrid (in Archer) and Mercedes (in Valkyrie) head west of their starting point to provide reinforcements to the two Goneril soldiers in the centre of the map. Hilda Strides most of the Byleth side, allowing Felix (using the ballista, which he just reaches thanks to the Shoes of the Wind) and Sylvain (in Wyvern Rider too) to combine to kill one of the two cavaliers threatening the isolated Goneril in the forest. Dimitri dances Byleth, allowing her to beat the two enemies nearest her starting position. At first, things start great, as one of the central Gonerils on a grass tile dodges three archer attacks in a row. But the fourth crits, which wipes out all the good work she'd just done. What's worse, a sniper near Sylvain has headed towards that group, and will be able to join the assault on their next turn. I play the turn through anyway, but as feared the sniper and another archer gang up on the targeted Goneril - even a full heal isn't enough to save him. If last paralogue I was reminded not to be careless, this paralogue I was reminded that no matter how much care you take, the RNG gods are a fickle pantheon. I rewind to the start, and change up the order of my attacks, hoping to reload the RNG. This doesn't save the green armour from the crit, but the Sniper's AI does change, and he heads towards Sylvain. I have no idea why, because Sylvain's positioning is exactly the same. But now the Cyril group are able to deal with most of the enemies on that central platform, easing pressure there. Sylvain beats the Sniper, and Felix attacks another cavalier. The pressure is building up on Byleth's side, and I have no choice but to aggro bird no. 1 (which I think is the starting gun for the aforementioned pile-on). But before I can start to think about that, one of the cavaliers near Sylvain scores a crit on the nearby Goneril, killing him. For god's sake, get a grip, green team. To be clear, displayed crit rates for both these enemy crits were 6, the archer had a 50 displayed hit rate and the cavalier had something in the 70s. I Divine Pulse again, this time putting Sylvain in between the cavaliers and the Goneril so he doesn't see combat, avoiding the crit altogether. Now it's time to prepare for the pile-on. Hapi barrier-breaks bird no. 1, Felix runs over towards Byleth's group. Lysithea warps Cyril over so he can come and help, and the others there get into position. Lysithea, Ingrid and Mercedes finish off the enemies on their platform and prepare to face the boss. Irritatingly, the enemy cavaliers approaching from north of Byleth's starting position are split into two waves, so bombing forward is dangerous. Bird no. 2 is also poorly positioned for me to barrier-break them with the gambits I have equipped. The first time I challenge those enemies, I send Byleth to kill the Sniper, so he doesn't take the ballista and make life more difficult for me later, while Dimitri and Catherine barrier-break bird no. 2. Which turns out to work poorly, because one of the cavaliers has Fusillade (which doesn't show up when you check enemy ranges) and lands it on Byleth (displayed hit 35), wiping her out - I have to Divine Pulse this. But there's a bigger flaw in my positioning - I didn't notice because bird no.2 was in my way, but an enemy cavalier can slip past in and clear the seize point. Another Divine Pulse. The solution is Stride (I've been using it so much more than in any previous run!). Which allows Felix and Catherine to do the barrier-breaking, while Byleth kills the Sniper, Dimitri dances her and blocks off part of the path, and Byleth gambits the closer enemies as well. This works much better, except the cavaliers now all target Dimitri. His dodge-tanking against Lances is not particularly good, and he takes two hits from them - but crucially, neither of those hits is from the battalion-wielding cavalier (displayed hit 76) - if he had hit, Dimitri would have died. The gods have thrown a morsel of good luck my way, and I thank them for the feast. Turn 5 is now just mopping up the bird and the surviving cavaliers for Byleth's group. In the meanwhile, the boss has done something slightly interesting, in sending his accompanying cavaliers one way while he heads another. It's a decent tactic - it means he can target, and probably kill, a Goneril next turn, while his cavaliers occupy me. However, he's strayed a bit too close to the central island, and Mercedes gets an OHKO with Curved Shot. Lysithea and Ingrid kill the remaining two cavaliers, and that's map over. What worked: Mercedes isn't quite capable of OHKOs with her spells (she doesn't have Ragnarok and probably won't get it) but she's still able to outrange Archers with the Cad staff, provides solid healing, and CAs with her Magic Bow are roughly around the OHKO mark. A good all-round performance, although her next few level-ups will have to be good to keep her in this zone pre-Sniper. What didn't work: I shouldn't have sent Felix to the ballista - Sylvain could have handled it I think (especially with Lance of Ruin Knightkneeler) and it meant he didn't get a ton of experience. But it all worked out, and I'm not hugely bothered about it. Yuri/Constance's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Ingrid Turn Count: 10 Divine Pulses: 1 Going in, I felt this was the toughest paralogue in the game, and the only reason I did it before Anna's was because I figured I might want the Fetters of Dromi for that paralogue. My recollection was of being swarmed by enemies from every side, not able to maintain control even with gambits, with more enemies joining the fray every turn and Gerth suiciding himself into the mix - and I was determined to avoid that outcome this time. So, like I did with Hapi's paralogue, I figured I would try and beat it without triggering any reinforcements. I was also determined to avoid fighting monsters, which are beefy enough that I'd get unnecessarily bogged down. Ingrid, Constance and Hapi head north to deal with the enemies nearby - Constance chips one before Ingrid kills him with Line of Lances (from Duscur Heavy Soldiers). Yuri Strides my fast movers (Byleth, Cyril, Mercedes, Lysithea, Dimitri, Paladin Ferdinand) who head up and kill the four enemies on the strip separating our part of the map from the main areas. Mercedes kills one of the three enemies east of Myson's group, before getting danced so she can kill one of the Snipers on Ingrid's side with the Caduceus Staff. Ingrid kills the other Sniper on enemy phase, and Dimitri kills a Sniper who was part of the trio Mercedes aggro'd. Apparently, only the enemies marked as being Thieves (rather than Agarthan Soldiers) can transform into monsters, and do so once they fight with Gerth. So my only option is to kill all the Thieves before that happens. Thankfully, none of them are particularly clumped together, except the two chasing Gerth from the north. First, Byleth goes to kill the thief that advanced on Gerth earlier. Cyril kills the last member of the trio east of Myson, a mage who's gotten too close. Ferdinand beats a grappler to the north with the Brave Lance. Dimitri Strides (he's got Gautier Knights) Mercedes and Lysithea, who each go over and kill the two units chasing Gerth from the north. I rushed this because I was concerned that the archer can attack Gerth on that turn, which could cause him to become a monster. Gerth continues to run, and now I can take the map more leisurely - Ingrid's group gambit and kill the pod of enemies far north of the starting point, while everyone else gathers around Myson's group, before eventually wiping them out on Turn 5. However, as it turns out, Myson cannot be killed until he's summoned the exact reinforcements I wanted to avoid. He hangs around on 0 HP, says his reinforcement-summoning dialogue, then dies. Annoyingly, most of my units have already acted by this point, so I won't be able to survive the spawn, and I use my Divine Pulse here. Not before noting down who spawns where, however. This time, I delay killing Myson, using my Canto units to kill his attendants and aggro him, as Ingrid's group head towards the rest of my army (they were in the most danger from the spawns). The turn before I'm ready to kill Myson, I leave Lysithea in close range of Gerth - which is also a reinforcement trigger, and the reinforcements show up. Myson himself is fairly fragile - I beat him and the closest reinforcements easily, and the Ingrid group are able to get out of the range of the reinforcements closest to them. The battle is far more straightforward now. The reinforcements targeting team Ingrid array themselves nicely in a line, so Constance uses Assault Troop, while Ferdinand uses Blaze on three of the four cavalry. Byleth, Mercedes and Lysithea take on the mage/sniper reinforcements coming in from the west, and things are over without an issue. What worked: The DLC, I guess. Dark Flier and Valkyrie are both busted classes, precisely because I can pull off the sort of high Mv/range play that allowed me to save Gerth from his pursuers. Not even Master-class physical units could have gotten kills from that far away without significant Mv and accuracy boosting. What didn't work: This went unbelievably smoothly for what, going in, I considered to be the hardest paralogue in the game. I couldn't have done it much earlier than this, because I needed advanced classes, but basically everything worked this time around. Anna's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Dimitri Turn Count: 4 Divine Pulses: 4 Bow Knights, Bow Knights, Bow Knights. What a busted enemy you are. This paralogue rewards very aggressive play, but there's no way you're clearing it before the Bow Knights come out in force - and the more turns you spend trying to bait out the Bow Knights, more reinforcements (Bow Knights) arrive. However, as of literally this map, I have my own, super-busted tool to fight with - B. VanWrath Dodgetank Dimitri. Yes, you read me right, I put all the skills on him at once. Overkill, you may be thinking - but even with it, Dimitri had his fair share of struggles. Ferdinand and Mercedes got +2 to Str and Mag respectively, so they could hit a couple of kill thresholds. I forged Dimitri a Wo Dao+ and put him in Swordmaster, so he could maintain 100 displayed crit on Enemy Phase while using the Chalice, specifically so I could tank Bow Knights (his battalion is Jeralt's Mercenaries). On Turn 1, Anna Strides most of my army, including Dimitri. I send Dimitri straight up to kill the priest - I want to see how much he can tank. The answer turns out to be not much, as Pallardo has 60 Hit on Poison Tactic, which obviously lands and leads to Dimitri's death. I try a different position, and Dimitri get submerged in gambits from the nearby Warriors. Then, Catherine doesn't get the kill on her designated enemy north of her, so I use my third Pulse. Finally, Dimitri gambits the two Warriors, Cyril and Sylvain swing west to kill a sniper and a Venin Lance cavalry unit, while Catherine, Byleth and Mercedes combine to kill the three enemies north of the starting point. Ferdinand and Lysithea kill the two snipers north of them, and Constance uses Rescue so Ferdinand isn't murdered by a Bow Knight. This time, Dimitri survives the Enemy Phase, although he still takes damage from cavalry. Cyril and Sylvain then kill the last cavalier and a mage further north of them, Dimitri moves forward for more tanking while the others mop up whoever is left near him, and Ferdinand/Lysithea try and bomb forward to take down the mage + Bow Knight group in the corner of the map. Of course, on that turn enemy reinforcements arrive and kill four or five people, so I rewind and play more conservatively - Cyril and Sylvain just kill the cavalier, everyone else congregates in the centre of the map except Dimitri, who still goes to tank. Thankfully, he pulls a couple of Bow Knights and Warriors to him straight away, and now Pallardo starts to advance, so Constance one-shots him on this turn. There are a couple of Bow Knights left, but Dimitri can safely bait them, and they bring along the infantry enemies who everyone else can hoover up. What worked: I didn't mention this in the Shamir paralogue because I was overlevelled for that - but Constance's Mystic Blow has been deleting everything. I think only monsters, and maybe the better mages, don't die from it at the moment. Her physical offence is now decent, but that will drop off as her Str growth plateaus and enemy bulk/Def increases - on the other hand Mystic Blow is just laughably powerful. I don't see it worsening before she hits Aura Knuckles. What didn't work: I used VanWrath dodge tank Dimitri specifically because I was worried about Swordbreaker units. And I was right to be - my first Vantage attack didn't crit on the cavalry Dimitri faced, and one landed a hit on him. However, getting to 100 Crit from Wrath was important. For now, the jury is out on SA+20 vs Battalion Vantage Fun Fact: Pallardo asks Anna to provide the manpower for this treasure hunt we're on, and then produces a billion more mercenaries than Anna and co. in order to rob her. Pallardo, why didn't you just use them to begin with, and leave me out of it? Chapter 11 Spoiler MVP: Felix Turn Count: 8 Divine Pulses: 1 During the course of this month, all of my main party certified in the classes they will spend the timeskip in. Furthermore, most of my army got all the Intermediate class masteries they wanted. Ashe was just shy of Hit+20, I'm thinking of picking up Hit+20 on Catherine because her hit rates aren't stellar, and Cyril is a bit short on Death Blow (mastering Fighter and me using him in Wyvern Rider the last couple of paralogues is why - he has PBV and isn't in Ch. 13 so getting it pre-timeskip isn't as important to me). Apart from that, I picked up Alois for his paralogue. The chapter battle is not particularly tough, especially after having done all the paralogues. Mercedes, Annette, Warrior Felix and Dancer Dimitri sweep right, while Byleth, Sylvain, Hapi, Constance and Ferdinand go left. A pleasant surprise is how powerful Annette is - this may be the best version of her I've had so far. Felix and a danced Annette combine to break the right monster's barriers, while Ferdinand, Byleth and Sylvain do so for the left monster. I pushed Mercedes and Sylvain a bit in order to kill the thieves furthest away, but it was nothing they couldn't handle. Constance ORKO'd the dark mage in the centre of the map while unarmed, in a maid costume. Why, you ask? Because she can. I decide that everyone will go up the right path (the third monster is on the left, but I don't need more Umbral Steel), but it's a bit of a slog to get the cavalry up so I attack from the centre instead. So instead Mercedes snipes an armour, Felix kills another. I was going to let Annette kill Metodey (I use a Divine Pulse so Constance can change the location of her Rescue), but Byleth crits with SCS so none of that for her. Instead, she rallies Sylvain, who ORKOs Edelgard with Lance of Ruin. I don't feel bad about missing extra EXP here - the units I actually want to use are all in a good place EXP-wise. What worked: Felix is finally the Felix we know and love. His gauntlets destroyed a monster's final health bar, he's one-rounding mages with Axes, and he's getting Crest activations and crits when he doesn't even need them. Part of the reason is the extra Mv, and more attention I'm giving him now lots of people are basically done with the labour-intensive part of their build. Long may this continue. What didn't work: Mercedes now needs her Magic Bow for KOing non-armours, and despite her solid Spd, her low Str means she can't double enemies. Hopefully the Sniper certification will fix this. Fun Fact: I'm spoilt for choice this month. The monk who repeated the same dialogue for four chapters straight (roughly, let's raze the Abyss to the ground) is gone as of this chapter. Dev error, or serial killer alert? There's some foreshadowing of Metodey in the monastery, as a rogue mentions refusing a job that is probably to raid the Holy Tomb. And there's some teatime line changes, but nothing supremely offensive - Hilda asks if she looks fat, and the localisation is probably erring on the right side of caution by changing that. Maybe the thing that stood out to me, is I just realised Sitri was only 20 years old when she died, compared to 100+ Jeralt. Way to keep it creepy, although it also feels weird to say Jeralt should date someone his own age. EDIT: I forgot to mention I did a red! battle with my remaining battle point, picking up a rusted Parthia and some Mythril. I don't know if the Archanea regalia are in Three Hopes, but I figure I should keep a record of it. Edited December 2, 2022 by haarhaarhaar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted December 1, 2022 Share Posted December 1, 2022 (edited) 3 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said: Bow Knights, Bow Knights, Bow Knights. What a busted enemy you are. Bow Knight is prolly my favorite class in this game after Gremory and Falcon Knight. Of course, facing them on the enemy side well before I can even have one is a pain in the ass, as I would expect it to be. Edited December 1, 2022 by Shadow Mir Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted December 2, 2022 Author Share Posted December 2, 2022 4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said: Bow Knight is prolly my favorite class in this game after Gremory and Falcon Knight. Of course, facing them on the enemy side well before I can even have one is a pain in the ass, as I would expect it to be. Yeah, it really is. I haven't done this paralogue with the Deer, but I imagine it's toughest there, because you don't have an obvious candidate for tanking them. Even a tank Raphael will get obliterated by a Bow Knight + any other enemy on this map. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted December 7, 2022 Author Share Posted December 7, 2022 I thought I'd be speeding up now, but writing this episode of the log still took me time. Below, I've written out some profiles of my units going into Ch. 12 story battle. Because while I've seen a fair few endgame parties from being on these forums, and I have an idea of where other players get to by the end, I'd also be interested in knowing where people are at this point - a lot of conversations I have on here often hinge on assumptions I make about build progress, which might not be shared by the community. Note that where I list stats, they are the stats of that unit in their timeskip class (so with class boosts, stat boosters, skills, and every non-Byleth character got +1 Cha from their birthday tea) - I've also added those in for their average stats, which are rounded to the nearest whole number. But I may have messed up the maths here or there. Also, where a weapon rank has a * next to it, that means the rank was achieved in the Ch. 12 battle and not before. I had planned to reach all the starred ranks before Ch. 12, but I didn't due to my own error (more on this in the Ch. 12 log). If I don't mention a weapon rank, that is because it is still at base rank for that character. Also, please excuse crappy formatting - I would have posted screenshots, but the quality is pretty bad. Halftime Review - Blue Lions Spoiler Dimitri - 9/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 28 Assassin Ranks: Swords/Authority A, Bows C Skills/Arts: Sword Prowess Lv 4, Sword Avoid +20, Hit +20, Str +2, Axebreaker, Windsweep, Curved Shot, Shove Current Stats: HP 54/Str 31/Mag 11/Dex 21/Spd 31/Lck 17/Def 15/Res 10/Cha 28 (received Spd+3, Mv+2) Average Stats: HP 45/Str 30/Mag 10/Dex 25/Spd 29/Lck 14/Def 18/Res 9/Cha 26 Notes: Already one of my best units on sheer combat alone, Sword Avoid +20 confirmed Dimitri as my key problem solver (that, plus the fixed EXP boost of Dancer and his personal, means he's way ahead on levels too). He also had the least demanding build of any unit I'm raising (with the potential exception of Annette, but I instructed Dimitri more), and that shows with reaching two A ranks by Ch. 12. I should be able to hit Swords S by endgame, although I'm not sure whether I'll even need Sword Crit+10. Dedue - 7/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 15 Brawler Ranks: Gauntlets B, Authority C+, Axes C, Bows D Skills/Arts: Brawling Prowess Lv 3, Bow Prowess Lv 1, HP +5, Str +2, One-Two Punch, Healing Focus, Shove Current Stats: HP 44/Str 22/Mag 6/Dex 11/Spd 13/Lck 9/Def 15/Res 2/Cha 10 Average Stats: HP 46/Str 21/Mag 6/Dex 12/Spd 12/Lck 9/Def 15/Res 1/Cha 9 Notes: Obviously I dropped Dedue pretty early, in Ch. 8. But I don't think he should be punished for that too much in my rating, since he was great from start to finish, which encompassed the early game and Chapter 7, which gave me some trouble. One-Two Punch is, of course, lovely stuff. The build plan was going to have him pick up Death Blow before going Grappler (which is why he got C in Axes), but I couldn't be bothered given I was 100% dropping him, so he just went Brawler so he could guard adjutant straightaway. Not much else to say, Dedue is great and I wish he didn't leave, or he'd have been in my endgame party. Felix - 6.5/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 23 Warrior Ranks: Axes B+, Bows C+, Authority C, Gauntlets D+ Skills/Arts: Axe Prowess Lv 4, Death Blow, HP +5, Str +2, Hit +20, Smash, Curved Shot, Shove Current Stats: HP 50/Str 26/Mag 16/Dex 17/Spd 22/Lck 15/Def 14/Res 9/Cha 14 (received HP+7, Mv+1) Average Stats: HP 53/Str 26/Mag 12/Dex 17/Spd 22/Lck 15/Def 14/Res 8/Cha 14 Notes: His stats caught up to average by the end, and average Felix is a great physical unit. But Felix spent a long time in Archer purgatory, using Curved Shot rather than getting close with Axes, and didn't get Death Blow till pretty late - and I think that hurt him. He was great in the early game, only so-so during paralogue season, and snapped out of it after the paralogues were basically all done. I also think I messed up his build, because he spent too many combats actually using Bows, and ended up hitting C+, which he doesn't need. I'm not very optimistic about S-ranking Axes. Ashe - 2.5/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 22 Wyvern Rider Ranks: Axes/Bows* B, Flying/Authority* C+ Skills/Arts: Bow Prowess Lv 3, Death Blow, HP +5, Str +2, Close Counter, Deadeye, Curved Shot, Shove Current Stats: HP 41/Str 24/Mag 9/Dex 18/Spd 20/Lck 16/Def 15/Res 19/Cha 16 Average Stats: HP 43/Str 23/Mag 10/Dex 20/Spd 21/Lck 16/Def 14/Res 13/Cha 12 Notes: I literally only discovered on typing this out that Ashe was Res-blessed. I don't think it ever came up. Easily the worst unit I was raising, and couldn't be relied on for much except opening chests. He didn't manage to pick up Hit +20, but that still wouldn't have saved him. Sylvain - 7/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 24 Wyvern Rider Ranks: Axes/Lances B, Authority C+, Flying C, Bows D+ Skills/Arts: Lance Prowess Lv 3, Death Blow, Swordbreaker, Str +2, Hit +20, Tempest Lance, Curved Shot, Shove Current Stats: HP 43/Str 27/Mag 10/Dex 15/Spd 25/Lck 16/Def 16/Res 11/Cha 17 Average Stats: HP 44/Str 25/Mag 12/Dex 15/Spd 23/Lck 14/Def 17/Res 9/Cha 18 Notes: Sylvain faced some of the issues Felix did, in being stuck in Archer and getting Death Blow pretty late. However, because he has boons in Axes/Lances and had the Lance of Ruin to rely on, his combat didn't suffer like Felix's. An always-reliable frontliner, with surprisingly decent pace. Mercedes - 7.5/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 23 Valkyrie Ranks: Bows B+, Reason B, Faith/Authority/Riding* C+ Skills/Arts: Reason Lv 3, Fiendish Blow, Dex +4, Mag +2, Hit +20, Waning Shot, Curved Shot, Draw Back Current Stats: HP 33/Str 17/Mag 29/Dex 20/Spd 20/Lck 14/Def 13/Res 20/Cha 21 (received Mag+2) Average Stats: HP 33/Str 17/Mag 30/Dex 21/Spd 15/Lck 12/Def 12/Res 21/Cha 21 Notes: Very very solid for most of Part 1. Despite spending levels in Valkyrie, she's been Spd-blessed throughout the game, meaning she ORKO'd enemies others couldn't well into paralogue season, and without Darting Blow. But as enemy AS lifted off, her Magic growth slowed down and she was struggling to hit the OHKO slot, unless she used a Magic Bow - Waning Shot is particularly great. She hit Sniper later than I was expecting (in Ch. 12, explaining the average Str 17 Def 12), and I have a few high-maintenance builds, so am not sure when she'll make the step up to Hunter's Volley. Even so, I'm not worried about her. Annette - 6.5/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 23 Warlock Ranks: Reason* A, Authority B+, Faith C Skills/Arts: Reason Lv 4, Fiendish Blow, Mag +2, Rally Speed, Rally Res, Draw Back Current Stats: HP 31/Str 15/Mag 31/Dex 21/Spd 15/Lck 13/Def 13/Res 20/Cha 15 Average Stats: HP 31/Str 12/Mag 28/Dex 20/Spd 16/Lck 14/Def 12/Res 20/Cha 16 Notes: Being a rally-bot put her massively behind everyone in the early game, with inferior combat following, and this took a significant amount of Part 1 and a lot of adjutant-ing to rectify. However, from around Lvl 17 it turned out she was Mag-blessed enough to be handing out OHKOs left, right and centre, especially thanks to her relatively high crit, and Warlock only cemented this trend. To the point where she's actually competitive with Lysithea for pure damage. Easily the best Annette has ever been for me, and she may see use beyond her paralogue. Ingrid - 8/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 23 Sniper Ranks: Bows B+, Authority B, Lance/Flying/Riding C, Axes D+ Skills/Arts: Bow Prowess Lv 4, Death Blow, Darting Blow, Str +2, Hit +20, Tempest Lance, Curved Shot, Shove Current Stats: HP 36/Str 26/Mag 20/Dex 21/Spd 24/Lck 18/Def 13/Res 14/Cha 23 (received Str+7) Average Stats: HP 38/Str 25/Mag 14/Dex 20/Spd 22/Lck 19/Def 13/Res 17/Cha 20 Notes: As one of the three Pegasi that carried me through paralogue season, Ingrid can't receive less than an 8. But this comes with the obvious caveat that I invested early and heavily in Ingrid's Strength, as well as getting three Intermediate masteries, and this paid dividends throughout the game thus far. Nobody in my army has received as many stat-boosters as her, and without them and both Death/Darting Blow she'd be consigned to relative mediocrity. Lacking CAs beyond Curved Shot also hurts, and looking forward I imagine I will have to invest more in Str and Spd to keep her competitive at endgame. But with all those tools and effort, she really is very good. Also, turns out she is Mag-blessed, which means I may give her a Magic Bow for Part 2. It'll allow her to beat armours, if nothing else. Halftime Review - Other Units Spoiler Byleth - 8.5/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 25 Wyvern Rider Ranks: Sword A, Authority B, Axe/Flying C+, Lance/Bow/Armour C, Gauntlets D+, Reason/Faith/Riding D Skills/Arts: Sword Prowess Lv 4, Death Blow, Darting Blow, Str +2, Wt -3, Windsweep, Curved Shot, Shove Current Stats: HP 40/Str 31/Mag 13/Dex 21/Spd 24/Lck 16/Def 18/Res 11/Cha 37 Average Stats: HP 43/Str 30/Mag 14/Dex 21/Spd 22/Lck 19/Def 17/Res 13/Cha 19 Notes: Relatively poor early start due to not using Swords (so lower hit rate and no CAs for the early game), and then not getting faculty training because I was focused on raising Professor Level. This began to sort itself out around Ch. 6, and once it did Byleth was rolling, especially as part of the pegasus triumfeminate. Although her stats are pretty close to the average here (excluding Cha from all the tea), that's still average for Byleth, so her ability to get kills wasn't really in doubt. To me, the weapon ranks here look a lot closer to how I'd be doing on NG+ (assuming no actual rank-buying) than NG Maddening. If I hadn't messed up, she'd have hit B+ Authority, and would still have E ranks in Reason and Riding - but the fact that I could get those last minute is testament to the freedom optimising Professor Level gives you. I'm particularly pleased with hitting Swords A before timeskip - I think I'm going to try for endgame S+, which I've only gotten via grinding before. Ferdinand - 6/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 24 Paladin Ranks: Lances B, Riding C+, Axes/Bows/Authority/Armour C Skills/Arts: Lance Prowess Lv 3, Death Blow, Swordbreaker, Wt -3, Hit +20, Tempest Lance, Curved Shot, Shatter Slash Current Stats: HP 46/Str 22/Mag 9/Dex 19/Spd 16/Lck 16/Def 17/Res 10/Cha 22 (received Str+2) Average Stats: HP 46/Str 25/Mag 11/Dex 17/Spd 18/Lck 15/Def 17/Res 11/Cha 18 Notes: As you can see, Ferdinand is behind the pace in Str and Spd, and his relatively late arrival (Ch. 6) meant I didn't have time to pick up Noble/Fighter masteries. However, these issues were mitigated by being one of the first units to get Death Blow, and by B-ranking Lances fairly quickly. This meant he could use the Brave Lance I picked up from the DLC tournament, which was obviously quite strong. Still, he needed Str help to reach thresholds in Anna's paralogue. Things might get worse before Swift Strikes, we'll see. Lysithea - 8/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 24 Dark Flier Ranks: Reason* A, Faith/Authority B, Flying C+, Lances/Riding C Skills/Arts: Reason Lv 4, Fiendish Blow, Dex +4, Mag +2, Darting Blow, Triangle Attack, Tempest Lance, Draw Back Current Stats: HP 30/Str 11/Mag 29/Dex 30/Spd 24/Lck 10/Def 12/Res 18/Cha 13 Average Stats: HP 30/Str 11/Mag 28/Dex 29/Spd 21/Lck 10/Def 12/Res 18/Cha 13 Notes: I mean, she's Lysithea. Strong from the get-go, although she didn't arrive early enough to help in the early game. Her combat levelled up once I got Darting Blow, which meant she reliably doubled quite a lot with Miasma/Swarm. And of course, Dark Flier is insane. If I had to complain, it'd be that she couldn't OHKO the Death Knight at all in Part 1, so always needed a gambit set-up. But she still removes the fear factor of the Death Knight, so it's not a real complaint. Catherine - 8/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 24 Assassin Ranks: Gauntlets B, Authority C, Lances/Axes/Bows/Faith/Flying D+ Skills/Arts: Brawling Prowess Lv 3, Death Blow, Darting Blow, Bow Prowess Lv 2, Battalion Vantage, Nimble Combo, Curved Shot, Healing Focus Current Stats: HP 43/Str 29/Mag 11/Dex 21/Spd 27/Lck 13/Def 15/Res 13/Cha 9 (received Str+1) Average Stats: HP 45/Str 26/Mag 12/Dex 22/Spd 29/Lck 16/Def 17/Res 11/Cha 12 Notes: The way the stats shake out, Catherine is apparently below average everywhere apart from Str and Res. It certainly didn't feel that way - she's been destroying most things since she joined, even as a dismounted Pegasus Knight. I think that's just how good gauntlets are, especially with Death/Darting Blow thrown in. Actually, I noticed her hit rates were occasionally not great, and none of her arts boost it, so I'm going to try and grab Hit+20 as well. War Cleric's speed isn't great, so I don't know if I can get her to quad non-monsters in the lategame, but Hit+20 will contribute more than Brawl Crit+10 in that scenario, and I'm not sure she'll hit S-Rank in Gauntlets tbh. Anyway, she's great. Shamir - N/A Timeskip Status: Lv 13 Sniper Ranks: Axe/Authority D+, Armour D Notes: She hasn't changed stats-wise from Lv 13 bases, but since she'll eventually be a guard adjutant and gain levels in Part 2 I'm just noting down that she exists here. She only used Stride in her paralogue, appeared one other time as a guard adjutant, and will never see actual combat. Cyril - 6/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 23 Wyvern Rider Ranks: Axes/Bows B, Lance/Authority/Flying C, Riding D+ Skills/Arts: Bow Prowess Lv 3, Axe Prowess Lv 3, Close Counter, Str +2, Hit +20, Point-Blank Volley, Curved Shot, Shove Current Stats: HP 39/Str 25/Mag 16/Dex 21/Spd 24/Lck 18/Def 15/Res 9/Cha 15 (received Str+3) Average Stats: HP 40/Str 26/Mag 12/Dex 22/Spd 23/Lck 18/Def 15/Res 9/Cha 14 Notes: I should have chased Death Blow first instead of Hit+20. I figured Bowrange+1 would take the pressure off Cyril having to rush to the frontline, but Point-Blank Volley is basically the only thing of worth that Cyril can do (and Vengeance I guess, but I don't use that). So going Archer first meant putting up with some meh Cyril. Still, Point-Blank Volley is great, and is getting ORKOs without Death Blow. I do appreciate reliable and early doubling, although it isn't a very exciting Cyril build. Which is why I introduced Riding to the equation - I figure Cyril can switch between Wyvern Lord and Bow Knight depending on map. I'll also start properly building Cyril's Authority - AM has most of the best bows, so he can run either Cichol or Indech at endgame to keep him competitive without necessarily having to crit. Constance - 7/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 24 War Cleric Ranks: Gauntlets/Reason/Faith/Authority B, Riding C Skills/Arts: Reason Lv 3, Fiendish Blow, Dex +4, Mag +2, Brawl Prowess Lv 3 Mystic Blow, Healing Focus, Draw Back Current Stats: HP 38/Str 19/Mag 32/Dex 21/Spd 15/Lck 11/Def 15/Res 17/Cha 15 (received Dex+2, Luck+4, I haven't included her personal here) Average Stats: HP 37/Str 20/Mag 26/Dex 21/Spd 14/Lck 15/Def 16/Res 14/Cha 14 Notes: Although I noticed her exceptional damage, I didn't realise how significantly she was Mag-blessed until I wrote it out here. Wow. I've been crowing about how good her combat has been - it makes sense that she's benefitting from superior stats, including the boosts to Str/Def from War Cleric. Although thinking about it, she's often been clearing Mystic Blow OHKO thresholds by well over 6 points, so it's not as if only this Mag-blessed version of War Cleric works for her. She had a blue period early in paralogue season, where she was too slow to double but not yet at OHKO thresholds, but the purple patch once she started hitting thresholds blows that out of the water. Despite the fact that I'm officially a fan now, I still don't think she deserves more than a 7 based on combat. Hapi - 5.5/10 Timeskip Status: Lv 23 Bishop Ranks: Faith A, Reason B, Authority C Skills/Arts: Faith Lv 4, Reason Lv 3, Fiendish Blow, HP +5, Mag +2, Tempest Lance, Draw Back Current Stats: HP 43/Str 11/Mag 26/Dex 24/Spd 16/Lck 12/Def 12/Res 24/Cha 11 Average Stats: HP 41/Str 14/Mag 26/Dex 20/Spd 15/Lck 11/Def 12/Res 23/Cha 12 Notes: Being neutral in Faith, she only got Warp in Ch. 12, which is better than nothing but still not ideal. Still, I think I was right to rush her to Bishop rather than going for Warlock, as she's easily the worst of the mages by pure offense (rarely getting KOs outside of armours), and Banshee/Death doesn't really save her from that. As a Physic bot, she's just fine though. Chapter 12 Spoiler MVP: Ingrid Turn Count: 8 Divine Pulses: 2 All remaining students joined this month (Caspar, Bernadetta, Leonie, Linhardt, Petra, Marianne). Lysithea and Mercedes certify into Warlock and Sniper respectively to boost their physical stats. I'd actually prefer Mercedes to be in Sniper for the time skip, but then I'd have no Physic for Ch. 13 and I don't want to risk that. I spent a fair bit of money forging new weapons, including a second Magic Bow, and an NPC in the Abyss gives me a Goddess Icon out of nowhere. Quite a few of my units hit important ranks, including A-rank Swords for Byleth and Dimitri, meaning they can have Windsweep for Ch.13. In general, my battle prep is aimed more towards Ch. 13 than this map, which I'm not really worried about beating. And then I get to the map screen, and remember how far up enemy units start. So I spend a bit of time figuring out how I'm going to beat all the closest enemies, without letting any of them have a turn to target someone squishy. My team is the Blue Lions (minus Dedue), Lysithea, Hapi and Catherine - Constance, Cyril and Ferdinand are adjutants. Felix, Sylvain and Lysithea are going to take on the Death Knight's side, while Byleth, Ingrid, Mercedes and Dimitri are on the central stairs, and Catherine and Annette near the magic orb between them. They all have to secure kills, while avoiding the Pegasus Knights/ballistae, in order to relieve pressure on that first turn, but after that the danger mostly dissipates. Ladislava misses three times in a row with a Brave Axe against a green army priest, allowing him to survive. In fact, he survives the entire map (mainly because I ensure it) - in my head, this is the story he tells the grandkids about the Great War for Fodlan. Felix has to gambit the Death Knight in order to bring him to thresholds for Dark Spikes, but it is done, and there's no more threat on that side. Slightly tougher is the two giant birds, just because I left that side to Ashe and Hapi, and the rest of my units then have to rush over from left of centre to try and deal with them before they beat all the green units there. I spend a Divine Pulse here to get the Warp shenanigans right to kill the first bird, and then beat the next one on the next turn. I didn't actually have the units there to break all their barriers, which is a shame, but they only gave Umbral Steel so it's fine. After that this map is just a straight charge down the middle and right. Byleth kills the ballista user on the left, while the Sylvain group and Annette/Dimitri head down the main path towards Randolph's unit charging. A green sword master has already beaten them to it, and gets in a kill before he dies. Meanwhile, there's another beast on the right but I now have units behind me so it poses no issue, and Ashe and Ingrid combine to kill Hubert on the following turn. Ingrid would have done it herself, but I want Ashe to get as much EXP as he can right now. After Randolph goes down, Edelgard heads out, and my main group are pretty able to crush her. But I spend a Divine Pulse here, so Felix can get the Edelgard kill for the EXP instead of the over-levelled Dimitri, who I make chip her instead. And that's map over. What worked: Lysithea and Hapi now both have Warp (and Constance has Rescue, although she's not on this map). Which gave me lots of flexibility, and two Warp units were crucial in ensuring I avoided greater danger against the two giant birds. What didn't work: So, my big error, that delayed last log and screwed up my training. Basically, I've been using a mixture of sources to provide information for planning this run, and the one that I was using for the calendar (game8.co) had the wrong calendar image for Ch. 12, providing the picture of that month in Part 2 instead of Part 1. I remembered that the monastery wasn't available in Ch. 12 CF, but that it was on Church routes, and my recollection stopped there. So I was taken completely by surprise when I only had one week of tutoring and two free days, instead of three weeks and four free days respectively. I should have just used the Wiki, but that site conveniently had the monastery support-raising dialogue on the same page (although some of that info is also wrong). The big issue with this, apart from delaying build plans, was that Linhardt, Petra and Marianne were unrecruited - I was expecting to have three weeks to save-scum them asking Byleth to join, but now I only had one. Originally I wasn't even planning on recruiting them, but I got everyone else so I figured why not, and I'm glad because I actually do want rewards from all three of their paralogues. So my original plan was on the first free day I had to spend two activity points on Reason to hit Linhardt's recruitment conditions, and then try and save-scum for both Marianne and Petra to ask me to join - which I tried for ages, never got both of them, and got tired and gave up. So I reloaded the free day, spent a point on Reason and two points on Riding, then spent another point on Reason and Riding each the next free day to hit their recruitment requirements. This meant that Byleth missed B+ Authority pre-timeskip, which wasn't essential but still a shame. This also took me a lot of real time to do. Fun Fact: Despite this being a truncated month, I still have plenty of little things. I'll restrict myself to one from the battle, and one from the monastery. I had never noticed that while fliers can fly over normal walls, they can't fly over breakable walls before they are broken. The tile is still impassable to them, meaning they can't even fly from one side to another (even though the breakable wall is ostensibly blocking passage from front to back). Not sure that made sense in writing, but there it is. On the monastery side of things, Petra's dialogue changed when she was unrecruited in Ch. 12 compared to when she's recruited. Before being recruited, she seems to be genuinely conflicted and says she could join either side (bringing up Duke Gerth from Constance's paralogue as a reason to side with the Empire). But after she's recruited, she reveals Edelgard has sent her a letter asking for her loyalty, although obviously she chooses Byleth instead. The interesting insight here is that this would mean that Petra keeps this letter secret (and obviously chooses Edelgard) if you don't recruit her, which is just a nice way of reflecting the diplomatic tightrope Petra is always walking in this game. Chapter 13 Spoiler MVP: Dimitri Turn Count: 12 Divine Pulses: 4 Honey, I broke the game. This is famously the chapter which softlocks runs, which inspires gnashing of teeth and complaints about Maddening at its unplayable worst. Which are all justified, because this is objectively a hard map, maybe the hardest in the game. But this is also one of the maps where dodge tank Dimitri is uncontroversially superior to every other version of him, even with King of Lions dragging down his Avo a bit. Because his new personal, combined with an abundance of forest tiles, meant he took no damage this map at all. I mean, it helped that he started as a Level 32 High Lord with 31 AS? I don't even understand how. But boy, did he break this level. Even Byleth was relegated to cowardly hit-and-run attacks, but Dimitri wasn't even getting doubled outside of Grapplers. Actually, the Grapplers and Snipers are an especially big threat to Byleth this map, so Byleth flees towards Gilbert and Ashe's spawn point, keeping to the bottom edge of the map, while Dimitri stays on a forest tile and proceeds to kill every last one of them. Well, not actually, because I only leave an Iron Sword+ on him so that he doesn't go too crazy. Yeah, I was comfortable enough to make him hold back on the opening of this map. He didn't even use Wave Attack. A couple of Grapplers circumvent Dimitri's choke point, but Gilbert and Ashe have arrived, and careful placement means Gilbert can protect Ashe and Byleth from them, who are stuck chipping and running. Gilbert miraculously hits both of them on Enemy Phase, (displayed hit somewhere in the low 50s) so Ashe and Byleth can actually finish them. Meanwhile, Mercedes and Annette (who have the Caduceus Staff and Thyrsus from last map) are able to get close and pick off the enemies drawn towards them. Which clears the main danger from this map. They then move forward, Ashe and Byleth making the next pod of enemies split into two temporarily, which allows Dimitri, Mercedes and Annette to beat the rest, and move up to kill the units stationary to the right of the boss. Sylvain, Felix and Ingrid have a slightly tougher time, as Sylvain eats a gambit after killing an Assassin with a Brave Lance. Which slows them down a bit, but I've given them Chest Keys in advance so they can pick up the two chests behind Pallardo. Felix has to gambit the Assassin guarding the chests, as none of them can finish him by themselves and I only have one unit to spare. But they're able to beat the units nearest them, and Ingrid takes out fake Pallardo. Thankfully, Pallardo and his goons spawn with the Speed/Evasion Ring so I don't have to feel guilty about missing them. Ashe and Sylvain take out one goon, Mercedes the other, and Annette one-shots Pallardo to end the map. What worked: Dimitri worked so well it was scary. For some reason or other, his dodge tanking in Part 1 never blew me away like he did here. Combined with his significant level advantage on everyone, it actually makes me want to not use him for a while - especially since his build is now pretty much done, and everyone else still has at least some work to do. What didn't work: Some of you may be wondering along the lines of "You're bragging about how well this map went, but you still spent four Divine Pulses." Well, yes and no. I did spend those pulses - but all of them were from accidentally pressing A on the Door/Chest command when I wanted to attack or sort out a unit's inventory. First-world problems, yeah. Fun Fact: I never noticed before that the game treats destroying the environment as combat, giving you EXP/WEXP. It's not particularly useful, but I guess smashing stuff is better than a Wait action. Gilbert/Annette's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Byleth Turn Count: 1 Divine Pulses: 2 I've only done this paralogue once before, and I did it blind so Annette originally got slaughtered. Once I found out how the reinforcements worked, it was at least doable, although the fact that Gilbert hits like cardboard is embarrassing. This time, though, I just want to get in and out with the rewards. My levels are pretty good, and while I could mine this map for class EXP, I'm just not feeling it today. So I set up for a quick clear. Hapi Strides everyone, Mercedes kills (with a surprise Magic Bow crit!) a Warrior north of the starting position and Constance OHKOs an Assassin near him. This allows Cyril to head straight north to ORKO the Sniper with the Black Pearl, which is arguably the most useful thing I get from this map. Meanwhile, Ferdinand, Sylvain, Byleth and Lysithea head east of the starting position, picking up a couple of kills from nearby enemies. Then Dimitri (the only unit with A Authority) uses my shiny new game-breaking thing, Dance of the Goddess, to give them all an extra turn. I spend a Divine Pulse here because I get the positioning wrong - the gambit effect diagram always confuses me. Lysithea Warps Sylvain to the edge of her range, then heads north to provide Linked Attack support against the boss. Sylvain then goes to kill the Spear-carrying Swordmaster in the opposite corner of the map from the starting area, but unfortunately doesn't crit and dies to the counter, so I have to rewind. Sylvain can't ORKO without a crit, so I'm just going to have to fish for it. Annette kills one of the armoured guard around her (I was going to let Gilbert help, but he deals 3 damage with a Short Axe and 25 HP out of 60 with a Hammer+, so I don't bother) and I try again with Sylvain, who gets the kill this time. I don't even really want/need a Spear, but we're here now. Byleth goes over to beat Baron Dominic - I have Ferdinand in reserve, but Byleth crits with the Rapier+, so that's a map clear. What worked: Dance of the Goddess. My god it's so strong - it takes me back to good old Rafiel from RD. I'm now thinking I turn Manuela into a Pegasus Knight so I can pick up Opera Co. Volunteers in the penultimate chapter, and Hapi can equip Dance of the Goddess without me having to get her to A Authority. We'll see how I feel closer to the time. What didn't work: I'm mostly just thankful it only took one Divine Pulse to get Sylvain to crit the Swordmaster. It's not a particularly skilful or reliable strategy - I'd have preferred to send Cyril, but I think Cyril would have also needed a crit, and Sylvain might have struggled more with the Sniper. It got the job done though, so no complaints. Chapter 14 Spoiler MVP: Ingrid Turn Count: 7 Divine Pulses: 2 Just about all my A supports with my main units come crashing in this month, which means I don't need to spend that much motivating people. I class Dimitri into Thief - I always forget about steal-able rewards, and never get the Magic Staves in Ch. 6 as a result. But I do know Dimitri's paralogue has stat boosters I want, and Dimitri's likely to have the best AS (without Darting Blow) in my party, as well as being literally too strong at the moment. So he's going to master Thief as his extra-curricular. Catherine also gets certs for Archer and War Cleric, Linhardt gets Bishop, and Petra gets Wyvern Rider. None of my late recruits were able to promote pre-skip, but if I can promote them now it'll be that much easier to protect them during their paralogues - so while I won't actively instruct them, I will give them Advanced Seals if they're able to promote from passive tutoring. I have a couple of activity points free on my second Explore, so I spend them getting +2 Cha via tea time for Constance. I also Battle twice this month - as well as the paralogue, I end up clearing out the three battle quests I got, a red! battle for Gradivus, and a yellow! battle for a Miracle Bean (I might need it to get someone to 20 Luck to try certifications). Although a few people are looking to master their classes soon-ish, I'm still in a pretty good place party-wise, and not worried at all about this map. Byleth, Cyril, and Sylvain take the left path - I'm unduly cautious about this, as my memories of this map are of Flayn popping up and me killing her accidentally - I also killed Seteth, so I ended up redoing this map when I realised I lost access to the Inexhaustible. Felix, Ingrid, Dancer Dimitri, Annette (w/ adj. Mercedes), Hapi, Constance, Valkyrie Lysithea and Archer Catherine are in the central area. It's a bit light on tanky units, but I should be killing enough to avoid tanking I think. I had subbed out Mercedes for Annette and given one of her Magic Bows to Ingrid because I was slightly worried Mercedes would burn through them too quickly if she fought this map in Sniper. But it turns out there's a Magic Bow enemy drop on this map, so I really didn't need to bother. Things start pretty great - Felix is getting lots of crits, and he's not the only one. Dimitri uses Dance of the Goddess early so I can clear out all the mobile units near the seize point (I don't actually intend for him to fight anyone this map). The enemy units behind the front line aren't particularly able or willing to advance, so I feel pretty safe here. In the meanwhile, Byleth's group take care with the enemies nearest them, but they're beaten easily enough. The green army swordmaster makes this map even easier than it is already, so I figure I may as well escort her. All three of them end up shoving her forward on my next turn, so she can get to the onager quicker. This aggression indirectly causes my first Divine Pulse - Sylvain is able to kill an armour in between the swordmaster and the onager, but can't Canto far enough away to avoid aggro from a Pegasus Knight, who kills him on the next turn. I hadn't foreseen this, but Byleth is currently running Secret Transport Force (it was an alternative strat I was considering for Annette's paralogue and I forgot to change it), so the Canto issue is easily rectified by using Stride. Ironically, if I had changed the battalion, Byleth could have killed the armour and avoided this to begin with. Anyway, the fire tactic lands, and it's no trouble to hoover up everyone in the central area. I do spend a Divine Pulse here, so I can feed Catherine some extra class exp. Randolph heads into battle, but it's pretty pointless as he and his group easily get swarmed and killed - Cyril gets the boss-kill. What worked: As predicted, Magic Bow Ingrid easily beats armours. But it's pretty unfair of me to single Ingrid out - all the actual mages were easily one-rounding armours. Constance got Pneuma Gale this chapter, which allows her to one-round armours from two spaces, while still building Gauntlets exp. She's not quite at Aura Knuckles yet, but she'll be there well before she's finished in Valkyrie - I'm not even sure she needs Uncanny Blow given how good she is at the moment. I can really see everything coming together. What didn't work: The only units that are still a bit far from their complete form are Sylvain/Ferdinand, who don't have Swift Strikes, Mercedes lacking Hunter's Volley, and Felix not in War Master. Felix and Mercedes are just fine at the moment. Sylvain is also good, but he doesn't often hit ORKO thresholds without crits, unlike them, so he is starting to want to hurry up. haarhaarhaar's Jumble of Pseudo-Mechanical 3H Trivia: If you put any item (even if it isn't a weapon) in a unit's inventory pre-skip, then they won't get their free Iron weapon post-skip. I accidentally found this out by leaving a half-used Antitoxin and just that in Petra's inventory. Units in mounted classes can wear some outfits, but not others. War outfits and Summerwear are OK, for example, while the butler/maid outfits aren't. It doesn't matter how much of an edgelord Dimitri becomes, it's impossible to take him seriously when he does the Dancer dance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted December 14, 2022 Author Share Posted December 14, 2022 I've definitely slowed down a bit recently, but I'm still hopeful of completing this log before the Christmas period. Next section below! Bernadetta/Petra's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Constance Turn Count: 9 Divine Pulses: 2 This map sums up why you shouldn't ever go completely blind into a Maddening map. In general, all the post-skip paralogues have some slightly unfair mechanics to them, and this is no exception with its set of threatening reinforcements. Of course, I did know about this in advance, which is why I made Petra a Wyvern Rider, and didn't take the game up on its offer to send Bernadetta left. Instead, while the majority (including Petra) went right, to escort Petra to picking up the green army reinforcements, I sent some units (Catherine, Felix, Cyril, Sylvain, with Bernadetta tagging along) up to beat the units in the central clearing. Which did cost me a Divine Pulse (a Swordmaster on a forest tile dodged Felix, Catherine and Cyril leaving them all in danger) but was otherwise the right choice. On the right side, Constance and Ferdinand (with some help from a dancing Dimitri) did most of the work deleting those enemies. The starting enemies are all generally straightforward - the central group was able to aggro the enemies on the left path so that they moved off forest tiles, which helped. I spent another Divine Pulse to check how the enemy reinforcements on the left path would move once I routed the starting enemies - specifically to see if Catherine could tank them. But she ate a hit (23 displayed) so I wound it back, and left the rout to the following turn, so I could set up more carefully. I haven't left anyone in range of the pegasus group, but I have left Dimitri in the forests where Hubert will be - his job will be to try and stop Hubert before he fires off a Meteor. But Dimitri's hit rates aren't good enough, and he doesn't get the kill till the following turn - an allied armour bears the cost of that. Hubert's other reinforcements don't even bother with Dimitri, instead going after the remaining green army in range. Bernadetta has to Stride the rest of the right group so they can help out and Canto out of range of other enemies. Meanwhile, Felix gambits all the left path reinforcements - this is my first Wave Attack of the run, and it delivers as promised, allowing the rest of that group to get picked off safely. The pegasus group of reinforcements all head towards Felix's side - once again Bernadetta Strides Ferdinand/Constance, who go to help out, while Felix launches another Wave Attack, and the rest of that group finish the Pegasi. And that's that. What worked: Constance was in the Lysithea role of magic sniper, and outperformed Lysithea, despite having a worse (and smaller) spell list. Fully deserved MVP, what a beast. What didn't work: Petra would have been fine in her starting class of Thief - no enemy got anywhere near her, and Wyvern Rider at most shaved off one turn in getting the green army onto the battlefield. Waste of an Advanced Seal, but it's hardly an issue. Chapter 15 Spoiler MVP: Constance Turn Count: 7 Divine Pulses: 0 I did a couple of aux battles with Petra's paralogue. I could have started on other paralogues, but I wanted to promote the relevant recruits and to get Dimitri through Thief quickly. Byleth and Sylvain received Goddess Icons so they could start attempting certifications (no dice there) but Felix hit War Master after receiving a Miracle Bean - this was the only Master class I actually need in a timely manner, so I'm pleased it happened quickly. Felix and Lysithea also got an extra +1 to Cha from tea times - I'm beginning to have too many activity points for what I need to get done. Lysithea hit Dark Knight (but will stay in Valkyrie for now to get Uncanny Blow), Leonie hit Paladin, and Ingrid got Bow Knight and Assassin. I decided this month to train Ingrid in Swords, so she can eventually pick up Falcon Knight - Assassin is just a waypoint for that. Bow Knight is still the plan for endgame, but it isn't great for Spd growths, and while I'm farming Speed Carrots anyway, lots of my units want them, so any pressure I can take off demand for that will help. This battle is pretty simple. My army splits into a group going down the right path (Dimitri, Felix, Ingrid, Sylvain) and everyone else going forward from the starting point. I could clear this map very quickly (maybe in one turn?) with Warp/Stride/Dance of the Goddess, but I have to hang around to get some goodies, not least the Sword of Moralta from Rodrigue, who won't arrive till Turn 6. There's fairly little in the way of tactics here - both groups just charge down their respective lanes, Dimitri stealing a Master Seal from the Ashe-clone. I remember halfway that Byleth needs to switch sides, so Byleth can talk to Rodrigue - Dimitri will take Byleth's place shepherding along my main group. I manage to aggro Gwendal's group via the reinforcement trigger, which means I can set up to beat them all fairly quickly. But then Rodrigue arrives, and every enemy's aggro changes to him. So I have to instead do some Stride/Dance of the Goddess stuff here so that I can beat Gwendal before he gets away - Ferdinand hits A Lances in the course of this, which means no more Brave Lance for him. Of course, I make sure Byleth chats to Rodrigue first. And that's map over. What worked: I didn't spend any Divine Pulses this map, but I came close - I forgot that a paladin emerges from behind you when you pass the reinforcement trigger, and I wasn't ready for him. However, by coincidence Ferdinand had equipped a bow (without Close Counter) the previous turn, so the AI went for him instead of a guaranteed kill of Hapi/Constance. Close escape. What didn't work: This map is full of armours/paladins, but mages without effective magic still generally needed to double to get the KO. Also, Ingrid's Magic Bow isn't powerful enough to kill the armours here even with doubling - we're already beginning to see the limits of non-optimised hybrids. Fun Fact: In the English translation, the conflict within the Alliance is framed as pro-Empire (Gloucester) vs. anti-Empire (Riegan). In the Japanese, it's pro-war vs. anti-war. However, the game is inconsistent about this in both languages, and being pro-Empire is also being pro-war, so there's not a huge difference between the two positions. It's also a pretty far cry from King Lear, which provided inspiration for the Alliance noble names - although I suppose Regan/Goneril were anti-Gloucester in the play too. Caspar/Mercedes' Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Catherine Turn Count: 9 Divine Pulses: 2 There are two difficulties in this map. The first is beating the Death Knight with Caspar. The second is protecting him from reinforcements that arrive in Turn 10 or if you get too close to him/Mercedes. I promoted Caspar to Warrior and gave him Freikugel, so the former is possible. But the latter is unlikely, because Caspar can't take a hit. So I have to make sure I beat the map without those reinforcements. The map also doesn't show you enemies on the starting screen, so once again this is annoying to attempt without looking it up in advance. But the actual enemies are mostly manageable. Noticeable are a couple of Dark Knights - I think this is the earliest appearance of that class of enemy. I also don't have a lot of offensive gambits for the beasts on this map. It's only Umbral Steel, so I won't change things up, but it's something to stay mindful of. I try straight away to beat the Death Knight, Caspar doesn't crit so that's a Divine Pulse. Byleth, Ferdinand and Cyril head right of the starting position (apparently entering the central forest makes every enemy move, so nobody is going through there) to take on the pods of enemies there. They're slightly underpowered compared to the enemy Heroes, and I didn't send a healer with them, so Ferdinand has to gambit the second set. Everybody else heads left of the starting area, through the first demonic beast and the nearby armours. Caspar tries again, and succeeds with the Freikugel Smash crit - now it's just waiting around until the end of the map for them. Avoiding the central forest makes approaching the enemies in the central clearing a bit awkward - instead, I have to charge and take out the demonic beast on the left side so it doesn't come after me later, leaving units with high Avo (Dimitri, Catherine, Ingrid) in range of enemy attacks. Catherine and Ingrid take some damage, but it's not overwhelming. In order to manage all the enemies with range flocking over, Felix gambits them. Which changes the tide of things - the Byleth group are now able to come over and help with the remaining beasts (I Pulse away a miss from Cyril), and Ingrid and Catherine can eventually head north to help kill the giant wolf. After that, there's only the pod with the priest to deal with, and that's another map clear. What worked: It could have taken much more than a Divine Pulse to get a crit out of Caspar - I'm glad the no-investment version of this paid off, even if I did have to delay the paralogue to get him to Warrior. What didn't work: Cyril's PBV couldn't quite one-shot the enemy Heroes, which made things a little more difficult. Marianne's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Catherine Turn Count: 13 Divine Pulses: 6 Every Fog of War map is a pain, although Maurice is not a massive threat IMO - provided your army can reach him, he can be beaten in one turn. The bigger issue is getting the goodies - if you want all the Wootz Steel, you have to actively trigger and beat the wolf reinforcements, and there's a beast with a Giant Shell lurking in the opposite corner of the map to you - you have to fight your way through a lot of beasts to get to it. So I made this map a lot harder for myself than it necessarily has to be. The flip side of fighting all the beasts is that all the units I fielded got really buff, because you get extra EXP for ending any bar of a monster. As per usual, gauntlets were great in dealing with the monsters, which is why Catherine was my MVP. Constance and Mercedes' builds are also fully online, so they were very useful, although not quadding meant they couldn't ORKO the later health bars of beasts. I quickly decided that my slower units (Mercedes/Hapi) shouldn't join in hunting the Giant Shell, so after I beat the immobile wolves in range I had them stay just south of Maurice - Felix and Sylvain stayed to guard them. Everyone else (including Marianne, my resident torch bearer) went clockwise along the forest path, finally getting the Giant Shell. They beat most but not all the enemies along the way, meaning a beast leaked through targeting Hapi. After picking up the Giant Shell, the Byleth group went past the stronghold to beat the final immobile wolf and trigger the reinforcement wolves, who are fast but otherwise non-threatening. This also allowed enough time for the remaining beasts on the map to go after the Felix group - instead of engaging them, I decided I'd rather finish the map, sending everyone to smash Maurice, who like I say is not that scary (provided Marianne is safe). A short log, but a long and fairly repetitive battle. What worked: The Byleth group developed a rhythm to beating beasts on their turn, so provided I had the visibility right they weren't in danger. Of course, it was a Divine Pulse when I got the visibility wrong. What didn't work: All my Divine Pulses came from mis-estimating enemy ranges, or pressing too far ahead in order to check if there were enemies ahead. Everything on this map is quick enough to double my slower units, so whenever I had to step out of the forest tiles I'd be in a lot of danger. Linhardt/Leonie's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Dimitri Turn Count: 8 Divine Pulses: 3 Unlike Maurice, Indech is a boss you almost certainly can't beat in one turn. However, the fear factor for me in this map is the infinite reinforcements emerging from the dark, fairly near Indech's platform (and thus a big threat for you). My original plan was for my army to go down the centre path, then send Dimitri (in Assassin, with Battalion Wrath) right while everyone else went left from there. Which I should have realised was a terrible idea, because you can't go left from the central path as it cuts off pretty quickly. Anyway, Leonie Strides everyone from the starting point, and I make short work of the nearby wyverns. Dimitri opens the chest north of the starting point, and counters the Snipers waiting on the path north of here. Now that everyone's going in one direction, Battalion Wrath is overkill, but oh well. It allows Dimitri and Leonie (torch-bearer) to charge forwards, while everyone else goes and kills enemies in range. I'm able to make it up the right path relatively easily, although I'm conscious enemies are chasing me from behind, and my slowest units (Linhardt/Hapi) are beginning to lag. Constance uses a Rescue to pull Linhardt forwards, and I'm able to bring most of my units to the right of Indech. Byleth, Cyril and Sylvain get an early start on the boss, where I also gambit an enemy Warrior. I end up spending two Divine Pulses here to try and preserve an aggressive positioning of Sylvain, but I can't manage it so he pulls back a bit. Everyone else is able to get into melee on the next turn, so I break Indech's barriers and manage to drag him down to his final health bar, with Quick Riposte. Even now, I'm far more afraid of the enemies jumping out from the darkness left on Indech's platform. They block up this area a bit, although thankfully Catherine absorbs most of it with her high Avo - the bigger danger comes from an ambush reinforcement Swordmaster on the right, who wipes out Hapi - I have to Divine Pulse and Rescue her. Finally, I send Byleth south with a torch to find a Warlock with a stat-booster, who Sylvain KOs. My mages (Constance, Mercedes, Hapi) have more than enough in the tank to take on Indech, even with Quick Riposte, and Felix gets me the final blow. What worked: In Hapi and Linhardt, I had more support mages than usual, but it allowed Hapi to double as magical chip support. Indech deals magical damage but has low Res, so the boss fight is basically an inversion of normal combats, where your back line get up close and your front line defend them from reinforcements. So not having to Physic on Hapi's turn helped me out. What didn't work: Byleth, Sylvain and Cyril aren't particularly tanky for Wyverns, which I need to get used to. Not sure if Wyvern Lord will fix that. Chapter 16 Spoiler MVP: Mercedes Turn Count: 7 Divine Pulses: 2 Monastery-wise, this month was a mixed bag. All my paralogue recruits promoted, which was crucial to getting their maps done this month. But I didn't get a single Wyvern Lord - Cyril hit Bow Knight first, which was pretty funny. Mercedes and Constance are also fully online (both have Uncanny Blow as well as brave magic now), so now almost every character I'm raising is just chasing marginal gains. Lysithea, Constance and Hapi all class into Gremory, and Lysithea gets Dark/Holy Knight as well. For Lysithea/Constance, these classes are mostly to help them build Reason/Faith since they're basically done now and they may as well. I also battled on two free days this month - one for the paralogues above, and an earlier one to pick up Mercurius, help bring those aforementioned builds online, and rectify a mistake I made the previous month. The Peculiar Trend quest line nets you stat boosters in return for droppable/stealable Trade Secrets. However, as I found out to my chagrin, it only releases once a month, meaning if you fail to complete that month's quest the month it was released (as I did in Ch. 15), you'll be a quest behind. This is a problem because the best stat booster rewards appear at the end of the line (Speedwing/Spirit Dust/Energy Drop) - it now looks like I'll miss one or multiple of those as a result. I figured I may as well try and stockpile some Trade Secrets, since I was battling an extra day this month anyway and wouldn't have the room to next month. The actual chapter map is pretty simple, especially given how I levelled through the paralogues. Partially because of that, I got careless and made some simple errors. The critical error was overextending against a pod directly north of the starting position - I could just about beat them, but I couldn't tank nearby enemies and the reinforcement archer that arrives from the stronghold, and I spent two Divine Pulses figuring this out. Combat-wise, that was the worst of it - the paladins are tanky enough to survive people like Assassin Ingrid, but my army is in ridiculously good shape so I'm normally able to kill everything on Player Phase. I also beat the stronghold enemies (and Acheron) very quickly, although I have to let Dedue do a bit of tanking as I don't have enough units to stop all Acheron's reinforcements that turn. Byleth uses the ballista to aggro the Ferdinand replacement and trigger Lorenz. It briefly crosses my mind that I could kill Lorenz, but my curiosity is outweighed by my completionist desire for his ending card, so Mercedes chips him for Byleth to beat safely. My next error - despite Dimitri being right there, I forgot to take Lorenz's Master Seal - I spent a lot of money this month so would have liked to grab it, but it's not the end of the world. I briefly consider routing the map, but I really don't need to, so Lysithea warps in Mercedes for the Ladislava kill. What worked: I haven't given Sniper Mercedes her flowers yet, so here they are. Once she hits A Authority, she'll be endgame-ready, but she's already brilliant as-is. What didn't work: I wasn't considering raising Dedue anyway, but when he returned he was a Lvl 19 Grappler. Meaning he only got 4 levels since pre-timeskip, which is embarrassing (some of my units got that many just from the time skip itself). Even Lorenz did better. If I had genuinely invested in Dedue, I'd be really disappointed. Fun Fact: Not really about the game per se, but because of how the aux battles fell, this is the first and only month where I spent lesson points on units I wasn't actively raising (Marianne, Caspar, Leonie). In general, restricting my resources and attention to a core group has done wonders for efficiency, although I'm not sure I'll be able to replicate said efficiency to the same degree in Hopes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted December 27, 2022 Author Share Posted December 27, 2022 So much for that Christmas deadline - life always finds a way to get in the way. The log is very late, but we are in the home stretch, so bear with me a little longer! Rhea's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Dimitri Turn Count: 10 Divine Pulses: 2 I think this is the first map where I'm allowed to field 12 units? Anyway it means I can bring along my entire endgame party, although I end up switching in Annette for Mercedes so she can have some quality time with the Knowledge Gem. I also decide to bring Retribution - normally, I just use the Chalice if I want to counter enemy siege tomes, but I'm going to use this map as a trial run to compare Felix and Dimitri's Enemy Phase performance. Apart from a couple of droppable stat boosters, the big reward on offer here is the Mythril from barrier-breaking the Golems, which means I'm going to have the split the party down both sides. Felix and Dimitri are going down the same side (right) with most of my army, because that's where two of the three golems, and the siege tome users, are. Cyril, Constance, Catherine, Lysithea and Hapi all go left - Cyril and Catherine (with Fetters of Dromi) are mostly just performing hit and run attacks on the left-side enemies, with my Warp and Rescue users there so that they don't get caught in the range of more enemies than they can handle. Down the right side, the only major difficulty is getting down the stairs, as the Bolting mages and some cavalry are lurking to cover the enemies on the stairs itself. I spend a Divine Pulse here so I can nail the positioning, keeping Ferdinand outside of range of both siege tomes, setting up so the Bow Knight and the nearest Golem can't target Annette, and making Dimitri/Felix an attractive target to the mages. In the end, Dimitri ends up being too attractive, and actually takes damage from Bolting, thus ruining his personal, and he doesn't do enough to ORKO the Bow Knight, so another Pulse to change things up here. Once that's sorted, the map itself ends up being a fairly methodical rout. The right side is mostly clear after this point, so it's just a slow approach to the second golem, while I'm chipping away at the left side. I perhaps dawdle a bit too much beating enemies there, as I end up confronting the left-side golem while the bosses are in range - Byleth has to gambit them, with a Crest proc on Enemy Phase ensuring her safety, but after that my rout is secured. Despite a couple of hairy moments, not a tough paralogue. What worked: Felix works just fine on Enemy Phase, even without Quick Riposte. Interesting - I may have to alter the build plan. What didn't work: Dimitri took a lot of hits for a dodge tank. Still, he was never in danger of dying, and it was my fault for not giving him a better battalion. Lysithea/Ferdinand's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Mercedes Turn Count: 6 Divine Pulses: 2 Like the Yuri/Constance paralogue that also takes place on this map, my overwhelming memory of this paralogue is of getting swarmed by enemies on all sides without space to recover or regroup. And, like how the Yuri/Constance paralogue went this run, I ended up being completely fine after learning the enemy spawn structure. Specifically, if you beat the Swordmaster and Grappler bosses, the enemies in their areas all retreat, turning this map from scary to manageable. So I set up to beat both on the first turn. Ferdinand's Smite and Lysithea's Warp put Assassin Dimitri on the same bank as the Swordmaster, who then gets OHKO'd from a Wo Dao+ crit. Meanwhile, Catherine Strides Cyril for him to ORKO the boss - he has to get a crit, but does it first time so I don't even need to scum for it. This means that I've immediately completed the optional objectives, and the Lance of Zoltan/Ochain Shield are secure. Now, I just have to open up all the chests as I rout the remaining enemies. I thought I might be able to stem the Wyvern Rider reinforcements if I killed the Sniper boss, so my remaining units worked on that - Hapi and Constance using Warp and Rescue to put Mercedes in position to one-shot the boss and then extract her from the nest of enemies. Unfortunately, all that did was provoke everything on the map. Ferdinand, Lysithea, and Hapi used gambits to shut down most of the enemies gathering near the fountain, while everyone else (except Cyril and Dimitri, opening nearby chests on their way to regroup) moved to hold off the enemies nearest the Sniper boss. A Wave Attack from Felix is enough, although I do spend two Pulses here, one to fix Felix's positioning so he doesn't get eaten by the wyverns, and another because I left Sylvain a bit too vulnerable to those same incoming enemy wyverns. Byleth and Sylvain head forwards to open up the chest near the Sniper, while Catherine and Felix go over to help the Lysithea group. I end up having to hold off on killing the fountain enemies too quickly, so as to give Dimitri time to open the final chest. Killing those two bosses early really sucked the jeopardy out of this map. What worked: Mercedes was deserving MVP - as discovered previously, her normal Magic Bow attacks are strong enough to OHKO Wyverns, and Hunter's Volley beat everything else on this map. What didn't work: Sylvain is generally fine, but lots of bulky axe wielders meant this really wasn't his map. Chapter 17 Spoiler MVP: Cyril Turn Count: 12 Divine Pulses: 3 My three Wyvern Riders all became Wyvern Lords this map - about time, although functionally things didn't feel that much different. I also had a surplus of Trade Secrets from last time around, meaning I cleared that quest straightaway and lost the ability to pick up new Trade Secrets in the one aux battle I did this month. Oh well. I'm a little cautious for this map, just because Gronders didn't go so great for me in Part 1, so I make sure to check the wiki for any surprises in this map. I vaguely remember the flaming central hill, although it's useful to be reminded of the exact trigger, and of the arrival of the Alliance reinforcements. So I follow the wiki's advice, heading right of my starting point through the forest to the Empire enemies. I immediately spend a Pulse here, in order to get my positioning and RNG just right to attempt to kill the two cavalry enemies in that corner. The following turn, I bait out the Empire pegasi, and I shoot down Hubert on Turn 3, making sure to stay clear of the ballista range. If there's a general problem with following the wiki approach, it's that my army is much faster and stronger than the wiki standard, so I don't really end up letting the Empire and Alliance chip away at each other. Felix fishes for a crit against Edelgard that doesn't arrive, so I have to Pulse that away. One thing that hasn't changed from Part 1 Gronders is that Edelgard and Claude are still scary enemies. Dimitri chips her for the kill instead. The Alliance only start properly moving around now, towards a massively depleted Empire force (where's the thank you, Claude). Which is where I realise, way too late, that my following the wiki strategy has led to the (obvious in hindsight) weakness that I have nobody near the ballista user. And the ballista user has a droppable Brave Bow - the only droppable Brave Bow on this route. I've only missed a few optional items this whole run (mostly stealable items, or things I don't need another copy of) - but I want every copy of this weapon I can get. All things considered, the Brave Bow is the best weapon in the game, and the primary use of Wootz Steel should be to manufacture Brave Bow+. So this hurts. I spend a Pulse to see whether I can send anyone to get it - but Claude is too close, and too much of a threat, for me to send anyone on that turn, and I didn't bring Constance (my only Rescue user) this map. So it's either rewind the level significantly, or restart it, or leave the Brave Bow behind. I'm genuinely tempted to restart, but it does feel like my completionism is getting the best of me here, so with a heavy heart I leave the Brave Bow to the Alliance. Despite being massed on the hill, their Snipers haven't taken the ballista, because one of their paladins is sitting on it. I'm still wary of getting close, because the paladin could always move, and Claude lurks just out of range - I don't want to give him the opportunity to use his combat art. This stalemate continues for a couple of turns, before I get bored of it and decide to send in the destroyer, Mercedes, to get rid of Claude so I can rout the Alliance. But as it turns out, the victory condition is just beating the two bosses, so the map ends there. This is what happens when I follow pre-made strategies instead of figuring things out myself. What worked: Despite my complaints above, this map was certainly easier than it would have been if I'd decided to take the hill quickly, or fight both armies from the get-go. Most of my units were under little-to-no actual pressure, so I guess the wiki has that going for it. What didn't work: After a lot of spending the last few chapters to make sure I was fighting fit for the paralogues, I decided to summon back my online liaison Dimitri to bring in some extra cash (he's been out since I caught my first Goddess Messenger randomly in Part 1). But instead, I got an error message and I didn't get anything back. Meaning I missed out on some WEXP for Dimitri, a ton of cash, and wasted my only Goddess Messenger at the time on nothing. Grrrr. To top things off, I'm now poor with no chance of earning till the last weekend of next month. Fun Fact: Cyril has the exact same line in the monastery that he had in Chapter 15. At least, I'm pretty sure he does, anyway. Apart from Anna, that basically doesn't happen - I'm pretty sure that's an oversight from the devs. Chapter 18 Spoiler MVP: Dimitri Turn Count: 7 Divine Pulses: 3 Byleth hit S+ Swords this month. I've never achieved S+ without grinding before, so this is nice, and proof of concept about the efficiency reward of early A+ Professor Level. It also takes off some pressure on my Activity Points - although I'm now at a loss as to what to do with them. Maybe I'll just raise some other Byleth ranks, since I don't really cook or need to eat that many meals. I also answered an Abyss NPC correctly, netting me 5 Mythril, which means I don't have to worry about feeding the animals any more (I've only been doing it for some of the animals in Part 2, and I have surplus Bullheads/Nordsalat that I wouldn't otherwise be using). I also did my three Aux battles this month for the Peculiar Trend quest, and Mercedes and Dimitri picked up and extra +1 Cha from some tea with yours truly. My lasting image of the Fhirdiad map is CF endgame, not this level, so it always gives me a bit of a start to see Fhirdiad not in flames. Anyway, my job here is to head up both sides, making sure to pick up the Tathlum Bow and switch off the Viskam, before then taking out Cornelia. I could pick up lots of Agarthium in this map, but I don't need it - I probably won't use the Scythe of Sariel before endgame, and I have enough to forge a Devil Sword+. I could also parachute units in to kill Cornelia, but I'd rather pick up the Tathlum Bow and at least some EXP. Lysithea, Annette, and Felix (with Fetters of Dromi) start in the left corner, Constance, Cyril and Ingrid are in the right corner, and my remaining units (Mercedes has been subbed out) are in the central area. The left corner group have all been chosen because they can KO an enemy near their starting position, without remaining in range of the enemy Grapplers lurking behind them. The right group exist only to escort Cyril to the Viskam-operating lever ASAP. Cyril kills the Grappler near his starting position immediately, and Constance Rescues him away from the mages lurking behind him. My central group are then Strided so they can start killing the enemies lurking in the streets - but Sylvain keeps missing an enemy Swordmaster, which I spent two Pulses failing to fix (my fault for not trading in Swordbreaker), so I pivot to the mage instead. It's a bit sub-optimal, but hey-ho. Hapi uses Dance of the Goddess here to give the central group another go instead - I have Ferdinand push Felix out of Magic Orb range, while Byleth and Sylvain get another run at the trio of enemies they attacked earlier and Dimitri baits the Grapplers on Annette's side. Next, I challenge the enemies around the Magic Orb - Byleth gambits the enemies behind the Magic Orb, while most of the left side gang up on the Titanus (they're 6 points shy of killing it outright, but its target is Ferdinand so I figure it's fine) and I beat the Warlock operating the Magic Orb. Meanwhile, the Cyril group have finished off the rest of the nearest enemy pod and are moving further up - Constance has to absorb an Abraxas, and Sylvain/Catherine haven't quite caught up, but otherwise they're fine. But this, somehow, results in an Enemy Phase from Hell, where the Viskam are activated, and every enemy attack hits, regardless of displayed hit (five out of six attacks at 45 Hit or below, three of those attacks at 25 Hit or below), meaning I lose three units, including Byleth. Pulse and reorder, so only some of those attacks land, none of them resulting in a kill. Once that's sorted, the sailing becomes smoother, as I'm able to switch off the Viskam on the following turn. It's now a forward charge - Annette takes over the Orb and chips at the enemies in the streets, while Ferdinand hangs around to guard her and kill the Tathlum Bow Sniper when he arrives. Dimitri, Felix and Byleth move through the enemies on their side and trigger that Sniper, while Cyril's group reconvenes, readying for the boss-kill. Which happens on the following turn - wounded Byleth doesn't have the HP to tank Cornelia, so Cyril leads the line, and Sylvain gets the kill. What worked: After last chapter, here's a glitch in my favour - even after using up all their motivation in tutoring, Felix and Sylvain still had 50 points of motivation on the following free day, meaning they only needed one gift to return to max. I've seen versions of this glitch before, but normally only 25 points of motivation are recovered. Still doesn't balance out with losing all that online money, but it's something. Also a special shout-out to Constance, helping out massively in the chapter map with Bolting - she used it four times on this map despite only having one charge. What didn't work: The sequence of low-percentage hits for that one Enemy Phase was ridiculous to watch. Fun Fact: If you A-rank a support with a unit, and take them to the Sauna, and one of you overheats, there is a chance that the other will save you and the sauna mini-game will continue. I discovered this effect is solely RNG-dependent, and thus not limited to once per sauna - I had it trigger twice in one sitting this month. Dimitri's Paralogue Spoiler MVP: Felix Turn Count: 7 Divine Pulses: 3 This map is annoying for me, because there are three enemies with stealable stat-boosters, in three different corners of the map. The one furthest away from your starting position is a War Master (this is the first map with enemy War Masters?) who is very likely to be faster than any of your units with the Steal ability. So you'll need a Rally/Seal Speed or both to net his Seraph Robe. Because Dimitri is the only unit in my army with the Steal ability, this means I will also have to get him to the other units with stat boosters as well. The AI could easily screw me on this. But I have more pressing problems to deal with. My mages (Lysithea, Annette, Hapi) and Rapier+ Dimitri can kill the armours right of the starting position. But Felix, Sylvain and Cyril all require crits to one-round the trio of War Masters left of the starting position. It's doable (after a Divine Pulse), although they also need to have Stride (and Cyril needs a March Ring) so they can escape the range of the Bolting Group. Felix, however, has to stay behind to counter them with Battalion Vantage, a Killer Axe+, and the Chalice. And boy, does he counter them - for this entire map, every one of his Vantage procs is also a crit, meaning he's able to clear out the Bolting group and deactivate the traps on Turn 2 - which is when I'm able to rob and kill my first target. This triggers the nearby enemies stuck behind the traps. A Bow Knight poses some danger, but Lysithea thankfully dodges. After beating the enemies that get close, my army splits into two groups. One group, led by Felix, will stay behind, edging towards Hubert. The other group (all my mounted units + Dimitri) will head to kill the Manuela replacement and pick up that Seraph Robe. Once again, I'm struggling to get the ORKOs here - the Assassin boss is easy enough, but I also want to kill the Bow Knights surrounding her here, before they become a nuisance, and while Byleth can do it, neither Cyril nor Sylvain have the power to get the other Bow Knight. So I use another Pulse to get the crit. This triggers the Seraph Robe War Master to head out, and into range of my other units - but it also triggers the final target enemy, a Paladin with an Energy Drop. He's on the same side of the map as Dimitri for now, but could easily head to the Felix group. Ferdinand chips the War Master to activate Seal Speed, Dimitri robs him, and I kill the other enemies there easily enough. But, as feared, the Paladin (and all the remaining enemies on the map) head towards the Felix group instead. So, I have to scramble a response, to make sure Felix doesn't kill the target before I can rob him. I use my movement CAs to get Dimitri as close as possible to Lysithea (who thankfully isn't too far on the other side) - Dimitri moves over and she warps him to Felix's group. Who then pull back, and Hapi uses Dance of the Goddess to refresh Dimitri, who can now steal the Energy Drop. Felix remains at the edge of the paladins' ranges. However, the enemies pick this moment to wheel out Linked Horses instead of attack directly, and one of Hubert's Bow Knights is able to tank Felix and secure the kill. So, I rewind, and send Felix forward instead, to Wave Attack the battalion-users near Dimitri. Which works a bit too well, as I've accidentally left him in Hubert's range, who suicides himself on Felix's Killer Axe. To crown it all, Felix masters War Master with that attack. And with that, Arianrhod has fallen. What worked: Obviously Felix was doing bits (again without Quick Riposte) but I'd like to shout out Hapi's combat - she was still doing chunky chip and ORKOing armours even with Blue Lion Dancers equipped. What didn't work: Cyril, Sylvain and Ferdinand were all struggling for ORKOs. Admittedly, none of them are using the good stuff at the moment, but it's looking like they'll need their endgame glow-up sooner rather than later. Chapter 19 Spoiler MVP: Cyril Turn Count: 2 Divine Pulses: 2 Ferdinand hit Great Knight, which I didn't care about but at least is an option for endgame. More frustratingly, Ingrid didn't hit Falcon Knight this chapter, meaning there's basically no time left for her to build levels in it before endgame. The frustration is compounded because Mercedes classed into Bow Knight (just so she could build Riding and Bow ranks more easily) despite having E rank Lances - I guess that's just how it goes with 30% cert rates, although I have to say I've never waited this long for a certification in this game. Dedue also hit Grappler - he doesn't need it, but he can and I have an Advanced Seal so why not. Otherwise, it's pretty peaceful in the monastery - I did a couple more aux battles, although I only got meh stat boosters (Res and Cha) out of them. I also have to wonder what the point is of a brawling tournament where you always get to initiate combat. That just feels mean. Since I recruited Hilda this time around, I wasn't sure whether protecting her replacement on this map was tied to the rewards or not. It turned out not, but I wasn't prepared to risk it, so my job was to save all the greens and pick up the droppable items. This version of the Derdriu map feels like the weirdest to me, because unless you avoid the town altogether, it's much easier to assassinate Arundel than it is to protect the Alliance, and there's basically no solid way for the enemies to protect the boss. This certainly isn't the only map that encourages a quick boss kill, it's just one of the least fitting because Arundel should be a much bigger deal. Maybe this is meant to demonstrate that Claude's master tactic of waiting for you worked? Either way, I don't really want to slog through a rout or risk losing Judith, and the War Master replacement looked like it was going to die pretty quickly, so I set up for a quick clear. Not a one-turn clear, mind, mainly because I figured I wasn't in that much of a rush, although it would have been pretty easy to accomplish. Catherine Strides everyone except Dimitri and Hapi, who warps Dimitri into the southwest corner of town. Felix, Ingrid and Ferdinand go off to kill the so-called 'supply unit' south-east of your starting point. Although I then realised I accidentally traded the Chalice away from Felix, so that's a soft reset (DP numero uno) to give that back to him. Ingrid machine-guns the Magic Bow Paladin (what were they thinking with that?) with the Inexhaustible, Ferdinand kills the other Paladin, and Felix shoots down the pegasus with a crit. Lysithea kills the Mortal Savant (first enemy of this type in the route?), and I have to Divine Pulse again so Sylvain can get a crit against one of the Heroes with him. Byleth and Cyril team up for the last Hero, and Annette gives them a group dance. Lysithea and Dimitri beat the two Fortress Knights in the south-west corner, and Sylvain kills the Sniper. Byleth and Cyril kill the Hero in the centre, then Canto over to Dimitri - Cyril occupies the reinforcement gate (which works even before the seize square gets highlighted). Ferdinand and the War Master get a right beating (she manages a kill against a Fortress Knight, for Ferdinand just surviving the reinforcements is enough) before she gets fully healed up - but given the number of enemies around her now she probably won't survive the next Enemy Phase. Even Judith doesn't look like she has more than a couple turns of life left in her. So on the following turn, I let everyone who can get a kill, get a kill. Catherine is Warped over to Dimitri's group and Strides them - they kill the two Concoction-bearing enemies and some other units nearby. Cyril then takes down Arundel with a Brave Bow quad for map clear. What worked: Lysithea is still able to double some non-armour enemies. Admittedly, she's just barely at the threshold with Swarm and without any extra weight, but she's there. What didn't work: Byleth isn't one-rounding enemy Heroes with a Brave Sword, even with Swordfaire. It's a bit concerning, because that is supposed to be Byleth's main route to ORKOs at endgame. Fun Fact: Lots to choose from this month! Localisation Difference: Annette's sass to Gilbert is lost in translation. After she suggests some devious cooperation with the Alliance, Gilbert wonders (in the Japanese) what her parent's face would look like on hearing that, and she replies he should go get a mirror. In the English, it's mother instead of parent, and her far more tame response is along the lines of "it's not that bad". Tea Time Observations: In the Japanese, Sylvain's tea time comment (on staring at his face) is that you can still see the imprint from where he got slapped. Fair. In other weird teatime news, Anna tells us that her clothes are specially made to be extra-breathable. Trivia: The Abysskeeper is from Derdriu. And Edelgard still has post-chapter map dialogue about dispatching troops to Arianrhod, even though in my run it's already been captured. 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Shadow Mir Posted December 27, 2022 Share Posted December 27, 2022 49 minutes ago, haarhaarhaar said: But instead, I got an error message and I didn't get anything back. Meaning I missed out on some WEXP for Dimitri, a ton of cash, and wasted my only Goddess Messenger at the time on nothing. Grrrr. Doh, I missed! 49 minutes ago, haarhaarhaar said: To top things off, I'm now poor with no chance of earning till the last weekend of next month. So ein mist! 52 minutes ago, haarhaarhaar said: This map is annoying for me, because there are three enemies with stealable stat-boosters, in three different corners of the map. The one furthest away from your starting position is a War Master (this is the first map with enemy War Masters?) who is very likely to be faster than any of your units with the Steal ability. I just finished that map myself, and it was War Masters. Thousands of them. ...Haha, not really, but they really ain't something I want to allow to get the first attack. 56 minutes ago, haarhaarhaar said: Ingrid machine-guns the Magic Bow Paladin (what were they thinking with that?) with the Inexhaustible lmao Magic weapons on enemy units that don't have the stats to use them well are always worth a laugh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted January 6, 2023 Author Share Posted January 6, 2023 Hope people had a restful holiday break - I hope this final edition of the log finds you all well! I finished this run in 2022, but the last edition of this log has been a mammoth, so is coming out now in 2023. Thanks for reading along - I've enjoyed writing everything up, and I look forward to putting it to use when I run Three Hopes. I'm not sure whether I'll start the Three Hopes run straightaway, because Engage is just around the corner, and I don't want to get burnt out on Fire Emblem before that happens. But I definitely will do the Three Hopes run at some point, so watch this space. Anyway, here we go! Chapter 20 Spoiler MVP: Ingrid Turn Count: 1 Divine Pulses: 0 The moral of this chapter is "Ask and you shall receive," apparently. I finally got Ingrid into Falcon Knight - better late than never. Shamir also got into Fortress Knight (I felt bad Dedue got a promotion and she didn't), and Lysithea hit S+ Reason. Obviously she wasn't quite as quick as Byleth, and she did spend a bit of time with the Knowledge Gem (which Byleth never did), but still, I've done better than I have previously with Lysithea. And as usual I did my three aux battles for the Peculiar Trend quest - funnily enough Hapi got critted twice in a row by an enemy mage, but received no damage because her Res is just that good. That made me chuckle. I also put Sylvain into Soldier - he doesn't really have anything to do build-wise, so he can pick up Reposition, which is miles better than Shove, especially for fliers. I also mentioned in the Chapter 19 log how I wanted Arundel to be much better protected than he was so that the player wouldn't plump for a quick boss-kill, given his relative importance in the story. And then this chapter rolled around, giving me exactly what I asked for. Actually, I'm gonna go on a tangent here about how great I think the map design for this version of Fort Merceus is (tbh, I also think it's pretty good on other routes, I just forgot how it played on AM). It's pretty clear, even just from looking at the map screen, how story and gameplay are supposed to meet, which is what you want from every level, and what the best Fire Emblem levels deliver. You're offered three "routes" to the Death Knight. The quickest, central route puts you in range of the most monsters, whose job is to slow you down and keep your army in range of the various siege weapons for as long as possible (many of which can't be countered). The left route has the extra rewards of the two chests, and a Brave Axe - but you have to beat a pretty tough Caspar/WM for that, and there's an extra monster waiting if you attempt to follow that route to the boss. The right route, with Linhardt/his replacement, is easily the least threatening route, but it's as long as the left route, without the rewards - and you'll still be dealing with enemy fire from the centre. You're given choices, but each comes with its own benefit/cost analysis. Then, of course, the most powerful incarnation of the Death Knight (the toughest human enemy on this route) sits at the end of it, who is free to move when threatened, is likely to double and crit given the chance, but still has a guard of enemies with him so that you can't easily rush his room, and you might still get fired upon if you haven't taken the central siege weapons out. This really did feel like I was taking on a fortress designed to be impregnable in-world, and it didn't rely on ambush spawns to make it difficult for the player - in fact, it's because I could see what was coming that I could feel it would be challenging. After all that, you may be wondering - why on earth did I choose a quick boss-kill? The short answer is that I chickened out. The long answer is that I was feeling good in terms of levels, I didn't want to be spending too much more money repairing and forging weapons that I wasn't necessarily bringing to endgame, and that attempting to deal with this map as intended looked like a massive headache. You could say the map was designed too well. So I decided no thanks, I'll take the easy route. Which still involved a decent amount of set-up, because I wanted the chests and the Brave Axe. In an ideal world, I'd have given Mercedes the boss-kill, but that wasn't looking feasible. Provided you can double the Death Knight (which is doable, but not easy), you need 74 magic Atk, or 76 physical Atk, to down him - while there are a literal handful of enemies that can survive one of those on this route, no human enemy on this route can survive both. And not even Mercedes and Constance, my go-to delete buttons, could get to that threshold without help I wasn't yet willing to give them (Rally Mag + a couple of boosters/magic meals - I didn't have units to spare for rallying and didn't want to use Mag boosters just yet). Getting multiple units to the Death Knight isn't an option, because I also need to send someone to pick up the Brave Axe, and someone else to pick up the chests - I don't have any units to spare if I want to finish the map in one turn. So, I have to change tack - if I can't beat the Death Knight by doubling him, I'll have to quad him. Step up, almost-final form Ingrid. In Bow Knight, it turns out she only needs one Speed Carrot, Weight -3, and Darting Blow on top of her current speed to get to the quad threshold with The Inexhaustible (if the DK still had the Scythe of Sariel, I would have needed more). Now she only needs 58 Atk, provided she can hit four times, or 64 Atk if she hits three times. The Death Knight has strong Avo (I gave her an Accuracy Ring instead of a Speed Ring for this reason), so I figure it's better to play it safe and gun for the higher threshold. She has 30 Str in Bow Knight, so keeps Death Blow and equips King of Lion Corps and adjutant Felix, putting her at 65 Atk. Felix has been using that battalion with Battalion Vantage for a little while, so it's primed for Ingrid to use Battalion Desperation (though she has to drop her Prowess skill) to avoid the Death Knight's guaranteed-OHKO counter. And then it's time to send her off. Catherine Strides most of my units, Byleth and Ferdinand Smite Cyril and Ingrid. Hapi warps Mercedes, so she can run over to not-Caspar and pick up that Brave Axe. Constance moves her Strided movement and Rescues Dimitri so he's further down the left route. With the March Ring, Cyril is able to open chest no.1, and Canto into position, waiting for Strided Dimitri to dance him, so he can open chest no. 2. Lysithea warps Ingrid behind enemy lines into the centre of the map, and she runs over to just in front of the Death Knight's guards, and hits him three times in a row for the clear. That actually ended up being a really satisfying win. What worked: Ingrid is a genuine threat in the late-game, for the first time ever. If repairing Brave Bows was less resource-demanding, she could have been doing this all game. What didn't work: I don't think I have any complaints? I mean, only fliers could get within 1-range of the DK, and none of my fliers could finish him without a crit, so on paper it looks like all my builds aren't strong enough. But I think it just says more about how strong the Death Knight is, and in actual fact I was able to beat him with one unit, so all's well that ends well. Fun Fact: A lot of material this month, but I've actually managed to narrow it down this time to things I legitimately didn't understand. 1. Dimitri and Hapi's A Support. More specifically, what it reveals about Cornelia. It seems to suggest (combined with other info you get from this route) that the TWSITD person pretending to be Cornelia was at odds with Thales from the time of the Tragedy of Duscur (so at least nine years in-game). On CF, you do see Cornelia getting too big for her boots - but if there was evidence of this nine years before Part 2, then how has she been left to her own devices ever since, and why would this even be the case to begin with? Or have I just misinterpreted the entire thing? 2. There's an NPC in the Abyss who curses an unspecified prince and says next time he may as well get on a wyvern and fight boldly, because he missed his chance to act quietly this time. I assumed this was a reference to the Arundel fight last chapter, but I still have no idea what he's talking about - and he runs off straight after he says this. Anybody know what I'm referring to, and can explain what that was? Chapter 21 Spoiler MVP: Cyril Turn Count: 2 Divine Pulses: 1 This is the final chapter in the monastery, so I'm mostly just rounding off ranks because I can in tutoring, and spending all my money because I can. I drop 60K gold on various prep for the last two chapters, 2,400 Renown for the Brave Bows in the Pagan Altar, and another 90K (and all my remaining resources) on items to be converted into Renown. I don't know whether/when I'll play 3H through again, but I figure if I do come back to it then it'll help my next NG+ run. For reference, I now have about 21K renown just from the monastery, and I'll have gotten a bit more from the three aux battles I did at the end of the month. Which also allowed me to complete my final, 61st quest of the run - Peculiar Trend. I was worried in Chapter 15 that I would miss a relevant stat-booster from this quest line, but it turns out the booster I missed out on was the Seraph Robe, which is probably the worst of the lot. That makes me feel a bit better. Another unexpected windfall is that Hapi mastered Gremory this month. It's irrelevant, but I'm still glad to see it. Everyone in my final twelve except Hapi, Catherine, Cyril and Byleth got +1 to Cha from in-monastery tea time - Lysithea got +2. The last time we were in Enbarr Town was for Balthus and Hapi's paralogue, which made me rack my brain a lot trying to figure out a way to clear it whilst retaining my sanity. I'm facing different problems this time, but they similarly demand a lot of my brainpower. Namely, I've decided that this is the run where I field Seteth, Flayn, Dorothea and Manuela on this map so I can get all the rewards from them visiting places in their past. I've never gotten the full rewards from this map before. I had the foresight to ensure Dorothea and Manuela certified into Pegasus Knight, but I wasn't actually sure until I got to the map screen whether I'd bother with this, and none of them have gained a level except via the timeskip. Fielding and protecting all four of them while doing the map normally is a non-starter, but a quick clear whilst fielding them means giving up on lots of EXP for my army. I also realise that a quick clear here will have to involve giving up on some of the other rewards. I don't feel too bad about the Sword of Zoltan, because Dimitri and Felix's support already got me one, which I haven't used at all this run and won't use in this map or the next. The same is true for the Tomahawk, except that's more easily obtainable and a worse weapon - although it's so near my starting position that it feels ridiculous to leave it behind. I do want the Bow of Zoltan though, because Cyril would love it even if it's just for the endgame - its forged version is second only to Failnaught in Mt, and Ingrid's getting Failnaught for endgame. However, Hubert is extremely far away and there's no way that Seteth/Flayn can reach their relevant locations on Turn 1 if I'm also trying to secure a boss-kill. Which means I will need to endure at least one Enemy Phase - but then there's still the logistics of getting someone to Hubert, and then a host of attendant problems: can I defend my Warp users? do I need to send a separate unit to get the Bow of Zoltan? and so on. Cue a lot of head-scratching and tile-counting. My eventual solution: Ferdinand, Dimitri (Dancer), Ingrid (Falcon Knight), Lysithea (Dark Flier), Cyril (Wyvern Lord, March Ring), Hapi are in the left group, near the Tomahawk chest. Byleth (Enlightened One), Constance (Gremory), Dorothea, Manuela, Seteth, Flayn are in the right group. Ferdinand uses Impregnable Wall on Lysithea, Cyril and Hapi. I only just bought the Impregnable Wall battalion from the guild this chapter, specifically for this clear - it's ridiculously powerful, but I don't like using it much because it doesn't really fit with how I like to play, and I rarely find it is relevant enough to me to justify deployment over something with better stats. Obviously, this is one of those times, and Kingdom Armored Co. is the only source of this gambit in the entire route. Anyway, Ferdinand uses it, then Cantos off over the bridge. Dimitri then goes over and dances him. Constance comes out and uses Rescue on Ferdinand, who can now come over, take Constance's starting position, and cast Impregnable Wall on Seteth, Flayn and Manuela. Byleth then Strides everybody here who hasn't moved, and Seteth, Flayn and Manuela charge as far as their movement can take them (Flayn has the Fetters of Dromi just in case she can't move in a straight line). Dorothea flies onto the nearby wall, out of enemy range. That's Phase 1 of Turn 1. Phase 2, Lysithea gambits the Grappler in the pod of enemies directly near her starting point - with the Blue Lions Brooch and Cha help over the game, her hit rates are decent, although obviously she only does 1 damage to the Grappler and 0 damage to the rest of the pod. Which doesn't matter, because the rattled effect still kicks in. She then Cantos over to directly west of Dimitri, on the bridge. Cyril occupies the position just north of Dimitri. Ingrid takes the tile directly south, and uses Stride (with Secret Transport Force) on Cyril, Lysithea and Dimitri. Hapi goes to the tile east of Dimitri, and uses Dance of the Goddess to refresh them all. Cyril heads his full movement, bringing him three tiles shy of opening the Bow of Zoltan chest. Lysithea moves to the tile north of Dimitri and Warps him, bringing him to the same area as Cyril. Dimitri then dances Cyril, who opens the Bow of Zoltan chest and then heads towards Hubert, landing on the 1-tile wide river separating Hubert's area from the rest of the map, two tiles from the main path. Ingrid kills the Wyvern Lord closest to Hapi. That's Phase 2 of Turn 1. Turn 1 Enemy Phase, things go pretty poorly for me - Ingrid gets one-rounded by another Wyvern Lord (displayed hit 21) and Dimitri also gets killed despite being on a forest tile. A lucky hit from a Dark Knight (28 Hit) deactivated his personal, and then another Dark Knight got the kill. If I hadn't been playing FE games for so long, I'd have assumed this game was out for me personally. Instead of Pulsing this, I actually did a soft reset, so I could give Dimitri an adjutant and Ingrid a Speed Carrot and an Evasion Ring (instead of a Speed Ring which she was using to double the Wyvern Lords). Turn 1 goes as described above, except Ingrid misses an attack against the Wyvern Lord she was supposed to kill on Player Phase, so kills him on Enemy Phase instead. Dimitri still takes a hit from the Dark Knights (18 Hit), but thankfully doesn't take two hits, so survives the Enemy Phase. Meanwhile, lots of people pile in on Cyril and Flayn. Honestly, if I had to attack a unit under Impregnable Wall, it'd be this Flayn, who is a Lv 11 Pegasus Knight with 28 HP and 10 AS (and 7 Def, not that that matters). They do a good job on her too, bringing her down to 11 HP (thanks Poison Strike). A quirk of the AI is that an enemy won't gambit you if it deals more damage by attacking you - and since everyone around Cyril and the trash-tier trio could double them, that meant they didn't attempt to land a gambit, which could have ruined this quick clear. That's the Enemy Phase, and the final proper hurdle before finishing the map. Turn 2, Byleth Strides Dorothea, the cardboard quartet move to where they need to go, everyone else who can gets a kill in, and Cyril uses PBV on Hubert to clear the map. I was racking my brains over this for at least a couple hours, but despite the fact that I basically cheesed this map, I'm still really proud of this mission clear - to the point where I'd say it was my favourite clear of the run. Recency bias is playing a part in that statement, but still. Other levels were harder or more dangerous or more demanding, but as far as this run was concerned, this map made me reach the furthest into my bag of tricks, just to try and surmount the basic hurdles of the boss being far away and my units being weak - and I think this strategy is very replicable, even without my exact units or builds. I don't think I could have pulled this off in my last run of the game, so this feels like genuine improvement. What worked: I think I've blown my own trumpet enough for one log section. What didn't work: Writing up this log, I noticed a couple of improvements I could have made. First, the answer to Dimitri's dodge tanking woes wasn't to double down on Avo as I ended up doing, but to pivot to B. VanWrath + Chalice + Rapier+/Cursed Ashiya Sword+, which would have netted him more EXP. Second, Ingrid didn't actually need to engage the Wyvern Lords, because Hapi and Lysithea had Impregnable Wall up (in a previous version of this strat I didn't have it on Hapi) and the Wyvern Lords would have had no chance against either version of Dimitri. If I'd given Ingrid the Fetters of Dromi, she could have gone and picked up the Tomahawk instead, and with her evasion she probably could have survived the gambited Sniper and any other enemies in range of the chest. I clearly still have much to learn. Fun Fact: Dimitri says at the end of this map something along the lines of "The way to the palace is clear, let's go everyone!". Given that a whole 3 out of 50 or so enemies have died, that's pretty funny. On a different note, Ferdinand and Lorenz basically both say out loud that they shouldn't really be on Faerghus' side of this war. It's not the first time Lorenz has said something to that effect in the monastery (and obviously this is after he basically got forced at gunpoint into joining Dimitri) but it's new from Ferdinand. I can't remember other characters being as vocal about it, even on CF (maybe Ingrid?). Endgame Spoiler MVP: Dimitri Turn Count: 10 Divine Pulses: 5 We're finally here! Again, I spend a ton of time in the prep screen, mainly so I can use all the stat boosters I've been hoarding. I'll go into more details of final builds in the unit rundown below, but basically the magic number is 73. With 73 Atk (magical or physical), if you hit twice you can ORKO every human enemy on this map except Myson (who can tank the magic attack) and the Fortress Knight next to him (who can tank the physical attack) - obviously there are plenty of other ways of dealing with those two enemies. Most of my builds revolve around hitting twice on Player Phase, so I tried to make sure that everyone who did hit 73 Atk with their top two weapons of choice. Nothing for Hapi, as dedicated support. This is also the only map in the entire game where I'd genuinely prefer to field Retribution over just giving someone the Chalice, because I can't predict exactly from the map screen who the siege tome reinforcements will attack when they arrive, and counter-killing them is easier than letting them take shots at me as I approach. Hegelgard is a scary enemy as per usual, so Cyril uses Retribution on Dimitri, Byleth, Felix, Sylvain, Catherine and Ferdinand, and then Catherine Strides everyone except Cyril, Constance and Mercedes, so I can start moving people out of range of her slow pitch. Sylvain uses Reposition to get Cyril out of range. Constance and Mercedes kill the two Mortal Savants in the chest room to the left, Ferdinand kills the Gremory behind them, and Ingrid kills another Gremory, before pulling back into the range of two War Masters. Felix shields her from them with her body. Dimitri steps into Myson's range, aiming for a counter-kill. Lysithea opens a chest with a Talisman. Yes, it's the final chapter, but as far as I'm aware the only stat boosters I've missed are from Peculiar Trend quests that I didn't trigger, and it's very much on the route I was always going to take. Dimitri beats Myson, which gets rid of a bunch of enemies - the only ones I care about are the warlocks in the room beyond the chest room. Felix beats the War Masters. Hegelgard targets Sylvain and Dimitri, neither of whom she has a chance against. I thought the last Gremory in the chest room would also come over, but apparently not, so I have to go over and kill her on the next turn. Byleth opens the Energy Drop chest, I move most of my units through, trying to only have units I think will dodge the Magic Orb in the next room in range of it. Dimitri and Catherine (but mostly Dimitri) start baiting enemies from the central room. Even though I'm not passing through there, I'm going to have to beat those enemies at some point, and this is the safest way to do it. This sets me up to use my first two Divine Pulses - the Mortal Savants move a bit awkwardly, posing a threat to the majority of my army as they come up to attack the Magic Orb user. She's the priority target this turn, because Magic Orb + Hegelgard will kill anybody if both land, but a monster is positioned awkwardly between me and her, requiring at least four units to kill it, with very few available spaces to attack it from. Combined with needing another two units to kill the Mortal Savants and Ingrid to kill the Magic Orb user, I needed to be positioned much better than I was to make it all happen this turn. So I rewinded to accomplish just that - and then Felix didn't crit the Mortal Savant with his Killer Bow+ (hit 100 crit 65, so I can't be that mad) so I have to rewind again. This time, everything works out - Dimitri and Catherine advance into the central room, and everyone goes back into Hegelgard's range. Hegelgard now starts picking on Hapi and Dimitri, which she continues to do until she switches weapon. I hadn't really thought about Hegelgard's AI going in, but I got really lucky with this. Hapi is relatively beefy (around middle of the pack HP-wise, and with HP+5 only one point shy of Byleth and Cyril) and had only one point of Prt less than Mercedes and Lysithea, both of whom weren't running Prowess skills on this map, making Hegelgard especially dangerous to them. If Hapi had gained a point of Def from a level-up and I hadn't yet entered the throne room, one of them might have been screwed. As for Dimitri, I'm assuming he was targeted every turn for story reasons? Because his Prt was not as low as the mages. Anyway, Hegelgard never posed him any threat from start to finish, so I'm glad he got targeted. I imagine people using his VanWrath build might have been sweating buckets about this. I move through to the anteroom by the throne room, and decide to start baiting as many enemies as I can from here, rather than attempting to kill them after I'm in the throne room. Everyone who isn't going in to the throne room (i.e. Ferdinand and my mages) are hanging out at the back of the room with the Magic Orb, because I'm wary of those siege tome reinforcements. Everyone who is going gets a Retribution top-up, and helps clear out the throne room enemies who helpfully track the wall as they come closer. Then, it's time for the throne room approach. Despite feeling ready and thinking I was prepared, I still burn three Divine Pulses here. The first was because I miscounted Ferdinand's distance from the Meteor Warlocks, the second was because Ward couldn't save Cyril (I should have known better), and the third because I put too much faith in Ingrid's Avo, when she wasn't built for avoiding things. Eventually, I just got quite lucky, as one of the Meteor mages (displayed hit 74) and both Bolting mages (47 hit) missed Byleth, allowing her to survive the turn and counter-kill all of them. It's not quite repayment for all the low-hit attacks and KOs I've received over the run - but boy does it feel like the RNG gods have given me their blessings. The big danger is now over, and I've only got two turns left on my Retribution, so I start setting up to beat Hegelgard. Byleth's primary job this map is to guarantee that she lands her gambits on Hegelgard, which indeed she does. Felix and Sylvain get through one and a half bars of her health, and on her turn Byleth's counter finishes the second bar. Her second attack is against Felix, who is unfortunately one point of damage (after a Crest proc and crit) shy of wiping out her third health bar, so takes a big counter. But he'll be fine, and this will all be over soon. Meanwhile, Dimitri has killed a couple of throne room enemies and everyone outside the throne room has been mopping up reinforcements (Lysithea has been killing the Dark Knights). On the final turn of the map, Ingrid and Cyril combine to kill the first of the War Master reinforcements, Byleth gambits Hegelgard, Sylvain chips her down, and I gift Dimitri the kill with Thunderbrand. Even VanWrath Hegelgard is not a problem when she can't hit him. Dimitri, just for some flair, finishes things with a Thunderbrand crit. And that is well and truly the end of the run. What worked: All my units deserve a pat on the back, but a special shout-out to Sylvain, who ended up ranking 3rd in my army for Avo with 87. It's pretty decent considering that I never intended for him to dodge things until the last minute, he wasn't running Alert Stance, and he ended up being far more reliable on this map than I could have hoped. What didn't work: War Master's Strike does not deal effective damage to Hegelgard (maybe because of an oversight with her null effective damage ability?). I was really excited to see it, because I was expecting War Master's Strike Freikugel (via a crit) to be able to wipe out even her final health bar. But it turned out to be just a worse version of Smash. This also meant that I did not use War Master's Strike or Quick Riposte once this run, despite them being the grail at the end of Felix's build. Sometimes, you've just gotta try things instead of thinking about it, huh. Fun Fact: I don't think this really counts as a fun fact, but it doesn't fall in any other category. Stealth worked, too well. To be honest, it's the first time I've ever even noticed it working. Because Catherine did not use her weapons once this entire map. During Player Phase other units had always dealt with nearby enemies, and nobody targeted her on Enemy Phase. Which meant all she did on this map was be a Stride-bot, and take up a position to try and hem in the Meteor Warlocks. I'm not complaining per se - they were important things that somebody had to do, and I didn't have to worry about leaving her anywhere for this whole map. It's just kinda weird, is all. Now, we have the unit reviews. I still haven't figured out why I can only download low-quality screenshots, so unfortunately I have to make do without them. I'm following the same format as I did for the half-time reviews, except this time there's some extra info about their endgame set-up, I've also worked +2 Cha from birthdays and battalion boosts to Cha into the average stats comparison, and I've included the build path (classes they certified into/used but didn't master are in brackets). All stats are taken from the very end of the game, literally just before Dimitri finished the map. Fulltime Review - Blue Lions Spoiler Dimitri - 9.5/10 Final Status: Lv 44 Swordmaster Progression: Noble > Fighter > Archer > Dancer > Assassin > (High Lord) > Thief > (Great Lord) > (Swordmaster) Ranks: Swords S, Authority A+, Bows B, Armour D Skills/Arts: Sword Prowess Lv 5, Sword Avoid +20, Hit +20, Sword Crit +10, Battalion Wrath, Windsweep, Curved Shot, Shove Equipment: Brigid Hunters, Wo Dao+, Mercurius, Sword of Moralta, Thunderbrand, Brave Bow, Evasion Ring, adjutant Dedue Final Stats: HP 67/Str 44/Mag 12/Dex 26/Spd 43/Lck 25/Def 21/Res 14/Cha 52 (received Str+2, Spd+3, Luck+4, Cha+5, Mv+2) Average Stats: HP 59/Str 43/Mag 13/Dex 33/Spd 39/Lck 21/Def 25/Res 12/Cha 49 Notes: If he hadn't been forcibly removed from teaching for half of Part 2, S+ could have been on the cards, since he saw lots of combat as my dodge tank. He wasn't far off mastering Swordmaster either, though I have no idea what anyone would do with Astra on Dimitri. Dimitri needed a tiny bit of Str help to pick up the War Master kills on Enemy Phase at endgame - but apart from that he almost never needed help. He wasn't totally issue-free, mages hit him more than I would have liked; I talk more about this below, but I don't regret making him a dodge tank over and alongside Battalion Vantage/Wrath for one second, not least because he spent a chunk of the game still dancing. Mv+2 early on was huge for him, but especially as a Dancer, it allowed me to pull off clears that would have been made much tougher without it. Deserved MVP of the run. And that Ch. 13 lives on for me as an absolutely ridiculous win. Dedue - 7/10 Final Status: Lv 29 Grappler Progression: Commoner > Fighter > Brawler > (Grappler) Ranks: Gauntlets B+, Authority B, Axes/Bows/Armour C Skills/Arts: Axe Prowess Lv 2, Str +2, HP +5, Weight -3, Defensive Tactics, One-Two Punch, Healing Focus, Shove Equipment: Short Axe, Lampos Shield Current Stats: HP 59/Str 30/Mag 11/Dex 15/Spd 17/Lck 13/Def 24/Res 6/Cha 13 Final Stats: HP 61/Str 30/Mag 9/Dex 18/Spd 19/Lck 12/Def 23/Res 7/Cha 15 Notes: Was obviously useless in Part 2, except for drawing aggro one time during his forced inclusion in Ch. 16. I maintain what I said at the timeskip though - it feels mean-spirited to drop his score for things he wasn't there for. Felix - 9/10 Final Status: Lv 45 War Master Progression: Noble > Fighter > Archer > Brigand > (Warrior) > War Master Ranks: Axes S, Bows/Gauntlets/Authority B, Armour D+ Skills/Arts: Axe Prowess Lv 5, Death Blow, Axe Crit +10, Battalion Vantage, Hit +20, Smash, Curved Shot, Shove, War Master's Strike Equipment: Goneril Valkyries, Freikugel, Killer Axe+, Killer Bow+, Killer Knuckles+, Hauteclere, Critical Ring Final Stats: HP 61/Str 44/Mag 21/Dex 32/Spd 34/Lck 25/Def 22/Res 14/Cha 36 (received HP+7, Str+1, Dex+4, Luck+1, Cha+3, Mv+1) Average Stats: HP 68/Str 45/Mag 18/Dex 30/Spd 37/Lck 25/Def 21/Res 13/Cha 32 Notes: Surprisingly, his stats are about average except HP. All things told he had one of the best Part 2's, and required the fewest stat boosters at endgame, (everything I gave him at endgame was just left over, he could ORKO everyone without it). He fielded King of Lions Corps for most of the game, but I switched in Goneril Valkyries at endgame because Felix is ultimately a crit build - given his base hit power, the +15 Hit advantage the ladies had outweighed the +2 power from the men. Which meant I ended up not fielding King of Lions Corps at endgame - I wouldn't have predicted that at the start of the run. Felix overdid it on Bows a bit, because he's so good with them (especially the Killer Bow+), and my early toil with Axes ultimately paid off nicely. I could have been much unluckier with the War Master cert - although I didn't realise it at the time, his build basically came online the moment he got into the class. A monster on both phases, I'd rather field him than standard Vantage/Wrath builds - I often took Battalion Vantage off him so that he didn't steal too many kills, but he still beat everybody on Player Phase. Ashe - 2.5/10 Final Status: Lv 25 Wyvern Rider Progression: Commoner > Fighter > Brigand > (Archer) > (Wyvern Rider) Ranks: Bows B+, Axes/Flying/Authority B, Armour C Skills/Arts: Bow Prowess Lv 4, Death Blow, HP +5, Str +2, Close Counter, Deadeye, Curved Shot, Shove Equipment: N/A Final Stats: HP 43/Str 25/Mag 10/Dex 20/Spd 21/Lck 16/Def 18/Res 20/Cha 17 Average Stats: HP 43/Str 25/Mag 11/Dex 23/Spd 24/Lck 16/Def 15/Res 14/Cha 14 Notes: The only difference between this and the half-time review was that he participated in Ch. 13 and got a couple of timeskip levels. He's made it here mostly because I pitied him as the only Blue Lion I never bothered with. Sylvain - 8/10 Final Status: Lv 42 Wyvern Lord Progression: Noble > Fighter > Archer > Brigand > Wyvern Rider > (Wyvern Lord) > Soldier Ranks: Lances S, Flying/Authority A, Axes/Bows B, Faith E+ Skills/Arts: Lance Prowess Lv 5, Death Blow, Lance Crit +10, Str +2, Hit +20, Swift Strikes, Curved Shot, Reposition, Ruined Sky Equipment: Galatea Pegasus Co., Scythe of Sariel, Gradivus, Lance of Ruin, Brave Bow+, Accuracy Ring, Evasion Ring Final Stats: HP 58/Str 41/Mag 14/Dex 22/Spd 42/Lck 25/Def 23/Res 15/Cha 34 (received Str+5, Dex+2, Spd+5, Luck+4, Cha+2) Average Stats: HP 60/Str 42/Mag 16/Dex 23/Spd 38/Lck 25/Def 26/Res 14/Cha 37 Notes: Sylvain was noticeably Spd-blessed in Part 2, though Swift Strikes meant this barely affected his combat until endgame, when I let him double things naturally with Scythe of Sariel. If I'd let my units use the best weapons, (like giving him any relic lance) he likely wouldn't have had any struggles getting ORKOs. He certainly didn't struggle at endgame. He was solid right the way through the game. Don't let his Bows weakness fool you - it's really important for him, because lance users have no good ranged options apart from Gradivus, which is a pain to repair. He was probably slightly worse than Cyril when their builds were both active (stronger, but lower crit rates and both needed crits at times), but also slightly better than Ferdinand. His hit rates were also a bit nervier than other units - again, Lances were part of the issue, but I think it's also very much a him thing. Mercedes - 8.5/10 Final Status: Lv 42 Sniper Progression: Commoner > Monk > Mage > Archer > Valkyrie > Sniper > (Bow Knight) Ranks: Bows/Riding A+, Authority A, Reason B+, Faith B Skills/Arts: Mv+1, Fiendish Blow, Uncanny Blow, Mag +2, Hit +20, Waning Shot, Curved Shot, Draw Back, Hunter's Volley Equipment: Ordelia Sorcery Co., Magic Bow+ (x3), Rafail Gem, Magic Staff, Elixir, adjutant Annette Final Stats: HP 44/Str 21/Mag 39/Dex 33/Spd 28/Lck 25/Def 17/Res 29/Cha 46 (received HP+5, Mag+3, Cha+6) Average Stats: HP 45/Str 22/Mag 40/Dex 32/Spd 24/Lck 22/Def 16/Res 29/Cha 42 Notes: I always thought final form Mercedes would be powerful - I've been long converted to Magic Bow+ Hunter's Volley. But Mercedes managed to closely track Constance's actual damage output for almost the entire time their builds were online, which really impressed me. Mercedes had the advantages in a Mt-boosting combat art, a more powerful weapon, significant range extension, and ultimately an adjutant, but I still didn't think she'd be able to deal as much damage as Constance. I did have to drop her Prowess skill for Mag+2 at endgame, as I would have been just shy on everyone's magic stats hitting thresholds if I'd used a booster instead. In turn, this made her that much more fragile and put her in more danger with Hegelgard, although thankfully she ended up getting ignored. She still had amazing hit rates though. Mercedes was amazing from start to finish, and between her and Constance I basically always had one mage getting kills. There's no doubt this is her best offensive option, and I honestly don't think Fortify is worth picking over this. Annette - 7/10 Final Status: Lv 38 Armour Knight Progression: Noble > Monk > Mage > Warlock > (Armour Knight) Ranks: Reason* A+, Authority A+, Faith C+, Armour C, Axe D+ Skills/Arts: Axe Prowess Lvl 2, HP +5, Mag +2, Defensive Tactics, Weight -3, Draw Back, Smash Equipment: Hand Axe, Hexlock Shield Final Stats: HP 45/Str 16/Mag 37/Dex 30/Spd 15/Lck 17/Def 20/Res 21/Cha 21 Average Stats: HP 44/Str 17/Mag 34/Dex 26/Spd 18/Lck 19/Def 19/Res 20/Cha 23 Notes: Annette sums up in a nutshell why I don't like pre-selecting who is going to make my endgame party. At first her rallying made her a pain to raise. Then she suddenly got really good, keeping up with Lysithea during the midgame when pure mages are at their most relevant. Annette was good enough for me to keep fielding her till the end of Ch. 19, even though I could have dropped her after her paralogue in Ch. 14. And while it's true that Lysithea is just the better unit, Annette made a really good case for her long-term inclusion in my party - had I actually built her, for example by sending her into Pegasus Knight/Dark Flier to help her with her speed, then she maybe could have stayed competitive in the late-game. As I said in the halftime reviews, this was the best Annette I have ever had (and I think I've recruited her in every run I've ever done of this game), so it felt like a real shame to waste her potential. If I run this game again I'll rectify that - but Murphy's law dictates she'll suck again when I try. Ingrid - 8/10 Final Status: Lv 43 Bow Knight Progression: Noble > Fighter > Brigand > Pegasus Knight > Archer > (Sniper) > Assassin > (Falcon Knight) > (Bow Knight) Ranks: Bows A+, Authority A, Lance/Flying/Armour B, Swords/Riding C, Axes D+ Skills/Arts: Bow Prowess Lv 5, Death Blow, Darting Blow, Wt -3, Hit +20, Smite, Curved Shot, Shove Equipment: Edmund Troops, The Inexhaustible, Failnaught, Killer Bow+, Brave Bow+, Speed Ring, Critical Ring Final Stats: HP 51/Str 30/Mag 28/Dex 28/Spd 47/Lck 23/Def 20/Res 23/Cha 45 (received Str+7, Spd+5, Res+3, Cha+1) Average Stats: HP 52/Str 34/Mag 20/Dex 29/Spd 44/Lck 27/Def 20/Res 28/Cha 39 Notes: I genuinely wasn't sure what I would rate Ingrid. I invested heavily in Str early on, when I had no idea how it would turn out (which I hate doing), and she still ended up Str-screwed - for a chunk of Part 2 she just plateaued as the enemies got stronger and she stayed the same. At the same time, she spent most of Part 2 in Assassin and switched to Falcon Knight briefly near the end, which meant that her Speed ended up being super-competitive, and she didn't need that much help to quad basically every enemy in the run (even before endgame). If I'd given her most of my Spd stat-boosters, she could have quadded every enemy the game could ever throw at you (even Enbarr Petra and Nemesis). When she worked, she worked beautifully. But quadding enemies, as powerful as it is, is very resource-demanding, and since basically everybody wants Wootz Steel (and I used up nearly all my Mythril on the regalia, probably unnecessarily) I didn't let her do that as much as she perhaps needed in order to be a beast. Still, being a fast unit in Bow Knight is just ridiculous. I now understand why Bow Knight, a class with a negative Spd growth, gets Defiant Speed as its mastery. The only thing more powerful than quadding from two spaces is quadding from further than that - when you add in Bow Knight's movement, you're doing something no other build can pull off. Which is why Ingrid got Edmund Troops instead of something more powerful - it gave her semi-reliable quadding against War Masters from 4 spaces (although she would have preferred Uncanny Blow to Bow Prowess), and allowed her to double enemies at 5 spaces with Failnaught, which actually came in useful at endgame. She technically could have done something similar with Magic Bow+ (seriously, what was up with her Mag stat?), although I probably would have needed Fiendish Blow for it to be competitive with Failnaught, and in general she wasn't near ORKO thresholds with magic for very long. Fulltime Review - Other Units Spoiler Byleth - 8/10 Final Status: Lv 43 Wyvern Lord Progression: Commoner > Fighter > Pegasus Knight > Brigand > Wyvern Rider > (Enlightened One) > Wyvern Lord Ranks: Swords S+, Authority A+, Flying A, Axes/Bows/Armour B, Lances/Faith C, Gauntlets D+, Reason/Riding D Skills/Arts: Sword Prowess Lv 5, Death Blow, Darting Blow, Sword Crit +10, Swordfaire, Windsweep, Curved Shot, Smite, Sublime Heaven Equipment: Cichol Wyvern Co., Sublime Creator Sword, Wo Dao+, Cursed Ashiya Sword+, Brave Sword+, Brave Bow+, Accuracy Ring Final Stats: HP 55/Str 41/Mag 18/Dex 31/Spd 37/Lck 28/Def 27/Res 20/Cha 73 (received Str+2, Spd+4, Res+8, Luck+4, Cha+??) Average Stats: HP 58/Str 41/Mag 20/Dex 29/Spd 36/Lck 27/Def 25/Res 26/Cha 28 Notes: Byleth ended up being pretty great at endgame. But one serious oversight I'd had all run was not thinking about what she was specifically going to do at endgame. I had the vague idea that she was going to quad things with a Brave Sword+ and Swordfaire around halfway through the run, but a few chapters later it was becoming clear her Speed was never going to be good enough to allow for that when other units needed Spd boosts more. So at endgame she had a mishmash of doubling and high-crit attacks, which actually worked - but it was probably the least reliable of the builds I brought to endgame. More generally, Swordfaire didn't regularly put her into ORKO territory even when she doubled (which was less than I would have liked). Don't get me wrong, Byleth was really solid this run - but my last Byleth was a gauntlets War Master, and this didn't hugely compare, except that Byleth flew for most of the game and flying is great. Byleth was also seriously Res-screwed, which actually mattered because mages were capable of OHKOing her at various points in Part 2. But I can't ignore the great work she did in Part 1, and the fact that she was generally good let me focus on units who needed proper attention. Ferdinand - 7.5/10 Final Status: Lv 42 Great Knight Progression: (Cavalier) > Brigand > Archer > Paladin > Fortress Knight > (Great Knight) Ranks: Lances/Riding A+, Authority B+, Armour/Bows B, Axes C+, Faith E+ Skills/Arts: Lance Prowess Lv 5, Death Blow, Pavise, Mv +1, Hit +20, Swift Strikes, Curved Shot, Smite Equipment: Duscur Heavy Soldiers, Areadbhar, Luin, Spear of Assal, Killer Lance+, Brave Bow, Ochain Shield Final Stats: HP 64/Str 36/Mag 11/Dex 25/Spd 20/Lck 22/Def 42/Res 15/Cha 45 (received Str+6, Dex+2, Def+12, Cha+5) Average Stats: HP 64/Str 39/Mag 13/Dex 26/Spd 22/Lck 24/Def 44/Res 13/Cha 40 Notes: The classic general-in-midfield unit. He spent most of the game in Paladin, and I often sent him to do rubbish jobs like protecting people that I left behind, eating the odd hit because he can, or using Smite to set up somebody else. I chose Great Knight for endgame, because it was -1 Str/Mv and +6 Def over Paladin (all his other stats were irrelevant at that point). Normally, that's a losing trade, but despite having no appetite for a def-tank since Dedue, I figured I'd try it for endgame. He ended up reducing the gauntlets War Masters to 1 damage per attack - if his Def had been average for his progression, he could have ignored them forever. He didn't take a single physical attack all endgame though, so it was wasted effort. Duscur Heavy Soldiers and Ochain Shield (which were mostly glued to him once he could use them) were more than enough to facilitate his survival for Part 2. Generally speaking, he was competitive with Sylvain and Cyril, as units who used brave combat arts, although being in Paladin meant he couldn't do everything they could. His personal was at its brilliant best this run, often meaning I let him get kills I was generally worried about securing, but Pavise/Aegis almost never activated (mainly because he didn't do much actual tanking). Lysithea - 8/10 Final Status: Lv 44 Dark Knight Progression: Monk > Mage > Pegasus Knight > Dark Flier > (Warlock) > Valkyrie > (Paladin) > Dark Knight > Gremory > (Holy Knight) Ranks: Reason S+, Authority A+, Faith/Riding A, Flying B, Lances C, Swords D+ Skills/Arts: Dark Tomefaire, Dark Magic Range +1, Fiendish Blow, Uncanny Blow, Darting Blow, Soulblade, Wrath Strike, Draw Back Equipment: Macuil Evil Repelling Co., Thyrsus, Blutgang, Devil Sword+, Speed Ring, Elixir Final Stats: HP 44/Str 25/Mag 52/Dex 37/Spd 40/Lck 21/Def 16/Res 27/Cha 36 (received HP+5, Str+3, Mag+10, Spd+10, Luck+4, Res+2, Cha+6) Average Stats: HP 41/Str 22/Mag 53/Dex 35/Spd 39/Lck 18/Def 15/Res 27/Cha 36 Notes: Great for most of the game, but she needed the most help at endgame. I mean, pure mages famously struggle in the late game, so that didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was that I could even get her to ORKO thresholds. I'd been farming Speed boosters almost always since I hit A+ Professor Level, but I was expecting to use it all up on my physical units. But most of them didn't need that much. In fact, Lysithea ended up dominating my thinking about stat boosters at endgame, once I realised I could get her to hit ORKO thresholds. She was able to double everything at endgame but the War Masters (using Miasma and Swarm, and Nosferatu/Seraphim/Dark Spikes for the slower units like Gremories), and could pick up at least two War Masters with Luna. This involved dropping her Prowess skill (as with Mercedes), which again could have made things a bit dicey with Hegelgard - but she had no problem there, or more generally with hit rates. I briefly invested in Swords, which I kinda figured might be pointless, but I didn't know what else to do with her for the last few weeks of tutoring, and was worried needlessly about her high-Mt spell charges. Often, she also just hung out in Gremory to buff her Warp - I genuinely considered Gremory at endgame for her, but Dark Knight's power and movement proved too much of a lure. Catherine - 9/10 Final Status: Lv 42 Assassin Progression: (Swordmaster) > Pegasus Knight > Brigand > Assassin > Archer > War Cleric Ranks: Gauntlets A+, Authority A, Bows B, Faith C, Lances/Axes/Flying D+ Skills/Arts: Brawling Prowess Lv 5, Death Blow, Darting Blow, Hit +20, Brawl Avo +20, Bombard, Curved Shot, Healing Focus Equipment: Gautier Knights, Vajra-Mushti, Killer Knuckles+, Brave Bow+, March Ring, Speed Ring, Evasion Ring, adjutant Shamir Final Stats: HP 57/Str 40/Mag 16/Dex 31/Spd 45/Lck 16/Def 21/Res 20/Cha 23 (received Str+1, Spd+6) Average Stats: HP 59/Str 38/Mag 17/Dex 29/Spd 46/Lck 20/Def 23/Res 16/Cha 25 Notes: A stellar unit, who needed no help except Spd at endgame. Although that was partially because I didn't let her spend that much time in War Cleric, because it's objectively a bad class to be in long-term. If you're a hybrid, you want it to boost Magic (which it doesn't), and if you're gauntlets-focused you want it to boost Spd (which it doesn't). The Spd issue was particularly pertinent for Catherine, who in Assassin was close to the thresholds to quad everything in endgame on Player Phase - which is why I went Assassin. War Cleric's power boost to gauntlets just isn't good enough to rival that. It was moot in the end, since Catherine did no fighting, so missing out on Recover/using up an adjutant made Assassin a net negative - but I'm not upset about it. Not flying after Part 1 hurt her ability to keep pace with kills a bit, although spending all that time in Assassin (often with Fetters of Dromi) meant it wasn't too bad - and she ended up doubling with Bows a lot which compensated. Always destructive, very little maintenance, and her dodge-tanking was mostly effective, although I rarely had to call on it. Shamir - N/A Final Status: Lv 24 Fortress Knight Progression: (Sniper) > Armour Knight > (Fortress Knight) Ranks: Bows A+, Lances/Armour B, Axes C+, Authority C Skills/Arts: Axe Prowess Lv 3, Armored Blow, Authority Lvl 2, Battalion Desperation, Wt -3, Smash, Curved Shot, Smite Equipment: Short Axe, Knowledge Gem Final Stats: HP 48/Str 22/Mag 11/Dex 24/Spd 8/Lck 20/Def 31/Res 11/Cha 16 Average Stats: HP 45/Str 22/Mag 10/Dex 23/Spd 11/Lck 21/Def 27/Res 9/Cha 15 Notes: Never faced actual combat, I promoted her to Fortress Knight just because she mastered Armour Knight and I felt like it. Cyril - 8/10 Final Status: Lv 43 Bow Knight Progression: (Commoner) > Fighter > Archer > Brigand > Wyvern Rider > (Wyvern Lord) > (Bow Knight) Ranks: Bows S, Flying/Authority A, Axes B, Riding C+, Lances C Skills/Arts: Bow Prowess Lv 5, Death Blow, Hit +20, Bow Crit +10, Point-Blank Volley, Curved Shot, Shove Equipment: Indech Sword Fighters, Parthia, Bow of Zoltan+, Brave Bow+, Killer Bow+, Tathlum Bow, Crit Ring Final Stats: HP 55/Str 36/Mag 23/Dex 40/Spd 30/Lck 29/Def 22/Res 21/Cha 38 (received Str+7, Dex+1) Average Stats: HP 57/Str 37/Mag 18/Dex 36/Spd 35/Lck 28/Def 21/Res 14/Cha 32 Notes: Easily the best version of Cyril I've ever had. Which I was expecting, given that I doubled down on one of the best combat arts in the game, and gave him some of the best physical classes in the game. But it's still nice to be able to dispel some of the doubts I've been holding about Cyril all this time. In Part 2, I often sent Cyril off to be my unit who gets stuff done, as a Wyvern with Bows, but also as a chest-opener, and he pretty much always did what I needed from him. Being a Wyvern Lord at endgame would have been worse for him, but up until that point it was normally the better choice. And yes, he still ended up needing a decent amount of Str - but so did Ferdinand, Ingrid, and Sylvain, who occupy similar kinds of roles in my army. Of my units, he possibly would have appreciated King of Lions Corps at endgame the most, since he was meant to be using Point-Blank Volley more than Bow Knight's extended range. Indech allowed him to do both, though, and I didn't really have anyone else with space in their build to be my Retribution-bot. His stats were solid all-round (nod to Dex) but I still didn't really feel the effects from Aptitude in terms of physical stats (his Mag and Res are obviously great, but he barely used them). Constance - 8.5/10 Final Status: Lv 43 War Cleric Progression: Commoner > Monk > Mage > War Cleric > Valkyrie > (Gremory) Ranks: Gauntlets S, Reason A+, Faith/Authority A, Riding B Skills/Arts: Brawl Prowess Lv 5, Fiendish Blow, Brawl Crit +10, Mag +2, Uncanny Blow, Mystic Blow, Healing Focus, Draw Back, Pneuma Gale Equipment: Timotheos Magi Corps, Aura Knuckles+, Killer Knuckles+, Fetters of Dromi, Magic Staff, Caduceus Staff, Healing Staff Current Stats: HP 47/Str 24/Mag 45/Dex 22/Spd 22/Lck 20/Def 17/Res 25/Cha 32 (received HP+5, Mag+3, Dex+2, Luck+8, Cha+4 I haven't included her personal here) Average Stats: HP 50/Str 25/Mag 42/Dex 24/Spd 21/Lck 22/Def 19/Res 22/Cha 31 Notes: My premier delete button. I know her numbers below say otherwise, but of all my mages she was ORKOing for the longest and most consistently. While she had the power, she didn't have the range of Mercedes/Lysithea or the movement of other units, which is why her numbers didn't soar above theirs - but I was never afraid that she couldn't get kills after she got War Cleric. I also could have let her fight more, but I overcooked her - she didn't need Brawl Crit +10, and never used Agnea's Arrow/Abraxas/A Authority, so even after Aura Knuckles came online I still had her on the bench with the Knowledge Gem a lot. I also accidentally gave an extra Mag+1 meant for her to Lysithea, meaning she was just shy of killing the Mortal Savants with battalions and the throne room Bishop at endgame. She didn't encounter them though, so it wasn't an issue. Having ORKO functionality whilst not needing to rely on spellcasting (but not losing spells altogether) is just the best, as a halfway house between Mercedes and endgame Lysithea, without really relying on stat boosters to stay competitive. Although she also spent some time in Gremory doing support things or raising her magic ranks. Killer Knuckles+ and Mystic Blow/Pneuma Gale weren't reliable kills in the late game, but they were more accurate and had higher crit rates than Fimbulvetr, so it was still a net plus. I'm also not totally converted to Bolting (it was only relevant in Ch. 19 IIRC) but I do appreciate how more charges of it would be nice. Those are the only two complaints I could have - I'd be willing to back War Cleric as Constance's best class (or at least competitive with Dark Flier), although her blue period in Part 1 means she doesn't get the highest scores. Hapi - 7/10 Endgame Status: Lv 42 Gremory Progression: Commoner > Monk > Mage > Bishop > Gremory Ranks: A+ Faith/Reason, Authority A, Axes C+, Lances D+ Skills/Arts: Reason Lv 5, Axe Prowess Lv 3, Fiendish Blow, HP +5, Mag +2, Draw Back, Smash, Exhaustive Strike Equipment: Opera Co. Volunteers (Lv 2), Crusher, Magic Staff, Healing Staff, Goddess Ring, Elixir Current Stats: HP 54/Str 15/Mag 38/Dex 31/Spd 25/Lck 15/Def 15/Res 35/Cha 31 Average Stats: HP 49/Str 20/Mag 40/Dex 30/Spd 24/Lck 15/Def 15/Res 31/Cha 30 Notes: It's hard for support units to excel, but I would say that Hapi's Part 2 was more successful than her Part 1. Mainly because she had gotten everything she needed pre-timeskip: Physic, Warp and White Magic Uses x2, meaning she did exactly what I needed from her for the rest of the game. But, this also led to me making two mistakes with her build. The first was not letting her class into and master Valkyrie. I had to spend Renown for an Abyss Exam Pass anyway because I disobeyed my original build plan - it wouldn't have been a problem to do it again. Valkyrie was extremely easy for her to get, Hapi had enough Class EXP to master Bishop and Gremory so could easily have fit another class in, and Uncanny Blow would have been a far better use of a skill slot than HP+5 or Axe Prowess. The second mistake was to go for A Authority (which meant not going for S Reason). Admittedly, it meant Hapi could run Dance of the Goddess a few chapters before endgame, and saved me needing to run two support-focused units - but it probably wasn't worth the effort compared to extending her range. I think I was short-sighted on these two fronts because I'd decided she would be in my endgame party as a support unit from the beginning, and then got into a one-track mindset that she didn't need to care about offence. It's true that she didn't - but the alternatives are obviously less optimal, even for her. But I still felt pretty assured with her at the back - Linhardt would have had to be Mag-blessed to be competitive, and no other mage runs Physic and Warp. Numbers for the Run Spoiler Below is a compilation of the numbers I've been tracking through the log (which I'll use to inform conditions for my Three Hopes run). First, we have the MVP Rankings. Every map in the game tells you who the MVP was - I believe it's determined by number of kills, with tiebreaks sorted either by number of attacks made or 'importance' (i.e. bosses are more important kills than grunts), although I don't know if the game actually tracks either of those things. I'm hoping somebody else on here might know exactly how it works. Anyway, I've been noting these at the top of every log section, and have ranked them here. It's slightly unfair to value Cindered Shadows at the same level as the main game, because only a few units in the main story were available in the side story, so the first number in brackets tells you how many MVP awards were obtained through chapter battles/paralogues, and a number after a + sign tells you how many times a unit has received an MVP award in CS. In the case of a tie, the unit with more main game MVP awards wins out. I also won't count MVPs of quest/aux battles in this. MVP Rankings: Dimitri (9+1) Ingrid (8) Byleth (7+1) Catherine (6) Constance (3+2) Cyril (3) Dedue/Sylvain/Felix/Mercedes (2) Ferdinand/Lysithea (1) Edelgard/Balthus (0+1) As far as the turn count/Divine Pulses are concerned, I count Cindered Shadows as part of this run, and do not include quest or aux battles. There were 23 chapter maps, 23 paralogues, and 7 side story maps. I also did 31 quest/aux battles throughout the game, one of which was mandatory - at an eyeball I would have averaged (to 0 dp) around 5 turns and 1 pulse for just those. Average Turn Count (to 0 dp): 9 Average Divine Pulses (to 0 dp): 2 In the main game (not CS, but including aux battles and quests), the game also tracks for you the number of combats a unit has been through, and the number of times they've killed their opponent (victories) - ending an HP bar of a monster also counts as a victory from the game's point of view, even if the monster didn't die. Although I don't put a huge amount of stock in these numbers because they entirely obscure the different ways in which you use different units, I have recorded them all, and ranked the "win rate" (victories/combats as a percentage) of my units below. For obvious reasons, I haven't included in the rankings any unit that has faced less than 100 combats (conveniently, everyone I actually used has faced more). Win Rate Rankings: Victories Combats Win Rate (to 1 dp) 1. Felix (190) Dimitri (320) Lysithea (73.3%) 2. Byleth (164) Byleth (307) Annette (67.2%) 3. Catherine (150) Felix (300) Mercedes (66.9%) 4. Ingrid (149) Sylvain (276) Constance (66.1%) 5. Dimitri/Sylvain (139) Ingrid (269) Felix (63.3%) 6. Cyril (253) Catherine (62.5%) 7. Cyril (138) Catherine (240) Ingrid (55.4%) 8. Lysithea (129) Ferdinand (189) Cyril (54.5%) 9. Constance (117) Constance (177) Ferdinand (54.5%, tiebreak decided by checking the 2nd decimal place) 10. Mercedes (107) Lysithea (176) Byleth (53.4%) 11. Ferdinand (103) Mercedes (160) Sylvain (50.4%) 12. Annette (82) Hapi (132) Hapi (45.5%) 13. Hapi (60) Annette (122) Dimitri (43.4%) 14. Ashe (46) Ashe (112) Ashe (41.1%) 15. Dedue (33) Dedue (101) Dedue (32.7%) As you can see, these numbers on their own tell a pretty different story to the MVP rankings, let alone the logs I've been writing till now. While they don't tell you by themselves much about these units' actual performance, with context they're pretty revealing about how I played this run. Some context that would have been particularly useful is the number of times each unit was actually deployed on a map (even I wasn't anal enough to track that). For example, Dedue ranked bottom in each of these metrics, but I know that he was deployed in 7 story battles, 2 paralogues, and somewhere between 2-7 quest battles. Even with the least conservative estimate for quest battles, Dedue would have faced a pretty high number of combats per map, because he was one of the only units at the time with an enemy phase. His numbers are actually quite impressive, especially if you scaled them up for the whole game (in this run he could have been in a further 11 story maps, 19 paralogue maps, and 17 quest/aux battles) and given that he was only active during the early game, when ORKOs are hardest to come by. Going up the board, Ashe and Hapi ended up being treated relatively similarly. I didn't actively raise them, so they only fought when they had to, and they only tended to get kills when I was feeding them EXP/WEXP. Otherwise, they existed as chip units, because I wasn't hugely interested in their combat. On the other hand, I treated the mages I was actively raising as attackers (Lysithea, Mercedes, Constance) as glass cannons. Their primary job was to kill things on Player Phase, and they could rarely afford to leave enemies alive because of the risk of dying to counters. So while their number of victories and combats was unsurprisingly low, their win rates were abnormally high. Interestingly, the number of (combats - victories) for these three mages is pretty similar, suggesting they spent similar periods of time not ORKOing. Annette straddles both of these groups, as a glass cannon who I had to feed in Part 1 because she was behind in EXP, but who I also used as a filler unit in Part 2. Although it still surprises me that her win rate is as high as it is. As for the physical units, the orderings above are roughly explained by a) the amount of time spent in high-mobility classes, b) the amount of time the unit's ORKO build was active, and c) the degree to which said unit could survive an enemy phase. So, while Dimitri had the greatest degree of enemy phase survivability (and ranked no.1 in combats), I rarely gave him Battalion Wrath, so he rarely killed things on Enemy Phase, explaining his relatively low number of victories and win rate. On the other hand, for some of the game Ferdinand was closer to a mage's combat than a tank's, as he wasn't that hardy until a bit into Part 2, he was grounded the entire time, and didn't regularly kill without Swift Strikes (or sometimes even with Swift Strikes), explaining his relatively low numbers for a physical unit (and he had the latest join time). Although Felix was relatively low-mobility, most of Part 2 was characterised by a high OHKO rate on Player Phase and Enemy Phase, explaining how his numbers got so good by the end. At the other end of the scale, 9/36 of the available units on this run did not enter a single combat in the main game. A further six (15/36 total) did not record a single victory. Of the units I didn't use, Gilbert saw the most combats (4, all from Chapter 13). In total, I had 1742 victories, from 3157 combats, giving my run an "overall win rate" of 55.2% (to 1 dp). I've been meaning to record these numbers from a run for quite a while now, and I'm looking forward to see if/how I can work them into my conditions for Three Hopes - hopefully they're also a useful data point for other people. General Notes Spoiler Here are some observations I made over the course of the run that didn't really belong anywhere else in the log thus far, so I'm just going to dump them here. On S+ ranks: There used to be some fairly heated debates on here about the viability of achieving S+ weapon ranks without using the rusted weapon exploit, NG+, or Normal's infinite aux battling. As I remember it, there was a consensus that it wasn't feasible, unless you were low-manning. I never felt that equipped to contribute to those debates, because I'd always played Fire Emblem games in the opposite fashion to low-manning (high-manning?) where I try to raise as many units as possible, for as long as possible - I was normally happy with A+ in my previous 3H runs, and S often felt like a stretch. This is the first time I had restricted the majority of my EXP to a pre-selected core group of characters, and the most optimised run of a Fire Emblem game I've perhaps ever done. And the results were that I got Byleth and Lysithea (and nobody else) to S+. Two units who are famously irregular in how they acquire WEXP. Byleth can gain more WEXP per month in Swords than just about any other unit in any rank, I got to A+ Professor Level almost as quickly as humanly possible in this game, Byleth normally trained four times, but always at least three times, per Explore after this point, and I used a faculty training exploit/save scumming (see below) to secure Great every time Byleth trained in Swords. And Byleth still didn't hit S+ until midway through Chapter 18. Lysithea hit S+ even later, and after she'd received a solid amount of sauna/tutoring and time with the Knowledge Gem. But I did get many units to S rank, where they had also raised one or multiple other ranks to A or higher by endgame. Having completed this run, I feel confident in saying that S+ is certainly achievable without low-manning. But, it is a pretty unreasonable ask, and antithetical to how a lot of people play. Lots of veteran players, when taking on a NG Maddening run (or equivalent in previous titles), will plan out what units they use, and what those units will need to be able to kill enemies as quickly as possible, for as long as possible. They're looking for efficient builds, and any extra upgrades they pick up along the way or once the build comes online are great, but not a priority. By its very nature, S+ is not efficient, so it's rare that units are built around it, and it's far enough away not to become accessible even after your build is complete. But if you tot up all the WEXP that my units had acquired over the course of the run, everyone who hit S rank had accrued enough superfluous WEXP to offset the gap between S and S+ in their primary weapon. If they'd stopped at B instead of going to A in Authority, and given up a different B rank for another certification, for example. The problem is, plenty of this WEXP will have come from battling, which you can't redirect even if you wanted to. So, in order to hit S+, you have to be really ruthless about aiming for it from the start, and cutting down massively on the amount of tutoring/focus that goes into everything outside your main weapon. You want to bring your Authority up to D/C/B quickly? Not allowed. You want to get another certification for a specific map/strategy? Not allowed. S+ is perhaps unique in requiring sacrifices and forethought from the very beginning of the game (provided you aren't low-manning) for an ability that won't arrive until the last quarter of the game, at best. And most players aren't really willing to commit to that, especially when there are alternatives that can hit thresholds earlier and may last longer. I'm not that sure how valuable S+ is, given all this. I wasn't farming Mag-boosters this run, so Lysithea needed double Tomefaire to ORKO, but Byleth was mostly focused on crits, so probably would have been fine without Swordfaire. It does seem like mages are the best candidates for S+ - but if you're happy not to have your pure mages ORKO in the late-game, then surely Authority/Faith/a mount is more useful for them. On VanWrath: I've never used normal Vantage + Wrath in this game before, and I've never fully committed to Battalion Vantage + Wrath Dimitri before, either. Not that I didn't believe literally everyone saying how good it was, but this is the first run where I've even properly deployed battalion skills. And lots of people also warned me that Battalion Vantage + Wrath Dimitri was more efficient than the dodge tank Dimitri build I ended up focusing on. The short answer is that that's probably true - Dimitri's numbers would have been much higher if I'd committed to that instead. But the tradeoff isn't as one-sided as people made it out to be. One obvious issue is that BVW Dimitri is too strong for most maps, and so can suck up EXP from the maps you deploy him on. Dodgetank Dimitri can still be deployed and used effectively, without that issue - which suited me better, because I'm trying to raise eleven other units. Another is that Dimitri is very likely to hit A Authority in a timely manner no matter what you do with him, but if you solely depend on the battalion abilities, you will come up short at least some of the time (e.g. Chapter 13, endgame, against strong monsters). Having a different Enemy Phase build available allows you to fix or avoid those situational weaknesses, and the general weaknesses of that build (which lots of people have covered elsewhere). And I never really felt like I was sacrificing my Dancer - Dimitri was in the class enough to master it, and was always available to be a Dancer where necessary. I gave up Dancer for endgame, but Dimitri's combat wouldn't have suffered that much if I hadn't (he still would have been able to kill most things with 100 crit on enemy phase). Dodgetank Dimitri was brilliant, but not perfect - he relied on full health, which can be its own kind of finicky, and mages in particular still got some lucky shots in - Vantage/Wrath could often have avoided those outcomes. That said, Dimitri's endgame Avo was 143 - your best flying dodgetank isn't doing much better than that, so I don't feel it was wasted effort. While I only ran B. VanWrath sparingly with Dimitri, I did run what I consider to be a version of that build, in War Master Felix with Battalion Vantage. And, in fairness, this really was competitive with Dimitri, although it came online a few chapters later than him. It also had the advantage of only requiring Battalion Vantage (and sometimes the Counterattack effect) to secure lots of Enemy Phase kills - the rest of the build could be Player Phase-oriented, which made me feel better about it. However, Felix was more vulnerable to gambits than Dimitri, and also sacrificed some reliability on Enemy Phase crit rates (at their lowest, Felix's crit rate was in the mid-70s in the lategame, although I never had an issue with him critting on Enemy Phase). I tended to still use Felix as a Player Phase unit, only putting in Battalion Vantage occasionally where necessary. But it's true that I could have replaced much of the Enemy Phase work done by Dimitri with Felix, and would have probably killed more enemies more quickly. Although again, I didn't actually want one unit to dominate combat. On the Counsellor's Box: It never triggered more than one note per Explore for the entirety of Part 2 this run. Is that normal? On Faculty Training: I mentioned above that I had an exploit for securing Greats whenever Byleth gets trained, which I haven't seen written about anywhere else before. However, I'm not sure how rigorous my testing was (I figured it out through lots of trial and error), and I still had to save-scum here and there when I got it wrong, so you may have to try this a couple of times to get the feel of it. Here's what I did: 1. Sprint up to the person you want tutoring from. You need at least a bit of a run-up, but don't overdo it (for example, a whole corridor is too much, but the size of a dormitory room is a bit too small) 2. Once you've reached them, change direction as sharply as you're able, and move a couple paces away (not far!) from the person you want tutoring from (Byleth's body should be angled away from them, but the tutor should still be in camera view). 3. Repeat Step 2, keeping Byleth's body angled away from the tutor, but this time making sure your final position is in range of being able to talk to your prospective tutor. 4. Talk to your tutor. Skip through the dialogue as quickly as possible, and then get tutored in the relevant skill. I basically only got Greats almost the entire time I tutored Byleth, but I did save-scum a lot while I was figuring this out, and I'm still not confident I would nail this method every time, so take with however much salt you like. On Armour ranks: You might have noticed that lots of my units randomly had armour training, despite it not being relevant to their build. It started because I didn't know what to do with Byleth, seeing as I'd gotten Swordfaire and she had all the skills she could want for endgame, but there were still months left for tutoring in the monastery. Then I remembered that Smite exists, is often (not always) a better choice than Shove, and I didn't have anyone at the time with Reposition, so I decided I'd pick that up for Byleth. Ingrid similarly had free space in tutoring, and no competition for combat arts slots, so I did it for her. Other units, I just did it because I could (including units I wasn't building, like Annette and Ashe). I figured if I came back to a NG+ run, buying units Weight -3 was an easy way to make them stronger in the early game without unbalancing everything. And then for units like Felix and Dimitri, they didn't have any build goals or the time to reach anything interesting, so I left it on them as a training goal. In general, the last couple of months of tutoring involved me rounding off ranks that units weren't using, just so I could have them for a hypothetical NG+ run. On Auxiliary Battles: The formula for calculating the gold reward from an aux battle is 400(x+5) where x is the number of the chapter the aux battle takes place in. For yellow! battles, this number is doubled, so the formula becomes 800(x+5). One of the complaints I've seen about the yellow! battles is that they ruin the balance of aux battles - and that's totally true. Sometimes you need ores that you can't buy or find easily, or I guess meat (perhaps this is more true in Part 1). But three yellow! battles in a month gives you so much money that it's normally more efficient to just do that. Especially when you can net yourself a +1 stat booster for every yellow! battle - consider that you can't normally get more than 3-4 stat boosters a month from gardening, and this becomes absolutely broken. After the Dark Merchant arrives and rare meat/Arcane Crystal is freely available, it isn't even a question. Yellow! battles are better to the point where I didn't even do enough other aux battles to figure out the formula for what meat/ores are given to you as rewards. The general idea is that there's a RNG tied to rarity, where rarity is inverse to amount of goodies, but I never figured it out exactly. As for the yellow! battles themselves, I did a fair few of these, so I tried to see whether there was any way to farm stat boosters from them. The short answer is no, there isn't, it's mostly down to luck. Most of the time, the same boosters showed up on the same maps, but there were exceptions and I don't think I did enough of every type of map to be sure. What I did figure out is that the game decides (at random?) two out of the nine types of +1 stat booster and a Large Bullion to assign to each of the five types of yellow! map (Ch. 5 map, Petra's paralogue map, Lorenz's paralogue map, Leonie's paralogue map, Ch. 10 map). The game can assign the same booster to multiple maps on the same day. One of the boosters is much more likely to occur than the other (this is also random). You can attempt to save-scum (or just quit the map and re-enter) to change the booster, but you will only be able to change it to the other of the two boosters assigned to that map. Boosters always occur on certain enemies, who occupy the same square every time you attempt that particular map (the same is true for Trade Secrets), although the enemy type may change. Each yellow! map has a theme enemy (who shows up most often on that map, and carries the Trade Secrets) and then some random enemies (one of whom carries the stat booster). The random enemies will change every time you quit and re-enter, but the theme enemy will not change until you clear that map, or do a different aux battle. Although I don't think they're fixed in stone, I will write down what stat boosters I found where, just in case there's a higher likelihood that certain stat boosters are assigned to certain maps. Chapter 5 map: Spd+1 (was very common for me on this map - I also did this map the most of all yellow! battles), HP+1 Petra's map: Def+1 (common), Res+1 Lorenz's map: Large Bullion (I've only ever seen this reward on this map), Cha+1 Leonie's map: Str+1, ?? (I think I maybe saw a Dex+1, but I didn't write that down) Ch. 10 map: Str+1, Mag+1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted January 6, 2023 Share Posted January 6, 2023 Nice work. 36 minutes ago, haarhaarhaar said: On S+ ranks: There used to be some fairly heated debates on here about the viability of achieving S+ weapon ranks without using the rusted weapon exploit, NG+, or Normal's infinite aux battling. As I remember it, there was a consensus that it wasn't feasible, unless you were low-manning. I never felt that equipped to contribute to those debates, because I'd always played Fire Emblem games in the opposite fashion to low-manning (high-manning?) where I try to raise as many units as possible, for as long as possible - I was normally happy with A+ in my previous 3H runs, and S often felt like a stretch. This is the first time I had restricted the majority of my EXP to a pre-selected core group of characters, and the most optimised run of a Fire Emblem game I've perhaps ever done. And the results were that I got Byleth and Lysithea (and nobody else) to S+. Two units who are famously irregular in how they acquire WEXP. Byleth can gain more WEXP per month in Swords than just about any other unit in any rank, I got to A+ Professor Level almost as quickly as humanly possible in this game, Byleth normally trained four times, but always at least three times, per Explore after this point, and I used a faculty training exploit/save scumming (see below) to secure Great every time Byleth trained in Swords. And Byleth still didn't hit S+ until midway through Chapter 18. Lysithea hit S+ even later, and after she'd received a solid amount of sauna/tutoring and time with the Knowledge Gem. But I did get many units to S rank, where they had also raised one or multiple other ranks to A or higher by endgame. Having completed this run, I feel confident in saying that S+ is certainly achievable without low-manning. But, it is a pretty unreasonable ask, and antithetical to how a lot of people play. Lots of veteran players, when taking on a NG Maddening run (or equivalent in previous titles), will plan out what units they use, and what those units will need to be able to kill enemies as quickly as possible, for as long as possible. They're looking for efficient builds, and any extra upgrades they pick up along the way or once the build comes online are great, but not a priority. By its very nature, S+ is not efficient, so it's rare that units are built around it, and it's far enough away not to become accessible even after your build is complete. But if you tot up all the WEXP that my units had acquired over the course of the run, everyone who hit S rank had accrued enough superfluous WEXP to offset the gap between S and S+ in their primary weapon. If they'd stopped at B instead of going to A in Authority, and given up a different B rank for another certification, for example. The problem is, plenty of this WEXP will have come from battling, which you can't redirect even if you wanted to. So, in order to hit S+, you have to be really ruthless about aiming for it from the start, and cutting down massively on the amount of tutoring/focus that goes into everything outside your main weapon. You want to bring your Authority up to D/C/B quickly? Not allowed. You want to get another certification for a specific map/strategy? Not allowed. S+ is perhaps unique in requiring sacrifices and forethought from the very beginning of the game (provided you aren't low-manning) for an ability that won't arrive until the last quarter of the game, at best. And most players aren't really willing to commit to that, especially when there are alternatives that can hit thresholds earlier and may last longer. I'm not that sure how valuable S+ is, given all this. I wasn't farming Mag-boosters this run, so Lysithea needed double Tomefaire to ORKO, but Byleth was mostly focused on crits, so probably would have been fine without Swordfaire. It does seem like mages are the best candidates for S+ - but if you're happy not to have your pure mages ORKO in the late-game, then surely Authority/Faith/a mount is more useful for them. Personally, I find getting S+ rank to be the definition of "awesome but impractical", far as this game goes. Especially when you're likely getting it rather late, if at all. 1 hour ago, haarhaarhaar said: On the Counsellor's Box: It never triggered more than one note per Explore for the entirety of Part 2 this run. Is that normal? I dunno. I have been ignoring it myself. 1 hour ago, haarhaarhaar said: I didn't let her spend that much time in War Cleric, because it's objectively a bad class to be in long-term. If you're a hybrid, you want it to boost Magic (which it doesn't), and if you're gauntlets-focused you want it to boost Spd (which it doesn't). The Spd issue was particularly pertinent for Catherine, who in Assassin was close to the thresholds to quad everything in endgame on Player Phase - which is why I went Assassin See why I consider War Monk/Cleric a low tier letdown as far as this game goes?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Holy Elf Posted January 6, 2023 Share Posted January 6, 2023 Nice work! On S+ ranks, I'll mention they're more feasible for Catherine (sadly, super focusing on swords isn't really a good build) and Shamir. Otherwise... basically agree with you. You can get them, but they do require a lot of focus, and likely will require tutoring someone more than their "share" of the time (though sauna may ease up on the requirements here a bit). Interesting observation about faculty training savescumming. I suppose it's possible something about your movement is related to the RNG used for this? Very strange, but possible. Can you explain what you mean by "repeat step 2"? On War Cleric, it's true that not having a +speed modifier is a bummer. However, unless your name is Jeritza, it's still the fastest Fistfaire class in practice, because if you can learn Darting Blow and your name isn't Jeritza, it's your only Fistfaire class. If my goal is to do as much damage with Catherine as possible (i.e. I don't care about mobility), it's unlikely that any other class is gonna come out ahead of War Cleric. Assassin is certainly faster, but War Cleric is 7 points ahead of Assassin for damage with gauntlets. (Though admittedly, assassin rocks a mean Thunderbrand / Brave Sword). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted January 6, 2023 Author Share Posted January 6, 2023 9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said: See why I consider War Monk/Cleric a low tier letdown as far as this game goes?? 8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said: On War Cleric, it's true that not having a +speed modifier is a bummer. However, unless your name is Jeritza, it's still the fastest Fistfaire class in practice, because if you can learn Darting Blow and your name isn't Jeritza, it's your only Fistfaire class. If my goal is to do as much damage with Catherine as possible (i.e. I don't care about mobility), it's unlikely that any other class is gonna come out ahead of War Cleric. Assassin is certainly faster, but War Cleric is 7 points ahead of Assassin for damage with gauntlets. (Though admittedly, assassin rocks a mean Thunderbrand / Brave Sword). Yeah I see what point you were making @Shadow Mir. In practice, Constance still spent a lot of time in War Cleric - but I'd say her amazing Magic growth carried her through, rather than War Cleric specifically. I mean, it still has the benefits of being a Fistfaire class for women, and allowing for optimised Aura Knuckles+, so I'm not willing to write it off completely, but yeah I was surprised to have to drop it at endgame. On your point @Dark Holy Elf, you're right about how the numbers come out. But for gauntlets users, where every attack is brave, quadding is often more optimal than increasing the power of two attacks. Provided you have a way of dealing with the counter (like Desperation or decent Avo) and you're not trying to down armours, AS is more relevant than Atk for gauntlets users in the late game. Even late-game Dedue is struggling for kills against War Masters with One-Two Punch, unless he crits. Catherine was still great and quadding units in War Cleric in early Part 2, but Assassin ended up massively winning the damage calculations in late Part 2. 8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said: Interesting observation about faculty training savescumming. I suppose it's possible something about your movement is related to the RNG used for this? Very strange, but possible. Can you explain what you mean by "repeat step 2"? Yeah, I was inspired by the fact that the RNG for random items in the monastery is partially determined by the direction from which you approach them. What I meant by "repeat Step 2" was that I normally changed direction sharply twice (Step 2 + Step 3) before I attempted faculty training. But the first direction change should take you away from the tutor, and the second direction change should take you back. 10 hours ago, Shadow Mir said: Personally, I find getting S+ rank to be the definition of "awesome but impractical", far as this game goes. Especially when you're likely getting it rather late, if at all. Yeah, I think I agree, although it seems more practical to farm Magic boosters. I might try it on a normal unit with a simple build plan (Annette?) if I ever run the game again, although I'm still not sure it'd do enough to save her lategame combat. 8 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said: On S+ ranks, I'll mention they're more feasible for Catherine (sadly, super focusing on swords isn't really a good build) and Shamir. Otherwise... basically agree with you. You can get them, but they do require a lot of focus, and likely will require tutoring someone more than their "share" of the time (though sauna may ease up on the requirements here a bit). I've actually never tried this with Catherine/Shamir - will add it to the list! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted January 6, 2023 Share Posted January 6, 2023 5 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said: Yeah I see what point you were making @Shadow Mir. In practice, Constance still spent a lot of time in War Cleric - but I'd say her amazing Magic growth carried her through, rather than War Cleric specifically. I mean, it still has the benefits of being a Fistfaire class for women, and allowing for optimised Aura Knuckles+, so I'm not willing to write it off completely, but yeah I was surprised to have to drop it at endgame. Being the only Fistfaire class for females units is nice... but then you realize that pretty much no female unit would actually shine in it because the focuses inherently clash; magically inclined units are gutted by the half uses, and physically inclined units don't have good spell lists. As an aside, I seriously hope Engage does a better job with classes than this game or Fates did... As far as 3 Hopes goes, what exactly did the newest update do? Because it didn't look like it did anything to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted January 6, 2023 Author Share Posted January 6, 2023 1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said: Being the only Fistfaire class for females units is nice... but then you realize that pretty much no female unit would actually shine in it because the focuses inherently clash; magically inclined units are gutted by the half uses, and physically inclined units don't have good spell lists. I wouldn't go that far - Constance was ORKOing in it from the moment she certified, right the way through to the end of the game, while still being able to use Rescue and provide linked attack boosts with Bolting (normally she didn't even need to cast offensively). Catherine was also ORKOing in War Cleric for most of the game, but the class couldn't keep up in late-game because of the massive increase in lategame AS. And Recover on its own made Catherine more useful in War Cleric than she was in Assassin - I mainly kept her in that class for its Dex/Spd growths. 1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said: As far as 3 Hopes goes, what exactly did the newest update do? Because it didn't look like it did anything to me. Wouldn't be able to help with this unfortunately! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted January 7, 2023 Share Posted January 7, 2023 (edited) 23 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said: I wouldn't go that far - Constance was ORKOing in it from the moment she certified, right the way through to the end of the game, while still being able to use Rescue and provide linked attack boosts with Bolting (normally she didn't even need to cast offensively). Catherine was also ORKOing in War Cleric for most of the game, but the class couldn't keep up in late-game because of the massive increase in lategame AS. And Recover on its own made Catherine more useful in War Cleric than she was in Assassin - I mainly kept her in that class for its Dex/Spd growths. Even so, I'd still consider it a tough sell when you yourself admit that Catherine was better off in Assassin. Also, I don't think I can really consider Aura Knuckles worth crafting, let alone worth building around when the build is expensive as hell to fuel. Long story short, anyone who could make it work is absolutely gonna be better off in a more specialized class. Same for Mortal Savant. EDIT: What's up with the random fence in chapter 21 of Azure Moon?? I swear that wasn't there in Verdant Wind... Edited January 7, 2023 by Shadow Mir Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
haarhaarhaar Posted January 7, 2023 Author Share Posted January 7, 2023 13 hours ago, Shadow Mir said: Even so, I'd still consider it a tough sell when you yourself admit that Catherine was better off in Assassin This was a lategame-specific comment - if she'd gone into War Cleric for endgame, she would have needed extra Spd boosters to quad everyone at endgame that I wasn't willing to give her. A woman using gauntlets who had lower Str than Catherine may have wanted to focus on a crit-build instead, and War Cleric would have been much better for that. Catherine also still needed to spend time in War Cleric for Brawl Avo +20, and ORKO'd for the entire time she was in the class (which she wouldn't have done without Fistfaire). 13 hours ago, Shadow Mir said: Also, I don't think I can really consider Aura Knuckles worth crafting, let alone worth building around when the build is expensive as hell to fuel. Long story short, anyone who could make it work is absolutely gonna be better off in a more specialized class. Same for Mortal Savant. I mean, you know I disagree on this. Because I just documented how it worked for Constance in the log. 13 hours ago, Shadow Mir said: What's up with the random fence in chapter 21 of Azure Moon?? I swear that wasn't there in Verdant Wind.. Yeah, that fence isn't there in VW/SS I'm pretty sure. Enbarr plays quite differently on AM, so I guess the fence is there to help protect the Dark Knights/Bow Knights for their hit-and-run attacks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Holy Elf Posted January 7, 2023 Share Posted January 7, 2023 Aura Knuckles have the problem other magic weapons have: before Chapter 16, Arcane Crystals are in limited supply, and how many you get is basically up to the RNG (either with blue shinies or cooperation from cats and dogs). That said, Aura Knuckles do burn through them significantly more slowly than say Magic Bow Sniper does (you get 15-20 double attacks instead of 5-6 Hunter's Volleys). You can argue it's an "expensive" build prior to the Dark Merchant, but after? Not even a little bit. And on non-CF routes, there's certainly enough game left after the Dark Merchant for this build to be notable. Especially since some other builds fall off at one-rounding right near the end, having a build which shines late is nice. And it's not like Constance is a bad unit until then. 30 minutes ago, haarhaarhaar said: This was a lategame-specific comment - if she'd gone into War Cleric for endgame, she would have needed extra Spd boosters to quad everyone at endgame that I wasn't willing to give her. A woman using gauntlets who had lower Str than Catherine may have wanted to focus on a crit-build instead, and War Cleric would have been much better for that. Catherine also still needed to spend time in War Cleric for Brawl Avo +20, and ORKO'd for the entire time she was in the class (which she wouldn't have done without Fistfaire). To add onto this, depending on how the numbers fall (e.g. RNG with stats; how much cooking you do; whether you have Death Blow, Darting Blow, or both), it's entirely possible that War Cleric maintains its supremacy for offence over Assassin. That's what happened for me the last time I did that build; the few things too fast for Catherine to double just died outright from Nimble Combo (with its super-high chance to proc Crest of Charon). Maybe not War Masters? I forget. And yeah, Brawl Avo 20 is very useful... quite frankly it's good enough alone to make Mir's hatred for the class unwarranted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow Mir Posted January 7, 2023 Share Posted January 7, 2023 (edited) 1 hour ago, haarhaarhaar said: Yeah, that fence isn't there in VW/SS I'm pretty sure. Enbarr plays quite differently on AM, so I guess the fence is there to help protect the Dark Knights/Bow Knights for their hit-and-run attacks. I knew I wasn't remembering wrong. It caught my attention because I'm in the midst of prepping for chapter 21 at this time, and caught sight of it, then started thinking "Huh, that's weird. Why is that there??". Anyways, you didn't say who you picked to marry, so who did you pick? 26 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said: Aura Knuckles have the problem other magic weapons have: before Chapter 16, Arcane Crystals are in limited supply, and how many you get is basically up to the RNG (either with blue shinies or cooperation from cats and dogs). That said, Aura Knuckles do burn through them significantly more slowly than say Magic Bow Sniper does (you get 15-20 double attacks instead of 5-6 Hunter's Volleys). You can argue it's an "expensive" build prior to the Dark Merchant, but after? Not even a little bit. And on non-CF routes, there's certainly enough game left after the Dark Merchant for this build to be notable. Especially since some other builds fall off at one-rounding right near the end, having a build which shines late is nice. And it's not like Constance is a bad unit until then. To add onto this, depending on how the numbers fall (e.g. RNG with stats; how much cooking you do; whether you have Death Blow, Darting Blow, or both), it's entirely possible that War Cleric maintains its supremacy for offence over Assassin. That's what happened for me the last time I did that build; the few things too fast for Catherine to double just died outright from Nimble Combo (with its super-high chance to proc Crest of Charon). Maybe not War Masters? I forget. And yeah, Brawl Avo 20 is very useful... quite frankly it's good enough alone to make Mir's hatred for the class unwarranted. It's hard for me to agree when Arcane Crystals are 500 gold for one, and repairing the Aura Knuckles has one of the highest price tags (3750 to repair the AK+, which ties for the highest repair price). Another issue with the Aura Knuckles is that they require A+ professor level just to craft (not that I'm saying that's hard to get), AND A rank to use. That's an issue when Coco will be risking her neck constantly in melee range (because let's be honest, that's about as smart as robbing a police station when we're talking about someone who is a mage, and thus is gonna be fragile)... To say my hatred is unwarranted is very, very, VERY bold talk when you know full damn well that I despise most hybrid classes for being masters of none, and War Cleric is even worse than most at this. If I have to invest that much for that kind of crap, passing up superior alternatives for it, I want RESULTS!!! Edited January 7, 2023 by Shadow Mir Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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