Rate the Unit 11: Yunaka

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Guidelines:

2.1.) mention the diffculty on which you rate the unit 

2.2.) what classes your unit went through, what skills they had and so on; don´t consider obviously suboptimal builds.

2.3.) no DLC rings, no non-unit DLC bonuses

2.4.) no grinding in skirmishes

2.5.) no rng abuse (no resetting for bond rings)

2.6.) cooking is allowed

2.7.) ratings to be given in the format X/10

2.8.) if it isn´t mentioned above, it´s fair game

2.9.) no "Kagetsu exists and obsoletes Lapis, 0/10", explain your rating

 

Unit: Yunaka

Class: Thief

                     Lvl   HP    STR   MAG   DEX   SPD    LCK   DEF    RES     BLD

Bases:          6     25      8       5        14       12        8       9        7         5

T. Bases:      6      6       3       3         4        2         6       3        2         1

Growths:      /     50      35     25      40      45      25     15       45       5

 

Personal Skill:  While unit occupies terrain that provides an Avo bonus, grants Crit+15.

Innate Proficiency: Knife

SP: 500

 

Support Bonuses:

C    Hit+10, Avoid+5
B    Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+5
A    Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+10
S    Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+20

 

Tools and mo stats:

Average Stats - Fire Emblem: Engage (FE17) (triangleattack.com)

Engage Numbers - Google Tabellen

 

 

Rating: 5.75

Next unit on Monday

Edited July 17, 2023 by Imuabicus der Fertige

[Bartozio]

And now we come to that mysterious wanderer, Yunaka. The rating below is considering Maddening mode.

Okay, so lets start with the good. Yunaka joins with pretty good bases and Thief is just a good class in the early game as it has good 1-2 range to fight on enemy phase and avoid counters on player phase. She's probably your best answer early on for most mages, since she has good Res and can easily fight them on enemy phase with physical weapons (well, assuming the're not using thunder). She's probably not one rounding much else without an emblem ring, but then that goes for most of your units and she deals decent chip damage.

She also gets to use Micaiah for free in her joining chapter, which can get her a good amount of exp and, more importantly, sp. After that, she likely only needs a single extra good chapter of Micaiah/Marth to get to Canter, or potentially two if you let her use some of the less in demand emblems. That's a pretty notable advantage over most of the other early game units, who all tend to need at least two chapters of Micaiah/Marth to reach Canter. This means that even if you're not planning to use Yunaka long term, it's still pretty easy to give her Canter and use her as a strong filler unit in the early game without hindering investment in the units you actually want to invest into.

So that's the good, now lets talk about the bad. After chapter 11 you should have obtained a grand total of 4 master seals, along with two being buyable in the shop (one before chapter 11, the other afterwards). Considering the low deployment limit for the next few maps, from here on out you'll likely only be deploying promoted units, and Yunaka's thief class doesn't compare nearly as well against those as it did against the unpromoted ones.

You'd really like to promote our girl here as well, but unfortunately you can't. Thief doesn't have a promotion and it can only reclass into promoted classes after you reach level 21. She's honestly fine, if not spectacular, once you get her into some of the better classes like Mage Knight or Griffon Knight, but it's quite a chore to get her there. This is made even worse by the fact that her dip occurs at a point where you're not allowed to field a lot of units, whoever else you were training in the early game is likely popping off right now, and you get a huge influx of amazing units. Between all that, it can be fairly difficult to justify fielding Yunaka just so she can get a bit more exp.

All in all, I give her a 5/10. Really good unit early on with some potential for the late game, but her midgame is just aweful.

[Armchair General]

Great mage killer, early on. Kind of entertaining for an meme unit. Other than that, I really stopped using her once I got Zelkov mostly because being an thief doesn't exactly carry as much weight as being an Wolf Knight (seriously, Wolf Knight Alear basically trivializes the game). In fact, most her issues comes from how niche of being an thief is, along with some plot-related circumstances that suddenly gives you promoted recruits in Solm. Plus, there isn't exactly an abundance of mages to actually kill in the second leg of the game...Aside from Griss, but he's essentially an pushover, so who cares about him.

[lenticular]

(Rating primarily based on Hard but with some discussion of Maddening too.)

So let's talk about forging. Specifically, forged daggers. Forged daggers are just too good. I'm going to consider +4 steel weapons, because that seems like something that can be attained quickly and easily without really feeling that you're over-investing in a single unit. For the 5 basic physical weapon types (sword, lance, axe, bow, dagger), the dagger has: the join second highest might (15, tied with lance, behind axe's 17); the joint second best hit (90, tied with bow, behind sword's 95), and the lowest weight (4, beating out bow's 6 into second place). This alone would be enough to make daggers the best weapon type, but then on top of that, they also get 1-2 range and the ability to debuff. Other 1-2 range options come with worse stats and/or more expensive forges.

The strength of forged daggers pretty much automatically makes Thieves and Wolf Knights, and as the first dagger wielder that you get, Yunaka is definitely going to end up making a strong showing when you first grab her. And since Leif is the only Emblem who offers knife training, your options are to use those characters who have natural knife proficiency (Yunaka, Zelkov, Merrin and -- huh -- Pannette apparently), wait until chapter 17, or throw it on an early game character (maybe Chloé or Lapis). There definitely are good options here, but they're limited enough that you do at least have to give it due consideration.

For long-term considerations, I do typically prefer Wolf Knight to Thief for the extra point of movement, but there's not that much between them in terms of stats. And both of them have class skills that are occasionally useful but not game changing. The biggest advantage that Thieves have over Wolf Knights is the Covert ability to double terrain bonuses. This makes it pretty easy to build Thieves into excellent dodge tanks, either using terrain that's already present or by making use of Corrin's smoke ability. As with most dodge tanks, this is considerably stronger on Hard on Maddening, due to the differences in AI behaviour.

If you are wanting to use that particular thief build, though, I think that Yunaka is the best choice for it. Her excellent res means that she doesn't have to worry much about pesky mages who can ignore her terrain bonuses, and her personal skill just makes her even better at killing things that are failing to hit her.

All of which makes me think she's worth somewhere between a 7 and an 8 on hard, but I'll round down since I do think she's weaker on Maddening. 7/10.

[Barren]

So now we get to talk about Yunaka. This will be assuming Hard but will mention Maddening.

Yunaka joins you turn 1 of chapter 6. Though she doesn’t get Micaiah immediately until you kill one of the bandits on her side of the map that has the ring. That’s easy enough to do. Once you do get Micaiah, then she would be able to take advantage of the mend staff that she has which is very convenient. She can also also start earning a huge amount of EXP with Great Sacrifice making leveling her up easy early on. Same can be said for alot of units though.

 

Daggers in this game when forged can be one of the more potent 1-2 range damage options available since it can inflict poison and gets +2 might per forge until you get the weapon to +5 then that last might increase would only be +1. This compensates Yunaka’s lowish strength growth. She is also a proficient mage killer as she has a good res stat and speed stat to double mages early on. If you forge the iron dagger she comes with high enough, she can ORKO mages.

 

Thief in this game is a special class so she would not need a master seal to reclass if you level her up to level 21. Same with Zelkov but we’ll get to him later. So if you want to reclass her to a different class without needing a master seal, she can go wolf knight for higher move, a secondary weapon type and eventually the skill hobble which can be useful against high move enemies including paladins, wyvern knights and even enemy wolf knights. She has a good magic growth so she could also go Sage or Mage Knight pending on what proficiencies you decide to give her.

 

As the game goes on, her lower HP, strength and defense growth will eventually start to go against her as she may not be able to withstand attacks as well as other might. But that’s not to say she becomes useless, trained to kill can help her score critical hits and be a dodge tank at the same time for being a covert unit.

There is something potentially game breaking you can do on hard mode of this game. You can keep Yunaka/Zelkov as a thief and use Corrin emblem to enable Fog Vein which functions like a AoE avoid tile. You can do this to create a potential choke point for your thief and hold the line. The enemy AI doesn’t see your avoid and just attacks you but only end up missing. On maddening however it’s not as abusable as you hope it would because if your avoid is too high then they will ignore you.

 

Overall, she gets a 6/10 for me. Yunaka is good where it counts and she can still contribute late game. But I personally don’t think that her damage will be all that meaningful by the end. But make no mistake, if invested into her, she can be a good unit. On maddening she is worse but not awful.

Edited July 14, 2023 by Barren

[SnowFire]

No Jean / Anna?  I'd humbly suggest ranking them around the other early joiners, rather than at the very end of the list.

Anyway, Yunaka Lvl. 40 Thief stats:

44 HP, 23 Str, 14 Mag, 34 Dex, 32 Spd, 19 Def, 24 Res, 17 Lck, 7 Bld, 5 Move

And since it's quite relevant if you're not changing classes, here's Zelkov Lvl 40 Thief stats for comparison:

51 HP, 25 Str, 6 Mag, 33 Dex, 31 Spd, 26 Def, 10 Res, 13 Lck, 11 Bld, 5 Move

--

Yunaka has a good start, with decent bases + sorta being in a promoted class already in Thief.  She has enough of a Magic score for Micaiah to be a reasonable pick on her.  Lategame, her passive can help set up some high-crit plays with Corrin and the like.  Pretty good Resistance (which gets even better if you keep Micky on her, and better yet if you have skill slot room for Micky's cheap +Res skill) means she can function as a magekiller if you want.  What a badass.

Unfortunately...  it still doesn't ultimately pan out that great, especially once you start promoting people and Thief's early edge falls off.  Her Str just isn't that great; we have yet another mixed build here.  That's okay if you keep her in her niche of fighting squishy mages, but means she falls off vs. other stuff where she has trouble doing damage.  If you're keeping Miccy on her, that's improving her utility but also not helping her kill stuff.  If you want the utility but Miccy isn't around, like many mixed-build units, Yunaka can make a passable Griffin Knight or Royal Knight to get her staff access back, but she won't really offer stuff Chloe can't already.

To Thief's credit, the S-rank Dagger is somewhat accessible, unlike the trollish S-rank weaponry that hides behind making absurdly huge donations and the like.  (And Yunaka can keep access to this if she class changes to Wolf Knight.)

As per the stats above, Yunaka compares somewhat unfavorably with Zelkov.  She's better if you're using her magic dip & getting hit by magic spells, but Zelkov is much tougher in HP & Def, dodgier thanks to his passive (can work vs. enemy magic users!), and a little stronger.  Potentially faster, too, if Yunaka is getting weighed down by her dagger.

Yunaka gets a 5/10.  Use her C6-C12, and salvageable post-C12 but nothing particularly impressive.

Edited July 14, 2023 by SnowFire

[Shadow Mir]

46 minutes ago, SnowFire said:

To Thief's credit, the S-rank Dagger is somewhat accessible, unlike the trollish S-rank weaponry that hides behind making absurdly huge donations and the like, if you stay in Thief rather than going Wolf Knight or something.

There's two of them. One of which is in the second to last chapter.

[SnowFire]

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

There's two of them. One of which is in the second to last chapter.

I'm familiar, yes.  Carnwenhan is in C21 and Cinqueda is in C25.  This is still much more accessible than the S-Rank weapons that might as well not exist which make S-Rank in certain weapons a joke, like the S-Rank Arts weapon or S-Rank staff that requires hitting lvl. 5 Donation in a region that you aren't even told which one it is if you want it.  (And you get...  ONE USE of your S-Rank Staff!!!  Ever!). Thief is the only class that can wield S-rank daggers naturally, along with certain characters in Wolf Knight (e.g. Merrin or class-changed Thieves), so not having access to multiples isn't really an issue - you're probably not running some goofy oops-all-daggers team outside of a themed run of the game.

[Shadow Mir]

On 7/14/2023 at 4:13 PM, SnowFire said:

I'm familiar, yes.  Carnwenhan is in C21 and Cinqueda is in C25.  This is still much more accessible than the S-Rank weapons that might as well not exist which make S-Rank in certain weapons a joke, like the S-Rank Arts weapon or S-Rank staff that requires hitting lvl. 5 Donation in a region that you aren't even told which one it is if you want it.  (And you get...  ONE USE of your S-Rank Staff!!!  Ever!). Thief is the only class that can wield S-rank daggers naturally, along with certain characters in Wolf Knight (e.g. Merrin or class-changed Thieves), so not having access to multiples isn't really an issue - you're probably not running some goofy oops-all-daggers team outside of a themed run of the game.

Fair enough. Though Carwenhan sucks; while its 28 might is impressive for a knife, the downsides of smash weapons knock it down, with the lack of range not helping; Yunaka also gets a pretty sizable speed hit from it. And it's the more accessible one of the two, as Cinquedea is in the second to last chapter, and you have to worry about a thief taking it before you can get there... and I've seen via Youtube that chapter 25 is REALLY rough on Maddening.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[FashionEmblem]

I've played the game on Maddening. Yunaka is a thief with Res, which is a decent niche that I quite enjoy though I can see why many wouldn't. Thieves mostly just want to run Corrin, set up fog, and dodge tank while inflicting poison on their would be assailants. Res is nice and notably lacking in her thievery competition from Zelkov, since enemy mystical units will ignore the +60 avoid from the fog cover. The thief class has pretty low strength, so their damage falls off and I'm not sure how much it's worth trying to offset this with forging (at least daggers forge well with +2 MT at every tier). Yunaka's personal skill synergizes well with this build since the fog terrain gives her a bit of extra crit, though unfortunately the ranged daggers don't carry inherent crit aside from steel. You'll likely want to carry a variety of avoid engraves on a thief since enemies have quite variable hit rates but they still need >0 hit (or chain attack set up) to bother attacking. As a player of the Trails series, I enjoy setting up a good dodge tank, but Engage is also a game with Soren!Veyle or Ike!Panette (or, really Ike!anyone can get close too) to set up characters that can enemy phase and KILL, which thieves aren't offensive enough to do.

Unfortunately, thief's status as a "special" class also hurts Yunaka's reclassing ability. She has to hit level 21 to reclass into an advanced class, which is quite a slog. There is the option to reclass first thing then rush level 10 unpromoted instead, but unfortunately Yunaka joins a ways away from your first Second Seal, and if you don't use her upon recruitment she falls even further behind Zelkov in levels by his join time.

Edited July 26, 2023 by FashionEmblem

[Shadow Mir]

22 minutes ago, FashionEmblem said:

I've played the game on Maddening. Yunaka is a thief with Res, which is a decent niche that I quite enjoy though I can see why many wouldn't. Thieves mostly just want to run Corrin, set up fog, and dodge tank while inflicting poison on their would be assailants. Res is nice and notably lacking in her thievery competition from Zelkov, since enemy mystical units will ignore the +60 avoid from the fog cover. The thief class has pretty low strength, so their damage falls off and I'm not sure how much it's worth trying to offset this with forging (at least daggers forge well with +2 MT at every tier). Yunaka's personal skill synergizes well with this build since the fog terrain gives her a bit of extra crit, though unfortunately the ranged daggers don't carry inherent crit aside from steel. You'll likely want to carry a variety of avoid engraves on a thief since enemies have quite variable hit rates but they still need >0 hit (or chain attack set up) to bother attacking. As a player of the Trails series, I enjoy setting up a good dodge tank, but Engage is also a game with Soren!Veyle or Ike!Panette (or, really Ike!anyone can get close too) to set up characters that can enemy phase and KILL, which thieves aren't offensive enough to do.

Unfortunately, thief's status as a "special" class also hurts Yunaka's reclassing ability. She has to hit level 21 to reclass into an advanced class, which is quite a slog. There is the option to reclass first thing then rush level 10 unpromoted instead, but unfortunately Yunaka joins a ways away from your first Second Seal, and if you don't use her upon recruitment she falls even further behind Zelkov in levels by his join time.

In my humble opinion, Corrin has better uses than giving to a thief for enabling fog strategies. Which begs the question, is that enough to offset not having access to the fire dragon vein instead?  I think not.

[samthedigital]

4 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

In my humble opinion, Corrin has better uses than giving to a thief for enabling fog strategies. Which begs the question, is that enough to offset not having access to the fire dragon vein instead?  I think not.

If you're making an opportunity cost argument the loss of the 1-3 range Dreadful Aura and Draconic Hex on a unit with more movement is far more impactful. I don't find myself using any of the dragon veins much because Dreadful Aura is a more potent defensive tool if I actually need one; I'd rather take a more offensive approach. I would probably prefer the fog when not engaged to get more enemies to attack into my unit in theory, but Yunaka's lack of bulk can make it difficult for that strategy to work effectively on Maddening. It can be pretty effective on Hard mode if Yunaka gains enough levels though.

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, samthedigital said:

If you're making an opportunity cost argument the loss of the 1-3 range Dreadful Aura and Draconic Hex on a unit with more movement is far more impactful. I don't find myself using any of the dragon veins much because Dreadful Aura is a more potent defensive tool if I actually need one; I'd rather take a more offensive approach. I would probably prefer the fog when not engaged to get more enemies to attack into my unit in theory, but Yunaka's lack of bulk can make it difficult for that strategy to work effectively on Maddening. It can be pretty effective on Hard mode if Yunaka gains enough levels though.

Honestly, cavalry and fliers have some of the weaker dragon vein effects, which dissuades me from giving Corrin to one of them. Dreadful Aura is nice, but it's only usable while engaged, AKA for only three to four turns. As far as Yunaka is concerned, she falls off in the late game; I ended up dropping her come the homecoming.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[samthedigital]

48 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Dreadful Aura is nice, but it's only usable while engaged, AKA for only three to four turns.

The trick is to play fast enough to get to the next energy circle before the engage meter runs out. If you aren't able to do that I can see why you'd find more use in the dragon veins.

48 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Honestly, cavalry and fliers have some of the weaker dragon vein effects, which dissuades me from giving Corrin to one of them.

To put it into perspective I didn't use a single dragon vein in my last Maddening playthrough; if I ever need to slow enemies down the engage window is enough, and even that's less necessary the more I play.

Quote

As far as Yunaka is concerned, she falls off in the late game; I ended up dropping her come the homecoming.

The people that really liked Yunaka were using the dodge tank build on Hard mode. That was the case in the first month of the game's life cycle anyway. It is pretty effective, but she needs some favoritism so that she can start snowballing. Otherwise she will fall off the way you experienced.

Edited July 26, 2023 by samthedigital

[Dark Holy Elf]

12 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

The trick is to play fast enough to get to the next energy circle before the engage meter runs out. If you aren't able to do that I can see why you'd find more use in the dragon veins.

Strongly agree with this. Additionally, the higher move lets you reach those energy circles more quickly/easily, and since the Corrin-user improves massively while engaged, that's a good thing. In the case of Ivy (or Hortensia), you're even guaranteed a useful action on the turn you grab emblem energy, because of staff access.

Mind, I do still think a Mystic (e.g. Sage) with Corrin is a decent option too - the fire dragon vein is nice now and then, you still have access to 3-range Dreadful Aura, and you still make use of the magic boost.

I definitely agree that Thief doesn't feel like it's making good use of Corrin's kit. Lower move, no 3 range, can't take advantage of the magic boost.

[Barren]

2 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Strongly agree with this. Additionally, the higher move lets you reach those energy circles more quickly/easily, and since the Corrin-user improves massively while engaged, that's a good thing. In the case of Ivy (or Hortensia), you're even guaranteed a useful action on the turn you grab emblem energy, because of staff access.

Mind, I do still think a Mystic (e.g. Sage) with Corrin is a decent option too - the fire dragon vein is nice now and then, you still have access to 3-range Dreadful Aura, and you still make use of the magic boost.

I definitely agree that Thief doesn't feel like it's making good use of Corrin's kit. Lower move, no 3 range, can't take advantage of the magic boost.

Plus not to mention that on maddening the enemy now checks accuracy and damage before they attack. In this case it’s the former.

So fog vein while useful can be a waste turn if the user’s avoid is too high. The only way I can think of that you could mitigate that issue is to carry a heavier weapon that has an engraving on it like Ike or Roy.

[FashionEmblem]

No disagreements from me that Corrin + mystical is strong due to Fire Vein and 3 range Dreadful Aura and Corrin + high movement + 3 range makes for even better Dreadful Aura too, at the cost of mediocre veins. However, I've recently been going in a different direction and focusing on patching up my mages' speed so they can double with Bolganone and get more one rounds, which is much easier to do with the well. Ivy + Speedtaker + Speed +5 or Mage Knight!Citrinne + Camilla + Speedtaker, for example. For context, internal level 39 Ivy and Mage Knight!Citrinne have 23 speed. Certainly unimpressive, but filled up with Speedtaker you get to 33 speed. Add in Speed +5 (or an emblem with a speed bonus, such as Camilla), and that's 38 speed. Some of this speed is unfortunately lost to weight, especially for Citrinne (but, that is offset thanks to Chaos Style), but by comparison internal Level 39 Wyvern!Kagetsu has ~34 speed and WolfKnight!Merrin has ~38 speed. Big investment yields big payoff when doubling from their high magic stats, but definitely not something to be pulled off without SP books from the well.

I also like that thieves can apply poison alongside Dreadful Aura and Draconic Hex for bosses. The poison is overkill on most enemies due to the Draconic Hex debuff, but it's appreciated when you have to deal with multiple HP bars.

And regarding maddening avoid, while it's true you have to maintain avoid within the range that the enemy still has some hit, I never found it too much of an issue. You do need to run multiple knives with different avoid engraves to do it, but perhaps that's too much investment in a single character for most. In the late game, only really had issues tuning avoid down to ~100 for some of the axe enemies, which I didn't find too big a deal since they were easy fodder for the above mages due to their low speed/res, you can still trick the backups to attack you for Chain Attacks since they don't account for Corrin's Pair-Up skill, their crazy high attack means you might actually just want to avoid combat entirely and merely slow them down a bit with fog, and you can run the heavier S-rank smash dagger to reduce your avoid if desired.

Edited July 26, 2023 by FashionEmblem

[Shadow Mir]

On 7/26/2023 at 9:29 AM, samthedigital said:

The trick is to play fast enough to get to the next energy circle before the engage meter runs out. If you aren't able to do that I can see why you'd find more use in the dragon veins.

This sounds too magic poker equation-esque for me. And unrealistic.

[samthedigital]

25 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

This sounds too magic poker equation-esque for me. And unrealistic.

On average an LTC completes maps in fewer turns than it takes the engage timer to run out. Someone has even done it in an ironman setting on hard mode, so it's possible to do that much less getting to the next engage circle on time. I play a little more casually, but 3-4 turns of Bonded Shield, a Byleth Dance, Wrath/Vantage, or whatever other related tool is more than enough to make a lot of progress in a map.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Just seconding @samthedigital here. I rather dislike LTC/warpskip-style play myself (I prefer to play FE maps, not skip them), but really unless you're playing at a glacial pace you should have little trouble reaching new sources of emblem energy on most maps. I checked my own file and my average number of turns over all the post-Corrin maps is around 9 (and that was without any of the "skip" techs like long-range Astra Storm to aggro bosses early), so one emblem circle will get you through some maps even at this speed, and two will get you through almost all of them.

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I rather dislike LTC/warpskip-style play myself (I prefer to play FE maps, not skip them), but really unless you're playing at a glacial pace you should have little trouble reaching new sources of emblem energy on most maps. I checked my own file and my average number of turns over all the post-Corrin maps is around 9 (and that was without any of the "skip" techs like long-range Astra Storm to aggro bosses early), so one emblem circle will get you through some maps even at this speed, and two will get you through almost all of them.

Just for reference I clear the game in around 300 turns on average completing every map; that averages to 7 turns each or so. I do take advantage of several skips and such, but I also like to clear most of the maps without them; it really just depends on how much I like playing the map the "normal" way.

For people that play slower and/or have trouble energy circle hopping something like Favorite Food can work too. I used it on my Byleth unit exclusively, but I can see someone making good use of it with Corrin. Dreadful Aura was one of the two most defining emblem effects in my first Maddening clear, and from what I've read that's a common experience.

I should probably actually talk about Yunaka to bring things back on topic somewhat and because I haven't actually given her a rating. I'd give her a 4/10 simply because I find that the Thief class is limited and it takes a lot of work to reclass her into something more appropriate. Since the ratings window has closed I'll probably save my thoughts on the Thief class in general for the Zelkov thread though.

[Shadow Mir]

On 8/8/2023 at 12:05 AM, samthedigital said:

On average an LTC completes maps in fewer turns than it takes the engage timer to run out. Someone has even done it in an ironman setting on hard mode, so it's possible to do that much less getting to the next engage circle on time. I play a little more casually, but 3-4 turns of Bonded Shield, a Byleth Dance, Wrath/Vantage, or whatever other related tool is more than enough to make a lot of progress in a map.

 

On 8/8/2023 at 3:14 PM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Just seconding @samthedigital here. I rather dislike LTC/warpskip-style play myself (I prefer to play FE maps, not skip them), but really unless you're playing at a glacial pace you should have little trouble reaching new sources of emblem energy on most maps. I checked my own file and my average number of turns over all the post-Corrin maps is around 9 (and that was without any of the "skip" techs like long-range Astra Storm to aggro bosses early), so one emblem circle will get you through some maps even at this speed, and two will get you through almost all of them.

So you're both pushing a very aggressive play style here, is that it? Because I don't think that's something that one can get away with easily on Maddening.

On Favorite Food: Aside from the fact that Celica has some of the worst availability emblem wise, whether I even get anything out of it is based on luck, as it needs a packed lunch, which one can only ever have one of, and getting one is not a guarantee.

Edited August 14, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

On Favorite Food: Aside from the fact that Celica has some of the worst availability emblem wise, whether I even get anything out of it is based on luck, as it needs a packed lunch, which one can only ever have one of, and getting one is not a guarantee.

Her availability doesn't matter as long as we inherit the skill before chapter 10. The packed lunch is also not that big of a deal since we can reset for it, but even if we don't it's common enough and can help a newer player out. To be clear I don't need it, but it's a good strategy for someone who isn't as proficient.

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

So you're both pushing a very aggressive play style here, is that it? Because I don't think that's something that one can get away with easily on Maddening.

I'm not sure what you mean by easily exactly. If you don't have a lot of game knowledge then sure, it's difficult to play aggressively, but I know enough to be able to pull it off, and I'm assuming that Dark Holy Elf does too. I'm not giving myself a lot of credit though; it's really not that complicated. If you want a really basic tutorial on how to play fast (not as fast as warp skipping everything) though you'll want to generate a lot of enemy phase combat. Bonded Shield is by far the "easiest" way to do it; give Alear* Lucina and use Bonded Shield on a unit with good 1-2 range and they'll kill an entire screen of enemies without any risk of taking damage. This is a tactic that has been employed (originalraisins has some examples of this in his ironman if you're interested; I'm sure that there is more out there, but I don't really watch Engage content.) in Maddening ironman runs, so it's about as consistent as it gets too. The Wrath/Vantage Panette build I gave you in the help thread also works; it's more limited, but it's not any less reliable with proper setup either.

*In theory any unit can work, but Alear is best because of their personal and support list.

In any case there's more that I could add, and those aren't the only strategies that work, but I'll refrain for now. From what I remember your only experience with Engage is a single Hard mode playthrough and some youtube content, so I can understand the skepticism to some degree.

Edited August 14, 2023 by samthedigital