Maddening mode play through

[9000gigabitePC]

Is it better to do a maddening run with growths or should you do a 0% growths run.

 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Well, they're very different from each other. The Maddening Mode playthrough with growths, for instance, is actually possible on the actual, unmodded game. As for which is "harder" - Maddening NG, or Hard NG 0% growths - I actually think it's the former. In a growths-less run, you can still "rise up" to class bases on promotion, alongside benefiting from stat-boosting skills, items, and battalions. Plus, you don't have to worry about generic enemies having additional skills. That said, I haven't tried a 0% growths playthrough, so I couldn't say for certain.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Maddening is definitely harder than Hard 0% growths.

Just looked up the stats for CF endgame... most enemies have somewhere around +10 atk, +10 spd, +13 HP, and +5 def (give or take) on Maddening. Will growths make up for that? Take speed. On 0% growths, everyone will have either 16 (most master classes) or 20 (those who train flying) base speed, before any modifiers. What about with growths? Well, take Ferdinand. He has 8 base speed, and 50% speed growth. Assuming he gains 40 levels, that's 28 base speed. His relative speed compared to enemies is thus basically the same as in Maddening as on 0% growths Hard, a little more or less depending on his class choice and class modifers to growths. Similar arguments can be made involving other stats, though they're more complicated because damage always involves more stats interacting.

Of course, that's endgame. The earlier you go in the game, the less growths matter. Taken to an extreme, at the start of the game, 0% growths does nothing. There's no question that Chapter 1 is far harder on Maddening than on Hard 0% growths. Not only that, but every time you reach a new tier (but especially Advanced) your stats automatically update to partly make up for the lack of growths.

And then there's the non-stat things. As @Shanty Pete's 1st Mate already mentioned, there are enemy skills. Archers having Poison Strike, thieves having Pass, and various enemy classes having breaker+ skills all serve to make them much more dangerous than they would be without them. Then there's the fact that you gain more passive instruction exp on Hard than Maddening, allowing you to access classes and skills more easily (Weight-3 alone means some characters will actually be faster on the 0% growths run for a while, if they're able to get it on Hard due to the extra training available). And finally, there are the battles themselves. Maddening features, in particular, reinforcements who act immediately upon appearing, and this makes things like the Chapter 5 ambush much tougher than it is on Hard. 

Having said all that, they are different experiences and you should do which one appeals to you more. Hard 0% growths is much easier than Maddening early, but will likely be almost as difficult as Maddening by the end; you might prefer that challenge curve to the one in Maddening itself. It'll also change which characters are more useful; if you're a fan of Petra, you might prefer a growths run, but if you're a fan of Alois, he shines more on 0%.

[9000gigabitePC]

I’d rather not hack my switch just for a harder challenge. I just feel like if I don’t play on a 0% growth run then I’m not playing the hardest difficulty as intended and that I’m cheating in a way.

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 7/27/2023 at 9:35 AM, 9000gigabitePC said:

I just feel like if I don’t play on a 0% growth run then I’m not playing the hardest difficulty as intended and that I’m cheating in a way.

Obviously you can do what you want, but 0% growth is absolutely not "difficulty as intended", given that it requires a hacking method. I can virtually guarantee the devs did not consider such runs when designing the game; if they had considered them important or something worth balancing the game around, they would have put in a "0% growths" option when you start the game (similar to how PoR and Engage provide an option between fixed and random growths).

[SnowFire]

On 7/27/2023 at 12:35 PM, 9000gigabitePC said:

I’d rather not hack my switch just for a harder challenge. I just feel like if I don’t play on a 0% growth run then I’m not playing the hardest difficulty as intended and that I’m cheating in a way.

Have you played or beaten 3H before?  On what difficulty?  If you've played it or Echoes before, it has the system where class promotion brings a character up to certain stat minimums, making it one of the games in the series that is least affected by 0% growths.  The difficulty increase of 0% growths is almost entirely backloaded as a result to when characters haven't promoted for a long while.  (Okay, and Reunion at Dawn, but that's because every single stat you can get is crucial for that rude map.)

If you've never played 3H before, don't underestimate vanilla Maddening (well, as long as you don't go research all the most OP strategies on the Internet first at least).  It's not a pushover, especially if you're playing marginally "fair" (i.e. not doing some of the powerful warp-skipping style strategies).  If you start up Maddening and feel it's still too easy, you can get a 0% growths-like experience by just delaying promotion.  Make it so that your characters don't certify for Advanced Classes until L30 rather than L20, or never if you're feeling really hardcore and stick with Intermediate classes the whole game.  And maybe say Intermediate classes only come at L15 rather than L10.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

On 7/27/2023 at 12:35 PM, 9000gigabitePC said:

I’d rather not hack my switch just for a harder challenge. I just feel like if I don’t play on a 0% growth run then I’m not playing the hardest difficulty as intended and that I’m cheating in a way.

As @Dark Holy Elf said, the fact that a 0% growths run requires external modification means that it's not "intended difficulty". It would be cool if it were available as an option, but even then, I don't imagine they'd design around it. All difficulty levels assume that the player's units are getting levels. And I would say thag Maddening NG is already plenty tough - especially sans DLC. There's no "cheating" in playing it vanilla!