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Shinori
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I really recommend against having guides suggest using Frederick for areas where he is obviously not needed (such as killing the Barbarian/Merc/Dark Mage at the top of Ch. 5), especially since Ch. 5 is where you should be starting to phase Frederick out of your team.

I pretty much never phase Frederick out of the team in Lunatic, he's useful throughout the entire game.

Edited by arvilino
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I pretty much never phase Frederick out of the team in Lunatic, he's useful throughout the entire game.

What exactly did you do to him to make him able to fight promoted enemies at all when they start showing up everywhere?

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What exactly did you do to him to make him able to fight promoted enemies at all when they start showing up everywhere?

Not much I think I just use him more often, I think the only difference I've seen between how I use him and other players based on posts is that along the course of the game I get him to 20 Great Knight and then Re-class him back into Great Knight. When the promoted enemies start showing up more frequently it's many are mounted or armoured units so his ability to use both Hammer and Beast Slayer Lance is handy(e.g. OHKOing the Valkyries in chapter 17) and many of them are Boss kill chapters so you don't fight that many anyway(with 18 as an exception), then there's the Rally skills you're most likely to have(Spectrum from MU and Speed from Cordelia) make up for his speed. It's not really until around chapter 23 where he may not be up to the enemies but at which point he's a great Pair-Up Partner for Chrom.

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I thought the main site said Beastbane only applies when unit is in taguel form. That's also kind of what the touchscreen tooltip implies. I also lose some pretty sexy +6 Spd bonuses for Fred when they're paired up by sending her Wyvern, though he probably would not mind it being translated into additional +6 Def instead. More tank for the tank god. It would certainly allow her to fill a different role on the main team though, so there is that.

Hmm, looks like you're right. Panne remains a Beast-type character (she is weak to Beast-effective weapons even after reclassing), which made me incorrectly think she would be able to continue to take advantage of Beastbuster. Given that many of your units will probably outpace Frederick pretty soon, though, I still think a Wyvern Panne is worth thinking about.

I honestly haven't really looked into how inheritance works, so I'm not sure if Lucina will get Veteran or not. Maybe I need to do some research.

Children will inherit the last active skill on each of their parents' skill list, so you can reorder your skills and ensure your kids get the skills you want.

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Just beat Lunatic mode (Classic) finally after 6 hours and I didn't use Fred past chapter 5. I used Chrom paired with Sumia until Lucina and Nowi paired with Gregor. Chrom basically solo'd the game paired with Sumia until Nowi. Got lucky with a Master seal from an early Anna Merchant shop. My Unit/ Avatar could barely level in the beginning even with Veteran for me so I dropped him. Some chapters Libra came along to rescue in order to recruit Say'ri etc. No grinding, skirmishes are impossible for me, and I used each available DLC map only a single time each.

Now on to the real beast?/ ridiculousness. Lunatic+ skills are broken. Enemies with Luna+ and Hawkeye... Its not even hard, its just dumb. There is no challenge, its just all luck.

Edited by SilverbackWolf
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Man, so I recruit Say'ri, and she outclasses Lon'qu in every stat except weapon rank, even if he gets promoted right now. Good thing I went with cavs first because they were higher level. FML, I guess you're getting benched now.

I really recommend against having guides suggest using Frederick for areas where he is obviously not needed (such as killing the Barbarian/Merc/Dark Mage at the top of Ch. 5), especially since Ch. 5 is where you should be starting to phase Frederick out of your team.

Why would you ever phase Frederick out of your team?

What exactly did you do to him to make him able to fight promoted enemies at all when they start showing up everywhere?

Pair him with Panne, give him decent/effective weaponry, let him get kills/earn XP at a natural pace. He's level 12 right now (Chapter 16, no children Paralogues engaged), and has more speed than either Sully or Stahl, and has comparable strength and durability with Sully (though he does lose to Stahl there). But he also has A ranks in all his weapons, which murders Sully's E axes, and Stahl not having axes at all, and trumps the pair of them only having B swords still.

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I am up to chapter 12 in Lunatic+ right now. At first I thought it was just pure rng and you sit there resetting the game, but thats not really true. You definitely need to get lucky to win, but for both chapter 2+3 once you get the first turn down which is something like 20% chance for chap 2 and 15% chance for chap 3, the rest of the chapter has very little RNG involved.

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Phasing Fred out at chapter 5? I found that Fred's usefulness extended to about chapter 12, but that's just me. Probably don't want to have him taking too many kills past chapter five though.

I mean that the first 3-4 chapters are usually "Fire Emblem: The Fredereckoning" so around Ch. 5 the rest of your team should be big enough boys and girls that they don't need to crowd around Fred's skirts to get anything done, and slowly the dynamic should shift such that Fred can't do anything because you're giving EXP to units who get more out of it.

Why would you ever phase Frederick out of your team?

He has pretty bad personal bases so the fact that the rest of your team gains like 2-3 times as much EXP means they will easily outgrow him, which matters in this game. It's the same issue Sirius has except FE13 is twice as long so the problem is even more apparent.

Also his skillset is pretty bad (Discipline on a unit that starts out with absurd weapon ranks, and Outdoor Fighter on a unit that will never dodge anything ever thanks to bad Speed+Luck? No thanks), and the ones he learns in the near future aren't too hot either (Luna vs. 8 Defense enemies, woo).

Granted, my Frederick should consider himself lucky to be Level 2 going into Ch. 2 so maybe it's just my dislike of the jeigan archetype

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Doing a run myself. Thoughts so far:

Premonition: Erm, isn't this identical to Hard mode? Boring.

Prologue: Oh hi game, welcome to you. Had to repeatedly make double-wide chokepoints and ensure that only one enemy could get to the not-Frederick side. But I'm definitely going to try not to rely on the guy~~~

Chapter 1: ohgodohgodohgod where do I put everyone who isn't Fred to keep them safe

Chapter 2: ohgodohgodohgod I have to squeeze everyone into this box, and then have them bait out individual enemies that they can take on while Fred does the rest and he needs that elixir too. I think this was 9 turns. You clear the first half, and then once you get in range for the second half they're all aggro and it's strategy time all over again. But the time in between is useful so that you can heal Fred and not waste more Elixir.

Chapter 3: ohgodohgodohgod Fred needs to pair with Sumia to double and it seems like there's barely enough time to take out the enemies on one side before the enemies from the other side reach you. No ranged weapons yet, which is the annoying part, until I can steal Kellam's javelin which requires first making the area safe for Chrom. Overall this was not fun although I'm sure I missed ways to make it better. And then once you open the door you still have to be careful because of that damned Hammer.

Chapter 4: Okay, starting to get easier now, but still needed a coordinated effort with Fred doing almost all the work. Kellam is pairing with Fred now since he temporarily has a good speed lead.

Paralogue 1: Ricken and Maribelle are beyond toast if they don't get rescued right away, so I made the sidetrip here, and decided I might as well recruit Donnel for completionism and what-not. This was surprisingly not bad, though long. The ax dudes in the center room seem to only aggro if you go to a spot where they can melee you, even though they have ranged weapons. My first run-through actually went without a hitch, except for Donnel not killing anything. But then I had a few more restarts after I realized that my first run involved Lon'qu getting fairly lucky with the initial ax dudes and archers in the south, and I had to revise my plan. This ended up being 13 turns.

Chapter 5: Yay, I have a Rescue staff. Lissa needs a pair-up just to have enough Mag to rescue Ricken and Maribelle down from the cliff at the closest point. That's sad. The wyverns were really annoying here - chumps compared to Fred, but a genuine threat for most of my units, and the map design favours them a lot. I had to work out a plan that took them into consideration, which was tough without knowing exactly what triggers them to start moving.

Chapter 6: ohgodohgodohgod Marth can't handle all that much, everyone on the right needs to scramble for safety (on turn 1 I had Lissa rescue a pair of them into Emm's room) and Fred has to go all over the place, mostly with a hand axe. Once the mages are gone, Panne can choke the central point instead, freeing Fred to deal with units that are advancing up the side, while a variety of units take turns covering Marth's flank and Chrom and FeMU chip in whereever they can, including the Gaius recruitment. FeMU is able to take 2 hits from mages, unless they're both using Nosferatu, which really helps.

Chapter 7: This... was... easy? Like, where did all the difficulty go, just evaporated. Again Fred is charging for a quick clear, but it's like 4 turns and rather little potential for things to go wrong. I continue taking opportunities to bait individual enemies and train units. Cordelia shows up too late to really do anything, although the additional flyer is greatly appreciated for the next two maps. Even though Sumia only got like 2 levels by this point so that Cordelia actually has a level lead, she's not really doing much better, except in the "taking a hit" department where her 7 extra base HP are a big help. I think Sumia got good levels though (i.e. ones including str/def). But yeah, on Hard mode Sumia can easily have a huge level lead by this point and make Cordelia look pretty bad.

Chapter 8: This would have been easy as well, except that the AI of enemies in the south is a complete WTF. The two guards near the southwest village seem to be doing the aggro-only-in-melee-distance thing again, which means they have to both be taken on at once (very inconvenient). The rest of the enemies around the boss, I really have no idea. On the run where I actually cleared, a bunch of them moved when I didn't expect to and FeMU got a bunch of lucky dodges. She promoted with the Master Seal, and Fred is almost ready to use the Second Seal.

Chapter 9: Emm D: But more importantly, ohgodohgodohgod the reinforcements. The game got hard again. On Lunatic there are 6 reinforcement wyverns instead of 4, and their weapons are upgraded (not forged, thankfully :P ). Plus, everyone else becomes aggro (including Tharja) when the wyverns arrive. To save everyone, I had to double everyone back after fetching Libra with Frederick well in the lead, have Sumia!Frederick go hand-axe crazy (and he doesn't ORKO even with a strength potion, unless he gets help or a Luna or two), pull everyone back and regroup, then charge Fred all the way back to the boss. I was being careful not to aggro Tharja with a 1-2 range unit, even if there were no others that could attack, because I wasn't quite sure how fragile Tharja would be. Anyway, the bright side is someone traded a Killing Edge to Fred and he actually OHKOd Campari with a Luna crit. Was not expecting that. Something like 13 turns, and I ran out of Rescue :(

Fred got to level 16, and has 45 HP, 24/3/22/19/8/22/5. If the SF charts are to be believed, this is actually fairly normal: a little blessed in Str/Skill/Spd, screwed in Res and especially in Luck. But I mean come on, that's 9 more points of Str and 8 more of Def than anyone else. If that's "falling off", I don't ever want to remain standing.

I'm open to advice on what to reclass him to BTW.

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Is Stahl even worth using in this difficulty? He has such a bad start...

Is there any other characters in this difficulty just not worth using (I know Donnel is definitely out though...)

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Chapter 3: ohgodohgodohgod Fred needs to pair with Sumia to double and it seems like there's barely enough time to take out the enemies on one side before the enemies from the other side reach you. No ranged weapons yet, which is the annoying part, until I can steal Kellam's javelin which requires first making the area safe for Chrom. Overall this was not fun although I'm sure I missed ways to make it better. And then once you open the door you still have to be careful because of that damned Hammer.

Suggestion:

Ch3 turn 1. Chrom recruits Kellam, can still act after talking, Pairs Up with Kellam. Kellam retreats back toward the center. Fred takes Javelin. ??? Profit.

Fred got to level 16, and has 45 HP, 24/3/22/19/8/22/5. If the SF charts are to be believed, this is actually fairly normal: a little blessed in Str/Skill/Spd, screwed in Res and especially in Luck. But I mean come on, that's 9 more points of Str and 8 more of Def than anyone else. If that's "falling off", I don't ever want to remain standing.

I'm open to advice on what to reclass him to BTW.

Holy hell, your Fred has way more levels way earlier than even mine. And I thought I was overusing him.

Is Stahl even worth using in this difficulty? He has such a bad start...

Is there any other characters in this difficulty just not worth using (I know Donnel is definitely out though...)

Stahl is absolutely worth using. Just make sure he's Paired Up with just enough speed to avoid being doubled and he'll be fine.

Edited by Balcerzak
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Stahl is absolutely worth using. Just make sure he's Paired Up with just enough speed to avoid being doubled and he'll be fine.

Ah, thanks. Hopefully, it's not too late for me to train him.

He did decently on my hard mode run, although he was quite slow...

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@zahlman: Most of your descriptions read to me like "I had Fred do everything because everyone else was too weak"

Holy hell, your Fred has way more levels way earlier than even mine. And I thought I was overusing him.

Yeah, pretty much, early on I couldn't figure out how to feed a significant amount to anyone else besides maybe Chrom and MU. The team's offense is actually okayish, it's defense that's the big problem. At least MU is promoted and Chrom is ready for promotion. Also I'm kinda expecting Lon'qu!Panne to start picking up the pace.

But yeah, with these levels he manages to continue doubling and ORKOing a fair assortment of enemies, even the ones without big weaknesses. He'll crit or proc Luna (which is slowly starting to become worthwhile) fairly often, and he has A Sumia now too.

Paralogue 4 is going to suck, though. Stupid start position. But no way I'm skipping Anna.

Suggestion:

Ch3 turn 1. Chrom recruits Kellam, can still act after talking, Pairs Up with Kellam. Kellam retreats back toward the center. Fred takes Javelin. ??? Profit.

Heh I realized later that you get to act after talking (helped a lot with Gaius), now I feel silly for not having worked that out. I think I might also have not noticed he carries a Javelin until later? :/

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I recommend +Def asset to those who haven't tried it. Avatar can Pair with Frederick for +4-5 Def, while Frederick can usually only get +2 from Pair Up. By the time Kellam arrives you can already be around level 12-14, on par with or better than Frederick's stats and with good 1-2 range. Kellam gives much needed Def, but still doesn't support with Frederick for even more stats + Dual Strike/Guard rate. And Avatar has Veteran + low level, so much higher growth potential.

Plus it's much easier to feed kills to others with 2 competent units and it's easier to phase Frederick out. For me, he's still useful later as a Pair Up partner later and for his Lance rank, since other Lance units are hard to train without grinding.

Edited by XeKr
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I recommend +Def asset to those who haven't tried it. Avatar can Pair with Frederick for +4-5 Def, while Frederick can usually only get +2 from Pair Up. By the time Kellam arrives you can already be around level 12-14, on par with or better than Frederick's stats and with good 1-2 range. Kellam gives much needed Def, but still doesn't support with Frederick for even more stats + Dual Strike/Guard rate. And Avatar has Veteran + low level, so much higher growth potential.

Kellam arrives on Chapter 3. How are you feeding the early kills, especially on Chapter 2?

Anyway.

Chapter 10: I'd gotten used to the idea of "Fred goes to boss, everyone else gets as close as they can to bait individual scraps and take them down". In Hard mode the obvious path to the boss was left then up - didn't work here. What I eventually worked out is to send Sumia!Fred up then left, and Kellam!Libra left to the fort, and then do the usual baiting thing. I delayed a turn to nab the Seraph Robe thief and give Libra a chance to get to the second sparkling tile, making 6 turns in total (I grabbed the Seal and Bullion too - really don't care that the Wyrmslayer got away). Chrom hit level 11 and promoted with the Seal. Still can't decide on Fred's promotion. Fred and Sumia could marry, but I kinda want to leave my options open at the moment.

Lunatic mode makes Libra look way better tier-wise, if only because it's that much harder for anyone not named Fred to have caught up by that point in the game. But he's also just generally really tanky and that's what you need against a lot of these enemies.

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Kellam arrives on Chapter 3. How are you feeding the early kills, especially on Chapter 2?

Depending on your level ups, Avatar does what Frederick normally does in Chapter 2. Typically this involves 8 Spd to not get doubled and around average Def. Avatar should be level 7-8 from Chapter 1 (So Spd benchmark is easy. 8 base def + around 3-4 from growth + 5 from Pair Up/C Support is 16-17 def, same as Frederick with a Pair Up. Hp is slightly less, but Magic also doesn't have Weapon triangle issues). You should get to around level 14 by the end of the chapter.

If you got RNG screwed, you can tank with Frederick until you make your way to a fort/mountain and all myrms are dead, and still give most kills to your Avatar. The 2nd wave is easy to tank. You should get to around level 12.

EDIT: Also, I personally think early promotion for Chrom is a bad idea in Lunatic. The enemy stat curve is crazy and you don't want to gimp your exp gain so early. I actually like reclassing him first. Chrom is usually one of the better lategame fighters, and either him or Lucina trained are pretty critical for a reliable clear of the final boss if not grinding.

Edited by XeKr
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I recommend +Def asset to those who haven't tried it. Avatar can Pair with Frederick for +4-5 Def, while Frederick can usually only get +2 from Pair Up. By the time Kellam arrives you can already be around level 12-14, on par with or better than Frederick's stats and with good 1-2 range. Kellam gives much needed Def, but still doesn't support with Frederick for even more stats + Dual Strike/Guard rate. And Avatar has Veteran + low level, so much higher growth potential.

Huh, that sounds pretty interesting. I'll have to try it sometime.

Chapter 10: I'd gotten used to the idea of "Fred goes to boss, everyone else gets as close as they can to bait individual scraps and take them down". In Hard mode the obvious path to the boss was left then up - didn't work here. What I eventually worked out is to send Sumia!Fred up then left, and Kellam!Libra left to the fort, and then do the usual baiting thing. I delayed a turn to nab the Seraph Robe thief and give Libra a chance to get to the second sparkling tile, making 6 turns in total (I grabbed the Seal and Bullion too - really don't care that the Wyrmslayer got away). Chrom hit level 11 and promoted with the Seal. Still can't decide on Fred's promotion. Fred and Sumia could marry, but I kinda want to leave my options open at the moment.

Gonna have to agree with XeKr here and recommend against an early promotion for Chrom, who needs all the Str he can get if you want to beat the final boss reliably (Ignis procs from Avatar are not what I would consider reliable). You won't really miss Aether and Royal Weapon for much of the game (I guess they might help in Paralogue 17, but that occurs very late in the game).

Urg, stuck on Ch 2 of Lunatic+. I looked in Othin's thread and saw an interesting strategy involving running up to the river, but I can't seem to pull it off. My most successful attempts have involved using Stahl to bait three enemies away from Frederick until Fred defeats enough enemies.

Edited by Redwall
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Yeah, bait is extremely useful in Ch2 Lunatic+ to avoid getting overwhelmed. The Cavaliers can outrun the enemies, so if you do it right, you can get them to circle back around without getting killed. It's tough, though, and I can't say I quite remember how.

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