1728 replies to this topic

[Lord Raven]

Thanks Othin! Also, I found this guide:

http://www.gamefaqs....ning/faqs/64260

That helped a lot too... though his formatting is confusing at points




EDIT: When do you get your first Master or Change Seal?

Edited by Lord Raven, 17 July 2012 - 09:51 AM.

[Othin]

Master/Change Seals can become available really early, especially with merchants showing up. You can get one of each in Ch8, but you can also get them earlier.

Returned for the final battle with Gimle, and my completely mixed up test attempt succeeded through sheer luck. It was actually a lot like my previous attempts, only less coherent; it still mainly consisted of Inverse blasting everything with Nosferatu. I ended up blitzing Gimle on Turn 4 because my strategy had fallen apart too much to survive otherwise, and MU managed to slay Gimle in the two rounds available, with help from Marth swinging the Falchion. And when I say winning a screwed up attempt through sheer luck, I mean forgetting to make sure MU would have the HP to survive a Magnificent Flame and then Gimle missing his 80% activation rate for the skill. But hey, it worked.

I also finished up with my Hard file earlier today, so now it's on to Lunatic+. For this round's MU, I made Derrick and gave him +Spd and -Str. Man, I'm going to be glad when I can finally get a chance to make a best stat something other than Spd; being so restricted on these Lunatic runs is getting kind of annoying. Derrick is, obviously, mute. Yes, it's obvious. If it's not obvious, you haven't been paying enough attention.

In addition to playing Lunatic+, I'm interested in studying it. Looking at the Prologue, here are my results so far:

As others have observed, the enemies automatically get two skills added. At this point, they can get Pass, Absolute Hit, Luna+, and Vantage+. The latter two look like the regular skill with a + added to the icon, while Absolute Hit looks like the other accuracy+ skills but with the + on the icon followed by the infinity symbol rather than a number. They certainly want to be intimidating, it seems. The skills don't seem to be equal: I loaded the map several times and it looks to me like Pass shows up about twice as often as the other skills: it appears on about 80% of the enemies, while the other three each appear on about 40% of the enemies. This is on the generic enemies, anyway. Geriba, the stationary boss, is sensible enough to not have Pass: instead, he just picks any two of the other three with rather uniform frequency. He also always has Gamble as a set skill, as on regular Lunatic. Similarly, the generic enemies seem to add a class skill about 30% of the time: Gamble for the Barbarians, Avoid +10 for the Myrmidons, and Magic +2 or Concentration for the Mages. As usual, the enemies don't bother with Mug, but it's interesting that the Myrmidons don't seem to have regular Vantage, either. This isn't actually new: I remember the same results from poking around on earlier maps on my Lunatic run, but they picked up the skill eventually. But let's see how things progress. As I noted previously, on Lunatic, the enemies eventually pick up some powerful inherent accuracy+ skills as set onto all of them, and at the very end, also have some powerful skills set depending on their class. I suspect we may see some of this expanded on Lunatic+.

Regarding my own run, I plan on holding to these same restrictions as from my Lunatic run for the duration of the main story:

-No buying Nosferatu
-No hiring bonus characters
-No replaying DLC maps
-No using Everyone's Room

I also will not allow characters to die, as a personal goal. I suspect these will be enough, if not more than enough. I do not intend to waver on these restrictions. Anything else is fair game, which will open up some useful options earlier than on my Lunatic run, although it seems like it'll be substantially more difficult overall regardless. And Lunatic was difficult enough.

Edited by Othin, 19 July 2012 - 09:46 PM.

[Psych]

What are your planned pairings for Lunatic+ and are you using the same people as in your Lunatic run?

[Tyrant Sage]

I wish they used Lunatic Reverse instead

[Angel Valentine]

Regarding my own run, I plan on holding to these same restrictions as from my Lunatic run for the duration of the main story:

-No buying Nosferatu
-No hiring bonus characters
-No replaying DLC maps
-No using Everyone's Room

I also will not allow characters to die, as a personal goal. I suspect these will be enough, if not more than enough. I do not intend to waver on these restrictions. Anything else is fair game, which will open up some useful options earlier than on my Lunatic run, although it seems like it'll be substantially more difficult overall regardless. And Lunatic was difficult enough.

Yeah, I'm willing to bet that your not gonna be able to finish the game unless you replay dlc, buy nosferatu or get additional units. But then again you never know :D

[Othin]

Prologue wasn't so bad; took about five attempts. The map is, as on Lunatic, split into two waves: the first wave was easy with Freederick abuse, but the second was the one that kept tripping me up. Then there's the boss, who's annoying with Gamble always giving him a tiny crit rate. There's really no excuse for that. But I made it through without getting critted anyway.

I stalled a bit to heal after the first wave, since the second wave doesn't move until entering one of their attack ranges. Each individual wave also took a lot of running around. The skills complicated things, but they were workable, and they really did act more of a spice than as a random "you can't win" button. Especially since Pass was useless to them at this point. Let's see if that holds up.

What are your planned pairings for Lunatic+ and are you using the same people as in your Lunatic run?

Planning is for sane runs.

Yeah, I'm willing to bet that your not gonna be able to finish the game unless you replay dlc, buy nosferatu or get additional units. But then again you never know :D

I suppose I should clarify: I said that upfront because I'm not interested in hearing that shit.

Edited by Othin, 19 July 2012 - 10:30 PM.

[arvilino]

You should be fine with those restrictions for the Lunatic+ run up to chapter 6 which may cause some trouble in my experience. In 6 I found the enemies charging on 3 separate fronts is a bit overwhelming to the point I needed to defeat some spotpass teams(Thany,Nyna if you can get Frederick to Crit her with the Killing Edge) due to the Lunatic+ skills especially pass preventing me from choke pointing the middle section of the map with the right hand side being equally annoying to deal with due to the couple of cavaliers amongst the other units.

Though an interesting thing about Lunatic+ is that the DLC chapters and Spotpass teams are actually the same as they were in Lunatic, the enemies there don't get the Lunatic+ skills.

Edited by arvilino, 20 July 2012 - 07:17 AM.

[Othin]

You should be fine with those restrictions for the Lunatic+ run up to chapter 6 which may cause some trouble in my experience. In 6 I found the enemies charging on 3 separate fronts is a bit overwhelming to the point I needed to defeat some spotpass teams(Thany,Nyna if you can get Frederick to Crit her with the Killing Edge) due to the Lunatic+ skills especially pass preventing me from choke pointing the middle section of the map with the right hand side being equally annoying to deal with due to the couple of cavaliers amongst the other units.

Though an interesting thing about Lunatic+ is that the DLC chapters and Spotpass teams are actually the same as they were in Lunatic, the enemies there don't get the Lunatic+ skills.

I was expecting to go for some extra help here. The unchanged skills makes sense; I figured that based on how they never changed their skills on other difficulty levels.

But right now, I have some more pressing things to worry about. Chapter 1 actually turned out rather easy: with a bit of luck, I completed it on my first attempt. As I suspected, the Prologue and Chapter 1 got way easier after playing the rest of Lunatic to know what I'm doing, and the Lunatic+ skills didn't make it much harder. Chapter 2, however, is insanity. Without supports, MU gets OHKOed by absolutely anything with Luna+. Frederick sometimes has trouble surviving as much as two rounds, and just about everyone else is worthless. I don't understand how I could survive this even with sacrifices, and I don't want to make sacrifices.

Say, how far have you played in Lunatic+, anyway? Did you notice any patterns in the skills, or a specific lack of patterns? Like enemies of a certain class all seeming to pick up certain skills at certain points?

[arvilino]

I was expecting to go for some extra help here. The unchanged skills makes sense; I figured that based on how they never changed their skills on other difficulty levels.

But right now, I have some more pressing things to worry about. Chapter 1 actually turned out rather easy: with a bit of luck, I completed it on my first attempt. As I suspected, the Prologue and Chapter 1 got way easier after playing the rest of Lunatic to know what I'm doing, and the Lunatic+ skills didn't make it much harder. Chapter 2, however, is insanity. Without supports, MU gets OHKOed by absolutely anything with Luna+. Frederick sometimes has trouble surviving as much as two rounds, and just about everyone else is worthless. I don't understand how I could survive this even with sacrifices, and I don't want to make sacrifices.

Say, how far have you played in Lunatic+, anyway? Did you notice any patterns in the skills, or a specific lack of patterns? Like enemies of a certain class all seeming to pick up certain skills at certain points?

Only chapter 8, I've quit playing my Lunatic+ run for quite a bit to play some other games. Though in regards to the enemy skills in Lunatic+, there doesn't seem to be any pattern or noticible frequency, every enemy from chapter 3 onwards appears have any combination of 2 Lunatic Skills regardless of class or chapter, or even specific unit on the map each time you reset.

Edited by arvilino, 20 July 2012 - 10:22 AM.

[Othin]

Hmm. Well, that's not far enough to tell, especially since I didn't notice Lunatic enemies having set skills until Ch24 - although it might have started a bit earlier.

Anyway, I'm also not done with my original Lunatic run: right now, I'm going around completing the remaining sidequests and making new pairings to unlock the others. I've also been getting some really funny results with Donny so far. As it turns out, dumping Speed Cry, Love Cry, and Rainbow Cry along with a good Double allows Donny to go from being killed in half a round to actually one-rounding some Lunatic enemies at base. Although a further Str bonus from Olivia's Special Dance and/or added damage from Dual Attacks are generally necessary to seal the kills. Regardless, with all those buffs in place, Donny's been able to take the front lines on the lower-level battles already. Meanwhile my other characters that fell far behind in the actual Lunatic story are nonetheless crushing the enemies back in these weaker sidequests. Sure looks different from here.

I'm also trying to see what I can do while still remaining within my original rules for the Lunatic run. I don't expect to be able to complete LvD or S23 like this, but let's see if I can unlock and complete all the sidequests without breaking any of those rules. Which will still probably require grinding on SpotPass battles for support points - they're not banned due to lack of Exp gain, but they're still potentially useful this way. Perhaps I should add as a rule for this "run" and my Lunatic+ run - no replaying SpotPass battles. It's basically infinite support points in exchange for weapons, which with the weak battles would be easy. Not game-breaking, but boring. In any case, the sidequests are offering plenty of funds to keep this up.

[Othin]

I do believe I may have found a way out. The upper left corner of the lower area is a tad more defensible, due to the river curving around and blocking off a space. This means a 2x2 block of characters can survive by having Frederick exposed on two sides and Krom exposed on one, which is far more manageable than needing a third character to also be exposed on one side. Getting to that corner is tricky; I haven't yet managed it without losing characters, but I think I can work things out. Of course, it's still a 2x2 block, and therefore only able to hold eight characters, leaving one unaccounted for. There are a few ways out of this:

Option #1: I sacrifice a character, just like I'd have to in order to get into the 2x2 block in the lower left. I'd rather not do this unless I have to, but one sacrifice might not be so bad: someone's likely going to get benched for the rest of the game due to the deployment limits: Ch3 only allows eight characters, and by the time I can deploy more, I'll have better characters and likely not field characters like Sol and Soiree until postgame. I'll want to work on pairings in postgame, but I can get away with losing one or two males and still pair all the females and therefore not really lost anything in that case.

Option #2: I have some character survive outside of the corner. This is a bit of a weird solution, but because the Cavaliers can outrun all the enemies, I could have one run around and potentially survive on their own. They could also work as a lure in the process. I discovered this possibility by accident: I was trying lower-left strategies for a while and chose Sol for my sacrifice; he was still alive when I was taking formation, so I had him run up towards the upper left, distracting a couple of enemies to get them out of the way. Meanwhile, my other characters killed most of the other enemies before the enemies caught up with Sol and he was able to slip away from them back to my other characters, who would be able to fend them off. I say "would be" because something went wrong; I don't quite remember what, but I think it was avoidable and it wouldn't have required Sol to die. So I could try to replicate this in the lower left, but on this attempt, I noticed the upper left and how much better it seemed.

Option #3: I try to defend something larger than a 2x2 block in the upper left. I can stick MU or Krom onto the protecting river tile: they'd still be in range because the tiles in the back are in range of the second group of enemies, which I'm not messing with at this point, but they'd only be exposed to one attack. This would mean protecting three characters, a lot like in my original 2x2 plan in the lower left, but without needing to sacrifice anyone. Of course, it still wasn't a particularly effective plan, but it has a couple of other advantages: I have two protected spaces in the back for Liz, Miriel, and Viole to use for support, and if an enemy is attacking the character on the river, only one enemy can attack Frederick, making things easier on him, and he can help the river character by attacking the enemy in front of them.

Of course, all this only matters if I can actually reach the upper left properly, and then I have to survive the second phase, which is easier but still tough. I'm sure I can manage this, but it'll take even more creativity. For the second phase, I realized that I can have MU or Krom pull Frederick across the river; I tried this once after making it through the first phase with two deaths. Frederick was able to survive well enough in the far upper left until some bad luck caught up with him, but I wasn't planning on continuing that attempt anyway; I had tried it expecting to crash and burn. This helped since while he took on some enemies, others went down the normal way for the rest of my team to (potentially) handle, making use of the available space and ranged attacks. Whatever the case, the second phase shouldn't be so bad.

I should comment on the enemy AI. On an earlier attempt where I tried the 2x2 formation, I had healed Krom enough to survive a hit from the enemy in front of him and set him up to not kill. But instead of attacking Krom and blocking off other enemies, the enemy moved to attack Frederick ineffectively, opening up a space for a stronger enemy to move in and kill Krom. These guys are crafty, and not easy to manipulate with cheap tricks.

Another thing to point out: now that it actually matters that enemies have Pass, they don't seem to be using it much more than the other skills, if at all. Which is good, because it tends to cause a lot of trouble.

[Psych]

...Can't you just double people?

[Othin]

...Can't you just double people?

That's how I already fit eight characters into four spaces. Not much help with fitting nine characters into four spaces.

In Lunatic, excessive Double use is key to having a chance of surviving. You can generally assume it's in effect unless stated otherwise. Probably even more so for Lunatic+.

Edited by Othin, 20 July 2012 - 09:08 PM.

[Othin]

Well, it took 22 turns and almost all of my healing - all that remains is one Vulnerary use and seven Heal uses - but I finally made it through Lunatic+ Ch2 with no deaths! Once I perfected my strategies for evading the enemies and sliding up the left side of the map, the upper-left barricade worked perfectly, although it took a ton of healing to maintain it. Sending Frederick and MU across the river for the second phase also turned out to be a great decision; three enemies went south where my other characters could handle them, while Frederick cleaned up the rest. The boss was a pain due to having Absolute Hit, though - Frederick needed to use the last Elixir use to survive, while running around to distract it so my other characters could move in and finish the job after all the other enemies were dead. The constant crit rates from the boss and other Barbarians due to Gamble is really annoying; it could have easily killed Frederick and screwed up everything, but fortunately, it didn't.

Ch3 finally brings a preparations screen, but also the rest of the Lunatic+ skills. The new ones don't seem all that common, especially Counter; I'm going to need to look into the ratios. Regardless, this will definitely be trouble. I recall someone said you need an Elixir use for this, but I don't quite have that luxury. Time to see what I can do without one. The second part shouldn't be much trouble due to the chokepoints, which I should be able to block off far enough that the enemies having Pass won't matter; the first part is my main concern for now. But I'm sure I can handle it.

I have to say, I really like the way Lunatic+ is looking so far. As I had hoped, the randomness means leaving room for error in strategies; it's possible to account for most variation if you do it right, but it's not easy and requires top-class strategy. Meanwhile, I'm getting to really appreciate the original Lunatic mode. While I've complained about the starting maps before, they're not so bad once you know what you're doing, and the rest of the game is a fantastic challenge. It also allows for sidequests, reasonable DLC use, and even basically free SpotPass use all without breaking the game, making all that content become strategic considerations when making plans for game progression as opposed to ways to simply bloat your characters on Exp and steamroll everything like they are on the lower difficulty levels. I've said that I'd want a Maniac mode between Hard and Lunatic as a challenging but more fair midpoint as my main setting to go through on replays, but while immensely challenging, I'd say Lunatic is nonetheless fair enough to serve that purpose; more difficulty options are good, but I no longer see its absence as much of an issue. Even Lunatic+, while random with its skill distributions and far more vicious, is still so far fair and immensely rewarding to the best tactics.

I've been rating Awakening as my second favorite video game after Berwick Saga. I may have to switch the two.

[SilverbackWolf]

I'm curious to see how you conquer chapters 3 and 4. Wasn't it chapter 2 that Westbrick couldn't pass? I'm glad it is possible without sacrifices.

[Othin]

I'm curious to see how you conquer chapters 3 and 4. Wasn't it chapter 2 that Westbrick couldn't pass? I'm glad it is possible without sacrifices.

Westbrick almost gave up at Ch2, but he eventually made it through with several deaths. It was Ch3 that he couldn't pass after that, which is no surprise. You need a full team ready to fight in Ch3; a big part of the reason I didn't want deaths in Ch2 was that I suspected Ch3 would be almost impossible with less than maximum deployment.

Fortunately, I succeeded in getting that team. I was worried about Ch3 on Lunatic+ because of how fast you have to move in the beginning, and random skills could easily screw that up. But Ch3 turned out surprisingly fair; most if not all of the enemy skill setups were entirely workable as long as you address them properly - which is extremely difficult. To survive the initial assault, I decided to stick with my same core strategy from Lunatic: rush left and eliminate the enemies there, then get ready to fight the ones on the right when they approach. The four enemies on the left need to die on Turn 2 player phase for it to work: while Counter was extremely disruptive, I was able to work around it; the real issues came from Great Shield. Derrick and Miriel were able to avoid Great Shield and Counter with their magic; Viole also joined in, being surprisingly more effective on this mode. He was near-useless on Lunatic, but these skills make him extremely important. I plan on keeping him on my team if he's able to keep pace properly. Frederick also grabbed Callum's Javelin and joined in, avoiding Counter but not Great Shield. On the other hand, he was unaffected by Holy Shield unlike the other three, making him essentially my only solution for enemies with the ridiculous Counter + Holy Shield combo.

It occurs to me that I've been leaving out the +. I think I'll keep it that way for simplicity.

Anyway, the group on the right wasn't so bad on Lunatic; I just had to kill the Archers and wall off any other survivors - which actually seemed really difficult at the time, but now things get even more complex. A main issue was Pass, which means I had to usually target another enemy or two to keep them from walking right through my formation, and all the enemies were stronger and harder to kill due to their skills. I should mention that the skills are really imbalanced: Absolute Hit is almost completely insignificant because enemies almost never miss anyway, and I haven't found Luna or Vantage to be particular concerns either, although I also haven't been seeing a lot of them in recent maps. Pass is still a huge concern sometimes and not really an issue other times. So it's mainly the new skills that stand out now.

This left the top. I had an easy time with it on Lunatic because of the chokepoints, but on Lunatic+, the skills kept screwing things up. I remember one time I was almost finished and had Frederick attack an Archer to 2HKO it and finally clear a path to the boss but I had forgotten the Archer had Counter and Frederick died. Eventually, I decided to modify my strategy a bit and open both doors. See, there are Knights behind each of the doors, but the other enemies won't do anything until you advance farther. So I opened one door, killed the Knight, sent Krom, Frederick, Derrick, and some others back around to the other door to kill the other Knight, and then lured the other enemies. Meanwhile, Sumia waited just outside the range of the enemies behind the first Knight, so when the enemies became active, three went one way and three went the other way. Splitting them up made it easy for Krom's team to handle the three in front of them while Sumia's team ran away so that Krom's team could reach the remaining small group in an open space and quickly eliminate them. I still messed up that strategy a couple of times, but it worked eventually, and the boss was an easy kill.

At this point, some more options open up. The Wireless function becomes available after Ch3, so I grab several ultimate weapons available through SpotPass. I also see now that I properly transferred my Fame this time by replaying the Final on my Normal file, so I have the 10k points needed to get almost everything, and I collect my winnings immediately. The gold allowed me to buy several Master Seals and Change Seals from merchants, but there's not much of it left now. Fortunately, I'll get more before too long. Then there's the stat boosters - one of every type. Krom ended up getting most of them to be even more help with carrying the team; hopefully he won't fall behind this time. When I promoted Krom and MU at the end of Ch8 in my Lunatic run, they were far above LV10; hopefully I'll be able to promote them quite a bit earlier this time and stabilize my team faster. See, while I'm out of the most constrained section of the game, Lunatic actually has a proper difficulty curve. The chapters get way harder with progress, and Frederick's ability to do things on his own is rapidly diminishing, even as tougher enemies force me to use him even more than I did on Lunatic.

Ch3 also opened both Ch4 and S1. I never actually did the early sidequests during the main story on my Lunatic run, but I'm going for them for the Exp this time. That said, S1 doesn't look easy, so I decided to go for Ch4 first. Ch4 is brief and was probably the easiest chapter on my Lunatic run, but Lunatic+ always has to go and complicate things. You have to fight off two enemies per turn with an extremely small team, and with skills like Counter and Great Shield, that gets really complicated. Mages also show up for the first time since the Prologue, and hitting extremely hard. On Lunatic, I brought Krom, MU, Frederick, Liz, Callum, and Sumia; I swapped Callum for Miriel this time because I figured her ranged attacks would be more important than Callum's Double bonuses, although in retrospect I'm not sure Miriel ever actually did anything because half of the enemies had 1-2 range and she's extremely frail.

I would've liked to bring Viole to make sure he keeps up, but he would've been even less effective due to not hurting the Knights and not having Vake to sit on him to boost his Str. It worked in Ch2-3 to boost his damage output, but I don't have the space to bring Vake anymore, and while the Str bonus would often put his damage above Derrick's and Miriel's magic, Viole doesn't hit hard enough to stand out without it. Hopefully he'll get better soon when he increases his Bow rank to use the Longbow I got from Fame for further range and slightly more power, and even more power if I can get a Steel Bow. I also have Astra and the Parthia; it's a shame he's a bit away from being able to use them, but he'll have them all to himself when he does, at least for a while. Basilio was the only character I had use bows effectively in Lunatic, and I don't think that'll be enough here. Besides, he's Viole. Who doesn't love him?

Speaking of bonus weapons, I had Frederick swap out his near-depleted Silver Lance for the similar but stronger Luna. He already has the Luna skill, but I never had anyone else competing with him as a lance user on Lunatic, and I don't think that'll be too different here: my other lance users were Tiamo and Elincia, who were support rather than combat. I also have Sigurd's Steellance as functionally another, even better Silver Lance when I need it, although it doesn't have many uses. Hopefully I won't burn through these as fast now. I also burned through most of the Javelin over the course of Ch3-4, although as another Fame prize, I have Othin's Handaxe if necessary to hold Frederick over with his ranged attacks while I look for an opportunity to get another Javelin or something. It's not particularly special; really just a more accurate Hand Axe.

Anyway, Ch4 took a lot of running around the arena to get away when I inevitably couldn't kill the enemies as fast as I needed to, generally due to skills, and also because the boss is really tough. I messed up multiple times at the end; I was playing it during the previews for The Dark Knight Rises and my friend's yelling at me to turn it off and I tell him I'm almost at the end and all the other enemies are dead but then I forget that she has Counter this time or something like that and then it's all over. And then because we got there so early I manage to get all the way to the end again while the previews were still playing and Frederick could've finished off the boss with Luna despite her Great Shield and in retrospect Miriel probably helped with chipping on that attempt then but then I forget about Great Shield and try to have Frederick finish her with his Javelin and she survives with 1 HP and kills someone and then I have to turn it off because the movie's about to start. Awesome movie, by the way; I definitely recommend it. Definitely had some issues, and to be honest I liked The Dark Knight better but if I watched it again I probably would find other stuff that bugs me and not like it as much this time and that's why I don't plan to because who wants to ruin that. At least the movie was really good once I managed to get immersed in it enough to forget how annoyed I was about losing again and stop thinking about Lunatic+ until I eventually finished the chapter at around 2 AM because the movie ran until almost 1:30. Have I mentioned run-on sentences are fun?

So I finished Ch4 and unlocked Ch5, as well as the DLC. The DLC seems to scale more than the chapters with difficulty level; one or two of the Spirit Talisman maps were immediately feasible on the lower difficulty levels, but not on Lunatic. Fortunately, they don't have Lunatic+ skills, but that doesn't change the fact that at the beginning of ST1 I'm facing Eirika who has 21 Spd and almost as much Str as Frederick, and Cellica can OHKO Krom. It might actually not be too far above my team's current abilities with enough effort, but I'm not ready to take it on yet, so that leaves S1 and Ch5 for now. Ch5 was enough of a pain on Lunatic; on that run, I didn't end up needing the Rescue staff from S1 to save Richt and Mariabel, but with the enemies being even tougher, I think I'll go for it first this time. I certainly don't need to move as fast on S1, which should make it easier, but I plan on getting Donny to join permanently, so I'll need to move carefully and set up some kills for him. That'll be tricky, but should be doable.

Interestingly, looking over my inventory, Frederick didn't actually need to use Luna once in Ch4. I guess burning through the Javelin was that much more necessary. Thrown weapons are really important here, since they're the only way my strongest character, Frederick, can weaken enemies while avoiding Counter, and they're the only way to get around Counter without running into Holy Shield, for the obnoxious enemies that have both. Although I also got a Levin Sword from Fame, which can contribute to the same stuff. My sword users have low Mag, but the enemies have just as bad Res, and the sword itself has plenty of power, so it evens out and should be highly effective. I could give it to Frederick, but I think it's better in Ronku's hands for now, since he can use it to just as great effect without taking up Frederick's action. Also, for when I get to Ch5, I have a trump card - Cellica's Gale. Derrick can't use it yet, but he'll be able to in just a couple of battles. This will let him obliterate the terrifying Dracoknights on his own, without needing a Spd boost or needing to take Elwind away from the other Mages. This also means I won't burn through Elwind as fast, although Cellica's Gale will go away even faster if used excessively, and with so many threatening Dracoknights over the next several maps, I'll need to be careful with how I use it - but it'll be there for when I really need it. And in Lunatic+, that's about all I can ask for.

[BBM]

Othin, if enemy hit is so high, and with skills like Absolute Hit, do you think the Slayer skills are of any value in Lunatic(+)? Or is the extra hit it also gives you necessary sometimes to hit enemies?

[arvilino]

So I finished Ch4 and unlocked Ch5, as well as the DLC. The DLC seems to scale more than the chapters with difficulty level; one or two of the Spirit Talisman maps were immediately feasible on the lower difficulty levels, but not on Lunatic. Fortunately, they don't have Lunatic+ skills, but that doesn't change the fact that at the beginning of ST1 I'm facing Eirika who has 21 Spd and almost as much Str as Frederick, and Cellica can OHKO Krom. It might actually not be too far above my team's current abilities with enough effort, but I'm not ready to take it on yet, so that leaves S1 and Ch5 for now. Ch5 was enough of a pain on Lunatic; on that run, I didn't end up needing the Rescue staff from S1 to save Richt and Mariabel, but with the enemies being even tougher, I think I'll go for it first this time. I certainly don't need to move as fast on S1, which should make it easier, but I plan on getting Donny to join permanently, so I'll need to move carefully and set up some kills for him. That'll be tricky, but should be doable.

I remember on S1 you can mostly play through it however you want(though you'll need to plan to defeat one of the thieves since one of them will get to the Killer Lance Chest before you can reach it) since the Archer at the top left hand side of the map can be trapped if you have Frederick move from outside it's range and drop Donny off blocking the Archer from moving. While the Archer will give diminishing EXP returns to Donny for attacking, Donny gets enough EXP to level up by slowly wittling the Archers HP down and defeating it (just make sure Frederick is moved out of the way so he doesn't dual attack) though he needs to use his vulenary twice if the Archer gets Counter.

[Othin]

Othin, if enemy hit is so high, and with skills like Absolute Hit, do you think the Slayer skills are of any value in Lunatic(+)? Or is the extra hit it also gives you necessary sometimes to hit enemies?

The Slayer skills can give you a shot at dodging attacks from enemies without Absolute Hit, and in fact when I was fighting Fauder on my Lunatic file, he lacked most of the enemy accuracy bonuses and I was able to get his accuracy all the way down to 0% with Magicslayer Thunder, allowing Dion to use the skill. I'm not sure I ever actually had a character learn one of those skills; I think Serge managed to learn Lance Slayer at the end, but she had fallen pretty far behind and was mostly team support and ferrying; she didn't stand a chance in combat without huge bonuses. The accuracy could also be useful, but I didn't have many accuracy problems myself, either, except when facing an enemy with a Slayer skill of their own.

I remember on S1 you can mostly play through it however you want(though you'll need to plan to defeat one of the thieves since one of them will get to the Killer Lance Chest before you can reach it) since the Archer at the top left hand side of the map can be trapped if you have Frederick move from outside it's range and drop Donny off blocking the Archer from moving. While the Archer will give diminishing EXP returns to Donny for attacking, Donny gets enough EXP to level up by slowly wittling the Archers HP down and defeating it (just make sure Frederick is moved out of the way so he doesn't dual attack) though he needs to use his vulenary twice if the Archer gets Counter.

I didn't manage to get the Killer Lance; for some reason I could never move fast enough to get the Thief. Not a big concern, though. As for Donny, I set up kills for him against a Thief and an Archer earlier in the map, giving him 100 Exp exactly.

My team seems to be improving now. Viole got C Bows so he can use the Longbow, and both Derrick and Liz reached LV10 to promote, which all should make things easier. Liz also now has a Rescue staff to use to save Richt and Mariabel and for other utility, and I bought a second one from a merchant. Shame I didn't think to buy a third Master Seal while I had the chance for Krom, but I'm sure I'll get another chance soon enough.

This time, since Liz promoted so early, I decided to make her a Sage. It's not that likely that she'll be able to help much in combat in the long run, but having an earlier start with magic gives her the opportunity, especially for a while. And the skills should be more effective. Even if she stops using magic by the time she learns Magic Expert, it'll still allow her to equip a tome to get a bonus on staff range and effectiveness.

[Othin]

Decided to finally get back to this.

As it turns out, Ch5 isn't so bad when you already have a promoted MU. Liz grabbed Richt and Mariabel on Turn 1, while Frederick and Derrick hacked through the overpowered enemies, with backup from Krom, Viole, and Marth. I initially let the enemies approach through the pass in the middle, but I eventually killed them and plugged it, also seizing the fort on the left. This meant that the only enemies that could approach were the ones coming from the far left, or the Dracoknights swooping over the cliffs. Krom, Derrick, and Viole were all able to take down the Dracoknights with their three different methods, and reasonable numbers of enemies coming from one direction aren't too hard to hold off. Plugging chokepoints is much harder on Lunatic+ due to the presence of Counter and Pass, but there are workarounds - the former by unequipping weapons, the latter by redirecting and killing the problematic enemies. Surprisingly, the chapter only took two attempts, and the sole reset was due to me screwing up my damage calculations and thinking I could get away with a useful but unneeded gambit with Krom against a pair of Dracoknights. But getting cocky would be a mistake.

I tried Ch6 next. It doesn't have the immediate pressure that other maps have, but I didn't take full advantage of my freedoms and ended up in a checkmate position on Turn 3, completely swarmed by enemies I hadn't fought off fast enough. I backed up and took a look at ST2, but the enemies were completely out of reach, going so far as to occasionally break 20 in their regular stats, scary enough to crush my team even if it wasn't split up from the start. With this in mind, I settled on S2 as my next target. On my first attempt, I bungled the beginning and got trapped, but on my second, I straightened things out and managed to fend off the enemies initially swarming my starting position. I held back more from the second part of the map this time, so a pair of Barbarians settled on the village Anna was guarding as a first target instead, keeping them out of my way. There was no way I was going to save Anna or the village at this point, so I just let them distract the enemies while I healed up and prepared to take them when they approached. The boss and his squad also eventually started moving on their own, breaking their pattern from the lowest difficulty levels of waiting until you get ridiculously close to start moving.

Derrick and Frederick remained as my main fighters, but I made sure to keep distributing Exp to my other characters as well. I know this momentum I've been having will fade in time, but it wouldn't do to burn out any faster than necessary; on regular Lunatic, Dion still needed a ton of support even once he had maxed out most of his stats, and characters are even less self-sufficient here, so training a solid team is especially important, but it's going well so far. As for actually fighting the boss, Derrick managed to score a crit and one-round him, although the boss would've taken massive damage without it and should have been easy enough to finish off. Derrick gained a ton of Exp from the kill and reached LV5, getting Magnificent Flame, although he hasn't activated it yet. Regardless, it goes to show how fast he's racing through the levels.

Funny enough, even though Anna "died", she still showed up at the end of the chapter, as strangely cheerful as ever.

After this, I returned to Ch6. I made some different moves at the beginning, and variations in enemy skill distributions probably helped, but I still nearly got destroyed on Turn 3. The skill variations are usually manageable and serve more to shake things up than to absolutely destroy the possibility of winning, which is really great when it works out that way, but I'm not sure it was the case this time. Ultimately, I'm still not sure the variation actually helped, as Marth still nearly got killed by a Fighter with Absolute Hit, only surviving due to a Dual Guard from Mariabel. I checked afterward and it turns out her Dual Guard rate with him was just 3%. The next turn was absolute insanity as I tried to figure out a strategy to have Liz heal Frederick and Mariabel heal Marth so that they could kill two more problematic enemies while keeping them and others from getting killed on the enemy phase. As it turned out, there was no safe way to do it, and I ended up healing neither, having Liz take Frederick's place in killing the Dark Mage while Frederick just healed himself kept blocking off the middle, and having Mariabel stay safely away in Double while Velvet took a hit to keep Marth safe.

I really had to start digging into the special weapons here - Krom using his Noble Rapier to kill pesky Cavaliers, Marth using his Thunder Sword for 1-2 range, and Viole using his Longbow for sniping Dark Mages from out of their range. It helps that he now outspeeds most reasonably slow enemies, letting him double them when he has speedy backup. Frederick kept up using Luna as a replacement Silver Lance, mainly for OHKOing frail enemies. It's my main countermeasure for foes like Thieves and Myrmidons that happen to have the Counter skill. It was also how I took down Fauder, since he was enough of a troublemaker to take Vantage+ as one of his skills. I'm not normally too worried about that skill since it tends to be tame compared to the others, but Fauder has Vengeance on Lunatic, making early hits a huge problem since he'd OHKO any character trying to finish him from low HP. Fortunately, Frederick was able to 2HKO Fauder with Luna, and had enough of a Spd advantage to double without too much trouble. The other enemies were dead by the time Fauder approached, so I was able to carefully set up supports to ensure that nothing would go wrong, and indeed, things went just as planned.

Krom and Viole have now both hit LV10 and could promote if I had more Master Seals, but I don't. Marth and Frederick also reached LV10 and could use Change Seals, and I do have two of them, but I think their current classes are the best places for them to stay for now. Marth likes his high class bases and Double bonuses, and I don't think there's a need for Frederick to take an Exp cut for a class that might not have much of an advantage right now at all anyway. Taking on a flying class could be an especially bad idea due to my limited team strength, making it unwise for one of my best characters to pick up a fear of arrows. Before starting the run, I wanted to try making him a General for Defense Cry, and that takes planning in advance due to it being a LV5 skill, but right now, that just doesn't seem worth losing the mobility, and having a flier with competent combat is so useful for chapters 8-10. Interestingly, once again, Frederick seems to be my only combat-ready lance user so far. This gives him a lot of options for strong lances: he's using Luna right now, but I also have Sigurd's Steellance and two of Ephraim's Bravelance, all of which can work as better Silver Lances and all of which he has to himself. I also have Gradivus and Gaebolg, but for obvious reasons, I plan on saving them for a while.

Next up, Ch7. This will be especially interesting because a defensive approach just doesn't work on the higher difficulty levels: as I learned on Lunatic, hanging around the starting point means certain death by reinforcements. On Lunatic, I had Frederick lead a charge straight through the enemies. With those enemies now having Luna+, Great Shield+, Holy Shield+, and Counter, it's going to take a lot more than that to make it through.

I'm also going to need to figure out how to properly train Tiamo this time. On Lunatic, I waited far too long to get her to promote and learn Speed Cry. I will not make the same mistake on Lunatic+.

Edited by Othin, 12 August 2012 - 09:15 PM.