shade_of_ox

Chapter 8Goals: Visit 3 villages for 10k gold, train OdinReinforcements: Lots of enemies from each village the enemy Lancers visit.Supports: EffiexStella, C - JakobxSilas, C - ElisexEffie, C New units: At the start of turn 2, Odin and Niles will come in from the bottom of the map. Niles is an Outlaw. He's the only Nohr unit with the Capture command which pretty much makes him mandatory. He has very good SPD, and decent STR and RES - but bad DEF and mediocre HP. He also has very bad LCK, but that won't be a factor until later. Bows are very strong in this game, so even though his stats aren't the best, he's still a pretty good unit. Our plan is to put him into Bow Knight, because we absolutely need Shurikenbreaker before chapter 25 (also we don't need another staff user). Odin is a Dark Mage. He comes in at a very low level (5) and his stats aren't stellar, but he's much better than Nyx (who is fragile to the point of being unusable). Odin has decent stats, but he's not actually a good mage - his MAG growth isn't actually very high at all. He's got pretty good defenses (DEF better than RES) but his SPD isn't very good. For some reason, he has an obscenely high SKL, which isn't very helpful at all since he already has Heartseeker to augment his hit chance. Fortunately, a lot of enemies in this game have terrible RES stats, so even though he won't ever reach very high power, he can still deal a pretty good amount of damage in early to middle-game. We're going to leave him in Dark Mage and put him into Dark Knight for the mobility, but he'll probably end up being a backpack for Leo in the endgame. On to the chapter! This is one of my favorite chapters in the game. It actually gives you incentives to play aggressively, as opposed to the usual turtle/hit and run that the game often degenerates into. The setup is that there are two Lancers with 3 MOV who are moving from village to village, trying to visit each village before you do. If you get to the village, it closes and the enemy can't visit it. If the enemies get to the village first, it closes for you and many enemy reinforcements (3 Dark Mages and 3 Fighters) appear around it. Visiting these villages is crucial, because if we manage to visit 3, we get an extra reward of 10,000G, which will be very useful in the coming few chapters. What makes this harder is that there are enemies in the way of the villages, and in particular, Flora will use her Freeze staff to try and stop you from getting to the villages. We will be going for the village on the bottom left of the map, and the village at the top of the map, along with the "free" village that is given to us next to our spawn. Setup: Jakob is in the bottom left starting position. Above him is Silas, behind him is Arthur, and to the bottom right of Stella are Elise and Effie. Turn 1: Stella pairs up with Jakob, Arthur and Elise move as far left as possible, Effie pairs up with Silas. Jakob moves as far to the left as possible (and one tile up) and Silas moves to the left and up as far as he can. Both of them drop their pair-ups in the direction they were moving. Turn 2: Odin and Niles show up right where all the other units are. Elise pairs with Odin (to prevent enemy Dual Strikes), then Odin moves up to the space directly below and to the right of the corner of the central ice statue. Effie moves behind Odin, and Stella (Yato Equip) moves to the left of Odin. One Dark Mage will take a bite out of Stella, the other will attack Odin. Jakob has to move to a very specific spot which is in range of all three bottom Dark Mages, 4 tiles to the right and 3 above the left Dragon Vein. With the Arthur +4 STR, Jakob will ORKO all three Dark Mages. This specific positioning also has the benefit of luring one of the enemy Fighters down (he will attempt a Dual Strike which will be blocked by Arthur). Jakob can attack that Fighter next turn while making his way to the bottom left village. Turn 3: Jakob attacks the fighter we lured last round. Odin finishes him off. Effie kills the Dark Mage that attacked her with a dual strike from Stella. Niles moves into Flora's Freeze range and kills the Dark Mage that attacked Odin, with a dual strike from Stella. Silas moves to the left of Niles, in range of the Fighter that we hadn't lured. Stella moves to the right of Niles, and uses a Concoction (Dragonstone Equip). Note that Flora will Freeze Silas (not Niles) because Silas has lower RES. Turn 4: Stella's now on low health, so Silas gets his +3/-3 boost. Silas kills the Fighter who attacked him last round. Effie kills a full health Dark Mage with a dual strike from Stella, Odin attacks and Stella kills the Fighter. Jakob secures the bottom left village. Odin comes back and kills the Fighter who attacked Stella. Silas kills the Fighter who attacked him last turn. Niles moves 1 tile above Stella, which puts him in range of where the top Lancer will move this turn. Stella moves as far up as possible, staying out of range of enemies. Turn 5: Jakob retreats from the enemies that spawned from the leftmost village. Odin switches to Elise and heals Jakob. Stella attacks the top Lancer with Dragonstone, then Niles finishes him off. Effie moves next to Silas (who is Frozen). Turn 6: Effie is Frozen, so I pair her with Silas. The enemies from the leftmost village are moving towards us, so I put Jakob just within the reach of the front two (a Fighter and a Dark Mage with Fire). Elise moves next to him, but switches to Odin (if Lily's Poise is active, the Fire Dark Mage won't attack Jakob at all). Jakob will have a Dual Guard lined up after the Dark Mage attacks him, so the enemy Fighter won't actually damage him. Stella moves upwards and secures the topmost village, in range of the top left Fighter (NOT the Dark Mage). Niles pairs with her. With his SPD boost, she can ORKO that fighter with Yato Equip, and she will barely survive his attack. Silas (carrying Frozen Effie) moves around the central statue, towards Stella (staying out of reach of enemies). He drops Effie. Turn 7: There's a Fighter with HP + 5 and a Steel Axe who's within range of Jakob and Odin. We move Odin in the direction of Stella (staying out of range of the remaining enemies on the right side) and bodyblock the Fighter with Jakob, who can live one hit from the Fighter. Silas and Effie stay where they are, and Stella moves just in range of the top left Dark Mage and switches to Niles, then they separate. Turn 8: Odin finishes off the Fighter that attacked Jakob, staying in range of the last Dark Mage that moved up against Jakob and Odin earlier. Despite being on 13 health, he can live one hit from that Dark Mage. Everyone else stays where they are. Turn 9: Odin moves back from the Dark Mage towards the rest of the group, someone transfers Elise away from him and heals him. Everyone else stands still. Turn 10: Odin finishes the Dark Mage. From here on out, the map is pretty much won - all we need to do now is kill the single Lancer who's slowly trooping towards the village on the bottom right (which we never visited. I'm just going to repeatedly shoot him with Odin until he's dead (weakening him with Jakob first). Heartseeker/dual guard helps here. None of the other enemies move, and there are hardly any of them left. We're going to steadily feed them to Odin and Niles, giving a couple to Silas to get him to level 9. In particular, I gave Flora to Niles. The boss is actually kind of a pain. He has the annoying combination of Nosferatu and Vantage, which makes attacking him on player phase ineffective - but, he's on a gate, so he heals on enemy phase. We whittle him down with JakobxOdin (who has enough RES to survive many hits, especially with Lily's Poise), then finish him with EffiexStella when he's 2 health above half. This chapter is a good illustration of how strong a shuriken user with good defenses can be, especially against tome wielders. Jakob pretty much soloed half the map.

yeah, pretty much - I would say the ninjas are the most difficult part of the chapter because they're the only enemies that can debuff you (aside from the staff users who you can Silence). I plan to use Niles with Shurikenbreaker to take them out.

You can't entrap the Hexing Rod and Freeze either. The guard stance horse units are big trouble - unfortunately, they're out of range of entrap anyway so there's really nothing for it but to tank them well. I was planning on using Corrin on the left side (since they have the Dark Knights) and maybe Xander on the right (with the Bow Knights) to bait, and then kill them off. It would take tricky timing to kill them without getting mobbed by the Faceless though.

If I remember correctly, it's not very useful. The reason for this is that you can't use entrap on any of the staff users (which are pretty much the only thing stopping the chapter from being a cakewalk, since they have enfeeble, staff savant, and inevitable end). Not only that, but the only other really dangerous enemies (the Master Ninjas) have a pretty high RES so they probably won't even be getting hit by the entrap in the first place. I have a plan in place for Endgame that will not require any uses of Entrap.

Last time I played through this, I was able to get Leo, Xander, Corrin, and several other units down there. So that's probably what I'll do this time. The last chapter is stupid in its design though, but we'll see how it goes - I might need to sacrifice units (though who cares at that point in the game). As for C26, I have a plan for that which involves Entrapping Hans (and maybe other enemies since Entrap is worthless in Endgame anyway) and then baiting enemies using Stella/another tanky unit, maybe Camilla/Beruka. We'll see how their growths pan out. Fortunately the AI prefers to heal its own wounded allies to freezing enemies, so we can initiate a long bait-and-switch sequence and slowly wipe them out. I am kinda worried about the Zerkers with 40+ STR though.

ore swap - you get free ores once per day unless I'm mistaken? It's not like I'm playing the game in one sitting. mechanist - yes you're right mb EDIT: And you can use the arena to get lots of extra ores once per day

you can trade ores 5 for 1. I'm going to only forge a certain select few items (blessed weapons, fruit knife) so I don't see it becoming an issue. Most of the resources I would be using would be to bribe captures, but you can just wait a few days to recruit them without paying anything.

Chapter 6 Goals: Catch Jakob up on exp. We might as well try to min-max exp gain while we're here. The chances of killing Ryoma with anyone but Xander or Leo is pretty slim, and the only units that benefit from kills in this chapter are Jakob and Stella. Therefore, we're going to lure Ryoma away from us by unequipping Xander's sword if we hit Ryoma at all. We'll then feed Takumi and Hinoka to Jakob or Stella, kill Yukimura with Jakob, and then kill Sakura with Jakob as well. Turn 1: Xander moves towards the top right and unequips his weapon. Ryoma will spend the next few turns beating him up. I move Leo in range of Takumi/Hinoka. Nobody else can get in range at the moment. Turn 2: Leo missed Takumi, but that doesn't matter - I go ahead and hit him with Leo from range 1, and then kill him with Stella. Jakob moves up and attacks Hinoka, everyone else moves back. Turn 3: Jakob is now on 3 HP. Leo moves next to Hinoka for Heartseeker, then Jakob attacks Hinoka with Stella in attack stance. With the help of Heartseeker, Jakob kills Hinoka. Elise moves up and heals Jakob. Camilla moves up and gets ready to pop the dragon vein to dry up the river. Xander managed to land a hit on Ryoma last turn. If he lands another one, I'll unequip his sword. Turn 4: Xander is pretty low on health so I use his Elixir. Jakob steps into Yukimura's range, Elise heals him, and Stella supports him for the attack stance. Turn 5: Jakob kills Yukimura with a dual strike from Stella. Xander moves down out of Ryoma's range, and Elise heals him. Now we want to hit Ryoma with Xander 1 more time in order to get him low enough to land a killing blow on Ryoma with Jakob (that's a lot of extra exp!) We don't have a chance of hitting Ryoma on his turn because of Duelist's Blow (hit chance of 25% or so) so we will go ahead and attack him with Xander repeatedly until we land the hit, running away and healing Xander as needed. I lucked out and hit him on my first try. Turn 6: Run away from Ryoma with Xander, luring him down towards our units. Turn 7: Leo moves next to Ryoma for the Heartseeker bonus, then Jakob finishes him off.

Chapter 5

You're probably right. I'll just stick to no food, I don't have a good understanding of how that mechanic works anyway. Not interested in the chapter 11 recruits, since no support bonuses is a pretty hefty nerf to take for those (pretty decent) skills. I totally forgot about Haitaka and Kumagera! I'm definitely going to be using Haitaka as a rally-bot (he gets Rally DEF). In previous runs I've captured Kumagera but never ended up needing him. I know he's a unit with decently high stats and pretty good skills, but I don't think he'd be worth replacing another unit with.

I was planning to cover that as I get the units, but I'm planning on using the 6 royals (obviously), Silas, Kaze, Odin (he falls off late-game but carries early-game), Niles, Effie, Keaton, and two Capture units: Rally man from chapter 23, and a Falcon Knight with Pass from chapter 24.

I've never used a 'zerker in this game, but both of my WL's have always turned out lackluster - maybe I've been getting unlucky but Beruka isn't strong or fast enough to deal enough damage, and Camilla has consistently turned out a bit too fragile to use in that way - even at level 20. Same for Silas - he consistently falls off in the endgame and I don't see what I can do to fix him. His personal is good, but not good enough to carry his terrible speed and RES. I also forgot to mention that I'm not using child characters for this run on the grounds that I think they're stupid and shouldn't be in the game. That also means no S rank support, and no paralogues (aside from Mozu).

Was trying to be funny, seems the message didn't get across? Will edit. I'm not actually planning on using food at any point during the playthrough but in case I'm one speed point short at some point or something, I might use it. I'm definitely not going to be using it before a late chapter when you should have samples of all food already (and can multiply them with the Arena). Obviously early game it's pretty RNG since it depends on what starting farm you get, so shall we say, no meals until chapter 15? My end goal isn't to be Mechanist, I'm only putting Corrin through 5 levels of Mechanist for Golembane and then switching to Master Ninja. Master Ninja has a fairly low defense cap so in the endgame you can still pull aggro despite the Jakob support and Grim Yato, but we want Golembane for that one faceless chapter - you can take them out pretty quickly that way. Although I never did think of using Lightning, I don't think the Brave Axe would work since it would make units too fragile to be able to survive the mob anyway. Besides, Golembane is also helpful against Mechanists which can give me trouble (mobile and tanky and the ones in Sakura's chapter have Shurikenfaire so they hit hard), and it's not like going Mechanist hurts you in anyway, just gives you some nice extra mobility for a couple of levels. The point here is that we want a dodge-tank with Draconic Hex in order to pull aggro and debuff all the enemies and then clean them up with the weaker units. I rejected +HP because of Takumi's endgame - the Hanzo ult takes out half of your max. HP so it's much better to be a defense build rather than an HP build on that chapter, and the last time I played that map I was having trouble keeping people behind the barriers. I'm not sure what you mean about exp decay? I don't plan on feeding Corrin all the kills in early chapters, and right now Corrin and Jakob are of equal level - I don't plan on feeding corrin 3-exp kills just to get her a little bit closer to promotion. You're not wrong about Turn 1 in ch3, I didn't really give it much thought since it's only about 10 missed exp anyway, and the game actively forces you not to become overleveled anyway.

Constructive criticism is appreciated - or just tell my my mom has the big gay, I don't mind