Wyvern Conquest - The Aftermath

[BANRYU]

It's taken me a while (I procrastinated for several months on Chapter 25), but I finally finished my all-Wyverns run of Conquest. Though the battle was bloody, the Wyvern Brigade made it through the Endgame to stop the evils of Twincest Takumi and his bow domination, thus striking down Fates' title as 'Bow Emblem'!

The endgame was an unmitigated disaster since I made a dumb move and half my wyverns ended up getting shot outta the sky by Takumi and the bow knights that spawned (not a huge surprise really, though it could have gone better if I didn't muck it up), BUT-- we did it.

I actually want to try recording a playthrough of the endgame for this thread; all I have is my crappy webcam but I'll see what I can do. Might make some last-second changes to the squad, like swapping Camilla's class, but we'll see.

Time for a little unit breakdown:

Nubrya was... somewhat mediocre actually, at least for a Corrin. She spent most of the game as an Oni Savage/Chief for the cool skills and same weapon types, and since I made her boon Skill, she basically wound up as a crit-abuser between Odin's Grimoire and Great Club (regularly getting hundo crit rates with the latter). She flagged a bit near the endgame where crits were more inconsistent and not landing them got more punishing, and Awakening/Aether didn't proc nearly as much as I'd have liked, but she DID manage to critkill Takumi at the very end so that's something. Having her marry Ignatius might have been a bit of a mistake, since it made Kana really slow (but otherwise not bad). If I attempt another run like this again (or to others who want to try something similar) I think a Speed boon and different hubby is probably the way to go.

Elise was pretty much like she always is TBH, being a MK didn't change that much; she was fast at good at ORKOing mages or things that couldn't retaliate, but can't take a hit. Pretty much just Elise minus healing plus flight, but Elise is pretty good already. Could have sealed her to a Wyvern very early (Selena and Odin got the early seals she would have wanted) to train up her Axes so she could use Bolt Axe, but her tomes still ended really high and Calamity Gate suffices well enough to fill the Bolt Axe's spot in the weapon triangle, so it's a small loss to my mind.

The only 2nd genner not to be a royal by birth, Effie!Percy was grabbed early and stayed a solid unit through the whole run with awesome stats all around. Vital for buddying with most of the kids to nab them wyvern, too; he married Ophelia so she could also be in the army, and, well...

Ophelia, more like OP-helia, amirite folks? She was hands-down the best magic-specialized MK of the lot, significantly faster and more durable than Leo and nearly as fast as Elise but able to tank a hell of a lot better. Rarely died even when I was being careless, and easily my best of my several anti-bow units. What more can you say? It's Ophelia, but as a MK.

Considering I originally grabbed him as a filler option, I didn't expect much from Dwyer but boy did he surprise me. Grabbed him early as a means of getting some early inheritance skills before chapter 10, and after more Heart Seals were unlocked at the shop, he went straight to Pegasus to train his lances-- one of my better decisions on this run. Starting early saved me an Arms Scroll I was sure I'd need to drop on him, and aside from being a bit frail, he's great at killing things, doubling practically everything thanks to Darting Blow. Breakers made him even better, and he had Rally Speed/Defense as backups if I wanted. Strong, useful, and versatile overall. Great unit.

Camilla was quite good throughout. Axefaire was bought from a My Castle (IDK if that counts as cheating in a run like this, shrug), and since I powered through the Sorc levels early she didn't see some use for a while, but in any chapters she was brought to she performed well. I kept her as an MK to make use of her Magic weapon level and for her unique character model, but she'll probably be better off as a WL since I opted to take her magic, and that'd likely make her a better pairup for Benny as well.

Charlotte does really well as a Wyvern Lord IMO; she basically just trades her Berserker crit rate for Wyvern-level movement, and WLs love being able to hit this fast and hard. She did end up getting KOed a few times, but having Sol helps her survive long enough to murder whatever she wanted. By endgame, she was pulling Rallybot duty and being pair-up fodder for Xander lategame when it was harder for her to stay alive

Benny actually surprised me and did really well for himself. Not only was he the tank to end all tanks, (as one expects of Benny) his combination of Wary Fighter and high Skill made abusing the speed penalty weapons like Effie's Lance and Ryoma's Club a breeze. Even against more durable units, Luna and/or Beruka's Axe let him one-shot them surprisingly often. Basically, he did Beruka's job better than she did, and is probably the main reason she got dropped. (Note that his Speed and Res are boosted from a surge and aren't accurate.)

The weakest WL, but still useful for a number of utility roles, namely rallying and mage-killing. Mostly like Dwyer, but even though his defenses are slightly better, he still wound up taking more damage than Dwyer since he couldn't kill things as often, getting him counterattacked a lot. Silver Lance / Killer Lance helped with that most of the time, so he was still quite solid. His dad is Jakob because, weirdly enough, that's the only way he gets Wyverns outside of marriage.

Had to marry Beruka to break into the Wyvern business, so suffers a bit from lack of a good support partner (mostly had him with Forrest). Not quite as good as Ophelia, as previously mentioned, but still really solid. Forged Lightnings let him compensate for his lacking speed really well, and he was responsible for ORKOing Hans in Chapter 26 after Nina Entrapped him into the first room. Though he lacks speed, his offense and survivability were pretty great.

Resisting the urge to use Siegfried in order to train Lances was the hardest part about using Xander. Basically an offensively-stronger version of Benny, but without Wary Fighter to keep from getting doubled. Fortunately, he can OHKO quite a lot with weapons like Effie's Lance / Ryoma's Club / Bold Naginata, and still tanked really well when I needed him to. Even better with Charlotte backing him up, since by the endgame she was struggling to find much more of a purpose.

Much like Ophelia, benefits from being a strong unit with good genetics. Amazingly well-balanced and solid all around, from stats to skills. The only point he fell short was the fact that I ran out of women to marry my largely-male second generation wyverns to, so his personal skill doesn't get much use. Even despite that, he was possibly the best of all the Wyvern Lords.

MU's hubby; solid unit, largely similar to Siegbert and a good general, balanced soldier, though not too much sets him apart... One of the few Wyvern Lords with Bowbreaker, so there's that. Another cog in the draconic machine, I suppose; in the end, he probably wasn't the best dad for Kana, but TBH I kinda wanted a male Kana with Camilla's hair color, so I decided to #DEALWITHIT.

Despite his weak speed and flaws in both his eugenics and skill set (namely, having no HP recovery sucked esp when healers weren't used in the final few levels), Kana actually did really well, and might have actually been a little better than his mom. Really strong magical unit, esp after bolstering him up with Spirit Dusts, and great at killing things between Death Blow, Trample, and Dragon Fang so Speedtaker was pretty easy to build up and subsequently abuse (although it is kind of unfortunate that it was necessary to use up a skill slot with it).

Being that Beruka was his mom, Forrest was probably the weakest unit in the whole of the Wyvern Legion. I only decided to swap him from his role as a Staffbot very near the end of the game when all the other Wyvern Legion members were getting maxed out and I still had a few kid paralogues left, and he could have actually been better if I'd decided sooner that I'd use him, so he could have inherited Bowbreaker from Leo and at least had anti-Bow utility like most of the other Magic-based MKs... Too slow and physically frail to do much aside from sponge magic though, sadly. He performed, just not great, and mostly got paired up with Leo for bonuses and Dual Guard.

Also finished with Azura being Azura (she was the recipient of the Witch skills, and Warp was godly on her), Nina being general utility (lockpicking/healing Strategist), and Midori for Profiteer, but they're less relevant and only Azura went into the final two levels with the Wyvern Legion.

Selena and Beruka both made it to around level 10-ish in appropriate precursor classes before being dropped, as they just weren't cutting it.

Pairings:

- Odin x Elise

- Arthur x Effie

- Niles x Nyx

- Kaze x Mozu

- Azura x Jakob

- Selena x Silas

- Beruka x Leo

- Camilla x Benny

- Xander x Charlotte

- Laslow x Peri

- Keaton x Felicia

- MU x Ignatius

- Percy x Ophelia

- Shigure x Midori

- Dwyer x Nina

- Kana, Forrest, and Siegbert go unmarried; could use My Castle battles to pair them off with the 3 unmatched ladies, but no point really since the girls not gettin' used

Forge Lexicon: (for those who care to know)

- Iron / Steel / Silver = shown weapons of that type

- Razor __ = Killer weapons

- Deadly Flutter = Hand Axe

- Giant Wingbeat = Tomahawk

- Gilded Fang = Javelin

- Giant's Tusk = Spear

- Crushing Heel = Hammer

- Ravenous Maw = Beastkiller

- Demon Wing = Berserker Axe

- Shadow Wing = Camilla's Axe

- Noble Wing = Arthur's Axe

- Blood Beater = Beruka's Axe

- Holy Wingtalon = Effie's Lance

- Barbed Nail = Peri's Lance

- Ivaldi = Lightning

- Fenrir = Odin's Grimoire

- Sindri = Speed Thunder

- Hraesvelg = Disrobing Gale

Other interesting (?) tidbits:

- I think a few people have mentioned this in the other thread, but if I had decided to give MU the Wyvern talent off the bat (instead of Oni Savage like I chose, since I decided to do the wyvern run after starting), I could have married her to another eligible non-wyvern bachelor to get both him and his kid in on the Wyvern action, IE Leo, Odin, Keaton, etc. Just changing MU's talent to wyvern and spouse to Keaton with no other changes, that's 2 more wyverns than I got in my run for a total possible of 19. That's nuts (and definitely overkill), but interesting to note.

- ended up with 2 extra Arms Scrolls that no one really needed by the end; probably wasn't the best use of them, but I decided to use them on Leo and Forrest since they were the magic-based MKs with the most strength so they could use Hammers and Pike-Ruin Clubs and such. If I'd decided to get Velouria in on this action via marriage/inheritance, they could be used on her after recruiting her post-level 15 Offspring Seal so she can go straight to Wyvern with her amazing Wolfssegner skills. Live’n’learn, as they say.

- I did My Castle battles a LOT while procrastinating on Chapter 25 and accrued tons of random-only weapons for forging. The most of anything I got was 11 Odin's Grimoires-- holy $#!7. By contrast, never found a single Iago’s Tome outside of the one from the battle rewards.

Final Notes!

It took a lot of planning, and yeah there were some missteps along the way, but I think I proved that this can be done. If anything, Wyverns might be one of the best unit types for a class-specialized run like this, given their access to all three corners of the Weapon Triangle and their crazy mobility. Had a lot of fun doing this, and hope to see other people try some crazy stuff too!

Edited September 24, 2016 by BANRYU

[Michelaar]

That was really interesting!

[BANRYU]

Hahh thanks man. It was actually a lot of fun to see all the different builds that resulted from the same 2 classes. Airtanks, squishy mage fliers, all-arounders (for both types), rallybots, breaker-abusers... Surprising amount of variety, haha.

I'm trying to decide what kind of run to do next; I'm thinking maybe a no-grind Ninja Birthright run?

Another thing I'm considering is a dumb idea I got from reading Rhajat's supports; in her support with Caeldori she says 'Can you imagine an army of only Rhajats?' AND I'M JUST LIKE YES ACTUALLY, I CAN BWAHAHA. The only hangup there is it would require a lot of outside help and making sure I get them already with skills they'd want to class-change for...

Edited September 24, 2016 by BANRYU

[Michelaar]

Well, thats what you get if you do one-class only runs!

[BANRYU]

It's true, hehe.

So speaking of Class-only runs.... I think I'm gonna do another one. Does anyone have a suggestion for another class-specific run I could try, especially for Birthright? (I still like the idea of the 'Army of Rhajats', but I think I'll save it for a Revelations run, or just do it later maybe...)

As previously stated, I'm leaning toward the all-Ninja run, as they get all three weapon triangle colors in their tree + there's a high concentration of ninjas in Birthright who can be used to spread the class around, plus tons more characters have Ninja as their Heart Seal class. It's the most interesting option right now, but I'm open to outlandish suggestions! Something like all Merchants or all staff-users would be entertaining too, lol.

[kcirrot]

I did an all Dread Fighter run on Revelation hard. About to do an all tome user run.

[BANRYU]

I did an all Dread Fighter run on Revelation hard. About to do an all tome user run.

Ah that sounds cool, although I should mention that I have none of the DLC, and both versions on separate 3DSes so I have no dreadfighter access at all unless I happen to buy Revelations on the one, ahaha... ;; If I do that, I'll probably include the ones I get as part of the Ninja run ahaha.

Also, I just went ahead and checked for kicks and the number of Ninjas I can get WITHOUT marrying anyone off is 12, + 5 more when accounting for kids (default class/heart seals/buddy seals). That's a pretty crazy amount right off the bat, and there's plenty of room for selective optimization lol.