How should I go about leveling up units?

[Lord Chrom of Ylisse]

I am doing my first serious run of Awakening and I was wondering; How should I approach leveling up units and getting different skills with minimal grinding? I want to have a really good army and good child units but at the same time I don't want to my entire life grinding.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Edited December 23, 2016 by Lord Chrom of Ylisse

[Light Strategist]

If you're open to grinding but don't want to do too much, why not use the last map you completed as a grind spot and only replay each stage once or twice if you get any new characters?

For example, you can replay Chapter 3 since you get Sumia and Kellam in that Chapter but Chapter 16 doesn't add anyone so you don't use it to grind.

Depending on how you want to go about Optional Chapters, you could ignore them since everything bar side stories 2 and 3 give you a character. I suppose it depends on how you want the characters to turn out.

[Xander]

Lunatic? Hard? Normal? DLC? With the information you've given us the best advice anyone can give you is just play through the game, use the attack command to drop the enemy units' health to 0 on the player and enemy phase and your characters will gain exp and level up. The EXP DLC is the only reasonable way to level up your units quickly outside of simply playing through the chapters. Regardless unless you're playing on Lunatic+ you won't need to grind to get through the story mode, and if you're trying to build a PvP team without grinding you can't have your cake and eat it too.

Edited December 23, 2016 by Xander

[Lord Chrom of Ylisse]

Lunatic? Hard? Normal? DLC? With the information you've given us the best advice anyone can give you is just play through the game, use the attack command to drop the enemy units' health to 0 on the player and enemy phase and your characters will gain exp and level up. The EXP DLC is the only reasonable way to level up your units quickly outside of simply playing through the chapters. Regardless unless you're playing on Lunatic+ you won't need to grind to get through the story mode, and if you're trying to build a PvP team without grinding you can't have your cake and eat it too.

I'm on hard.

[Lord Chrom of Ylisse]

If you're open to grinding but don't want to do too much, why not use the last map you completed as a grind spot and only replay each stage once or twice if you get any new characters?

For example, you can replay Chapter 3 since you get Sumia and Kellam in that Chapter but Chapter 16 doesn't add anyone so you don't use it to grind.

Depending on how you want to go about Optional Chapters, you could ignore them since everything bar side stories 2 and 3 give you a character. I suppose it depends on how you want the characters to turn out.

Another thing I want to know though is how much reclassing can I do without grinding(To get skills).

[Xander]

I'm on hard.

Do you have or are you willing to purchase exponential growth? If not, you will have to settle for a few children or accept sub par skills since it's not realistically possible to get every child optimized without grinding.

[SullyMcGully]

Try to avoid over-grinding. Awakening is a strategy game, and while you do need to grind a certain amount to win the game, every level you gain that you don't need makes the game easier and thus, less strategic. A good limit would be to only level your units to 150% of the chapter number, promoting your units at level 20.

The way I prefer to grind is by using Spotpass teams. I don't really like EXPonential growth because, while you gain levels quickly, you gain WEXP and supports at a slower rate.