Fire Emblem Gaiden: Minimum Recruitment Run

[SRC]

So there was a challenge run concept proposed in this topic the other day requiring you to complete an entire Fire Emblem without recruiting a single character. http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=67837 In most of the Fire Emblem games, this isn't a big deal since your starting party tends to be reasonably strong and viable backups come pouring in as the game progresses, Gaiden is different. Almost none of your roster joins automatically. In fact, aside from a few characters that are mandatory to recruit in order to advance the story, nobody joins automatically at all! All in all, this means we're going to beat the game with a total of 6 characters split between two parties. Pretty crazy, but Gaiden itself is also crazy so maybe it will balance out.

 

Update! The full playlist for a Grey-less version of the run can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4y9vIwFHQJohlg8l3C2pme61h_XG3but

 

 

 

Chapter 1:

 

 

We start out pretty strong here. Luka is required to be recruited to advance the story and Gray is blocking the pathway. (Gray can be skipped through a simple exploit though I forgot about this at the time of the run.) This makes the beginning a somewhat standard affair with one exception: the leather shield mercenary. Since I go the mercenary path with Gray, the team has no magic users, so the mercenary mini-boss has to be whittled down repeatedly with weak physical attacks. Luckily, Alm is a pretty cool guy that can take hits, so he can just park on the healing tile while the boss slowly but surely is done in by Alm's barrage of 2-3 damage attacks.

 

 

 

 

 

After the thundersword is obtained, the chapter is a piece of cake. Gray doubles and one-rounds just about everything and both Alm and Luka can take a hit or two. Lion head bonuses are +3 speed to Luka to help him double in mid-game and +2 def to Alm and +1 def to Gray to help their durability just a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2:

 

 

After a relatively easy chapter 1, chapter 2 is some bad times. For mandatory characters, we get our choice between May and Boey. Boey has decent durability later on, but his offense is hot garbage throughout the game so I think May is the pick here. Lion heads are +2 Power for Cellica and +1 speed to May so pirates will go down soundly in one round of combat.

 

 

 

 

 

The main issue for chapter 2 is the frailty of the units. Neither Celica nor May can really take physical attacks well, so the leather shield has to be obtained very cautiously. The leather shield helps Celica quite a bit, but I still have to take certain maps slowly to avoid her getting swarmed and more or less keep May in the back row behind her at all times. Fortunately, this isn't too difficult largely because the pirate ship chapters are FULL of choke points.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3:

 

 

With Luka and Gray promoted to Knight and Hero (Myrmidon), there isn't really anything standing in the way of steamrolling Alm's side of chapter 3. However, Cellica's team needs a LOT of help. So, on the final map, Gray is killed off (surprisingly difficult to do) so he can be brought back in a revival shrine. He's a Demonfighter with a thunder sword at this point in time, so once we get him it's good times. Getting to him is the hard part.

 

 

 

 

 

Celica's team being undermanned is an even bigger problem in chapter 3. In fact, it's nearly impossible to save Palla and Catria here without a huge amount of luck/rigging. Basically the eastern part of the chapter in impossible with our current team, so we've got to go to the revival shrine. This wouldn't be a huge problem, except that it also happens to house 3 dragonzombies. Celica can take them out with ease, but once again durability is a problem. Not only can the team only take 1-2 hits total from these jerks, Celica lacks the HP to use Angel to kill them all unless she has 25 HP! This meant an extra trip to the graveyard before I get Gray back from the dead.

 

 

 

 

 

Luckily, having a demon fighter gray solves a lot of problems! He cut through everything with ease, alternating between the lightning sword and darkness sword. He even killed that jerk Geyse in 2 hits! Lots of killing means lots of experience points, so Gray actually gets to level 10 and gets to promote to villager so he can later repromote to archer. As we move into chapter 4.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4:

 

 

The first map is a little annoying since becoming a Villager erases Gray's insane Demon Fighter resistance stat, but with some support from Celica with her healing and 5-range magic ring attacks, he gets through it. It's totally worth it, though. Gray is a pretty good archer. Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv26mxrMJ50 Once he has access to the 5 range steel bow, the whole chapter is basically a joke. The only except are the always-annoying Bigls. I actually have to rig some turns so they multiply less. One or two turns of them multiplying by 5 or 6 renders the map unbeatable since Gray can't kill them as fast as they multiply.

 

 

 

 

 

The same goes for Alm's side, as he gets a promotion and a silver bow at this time, so after a map of slight growing pains, him and Luka become a 2 man wrecking squad. Things are even better when Ruka gets the speed ring and Alm gets the Holy Bow in the fear shrine. The HP recovery and stat boosts from those items make Alm and Luka nearly invincible. They even find a super-rare Dragonshield as Alm lays wastes to easily a hundred dragon zombies. Not too useful hear, but with a 1/2000 drop rate, a cool souvenir for sure!

 

 

 

 

 

As usual, the biggest pain here is Rudolph. He hits hard and has huge defenses, so I just have Alm go in alone with a Speed Ring for the massive defensive advantage (prevents Alm from being doubled as well as granting him massive avoid thanks to automatic 40 speed). Alm only does 4x2 damage per round, but with the critical hits mixed in, is enough to slowly take Rudolph down to finish Alm's side of the chapter. Afterwards, we get Maisen, our last mandatory character. Wheeeee!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 5:

 

 

Maisen gets the Dragonshield, meaning that Alm's squad now effectively has 3 invincible units. Maisen doesn't hit hard or fast, but his movement is good which makes him a formidable meatwall or magekiller during certain moments. Alm mainly cleans house by himself, though.

 

 

 

 

 

The only noteworthy battle of chapter 5 is of course the finale itself. Gray is a bowknight now and proves to be a valuable asset in escorting Celica upwards. He one-rounds just about everything with 1-5 range, including those obnoxious Bigls! He takes a bit of damage when trying to clear some of the witches near Doma, but his monstrous HP stat lets him tank a lot of them despite his Res stat of 2 and no clerics or healing tiles to bail him out. Celica herself is also surprisingly strong. She has great speed, reasonable defenses thanks to loads of lion's head bonuses, and a good magic arsenal made better with the overpowered magic ring for 5 range attacking. She holds her own better than she has in any other run I've done with her, so getting her to Alm and Doma for some game winning healing+100% crit support with Alm isn't too much of a problem.

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway, it was kind of crazy run, but aside for a few maps that were dumb, this was definitely more of just a novelty run than a challenge run. Like in most Fire Emblem games, it pays off in Gaiden to have a small number of really overpowered units. Maybe next time I will try it without Gray...

 

 

 

 

 

For those wanting pics, I didn't take a whole lot of this one, but I went back and took a few of my final battle squad. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

[spoiler=pics or it didn't happen]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alm (Falchion equipped) and Luka (Quick Ring Equipped)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maisen (Dragon Shield Equipped) and Celica (Magic Ring Equipped)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May (Magic Ring Equipped) and Gray (Silver Bow Equipped)

 

 

 

 

 

Also for those seeing May's stats and wondering if she was useless for the finale, she actually contributed a little bit! The Magic Ring with its 5 range solves a lot of problems, so despite her horrible stats and 4 move, she got in some decent damage with Aura (~20 per hit) and the Bigls for other characters to finish off. Not too shabby, but nowhere near as insane as Gray on the right heheh.

 

 

Edited January 20, 2017 by SRC

[OliKad]

But why was May that neglected level and stat-wise?

[SRC]

It's mostly due to game mechanics. Once you reach level 10, experience gains grinds almost to a halt, but most characters are able to avoid this due to promoting at level 10 or earlier, Unfortunately, May promotes at level 20, which would probably be the equivalent of level 30 or 40 in a normal Fire Emblem game. This is really difficult to do without grinding and is made worse because, while her base stats are rather good, he growths are not so she plays a very limited role compared to Celica and Gray in chapter 3 and beyond.

tl;dr May isn't needed much past the early game and isn't worth the time or resources to try to get her caught up to other characters due to awkward game mechanics.

[Jedi]

You're insane SRC, but this is why I love your runs, because you can do this insanity haha.

Good stuff, I'd watch a youtube playthrough version of this, but it'd probably drag

[Lord Raven]

The real question is why you didn't stream this. Is it because we were watching that shitty ass football game together?

Edited December 26, 2016 by Lord Raven

[Jedi]

Yeah dude I'd have watched you stream this.

[SRC]

It didn't even come to mind. It's possible I stream/youtube a Grayless version in the near future. (Winter beak is so looooong not that I'm complaining.)

Luka would have to replace Gray's role as savior. Not sure how that one works out. Funny thing is Alm soloing his part of chapter 4 should be a non-issue.

[geraq]

Wow, that's was amazing. I don't think I'd had the patience to pull off such a feat, and even if I read about it, it would have never come to my mind to use the revival shrines as a way to transfer characters to the other party.

Great work SRC!

[SRC]

For those who were wondering how this would actually work in practice, I have been slowly uploading another playthrough I did with this concept. (This time I remembered to skip Gray!) All of it was recorded in real time without editing so (for better or worse) you get to see parts where I rigged certain hits/misses and where the game was slow that I got bored and fast forwarded. Fortunately I didn't need to rig any level ups but there were plenty of times where I needed to rewind to make up for bad luck, questionable tactics, and/or laziness.

[spoiler=Video Links]

Chapter 1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZoLn-wC0Us

Chapter 2:

Chapter 3 Alm:

Edited January 6, 2017 by SRC

[SRC]

Hey, I finished uploading my updated run in honor of the Echoes announcement. You can see the full playlist at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4y9vIwFHQJohlg8l3C2pme61h_XG3but 

It's an interesting way to see some Gaiden in action if you don't feel like watching a normal playthrough. You might want to watch another run if you want to see the full roster in action....

This is unedited footage of me recording so the whole playthrough is over 6 hours long. If you don't feel like sitting through the whole thing, I recommend the finale since the final battle is pretty exciting and you get to see Alm at his broken-est.