Tips for the final map?

[The DanMan]

I've spent the past four hours trying in vain to beat the final story map of the game (normal/classic). Honestly, it feels like the game is punishing me for not grinding much up to that point. Everybody is level 5-10 on their final class (level 10-ish is on those who have only two tiers, and it's worth noting Palla got RNG screwed and ended up being ditched). The team I've been using is as follows:

Alm
Celica
Leon
Tobin (horseman)
Python
Gray (dread fighter)
Dean
Kamui
Saber
Conrad
Mae
Catria
Tatiana
Genny
Silque
Kliff (Sage)
Zeke
Clair
Clive
Mathilda

Of note is that Kamui and Conrad have blessed weapons and ORKO the Mogalls.

I haven't been able to get past Jedah. The whole map is way too RNG reliant. Randomness accounts for:
-If , when, and how many Mogalls Jedah summons
-If, when, and how many witches the witch sisters summon
-If Duma summons Mogalls and if he desides to use his AOE
-If, when, and were the crapton of summoned witches teleport

Throw in the odd low% crit from enemies, and the chapter has been nothing but frustration and pain.
I have a save from right before I recruited Zeke-- if I'm having this much trouble, should I just re-load from there and focus on grinding more?

[Emerson]

For me, I use my Dread Fighters (Saber, Gray, Jesse, Kamui) to get Jedah to his 4th attacker, and then use Hunter's Volley with Killer Bow!Bow Knight!Atlas to OHKO him with a crit, which is around a 50% chance for each hit.

Duma, on the other hand, is an issue for me, although I know how to deal with him now, and I'm about to start the battle over (Ran out of Mila's Turnwheel experimenting).

In your case, I'd say using whichever of your Dread Fighters doubles him and has the most strength to attempt a Crit with a Brave Sword, which could work well. He doesn't do much damage to them, where Tatiana's Fortify should heal to full.

Mogalls summoned by him will vanish after he dies, and the rightmost witch sister can be killed by Bow users (Or strong Mage ring users) without getting in Duma's range or the other witch's range. The summoned witches are pretty much just chip damage, they barely do more than 4-5 damage per hit to my Royal Shield!Forsyth, who still has base Res and a massive HP Pool.

Make sure to make use of Tempest Lance if you have anyone with it. It's very powerful.

If all else fails, Alm's Double Lion can do a sizable chunk to Jedah, although I don't know if he gets killed in return or not. Some damage from the Dread Fighters and then using Alm should be enough to take Jedah down?

If you haven't gotten it already, get the Gradivus in the first four-teleporter room in Duma Tower. Rather than taking the Alm's mark sigil (Top right), take Celica's (Bottom left) to receive it. It's a good weapon with 12 might, 5 weight, and 1-2 range, plus recovery which is always great.

Edited May 26, 2017 by Emerson

[maninbluejumpsuit]

Use invoke fodder to distract Dumah and his posse. Makes the last stretch so much more tolerable.

[The DanMan]

7 hours ago, maninbluejumpsuit said:

Use invoke fodder to distract Dumah and his posse. Makes the last stretch so much more tolerable.

Yeah, I know. Haven't got past Jedah, though.

@Emerson Thanks for the tips. Reloaded the Zeke save and have been grinding everyone up (especially Tatiana, who was nowhere near level 4 on the initial file). Didn't know how to get Gradivus and hadn't bothered upgrading anything into a Killer Bow.

Looks like I need a lot more preparation.

[Generic_Enemy_Knight_#???]

@The DanMan

The Gradivus room can be accessed via the portal, in the first teleportation room, that has Celica's Brand on it. Good luck!

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

The final boss has an annoying gimmick.

Spoiler

When he's down to a certain HP area only Alm can do damage to him. Duma is immune to any other attacks.
Also Alm has to finish him off.
However he normally can't do it with two regular hits unless you overleveled him.
It's not guaranteed that Alm can oneround him.
You have to hope for a crit unless Duma's HP is so low that Alm can oneshot him with a crit. Then he would crit automatically.

 

[MrSmokestack]

You can waste Jedah's immunity to attacks by trading the Mage Ring between Mae, Sonya, Celica, and Boey to cast Thunder from 5-range, or using Bows. On the fourth attack, you can send in your strongest unit to attack Jedah, casting Fortify with Tatiana immediately afterwards. If Tatiana isn't Lv. 4, then just using her and Genny's Physic is fine.

You can use Invoke fodder to draw the Conjure Witches out of position to kill them without drawing Duma's aggro, since he moves to attack anyone in range. If you have a Bow Knight, you can Warp them to deal with the rightmost witch without ending up in range of the other enemies.

Between Banish on your Falcon Knights and the Blessed Lance, they can contribute to KO'ing Mogalls as well as stray witches that attack your group from the rear. Celica's group can get overwhelmed since they are much closer to the boss than Alm's group, so after clearing the Dread Fighters and Gold Knight on the left I started warping my more durable units to the right to create a front so that the rest of the team could push through. Fortify is unsurprisingly invaluable here, especially to shake off the excess damage that Duma's Earthshaker spell does.

By the time I was ready to deal with Duma, I made sure that everyone else besides the Medusa Arcanist was dead, after which I started luring Duma towards my group from the right side. Once there's enough space to move around after cleaning up any excess Mogalls, I had three of my most durable units--all Dread Fighters in this case--surround Duma to prevent him from moving, with Alm covering the fourth tile. At that point, it was just a matter of passing turns and letting Alm passively counter Duma on enemy phase, while Physic and occasionally Fortify brought him back to full on player phase. If I recall correctly, Duma doesn't attack on turns he casts Earthshaker, so you're free to attack with Alm at those times since Earthshaker's damage isn't lethal. Once Duma was below the threshold at which he becomes immune to everything except Deicide and recovers 40 HP during each of his turns, I had Alm attack to wrap up the map.

Hope this helps!

[BrightBow]

Sounds to me like this map is quite a bit different on Normal compared to Hard. If you don't mind me asking, does the guy with Medusa and a Silver Shield exist on Normal? And does Duma move in that mode?

Edited May 26, 2017 by BrightBow

[Thane]

16 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

Sounds to me like this map is quite a bit different on Normal compared to Hard. If you don't mind me asking, does the guy with Medusa and a Silver Shield exist on Normal? And does Duma move in that mode?

I don't remember if the guy has a shield, but there's definitely a guy with Medusa on Normal, and Duma does indeed move even in that mode.

[BrightBow]

13 minutes ago, Thane said:

I don't remember if the guy has a shield, but there's definitely a guy with Medusa on Normal, and Duma does indeed move even in that mode.

Alright, thanks. I guess that means he probably doesn't have one. At least I think you would have remembered if he did have a Silver Shield, seeing how it makes him hard to kill with physical attacks while magical attacks don't work well because mages can't cast without HP. This guy was such a pain that I started to try luring Duma away from his range.

Edited May 26, 2017 by BrightBow

[Emerson]

1 hour ago, MrSmokestack said:

You can waste Jedah's immunity to attacks by trading the Mage Ring between Mae, Sonya, Celica, and Boey to cast Thunder from 5-range, or using Bows.

Jedah has a skill that allows him to counterattack from any range. Unless they've gotten a lot of resistance somehow, Jedah can take them down to very low health, if not kill them.

Also remember that you can switch positions of units around pre-battle, so if a certain unit fro Alm's group is needed on Celica's side to deal with the Mogalls and Jedah, move them to her side.

Edited May 26, 2017 by Emerson

[MrSmokestack]

On 5/26/2017 at 6:54 PM, Emerson said:

Jedah has a skill that allows him to counterattack from any range. Unless they've gotten a lot of resistance somehow, Jedah can take them down to very low health, if not kill them.

Being able to force an attack from further away makes it easier to reduce the countdown on his immunity while also staying out of range of enemy attacks save for witches, though yes his distant counter can't be bypassed. I should have mentioned that, thanks.

On Hard Mode, Jedah has 40 Atk and 10 AS with Death equipped. Priestess at base has 32 HP / 6 Res, while Sage has 32 HP / 9 Res. Thunder costs 2 HP to cast, though Jedah's seal prevents the spell from being cast and consuming HP in the first place--correct me if I'm wrong. So a Sage at base can live a single hit from Jedah with exactly 1 HP while a Priestess would need at least three more Res or HP procs to manage the same, after which Fortify can be cast. Does he attack on enemy phase?

 

EDIT: Unit Res does not increase to match the base Res of their promoted class. However, Mae, Sonya, Celica, Boey, and Nomah all have more than 6 Res at base so this isn't an issue, Spd notwithstanding.

Edited May 29, 2017 by MrSmokestack

[Emerson]

8 minutes ago, MrSmokestack said:

Being able to force an attack from further away makes it easier to reduce the countdown on his immunity while also staying out of range of enemy attacks save for witches, though yes his distant counter can't be bypassed. I should have mentioned that, thanks.

On Hard Mode, Jedah has 40 Atk and 10 AS with Death equipped. Priestess at base has 32 HP / 6 Res, while Sage has 32 HP / 9 Res. Thunder costs 2 HP to cast, though Jedah's seal prevents the spell from being cast and consuming HP in the first place--correct me if I'm wrong. So a Sage at base can live a single hit from Jedah with exactly 1 HP while a Priestess would need at least three more Res or HP procs to manage the same, after which Fortify can be cast. Does he attack on enemy phase?

Thunder weighs down 5, and Sage's base Speed is only 7. So if, for example, Boey isn't able to get above 14 Speed, which would be understandable considering his growth is 30% and his base is 4, he gets doubled. As a Level 3 Sage, my Boey has 8 Speed. I believe 2 of those were from the starting stat fountains. Probably RNG screwed, but still. Sonya and Mae should be fine, since their base Res is already higher then the class', and their Speed shouldn't be an issue. I believe my Celica is a little RNG screwed with only 15 Speed despite the 50% growth, meaning holding anything with weight will get her doubled and killed. 1 point more, and she'd be good.

[The DanMan]

1 hour ago, BrightBow said:

Sounds to me like this map is quite a bit different on Normal compared to Hard. If you don't mind me asking, does the guy with Medusa and a Silver Shield exist on Normal? And does Duma move in that mode?

No shield, but he's still got Medusa. And as Thane said, Duma still moves.

@MrSmokestack Yeah, I watched linkmstr's run of the map. 
Really, what I'm learning is that I should've grinded Tatiana the two extra levels to get fortify. While grinding her and Alm a bit, I used the Villager's Fork to make Faye a Cleric for Rescue (she'd firmly fallen off to Clair as an FK), and was easily able to make her a Saint.

Right before the final map with Jedah on Celica's side. Realized the Shadow Sword could be upgraded into a Brave Sword and went with it, so now I've got BS Saber for maximum strength and crit (with Kamui ditching his blessed sword for a silver one).

 

[MrSmokestack]

48 minutes ago, Emerson said:

Thunder weighs down 5, and Sage's base Speed is only 7. So if, for example, Boey isn't able to get above 14 Speed, which would be understandable considering his growth is 30% and his base is 4, he gets doubled. As a Level 3 Sage, my Boey has 8 Speed. I believe 2 of those were from the starting stat fountains. Probably RNG screwed, but still. Sonya and Mae should be fine, since their base Res is already higher then the class', and their Speed shouldn't be an issue. I believe my Celica is a little RNG screwed with only 15 Speed despite the 50% growth, meaning holding anything with weight will get her doubled and killed. 1 point more, and she'd be good.

Without even considering archers, you only need three mages to attack Jedah to leave him vulnerable to a fourth, so Sonya, Mae, and Celica on average will fit the bill pretty well. It just goes to show you have a number of options to choose from to break his seal, RNG notwithstanding. Fair point on Thunder's Wt though, even with the stat boosters available to compensate for possible stat screwage. Personally, I used Mae, Sonya, and Bow Knight Kliff for those three attacks.

32 minutes ago, The DanMan said:

Really, what I'm learning is that I should've grinded Tatiana the two extra levels to get fortify. While grinding her and Alm a bit, I used the Villager's Fork to make Faye a Cleric for Rescue (she'd firmly fallen off to Clair as an FK), and was easily able to make her a Saint.

I went into the map blind and found Fortify to be incredibly clutch once Alm's and Celica's groups merged together. There are a great deal of Recover and Physic users between the two groups to keep Fortify from being required, but having it still removes a huge chunk of the map's difficulty since it renders swamp and Upheaval damage null. I made my Faye a cavalier instead of a cleric, though, since at the time I didn't know about her access to Physic, Anew, and Rescue, so KO'ing the Medusa Arcanist safely wasn't an option for me.

Best of luck if you have yet to finish the map, by the way.

[The DanMan]

11 hours ago, MrSmokestack said:

Best of luck if you have yet to finish the map, by the way

I had to reload a save from right before I recruited Zeke. Finished Celica's route and Rudolf's just up ahead for Alm. Hopefully I should beat the game for real today.

Been investing in Brave Swords and Killer Bows (Hunter Volley seems way too good and with warp/rescue shenanigans could cheese the main witches on the final map).

[Lord_Grima]

I beat the final boss today on hard mode! That was a tough fight.

My strategy:

1. I had tankier units wall off the incoming Mogall, and other enemies. Then had archers and Mages behind them to kill. Healers with Fortify and Physic are a huge help, especially when Upheaval hits. My Leon with a Killer bow could quickly take out the Dread Fighters on the left side. Kliff quickly killed the Baron.
2. Once my two armies meet up, I kept the tank units as a wall just outside of Jedah's range. Repeating the same tactics from stage 1 to fight the mogalls and witches that kept coming.
3. After healing from an Upheaval and clearing out most of the Mogalls and Witches, I was able to use my Mages and anyone else who could survive a hit from Jedah to take up the first 3 attackers, the Alm used Double Lion. Jedah did not die (If alm did a crit, then he would), so I use my fliers to do another 3 rounds of attack, then I think I used Leon to finish him off. Used Fortify and Physics to heal everyone, then placed rest of the army around to protect from the few Mogalls and witches remaining.
4. With Jedah down I moved my army up just outside of Duma, the Medua-Arcanist, and the Witch's range. Forming a similar wall as before. Used Leon with a Longbow to kill the main witch on the right.
5. Now began the long part. I invoked a few Dread fighters with Silque and eventually got them to bait/distract the last main witch, the Arcanist, and Duma. Kept summoning them and sometimes a few soldiers from Genny to keep Duma occupied. Meanwhile I was keeping my units out of their range. Around turn 42, my turnwheel stopped working (still had four uses left!). So, I wanted to make sure nobody died. Used Leon with his Longbow to weaken the main Witch and the Arcanist, then I let the Dread fighters finish them off (I just wanted them gone so I was happy).
6. Eventually I got Duma into this position: 

Spoiler

 7. Kept spawning more Dread Fighters to wall off Duma, and deal chip damage. Used Leon with the Longbow to do more chip damage. He did 7 damage X2, and crit every now and then, so it took a while, but was enough damage to bring him down.

8. Once Duma got to 50 health, I moved Alm and 3 other units (that could survive a hit) to surround Duma on all sides. Kept summoning Dread Fighters for Duma to kill. Then had Alm attack Duma over and over until he died. Victory!

 

That was one heck of a battle, but I'll say that this battle is much better than the final battles of Awakening and Fates. 

Edited May 27, 2017 by Lord_Grima

[The DanMan]

Beat it first try. Fortify on Tatiana and having my Horse Archers spam Hunter's Volley did wonders. Leon was the MVP, as he ended up taking Duma all the way from half health to 45 HP, and then Alm finished it from there.

Thanks for all the advice.

[The_antithesis]

On 2017-5-26 at 7:16 PM, アリサ ラインフォルト said:

The final boss has an annoying gimmick.

  Hide contents

When he's down to a certain HP area only Alm can do damage to him. Duma is immune to any other attacks.
Also Alm has to finish him off.
However he normally can't do it with two regular hits unless you overleveled him.
It's not guaranteed that Alm can oneround him.
You have to hope for a crit unless Duma's HP is so low that Alm can oneshot him with a crit. Then he would crit automatically.

 

One word: Nosferatu

[Etria]

I'm quite surprised that Jedah attacked you. He never attacked me, even when he had no monster spawns. I could park my units in his range and he just ignored them. On all of my three tries. I was on Normal/Classic. Since he wasn't bothering me, I also didn't kill him. I'm kinda wondering what he was doing then, after Duma was defeated.

[Stopwatch]

5 hours ago, The_antithesis said:

One word: Nosferatu

living up to your name i see