HOT gameplay tip sharing thread

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Here's a thread where we can post helpful tips we wish we knew ahead of time.

-Special attacks do not stop the clock. Be mindful of this with timed missions. Furthermore, if you're in the middle of doing a special attack when the timer hits 0, it will stop hurting enemies, and won't reward you any KOs. 

-You can check Anna's Conditions when pausing to see what makes her appear. She won't stay for long, so remember you can send one of your playable characters over to her, then switch to them to interact with Anna once they arrive.

-Your allied (blue) captains can't be played as, but you can pair up with them for the sake of dual attacks and dual guards. Consider pairing up with a unit that helps your with weapon triangle disadvantage. For example, Chrom pairing up with Camilla whenever you're fighting a lance wiedling opponent. Every dual attack will open their stun guage immediately.

-In the second History mode map, engage the priestess character to the East for a bow that has the "topsy turvy" skill. This lets Sakura use her magic stat instead of her strength stat. You can then use the smithy to forge that skill onto her personal weapon, the Spellbane Yumi, which already has plenty of power to carry her for a long time.

-In the first History mode map, you can eventually engage a mage that rewards you with the conduit axe. But it's pretty weak. I would hang onto it until you do find a good axe for her to use, so that you could reforge the topsy turvy skill onto it. As far as I know, Lissa lacks a personal weapon.

[The DanMan]

-Effectiveness weapons shred what they're effective against. The twin's personal weapons make the Outrealm Fiend officers non-threats; considering how often latter story mode maps throw them at you, always make sure they're the ones going after them.

-Make sure to actually command allied units and always keep an eye on them. You're hurting yourself by neglecting this and will only benefit from doing so.

-Allied AI accomplishes more off-screen than on-screen. Not sure exactly why, but it does.

-Spoilers for the final boss:

Every time he changes weapon types, the AI treats him as a different enemy-- meaning if you want to keep everybody targeting Velezark, you have to re-select him as a target.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Oh, and the big one:

- Every character has a skill that is unlocked using items you get from either defeating them as an enemy captain or every time you increase their support level with another character. Once unlocked, that skill will appear in every other character's boost crest section, but requiring higher quality items. Some of these skills are extremely valuable, so grind those supports whenever you can.

[Thany]

-Your allied units will never attack the commander that will end the level. so its pointless to leave them at the commander when there other enemies to attack on the map, its best to only keep healers close to the commander incase you need it.

-Dont leave your base unguarded, Its easy for the mission to pop up so many prompts that you may miss a message that says your base is in trouble, and by then it may be to late. clear as many enemies around your base as quickly as possible before you send your allies to capture a fort.

-unless you really overpower said unit, dont waste your time on commanders in K.O. X missions as they will just slow you down, you only have 7 minutes for an S rank. the rally buffs dont do to much to the mooks you actually kill.

-dont just sell all your weapons, even if a vast majority of units have personal weapons, you still need more strength for later missions, and the personal weapons dont get very strong until very much later in the game.

[Anomalocaris]

- A good way to clear those "rack up kills within a time limit" challenges is to play as Camilla and just spam her Strong Attack while dashing. It becomes a ground stomp that comes out very quick and blows away 50+ mooks per use.

- During Awakening Mode, your gauge will not deplete during weak point strikes, so they're a good way to artificially extend your time in Awakening Mode.

- Tiki can use her Strong Attack to convert her Warrior Special bar into Awakening Mode bar. She can even do this mid-Awakening Mode, so keep an eye on both gauges and convert accordingly.

- Dual Strikes can still deal Effective Damage. For non-controllable allies, a good strategy is to make them Bow users, pair them as the support unit to a controllable hero, and call upon them when fighting flying enemies. It's usually enough to kill them in one hit.

[Jedi]

The dodge roll can cancel out laggy end frames of attacks on characters who have some laggier attacks and can be used even as quick canceling into other attacks. 

Simple example is doing Chrom or Lucina's various strong combo enders, rolling then doing a quick stab with another strong.

[Tolvir]

Leave behind defenders, and pay attention to what is on the map.

Reinforcements happen a lot, and the enemy will rush your bases. Leaving behind some units at key points isnt a bad idea. And pay attention to what captain is at the base. If its an axe user, you may want to leave a lance user there to handle swords. If its a sword, you may want to leave an axe user. And even more important, if its a map like Hinoka's where more often than not you are getting flyers, leave behind one of your archers.

Orders. Orders. Orders. Do not leave your allies roaming on their own. They arent all that intelligent by themselves, but listen to orders really well. And this is key to winning maps like Chapter 12, where the game will really test your multitasking capabilities.

Diversify your team. You get 4 PC slots, and 4 NPC slots. Use them all, and dont neglect to set up your NPC slots well. I would advise to always have an archer and a mage in a slot somewhere, doesnt matter who exactly. Just having them around to deal with low resistant enemies and flyers is a bonus. On top of that just having a good mix of unit types, flyers, cavalry, and infantry isnt a bad idea.

Pay attention to skills you can use. When you promote a unit, skills are unlocked for them to be available to use, for all units. For example Frederick gives Pavise. Pay attention to what the skills are, some of them can help shore up problems with stats, like Pavise on Elise or Aegis on Frederick.

Dont forget to spread out your crests. Throwing everything on 1-2 units is going to cause issues later. You will be forced to use some for History Mode, or some might not be available later. Make sure to at least cover a few of the minimum crests for characters.

[YotsuMaboroshi]

You can check the requirements for S-ranking a map in History Mode from the pause screen by moving the cursor to a square not occupied by a fort or a unit.  This also shows you your current stats for each of the requirements.

For crits (or Weak Point smashes, whichever you prefer to call them), depleting a white gauge makes the crit only damage the target, depleting a yellow gauge makes the crit stronger and AOE.

Related to the above, dual attacks force a Stun gauge.  If the character you're paired up with has weapon advantage on the enemy, this forces a yellow gauge, which allows you to gain advantage on units you'd normally have disadvantage against, letting you kill them quicker.

[Anomalocaris]

4 hours ago, YotsuMaboroshi said:

Related to the above, dual attacks force a Stun gauge.  If the character you're paired up with has weapon advantage on the enemy, this forces a yellow gauge, which allows you to gain advantage on units you'd normally have disadvantage against, letting you kill them quicker.

To expand on that, it's a good idea to have axe users as your support for a sword unit, sword units as your support for a lance unit, and lance units as your support for an axe unit. That way you can force a yellow stun gauge against foes that'd normally have a type advantage over you.

[Green Tees]

If you don't mind not having bonus damage against dragons, it's best to up the rank of weapons for Lucina, Chrom, and the Twins (only one if you need to) early game.

If you like a certain attack from someone's combos, forge a Strong # move on them from the smithy.

If you want to grind, get the skill "Paragon" from Marth and defeat him on history mode challenges with Divining Skills and the Quality Up Material blessings so you can get his "essence", as well as A ranking him.

[Rayhaku808]

-Timed onslaught missions in history mode are really good for leveling up fresh characters. Just make sure you bring one stronger one to take care of the higher leveled units that pop up here and there.

-while on the topic of timed onslaught, Pegasus knights are extremely efficient at this. They get around quickly and you only need to spam one mind numbing attack.

y, y, x

y, y, x

y, y, x

its so stupidly fast and efficient that I fall asleep at night doing this. Spin for days. Not even exaggerating. I semi-built a spear just for this.

Power Up, Strong III, First Class, Divining, Pair Up+, Dracoslayer(but probably don’t need it)

K.O. count is usually around 4000+. If I actually tried I could get it higher.

Edited October 25, 2017 by Rayhaku808
iPhone autocorrect shenanigans

[Anomalocaris]

5 hours ago, Rayhaku808 said:

-Timed onslaught missions in history mode are really good for leveling up fresh characters. Just make sure you bring one stronger one to take care of the higher leveled units that pop up here and there.

-while on the topic of timed onslaught, Pegasus knights are extremely efficient at this. They get around quickly and you only need to spam one mind numbing attack.

y, y, x

y, y, x

y, y, x

its so stupidly fast and efficient that I fall asleep at night doing this. Spin for days. Not even exaggerating. I semi-built a spear just for this.

Power Up, Strong III, First Class, Divining, Pair Up+, Dracoslayer(but probably don’t need it)

K.O. count is usually around 4000+. If I actually tried I could get it higher.

Pegasus Knights have nothing on Camilla when it comes to wrecking Timed Onslaught missions, though. Try just spamming Camilla's Strong Attack while dashing. It's brutally effective.

[Rayhaku808]

2 hours ago, Anomalocaris said:

Pegasus Knights have nothing on Camilla when it comes to wrecking Timed Onslaught missions, though. Try just spamming Camilla's Strong Attack while dashing. It's brutally effective.

I tried yours out, it's very effective. The only thing is that the controls aren't as responsive to dash cancel into the dash strong attack right away so you need to be pretty precise with the timing of your inputs. It's also sometimes hard to land where you want but with such a massive aoe that isn't an issue most of the time.

[FangfireX]

Unless you feel like you need the aesthetic of a character's legendary weapon, only the weapons with Dragonslayer are worth upgrading. To fully upgrade a legendary weapon, you need to obtain the weapon's seal from S-ranking the associated mission, purchase the character's final weapon rank seal (which requires having A-rank), and then get 10,000 K.O.s using the legendary weapon. Doing all of this unlocks the weapon skill "True Power" which does absolutely nothing except raise the weapon's attack to 240. This means that most fully upgraded legendary weapons are exactly the same as 5*, 6-skill slot brave weapons, which you will probably have some of by the time you start earning these weapon seals. This means the best legendary weapons to upgrade are the Falchions and Sol Katti, because they have dragon effectiveness without taking up a skill slot and without an attack penalty.

Edited October 25, 2017 by FangfireX

[wissenschaft]

Apparently putting slayer kills on legendary weapons doesn't have an attack penalty. So thats an advantage for them.

[nocturnal YL]

Don't know if this counts as gameplay tip. Now that I've got Lianne to level 99 and have Celica and Lyn remain at level 1, I can compile a list of the amount of gold needed to level up the units.

Spoiler

Using level 1 as the base, the amount of gold needed to get to the level is as followings:

Level    Gold needed   Difference   Difference of difference
-----    -----------   ----------   ------------------------        
 1               0                       
 2             525          525         
 3            1076          551           26
 4            1654          578           27
 5            3139         1485          907
 6            4689         1550           65
 7            6303         1614           64
 8            8979         2676         1062
 9           11757         2778          102
10           14638         2881          103
11           18734         4096         1215
12           22970         4236          140
13           27348         4378          142
14           33094         5746         1368
15           39019         5925          179
16           45124         6105          180
17           52749         7625         1520
18           60593         7844          219
19           68654         8061          217
20           78390         9736         1675
21           88382         9992          256
22           98630        10248          256
23          110705        12075         1827
24          123075        12370          295
25          135740        12665          295
26          150385        14645         1980
27          165363        14978          333
28          180675        15312          334
29          198120        17445         2133
30          215936        17816          371
31          234124        18188          372
32          254599        20475         2287
33          275483        20884          409
34          296777        21294          410
35          320512        23735         2441
36          344695        24183          448
37          369325        24630          447
38          396549        27224         2594
39          424260        27711          487
40          452457        28197          486
41          483432        30975         2778
42          514932        31500          525
43          546957        32025          525
44          579507        32550          525
45          612582        33075          525
46          646182        33600          525
47          680307        34125          525
48          714957        34650          525
49          750132        35175          525
50          785832        35700          525
51          822057        36225          525
52          858807        36750          525
53          896082        37275          525
54          933882        37800          525
55          972207        38325          525
56         1011057        38850          525
57         1050432        39375          525
58         1090332        39900          525
59         1130757        40425          525
60         1171707        40950          525
61         1213182        41475          525
62         1255182        42000          525
63         1297707        42525          525
64         1340757        43050          525
65         1384332        43575          525
66         1428432        44100          525
67         1473057        44625          525
68         1518207        45150          525
69         1563882        45675          525
70         1610082        46200          525
71         1656807        46725          525
72         1704057        47250          525
73         1751832        47775          525
74         1800132        48300          525
75         1848957        48825          525
76         1898307        49350          525
77         1948182        49875          525
78         1998582        50400          525
79         2049507        50925          525
80         2100957        51450          525
81         2152932        51975          525
82         2205432        52500          525
83         2258457        53025          525
84         2312007        53550          525
85         2366082        54075          525
86         2420682        54600          525
87         2475807        55125          525
88         2531457        55650          525
89         2587632        56175          525
90         2644332        56700          525
91         2701557        57225          525
92         2759307        57750          525
93         2817582        58275          525
94         2876382        58800          525
95         2935707        59325          525
96         2995557        59850          525
97         3055932        60375          525
98         3116832        60900          525
99         3178257        61425          525

This is a rather weird pattern, I'd say. And the last few levels are quite costly, so I guess it should take a while to raise everyone to level 99 even though earning gold is quite easy.

[Anomalocaris]

24 minutes ago, nocturnal YL said:

Don't know if this counts as gameplay tip. Now that I've got Lianne to level 99 and have Celica and Lyn remain at level 1, I can compile a list of the amount of gold needed to level up the units.

Did you fill in this page with that info? If so, thank you. I only had up to level 75 or so.

[nocturnal YL]

Oh, sorry, that is not the case. I'm not aware that someone tabulated this data in the wiki.

[Anomalocaris]

1 minute ago, nocturnal YL said:

Oh, sorry, that is not the case. I'm not aware that someone tabulated this data in the wiki.

Oh, well, thank you to whoever filled in the last few levels for me.

And yeah, it is a weird pattern, with the sudden spikes every three levels up until level 41 and then becoming completely linear the rest of the way.

[HK Motendra]

IDK how accurate this is from not fully testing it with the entire cast, but from my own playing, I've noticed that the strong IV attack (y, y, y, x combo) forces out the stun gauge (provided that you're not at weapon disadvantage [?]). This can be abused with Ryoma, in particular for having the Astra skill, which when done with strong V (y, y, y, y, x) immediately following strong IV, is an almost guaranteed critical hit.

This does not apply to ranged units such as archers and mages, however, who instead rely on their strong I attack (archers must charge the attack for a few seconds, while mages have a gauge that when full, forces a stun gauge). Both can force a yellow stun gauge on any enemy for not being in the weapon triangle

[GeminiJ]

On 10/25/2017 at 12:30 PM, FangfireX said:

Unless you feel like you need the aesthetic of a character's legendary weapon, only the weapons with Dragonslayer are worth upgrading. To fully upgrade a legendary weapon, you need to obtain the weapon's seal from S-ranking the associated mission, purchase the character's final weapon rank seal (which requires having A-rank), and then get 10,000 K.O.s using the legendary weapon. Doing all of this unlocks the weapon skill "True Power" which does absolutely nothing except raise the weapon's attack to 240. This means that most fully upgraded legendary weapons are exactly the same as 5*, 6-skill slot brave weapons, which you will probably have some of by the time you start earning these weapon seals. This means the best legendary weapons to upgrade are the Falchions and Sol Katti, because they have dragon effectiveness without taking up a skill slot and without an attack penalty.

Not true. Once you unlock the potential of a Signature weapon, it no longer gets an attack penalty from having a Slayer skill added to it. Even the weapons without slayer skills on them already are thus worth unlocking the potential of.

 

Please don't post information unless you know for certain you're correct about all of the details.

Edited October 27, 2017 by GeminiJ

[Technoweirdo]

Here's one I recently discovered:

You know how the archer's Strong V lets you move / take damage / get knocked off your feet and -still- deal damage so long as it was fired off? It just hit me to try firing off a musou immediately after. Turns out the attack persists through the musou, which means you can gain musou during a musou. Catch enough people in the Strong V and you effectively get free musous.

Makes me wonder what other persistent attacks there are.

[wissenschaft]

I add that  at high level Skill becomes more important than str. Most of your damage will come from your weapon which will eventually far outstrip your str. On the other hand, skill has a big effect on your crits which means Takumi's crits do a lot more than the other 2 archers in the game. It means Leo can out damage Elise because her crits will start to lag behind quite a bit.

[Technoweirdo]

53 minutes ago, wissenschaft said:

I add that  at high level Skill becomes more important than str. Most of your damage will come from your weapon which will eventually far outstrip your str. On the other hand, skill has a big effect on your crits which means Takumi's crits do a lot more than the other 2 archers in the game. It means Leo can out damage Elise because her crits will start to lag behind quite a bit.

Quickly testing Strong I (full charge) -> Weak I - IV ->  crit on a Lv. 80 Warrior with both of them using Luna, I'm not entirely sure about that. I'm only eye-balling it, but it looks like Elise wins. Elise's 8 Mag over Leo doesn't sound like much, but you still have to hit enemies a bit before you crit and it does add up. There's also her 36 Luck affecting Luna.

Also, it's only an 18 Skl difference. It's not that bad. lol

 

[wissenschaft]

Ah, I don't have Luna on Elise nor am I that far into the game. Luna is probably making a big difference. However, Takumi's skills is about twice of Sakura's. It should make a difference. I wonder if you could test that.

Edited October 30, 2017 by wissenschaft