Noble Lady of Caelin

[Fire Emblem Fan]

For the life of me, I can't seem to get past the required battles to unlock Lyn! Every single Shadow Elimination challenge kicks my butt no matter what units I put out or what level they are. They throw WAY too much at you at once, to the point where it's nearly impossible to manage. Does anyone else have problems with this? Is there any advice anyone can give me at all?

[Florete]

Which map(s) in particular are you having trouble with?

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Shadow Elimination, especially the lvl. 37 and 41 ones.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Send one controllable hero to kill each mage. Place the rest of your heroes, including one controllable hero with a healing staff, on base defense duty. Switch to each mage killer as they arrive to take out the mages as quickly as possible. Swap back, heal the base and commander as needed, and kill the shadows at base while your mage killers are now free to take other orders.

That's been my approach and it's worked like a charm.

Edited November 16, 2017 by Etheus

[Zapp Branniglenn]

The Shadow Elimination challenges are definitely a step up from previous history maps. Shadows will not stop spawning until the mages/sages/summoners that are spawning them are defeated. Furthermore, the game prompts you to defeat Rally Captains before it starts highlighting the summoners. Once the rally captains and summoners are dealt with, defeating the shadows will put them down for good. Luckily these maps tend to hand you 6-8 character slots, so be sure to keep some of your allies at home guarding your allied commander. Allies with staves so you can heal the commander when he's at risk. Once shadows are dealt with permanently, nothing else tends to happen in these maps, and all you need to focus on is getting the Anna's memento or the requisite 2000 KOs for S rank. It's a challenge type all about getting past the first seven minutes of chaos.

[Florete]

1 minute ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Shadow Elimination, especially the lvl. 37 and 41 ones.

For the lv 37 one (with Lyn as the map icon), if you can, get mountslayer on your best lance user. This will destroy the Xander shadows as well as Xander himself. If you don't have a lance with mountslayer, anything with mountslayer will do, with a tome user probably being your next best bet. Aside from that, send units immediately to the dark mages to avoid any extra shadows, and the butler when it appears to avoid healing. Also keep a controllable unit at the base, as it will likely get low while you're doing other stuff. Someone who can use a staff is best so they can heal the fort captain in case of emergency.

A streamer friend of mine recently had trouble with the above map, as well. After multiple failures he took the above advice and S ranked the map.

Same idea for the other one. I don't remember this one specifically, but assuming the shadows are Hinoka (since she's the boss), bring your most capable bow user or anyone with wingslayer, maybe even two, and have them start shooting. Take out the summoners immediately (I think it's diviners on this map), the healer when it arrives, and leave a controllable unit (preferably staff user) at the base.

Don't underestimate effective damage.

[Jedi]

With shadows spread out and destroy their mages and as Florete said, effective damage is a huge friend. 

The Xander map in particular can be a struggle but thats why I brought 2 Pegasus Knights, might have been overkill but it worked.

[CmdrQuartz]

if you have a non controllable character with a staff you can command them to heal as well. For whatever reason you can't command them to heal the base(fort) commander, so just have them heal someone else and the aoe should get them. I always pair up so I only have 2 controllable characters so they're both bum rushing the *mages* so that's my solution if things get nasty. Also capturing a fort or two nearby sometimes distracts the shadows.

[Wayward Winds]

One interesting thing to note about the Shadow battles is that they don't actually require you to go chasing after those Rally Captains (or even, sometimes, the buggers running around healing the Shadows).  Just kill all the Shadows, and those enemies will vanish as well - and you'll even have the respective mission marked as completed!  You miss out on whatever materials they'd have dropped, but that's not so bad.

As for the Shadows themselves, I generally let them congregate on the home base, charge up a dual special and hit them with that.  Clears out a lot of their combined health at once.

Shadow battles are usually hellish when you're still getting used to them, but once you've figured them out, they're more tedious than anything (or in the case of the one that has Shadow Lissas running around, surprisingly easy).  But beware - there's one nightmare one that will really test you on Celica's history scenario, against Iago.  The problem being that this map also has the "Reduced Healing" restriction, which means you've really got put your all into protecting the Allied Commander - the Base commander will heal up over time, he won't - and you can't use staves on him.  It's doable, but yeesh.

[Nanima]

Can anyone give me some specific tips for S-ranking the final mission on Lyn's map? The shadows just take so much time to deal with that I never manage to beat the ragon in time. Best I've done was 17 minutes.

[thecrimsonflash]

20 hours ago, Nanima said:

Can anyone give me some specific tips for S-ranking the final mission on Lyn's map? The shadows just take so much time to deal with that I never manage to beat the ragon in time. Best I've done was 17 minutes.

tiki was my best method for dealing with the final map, that one sucks because there is no good way to take out the shadows, just keep tiki at the base with full awakening and have her kill everything that gets close also if she doesn't have two warrior gauges this will not work, send your heavy hitters for the summoners first, and use orders to cover as much ground as possible, you want to beat validar with at least 5 minutes to spare. with the chaos dragon you want to use pair up and dual strike as much as possible, armored blow is also really useful for beating the chaos dragon.

[Nanima]

41 minutes ago, thecrimsonflash said:

tiki was my best method for dealing with the final map, that one sucks because there is no good way to take out the shadows, just keep tiki at the base with full awakening and have her kill everything that gets close also if she doesn't have two warrior gauges this will not work, send your heavy hitters for the summoners first, and use orders to cover as much ground as possible, you want to beat validar with at least 5 minutes to spare. with the chaos dragon you want to use pair up and dual strike as much as possible, armored blow is also really useful for beating the chaos dragon.

Problem is, I suck at using Tiki... a lot. I know the trick with her, but I can't stand constantly checking my brave gauge and having to worry about filling my musou gauge. I just can't get the hang of it. Even with loads of enemies around to strike at, she still doesn't get enough fuel to keep in dragon form. I guess I'll just use my overpowered Takumi for that. Thanks for the rest of the tips though.

[Thany]

2 hours ago, Nanima said:

Problem is, I suck at using Tiki... a lot. I know the trick with her, but I can't stand constantly checking my brave gauge and having to worry about filling my musou gauge. I just can't get the hang of it. Even with loads of enemies around to strike at, she still doesn't get enough fuel to keep in dragon form. I guess I'll just use my overpowered Takumi for that. Thanks for the rest of the tips though.

The way I did it was to use a very strong marth, but that alone wouldnt of done it, So i used a blessing to make stun gauges go down easier, then I was able to defeat the shows and the chaos dragon faster then I would of otherwise, Blessing is a good desperation move if you need just a tiny boost.

[Nanima]

53 minutes ago, Thany said:

The way I did it was to use a very strong marth, but that alone wouldnt of done it, So i used a blessing to make stun gauges go down easier, then I was able to defeat the shows and the chaos dragon faster then I would of otherwise, Blessing is a good desperation move if you need just a tiny boost.

All right, thanks. I am currently planning on fort defending with Lyn and Sakura, while rushing to defeat the mages with Takumi and Ryouma. Or maybe switch out Ryouma and use Hinoka as a ferry for blessing boosted Takumi. Then wipe out the shades and go for gold. 

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Thank you all for your advice! I managed to beat and S-rank the lvl. 37 and 41 Shadow Elimination battles. I haven't unlocked Lyn yet though, so I dunno what I'm doing wrong there.

[Thany]

2 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

Thank you all for your advice! I managed to beat and S-rank the lvl. 37 and 41 Shadow Elimination battles. I haven't unlocked Lyn yet though, so I dunno what I'm doing wrong there.

beating the map is a good way to get Lyn, just gotta finish the mission that makes it say map clear.

[Etrurian emperor]

Yeah Shadow elimination battles are really, really rough. The one where you got to fight an army of Xanders was especially difficult. 

The best advice I can give is to glue a unit to the main base because it will get flooded with attackers pretty quickly. I'd make this a healer so that you can also quickly start hearing the allied commander when his health goes low. With the base covered I send my strongest two units to root out the rally captains, priest and mages while the fourth team member gets send wherever he's needed the most.

Its a pretty time consuming battle type so ensuring you got your time Rank is the trickiest part. This is especially the case in Validar's chapter when he summons 

Spoiler

The chaos dragon

Once you're supposed to be done with the chapter. 

The shadow battle against Hinoka is pretty easy. Just take some archers and decimate the shadows without going after the mages, rally captains and priests. 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Etrurian emperor

[Nanima]

I finally S-ranked the final map, and it took me just under ten minutes this time. I used the Broshidos as my playable units for this. First I upgraded everyone to Brave Weapons and leveled somewhere in the 70-90 range. Had Sakura defend the fort along with the npc units and healed whenever necessary. Teamed up Hinoka and Takumi to finish the mage on the upper left, while sending Ryouma to soften up the one on the upper right. Switched over to him afterwards to kill what was left of the guy. Then I just used Hinoka to fly all over the map and clean up the Shadows that were still around. Afterwards I destroyed Validar with little more than a single dual special and had plenty of time to wail the dragon to death using the middle siblings. Felt awesome, thanks for all the help.

Edited November 18, 2017 by Nanima

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Ah, yeah, beat Validar's map and got Lyn. I wasn't able to S-rank it, though. I only got an A, so I'll have to go back at some point to get the Sol Katti.

[dragonaichu]

If you're still stuck on that S-rank, I'll share my strategy that I used.

Deploy:

1. Lissa (preferably with a Brave Axe at 240 power; she'll do massive damage to mages), to guard the base
2. Sakura, to pair up with Lissa
3. Your strongest peg knight (I used Caeda) for offensive duties
4. Rowan or Lianna, whoever's stronger, to pair up with your peg knight. Make sure you deploy them with Enliron/Facinna; Velezark will take tons of damage from it

The remaining 4 slots I filled with mage-hitting characters with high resistance as well as some Dracoslayer characters (Hinoka/Cordelia/Leo/Chrom were the 4 I picked).

At the beginning of the map, pair up Sakura to Lissa and the twin to the peg knight. Send Lissa to guard the base, and keep two of your AI units at the base and two guarding the allied commander. Using your peg knight, quickly rush the two Sages creating shadows of Validar (with high enough stats, this should only take a couple of minutes). Switch back to Lissa as soon as this is finished and clean up at the base while you command your peg knight to fight some of the shadows hanging around in the northern part of the map. If the base is clear and your peg knight hasn't finished dealing with shadows, switch back to the peg knight and finish the job while you order Lissa to move closer to the Enemy Base.

Once the Enemy Base opens, switch to Lissa and command your peg knight to go back to the Allied Base. Lissa wreaks absolute havoc on Validar, and one Dual Special with her and your chosen twin will pretty much do the job. At this point, I was sitting at around 7-8 minutes. The peg knight may or may not be back to the Allied Base by the time you kill Validar, but go ahead and switch over once he's taken care of, commanding Lissa to go back to the base where Velezark will appear.

As soon as Velezark shows up, command ALL of your units to fight him. They'll deal chip damage while you slaughter him. Switch your peg knight to your twin and go hard on him. Dual Specials, Awakening, the like. Lissa also deals a ton of damage with Sakura as a pair-up; just make sure she's not disadvantaged when he's in Sword mode. With enough strength (and a lot of this is really just mere strength alone), I managed to complete the whole think in about 12 minutes.

Another strategy for Velezark is just to bring a Takumi/Robin pair-up instead of Lissa/Sakura and just load up on Musou bars for both of them while your peg knight and twin take care of the start of the battle. Three Dual Specials to Velezark in a row from Takumi/Robin will kill him easily if both of them are around level 50 or so.