SD help?

[Gebby]

As you could probably gather from the title, I’ve just recently started to play Shadow Dragon. And by recently, I mean 24 minutes ago minutes before my typing this out.

Anyway, I understand that SD has units recruited through killing other units, and need guidance as to who to kill off, if anyone, who to use, and possibly any other helpful tips.

Also I'm playing on normal right now because I wanted to check out the prologue, I'll be starting over on hard after that however.

My apologizes if this topic is redundant.

[KKAfterbrun]

Barst (One of the fighters) is a good one to start, if you reclass him to knight. Lena is one of the best healers you get early on. Out of the Caviliers, Able is the better one. (If you're on normal and not hard, Frey is a good second)

 

I won't go much further as to not spoil up coming characters for you.

[Gebby]

23 minutes ago, KKAfterbrun said:

Barst (One of the fighters) is a good one to start, if you reclass him to knight. Lena is one of the best healers you get early on. Out of the Caviliers, Able is the better one. (If you're on normal and not hard, Frey is a good second)

 

I won't go much further as to not spoil up coming characters for you.

I really don’t care  about spoilers at all, I don’t care about story and there’s no 'magic' in my first playthrough, I’d just like a general guide on who to use.

[eclipse]

Honestly. . .it's not really worth killing off your characters for the extra chapters.  But if you must, I suggest checking out the drafting subforum for Shadow Dragon drafts.  Pick a team, and run with it.  Hard should be easy enough that it's doable without excessive cheese.

There's a handful of characters with decent growths.  Then the vast majority have growths that do FE6 Marcus proud.  However, you don't need a lot of stats to beat the game.  Half the fun is using whoever you want!  The only thing I'd recommend is someone with a staff, because you may need to use that Warp staff occasionally.

[Nobody]

I wouldn't kill anyone, unles you REALLY want to see the gaiden chapters. The units you get on them aren't really good.

 

Some of the best units in the game are Caeda, Abel, Barst, Lena and Hardin. Caeda's wing spear, if forged, can one shot (or one round) like 90% of the enemies in the game even on H5.

Also, without spoiling too much, you want to train a tome user.

Edited November 25, 2017 by Nobody

[eclipse]

1 hour ago, Nobody said:

Also, without spoiling too much, you want to train a tome user.

I think it's a lot easier if you don't.

Spoiler

Lightsphere + Starsphere = infinite weapons that ignore terrain bonuses.  In other words, perfect for boss-killing.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

22 minutes ago, eclipse said:

I think it's a lot easier if you don't.

Fair enough, particularly on Merciless where the Whatsie isn't so useful because of Whodunnit's Speed. Thus you're best Hopscotching that chapter and keeping the Comet and Bulb.

Plus you can use Totem for that purpose given their Granite is effective on Whodunnit. Or you can kill Totem, use your one use of Oil to revive Totem if you feel bad later, and get Cobra and a somewhat worse Whatsie, plus a duplicate Slicer and Aroma.

 

The chapters which you have to kill characters for don't, which the exception of the very last, have any plot significance. And getting the last denies you a different character.

Also, effective weapons are very good in this game given a lot of foes are cavalry and armor- forging them isn't a bad idea.

Don't expect stats on the player side to be that high, SD is something of a low stats game compared to others in the series.

As for the Hard Mode to start on, H2 is fair. H5 and H4 would be terrible. H1 is like Normal, but without the Prologue and just slightly higher stats.

[Harvey]

2 hours ago, eclipse said:

Honestly. . .it's not really worth killing off your characters for the extra chapters.  But if you must, I suggest checking out the drafting subforum for Shadow Dragon drafts.  Pick a team, and run with it.  Hard should be easy enough that it's doable without excessive cheese.

There's a handful of characters with decent growths.  Then the vast majority have growths that do FE6 Marcus proud.  However, you don't need a lot of stats to beat the game.  Half the fun is using whoever you want!  The only thing I'd recommend is someone with a staff, because you may need to use that Warp staff occasionally.

I always thought that the idea of the gaiden chapters in this game is that for those not skilled, if they lose units, these new ones they get should be strong enough so that the game becomes winnable. I mean that was the whole reason why FE7's prepromotes were strong in the first place right?

But hey I could be wrong here as I only played the original and not the remake.

 

[eclipse]

2 minutes ago, Harvey said:

I always thought that the idea of the gaiden chapters in this game is that for those not skilled, if they lose units, these new ones they get should be strong enough so that the game becomes winnable. I mean that was the whole reason why FE7's prepromotes were strong in the first place right?

But hey I could be wrong here as I only played the original and not the remake.

 

Remake is the one with the gaiden chapters.

However, you have to work at it to make the game nigh-unwinnable.  If your party dips below the number of required units, you'll be given generics at the start of the next chapter, starting from Chapter 4.  While the generics usually suck, some of them have very impressive bases.  IIRC it's doable up to H4 (someone did that. . .really).  Thus, the gaiden chapters are only if you REALLY WANT those named characters.  Most are irrelevant, with the exceptions of. . .

Spoiler

12x, which has some nice exposition, and 24x, which has a different set of unlock requirements.

 

[Punished Dayni]

4 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Fair enough, particularly on Merciless where the Whatsie isn't so useful because of Whodunnit's Speed. Thus you're best Hopscotching that chapter and keeping the Comet and Bulb.

Plus you can use Totem for that purpose given their Granite is effective on Whodunnit. Or you can kill Totem, use your one use of Oil to revive Totem if you feel bad later, and get Cobra and a somewhat worse Whatsie, plus a duplicate Slicer and Aroma.

Pfft I love this, makes perfect sense despite being utter gibberish.

[Harvey]

10 hours ago, eclipse said:

Remake is the one with the gaiden chapters.

However, you have to work at it to make the game nigh-unwinnable.  If your party dips below the number of required units, you'll be given generics at the start of the next chapter, starting from Chapter 4.  While the generics usually suck, some of them have very impressive bases.  IIRC it's doable up to H4 (someone did that. . .really).  Thus, the gaiden chapters are only if you REALLY WANT those named characters.  Most are irrelevant, with the exceptions of. . .

  Reveal hidden contents

12x, which has some nice exposition, and 24x, which has a different set of unlock requirements.

 

Oh ok. Still...I mean you know how bad players like me are at Fire Emblem in general so its only fair to say that the devs tried to do something to make the game impossible to NOT win because even in DS days, hard games aren't always the way to make games sell well.

 

[Flee Fleet!]

My suggestion is that you just have one strong group of units, instead of trying to use every unit. Most of the units in this game aren't that great, imo.

Unless you really want to, don't bother trying to access the gaidens. Killing your units to access gaidens and get units that are mostly average is total bull. The only exceptions I can think of are Norne for who you need to kill 2 units in the Prologue, and Nagi, who has some special requirements that, again, does not involve mass genocide. It's up to you in the end however.

 

...that's pretty much what I have to say. I'd honestly recommend FE3 over SD, since I find it somewhat better (at least graphics wise) but your choice.

 

 

[Harvey]

40 minutes ago, Flee Fleet! said:

My suggestion is that you just have one strong group of units, instead of trying to use every unit. Most of the units in this game aren't that great, imo.

Unless you really want to, don't bother trying to access the gaidens. Killing your units to access gaidens and get units that are mostly average is total bull. The only exceptions I can think of are Norne for who you need to kill 2 units in the Prologue, and Nagi, who has some special requirements that, again, does not involve mass genocide. It's up to you in the end however.

 

...that's pretty much what I have to say. I'd honestly recommend FE3 over SD, since I find it somewhat better (at least graphics wise) but your choice.

 

 

You mean FE12? But I get your point. Its a shame that IS stuck with pre-rendered graphics instead of sprites.

 

[Gebby]

2 hours ago, Flee Fleet! said:

My suggestion is that you just have one strong group of units, instead of trying to use every unit. Most of the units in this game aren't that great, imo.

Unless you really want to, don't bother trying to access the gaidens. Killing your units to access gaidens and get units that are mostly average is total bull. The only exceptions I can think of are Norne for who you need to kill 2 units in the Prologue, and Nagi, who has some special requirements that, again, does not involve mass genocide. It's up to you in the end however.

 

...that's pretty much what I have to say. I'd honestly recommend FE3 over SD, since I find it somewhat better (at least graphics wise) but your choice.

 

 

All right, thanks for the advice, looks like I’ll keep everyone alive as best as possible. I'll look into Norne and see if they're worth staying in Normal for, I suppose. Nagi sounds kinda cool too, I'll look them up too I guess.

Also, I plan on hopefully playing every game eventually just to say I did, so I’ll end up doing FE3 sometime down the road, maybe after SD. I've enjoyed what I’ve played of SD so far, so if FE3 is better, then that’s sweet.

[Flee Fleet!]

12 hours ago, Harvey said:

You mean FE12?

FE3 is basically two games in one so...

 

12 hours ago, Harvey said:

Its a shame that IS stuck with pre-rendered graphics instead of sprites.

Indeed. FE3's graphics aren't the best but they're appealing to look at, while the graphics in SD are god awful to look at, imo.

 

12 hours ago, Gebby said:

Also, I plan on hopefully playing every game eventually just to say I did, so I’ll end up doing FE3 sometime down the road, maybe after SD. I've enjoyed what I’ve played of SD so far, so if FE3 is better, then that’s sweet.

One thing to note, however, is that FE3's Book one (basically SD) does not have some characters, and a few chapters had to be cut out as well. Hopefully, that doesn't ruin your experience with the game.

[Schleimann]

5 hours ago, Flee Fleet! said:

Indeed. FE3's graphics aren't the best but they're appealing to look at, while the graphics in SD are god awful to look at, imo

I really like the FE SD graphics...

I would recommend FE SD over FE3 if you care about dialogue. 8-4 did an amazing job on the translation, the English is very pretty, and they even changed a few characters' personality to make an overall better story.

[Flee Fleet!]

On 11/26/2017 at 8:36 PM, Schleimann said:

I would recommend FE SD over FE3 if you care about dialogue. 8-4 did an amazing job on the translation, the English is very pretty, and they even changed a few characters' personality to make an overall better story.

I have to agree that since SD's localized, it has better translation.

[Midnox]

On 11/24/2017 at 7:37 PM, Gebby said:

As you could probably gather from the title, I’ve just recently started to play Shadow Dragon. And by recently, I mean 24 minutes ago minutes before my typing this out.

Anyway, I understand that SD has units recruited through killing other units, and need guidance as to who to kill off, if anyone, who to use, and possibly any other helpful tips.

Also I'm playing on normal right now because I wanted to check out the prologue, I'll be starting over on hard after that however.

My apologizes if this topic is redundant.

I don't think it's worth killing your characters in order to recruit those others. I don't think they are that good. You can get characters as good as those in the normal run