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My No Pair-Up Lunatic Playthrough "Journal"


HeroMystic
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Thesis: All of Awakening, including DLC, is possible on Lunatic without pair-up.

 

Lets have some fun, shall we? Along with this I have self-imposed rules to make it slightly more interesting:

  • No Reeking Boxes/DLC Grinding
  • No DLC until after the completion of Endgame.
  • No Spotpass/Einherjar/etc.
  • No Deaths.
  • I haven't decided on Second Seal usage for the main story, though I feel they'll be required for the harder DLC chapters to get better skills (or if it comes down to it, maxing out stats). Right now I'm thinking to horde all second seals until after the completion of Endgame to see how I feel about it then.

I've already finished Chapter 2 before posting this. Frankly, if any playthrough can get past Chapter 2, then the run isn't impossible. Chapter 2 is just that crazy of a hill to climb for any challenge run. I'll be posting my progress and linking the posts in the OP.

----

Prologue

Spoiler

 

Almost immediately I realized one thing: Robin can't be OP in this run without Veteran. This is an extremely hard setback for Robin as he's basically only a slightly better Chrom now. Despite this, he still needs to be trained, as I learned the hard way that Frederick can't carry the team out of the early chapters. Fortunately, Chrom can also be trained just enough to stay relevant in the early chapters as well.

 

Gender: Male

Best Asset: Speed

Worst Asset: Luck

 

If you ever played H2+ from Shadow Dragon, that's basically how I can describe Prologue. Relatively easy, but still required some thought. Elwind Mages will rock Fred's world so you even have to be careful with him, but the use of the Bronze Sword and simply having Fred face tank stuff allowed Robin and Chrom to be fed EXP.  I spent some time getting some CEXP on the boss with Robin before killing him. In the end though, Robin and Chrom both reached level 2, with Robin close to level 3. No water trick obv.


 

 

 

Chapter 1

Spoiler

 

Not that much harder than Prologue, but it requires Fred to dodge a hammer hit. If that can be done, the rest is relatively the same as Prologue except now you have a boss that moves. If Robin gained a point in HP and DEF, then he can survive one hit from anything in this chapter, and his Speed Asset will allow him to not get double-obliterated by Mercenaries. Ideally, the event tiles will give you an extra sword that'll allow Robin to keep his Bronze Sword to up his Hit against fighters, but it isn't a big deal if Fred needs to keep his Bronze sword.

The strat for Chapter 1 is to lure enemies towards Fred (making sure they don't park themselves at the uppermost fort tile. Fred is going to need that.) and then pick off one with Robin/Chrom while  you move Fred into the fort tile to pick off the other. After that, you let the fun begin and see if Fred dodges the hammer hit or not, and then let him soften up all the enemies and then lure them to Robin/Chrom to pick off for EXP. For safety, taking Chrom's Vulnerary is ideal to keep Fred alive if he eats too many axe hits for a phase. The boss should also be fed to Robin/Chrom, but I messed up the attack order and Fred had to seal the kill otherwise he was going to kill one of my units. So Robin couldn't reach Level 4 by the end of this, but luckily it's not necessary for Chapter 2. It's more important for Virion to trade Fred his Elixir before the chapter is over (something I didn't do and man did it make Chapter 2 harder because of it).


 

Chapter 2

Spoiler

 

The gatekeeper of all challenge runs. The biggest pain in the butt to slog through, and master of breaking your reset buttons. Truth be told, I had to redo my entire run because this is when I realized I needed to train Chrom and Robin. Fortunately, if you can beat this on Lunatic+, then you already have a good idea on how this can be done in this type of run. All it truly requires is killing off a the leftmost Mercenary on Turn 1 to allow everything to work out.

Unfortunately, Fred can't do this alone, even if you let him have every single kill  before this chapter, and Robin is literally the only character close enough to aid him. Meaning, he has to hit the Mercenary (either by himself or on dual strike), and then he has to eat a hit from a Fighter. Without any gains in DEF and HP, he needs his Bronze sword to survive with 1 HP (unless you spec him in DEF or HP, but then he gets doubled by Mercs). Fortunately, my Robin gained HP and DEF on every level up thus far, so he could keep his thunder tome equipped, which made enemy phase much more fruitful, as three targets guns for Fred with his Silver Lance, and Robin with a Thunder tome can aid with dual strike. Unfortunately it won't kill, but it will allow ranged units to pick off those targets, allowing Fred to use his high damage on full HP targets.

That said it was difficult to  clear the bottom-half portion of the map because everything just swarms you, and you need to cover your front with units that can tank exactly one hit and not get doubled, which means only Fred, Robin, and Chrom can fit this criteria in all cases (Sully can tank one hit with WTA, Stahl can tank one hit from a Fighter with WTA. Both gets slaughtered by mercs). A lot of this was just slowly chipping away at the incoming force while making sure no one but my meatshields were eating any extra hits on the left side of the map.  Fortunately, once this is done, a sigh of relief can come because the rest is easy. Everyone gets healed to full before moving forward, and I rush Fred to a fort and just let him kill everything threatening. Chrom lures in a fighter and the boss for extra EXP and the map ends there. 

Chapter 3 is still in progress, but it's pretty much mapped out (in fact I'd be done by now if I didn't accidentally hit Auto and watched my Chrom walk into the boss and die). So that should be coming soon.

 

 

Chapter 3

Spoiler

 

AKA "Easier than Chapter 2."

Once you learn the enemies ignore Kellam until you recruit him, the chapter is waaay simplier. I replaced Sully with Miriel for another ranged unit. 

Fred baits the squad from the left side  from the bottom. With C-Support Chrom, he can weaken or kill off the incoming soldiers depending on how his STR-blessed he is. Even if Chrom doesn't dual strike, you have enough units (and enough turns) to kill the soldiers without getting pincered. On Turn 2, Chrom recruits Kellam, and then damages an Archer that is convieiently next to him. Fred uses his high damage on the other archer, and the team full sweeps the left side. 

That's the easy part.

The difficult part was figuring out how to handle the incoming wave on the right side. Fred couldn't blitz it as he'd just get slaughtered, but walling wasn't an option because an Archer would pick off my "Not Frederick" meatshields. So I had to treat it like Chapter 2 where everyone had to run into a corner and peel the enemy squad one at a time. Fortunately, walling was no longer an issue once the Soldier and Archer was dead, so all that remained was a Knight, Mercenary, and 2nd Soldier. Fortunately for me, my trio team of Robin/Chrom/Frederick could tank a hit in all scenarios and live (Chrom would barely survive a blow from the Knight with 1 HP with WTD, but best to unequip him anyway). Once all hits were tanked, the the team swept the rest of the squad.

I chose to enter the top part of the map from the right side so I could use Chrom on the event tile (he got 14 EXP), and Fred took lead. A chokepoint gave me a lot of options, though Fred had to lead. The final issue of this map was the hammer fighter wanting to rock Fred's world. While he could survive a hit, he would then get picked off by an archer. Typically, I would just let RNG do it's thing, but luckily I figured out the AI, while smarter than the previous iterations of FE, is still exploitable.

The army rolls moves by a set order, meaning some units will move sooner than others, and this will never change (unless you can make a killing blow on a target with a single unit I'm assuming. I know it doesn't "plan ahead"). What does this mean? Well, imagine there was two melee units and Archer. These two melee units  were plugged into a chokepoint and the archer couldn't reach the target. All that would need to be done would be for the melee unit not attacking the player to move out of the way and let the archer attack. However, the AI does not know to do this.

This is exactly what happened when I baited the Hammer Fighter with Chrom. Another melee unit plugged in the next tile, making the archer unable to attack, and the AI does not know that it can move that melee unit out of the way so the Archer can kill Chrom. So now I have Chrom safely eating Hammer hits with Lissa on standby until the fighter is dead, and then Fred and Robin cleans up the rest.

I use Robin and Chrom to kill the boss for EXP. Chapter 3 complete.

Turns: 23
Robin: Lvl 5
Chrom: Lvl 5

 

Edited by HeroMystic
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