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My first run (mampfoid goes to know Hector & co)


mampfoid
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Hi everybody,

playing Fire Emblem Heroes all the time, I wanted to get to know some of Fire Emblems most iconic characters better. I already started Lyns tutorial some months ago and I also have started an Awakening run, but this will be my first serious approach on a FE main title.

I'm playing on my smartphone, so I can play on the train, in my breaks and so on. I have to get used to the UI, even on the emulator (Classic Boy) it's not touch-optimized but you can save/load your game at any time, even in the middle of a map. I'm also new to the stats (luck?), fighting system (crits?) and classes (lords? promotions?). 

Currently I'm at the first quest were you have to save the merchant in the middle of the night. (What the heck was he doing there all alone, loaded with expensive stuff?).

team: 

  • Eliwood and Hector are cool
  • I've just recruited a guy named Guy.
  • I will bench Barte, since Hector and Dorcas are my Axe users. 
  • Rebecca seems as week as in Heroes, is it worth leveling her? 
  • I'd like to use Matthew more @Zeo , but it's hard to get him XP. 
  • Marcus is cool, I'm not sure about the other cav guy with the grunge haircut. 
  • Serra, talks and heals
  • Not sure about Oswin. I know Hector is not a Knight in this game, but he seems to do Oswins job fine? 

I hate when you have to do something in limited turns, like preventing the enemy thief from stealing your loot. Why is every weapon melting? I hope I'll get some decent weapons soon. 

@mcsilas

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First of all, you put this in the wrong sub-category. This is Blazing Blade/Sword. Not Binding Blade/Sword of Seals.

Anyways, luck is the best stat is a stat that determines many miscellaneous factors, like helping in hit, dodge, ect. Decent stat to have, having low luck really only screws you on weapon triangle disadvantage. 

Neither Bartre or Dorcas are particularly good, but Dorcas is the better of the two and is also an A+ class meme.

Rebecca isn't worth using, still very weak. Have her chip when you're forced to deploy her or just have an open slot that no unit is going to take, then bench her and sell her bow for cash. None of the archers in this game are particularly good, Rebecca is trash, Wil is trash, Rath is decent at best, Louise is decent at best and Lyn rarely ever has a reason to use Bows upon promotion. You don't need a bow user at all to beat this game.

Matthew doesn't need experience points too much. You will most likely never promote him, and his utility is in stealing things and opening chests. Even if you do promote him, he'll just be a worse Jaffar. You know you f-ed up if you're relying on Matthew to deal meaningful damage (Outside of the first few chapters).

Oswin, or BOSSWIN, as he is often called, performs basically the same job as Hector, but normally better on average. He's basically a mini Jagen (or if you don't know archetypes, a slower Marcus). His main early game utility is weakening down units for other people in your army to kill. Unfortunately for him, Knights require Knights Proofs (Or crest, it's been a while since I played GBA Fire Emblem.), which most cavaliers call pretty good dibs on. Speaking of cavaliers

Lowen is the defensive cavalier. Sain is the strong one, Kent is the fast one. Marcus is OP as shit, and Isadora is all-around. Those are all general assessments, and not always true, but take that as you will. There are no bad cavaliers in FE7, so use any of the ones that you want. In fact, use any unit that you want, the game isn't that hard.

Crits, or critical hits, are attacks that triple your damage. So if Sain was fighting a brigand, and would normally be dealing 7 damage, but activates a critical, then he will now deal 21 damage. Crits are mainly effected by skill, and a bit of luck. I assume you know that hit rates are the rate that you will hit, as attacks aren't guaranteed like they are in Heroes.

Each class has a promotion item or an item that allows the to transition into another class upon reaching a certain level. You see, there's a level cap of twenty, promoting resets the level cap, gives you a fancy new sprite, often new weapons, and stat bonuses. The items are as follows Knights Crests are for Cavaliers and Knights, Guiding Rings are for Mages, Clerics, Monks (or Monk I guess), and Shamen (Shaman), while Hero crests are for Fighters, Myrmidons, and Mercenaries.  The Fell Contract is for thieves, you get exactly one and the best strategy is instantly selling it. Ocean (might be called Earth Seal, I kinda forget) Seal can be used on anyone, who isn't a lord or a thief, above level 10 unpromoted, but is intended for Pirates. Lords have to use Heaven's Seals, well, two of them can. I am going to assume you're playing Eliwood mode, which means that Eliwood is your main lord. He won't promote until a certain moment in the story. Lyn and Hector will have to fight over who gets the first Heaven Seal, and I'll leave that choice up to you.

That enemy thief stealing items is a way to make sure you move. Same goes for Brigands going to destroy villages, and green units you need to save. The developers don't just want you to slowly advance through the map, or turtling it. They want you to experience risk, face danger, maybe lose a unit or two, but then also have another miraculously survive. That's part of the Fire Emblem experience, and although you may not like it, it is really good level design.

Your weapons aren't melting, they're breaking. The weapon durability system is a way to add realism and ensure that OP weapons don't just reign supreme. The better the weapon, the worse it's durability (generally). Don't be afraid to use any weapon, they should be used to the fullest extend instead of rotting away in your convoy. As for better weapons, well, you get Steel weapons. Don't expect this to be like Heroes, where every unit can get a cool refinement, and a unique-ish weapon. Most units will all be using the same weapons, iron and steel swords/lances/axes. Get javelins and hand axes, and get loads of them. They are single-handedly the best weapons in this game due to their 1-2 range, allowing units to be very versatile. This isn't to say you won't get cool stuff. Killing/Killer weapons that increase critical, effective weapons (Which are kinda bad in this game due to only 2x effectiveness), and eventually Silver weapons do come along.

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Critical hits in this game is basically using an RNG proc system. If it procs you deal triple damage


Critical Chance is based on largely 3 factor:

1. Skill stats(iirc 2 Skil = 1 Crit chance) and then reduced against enemy luck stats. FOr the most part FE7 enemy have shitty luck so expect TONS of crits

2. Weapon base stats. You might notice for example Rapier on Eliwood have higher critical chance. Those stuff. Killer weapons have base 30% Crit chance which GENERALLY make it the best kind of weapon, i dare say

3. Weapon Rank - you can only S Rank 1 weapon, but when you get S Rank you get 5 Hit and 5 Crit bonus. This, essentially, turns Marcus into a surprisingly frequent Critter since he starts having A Rank on 2 weapon, and B in another so he can quickly get S Rank bonus

 

>Rebecca seems as week as in Heroes, is it worth leveling her? 

Archers GENERALLY sucked in main series since the lack of counter attack slows down their XP progression and unlike heroes, main series tend to be more combat heavy and stuff. They also tend to have weaker base stats relative to other units(compare Lowen vs Rebecca for example). FIttingly New Mystery, which is the closest to Heroes, gameplay wise actually had good Archers

That said FE7 Archer is even worse since Bows only do 2x damage instead of 3x, calculated with (Weapon MT x multiplier) + STR instead of Heroes (overall MT x 1.5)

 

>Marcus is cool, I'm not sure about the other cav guy with the grunge haircut. 

Yeah Marcus is generally considered the best overall unit in the game since he starts strong and barely slows down. That said, as you might notice horses generally have strong stats and tons of movement convenience for Rescuing or using Item-> Move again. So you can't really have enough horses outside like desert chapters which slows them down. Lowen can be rough since his offensive growth is shaky, but iirc he usually did fine once promoted. 

 

Anyway yeah every character had class, and they can promote with promotion item at L10 and above. Once you promote they get re-set into Promoted L1 regardless of their previous level, and their EXP gain is adjusted based on the class. Some class(Horse Healer) gains EXP faster than others in their promoted form.

Promotion gave you stats based on the internal base stats of promoted class vs their pre promotion self, and usually get extra weapons and in general increases your primary weapon rank. Basically theres tons of bonus you get from promotion

 

>Not sure about Oswin. I know Hector is not a Knight in this game, but he seems to do Oswins job fine?

In lower difficulty, Hector basically can do Oswin job while murdering Horse and Armors quickly yeah. Oswin's basically near immortal in normal mode on the flipside, but in Hard Mode he's noticably nice for his extra bulk over Hector. Notable, Oswin can promote fairly early due to high base level and Knight Crest appearing early if thats what you want to do, while Hector promotes fairly late regardless of Route(essentially promotes at the very beggining of the last long arc of the game in Eliwood route, promote at the last short arc in his own route).

As for promoting in general, try to make a habit of promoting when you think its nice instead of promoting as late as possible, while its true promoting early lowers your overall stats, it isn't really that big of a deal on average since enemies usually had weak enough stats. Your promoted unit gets even stronger and can do even more combat which makes them grows just fine along the game.

 

> I hate when you have to do something in limited turns

Oh trust me, FE7 had shit tons of this youve seen nothing yet

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If your difficulty's Normal Mode, I'd argue anyone is pretty useable, even Rebecca (though she's not great. And I say that as someone who has a 5* in heroes and who used her in several playthroughs)

You'll get a mage in the map after the merchant map. He's alright, I guess.

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16 hours ago, DarthR0xas said:

Rebecca isn't worth using, still very weak. Have her chip when you're forced to deploy her or just have an open slot that no unit is going to take, then bench her and sell her bow for cash. None of the archers in this game are particularly good, Rebecca is trash, Wil is trash, Rath is decent at best, Louise is decent at best and Lyn rarely ever has a reason to use Bows upon promotion. You don't need a bow user at all to beat this game.

The Fell Contract is for thieves, you get exactly one and the best strategy is instantly selling it.

Ocean (might be called Earth Seal, I kinda forget) Seal can be used on anyone, who isn't a lord or a thief, above level 10 unpromoted, but is intended for Pirates.

 

No you don't want to sell her weapons, how about having her just keep all the bows in her inventroy and not deploy her? The reason being is that weapons have value per use remaining  but if you sell them you get them at half value so say you bought a weapon with N value and now if you want to sell it it's worth N/2 value but say this weapon has 100 uses and it is now at half durability, well now it's value is N/4 this is why you don't want to sell too much stuff, because it lowers your fund ranks where it might have been better to just have some bad unit hold it in their inventory forever.

No you don't it is super valuable and selling it lowers your funds rank a lot. It might be the best thing for a player that doesn't care about ranks but saying it's the best strategy is wrong.

The item you're talking about is Earth Seal, Ocean Seals are only for pirates while Earth Seals work on everyone except Lords, Thieves or Pirates. And again the ocean seal is very valuable so just keep it, Dart is ok but Hector is better.



Ok so you heard me talk funds rank a few times what does that mean?

Well the game has 5 ranks: Tactics, Survival, Funds, Exp and Combat. The game measures you with these 5 ranks and they all measure different aspects of your gameplay; Tactics measures how many turns it takes you to beat a chapter, Survival basically checks how many units die and a 5 star for it means every unit is alive at the ends of the game, Funds checks how much gold you have combined in weapons items and such in the convoy and your gold, Exp checks how much Exp you gained and Combat sees how many enemies you killed and in what number of rounds. Usually these ranks are disregarded since they are seen as expert only territory but it is also used to measure how good a unit is (For example if a unit needs many silver weapons to do significant damage that can be a problem or if a unit takes too many turns to get from one place to another or if a unit is so frail she can be hard to keep alive etc.) but you don't need good ranks to beat the game so don't worry too much about it unless you want to get 5 star rankings which is kinda hard.

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3 hours ago, This boi uses Nino said:

No you don't want to sell her weapons, how about having her just keep all the bows in her inventroy and not deploy her? The reason being is that weapons have value per use remaining  but if you sell them you get them at half value so say you bought a weapon with N value and now if you want to sell it it's worth N/2 value but say this weapon has 100 uses and it is now at half durability, well now it's value is N/4 this is why you don't want to sell too much stuff, because it lowers your fund ranks where it might have been better to just have some bad unit hold it in their inventory forever.

No you don't it is super valuable and selling it lowers your funds rank a lot. It might be the best thing for a player that doesn't care about ranks but saying it's the best strategy is wrong.

The item you're talking about is Earth Seal, Ocean Seals are only for pirates while Earth Seals work on everyone except Lords, Thieves or Pirates. And again the ocean seal is very valuable so just keep it, Dart is ok but Hector is better.

Since this guy is asking about more of a casual playthrough, I was thinking more along the terms of that. Of course, if you're doing a ranks run, then you'll want to do that, but for a regular run having more immediate cash is better. 

Best strategy was arrogant and wrong of me to say, mistakes were made. I do more casual runs whenever I play FE7, so I never really take ranks into account when giving out strategies.

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Hi everybody, thanks for all replies!

Sorry for replying late myself, but I didn't get notifications for this topic (which is my fault, because I assumed notifications would active by default). 

Oops, I even started the topic in the wrong category. Could you please move this to the Blazing Blade / Fire Emblem Forum, @eclipse ? (From the staff page I can't see who is responsible for this forum). 

On 12.10.2018 at 1:14 AM, DarthR0xas said:

Anyways, luck is the best stat is a stat that determines many miscellaneous factors, like helping in hit, dodge, ect. Decent stat to have, having low luck really only screws you on weapon triangle disadvantage. 

Playing causal, I won't try to min/max, but good to know what this stat is about. I assume fighting at TA disadvantage with bad luck is a bad idea because of deadly TA crits? 

On 12.10.2018 at 1:14 AM, DarthR0xas said:

There are no bad cavaliers in FE7, so use any of the ones that you want. In fact, use any unit that you want, the game isn't that hard.

On 12.10.2018 at 4:38 AM, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Yeah Marcus is generally considered the best overall unit in the game

I'll keep Marcus as my backup-OP guy and check which of the others I like most (found out I don't like Florina). Perhaps I'll keep some more of the cavs, even though Guy and Raven seem to be interesting. 

How do Fliers compare to Cavs, apart from their weakness to bows?

On 12.10.2018 at 1:14 AM, DarthR0xas said:

None of the archers in this game are particularly good

On 12.10.2018 at 4:38 AM, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Archers GENERALLY sucked in main series

[...]

That said FE7 Archer is even worse

Good to know I can dump Rebecca at least. If Archers aren't important, how are mages and other ranged units? 

On 12.10.2018 at 1:14 AM, DarthR0xas said:

Crits, or critical hits, are attacks that triple your damage. So if Sain was fighting a brigand, and would normally be dealing 7 damage, but activates a critical, then he will now deal 21 damage. Crits are mainly effected by skill, and a bit of luck. I assume you know that hit rates are the rate that you will hit, as attacks aren't guaranteed like they are in Heroes.

On 12.10.2018 at 4:38 AM, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Critical Chance is based on largely 3 factor:

Apart from maps, teams and movement rates being bigger, that's the main thing I have to get used to. I could play Heroes like a puzzle, those randomized factors will change my way of playing. 

So my goal should be to optimize crit chances by raising skill/weapon stats and weapon rank (also to make it less random). 

On 12.10.2018 at 1:14 AM, DarthR0xas said:

Each class has a promotion item or an item that allows the to transition into another class upon reaching a certain level.

On 12.10.2018 at 4:38 AM, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Anyway yeah every character had class, and they can promote with promotion item at L10 and above.

Yeah, I think I got the idea of this system. I'll have to check the details once some of my units are high enough and I have seals at my disposal, but I'll evaluate by favoritism. 

On 12.10.2018 at 1:14 AM, DarthR0xas said:

I am going to assume you're playing Eliwood mode, which means that Eliwood is your main lord. He won't promote until a certain moment in the story. Lyn and Hector will have to fight over who gets the first Heaven Seal, and I'll leave that choice up to you.

Didn't know there is another mode? Between Hector and Lyn that's going to be a tough choice. 

On 12.10.2018 at 4:38 AM, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Oswin's basically near immortal in normal mode on the flipside, but in Hard Mode he's noticably nice for his extra bulk over Hector.

Hmm, I'll see if I like Oswin enough. At least armors aren't as limited as in Heroes (1 tile movement ...). 

On 12.10.2018 at 1:14 AM, DarthR0xas said:

They want you to experience risk, face danger, maybe lose a unit or two, but then also have another miraculously survive. That's part of the Fire Emblem experience, and although you may not like it, it is really good level design.

I prefer round based strategy over RT strategy to ponder out my way in peace. Usually I'm not turteling around, guess I'll get used to it fast enough. 

On 12.10.2018 at 1:14 AM, DarthR0xas said:

Don't be afraid to use any weapon, they should be used to the fullest extend instead of rotting away in your convoy. [...] Killing/Killer weapons that increase critical, effective weapons (Which are kinda bad in this game due to only 2x effectiveness), and eventually Silver weapons do come along.

Ok, I'll use up everything I get! 

Effectiveness in Heroes means 1.5x damage, so 2x is decent.

On 12.10.2018 at 1:14 AM, DarthR0xas said:

Killing/Killer weapons that increase critical, 

On 12.10.2018 at 4:38 AM, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Killer weapons have base 30% Crit chance which GENERALLY make it the best kind of weapon, i dare say

Are Killer weapons very rare? Guy consumed his one pretty fast. 

On 12.10.2018 at 4:38 AM, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Oh trust me, FE7 had shit tons of this youve seen nothing yet

Oh no ... at least I can create emulator save games at any point. 

On 12.10.2018 at 9:53 AM, Garlyle said:

Let me know if you need help with Binding Blade.

Thanks! Binding Blade is the successor of FE7? Chances are high that I'll try it out in the future. 

On 12.10.2018 at 5:46 PM, Dayni said:

If your difficulty's Normal Mode, I'd argue anyone is pretty useable, even Rebecca (though she's not great. And I say that as someone who has a 5* in heroes and who used her in several playthroughs)

I didn't change the preset difficulty, so I think it's normal.

Respect for using Rebecca in Heroes, I might ask you for a skill-set in the respective forum. :-) 

On 12.10.2018 at 5:46 PM, Dayni said:

You'll get a mage in the map after the merchant map. He's alright, I guess.

You mean Erk? Well, he is still at level 1. 

On 12.10.2018 at 6:06 PM, Critical Sniper said:

No you don't want to sell her weapons, how about having her just keep all the bows in her inventroy and not deploy her? The reason being is that weapons have value per use remaining  but if you sell them you get them at half value so say you bought a weapon with N value and now if you want to sell it it's worth N/2 value but say this weapon has 100 uses and it is now at half durability, well now it's value is N/4 this is why you don't want to sell too much stuff, because it lowers your fund ranks where it might have been better to just have some bad unit hold it in their inventory forever.

I think I won't sell all my bows immediately, but if I'll get to the conclusion to not use bows at all, that shouldn't be a big problem. 

On 12.10.2018 at 6:06 PM, Critical Sniper said:

But you don't need good ranks to beat the game so don't worry too much about it unless you want to get 5 star rankings which is kinda hard.

On 12.10.2018 at 9:12 PM, DarthR0xas said:

Of course, if you're doing a ranks run, then you'll want to do that, but for a regular run having more immediate cash is better. 

Ranks are a kind of highscore system, right? No, I won't aim for good ranks, I just want to enjoy the game. 

 

 

 

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47 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Thanks! Binding Blade is the successor of FE7? Chances are high that I'll try it out in the future. 

Binding Blade story takes place 20 years after the events of FE7. I also played FE7 first, but overall I had more memorable experience from Binding Blade. It's also more difficult, but also a lot of fun.

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2 hours ago, Garlyle said:

Binding Blade story takes place 20 years after the events of FE7. I also played FE7 first, but overall I had more memorable experience from Binding Blade. It's also more difficult, but also a lot of fun.

Thanks, I will consider it once I've finished FE7. 

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Binding blade is actually before FE7, this is kind of an issue in terms of how the game run in that FE7 legitimately had a lot of improvement that wasn't found in Binding Blade(the most important being ability to use Item on preparation screen, and iirc shop on the same screen which significantly improve unit managing experience). In a sense, while FE7 is the better starting game for various reason, FE6 is harder to play after you play FE7 because it is older than FE7 with generally speaking lower polish on their interface

 

Killer weapons are one of those things in this game that you get a steady amount before mid-late game essentially give you as much stock of it as you wanted. The alvailability of them is actually kinda erratic

Spoiler

After Guy, if i remember correctly theres several character/chest that gives you Killer weapons. And then at the end of the first arc which is either chapter 19 for Eliwood mode or 20 for Hector Mode(the chapter is named Dragon gate iirc and you can notice, story wise and map wise, its bigger and more climatic than the previous chapters) theres a secret shop selling them

You can probably look up what Secret shop is and where they are, but the gist there some suspicious tile in some maps where if you move a character holding a member card to that tile, you can access a shop with items you won't be able to find elsewhere. In FE7 in particular, Physic Staff is an example of extremely useful item that is only alvailable there. The member card appear in this chapter on a recruitable character so the only way to miss them is by not recruiting that character

 

The next opportunity to buy Killer weapons is way later on chapter 24/26 depending on mode. This time on a normal shop. This is pretty much the most important shopping time in the entire game because after this point the next few chapters are infamous for how ridiculously long they are with barely any shops to restock with. After you went past that, the game literally have a chapter that is all about stocking up so.... yeah

In vacuum, the idea for fliers are "Horse, but they fly over terrains so they are better". This is obvious looking at unit traits and fliers pays being weak to arrows for this movement advantage. Note that most games usually have an item alvailable later on that allows fliers to avoid arrow weakness completely.

In a less basic level, theres more things to consider. For most of the series Horse have a (rather unfair) advantage of being able to use 2 separate weapon types instead of locked to 1. This was a carryover from older FE, but in newer FE with weapon triangle this give them partial control over weapon triangle which gives you a good chunk improvement on damage dealt and taken, dodge rate and hitcount. In FE7, this weapon advantage is improved further when Cavalier promotes into Paladin(Marcus class) which is able to equip all 3 of the basic weapon class which allows you to completely control the weapon triangle

While Fliers does ignore terrains, this also means they can't take advantage of terrain bonus. Forest tile are extremely common and they gave a huge survivability improvement(this was so good in FE7, that it got nerfed in DS games onwards), Forts are intended for this purpose giving them even better bonus than forest while also healing. And Infantry class is the only one who can use Mountains which gives them even better boost than forest. Some units are able to use Peak terrains as well which turns them nearly invincible. Generally speaking, Pegasus Knights have higher speed than normal units, but their lack of terrain bonus makes them much less dodgy than you'd expect. So while ignoring terrain is good, theres some usage you get out of those terrains that fliers are unable to use

That said, Horse units are generally easier to use and have more balanced stats spread, the idea is you usually have horse handle the high mobility combat unit role earlier while having your flier trained up to take over later on. Note that since movement based utility are not tied towards stats, its reccomanded to try out fliers for their movement utility with rescue. There are some maps in the game that become way easier if you use flier Rescue as a transportation method, and in some cases these maps are borderline unplayable without fliers.

 

As for Mages, its important to note that you can technically give every class Ranged attack by using ranged weapon. Lance have Javelin and Axe have Hand Axe for example. They are somewhat innacurate, but its basically the go-to weapon to give a unit to handle enemy phase since they have simmilar effect to Distant Counter in heroes(able to counter at both 1 and 2 range. As a bonus you can attack from range too). In FE7 they also have decent MT so they do quite nice damage. Other downside is sometimes there are stronger enemies where you want to use stronger weapons. These ranged weapons also have lower uses, but they are cheap enough for you to stock up a tons of them at a time.

That being said, besides the fact that magic is now attacking in 1-2 range theres 2 obvious upside of Magic - since its a weapon type that is designed from the get go to attack in 2 ranges, so does their weapon progression. Magic attacks maintains strong damage on both range because you can use stronger tomes. The other upside is, well, simmilar to Heroes, enemies usually have higher DEF than RES so on average Magics are generally stronger for combat purpose.

Last but not least Magic units have extra utility in that all promoted form of Magic units are able to use Staff. Early on Staves are just healing, but later on they got expanded options such as increasing Res, ranged healing, inflicting status ailments, and the most important one - staves that allows you to perform movement based effects.

Since your familiar with them in Heroes, you probably know how strong they are in advance, but those movement based staves are basically Wing of Mercy/Escape Route shenanigans on crack. In a more efficient play, people essentially raise up their mages to have a more effective user of Staves(since Staves are REALLY strong), which doubles as competent combat unit. The need to train Mage is much lower in FE7 compared to every other games in the series because later on in the game, they will give you a ridiculously good unit who is a promoted Mage with Staff rank that allows him to use every Staff already, and almost every good staff only appears after he joined your army so you can just use him to do all your staff needs. That being said its still reccomended to use several Staff user in case the map demands you to do so

The most obvious downside of Mages is they are more fragile than normal units, and some later enemies tend to be harder to handle with magics. And thats about it

 

 

>Ranks are a kind of highscore system, right? No, I won't aim for good ranks, I just want to enjoy the game. 

Expanding on this a bit, the gist of ranking system in this game is just

"how much EXP you get in total"

"How much turns you spent to finish the game"

"how much funds do you have" Note that funds is not money, they rank based on the value of your items.

"How much of your units died"

"Combat records"

I can tell you that generally if you aim for high rank, the main difficulty is balancing your exp distribution, and then knowing how the funds system works, which boils down to "items are sold at half their value, so if you sell an item, you lose funds by the amount of money you get". Essentially this forces you to stock up Gems, statsboosters, and promotion items on your inventory. The turn requirement are ridiculously high so they tend to not be a problem, while the other criteria is a normal gameplay assumptions

 

 

> Playing causal, I won't try to min/max, but good to know what this stat is about. I assume fighting at TA disadvantage with bad luck is a bad idea because of deadly TA crits? 

This is KINDA true, but not in the way you describe

The easiest way to explain Luck is essentially "it reduces your chance to get hit by critical hits, and then it act as a mini skill and spd". Luck doesn't affect your speed for doubling speed check, but it affects hit rate and dodge rate

 

So fighting at TA disadvantage with Bad Luck CAN be a bad idea, because TA disadvantage already reduced your accuracy, and bad luck could make that accuracy issue ever worse. Meanwhiel High Luck(alongside HIgh Speed and HIgh Skill) leverages how much TA disadvantage combat you can take on since even if you are facing weapon disadvantages, it doesn't matter if you STILL hits, STILL dodges, and took low damage.

TA in main series is less of a "you can only fight neutral or advantage match up" and more of a simple stuff you follow to get advantages. If you don't need the advantages you can ignore it since the bonus doesn't scale unlike in heroes. Its always +1 damage, -1 Damage taken, and 15% hitrate and dodgerate. A critical hit with weapon advantage only affects damage by 3 points.

Note that there are weapon that reverse the weapon triangle, and then doubles the weapon triangle bonus(kinda like Triangle Adept in heroes). These can be very annoying if you didn't keep track of it since it reduces your hit rate by 30% if you got caught off guard with them

 

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I hope you are enjoying FE7, it was the one I started with a I still think its a great game.

14 hours ago, mampfoid said:

I assume fighting at TA disadvantage with bad luck is a bad idea because of deadly TA crits? 

TA doesn't really effect crits much, you do have to hit to crit so the accuracy change (and the +/- 1 strength could make the difference when tripled) does effect it, but it isn't huge. Honestly I think someone has overstated the value of Luck a bit here. There are a fair number of people who call it great due to it playing an impact in accuracy, avoid, and crit avoid, but it only plays a small role in accuracy/avoid, and while the crit avoid is nice, there aren't a lot of enemies with high crit rates.

14 hours ago, mampfoid said:

How do Fliers compare to Cavs, apart from their weakness to bows?

I think JSND Alter Dragon Boner has covered a lot of the main points rather well, I just want to add a few things. First that I also didn't like Pegasus Knights on my first couple playthroughs as well (although they have grown into my favorite unit type), and you might end up liking Wyvern Knights better, they fly and are weak to arrows, but tend to have higher Strength and Defense although with lower Speed (but with higher Con to compensate) and embarrassingly bad Resistance. I find Flyers help a lot when the game is pushing me to reach some side objective before a thief/brigand can make off with all the loot, plus they work well when doing rescue shenanigans, or when switching the equipped weapon of someone who has already acted through trades, and then taking the rest of their movement to reach safety after doing so (Cavs can help with both of these two, but being able to ignore terrain makes it easier for flyers).

14 hours ago, mampfoid said:

If Archers aren't important, how are mages and other ranged units? 

The issue with Archers is that they have no way to attack or counter attack at range 1, people who only wield swords only also get criticized for how difficult it is for them to attack/counter attack at range 2, due to there being only two weapons (four in hector mode) in the entire game that give them 1-2 range, and at range they have their strength halved (although they do target resistance instead of defense at range to compensate). Even Lyn and Rath, who when they promote can both use swords and bows, have the issue of relying on the magic swords if they want to counter at both ranges during enemy phase. Meanwhile all magic is range 1-2, and you can buy the basic 1-2 ranged lances and axes at numerous armories (although the better versions are fairly rare). Mages also have the advantage of a lot of basic enemies having pathetic resistance (although the bosses of this game have unusually high resistance values in general). If you haven't already, stocking up on Javelins and Hand Axes might be a good idea.

14 hours ago, mampfoid said:

So my goal should be to optimize crit chances by raising skill/weapon stats and weapon rank (also to make it less random). 

Well... I am not saying its a bad idea to try this, but there is only so far you can push your crit chance, and often just having a heavier hitting weapon/character is what you need to more reliably take down basic enemies. Guy is a good example for why this isn't always the best plan, unless he gets lucky with his Strength growth (or you give him the only energy ring in Eliwood mode) he has a hard time doing the damage he needs to reliably one round enemies unless he crits, where as a powerhouse like Raven tends not to need the crit to one round, even if his crit chance is significantly less.

14 hours ago, mampfoid said:

Effectiveness in Heroes means 1.5x damage, so 2x is decent.

 

This really isn't as good as it sounds, the multiply only applies to the weapon's Strength + TA, not the actual characters strength (at least in this game)

14 hours ago, mampfoid said:

Thanks! Binding Blade is the successor of FE7?

 

Technically FE7 was designed as a prequel to the Binding Blade, so the Binding Blade is an older game, but the story takes place after, following the story of Eliwood and Hector's kids Roy and Lilina 

14 hours ago, mampfoid said:

You mean Erk? Well, he is still at level 1.

Erk tends to get overshadowed by Pent who arrives far latter in the game as a promoted unit with amazing bases, high staff rank (which is hard to get with those who only get staff use on promotion) and using the same magic type. You should also be getting Lucius and Canas (if you reach his gaiden chapter) fairly soon, who use the other types of magic and are fairly good. Lucius tends to be a glass cannon, and dark magic has some cool effects, which makes Canas fun to use.

Have fun Mampfoid, this was a great entry to start with, and hopefully it gets you to appreciate the heroes of the Blazing Sword.

 

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8 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

@JSND Alter Dragon Boner The only problem with the prep screen is that we cannot use the stat booster items there. Other significant thing is that Thieves don't promote, Rapier is not effective against Nomads, Swordmasters have higher crits.

Yeah the thing is those prep screen improvement were way too good

 

Thief not promoting isnt that big of a deal i think, since you'd normally didn't want to run them extensively and FE7 thieves promotion is problematic on its own. Rapier had more issue than that such as 5 MT, but Nomads are rare enough for it to matter much

 

 

OTOH Swordmaster crit.... kind of interesting to note its canceled out, in comparison to FE7, due to FE6 not having S Rank bonus and enemy having actual luck. In practical manner, SM only really have 10% or so more crit in FE6 vs FE7 iirc. Its really the Axe and Lance accuracy and Rutger's fantastic base that makes them feels much better than Guy IMO

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Ok, thanks again for the replies, I hope I didn't mix up too many quotes and stuff. 

12 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Technically FE7 was designed as a prequel to the Binding Blade, so the Binding Blade is an older game, but the story takes place after, following the story of Eliwood and Hector's kids Roy and Lilina 

20 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Binding blade is actually before FE7, this is kind of an issue in terms of how the game run in that FE7 legitimately had a lot of improvement that wasn't found in Binding Blade [...]

Ah, didn't know that. Yeah, I'm having a hard time to get used to this old GUI (compared to Heroes), I don't think some other small drawbacks here would hold me off playing Roy's game. 

5 hours ago, Garlyle said:

@JSND Alter Dragon Boner The only problem with the prep screen is that we cannot use the stat booster items there. Other significant thing is that Thieves don't promote, Rapier is not effective against Nomads, Swordmasters have higher crits.

Doesn't that problematic to me. Or are thieves better fighters in Binding Blade? 

20 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Killer weapons are one of those things in this game that you get a steady amount before mid-late game essentially give you as much stock of it as you wanted. The alvailability of them is actually kinda erratic

 

Good to know there will be supply most of the times. I'll keep my eyes open for suspicious tiles. 

12 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Well... I am not saying its a bad idea to try this, but there is only so far you can push your crit chance, and often just having a heavier hitting weapon/character is what you need to more reliably take down basic enemies. Guy is a good example for why this isn't always the best plan, unless he gets lucky with his Strength growth (or you give him the only energy ring in Eliwood mode) he has a hard time doing the damage he needs to reliably one round enemies unless he crits, where as a powerhouse like Raven tends not to need the crit to one round, even if his crit chance is significantly less.

Ah ok, I though Killing weapons would help Guy with that. He seemed to proc crits all the time with his sword, but if the additional critical damage is that low, then it's probably not worth the effort. 

20 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

In a less basic level, theres more things to consider.

So in summary, Cavs are great but it would be good to have at least one decent flier. Florina is still my only one, but I think I'll wait for the next one before giving her too much XP. 

11 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

First that I also didn't like Pegasus Knights on my first couple playthroughs as well (although they have grown into my favorite unit type)

In Heroes (sorry if I keep making comparisons, but I'm playing that a lot) Fliers are my favorite unit type too. But the only Flier I know from FE7 is Florina, one of my least favorite units in FEH. 

12 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I find Flyers help a lot when the game is pushing me to reach some side objective before a thief/brigand can make off with all the loot, plus they work well when doing rescue shenanigans

That was my suspicion too and you guys confirming that they might not be as important for combat but for other (supportive) purposes is good to know. 

20 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

[...] but in newer FE with weapon triangle this give them [Cavs] partial control over weapon triangle [...]

While Fliers does ignore terrains, this also means they can't take advantage of terrain bonus.

Didn't notice these points, thanks! 

20 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Last but not least Magic units have extra utility in that all promoted form of Magic units are able to use Staff. 

[...]

The most obvious downside of Mages is they are more fragile than normal units, and some later enemies tend to be harder to handle with magics. And thats about it

Oh, that's nice and a good argument to bring at least 1-2 mages. /Edit: Ok, I'll wait for the OP mage. 

So is it worth to level up the early healers at all? 

12 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Erk tends to get overshadowed by Pent [...] You should also be getting Lucius and Canas (if you reach his gaiden chapter) fairly soon, [...]

Yeah, I got Lucius and I'll bring him with Raven of course.

Canas will have glasses, right? I'll try him out! 

12 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The issue with Archers is that they have no way to attack or counter attack at range 1 [...] If you haven't already, stocking up on Javelins and Hand Axes might be a good idea.

Ok, archers have to be cool characters to drag them around, all the other unit types have their uses. I'll have to buy more ranged melee weapons - check. 

21 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

I can tell you that generally if you aim for high rank

Na, I don't think I'll ever aim for that in this game. 

21 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

This is KINDA true, but not in the way you describe

The easiest way to explain Luck is essentially "it reduces your chance to get hit by critical hits, and then it act as a mini skill and spd". Luck doesn't affect your speed for doubling speed check, but it affects hit rate and dodge rate

Ok, then it makes a slightly randomized system a tad more random. 

21 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

So fighting at TA disadvantage with Bad Luck CAN be a bad idea, because TA disadvantage already reduced your accuracy, and bad luck could make that accuracy issue ever worse. Meanwhiel High Luck(alongside HIgh Speed and HIgh Skill) leverages how much TA disadvantage combat you can take on since even if you are facing weapon disadvantages, it doesn't matter if you STILL hits, STILL dodges, and took low damage.

11 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Honestly I think someone has overstated the value of Luck a bit here.

So it is less important than the other skills, but not a real dump stat (unlike Min/Maxing works in Heroes). 

21 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Its always +1 damage, -1 Damage taken, and 15% hitrate and dodgerate. A critical hit with weapon advantage only affects damage by 3 points.

11 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

TA doesn't really effect crits much, you do have to hit to crit so the accuracy change (and the +/- 1 strength could make the difference when tripled) does effect it, but it isn't huge.

Ok, I knew of the hitrate, but the effect on damage isn't as big as expected indeed. 

12 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

This really isn't as good as it sounds, the multiply only applies to the weapon's Strength + TA, not the actual characters strength (at least in this game)

On 16.10.2018 at 10:30 AM, mampfoid said:

Oh wow, then it's as underwhelming as crit damage. 

21 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Note that there are weapon that reverse the weapon triangle, and then doubles the weapon triangle bonus

Yeah, I saw them and they don't make much sense to me (I know how they work though). If they had high availability you could cover the full weapon triangle with units that can use two melee weapon types. 

Thanks for your detailed response, much appreciated! 

19 hours ago, Joe Cool said:

fe7 is not kind to guy...or lyn.

Story-wise or gameplay-wise? 

/Edit: Ok, reading the other responses, I get the idea. 

11 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I hope you are enjoying FE7, it was the one I started with a I still think its a great game.

[...]

Have fun Mampfoid, this was a great entry to start with, and hopefully it gets you to appreciate the heroes of the Blazing Sword.

Hey thank you very much! Also for helping out. 

So far it's fun and it's great to get to know many characters better whom I already knew a little from Heroes. It's good to have some real story in the game, this is the main drawback in Heroes. 

3 hours ago, eclipse said:

@mampfoid Sorry for the delay!  I'll move this now.

Thanks! 

There was no hurry, I only didn't want to clutter the wrong forum. ;-) 

 

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19 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Doesn't that problematic to me. Or are thieves better fighters in Binding Blade? 

Not really, I wouldn't bother levelling them up. They can have good dodge, but since they can't promote, they'll eventually become bad. Plus you only really need them on a few maps for thief duties.

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6 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

Not really, I wouldn't bother levelling them up. They can have good dodge, but since they can't promote, they'll eventually become bad. Plus you only really need them on a few maps for thief duties.

Before starting the map, could I see if a thief is needed? In FE7 it's more or less obvious in the first chapters. 

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3 minutes ago, mampfoid said:

Before starting the map, could I see if a thief is needed? In FE7 it's more or less obvious in the first chapters. 

You can it's the same in FE6 and FE7. Well, you do get a preview of the map, so you can see if there's a door or a chest you need to deal with, but you might not need to open chests all the time. The only expection would be Chapter 5, where you have some rooms with locked doors, behind some of these doors you have treasure chests.

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6 minutes ago, Garlyle said:

You can it's the same in FE6 and FE7. Well, you do get a preview of the map, so you can see if there's a door or a chest you need to deal with, but you might not need to open chests all the time. The only expection would be Chapter 5, where you have some rooms with locked doors, behind some of these doors you have treasure chests.

Ok, thanks! I might come back to you once I'm ready to start bringing Roy to his glory. :-) 

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@mampfoid far as FE6 goes, essentially somehwere along mid game you get opportunity to stock up Chest and Door Keys, so you can try stock those up and your thieves pretty much become demoted exclusively for item stealer more or less. It helps that FE6 did not force you to have Thief at higher speed than steal target

 

>So is it worth to level up the early healers at all? 

 

Generally, yes. Doing this kinda gave you a tons of extra EXP that you'd normally didn't get otherwise(since healer gets EXP off healing instead of the rather limited amount of combat EXP) and once they promote, healers would get Tomes which allows them to get more EXP. Theres also a limited amount of promotion items, and a good chunk of time before you get promoted Mages who can heal. Usually by the time you can promote mages into promoted form with Staff access, your natural healer would have higher Staff rank, which is neat since Staff Rank is much more annoying to increase overall(it either requires using limited use Staves that can be used whenever or taking damage to heal off)

Notably multiple slot for healer isn't quite as bad as it seems since there are times where you could need more than 1 staff user. If nothing else Healer on horse are really solid in this regards, since during the times they can't heal, you can use them to rescue units around instead

Edited by JSND Alter Dragon Boner
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On 17.10.2018 at 5:41 PM, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Notably multiple slot for healer isn't quite as bad as it seems since there are times where you could need more than 1 staff user. If nothing else Healer on horse are really solid in this regards, since during the times they can't heal, you can use them to rescue units around instead

I got Priscilla and Serra so far, the first is nice and on a cav while the second is fun. I'll try to level both. 

Is it worth to use arena? I'm currently at the pirate port, but it gets a little grindy. 

On 17.10.2018 at 5:41 PM, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

It helps that FE6 did not force you to have Thief at higher speed than steal target

In FE7 my thief has to be faster, right? Perhaps it's worth to give Matthew some levels as well. 

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On 10/19/2018 at 1:56 PM, mampfoid said:

Is it worth to use arena? I'm currently at the pirate port, but it gets a little grindy. 

Sorta, the Arena can be used to grind money or levels for any characters, (although there is the danger of unit death, but I remember it as fairly easy to avoid Arena deaths in FE7) a lot of people don't use it because you can easily abuse it to really break the game.

 

On 10/19/2018 at 1:56 PM, mampfoid said:

In FE7 my thief has to be faster, right? Perhaps it's worth to give Matthew some levels as well. 

Only if you want to, you will be getting a second thief (Legualt who you might have seen in Heroes) before too long, and he starts with higher speed (although if you get Matthew to Legault's starting level he will average a higher speed), and even then I don't think there is anything hard to steal with Legault in normal mode (although there are a couple of items in the harder difficulties that would require actually training a thief to get)

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