screenshot A relaxed Conquest playthrough (With Screenshots!)

[Armchair General]

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Who's getting hit twice for 20 damage here? This sounds like conjecture without evidence. And this is flagrantly ignoring there are many ways to cut damage taken.

Hardly anyone at this point, since the OP is forcing the enemy hit rates to nonexistent levels via Guard Stance, friendship bonus, and AoE abilities. But I was mainly referring to the 2RKO thing, since it's kind of difficult to max your health in this game.

But if you want evidence on how insane Lunatic is, there's is an forecast on page 2 wear Arthur is facing potentially 24 damage when he has 29hp. There's also Nyx vs that magician in the Rainbow Sage's palace. The merchants in the level after that. And there's that Chevois knight who's trying to deal 16 damage to Selena. 

Of course, all of these were on the player phase and had an good chance of killing the enemy; so the attacks didn't actually happen. But if the enemy had the initiative, the character would be almost dead after an single round of combat.

Remember, this isn't Awakening, where you can have 60-80 after spending a few weeks of fighting zombies.

 

 

Edited April 6, 2019 by Armchair General

[DehNutCase]

Chapter 21:

Pre-map Planning:

  

This map is more or less a freebie, since you have multiple ways to advance safely. Aggressive teams can take advantage of the map wide freezes so that their squishy units don't get stoned to death, and bulky, slow-roll teams can just do their regular thing all the way to the end. Basically, as long as you know what you're doing with the team you've built, this map should be a breeze.

I was a little worried during the map itself because I kept expecting the random earthquake path-blocking from the other version(s) of this map, but, oddly enough, the Conquest version is basically the most straightforward version of this map. What you see on this map is what you get, aside from the periodic reinforcements.

 

Objectives: Arms Scroll.

(And also exp on a few key units that I'll want specific level 15 skills for, namely Nyx and Camilla. IRRC you can just duplicate your units through the Einherjar shop, so utility skills like Pass & +1 move only need to be obtained on one character to run a full team based on that effect, meaning I don't need to do stuff like getting Niles\Shura to level 15 or Camilla\Felicia S-rank with Niles just for Bow Knight infiltration shenanigans.)

  

Mooks have Savage Blow, fairly decent stats, and usually a breaker. The breaker mooks come in clumps, so it's pretty easy to kill all of a single breaker type at once, and even if you don't 30 + 50 + 10 (from the stairs) is only barely higher than the crap we've already dealt with in the Kitsune map.

If you counter-kill Savage Blow doesn't trigger, so properly controlling combats means you can save a lot of resources on this map.

  

Rock beats everything. On the plus side, Rock doesn't double or crit. On the minus side, all the Stoneborn on the map have Wary Fighter, Renewal, and fairly decent bulk. (Leo's triple Spirit Dust offenses laughs at them, though.)

Occasionally they carry a stronger rock for like 44 Atk or something, but honestly they're mostly there to make you be careful when positioning than anything else. (I do have 3 people that are OHKOd by rocks, but the map design makes it really easy to deal with these guys.)

  

Boss Mook. The back side is a normal Faceless, so you don't really need to worry. This guy shouldn't be a problem unless you fuck up hilariously, despite his high stats, because of the two Dragon Veins right next to him that you can use to chip him down if needed.

  

Note that both sides of this map are Stairs, and the middle is either Floor or unavailable for standing on. This matters if you're using Elbow Room or Natural Cover. (The stairs thing make the slow and steady teams even easier to handle since a lot of them basically have +3 Def forever on this map, whereas offensive Cavalier based teams would need to do a tad more work than normal to get Elbow Room.)

Shura's benched because Elise's Dragon Vein utility is more important than his minor damage contributions on this map, since enemies have fairly high Def stats.

The overall plan is just to deathball all the way to the end of the map---and, because it's been quite a while since I last played Conquest, I played it safe and made sure everyone was using the buddy system just in case earthquake shenanigans happen and separate my team.

 

My Castle Stuff:

Got this C-rank from my room. Only missing Niles and Nyx now. Nyx doesn't really care too much at this point, though, since she already has +20 Hit from Lucky Seven, and her Mag is getting less and less shaky now that I'm actually feeding her exp.

  

Decent roll on the lottery and another (even crazier) high-roll in the Mess Hall. We're nearing the end of Bronze's dominance since we're starting to see actual crit rates and offensive specials on our units now, so I'm going to slowly transition into Irons and stuff. (Not everyone will be going through the transition, since not everyone is in a class with specials that matter.)

Flora is crazy good as a cook (flairs depend on the unit), so honestly if you have the dragon vein points to spare just having her in your barracks is pretty great. Note I cooked Mag because enemies have generally low mag on this map, and the def is just to reduce incoming damage as much as I can. She even rolled Str as the random, non-food stat, meaning this was the best possible roll for this map.

 

Resource Distribution:

  

I don't buy any of these, these screens are just here to show that they're here.

If stat boosters sold for half* then this is a nice chance to min-max your team by selling the worse stat boosters to buy a few of the better ones, but due to limited availability (you only get 1 of each booster other than the Arms Scroll, which you can buy 2 of), I mostly think of these as an endgame thing you buy to get the last points of a particular stat you need. And do bear in mind weapon rank damage bonuses, so the Arms Scrolls can be considered another copy of Energy Drop\Spirit Dust if you haven't capped weapon rank yet.

*They sell for 1k for some god damn reason, instead---mind, I agree with the decision from a balance perspective, but part of the fun of Fire Emblem is finding broken stuff and exploiting the hell out of them.

 

Eternal Seals are mostly for early promoted units (because otherwise a -5 unit is effectively capped at level 15 in terms of exp), and also to pick up some new skills---if you don't min-max your skill acquisition you pretty much have to use Eternal Seals to grab more than 2 level 15 skills. They're quite a bit more cost efficient than stat boosters, but to bear in mind that you need to get the exp to get those levels from somewhere if you aren't using them on a unit with low internal levels.

The Eternal Seals have their uses, but most games Camilla should be the only person thinking about buying one*, and maybe Leo if he's ultra blessed and you're trying to pick up one last amazing skill for him. If you have access to child map exp you can probably force most of your normal mooks to level 25 and your low internal level mooks to level 30, though, if you wanted to play the endgame maps 'normally.'

*This is a combination of the fact that she makes really good use of levels and also the fact that the people that make outrageous use of levels already have a bunch of eternal seals for free. Jakob and Felicia have 4, and Gunter has 2, I believe. Something like an early promotion Odin (because you wanted to grab a bunch of level 15 skills on him---his class pool is pretty damn good) can also benefit, but that's hardly a 'most game' thing.

  

I briefly considered buying 8 or 12 Iron Axes since we have the 5% discount, but going up in metals is amazing for axes, so I hold off for now. Even a +2 Iron (equivalent to a +0 Steel, except with better accuracy and avoid) is overkill at the moment, anyway.

Also, R.I.P. over 10k gold, lul, I'm like 50g below now.

  

Note the Beserker's Axe, it's basically a Ganglari except Axe shaped, and they're fairly common random drops at this point. I managed to get 2 copies to forge into a +1. Camilla is over-leveled, so the MT is massive overkill---just like the Ganglari, the Axe is for Attack Stance purposes. It's a pretty great boss killing weapon, though, thanks to sky high MT and Hit.

Camilla has something like 30 base Str, 31 Speed, in case it's hard to see. She also has a +2 Iron Axe and +2 Bronze Sword.

  

MoA might take after the lance mook side more, but it's still a Hoshido class, so even Paladin drops Jakob's Speed to the point where he can't expect to double people anymore. But he also picked up 15 extra damage when using swords, so whatever. (Pity it means he's 2HKOd by everything, though, meaning an Attack Stance would kill him. But it's a lot easier to deal with being squishy when you have 8 move and 1-2 range combat options.)

I dropped Tome-breaker and Res +2 since there aren't any mages on this map, and gave him a Naginata since there are Sword Breakers on the map.

Optimized my bow distribution a bit since Camilla isn't a Bow Knight anymore. The Bronze Bow is for dodge purposes rather than damage purposes for Nyx. (The Shining Bow has 1 MT over Bronze Bow +3, and Nyx's Atk and Mag difference is high enough that it's usually not worth switching to a physical weapon just for a low def, high res flier.) The Killer Bow is in case I wanted her to do 0 damage for some reason.

Odin got the Leo's Iceblade I picked up off the ground, a 14 MT magical weapon that's 1-range only and drops stats. (It's also in bp/vp, but I don't have enough to get it from that.) It's B-rank, but Odin's really close to it. He ended up not seeing any combats this map, though.

The Map:

  

I freeze everyone as the first move, so that planning for enemy range is easier.

Pity Leo doesn't have Malig Knight naturally, because the only reason Selena's here is to give him a lift.

  

Conquest, it's a game where everyone except Selena can manage to get Speed levels.

This is very, very good for Leo, but it's infuriating that the one unit that's supposed to be fast as hell is the one unit that's not fast as hell in my team.

  

I trade swap to Horse Spirit on Leo before having Beruka smack a mook. Only the Stoneborn + the Faceless could attack Beruka, so taking like ~30 damage is fine since I'll heal it off next turn. (Beruka wasn't really needed up here for damage, it's so that Leo doesn't waste his Mag countering with Lightning.)

  

Nyx is slowly getting her offenses back, and I ride Felicia to smack a mook before I remembered why I wasn't having her do that on other maps.

She got an entire level from this single kill because of her Paragon. I'm not planning on her doing main-line combat stuff this run (originally this run was planned to be much more DLC and min-maxing heavy, but I decided against it once I realized people actually liked reading this for Lunatic tips*), so keeping her low level is best in case I need to get a specific skill.

*I'd sort of just assumed that there'd be enough Conquest playthroughs out there that people didn't really need Lunatic tips anymore.

  

Felicia's growths are far more min-maxed and Jakob's, but a tad worse on average, so she gets something like 3.35 in Maid and like 3.25 in Strategist. And .75 of that is in Luck.

Felicia relies on Speed and Luck to function, since her best combat roles rely on dodge tanking, so I don't mind her stats too much, but you need a lot more work compared to Jakob to make Felicia work as a front-line combat unit even if she peaks higher than Jakob. (Without Awakening she's probably a bit worse than Camilla---although a min-maxed front-line Felicia needs less resources to function than a min-maxed Camilla---with Awakening Felicia becomes more expensive, but probably better.)

 

Like I said, she's basically Elise, since Mag, Speed, and Luck are more or less all you care about. Except unlike Elise she has the ability to actually exploit her high Avoid to turn into a front-liner, thanks to being able to grab a bunch of Avoid skills. Niles has the best avoid support bonuses, incidentally, with 20% at S-rank, but there's a fair amount of 15% avoid people in Kaze, Shura, Azura, and Felicia herself. Adventurer also gives Lucky Seven and Pass to have Felicia run up and snipe the boss without caring about anything in between, so it's pretty useful pair-up if you're into low turn-count stuff.

  

Doop.

  

The mooks on this map are level 28, but Nyx has -5 internal levels, so she gets lots of exp per combat. Her offenses are slowly climbing back up from the resource staved hole I left her in.

Nyx isn't lucky, so she cares about Skill for accuracy purposes (past turn 7, anyway, before turn 7 Lucky Seven carries her).

  

This is just to show how many fucks you need to give about Breakers on the enemy team. (A +3 Bronze would push this into 100% accuracy, although mind 15% of this is from Supportive.)

Camilla wants 2 levels from this map, since you don't really need to stay Hero to benefit from Sol and Axe Breaker, so I make things easy on myself and have her front-line.

  

End of turn 1. Note the 2 mooks in the bottom right. I'm never going to get around to killing them for exp, which is a shame. Normally I would just camp the exit for a few turns and wait until they reach me, but every screenshot I take is another screenshot that can cause a crash, so yeah.

  

God damn it, Selena.

Yes, I know this is Beruka. She got the level from counter-killing the Faceless on EP.

  

Void Curse also means they don't give weapon exp, incidentally. I believe you do still get support points for fighting them, though, so this is a pretty good place to grind if you aren't into just doing a child map or visiting a castle for support points.

Beruka's low hp is her main issue as a tank, but it does mean it's really cheap to heal her back up.

Do not fuck with triple Spirit Dust Leo.

Doop.

  

Camilla doing Camilla things. Hero doesn't have Mag growths, so triggering her 25% personal growths is pretty nice. Pity hand axes aren't the Radiant Dawn hilariously broken versions, so she actually does need to care about her Mag stat for 1-2 range purposes.

This has Skill % chance to trigger, Camilla has 30 Skill before anything else. (Although most of this comes from Hero being a very skilled class.) So she'll trigger this every other combat, more or less, assuming you double a fair amount of times---which 32 Speed Camilla definitely does.

She already has overkill damage, so I keep everything else for utility purposes.

  

Note how B caps Axe rank for Hero, which is kind of weird when you remember it comes from Fighter and Mercenary. Paladin has double A but Hero has A\B, which seems a bit odd.

I could swear that I've seen Brave Axe Heroes on the enemy team before, though. Maybe they're just cheating on weapon ranks. (Might be interesting to capture one and see if they keep their inflated weapon rank, assuming my memory isn't just shit.)

  

*Fake Celebration Noises*

  

Moving at a fairly good clip---I didn't use a Dragon Vein this turn because I wanted the Stoneborn & top side reinforcements to move a bit closer to me. If I spam freeze too much there's going to be a lot of mooks top-side, and that's annoying to deal with.

  

Botton mooks have Wary Fighter and Grisly Wound rather than Savage Blow, which is interesting. They might as well have perfect stats in everything for all they matter, though. This map is a really good demonstration of why mobility matters---having just 1 move over the enemy means they can't ever catch up if you don't care about them, and you can freely engage enemies on player phase without having to bait them into you first.

Just feeding Nyx more exp.

  

Picking up Xander's great level that I knew about from an alternate timeline. Note that his accuracy isn't this bad, normally, this mook has Swordbreaker.

  

Conquest. Speed. Selena. Etc. etc.

  

What weapon Camilla was using didn't matter, so I use the Bronze Sword to get some irrelevant sword exp. In retrospect I should've swapped Camilla back into Iron Axe for Sol procs, though.

  

Maximum offenses intensifies.

Some minor patching up. I take Savage Blow damage whenever I fail to counter-kill, so I try and position to take advantage of Healing Descant rather than use up my staves whenever it's reasonably convenient.

  

Note how Charlotte's hanging around Xander rather than the main team. Buddy rule in effect since I didn't know the map was so straightforward. (Hero gives 2 Def, so in the worse case that Xander becomes separated from everyone else he can get +5 Def from his Nohrian Blade and Charlotte pair-up.)

  

The fact that Savage Blow works on your target is really nice for chipping people down. Not that Nyx needed the extra damage.

1-2 range Brave Weapons are so stupid good, especially when you randomly get them at C-rank and 3.3k rather than A-rank and 8k.

I use Jakob to weapon swap to Horse Spirit since Leo's in range to get rock'd.

  

Second Heal staff broken of the run, getting B-rank staves. You get extra healing at C, A, and S rank, and extra hit at B and S rank.

Pity fortify is expensive as hell + needs A+rank. If I end up doing the endgame maps 'normally' I'll probably cough up for a fortify, but I doubt I will.

  

Pretty much halfway done already---Lucky Seven is pretty great when you're comfortable running low-turn count styles, but I tend to slow and steady my way through maps unless the maps give me a reason not to. (Like, say, infinite reinforcements that don't give exp, that's a fairly decent reason to not take a ton of time.)

Note how Camilla ended up fully healed during the enemy phase. If you can get a unit over-leveled (for extra Def compared to where they're 'supposed' to be), and stack some extra Def\Res on them, Hero makes them really self-sufficient. Main issue is that I treat exp as a resource to be distributed, and I'm not exactly having trouble distributing exp to anyone I want. But on this map the distribution thing doesn't matter as much since the reinforcement mooks don't give exp anyway, so there's no downside to having Camilla destroy them all.

  

Leo needed to move this way to join the rest of the team anyway, so I froze everything. Turns out he was in range of the rock guy above, so I danced him to kill this rock guy to the right.

  

If I was using DLC classes like I'd planned I'd be really tempted to get Leo Dark Flier at this point, since it's Dark Knight's low speed bases holding him down at this point. He'd get Galeforce at level 15 exactly and it wouldn't be difficult to swap him back to Dark Knight or Sorcerer for a level or two before going back to Dark Flier. (You can Heart Seal into DLC classes you've already been.)

  

Using Lunge to take the enemy phase combats.

  

This is just to save Camilla like 3 hp or so (if we take into account Sol healing), the mook doesn't give exp.

  

I decide to backtrack for exp at this point, since we passed a Dragon Vein (meaning back tracking won't cause any real issues), and it's pretty easy to pick up the 4 mooks of exp we'd otherwise pass by.

Got Camilla to take the combat here to block the Stoneborn from getting his maximum threat range + bait a bunch of mooks into giving her exp.

  

Didn't want to waste Leo's hp, so I take the inaccuracy from fighting at 2-range rather than using Heartseeker. Nyx comes in to take the kill & setup Heartseeker for the next mook.

Chip damage + setting up Inspiration.

  

Attack Stance gets Nyx this fairly typical Nyx level. (Her skill is pretty shaky, but it's still better than her Luck, so her base accuracy will primarily come from her Skill stat.)

Niles really likes Heartseeker when he's not Adventurer. Lucky Seven would basically fix his accuracy completely since I'm using Bronzes (no reason not to for Outlaws, since they don't get offensive skills and the natural ones have accuracy issues), but it's not a big enough draw over Bow Knight's +2 move & better Strength.

  

L&D basically turns Jakob into Charlotte. The Samurai line being hilarious means that he dodges the counter, though. I have Xander swap him into Naginata since the red aggro line is a Sword Breaker mook I'm baiting.

  

Pretty close to the finish line now.

  

Corrin's basically the best backpack in the game, so she tends to get a lot of Guard Stance exp in my playthroughs. Pity about the sub-par level.

  

Less than stellar, but unlike Corrin Camilla got stats she actually cares about.

This means Camilla doesn't need to be Hero anymore. She'll probably end up Malig Knight for the rest of the game, since Tomes have weapon triangle versus Axes just like Swords, and she keeps Axes. I might give her some Speedwing(s) and Goddess Icon(s) to fix Malig Knight's Speed and Luck*, but we'll see.

*She can't just Bronze her way through positive crit rates now since she actually wants offensive skills at this point.

Nyx doops a mook for more exp.

  

I run Elise down here for the Dragon Vein that I missed.

Technically Camilla's still 1 level from the Lunatic exp cutoff---since level 17 means she's 12, or 4 higher than the mooks---but this is another one of those 'just have the Jagen take care of it' moments where I can't be assed to be 100% efficient in my resource distribution.

  

Rose's Thorns + Savage Blow combine to make Leo 2 Mag happier. And the I dance him to shoot Lightning bolts at a rock.

  

Lucky Seven's gone at this point, but Nyx is also only 5 levels from Pass at this point, so I don't need to go overboard about feeding her. (It's nice that she pretty much has her offenses back at this point, though.)

  

Another wave of exp-less mooks, so I send Camilla in to take care of things + bait 2 of the last Stoneborns.

  

Healing and buffing Xander so that he can actually go in and do stuff rather than just getting Camilla Savage Blow'd from failing the counter-kill.

The Odin pair-up and Azura's dance gives Xander enough to double the Faceless, and the Rally gives him enough bulk that they'll target Camilla rather than him, so his less than Perfect Accuracy won't be a factor on EP.

  

The right side is blocked off by the Xander Camilla combo, so I send Selena left (with Inspiration support), to bait the Stoneborn that's all the way to the left.

Lightning beats everything in rock, paper, scissors.

I dance Leo then have him freeze the map---making sure to swap to Horse Spirit beforehand.

Don't know why I didn't have the pre-combat screenshot, but I Lunge to get Camilla into counter the boss position, which will save us the worst of Vengeance damage. (She'll still take a tad extra, from Savage Blow damage, but nothing she can't handle.)

  

Xander smacks a mook to try and counteract the Stoneborn's Renewal. He's safe for 3 rock hits and no one else can hit him. A-rank is the highest Paladin can get, so he has all his weapons (and half an Energy Drop) with this.

  

Rocks can't crit, so I end Beruka next to the Stoneborn with her Axe to see if it's stupid enough to hit her and her 40% crit rates.

I'm not sure if it's the Savage Blow that pushed Camilla into the 2HKO or if she crit, but she counter-killed the boss mook for the only objective on the map.

Failed the crit roll, oh well.

I then have Leo deal with this side before I figure out the next move.

  

So much Speed for everyone who isn't Selena. Leo has 4.05 average stats in Dark Knight because it's a pretty amazing class if we ignore the whole Speed thing + Leo is pretty amazing, so he's under-rolling total stats but high-rolling the stats that matter. A rough guide to Leo's growth is that he has 50% in everything. (Not exactly, of course, but most of his growths are around the 50% range.)

Yeah he's basically just pre-promoted Odin, if you cared about Samurai he can even get it from Odin.

  

Reinforcement mooks don't give exp so having Camilla freeze everything doesn't cost us anything when she counter-kills the mook above her.

  

Doop.

Just clearing mooks so next turn's simpler.

  

It's trivial to have everyone escape next turn, but I hang back another turn to pick up some exp.

Corrin missed her first hit (which proc'd an irrelevant Dragon Fang), but killed the mook with her second---I skipped the combat so I don't know if it's a crit or a Dragon Fang.

Just getting some Odin Niles support points. Bow Knight would be pretty great to move Odin out of foot-lock, since I don't really want to feed him boots (I don't want to feed anyone boots, stat booster are for looking at, not using, unless you're in a serious run.)

  

3 mooks let that give exp. Two of whom are in the high-light'd pack. I'm worried about crashes so I don't hang back for them.

  

These are some sad, sad, Corrin levels. She has 3.9 average growths in Nohr Noble with Strength Boon and Luck Bane, I believe, and thanks to her Luck bane her growths are fairly optimized. (Supposedly she even has 60% Speed, just like how Selena also supposedly has 60% speed in most of her classes.)

I have everyone escape for the wrap.

 

Epilogue:

  

Not a lot of support levels since I didn't bother grinding.

Strictly speaking you should optimize to grab the relevant A or S-ranks ASAP, but eh.

[Armchair General]

You know, one of the weird things about this area is how they handled the geography. In Birthright, you're walking up the stairs to get from Hoshido to the Wind Tribe village; and in Conquest, it's the opposite...except that you're still hiking up the stairs.

[DehNutCase]

It's just one of those paths where you go uphill both ways, in the snow.

If you must make sense of it logically it's probably just a 'V' or upside-down 'V' shape, and the enemy camps the high-ground like smart people do. That is, it's basically a mountain or a valley, so you'd go up then down or down then up, and the enemy camps the part where you go up both times, since being on the high-ground is a huge advantage.

[Shadow Mir]

17 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

I was a little worried during the map itself because I kept expecting the random earthquake path-blocking from the other version(s) of this map, but, oddly enough, the Conquest version is basically the most straightforward version of this map. What you see on this map is what you get, aside from the periodic reinforcements.

Do you even play on this map in the other routes...? I doubt it.

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

Do you even play on this map in the other routes...? I doubt it.

No, it's just used as the Wind Tribe's front yard. Besides, most of Birthright's map are pretty straightforward.

[DehNutCase]

It's possible I mixed up the revelations wind tribe map with the eternal stairway, confusing the pre-map animations for stuff in the map itself, and just remembering the part where the team gets separated. It's been a while since I last played Fates stuff.

[DehNutCase]

In retrospect, sending Xander to the right side, where every pair'd up Falcon Knight ORKOs him might've been a bad idea.

Reset Counter: 22

The problem is that I only knew about it in retrospect. All the Falcon Knights were fucking reinforcements. (I could've ended the map, but wanted to grab the exp from the hilarious amounts of reinforcement mooks that popped up, and I didn't position Xander properly for that.)

 

Anyway, updates are probably going to be slow since my free time is going away again.

[Shadow Mir]

On 4/5/2019 at 6:41 PM, Armchair General said:

I think Charolette is kind of useful late game as an Berserker. Granted, I was playing on Hard and gave her with an Killer Axe that had 2/3 accuracy and an insane crit rate. To me, she was an boss-killer and vanguard because of her personal skill; plus I think I had Benny and everyone else to move in front of her after she killed someone because it would be kind of stupid to leave an opening like that.

I find it hard to find much reason to invest in Charlotte - her one standout feature is something that other characters have without having her glaring weaknesses. Like Camilla, for example. Besides her, Effie, Keaton and Velouria can also hit hard, and none of them are made of glass like she is.

[Armchair General]

49 minutes ago, DehNutCase said:

In retrospect, sending Xander to the right side, where every pair'd up Falcon Knight ORKOs him might've been a bad idea.

Reset Counter: 22

The problem is that I only knew about it in retrospect. All the Falcon Knights were fucking reinforcements. (I could've ended the map, but wanted to grab the exp from the hilarious amounts of reinforcement mooks that popped up, and I didn't position Xander properly for that.)

 

Anyway, updates are probably going to be slow since my free time is going away again.

Is it wrong to assume that the bolt naginata did you in? 

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I find it hard to find much reason to invest in Charlotte - her one standout feature is something that other characters have without having her glaring weaknesses. Like Camilla, for example. Besides her, Effie, Keaton and Velouria can also hit hard, and none of them are made of glass like she is.

I had enough units who were weak to beast-killers and I needed an proficient axe-wielder to deal with blue weapons since archers are kind of fragile. Effie is kind of an decent choice as an general, but Charolette's personal was to weird for me to ignore...

[Shadow Mir]

14 minutes ago, Armchair General said:

I had enough units who were weak to beast-killers and I needed an proficient axe-wielder to deal with blue weapons since archers are kind of fragile. Effie is kind of an decent choice as an general, but Charolette's personal was to weird for me to ignore...

As in, too situational? Because added damage and crit against female units doesn't mean a damn when most every enemy unit is male. But more to the point, were you just not using Camilla in that run? Because she's pretty much all I need for axes - I prefer bows for dealing with blue weapons.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[Armchair General]

1 hour ago, Shadow Mir said:

As in, too situational? Because added damage and crit against female units doesn't mean a damn when most every enemy unit is male. But more to the point, were you just not using Camilla in that run? Because she's pretty much all I need for axes - I prefer bows for dealing with blue weapons.

I was using Camilla. But then came the matter of needing another axe-wielder who wasn't vulnerable to certain weapons and Beruka's default class was kind of superfluous to Camilla's. I tried Niles, but he's either on raiding duty, going after fliers, helping Odin, or just taking potshots at someone else. Plus, it kind of coincidental that the female generics are vulnerable to axes.

[DehNutCase]

It was the beast killer, actually.* I fucked up positioning really hard since I wasn't paying attention. (I caught the first bolt naginata properly and happened to have Selena available to deal with it.) Xander managed to survive the 2nd Bolt Naginata by counter-killing with a crit, but the beast killer caught him anyway. 

*Edit: Oh wait, no, it's just a Silver Naginata---the pair'd up Falcons had double Bolt Naginata and double Silver Naginata unlike the first set. The reason it did so much damage was the Lancefaire. In other news, Reset Counter: 23. Really feels like the game wants me to actually use tonics at this point. (Or maybe just not farm the massive amount of exp that the map is handing me on a silver platter.) I also completely mis-understood what the reinforcements were tied to---I figured they were tied to certain unit kills, but no, the mass wave just comes from being near Yukimura, and this time my right side team was caught completely out of position because the left side happened to reach him sooner, unlike my 1st attempt where both sides reached him at around the same time. (It was fixable with good RNG, but I was exactly one unit-turn short because I had too many units paired up and I missed my first Freeze Staff use.)

 

The 4x mage spawn was hilarious, too, since they have 2RKOs even on Selena, and everyone else had it even worse. Fortunately I happened to have a full shield gauge so I managed to choke point that reinforcement wave properly.

 

Really dislike this kind of map since it's hard to prepare for it without doing it before or looking up a guide---I'd still dislike them even if you had the ability to swap between sides, but at least then you can compensate for the fact that you didn't actually know what you were dealing with on each side at the start of map.

Edited April 9, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, Armchair General said:

I was using Camilla. But then came the matter of needing another axe-wielder who wasn't vulnerable to certain weapons and Beruka's default class was kind of superfluous to Camilla's. I tried Niles, but he's either on raiding duty, going after fliers, helping Odin, or just taking potshots at someone else. Plus, it kind of coincidental that the female generics are vulnerable to axes.

I never felt that I needed another axe unit - largely because bows can deal with the stuff axes are good against as well as, if not better than them,  largely because they're not so inaccurate, and because the bow users you get are better than the axe users not named Camilla (or at least Arthur and Charlotte - not that that's saying much since they're so terrible, as is to be expected of axe infantry).

On 4/5/2019 at 6:51 PM, DehNutCase said:

Charlotte has some of the most min-maxed offenses in the game, so she's really good at the style Conquest more or less expects from you, which is highly mobile offenses that clears every single threat in one player phase. Most other units lack just a bit of Atk or Spd to ORKO consistently, but invested Charlotte has very consistent ORKOs. (Her issue is that she needs 'upkeep' in the form of healing after pretty much every fight, but a highly mobile team can spare a player phase between waves to heal everyone up.)

Erm, if you were running a highly mobile team, I'd imagine Charlotte wouldn't have much of a place on one without a Friendship or Partner Seal; her sole mounted class is Strategist, which she wouldn't be so good in. And even with those, most mounted classes don't use axes; only the Wyvern line and Great Knight do, meaning she's most likely gonna have to abandon her weapon rank.

Edited April 9, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[DehNutCase]

55 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Erm, if you were running a highly mobile team, I'd imagine Charlotte wouldn't have much of a place on one without a Friendship or Partner Seal; her sole mounted class is Strategist, which she wouldn't be so good in. And even with those, most mounted classes don't use axes; only the Wyvern line and Great Knight do, meaning she's most likely gonna have to abandon her weapon rank.

I use mobility because I'm lazy. I use Charlotte because most of my team is under-leveled, and it's extremely difficult to get damage or bulk on the cheap, but she has both. And the weapon rank argument would work better on someone who isn't using Bronzes on pretty much everyone.

 

The majority of my team is looking at being straight up counter-killed in a Counter hit + Attack Stance hit, and most of them don't have the speed to double in a pair-up, nor do you get enough unit-turns to properly advance if you're only using half (since the other half is busy being backpacks).

This is an average mook on the map, he has 43 Atk half the time. Odin, for example, has these stats the next time he levels up. 

He takes 33-ish from the counter-attack and then 16-ish* from from an Attack Stance. This happens to everyone on my team other than Camilla, Leo, Corrin, and Selena. Camilla, Selena, and Leo are extremely heavily invested (they have levels, stats boosters, and optimized inventories). Corrin has +9 Def, +7 Res from her Dragonstone+.

*Edit: I did the math wrong. It's more like 30ish and then 15ish from the Attack Stance. So he's only overkilled by 11 hp.

If you think this is because Odin is a squishy unit Silas has 33.5 hp, 21.5 Def, and 13.95 Res on average at level 6 Paladin from a level 20 promotion. Everyone is fucked on Lunatic if you don't get the obscene child map resources. The reason children are broken is because a child joining gives you a map's worth of exp, since you didn't need to grind them up to par, and then their map gives you another map worth of resources. If you can get children without affecting resource acquisition it'd be pretty obvious they're on the same level as the 1st gen units, except with worse availability.

 

Niles and the like can survive the mages, but this:

Is also an average mook on the map, if we ignore Death Blow. He has Heartseeker and 106 natural hit, incidentally.

If you stack stats from AoE skills this stuff is survivable, but you need a heavily invested unit + the relevant AoE skills, and also the map not giving you a reason to kill mooks. And the map isn't kind enough to just give you all physical units in one side and all magical in another anymore. They're stacking high speed (the Falcon Knights in a pair-up have 30 speed), decent Atk (the Lancefaire Falcon Knights hit for ~35 magical and ~41 physical), and hit both sides of bulk at once.

 

And we're hitting stat caps on people like Camilla already, meaning being over-leveled isn't going to give her (or people that ate a ton of stat-boosters) bulk very soon.

Edited April 9, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Armchair General]

43 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I never felt that I needed another axe unit - largely because bows can deal with the stuff axes are good against as well as, if not better than them,  largely because they're not so inaccurate, and because the bow users you get are better than the axe users not named Camilla (or at least Arthur and Charlotte - not that that's saying much since they're so terrible, as is to be expected of axe infantry).

Erm, if you were running a highly mobile team, I'd imagine Charlotte wouldn't have much of a place on one without a Friendship or Partner Seal; her sole mounted class is Strategist, which she wouldn't be so good in. And even with those, most mounted classes don't use axes; only the Wyvern line and Great Knight do, meaning she's most likely gonna have to abandon her weapon rank.

I  wasn't really an fan of relying on archers because they need someone else or some distance to actually work on hard. Niles was good early on, but I don't remember using him that much until I wanted to kill off an straggler. Even though axes are kind of inaccurate, I was in the market for an front-liner that wasn't royalty, conveniently enough, I got the border guards.

 

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

I use mobility because I'm lazy. I use Charlotte because most of my team is under-leveled, and it's extremely difficult to get damage or bulk on the cheap, but she has both. And the weapon rank argument would work better on someone who isn't using Bronzes on pretty much everyone.

 

The majority of my team is looking at being straight up counter-killed in a Counter hit + Attack Stance hit, and most of them don't have the speed to double in a pair-up, nor do you get enough unit-turns to properly advance if you're only using half (since the other half is busy being backpacks).

This is an average mook on the map, he has 43 Atk half the time. Odin, for example, has these stats the next time he levels up. 

He takes 33-ish from the counter-attack and then 16-ish* from from an Attack Stance. This happens to everyone on my team other than Camilla, Leo, Corrin, and Selena. Camilla, Selena, and Leo are extremely heavily invested (they have levels, stats boosters, and optimized inventories). Corrin has +9 Def, +7 Res from her Dragonstone+.

*Edit: I did the math wrong. It's more like 30ish and then 15ish from the Attack Stance. So he's only overkilled by 11 hp.

If you think this is because Odin is a squishy unit Silas has 33.5 hp, 21.5 Def, and 13.95 Res on average at level 6 Paladin from a level 20 promotion. Everyone is fucked on Lunatic if you don't get the obscene child map resources. The reason children are broken is because a child joining gives you a map's worth of exp, since you didn't need to grind them up to par, and then their map gives you another map worth of resources. If you can get children without affecting resource acquisition it'd be pretty obvious they're on the same level as the 1st gen units, except with worse availability.

 

Niles and the like can survive the mages, but this:

Is also an average mook on the map, if we ignore Death Blow. He has Heartseeker and 106 natural hit, incidentally.

If you stack stats from AoE skills this stuff is survivable, but you need a heavily invested unit + the relevant AoE skills, and also the map not giving you a reason to kill mooks. And the map isn't kind enough to just give you all physical units in one side and all magical in another anymore. They're stacking high speed (the Falcon Knights in a pair-up have 30 speed), decent Atk (the Lancefaire Falcon Knights hit for ~35 magical and ~41 physical), and hit both sides of bulk at once.

 

And we're hitting stat caps on people like Camilla already, meaning being over-leveled isn't going to give her (or people that ate a ton of stat-boosters) bulk very soon.

Well, you gotta admit, not everyone would be content to settle for forged bronzes. Also, as far as I'm concerned, Charlotte has the damage, but not the bulk - high HP alone does not good bulk make. Just look at most of the fighters in other FE games - they had high HP, but I wouldn't exactly call a lot of them bulky. The only ones that could actually be defensive enough to be bulky were Lot (in a game where axes were drearily inaccurate), Nolan (winds up in a position where he has to carry the team because your other units, bar Sothe, are far less bulky in comparison, and Vaike (in a game known for stat inflation).

Those screen caps show enemies that don't look much worse than what Hard throws at you - for all your banter about enemies having better stats on Lunatic, you have yet to, oh i dunno, PROVE IT! Or is it because you know you cannot prove it?

[DehNutCase]

9 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Well, you gotta admit, not everyone would be content to settle for forged bronzes. Also, as far as I'm concerned, Charlotte has the damage, but not the bulk - high HP alone does not good bulk make. Just look at most of the fighters in other FE games - they had high HP, but I wouldn't exactly call a lot of them bulky. The only ones that could actually be defensive enough to be bulky were Lot (in a game where axes were drearily inaccurate), Nolan (winds up in a position where he has to carry the team because your other units, bar Sothe, are far less bulky in comparison, and Vaike (in a game known for stat inflation).

Those screen caps show enemies that don't look much worse than what Hard throws at you - for all your banter about enemies having better stats on Lunatic, you have yet to, oh i dunno, PROVE IT! Or is it because you know you cannot prove it?

Lunatic is about higher enemy densities and lower player team stats. I already showed you the math on why everyone on my team is counter-killed, which is also why everyone on my team is 2RKOd on EP. The fact that you aren't taking lower player team stats into consideration is why you don't understand Lunatic. Camilla, the highest leveled unit on my team, is level 17 at the start of map, or effectively 2 levels higher in terms of exp.

Everyone else has a lower level than the mooks on the enemy team, in terms of exp. Like seriously, just try Lunatic without child maps. You're either right, in which case you can do whatever you want, because the game is so easy for you. Or you're wrong because you have no idea how resource distribution works.

 

Charlotte has: 46.25 + 5 hp, 12.5 Def, and 1.75 Res as a level 20/6 Beserker. She's just as dead as Odin against mages, but she has a way better shot at OHKOing because of her 31.5 Str, and her 25.75 Speed means that unlike Xander etc. she can consistently survive a magical unit in a pair-up. (Xander is consistently dead even with a pair-up versus the 30 Speed Falcon Knights on this map.)

Versus physical units her 18 hp lead versus Silas easily cancels out his Def lead, especially once her higher speed is taken into consideration.

 

Higher enemy density means that you can't afford to have everyone pair'd up for stat bonuses unless the map allows you to slow-roll, because you have to kill enough of them so that nobody is taking multiple fights on EP, which would kill them. There are strategies that let you do choke point stuff to limit enemy phase combats you take, but they're not always available. I can trivialize this map by just pairing up everyone left side and abusing the left side's better choke points, for example, but that takes longer + I have to back track the entirety of the right side.

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

I wonder: what builds have you tried on previous playthroughs before now with certain units? Like with making Effie a Spear Master or Sniper, Camilla a Wyvern Lord or such?

[Armchair General]

19 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

 

Those screen caps show enemies that don't look much worse than what Hard throws at you - for all your banter about enemies having better stats on Lunatic, you have yet to, oh i dunno, PROVE IT! Or is it because you know you cannot prove it?

Going by the maps on the FE Wiki, there's an slight but growing increase in the quantity of enemies. But I won't be surprised if Lunatic threw in an extra ability or 2 for the bosses and certain specialists.

[DehNutCase]

10 hours ago, Azure in a Roundabout said:

I wonder: what builds have you tried on previous playthroughs before now with certain units? Like with making Effie a Spear Master or Sniper, Camilla a Wyvern Lord or such?

I haven't actually played Conquest that much, mind. I'd say I started like 4-6 runs of Conquest that I played semi-seriously and completed only one.

 

I have tried janky stuff before, of course, and things like reclass timings and child map usage and so on, but mostly what it boils down to is that your units tend to be best in their base classes, not because they're optimal in them, but because the people who designed Conquest were very good at it, and handed you basically an ideal lineup in terms of team composition to beat every map. (I'm basically leaning on their team-building skills rather than my own, and Conquest tests team-building more than min-maxing individual units, so their skills are carrying my ass.)

(So if you reclass people, especially ones that fulfill hard to find roles like Flying + Bulky + Mage + Physical (Camilla), all at once, or dodgy + 1-2 range + healer + debuffer all at once (Felicia\Jakob), the game gets harder than it 'should' be because you end up missing the right tools.)

 

The DLC classes and child maps completely break the game, though. DLC classes are basically a free set of tonics all the way until Chapter 20 (my units weren't promoted until around then), on top of a 'free' level of stats from 20-21. They even have better weapon access for grinding weapon ranks because why not. Child maps are even more hilarious, since they basically triple or even quadruple the resources you have to distribute---and Conquest is beatable with only doing the main route Chapters.

 

Off-topic:

In other news:

Reset Counter: 24

Apparently the AI would break the breakable Levee in the middle of the map to get to your stuff, but only the last wave of reinforcements, the replacement Mechanists and such would still stay in Sakura's box. You learn something stupid everyday.

This is actually a pretty huge problem, Leo & Camilla are both needed right side (Leo for the mages, Camilla for the Falcon Knights), and even though I have Corrin blocking the left I'm not actually sure my remaining units can deal with the ass-load of units in Sakura's box. (There's like 10 total in there or something stupid, even if she only started with 2 mooks around her.)

Good thing I have Selena with a hilarious amount of stat boosters, so hopefully she can handle it.

As you can see I have the map completely handled except these random jerkwards that break breakables. I have legit never seen the Conquest AI break breakables on any map before this. At least, I don't remember it happening before---my memory is pretty bad.

[Armchair General]

About Conquest AI breaking down walls, it happens on the harbor level on Hard.

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Armchair General said:

Going by the maps on the FE Wiki, there's an slight but growing increase in the quantity of enemies. But I won't be surprised if Lunatic threw in an extra ability or 2 for the bosses and certain specialists.

That's what I'd expect of higher difficulties - more enemy units, and more skills as well. However, outside of the endgame, where Inevitable End and Staff Savant (technically, this one's always a thing outside of Lunatic because of Iago, but in Lunatic, all the staff users in 26 and endgame get it) come out to play, there doesn't seem to be any notable difficulty spikes from Hard to Lunatic, at least from what I've seen here.

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

I have tried janky stuff before, of course, and things like reclass timings and child map usage and so on, but mostly what it boils down to is that your units tend to be best in their base classes, not because they're optimal in them, but because the people who designed Conquest were very good at it, and handed you basically an ideal lineup in terms of team composition to beat every map. (I'm basically leaning on their team-building skills rather than my own, and Conquest tests team-building more than min-maxing individual units, so their skills are carrying my ass.)

(So if you reclass people, especially ones that fulfill hard to find roles like Flying + Bulky + Mage + Physical (Camilla), all at once, or dodgy + 1-2 range + healer + debuffer all at once (Felicia\Jakob), the game gets harder than it 'should' be because you end up missing the right tools.)

 

The DLC classes and child maps completely break the game, though. DLC classes are basically a free set of tonics all the way until Chapter 20 (my units weren't promoted until around then), on top of a 'free' level of stats from 20-21. They even have better weapon access for grinding weapon ranks because why not. Child maps are even more hilarious, since they basically triple or even quadruple the resources you have to distribute---and Conquest is beatable with only doing the main route Chapters.

Erm, no. You're giving them way too much credit - these are the same people who thought giving Nyx shaky accuracy was a good idea, when it's only baffling (granted, it isn't unfixable, but still, it's a bizarre design choice for a glass cannon unit). Also, I don't really see what good magic access does Camilla when her magic stays lower than her strength by a notable margin forever; incidentally, this is the problem I have with hybrid classes like Malig Knight - most units cannot pull it off well. Though I've probably stated this already. I do agree that DLC classes break the game, though.

[DehNutCase]

20 hours ago, Armchair General said:

About Conquest AI breaking down walls, it happens on the harbor level on Hard.

Oh right, my memory is just shit.

Edit:
Reset Counter: 25

Not me this time, just another crash. -_-

(If I crash another time I'll just do the same old clear the map regularly and then go back to an old save for screenshots thing.)

Double Edit:

Reset Counter: 26

Feelsbadman. Another crash.

(The map was more or less completely solved this time, too. There was like 30 mooks of exp left to take, but all the bosses were dead, Leo was even free because he landed his shaky hit rates to ORKO all the mages, so the only issues were the middle---which Selena had more than enough stats to take care of---and a couple of pass mooks and Silver Bow mooks who need to be spaced to handle.)

 

Out of time for today, so I guess I'll finish the map tomorrow, grab the screenshots I'm missing from the map's second half, and then post the day after.

Edited April 11, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Shadow Mir]

On 4/9/2019 at 11:36 AM, DehNutCase said:

Lunatic is about higher enemy densities and lower player team stats. I already showed you the math on why everyone on my team is counter-killed, which is also why everyone on my team is 2RKOd on EP. The fact that you aren't taking lower player team stats into consideration is why you don't understand Lunatic. Camilla, the highest leveled unit on my team, is level 17 at the start of map, or effectively 2 levels higher in terms of exp.

Everyone else has a lower level than the mooks on the enemy team, in terms of exp. Like seriously, just try Lunatic without child maps. You're either right, in which case you can do whatever you want, because the game is so easy for you. Or you're wrong because you have no idea how resource distribution works.

 

Charlotte has: 46.25 + 5 hp, 12.5 Def, and 1.75 Res as a level 20/6 Beserker. She's just as dead as Odin against mages, but she has a way better shot at OHKOing because of her 31.5 Str, and her 25.75 Speed means that unlike Xander etc. she can consistently survive a magical unit in a pair-up. (Xander is consistently dead even with a pair-up versus the 30 Speed Falcon Knights on this map.)

Versus physical units her 18 hp lead versus Silas easily cancels out his Def lead, especially once her higher speed is taken into consideration.

 

Higher enemy density means that you can't afford to have everyone pair'd up for stat bonuses unless the map allows you to slow-roll, because you have to kill enough of them so that nobody is taking multiple fights on EP, which would kill them. There are strategies that let you do choke point stuff to limit enemy phase combats you take, but they're not always available. I can trivialize this map by just pairing up everyone left side and abusing the left side's better choke points, for example, but that takes longer + I have to back track the entirety of the right side.

The problem I have here is that your comparison is fallacious in assuming equal levels for Charlotte and Silas despite the latter's massive availability lead - thanks to her join time and being underleveled, Charlotte would need like two levels a chapter to be 20/6 by chapter 22, which is a tall order when accuracy is a concern (again, not everyone will settle for forged bronzes).

Edit: Speaking of Charlotte, it brings me back to your setup of "Great" Club Awakening Berserker you mentioned for her - given the "Great" Club's Cev penalty being stacked on top of the one she'd suffer due to class, that'd mean there's a good chance that she just makes like a frog and croaks unless you glue Percy to her. Even then, you're looking at a weapon that's drearily inaccurate.

Edited April 11, 2019 by Shadow Mir