screenshot A relaxed Conquest playthrough (With Screenshots!)

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Chapter 26:

Pre-Map Planning:

  

Chapter 26 is one of Conquest's many, many maps where the major difficulty comes from a lack of information. Note how Iago has a Hexing Rod---it actually doesn't matter at all, but there's no way you'd know that unless you played the map before. I actually like the map's design quite a lot aside from that, though, because if you have played the map before then it gives you quite a few options on how you want to clear it + has a pretty interesting gimmick in Iago's whole red-light, green-light thing.

The gimmick with Iago is that he'll use all of his staves in order, depending on turn number (rather than whether he hit you with earlier staves or not), starting with Enfeeble and ending with Hexing Rod, so as long as you aren't in range of him on turn 4/8/12/... he'll never get to use Hexing Rod on you.

Reset Counter: 30

I'm just going to put the reset counter here so I don't forget about it. tl;dr on my resets is that one of them was me not knowing how the faceless & stoneborn room worked and the other two were me fucking up badly (not having Corrin chug tonics before I had her tank for one reset and accidentally opening a door too early for the other). I guess you can also give me also a moral reset or something because I didn't think of giving Leo a bronze tome (since if Leo crit he was going to die---just about everyone need a bronze weapon option if you want to be perfectly reliable---but more on that later), so:

Moral Reset Counter: 11

 

  

This is the other Hexing Rod asshole on the map---note the Staff Savant. But also note her stats---if you capture a maid they make for great staff users thanks to their decent Mag, excellent Skill, and passable Luck on top of S-rank staves. She's pretty easy to kill turn 1, though---I used Pass to kill her as my first move, but as you'll see later the Pass wasn't needed at all.

  

Entraps are a bigger issue, since it limits the places you can stand to clear the first room. That said, this maid is far easier to handle than the other Entrap user---she's even positioned so that you have 2 non-Entrap squares to kill the Hexing Rod Maid.

  

As it turned out, I completely mis-remembered about enemy Heroes having rank A axes. Most of these guys aren't too threatening as long as you don't get your hp halved thanks to hexing Rod---everyone in the room has Wyrmslayers, though, so don't use Wyverns or Corrin for this room.

  

The mooks mostly have stats and skills like this---pretty easy to handle as long as you remember Counter isn't the completely broken Awakening version, Counter is only active if you attack into them, if they attack you it doesn't do anything.

  

42 Atk Brave Weapon is interesting, and so is Lucky Seven, but honestly if you can't find multiple 40 Def people in your lineup at this point you fucked up hilariously badly. There's another guy with a Silver Sword and the same skillset on the other set of the room.

  

There's also this weirdo with Darting Blow and a defensive skill. Just like with the Brave Sword guy, he's mirror'd by another guy in skillset on the other side of the room. Honestly this room is a freebie unless you've been relying on Corrin and Camilla to do everything, though.

  

Anyway, on to the next room. These are the average Sorcerers on the map, very high Mag and Res, decent Def, but awful Speed. Not really much of an issue since just about any Ninja you captured from the last map can probably solo or duo all the mages on the map if you wanted them to---S-rank WTA is a hell of a drug. And if you haven't captured any your mage killers should be able to handle them fairly easily regardless.

  

Freeze makes it harder to dodge tank, but that's about it.

  

Enfeeble is a bigger threat, but they don't have Inevitable End so who cares. (You should have Rallies to counter Enfeeble by this point in the game, so without Inevitable End debuffs shouldn't matter.)

  

There are some interesting weapon & skill choices on the Sorcerers, but tl;dr is that 40 Res probably steamrolls all of them.

38 Crit is pretty sweet, though.

  

41 Atk Brave Weapon.

  

50 Atk and Inspiration.

  

This guy isn't actually part of the room---since he's locked outside. Pretty sure he's only here so you have someone to use Excalibur---37 effective Mag after Tomefaire is pretty sweet, and Excalibur gives +5 effective Speed, which bumps him up to 27 Speed, which is very respectable.

I should mention at this point that opening the door to the room with a ton of mages spawns a wave of reinforcements, but it's only 4 and you don't actually need a lot of people to handle the mage room. (I end up blocking all reinforcements for my completed run, though, since it was like 3 in the morning at that point and I can't be assed to play 100% efficiently, I even skipped the Spy Yumi/Shuriken chest because I didn't want to bother doing the faceless room.)

  

Anyway, on to the next room. 42 Atk Brave Weapon and a giant middle finger to Xander is the theme of this room. Every General has a Beast Killer. The generals have pretty great stats, though, so feel free to capture a few assuming you planned ahead and gave Niles a Shining Bow. (LUL trying to capture vs. 37 Defense otherwise.)

  

There's a few with Silver Lances, a few with Spears.

  

This guy is great if you don't have an Inspiration already, he's bulky as all hell meaning it's no problem to have him front line and provide Inspiration to your other tanks. (I don't need him because I can just class change Leo into Dark Knight if I wanted a tankier Inspiration user, but 37 Def and Wary fight is damn sweet---so in retrospect I wish I captured him.)

  

This guy is also interesting, but more for offensive teams---Inspiration is just for providing the +2 damage for someone like him. 36 Str 29 Speed is some godly offenses for ORKOing a mook to start off with.

Every Berserker has a Hammer, so I hope you didn't have Xander in Great Knight if you wanted him tanking, lul.

 

Note the 22 crit, also. It seems a bit low, since Beserkers are supposed to have 20% base crit according to Serenes Forest---they have 28 skill, which should mean around 30% crit rather than 22%, but *shrug*---Keaton tanks them no problem since he has 20% dodge thank to his stone + promoted class bases, but everyone can hit 14 Luck after Bronze Weapon & pair-up so the generic Beserkers aren't too much of a problem.

  

Guarding Hans are two of these generals. Pretty great skills, but honestly I think the Inspiration guy is better for player use. That said, I'm pretty sure this guy can just grab a Guard Naginata and solo last boss Takumi by taking 0 damage the whole time.

Note how they have both types of effective weapons.

  

Again, 38 crit feels a bit low (unless Berserker is only 10 or 15% base crit rather than 20%), but with Death Blow it's more than enough to have positive crit rates on everyone unless you're stat stacking like a crazy person. It is possible to see 0% crit rates vs. Hans, but I'm not sure why you'd bother since it's so much easier to get 50+ defense instead. Who cares if he crits all the time when it only does like 30 damage.

Note his extremely crappy Res, this means it's really easy to use offensive staves on him---Entrap seems to the one other people like to use, but I just used Enfeeble since I had one lying around since forever. Didn't have enough points to get Entrap from bp/vp rewards and I didn't want to cough up 5k.

  

Anyway, if you couldn't the Inspiration Beserker this guy's also pretty good, quick Draw is 40 effective Str and that's pretty sweet when you remember that Hans is going to drop his S-rank axe for a Capture'd Berserker to use.

50 Atk with a Brave Axe is also pretty damn nice. (For us, that is, it's trivial to reach 50 Def so this guy doesn't actually do anything ever in AI hands.)

 

The Inspiration guy is probably better, but I ended up Capturing this guy instead.

  

The other Berserkers are pretty boring, just Silver Axes and Tomahawks. You should remember Tomahawks can crit, unlike Hand Axes, but they're not too threatening.

  

And, of course, there's the maids. The Physics don't matter unless you're having attrition problems, but the Freeze can be pretty annoying if you're relying on dodge tanking. Freeze doesn't matter for me since my tanks have more than 50 Def, and Physic doesn't matter for me since Amaterasu is more than enough to out heal the piddly damage from everyone other than Hans.

Hans himself is pretty spooky, though, I'll give him that much. One of my resets came from me not expecting a general would move back while full hp to make a space for Hans to attack Corrin. He even rolled the crit for nearly lethal, but Corrin counter-killed with Astra. (Which didn't save her since I was stupid and didn't give her Rally speed or any tonics, meaning the generic Berserkers were doubling her---she's tanky, but not tank a crit & a bunch of doubles tanky.)

 

The two maids in the room already have 2 maid skills learned, so they can get the full skill set in 2 more levels, but if you capture them they're mostly for staves rather than daggers. (They can still provide combat damage if needed, thanks to 26 speed and decent mixed bulk and mixed offenses, but there's a whole bunch of better pure offensive units to capture on this map.)

  

I'll be up front---I didn't actually complete the Faceless room. It's probably the simplest room from a strategy perspective---all you need to do is ram a guy with ~50 Def into the room and steamroll, but my team's bulk is contingent on everyone being around to provide buffs, and 5 range weapons & Entrap kind of means that I don't get to do that.

That said, I actually like this room for that reason, it means you have multiple options for how you want to get into the room with Beserkers and Generals. Left side is easier on strategy, harder on raw stats, whereas the right side is the complete opposite---an aggressive lineup can probably steam roll the Sorcerer room even if everyone is ORKOd.

 

Anyway, back to the faceless Mooks themselves. Crappy damage, great post combat damage, try to ORKO if at all possible.

  

Rock beats everything. 5 range weapons with 51 Atk, holy hell.

  

The faceless inside the room matters for jack all, though. Yeah they have Seal Def, but Seal Def doesn't work when you're one-rounded.

  

Some of them have this instead---again, just counter-kill and you're fine.

  

The Stoneborn are much more interesting, carrying hefty post combat damage in Poison Strike and also having counter-magic to make the obvious just kill them with Leo solution unviable without Galeforce or a ton of mages on Leo's level.

I don't have Galeforce since I'm not using DLC\Bonus classes this run, so this room pretty much demands sending someone with a ton of Def to handle. (Xander is probably the easiest choice, by the way. The obvious clear is to class change him into Wyvern Lord, give him Arthur's Axe, and have Corrin pair'd up possibly as a General, which gives something like 14 Def, which should easily push him to nearly 60 Defense after tonics, his Prf, and other stuff. If you're willing to use bp/vp stuff---Arthur's Axe is a pretty common drop---then you can even use Guard Naginata for another +1 Def over Arthur's.)

  

The 45 Atk Rock rather than Massive Rock guys have Wary Fighter rather than Poison Strike, which is somewhat interesting.

  

And here's why you really want to just solo the Faceless room---this Maid will entrap your ass if you try to enter the room normally, and the room's so small that there's only one safe spot from getting pelted to death by rocks after being Entraped into this tiny ass room. That said, you can just skip the entire faceless room by using her as a teleporter. If there's nobody she can attack for damage she'll Entrap rather than attacking, so it's quite doable to get your entire team teleported in. (But you will want to get your entire team teleported in, I think---if my guess is right then breaking the door into the Beserker room will trigger a double wave of reinforcements, which your leftover mooks probably can't handle by themselves.)

 

All in all the map is pretty straightforward if you did it before---just play red light green light with Iago and get to to the Beserker room through the easiest route. Then you stick 2 50+ Defense tanks in front and just slow roll your way into killing everything. 64 Atk and ~60% crit from Hans means jack all if even a crit doesn't seriously dent you. After that you either poke Iago to death with the 3-range weapon from the Faceless room or you just have a mage killer handle him.

 

Objectives: 20,000G, Seraph Robe, Bi-frost, Venge Naginata, Spy Yumi/Shuriken.

Like I mentioned before I didn't bother going for the Spy weapon, but I collect everything else since it's not really possible to miss more than one chest on this map.

 

Over-all strategy is just to deathball my way to the Berserker room, and then have 2 of my tanks handle the massive pileup of enemy units with the team positioned behind to provide buffs and damage support. (I ended up using Selena and Corrin as my tanks, but I had tons of people who could reach 50 Def.) Afterwards I had Jakob kill Iago since he can force Iago to 0% hit rates pretty easily.

  

Turns out having 16 deployment slots wasn't just a one time thing, which is great. I bring in a captured Ninja because I felt like it, and drop Elise because it's pretty hard to use her with a bunch of 2+ range enemies lying around.

 

My Castle Stuff:

  

Pretty meh roll on the lottery, although the food court was quite good. I should mention that I actually used a Def/Res food combo before realizing my mage-killers didn't actually need extra Res---originally I rolled a +1 Str to male bonus, I believe. So this food roll is a bit better, but not extremely so.

Practical isn't exactly one of the high tier food rolls, but Def is a very good stat for this map, so I'm quite happy with this.

  

This is the only Captured mook that matters, the other two are just bench warmers.

  

Pass is nice, but I have 3 people with +1 move on top of Pass.

  

And this guy is definitely just a 'for fun' pickup.

 

Note that I actually bribed these guys before using the kitchen---Kitchen buffs don't work retroactively.

Resource Distribution:

  

R.I.P. my mountain of cash.

  

Selena's going Hero for Sol and Axe-breaker, but Odin's going Bow Knight for pure utility---he won't be seeing much combat at this point.

I should mention that in one of my failed runs Beruka got a few more levels than she did in the 'real' run, and reached 30 Speed or something. Pretty amazing considering she started with 9 Speed at base.

  

R.I.P. my mountain of cash even harder.

  

Going all out on tonics like this is pretty expensive if you do it for the whole playthrough (and you'd need child map resources to afford it), but we're 3 maps from the end at this point---and I think you might get to keep kitchen and tonic buffs going from chapter 27 to the endgame.

  

150G a pop is pretty cheap, but buying full sets like this adds up, especially when you're doing it for multiple people.

  

The last purchase is a Heart Seal, by the way. I don't actually use all the tonics I buy, most of them is just so that I have them in Convoy if I realized I wanted more stats during the middle of the map. The Heart Seal is bought for the same reason---if I needed to I can just class change someone for better stats.

This is me combining Felicia's Freeze with Elise's. Elise is benched and nobody else wants to hold a Freeze so there's no loss in combining.

I dropped Malefic Aura for Seal Magic since Leo's one of my mage-killers for the mage room, and Seal Magic makes the 2nd turn a lot easier---since not everyone has 30 Res.

Odin's pretty much a pure support now, since I didn't bother getting him Swordfaire and L&D.

Gave up Nobility for Nohrian Trust---mostly as a 'just in case' if I decide I wanted Sol (from Beruka, Camilla, or Selena) rather than a Jakob pair-up.

Jakob goes full mage-killer since he doesn't have the kit to handle the faceless room, the hero room, or the berserker room anyway, so he might as well specialize vs. mages.

  

Beruka gets Odin's old sword---everyone else has more than enough Atk even with Bronze +2, but Beruka has just a bit of damage issues if she's not using her axe collection.

  

She chugs a HP tonic and a Defense tonic. She'll get the hp +5 skill after 1 level, but before that her bulk is just a tiny bit shaky.

  

The most significant difference between Selena and Beruka is the Res, everything else is pretty much accounted for after you remember the massive amount of stat boosters I fed Selena. That said, Res does matter a lot if you plan on not exploding when you try to hit mages---it's part of why I like Malig Knight a lot, even ignoring Trample and Savage Blow.

  

I have Selena chug a full set of tonics because of massive favoritism, by the way.

  

Every little bit helps when you're trying not to die to Hans. (The funny thing is my tanks ended up so tanky that Hans never once thought it was a good idea to attack into them.)

Well, okay, I didn't have Selena chug a complete set. Only Niles, Leo, and the Ninja were supposed to tank magic damage this map, so no Resistance Tonic for her.

  

The vulnerary tome is pretty pointless now that I have Amaterasu, so I ended up giving Leo a Rescue just in case. I also make him eat a Magic Tonic. (In retrospect I should've forge him a Bronze Tome to control damage---I have a hard time remembering stuff in convoys and on other people, hence why I didn't think to give Leo Felicia's Fire or have Corrin use an Armorsmasher on armors.)

Bow Knight Odin doesn't get a sword, by the way. Not having Swordfaire or L&D means that he's only on the team to do stuff Nyx could do. (Just with way better bulk on the off chance I do something retarded.) In retrospect I should've gave Niles the Bronze +4.

  

I end up giving Felicia the Enfeeble in the middle of the map, dropping Mend for it. She's basically a pure support.

Here's another picture of the maids on this map for stat comparison, though. They're 10 levels higher, of course, but as you can see for staff purposes the maids on this map are pretty hard to beat. (A 1st string Felicia would crush the maids in staff using stats, thank to her sky high Luck, but you'd have to feed her 2 Arms scrolls after class changing her back into Maid.)

  

Charlotte gives up her sword for a pure Axe inventory, and the mook Ninja I captured gets decked out with a bunch of Shuriken. (He can probably solo every mage on the mage if I gave him a forged knife/Shuriken, and in 4 levels he'll pick up Shuriken breaker for 1st string offenses, but I don't really need more 1st string damage dealers considering I'll be picking up at least 2 from captured mooks this map---thanks to the S-rank weapons.)

  

Corrin picks up a Bronze Sword for one last map---after this the Yato will give +10 dodge, meaning she won't need one anymore. Note the Armorslayer---I put it into convoy later to chug tonics and then forget to take it back out to slay some armors, lul.

Azura gets her salve, but in retrospect I should've given it to one of the other supports---she never has a turn free or the bulk to use it, since it's only adjacent rather than within 2 range.

 

The Map:

  

Pretty lazy opening, I have Odin unlock the door, pair a buffed Selena into him, and then dance him to have Selena rush down the Hexing Rod Maid. (He can reach the maid due to Pass, but he didn't need it.)

The 94% hit chance is less than ideal, but whatever.

The green line is the Entrap range, incidentally. It's a pretty awful idea to leave a unit in range before you're ready to break into the right side.

And here's why Odin didn't need Pass. It's pretty trivial to just ORKO this Hero over here to open a path to the maid.

  

Corrin had 99 exp, so the Guard Stance exp gives her this level. Hp and Def are honestly more important than Str at this point for boss killing, but whatever. (In the worst case I'll just stuff her full of stat boosters, I have like 2 whole sets just lying around anyway.)

  

Turn one ends more or less like this. (Not quite, since this was from a different reset---I didn't bother retaking the first turn screenshot since I did the same thing every time.)

  

Note how Felicia is in Leo's spot this turn---this is the start of the 'real' run. In retrospect I should've attacked with Selena first, to let her Savage Blow force this guy into OHKO range, but whatever.

  

Niles has capped Res, by the way. But yeah, his stats are pretty great at this point.

  

This is probably the least interesting mook I captured on this map---not even sure if I'll bother bribing him, to be honest

Doop.

Gotta love Capture'd mook offenses, ORKOing with nothing except their excellent bases. Dual weapons are amazing with S-rank in a weapon, since S-rank has the weapon triangle adding 2 damage, meaning he has 4 extra damage right now.

I don't have a screenshot for it, but I swapped into the Killer Shuriken on the Ninja---and he roll'd the crit for a ORKO.

Doop.

  

I have no idea whatsoever why she's getting so much Speed. No complaints, but it's still weird.

If conquest had better hp growths this skill wouldn't be nearly as good, but pretty much nobody has good hp bases/growths for some reason.

Doop.

  

If Selena gets this level 4 times she'll be basically the exact unit she's 'supposed' to be at this point, but getting these stats at the endgame kind of sucks. Stats are much better front-loaded than back-loaded, part of many reasons why trainees tend to suck and why Jagens tend to be low-key amazing.

 

On the topic of trainees: Mozu does have a niche in Conquest, but it relies on her high-rolling her first few levels. If she doesn't high-roll her first couple levels and get decent bulk there's pretty much no reason to use her over other options---Conquest has enough low bulk high offense units that Mozu's typical stats aren't worth investing in her for, but if she manages to high-roll her bulk then you have a front line unit with passable bulk and excellent offenses rather than just another bow user.

That's basically the key to using Mozu, if you can get the exp to spare to fish for high-rolls then people like Mozu, Odin, etc. end up a lot better since you can just dump them if they don't high-roll and keep them if they do. If you don't like early promoting units that don't need exp to function then it's hard to find enough exp without doing child maps, though. (It's one of many reasons I like early promoting for chapter 10---I don't actually need it for the map itself, chugging tonics is more than sufficient, but making it so that a unit doesn't exp at all for the next few maps means that I have more exp to feed 'trial' units like Mozu who I'll only keep if they high-roll.)

Selena gets Sol with this level, and I drop Lunge for it.

  

Azura gets this pretty good level from dancing the Ninja. That said, 40 Atk from either direction explodes her into tiny pieces, so none of her stats matter.

  

I pair Camilla into the Ninja, use the Convoy to grab him Kagero's Dart---for dodge tanking vs. the Mages once he's Entrapped. S-rank WTA also gives 20 avoid, so this guy demolishes Sorcerers.

  

And turn 2 ends like this. I have to get out of Iagos range by the end of turn 4, but obviously that's not going to be a problem.

  

The ninja ended up dodging the Entrap, so I move him and Xander in like this.

Xander has a full Shield Gauge, by the way---otherwise having him fight 2 mages is pretty retarded. I do think he would barely survive, but I didn't bother doing the combat math.

  

Turn 3 ends like this, with everyone who isn't a mage killer outside of Entrap range but as close to it as possible so they can move to help out if needed.

  

The maid ended up Entrapping the Ninja, so these guys are nicely softened up.

  

You know, if I gave Xander the Speedwing and Dragon Herb rather than Selena he'd have 28 Speed right now.

My team is so damn weird when it comes to Speed level ups.

Doop---he rolls the critical on the second hit, I believe.

  

Pretty great level---Captured units rarely have bulk problems thanks to their high base hp, so usually all you want are the 4 offensive stats, and this is three out of four.

Locktouch is actually pretty great, since I actually want this guy to be the one opening the door to the sorcerer room.

  

End of turn 4, note how nobody is in Iago's range.

Here's me picking up Enfeeble in place of Mend.

Fully buffed Leo and the Ninja and had them choke the wall. Both of them easily survives 4 mooks ganging up on them, so this is pretty safe. (Not 100% safe since technically Leo can kill himself crit-killing everyone who hits him, though---but that's the price you pay for using weapons that can crit.)

  

Note Beruka and (hard to see) Charlotte blocking the stairs above the chest. Opening the door should've triggered reinforcements but I was too lazy to farm them for exp at this point, so I just camp the stairs to prevent the spawn---I leave those 2 there for the next wave of reinforcements that'll spawn when I get into the Berserker room.

Because of the Ninja's hilarious avoid (and the fact that Felicia's buffing him but not Leo) everyone went after Leo first, so most of these guys have their Magic debuffed.

Just spreading some Savage Blow damage.

  

Honestly this is a great level, 32 Speed is enough to double everything forever, so all she needs is Hp, Str, Skill, and Res, and Skill is only for Sol.

And then I end up not spreading Savage Blow damage after all---I want Selena tanking, so Savage Blow damage might get her or Corrin killed if the AoE damage starts a counter-kill train.

Axe-breaker means the Beserkers are seeing some awfully sad numbers against her, though.

Doop. (Don't forget Killer Weapons do x4 damage on crit, if you're trying to see if you can survive one.)

Doop.

And danced Selena for this last doop. This is all the mages in the room cleared.

  

Make sure to time your room break ins based on the turn count. Note how it's turn 10 right now, if this was turn 12 then one of my guys would be Hexed and very, very sad.

  

Just farming more exp. (I danced her for the second combat, deliberately not going for the ORKO to get a tad extra exp.)

  

End of turn 11, so Corrin and the rally mook needs to gtfo next turn or get Hex'd.

First things first, though, gotta farm some more exp.

  

Great level, and Def is capped. (I ended up upgrading Camilla's statue.)

  

Not much point to this, to be honest. 18 MT is easy to forge up, and this is only 9 MT if you aren't being attacked. If you can get multiple copies then it becomes really good really quickly, but you can't.

  

I'll want to time the break in into the Berserker room for just after Iago would've used his Hexing Rod, so even though the next room only has 1 mook it still takes 4 turns.

Having multiple Locktouchers is really convenient, even if not absolutely necessary.

  

Note Felicia being here to provide +2 damage, Niles was going to miss the ORKO without it.

  

This guy isn't as nice as the Beserker or the General, but it's still basically the only practical option for using Excalibur unless you're into feeding someone two arms scrolls.

He also gets Malefic Aura next level, which is great. Pity he doesn't have enough levels left to get Bow Breaker for Takumi (unless you give him an Eternal Seal for some god damn reason), but you can't have everything.

  

With the turns free before my break in I have Corrin chug a bunch of tonics---so that she doesn't explode to Hans like the last tine I tried to break into the Berserker room. Being double by mook Berserkers is pretty lethal.

Also note Beruka walking down here. There's 2 sets of stairs that need to be covered now, and the one closer to us is in range to get attacked, so her Rally Defense is pretty useful for her stair blocking partner.

  

And this is the last of the tonics Corrin needs to tank reliably.

  

I end turn 16 (the Hexing Rod turn), like this. The person up top replacing Beruka is the Ninja, by the way---he didn't have anything to do in the Berserker room.

  

I'd actually prefer Charlotte as the pairup for Selena over the master of arms, but I didn't think of her in time. Corrin was 100% going to use Jakob, though.

  

Weirdly, none of the mooks attack on EP even though they'd do damage. I think the idea is that they want to block your 'escape' by just clearing a path forward so that the reinforcements can catch you in a pincer---the reinforcements I'm blocking by standing on stairs. If they attack there's a chance you can just counter-kill everything, but if they just walk forward without attacking there's no escape and you have to stand your ground.

  

Doop. Also, note the 11% crit chance on Leo. He's basically 11% dead every single time he gets smacked on EP, LUL. (Dark Knight Leo wouldn't have that problem since he'd be 3HKOd instead, but Strategist Leo is 2HKOd.)

Really should've given him Felicia's +3 Fire.

Moral Reset Counter: 11

Just repeating the counter now that we see why he's dead. Bronze weapons are really important for damage control.

  

I swap Camilla out of Fire +3 and into a Bronze Axe this turn, I believe. She needs to face tank a few more turns since the the stairs she's blocking spawns reinforcements later than the ones Charlotte and the Ninja are blocking. (I wait a full 3 turns on the stairs for safety, leaving on turn 20, although I could've left turn 19 and been fine.)

Enfeebling Hans for safety. Every -Atk is basically -3 damage since I have to assume he's going to crit with his 60% crit. That said, I don't think I needed to do this, in retrospect. Leo was always going to be the priority target over Corrin---so a 2-range mook was always going to smack him over Hans smacking Corrin---and Axe-breaker Selena is too scary of a target for Hans to even dream of attacking.

Stupid strategist and being 2HKO'd. 24 damage from a spear.

The funny thing? There's actually an easy KO on Leo just by suiciding all the 2-range Berserkers into him, since he's fast enough to double Tomahawks. But the AI doesn't look for KOs, it just looks for the most damaging combat, so they won't do that unless the Berserkers would do more than the Generals, and because Tomes are advantaged vs. Axes and Disadvantaged vs. Spears the Generals will always do more damage.

This combat doesn't mean anything except debuffing the General even more and wasting Maid turns by making them Physic rather than Freeze. (That they waste half the time Freezing one of my buff-bots anyway.)

  

And here you can see the formation I'm using. Leo's in range to both provide damage support for Corrin and also defense buffs for both my tanks, the Speed, Skill, Str buffbot is behind Leo to heal Corrin and give her Speed, while the Luck, Def, Res buff bot dances in and out of enemy range to provide buffs by using Azura's dance. Selena takes piddly damage to the point healing Descant is enough to heal her up, and dancing the Luck buff bot in and out like this means Selena, Corrin and Leo all get the Luck & Defense buffs.

Felicia's also in range to provide Leo with defense buffs as well as heal him if necessary.

This formation breaks down once I run out of enemy Generals, though, because the Berserkers will chain suicide into Leo at that point, which would kill him. (But once the Generals run out there won't be any Beast Killers left to kill Xander, so I get to run him in to kill Hans & solve this room.)

  

Doop. Note how I'm using the Grim Yato rather than the Armorsmasher---I was pretty tired at this point, so wasn't really thinking about the Armorsmasher I had in the Convoy.

  

In retrospect I should've captured this guy rather than killing him with Leo, but whatever. Note how I trade swap Corrin back into Dragonstone after her combat---I do this every time because she's dead to a Hans crit otherwise. But after this I won't bother showing the screenshot for it.

I was a tad worried about Leo's hp, so I heal him up with Felicia.

  

Slow and steady wins the race, I guess.

Note how I'm gathering up the team now that I don't need them blocking the stairs anymore, which will add a bit more damage top since Xander gets to join the fun.

Enfeebling Hans again just to be safe.

This is a waste of Enfeeble, honestly, but it's not like I have anywhere else to use it and its sell price is pretty terrible. (Corrin will handle debuffing the end game bosses.)

  

It's almost like we've had this turn before, lul.

  

This part is new, though, since Xander's joining the fun now. Note sure why I didn't think to give Selena Beruka, though.

  

Doop.

Note the Bronze Sword, I was preparing for a Capture so I didn't want to Crit/Astra kill the guy.

  

Niles is Adventurer this map because of mage killing (Bow Knight has worse Res caps) and Shining Bow. He'll probably end up Bow Knight for the next map, since Pass should make things quite a bit simpler even without Hexing Rod.

  

The Inspiration General is probably better, but this guy's pretty good too. He kills mages with Countermagic and kills regular mooks by being a general.

And here I swap Niles into Bronze Bow so he doesn't get his ass crit-killed by a spear or tomahawk (or, possibly even worse, counter-kill the other guy and get smacked again for lethal).

I make sure to smack the generals with Selena whenever I remember to, since the -2 Str Silver debuff is pretty nice for lowering incoming damage. Not that Selena is taking any incoming damage.

  

Only 4 general left, so it's almost time to murder Hans.

  

Niles gets pretty mediocre level to cap---from combat exp on EP---but his stats have been good enough for like 10 levels before this, so whatever.

  

Once more onto the breach etc. etc.

The Corrin side is just a General murdering assembly belt. One where Leo is facing an 8-11% chance to die every EP, lul.

  

Still haven't remembered to give Selena a more useful pair-up, but then, it's not like she needs it.

I'm really worried about Leo's hp since he's not Dark Knight, so here's another Sun Festal for him.

  

Doop.

My last Enfeeble use of the map. Pretty sure none of them except this one mattered. (Since this one lets Xander ORKO Hans more easily.)

  

Also, turns out empty levels are possible after all, lul.

This makes Gunter a bit worse.

  

It's interesting that the Silver Axe guy attacked Corrin before Hans---the AI doesn't seem to think about crit chance at all before determining 'maximum' damage.

  

Again, the Inspiration guy was probably better, but 40 effective Str is pretty good too.

Doop.

  

To be honest, I could've just fast forwarded through all of this. But this way you get to know why I didn't want to bother doing the faceless room after I got through this one---the whole map isn't hard, per se, just a real grind.

The 3 resets wore my patience down a lot.

Only 3 generals left, so I decide now's the time to break through and murder Hans.

  

No problem using Berserker's here since no way Selena dies to ranged damage.

  

I swap her to Bronze Axe anyway, though, and have Xander murder Hans. There's only one Beast Killer left and Xander isn't Great Knight, which means the Berserkers do jack all damage to him.

S-rank weapons sell for 0 gold, so it's a pretty good idea to capture S-rank'd mooks to use them.

  

The map's pretty much solved at this point, just a matter of distributing the last few bits of exp.

  

Doop.

  

Corrin refuses to get levels that don't contain Str. She also refuses to get levels that contain, you know, anything else. She's supposed to have 3.9 average growths with Str Boon, Luck Bane, and Nohr Noble.

Not sure I can just Pass cheese the final map with her stats like this, to be honest---her Str is fine, but I think she needs a bit more bulk, Luck, and Skill even after my stat boosters are considered.

  

Doop. (And these sure are some numbers that Selena's taking vs. Berserkers, lul.)

  

I'd like a bit more Res, but any level with Speed and Str is pretty good.

Doop.

  

26 points of natural Xander Speed. Xander is faster than Corrin, by the way.

  

The inspiration Berserker gets counter-killed this EP, which was unfortunate, but whatever.

  

Doop.

  

Bifrost and offensive Staffer, secured. (Her offenses are also pretty great, honestly, since Flame Shuriken would give her 2 more Speed, but the other Capture'd mooks are just better in the offense department.)

She crits, by the way.

  

Again, her good levels are after level 5. Her offenses are serviceable as a 2nd or 3rd string unit, but Charlotte definitely wants 1st string resources to take advantage of her growths and Berserker stat caps.

She'll probably need boots to function properly, though. (And it'd be great if I can fit Trample and Savage Blow into her skillset somehow.)

  

Next turn is Hexing Rod turn, but we have Jakob, so Iago doesn't even matter.

  

I open the door with Odin and have Selena give Jakob her Sunrise Katana.

And then Jakob does Jakob things to Iago.

  

Jakob's pretty much the reason Charlotte wasn't invested this run. He took up 1st string resources (from all those class changes, not to mention getting Samurai at all---giving up Corrin's S-rank to get Jakob class access is an very expensive option), and does about the same thing as 1st string Charlotte, so there wasn't much reason to invest heavily in Charlotte.

It helped that he was blessed like hell, though. Lul 29 natural Speed.

Excalibur isn't really too good on Odin or Leo, since you can just forge an Iron or Steel or whatever past its MT, but the fact that it sells for 0 means that it's pretty nice to give it to an S-rank mook. (It's a decent backup option, since +5 effective Speed is great, but if Leo or Odin turned out well then you don't really need the +5 speed.)

  

I don't know if you resurrect with a turn or not, probably something I'll test during the final 2 maps.

  

Like I mentioned before, I value +5 hp very highly. Seraph Robes are probably the best stat boosters in Conquest, since nobody has hp for some god damn reason.

  

Too lazy to do the left side for exp + spy weapon, so I just prepare to end the map like this.

  

Doop.

And doop.

  

All in all, the map is pretty straightforward once you've actually done it, which is the main issue with Conquest. The maps are a lot more fun the 2nd time through than the 1st time, because the 1st time through the gimmicks tend to look like bullshit.

(Like I mentioned before, the first time I saw this map on Lunatic I dropped the difficulty immediately, because fuck Iago and his Hexing Rod---I didn't know it was red-light green-light.)

Epilogue:

  

Lots of knives from the lottery---pity we basically never see mounted units in Conquest. The maid also ended up having Rapport, so I bribed her out immediately.

I kind of hope the final map has like 20 deployment slots or something, because I have a lot of units I want to bring.

  

Some random, probably irrelevant support levels.

Azura earned one with Odin, by the way, I just didn't screenshot properly.

[Armchair General]

I always found it weird as to how the enemies were segregated like that, considering that this map is essentially an retooled version of the Rainbow Sage's castle. But hey, I at least I had an excuse let Berserker Killer Axe Charolette counter-kill those Generals.

[DehNutCase]

Gimmicks aside, the Conquest designers were pretty good about making sure maps were beatable with stuff you're supposed to have without doing extra stuff like DLCs and Child maps and tons of class changes. Separating the units like this lets them push up enemy stats a bit without making the map unplayable for teams that aren't min-maxed to hell and back, since mixed bulk is way harder to get than bulk in a single direction.

Like, put even a single physical unit in the mage room and I'm not sure the Ninja mook I captured could handle choke pointing for the room (he'll be able to dodge tank it on a good day, but right now he doesn't even need his ultra high avoid to handle the choke point), but because it was all mages the guy could've solo'd the room if I wanted to feed him a bunch of exp for some reason.

 

Doing things this way also encourages you to have a wide barracks with lots of medium invested units rather than a tall one with a few ultra-invested units. By making it so that units with the right combination of traits make certain rooms really easy it means that they don't have to be very invested to handle them, whereas doing something like, say, making Camilla do the first room would require either getting her a ton of Defense or class changing her.

Which is part of why hybrid classes are so strong in Conquest. As long as one of their sides are useful then they're useful, whereas you can't really get a Wyvern Lord or Strategist to do the other half of what Malig Knight or Dark Knight could do. (I mean, Wyvern Lord Elise can definitely still do magic things, but that's just her personal growths being hilariously lopsided. Something like a Witch Selena would also be bulky as hell physically, but that's because she has 45% defense growths for some reason.)

[Eltosian Kadath]

18 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

(unless Berserker is only 10 or 15% base crit rather than 20%

I believe enemies have their class bonus's halved.

19 hours ago, DehNutCase said:

one of them was me not knowing how the faceless & stoneborn room worked

That room is frustrating under documented on Conquest Lunatic. That was the route I ended up taking on my Lunatic Conquest challenge run, and I simply could not find footage of how that room worked on Lunatic mode, so I had to guess my way through based on what the bad wiki said about it.

[DehNutCase]

28 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I believe enemies have their class bonus's halved.

That explains a lot.

(I wonder if they also half the 'bonus' -5 dodge---not that it matters since mook Berserkers have jack all for Luck.)

[Armchair General]

19 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

That room is frustrating under documented on Conquest Lunatic. That was the route I ended up taking on my Lunatic Conquest challenge run, and I simply could not find footage of how that room worked on Lunatic mode, so I had to guess my way through based on what the bad wiki said about it.

That's because no sane person would go over there. Who would be crazy enough to deal with a Stoneborn belching rocks at you?

[Eltosian Kadath]

8 hours ago, Armchair General said:

That's because no sane person would go over there. Who would be crazy enough to deal with a Stoneborn belching rocks at you?

It was a vital part of my strategy for surviving the Berserker and General room for the challenge run I was doing on Lunatic Conquest. If you break down the door on that side and use shelter and dancer shenanigans to let the door breaker out pace them you can take advantage of the Berserkers higher movement to create a situation where you can player phase the Berserkers without having to deal with the Generals retaliating, which let me survive that chapter without using guard stance to take any hits.

[Shadow Mir]

On 5/10/2019 at 2:02 AM, DehNutCase said:

Note the 22 crit, also. It seems a bit low, since Beserkers are supposed to have 20% base crit according to Serenes Forest---they have 28 skill, which should mean around 30% crit rather than 22%, but *shrug*---Keaton tanks them no problem since he has 20% dodge thank to his stone + promoted class bases, but everyone can hit 14 Luck after Bronze Weapon & pair-up so the generic Beserkers aren't too much of a problem.

I dunno why, but I think it (it being the fact that enemy units have halved crit class bonuses) might be to make classes like Berserker less threatening for the player to face. Not that they succeeded, since Berserkers are still way better as an enemy class than as a player class.

On 5/10/2019 at 2:02 AM, DehNutCase said:

S-rank weapons sell for 0 gold, so it's a pretty good idea to capture S-rank'd mooks to use them.

They sell for 5000 gold. I would know because in general, I'm highly tempted to sell Aurgelmir in any Conquest or Revelation run I do since it ain't like I'll ever have anyone who can use it.

On 5/10/2019 at 9:41 PM, DehNutCase said:

(I wonder if they also half the 'bonus' -5 dodge---not that it matters since mook Berserkers have jack all for Luck.)

I think they take the full brunt of the Cev penalty (though Hans in Conquest is the only Berserker in the game that actually has the luck stat to confirm this - generic Berserkers tend to have bugger all for a luck stat).

14 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

It was a vital part of my strategy for surviving the Berserker and General room for the challenge run I was doing on Lunatic Conquest. If you break down the door on that side and use shelter and dancer shenanigans to let the door breaker out pace them you can take advantage of the Berserkers higher movement to create a situation where you can player phase the Berserkers without having to deal with the Generals retaliating, which let me survive that chapter without using guard stance to take any hits.

Now you've got me curious - how did you deal with the Faceless and Stoneborn room? Especially since you have to worry about being displaced by Entrap, in addition to being in range of Iago's staves.

[Eltosian Kadath]

5 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Now you've got me curious - how did you deal with the Faceless and Stoneborn room? Especially since you have to worry about being displaced by Entrap, in addition to being in range of Iago's staves.

Short answer I open the door, use shelter strats to let the door opener escape, while some units lure as many stoneborn into staying in the room to attack as I can, that way I could kill the faceless without worry about the stone born, (or worrying about the entrap staff) and then ambush a few stoneborn by luring them adjacent to walls. A more detailed explanation is below in the spoiler tag, and it is an excerpt (with some spelling/grammar corrections) from my writeup of the run from

Spoiler

The next phase was such a delicate maneuver that I had to map it out on paper. The big things are Corrin uses 2 turns to Dragoon hex debuff the 2 nearest stoneborn from their range before we start the maneuver (to prevent the scenario that they set up their attack order right with the 2 poisoners striking first and have all the stone born hit Corrin they could kill him). On a Iago freeze turn, first Beruka defense rally's everyone that will stay in stone born range, Corrin blocks the stoneborn reinforcement and ensure that 3 of the stoneborn will head north and be 2 turns behind the charge of faceless, Effie javalin's open the door, Silas shelters her, Azura dances Silas, Peri shelters Azura, Niles transfers then swaps to let Azura dance Peri, Felicia transfer Niles away from Azura switches and separates such that Niles could possibly receive 2 debuffed stoneborn hits with demoiselle plus Inspiration plus defense rally boost, and Felicia could face one with lily poise, inspiration, defense rally boost. Peri goes back a few spaces and shelter Azura again (Peri's final position has potentially 2 debuffed stoneborn hits with defense rally plus inspiration boost), then Opheila transfers and separates Azura to safety leaving her in range of 1 debuffed stoneborn hit with defense rally and horse spirit. With only Niles in stoneborn kill range (and only if the poisoner acts first, and both hit him despite his effective 77 avoid with supports, but I make a note to give him a defense or health tonic if I reset to remove that possibility), they split their fire anyway, and next turn we flee through Iago's silence staff and the following turn back to the starting room to prepare my defense. The first step is to draw the only stoneborn that is keeping pace to enter the nearest space he can be killed from range inside the room, and them killing him with Ophelia. With that dealt with I use Effie to enemy phase 2 of them with the blessed lance with solid attack stance and some defensive buffs, and then finish the rest off on player phase. I bait another Stoneborn into a ranged Ophelia death (with sheltering strats afterward to keep her alive), the rest die to my team dog piling them.

 

[DehNutCase]

On 5/11/2019 at 2:18 PM, Armchair General said:

That's because no sane person would go over there. Who would be crazy enough to deal with a Stoneborn belching rocks at you?

The room is very easy for a 'tall' barracks, since the moment you hit 57 defense is the moment literally nothing in the room can damage you. At that point you just teleport your solo guy in with Entrap, kill the maid, and just solo the room with 1 hp after all the post-combat damage. I don't know if there are reinforcements if you open the room 'normally,' but going up through the Entrap maid's room doesn't trigger any, so once you clear the room you can just stand on the stairs to block reinforcements---assuming there are reinforcements---if you didn't want to deal with them.

I did consider just pumping Xander to hilarious amounts of Def and sending him in, the main reason I didn't bother is because I'd rather spend a bit more effort on unit-placement in order to save on resources. (And make no mistake, pumping Xander's Def that high would've been expensive as hell.)

 

4 Def from Siegfried, 4-5 Def from equipped weapon (Siegfried doesn't need to be equipped), 2 from Xander's Prf, 2 from Tonic, 2 from Supportive, 5 from General or 4 from Great Knight pair-up, 1 or 2 from food court and you'd only need 57 - 4 - 4 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 5 - 1 = 37 Def---which, mind, would need either a blessed Xander or some Draco Shields, and he'd need to be Great Knight or Wyvern Lord for the better Def cap and defensive weapon access. It's also technically above Xander's Def cap by 1, but his statue boosts Def cap by 1.

This is also ignoring skills and support levels, but Corrin usually only gives +1 Def at most (Unlucky gives +1 Def at B-rank for all boons), and besides the obvious Defender for +1 Def you're looking into weird stuff like the apothecary 50% tonic boost thing or... Defense +2. If you have Defense +2 on Xander he was going to be General for the room, and it's kind of hard to actually mess up with the room if you got Xander General. (It's why the Berserkers all have Hammer, incidentally, it's a giant hint for how strong Generals are for the previous room.)

 

Corrin can do something similar, thanks to Yato's +2 Def and Jakob's pair-up giving 7 defense fairly easily (Evasive Partner + Great Knight), but they need more Def cap boosts and either a Strength or Defense boon on top of chugging a ton of Draco Shields.

 

That said, 'tall' barracks setups should be using child units for min-maxed caps anyway, so doing the math for 1st gen units is pretty academic. If you aren't grinding a lot child units are worse than 1st gen because statues costs kills and support levels to take advantage of, which requires availability. Child units lack availability pretty much by definition, so they don't actually end up with better caps. But if you are grinding---which you'd have to get multiple child units---then you can just build 2nd gen statues and support ranks with all the extra maps you're doing.

 

There's also some stuff you can do with AI manipulation---highest damage goes first, so if you position a bunch of squishy units properly they'll all take exactly 1 hit each---but anyone who can handle that much finesse would steam roll the mage room, so they'd have to be under pretty weird constraints to do the left side with AI manipulation. (Most likely odd barracks planning that left them needing a 3-range weapon for some reason, on top of not using bp/vp rewards.)

[DehNutCase]

39 Skill Corrin couldn't proc a single Astra in 4 Brave Sword hits, I feel robbed. (I mean, that has a 40% chance of happening, so I guess in retrospect I should've went with the more flavorful Shadow Yato gamble---Brave Sword has 0% crit, but Yato has 5%, and a Dragon Fang or Astra turns it into a clean ORKO, I believe. Edit: Nevermind, a Dragon Fang proc leaves Takumi 2 hp, lul.)

Edit: This was against Takumi, incidentally. Garon got Astra'd to death.

 

But yeah, the final Chapter is going to be a pair of RNG based 1-turn clears---not a fan of slogging through them when I'm on fairly low resources like this.

Double Edit: What the hell Corrin, stop proccing double Astra vs. Garon, you don't need them.

 

Triple Edit: 3 Resets for Takumi, lul. Corrin refuses to proc any specials on him, although she loves using Astra on Garon. The stupid thing? I don't need special procs for Garon, I have a Dance for Garon, but not Takumi.

Reset Counter: 33

Turns out I needed Astra to ORKO Takumi, since I needed either another Str statue or a better pair-up than Bow Knight. Which is easily doable if, say, Jakob had Pass rather than Odin, but the ORKO relies on proccing specials either way so min-maxing numbers a bit higher doesn't actually matter too much.

Since it's just some Rescue abuse the final pair of chapters are very short, so I should have them up pretty fast.

 

Edited May 14, 2019 by DehNutCase

[DehNutCase]

Night Breaks Through:

Pre-map Planning:

  

The endgame of Conquest is another one of Conquest's fake difficulty things, where the majority of the difficulty comes from a lack of information.* If you prepared for it the endgame is very easy to get through, only costing 2 Rescue staves---although with 4 or 5 you can make the Garon map even easier. If you haven't... well, then it's kind of a grindy hellhole of a map. This is a relaxed Conquest run, so I'll take the (very relaxed) RNG heavy clear option, thank you.

*I don't consider things like that difficult in any real sense, since they're basically trivial the 2nd time through. The Faceless & Stoneborn room from the last chapter, for example, I consider 'real' difficulty, since you'd need to either stack a ton of stats or be very confident in your AI Manipulation skills. The endgame is 'fake' difficulty because as long as you knew about what you needed to beat it beforehand it's trivial to have enough resources to steamroll it.

 

Since I (over) prepared for the endgame, the final two maps only took like 30 minutes including resets to do---I actually spent more time taking screenshots than doing the maps.

 

Garon:

You can't see it in this screenshot, but these 6 stairs next to the + shaped pack of mooks takes you in and out of the 6 side rooms. (You open the side room doors to take these stairs by killing the level 20 Priestesses, I believe.)

It's conveniently right in front of Garon himself, so even a ordinary clear of Garon's shouldn't take too many turns.

  

Dragonskin is a hell of a drug, but Garon only has 70 hp and 30 Defense for some reason, so he should be 2RKOd by pretty much everyone remotely competent. And you can get like 4 unit turns to hit him with if you have Galeforce users. And even without them you only need 2 rescue staves for a hit with Corrin, and another 1 for a dance. If you don't need Corrin for him then 1 Rescue staff is enough to hit him once.

  

His stats are pretty okay, but his skills are too defensive to be threatening when you're just ORKOing his ass. Note how Bolverk has 3 range, though---which is pretty nice. It has nothing on Takumi's 4 range bow, but Takumi is kind of Takumi.

  

Merchants are a lot less threatening now that they're stat capped, ironically enough. Their Str and Def are obscene on earlier levels, but we've finally gotten to the point where they fell off enough that they aren't too hard to kill or tank. Note the Wary Fighter, but it shouldn't really matter.

  

The lancer mooks around him are pretty interesting, but they're all trivial to murder. The +1 move is so they have normal promoted movement, incidentally---note how they only have 6.

  

Swordmasters continue to have great stats while being completely harmless. (The pair-up has the same stats and skills.)

  

These sure are some endgame level stats on that Shrine Maiden.

(Again, I think killing them opens the door to the stairs, but I haven't checked since I have enough mobility to 1 Turn this map with perfect reliability.)

  

Spear Master have pretty great stats now, with near capped offenses and very good bulk. Seal Defense is also kind of neat.

I'm not sure if it's even possible to ever die in the Spear Master or Swordmaster rooms, though, seeing how you can start with 4 units in there with pair-ups and they only have 1 unit-turn to hit you with if you kill the guy who isn't pair'd up.

  

And here's the main Gimmick of the map. 200 hit chance (I think it's possible to dodge them like 10% of the time?) Entrap staves with infinite range. Pretty sure the doors close after you if you get Entrap'd inside, but they're all 1v1s so it's hard to lose.

  

This guy has almost 60 Atk on a good day, but beyond that he's more annoying than dangerous, since being 2-ranged means physical units have problems ORKOing him, and I doubt the Priestess is stupid enough to Entrap a Dark Knight into the room.

  

These Entrap rooms all have identical Priestess, so I won't be screenshotting them. The Sorcerer is even more annoying than the Sniper, thanks to being able to 1-2 range to prevent counters, but his stats are even worse. (Watch out for the Vantage, though. Like I said, there's a a 'gotcha' unit like him on pretty much every map.)

  

This guy has some pretty nice looking stats---his Speed's also capped, by the way, at 35 base. But he doesn't even have Inevitable End so *shrug.* Again, he's hard to counter-kill thanks to 1-2 range, but beyond that not very dangerous since he has 41 Atk, meaning even with 40% post-combat damage he has a hard time 2RKOing.

  

I'm... not sure why this guy has Seal Attack? How do you ever survive a combat with 19 Def at this point? His stats are great outside of that, though, with 56 Atk and Certain Blow to make sure he hits. Also has 30 speed, but you should be chugging tonics and possibly even re-rolling kitchen buffs at this point, so it's a lot easier to get out of double range.

 

Not much to say about this map, I have enough mobility to send Corrin to chunk down like 80% of the boss's hp guaranteed, with a very likely ORKO if she procs crits, Astras, or Dragon Fangs. And even if she fails the ORKO I can spend a Rescue to dance Jakob and have him finish things off. (There's probably a way to dance Corrin herself with Azura, but I was too lazy to find it.)

 

Takumi:

  

I'll be honest, I have no idea what Takumi's 'attack' even does. I don't remember it from the last time I did this and this time I'm just rolling the dice until he dies in one round.

  

His stats might be a bit worse than Garons, and he's not sitting on a Throne, but don't be fooled, apparently you do not keep kitchen buffs or tonic buffs going into this, so I hope you remembered to buy some extra sets of tonics & your 2 most important stats are probably 2 points worse.

  

I'm not sure why Skadi has -10 crit---it's nice if you're trying to kill him with someone that doesn't have Luck at all, but *shrug*---Bold Stance is very good though, since he still gets Dual Guards. Astra based strategies are a bit annoying against him, since if you proc Astra on the first hit he'll block your second one unless you proc Astra or Aether or are using a Brave Sword.

  

Off to the side rooms where the Entrap mooks used to be are some new folk. Heroes still aren't too threatening outside of their high Speed, but the sheer quantity of enemy units can probably wear you down without needing to go full ham on quality.

  

Bottom left we have a pair'd up Paladin. Just like the Heroes, his stats aren't too threatening, but you don't get to Attack Stance vs. him and his other side is Dark Knight, meaning he hits both sides of bulk.

Back side is this guy, incidentally. They're also not actually level 20. I think they have level 21 stats or something. Level 20 Dark Knights (and you can find them on the last Invasion map), should have 28 Str, 28 Mag. Edit: This is wrong, I think. I believe I mis-remembered about the last Invasion map---everyone other than the boss in that Invasion shouldn't be level 20, so these guys might be level 20 exactly.

Stat inflation isn't too high in Conquest, though, so even level 20+ units don't have raw stats to kill you with.

  

These guys are just jokes, though, if we ignore the Vantage. Sorcerers are a much bigger threat thanks to their passable bulk and great Mag on top of S-rank boosts to hit, crit, and---a tad less relevant---dodge. Yeah, these guys have like 6 Speed on the Sorcerers from Chapter 26, but it shouldn't matter at all.

  

Bottom right we have another pair of Paladin pair-ups, this time with a Bow Knight backside.

Since the front side has Silver Lance this means the pair-up has all 3 sides of the Weapon Triangle covered, which is pretty neat.

(Also note how they have 32 Speed as a Nohr class while Onmyojis have 28 as a Hoshido class. Bow Knights are pretty damn fast.)

  

Yeah... Somehow I don't think 33 Str 33 Def is going to cut it in terms of making an actual threat. (They do make half-decent meat shields for the maids on the map, though.)

  

Oh and some of these guys have Tomes, because 36 magical Atk is really going to kill people at this point.

  

Say 'hi' to Inevitable End again---honestly it was pretty odd we didn't have it last map or the map before. The 3 highlighted Maids all have Enfeeble, while the un-highlited one has Freeze, as you can see.

(She also has Inevitable end so her Silver Dagger does things, I'm guessing.)

  

Now this guy is a real meat shield. 36 Str, 38 Def, and 58 hp on top of Pavise and Wary Fighter. Nohr units tend to make decent Hoshido unit impressions if pressed, but Hoshido units don't do Nohr impressions very well.

  

Some of them have hammer, incidentally. An alternative weapon that actually matters.

  

Duelist's Blow is pretty interesting, and so's the fact that he actually has less stats than the Master Ninja we saw last map, but I guess that one was a semi-boss or something. Silver Shurikens are still -5 Speed, Def, Res, so be careful about the inevitable end from these guys.

  

The Paladins have Inspiration and Aegis on top of fairly good bulk, letting them hit once and sometimes survive to provide AoE buffs to everyone else charging at you.

  

The Malig Knights are decently dangerous on both sides, now, since Trample can push their Magic damage to 45, which is fairly respectable, and they also have a physical side + Savage Blow to spread even more pain around.

  

The highlighted Great Masters have Enfeeble, the non-highlighted one has Hexing Rod. (Honestly it's pretty surprising we didn't see one on Garon's map, Conquest loves putting Hexing Rods all over the place.)

 

This map is fairly RNG heavy since I need to either proc a bunch of specials on Corrin's Brave Sword or proc Astra on the second hit with her Yato. (Has to be the second hit because otherwise Takumi blocks the second hit, meaning no ORKO.) That said, I do have enough mobility to get to Takumi turn 1, and Garon's map is 100% 1-turn'd, so it's not like it took too long to do 3 resets for the kill.

 

My Castle Stuff:

  

Some crazy high-rolls at the end. I was going to re-roll for good food buffs regardless, but Niles made it unnecessary by giving basically the best possible food roll 1st try.

Silvers only sell for 1k, sadly, and nobody except Corrin is hitting anything at this point. So I wasted a ton of money on tonics and weapons and whatnot for other people---Jakob technically had a job securing the 1 turn KO on Garon, but I didn't remember him in time the run Corrin failed the ORKO and I ended up resetting---Takumi actually only took 3 tries, that is, 2 resets + the completed run, to kill.

Niles is pretty crazy as a cook. This is pretty much the definition of 'maximum' offenses.

  

I forgot the last screenshot, but I bribed everyone except the Hero, not that my new mooks mattered.

  

Yeah... these guys didn't end up making the team. (The maid did, but only for show, since she didn't do anything---I gave her a +4 Luck staff, but you can't use it without being damaged first, and that's not really feasible turn 1 without Galeforce, since fighting a combat or class changing costs a unit-turn.)

 

Resource Distribution:

I more or less bought 5 of every tonic except mag and res, which I only picked up a handful of. Ended up wasting most of them---although I did keep a full set on the off chance you don't keep tonic buffs to Takumi's map. Which made things very convenient when it turned out that you didn't keep buffs. (My gold count hits near 0 at the end, but I have a lot of vendor trash, so if I needed more stat boosters or whatever I could've drummed them up.)

  

A Brave Sword for Corrin and a forged Wyrmslayer for Jakob. (I was assuming that Garon & Takumi counted as dragons, seeing how they had Dragonskin and all, but didn't end up testing it---didn't even click Jakob to see if the '!' or whatever pops up.)

  

I already had 2 Arms Scrolls, which was enough for Corrin---these two were for Jakob. 2 Arms scrolls give as much Atk as an Energy drop if you haven't capped weapon rank for Swords yet, and swords had WTA against Axes and Bows, so they're strictly better as a stat booster.

The Heart Seals were for other mooks (I already had one last map for Corrin), but the tiny optimizations I did like Nyx into Dark Knight didn't end up mattering. I also saved a Heart Seal in the convoy in case I wanted to class change for Takumi's map.

  

I'll skip the buffs and whatnot I gave people other than Corrin and Odin, since everyone else didn't end up mattering, but here's my first move. I arms scroll'd while still Nohr Noble just to pick up a tome and a dragonstone rank.

  

Then I class changed and went to S-rank swords. All S-ranks give +1 Atk, +5 hit on top of +1 damage with WTA and +5 hit with WTA, meaning losing 2 Str from the class change didn't do anything except make Corrin more accurate vs. Garon and Takumi.

  

Here's a single Energy Drop to cap Str at 35.

  

And basically every other statbooster in my convoy---I was pretty much sitting on a mountain of the stuff. If I needed more stats on someone else I would've just sold some vendor trash to buy them from the shop.

  

This is also why I really like feeding Corrin tons of stat boosters in more serious runs (leaving stat boosters until the end like this is a giant waste---everything except the Str wasn't even relevant, really, since I could've just reset a tiny bit more), she has great growths, but also great availability and stat caps---assuming you gave her some good classes to be in---so giving her stat boosters makes the early and mid-game a lot smoother while also bumping up her late-game by a few notches, even if you'll 'waste' a tiny bit of level up stats since you'll hit stat caps before you hit max level.

  

Doop.

  

I didn't bother feeding her the Talismans, by the way. Neither Garon nor Takumi does magic damage and nobody else matters.

  

Here's her un-tonic'd stats and kit after all the stat boosters, and I also swap out Nohrian Trust for Duelist's Blow. Odin was going to be my Corrin carrier, and his only special was Astra, which is kind of redundant.

And here's Corrin's stats after one of every tonic but Mag. (Yeah I ended up feeding her a Res tonic, *shrug.*)

  

Here's a pair of Boots for Odin, pushing him to 11 move before pair-ups. (Not that Corrin gives +1 move in a pair-up.)

  

Ended up dropping Locktouch for Lucky Seven, not that minor optimizations on him mattered. (I made a ton of other adjustments, too, but nobody except Corrin & the rescue chain people mattered.)

  

Turns out flying mobility actually did mater, after all, since the columns or whatever reduce grounded movement.

The Map:

Here's Nyx (who has Pass and +1 move) ready to ferry Azura to a dance target, and also 11 move Odin ready to pick up Corrin. It takes 2 extra movement as a land unit to enter the middle, so these two need to be rescued out of the room rather than just riding out.

And here's my main rescue staffers for the 2 endgame maps, the Falcon Knights with Pass I captured a few maps back. They're not necessary or anything (I have no problem just grinding some S-ranks to class change Odin etc. into a flier if I needed more mobility), but they ended up surprisingly convenient, and I'm pretty happy I picked them up.

And here's the main team, note the 2 Rally Bots, Corrin, Leo with a mobility pair-up, and Selena. Nobody else matters. This is Jakob down here and Xander up with the Falcon knights, but I end up swapping them later once I realized that Jakob could make Garon's map 100% one-turned. Not that it ended up mattering since Corrin killed Garon and Takumi without any issues that run.

 

  

A doop.

  

A doop.

Another doop.

  

And we have one of the most unfair fights ever recorded. Although it's still not the Selena v. random Mook Berserker's 1 Atk, 0% hit, 0% crit levels of sad. Note the Astra proc, so Garon was cleanly ORKO'd and actually gave Odin some exp from getting to block an attack.

  

Which got him a pretty amazing level. Pity literally nobody except Corrin ever took a single combat again.

Here's how Garon would've died if Corrin didn't proc a special or crit, by the way.

Takumi:

I didn't quite have enough mobility to give Corrin dance for Takumi's map, but it looks possible if you have Galeforce or duplicated some boots. (Boots costs 5,000g to duplicate with the card shop, meaning you'd need to pay 10k extra to clone someone you fed 2 boots. That said, even Camilla only costs ~14k to clone before boots, so it's not really a problem unless you spend your gold on a ton of random stuff.)

Anyway, note the rally mooks, the Rescue Pass Falcon knight in a mobility pair-up, 2 boot Selena ferrying Azura, and 2 boot Odin ready to pick up Corrin.

Nobody else matters.

Doop.

Doop.

Doop.

  

I'm honestly not sure which sword is better, they both do about the same damage. Yato is guaranteed to kill if Astra procs on the second hit, and has a very slight crit chance, but the Brave Sword has more procs.

  

Corrin did this in the completed run, by the way. She was using Yato, proc'd Dragon Fang the first hit, and Astra the second. (Yeah Takumi was so dead it's not even funny---and my plan for Vengeance was just to fully buff Corrin and feed her a bunch of stat boosters, incidentally. Nothing fancy, but when raw stats work raw stats do work.)

  

She also picked up this very nice BM level up just to troll me. The game is literally over at this point.

 

Post-script:

  

I happened to get to test Foreign Princess on Takumi's map, and turns out it's actually completely useless outside of Castle Battles, like the wiki says. (I didn't believe the wiki because god damn that's a useless skill---I'm fine with Dwyer having a useless Personal because personal skills don't really matter too much, but a random useless level 35 skill I am not fine with.)

Corrin gets utterly wrecked if she doesn't ORKO, incidentally (and so is everyone else in the rescue chain). 100+ avoid doesn't really matter vs. Conquest units, they're pretty damn good at hitting people.

Edited May 14, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Armchair General]

Well, that was anticlimactic. Too bad you didn't do  the child maps, though.

[DehNutCase]

Mind, part of the reason it was so anti-climatic wasn't because the final maps were easy, per se, I devoted tons more resources to them than I did for normal maps---Staves are extremely strong in Conquest, hence why they're so expensive and rare. Although, mind, the Garon map is probably a fairly easy map even without Rescue staves once we get past the Entrap gimmick.

 

If I had actually played efficiently (or grabbed child map resources---there's so much exp, gold, stat-boosters and whatnot in there it's not even funny), I think all of Conquest would've felt like the final map.

: /

 

I could've ramped up the difficulty by giving myself some random arbitrary restrictions, but I don't have fun playing like that.

Edited May 14, 2019 by DehNutCase

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

You can't see it in this screenshot, but these 6 stairs next to the + shaped pack of mooks takes you in and out of the 6 side rooms. (You open the side room doors to take these stairs by killing the level 20 Priestesses, I believe.)

It's the other units in those rooms you have to delete for that to happen.

1 hour ago, DehNutCase said:

I happened to get to test Foreign Princess on Takumi's map, and turns out it's actually completely useless outside of Castle Battles, like the wiki says. (I didn't believe the wiki because god damn that's a useless skill---I'm fine with Dwyer having a useless Personal because personal skills don't really matter too much, but a random useless level 35 skill I am not fine with.)

Yeah. I seriously have to question why they made a useless level 15 skill...