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 I'm back! Now that being in full time employment has sufficiently cauterised my soul and numbed me to all pain and suffering, I'm here to play more Fire Emblem on Lunatic difficulty! Fire Emblem? Awakening??? Fire Emblem Awakening is the 13th installment in the Fire Emblem series, and arguably the beginning of "modern" Fire Emblem. As always, this won't be a particularly tutorial-y or plot focused LP - I'm assuming you've played the game before, so I won't be going over core FE concepts or anything like that, neither will I be transcribing any plot stuff, except to make the occassional dumb joke. If you'd like to read an LP that does do all of those things, there's an excellent one available to read on the LP Archive here. So why Awakening? In my past LPs I had a tendency to complain about this game, even when not prompted to at all. I'm pretty sure I've compared maps I dislike to it as a prejorative at least twice. It's definitely not my favourite Fire Emblem game... But I'm not playing the game to hate on it, I'm giving it a fair shake. I think there's some interesting stuff to say about it and do with it! At the very least, I can share some fun facts like the following: did you know that the European English localisation made some minor script changes to the US one? It better have, considering we had to wait like two months extra to play it. One of which is that they gave Cervantes a different defeat quote in Chapter 16 to make it clear that you were merely defeating him in battle, not killing him outright. Isn't that neat? I think it's interesting. Also they replaced Frederick's AR47 with a knife. Lunatic Mode? As for Lunatic mode, it has somewhat of an infamous reputation... Both for being very difficult, but also being very cheeseable. Its dense enemy placement and incredibly high enemy stats may seem nigh insurmountable at first, but the game has very few tools to prevent you from breaking it over your knee once you raise a single one of your own units to the point where they can outstat them. In fact, undeploying your entire army save for one super high level unit and Chrom is arguably the easiest way to play the game once you've reached Chapter 7. Spreading your EXP over a large army becomes less and less ideal as you find yourself faced with ambush spawns, absurd stat inflation, and a general lack of side objectives to justify spreading out in the first place. Doing that would be boring though, and would not make for a very exciting LP. For that reason, I've given myself the task of unlocking and recruiting at least 3 (!!!) child units that are not related to either Chrom or Robin, the two main characters, to prevent myself from turning this playthrough into a typical low-man curb stomp. Audience Participation? Ehh... Maybe just a little tiny bit. My avatar character is already decided, as is my team... Mostly. Given the difficulty of raising multiple units without grinding in Lunatic mode, I don't want to swap around my guys on the whims of the readers. However, not all of my pairings are 100% solidified. If some readers would like to see any one particular character used, and they happen to express their sentiments strongly during the first few maps, then perhaps maybe my decisions could be influenced a little. So all you Stahl Stans, Gregor Goons, Libra Lovers, or people who think it's funny when Severa has blue hair and looks like Hatsune Miku, be loud! Just be loud with good opinions, please!! The Rules
Oh and one last rule for the thread: I don't care about spoilers!. We all know who """Marth""" is, c'mon. I'm not going over the plot except to make bad jokes about it, so there's no use tiptoeing around it. I think that's about everything. I'm terrible with introductions, sorry! I hope you'll enjoy the ride regardless. Oh and that FE6 ironman LP is totally dead. Turns out it took place in the timeline where Roy abandons his friends and country to go join smash and Idunn killed everybody in his absence.
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Sep 15, 2023 13:30
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Avatar Creation and Preminition Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Exploring the World Map Chapter 4 Bonus: The Water Trick midnight lasagna fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Oct 12, 2023 |
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Sep 15, 2023 13:31
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Preminition - Hey, you, you're finally Awakening First thing you gotta do after waking up is sort out your appearence. I've never really liked Fire Emblem avatars as actual characters, but customising what they look like is always fun... Which we don't even get to do anymore! It's the worst of both worlds!! So the previous Awakening LP I linked to in the first post picked a female avatar - portrait 3 to be specific. Now on one hand, I'd like to show off a male Robin instead, just for the sake of being different... But on the other, better hand: nah.  Meet Truck! She's just rolled out of bed and is ready to face the world and all of its trials and tribulations. Could you imagine not picking portrait 3? I mean, c'mon. Unfortunately, thanks to Awakening's reclass system and gender-locked classes, the gender of your avatar does make a difference. The Fighter and Barbarian class trees will be inaccessible to Truck, while the Pegasus Knight and Troubadour class trees are free for her to use. Awakening also lacks any form of gay marriage, so the gender you pick determines who you can marry and by extension, which kids you can pass the ultra powerful avatar genes onto. It kind of sucks! For Truck's asset I picked Defense, and for her flaw I picked Skill. I've always gone either Defense or Speed when trying Lunatic, since both are well suited to the typical strategy of trying to funnel as much EXP into your avatar as possible. Defense lets them quickly reach a point where they can take multiple hits on enemy phase without dying, allowing them to function as somewhat of a second Frederick in the early stages of the game. Speed meanwhile is more suited to offense, helping them quickly (hehe) reach a point where they can double attack most enemies and also helping them dodge a little better. I opted for Defense as it's generally more reliable in the earlier chapters. As for Skill, I went for it as a flaw over Luck or Resistance to avoid having her be overly vulnerable to critical hits or magical attacks. Since Skill is the primary determinant in calculating accuracy she might end up whiffing a few important shots, but I'd rather that than her die in one hit or not be able to do enough damage to get any EXP at all. I'll go into more detail about her exact stats and growths later... As for the name... I think Truck is cool! It's a powerful name. I would call a kid Truck. They wouldn't even get bullied for it, if they were larger and stronger than all the other kids. One option I do not get access to here as a non-Japanese player is the choice to pick my avatar's speech style. Each gender of avatar gets three slightly distinct speech patterns... or rather two, and one that renders them completely mute. Cool! Unfortunately as someone who does not speak any Japanese at all I can't really go into detail on how they differ, and I'm a bit reluctant to quote other people since information on the original Japanese dialogue is notoriously prone to getting telephone gamed when people talk about it online.   Awakening started a tradition of FE games beginning with a flash forward. It was cool... once. They've only felt more and more out of place as they go along. Engage's flash forward scene doesn't even reference anything that ever happens in the game, it's like they put it in for trailer footage and then accidentally wrote it out of the final plot. Anyway, I can mostly skip over this because nothing of consequence gameplaywise happens during it.  We do however get a preview of what a higher leveled Truck may look like. As you can see, her defense is good but her skill is a little dire. She can't even break 100 accuracy with her Thoron tome! For shame.   Truck's stats are ultimately irrelevant, as Chrom paired with your avatar will always be able to take out Validar in one round of combat with his Silver Sword.   Of course this map's objective is Rout, not Defeat Boss, which means we must take out all of the enemies. You'll be stealing your next kill in hell, Chrom! This is Truck's game!!!
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Sep 15, 2023 13:31
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Prologue - Frederick Emblem Okay so none of that actually happened. Chrom is alive, Validar is alive, Truck's bloodlust yet remains unsated.   Our story begins with Chrom and his little sister finding a broken down Truck in a field. It's a good thing they know nothing about theology, or else they'd know that their new friend has the symbol of dragon satan tattood on her right hand. Maybe she has a Grimleal phase in tactician school.   Of course she has amnesia, she's an RPG protagonist! This is a fairly common trend for avatar characters, both to let them be naturally curious as the world they inhabit so as to organically present information to the player, and to prevent any established backstory from clashing with the IRL player, therefore making them less relatable. It unfortunately contributes a lot to avatar characters often being rather bland, personality wise. Actually, how many avatar characters do have amnesia? Robin does, Alear does, Byleth and Corrin are in a weird grey area where they might have amnesia or they might just not know anything due to childhood trauma and also being very stupid, I don't think Shez does, and Kris is so bland that they give me amnesia because I don't remember anything about them.  The name "Shepards" for Chrom's little group is actually a localisation embellishment - in Japan they're just "Chrom's Vigilantes". Interesting! I don't know how this change came about, but the few puns and metaphors they manage to get out of it make me think it was worth it.  Anyway, we don't care about the plot. Villageburner the bandit is in town making trouble, and Frederick and co. are going to go shove their collective boots up his rear end. This is a very simple tutorial map where the objective is to rout every enemy. Every map in this game has either that objective or ends when you defeat the boss. Despite being a bit of an Awakening hater myself, I don't really mind all that much - it's the map design that determines how you play it, not necessarily the objective. Chapter 6 and Tiki's paralogue are good proof of that!  Future Truck may be a badass, but present Truck's not even got a single point of EXP to her name. Thanks to her asset and flaw, she has 2 extra points of defense and 1 less point of skill than normal. That's more than a good tradeoff right now. I'll go into great depth about every character and their stats eventually, but for now here's a quick bio on all of the Shepards: Truck (AKA Avatar, AKA Robin) Skills: Veteran (Earn 50% more EXP when paired with another unit) Growths: HP: 80% STR: 50% MAG: 50% SKL: 40% SPD: 50% LCK: 60% DEF: 50% RES: 35% The lack of any one particular standout growth may fool you into thinking these aren't impressive, but Awakening's growths are super high across the board. These 50% or so growths in each stat will go far with how quickly Truck's Veteran skill will allow her to gain EXP... She may not be worth much in a fight right now, but if I funnel as many kills to her as possible she'll very quickly blossom into a great unit.  Here's Chrom! I guess he's technically the main character, but, like... No he's not. This is the Avatar show, we don't care about Mr. Blue Hair number 5. That said, he is actually a pretty great unit! He's just overshadowed by joining next to the destroyer of worlds and the destroyer of earlygame bandits. Chrom Skills: Dual Strike+ (Dual Strikes are 10% more likely to occur when this unit is present in battle, either as the lead or the support) Growths: HP: 85% STR: 60% MAG: 10% SKL: 60% SPD: 60% LCK: 70% DEF: 45% RES: 25% Long gone are the days of lord characters being medicore units who have to be babysitted on their way to their goal. Chrom's fast, he's strong, and he's surprisingly bulky too. His Falchion and Rapier are effective against Wyverns and Horses/Armour respectively, but since neither of those enemies are present he effectively has a slightly less accurate Iron Sword with infinite uses and a second Iron Sword that's more accurate and crits a little more often. His combat stats are arguably better than Truck's right now, but the enemies here are so strong that they're both equally bad in practice. My short term game plan is to funnel as much EXP into truck as possible, so Chrom's not going to be doing much besides pairing up with her.  Now we're getting somewhere! Look at those stats! Frederick is what people call a Jeigen (not an Oifey, Oifeys aren't real, Oifey isn't even an Oifey), which is a strong promoted unit with excellent base stats but lackluster longterm potential. He will singlehandedly carry me through the first few maps as the only unit present who does not die in two (or one!) hit to everything. Frederick Skills: Discipline (unit earns 2x weapon experience), Outdoor Fighter (unit gains +10% hit and avoid in outdoor tiles*) Growths: HP: 110% STR: 65% MAG: 10% SKL: 55% SPD: 50% LCK: 40% DEF: 55% RES: 25% *a quick look on google does in fact suggest this skill works on a per tile basis, not per map. no idea which tiles count as which though! Hold on a moment, this man is a jeigen and he's got a growth over 100%? Frederick's not like Jagen or Marcus, his growths aren't made worse than other units to slow him down. He's not going to be held back by hitting the level cap early like Seth or Titania either, Awakening allows units to level up an infinite amount of times via Second Seals. So how does he "fall off?" The answer is EXP gain. As a promoted unit he'll be earning much less EXP than those around him, so he'll be proccing those juicy growths much less often. Right now he's by far my best combat unit and the only one capable of doing anything besides scavenging kills off of others, but as the game goes on he'll slowly start to fall behind.  Lastly, Lissa. Lissa heals people. That's pretty handy! Lissa Skills: Miracle (has a luck% chance of surviving a lethal hit with 1HP if unit had more than 1HP beforehand) Growths: HP: 70% STR: 30% MAG: 50% SKL: 45% SPD: 50% LCK: 65% DEF: 20% RES: 50% Lissa's a healer, and at the moment that's all that matters. If any enemy so much as looks on her on this difficulty she will die, because the Geneva conventions aren't real. It's not just her poor bulk that makes her vulnerable, it's also her terrible speed... Good luck with early HP and speed levels can potentially prevent her from being doubled and killed, but I'd really rather she not be attacked in the first place! Anyway, that's my party all sorted. They look the same on any difficulty. How are the enemies now?  Villageburner the bandit and his cohorts are here to burn the village. This map's objective is to defeat everyone, not just the boss, but since he's tough and doesn't move he'll be the last one going down anyway. The units next to him will not move at first, but once you enter one of their ranges the entire squad will aggro. So don't do that until you have to!  Otherwise, there are three enemy types on this map: Myrmidons, Barbarians, and Mages. These Myrmidons are fast, evasive, and dangerous...   ...as you can see here, if I try to have Chrom or Truck fight one. An avatar without an HP, defense, or speed asset would straight up die in one round against these enemies! Meanwhile, in normal mode, Chrom would not take a single point of damage if one of these attacked him. It's quite the big difference.   These Barbarians are also plenty scary, but at least they're not as fast... Still fast enough to double Lissa, not that it matters when they one shot her regardless. The weapon triangle leaves them vulnerable to swords, which makes them easier to hit and kill with Chrom and Truck than the other enemies. Plus they're the only enemy type Frederick can't one shot with his lance! So you should see these not as enemies, but more like jars of baby food that need to be opened by an adult before they can be eaten. Non-boss enemies in Awakening may randomly roll skills from their class tree. These Barbarians can get the Gamble skill, lowering their accuracy but increasing their crit rate. For the player this skill is fairly useless, but when the enemy has it... That's a %% or so chance to completely ruin your day. Support bonuses can lessen crit rates, so I'll be trying my best to make use of those. Thankfully only one Barb on this map rolled it...  Lastly, Mages. Mages can attack from a distance and are the only enemy that Frederick needs to fear. He can kill them in one hit on player phase though, so it's best to keep out of range until you can do that. Also their hats look stupid.   First order of business is to clean up a little. As much as I'd like to feed every morsel of EXP to Truck or maybe Chrom, the map is way too dangerous in its current state. Demolishing this Myrmidon will free up some room in the starting area...  Frederick earns about a third as much EXP per kill as any other unit would on this map. At least this EXP isn't going to waste thanks to his high growths.   Chrom and Truck's skills both require them to be paired with another unit to function, so it only makes sense to keep them together. Plus it keeps the tiles outside of the danger area a little less crowded. Chrom and Truck have no stats over 10 or any support rank with one another, so the bonuses they offer are just the bases for their class. I'll be keeping Truck out in front - her Veteran skill means she can earn more EXP per kill, so every kill she makes here will count for more. I'm not even going to try investing in more than one non-Frederick unit until I'm done with Chapter 2, since that's when the game's maps open up a little and become less dangerous.  Let's leave Frederick to his thing for now. One attack wouldn't kill Truck, but it would leave an alive enemy very close to my squishy units that I would then have to deal with next turn.   Frederick bravely tanks an axe to the face... And then misses in retaliation. That's not super ideal! I wanted that Barbarian left in kill range for Truck. I guess the weapon triangle does matter, even if you are Frederick.  The second Barbarian has a crit chance against him thanks to Gamble. Fred would survive a crit, but it would leave him in a bit of a sticky situation after.  This joker however does nothing and then dies for his trouble. It's pretty funny.  The first Mage enters Frederick's killing range, but unfortunately attacking him would aggro the squad near the boss. I'll have to have him retreat for a turn.   I want Truck to kill that Barbarian though, so she's going to position herself to lure the weakened one, while Frederick waits to lure the one he previously missed.   Lissa can top him up for some EXP too. Thankfully, staff EXP gains in Awakening are much better than in older games - Lissa will level up quite fast if you're not speeding through maps at a breakneck pace. Maybe after a couple of levels she might even be able to take a single hit...?  As Frederick's support partner she makes herself present in battle, but uhh... She's not actually doing anything. Or rather, she's not attacking - even if she's just adjacent to Frederick and not paired up with him, she can still potentially assist with a dual guard in addition to providing small boosts to combat stats such as accuracy.   Unfortunately Bronze weapons do not provide the bonus to critical evasion they do in Fates, so Truck faces a slightly scary crit rate. Gamble! It's the worst! I think having Lissa next to her would have raised her critical avoid, but I'm not 100% sure - I don't have the numbers for how consecutive support bonuses work in this game. Regardless, every unit paired up with or adjacent to your unit helps them out in combat a little, even if they have no support level at all.  Truck takes her first life and is rewarded with a hefty 45 EXP. 15 of that comes from her Veteran skill.   There's kill number two! She only needs 3 of these to level up, unlike Chrom who would need 4.  Frederick kills this Mage and sends him to hell, which is where all wizards go. That's all of the currently aggro'd enemies on the map now dead, which means time for a breather.   Truck steps on the first sparkling tile, netting herself a Seed of Trust. These can boost the support rank of two paired up units and IIRC are only obtainable through these sparkling tiles. I was hoping for a weapon, but I suppose this is pretty cool.  Everybody's topped up and all loot has been picked up off of the floor, time for wave 2! Once again Frederick will handle all the enemies save for the axe guys.  This is funny every time it happens. Weapon triangle makes a big difference here - every enemy in Lunatic mode has a capped weapon rank, but facing triangle disadvantage removes all bonues that high weapon rank applies. The +3 might this Myrmidon's A rank in swords gives him is completely cancelled out, in addition to the extra -1 penalty from WTD, making him bounce harmlessly off of Frederick when he attacks.  Now to explode this Mage and soften up the rest of the enemies. Thunder tomes have a high crit rate, and a crit from this guy would outright one-shot Frederick! Thankfully he's the last mage we'll be seeing until Chapter 4.   Everybody else hides while Frederick faces the last combat he'll see all map. He's almost leveled up already - maybe a sign that I've been somewhat inefficiently distrubuting my EXP, but an extra level will help him - he's not gonna be invincible forever.  It's his lance I'm more worried about, to be honest! That's 10 uses gone already. I really want to conserve this as much as possible for Chapter 2, so maybe next map he can steal Truck's sword instead.   Perhaps I should have waited a turn or two to see if I could lure him out safely to hit him with a more accurate sword attack, but eh, it worked! Now let's see what level Truck gets.  Well this is... Okay see this looks good, but I was really hoping for defense! The bulkier she is come next chapter, the more EXP she can potentially harvest. Not that a near perfect level is anything to turn up your nose at, but...   I probably wouldn't be risking crit rates like these if this weren't the first chapter and it wasn't very short, but everything worked out fine. Seems like Citra has come a long way since I last played - thunder magic animations used to drop the frame rate down to single digits whenever they played! "Citra" incidentally is the name of the 3DS I'm playing this game on.  Money is fairly abundant in Awakening, so I'm happy to waste as many of Lissa's heal staff uses as possible just to get her some EXP. This may seem like a bad level by Awakening standards, but it helps her potentially not die so it's good in my book. Lissa has one of the lowest growth totals out of any unit in the entire game, so maybe it's best not to expect too much out of her anyway.   This last sparkling tile is hiding just out of range of the boss. Weapon EXP is nice - both of Truck's weapon ranks are at E, so she can't even use Iron Swords. Not that I have any of those.  It would make sense to chip down the boss with a sword to increase Truck's accuracy and avoid, but that crit rate is scary! Do I gamble the entire map on a 3% chance for him to hit and crit...?  The answer is no. By standing in this formation and attacking with magic, Truck can receive 4 levels of support bonus while also not putting any of her allies in danger. The lack of WTA is a shame, but if she gets hit then that's more EXP for Lissa!   Truck gains a second level and misses defense a second time. Again, I can't really complain about this, but...  Chrom makes his first attack of the map and... misses! Don't swords beat axes? Thanks for nothing!  Apparently blindness is contagious. Maybe I should have just whacked him with the sword up close...   What a thrilling battle of standing around for a few turns watching 3 idiots miss each other. Unfortunately, Truck just barely falls short of a third level. Perhaps I could have been a little more conservative with the Frederick kills? Ah well.  14 turns isn't too shameful...? Half of them were spent grabbing sparkling tiles and doing unnecessary healing with Lissa. The reason why Frederick is not considered the hero despite singlehandedly carrying my team is because the "heroes" tab just measures which couple gained the most support points. Frederick's overachieving has not made him popular with the rest of the class.   As the player's representative in Ylisse, it is mandatory that the avatar be made to feel good about themselves at all times or else they might get sad and turn off the game. It was really cool how you managed to step on all those corpses Frederick left laying bleeding on the ground, Truck! Although in canon she was the person who came up with all this strategy, so maybe she does deserve the praise.  Chrom's been begging Frederick to let the Shepards have some wheels for ages. The prince and his friends can't just walk everywhere, what will the neighbours think? Next time: The Shepards go camping in the woods
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Sep 15, 2023 13:31
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Well this should be interesting! I've never tried this on Lunatic, so I'll be following along with interest.midnight lasagna posted:I don't think Shez does I can confirm, as someone with an in-progress game of Hopes, that Shez does not have amnesia. She's just a wandering mercenary from the back woods with no formal education and it's called out in her game as remarkable that she even knows how to read and write at the start.
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Sep 15, 2023 14:14
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Oh hey, Awakening Lunatic! And pretty much the ruleset I run by, excepting disallowing the Barracks. I usually never get anything that good from it and I definitely don't grind it for bonuses, but I get not using it at all. For some reason I've done two different Lunatic runs of this game, and both of them were pain. Then you hit the middle spot where you're finally breaking the game over your knee. Then it was pain again. I still have the sense left in my mind to not touch Lunatic+. I usually try to level a real team of units though the game, but it will inevitably be carried by Robin, Lucina, Morgan, Donny, and whoever his kid is. No matter how hard you try to level someone else, Robin's going to pick up a lot of the early EXP as one of the only units who can take a hit or two. I've kinda exhausted pretty much all the fun I can from Awakening on my own with way too many ironman runs so I suppose I'm living vicariously through this. Still, interested to see how your run turns out and how it differs from what I remember of mine, I remember Chapter 2 is a special sort of hell usually.
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Sep 15, 2023 21:52
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Not going to backseat LP but I built my own simple rule for Lunatic Awakening to keep it interesting. On Simple display every enemy has a combined stat total. You just play Awakening Lunatic and make sure that no character is above the combined stat total of the enemies on the map and rotate as required. You're advantaged because your stat and skill distribution is better than your opponent but they always have more *stuff* which I feel makes for an interesting challenge. (And also lets you grind up units that have lagged behind if you want to since you've got a defined limit on where they can go!) I'm surprised at the preference across LPs for FRob (I didn't clock it until you mentioned it). She feels worse to me in this game than her Male alter ego in most ways, with a significantly weaker Chrom support, a weaker Morgan, both mechanically and gameplay-wise as well as just being weaker mechanically herself anyway because her support distribution across the second generation is worse. Anyway, excited to read through this, force out votes for Severa and try and goad you into doing Apotheosis.
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Sep 15, 2023 22:15
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So recently Mekkah(a fire emblem youtuber) made a series of videos demonstrating that Teach is actually the superior early growth unit to Truck. So I'd be very interested in living vicariously through you and having you try it out.
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Sep 16, 2023 06:10
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I really liked your previous LP, so I'll be eagerly watching this one!
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Sep 18, 2023 22:50
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Excited to follow this LP! I played this mode up to chapter 6 or 7, and I remember being surprised by how brutal the early game was! I think I did a -Def Robin though, which it sounds like wasn't an amazing idea haha.Dance Officer posted:So recently Mekkah(a fire emblem youtuber) made a series of videos demonstrating that Teach is actually the superior early growth unit to Truck. So I'd be very interested in living vicariously through you and having you try it out. Wholeheartedly agree with Teach getting screentime. Natural 20 posted:Anyway, excited to read through this, force out votes for Severa and try and goad you into doing Apotheosis. Doubly so if Teach sires someone who will help completely conquer the game.! ...maybe not Severa specifically, but hey, if you're trying to get some kids anyway, why not Vaike's?
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Sep 20, 2023 04:47
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I’ll definitely be keeping up with this run! I’ve only played the first 5 chapters or so of Lunatic, and that was a good seven or eight years ago, so It’ll be interesting to see how difficult it is as a whole. Dance Officer posted:So recently Mekkah(a fire emblem youtuber) made a series of videos demonstrating that Teach is actually the superior early growth unit to Truck. So I'd be very interested in living vicariously through you and having you try it out. I would also like to see Teach get tenure.
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Sep 20, 2023 05:45
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Just a heads up, this LP isn't going to have the silly fast update schedule of my Fates LPs - I'm working full time now in addition to living in my own place rather than being stuck with my parents in post-lockdown limbo. Which is very good for my social life, my mental health, and my bank account, but can the same be said for my gaming...? Sacrifices have to be made...Odd Wilson posted:For some reason I've done two different Lunatic runs of this game, and both of them were pain. Then you hit the middle spot where you're finally breaking the game over your knee. Then it was pain again. I still have the sense left in my mind to not touch Lunatic+. I am also a little scared of Chapter 2. Natural 20 posted:Not going to backseat LP but I built my own simple rule for Lunatic Awakening to keep it interesting. Personal preference aside, I've always liked F!Robin as a unit more than her male counterpart. I can imagine M!Robin is better for postgame optimisation since he can get two OP kids with any character while F!Robin is forced to pair with Chrom for it, but I've never really cared about doing that. I just like that she can marry Chrom very easily and give you a better Lucina, a unit you're forced to recruit anyway, and Rightful King is very nice on Morgan. Also she gets Galeforce, but again not really relevant outside of postgame stuff. M!Robin's Chrom support is however much better written. And much more romantic, ironically! Dance Officer posted:So recently Mekkah(a fire emblem youtuber) made a series of videos demonstrating that Teach is actually the superior early growth unit to Truck. So I'd be very interested in living vicariously through you and having you try it out. It seems like there's a preference for Severa, so I guess I'll be using Cordelia? Vaike & Cordelia is meant to be a nice pairing from what I've heard, but I did have plans for Vaike already... We'll see how things shake out.
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Sep 20, 2023 08:45
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Bonus: Walk On Water, Dark Dragon Jesus Beating the prologue via careful application of Fred is all well and good, but what if there was another way? It feels irresponsible to talk about Awakening's prologue without mentioning a certain strategy.  First off, clear all the enemies on the map that initially aggro. That's everyone save for these guys up the top here.  Next up... walk on water? For whatever reason, main characters having the ability to cross water has been somewhat of a Fire Emblem tradition... Maybe to prevent softlocks if everybody but your lord dies and you end up stuck in an awkward position, who can say. Regardless, both the Lord and Tactician class have the ability to cross water 1 tile at a time. Lissa and Frederick however are mere mortals, so they'll need to be paired up or else they'll be left behind.  Chrom and Lissa both start with map with a single Vulnerary in their inventories, and Truck will be wanting both. She'll be paired up with Lissa however, so she can dip into her inventory at any time. Unfortunately Truck did not inherit Jesus's other ability to feed a crowd with a single loaf of bread so she'll be needing a few of them.  Chrom positions himself in a safe space while Truck crosses the water to aggro the Mage, probably yelling something about how dumb his hat looks and how it's going to give him a really goofy looking tan.  Unfortunately this is not a particularly great matchup - that's what the Vulneraries are for! Lissa increases Truck's luck and resistance, making her a little more resilient and less likely to be crit, but it's still not ideal. There may be a way to do this a little more reliably, but if there is I don't know it and it may involve a lot of very precise positioning.   Truck can step back a tile to heal herself if needs be. This will cause all the enemies to start moving as they will see that they can now reach her, but she can just as easily step back to put herself out of range from all but the Mage again.  A few Vulneraries later, the battle of attrition is won and she can now snipe a couple of enemies from her safe haven above the waves.   Unfortunately the awkward positioning of these Myrms means she cannot freely bait them into a location from which she can attack them but they cannot attack her, but stepping forward to the shore allows her to lure them one at a time while only facing a single round of combat. With a couple of Vulnerary uses left, this isn't a problem.  Once they've been baited she can then step back to snipe at them from safety. The enemies will only move to chase someone they can attack - with no units reachable from their current position, the life leaves their eyes and they just stand there. Their desire to murder is all that drives them...  And that's 4 free levels without even engaging the boss! This strategy is dumb, time consuming, and unfortunately a teensy bit unreliable, but if you're struggling with the earlygame or you just want a head start it's always there for you if tou want it. There may be a more reliable version of this that can help mitigate the risk of crits - if you know one, I'm all ears!
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Sep 20, 2023 09:10
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I'll be watching this with interest. I've done a few Lunatic Awakening runs myself, but didn't go quite as restrictive with any of them so I'm kinda curious to see how different full no-grind might look. Where I settled was allowing myself to play the DLC maps, but only once each so I had to choose carefully when to visit the exp/gold maps and who to give the couple skill books to but still had some ability to catch units up and it felt like a good balance to me. Also, would disagree about the difficulty having a lull in the middle, I always found the Valm arc to be the biggest difficulty spike (at least after you get past ~ch5) and then the endgame falling back down. Mainly because enemy pegs are absolute bastards and the first half of Valm throws a decent number of them at you in a couple maps before you really have the stats to reliably weather that safely.
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Sep 20, 2023 10:38
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midnight lasagna posted:The terrible early and lategame with the peak in the middle does match my lunatic experience pretty well. The first few chapters your entire army save for Frederick feels useless, but then you start leveling people up and having fun... And then around the end of the Valm every map becomes a gigantic slugfest where juggernauting with as few units as possible starts to feel mandatory again. Unfortunately I think lategame Awakening's descent into juggernauting is just a consequence of the map design, but at the very least I hope I can end with a fun team of juggernauts rather than just the old Avatar with Nosferatu standard! Shiny777 posted:Also, would disagree about the difficulty having a lull in the middle, I always found the Valm arc to be the biggest difficulty spike (at least after you get past ~ch5) and then the endgame falling back down. Mainly because enemy pegs are absolute bastards and the first half of Valm throws a decent number of them at you in a couple maps before you really have the stats to reliably weather that safely. I feel this very very strongly varies based on your level of kid recruitment. Essentially if you get the kids and nurture them you get a harder Valm but a much easier endgame because their skill distribution and significantly better growth rates allow them to just do a lot of work. Admittedly this involves setting up archer traps for the likes of Nah or giving Inigo and Severa forged weapons to take advantage of armsthrift (Or just using the DLC) but I suspect that's the reason for the difference. midnight lasagna posted:Personal preference aside, I've always liked F!Robin as a unit more than her male counterpart. I can imagine M!Robin is better for postgame optimisation since he can get two OP kids with any character while F!Robin is forced to pair with Chrom for it, but I've never really cared about doing that. I just like that she can marry Chrom very easily and give you a better Lucina, a unit you're forced to recruit anyway, and Rightful King is very nice on Morgan. Also she gets Galeforce, but again not really relevant outside of postgame stuff. M!Robin's Chrom support is however much better written. And much more romantic, ironically! Basically the argument for MRob if we're looking purely at gameplay is that he can S support Lucina. Chrom is already amazing as a support character because of Dual Strike+ so burning Robin's best support to make Chrom better isn't worth it, but burning it on Lucina makes getting her up to speed when she shows up way easier and then gives you a Gen 3 FMorgan running around with Aether, contrasted with FRob/Chrom giving you a Gen 2 MMorgan.
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Sep 20, 2023 12:24
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oh man I totally missed this, welcome back  I never did end up giving Awakening Lunatic a try and I'm still pretty sure that was the right choice but I'll be following this with interest!
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Sep 20, 2023 20:05
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Chapter 1 - F-f-fire!  The world map is unlocked! Listen to this nice, relaxing music... Unfortunately as we currently cannot do anything via the world map except save, it is entirely useless and only serves to increase the amount of time spent between maps by about 5 seconds. It'll be a couple of chapters yet before all 5 of those greyed out options because usable.  Time for things to get worse! What unwelcome changes shall we be welcoming?   Oh! That seems like an unwelcome change. I think the forest was probably better when it was not on fire and there weren't any meteors. Why is this happening? Who knows. Seriously, I do not know why this happens. It's never explained, never happens again and there's no obvious cause? This is a very pretty cutscene though, so maybe it happened because it was cool.  Not content with his complete mastery of space, Marth's hand reaches through a portal in time to extend his grab range into the fourth dimension. Fox won't even be safe in his home series now...  Aha, here are the culprits of this forest fire! These zombies must have been having a cookout and forgot to properly dispose of their barbecue. As punishment for their irresponsible behaviour they must all be sent back to their graves. This map is a rout in what, despire the large amount of terrain haphazardly thrown around, is effectively a large open field. You'll see a lot of those in this game.  The bossman is yet another axe user with a Short Axe, except this one is a Fighter and can move. These Fighters are a little bulkier than the Barbarians from last chapter, but they are also slightly slower and hit slightly less hard. Not that it matters all that much, they're still significantly stronger than everybody except Frederick.  This Fighter is an addition made in Lunatic mode specifically to counter Frederick, who as a Great Knight is weak to both armour and beast killing weapons. He just about OHKOs him with this Hammer, although he will have to hit him with it first. He's even more deadly in Lunatic+ mode where, with bad enough luck, he can also roll the Hawkeye and Vantage+ skills to make him always strike first and incapable of missing, a combination so deadly that for a while people believed it was straight up impossible to beat the map without a lucky dual guard if he rolled both at once. I don't actually know what the strategy is if he does - letting him weaken himself attacking someone paired up with Fred and then piling on him with ranged attacks, maybe? His positioning in the middle of the group makes him quite hard to isolate.   This situation from my first attempt is something you want to avoid, ideally! It wasn't even what ended it - Frederick dodged a second Hammer swing after this one - but it was overall not entirely ideal.   Also here in the woods are some Archers and Mercenaries. Archers have pretty crappy stats as is traditon, but Fred not being able to counter them at range is a little annoying. The Mercenaries are effectively stronger versions of the Myrmidons from last map.  Fred can pair up with Truck to give her a hefty boost in strength and defense, as well as some extra movement. At base, Great Knights only give +3 strength, defense, and +1 movement as pair-up bonuses - the extra boosts come from Frederick's own stats, as every ten points your partner has in a single stat translates to an extra bonus point for you. Truck has no stats over 10 of her own (besides HP, which doesn't count!) so she just offers what she did last map.  Chrom once again will not being doing much, so he should hand over that Vulnerary he's been keeping to herself. Lissa probably should have done the same too - she's not living a single round of combat anyway.  While I could leave Truck out in front and have her take a few hits thanks to the combined bonus of Fred and the +2 from this fort tile, it's still a little risky... Truck won't be able to kill enemies fast without help from Frederick's dual strikes, and he's only going to do those some of the time. If I wanted to get her to be as strong as possible I could just reset the first few turns of the map until she dodges enough low hit% attacks and levels up a bunch, but I'd rather aim for something a little more reliable. For that reason, Fred goes out in front and steals her Bronze Sword both to conserve uses of his Silver Lance and to give him weapon triangle advantage against the scary axes. Truck will be dual attacking with her Thunder tome, if she feels like it.  The wide open nature of this map makes it hard to keep my weaker units safe, so I'd rather they hang back for now. The enemies would rather attack Fred on his fort than chase after people not in range, but I want some breathing room regardless.  The slight speed boost Truck gives him plus WTA and the extra avoid from the fort make Frederick actually somewhat evasive here. That said, he's not in danger from these particular Fighters...  Ideally he'd weaken enemies just enough so that Truck could finish them off herself next turn if I wanted, but this weapon is a little too weak for that. If Truck dual attacked now then she could maybe finish them off with a second attack after, but her chance of doing so is fairly low.  The higher strength of the Mercenaries plus Frederick no longer having WTA against them means the sword users can do a little damage now. Just a little.  Every single enemy on this map starts moving at once, including the boss. Thankfully there's not a huge amount of them, but it gets crowded pretty quick.   But wait... what is this...? Heroes to save us in our darkest hour...? Absolutely not lol, these guys are gonna be no help at all.  Let's have a look at them anyway. Here's Sully, the first ever member of a red/green Cavalier duo to be a woman! The glass ceiling in Archanea is gone, and it only took 2000 years to break!! Unless Cecil was actually the red Cavalier of her game. Was she...? Sully Skills: Discipline (Earn 2x as much weapon exp in combat) Growths: HP: 85% STR: 55% MAG: 20% SPD: 60% SKL: 60% LCK: 60% DEF: 45% RES: 25% I only just noticed it now, but Sully's bases and growths are extremely similar to Chrom's. How interesting... How fitting that they're both going to get married! Oops, surprise. Sully is one of my favourite characters in Awakening based off of personality alone, and she's pretty alright as a unit too. Unfortunately she's not going to be much help in this map outside of providing pair-up bonuses and carrying Virion to safety, but I plan on investing EXP in her later.  Here's the obligatory lovely earlygame Archer. Virion might not be green, but he is otherwise just as bad as you'd expect. I'd be tempted to call him the worst of the bunch, but I don't really think that's fair - as underwhelming as his potential is, and as susceptile to being ORKO'd as he is, being able to safely deal chip damage against powerful enemies from range is nice. Unlike Rolf he does have an actual niche, tiny as it may be. That Elixir in his inventory will be incredibly useful - one use restores a unit's HP to full. You'll want to get that traded to Frederick ASAP. Virion Skills: Skill + 2 Growths: HP: 80% STR: 55% MAG: 30% SKL: 70% SPD: 60% LCK: 40% DEF: 35% RES: 30% Look at that magic growth! Would you believe Virion's base strength and magic growths are actually the same? Unfortunately for him this game has no magic bows. Even more unfortunately for him, he's... pretty awful. That 5 base speed is especially dire - so many enemies are going to be able to double and kill him, and his 60% growth isn't really high enough to dig him out of that hole, especially with his lack of enemy phase combat greatly hindering his potential EXP gains. He'll be able to deal minor amounts of chip damage and provide pair up bonuses for a short while, but then it's bench time for him.  I'm especially mad at him for being the cause of my last reset. Granted, this was my fault for leaving him in range without checking enemy stats, but I assumed he could avoid being doubled by a lovely Archer!! Unfortunately I failed to take into account that he too was a lovely archer.  I have learned my lesson now. The bench is many steps away from peril, perhaps you would like to be escorted there...?  Sully and Virion both start a little too close to the action for my comfort. On lower difficulties the idea was they could jump straight into the fray, but here all they're doing is being a liability. Sully partners up with Chrom, giving him some pretty cool stat boosts in the process. Perhaps they can do a little combat together to build support ranks?   Chrom can just about handle one of these on his own. He can stand right here on the edge and lure one over.  With the fort giving him an extra 20% avoid, Frederick will face a displayed hit chance of 23% against this enemy that can kill him in one hit. Ideally I could have Truck weaken him first, but it's less risky to have Frederick dodge than it is to expect her to survive against him and all his friends on enemy phase. I'd rather not rely on dodges if I have to, but taking a risk on an unlikely hit sounds better than wasting time trying to slowly and safely whittle this guy down.  Meanwhile, Chrom can and does take exactly one hit. His avoid is much less impressive than Frederick's.   But Dual Strike+ gives Sully just that little bit extra chance to make a hit of her own, and the Fighter goes down! Some well earned EXP for the both of them.  Fred's also eating well at the zombie meat buffet. This level is... not ideal, but I'm happy to see the extra speed all the same. What I was hoping to see was defense, maybe even a +2 in HP if I was really lucky. Unfortunately Frederick cannot make up for this one poor level by following it up with many more levels like Truck can, so I'll just have to deal with it.  The extra speed does however allow him to start doubling Fighters, and he takes down his Hammer adversary with this newfound agility. This is... maybe not good? Obviously it's nice that he's no longer at risk of getting bonked to death, but now he's really chewing through enemies fast. That's less EXP for both Truck and himself!  At least Truck is making some dual attacks of her own. Hey, defense! That's pretty cool! Now if you can get just one more point before the chapter ends...  The extra tome rank is also appreciated, but unless I get lucky with sparkling tiles I won't be seeing any tomes of rank higher than E for a while.  Wow Frederick you uh... you sure did kill just about near everyone. Let's see if we can't make these last few morsels last...  Virion can lure over that one Archer to let the vultures steal some EXP, but not without a support partner to first give him some speed so he doesn't die. I've learned my lesson!  Lissa's not really had the chance to do much this map, it's a bit of a shame. The forts already heal HP passively each turn, so I'm not feeling her lack of ability to contribution too much.  The lack of powerful Fighters means that Truck can now come out to play and maybe get another level for herself. Frederick's still got her sword though - I don't want him wasting his Silver Lance.  Every swing he makes is extra sword EXP for him, which is quite handy. Frederick's non-lance weapon ranks are quite poor, but with Discipline he can level them up fast.   These two idiots both shoot each other non-lethally. Virion takes less and deals more, if only because a much cooler woman on a horse is standing next to him.   Now to wait things out a little. Using a Vulnerary to heal 2HP might seem wasteful, and it probably is, but if all 3 enemies here hit Truck then she'd be dead! Meanwhile, Virion and the gang run away on account of none of them being able to safely finish off that Archer.   Risen Chiefs make up a large number of the bosses in this game. As the plot progresses they get more and more eloquent, eventually managing to form meaningful sentence fragments! Maybe once their grasp of the Ylissean language gets good enough they can pass the entrance exams to get into axe school so they can learn how to throw one.  Lissa this does not bode well for your longterm usability. Do you want to be a staff bot all of your life? This isn't Thracia, you don't need accuracy to heal a guy.   These Archers have a crit rate of 7 but Chrom's luck stat is only 5, meaning he needs his friends to stand around next to him and give him a little extra crit avoid through adjacency bonus stacking. In retrospect I should have let Truck kill this guy for the EXP, but I feel a little bad not letting my other units do anything in these early maps!  Yay, Sully! Now I wish Chrom had gotten this kill, getting him a level would benefit me more than spreading the EXP between both him and Sully. Hindsight is 20/20...   Tragedy! The Risen Chief has rudely positioned himself on top of this sparkly tile, necessitating that I lure him somewhere else so I can stand on it. I suppose Truck can stand on this other fort instead.  Cool. Intended to be the series's last hoorah and pay homage to past games, Awakening's sparkling tiles are full of named weapons like this that serve as references to past heroes. All the new players this game drew in would be confused by these random names, and possibly led to believe their namesakes were cooler than they actually were.  See? No way anyone would let Eliwood have a sword as cool as this. This is an incredibly good find - it's a weapon almost on par with Fred's Silver Lance, and it comes with the advantage of not giving him WTD against scary axe users when he wields it... One problem though - he can't, and neither can anybody else. C rank is just a little too high!   He is swinging that Bronze Sword around a lot though, maybe he'll level up his rank before the map ends. Truck, this isn't what I want to see... An extra point of defense might not mean much for her, but it would result in Frederick gaining an extra point from Truck as a pair up partner on account of it bringing her to double digits. I was really hoping for that this map!   There's the last of the EXP gone. Didn't even get that other sparkling tile... Unfortunately Truck did not get to roll the level up RNG one last time. Now I regret feeding those two kills to Chrom and Sully!  This however is a nice consolation prize - Frederick can now use that cool sword I just found. Will the power of Eliwood help me solve Chapter 2?  I sure hope so. Things didn't go quite to plan - Truck could have gotten more EXP, she and Frederick both could have leveled better, and worst of all I straight up forgot to trade over Virion's elixir! It's not the end of the world. I'll figure this all out somehow!  Oh and Marth killed all the zombie goasts offscreen. Kinda forgot about that dude to be honest.  Instead of being fully voice acted, Awakening uses a small selection of character grunts and phrases to make its textboxes more aurally involved. This occassionally leads to funny conversations if you ignore the text on screen and just listen to the sounds, like this conversation consisting of "You may call me Marth" "Really?" "No". It's okay, we all know who this is anyway.  An entire forest burned down, the dead rose from their graves, and Marth is here. Cool! Seems like it was a good bonding exercise for everyone, because we've just unlocked support conversations. Camping does build character after all! Next Time: Unironically the hardest map in the game
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Sep 21, 2023 18:52
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midnight lasagna posted:Next Time: Unironically the hardest map in the game Yup, I anticipate an ungodly amount of Fred strafing or progressing only because you got lucky on a hit chance more likely to hit than not. At least, that's the only way I made it through it on my two successful runs. I found that I still have written notes for a reliable way to manage this coming chapter. I've never done that for any other chapter in any other FE. Virion has worse stats than an enemy archer would at base, but he gets an odd utility in Lunatic as one of the few characters capable of ranged attacks on the next two maps. Unless he gets super blessed he's absolutely not going to last long, though weirdly enough he somehow followed me all the way into the second arc on my first Lunatic attempt. That run was purely unsuccessful though and I had to totally restart. This map... I never manage get that other sparkly spot and it's so easy for Fred to sponge up all the EXP. On Hard Ironman modes I usually feed Chrom really hard so I can have him dodgetank on the forts while paired with Fred since Robin can always catch up. That's a no-go on this broken difficulty. Sully is cool and she's my default pick for Chrom's S-rank as Lucina with Astra is hard to pass up. Kjelle is frequently on my endgame teams as solid unit as well thanks to it. I'm not sure if I've ever really cared that much about the 1st gen units' growth rates as usually their bases and early levels defines how quickly they get benched or not. I think the only time I've really bothered with checking growths in this game is just for seeing what Donny's kid has with Aptitude on. It's very hard to find spots for other units to get EXP this early on. Sometimes I wonder how I even managed to level Donny on either of my attempts. Eliwood's Blade is a real nice find this early. I think probably the best get this early is Celica's Gale as it will unquestionably sweep any fliers we see in the coming chapters. That, or Ephraim's Lance for the Defense bonus. The Glass + Dying Blaze set is the minimum you want to see, with the joke weapons probably being the least favorable finds.
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Sep 21, 2023 20:29
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Add me on to the pile who defaults to pairing Chrom with Sully. Oh, Virion. One of my surprise favorites from this game as a character, but such an awful unit.
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Sep 21, 2023 20:33
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I always felt this map was a lot harder than chapter 2 and also chapter 5 feels a bunch more difficult than both of them, but we'll see! Virion's your only archer for a bit so he'll see usage, but yeah, archers only come into their own really deep in and Virion is *not* a deep into the game unit. Also surprised we're getting Sully!Lucina! I thought for sure we were getting Robin as the mother. In terms of optimisation nerdery. Sully as Lucina's mother isn't bad at all. Her upside is that she has a daughter, and inheriting Aether is pretty strictly better than inheriting Rightful King. Her statline is really solid as well! Lots of strength and speed make both Lucy and Kjelle well optimised for their physical attacker roles. And Astra is always a really cool skill to run. Their early pair up will also help out a bunch on these early levels as well with Sully delivering Chrom where he needs to be and dual strike+ putting in plenty of work to let Sully get hits in. So what are the downsides? Well, Sully's classes inheritance with Chrom isn't great. Lucy only gets the Myrmidon Line and the Wyvern Line, contrasted with the likes of Sumia granting Peg Knight/General/Casters and Olivia exchanging the Wyvern Line for the much better Peg Knight line. And that's basically all of the issue resulting in two major problems: Lucina and Kjelle lose Galeforce access. Kjelle loses Armsthrift access. Lucy is one of the few kids that will get to Galeforce without inheritance if you let her because of how early she's recruited and since she comes with Aether anyway it's actually really good to switch her class straight away. But Kjelle's Armsthrift loss is more painful for me. Armsthrift is, to me, probably the single best skill in the game, letting units walk in with forged weapons that never break. It's what makes the likes of Severa and Inigo as powerful as they are because they're kids who can roll in underleveled, but pick up a forged brave item and get going. So Kjelle losing that, frankly, massive advantage always feels pretty bad for a girl I really like.
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Sep 21, 2023 21:26
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There's also one other big advantage to the pairing in a no-grind run. Of the non-Lucina kids, Kjelle (along with Morgan, Owain and Laurent) is one of the kids whose paralogue still have a bunch of unpromoted enemies and are basically level appropriate to jump right into after Ch13 if you want, so they can grab some easy levels on their joining map and slot right in. Basically all the kids tied to moms from Sumia onward have an increasingly hard time getting up to speed in their joining maps and those maps end up as difficulty spikes if you beeline for say, Nah and have her try to play catch up in plot maps.
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Sep 21, 2023 22:08
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It’s funny to me that Virion, objectively one of the worst units in the game, becomes better the higher the difficulty is. He’s certainly not good in the long-term, but being able to chip fairly reliably at 2 range becomes a lot more important on Lunatic, where most characters are only able to take one hit or less before dying. I guess he can also contribute in chapter 7 by shooting fliers down, but that’s probably about the last time he’ll get deployed in your average run. On Hard and below, everyone else is so much more capable that he doesn’t really get a chance to contribute. I’ve also heard that he can help when dealing with Counter enemies in Lunatic+, but I’ve never even considered touching that mode, so I don’t know if that’s true.
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Sep 23, 2023 02:55
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Shiny777 posted:There's also one other big advantage to the pairing in a no-grind run. Of the non-Lucina kids, Kjelle (along with Morgan, Owain and Laurent) is one of the kids whose paralogue still have a bunch of unpromoted enemies and are basically level appropriate to jump right into after Ch13 if you want, so they can grab some easy levels on their joining map and slot right in. Basically all the kids tied to moms from Sumia onward have an increasingly hard time getting up to speed in their joining maps and those maps end up as difficulty spikes if you beeline for say, Nah and have her try to play catch up in plot maps. This is a big advantage, yeah. The fact that an Astra proc with Parallel Falchion on the final boss is incredibly effective at putting a massive hole in it on turn 2. You do not want to be on Endgame for longer than 2 turns in my no-grind experience. Natural 20 posted:Very salient points Galeforce is definitely useful to push the envelope on some maps and clear threats faster, but count me as one of the rare few who doesn't think it's really all that good so I don't really value it that much. Probably an insane opinion, but I dunno, I probably play the game really weirdly and I'm not one who' keeps up to date on what strategies are considered valid. I've never done anything with the online stuff and I've never played the DLC maps so my strategies are purely based on surviving the base game. Not to mention that without grinding, it'll be quite a while before Galeforce even shows up. To continue my random defense of Myrmidon Lucina... Lucy's free silver sword with an infinite concoction puts her in a much better position that having to force her through E Lances, on a flying mount, in the arc of the game that becomes obsessed with Bow Knights, Warriors, and Assassins. Free avoid and Vantage are a nice little plus to go with it, having a bit more use than Speed +2 and Relief. Arms Scrolls can alleviate this if you can get enough to do anything, but I think there's only 1 guaranteed one up to that point if I remember right. Movement range doesn't matter that much to me either in this specific case as there's so many drat enemies you're gonna be forced into defensive lines and turtling slogs with. Besides, Sully or Chrom promoted into Paladin and used as permanent stat paste provides + Mov to make up for it. Few maps really have an objective you even need to hurry towards, and the ones you do won't be a problem anyways. It doesn't really bother me that the class potential is low in the Chrom + Sully pairing in Lucina's case as for me the endgame plan is just Swordmaster Lucina (theoretically you can class back to Great Lord at 15, but you're not likely to see another level 15 by the end for Rightful King Astra unless you tap into Paralogues hard.) Armsthrift is a loss, but I usually have Donnel for that, and possibly Robin. I perhaps don't get as much use out of forges as I should, but I play basically just no-grind runs so endgame I'm usually seeing forged Killing Edges/Axes on any units who can use them and unforged Brave Weapons on and around where I can afford them. Kjelle usually just ends up a Paladin or a Great Knight on most of my runs and stays around as relatively solid on Hard, and I think the one Lunatic she saw use was when I brought her to Assassin. ...I also probably overvalue Myrmidon -> Swordmaster in general for this game as any pairing that gives me access to it is mechanically raised in my eyes. Eh, whatever, this is just my takes on the situation. We're still a long way off from Lucina arriving. Kmsorter posted:It’s funny to me that Virion, objectively one of the worst units in the game, becomes better the higher the difficulty is. He’s certainly not good in the long-term, but being able to chip fairly reliably at 2 range becomes a lot more important on Lunatic, where most characters are only able to take one hit or less before dying. I guess he can also contribute in chapter 7 by shooting fliers down, but that’s probably about the last time he’ll get deployed in your average run. On Hard and below, everyone else is so much more capable that he doesn’t really get a chance to contribute. I’ve also heard that he can help when dealing with Counter enemies in Lunatic+, but I’ve never even considered touching that mode, so I don’t know if that’s true. It's rather fascinating how the difficulty and lack of early thrown weapons really enhance his performance as just a guy who can hit from behind your defensive line. One of his best uses is probably just to pop enemies sitting at really low HP when the unit holding the line needs to heal badly. Dying from success is a huge issue on this difficulty given most units can't take more than 1 hit, and he's a rather needed answer for it. A lucky Glass Bow drop absolutely helps for either of the two awful wyvern mountain maps in some situations, provided Virion can get a safe approach. If anything, I think I'm most interested to see what midnight lasagna does with Robin. What I reclass Robin to is usually a focus point of my Hard runs, and remained extremely pivotal for getting through Lunatic. I will not deny that on both of my Lunatic completions I sandbagged for a random Anna spawn for an early Second Seal. edit: It's funny, Awakening's not even my particular favorite FE, but it's the one I've played way too much of so it's the only one I have any real solid opinions on. I don't think I could give a mechanical spiel like this for any of the other games. I might be able to for Echoes, but I don't think it'd say anything new. Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Sep 23, 2023 |
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Sep 23, 2023 05:22
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Galeforce is a fun and useful skill, but grinding levels to pass it can really kill any fun in playing this game, imo. Excited to see where this goes, I enjoyed your Fates let's plays a lot!
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Sep 23, 2023 09:32
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Ventadour posted:Galeforce is a fun and useful skill, but grinding levels to pass it can really kill any fun in playing this game, imo. ....Never loving again.
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Sep 23, 2023 15:07
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I've heard the stories about Awakening (and Lunatic mode) but it's something else seeing statistically how much the game hates us. I'm excited to watch the carnage unfold! I also made the mistake of looking up Lunatic+ and, excuse me, why?
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Sep 23, 2023 15:51
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Malah posted:I also made the mistake of looking up Lunatic+ and, excuse me, why? We like to think it's some form of sick joke. We hope it was a sick joke... I have a feeling that one day I am going to return to Awakening, and that playthrough will be Lunatic+ because I will have completely lost it. Although I think Counter is my most hated skill in all of FE so I'm not looking to experience Counter even more.
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Sep 23, 2023 16:04
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Adding to the 'Sully is cool' club, though that's mostly as a character... I've had too many runs where she just failed to proc Str too many times. Doubling is nice but not for 0! Stahl usually ends up being my more reliable cavalier, he's an underrated guy. Her daughter is kinda lame (to me), but her map is good for training, so it could be a lot worse.
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Sep 23, 2023 18:30
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Galeforce always struck me as an incredibly pointless skill people put far too much weight in. Grinding for Galeforce both takes longer than it's worth and invalidates a great chunk of the game from the stats gained alone. I never understood why the primary healers in this game suck so hard. Both their bases and their growths are a noticeable tier below your regular units. This is noticeable if you look at Lissa right now and compare her to Sully and Virion, as the first average units in the army. Stat totals for non-HP and not including the offstat (str/magic for the stat they don't use) Lissa: 17 HP, 28 other stats Sully: 20 HP, 38 other stats Virion: 19 HP, 34 other stats. Lissa is level 1 and the others are 2, but she'd have to get a perfect level to match Virion. And Archers have lovely stats in the first place. And Lissa has lower growths than them. Your best healer is actually to take the first mage and second seal her to a healer, so that on promotion, you actually have a magic user with stats worth fighting with and someone with trained staff rank. I generally played on Lunatic Casual and mostly played normally, but ignored deaths that were due to reinforcements since I couldn't be bothered to memorize the placements. Since I disliked Juggernaut stacking and actually tried to use an army, reinforcement deaths are kind of inevitable if you don't have the wiki open to the reinforcement timings. And I actually had this on the handheld, so yeah...
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Sep 24, 2023 00:23
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lissa's personal modifiers are a +1 overall (a lead in magic and luck, low strength), the same as most of the characters in the game. what you're seeing is that cleric has atrocious class bases because they shouldn't see combat, which is fine because they're The class that gets experience without having to see combat. her base magic is fine, her growths being relatively even overall just doesn't work out for her because generalists have never been great in fire emblem, especially not with pair up. there's no opportunity cost with using her at this point, anyway. by comparison, frederick's a whole +2 relative to his class bases, but they're very min-maxed, with him getting 2 str/skl/def and -2 spd/mag compared to the typical great knight. great knight being a promoted class just comes with way better stats in the first place. the first mage you get has a whole +1 higher magic base than lissa, in exchange for even lower defense. i don't want to get into the technicals well before we see them but the game has several pre-promotes with solid staff ranks, so there's no need to kneecap anyone by making them a cleric if you don't want to train lissa.
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Sep 24, 2023 02:47
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Lissa has generalist growths just for the possibility that you turn her into a War Cleric instead. She's honestly better as Sage in my opinion (and Libra is the better War Cleric) but it's an option, especially if you want to pass down more physical stats to Owain without grinding her to Galeforce; I got a weirdly Str-blessed Lissa on one run so gave it a go.
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Sep 24, 2023 02:52
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I always found Lissa one of the more useful early units in the long-term myself just from being able to grab a bunch of easy exp patching everyone else up and riding those levels into being a solid Sage as one of the earlier promotions. Miriel probably ends up with the better statline at equal levels, but she also has to actually grab kills to get there.
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Sep 24, 2023 03:28
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Miriel is one of the better Gen 1 units yeah and a very strong candidate for the early Second Seal because her growths patch up a lot of Dark Mage's weaknesses, but Sage/Valkyrie Miriel is still excellent. And 'getting kills' is not an issue for her especially since low Res enemies are abundant early game and Knights are just training dummies for a mage.
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Sep 24, 2023 03:33
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The problem I had with Lissa is that she doesn't have a good second seal choice. Cleric bases suck yeah, but a 30% str growth combined with a 1 str above base isn't going to allow her to really damage anything for a kill. She may get a bit of strength from going into a weapon class, but her likely average + bronze weapons are going to go nowhere. I feel that she has a strength growth more to make it so that her kid doesn't get absolutely penalized in that front, since I have tried letting her use her strength to attack, and it doesn't work on Lunatic at all. My judgement also comes from when I let her get to 20, reclassed her, and.... she barely reached like 1-2 caps at 20 in the second class. Compare that to second sealing anyone else (including Miriel) at level 14-16, and them hitting their caps fairly easily by the time you'd want to promote them at 20 in their other class. It's still good to let her heal to 20 if you plan to use her kid, since her kid actually comes early enough in the order to actually gain levels in his own map. I had some success with him. I just never had any success trying to use her directly. All perspectives here are from the stance of no grinding extra battles, and no DLC.
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Sep 24, 2023 03:53
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I think the only time I reclassed Lissa was on my original Hard, non-hardcore playthrough. She ended up going into Peg and doing surprisingly okay with an early prepromoted Lon'qu as a S rank partner, eventually becoming an eventually unhittable Falcoknight. That's really the only consideration there for her, second sealing at level 10 Sage into Falcoknight. Her damage with tomes eventually falls behind anyone else's who was made for the role or pampered into it unless you're intentionally feeding her. Her bulk is frequently too little to want to see her too close to any combat anyways. Being a flying staff user with 8 Mov has its utilities, and you if leave her unpaired she can play like a GBA rescue peg. Not to mention that a Rescue user with high mov is very good for going fast through a map and for bringing someone in range for a turn 2 kill on the final fight. She ends up sticking around on my teams pretty long and it's not a real loss to promote her early into Sage if nobody else needs the seal soon (though Owain's stats will take a hit). ...But I'm not denying that her potential is often quite limited. I like Lissa, but I'm not going to go out of my way to imply she does much more than serve her role as healer on the regular. There's nothing wrong with that though, that's just the fate of a healer unit.
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Sep 24, 2023 05:04
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The thing with Galeforce is that it exists in this state where it's somehow both under and over valued. Grinding out for Galeforce became a common idea in Awakening because the assumption was that players who gave enough of a poo poo about doing that would be going on to do Apotheosis, the final DLC. A lot of discussion around Awakening optimisation is framed in that light, aka, "The game is trivial. Apotheosis is not. What do I do to make sure that when I get there I can beat it?" And if that's your objective, then yeah, grinding out Galeforce is worth it. It's hard to emphasise how loving powerful the skill is, you have 8 movement characters attacking twice and rescue ranges of 10+. It gives you an absolutely unprecedented level of map control as you have characters fly out of a rallyball, kill 2-3 enemies and then get rescued back into the rallyball. A lot of people who say "Ah galeforce isn't that good," just don't seem to get how powerful that level of control is in a game with stuff like same turn reinforcements. But over time I think that opinion on what Awakening is even about as changed pretty significantly. Firstly opinion on Apotheosis has changed as people got better at handling the map. I've never seen it done, but it's a pretty commonly held belief that you can probably beat it with Gen 1 units without Limit Breaker on. But secondly I feel like the prevailing opinion that Awakening isn't trivial without exp cheese strats has come about as well. So the question of "Where is Galeforce worth the grind?" is much more important now than it was back then. So tonnes of people end up overvaluing it because they half remember what they were doing 10 years ago.
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Sep 24, 2023 13:15
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Will maybe weigh in on all the galeforce stuff later, but I just wanna say that my attempts to find a "reliable" solution to Chapter 2 that do not involve Frederick dodging hits ironically have involved me making lots of save states. Not to rig outcomes, but to puzzle things out move by move so I don't go insane. Or at least slow down the rate at which I go insane. I am now sitting on a savestate where I've cleared out the initial group of enemies that aggro because I really don't want to repeat that exact sequence of moves again. Truck got a HP and nothing else level but I don't care, it's part of the canon now. Incidentally, doing almost the same sequence of moves over and over again made me discover that accidentally putting someone one tile away from where you put them last attempt can change enemy movement patterns and mess up your whole strategy. I have no idea how people have the patience to figure these things out, I'd grind my lower jaw into powder after just one map!!
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Sep 24, 2023 18:17
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Them adding Mila's Turnwheel (and then later on into Divine Pulse and so on) was one of the best new additions to the games.
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Sep 24, 2023 18:26
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midnight lasagna posted:Will maybe weigh in on all the galeforce stuff later, but I just wanna say that my attempts to find a "reliable" solution to Chapter 2 that do not involve Frederick dodging hits ironically have involved me making lots of save states. Not to rig outcomes, but to puzzle things out move by move so I don't go insane. Or at least slow down the rate at which I go insane. I am now sitting on a savestate where I've cleared out the initial group of enemies that aggro because I really don't want to repeat that exact sequence of moves again. Truck got a HP and nothing else level but I don't care, it's part of the canon now. Incidentally, doing almost the same sequence of moves over and over again made me discover that accidentally putting someone one tile away from where you put them last attempt can change enemy movement patterns and mess up your whole strategy. I have no idea how people have the patience to figure these things out, I'd grind my lower jaw into powder after just one map!! Yeah I think it took me upwards of a 100 attempts to get through this map the first time. Only took me about 20 on the second go I think, but I got super lucky on a Fred dodge. That is, complete resets. I played on hardware. I don't like physical pain, but I'm either some kind of masochist or way too stubborn for my own good. I salute your efforts to try and puzzle out a way to win this chapter without hit RNG playing a significant factor, I never could.  It's amazing how this map that normally blends into the first two suddenly becomes an almost insurmountable challenge. And you don't even get the DLC yet if you were to do a grind allowed run, you have to live through this no matter what. And if your stat gains are too bad, you might even see yourself resetting to fix it before a later map becomes impossible. The stat thresholds some units have to hit to remain "not a liability" can be tough. ApplesandOranges posted:Them adding Mila's Turnwheel (and then later on into Divine Pulse and so on) was one of the best new additions to the games. I was a little conflicted about its existence at first, but I've since been fine with it. You can just ignore it if you don't want to use it, and for less hardcore runs it's so nice to have a button to remedy misclicks/ evil AI design more than an hour into a mission. Echoes's overly faithful maps (which I do appreciate) desperately needed it for the length, and it's been a solid thing to just have around. It is funny as it's the new thing that always has to get written in with some sort of plot hook that lies half forgotten off to the side.
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Sep 24, 2023 18:43
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Natural 20 posted:A lot of people who say "Ah galeforce isn't that good," just don't seem to get how powerful that level of control is in a game with stuff like same turn reinforcements. I know that Galeforce is excellent, it just comes too late in the context of the game for me to care, really. Turn economy is always valuable. I didn't buy any of the DLC (and therefore Apotheosis doesn't factor in for me) because my first impression of FE DLC was horrendous. First exposure was my friend being excited about them giving gold/exp farming maps so his grinding got more 'efficient'. And even before the plague of microtransactions would make this look cute in comparison, I had a severe distaste for them letting people pay money to break their own game's balance in pieces. With all that in mind, Galeforce doesn't apply very heavily for me in the campaign, since it's such a late skill. I tried a game where I used grinding and got bored shitless really fast, so my games were no-grind ones. Ah, yes, Chapter 2. That's the one where you get Teach, Miriel, and the other sheperds right? That one always felt like such a difficulty spike due to how immediately in your face the enemies are, and how many of your units can't take a singular hit.
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Sep 24, 2023 23:07
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