😹 Honestly I love those videos, I have learned a lot of useful strategies from Zoran and other creators, but I don't think that people need to approach casual Fire Emblem the same way. It's okay to play with less-than-perfect strategies and still think about how to 'win' rather than how to 'come up with a puzzle-like solution that leads to the same results 99.9% of the time'
@@oElleryyea, conquest 10 was the only map that made me want to do super deep into strategizing to fulfill all objectives. If you like conquest 10 look at my perfect run. :)
These guides are so interesting. I recently did a Lunatic Ironman run, where I tried to also unlock & complete as many paralogues as I could & will attempt a Lunatic + one in the future. It's so cool how Awakening has some of the most complex & intricate strategies out of any fire emblem game out there.
I don't think I could handle an Ironman of this game, I'd probably go bald! 😹Although I have thought about it a few time and might actually try it one day. Maybe...
I learned the negating weapon triangle bonus strategy in fe12 lunatic mode and it is one of my favorite mechanics in DS and 3DS era. I finished fe12 and awakening lunatic but their jump to lunatic reverse and + are very high to me to complete without guide These higher difficulties makes me appreciate awakening more than the average hard mode because each early unit is a valuable piece in their map, specially in awakening. I used to hate awakening because hard was too easy to low man and lunatic + was meme. But I appreciate guides like yours that shows the beauty of this mode. FE12 is "more friendly" for having prologue maps, free reclass, no + skills, and stat boost in the prep shop. Lunatic reverse and Lunatic+ are indeed similar to their philosophy of using each tool in your favor. I prefer watching your edited videos becauae i got lost with your past stream XD. But i think after i understand how to deal with counter in ch3, I can try playing lunatic+ on my own.
I hope you're able to have a bit of fun with it. The beginning section is very hard and can be frustrating, but once we get to about chapter 6-8, the game realllyyyyy starts to feel a lot more fair and a lot more fun, and for the rest of the game it becomes so complex and interesting. You get all of the best parts of Lunatic+ and you mostly don't have to deal with the harsh difficulty of chapter 1-5 because at this point you have a full team that is capable of handling anything the game throws at them.
Im really enjoying the discussion in this series about lunatic +. The discussion of this mode starts and ends most of the time with the lack of balance and lack of quality control, so seeing an in-depth breakdown of how the mechanics work together is really refreshing.
@@oElleryFor me, it’s because it’s the only in-depth breakdown that I can see happening before my eyes. I haven’t really seen other breakdowns really get into the mechanics while explaining why something works and it makes me want to re-try Lunatic+. I remember getting stopped at Chapter 3 the last time I tried it, so I’m hoping this goes up to Chapter 4 at least.
@@herofox12 I'd like to do the entire game if possible! For now, I can say for sure that I already have concrete plans for chapters 1-8, and paralogue 1-3. The rest of the game is loosely solved in my head, I have cleared it before in my free time, twice or more depending on the chapter, but I haven't sat down to think about how to make guides about it or how I'd show it on stream. Well, I won't be releasing any Fire Emblem videos this week, sadly. So it'll probably be January 4th when the Chapter 3 video is released 😅
10:00 I actually came up with that strategy a while ago when playing conquest and applied it to awakening lunatic. It’s also a strat I often use in FE12 lunatic to train Norne or Est. Though for chapter 2 I typically use the upper fort sbd use Robin on the river tile to peel off other enemies. With a Chrom pair up and a bronze sword, Fred faces zero listed hit from the boss unless he rolls hawkeye. The same is true for the other axe fighters. What I typically do is use the river to have robin lure and chip him, back off to heal, have fred lure him away from Robin, then repeat until the boss is low enough to be killed by whoever I want. Although maybe using the lower fort might be better as I’ll have more space to work with. On the general unit discussion I completely agree on everything you said. I honestly think Miriel is the best candidate for the early game exp because she can use wind tomes to one round wyverns in chapters 5 and 7. She’s also super easy to train in chapter 3 because you can just hold a choke point with fred and have her pick things off from behind him at 2 range. The only other units that can do that are Robin who id likely already out leveling everyone and Virion who doesn’t provide significant pay off to warrent it. Also completely agree with on Vaike. The more I play thid game the more I realize that it’s balanced very similarly to FE 12 and almost every early game unit is viable if you choose to invest in them and having a well trained team is essential for tackling a lot of the challenges the game throws at you later Edit: I accidentally typed this as a reply to another comment Reposting as it’s own post and deleted the original sorry. Edit 2: I was typing a lot of this as I was watching the video so jf I missed something you mentioned or if some info in here feels redundant that’s probably why so again sorry about that.
No worries! Thanks for all of the detailed commentary! 😹Yeah, I love the meta of this game, it is super diverse and interesting. I can't wait to see how other people are able to improve and refine on these team based strategies even beyond my initial ideas.
@ yeah your videos got me to try Lunatic+ again and it’s been surprisingly manageable although it took me several hours to beat chapter 5 because stupid counter wyverns. It’s also skyrocketed my opinion on Miriel and Virion because being able to chip a counter enemy at range is invaluable early on. I’ve also been using the renown rewards a lot because having access to some more money and early stat boosters has been a huge help. Also Merc Robin with a levin sword has just been amazing for what I need him to be doing
I know we've already talked about the Vaike stuff, but I guess I'll respond to it because it's here: With regards to "why not use Robin and Vaike at the same time". You definitely can do. I do think there is something to be said, though, for lowmanning being way less of a headache in some maps. Maps like C23 and C24 and C19 and C20 if you're routing them really are a lot easier with one very powerful unit as opposed to trying to juggle multiple units. So there's less incentive to train multiple combat units unless you want to play highman (which granted is significantly more skill intensive and fun, but it is much harder). You could train Robin beforehand and then plan to drop them later on, I suppose, but there's also other units that you may want to invest into. If you know your combat is pretty much sorted post C8, then you can raise supportive units like Ricken, Miriel or Cordelia. You could also take the opportunity to use Frederick even more, as you've got one less person you need to give exp to. This doesn't just make the game easier, but also makes Frederick better, too. I'm not saying that Vaike+Robin is always worse than Vaike or Robin, just that it's no worse an option, in the grand scheme of things. Just like how you mention you can't raise all of the C2 units, I'm just saying that Robin is also included in that list. With regards to "Vaike vs Gregor" As I've said before, I don't agree on the hitrate point being a big deal. Vaike w/ Sully pairup has ~95% chance to land his hits in C2. Most units on this map are going to be leading Vaike than a less than 5% in hit chance (although Robin with thunder likely ties Vaike for HR). That's one hit in every 20 attacks. It's something to think about, but as you mention, why not take the risk early into the map so if you do hit the 1/20, you can just reset. I agree it probably sucks to miss a 1/20, but you don't need to do it right at the end of the map, and if you do, it doesn't need to be something that's going to kill you if you miss, either. You can place Vaike at the edge of the range of an enemy and have them run into him and die on him on EP- then if Vaike misses you still have PP to act (again, this is something you mention in the video so I don't get why this is a disadvantage for Vaike). That means Vaike has to hit a lowroll of 1/400 to be at a disadvantage here- and that's ignoring things like someone else being able to attack, or have Lissa heal Vaike. This is the point in the game where his accuracy is the worst, and it's a lances for the earlygame because of all the axe spam and it's not like either Sully or Stahl is going to be using a javelin pre C7, so it's not like that will matter a great deal either. With regards to his speed, he's not too far away from Vaike's own position. The only times he's at threat of being doubled is C2 and C3 and there are enough speed pairups on the map to make that not really a big deal. I'm not going to claim that he's the bestest unit ever, I just think that he's being undersold a bit here I wouldn't train either of them for combat in lunatic+, but if I had to pick, Stahl is a better combat unit than Sully. Other than that I think this is a great video and guide for lunatic+. Have a good one :)
I think this comment really just highlights how diverse and interesting the meta of the units in Awakening are, and how little these topics actually get discussed is really a crime. I won't pretend I have the right answer about everything -- I have my best conclusions that I was able to come up with. But the only way to come to better conclusions is by sharing ideas with other people, and sadly there hasn't been much discussion or sharing of ideas about Awakening 🥲 Hopefully we can change that and have more interesting discussions about all of the different facets of these units, why one is better than the other for very specific tasks, and how to balance a good team by picking the units who cover for the gaps in other units. As for why I don't generally use Gregor and Vaike, it has to do with how I build my teams. There are not enough party slots to field all of the characters I want to use, and they are too redundant in their roles. I don't typically need two physically bulky Sol tanks, I only need one. It might seem like this goes against the point I was making in the video but maybe I didn't explain it fully or well enough. I will normally have two or three units who are capable of enemy phase sweeping. However, I prefer if they have different builds. That way I can use A to counter enemy mages, B to counter enemy Berserkers, and C to counter a mixed group of Swordmasters and Archers. Something like that should make sense. Each of my tanks should be the best suited for a different role, while Gregor and Vaike will both typically be good and bad in the same situations. They don't offer enough variety to my tanking options when I'm already wishing I had 4 more party slots. I have no doubt that using both Gregor and Vaike could lead to some very good results. I haven't personally tried it yet to say exactly how good. But it's not how I have typically built my teams before now, and I wouldn't guess that it would lead to the best results. But I can only make my best guess, and there's no guarantee my guesses are correct. Hope that explains it better.
For the 2nd part of the map, I’m a big fan of engaging the enemies at 3 points initially. Frederick in the middle, Chrom and Robin on the river flanks respectively. This way the enemies are dispersed even more and easier to take down. A lot of control by abusing the river by kiting/chipping over the river. Additionally you can lure the boss occasionally to go to a side, then backout so he’s last in line of all the enemies to cross the bridge, at which point a fort makes him trivial EDIT: you actually did something similar later in this video, good spotting!
I actually had one run where I perfectly executed this strat and saved the boss for last, before dragging them down to be killed by Vaike (and Vaike hilariously missed his attack and died), but this is the run that I lost the footage from. Life is just like that sometimes 😹
Yeah this chapter really feels like the most honest presentation of the mode's enemy phase heavy philosophy. The advice of being more active just like a video by hiiyapow for vanilla Lunatic going around a while a go really is a good mindset change for people playing this mode. With the whole Dual Attack thing that people say relying on is inconsistent? Just look at the mode you're playing: You live or die and reset by skill RNG in earlygame. It's ok to rely on a quick reset Dual Attack. Besides later on you RELY on support pairs with high Dual Attack rates.
That's a really good observation! And yeah my recent streams have only made me appreciate high variance units and strategies even more, because they can REALLY bail you out when you get unlucky, AND they can allow you to make even more powerful turn 1 openers as long as you're willing to bank on a 30-40% opener. (Lon'qu will have his time to shine very, very soon in this series)
I'm still digesting this series in chunks and not watching all the videos at once. And I just got to your lowman strat statements. Yeah I agree. Most people I've noticed that have played the mode distills it into "just field Robin and Chrom as a Dark Mage Great Knight Duo win game". It doesn't take into account how much variance you can do in any given run. It was like when one of my water tile trick in the prologue got a lot of views and people are like "man now that's mandatory". It feels weird with the community that the first solution is seen as the ONLY solution sometimes. This stuff should facilitate creativity not stifle it because people see one thing works lol I tried getting advice from old forums and discords after pickup up vanilla lunatic again and NO ONE could give me general advice for my fun no grind "Two married Robins" hack run.
@@shadowofchaos725 I joked about this during the last stream but it's really funny how when I tried to find information on the game I couldn't find any. Now that I'm making the guides myself, the comment sections are filled with people offering advice. Where were all of these people before? 😹 Anyway, if you want advice for a dual Robin build, I would probably personally use this (If infinite Grinding is allowed) Male Robin: Vantage, Sol, Tomefaire, Aegis, Pavise Female Robin: DualGuard+, DualSupport+, Hex, Anathema, Bowfaire You can cut one of Female Robin's skills for Galeforce if you think you'll need more positioning tech, but with these skills, the Male Robin can probably tank through everything in the game, even on Lunatic+ If you're playing without grinding allowed, you need to focus on the most important skills that can be attained in the quickest progression and drop the skills that are too far out of the way. This is what I did for my normal runs when switching over from "grinding allowed" to "no grinding" playthroughs. Look at my completed builds and find out which combinations of skills that can easily be obtained together produce the best results. For minimum unit challenges like a single pairing... I haven't personally done this myself, and it's not the kind of run I would normally do, so I can only guess, but.... In that case I'd probably have the Male Robin reclass to Dark Mage ASAP, pick up Hex and Anathema, and then probably live without Sol and rely on Nosferatu healing and Vengeance to help amplify damage. You'll have minimal skills but still likely be reliable enough due to inflated stats. The Female Robin should probably get Galeforce ASAP, because you'll be less tanky, repositioning tech will be more essential. After that I'd probably send her into Sniper for reliable kills against high resistance enemies and Galeforce repositioning, and because she'll eventually get Bowfaire to amp her damage further.
You got my subscription, this series has been way to compelling ...and perhaps even more difficult to get than my subscription, you have gotten me to start playing lunatic+, something I have never ever wanted to do You're pretty alright
Thanks a lot ! 😸 One of my goals with this series is to convince people that Awakening IS a game that can be played in good faith, and doesn't require lowman strats to be playable. For people who want to get into Lunatic or even Lunatic+, I'd really encourage them to give it a fair try!
This video is PACKED!! I’m so excited to try out this chapter now!! X3c I did pick a +Spd -Def Robin though, let’s hope that doesn’t bite me in the butt too hard XD I’m also getting a little ahead of myself here, but your Miriel & Stahl discussion made me very curious 👀 Assuming I got multiple 2nd seals, is it worth taking Miriel/Robin into Dark mage for the accuracy boost skills + Vengance? For my other reclass ideas, I feel the I could gauge whether I want them or not when the situation comes, but this one stumped me, if I’m using them long term then maybe, if I’m pairing them with an axe user then probably, *man* this one’s going at my indecisiveness 🤧😆 Though, I think I’ll grind up the units I don’t use on the side, so any setbacks I face would probably be minor (or as minor as it could be for lunatic+ XD) I want to use a lot of the cast, but I know I’m not yet skilled enough to manage exp or plan ahead, (plus this would make the kids even better units lol) anyway, thanks for reading and thank you for posting!! I’ve already watched it like three times today, but I’m definitely gonna watch it as I play next X3c take care mate!! Hope you’ve eaten well 😆🥳🤟
Thanks for the praise! 😹 Be careful, the +Spd Robin can sometimes get oneshot by the boss, so the river strategy doesn't work as well. You might have to reset until he doesn't have Luna, or check his damage. A Virion Pair Up helps a lot if you have the C Support because you get +3 Def. As for Second Seals, I'm not a huge fan of them because they slow down EXP Gain. However, if you're grinding, I think that it's worth going into DarkMage for Hex and Anathema. However, keep in mind, auras in this game work on your pair up partner. This means that each pairing only needs to have one Hex and Anathema. For example, in the streams I've been doing recently, I'm pairing Robin and Tharja. Since Tharja already has Hex and Anathema, Robin doesn't need it, so there's no reason to go into Dark Mage. Hope that helps, and good luck 😸
@ ohhh right! Tharja 👀 I always think we get her much later than we do XD I do plan on using her too, guess I should start on that marriage planner to see who’s getting Dark mage 1 & DM 2 lmao, thank you! I definitely need to watch the more recent streams :3c Thanks for the help mate!! Excited to see what you do next!! X3c
The talk of front-loading risk reminds me a lot of tennis, where the expectation is that, no matter how good your first serve is, you should be putting about 2 out of 3 in-bounds. Making more than that is actually _bad_, since it suggests that you're not being aggressive enough with them. (The second part of this is that your second serve should be near-100% reliable.) Where it gets a little gnarly with FE is that the goalposts can move. In tennis, I only ever get 2 serves because those are the rules of the game. In FE, as soon as you break the seal of reloading, drawing the line starts getting fuzzy. Am I going to keep rolling for a 5% crit on my first action just because I can, or am I going to treat each run with like... _any_ level of "legitimacy". (This is compounded by me being a GBA-head, where manual RN burns would be required, making the whole thing one degree sketchier.) So in this context, it's not really a strategic, time-management discussion as it is a philosophical one.
This is funny because when I was working on this script, my friend said a lot of the same things to me, specifically with regards to GBA era fire emblem. Thanks for sharing your thoughts 😹
I see your argument with frontloaded risk, but as a guy who likes trying his best on his ironmans, I'm more into overall reliability. A 10 min strat with 50% reliability is better to me than a 2 min strat with a 25% reliability. So if that frontloaded risk doesn't lower overall reliability, it's fine by me, but if it's less reliable but faster if repeated, then I'm more torn. I prefer to slowly turtle if it's more reliable even if it's significantly slower. Still, I do like to see people's strats even if they don't play the way I like cuz some lessons are still applicable to my playstyle, like learning about better pathing from LTCs despite me not liking the LTC style of gameplay. And this stuff is pretty cool too!
It's just really, really difficult to come up with strategies that are actually 100% reliable in this game mode. That's the reason why frontloading the risk is better than taking the same (or worse) risks later on. Anyway, I know what you mean about adapting other strategies to your own style of play. I gained a lot of information from watching other people play Fire Emblem, and in many cases they played the game very differently from me, but I was still able to understand mechanics better, or learn new techniques, and then adapt those to my own style. That's one of the cool things about strategy games like this. Often times the strategies can be broadly applicable, which is the way I'm trying to explain them in my vids 😸
You are convincing me on +Def robin being better than SPD. I didn't notice, see or remember the strategy of going to Fort and bait them with other units. That is definitely worth keeping in mind so I could potentially build some supports sooner. I vaguely remember having a +Def Robin with Frederick pair up having more defense than him so that will make it better. It'll be less likely to dual strike on the first Turn but that's ok. I would like to remember your initial approach as sometimes when I go bottom left more than one enemy comes to me from left to mountains, which would probably be Ok if there was no pass. Using Robin to bait the boss and Having 2 units next to each other on the bridge is something I must have done previously. We'll see how the next one goes. By that point, I tend to have a good enough Robin but 1 unit isn't doing all the job, at least the first part.
100% ! Clearing this map 5 additional times in the last week to record all of this footage, and trying out different Robins, really, really made me appreciate my +Def Robin EVEN MORE than I already do. Whenever I tried strats with +Speed Robin they always felt like the extra Speed didn't actually make them fast enough to double anyway, but the loss of Defense actually made it possible for some enemies to oneshot them. Meanwhile, the +Def Robin is way more tanky and is already fast enough that they don't need a Speed Pair Up to avoid being doubled.
I also got convinced to run +Def Robin and I got a similar experience, then I also looked at the average Lvl 7 Robin averages 11 defense Frederick Pair up +4 defense (later +5 after they reach C support) Total 15 defense (16 with C support) > Fred's 14 defense. And Frederick can't pairup with himself And that defense keeps snowballing as Robin gains levels Also one really good prologue thing is that base lvl 1 Robin with Chrom pairup (to avoid getting doubled) survives 2 hits from a non Luna+ Myrmidon thanks to that +2 base def.
@tricky2795 Thanks for the numbers, it helps knowing it wasn't just lucky level ups. I should point out Robin could possibly have more than lvl 7 with water Trick as without it that's what I got once on lunatic.
This is good content, but what discourages me from using a full team, or units like Miriel that are only good on player phase, is the repeated ambush spawns on your position that plague this game. You're basically forced to run the game with the wiki open at all times to make sure a bow knight isn't gonna come out 10 tiles away from you to one shot something, and because there are so many of them, even bulky units are at risk unless they have a way to regen on enemy phase.
I'll address the Ambush Spawns in the chapters where they are relevant. I don't disagree with the point that you either need to have the wiki open (or already be very familiar with the maps), but I do think that they are extremely overstated. They're nowhere near as common or as bad as people make it seem when they talk about it. The majority of Ambush Spawns in this game follow one of two patterns; 1. If you fail to clear the map by a specific turn, Ambush Spawns will appear to force a Game Over (or you can intentionally set up on them for extra EXP) 2. Ambush Spawns will appear from specific objective points like forts or stairs which can be captured or blocked (or you can intentionally set up on them for extra EXP/Loot) But yeah, it's a fairly interesting point and I can't wait to discuss it more in depth when we get to those chapters. Thanks for the feedback 😸
Dude I felt called out when you said “plan for hours and upload perfect run to TH-cam” with my conquest 10 run
😹
Honestly I love those videos, I have learned a lot of useful strategies from Zoran and other creators, but I don't think that people need to approach casual Fire Emblem the same way. It's okay to play with less-than-perfect strategies and still think about how to 'win' rather than how to 'come up with a puzzle-like solution that leads to the same results 99.9% of the time'
@@oElleryyea, conquest 10 was the only map that made me want to do super deep into strategizing to fulfill all objectives. If you like conquest 10 look at my perfect run. :)
seeing more awakening lunatic/+ content is always good
Glad you're enjoying the series 😸
These guides are so interesting. I recently did a Lunatic Ironman run, where I tried to also unlock & complete as many paralogues as I could & will attempt a Lunatic + one in the future. It's so cool how Awakening has some of the most complex & intricate strategies out of any fire emblem game out there.
I don't think I could handle an Ironman of this game, I'd probably go bald! 😹Although I have thought about it a few time and might actually try it one day. Maybe...
@@oEllery Ooooh can't wait to see that, if you ever do attempt it.
I learned the negating weapon triangle bonus strategy in fe12 lunatic mode and it is one of my favorite mechanics in DS and 3DS era.
I finished fe12 and awakening lunatic but their jump to lunatic reverse and + are very high to me to complete without guide
These higher difficulties makes me appreciate awakening more than the average hard mode because each early unit is a valuable piece in their map, specially in awakening.
I used to hate awakening because hard was too easy to low man and lunatic + was meme. But I appreciate guides like yours that shows the beauty of this mode.
FE12 is "more friendly" for having prologue maps, free reclass, no + skills, and stat boost in the prep shop.
Lunatic reverse and Lunatic+ are indeed similar to their philosophy of using each tool in your favor.
I prefer watching your edited videos becauae i got lost with your past stream XD. But i think after i understand how to deal with counter in ch3, I can try playing lunatic+ on my own.
I hope you're able to have a bit of fun with it. The beginning section is very hard and can be frustrating, but once we get to about chapter 6-8, the game realllyyyyy starts to feel a lot more fair and a lot more fun, and for the rest of the game it becomes so complex and interesting. You get all of the best parts of Lunatic+ and you mostly don't have to deal with the harsh difficulty of chapter 1-5 because at this point you have a full team that is capable of handling anything the game throws at them.
25:53 lol I think the general consensus is the inverse, that is st*hl is worse than sully
These videos was what FE youtube was lacking the lost
Thanks a lot !
I wanted to give Awakening a new chance for some time
Give it a shot, and don't be afraid to play the game in whichever way is the most fun for you! 😸
Im really enjoying the discussion in this series about lunatic +. The discussion of this mode starts and ends most of the time with the lack of balance and lack of quality control, so seeing an in-depth breakdown of how the mechanics work together is really refreshing.
Thank you! I felt the same way, so I just had to make a video about it myself. I'm more happy to see how positive the response has been 😊
@@oElleryFor me, it’s because it’s the only in-depth breakdown that I can see happening before my eyes.
I haven’t really seen other breakdowns really get into the mechanics while explaining why something works and it makes me want to re-try Lunatic+.
I remember getting stopped at Chapter 3 the last time I tried it, so I’m hoping this goes up to Chapter 4 at least.
@@herofox12 I'd like to do the entire game if possible! For now, I can say for sure that I already have concrete plans for chapters 1-8, and paralogue 1-3. The rest of the game is loosely solved in my head, I have cleared it before in my free time, twice or more depending on the chapter, but I haven't sat down to think about how to make guides about it or how I'd show it on stream.
Well, I won't be releasing any Fire Emblem videos this week, sadly. So it'll probably be January 4th when the Chapter 3 video is released 😅
10:00 I actually came up with that strategy a while ago when playing conquest and applied it to awakening lunatic. It’s also a strat I often use in FE12 lunatic to train Norne or Est. Though for chapter 2 I typically use the upper fort sbd use Robin on the river tile to peel off other enemies. With a Chrom pair up and a bronze sword, Fred faces zero listed hit from the boss unless he rolls hawkeye. The same is true for the other axe fighters. What I typically do is use the river to have robin lure and chip him, back off to heal, have fred lure him away from Robin, then repeat until the boss is low enough to be killed by whoever I want. Although maybe using the lower fort might be better as I’ll have more space to work with.
On the general unit discussion I completely agree on everything you said. I honestly think Miriel is the best candidate for the early game exp because she can use wind tomes to one round wyverns in chapters 5 and 7. She’s also super easy to train in chapter 3 because you can just hold a choke point with fred and have her pick things off from behind him at 2 range. The only other units that can do that are Robin who id likely already out leveling everyone and Virion who doesn’t provide significant pay off to warrent it. Also completely agree with on Vaike.
The more I play thid game the more I realize that it’s balanced very similarly to FE 12 and almost every early game unit is viable if you choose to invest in them and having a well trained team is essential for tackling a lot of the challenges the game throws at you later
Edit: I accidentally typed this as a reply to another comment Reposting as it’s own post and deleted the original sorry.
Edit 2: I was typing a lot of this as I was watching the video so jf I missed something you mentioned or if some info in here feels redundant that’s probably why so again sorry about that.
No worries! Thanks for all of the detailed commentary! 😹Yeah, I love the meta of this game, it is super diverse and interesting. I can't wait to see how other people are able to improve and refine on these team based strategies even beyond my initial ideas.
@ yeah your videos got me to try Lunatic+ again and it’s been surprisingly manageable although it took me several hours to beat chapter 5 because stupid counter wyverns. It’s also skyrocketed my opinion on Miriel and Virion because being able to chip a counter enemy at range is invaluable early on.
I’ve also been using the renown rewards a lot because having access to some more money and early stat boosters has been a huge help. Also Merc Robin with a levin sword has just been amazing for what I need him to be doing
I know we've already talked about the Vaike stuff, but I guess I'll respond to it because it's here:
With regards to "why not use Robin and Vaike at the same time".
You definitely can do. I do think there is something to be said, though, for lowmanning being way less of a headache in some maps. Maps like C23 and C24 and C19 and C20 if you're routing them really are a lot easier with one very powerful unit as opposed to trying to juggle multiple units. So there's less incentive to train multiple combat units unless you want to play highman (which granted is significantly more skill intensive and fun, but it is much harder).
You could train Robin beforehand and then plan to drop them later on, I suppose, but there's also other units that you may want to invest into. If you know your combat is pretty much sorted post C8, then you can raise supportive units like Ricken, Miriel or Cordelia. You could also take the opportunity to use Frederick even more, as you've got one less person you need to give exp to. This doesn't just make the game easier, but also makes Frederick better, too.
I'm not saying that Vaike+Robin is always worse than Vaike or Robin, just that it's no worse an option, in the grand scheme of things. Just like how you mention you can't raise all of the C2 units, I'm just saying that Robin is also included in that list.
With regards to "Vaike vs Gregor"
As I've said before, I don't agree on the hitrate point being a big deal. Vaike w/ Sully pairup has ~95% chance to land his hits in C2. Most units on this map are going to be leading Vaike than a less than 5% in hit chance (although Robin with thunder likely ties Vaike for HR). That's one hit in every 20 attacks. It's something to think about, but as you mention, why not take the risk early into the map so if you do hit the 1/20, you can just reset.
I agree it probably sucks to miss a 1/20, but you don't need to do it right at the end of the map, and if you do, it doesn't need to be something that's going to kill you if you miss, either. You can place Vaike at the edge of the range of an enemy and have them run into him and die on him on EP- then if Vaike misses you still have PP to act (again, this is something you mention in the video so I don't get why this is a disadvantage for Vaike). That means Vaike has to hit a lowroll of 1/400 to be at a disadvantage here- and that's ignoring things like someone else being able to attack, or have Lissa heal Vaike.
This is the point in the game where his accuracy is the worst, and it's a lances for the earlygame because of all the axe spam and it's not like either Sully or Stahl is going to be using a javelin pre C7, so it's not like that will matter a great deal either.
With regards to his speed, he's not too far away from Vaike's own position. The only times he's at threat of being doubled is C2 and C3 and there are enough speed pairups on the map to make that not really a big deal. I'm not going to claim that he's the bestest unit ever, I just think that he's being undersold a bit here
I wouldn't train either of them for combat in lunatic+, but if I had to pick, Stahl is a better combat unit than Sully.
Other than that I think this is a great video and guide for lunatic+. Have a good one :)
I think this comment really just highlights how diverse and interesting the meta of the units in Awakening are, and how little these topics actually get discussed is really a crime. I won't pretend I have the right answer about everything -- I have my best conclusions that I was able to come up with. But the only way to come to better conclusions is by sharing ideas with other people, and sadly there hasn't been much discussion or sharing of ideas about Awakening 🥲
Hopefully we can change that and have more interesting discussions about all of the different facets of these units, why one is better than the other for very specific tasks, and how to balance a good team by picking the units who cover for the gaps in other units.
As for why I don't generally use Gregor and Vaike, it has to do with how I build my teams. There are not enough party slots to field all of the characters I want to use, and they are too redundant in their roles. I don't typically need two physically bulky Sol tanks, I only need one. It might seem like this goes against the point I was making in the video but maybe I didn't explain it fully or well enough. I will normally have two or three units who are capable of enemy phase sweeping. However, I prefer if they have different builds. That way I can use A to counter enemy mages, B to counter enemy Berserkers, and C to counter a mixed group of Swordmasters and Archers. Something like that should make sense. Each of my tanks should be the best suited for a different role, while Gregor and Vaike will both typically be good and bad in the same situations. They don't offer enough variety to my tanking options when I'm already wishing I had 4 more party slots. I have no doubt that using both Gregor and Vaike could lead to some very good results. I haven't personally tried it yet to say exactly how good. But it's not how I have typically built my teams before now, and I wouldn't guess that it would lead to the best results. But I can only make my best guess, and there's no guarantee my guesses are correct. Hope that explains it better.
For the 2nd part of the map, I’m a big fan of engaging the enemies at 3 points initially. Frederick in the middle, Chrom and Robin on the river flanks respectively. This way the enemies are dispersed even more and easier to take down. A lot of control by abusing the river by kiting/chipping over the river. Additionally you can lure the boss occasionally to go to a side, then backout so he’s last in line of all the enemies to cross the bridge, at which point a fort makes him trivial
EDIT: you actually did something similar later in this video, good spotting!
I actually had one run where I perfectly executed this strat and saved the boss for last, before dragging them down to be killed by Vaike (and Vaike hilariously missed his attack and died), but this is the run that I lost the footage from. Life is just like that sometimes 😹
Yeah this chapter really feels like the most honest presentation of the mode's enemy phase heavy philosophy. The advice of being more active just like a video by hiiyapow for vanilla Lunatic going around a while a go really is a good mindset change for people playing this mode.
With the whole Dual Attack thing that people say relying on is inconsistent? Just look at the mode you're playing: You live or die and reset by skill RNG in earlygame. It's ok to rely on a quick reset Dual Attack. Besides later on you RELY on support pairs with high Dual Attack rates.
That's a really good observation! And yeah my recent streams have only made me appreciate high variance units and strategies even more, because they can REALLY bail you out when you get unlucky, AND they can allow you to make even more powerful turn 1 openers as long as you're willing to bank on a 30-40% opener.
(Lon'qu will have his time to shine very, very soon in this series)
I'm still digesting this series in chunks and not watching all the videos at once.
And I just got to your lowman strat statements. Yeah I agree. Most people I've noticed that have played the mode distills it into "just field Robin and Chrom as a Dark Mage Great Knight Duo win game".
It doesn't take into account how much variance you can do in any given run. It was like when one of my water tile trick in the prologue got a lot of views and people are like "man now that's mandatory".
It feels weird with the community that the first solution is seen as the ONLY solution sometimes. This stuff should facilitate creativity not stifle it because people see one thing works lol
I tried getting advice from old forums and discords after pickup up vanilla lunatic again and NO ONE could give me general advice for my fun no grind "Two married Robins" hack run.
@@shadowofchaos725 I joked about this during the last stream but it's really funny how when I tried to find information on the game I couldn't find any. Now that I'm making the guides myself, the comment sections are filled with people offering advice. Where were all of these people before? 😹
Anyway, if you want advice for a dual Robin build, I would probably personally use this
(If infinite Grinding is allowed)
Male Robin: Vantage, Sol, Tomefaire, Aegis, Pavise
Female Robin: DualGuard+, DualSupport+, Hex, Anathema, Bowfaire
You can cut one of Female Robin's skills for Galeforce if you think you'll need more positioning tech, but with these skills, the Male Robin can probably tank through everything in the game, even on Lunatic+
If you're playing without grinding allowed, you need to focus on the most important skills that can be attained in the quickest progression and drop the skills that are too far out of the way. This is what I did for my normal runs when switching over from "grinding allowed" to "no grinding" playthroughs. Look at my completed builds and find out which combinations of skills that can easily be obtained together produce the best results.
For minimum unit challenges like a single pairing... I haven't personally done this myself, and it's not the kind of run I would normally do, so I can only guess, but....
In that case I'd probably have the Male Robin reclass to Dark Mage ASAP, pick up Hex and Anathema, and then probably live without Sol and rely on Nosferatu healing and Vengeance to help amplify damage. You'll have minimal skills but still likely be reliable enough due to inflated stats. The Female Robin should probably get Galeforce ASAP, because you'll be less tanky, repositioning tech will be more essential. After that I'd probably send her into Sniper for reliable kills against high resistance enemies and Galeforce repositioning, and because she'll eventually get Bowfaire to amp her damage further.
You got my subscription, this series has been way to compelling
...and perhaps even more difficult to get than my subscription, you have gotten me to start playing lunatic+, something I have never ever wanted to do
You're pretty alright
Thanks a lot ! 😸
One of my goals with this series is to convince people that Awakening IS a game that can be played in good faith, and doesn't require lowman strats to be playable. For people who want to get into Lunatic or even Lunatic+, I'd really encourage them to give it a fair try!
This video is PACKED!! I’m so excited to try out this chapter now!! X3c
I did pick a +Spd -Def Robin though, let’s hope that doesn’t bite me in the butt too hard XD
I’m also getting a little ahead of myself here, but your Miriel & Stahl discussion made me very curious 👀
Assuming I got multiple 2nd seals, is it worth taking Miriel/Robin into Dark mage for the accuracy boost skills + Vengance?
For my other reclass ideas, I feel the I could gauge whether I want them or not when the situation comes, but this one stumped me, if I’m using them long term then maybe, if I’m pairing them with an axe user then probably, *man* this one’s going at my indecisiveness 🤧😆
Though, I think I’ll grind up the units I don’t use on the side, so any setbacks I face would probably be minor (or as minor as it could be for lunatic+ XD)
I want to use a lot of the cast, but I know I’m not yet skilled enough to manage exp or plan ahead, (plus this would make the kids even better units lol)
anyway, thanks for reading and thank you for posting!! I’ve already watched it like three times today, but I’m definitely gonna watch it as I play next X3c take care mate!! Hope you’ve eaten well 😆🥳🤟
Thanks for the praise! 😹 Be careful, the +Spd Robin can sometimes get oneshot by the boss, so the river strategy doesn't work as well. You might have to reset until he doesn't have Luna, or check his damage. A Virion Pair Up helps a lot if you have the C Support because you get +3 Def.
As for Second Seals, I'm not a huge fan of them because they slow down EXP Gain. However, if you're grinding, I think that it's worth going into DarkMage for Hex and Anathema. However, keep in mind, auras in this game work on your pair up partner. This means that each pairing only needs to have one Hex and Anathema. For example, in the streams I've been doing recently, I'm pairing Robin and Tharja. Since Tharja already has Hex and Anathema, Robin doesn't need it, so there's no reason to go into Dark Mage.
Hope that helps, and good luck 😸
@ ohhh right! Tharja 👀 I always think we get her much later than we do XD
I do plan on using her too, guess I should start on that marriage planner to see who’s getting Dark mage 1 & DM 2 lmao, thank you! I definitely need to watch the more recent streams :3c
Thanks for the help mate!! Excited to see what you do next!! X3c
The talk of front-loading risk reminds me a lot of tennis, where the expectation is that, no matter how good your first serve is, you should be putting about 2 out of 3 in-bounds. Making more than that is actually _bad_, since it suggests that you're not being aggressive enough with them. (The second part of this is that your second serve should be near-100% reliable.)
Where it gets a little gnarly with FE is that the goalposts can move. In tennis, I only ever get 2 serves because those are the rules of the game. In FE, as soon as you break the seal of reloading, drawing the line starts getting fuzzy. Am I going to keep rolling for a 5% crit on my first action just because I can, or am I going to treat each run with like... _any_ level of "legitimacy". (This is compounded by me being a GBA-head, where manual RN burns would be required, making the whole thing one degree sketchier.) So in this context, it's not really a strategic, time-management discussion as it is a philosophical one.
This is funny because when I was working on this script, my friend said a lot of the same things to me, specifically with regards to GBA era fire emblem. Thanks for sharing your thoughts 😹
I see your argument with frontloaded risk, but as a guy who likes trying his best on his ironmans, I'm more into overall reliability. A 10 min strat with 50% reliability is better to me than a 2 min strat with a 25% reliability. So if that frontloaded risk doesn't lower overall reliability, it's fine by me, but if it's less reliable but faster if repeated, then I'm more torn. I prefer to slowly turtle if it's more reliable even if it's significantly slower.
Still, I do like to see people's strats even if they don't play the way I like cuz some lessons are still applicable to my playstyle, like learning about better pathing from LTCs despite me not liking the LTC style of gameplay. And this stuff is pretty cool too!
It's just really, really difficult to come up with strategies that are actually 100% reliable in this game mode. That's the reason why frontloading the risk is better than taking the same (or worse) risks later on.
Anyway, I know what you mean about adapting other strategies to your own style of play. I gained a lot of information from watching other people play Fire Emblem, and in many cases they played the game very differently from me, but I was still able to understand mechanics better, or learn new techniques, and then adapt those to my own style. That's one of the cool things about strategy games like this. Often times the strategies can be broadly applicable, which is the way I'm trying to explain them in my vids 😸
You are convincing me on +Def robin being better than SPD. I didn't notice, see or remember the strategy of going to Fort and bait them with other units. That is definitely worth keeping in mind so I could potentially build some supports sooner.
I vaguely remember having a +Def Robin with Frederick pair up having more defense than him so that will make it better. It'll be less likely to dual strike on the first Turn but that's ok.
I would like to remember your initial approach as sometimes when I go bottom left more than one enemy comes to me from left to mountains, which would probably be Ok if there was no pass.
Using Robin to bait the boss and Having 2 units next to each other on the bridge is something I must have done previously.
We'll see how the next one goes. By that point, I tend to have a good enough Robin but 1 unit isn't doing all the job, at least the first part.
100% ! Clearing this map 5 additional times in the last week to record all of this footage, and trying out different Robins, really, really made me appreciate my +Def Robin EVEN MORE than I already do. Whenever I tried strats with +Speed Robin they always felt like the extra Speed didn't actually make them fast enough to double anyway, but the loss of Defense actually made it possible for some enemies to oneshot them. Meanwhile, the +Def Robin is way more tanky and is already fast enough that they don't need a Speed Pair Up to avoid being doubled.
I also got convinced to run +Def Robin and I got a similar experience, then I also looked at the average
Lvl 7 Robin averages 11 defense
Frederick Pair up +4 defense (later +5 after they reach C support)
Total 15 defense (16 with C support) > Fred's 14 defense. And Frederick can't pairup with himself
And that defense keeps snowballing as Robin gains levels
Also one really good prologue thing is that base lvl 1 Robin with Chrom pairup (to avoid getting doubled) survives 2 hits from a non Luna+ Myrmidon thanks to that +2 base def.
@tricky2795 Thanks for the numbers, it helps knowing it wasn't just lucky level ups. I should point out Robin could possibly have more than lvl 7 with water Trick as without it that's what I got once on lunatic.
nowi spotted, so i subscribe
Thanks for the comment, and the sub 🐉
She is very cute and funny
@@SomethingSomteting ew
This is good content, but what discourages me from using a full team, or units like Miriel that are only good on player phase, is the repeated ambush spawns on your position that plague this game. You're basically forced to run the game with the wiki open at all times to make sure a bow knight isn't gonna come out 10 tiles away from you to one shot something, and because there are so many of them, even bulky units are at risk unless they have a way to regen on enemy phase.
I'll address the Ambush Spawns in the chapters where they are relevant. I don't disagree with the point that you either need to have the wiki open (or already be very familiar with the maps), but I do think that they are extremely overstated. They're nowhere near as common or as bad as people make it seem when they talk about it.
The majority of Ambush Spawns in this game follow one of two patterns;
1. If you fail to clear the map by a specific turn, Ambush Spawns will appear to force a Game Over (or you can intentionally set up on them for extra EXP)
2. Ambush Spawns will appear from specific objective points like forts or stairs which can be captured or blocked (or you can intentionally set up on them for extra EXP/Loot)
But yeah, it's a fairly interesting point and I can't wait to discuss it more in depth when we get to those chapters. Thanks for the feedback 😸
This phase is over.