Fire Emblem Fates

[teal6]

So I encountered a really bizarre issue on Conquest 21.

Spoilers if anyone doesn't wanna know the levels:

In this map, you have to get all of your units to the last row of tiles in order to have them all escape from the stairs. The map's gimmick is that at the end of every turn, two more faceless will spawn, alternating between the top row of tiles on the map or the bottom row. The map is only over when you've escaped with either all units or your remaining units die.

My Benny is a level 10 general with astounding defense. As I was wildly low on health at the end of the map, I made a bee-line for the tiles, realizing he'd be left behind. I figured he could last a turn on his own taking three hits so I would just bring him home the turn after everyone else. However, he got trapped in by the faceless and couldn't beat them in a single turn (attacking one and retaliating against the others). This shouldn't be a huge problem, but because more keep spawning from the top, I'm endlessly trapped. I literally can't beat the level or lose the level because Benny takes actually 0 damage from every single hit. I'm one fucking tile away and can't finish.

I can't imagine what I'm supposed to do other than start over lol

Currently on turn like 150, wondering if it times out at some point. Of note, there seems to be a cap of 50 enemy units on the field at any given time

 

[Darth Manaphy]

So I encountered a really bizarre issue on Conquest 21.

Spoilers if anyone doesn't wanna know the levels:

In this map, you have to get all of your units to the last row of tiles in order to have them all escape from the stairs. The map's gimmick is that at the end of every turn, two more faceless will spawn, alternating between the top row of tiles on the map or the bottom row. The map is only over when you've escaped with either all units or your remaining units die.

My Benny is a level 10 general with astounding defense. As I was wildly low on health at the end of the map, I made a bee-line for the tiles, realizing he'd be left behind. I figured he could last a turn on his own taking three hits so I would just bring him home the turn after everyone else. However, he got trapped in by the faceless and couldn't beat them in a single turn (attacking one and retaliating against the others). This shouldn't be a huge problem, but because more keep spawning from the top, I'm endlessly trapped. I literally can't beat the level or lose the level because Benny takes actually 0 damage from every single hit. I'm one fucking tile away and can't finish.

I can't imagine what I'm supposed to do other than start over lol

Currently on turn like 150, wondering if it times out at some point. Of note, there seems to be a cap of 50 enemy units on the field at any given time

Yeah, for that level, I used mostly mounted units. I know Benny is good for turtling (I certainly used him as such), but this chapter is like the one chapter where turtling is downright BAD idea.

 

[newtonja]

People saying birthright was easy weren't kidding. I beat chapter 18 in two turns. I just paired akumi with one of my pegasus Knights then proceeded to one shot the boss. Now that's strategy?

 

[Layell]

Currently on turn like 150, wondering if it times out at some point. Of note, there seems to be a cap of 50 enemy units on the field at any given time

Dude get him to max level and wreck house.

 

[moonbound]

^on hard/lunatic all those reinforcements have a skill that makes them just give 0 exp

On lunatic I only brought fliers/mounts (and their pairups) to that map because 10-move Camilla (boots plus guard stance bonus) can get to a DV point every turn on her own to keep them always frozen and finish pretty easily. Thanks, complete lack of minimum deployment.

 

[Darth Manaphy]

^on hard/lunatic all those reinforcements have a skill that makes them just give 0 exp

On lunatic I only brought fliers/mounts (and their pairups) to that map because 10-move Camilla (boots plus guard stance bonus) can get to a DV point every turn on her own to keep them always frozen and finish pretty easily. Thanks, complete lack of minimum deployment.

Shit, THAT must be why my characters weren't getting EXP on the one paralogue map. Now THAT is cheap.

 

[Of Moose & Men]

Speaking of BS, I'm getting tired of it. . .
I know it's nothing new to FE, but it's annoying every time I have to deal with it and I just want to vent.

So, I'm on Chapter 20 of Revelations, it's not all that tough honestly, there's a pretty nice route on the right that lets you take on the baddies slowly but surely. I made it all the way around the top right corner with absolutely no difficulty. All of my units are up to snuff and can hold their own for the most part.

Except for Ryoma apparently. A single Malig Knight came flying over to my giant army to single out Ryoma, looking at the damage, hit and crit rate, I wasn't scared at all. It would have hit for about 16 damage, something Elise or Azama had no problem with healing back up. . . The best part about it was he had a 24% chance of hitting with a 2% chance to crit. . .

I'm sure you see where this is going. . .

Naturally not only did he hit, he also crit, then his partner came over and picked him off with a Thunder. I JUST bought this new 3ds (the beautiful Fates 3ds, I love it) but it was SO tough not wanting to toss it across the room.

I despise when difficulty at times consists of "I can roll the dice better than you". I'll miss 70+% moves and they'll hit anything regardless of percentage as long as it's about to kill. It's just so aggravating. I think I'll give it another go tomorrow, I'm too upset right now to pick it back up and try again.

 

[newtonja]

Speaking of BS, I'm getting tired of it. . .
I know it's nothing new to FE, but it's annoying every time I have to deal with it and I just want to vent.

So, I'm on Chapter 20 of Revelations, it's not all that tough honestly, there's a pretty nice route on the right that lets you take on the baddies slowly but surely. I made it all the way around the top right corner with absolutely no difficulty. All of my units are up to snuff and can hold their own for the most part.

Except for Ryoma apparently. A single Malig Knight came flying over to my giant army to single out Ryoma, looking at the damage, hit and crit rate, I wasn't scared at all. It would have hit for about 16 damage, something Elise or Azama had no problem with healing back up. . . The best part about it was he had a 24% chance of hitting with a 2% chance to crit. . .

I'm sure you see where this is going. . .

Naturally not only did he hit, he also crit, then his partner came over and picked him off with a Thunder. I JUST bought this new 3ds (the beautiful Fates 3ds, I love it) but it was SO tough not wanting to toss it across the room.

I despise when difficulty at times consists of "I can roll the dice better than you". I'll miss 70+% moves and they'll hit anything regardless of percentage as long as it's about to kill. It's just so aggravating. I think I'll give it another go tomorrow, I'm too upset right now to pick it back up and try again.

I think any game of this nature has these occasions. But for as bad as that is, you can't deny that feeling when you do the same thing. It's great. I have heard that the rng for xcom is much worse(I don't know how much that has to do with FE though).

 

[moonbound]

Xcom uses single RN rolls (like FE did before 6), which means it has more variability. Modern FE still uses single rns for most things, but for hit/miss it uses the average of two rolls, which means that anything above 50% is more likely than it appears and anything below 50% is less. I've heard people claim that fates does a weird weighted average where one of the two rolled numbers is more influential than the other (which would have more variability than 2RN but still less than 1), but there really isn't data to support it yet.

Also expect the thread for the draft to go up sometime tomorrow (maybe), starting with interest gathering and deciding what route to do.

 

[Darth Manaphy]

People saying birthright was easy weren't kidding. I beat chapter 18 in two turns. I just paired akumi with one of my pegasus Knights then proceeded to one shot the boss. Now that's strategy?

Now that I've done all the child paralogues (in Conquest), I have to say I'm astonished by how quickly some of them were beat too.



(Small spoilers for those chapters ahead!)



Like, Dwyer's for instance. I spent more turns getting up to him than I did actually battling any of the enemies. And Midori's one was a straight-up two-turner. Both levels were "Beat the boss" but the boss was very close so turtling or anything of the sort wasn't necessary. Midori's you had to chase the boss but she's going down a winding path and you have Dragon Veins around to make shortcuts and the first one passed directly in front of the boss as she moved on the second turn. Literally the only reason to spend more than a couple turns on them is to gather experience, which, if I didn't buy the DLC, I would have probably done because most of my units are grossly underleveled.

The two hardest paralogues I faced were Kana's and Ignatius's. Kana's was hard because there were strong enemies that just bum rushed you so you had to survive multiple turns of agony before you could breath easier. And Ignatius was hard only when I did it. You see, enemies in the paralogue scale with your level but child units, until you promote them, will only go to a max level of 20 unpromoted (though they have an item to promote them and raise their levels to the appropriate level). When I finally got around to Ignatius's level, the enemies around him were roughly level 12 promoted and he was still level 20 unpromoted. Even the ninjas were doing like 8 damage a round (before the debuff). And to make matters worse, he starts off as an ally so you can't immediately promote him and he's on the other side of the map only being able to be recruited by Benny. So I had to have Camilla pair up with him, manuever around the Shrine Maiden with the Freeze Staff and make my way to Ignatius before he croaked. Needless to say it was a very aggravating map.

 

[Fishin]

finally got my copy, started with Birthright. I'm quite liking most of the changes to the formula so far, having Bows and Tomes as a part of the regular weapon triangle and weapon differentiation rather than breaking and throwing weapons are all pretty neat. Not quite as huge on how enemies will assist each other if they're one tile away since it can easily throw off your calculation of whether or not a character can survive something (especially with how weirdly low HP growths seem to be) but it's a thousand times better than same-turn reinforcements

also I kinda like how it has a double fakeout with "Archers aren't looking so bad now that Javelins and whatnot have been nerfed into the dirt and they have a +4 damage on ally turns skill which is basically perfect for them, right? Haha just kidding the first one you get has 35% strength growth." and then it gives you an Archer with a wtf 14 mt prf weapon only 10 chapters into the game.

Sorry if I went on a crusade there, it's just that this game was soooooooo close to absolute greatness and for it to be held back by a poor translation is very, very frustrating.

playing the Japanese version and there seem to be a lot of random unnecessary name changes. there have certainly been names that warranted changing before (Brom being called Chap is probably my favorite) but most of the ones in Fates seem like they're made just for the sake of it

 

[Fishin]

ouch, should've figured those stupid auto-guards by Paired Up units would get someone killed by a counterattack eventually. RIP Suzukaze, I guess I can replace him with another Ninja since I'm on Hoshido.

It's also kind of weirdly nostalgic to have the old "where the hell are all the axe users" problem, Hoshido has exactly one unpromoted class that uses axes and you get one member of that class (who isn't great). I realize now that I could've swapped Hinata to Oni Savage too but oh well.

 

[Blazade]

^You know, I've never liked axe users so I've never had that problem.

For me to want to use an axe the class should either have a movement bonus (Wyvern Rider), or have an obscenely high trend in skill (Hero).

The low accuracy coupled with the tendency in high HP over high defense makes me dislike fighters in most runs of games, but perhaps I'm missing out on something by consistently not giving them the chance.

 

[Killah]

I haven't played Birthright/Revelations yet, but I was under the impression that 80+% of the "normal FE weapons" were swapped to the new weapon types, eg there are no Axe users, they are all Club users. Just like there's a couple classes that use the "other side's" weapons in Nohr, very few Hoshido units will get traditional Swords/Lances/Axes.

I feel like I'm cheating by only using so few units on my Conquest playthrough (basically the Royals and 5-6 others, plus dualbots) but I can't realistically see a way for me to level any of the units I'm not using to get them into a usable position. I spent too much of the early game giving all the free xp to Mozu, and the rest of my army really suffered for it. Feels bad

 

[Fireburn]

Hero Corrin, Scarlet, and GK Silas make fine axe/club (they're analogous) users in Birthright, assuming you wanted to do something other than solo the game with Ryoma. :V Rinkah is mediocre but usable with investment.

Blazade, I'd have to disagree with you somewhat regarding axe users - Berserkers are pretty darn good in Conquest with good skills, high crit rates and HP in Low HP Emblem, and insane GS boosts. It also helps that the one reaver weapon you get in Conquest is the Dual Club which counts as an axe. I'm personally using reclassed Beruka and she is doing pretty well, she appreciates the extra speed and her other growths complement the class well.

I haven't played Birthright/Revelations yet, but I was under the impression that 80+% of the "normal FE weapons" were swapped to the new weapon types, eg there are no Axe users, they are all Club users. Just like there's a couple classes that use the "other side's" weapons in Nohr, very few Hoshido units will get traditional Swords/Lances/Axes.

I feel like I'm cheating by only using so few units on my Conquest playthrough (basically the Royals and 5-6 others, plus dualbots) but I can't realistically see a way for me to level any of the units I'm not using to get them into a usable position. I spent too much of the early game giving all the free xp to Mozu, and the rest of my army really suffered for it. Feels bad

You are correct in saying that in Hoshido you'll get mostly katanas/naginatas/clubs, but they are mostly functionally equivalent to the traditional weapons Katana classes can use swords and vice versa.

You shouldn't feel bad about spamming royals in Conquest since the game is balanced around them, they're all extremely good but have defined weaknesses that keep them from being OP (Elise is brittle, Camilla has low base HP and arrow weakness, Leo has low base Speed and mediocre Defense, Xander has low base Speed/Res), though Camilla is probably pushing it a little. None of them are at least as imbalanced as Ryoma, who can solo Birthright mostly by himself once he joins. I kind of like having Camilla/Leo/Xander all being extremely good prepromotes since it gives you a bit more flexibility with how you build your early game team (though Mozu is not worth it imo).

 

[HelenTheHero]

This is the first time I've ever played a FE game, and I loved it. I decided to side with Nohr because I really like Xander, Leo, and Elise, but I find Camilla super annoying. I managed to finish the game during a lot of driving when going to a cousin's wedding.


Don't hate me, but I played on Phoenix mode. I started on Casual-Hard, but after losing Odin and Niles I didn't want to play like that anymore. I can't stand losing fun characters like that. I like the battle mechanics, but I'm really in this for the story.

Story stuff.

I loved the story so much though for Nohr's path. Once again I have found a game that makes me smile (Phoenix Wright and Undertale being the other two on that list.) with so many fun moments. Poor Arthur with his good heart and bad luck, Odin and his all-around weirdness, Silas being so sweet I can't stand it, and then the heart breaking moments when you have to face your Hoshido siblings.

I'm replaying the Nohr path as the female character instead, but also plan to buy Birthright and Revelations when I have the money. Should I go for Birthright first, or buy Revelations instead though?

 

[Blazade]

You'll probably want to go through Birthright first, and you can probably go for a hard difficulty on that. If you plan on playing both, familiarizing yourself with the Birthright units will probably make Revelations a better experience.

 

[Darth Manaphy]

This is the first time I've ever played a FE game, and I loved it. I decided to side with Nohr because I really like Xander, Leo, and Elise, but I find Camilla super annoying. I managed to finish the game during a lot of driving when going to a cousin's wedding.


Don't hate me, but I played on Phoenix mode. I started on Casual-Hard, but after losing Odin and Niles I didn't want to play like that anymore. I can't stand losing fun characters like that. I like the battle mechanics, but I'm really in this for the story.

Story stuff.

I loved the story so much though for Nohr's path. Once again I have found a game that makes me smile (Phoenix Wright and Undertale being the other two on that list.) with so many fun moments. Poor Arthur with his good heart and bad luck, Odin and his all-around weirdness, Silas being so sweet I can't stand it, and then the heart breaking moments when you have to face your Hoshido siblings.

I'm replaying the Nohr path as the female character instead, but also plan to buy Birthright and Revelations when I have the money. Should I go for Birthright first, or buy Revelations instead though?

To be fair, when I heard you saying "first time [you've] ever played a FE game" and siding with Nohr I was prepared for the worst so hearing you lowering the difficulty to normal-phoenix isn't too bad to hear. That path was actually the hardest of the three and probably the second hardest (fair) FE game overall and even as a veteran that played on the medium difficulty level (normal or hard depending on the game) for every other game lowered the difficulty to normal-classic just to survive without having to reset all the time (and even then I still had to reset a lot on a few chapters).

If you care about getting a complete story, I'd play Birthright first. Revelations tends to fill in plot holes you'll find in both previous games so if you want to have a fuller experience I'd start off with Birthright to figure out its confusing story elements that you want answered. It will also give you more practice with Fates's gameplay since it's the easiest of the three. You might even then want to play it back on Hard/Casual. Birthright and Revelations allow for "scouting" in order to find extra maps to fight and level up. This combined with a much easier and relaxed set of main levels makes Birthright easier. So far, having just beat Chapter 15 in Birthright, I only resetted once because I forgot to check the range of these ninjas when I sent Jakob to kill one for me versus the nearly once a map in Conquest.



EDIT: In a completely serious yet hilarious note, I wish I could play Phoenix mode in the other difficulty levels. If I were, I would have DEFINITELY have did my playthrough in Lunatic Phoenix mode just to see how crazy that would have been.

 

[Fishin]

Hero Corrin, Scarlet, and GK Silas make fine axe/club (they're analogous) users in Birthright, assuming you wanted to do something other than solo the game with Ryoma. :V Rinkah is mediocre but usable with investment.

Blazade, I'd have to disagree with you somewhat regarding axe users - Berserkers are pretty darn good in Conquest with good skills, high crit rates and HP in Low HP Emblem, and insane GS boosts. It also helps that the one reaver weapon you get in Conquest is the Dual Club which counts as an axe. I'm personally using reclassed Beruka and she is doing pretty well, she appreciates the extra speed and her other growths complement the class well.

I picked a different class for my Kamui and my Silas got speed screwed. Scarlet is okay, wish she could actually support outside of Kamui so you could pass the class down to better units though. I think I'll probably just pair Rinka up with Ryouma or someone and switch his kid to Oni Savage.

And yeah, individual users have their ups and downs but I like Axes. They were definitely best back in the GBA days where an Iron Axe had the exact same combat stats as a Steel Sword (but cheaper, with more uses, and lower weapon rank) but in general being able to deal more damage with a cheaper weapon has always been nice for efficiency back when weapons cost money as well. In this game the main reason I'm looking for them is just WTA balance, I have a bunch of Lance/Shuriken users, a couple Sword/Tome users, and only one Bow user and nobody with Axes atm.

on a general note, Asama is pretty insane. Not only are his base growths all-around great but he gets a whopping +8 strength on promotion to Great Master so he's the strongest in my army atm on top of being tankiest and close to fastest, even if he's stuck with E spears for the moment. I'm really regretting pairing Orochi with him just because Mitama's default class was magically oriented (Orochi is also kind of bad in general but that's another story).


Also, between the generally lowered HP and the changes that have been made to the evasion formula, defenses seem a lot more important than previously, squishies evade tanking is mostly a thing of the past.

 

[Of Moose & Men]

on a general note, Asama is pretty insane. Not only are his base growths all-around great but he gets a whopping +8 strength on promotion to Great Master so he's the strongest in my army atm on top of being tankiest and close to fastest, even if he's stuck with E spears for the moment. I'm really regretting pairing Orochi with him just because Mitama's default class was magically oriented (Orochi is also kind of bad in general but that's another story).

Yea, Azama is an odd case that's for sure. It's so weird having a magic oriented (for the most part) character have such behemoth physical power. Mitama is the same way. That whole bloodline is a weird case. Effie!Mitama is stupid though, lol, like, she literally cannot die, and she kills everything in her line of sight. I love it.

Also, yea, Orochi is. . . one of the few women I've yet to use as a mother. There's just better magic ladies and it's rather unfortunate. There's really only two big reasons to ever wife her up, that's about it.

 

[newtonja]

Also, yea, Orochi is. . . one of the few women I've yet to use as a mother. There's just better magic ladies and it's rather unfortunate. There's really only two big reasons to ever wife her up, that's about it.

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


But anyways, I just beat birthright and I have got to say, I was very satisfied with it all. And now I am moving onto conquest, I am frankly terrified, I have heard a lot about how hard it is so I am preparing for the worst. Just as a side thing, which do you think has a better story, conquest or birthright. and while we are the subject, which do you think has better characters?

 

[Blazade]

I said this earlier, but I like Conquest's story and Birthright's characters better. I personally enjoyed the struggle of working from within the other side as opposed to just having a righteous crusade to go on. I also thought more of the characters in birthright weren't straight up gimmicky (think Odin and Effie from conquest for an extreme example of what I mean by gimmicky). Considering that the game is supposed to be lighter on the difficulty and allow for support grinding I wouldn't be surprised if more effort went into the relationship building aspect, as not into that as I may be.

 

[HelenTheHero]

Odin is one of my favorite characters just because he is so gimmicky...




Also he and Felicia are adorable together.

 

[Of Moose & Men]

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

This guy gets it!

But anyways, I just beat birthright and I have got to say, I was very satisfied with it all. And now I am moving onto conquest, I am frankly terrified, I have heard a lot about how hard it is so I am preparing for the worst. Just as a side thing, which do you think has a better story, conquest or birthright. and while we are the subject, which do you think has better characters?

But to the subject at hand, although it wasn't an option, I think Revelations has the better story. It's far more fleshed out, and it explains a lot of the questions left in your head from the other two versions. I say that, but I've yet to beat it completely yet. Chapter 24 pissed me off so much, I decided to put that down and start my Lunatic run. Yes, it's that aggravating, not because it's difficult, it's just stupid and I'll let you make your own opinions on it whenever you get to it.
With that said, I'd have to also say Revelations has the best characters! :D

But, that's cheating, so I'd have to say Conquest. I felt more attached to them than I did the characters in Hoshido, but, perhaps that's just how immersed I get with these games that may be speaking for me.

 

[Blazade]

I really need to shape up as far as team comp is concerned when I hit lunatic. I didn't even touch the royals in normal Conquest because I thought prepromotes would be bad. Now that I'm almost through hard with a better understanding I'm finally hitting some real points of frustration. It didn't take too long to beat chapter 25, but there's nothing more rage inducing than a corridor of ninjas that sap 40% of your health from range 3 while a few masters of arms are just waiting to pick you off. But now I struggling with Ch 26, where even if I didn't get 6% critted by Hans I would have still been in quite a pressured spot because of the horde of Beast Killing Generals on his tail that I wasn't able to kite properly.

Many of the characters I thought were good in normal were lucky rolls. Particularly my Niles and Selena got a lot more Strength in my last run, and I suffered when I put my faith in them again and they couldn't reliably get efficient kills in later chapters. I wasted so much experience on characters I hadn't tried as well. I tried to make Kaze, Peri, Laslow, and Midori work, but as soon as I got into a tight spot where it was hard to nurse them they just fell behind.

Right now my front runners are Xander, Mozu!Sophie, Peri!Nina, Azura!Velouria, Keaton, Elise (Close to level 20), +Def -Luk Corrin (Also probably a mistake), Peri, Niles, Leo (around level 13), which a bunch of prepromoted children often paired defensively. I think I can make it to the end with a bit of moxie but next time I need to think more about running some less mobile, more powerful units. Getting a decent berserker out there, trying out a well bred sorcerer or general, instead of putting my eggs in these all around good baskets.

But yeah just goes to show I'm really enjoying the fresh experience of a harder game, and I'm looking forward to planning better in Lunatic.