Fire Emblem Fates

Started playing this back around... October of last year, I think? Anyway, since then, it's been my main game. Primarily because it's on the 3DS, and I'm in a college dorm.

I've done 3 runs of Conquest, all on Hard/Classic, haven't gone up to Lunatic difficulty yet. First run was with DLC, the second was without, and the third was with Birthright units, via a mod.

As for the other routes, I've only played vanilla Birthright and Revelation on Lunatic once. Both of which were easier than Conquest on Hard. Revelation was so bad though, that I just didn't bother to take the last few chapters seriously, and made an overpowered DLC build, because I just couldn't be bothered.

If any of you are interested in playing this, you're probably only going to like Conquest. Conquest is a really challenging game (Though I'm not experienced at strategy games, so take my opinion with a grain of salt) on the second highest difficulty. I can't imagine what it's gonna be like when I finally get to Lunatic. Your resources are limited, and you don't get grinding maps like in Birthright, or Revelation. The map designs are complex, and they very frequently have side objectives. Each map has large quantities of enemies with nasty skills that will completely fuck you over if you forget to take them into account. To illustrate the difference between Conquest, and Birthright map design, I'll just show you two maps that are essentially equivalent to the other on each route.



The maps in Conquest are consistently tough, but very, very rewarding to beat. To this day, I have only beaten Conquest's Endgame on hard mode without deaths once, and that was with Birthright units and items. The other time I beat Endgame on hard was with DLC, and 3 deaths. And Lunatic is even harder than that.

I personally think that Birthright is alright, though if you didn't like, say, Awakening, you're probably not gonna like Birthright either, but I seriously do not recommend Revelation. The levels are horribly tedious, and have the most unfun gimmicks imaginable. Here are some spoilers for the worst of them without context!







Right now, I'm not playing Conquest on Lunatic, nor am I replaying Revelation. Rather, I'm playtesting a Birthright romhack by this dude on reddit by the name of Mayor_of_Smashvill (Not misspelled). You can DM him there to get the link to his discord, which has the files for the hack. It requires either Citra, a 3DS emulator, or a homebrewed 3DS. So far, I'm on chapter 16 of the hack, and it's pretty awesome. Very challenging, and I would highly recommend trying it out after a few playthroughs. And one of the co-developers of the mod is working on a Revelation romhack, which I also plan on checking out. Should note that neither of these hacks are finished, the Birthright hack is only up to Chapter 19 (I think) out of 28, and the Revelation hack is up to Chapter 20.

Haven't really been sucked into a game and its community to this extent in a long, long time. Fates, mainly Conquest, is an extremely replayable game in its base form, let alone with these romhacks and mods. I would highly recommend giving this game a shot, especially if your faith in Fire Emblem gameplay was shaken after Awakening. Which, I tried going back to while on my Fates binge, and... Couldn't.

Anyway, go ahead and ask me anything about how the game plays, and what strategies or builds I've employed, and I'll do my best to answer those questions, though I can't make promise I'll be able to provide a satisfactory response to all of them.

Firma! Great to see you here again, and immediately quite the big post!

I was a bit confused by the names at first, but 'Fates' is the umbrella term for Birthright, Conquest and Relevations right?

> lunatic
Higher difficulties in Fire Emblems are often very weird. They can either be extremely fun and challenging (Path of Radiance) or just utter rng-riddled bullshit (Awakening), with no real in between I've found. Ironically the first GBA Fire Emblem might be the most insane, with raw numbers meaning nothing i.e. a 90% chance to hit almost always misses if you do it, while a 1% chance to hit from an enemy means certain death.

> mapdesign difference
Very telling, we talked about this before but good map-design really is at the core of a good Fire Emblem game, good to see Conquest putting in the work than this.

> Revelations is worse than Awakening
Oh dear.

> Conquest
Some questions:

I'm mostly curious on the class-system, is it similar to games in the past? Or does it have a unique gimmick tied to it?

Are there skill-slots again? How do they work?

Can you play Conquest stand-alone, or are you absolutely lost in terms of story if you haven't played the rest first?

How's the story?

How does Support work in this entry, does it still give bonusses or is it more relegated to 'waifu-simulator' as with Awakening?

Is respec / class change an option?

Does it have weapon-crafting again?

Did they ever put the bonus-xp system back in from PoR? God I miss that mechanic...

> 'Fates' is the umbrella term for Birthright, Conquest and Revelations right?

Yep.

> raw numbers

If I remember correctly, the game uses 2 RN for hit rates over 50%, and 1 RN for hit rates under 50%.

> Class system

Uses the Awakening class system, with a few modifications. For one thing, each character usually only has one or two innate reclass options to a totally different line (Including the avatar) versus Awakening having like, 4 reclass options per character.

You're also unable to 'demote' your characters when reclassing with a heart seal (Equivalent to Awakening's second seal), so to speak. Your level holds consistent across reclasses.

So, say a character has the Sky Knight (Pegasus Knight equivalent) line as their secondary class, and they are currently a level 5 Swordmaster. If you use a heart seal, you can only reclass to the advanced classes on the given characters class lines, and not back to Samurai (Equivalent to Myrmidon in past entries), or Sky Knight. In this case, you can reclass, and become either a level 5 Master of Arms (The other advanced class for Samurai), Falcon Knight, or Kinshi Knight.

> Skill Slots
Yep, 5, plus a personal skill for each character that's unique to them. Each individual class (With the exceptions of DLC, and Songstress) has two skills; Base classes get them at level 1, and 10, and Advanced classes at 5, and 15.

So I said earlier that you can't demote units in Fates. Remember how our previous example's latter two reclass options are the advanced Sky Knight classes, and are in a separate line from Samurai, right? You might be wondering how to get base Sky Knight skills; When you reclass to an advanced class from a different line, the next 2 level ups on your character will give them those skills.

So say our character was a level 5 Swordmaster, and reclassed to a level 5 Falcon Knight. At level 6, they would get the level 1 Sky Knight skill, at level 7, they would get the level 10 Sky Knight skill, and at level 8, they would get the level 5 Falcon Knight skill.

Sorry if this is confusing.

> Can you play Conquest stand-alone to understand the story?

You CAN understand what's going on in Conquest's story without playing the other routes, but a whole lot of details are missed. That being said...

> How's the story?

Very bad. It's legitimately shocking how utterly contrived most of the events in the plot are, and how often it betrays its themes, or worse yet, doesn't even seem to understand what its themes are. You know how the whole central premise of the game and its marketing was "Blood versus Bonds"? That's not even an accurate summarization of the conflict between your two families.

Spoiler:

> Support system

Similar to Awakening's, with some modifications. Pair-up bonuses are based on both the class, and the character itself. If you don't have a support with a given character, the only bonuses that you get from pair-up are from the class. In general, pair-up's been pretty heavily reined in from Awakening, and is now part of the attack, and guard stance system, which I can explain further if you'd like.

The other big change with the support system is that characters can give eachother classes. If you S-support someone, you can use a Partner Seal to get access to their base class line; So let's go back to our Swordmaster, and say that they marry someone with a Wyvern Rider base class; With that Partner Seal, they can now get access to the Wyvern classes. There's also A+ Supports, which let you do the same thing that I just described, just with a Friendship Seal instead. Each character can only have one of these.

Oh yeah, and the child system is back from Awakening, justified in the absolute most idiotic of ways that simultaneously snap the worldbuilding in half (What little there IS of it, anyway) and have all sorts of horrifying implications. At least the Heirs of Fates DLC actually does something interesting story-wise with the second-generation, though. And some of the second generation are actually pretty alright characters in their own right.

> Respec/Class Change

Respeccing? Don't really know how that would work in a Fire Emblem game, but reclassing, yes. Explained the reclass system earlier.

> Weapon crafting

There's forging, or weapon upgrades, if that's what you mean.

> Bonus EXP

Unfortunately not, as cool as it sounds when reading up on it.

Guess I'll start keeping a log of this current modded playthrough.

Currently, on chapter 17, "Pleasure Palace". This is normally chapter 16 in vanilla, but a few chapters have been rearranged.



In this romhack, the objective is instead to escape in 14 turns, versus rout the enemy, and you now start at the top 2 rooms in the middle and left of the map. A few extra chests have been added to the bottom room, and the one lower left of center. You can also now use the stairs to teleport from one stair to another.

In vanilla, Takumi, one of the characters was sick, and you couldn't use him on the map. Which is definitely a handicap, since Takumi is a good unit, but Birthright is not a difficult game, so that'll not pose much of an issue to you. But in this hack, which is significantly harder, you can't use Ryoma on this map.


Ryoma is a ridiculously powerful character, and a big part of the reason why vanilla Birthright is so easy. Let me explain.

1. His personal weapon, Raijinto, has high base power, boosts his strength by 4 points when in his inventory, and has unrestricted 1-2 range in a game that has generally heavily nerfed 1-2 range weapons, meaning that he's able to attack enemies from 1, or 2 tiles away without any drawbacks like not being able to attack multiple times, or not being able to activate skills. Those are the sorts of drawbacks imposed on most 1-2 range weapons in Fates.
2. Being a Swordmaster, he naturally has increased evasion and crit rates, as well as access to Vantage, meaning that if he's below half health, and an enemy initiates combat on him, he attacks first. His high damage weapon already almost guarantees a large hit of damage, unless you're a general or something. So enemies are going to be suiciding into him a lot when he's below half health.
3. His personal skill 'Bushido' grants +2/-2 damage dealt/taken, as well as a +10% critical hit chance when he is being backed up by a unit that is of lower level than him. And since he's a pre-promoted unit, it's not hard to find a unit that'll be lower level than him.
4. Despite his mediocre defense and resistance, he still has a decent amount of health, meaning that he still has a safety window if he gets hit by a large attack.
5. Astra. How do I explain this? In Fire Emblem Fates, when 2 units are paired up, they're in what's called "Guard stance". And while you're in guard stance, you have a shield gauge, and with this shield gauge, after every 5 actions that occur while the pair is in combat, the next attack that comes at them, regardless of damage or hit rate, is automatically nullified. Astra is a skill that hits 5 times... See where I'm going with this? And sure, Ryoma will frequently destroy whatever's the target of Astra in less than 5 hits, but think about it: He either fills up shield gauge, and can nullify the next attack that comes at him, utterly annihilates the enemy anyway, or both. Now, Astra isn't going to be constantly firing off, because of its fairly low activation rate, but it IS another layer of protection that offsets his bad defensive stats that are intended to keep him in check.

Now Ryoma isn't anywhere near as dominant in this hack as he is in Vanilla, but regardless, he still keeps most of his key advantages. So not being able to use him in a level is a pretty big loss.

So back to the map, I still have to try and figure out how I can both reliably intercept the thieves more reliably before they escape with all the treasure. As well as trying to get to all of the chests, and then escaping within 14 turns. Intercepting the thieves in the top right room of the map isn't too difficult, I can just block off the escape point. But getting to the bottom right room, and then managing to get back up to the escape point of said room, while also evading reinforcements is going to be a bit dicey. Maybe have a rescue staff user hanging around the escape point? Or maybe a flier with a movement pairup so they can quickly rush back in a small number of turns?

Conversely, for the left side of the map, intercepting the thieves has been the tricky part for me, while the treasure isn't too difficult to get.

When it comes to picking up chests, I probably should've also used Kaze, and/or Kagero, instead of just Saizo (Who is currently my only ninja), because locktouch users that don't need chest keys are very nice to have around. Hell, if I really just don't want constant ninjas on my team, I could've easily reclassed them. Alas, that ship has sailed, unless I go grinding, which I'd rather not do, because A. That feels cheap, and B. Since this hack, as well as the vanilla version is designed without having to grind in mind.

Current pairings:
Corrin + Felicia
Subaki + Oboro

Planned pairings:
Azama + Mozu (Or Azura, haven't decided yet)
Ryoma + Rinkah
Jakob + Hinoka
Takumi + Hana

I liked Awakening. Does that make me a bad person?

@TheFirmament1

> romhack
This is a sub-community I really should delve into at some point in my life. I've never had the best of luck with them, as most confer badly designed challenges or are this 'over the top' design instead of a great designed level if you get me.

> Takumi
I actually remember this guy from the Mobile game haha, he was a beast there too (yeah to my shame I played that).

> astra
That honestly sounds like an unintended combo, right?

> -2 damage value
That's super rare and powerful in a game like FE. Pair that with a decent def. stat and you've got a nigh immortal tank. I assume it's regardless of affinity?


@Infinity_Divide

> liked awakening
Simply means you haven't delved into the bigger FE's I think (not sure if you have). Personally Awakening was, and I quote past-Raeng: "the best Fire Emblem I ever played". It wasn't until I replayed it a few times and started looking at past titles that the cracks started to show. I also dislike it immensely for 'saving' the series by showing that incest and waifu-simulators are the main draw of the series apparently and for cursing the series ever since from being a cool medival styled anime game to a typical styled anime.

This game is like Metroid: Other M for me, we should put a banner on the site to just not mention it lest I lose my marbels hahahahah

@Infinity_Divide

> liked awakening
Kind of as Roy said. I remember being obsessed with this game back in like... 2015/2016? But as time goes on, it kind of ages more and more poorly in my eyes.

@Royta/Raeng

> romhacks
Those can definitely be a mixed bag, I'm sure. That being said, I've really been enjoying this one.

> Heroes
Don't plan on touching this one anytime soon.

> Astra
I certainly don't think they intended it to be as powerful as it ended up being in Fates, but with the way the shield gauge works, it's basically an all-in-one offensive/defensive option. That being said, Sol (Heal half the damage that you deal to an enemy) is a more reliable defensive proc skill, due to its higher activation.

> decent defense stat
Yeah, this sort of -2 damage taken is really powerful in these games. Definitely adds up over time.

What I like to do in this romhack is put a Guard Naginata (+5 defense and resistance, which is about as amazing as it sounds) on Azama, a monk with generally decent defenses, and then pair up Corrin to him. I set Corrin as an Oni Chieftain in this playthrough, meaning that their pair up bonuses are +4 Strength/Defense. Combine that with Corrin's personal skill of +2/-2 damage dealt/taken and +10 hit to anyone that they have a C-Support and above to, and I have an unstoppable physical tank. This would probably work with a number of other units.

That being said, Ryoma's defense stats aren't very good. His personal skills is generally a bigger boost to his offenses.

Oh, and here's the resource for pair up bonuses for each character (depending on support rank), and each class.
https://serenesforest.net/fire-emblem-fates/hoshidan-characters/pair-up-stats/
https://serenesforest.net/fire-emblem-fates/hoshidan-classes/pair-up-stats/

> Affinity
As far as I'm aware of, no. Just so as long the pairup is of an equal, or lower level than him.

Okay.

Yesterday, I managed to beat modded Pleasure Palace. The map layout actually lends itself quite well to an escape map with the way he used it, so Mayor did a pretty kickass job with reworking the map. Managed to get 9 out of the 10 chests. I'll give a screencap of the map here (Not mine, took these from some YouTube video).



It's not as absurd, or as intimidating as it may look with the huge number of enemies. You can generally take them out group-by-group, and the infinite range flame orb (the lavender circle) on the middle right room definitely facilitates things quite a bit by chipping enemies down. That's what I set Felicia to during the entire map, while I sang with Azura to allow her to do it twice.

Also used a rescue staff after one of my pairups managed to get one of the bottom right chests. Missed out on the other, but oh well.

Anyway, haven't given Chapter 18 a serious crack yet. Can't really provide an up-to-date screenshot of the modded map, so here's one of the vanilla map.



In case you're wondering why there are no enemies, visiting each village sics a whole bunch of enemies on you in the vanilla version, and one of the enemies has an item you can loot. One of the villages gives 10,000 gold for free. This, unfortunately, isn't as interesting as it might sound.

Uses the same map, but instead, it's now a seize map. There are a whole bunch of enemies scattered around the villages, and going to the villages allows you to either freeze, or silence all of the enemies on the map. Mayor says that if you visit all of the villages, you'll get a pair of boots that permanently give you an extra point of movement. I've never been able to totally complete all the side objectives on their maps, so whether or not I'll be able to do that, or am even willing to do that is up in the air at the moment. I'll try and see if I can perhaps play a bit more aggressively on the first turn, and get to the two villages at, and immediately above spawn so i can both freeze, and silence all the enemies to really cripple them.

Ran out of romhack a few days ago, since it's currently not finished. I decided to start my Conquest Lunatic playthrough at long last. Currently on Chapter 14 of this playthrough.

My Corrin this time is a +Strength/-Luck monk (So I can reclass into Great Master for the renewal skill, which restores 30% of my health every turn), and I plan on befriending Kaze, and then either befriending, or marrying a mercenary to get Sol, which is a proc skill that heals half the damage you deal against an enemy. Possibly go over to Mechanist to pick up Replicate (Allows you to make a double of yourself) on the way, but that's definitely a stretch goal.

Silas is also gonna befriend Kaze, so I can have him reclass to Master Ninja. After picking up Sol via a reclass, of course. Then Laslow will reclass to a Master Ninja after picking up Sol. In which he'll marry Azura, and then his kid Soleil will then also be a Master Ninja with Sol. Heck, I might decide to marry Soleil for access to Mercenary, and by extension, Sol.

I'll have to use Niles this time, so I can capture certain enemy units that'll assist me in the endgame. Spear fighters with swap, Oni Savages with shove, Falcon Knights with pass, and of course, Rallyman.

Another thing that I'll have to plan out long-term is how I'm going to kill Takumi in the endgame of Conquest, since that's already a really hard map on just Hard mode, and apparently, it's a big step up on Lunatic as well. Possibly going to use a Life and Death (+10 damage dealt AND taken), and Spendthrift (+10 damage dealt, -10 taken, expends a gold bar) Mozu with a Brave Bow. Might also use a Life and Death Ophelia.

As for current pairings, Odin and Elise are currently the closest to being in an S-Support. Next order of business is to reclass Odin into a samurai, for access to vantage, which he can pass on to Ophelia.

So on this Lunatic Conquest playthrough, I'm currently on Chapter 21. Haven't attempted it yet, but here's a summary of my thoughts on each map from Chapter 14 onwards, along with the paralogues I've done.

14 - Meh. Not a particularly interesting map, but Silas's personal skill, Vow of Friendship (+3/-3 damage dealt/taken when Corrin is below 50% HP) was pretty insane here. I was able to throw him into a crowd of Pegasus/Kinshi Knights, and he was able to solo them when paired with Camilla.

Paralogue 20 - Map itself is very solid, encourages you to play fairly quickly and to spread out your units to get to the 4 villages. Got Odin and Elise's kid Ophelia here, and goddamn, vantage and nosferatu are an insane combo. Vantage allows you to attack first when an enemy initiates you below half health, and nosferatu heals back half the damage you deal with it. Combined with guard gauge, and Ophelia was an unstoppable tank.

15 - Not great either, the gimmick of cloning your 3 units so they can fight at the bottom islands is fairly interesting, but this map is just there to feed Corrin exp.

16 - Pretty interesting map. Forces you to play fairly quickly with the gold incentive: You start with 10000 gold, and every turn that passes by, you lose 300 gold. Cleared in 9 turns, which is decent. Again, vantage + nosferatu Ophelia is unstoppable here.

17 - Scuffed this one. Paired up Xander, and had him plug up all the chokepoints while I fed kills to everyone behind him. I took 96 turns to slowly crawl over the map, routing everyone.

18 - One of my favourite maps in Conquest. Objective is to beat both bosses in 20 turns, while there are two chests up on the corners that you can try and get. Again, vantage + nosferatu Ophelia was nuts, here. Singlehandedly cleared out almost half the map, and she was able to feed kills to a lot of my other units here too.

19 - Conversely, this is my least favourite map in this playthrough so far. It's pretty horrible; There are all these enemies that have pass, meaning that you can't block off any routes with them, since they can just go right through your lines, Life and Death (+10 damage dealt AND taken), and Beastbane (Cavaliers and pegasi take extra damage). Enemies also have very high evasion, meaning that hit rates tend to be dicey at best. Consistently had hit rates in the 60s and lower. But the worst part is the map gimmick, which works IN TANDEM with everything I mentioned: There are these "illusions" that the enemies will cast which don't allow you to attack ANY enemies on certain turns. The whole gimmick utterly ruins many of the player phases. There are many ways to scuff this map, and I took the route of taking all of my flying units, parking them on a mountain, and then sniping them out of their range.

Paralogue 5 - Decent, nothing too special, but nothing too awful either. Most notable part about this map is the villagers you're protecting, and how utterly stupid they are. They just run straight towards the island full of enemies.

Paralogue 3 - Nothing really that interesting about this map. Really just acted as free exp and support points.

Paralogue 21 - Solid map, though once again, a few juggernauts did a lot of the work. Ophelia did her usual nosferatu tanking at chokepoints, I sicced Xander into some corners to kill the reinforcements, and the rest of the cast was mostly focused on cleaning up enemies.

Paralogue 6 - Easy enough map. Used this one for free exp, support points, and weapon ranks, as usual. Reclassed Silas into a Master Ninja after he acquired Sol from the hero class, and then grinded his weapon rank to D.

Chapter 20 - Also not a super fun map. Would normally be super hard, but I was able to pretty heavily neuter it by throwing Silas with a Camilla pairup into the fray to clear out most of the biggest threats. Silas as a Master Ninja with Sol is absolutely insane. Great stats all-around, with high speed and skill, decent defense and resistance, and decent strength, along with 1-2 range that debuffs enemies who survive.

Paralogue 15 - Very tedious map, not much fun here. Spread out your enemies, shut off the reinforcement points, and then pick off all the stragglers. Sounds decent on paper, but the map is quite large, with a lot of forest terrain, and certain reinforcements (Namely, Master Ninjas and Mechanists with Poison Strike) are awful to deal with.

Paralogue 2 - Pretty easy map, once again. Used for free exp, weapon ranks, and support points.

Paralogue 22 - Very fun map, though I only ended up going down the left side. Again, mostly just used for EXP.

I've a few units that I really need to prioritize the training of right now:

Ophelia - Currently a Master of Arms, which she is awful at. However, the skill Life and Death will massively increase her damage output.
Corrin - Currently a hero, and I'm just trying to obtain Sol. Once I do that, I'll reclass into Master Ninja for my final class.
Mozu - Is gonna be my dedicated Takumi killer. Will also need to reclass to Master of Arms for Life and Death, then Sniper for bowfaire, and then finally, Merchant for Spendthrift.
Soleil - Need to get Shurikenbreaker from Bow Knight, and then I'll reclass to Master Ninja, so she can act as my Ninja killer.

Okay, now for the other chapters I just completed.

Chapter 22 - Good map. Actually split off my forces for this one, and I'm pretty proud that I managed to rout the entire map. Turn count wasn't great, but whatever. Hardest part of this map was this little room with 2 Onmyoji-Oni Chieftain pairups, and Sakura. Was lucky enough to be able to dodge the onslaught from the paired guys.

Chapter 23 - Also a pretty awesome map. Was able to sweep the bottom pretty neatly, caught this generic unit called "Rallyman" (Known, because he has 4 RALLIES. Strength, Speed, Defense, and Resistance. A rally gives you +4 of a given stat for a single turn.). Also was able to clean Oboro's paired up group in one turn. Hardest part of this map was the initial bridge with Hinata, and his crew standing right there.

Paralogue 16 - Used this one for EXP, mostly. Specifically, to get certain units to a level where they could get the skills that they needed, so I could reclass them into their "final" class, so to speak. I mentioned those 4 units above, managed to get Life and Death on Mozu, and Ophelia. Mainly used the left chokepoint and held the line with Silas, and Xander.

Chapter 24 - Great map, once again. Silas with a Beastkiller knife did a LOT of work here, he was able to take down the Falcons, and Kinshis very easily. Grinded up Soleil a bit here, so she could obtain Shurikenfaire to increase her damage output on the next map.

Chapter 25 - This was the moment of truth: Two of my units, Ophelia, and Soleil, were being put to the test with all the skills they had accrued over the game, along with optimal pairups. And boy-oh-boy, it paid off.

So on the left side of the map, I had Ophelia. She had the following skills:
Bibliophile (Personal skill) - +10 crit when this unit has 3 tomes in their inventory. This skill isn't too relevant though, since this Ophelia was built to be able to kill enemies in one shot without any
Vantage - Below half-health, attack first when enemy initiates combat on you
Malefic Aura - Enemies within two spaces take +2 magic damage
Heartseeker - -20 evasion to adjacent enemies
Life and Death - +10 damage both dealt, AND taken.
Bowbreaker - +50 hit/evasion against enemies with bows.

Paired her up with her mother, Elise, who I had reclassed to a Sorcerer for the maximum magic bonus. Also gave her a magic boosting meal, and tonics. Against the ninjas, swordmasters, and automatons on the left side, she was able to wipe each of them out in a single shot. As soon as the first ninja landed a hit on her, and put her below half health, it was all over for them. Enemies would constantly suicide right onto her on enemy phase.

On the right side, we had Soleil, a Master Ninja with the following skills.
Sisterhood (Personal Skill) - +2/-2 damage dealt/taken when supported by a female ally.
Strong Riposte - +3 damage dealt on a counterattack when enemy initiates combat.
Locktouch - Unlock chests without a key
Sol - Heal HP equal to half damage dealt (Trigger skill, rate is equal to skill stat)
Shurikenbreaker - +50 hit/avoid against Shurikens
Shurikenfaire - +5 damage dealt with Shurikens

I paired her up with Camilla, whom I had reclassed to a Wyvern Lord, even though these two can't support. The sake of increased strength, defense, and movement, along with her personal skill necessitated this. With a few rallies, again, Soleil was able to decimate just about anything that came her way on the right side. She would frequently trigger Sol to regain back any health that she had lost, and was able to avoid just about every shuriken thrown her way.

So yeah, Chapter 25 was one of the culminations for what I had been building up my team to do.

3 chapters left. Chapter 26, 27, and Endgame. And I've got a pretty solid plan for that last one.

Finished my Conquest Lunatic run.

Chapter 26 - I'm glad my team was as powerful as it was here. Very challenging map, and one of the best in Fates, along with much of Conquest's lategame.



I think this map deserves some dissection, so here goes.

First room immediately below your units room is full of Heroes, 3 of which have Wyrmslayers, meaning that whatever wyvern-mounted units you have, along with the avatar will not last unless you kill them immediately. On Lunatic, you have a few enemies with counter as well, so attacking them from 1-range unless you can 1-shot them is unsafe. There's also a maid with a Hexing Rod that cuts a targeted units maximum health by half for the rest of the battle, and they've also got the skill Staff Savant, meaning that their minimum staff range is 10, and staff uses are infinite. It's a decent idea to have two tanky units bust open the door, and then hold the line while letting the heroes come at you, with a unit with low resistance there to act as bait for the hexing rod, since maids will target whoever has the lowest resistance.

The boss, Iago is in the middle room, and he's also got Staff Savant, along with 4 staves that he uses on a strict rotation: Enfeeble, which cuts all your stats by 4, Freeze, which cuts off your movement, and shaves 20 off your evasion, Silence, which disallows you to do magic for a single turn, and a Hexing Rod, which I explained above. You really want to stay out of his range every 4 turns.

On the hallway to the right is another maid; One with an entrap staff, and Staff Savant as well. Entrap teleports whatever targeted unit right next to the user, so the unit can easily be dogpiled on. Unless your unit is equipped to kill the two sorcerers in the hallway (Who aren't a big deal), you really want to be wary of being in the maid's range.

Once your units bust down the door to the hallway, and then the easternmost room filled with sorcerers and two maids, four more sorcerers will crop up on the top right corner. Make sure that you have a few mage-killing units around, for that reason; To both deal with the sorcerers, and the reinforcements.

And now here's the hard part (Aside from the left path). The bottom room, full of Generals, and Berserkers. They're all equipped with Beastkillers, and Hammers, so armoured, and calvary (Horseback) units will not do well in holding them off. And as you fight them, 3 more sorcerers, and a maid will crop up in the top right staircase again, and then another group of the same enemies will do so again on the middle right. Make sure you've got some mage killing units there, again. I did that part with Master Ninja Soleil paired with Corrin. The best way to tank the bottom room is to use Xander reclassed as a Hero, paired with Charlotte. Charlotte gives him absolutely absurd strength and speed bonuses (+8 strength, and +5 speed), and Xander won't have to worry about any of the anti-beast, or armour weapons. There are also two maids in the room with freeze, so be careful when plugging the hallway with those units.

Once you're done with those, then you have to deal with Hans, and two generals, plus 4 reinforcements: 2 generals, 2 berserkers. Hans is VERY dangerous; He has:
Counter - All damage taken from an adjacent unit is dealt back
Countermagic - All damage taken from magic is dealt back
Death Blow - +20 to crit on initiation
Certain Blow - +40 accuracy on initiation
Armoured Blow - -10 damage taken on initiation

The safest way to deal with him is to use entrap on him in the eastern hallway, so you can then snipe at him with a 1-2 range, or 2-range physical weapon. That being said, this will also trigger the general and berserker reinforcements early.

Once you're done with ALL that, then you can just go in, and kill Iago. Iago's not very difficult, so I won't touch on him.

As for the left side of the map, I haven't even attempted that insanity once. The game definitely intends for you to go down one of two paths. But if you're an absolute god at this game, like Zoran, then it IS possible to split off your forces, and go down both paths.



Chapter 27 - This is really just a prelude chapter to endgame. I just paired up 8 units, let them get entrapped by some shrine maidens, killed the enemies in the rooms, and then went on to kill the boss after waiting for the enemies to chase me a bit, so I wouldn't get caught by them.

Endgame - This map is already very difficult on hard mode, and Lunatic is just plain ridiculous. A bunch of maids with status staves whose debuffs stack, infinite reinforcements, extremely powerful enemies, and a boss that halves your health unless you're behind barriers every few turns. I used a 2-turn boss kill for this one, the same one that Excelblem used. Let me explain.

My boss killer was Mozu, whom I had been building up for the entire game.
- Reclassed to Archer from villager at around level 9 or 10? In order to get access to bows, as well as Quick Draw (+4 damage on initiation).
- Once at level 20, upgrade to Kinshi Knight, for easier EXP gain, since Kinshis have high movement, and they can go on certain normally inaccessible terrain.
- At level 12, I reclassed to Master of Arms until level 15. The level 15 skill for Master of Arms is Life and Death, which is +10 damage dealt, AND taken.
- Reclass to Sniper once you're at level 15, so you can get Certain Blow (+40 accuracy on initiation), and Bowfaire (+5 damage with bows).
- Finally, reclass to Merchant to get access to spendthrift: Use a gold bar for +10/-10 damage dealt/taken. You can get gold bars by feeding Lilith in My Castle. Every 3 times you feed her, you get a gold bar. Merchant also has a skill called Profiteer that gives you the chance to get a gold bar every turn for the first 7 turns, but that wasn't needed.

I also fed her several statboosters, namely energy drops (+2 strength), arms scroll (+1 weapon rank) and a pair of boots (+1 movement) as well as tonics to get her up to spec. I then equipped her with a Crescent Bow for extra attacks.

So here's my process for beating endgame:

Turn 1:
- Move the following units into position:
- A captured Falcon Knight from chapter 24 equipped with a rescue staff, and the pass skill (Allows units to move through enemy lines) with a movement pairup (So they have 9 movement instead of 8.)
- Another Falcon Knight (I used Shigure) with rescue to move the first falcon knight into position
- Another 8-movement unit (I used Camilla, but it doesn't matter) with Azura paired up
- Siegbert, who is a Great Knight for the pairup and movement bonus he provides to Mozu, along with his personal skill that boosts the damage of any female ally he supports by 2
- Mozu, who is out of staff range as not to get debuffed.
- Rallyman, who has Rally Strength, Speed, Defense, and Resistance (+4 to each of those stats for a single turn).

Wait on enemy phase.

Turn 2:
- Rally with Rallyman
- Pair up Mozu with Siegbert, who moves forward, and switches to Mozu to attack and double a stray enemy. This will fill her guard gauge to 3/5 of the way.
- Move Camilla forward next to Mozu. Switch Camilla to Azura, and sing to Mozu so she get extra movement.
- Move Shigure forward to rescue the first Falcon Knight with pass
- Move the Falcon Knight with pass forward, and then rescue Mozu
- Use Mozu's extra turn to go in, and kill Takumi. The Crescent Bow, along with her speed allows her to attack 4 times: 2 times, enemy counterattack, and then another 2 times (Of which the fourth attack will be blocked, because of guard gauge). Filling up the guard gauge prior allows Mozu to survive Takumi's counterattack.

And that's my first Conquest Lunatic run complete. Would highly recommend playing it on Hard first, and then Lunatic. I hope I've managed to convince at least a few of you to play this game. Next up is probably a recruitment swap, beating Conquest on Lunatic with Birthright units instead. Then, uh, I dunno, maybe a Revquest run where I can use both Conquest and Birthright units. I really don't know, I'm just waiting for Mayor's Rebirthright romhack to be completed.

I decided to go back to Awakening for its 10th anniversary on hard mode, and the balance is fucked to the point of hilarity. Robin snowballs so quickly because of the game's ridiculously generous exp gain, as well as high growth rates, that they can already become a promoted unit within the first 7 chapters while still gaining consistent exp to level up on each map.

I basically speedran the game up to chapter 14, and their stat total is already 180 at this point. This would be a really strong endgame unit in Fates. I honestly forgot how insane the stat inflation was in Awakening.

Anyway, as for Fates, I started my Conquest recruitment swap on Lunatic mode since I'm waiting for updates to the Rebirthright romhack, and don't want to start the Revelation romhack until the gameplay side is done.

Vanilla chapter 7 is a really solid introduction to Conquest that pretty clearly establishes what it's all about. With the mod on Lunatic, and the tools Azure gives you though, it's absolutely insane. None of your units aside from your servant (Either Jakob/Felicia depending on if your avatar a girl or guy, respectively) have 1-2 range, and I wasn't able to beat it. So I brought that up to the mod creator, and he considered giving Hana a Kodachi, a throwable sword. He didn't update the mod yet though, so I hacked it into the game, and gave it to her. Map was still pretty challenging, but Jakob got a lot of lucky critical hits.