Author Topic: Fire Emblem: Fates - More waifu, more husbando, more sales! (Read 105354 times)

commandercool · « **Reply #210 on:** May 21, 2016, 08:44:57 PM »

Quote from: Raikaria on May 21, 2016, 08:00:16 PM

I don't use characters to break the game. Well; except one time where I made Severa a super solider and then got bored of Awakening when she could literally solo the game but that's besides the point. I tend to make a mix between the characters I personally like and having a mixture of classes.

Donnel was dead weight before he was reclassed. Mozu is useful already and is hitting for ~10 damage and can selfheal. Also there's the little things like Mozu's terrified animation before she attacks. It kinda makes me want to make her get more confident. Although I'm unsure if the animation is character-based on class-based.

Also I'm a terrible person who wants to force someone scared to fight and break her into a confident warrior. I'm a terrible person.

Mozu's a solid character for sure. I like her. I married her on my first playthrough. She's just not game-breakingly good. But yeah, if you like her for her personality, she's got really fun supports.

Not sure if that animation is class-based or not, but she's the only natural Villager in the game as far as I know. Not sure if anyone can reclass into Villager or what their animations are like if they do.

Quote from: PX on May 21, 2016, 08:01:06 PM

They do address the incest thing if you S-Rank Ryoma

From experience I can tell you it is addressed when marrying Camilla, but it isn't addressed when marrying Forest, who's kind of your step-nephew.

CF7 · « **Reply #211 on:** May 22, 2016, 08:23:32 AM »

So, it's out in EU. Kind of thinking about buying it.
I really enjoyed Awakening and i think i sunk like 200+ hours into it with crazy eugenics shenanigans and the like.
On the other hand i like old FEs and really enjoyed PoR and RD on hard/normal respectively. It was fun and hard at the same time, but not frustratingly so.
Any thoughts on which should i pick first?

theshirn · « **Reply #212 on:** May 22, 2016, 04:31:06 PM »

Birthright is much more like Awakening, fairly easy overall even without grinding, which is freely available. The endgame difficulty in Birthright is much more along the lines of enemies with higher stats.

Conquest doesn't have enemies with particularly high stats or anything, but it does have creatively cruel combinations of skills, weapons, and map gimmicks that make it really challenging at times. Conquest Normal is a little harder than Birthright Hard, for example.

Both were a lot of fun, for sure, but I'd say Conquest is the better game.

Sect · « **Reply #213 on:** May 22, 2016, 05:48:36 PM »

Quote from: theshirn on May 22, 2016, 04:31:06 PM

Birthright is much more like Awakening, fairly easy overall even without grinding, which is freely available. The endgame difficulty in Birthright is much more along the lines of enemies with higher stats.

Conquest doesn't have enemies with particularly high stats or anything, but it does have creatively cruel combinations of skills, weapons, and map gimmicks that make it really challenging at times. Conquest Normal is a little harder than Birthright Hard, for example.

Both were a lot of fun, for sure, but I'd say Conquest is the better game.

This makes me think that these games had different directors or something.

commandercool · « **Reply #214 on:** July 03, 2016, 06:24:57 AM »

Old thread is old, but I'm playing this game again because I hate myself. Conquest lunatic because I might as well complete the set.

Honestly it's not going that badly. I just beat chapter 22 with no real serious problems. A lot of my success has to do with an absolutely batshit powerful Dread Fighter Mozu which I'm not thrilled about since it kind of feels like DLC cheese, but I guess I'm okay using the path bonuses.

Anyway, does anyone know how the flying fuck to beat paralogue 15 (the Siegbert one)? I've been able to figure everything up to now out, but this chapter seriously seems impossible and any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Spoiler:

I've tried looking up hints online, which I usually don't like to do, and everything I've found is either people asking what the fuck to do or advice like "Defeat the enemies to win the chapter". :V So, anybody know anything I don't? Am I overlooking something obvious? Is splitting my forces actually a really stupid idea?

Think Komachi with a Rifle · « **Reply #215 on:** July 03, 2016, 11:13:46 AM »

hmm the issue with the paralogues and DLC for that matter, they scale to your average level.
Do them as soon as humanly possible seems sound advice.
Haven't doen seigberts one yet..

Sounds like you messed by reclassing everyone into mounted classes... all eggs in one basket...
Sounds like flyers might be viable, you should have a fair few wyvern riders.
Poison touch dosn't work if your counter attack kills them, or they miss. Dealing with chapter 17 (I think it was) that is entirly ninjas and blademasters. Seigfreid wining prizes for best anti ninja tank, despite weapon disadvantage.

PS over here in Europe all the DLC isn't even out yet...

commandercool · « **Reply #216 on:** July 03, 2016, 03:30:37 PM »

Not sure doing this early would have helped. The enemies would have been weaker, sure, but my units and team would have been less optimized as well.

I do have three fliers actuallly (Cam, Percy, and Shigure). The chapter only allows you to bring twelve units, so any more than that and I'd be seriously struggling with the asslods of super-archers that get spawned in. Unfortunately my Percy got horrendous level ups so many times in a row that he's pretty much been relegated to General Effie's taxi (she's his mother).

Consistently dodging or one-shotting the ninjas on counterattack is not really an option. Stats are too high on lunatic and virtually the whole map is forest, which means they'll always be getting a dodge bonus. The only one who even has a chance at that is Effie and she has neutral weapon disadvantage. Xander definitely can't do it. His hit chance is like 60% against ninjas and he falls short of one-shotting them.

My best guess right now is that I shouldn't be splitting up. Maybe blitzing the ninja spawn point with my entire team then just battling thorough the hordes of other enemies with everyone will work better?

I tried looking up clears on Youtube and the few that existed were people playing on super-easy in Revelation with a DLC-heavy team and tons of grinding. So yeah, that didn't help...

commandercool · « **Reply #217 on:** July 03, 2016, 05:57:37 PM »

Just spent another two hours hacking away at this fucking garbage chapter, and yeah, pretty sure it's actually impossible on Lunatic. The portal that spawns the ninjas is right next to the boss, so if you get close to it you trigger the massive horde of enemies guarding him. If you rush forward it's a guaranteed loss to the swarms of enemies guarding the portals, and if you go slow it's a guaranteed loss to the 20+ extra enemies you'll have to fight later.

Oh yeah, and the AI here is absolutely sadistic too. Enemies won't just get into losing fights. If they can't win they'll just run away and go camp on another spawn point.

I give up. For now at least, I legitimately think this is a DLC trap to try to force me to pay to grind in order to beat it. Unless I'm seriously overlooking something I'm done. I'll come back later and give it another shot, maybe I'll figure something out if I give it some time. Good thing this an optional chapter and I can continue with the non-terrible parts of the game.

Hello Purvis · « **Reply #218 on:** July 03, 2016, 06:03:26 PM »

No one likes Seigbert anyways.

Spoiler:

commandercool · « **Reply #219 on:** July 04, 2016, 01:12:18 AM »

How do Hinata and his stupid goons work in chapter 23? They're at the other end of a bridge, and you can inch closer to them to a certain degree and they don't aggro. However, sometimes they do while I'm trying to set up my team to take them out and I don't want to spend the 45 minutes plus it takes to get to them over and over and over to figure out the tile-perfect positioning you can use without setting them off. The archers near him have infinite damage for all intents and purposes, so if they get triggered it's an instant loss.

I guess I could just move around them, but I'd like to get the experience for taking them out if possible.

commandercool · « **Reply #220 on:** July 04, 2016, 04:26:13 AM »

God dammit, so I realized I made a potentially run-losing My Castle build error and badly need a Dragon Vein point, so I went back to Siegbert's fucking horrible level. Was actually doing pretty well when a couple of Ninja Masters somehow attacked Corrin from outside of their threat range and insta-lossed me. I guess someone else must have been chokepointing them (which is really difficult to keep track of on this map given that it's all trees and the forest and Dense Forest tiles look almost the same) and I opened them up when I moved and didn't realize it.

This whole stage is an exercise in trying to manipulate the enemy's nonsense threat radius. Seriously couldn't get this far without my broken-ass Dread Fighter Mozu standing in the middle of the map and just mowing down everything that approaches, and even that is vulnerable to RNG (most enemies have a ~30% hit chance when she's parked in a Fort). So if I can manage all of that again, which is dubious, I can possibly at least get back to the same point in the level given 90 minutes, a Rescue staff use, and a ton of luck. I don't understand what causes enemies to engage or run away though, so controlling the flow of the battle is important, but also extremely unreliable.

I seriously don't understand why everybody loves Xander so much. He is not good. His strength is just okay, his speed sucks, his skill is only passable, his resist sucks, and his defense is good but not excellent. The only things he has going for him in my opinion are his amazing personal weapon and a lot of good supports. At least he's better than Leo, whose only redeeming factors are granting +1 move to partners, being fast with Heartseeker, and occasionally getting his ass saved by his mediocre special weapon?

Even with a Speed tonic Xander only had a 54% hit chance against the Ninja Masters, so with a bunch of luck he probably could have taken the group of them on, but I didn't get luck at all and he missed four attacks in a row. I guess I have to get him a Skill tonic as well and just not play the game until I get a solid Mess Hall roll that gives better stat boosts than I have currently. I should probably also buy all of the tonics for Mozu just to minimize the odds of her getting accidentally killed by a few bad dice rolls, but I'd be concerned about scaring off the enemy's bizarre AI by making her just a hair too hard to hurt so they just ignore her. There seems to be some kind of invisible balancing act here of tricking the AI's risk assessment into getting into bad matchups that I can't comprehend.

commandercool · « **Reply #221 on:** July 05, 2016, 03:39:31 AM »

You know how I said I gave up? Turns out my masochism is more powerful than Conquest's sadism, because I beat Paralogue 15 on Lunatic.

Alright, so I'm going to lay out everything I know in case anyone is ever in the same boat as me and needs help.

Spoiler:

-Closing more portals DOES NOT reduce enemy spawns, at least not significantly. Focus more on closing dangerous portals (the Ninja Master one) than blitzing all reachable ones on turn one. I sent Camilla to pick up Siegbert, then sent pretty much everyone else up the right side of the map to rush the ninja spawn zone.

-Dread Fighter Mozu with a Hunting Knife paired with Niles beat most of the level for me, even ten on one. The only thing she can't really handle is Ninja Masters. That being the case, I split her off from the rest of my team and had her hang out in the middle of the map mowing down the magic units that spawn over there, as well as the pegasus units and some stray Great Knights, before they could reach my main force. Any very strong Ninja Master with a Hunting Knife should be able to pull this off, and I didn't even have S support with Mozu and Niles, so if you have Kaze with an S support with someone who gives a Speed bonus that should do as well.

-The Sniper portal (second one up from the bottom on the right side) is also extremely dangerous, so I sent Shigure up there first turn to close it following an Azura song and snapped him back with a Rescue use. Not incredibly thrilled about that, but it was the only necessary staff use this run. It is possible to send a unit up there who can close the portal and won't need to be Rescued, but it's not easy. I had Leo/Shigure or Leo/Camilla survive about 25% of the time, but given that this took me many dozens of runs to beat I just couldn't be bothered to restart that often and burned a staff. If you have different royal offspring units or a different Corrin you may have better luck consistently surviving the rush on that spot and may not need the Rescue.

-I found that Effie was pretty much the only one who could reliably fight the Ninja Masters and Machinists. Xander could take a few, but not enough to be reliable against the whole swarm of them.

-I used A TON of Tonics. Every stat on Mozu, Skill, Defense, and Speed on four different units, and Strength on Effie (since she needed it to one-shot Ninja Masters with a Javelin). Between that and the Rescue this was a pretty costly chapter for me and whether it was worth it or not is up for debate, but I REALLY needed to dragon vein point because I forgot to build a jail to put Rallyman in from chapter 23.

-Camilla and Corrin are among the only units who can fight the reinforcement Great Knights since they have Armorslayers and Beast Killers. Because they spawn so close to the Ninja zone you may need to kite Ninjas and Knights for quite a while before you can get an opening for someone, probably Camilla, to run in and use the Dragon Vein.

-If possible probably shoot for an extra skill or speed bonus in the Mess Hall dish, or maybe a Resistance one. Making sure your hit chance against the ninjas is high is very important.

Hopefully that helps somebody, since there doesn't seem to be much information online about this chapter right now and it's a total bitch.

Once again Conquest does a great job of blunting my sense of accomplishment for doing something very difficult, since I know that now I have to immediately go clear chapter 23 while capturing Rallyman. Ugh...

commandercool · « **Reply #222 on:** July 08, 2016, 04:03:52 AM »

Oh my god chapter 25 lunatic is so much worse than I expected. I'm of the opinion that 25 is the hardest chapter on hard, not 10 or 26, but this is SO MUCH more brutal than I could have imagined. I still have a lot of tricks up my sleeve before I'm ready to call this run a failure, but looking at what I'm going to have to do to get through it is soul-crushing. And I'm told 26 is even worse... Good thing I'm a masochist or I think I would have burned my 3DS after just seeing this chapter, much less playing it.

Spoiler:

:colonveeplusalpha:

Mеа · « **Reply #223 on:** July 14, 2016, 09:43:43 AM »

I picked up a copy of conquest recently and decided to play on lunatic for the hell of it since you seem to be enjoying yourself there. Like, hey, if ccool can get through it, I'll give it a try too -- so I'm thinking naively. I'll probably have to look through your previous rants if I seriously get stuck.

Have to say, the new mechanics (compared to the little I've played of the older ones) such as the pair up/formation system, passive skills, etc, make it pretty interesting.

Currently finished chapter 8 -- that one with the pretty mean go-visit-3-villages sweater--, an invasion, and also mozu's paralogue thing. There were a few times when it just about tickled my fancy to let arthur just stay dead, but not enough, it seems, no one dead... yet(?). I guess it was worth investing hesitantly in mozu a bit since you seem to be getting a lot out of her. Been pairing avatar with felicia since I don't really favor any girl atm and she's a maido so bonus points. I'm assuming the only other potential marriage candidate is the hilariously chesty oneesan camilla, who is going to join me eventually I'm assuming, but her doting seems a bit forcibly written so I'm probably staying away from that. If I picked the feMC, probably definitely would have gone for leo though since he's kind of like a chuuni male awkward cute brother alice. I'm kinda sad I can't just kidnap that red hair girl from the hoshidans or just marry the dlc shopkeeper, they seem cute.

Feels very intelligient systems so far, from my experience with all advance war games except 1.

Think Komachi with a Rifle · « **Reply #224 on:** July 14, 2016, 10:34:32 AM »

Quote from: Mеа on July 14, 2016, 09:43:43 AM

I picked up a copy of conquest recently and decided to play on lunatic for the hell of it since you seem to be enjoying yourself there. Like, hey, if ccool can get through it, I'll give it a try too -- so I'm thinking naively. I'll probably have to look through your previous rants if I seriously get stuck.

Have to say, the new mechanics (compared to the little I've played of the older ones) such as the pair up/formation system, passive skills, etc, make it pretty interesting.

Currently finished chapter 8 -- that one with the pretty mean go-visit-3-villages sweater--, an invasion, and also mozu's paralogue thing. There were a few times when it just about tickled my fancy to let arthur just stay dead, but not enough, it seems, no one dead... yet(?). I guess it was worth investing hesitantly in mozu a bit since you seem to be getting a lot out of her. Been pairing avatar with felicia since I don't really favor any girl atm and she's a maido so bonus points. I'm assuming the only other potential marriage candidate is the hilariously chesty oneesan camilla, who is going to join me eventually I'm assuming, but her doting seems a bit forcibly written so I'm probably staying away from that. If I picked the feMC, probably definitely would have gone for leo though since he's kind of like a chuuni male awkward cute brother alice. I'm kinda sad I can't just kidnap that red hair girl from the hoshidans or just marry the dlc shopkeeper, they seem cute.

Feels very intelligient systems so far, from my experience with all advance war games except 1.

You didn't play awakening?? You are aware of how child characters and skill inheritance work. i.e S rank support = you get side story to get their kid playable (at your teams current average level). They get their class skills + the skill last on the list from both parents (so rearrange order, before doing those levels).

Playing seriously as you need to on Conquest lunatic.

Pair MC with whoever gives your daughter the best stat profile/ skillset. (depends what stats and alt class you picked.)
Mozu is potentially godly due to the better stats on level up passive skill.

The Maid/ Butler (it's actually an advanced class) is not level capped (this matters due to the gold shortage, so you can't spam level cap +5 seals, like in birthright), neither is Azura (who is a fantastic glass cannon).

Also abuse DLC or at least online for the free gear and support rank grinding, you will need it.

Currently playing through conquest hard... not going to try lunatic until I figure who best parent/child combos are. Hard is bad enough.

commandercool · « **Reply #225 on:** July 14, 2016, 01:19:50 PM »

I'm going to be honest here and say I don't think you're going to clear Lunatic on the first go. Not having the game already roughly mapped out is going to make planning your route too sketchy. Regardless, here's some dubious advice.

-Don't let any royals or Niles die. Restart if they do. Well, actually if you let Leo die it would probably be fine. The only thing he's good for is making Forrest.

-As much as you may want to, don't marry Niles on Lunatic. He can't have your babies so you get fucked over if you do.

-Don't use any Freeze, Rescue, or Entrap staff charges on any chapters except

Spoiler:

. You will NEED them at certain points.

-Don't overuse the jail, but definitely don't underuse it either. This game has a lot of enemies with completely unfair skill combinations, so if you see something that seems bullshit, help yourself. Don't be afraid to use kidnapped units as disposable though, they mostly are.

-Go to the trouble to level up Elise, she is top-tier if you do.

-It's okay to keep units on your team who are dedicated pair-up fodder. I wouldn't have more than one, but you can save a lot of experience by choosing not to level some characters and just keeping them perpetually paired with others and never actually letting them see combat.

-Be careful with your money. This is especially true in a blind run where you don't already know roughly what you'll get for free from chests. Always buy every debuff staff given the opportunity though.

So good luck. I don't want to be too much of a downer and say "you'll need it" so I'll just say that it'll be a huge accomplishment if you get this clear.

Quote from: Think Komachi with a Rifle on July 14, 2016, 10:34:32 AM

Also abuse DLC or at least online for the free gear and support rank grinding, you will need it.

But that's cheatiiiing! I mean, you can do whatever you want obviously, it's your game, but playing Conquest, grinding anyway, and still calling it Conquest seems wrong to me.

So to update on my Chapter 25 adventure, it's going alright. I have a route mapped out for both wings of that maps that has a ~50% win rate, I just need to combine them and then beat the boss. Unfortunately my current route is extremely staff-heavy (two Entrap and two or three Freeze) but this chapter sems to just sort of be built that way.

The game's boner for putting skills that basically instantly kill you if they hit and that have high trigger chances (Luna, Rend Heaven, Vengeance) on every boss is a real problem. Especially when they give the boss more than one of them. Has the potential to make this a real RNG-fest.

Mеа · « **Reply #226 on:** July 14, 2016, 06:05:43 PM »

Mm, guess I'll look into the gameplay details like the abilities and classes then, along with character builds so at least I have a decent army. Can't solve these puzzles without good tools

commandercool · « **Reply #227 on:** July 14, 2016, 07:16:40 PM »

I mean, kind of the problem with jumping straight in to the super deep end of the deep end is that there are a lot of mechanics to learn, and you kind of need a solid grasp of all of them for Lunatic. I found Conquest Hard to be extremely difficult when I first played it just because I didn't fully understand the mechanics yet. Four runs later I do, and Lunatic is semi-manageable. But yeah, there's a TON to learn.

Also, a quick note regarding Mozu: She's a fine character, but under normal circumstances she is NOT god-tier. There's a character archetype in Fire Emblem now since Awakening (so only in that game and this one depending on your definitions since there were some comparable character before Donnel made it cool) called "the Donnel". Donnel was a similar character in Awakening, who started super weak but if you took the type to train him he became great. He was god tier. Mozu is a Donnel, but she is not the Donnel. Fates is a much lower-powered game with lower stat growths, so a 10% boost to stat growths (Donnel had a 20% bonus) isn't that huge when the rates are already quite low, and Mozu has lower stat caps than Donnel did.

That's not to say she's a bad character, she certainly isn't, and making her an archer can be very handy for a certain infamous early-game Conquest chapter, but she doesn't have the insane snowball effect that Donnel did. She has been absolutely batshit in my game and is definitely my all-star unit, but I attribute that more to giving her the Dread Fighter class, which is a special class that you get for having multiple paths downloaded. It's basically DLC, so it's semi-cheating in my opinion. I feel kind of bad about doing it, but I probably couldn't have ever cleared Paralogue 15 without it.

So some people will tell you that she's completely terrible, and they're wrong, she's okay to good. She is just not a point-and-click uber unit without some very specific sort-of-cheaty stuff.

commandercool · « **Reply #228 on:** July 15, 2016, 04:12:39 AM »

Cleared Conquest chapter 25 on Lunatic. Didn't lose a single unit, although I did use two Entrap charges and one Freeze. But all things considered that seems really, REALLY solid to me.

I'm not even looking at 26 tonight. I don't want to spoil this feeling of accomplishment by seeing what sadistic nightmare shitstorm I'm in for next. I have a vague idea and it's pretty worrying, but maybe it won't be too bad...?

Hikarin · « **Reply #229 on:** July 15, 2016, 01:34:59 PM »

Meanwhile, I'm still stuck on Conquest Hard :fail:
Every few days I retry the stage I'm stuck on, but I've been too lazy to grab a guide...

By the way, Mozu isn't normally amazing, but I find that Dread Fighter Mozu might be.

Hello Purvis · « **Reply #230 on:** July 15, 2016, 02:55:16 PM »

Mozu can get good, but you need to have her stop being a villager immediately. Apparently their stat growths are godawful. Just turns out Dread Fighter is a very quick way to do that.

Also is it bad that I am super amused that turning Mozu into an archer just puts her head on Setsuna's model, obviously so? Because it amuses me deeply.

Mеа · « **Reply #231 on:** July 17, 2016, 08:09:42 AM »

I wonder if buying heart seals from other castles is cheating

commandercool · « **Reply #232 on:** July 17, 2016, 12:50:51 PM »

Quote from: Mеа on July 17, 2016, 08:09:42 AM

I wonder if buying heart seals from other castles is cheating

I don't really know how those mechanics work. As far as I could tell you can't buy anything actually good "more staves" from My Castle. The best use seems to be buying the OP Hoshido weapons that you have no access to otherwise (Spy weapons, Swordreavers etc.) and I would consider those cheating a bit since you're not supposed to have them.

I'm inclined to say that if seals are available through My Castle, buying them is not cheating as long as you have a second-level lottery tent, since infinite seals seem to be available from there as lottery prizes, just at extremely low rates that would require you to wait around for months to get what you need.

So I see no problem with using My Castle to bypass gratuitous RNG. Just keep in mind that store inventory resets every time you upgrade the building, so you will be able to buy more eventually.

Mеа · « **Reply #233 on:** July 17, 2016, 09:03:21 PM »

Yeah no, I'm not going to go through the other people's castle after all. If they made a game, I'm assuming that I have all the tools necessary to beat it without having to rely on outside resources.
I do however already feel like I've been either wasteful or screwing up in some places, like not building enough relationships or feeding the 'wrong' characters. I didn't even know about what the shield gauge does and also how defense stance blocks attack stance's second attack until yesterday :V
But I think I can still somewhat manage. I don't think I can babysit Mozu around anymore since I didn't feed her enough earlier in her own paralogue chapter, so her and Odin will be hitting the bench soon along with Arthur. Oh, right, and I also chose my boon and bane without even knowing what they would do even though I figured they would relate to stats somehow lol. Currently on chapter 10 where it feels almost unfair to use Camilla

commandercool · « **Reply #234 on:** July 17, 2016, 09:10:32 PM »

Yeah, when I say you may want to do a playthrough on a lower difficulty to learn the mechanics, a lot of that is stances. I'll try to explain them later when I'm at home and have a keyboard.

Chapter 10 is one of the chapters people regard as being extremely difficult, FYI. It's okay to use staves and maybe even let some characters die. I let Selena die on my Lunatic clear of it.

Edit: Alright, so this is how stances work. They're complicated, so I may forget something.

Defensive stance is when two characters pair up, effectively forming one super-unit. The primary unit is the one who attacks and defends, and the secondary unit's only contribution is a set of stat boosts for the primary character based on the secondary character's class and the support rank between the two characters.

Defensive stance gives the primary character a shield gauge and protects them from extra attacks made by opposing characters in offensive stance. The shield gauge is made up of ten points, which fill up by two every time the primary character attacks or is attacked (note that opposing characters' extra attacks from offensive stance don't count toward this, only the primary attacker fills the gauge). Depending on the support rank between the primary and secondary character the gauge may also start partly filled. When the gauge reaches ten, the next attack made against the primary character will be prevented and the gauge will empty back to zero. A blocked attack does no damage and can't apply debuffs (because it doesn't actually hit), but it can trigger skills like Poison Touch. A character in defensive stance can't be the primary attacker in an offensive stance as well, but they can be the secondary attacker. You can switch between primary and secondary characters once on the defensive stance pair's turn before they attack.

Offensive stance allows a two characters to attack at once. The two characters have to be adjacent, and the primary attacker is the character whose activation it currently is. The primary attacker gets their full offensive strength, and the secondary character has their damage reduced somewhat (I don't actually know how much). Only the primary attacker's activation will be used up, meaning that a pair can each attack every turn with both of them being the primary attacker once and both of them being the secondary attacker once, provided ranges work out. Only the primary attacker's skills that trigger upon attacking (like Poison Touch or Seal Defense) will trigger, but either character's sword skills (anything that has a chance to activate Dragon Fang or Astra) can apply. Again, you can use the primary attacker from a defensive stance as your partner for am offensive stance, but you can't be the primary attacker in both an offensive stance and defensive stance. Also remember that, again, enemies in a defensive stance will be protected by from the extra attacks made by an offensive stance.

That seems like it couldn't be more confusing, so let me know if you have any questions. That said, here are some tips regarding stances:

-Characters with high speed and low strength are best suited as the primary attackers for a defensive stance, because the shield gauge fills for every attack, meaning if you attack more often you can block more attacks, and any strength bonuses granted by their partners will be applied on each attack made. Conversely, they make relatively poor offensive stance partners because their already-low damage will be reduced even further and offensive stance partners can only grant one extra attack no matter how fast they are. This means slow, powerful units tend to make the best offensive partners.

-Defensive stance partners move into the primary character's square, and while there they are off the map for most purposes. They can't be attacked or targeted by staves and won't take damage from siege weapons (can't remember about environmental damage). However, they're still present for the purposes of gaining support points and being buffed by Rally skills (relevant if you switch).

-A character can pair up with another character as the secondary part of a defensive stance even if the primary character has already activated this round.

-A useful benefit of defensive stance can be pairing a slow unit (a general) with a fast unit (a mounted or preferably flying character) and using the fast character to move while switching to the slow character to attack. This can kind of give a "best of both worlds" unit that's very fast and strong, but be careful not to get stranded since you can't swap back before moving in the same turn. Also keep this in mind as you build support ranks, since it helps to have your general high-ranked with a Wyvern Lord since their stat bonuses are very synergistic.

-Because secondary defensive stance characters are protected from virtually everything as long as their primary buddy is alive, you can squeeze extra value out of characters who you don't even bother to level without risk of them being picked off by using them as dedicated pair-up fodder. Arthur and Charlotte are very popular for this since Heroes grant large and well-rounded stat bonuses at high support rank, and they both have lots of good supports.

I have no idea if any of that makes any sense, but that's what we got. :V

CF7 · « **Reply #235 on:** July 18, 2016, 09:46:15 AM »

So i am kinda late to the party, but finally bought it.
First playthrough will be my more or less standard Hard/Classic.
Made a cute (also Quick and Excitable) dragon princess to conquer the world. Let's see how it works out.
Some questions.
Kinda like Jakob. How useful is he in general and as a pair support unit for the MC in particular?
Also i noticed that even basic weapons do not have durability. Is that a prologue thing or weapons actually no longer break?

Mеа · « **Reply #236 on:** July 18, 2016, 11:21:03 AM »

Quote from: commandercool on July 17, 2016, 09:10:32 PM

thanks for the pairing up and synergy tips tips, very helpful. I'm not like stuck stuck on chapter 10 but I am taking an awfully long time on it. I actually got really close to beating it on turn 11 with all the villages visited but I left camilla isolated off in the lower right village and didn't have enough tank power to get through the final turn without letting azura die ;_;
I can't tell if it's the difficulty or just me not thinking things through. Likely a combination of both.

Quote from: CF7 on July 18, 2016, 09:46:15 AM

staves seem to now be the only things that break, while actual weapons without numbers are infinitely reusable. Such a welcome change, I hated equipping higher tier weapons only to have impatient fodder rushing to their deaths to be skewered on my sword

Think Komachi with a Rifle · « **Reply #237 on:** July 18, 2016, 11:28:23 AM »

Quote from: CF7 on July 18, 2016, 09:46:15 AM

So i am kinda late to the party, but finally bought it.
First playthrough will be my more or less standard Hard/Classic.
Made a cute (also Quick and Excitable) dragon princess to conquer the world. Let's see how it works out.
Some questions.
Kinda like Jakob. How useful is he in general and as a pair support unit for the MC in particular?
Also i noticed that even basic weapons do not have durability. Is that a prologue thing or weapons actually no longer break?

Weapons don't break, only staves do. (buying spares would be torture in conquest) Spares are used to level up the weapon a bit.
Jakob, starts as an advanced class with no level cap, and has explicit bonus to supports with MC, best actually leveled as breaking level cap is seriously pricey, decent "attack stance" support for any ladies in the army.

commandercool · « **Reply #238 on:** July 18, 2016, 01:02:50 PM »

Quote from: CF7 on July 18, 2016, 09:46:15 AM

So i am kinda late to the party, but finally bought it.
First playthrough will be my more or less standard Hard/Classic.
Made a cute (also Quick and Excitable) dragon princess to conquer the world. Let's see how it works out.
Some questions.
Kinda like Jakob. How useful is he in general and as a pair support unit for the MC in particular?
Also i noticed that even basic weapons do not have durability. Is that a prologue thing or weapons actually no longer break?

Which game are you playing? Conquest or Birthright?

If you have a female Corrin, Jakob is very good. Especially in Conquest where healers are a bit rare. He's not my favorite healer and his son tends to be one of the weakest child units, but he's certainly good.

As you've already heard, only staves break now. The tradeoff is that strong weapons tend to have really significant penalties so you can't just blast through the entire game with an infinite-durability Brave Sword. Just about every extremely useful or powerful weapon has been severely nerfed too, so the weapon balance is quite a lot different than it was.

Regarding the breakability of staves, if you're playing Conquest it's probably necessary to be extremely careful with your rarer and more powerful staves. One of the few things Nohr gets that's more powerful than the Hoshido equivalent is staves, and Freeze and Entrap are not only extremely powerful but virtually required for some lategame stages. That's not to say you should never use them, but be sure you need them before you do.

Mеа · « **Reply #239 on:** July 18, 2016, 02:27:35 PM »

Considering we want to conserve freezes, does that mean you did the frozen village chapter without them?