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Safer Sacrificing
Every time a unit in the Dawn Brigade gains HP in one of their level-ups, Micaiah can use Sacrifice on them for the extra 10 exp. Using Sacrifice in this way changes virtually nothing about your overall strategy, but helps Micaiah accrue extra exp, even when she's not actively battling.
Hey! I can't seem to find info on this but I've started playing lunatic mode and wanted to use Risen skirmishes to grind some low level units. Well, little did I know. The thing is though, I completely failed to beat the two skirmishes on the map around chapter 5 and now on chapter 6 two more spawned in "earlier" areas that were even stronger. do they level up with each chapter? or am i just perceiving things wrong
What you should find is that stronger Risen spawn on later maps, which will become more apparent when you progress a bit farther and Risen start appearing in promoted classes (after Lucina joins for good, I think).
The Risen you’re finding right now should all be around the same strength, but because of the ways your units and theirs set up during skirmish battles, it is sometimes harder to take good advantage of terrain and other features. For example, the relative openness of the Prologue map makes it easy for them to overwhelm one character. You also don’t have the option of picking them off at your own pace, since all skirmish Risen have aggressive AI.
Now here's the thing.
Prologue: open area, although you can reuse the water trick if you're training the right units (but you have to get to the water first)
Chapter 1: plenty of trees, but your party placement is on the opposite side (bottom-left corner), giving the enemy the advantage of terrain
Chapter 2: you get control of a choke point and two forts. Be careful, though, since certain enemies will likely be able to walk on water tiles (and flank you on the bridge). One of the relatively safe options.
Chapter 3: your party starts at the northwest corner, granting easy access to a choke point. However, you will have to defend it from both ends, so those trees in the south will be very helpful
Chapter 4: a big open square. Turtling doesn't help, overextending doesn't help. Your units can either handle two or three enemies apiece or you're in trouble
Chapter 5: you start from the top, with a choke point just south and plenty of forts nearby. You can hold the choke point or turtle in the northwest corner, but the choke point is not recommended if there are too many fliers around.
So chapters 2, 3, and 5 are your best options for skirmishes right now, but of course you don't get to pick the location unless you use (expensive) Reeking Boxes. Luckily, that's still ~50% depending on whether you've cleared Donnel's paralogue. If you go anywhere else, you're likely to be overwhelmed, especially the Prologue and chapter 4.
Since new skirmishes spawn every few hours, you can, if you're patient, wait for the ones that advantage you most, but if I were you I would press on through the story a little longer before I came back to level characters. If you forked over the money for the EXPonential Growth DLC, you can simply target the low-level ones (from range if necessary). That gets dull pretty quickly, though.
Use List, not Convoy
In games with a convoy, a player will find it a very useful storehouse for various gear, be it weapons, vulneraries, or unused torches. However, one shouldn't restrict themselves to the convoy.
The convoy, much like your units, has a certain carrying capacity. If you placed all of your currently unused weapons into the convoy, you would likely overload it with things you picked up from various recruited but unused units. However, you can make full use of undeployed units by using them as a sort of crowd-based convoy, storing items in their inventories for later.
However, it's very easy to forget who is carrying what, and if you use the "Convoy" option to search for a particular weapon, you'll never find what these units are holding. "List", on the other hand, provides a complete picture of what you have to work with, because it shows all items and equipment regardless of where they are located. Thus, if you forgot that Rhys was still holding a Mend staff because you've stopped using him, the "List" command will help remind you so you can give it to Mist.
Of all FE games, I find unit-based storage and List most useful in Sacred Stones, because of the large number of weapon drops and items available for stealing, coupled with the convoy's somewhat limited capacity (you can steal a ton in RD, but since you get a combined convoy space of 300 slots, I've never once hit capacity).
The Best Use of Pure Water, though...
...I'm always lauding the use of Barrier and Pure Water, because they can give you the edge in magic-heavy maps (for example, most of the series' desert maps). But Pure Water has another use, though.
Pure Water holds the distinction of being the only item that can be used regardless of circumstances. Also, in the GBA games, a mounted unit can only take advantage of Canto when it uses an item. So if you need a mounted unit to trade for something and progress it a little farther along the map, Pure Water allows you to do this no matter what condition this unit is in. Even better, when your units don't have full inventories, they can trade the Pure Water and the item you're chaining along, to give the next unit the same bonus. So a single Pure Water can increase three units' resistance in a single turn, while also helping them make the most of their movement. That's pretty fantastic.
Second-Line Stonewalling
This requires a very specific setup. You need:
Enough units to plug a gap (usually 1-3)
All of these units need to have mixed-range weapons equipped
At least one unit behind them without a mixed-range weapon equipped; helps if they have solid defenses or evasion
We're also operating on the assumption that your plug units are strong enough to survive one turn's worth of encounters in their present state. This technique, however, is about prolonging that time.
Earlier, I talked about dissuasion, where enemy units target units that they can either kill or attack without risk of damage first, so by equipping mixed-range weapons on certain units, you can coerce them into attacking your other units. The idea is that if you can get enemy ranged units to position themselves in front of your plug units, they also serve as a buffer between your units and the main enemy force. It slightly dampens EXP gains, but greatly increases survivability. Your units also get to strike these with impunity, while the other enemies are blocked off (and also preventing the range units from retreating to a more advantageous position).
So, let's say we give Nephenee a Javelin, Haar a Short Ax, and position them on the eastern corner of Radiant Dawn's Retreat! map (P3-5). We can then put Heather, Mia, or Brom (to varying degrees of success) behind them, without any range weapons equipped. The enemies that come up to that corner are Swordmasters at first, then the reinforcements that arrive are all Generals, some of which have Short Spears, etc. The Generals with mixed-range weapons will come after the back line first (if they can reach them), putting them right in front of Nephenee and Haar, but those two are still at full HP or only slightly damaged from previous turns. They then strike out against those units (with stronger weaponry if going for a kill, but remember Neph is also a great candidate for Disarm).
With the second line absorbing most hits, the front can stay out longer, but there's even more to it than that. The second line is much safer to heal for priests/clerics, since you don't have to put them in range of those enemies to use your staves (in RD, this is a big deal, since staves are equipped when used). This, in turn, means the second line can take even more hits, and controls the dispersion of damage across your small party.
Though I provided a specific context (as it was fresh on my mind), I typically find that this is most useful when I want to detach a small rearguard to protect the weaker units of my main party from a pincer attack. It works best at a choke point, where you're already restricting the influx of enemy units, but you should still take caution if there are mounted units around, they can throw a wrench into this pretty easily.
I'll try to provide a screencap as an example in the near future.
Class Trading in DS Games
*Awakening is excluded, as SD and HoL&S allow free class changing without the use of items, while Awakening uses Second Seals.*
Upon a sort of discovery in HoL&S the other day, I realized that a player could literally use the same units throughout the entire game, regardless of which classes are best for a given map, based on intelligent use of the class system. So, a quick overview of the imposed limits of the class system:
There are three class sets, Male A, Male B, and Female.
Male A is comprised of Dracoknight, Bishop, Sage, Paladin, Sniper, and Swordmaster, and their root classes (except there are no male pegasus knights).
Male B consists of General, Hero, Warrior, Berserker, Horseman, Sorcerer, and their root classes.
Female includes General, Dracoknight, Falconknight (if Elysian Whip used), Sage, Bishop, Paladin, Sniper, and Swordmaster (but doesn't include the Knight class).
You can have exactly one "extra" unit of any given class type, based on the number of units you could have recruited up to that point (a root class and its promotion are considered a single class type), and in HoL&S, your created character counts as the extra.
That's only as limiting as you let it be. For one, you could kill off the characters you don't want taking slots (more profitable in SD, whose gaiden chapters make it worth your while to do so anyways). Or, if you're obsessed with "perfect runs" like myself, you can class trade.
Class trading involves taking two units from the same class set, (i.e. Ryan and Rody) and swapping their classes so that the unit you wish to use (Ryan for me) is now the more useful class for that map (Cavalier/Paladin) while changing the unused unit into the other's original class. By continually doing this with different units (i.e., I need a Swordmaster later, so I exchange Paladin!Ryan with Myrmidon!Radd), one can always maintain their strongest units on the field. Also, there's a little overlap between the Female set and both Male sets, so don't be afraid to make exchanges across those lines.
There are still a few limitations, such as sacrificing weapon level if done too often with too diverse a class range, so I intend to playtest this on a H2 run of HoL&S starting after I complete this one (on chapter 19 at the moment). I am going to try keeping units jumping back and forth between classes of two weapon types (bows and swords, lances and bows, etc.), while also attempting not to restrict myself so much that I can't adapt for special situations (like needing four Swordmasters or three fliers). I'm certain it can be done.
I'm still wondering whether it would be worth changing magic units between anything besides magic classes (Merric becomes a Bishop when I need a magitank and Yumina is a Sage for the boost to magic) other than specific situations like Elrean's map. Still, an enticing prospect. Please, add anything you have to offer on the subject!
I didn't actually take any pictures while playing this map earlier...hmm... Anyway, this is Radiant Dawn Part III Chapter 7, the map where you take the Greil Mercenaries and stomp all over the Dawn Brigade. It's a swamp map, so if you thought about bringing your mounties....yeah, forget it. However, it's a great map for fliers, and for shoving. I'm going to primarily talk about the latter, and using the former for the latter.
On this map, I typically press forward with Ike x Soren or Ike x Ranulf, along with Nephenee (sometimes supported, but if she's paired with Heather she's out of luck, because Heather sits this one out), Boyd x Mist, Mia, Rolf or Shinon, Haar, and Gatrie. Sometimes I'll change one of those units out for Reyson. Gatrie sucks when it comes to actually taking part in the action on this map, but he's pretty good at shoving things. And that's why I bring him.
The swamp terrain inhibits all unit movement on the ground, sometimes reducing units to progressing one panel at a time. They can, however, gain a space each time they get shoved, and Gatrie holds the constitution to do that. Also, since he's heavily hindered by the swamp himself, he's going to be behind your main group, so he can't do much else. It gets better, though.
A few turns in, Janaff and Ulki enter the map as neutral units. Talk to either of them with Ike, and they both become player-controlled. I often use Ulki, but I bench Janaff when he becomes unnecessary, so I just use him to shove units ahead, lighter ones when unshifted, heavier ones when shifted, and Ulki helps when I need him to. Because hawks have high movement, they can usually get to where I need them to be in a single turn.
Shoving works out better than Vigor many times due to the fact that a shoved unit doesn't suffer from movement cost, they always move one space. Thus, a unit that gets chain shoved by Gatrie, Ulki, and Janaff gains three spaces through the swamp, whereas when refreshed, they may have only gained one or two additional panels. It does, however, pull the hawks out of most combat, so if you like using them later, this probably isn't for you.
You can bring Reyson along and occasionally refresh your shoving units for 1-3 additional pushes through the mire, but I'll leave it to you to determine whether that's worth trading out one of your other units.
Some Thoughts on Skills in Radiant Dawn
Up until Awakening, Radiant Dawn held the title of "Most Expansive Skill System". It could be argued that it still boasts the "Most Original Skill System", but that's not ground we're going to tread at the moment. In a single post, I hope to enlighten players on making the most out of the skills provided in Radiant Dawn. Not the Mastery skills, or the obviously useful ones, mind you, but the quirky ones that have little niche uses. And because Radiant Dawn is the most-played game in my FE library, I've got quite a bit to say.
Disarm: Disarm is a skill that seems great, and then when it comes to practical use, seems to fall flat. Every time a player tries to use it, there's a setback: it doesn't activate, or it does activate but the enemy unit dies, rendering it worthless. To maximize its use, a few things need to be taken into consideration:
More attacks = more opportunities to activate (user should be fast)
More battles = more opportunities (user should be able to frontline)
High skill = greater chance to activate (rate: Skill/2 %)
Positioning - (user needs to be near either Sothe or Heather)
Death = less opportunities (user shouldn't frequently kill opponents in a single encounter)
So you need a fast unit that either primarily chips or can carry a chip weapon. Brom is the only unit that comes with it, but one can easily swap it over from him to Nephenee, who can support Heather to make the most of the arrangement (the support itself isn't great, but it's still a good call, since you'll be moving the three of them to the Greil Mercenaries after Part II). Once they've moved, you can shuffle it as you like, but whichever unit you give it to needs to be in the thick of the battle, without getting instant kills, which limits you to Mia, Oscar, and Nephenee (I just stick with Neph most times). Mia does have the disadvantage of being less consistent on the front lines than the other two viable options.
Also, one should target whom they wish to Disarm at the beginning of the battle, when deciding map placement. Sending your Disarm/Rogue pair to pick off weapons is easiest when they face Generals, which will last for multiple combat phases before falling. However, they should target clusters with desirable weapons, as it is difficult to predict when the skill will activate and thus not worth attempting to hunt down a particular weapon off of a particular unit.
Corrosion: This skill is a bit off-putting, as nobody wants to accidentally break a weapon drop in combat. This issue almost vanishes when the skill is placed on a Sage or other second-line unit, but in my experience, magic users utilize it best. Magic units hold the advantage of dissuasion, as their ability to attack from either common range causes enemy units to seek other targets. This gives you more control over whom it may activate on, although the activation itself is almost impossible to predict. Bastian starts with it, and I've put it on many units at one time or another, but I find myself most satisfied when Soren uses it.
Cancel: Neither unit that starts with Cancel makes good use of it. Leonardo rarely attacks another range unit without assurance of a kill, while Haar rarely benefits from the skill's effect, as he hardly ever attacks a unit he cannot kill unless he takes very little damage from it. Rather, Cancel finds its best home on quick, vulnerable units like Swordmasters or Nephenee (less so as Nephenee levels). If a unit that doubles its enemy activates cancel on the first strike, the effect is almost like using a Brave weapon and attacking with impunity. Of course, if used with a Brave weapon, the chance of this happening doubles. This also helps Mist from time to time, but much less often.
Cancel can be used to halt an enemy's second attack in the event of your unit being doubled, but that's pretty rare on your key units, and the skill activates based on your unit's speed, so that's a poor application of the skill.
Flourish: Okay, Flourish really does suck, but it is activated by command, like Parity or Gamble, so you can use it to turn one of your units into a chip unit for the player phase. It helps Mist, Rolf, Micaiah, etc. get relatively easy mooch kills if you're struggling to train them. It also holds Ike back from soloing every unit if you use him as a lead unit.
