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Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Walkthrough/FAQ
By Roni
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Version 2.0 (November 16, 2005)
Created by Ross Weaver, (c) 2005
Start date: October 28, 2005
Size: 214 kb
The content of this work is reproduced with my permission.
Do not reproduce this work without my consent. If you see
this FAQ anywhere other than an authorized site, contact me.
All the content here is my own work, unless otherwise cited.
See the bottom of this FAQ for a list of sites authorized to
reproduce this FAQ.
If you have any questions or comments or corrections, e-mail
me at ronirossa(at)hotmail.com, and I'll try and get back to
you.
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| Table of Contents |
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Note: to find a specific section, bring up the Find...
feature of your browser and type in the three-letter code
next to the section you want, and click Find Next until you
find the part you want. Make sure to include the brackets
to avoid finding other iterations of words that I may have
spelled with the code (like bad).
1. General Notes.......................................[aaa]
a. Spoiler notes...............................[aab]
b. Stat growth.................................[aac]
c. Difficulty..................................[aad]
d. Basic Game Mechanics........................[aae]
e. Leveling Up.................................[aaf]
f. In-Depth Mechanics..........................[aag]
2. FAQ Section.........................................[aah]
3. Walkthrough.........................................[baa]
a. Chapter 1...................................[bab]
b. Chapter 2...................................[bac]
c. Chapter 3...................................[bad]
d. Chapter 4...................................[bae]
e. Chapter 5...................................[baf]
f. Chapter 6...................................[bag]
g. Chapter 7...................................[bah]
h. Chapter 8...................................[bai]
i. Chapter 9...................................[baj]
j. Chapter 10..................................[bak]
k. Chapter 11..................................[bal]
l. Chapter 12..................................[bam]
m. Chapter 13..................................[ban]
n. Chapter 14..................................[bao]
o. Chapter 15..................................[bap]
p. Chapter 16..................................[baq]
q. Chapter 17..................................[bar]
A. Battle 1............................[bas]
B. Battle 2............................[bat]
C. Battle 3............................[bau]
D. Battle 4............................[bav]
r. Chapter 18..................................[baw]
s. Chapter 19..................................[bax]
t. Chapter 20..................................[bay]
u. Chapter 21..................................[baz]
v. Chapter 22..................................[bba]
w. Chapter 23..................................[bbb]
x. Chapter 24..................................[bbc]
y. Chapter 25..................................[bbd]
z. Chapter 26..................................[bbe]
aa. Chapter 27.................................[bbf]
A. Black Knight........................[bbg]
bb. Chapter 28.................................[bbh]
cc. Chapter 29.................................[bbi]
A. Hard Version........................[bbj]
3. Character notes.....................................[caa]
a. Ike.........................................[cab]
b. Titania.....................................[cac]
c. Oscar.......................................[cad]
d. Boyd........................................[cae]
e. Rhys........................................[caf]
f. Shinon......................................[cag]
g. Gatrie......................................[cah]
h. Soren.......................................[cai]
i. Mia.........................................[caj]
j. Ilyana......................................[cak]
k. Mist........................................[cal]
l. Rolf........................................[cam]
m. Marcia......................................[can]
n. Mordecai....................................[cao]
o. Lethe.......................................[cap]
p. Volke.......................................[caq]
q. Kieran......................................[car]
r. Brom........................................[cas]
s. Nephenee....................................[cat]
t. Zihark......................................[cau]
u. Jill........................................[cav]
v. Sothe.......................................[caw]
w. Astrid......................................[cax]
x. Makalov.....................................[cay]
y. Stefan......................................[caz]
z. Tormod......................................[cba]
aa. Muarim.....................................[cbb]
bb. Devdan.....................................[cbc]
cc. Reyson.....................................[cbd]
dd. Janaff.....................................[cbe]
ee. Ulki.......................................[cbf]
ff. Tanith.....................................[cbg]
gg. Calill.....................................[cbh]
hh. Tauroneo...................................[cbi]
ii. Ranulf.....................................[cbj]
jj. Haar.......................................[cbk]
kk. Geoffrey...................................[cbl]
ll. Lucia......................................[cbm]
mm. Bastian....................................[cbn]
nn. Largo......................................[cbo]
oo. Elincia....................................[cbp]
pp. Ena........................................[cbq]
qq. Nasir......................................[cbr]
rr. Tibarn.....................................[cbs]
ss. Naesala....................................[cbt]
tt. Giffca.....................................[cbu]
3. Weapons/Magic.......................................[daa]
4. Items...............................................[eaa]
5. Skills..............................................[faa]
6. Extras..............................................[gaa]
7. Final Words, Authorized Sites, Version History......[haa]
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General tips for the Newcomers [aaa]
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First of all, this is a strategy-based RPG, so use strategy.
What I mean by that is: don't just send whoever to kill
whoever. Plan out your entire strategy before starting your
battle. I'll help you along in the walkthrough with
specific battle tips, and hopefully save you some headaches
and trips to the reset button. I'm very OCD when it comes
to developing characters in RPGs (I've put around 1000 hours
into Final Fantasy Tactics...go figure), and so my FAQ will
be strewn with fairly conservative means of winning battles.
The good thing about that is that your losses will be
minimized: the goal here is to finish the game without
losing anyone. It's very easily done if you just know what
you're doing at all times.
Now, as to some quick specifics to keep in mind on your
first playthrough:
You get a character named Titania in the first level, and
she'll appear to be at level 1, around the same area as Ike
and the rest of the crew. This is a lie. She's actually a
level 1 paladin, which is equivalent to being level 21. So,
in other words, you're starting out with an uber colossus
unit who will mow over anything and everything in the
opening half of the game. As such, you may end up maxing
her out in that first half, but if you do that, everyone
else will suffer regardless of the hordes of bonus exp you
throw at them. So, take my advice and try to use Titania in
as controlled a manner as possible. Don't just send her
into the midst of the enemy and let them all go lemming on
you (more on that later). You have other characters in the
game, and you'll come to find out that Titania is actually
just a mediocre character when it's all said and done.
You'll also get certain items throughout the game that boost
the stats of the character that uses them. The first one
you get is a Seraph Robe from a house in the first chapter.
I'm not gonna tell you how to use these items; instead, just
look at your units yourself and decide what you want to
have. For example, I like to have a strong Ike, so I gave
him a seraph robe and a speedwing early in the game to give
him an edge that he could really use. By the same token,
you could use both of those on Soren and have a really
strong mage. You can use the speedwing on Boyd to help him
make up for his early sluggishness. And so on.
In the same fashion, I'm not gonna tell you which units to
use and when to use them. That's up to you. I will say
that you can build up any character in the game and have a
viable unit for combat. So don't worry about a unit being
just inherently crappy. You just have to know how to use
each unit, as is always the case in strategy games. Instead
of telling you exactly which units to use, I'll give general
tips on how to use each unit, and maybe suggest using a unit
in a certain battle. But by no means is this a definitive
walkthrough: the beauty of a strategy game is there's no
right way to go about playing it. So, if you find a tactic
that works well for you, go ahead and use it. Don't worry
if my suggestions are totally condradictory to what you're
doing: if it works, it works.
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%%%%%%% A Note on Spoilers %%%%%%% [aab]
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Throughout this guide, I'll try my best to keep explicit
plot events and spoilers out of my writing, but I will be
telling you when you gain a certain unit or lose one or when
one promotes, and through those you may have some of the
story spoiled for you. My advice for those who don't want
to have the game spoiled is to just not read ahead and try
and finish as much of the game as possible before coming to
this FAQ.
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| Statistic Growth [aac] |
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When you're playing through the game on your second go, you
get presented with the option to either have random or
fixed stat growths for your characters. The way these two
work is that fixed is, as it sounds, a set growth for each
character, meaning that by the end of the game you can know
exactly what stats each character will have. Random, on the
other hand, uses a different system. Each time your
character levels up, the game will determine which stats get
a point by a percentage linked to each unit's stats. Say a
unit has a 50% in their HP growth. That means in fixed,
that unit will get +1 HP every two levels. In random, every
level has a 50% chance of netting the +1, so you can get +2,
you can get +1, and you can get +0. Over time, the stats
tend to even out, but there will be some disparity.
So in other words, with random, you have the potential of
getting a completely maxed out character, but you also have
the potential of getting a really bad character if they get
unlucky. Each class has a cap for each specific stat, so
you can't get someone with 40 in every category. I prefer
to use the fixed gain, because it rules out the possibility
of a character getting screwed over by a few bad levels.
That's not to say you're going to get a bad character or two
every time you choose random, though.
If you have a unit or team you really want to use but you
don't like the possibility that one or more of those units
could get crippled by a poor roll of the dice, use fixed.
If you want to try out a few different characters, my advice
is to use random and watch each character's stat growth
carefully. If a unit starts falling behind, cut them. With
random, you have room to make up for a character being a few
levels behind the curve if they get a good level or three.
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> Difficulty [aad] <
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Also, whenever you begin a new game, you get three choices
as to your difficulty setting: Easy, Normal, and Hard. If
this is your first time playing any strategy RPG, choose
easy. If this is your first time playing any Fire Emblem
game, easy might not be a bad choice. As far as I can
tell, people die in easy just as much as they die in hard
if your strategies are bad, so there's really not much
difference that I can see between easy and normal. I
noticed that I got quite a bit more bonus exp on easy than
I did on hard and normal. On hard, quite a few battles
would net me 0 bonus exp. However, on hard mode, there are
several battles where the enemies will outnumber 2.5 or even
3 to 1, so you can make up the bonus exp dropoff in battle,
which is better anyways because you also get your weapon's
level up.
The general strategies I lay out in each section are mostly
pertinent to the easy and normal settings of the game.
However, I've gone through and noted what to watch out for
in hard mode, and whether or not big changes need to be
made in my strategies for each battle.
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- Basic Game Mechanics [aae] -
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This section just contains a rundown of the basic game
mechanics you should know before going into battle for the
first time. Note that you can learn everything you see here
by simply viewing all the tutorials you get throughout the
opening chapters of the game.
The first thing you need to understand is the weapon
triangle. There are four types of weapons: swords, axes,
lances, and bows. The triangle is made up of swords, axes,
and lances. It works like this: swords are strong against
axes, axes are strong against lances, and lances are strong
against swords. It's just like rock, paper, scissors. I'll
get to bows later.
Much like the weapon triangle, there exists a similar system
for magic, called the trinity of magic. Fire, wind,
thunder, and light are the four kinds of magic. Fire trumps
wind, wind trumps thunder, thunder trumps fire.
Also, some weapons get inherent bonuses in the form of extra
damage in certain situations. I'll list some of them here
for you:
Weapon Type/Name Bonus vs.
All bows Flying units
Hammer Armored units
Longsword Mounted units
Fire magic Beast laguz
There are others, so for more information go on down and
check out the weapons/magic section. You can tell when a
particular weapon will get a bonus by looking at the icon
in the attack menu--if the weapon is flashing, you get a
bonus.
With all kinds of weapons, you get a chance to score a
critical hit. If you're using the simple combat menus you
can see your crit % towards the bottom, next to the 'Crit'
in the blue column. When you score a critical, your damage
is multiplied by 3, but you first have to score a hit in
order for it to be a crit, so typically trading off hit %
for crit % is a bad thing.
Now that you have an understanding of some of the basics of
combat, it's time to move on to the general flow of battle.
A battle is made up of turns, which are each divided into
four phases. The first phase is the player phase, where
you get to act by moving your troops, casting spells,
attacking, healing, etc. Each troop can move and attack on
their turn, and mounted units can move again after attacking
if they have any movement left over. After the player phase
is the ally phase, where units encircled in yellow move.
These units are your allies in the battle, and you can't
directly control their actions, but Ike has a command,
Direct, which lets you exhibit some degree of control over
allied units. Luckily, it's easy to predict what they'll do
with any given command once you've messed around with it a
bit. The next phase is the enemy phase, where the red units
do their thing. Last is the other phase, where green units
will take their turn. Usually you can recruit green units
by having Ike or another unit talk to them. Other units
aren't necessarily your allies, but they're not typically
your enemy either.
Tip: You can see which units in your party can talk to other
units on the battlefield by opening up the troop list. To
open the list before the battle, go to the Choose Units list
and scroll to the right until you see the Conv heading. In
battle, hit A on an open square and go to the Units menu
and then scroll right.
Before you start your battle, though, there are a few things
to consider. First of all is unit placement. You can
reposition your units using the aptly named command from the
pre-battle menu. Once you get to chapter 8, you can choose
which units you want to use as well. You can view the map,
which is always helpful in planning out who you want to use
and where you want them to go. There are a few other
options, like save where you can save your pre-battle
changes, or items where you can move items around and make
sure all your equipment is in line.
Before you start a battle, you can go to the Conditions
screen and view the entire map with your units, enemy units,
and victory/loss conditions displayed. There are several
different types of win conditions, and I'll just briefly go
over each one here.
Seize: to win this map, you must get Ike to the flashing
square and select Seize. There is always a boss on this
point, so you'll have to defeat him to take the map.
Rout: simply destroy every enemy unit on the map to win.
Defeat boss: just kill the boss, who you can identify
through the conditions menu before the battle.
Defend: there will be a number next to defend signifying
just how many turns you have to hold out before winning.
The only way you can lose this map is if an enemy unit gets
to the flashing square on the map. Note that if the number
is 8, then you won't win until the enemy's last phase.
Escape: to win this map, Ike has to get to the flashing
yellow square(s) on the map and then select the escape
command. Note that any unit can escape before Ike, and
each unit that escapes before Ike will yield bonus exp, but
the battle will not end until Ike escapes.
Arrive: simply get any one of your units to the flashing
square and select arrive from the menu. Sometimes you are
given a set number of turns in which you have to complete
your objective.
Remember that on some maps you'll have to keep more than
just Ike from dying. Always check the conditions screen so
you know just exactly what you need to do for each battle.
Finally, there are a few of commands that I'll just briefly
cover: the Shove, Rescue, and Steal commands.
To shove a unit, simply walk up next to the unit and select
the shove command. A unit can shove any other unit whose
weight does not exceed their own by more than 2. Mounted
units cannot shove.
To rescue a unit, walk up next to the unit and select the
rescue command. A unit cannot rescue another unit if the
rescued unit's weight is more than 2 less than the rescuing
unit's weight. Haar can rescue anyone I believe. Once you
have a unit in tow, the rescuing unit will have their speed
and skill cut in half. Also, there are a few other options
that open up once you've rescued a unit: you can give him
to another unit, you can drop him, or another unit can take
the rescued unit from the rescuer. Once a unit is dropped,
both the rescueing and rescued will be unable to do any
other commands, although mounted units can move again.
To steal, have a thief walk up next to the target that you
want to steal an item from. Select steal from the menu,
and then select the item you want to take. You cannot steal
equipped items. To steal an item, the thief must have speed
2 greater than the target's, and the thief's strength must
be equal to or greater than the stolen item's weight.
Also, the thief has to have a spare slot in his inventory to
put the stolen item.
Once you're ready, just begin!
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| Leveling Up [aaf] |
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By the end of the game, you can get 43 characters in your
party. There is no way you can distribute exp to all of
those characters. So, what you need to do is pick out a
core unit of 10-14 units that you're going to spend time on
and build up so that by the end of the game you'll have a
good strong team that can take on anything. The big thing
to consider is bonus exp. You can either use it to help
units that fall behind catch up, or you can just spread it
around to the whole party. There are a few characters that
really benefit from bonus exp loving, like Rolf, but I've
found that spreading out the bonus exp to the entire unit
instead of piling it on one or two guys tends to get you a
better party at the end of the game. On easy, you'll have
tons of exp all the time. On normal, you'll still get good
bonus exp numbers, but your in-battle exp might drop a bit.
On hard, you'll get hardly any bonus exp, but you'll get a
ton of in-battle exp. So what this means is that you need
to spend as much time in battle getting everyone all the exp
that you can get out of the enemy army. Don't go for the
one-hit kill if you don't have to. Whittle the enemy down
and then kill him. A single attack on an equal level enemy
will net you around 10 exp. A kill on that same guy will
get you 30. So if you kill him in one hit, that's 30 xp.
If you kill him in 5 hits, that's 70. In other words, you
need to try to balance your killing rate with your exp gain.
Aim to net at least 1000 combat exp per battle--that equates
to about 10 levels for the unit as a whole per battle. With
33 battles in the game (including the prologue), and taking
into account bonus exp and other factors, you're looking
at maybe 40,000 exp for a game if you can stretch it out.
That number is probably a bit conservative, but oh well.
That equates to about 2,600 exp per unit if you use 15,
meaning that's 26 levels per unit. Not every unit starts
at level 1, though, so some won't need 26 levels.
Finally, units that are far above enemies will suffer a
penalty to exp gain, so try to use your strongest units to
just soften up the enemies that are lower, and then let your
weaker units come in and get the kill, minimizing your exp
loss due to level disparity. The same rule applies to bonus
exp--the higher a unit, the more bonus exp it takes to get
a unit a level. Some units might need 200 bonus exp for one
level, so when you're doling out bonus exp, lower level
units should get priority.
Finally, a unit at level 20 that can't promote won't get
any exp, so when you get someone at that point, just don't
use them at all. In chapter 17, Ike will probably hit 20,
and after that just quit using him. He's carrying a heron
anyways, so he's not very combat-effective. Same principle
applies to 20/20 units when you've got some others that are
20/10 or 20/15--let the stragglers catch up if you can.
See the FAQ section below for some other notes on exp gain
tips.
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In-Depth Battle Mechanics [aag]
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In this section, I'm gonna break down the actual numbers
that go into determining what happens in battle. I haven't
actually looked at the game's code or anything, so I had to
find out all of the following information simply by
deduction and lots of observation and number-crunching. I'm
confident in my findings, though, since the forumlas always
work.
First of all, I'm gonna give a listing of all the pertinent
variables that go into determining battle mechanics. In
other words, I'm gonna list unit and weapon stats and any
other data that has anything to do with battle.
Unit Stats:
Hit Points (HP)
Strength (Str)
Magic (Mag)
Skill (Skill)
Speed (Sp)
Luck (Lck)
Defense (Def)
Resistance (Res)
Constitution (Cn)
Movement (Mv)
Weight (Wt)
Weapon Attributes:
Level
Might (Mt)
Hit % (Hit)
Crit % (Crit)
Weight (Wt)
Range (Rng)
Then there's biorhythm. Go to an individual unit's stat
screen and flip over a page or two and you'll see a graph
with a curved line along the graph. There'll be a point on
that graph glowing--that point indicates that unit's current
biorhythm status. Here's what the actual graph looks like:
--------------------------------- 2
--------------------------------- 1
================================= 0
--------------------------------- -1
--------------------------------- -2
Any time a unit has their biorhythm in between the 1 and -1
lines but not touching those lines, they are considered to
have regular biorhythm. At or above 1 is high, and at or
below -1 is low. You can see which state a unit is in by
looking at the colored arrow behind the unit's general
status bar (the one with their name, class, level, hp,
etc.). If you see a green line curving up, it's high,
red is low, and no line is normal.
When biorhythm is high, the unit will get a +5 bonus to a
few things (detail below), and if biorhythm is low, it's a
-5 penalty. Anything touching or between 1 and -1 has no
effect on the unit's performance.
On the graph is a curved line representing how a unit's
biorhythm will change over time. As far as I can tell,
biorhythm changes on its own from chapter to chapter. The
more kills and actions a unit does, the more their
biorhythm will change. The point on the graph will follow
the curve, so getting kills won't necessarily cause your
biorhythm to rise or fall, but you can be sure it'll do one
or the other. But enough with biorhythm, let's move on to
battle.
First of all, when you select an enemy to attack, you'll
see one of two windows. The simple window displays HP, Mt,
Hit, and Crit. I'm not gonna go over that window, as it's
all self-explanitory (Mt is damage done). The complex
window has all the interesting data on it. It has HP, Atk,
Def, Hit, Crit, and AS. I'll take these one at a time.
Atk: This is the attack power of the unit. It is
determined by adding the unit's Str score to the weapon's
Mt score, or in the case of magic attacks, the unit's Mag
score to the weapon's Mt score. Support from other units
can also effect this score.
Def: This number is simply the unit's defense; Def applies
to physical attacks, and Res applies to magical attacks.
You subtract Def from Atk to figure up final damage.
Support can have an effect here as well.
Hit: This number is the unit's chance to hit. This one
took me a while to figure out, because biorhythm has some
funky effects on it. You start with the attacker's skill.
Double that, then add in luck. Next add a pinch of the
weapon hit %, then finally drain an amount equal to the
defender's avoid (more on that below). After all that,
if the unit has positive biorhythm, they get an extra 5%
tacked on top of all the numbers. It looks like this:
(Skill x2) + Weapon Hit + Luck +/- Biorhythm - Avo = Hit%.
Crit: This shows you your chance to score a critical on a
target and do 3x damage. Crit is calculated by simply
taking half of the unit's skill, adding the weapon's crit,
and then subtracting the enemy's luck. Snipers and
Swordmasters get a 15% bonus to this equation. Biorhythm
has no effect on crit %. (Took me a while to figure that
one out actually.) First, if a crit is scored, regular
damage is figured out (Atk - Def, supports factored, etc.),
then that number is tripled. You get a cool animation too.
AS: AS stands for Attack Speed. AS is figured by simply
taking the unit's speed. However, if the unit's weapon's
weight is greater than the unit's strength, then the unit
will suffer one point off of their AS for every point of
Str they lack to use that weapon. In other words, if Soren
has a Spd of 20 and a Str of 2, when he attacks with a
weapon with a Wt of 6, his AS will only be 16 instead of 20.
If he uses a weapon with a Wt of 1, his AS will be 20, even
though the weapon's Wt is one less than Soren's strength.
If either unit's AS is greater than the other's by 4 or
more, the unit with the higher AS score will get a second
attack. That's how "doubles" are figured.
Now, this isn't all there is to combat. There are a few
other things I'm gonna mention.
If you look at a unit's status screen, you'll see a tan box
in the bottom left hand corner with a bunch of numbers in
it. You'll see numbers next to Atk, Hit, Avo, Crit, Ddg,
Rng, and Effect.
Atk: This is the unit's base attack power. In battle, you
basically take this number and subtract the target's def to
get damage. Again, it's Str/Mag + Mt.
Hit: Base hit %. See above for more on Hit.
Avo: This is a unit's base chance to avoid an attack. This
number comes from doubling the unit's speed, adding in luck,
then factoring in biorhythm effects. Equation is:
(Speed x2) + Luck +/- Biorhythm = Avo %.
Crit: Again, this is the base crit %. You take half the
attacker's skill and add in the weapon's crit.
Ddg: Ddg stands for Dodge, or a unit's chance to dodge a
critical attack from an opponent. This number is equal to
the unit's Lck score.
Rng: This is the weapon's range. The only thing to note is
that a weapon with a range of 2 can only hit enemies 2
spaces away, not enemies 1 space away.
Effect: Here are listed bonus damage effects the equipped
weapon will get. You'll either see Beast, Flying, Armor,
or a few other things listed here--they're self-explanitory.
Now to help you understand better how this all ties
together, I'm going to share a case study I did in a battle.
I'll just list each unit's name and then show you the
numbers that come up on the combat window, both complex and
simple, and then I'll make some more notes.
Soren vs. Sword Knight
Simple 35 HP 31
28 x2 Mt 12
100 Hit 38
17 Crit 0
Basically, Soren will do 2 28-damage attacks that will hit
100% of the time and crit 17% of the time, and the knight
will get a single attack doing 12 damage, hitting only 38%
of the time and never critting.
Soren vs. Sword Knight
35 HP 31
Complex 34 Atk 19
7 Def 6
100 Hit 38
17 Crit 0
22 AS 10
Both boxes tell you the same thing, except on this one you
get to see more of the two units' stats. The Mt score from
above is, as you can see, equal to Atk - Def. Soren's
weapon had a crit of 9, and his skill was 24. The enemy's
luck was 4 (poor guy), so the equation goes like so:
(24/2) + 9 - 4 = 17. Someone get that knight a rabbit's
foot. AS is 22, which was Soren's speed (since the weapon
had a Wt less than his Str). I suggest using the simple
window in combat since it's faster and will tell you all
the same stuff, but if for some reason you like doing the
math yourself, have at the complex window.
But what about bonus damage and the two triangles, you say?
En garde!
Bonus damage is the simpler one of the two. When using a
weapon that gets an attack bonus vs. the enemy, the weapon's
Mt is doubled. So if you have a Laguz bow vs. a cat laguz,
the Mt of the bow is doubled to 20, then you add in your Str
and subtract the laguz's Def to get damage. Sadly, you get
no bonus to your hit %.
Whenever two units face off and neither has an advantage via
the triangle, then their normal numbers will be used. But
if say Ike with his sword attacks a bandit with an axe, Ike
will get a +1 to his damage and a +10 to his hit %. On top
of that, the bandit will suffer -1 to damage and -10 to hit.
So, having the weapon advantage won't really make a huge
difference, but the +10% to hit is always nice, so try and
take advantage of that as much as possible.
~~~~~~~--------~~~~~~~~-------~~~~~~~--------~~~~~~~~-------
============================================================
Frequently Asked Questions [aah]
============================================================
Q: I hate going to the reset button.
A: If you hold down X, B, and Start, your game will
automatically reset. God bless whoever implemented this
feature, as it's saved me several trips to the old 'cube.
Q: Are there any other super-secret button commands?
A: Well, while on the battlefield, the L button controls
the camera's zoom, and the R button in certain situations
will hide the GUI. Also, if you hold down the B button
while moving your cursor across the map, it'll start moving
a whole lot faster, so when you've got troops spread out
you don't spend a whole minute scrolling across the map.
Q: What is this Murphy's Law you speak of?
A: Murphy's Law simply states that everything that can go
wrong will go wrong. Mr. Murphy is the other identity by
which this law is identified. Basically, Murphy is what
happens when you take a chance with a unit and he ends up
getting criticaled twice and dying. Murphy is what happens
when you choose to attack with the 80% hit weapon instead
of the 95% weapon and you miss twice, and then on the next
turn the enemy kills you with a crit even though he had a 1%
chance of pulling off that crit. In hard mode, you'll come
to know and hate Mr. Murphy.
Q: Is X character good?
A: Most characters aren't good per se, nor are they bad.
What determines the goodness/badness of a character is how
you use the character. In other words, nearly every
character brings something unique to the table that can be
used extremely well in at least one situation.
However, there are some characters that are, in fact, just
plain better than everyone else. Ike and Stefan are the two
that first come to my mind, along with Astrid. These guys
are better either because of their skills or because of
their superior stat growth.
Note: On hard, characters ARE bad because of their stats,
and there are only a handful that you can use and trust 100%
of the time to never get screwed over (unless you misuse
them).
Q: Why won't my character promote?
A: Certain characters either don't promote or won't promote
until a specific event happens in the plot. Specifically,
Volke doesn't promote until after chapter 19, Ike doesn't
promote until after chapter 17, and Sothe never promotes.
Q: I can't kill the black knight, help!
A: First of all, you can't kill the black knight except on
chapter 27, when you face him mano-e-mano (plus Mist), so if
you're trying to kill him on chapter 24 or on chapter 11,
just stop. You'll get your chance.
Q: I'm on chapter 27 and I still can't kill the black
knight!
A: Look down in the chapter 27 section for strategy
regarding defeating the black knight.
Q: How do I do the brothers' triangle attack?
A: You have to position each one two spaces from the enemy,
each brother going in a straight line away from the enemy.
Look at this setup:
O
O X O
The X is the bad guy, the O's are the brothers. The first
two attacks won't do anything special, but the third attack
will force a critical. That said, it's best if you use Boyd
as your 3rd attacker; since he has the highest strength,
he'll do the most damage. I can't think of many situations
in the game where this attack might come in handy, but you
never know.
There is also a triangle attack you can do with your 3
Falconknights (Tanith, Marcia, and Elincia). To do it, you
set up your troops in the same formation, except you have to
attack in melee. The third hit forces a critical.
Q: I just completed the game, and on my new game everyone
has these bands, what's the deal?
A: Those bands give your units a chance of getting a certain
stat point up each level, so that they become better in
their category. Here's a list of what each band increases:
Paladin Band...............HP, Speed
Fighter Band...............HP, Strength
Soldier Band:..............HP, Defense
Sword Band:................Skill, Luck
Archer/Thief Band:.........Skill, Speed
Knight/Wyvern Band:........Strength, Defense
Mage Band:.................Magic
Pegasus/Priest Band:.......Luck, Resistance
See the Items section below for band locations.
Q: What's the deal with support?
A: During the game while you're in base, you can have your
units converse with each other, building up rank in support.
Depending on the two units and their support rank, they get
different bonuses. There's already a great FAQ on GameFAQs
which goes into more detail, I recommend reading that for
more information. Also, Ike and Soren's support bonuses
rocks the house.
Q: Where do I find all the items in chapter 15?
Q: Where do I get Stefan?
A: I found an image of the battlefield and figured out
what's buried at each spot:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v41/Rossaroni/FE9/
ch15maptrans.jpg
Q: Where are each of the S-rank weapons located?
A: Sword: Stefan comes with it/gives it to you in chapter 15
Bow: From a thief in chapter 27
Thunder Magic: From the chapter 28 boss
Staff: Don't kill any of the priests in chapter 22
Unfortunately, you can't get the S-rank lance, axe, fire,
wind, or light magic weapons, but you can see the lance and
the light magic tome on the last chapter. (Since they're
equipped, you can't purloin them.)
Q: What does the Occult item do, and where can I get them?
A: The Occult item is essentially a skill scroll, but the
skill that it gives to each person varies, depending upon
the class of the unit. First of all, only promoted units
and laguz can learn their occult skill. Secondly, there
are a few people on whom you will really want to use this
item on. Finally, you only find four in the game:
-one in chapter 13 from a chest
-one from a conversation with Stefan if you recruit him
-one from Tauroneo (either steal it or get him to join you)
-one from the chapter 27 boss.
For a list of the skills each class gets from occult and a
description of the skills, look down in the skills section.
[As of this version, there is no skills section, so here's
a list of the skills.]
Lord: Aether (Sol followed by Luna)
Paladin: Sol (Damage done = amount healed)
Valkyrie: Sol
Swordmaster: Astra (5-hit combo, each at 1/2 power)
Halberdier: Luna (Halves enemy's defense)
General: Luna
Warrior: Colossus (More damage when Cn is > enemy's)
Berserker: Colossus
Assassin: Lethality (One-hit KO)
Sniper: Deadeye (Ups hit %, puts enemy to sleep)
Falcon Knight: Stun (Stops enemy from moving for 1 turn)
Wyvern Lord: Stun
Sage: Flare (Halves enemy's defense)
Bishop: Flare
Beast: Roar (Stops enemy from moving for 1 turn)
Hawk: Cancel (Nullifies enemy attacks)
Your character's skill stat is what determines the
activation of each of these skills. Typically, your skill
is the activation chance, but on some skills it's half your
skill stat. Aether is one you definetly want to get Ike,
and Stefan comes with Astra, so you can check that one out
too.
Q: Naesala keeps killing me, what do I do?
A: Refer to my chapter 19 strategy for tips on beating the
level, but if you just want to get rid of Naesala, have Ulki
or Janaff talk to him, then he'll fly over and talk to
Reyson (both have to be in your fighting group for this to
work), then withdraw with his flock.
Q: Rhys/Mist keeps falling behind everyone, how can I get
them caught up?
A: Once you get the Physic staff, start using it. It's nice
to save one or two for the black knight/Ashnard battle for
healing, but the important thing is that a single use gets
you 20 exp, so you'll level up a lot faster if you use them
frequently. Plus they're much more versatile and let you
keep your healers away from the heat.
Q: How can I level up my units' weapon level faster?
A: When a unit uses a weapon with a higher weight, that unit
levels up that weapon grade much faster. If you remember
the old NES game Willow, you'll rememeber that after using
your sword a certain number of times, you'd swing it faster.
The same principle applies in FE9, so if you're forging a
weapon or you have a choice between two weapons, use the
heaviest one possible. Be sure that the weapon's weight
score isn't higher than the unit's strength when attacking,
because for every weight point over your strength, you'll
suffer a point of speed loss, so you won't get doubles with
the heavier weapons. If you haven't noticed, silver weapons
will level up your character's level much faster than iron
and steel weapons. Keep that in mind when forging a weapon
too, since changing the weight either way will cost money.
Q: Soren has no strength and can never double an enemy,
what can I do to get him better?
A: Basically, since Soren has next to no strength, you have
to forge him a custom tome with minimized weight. That's
not too bad, though, as it'll cost you around 20k of the
absolute ton of money you get in the game. You can afford
it. Until then, though, just stick with the basic wind
spell so he can still get doubles that he won't get
otherwise (like with elwind or tornado, etc.).
Q: Thieves keep beating me to items on maps, help!
A: Your thief can steal any unequipped item from enemy units
if your thief has a higher speed score and a str score equal
to or less than the weight of the item being stolen. So,
if you can't quite make it to that chest on the far end of
the map, just block the thief from escaping (they won't ever
attack) and have your thief come up and do his thing. Also
note that you can get any staff from an enemy in this way,
including quite a few physic staves in the last half of the
game. (Handy for getting healer exp.) I've heard rumors
that an enemy put to sleep will unequip any weapons they
have, but I can't confirm this as of yet. (E-mail??)
Q: I don't have any bonus exp, but I want to level up X
character, how can I do it if he can't kill anyone?
A: Typically, paladins won't be able to kill some units in
a single hit (or double), but they'll leave them almost
dead. Look for any opportunity at all to get those lower
units exp, like giving them 2-6 hp kills, letting them get
damaging hits on much higher level enemies, etc. Astrid
can get 100 exp from a single attack on a higher level
enemy if she finishes him off, so try to almost kill as many
enemies as possible to allow your lower units to get the 30
to 60 exp for a kill on that big enemy.
Q: How should I go about leveling up my party?
A: First of all, you won't be able to level up all 46
characters that you get throughout the game. At best,
you'll probably only be able to get 10-13 of them to a high
enough level for the last chapters of the game, so try to
pick out your favorite units early on and then stick with
them. If a unit falls behind and a better one shows up,
ditch the slacker. It's really hard to catch up unless you
spend a lot of attention on a character (unless that unit
has paragon).
Q: What in the world is biorhythm, and what does it do?
A: Well, if you want a detailed explination of the effects
of biorhythm in battle, see the above section covering
battle mechanics in-depth. Short answer: high biorhythm
means higher hit chance and better dodge chance.
Q: Extras? Vat ees dis?
A: When you complete the game, you open up the Extras menu.
I've got a section covering that at the end of my FAQ.
============================================================
------------------------------------------------------------
===============Walkthrough=============== [baa]
------------------------------------------------------------
Quick note: I usually use cardinal directions (N, S, E, W)
to indicate direction on the battlefield.
=====Chapter 1===== [bab]
Your units: Titania, Oscar, Boyd, Ike
Victory: Seize
The first battle is a fairly simple one. You have a few
options as to how to go about this battle, and if you just
want to win quickly, you'll be using Titania (refer to note
on Titania above). So, start out by sending Ike and Boyd
for the closest mercs, and use Oscar to finish one or the
other off. Send Titania around the SW house to pick off the
merc up in the NW area. After those three are done, use
whomever you wish to kill the third and fourth roving mercs,
then use either Titania or Boyd to weaken the boss to about
9 hp or less, and let Ike finish him off. Remember, Ike is
a great character, and you have to resist the temptation to
play too conservatively with him. Plus, if you're wanting
sweet sweet revenge, you'll need Ike topped off by the
beginning of chapter 27. More on Ike later, though.
On hard mode, you'll be going up against way more troops
than in the other modes, so be very wary of your units' hp
and use those vulneraries. If you never used them before,
you better get used to it on hard mode, because you will
almost always be outnumbered and you will get hit quite a
bit more.
Items: NW house (Seraph Robe), SE house (Steel Sword)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
=====Chapter 2: Rescue===== [bac]
Units: Oscar, Boyd, Rhys, Ike, Titania (R)
Victory: Rout
The (R) next to Titania means she comes as a reinforcement
after a turn or two. This will be your first battle with
Rhys, and it's here that you'll start learning how much of a
pain it is to protect a magic user. The best way to start
this map is by pushing to the immediate N, where a single
enemy awaits in a little aclove. After taking him out, you
can line up Oscar and Boyd/Ike for a good defensive bout.
The defense works because some of the enemies will charge
you, so you can just mow them down. Once Titania comes
along, you can start making an advance around the bend to
the rest of the enemy. Whenever you're moving Rhys, try to
have him protected either by surrounding him or by forming a
line with your other 4 troops. Using the line is better,
because it allows those on the line to be on the offense.
Oscar is a great tank in this battle, so use him effectively.
And remember, you have a healer now, so don't be afraid to
have him heal someone even if they've only been hit once.
It's better to stay totally out of trouble, because people
can die in a single turn if they're not up to full hp.
On hard, you're just facing more opponents, but the same
strategy applies. However, it'll be tougher for you to keep
Rhys protected, but at the same time he'll be able to lay
down some much-needed healing. So be smart and plan out
each move.
Items: Boss (Speedwing)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
=====Chapter 3: Pirates Aground===== [bad]
Units: Shinon, Gatrie, Titania, Ike
Victory: Boss
Other: Marcia
This map will be a cakewalk, because Shinon, Gatrie, and
Titania all outlevel the enemy by a good margin. Take this
opportunity to whittle down enemies with those three and let
Ike finish them off--it'll be good exp for Ike. Also, there
are some houses on this map: make sure you visit them. Note
the teal-haired man who gives you an elixir. As to
strategies, Shinon and Gatrie's thunder and lightning tactic
is a very good one. Another one that works is a tactic I
call the lemming tactic. What you do is you take a powerful
unit (Titania) and set it right smack in the middle of a lot
of enemies. The enemy soldiers then become lemmings,
attacking, missing, and getting doubled. The only thing of
real note in this battle is Marcia. She's the first NPC you
encounter that you can talk to with Ike. Make sure you have
your crew get to the ship fast enough to save her from
dying, and then have Ike talk to her. Later, she'll join
your team, but for now she heads back to Begnion. Remember
that lemming tactic, though, because there are tons of
situations in the game that you can get out of easily with
the tactic.
Items: SE house (Elixir), Boss (Thief band)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
=====Chapter 4: Roadside Battle===== [bae]
Units: Soren, Rhys, Gatrie, Shinon, Titania, Ike
Victory: Defeat Boss
This battle will probably be your first challenge in the
game. It's not hard to win the mission per se, but it's
tough to keep both Rhys and Soren alive during the whole of
this battle. But take heart! It can be done. And the best
way to do it is by the means of a sort of phalanx formation.
The way this formation works is you get a front line of
Titania and Ike, then directly behind them you place Rhys
and Soren. On the same line as Rhys and Soren go Gatrie
and Shinon, set so that they're covering the sides of your
two magic users. It'll look something like this:
G G= Gatrie R= Rhys
IR I= Ike S= Soren
TS T= Titania
H H= Shinon
Keep in mind, though, that this is just the strategy I found
to be the most effective, since Soren and Rhys die so
frigging easily. If you prefer to just have them run and
let the other four do the dirty work, that's all fine and
dandy. But anways, assuming you're using my suggestion...
The first thing you should do in this battle is set up this
kind of formation against the back of the grid, so that your
mages will be protected from all sides. Don't worry about
Shinon not being able to counterattack, he's fast and has
good defense, so he won't be dying. If you set Soren next
to Shinon, then Soren will be able to attack anyone who goes
for Shinon, so you might try using that sort of formation.
Once you've beat off the initial charge from the enemy, stay
in formation and advance. If you highlight an enemy with
your cursor and hit A, you'll see a shaded area pop up on
the grid which represents the enemy's attack range. You can
select as many enemies at once as you want in this way, so
you can tell where the safe spots to advance to are. One
thing to watch out for on this map are the enemy archers, as
they'll be able to hit Rhys and Soren regardless of who's
surrounding them. So, have Titania or Ike take those guys
out fast. There are some trees on this map, too, and you
can use those for cover if you can't quite get everyone
protected. Take this battle slow, and it'll be an easy win.
This is one battle where using Titania a bit more freely
won't be so bad. Soren is a great great character, and I'd
recommend using him.
In hard mode, you'll probably be wondering how you can
possibly win this battle without losing anyone. Well,
luckily, most of the troops won't charge you until you get
well into their range, so use the phalanx, fight off the
first wave, then just advance slowly, drawing a single group
at a time.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
=====Chapter 5: Flight!===== [baf]
Units: Titania, Shinon, Gatrie, Oscar, Boyd, Soren, Rhys,
Ike
Victory: Defend 6 Turns
Aah, the defense battle. These are my favorite. You've got
the whole crew here, so it won't be as hard to protect
everyone as it was last battle. There are two points that
the enemy will come from, and you've got 5 candidates for
frontliners to protect each 2-space bottleneck. I'd
recommend putting Titania on the southern entrance with
Oscar, and letting Boyd sit back and go in only to switch
out with Oscar. Boyd won't last as long on the frontline as
Oscar, though, so get Oscar healed and back up there ASAP.
Soren can help on the S part with his magic. Shinon,
Gatrie, and Ike work well for the W entrance. After beating
back the initial wave, you might even push them out a bit,
so that they can get the jump on any units that come later.
You don't have to do that though, since everything is fought
in such proximity. Towards the end, at about turn 5, you
might consider having Titania ride out to kill the enemy
general. He drops an item that might be handy, and Titania
won't have any trouble at this point in the game with a solo
mission as long as it only lasts 2 turns. Other than that,
just remember to keep everyone healed and your mages
protected.
In hard mode, this is your first battle with the Fog of War.
It works exactly like the fog of war in Warcraft. There's
a tutorial ingame that you can view which explains the
basics of the fog, and I suggest watching it. Also, there
will be way more troops assaulting you this time around, and
Boyd will probably have a hard time surviving if you tap him
for the frontline. Oscar and Titania always work best for
me at the southern entrance, but Gatrie is another good
choice. Just be sure to use vulneraries whenever you take
damage--remember, this is a defense map, so you don't have
to kill all of the enemies.
Items: Boss (Ashera Icon)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
=====Chapter 6: A Brief Diversion===== [bag]
Units: Titania, Soren, Rhys, Oscar, Boyd, Ike
Victory: Escape
The first part of this map is like Metal Gear Solid 3,
sneaking through the woods and all. For this battle, you're
gonna have to rely on a quick breakout followed by a hasty
and very careful defense to win. You'll want to make your
way SW through the trees to that bridge on the W side. Get
everyone in position, with Oscar and Titania right at the
edge of the trees, and then make your charge. Once you get
across the bridge, be very wary about enemy attack ranges,
and try to lure them out one at a time. Eventually, the
enemy general will sick everyone on you at once, and that's
when it gets a bit tricky, because you'll get hit from two
sides at once (this is why we're not just rushing in). The
best way to handle this is to have Oscar and Boyd double
back and wipe out the enemies from the bridge, and then have
everyone else hold a line anywhere you see fit. After
you've fought off the enemy attack, simply move in on the
enemy general and take him out. Once you've killed
everyone, have all of your units other than Ike escape.
This gets you some good bonus exp which you'll need later.
Once Ike escapes, the battle ends, so if you're hanging on
by a thread and Ike gets a chance to flee to save another
unit, take it. The bonus exp is handy, but not that
important.
However, on hard mode, you face more troops, so many that it
makes your life very hard across the bridge when they all
come at you. So, what I decided to do was to just charge
right out of the trees and clear the north side of the
bridges of enemies, and then work my way down the eastern
bridge. That way you can fight off the majority of the
troops on your own terms, and then when they all start
rushing you, there won't be as many, plus you won't get
flanked.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
=====Chapter 7: Shades of Evil===== [bah]
Units: Titania, Soren, Rhys, Oscar, Boyd, Ike, Shinon (R),
Gatrie (R)
Victory: Rout
Other: Mia
Oh dearie me. This is an interesting battle, and it might
seem like at times that you're gonna get overwhelmed. Well,
don't worry, you're probably giving the enemy too much
credit. This battle is really easy, actually. The best way
to proceed is by forming up and heading along the hallway to
the N. Along the way, a myrmidon named Mia will come in.
Have her and Ike chat and she'll join up. Hooray! She
comes with the skill Vantage, which allows her to always
strike first. So, give her something that criticals a lot,
that way she'll be getting first-hit crits even when she's
getting attacked. Anyways, note that there are three chests
on this map. You're going to want to get what's in those
chests, right? Well, enemy soldiers drop chest keys that
you can use, but alas, the enemy gets a thief reinforcement
after a turn or two, and he's right in the midst of a ton of
soldiers and knights. So, send in Titania as a sort of
colossus assassin, have her kill that thief, then head to
the room to the N with the two chests. She doesn't have to
kill everyone along the way, just get to the room and kill
the guy guarding it. Have her hold out there using the
lemming game while everyone else advances N on the opposite
side of the room. Eventually Petrine shows up, but so do
Greil, Shinon, and Gatrie. Greil lures Petrine out, and
Shin and Gat are left right next to a bunch of enemies, and
then some more come in behind them. Oboy. Well, that's why
we've got Titania in that room already. Have the two bust
into there, let Gatrie hold the door, while Shinon rains
arrows from behind him. At this point, you can have your
main body of troops in the NE corner advance towards the
enemy boss. Careful around him, though, 'cause he's a
pretty powerful mage. Soren has high Res, so he's good with
dealing with other mages, but do whatever works for you
here. It turns out that the princess is in another castle.
On hard, it may be a bit tougher for Gatrie and Shinon to
survive, but trust me, it's possible. Just have Shinon
back into a corner if you don't get Titania up there due to
the massive amount of enemies between her and that room.
Shinon is fast enough to avoid most of the damage thrown his
way, and they only have to survive three or four turns for
your main party to come in from the east. You can just run
right past the boss if you don't want to engage him.
Titania is a big help in this battle if you're finding it
hard to win. Finally, if you just can't get to that thief
with just Titania, go ahead and send a few people with her,
but try to leave Ike behind to get Mia when she comes in.
Items: NE chest (Armorslayer), NW left chest (Miracle),
NW right chest (Ward)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
=====Chapter 8: Despair and Hope===== [bai]
Units: Boyd, Oscar, Titania, Soren, Rhys, Mia, Ike
Victory: Defend 8 turns
Other: Ilyana
Shinon and Gatrie have hit the road, and Ike wants revenge.
Hooray. Before this battle, you'll get introduced to the
base screen. Here you can manage bonus exp, skills,
equipment, find information, and have support conversations
between units. Support works sorta funky like, but what I
can deduce so far is that if a unit is near another unit it
has a support grade with, the two units will recieve stat
bonuses that you can see on the status screen with biorhythm
status and such. Before this battle, make sure everyone is
equipped with enough weapons to last the battle, and try and
give Oscar some javelins and Boyd a poleax. Trust me on
this one, you'll love it.
This can be a rather tough battle, but it's very doable.
First of all, there are 3 bottlenecks that you can protect,
and who you choose to put there should depend on what's
gonna be coming at that point. The W point is where you'll
see a ton of enemies flow in, but most of them are simple
soldiers and are fodder for anyone. I suggest using Mia and
Ike here, positioning them so that whenever a soldier passes
that wall, Mia and Ike are both trapping them in. Then
Soren can pound them with spells, while Mia and/or Ike can
apply the finishing blow. Don't expect to kill all the
troops here, just expect to survive. Mia's vantage helps
here. For the E entrance, you just want to use Titania and
her lemming tactic. Give her a good axe, and she'll mow
down all four of those knights. As to the S entrance...
notice how all the enemies down there are mounted. Yeah,
Boyd will tear through them all with a poleax. If he's not
around level 10, he'll take a lot of damage and may die, so
make sure you give him bonus exp before the battle if he's
lacking a level or two. He should be strong enough with the
poleax to kill every single enemy with a single blow. If
not, have Oscar ride by or ride out and hit them with a
javelin to finish them off, then try to get him back. If
Boyd's getting beat up, have Oscar take over up front and
let Rhys heal Boyd. During this battle, I've had Boyd go up
three levels after getting something like 8 kills. He can
be a monster.
Now, as to Ilyana: you'll notice a female mage up in the NW
part of the area named Ilyana. If Ike can talk to her, you
can recruit her, but this is sort of a hard thing to do,
since she'll be caught in the middle of the giant soldier
orgy heading towards that W entrance. If it's getting close
to 8 turns and it doesn't look like she's gonna make it, at
turn 5 or so have Titania ride out, up, and around to flank
the huge mass of enemies. Just have Mia or Oscar take over
Titania's old spot. If you're fast enough, you can get
Titania to hack a way through the enemies without killing
Ilyana, then Ike can run out, talk to her, and boom, you've
got another defender for the last turn or two.
After the 8 turns, you get saved by a couple of sweet laguz
named Mordecai and Lethe.
The battle doesn't change much for hard mode, except that
your units will probably be at a higher level than on easy
or normal, since you're killing way more troops per map.
That just means your job is easier.
Items: SE Priest (Red Gem), Boss (Soldier Band)
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=====Chapter 9: Gallia===== [baj]
Units: Boyd, Oscar, Titania, Soren, Rhys, Mia, Ilyana, Mist,
Rolf
Ally: Mordecai, Lethe
Victory: Seize
Other: Marcia
Well, first of all, you have these two laguz for this battle
that will nearly be able to win it by themselves. If you
look in the NW part of the map, you'll notice two houses.
Position Titania in the back of the group and have her make
a run for those houses. The sand will slow her down, but
all she has to do is kill that pirate-looking chap that
keeps moving towards those houses. He'll destroy the houses
if he gets there first, and that's bad juju. Later on, some
more pirates show up, so make sure you use all of Titania's
movement up on every turn. She's not critical to the
important part of this battle.
The big thing in this battle is protecting Mist and Rolf.
They're both level 1, so a hit or two and they'll be gone.
You might think "Ah, they're just kids, I don't wanna use
them." Well, you're wrong. First of all, Rolf is one of
the only archers you get in the game, and the only other
archer you get is someone in chapter 18. You get a bow
knight before then, but they can't use longbows, which is
something that makes Rolf awesome. Anyways, Mist is cool
too, because she's a healer, and when she promotes she can
use a sword and she rides on a horse. Plus, there's a
battle later in the game where only she and Ike fight, and
if you want to win it, you'll need her leveled up to a
healthy point.
Other than that, you just have to use your Direct command
with Ike to keep those laguz from killing everything or
going kamikaze and getting themselves killed, which Lethe
will do if you don't stop her. After a few turns, Marcia
shows up back where you deployed, so have Ike talk to her
again to recruit her. She's your first flying unit you get,
and they're really nice to have--just watch out for enemy
archers. I personally never used Marcia, but she's still a
good choice if you don't like Soren, Ilyana, Rolf, etc.
Remember to stay in a line formation to protect Soren,
Ilyana, Rhys, and those other softies in the back, and think
out each move before you make it and you'll be fine.
On hard, you won't be able to send Titania alone up N to get
to the houses in time, so I usually send Ike and Mia with
her to deal with all of the axe users. Meanwhile, I have
those laguz hold with the rest of the party, and I don't
start towards the boss until I've cleared the north side of
everything. You won't get much bonus exp (if any), but if
you want those items from the houses, you'll need to take a
few more turns.
Items: N house (Talisman), S house (Restore staff),
Boss (Arms Scroll)
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=====Chapter 10: Prisoner Release===== [bak]
Units: 9 (you choose from here on out)
Victory: Escape
Other: Volke, Kieran, Brom, Nephenee
Well, apparantly you can sneak through this battle and avoid
a fight, and that probably will net you some good bonus exp,
but I like a good fight. I usually ride right out with
Titania and kill the first guy I see. If you want to sneak,
I won't be able to help you, 'cause I've never tried it.
I'll try and find someone on the boards who knows how to do
it, and I'll put it in here later. For now, though, we
fight!
Before the battle, you get the option of hiring Volke. Do
it. Full stop. He's the only thief you get for a while,
and he's the only thief that can promote. Once you get him
topped off, he's one of the best units in the game. Use
him. Also, it might not be a bad idea to pump some bonus
exp to either Mist or Rolf, but not both. I recommend
starting with one, and once they're high enough to get into
battle, let them do that and get exp the old fashioned way.
Then pump bonus exp into the other one. I used Mist first,
then Rolf. You don't really need Rolf that much in this
battle anyways.
First of all, once the alarm goes off, troops will come in
from each entrance, including the one right next to where
you deployed. So, when positioning your units, put a tank
or two up top to deal with those enemies. You might have
Titania and Oscar ride out into the jail to get a good head
start on killing people. Oscar becomes a pretty mean
paladin when he gets promoted. The only thing you need to
remember here is, again, formation, protection, and healing.
There are 3 prisoners here that you can recruit, and one
more that you can only talk to. Have Ike talk to Sephiran,
then head on over to Brom, then have Ike head back up to
Nephenee. Brom and Nephenee will join after this battle if
you talk to them. Oscar is the man you want to have talk to
Kieran. After killing off all the enemies, have Volke open
any chests you don't have keys for (like the four in the far
NW corner, and the one in the NE), then let everyone escape
before Ike for some more bonus exp. Once you've talked to
the four NPC's on this map, they won't do anything; don't
worry, they'll join after the battle.
On hard, I don't think there's much of anything changed, so
just be wary as usual.
Items: NE chest (Statue Frag), NW chests- top left (Javelin),
top middle (Short Axe), top right (Steel lance), bottom
left (Counter), Boss (Master Seal)
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=====Chapter 11: Blood Runs Red===== [bal]
Units: 13
Victory: Arrive
Other: Zihark
In this battle, you have a choice of two different ways to
go. Either way, you're gonna have to face both of those
groups of enemies near the docks, so I'd suggest taking the
southerly route, and maybe sending Lethe or Mordecai north
with another unit or two--the reason for that is because to
recruit Zihark, you need to talk to him with either Lethe or
Mordecai. But once you've recruited him, hurry up and wipe
out the remaining troops, get that house, and get outta
there. I'll tell you why later. Anyways, there are two
more houses down on the southerly route that you wanna nab,
but watch out for the thief, as he'll nab them from you if
you aren't quick. Kill him with someone like Titania.
On turn 5, Jill will show up with a couple of wyvern riders,
but if you're well out of their range, as you should be at
that point, they won't come after you. So no worries there.
Note that if you kill her here, you won't be able to recruit
her later.
Once you get near the boss, though, you could have some
potential huge worries in the form of a large black knight
trudging out of the little house in the middle of the town.
He won't go after anyone unless they're in his range, so
just watch out for that.
Other than those two late-battle enemies, this is a pretty
standard advance. By now you should be getting the hang of
moving your troops around and using them all effectively.
Remember to try and spread the exp around evenly, so that no
one gets behind too much.
In hard, you'll be facing the usual diet of more troops. I
think the enemy count at the beginning of this map was 33,
so you'll be way outnumbered. Do the usual routine for
getting Zihark, and send Oscar with him to get the house and
get back. You start with enemies behind you, so move your
troops around accordingly. You're gonna have to be fast to
get the houses to the west, as well, so try sending Titania
towards the central one, and maybe Boyd or Kieran for the
southern one. Remember, you can kill a thief and get the
first item he stole, but not the second or third. If you
have Volke, he can purloin any extra items you didn't get
to, so it's not the end of the world if a thief beats you to
a house or two.
Items: NE house (Killer lance), SW house (Dracoshield),
Central house (Elwind), Boss (Master Seal)
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=====Chapter 12: A Strange Land===== [bam]
Units: 10
Victory: Rout
Other: Jill
Before battle, equip your troops with any laguz-slaying
weapons you might have picked up along the way. Also, make
sure to check out all the information here, as you'll get
the chance to recruit Sothe, a little thief who has the
skill Blossom.
This battle takes place on your ship which has run aground
and is being assaulted by pirate crows. Aaarrr. This is
actually a really simple battle, if you'll keep in mind one
thing: the crows cannot attack you unless they're on the
ship with you. In other words, if you set up a huge line of
your troops in a perimeter around the ship's railings, then
the crows won't be able to get on, and in the meantime,
Soren and Rolf can just wreak havoc on the enemy (use
Soren's wind spells). This is a great battle to level up
Rolf in, so I'd suggest giving him some bonus exp
beforehand. If you can give him a master scroll to get his
bow skill high enough to where he can use a longbow, he'll
be really uber. But it's not necessary.
Jill will show up after a turn or two into the battle, and
she'll start heading towards Ike. Make sure Ike's standing
out in the open on the ship so that Jill can come up and
talk to him. After talking, she joins up, and with her
Laguzguard, she's a great roving slayer in the sky. Not
Buffy, but hey, Jill has a wyvern.
The boss is a pushover, so don't worry too much about him.
Just try to keep good perimeters up so that your softies in
the back don't get unexpectedly swarmed by the birds.
On hard I think you might face two or three more pirates,
but it's really of no consequence. Just make sure that
you're extra-careful when moving your softies, as they'll
usually die from a single hit (or double). I actually
used the mast in the middle of the boat as one wall of a
square defense for Rhys, Soren, and Rolf. The battle took
me a few tries, but that was mostly due to me not wanting
to check the enemies' attack ranges every turn.
Items: Arms Scroll, Secret Book, Seraph Robe, Blue Gem,
Laguz Stone, Coin (all come from the ravens)
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=====Chapter 13: A Guiding Wind===== [ban]
Units: 12, plus 6 allies
Victory: Defend 10 turns
Other: Astrid, Gatrie
This battle is simple, but to pull it off and get all of the
spoils of war is a bit tougher than it may seem. With all
the chests, you'll want to bring Volke. If this is your
first time through, I'd suggest using Volke a lot, because
once he promotes he becomes...well, pretty much a ninja.
Yeah, totally sweet.
*cough* Anyways, You'll notice that Gatrie's back! And,
true to form, he's protecting a damsel named Astrid. You
can recruit Astrid by having Ike talk to her, then have
Astrid talk to Gatrie to get him.
There are only three planks going from the Begnion ship to
the pirate's ship, so get your three best frontliners and
send them each to a plank. Basically you just need to
slowly push across the planks and just sort of roll over the
enemies on the far boat. The only thing to watch out for
are those stinking crows. Jill can really shine here, as
she can fly in between the ships and do some crowslaying.
If you've been using Marcia, she'll be handy here too. And
again, any mage with wind or anyone with a bow can really
mess up the crows too. The only person you have to really
watch out for is Astrid, as sometimes she finds it noble to
go and block an enemy and then get cut down. Just make sure
you get your units in place first so those stupid greenies
don't get in the way. Blasted green meanies.
Once you've got the ships taken over, the crows will start
to go for the chests. Hopefully you've already had Volke
hard at work opening chests. Have him start with the ones
on the W side of the map, go N, then back E and finally to
the two at the far end of the Begnion ship. Reason for that
is because the crows start at the west and move to the east,
so you want to nab the closest chests to them first. They
start coming in pairs during the last few turns, so killing
them might be a chore for Jill alone, but if you set up a
good permiter around the W sides of both ships and set up 3
men on the plank, you won't have to worry as much. If a
crow does get a chest, you can kill it and get the item it
recieved. If a crow grabs two chests, though, you can only
get the item from the first chest. So be quick.
Now, on hard mode, this battle can be really really tricky.
First of all, Astrid might die on the first turn before you
even get a chance to get to her. So, what you have to do is
use the shove command to get Ike close enough to her so he
can talk to her, have her talk to Gatrie, and then run away
before getting slaughtered. I had Boyd do the first shove,
then I had Mordecai smite Ike up the plank to save an extra
shove. Also, it'll be tough keeping all of the ravens from
getting the items in the chests and keeping the base
protected. However, the ravens won't start going for the
chests until you get past a halberdier guarding the last
ship, so if you just clear out everyone down on the
Begnionian ship and get Volke in position for a quick grab,
you'll have an easier time. Also, if you do choose to block
the northern chests, the ravens will simply go around and
fly towards the eastern chests on the center ship. I
suggest either killing them or forming a wall around those
chests if Volke is a turn or two away from them. If you
have any spare chest keys, now would be a good time to bring
them.
Items: NW chest (Occult), N chest (Energy Drop), NE chest
(Speedwing), W chest (Laguz Axe), E chest (Longsword),
SW chest (Killer Bow), SE chest (Elfire)
[If you're confused as to the chest locations, all of the
N chests are on the pirates' boat, and the other 4 are on
the Begnionian boat--the directions make it clear as to
where they are relative to each other.]
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=====Chapter 14: Training===== [bao]
Units: 13
Victory: Defeat Boss
Other: Makalov
This is just a basic field battle. There's a guy off to the
east of your deployment, so take him out before he gets lucky
and kills someone. I'd suggest splitting your team up into
two units, one offensive and one defensive. Have the defense
unit hold the closest bridge that spans N-S, then send the
other unit to the west to sweep up towards the houses and
eventually head back east over the bridge to meet up with the
other unit. Be quick on the houses, as there's a pirate
heading towards them to destroy them. If you bring Marcia
along, you can have her talk to the sword knight Makalov and
recruit him. He looks goofy. Once you've gotten the western
part of the battlefield secure, move on the center part, then
have your army converge and sweep north to overwhelm the boss.
He's a berserker, which is pretty cool, and he brings up two
laguz once you charge him, which isn't cool.
There isn't anything particularly hard about this battle if
you just play it right, and there are lots of ways to play
it; for example, you could just send all of your troops over
the W bridge then back to the center, or you could just make
a mad dash to the boss and forget about everything else.
I'm hoping by now you're beginning to see that there's
always more than one way to win a battle.
This is another fog of war battle in hard mode. If you use
a thief or a laguz, you'll get better visibility due to
their extended ranges. That torch you got way back will
help too. The problem, of course, is identifying those
pirates that are heading for the houses to destroy them and
killing them before they get there. So, here's how I did
it: I used Jill to get the SW house (Marcia works if you're
getting Makalov), and then had all of my other mounted units
charge to the NW for those houses. I left Volke, Rolf, Ike,
Soren, and Zihark to simply hold at the bridge and kill one
of the pirates that starts off at the north end of it, and
everyone else went to the NW. I gave Titania the torch. I
also had Mordecai along and used him (in humanesque form) to
scout out areas, and then had Kieran or Oscar or whomever
get kills on spotted enemies. There's one pirate that
starts off just to the NW of your deployment, but just out
of vision, so run out and try to kill him on the first turn.
Then, I just killed everyone that came across the bridge as
fast as possible, then used Titania, Jill, and Mordecai as
a team to intercept any other pirates that were heading to
the houses. Usually, though, there were just on the other
side of the bridge, so picking them off wasn't a problem.
I never cared much for Makalov, so I just killed him. You
can have Marcia come up and recruit him, though.
Remember that the boss and the laguz won't attack you unless
you stand right next to them, so take this opportunity to
get some good exp for your archers if you're using them.
Items: NW right house (Vantage), NW left house (Secret book)
SW house (Spirit Dust)
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=====Chapter 15: The Feral Frontier===== [bap]
Units: 14
Victory: Defeat Boss
Other: Stefan
This battle can be a doozy if you don't understand how the
laguz work. They charge up, they transform, then they lose
their gusta and transform back into their humanesque form.
In this humanesque form, they are incapable of attacking
you. Keep that in mind at all times, thank you.
A note before you get started: apparently if you don't kill
any laguz on this map and just defeat Muarim, then you also
find all the items hidden on the map, you'll get a huge
bonus exp...bonus. I've never attempted this before, so I
can't confirm the authenticity, but I've heard it talked
about on the boards by more than a couple of people, so I
think it's probably legit.
Anyways, bring a thief along here, along with either Lethe
or Mordecai, as you'll want to find all of the hidden items
in the sand, and you'll need Lethe or Mordecai to recruit
Stefan, quite possibly the sweetest unit in the game. I
mean, this guy takes the cake. More on him in the character
section, though. To recruit him, you have to move Lethe or
Mordecai onto a single specific spot in the NE part of the
map. So, send someone up there to clear it all out, then
move your cursor to the top corner of the map. Move it left
twice, down once. The spot that your cursor now hovers upon
is the spot where you need to move Mordecai or Lethe. If
you just move anyone else there, he'll give you his sweet
S-rank sword, but he won't join you.
As to the actual battle strategy: this battle works just
like any other, except you'll be going about 1/3 as fast as
usual. Once you get the laguz killed around the outside
parts of the map, you'll be left with four cats, two beasts,
and the boss. The best way to do this final part is to wait
for the cats to all transform back into humanesque form,
then charge them. The beasts might get a single attack off,
but I believe their transformation timer is set so that
they'll transform back one turn after the cats. Unless the
timing is completely random, in which case you'll just have
to wing it. If you have problems with this last part, just
give me an e-mail and I'll hopefully be able to help you
through it.
Before you kill Muarim though, you should note that there
are various items scattered around the map just laying in
the sand. Check up in my FAQ section for a link to a map of
the level with boxes over each area where the items can be
found. You can also see the spot where you step to recruit
Stefan.
On hard, it's the same song, just with more care.
Items: (see the FAQ section for the link to a map displaying
all the spots to find the items)
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=====Chapter 16: The Atonement===== [baq]
Units: 11
Victory: Seize
Other: Devdan
Once you finish the 15th chapter, Tormod and Muarim join up.
The next battle takes place indoors and is fairly
straightfoward. With the columns and narrow hallways, you
shouldn't have much trouble thinning out the enemy ranks so
that you can easily mow them down.
There is one thing to look out for, though. You can already
see a room in the middle of the map with a couple of chests
in it. If you look to the left and right of the boss,
you'll notice two more doors (Devdan is in front of the left
one). Behind those doors are more chests. However, a thief
will come onto the map at turn 9 and head right for that
western door and the chests. So, use someone like Titania
to take out that thief so that yours can do his job.
To recruit Devdan, have Soren talk to him. He's a
halberdier, and I love that class. They're good for
anything, really.
On hard, again, it's just more enemies to mow through.
Getting to that thief on the far west side of the map before
he can get to the chests is gonna be really tough, but if
you have Volke or Sothe, you can always steal the items back
from him. I just cleared out the first part of the map as
fast as possible then sent my whole team save Boyd and Soren
and Rolf for the west side, and even though the thief got
both chests before I did, I had Ike block off the exit to
the room, and when Volke got there and the enemies were
dead, I just had Ike shove him back, and then Volke took
the loot. The thief won't attack you, so don't worry about
him dying. Once I had all the enemies clear outside of the
boss's chamber, I had Volke run back to the other rooms to
get the rest of the items. Also, there are a few enemies
in that NE room, so have some backup for Volke ready.
Items: NW chests- left (Bolting), right (Physic)
Central chests- left (Dracoshield), right (Full Guard)
NE chests- left (Ashera Icon), right (Silver Lance)
Mage (Gamble), Boss (Spear)
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=====Chapter 17: Day Breaks===== [bar]
Hoo boy! This is about the halfway mark in the game, and at
this point a lot of your units should be either promoted or
about to promote. Usually my units will promote during the
course of the next series of battles. Oh, yeah, by the way,
chapter 17 is made up of 4 consecutive battles, and you get
no rest or switching of units in between battles. So, there
are a couple of things you need to do to prepare for this
series. First of all, everyone needs a good supply of
weapons with plenty of durability left. Give your frequent
attackers 3 or 4 weapons to ensure that they'll still be
effective in the final battle. If you have any troops that
are at level 20, but you don't want to shill out the bonus
exp for that promotion, give them a Master Seal. Master
Seals will promote any unit who's over level 10, but at the
expense of all the stat growth you're missing in those
levels. But, if you give someone at level 20 the Master
Seal, it's basically a free 100 exp. I never like to
promote my units early, except in a case or two (I promoted
Mist at 19 after this series). So, are you ready?
First of all, I should say that the units you choose for the
first battle will be in every consecutive battle and won't
get a chance to trade or move items in some other fashion in
between battles. However, you will be bringing in
reinforcements, and they can bring you supplies from the
convoy, so if you need items but you don't really want to
use a particular unit, just load them up and bring them in
with the items/weapons.
=====Chapter 17-1===== [bas]
Units: 10
Victory: Rout
This first part is fairly simple. Just form up and advance
on your enemy. The only thing to watch out for is poison,
but it might do 10-15 damage total once it has run its
course, so don't get too stressed out about it. Watch out
for enemy reinforcements, because if you're an aggressive
advancer like me, you might end up getting enemy
reinforcements behind your line, and that can really
potentially screw you up. So just be wary of everything.
On hard, you get flanked right off the bat, so watch out for
that, otherwise it's just the usual routine.
=====Chapter 17-2===== [bat]
Units: +2 reinforcements (12)
Victory: Arrive
In this battle, you'll be facing a lot of mounted units, so
give your axe users poleaxes. This battle is also fairly
simple. Just form up and sweep northward, taking the
western path instead of the inner eastern path. You could
send a couple of troops up the eastern path and then perform
a sort of hammer and anvil move, but it's not really
necessary. Since this is an arrive map, you want to finish
it ASAP with anyone you can for bonus exp.
On hard, you'll be facing more troops, but it won't be too
hard. Remember to keep your softies protected, as I lost
Rhys twice in a row due to silly blunders--those mounted
units with javelins and bows have a longer range than I
gave them credit for, and you should be wise to not make
the same mistake.
=====Chapter 17-3===== [bau]
Units: +2 reinforcements (14)
Victory: Survive 10
Now things start to get tricky. All around you are enemy
troops, but the biggest concentration of them are in the
south. So, take your men and smash up the enemies in the NW
corner of the map, and be hasty. Set up a defensive
perimeter as fast as you can, and try to make it as small as
you can, because you'll need a few more roving troops to
take care of enemy reinforcements which will come in most
likely behind your lines. Your mounted units are invaluable
here, since they can form a perimeter, then ride out,
strike, and ride back without breaking formation. Astrid
ftw. I call that tactic the mountie blitzkrieg. You'll
probably hear me use it again later, because I love
paladins. (ftw means "for the win")
One thing to note: since Ike is carrying a load on his back,
his stats will drop a bit, so try to keep Ike out of battle
as much as possible. If he's level 20, there's no reason
to use him anyways, since he can't get any exp. Don't waste
exp! Litterbugs.
On hard, it'll be a bit tougher to establish your defense,
but it's regardless the same routine. You do get hit with
an absolute ton of mages from the south, but thankfully,
mages are soft and squishy and do not react well to swords.
=====Chapter 17-4===== [bav]
Units: +2 reinforcements (16)
Victory: Boss
I usually don't even bring in the final two reinforcements
here, because I don't have 16 units that I use at this
point, and I prefer to have 12 or 13 units leveled up to a
higher point. Plus, 16 is a big number to manage. If
you're in need of elixirs, vuleraries, weapons, etc.,
bring in someone as a mule.
The thing about this battle is that there's a mage in the
mid-northern part of the map with Meteor. Check out that
range. Now, I don't think that Meteor by itself is much of
a threat to your party. However, with its huge range and
potentially large damage, you could easily lose a troop in
a single turn from other attacks combined with meteor, even
if everyone is protected well. So what I suggest doing is
moving everyone around the range of that spell and using
that as a path towards your goal. It's okay if a single
unit takes a hit; heck, it's not a bad idea to have someone
as a controlled decoy here to drain the 5 Meteor shots the
mage gets so that you don't have to worry about him. But
anyways, by the time you get past the group of knights and
the paladin, some flying laguz will show up. One of them
is Tibarn. If Superman was a hawk, his name would be
Tibarn. Once they show up, there's really nothing else you
need to do to win the battle, but go ahead and get some exp.
Note that with the hawk trio comes a trio of paladins from
behind your deployment zone. If you can, try to make it to
the boss before the birds slay him so that anyone who needs
an extra exp boost can get it.
On hard, it's again the same story, just with more enemies.
Note that the halberdier next to the boss has an Adept
scroll, and boy, you want that scroll, trust me. So you
might have to hustle to get someone there before the birds.
Remember, Ike has a unit rescued, so his speed and skill
are gonna be cut in half--try not to actually use him in
battle unless he's just gonna finish a unit off.
Quick note: there's a lot of swamp at the southern part of
the map which can really impede your progress, so keep that
in mind while advancing your units along the southern edge
of the map if you chose to do so.
If you're having problems at this point in the gauntlet due
to anything at all, e-mail me with your problem. I can't
think of anything in particular that I didn't mention that
would cause lots of grief, but I could easily be overlooking
something.
Items: Boss (Nosferatu)
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=====Chapter 18: Crimea Marches===== [baw]
Units: 13
Victory: Rout
Other: Shinon
Tanith, Reyson, Ulki, and Janaff will join your party
automatically after the gauntlet you just finished. Cool.
Tanith will come in handy for this next battle, and you can
use Janaff or Ulki as well. I've never used Reyson much,
but he does have some cool abilities that give him some
potential for use. One skill will heal any adjacent unit
at the beginning of your turn, and he has a chant skill
that he can use on any unit that's already taken a turn,
and it'll give that unit another turn. Reyson's pretty
fragile, though, so use him with caution.
Anyways, this battle is another easy straightfoward one.
You just have to advance up onto the wall and plow through
the narrow corridors to the other side, which should be
done easily if you have an archer or mage or, even better,
two of each. I found Astrid to be a big help during this
battle, using the mountie blitzkrieg tactic a lot to
whittle down enemies before they get to you. There are a
trio of wyverns which start out on your side of the wall in
the beginning, but Tanith can easily shred them with her
sonic sword, so you might consider using her here. Note,
though, that she comes promoted at level 10, so she'll be a
big exp hog if you use her too much.
Also, there are three chests on this map, and unless you
have three spare chest keys, you'll need to use Volke or
Sothe to open those chests since no one on the map drops
keys. With thirteen units, though, you should have room for
one or the other. Once you get to the other side of the
wall, there will be a couple of waves of crows that you'll
have to slay, so use this opportunity to get anyone who
needs an exp boost, like Rolf or Astrid.
Shinon is also on this map, but simply talking to him won't
get him on your side. To recruit him, you have to have Rolf
talk to him, and after their conversation, have Ike kill
him. However, Ike won't actually finish him off, as their
conversation implies, even though he disappears from the
battlefield. If you do this right, after the battle he'll
(re)join you.
On hard mode, there's really nothing you have to watch out
for, only that there are now three sages with long-range
spells, so try to keep your lower res units out of their
range. Rhys makes a good decoy, as does Soren.
Items: Boss (Tornado), Shinon (Brave Bow), Sage (Shade),
NW chest (Recover), E chests-left (Silence), right (Wrath)
Note: I believe the sage only drops the shade skill scroll
on hard mode, but I could just be totally nuts.
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=====Chapter 19: Entrusted===== [bax]
Units: 13
Victory: Boss
This battle is a doozy. There are three ballistae on this
map which can pretty much decimate any fliers you have, but
the catch-22 is that only fliers can take out two of those
ballistae. However, each ballista only has a 5-shot
capacity, so you could just use a single strong unit like
Titania as bait to drain the 5 shots.
The other big thing in this battle is that Naesala is
fighting against you, and unless you're playing on easy,
you're not gonna be able to take him out before he takes one
or two of your own men out. However, there is a trick you
can use to get him to leave the field along with the rest of
his crows. If you have Ulki or Janaff talk to the king,
they'll inform him that Reyson is actually fighting for
Crimea. After that inital conversation, if you have Reyson
on the field, the king will start heading for Reyson and the
two will have a chat, after which the king will withdraw
along with his units. You pretty much have to do this to
get through the battle, so bring along one of the hawks with
Reyson. Finally, if you end up getting Naesala to leave
without killing a single raven, you'll get the Knight Ring.
More on getting that later, though.
Here's the strategy I use to win this battle:
Have Janaff or Ulki take Muarim's Demi Band and equip it so
that they'll always be in their hawk form. Then, have
either Tanith or Jill go along with the hawk to the east,
take out the two crows there, then head north towards the
ballista, being wary to stay out of the range of the other
ballista. Meanwhile, have the rest of your troops form a
defensive line just out of range of the other two ballistae,
and after beating off the advancing attackers, use Titania
as bait to draw the five shots from the closest ballista.
Once that's done, just stay on the defense until your hawk
and his partner have taken out that ballista. Be careful
here, though, because the kilvas king may come at you and
kill your flyer with his wind magic or his uber attack.
Once you've taken out the ballista and the axe wielder on
the hill, have your hawk heal up completely and then move
within the very outer band of the king's range. He'll come
over, and hopefully you'll survive his attack. On the next
turn, talk to him, and once he's off towards Reyson, bring
your two fliers back south to flank the troops there that
haven't moved yet. By this time, the closest ballista
should be empty, and if it's not, wait for it to empty
before doing your next move. When the ballista is empty,
have everyone advance up and take out the enemies in the
area, but don't get in range of the last ballista. Form up
another defensive line and kill anyone who comes at you.
Once the action dies down, have Tanith or Jill (whoever
you're using) head towards the last ballista, and have
Reyson use his chant to get a double move so that your
winged knight can take out that ballista. I suggest using
Tanith here, just because she's probably stronger than Jill
at this point, and I know that she can take out those
ballista archers in a single turn. Once that's done, you
can clean up the wyverns to the west and have the rest of
your troops advance on the enemy boss. The boss is a
swordmaster with a sonic sword, so be careful with your
archers. Luckily, he doesn't have the best defense or the
highest hp, so he goes down fairly easily. If you don't
have anyone who can go toe-to-toe with him, use Shinon
and Rolf to kill him from afar with longbows--their range of
3 will allow you to hit him without fear of a counterattack.
Just keep in mind that doing this will open up your archers
to attack from the boss's bodyguards.
HOWEVER! If you want to get the knight ring, here's how I
figured out how to do it without getting anyone killed:
Your party should have Janaff & Ulki, Reyson, and Tanith.
First of all, give Tanith's weapons to Janaff/Ulki, and have
them both head E as usual. Tanith is fast so she'll dodge
most of the attacks, and since the hawk has a weapon, the
non-transformed laguz will run from him. Once you get
Tanith past a certain tree on the far right side of the map
(about 2 spaces out of the NE ballista's range), Naesala
will start heading for your party. If Tanith gets trapped,
have your hawk shove a raven out of the way so the two can
hightail it back before Naesala comes for them. So instead,
Naesala will head for the main body of your troops, where
your other hawk with Reyson are waiting. The big thing here
is that if Tanith has a weapon, she gets an 8% crit chance
no matter what, so you'll probably end up resetting 90% of
the time, but you have to move her foward past those ravens
to bait out Naesala without getting anyone killed. After
Naesala talks to Reyson, he'll give Reyson the Knight Ring,
so if the Daeins kill a raven or two, it won't matter.
This worked on hard, which has a few more ravens, so I'm
assuming that it will still work just fine on easy and
normal. After the ravens leave, conduct the battle as I
described above if you're still having problems.
Phew, that was a doozy, and might be one of the toughest
battles in the game. Again, if my notes here don't help you
enough and you're just hopelessly stuck, e-mail me and we'll
see if we can work out a solution to your plight.
After this battle, Volke promotes to Assassin, and becomes
uber. If you use an occult on him, he gets the skill
Lethality, which results in a one-hit KO when it activates.
It has sweet animation too.
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=====Chapter 20: Defending Talrega===== [bay]
Units: 11
Victory: Arrive 15 turns
Before this battle, you get the opportunity to hire Calill,
a sage, in a conversation from the base menu, much like how
you recruited Sothe. On with the show!
This is your first battle where you have a limited amount of
time to get to your objective, so you might be tempted to
play rather aggressively. Well, 15 turns is a long time in
this game, so don't get too hasty. The one thing you really
need to watch out for is Jill. Her dad is the boss here,
and if the two get near each other, Jill will go back to the
other side. It's rumored that Jill won't defect if she has
an A support with someone, but I've yet to confirm this
myself.
Okay, I've gotten a few e-mails saying various things, and
from what I can gather, if Jill has an 'B' support with
anyone, she'll be able to kill her dad personally without
defecting. She can get it with Lethe or Mist.
[Thanks to Broken Alleluia, Timothy, Bocaj and Jos for
confirmation.]
There's a pair of houses in the northern part of the valley
that you need to head for with a small force, because not
only do you want the items, but also a few enemy
reinforcements will arrive there. So you'll want to take
them out. Exp!
There's a single mage next to a house on the hill up to the
dam with blizzard, and he can mess you up pretty good if
you're not careful, but you don't have enough time to work
up slowly to him. Instead, get a mounted unit or three and
have them act as a sort of steamroller to get to that mage
as fast as possible, then get back to the main part of your
force for some healing. Also, blizzard will decimate
fliers, so watch out for that. If you're not using any
mounted units (blasphemy!), then you'll just have to stick
to whatever tactic suits you best. I will say, though,
that you really should be using at least two paladins, as
they're some of the most versatile units in the game.
Titania, Kieran, Oscar, and Astrid are my own personal four
horsemen.
Once you've cleared everything in the valley below, just
move on up the hill and take the boss and his cronies out.
Proceed with extra caution here, though, as the enemies are
starting to get quite a bit tougher here, and with that
15-turn limit, you might find yourself overextending your
units, and that can get them killed. If you do find
yourself in a situation where you only have a few turns to
win it might be prudent to take a few risks, but if you
minimize your risks, you minimize your losses due to flukes
and such (Murphy's Law anyone?). If you took 13 or 14 turns
to win this battle and barely made it, you might want to
re-evaluate your strategy, because this battle is easily
winnable in 7 or 8 turns.
On hard mode, you get 20 turns to complete the objective,
and to be honest, the battle isn't really that much tougher,
so I'd almost go so far as to say that this battle is easier
on hard mode.
Also note the bishop on the hill--he carries a physic staff!
Items: Sniper on the hill (Provoke), N house (Smite),
S house (Rescue)
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=====Chapter 21: Without a King===== [baz]
Units: 13
Victory: Seize
Other: Tauroneo
This battle will probably take you a while. First of all,
note that there are several doors and chests behind those
doors, so you'll need a thief for getting all the good loot
from this map.
The narrow pathways in this map make it easy for you to
advance and slay each group of baddies, so you don't have to
worry about much in terms of your usual routine of killing.
Take note of each doorway and the stairway near the central
chamber where Ena resides: reinforcements will come through
in trios from each place at intervals in the battle. So
leave a unit or two behind with your thief if he's not very
strong to help cover his back. I use Tanith, since she can
move around the sewers easily. Also, if you got the Knight
Ring back a couple of chapters, give it to your thief to
save him a turn or two while collecting all the chests.
The first objective in this battle is to take out Kasatai.
He wields a brave lance, so watch out for double and
quadruple attacks from him--a quick kill is best here,
preferably from one of your stronger, faster units.
There will be plenty of opportunities for your longbow
wielders to get some easy kills across the waterways on
enemies, so take advantage of those opportunities.
There are a couple of bishops on the map that carry sleep
staves, and those can be really bad news if you don't take
care of that. The first one you encounter is next to
Kasatai, so just have a couple of faster units charge him to
ensure a swift death. The second sleeper is actually inside
the inner chamber in the SW, and he'll be putting your
troops to sleep from inside there, but the good news is that
you can just bait him and let him use his 3 charges without
putting your troops in danger from other nearby enemies.
Just watch out for the pair of enemies to the immediate W
side of that last bridge you cross.
Guarding the entrance to the inner chamber is the general
Tauroneo with a couple of knights alongside. If you talk to
him (there are a few units who can do this, I usually have
Ike do it), he'll join you, and man he's a behemoth.
The far NW room with chests is occupied by four swordsmen,
so send a spear user or two to deal with them before
goin on in to get the chests. Oscar or Nephenee will do
nicely, as will Titania.
After you've collected all the chests, move in on the inner
chamber and either pick off the mages and knights, or just
go Bogart style and slaughter them. Ena's attack range is 1
and she won't move, so you don't have to worry about her
rumbling out and going big bad wolf on you.
Ena herself has really high defense, so it'll be hard to do
significant damage to her. Going toe-to-toe isn't the best
option for killing her, unless you've got a healer or two
handy. Note that every turn she recovers 10 hp. Also note
that this is a place where you can earn potentially
limitless exp if you just chip away at her with ranged
attacks and let her heal back up each time. I tried doing
this for a few turns, but it got boring and I figured I
didn't need the exp that badly. However, the ranged
approach to killing her is probably the best. Have everyone
pour it on her, and whenever she gets low enough, bring in a
heavy hitter to finish her off. She has 3 elixirs that
she'll use if you don't quite do the job in a single turn.
This part will probably take you a turn or three if you
don't have a strong enough ranged game. Thunder magic helps
a lot. Expect 20+ turns on this one, unless you just go
completely banzai.
On hard, there are a crapload of troops to plow through, but
again, since the corridors are so narrow, you can easily
wade your way through the sea of madness. One thing to
watch out for is the Bishop just south of Kasatai: he is
carrying a sleep staff, so check his magic stat and find out
the maximum range of his staff (he won't move), so that you
can be sure to ride in and take him out before he puts
anyone to sleep.
Items: Tauroneo (Occult), E room-top (Stiletto),
bottom (Parity), NE room (Energy Drop), N room (Talisman),
NW room- left (parity) right (Brave Sword), S room-
left (Brave Sword), right (Master Seal)
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=====Chapter 22: Solo===== [bba]
Units: 11
Victory: Defeat Boss
Okay, first of all, this looks like a few different things.
Your initial thoughts will be along the lines of "Game over,
man! Game over!" But once you realize that all of those
priests are really low level, you might see an opportunity
for lots of easy exp. Well, let me advise against murdering
all those men of the cloth, because if you finish this map
without killing a single priest, you'll get a really nice
S-rank staff plus a hefty bonus exp...bonus at the end of
the battle. So, in other words, it's priest pushing time.
Quick note: there are 6 chests on this map, and only two
enemies drop chest keys, so you'll be short two keys.
Either bring a couple of spare keys from earlier maps, or
have a thief tag along. If you have the spare keys, bring
them, since you can only bring 11 troops into this battle.
Split your force into two units and send each one to the
chambers with the chests. Make sure you have at least one
heavy ground-based unit who can push priests going each way,
since paladins and your lighter troops won't be able to push
some of the priests. I don't like sending all 11 troops to
deal with the rooms one at a time because the rooms only
have 3 or 4 troops in them, and the space is already cramped
with the priests in the way. Also, try and take out that
enemy thief on the west side on the first turn to prevent
him from nabbing some of your loot. Once you've got the
two rooms secured, wait a turn or two, as a pair of enemies
will come out of the doors in each of those rooms. Take
them out, and then take out the other reinforcements that
come from the SW door on the map. Now you can begin
forming up to take on the middle corridor.
Either on turn 10 or when you start advancing up that middle
corridor, 2 sages and 2 feral ones will come out of the SE
door to try and flank you. I actually had Oscar sit back by
himself in the doorway and used the lemming tactic to kill
all 4 attackers. I believe he only took a single hit. Cool
beans.
Anywho, advancing up the middle corridor is a sort of
puzzle, much like the block-moving puzzles you get all the
time in the Zelda series. Your first concern should be
killing the enemies amidst all the priests, and then shoving
those priests out of the way to make it easier for you to
set up your rush on the final room. There are a couple of
niches in the side of the hallway where you can push
priests into, so do that when you can. Once you have the
hallway clear, you can lure a couple of the warriors in the
inner room out. They'll rush you and attack with their
bows, so you might consider giving Boyd a bow and letting
him do the lemming thing. Once you're ready, charge in and
take out the mages in the wings, then just pound the boss
until he drops. Cake!
On hard, there'll be a few more enemies here and there, and
the thief on the west will start inside the room, but you
should be able to get to him with an archer early enough to
take him down and get the sleep staff that he'll have.
Otherwise you'll have to get in there and block off all the
exits and have a thief steal the stuff from him, as is the
usual routine. There's a physic staff to be had here as
well. Be sure you nab that Nosferatu if you didn't get it
from the Duke back in chapter 17--it really increases Rhys's
effectiveness and makes up for his lack of speed.
Items: E chests- top (Bolganone), middle (Tomahawk),
bottom (Silver Bow), W chests- top (Spirit Dust),
middle (Nosferatu), bottom (Sleep)
A note about Ike: At this point, Ike should be about on-par
with the rest of your group levelwise. However, there's a
big battle coming up in chapter 27 that you won't be able to
win unless Ike is level 20 and he has Aether, so if you want
to win that battle, you should start giving Ike bonus exp
and letting him do some more work in battle to boost his
level up to the point where he'll be able to win in 27.
Then in chapter 29 you're going to have another battle with
the final boss of the game, and if Ike isn't level 20 there,
you're going to have a ton of problems with the boss. So
my advice is to start aiming to have Ike at level 20 by
chapter 27 or 28, depending on what you want to do in the
chapter 27 battle.
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=====Chapter 23: The Great Bridge===== [bbb]
Units: 13
Victory: Seize
Other: Haar
This battle can be quite a doozy. There are several points
all over the map that are booby trapped. If any of your
units walk over a trapped square, they'll stop and be
paralyzed for the remainder of their turn. On the next
turn, they can move out of the trap, but no other ground
unit can pass over that space, effectively making walls in
a few spots. Instead of trying to make an ASCII map of the
battlefield, I'll use a coordinate system to tell you where
each spot is located at. Look at the paragraph at the
bottom of this section for a breakdown of all that.
There are a few ballistae on this map along with a
catapault, and they can make your life very hard for you.
My favorite way to go about winning this map is using what I
like to call the steamroller technique. Basically, this
technique involves using your paladins as a sort of banzai
team that just go charging all the way down the bridge,
taking out everything in their path. Since paladins are so
frigging versatile, they'll be able to dodge plenty of
attacks, deal out healthy damage, and take a few hits as
well. If you have Mist promoted to Valkyrie, she could ride
along as a healer, but she will be taking significant damage
if she's in a ballista's range.. If you decide to do it
this way, don't worry about killing every last unit. Just
go through and take out the ballistas and whomever else gets
in your way, then run back before you overextend and get
your paladins cut off from the rest of your party, who
should be advancing slowly behind them as a sort of mop-up
operation. Flying units could be a tremendous help on this
map if it wasn't for all those ballistae. You could use a
single air unit with a full guard equipped if you wanted to
include her in your steamrolling operation, or any other
operation you happen to be performing inside the ballistae's
range. I'd suggest leaving your softies out of the
ballista's range altogether, because I've had one crit Soren
for a one-hit KO, and there's nothing more annoying than
that.
There are a few waves of enemy reinforcements that come from
behind your deployment point, so it's not a bad idea to
leave a couple of troops behind. After the first two waves,
Haar will show up in the rear with a trio of wyvern riders.
Have Jill talk to Haar and he'll join up. If you're not
using Jill much, don't worry, as Haar is plenty strong and
can take out the enemies without too much trouble. Once
you've got Haar, be wary of any ballistae that might try to
shoot him down. Have he and Jill rescue any troops you left
behind to get them back to the front quickly if they're
needed.
Once you've advanced to a certain point, a group of Crimeans
including Lucia and Bastian will show up and 5 of their
paladins will come in from behind the enemy. They usually
do a pretty good job of taking out the wyverns back there on
their own, but they won't touch Petrine once everyone else is
dead.
Petrine wields a flame lance, so you might try having a mage
take her on. She recovers 4 hp per turn, which isn't too
much to worry about. Magical weapons like the Flame Lance
are considered magic attacks, so a unit with high Res will
really have an advantage on Petrine.
Now, on hard, there are an absolute ton of soldiers,
somewhere in the 40 range. So instead of just sending a
small crew of 3-4 paladins on a crash course down the
bridge, a slower course of action might prudent here. The
same principles apply, though, so just be wary and try to
use the mountie blitzkrieg as much as possible to keep the
ballista exposure to a minimum.
Booby Trap locations:
The coordinate system works something like this: each row
(horizontal) is lettered starting with A at the top, and
each column has a number, starting with 1 on the left. The
numbered columns don't start at the edge of the map, since
the actual bridge doesn't start for a while, so I decided
to make column 1 where the bridge actually starts. As a
point of reference, use the catapault sitting behind the
two ballistae (the catapault itself, not the platform
behind it). That catapault is located at square E-1. Got
it? Okay, now, from left to right, top to bottom, the booby
traps are located in squares:
E-5, A-7, B-7, G-7, D-10, E-10, F-10, E-13, B-14, G-16,
H-21, B-23.
All in all, that's 12 traps. The ones that can really screw
you up are the ones in column 7, 10, and the E-5 one, which
is in between the two sandbags providing cover for the last
two ballistae.
Items: Boss (Flame Lance)
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=====Chapter 24: Battle Reunion===== [bbc]
Units: 11 + 7 other
Victory: Arrive 15
Other: Lucia, Bastian, Geoffrey
This is another one of those arrive in time battles, but
this one is easily done. It shouldn't take you more than
10 turns to completely wipe out the enemy, which you don't
even need to do.
But first, I should note something about the three new
members you'll be getting: Lucia, Bastian, and Geoffrey.
Lucia and Bastian will automatically join your team on turn
2, and Geoffrey will join you after the battle if he
survives. I've never seen him even get slightly threatened
by anything, though.
Of note on the battlefield are the three ballistas and the
two houses. You get skill scrolls from both houses, so you
might want to pick those up along the way. There are
pirates that come in from the far NE corner in the stream
once you get to the bridge, and I assume they will destroy
the house if you don't get there first. For the SW house,
you get a trio of pirates from the S end of the stream. The
southernmost ballista isn't necessarily a threat to you
unless you charge it, but the one in the center of the map
will fire on you quite a bit, and the northern ballista will
most likely eat away at Geoffrey's troops. Taking out the
central and northern ones wouldn't be a bad idea.
There are two ways to go about winning this map. One way
involves taking your entire force and sweeping over the
bridge to the north, then barreling through any enemies that
get between you and Geoffrey's forces. Once you get there,
you can either end the battle or play defense for a few
rounds and maybe ride out and finish off any stragglers.
If you do it this way, you can take out the northern
ballista on the way, and maybe send a man or two to get the
central ballista.
The other way to do this map is my favorite way. First,
you send about 8 of your troops north to the house, clear
out all the enemies around there, then head towards
Geoffrey's troops, taking out the ballista on the way.
Then, you take 4 or 5 of your remaining troops (Lucia is
good for this) and send them in to hit the central ballista
and then hold there in the trees, just outside of the
southern ballista's range. Once your main party gets to
Geoffrey's castle, you can send them sweeping down the hill
while at the same time your 4-5 men in the trees can come
out like a bunch of banzai samurai, and you'll tear through
anything left of the enemy. Doing the map this way tends to
be a bit faster, as you're taking out more enemies at once,
and then afterward you can just leave one person at the
castle while you have someone nab the skill scroll in the NW
house.
Items: NE house (Savior), SW house (Nihil)
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=====Chapter 25: Strange Lands===== [bbd]
Units: 12
Victory: Rout
Other: Largo
Before this battle, make sure you check out the info
conversations, as one of them will be with a berserker named
Largo whom you can hire. Enter Conan, stage right.
Aah, the great uphill battle. You probably have noticed all
of those boulders sitting uphill from you, and that's right,
they're gonna go downhill at your troops. Luckily, you can
manage them so that no one gets completely pancaked by a
whole row of them. The last time I did the battle, I forgot
to track where each boulder goes, but I do remember that all
of the boulders on the top of the hill except for maybe one
on the far left all go straight down the map. The ones on
the path will pretty much hit anyone on the path, so instead
of trying to predict the path of each boulder, just keep
your troops thinned out.
There are several things to note before going into this
battle in addition to the boulders. First off is the
terrain; all of your mounted units will be limited to 4
squares of movement over the whole map, save the platforms
on the top of the hill. If you can help it, try to bring
more footsoldiers and fliers than mounted units. The next
things to look out for are the two catapaults halfway up the
hill and the ballista at the top. The ballista has a
decievingly long range, so if you have Haar or another
flyer, be sure to check the ballista's range before you
move. Those ballistae have a nasty tendency to get big
criticals at the most inopportune times. The catapaults
don't do much damage at all on easy or normal, so I don't
really even see why you should treat them any differently.
They do have an area of effect damage type, though, which
branches out 1 square from the boulder's impact, so just try
not to bunch all of your units up. Finally, there are a few
laguz on this map, so bring along some animal control gear.
(Shame on me.)
To tackle this hill, you should first try and bait as many
of the boulders as you can. Take your time in the
beginning, because those boulders do 10 damage regardless of
everything, and that may really screw you up. Once you feel
like you've got enough boulders out of the way and you're
healed back up, begin your attack. Either split your forces
and send each troop up the two paths, or just send the
entire unit up a single path. Either way will work just
fine here. I prefer to split my troops, because a) it makes
for a faster battle resulting in more bonus exp; b) it
spreads out the exp a bit better; and c) you don't end up
bunching up on the narrow trails, which reduces the murphy
factor from boulders and catapaults. If you brought along a
flyer or two, have them go to the east side of the map and
fly up to take out the catapault operator and, if you can
manage it, the boulder flunkie too.
Most of the enemies behind the boulders will charge you
after launching their infernal snowballs, so you could
fight defensively for this battle and do just fine. Again,
whatever works for you. Watch out for the boss, as he'll
fly after whoever gets in his range, and his axe can do some
ugly damage to your low res troops. This is one guy Soren
can walk all over. Blizzard makes for an easy kill if you
have a spare one.
On hard, I recommend just sending all of your troops up the
left side of the hill. If you try and go up the right side,
your only options are to either send a lone troop to bait
the boulders or to send everyone charging up. Either way,
chances are someone's going to die on the right, so I'd just
make it easy and overwhelm the left side, then push the
boulders at the top down on the right side to soften up the
baddies before you go back down the hill.
Items: Boss (Bolt Axe)
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=====Chapter 26: Clash!===== [bbe]
Units: 19 (yes, 19)
Victory: Seize
Other: Elincia
Before the battle, Elincia will join your party. She's a
pegasus knight with healing, but she'll start at level 1 and
you have to bring her along for this next battle. Even so,
she works as a healer, just try to keep her out of combat.
This is the largest battle in the game in terms of your
units. Since Ike and Elincia are required, you're getting
to choose 17 of your men to go into this battle. You might
find yourself coming up a bit short; don't worry, I usually
do this battle with 16 or 17 troops to help spread around
the exp to the ones that need it. You should be able to use
Geoffrey, Bastian, and Lucia since you only got them 2
chapters back, and Haar and Tanith will be high enough, even
if you haven't used them at all. I'd recommend bringing a
pair of fliers into this battle if you have them, as there's
a part where they come in handy. But they're by no means
necessary.
I like to divide this battlefield into four quadrants, the
NW being 1, NE 2, SW 3, and SE 4. You deploy in quadrant
four. If you look at the enemy, you'll see that there's a
large concentration of troops in the 1st and 3rd quadrants,
so you should divert most of your fighting power towards
those areas. In the 2nd quadrant there are a few paladins
and a mage with blizzard. Note the cliff face dividing the
1st and 2nd quadrants: this is where the fliers come in
handy. Since you're bringing 19 troops, I'm going to assume
you've got at least a couple of fliers and a couple of
paladins. Send something equivalent to that towards the 2nd
quadrant with Elincia tagging along as healer. I prefer the
faster-moving units for this job, so I chose paladins.
After three or four turns, a pair of wyvern lords will ride
in from the N, and hopefully you'll be mopping up the
paladins and sage just in time to take on the wyverns.
Meanwhile, the rest of your army should be marching towards
the swordmasters, the sniper, and the group spearheaded by
two generals (maybe they were knights, I forget). Take out
all the local riff-raff, including the two laguz that will
come at you. Once quadrants 2 and 3 are clear, start easing
your troops in q. 3 towards the castle. Send any non-fliers
in q. 2 back to rejoin the main group. From here on out,
reinforcements will only come from the area surrounding the
castle, so you don't have to worry about being flanked.
Once you're ready, you can deal with the enemy atop the
plateau in any way you see fit. Again, I prefer to bait
small groups of enemies and wipe them out, but if you like
to go all gung-ho, go gung-ho. Watch out for the 3 sages
that come out of the castle, though, as they can be fairly
annoying. Also, lots of paladins come in from the east of
the castle up on the hilltop (there are at least 2 waves,
perhaps 3), so send a healthy retinue of your men to deal
with that problem if you get up there before the
reinforcements actually come.
The boss can be a mean son of a gun with his runesword
healing him every hit, so be wary about who you send in to
tear him up. I had Ike just go duke it out with him, and
after a turn or two, Ike got an aether, and when that
happens, even the toughest of men will gnash their teeth.
I still don't know if the ranged attack for runeswords and
other 1-2 range magical weapons uses res or def for damage,
so a magic user might be well-matched against the boss.
On hard, I hate this map. I just usually send my troops N
to the trees and form a two-sided perimeter while the
paladins, warriors, swordmasters, generals, and halberdiers
all converge on you. There are lots of enemies with bows,
and there's always that punk sage up north with Meteor, so
you really have to be careful. My first four tries on this
map resulted in Geoffrey dying twice, Stefan dying once, and
Rhys dying once. The real hard part about this map is that
you're going to face so many enemy troops that anyone below
the curve is going to die, so if you keep losing a unit,
simply cut him from your team. I ended up using 12 on hard,
and it actually made the battle easier since I was basically
getting rid of crutches.
Keep in mind the phalanx tactic that I've harked on about a
time or two, as it's basically all I used in this battle.
The trees everywhere give you great opportunities to form
fighting lines, and since 80% of the troops on this map will
charge you without provocation, you don't have the burden of
charging up into a gigantic throng of red circles.
One last thing on hard: starting on about turn 6, you'll see
some reinforcements come in just E of the castle. First
it'll just be 3 paladins. Then it'll be 4, then 5, then 6,
then finally 5 or 6 wyvern lords. You can either charge in
and try and end the battle before the reinforcements come
into play, or you can wait it out, get the combat exp, and
then when you're good and ready go for the boss. Watch out
for his Runesword: if you have a mage go up against him,
he'll change out to his spear allowing you to kill him much
faster. Remember, magical weapons use Mag vs. Res instead
of Str vs. Def, so sages are your best match vs. the boss.
Items: Boss (Runesword)
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=====Chapter 27: Moment of Fate===== [bbf]
Units: 11
Victory: Arrive
Before you go into this battle, let me explain a few things.
First of all, this battle is technically fought in two
parts. The first part is the part where you arrive at the
far end of the castle, and the second part is a battle
between Ike and the Black Knight with Mist assisting. You
can escape from this second part and still complete the
chapter, so if your Ike isn't quite up to par, or you
haven't been using Mist at all, don't worry. You can always
come back on your next playthrough and plan on winning this
battle. If Ike isn't at level 20, don't even think about
trying to kill the black knight. Also, it helps a lot to
have Mist promoted and carrying a Physic and a Sleep staff.
I'll get to the details at the end of this section.
But first, the battle! There are 5 doors, 7 chests, 4 door
keys, and 6 chest keys to be had on this map, so if you want
all 7 chests either bring along a thief or an extra key.
You only have to open 3 doors in this map, and besides, you
can always bash those.
Once you're deployed, there are three ways you can go. To
the left is a single thief protected by three warriors, and
to the right a pair of thieves protected by a wall of
knights. The thieves need to be killed to prevent them from
getting the chests, but of paramount importance is the thief
on the left side: he's carrying the S-rank Double Bow, which
you're gonna want to grab. You can intersect the thieves by
either riding out the N doorway and meeting them at the
door, or you can just barrel through the lines of troops
guarding them and kill them that way. If you know my
strategy preference by now, you already know that I'm going
to suggest splitting your troops three ways. You only have
to deal with a couple of laguz and a single swordsman to the
N, and then a single general to each side. In other words,
you're dealing with 3 enemies no matter which way you go.
Try to bring some armor-killing gear for the knights, and
maybe some laguz control for the middle two laguz; there are
also three more laguz on the map, so you'll find uses for
those weapons. Once you've cleared the outer area of
enemies, you have two options: either bust into the middle
room and kill the enemies there, or split your forces and
charge into the two rooms flanking the back room. Either
course of action will work, but you can skip the middle
room altogether if you just take the outer route. If you
take the middle path, you'll have a nice bottleneck from
which you can deal with everything in the back and side
rooms. You should try and kill everything here for exp,
since you're nearing the end of the game.
Note that the boss carries a Brave Lance and a Spear. If
you want that lance, leave someone 2 spaces from him so he
will attack with the spear, allowing your thief to come in
and nab the lance.
When you get here on hard, you face maybe 7 or 8 more
enemies total in this battle. There's an extra pair of
warriors near your deployment, there are a few extra laguz
here and there, and I believe an extra pair of troops in
the back central room. The real thing to watch out for is
the horde of laguz in the back right room--I think it's
something like 2 ravens or hawks and 3 cats, so be careful.
Once you have all the soldiers cleaned out, harvest those
chests and get ready for possibly the hardest battle in the
game.
Items: Left room- left (Bolganone), middle (Resolve),
right (Laguz Axe), Middle room- left (Silver Lance),
right (Physic), Right room- left (Fortify), right (Spear),
boss (Occult)
=====The Black Knight Battle===== [bbg]
So, Ike gets Ragnell, a sweet sword with a 1-2 range and a
blessing from the godess making it indestructible. Uber.
Like I said earlier, if Ike isn't at level 20, or if he
doesn't have aether, you will lose this battle. The real
key to winning is getting heals from Mist and getting
aether to activate on your first few attacks. So, having
a capped skill score will really help. If Ike is maxed out,
you'll be doing 9 damage per hit with Ragnell, and the
knight will heal 6 of that back on the beginning of his
turn. Neither foe will double up on the other, but if Ike
has a good speed score, you'll get a nice chance to dodge.
My Ike had capped speed (the number is green if a stat is
capped), and the knight had a 62% hit ratio, which isn't
bad at all.
The way you beat this guy, to put it bluntly, is through
sheer luck. Basically, you have to walk up to him on your
first turn, attack him, and pray for an aether. If you
don't get it, don't worry. Heal Ike up with Mist if he was
hit, then wait for the knight's attack. If Ike gets hit on
this turn, you'll need to heal him with Mist on your turn
and not attack with Ike. If you do, he'll die on the
knight's next attack. However, if Ike has full hp at the
start of your turn, then you can attack before getting
healed. Also, if the knight activates his Luna attack,
he'll do around 40 damage to you (I believe), which is
manageable but ugly, so watch out for that. At the end of
the knight's third turn, a couple of bishops and a
halberdier will come in out of nowhere. Yes, those bishops
will heal the knight. However, I got a single aether to
activate and dodged two attacks before this point, and
despite getting hit by the knight's luna, I killed him
before the priests got a chance to heal him. It's possible
to kill the knight before the bishops become a factor.
However, this is why you brought that sleep staff. Put one
of the bishops to sleep, and have Ike wipe out the other
one to stop them from healing the knight back up. Then
have Mist put the halberdier to sleep, and get Ike working
on the knight again. After 5 turns, though, Nasir will
step in and end the battle, so ideally, you want to win
this battle before those reinforcements come into play.
This means you have to get very lucky and either get two
aethers in a row or just dodge 2 or 3 of the knight's
attacks to allow you more attacks on your turn.
Finally, if you don't have Mist promoted or even competent
and you still want to win this battle, give Ike all the
elixirs you have before going in. Have Mist escape on the
first turn, and walk Ike up next to the knight. Basically,
you just have to sit there and drink elixirs on your turn
and pray that two of your three attacks will be aethers.
If you get an aether 25% of the time, you're looking at
pretty grim odds (4.6875% to be exact), but it's still
doable if you absolutely must defeat this colossus of black
steel.
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=====Chapter 28: Twisted Tower===== [bbh]
Units: 12
Allies: Tibarn
Victory: Seize
If you defeated the knight in the last battle, you'll get
Nasir to join you. Otherwise, you get Ena. They both have
a movement range of 5, so I don't like to use them. Since
Nasir is level 18, he'll be fine. Ena...not so much.
For this battle, you get Tibarn as an ally. Hooray! To be
honest, he can almost solo this map. The only thing
stopping him is a single bishop next to the boss with a
sleep staff.
Before you go in, try and equip everyone with at least one
weapon effective against some sort of laguz, whether it be
bird, dragon, or beast. You face all 3 of them here.
Laguzguards will be handy too if you have any to spare.
So, like I said, there are tons of laguz, and three of the
horde are dragons. Luckily, Tibarn can go toe-to-toe with a
dragon and come out without so much as a scratch thanks to
his sah-weet skill. I guess being the king of the hawks
helps too. Anyways, form up your troops and begin heading
towards the tower. If you have a flyer you'd like to send
over the trees to the tower you can do it, as I think Tibarn
usually takes that path over there, so you'll have backup.
Watch out for Heddwyn, though (the boss), as he's got
Bolting. Also of note is the fact that he carries Rexbolt,
the S-level lighting magic tome, and he drops it upon death!
Hurrah!
Be especially careful when advancing towards the end on this
map becuase you can end up facing a whole mess of enemies at
once, and those laguz are some mean animals. Keep an eye on
Tibarn, and if he starts to get too close to the sleeper
next to the boss, send him south or have him halt. Once
you've hacked and slashed your way to the tower, send
someone fast to take out that annoying sleeper, then let
Tibarn resume his slaughter. There will be a few
reinforcements throughout the battle, including a trio of
beast laguz at the tower's footsteps, so be wary of those at
all times. Other than the enemies on this map being high
level and the abundance of laguz, there's nothing too
dangerous to watch out for.
Except on hard! If you thought this battle was annoying on
easy or normal, bring something to bite down on for hard.
You face 41 troops at the start, and around 10 more will
come in as reinforcements during the battle. The really
annoying thing is the addition of the sage in the trees with
meteor coupled with the bishop with the sleep staff who has
now been moved up. If that bishop puts one of your men to
sleep at the beginning of the enemy phase, you're looking at
an ally who's gonna take an absolute ton of damage. There
are dragons, paladins, halberdiers, that sage, and several
laguz all in the general area of the bishop's sleep range,
so you'll have to be extra careful about how you go about
handling the situation. It might not be a bad idea to have
a big tank like Tauroneo wear a Laguzguard and let him take
the brunt of the damage--he's got high res, so even the sage
with meteor won't be too much to handle.
Keep in mind that the boss carries both Bolting and Rexbolt,
but since Rexbolt will drop upon his death you can steal
Bolting from him and still get the Rexbolt.
Items: Boss (Rexbolt)
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*****Endgame: Repatriation***** [bbi]
Units: 14 + 1 laguz general
Victory: Defeat Boss
Note: This battle is very different on hard, so skip down
below to the hard section for my tips on that mode.
Well, here you are. At this point, it'll help to have some
level 20 characters, and everyone needs excellent weapons.
Silver is a must here. Ike is taken care of, and characters
like Stefan, Kieran, Oscar, Rolf, and Muarim will prove to
be of immense worth in this battle (or whoever you decided
to level up; those are just my favorites). This battle is
best fought defensively. If you look at the courtyard, it's
split into two main sections, an upper stone-paved section,
and a lower garden section. Each of these sections are
divided into three more sections. In the garden section,
and here's the important part, you only have to clear the
troops from the middle and one other side. What this means
is you can skip a whole lot of fighting and save some time
and frustration by just sending your entire troop to one
side or the other. I highly suggest the right side, since
the left side has a healer, and man I hate healers. You
could, of course, split your force, but this is one battle
where I believe it to be prudent to stick together.
Deployment: Put your slowest-moving troops to the far right
side, and leave your fastest (mounted) units on the left.
This'll help you get set up faster, which means a more
controlled battle. With three generals, two dragons, other
assorted laguz and general nuisances, you're going to want
to maintain complete control over who you fight at all times
in this battle. Bring laguz weapons, and maybe something
for armor/mounted units. Mobility is important here, so
keep that in mind when choosing units.
Once the battle starts, you're going to want to move
everyone to the SE corner of the map and set up a perimeter
with your fastest units. Stefan, Ike, Volke, any paladin,
and any laguz work well for frontliners. Basically, you
want to form a 4x4 or 4x5 phalanx (remember how to do
that?), and have people like Jill, the princess, Rhys, Rolf,
etc. hanging back to do their things. Throwing spears help
a lot here. On the end of the first turn, you get the
option of calling in a laguz general to help. I suggest
getting Tibarn, because his speed and flying abilities are
best suited to this phalanx-like formation I've got going.
You can't go wrong with any of them, to be honest, so if you
want to try someone else, go for it.
As you're getting your defenses set up, you'll notice that
there are several enemies charging your location, and some
of them are on the other side of the map. This is a good
thing: it'll allow you to pick off a few units without
having to expose yourself to the rest of the enemy. So, be
patient, let them come to you, and when they're in range,
hit them with whatever you have. The mountie blitzkrieg
should see a lot of use here. Lemming tactics are a no-no.
So, once you've fought off the first wave or two of regular
soldiers, you'll notice that those dragons are getting
close, and those dragons are mean. Have your laguz general
take care of them: from my experience, Tibarn can dispatch
them with ease, being the superhawkman that he is. Thunder
magic is of course another good option. Anyways, when the
dragons are all gone to dragon heaven, begin your advance
up the pathway. I usually move 5 spaces at a time to
ensure everyone can keep up while at the same time limiting
the enemies I draw out. But whatever. Once you make it to
the stairs, you'll want to do a little shift and have your
left outer perimeter move up and leave the front perimeter
in the same spot, while everyone else ducks for cover inside
the phalanx. If you're confused as to what I'm talking
about here, I'm just explaining that your phalanx needs to
shift so that it's facing to the west (left) side of the map
to deal with the foes in that direction. Watch out for the
bow knights on top of the stone platform next to you, as
they can shoot down and really mess up anyone who's caught
there. It isn't a bad idea to send Tanith or Jill up after
them. Plus, by doing that you'll lure a few of the paladins
off of Ashnard's platform. One other thing to look out for
is the bishop in the middle area with the sleep rod. Either
bring along a staff to cure it or just ride out and take him
down. Once you've taken care of the local troops, you'll
want to start luring all the rest of the troops on the stone
area towards you. So, use either your laguz general or your
mounties to run out, moon the enemy, then run back to your
phalanx. You could just take a good force of riders and mow
down everyone, but I like to just pick them off; it avoids
single units getting surrounded and potentially killed. As
you're doing this, don't worry about Ashnard coming out and
attacking you; he only attacks people that come within 2
spaces of him. So buzzing the tower is okay here.
(Negative Ghost Rider, the pattern is full.) Once all the
units on the stone area are destroyed, it's time for
Ashnard.
I really really hope you gave Ike aether with one of the
four occults you collected up to this point. If you did
this and Ike has more than 20 skill, then your battle with
Ashnard will go much faster, and can end on a much cooler
note. All you need for Ashnard is Ike and a healer or two
with physic staves. [This battle strategy is pretty much
identical to the one used to beat the black knight, so go
there if you don't understand this part.] For your first
turn, have Ike walk right up to Ashnard and smack him with
Ragnell. Ashnard will counter and do a crapload of damage,
which you're gonna want to heal with one of your healers.
Having 2 healers with Physic staves speeds up this part a
lot, but it's not necessary. Anyways, on the next turn,
Ashnard will recover 6 hp. Ike should be doing about 9
damage per strike, so that means you'll do 3 damage after
Ashnard's turn. An aether, though, will do around 20 or so
damage to Ashnard, so that's why we want aether. After
Ashnard smacks Ike on his turn, have your healer patch up
Ike again. If you only have one healer, just have Ike sit
there: DON'T ATTACK. If you have two healers, have Ike
attack, then have your other healer stitch Ike up. For one
healer, you'll just repeat the heal/wait method until
Ashnard goes down, either through repeated 3 damage ticks or
an aether. With two healers, you can heal, attack, then
reheal each turn and more than double the speed of this last
part. Again, you don't have to worry about Ashnard
sauntering over to your healers and laying the smack down on
them, because he only attacks targets within his immediate
range. So, if you don't have two physic staves, but you
have a mounted healer, you can do a heal-and-run then let
your other healer just sit back and heal.
If you didn't give Ike Aether (why oh why?!), there's still
a few things you can do to win here. One way is by using
Tibarn to damage Ashnard and having one of your healers
heal Tibarn. Ike's speed cap isn't high enough to get him
to where he can double Ashnard, so that's out of the
question.
===Hard Version=== [bbj]
On hard, you're facing off against about the same amount of
troops, but there are a few key differences that made me
decide to alter my strategy a bit.
Basically the big difference is that everyone will charge
you on this map, including Ashnard. So instead of using a
phalanx formation, I found it easiest to simply form up my
troops in a triangle at the bottom of the map (strong on
outside, mages/archers/thieves on inside). The idea here
is to have your paladins use the mountie blitzkrieg (if you
have the Knight Ring, whomever is using it will help a lot)
and then when enemies get to your line, have your people in
the back take them out. It's really important that
everyone is strong, because one weak point can mean utter
death and destruction. Once you've killed the two waves of
paladins, the knights and halberdiers, the dragons, and
lastly the trio of swordmasters, start moving your party to
either bottom corner of the map. One thing I found to be
really helpful when lots of people were hurt was the Fortify
staff. It heals everyone within a radius of 1 to half the
user's Mag score for 10 + the user's Mag, and on top of that
it gives the user around 50 exp PER USE. Hooray! I guess
the Ashera Staff would work too, but you only get 3 uses of
that, whereas the Fortify comes with 8 and isn't an S-rank
staff.
After 8 or 10 turns Ashnard will taunt you and then charge.
Behind him will come a quartet of paladins along with a
bishop. The paladins will also join Ashnard in a charge.
Now, the idea to taking on Ashnard is much the same as it
was in the other difficulties, except this time you have a
few choices as to where to fight. If you'll notice, there
are a lot of thickets around the corner area, and thickets
provide +10 Avo to anyone in them. The important thing
here is that Ike's Hit should be high enough that he'll hit
Ashnard 95% of the time or more, while Ashnard will take
the full 10% penalty to his hit % (I think he had around
64% for me). He still recovers 6 hp per turn, but if you
have 2 healers you can follow the same strategy as above--
just try and keep your healers as far away from Ashnard as
possible. He never went chasing after anyone else on my
game, but I had Ike with Provoke, so who knows if he will
in another situation. Use caution.
Once you slay Ashnard, he decides to take the medallion
and go all berserker on you. His Str will get boosted up
to 40 and he will now recover 8 hp per turn. Don't panic.
He's very beatable. The only thing that's changed is the
amount of damage he's gonna do to Ike per blow and it may
take a few turns longer to kill him. You basically have to
have Aether for this battle, as without it you're gonna be
toast. Ike should still be doing 9 dmg per hit, so an
Aether will end up taking off close to 40 with both blows
combined. In other words: 2 Aethers is pretty much game,
set, and match. If you can't beat Ashnard here because Ike
got screwed over by random stat growth or because he's not
level 20, I don't know what to say except to start a new
game and focus on getting Ike to level 20 before he faces
off against Ashnard. (I warned you about this back in
chapter 22, so hopefully you're okay.) During your fight
with Uber Ashnard, those paladins will probably go for Ike,
but you don't have to worry. Ike's Avo should be sky-high
here, and with Ragnell he'll be killing them in 2-3 blows,
so they're just white noise. Remember, heal if Ike needs
it, and if you've got a spare healer, you can attack once
on your phase and then counterattack once during the enemy
phase, vis a vis speeding up this whole debacle. (I've
been wanting to say 'vis a vis' this whole guide.)
Well, that's it. Congratulations, you've defeated Mad King
Ashnard and put an end to the strife! Hooray! After
beating the final chapter, save your file (it'll say
Epilogue), and you can go to the Extras menu from the main
menu, select the Trial Map option and load your Epilogue
file to play Trial Maps with your ending party, complete
with your uber laguz warrior! Fun times.
=----------------------------------------------------------=
============================================================
X Characters [caa] X
============================================================
In this section, I'm going to list every character and then
follow up with a description of the unit's class, when and
how you can recruit them, which weapons they do/can use, and
any comments I have to make on each character. I haven't
used every single character as of yet, but I'm working on
it. A (P) signifies a weapon a character gains usage in
after promotion.
When I evaluate characters, I look at three seperate traits:
1) Ability to deal/heal damage
2) Ability to prevent/take damage
3) Ability to bring something unique to the group
So, if you disagree with one of my evaluations, it's
probably because of reason 3. A unit can be good in #1 and
#2, but if they aren't excelling in #3, I'll probably list
them as simply mediocre, since they're actually nothing
unique. Someone like Rhys is great because he's the only
healer you get early in the game. Same with Rolf, Boyd,
Volke, etc. So, I'm not gonna tell you which units I like
and which units I don't like per se, I'll just tell you how
each individual unit stacks up to the rest of the
competition, so you can use that evaluation hopefully to
determine what attributes each character has, who has what
you're looking for, etc. etc. Also, when I'm evaluating
a unit's stats, I'm going to use the fixed growth numbers as
my standard.
Finally, the chapter that I list units as joining on will
either tell the battle in which they can be recruited or,
if they joined automatically, the first battle in which
you can use them.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Ike=== [cab]
Class: Ranger/Lord (auto promote at end of ch. 17)
Joins: Prologue, automatic
Weapons: Sword
Other notes: Ike's required in every battle and pretty much
a powerhouse. You can almost max out his hp, he has great
speed, decent defense (which is augmented by the Ragnell),
good strength...he's got it all. If anything, he's
basically a swordmaster with better stats all around. I've
gotten his hp up to 55 in past playthroughs, so it's like
getting the strengths of almost every unit in the game, save
mages, all in one character. Just don't hog the exp too
much.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Titania=== [cac]
Class: Paladin
Joins: Chapter 1, automatic
Weapons: Axe, Lance
Other notes: Titania is a good unit to have for the opening
half of the game, as she'll carry quite a load when you need
her to. Just don't overuse her. In the long run, I think
she turns out to be just a mediocre character, but since she
starts promoted, you won't have to do as much work to get
her to 20.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Oscar=== [cad]
Class: Lance Knight/Paladin
Joins: Chapter 1, automatic
Weapons: Lance, Axe/Sword/Bow (P)
Other notes: Oscar is probably my favorite mounted unit
in the game. He comes with a lance, so he'll be skilled
in close combat by the end of the game, but when he
promotes you can get him a bow, which will add a whole lot
of depth to his ability. He also turns out with awesome
stats. In short, he's one of the best all-around units in
the game, next to Ike.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Boyd=== [cae]
Class: Fighter/Warrior
Joins: Chapter 1, automatic
Weapons: Axe, Bow (P)
Other notes: Boyd is Oscar's brother. He has a ton of hp,
a ton of strength, and can use bows upon promotion. In
short, he has the potential to be your hardest hitter in
your group. Even early in the game you can see his
penchant for getting one-hit kills with his axe. Give him
a killer axe and a tomahawk and be awed. Also, Tempest
really helps him a lot and gives him that extra edge he
needs with axes from time to time.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Rhys=== [caf]
Class: Priest/Bishop
Joins: Chapter 2, automatic
Weapons: Staff, Light Magic (P)
Other notes: Rhys is the first healer you get in the game
and he's the only unit you get able to use light magic. I
loved using Rhys on my first playthrough. Once I got him
the Nosferatu book, I never had to worry about letting a
single enemy get thru my defenses, because he would do
major damage and heal himself at the same time. The self-
healing makes him a great candidate for a frontline healer,
but I wouldn't say that he's necessarily the best one. He
is, though, a good offensive threat once he's promoted.
Just watch out for AS penalties from his low Str.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Shinon=== [cag]
Class: Sniper
Joins: Chapter 3, automatic/Chapter 18 (have Rolf talk to
him then have Ike kill him)
Weapons: Bow
Other notes: I used Shinon on my second playthrough
alongside Rolf, and I never really liked Shinon. His stats
were always inferior to Rolf's, he's arrogant, and no matter
how hard I tried, he could never pick up the slack I wanted
him to. So, I ended up cutting him from my team. He's
certainly usable if you need a good ranged attacker, but I
would recommend building up Rolf instead of waiting until
chapter 18 to get Shinon.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Gatrie=== [cah]
Class: Knight/General
Joins: Chapter 3, automatic/Chapter 13 (recruit Astrid, then
have her talk to Gatrie)
Weapons: Lance, Sword (P)
Other notes: I've never used Gatrie, actually. On my first
playthrough, after losing Gatrie in chapter 8, I replaced
him with Brom in chapter 10, and once I got Gatrie back,
Brom was already a bit higher and better statwise than
Gatrie. Then later in the game I got Tauroneo, and, well...
I would venture a guess that he'd be a solid frontliner,
given his performance in the early part of the game, but be
wary of magic, because Brom and Gatrie both have much lower
Res than Tauroneo. I'd use Tauroneo over him in the end,
but if you need a good knight and you don't want to spend the
effort on Brom, Gatrie's your man.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Soren=== [cai]
Class: Mage/Sage
Joins: Chapter 4, automatic
Weapons: Fire, Wind, Thunder Magic, Staff/Knife (P)
Other notes: Soren died in chapter 4 of my first playthrough,
and I never cared since he was so weak. Then, on my second
time, I kept him safe, and voila, I had a great magic user.
I've seen tons of arguments on the GameFAQs boards about who
makes the best magic user in the game, but I will say that
Soren comes with Adept, which can really pull you out of a
jam. Don't rely on it to pull you out, though. I loved
Soren because he could use staves after promotion, meaning
I had one less healer to protect. He doesn't ever have much
strength, so you can't rely on him to use all sorts of magic,
but if you forge him a custom tome or three, he'll be fine.
I loved using Soren, as he gives you an edge over knights and
generals in various parts in the game where you really need
it.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Mia=== [caj]
Class: Myrmidon/Swordmaster
Joins: Chapter 7 (talk to her with Ike)
Weapons: Sword
Other notes: I've tried using Mia on all three modes, and
every time I ditch her because of her lack of hp. I hear
people say that she's great and all, but if she gets hit
twice, that's about it for her. Maybe I'm not giving her
enough time, but, on hard mode especially, you are going to
get hit whether you like it or not. She's probably solid
once you get her speed to a point where enemy's hit % is
down below the 50 mark regardless, but even then you're
looking at a unit that shouldn't engage more than 2 enemies
at once. She does have one big saving grace though: she
comes with Vantage. Give her Wrath, and then all of her
low HP problems are basically solved. If you really want to
be sadistic, give her a Killing Edge to go with Wrath, but
make sure to wear protective eyewear.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Ilyana=== [cak]
Class: Mage/Sage
Joins: Chapter 8 (talk to her with Ike)
Weapons: Fire, Wind, Thunder Magic, Staff/Knife (P)
Other notes: (Never used.) She starts off a few levels
behind your party, which can be a pain to make up especially
in hard mode, but I don't see any reason not to use her if
Soren dies or if you just want another mage.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Mist=== [cal]
Class: Cleric/Valkyrie
Joins: Chapter 9, automatic
Weapons: Staff, Sword (P)
Other notes: Well, on my second playthrough, I worked Mist
up quite a bit for the chapter 27 battle (which I won thanks
to her). First of all, she works as a healer extremely well
after promotion due to her movement capabilities. However,
she has no offense at all, even if you forge her a sword and
try to build her up--it just isn't worth it to try and give
her an offensive game. Overall, I like Rhys better due to
his ability to use light magic after promotion, and since
his magic stat is already high, he'll be a good viable
offensive threat whenever you don't need him for healing.
So, compared to Rhys she's fairly mediocre, but she works
nonetheless as a healer.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Rolf=== [cam]
Class: Archer/Sniper
Joins: Chapter 9, automatic
Weapons: Bow
Other notes: Whoo boy, this kid is a beast. He starts at
level 1, but if you can find the bonus exp or 2-3 hp kills
to get him on par with the rest of your party, you will have
one of the biggest one-hit threats in the game. His speed
is excellent, he has great str, and since his speed is great
his defense and hp don't have to be as high as other units'.
You won't be using him as a frontliner, but he's the only
guy between chapters 9 and 18 that can use a longbow, so I
always end up finding uses for him. His Occult skill is
pretty cool, but since he's usually killing units in 1-2
hits anyways, there's no need to put them to sleep. In
other words, an occult skill is a moot point for him. Give
him something like vantage or adept and he will transform
into a sort of beast that is typically described in the
myths of old, ancient cultures.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Marcia=== [can]
Class: Pegasus Knight/Falcon Knight
Joins: Chapter 9, (talk to Ike if he talked to her in ch. 3)
Weapons: Lance, Sword
Other notes: I've tried to use her on all 3 playthroughs,
but since she comes at such a low level at the same time as
Rolf, it's between her and Rolf for bonus exp and mooch
kills, and Rolf is just a better candidate every single
time. However, she is the first flying unit you get, and
that's a plus. I find, though, that flying units' pluses
are usually outweighed by their minuses on the battlefield,
so I never use them much, save for Haar and Tanith perhaps.
Not a bad choice if you want a good fast javelin thrower,
though.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Mordecai=== [cao]
Class: Beast laguz
Joins: Chapter 10 (if survived chapter 9)
Weapons: Claw
Other notes: Aah, the first half of your pair of laguz. I
love laguz. They may have a big downside in their
transformation and level mechanics, but the big big upside
is that when they're transformed on the battlefield, not much
can stop them. The thing is, you have to treat these guys
like they're promoted when they come in, since they only have
20 levels ahead of them tops. That's bad because they get a
penalty to exp gain early on, but you can start making it up
around chapter 17. Also, once you get the Demi Band from
Muarim, Mordecai is a great laguz to put it on. Of the
first pair you get, Mordecai is my favorite due to his higher
str and late transformation time. The late transformation is
handy because it's usually later in a battle that I need a
boost, and then all of a sudden I have this giant beast
ripping everyone to shreds. It's kinda nice. If you're
going to give him the Demi Band, though, expect him to suck
because his speed will get lowered to a point where he won't
double on anyone.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Lethe=== [cap]
Class: Cat laguz (essentially a beast)
Joins: Chapter 10 (if survived chapter 9)
Weapons: Claw
Other notes: Lethe is the female of the pair of laguz you
get after chapter 9, and she's pretty much on the same level
as Mordecai, but she has her strengths switched around a
bit. First of all, she's an early transformer, which gives
you a good early hard hitter, plus she's faster, increasing
her ability to double enemies and avoid attacks. She
suffers from the usual things that females suffer from: low
hp, low str, etc., but all females also get better speed to
make up for that. Neither Lethe or Mordecai are better
than the other, so choosing between these two should depend
upon your party's setup and your particular tastes. Speed
is typically king in this game, but Mordecai is just so much
stronger that he usually does 2x damage than Lethe in a
single attack, so when Mordecai doubles someone, look out.
Lethe...not so much.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Volke=== [caq]
Class: Thief/Assassin (chapter 19)
Joins: Chapter 10 (your choice)
Weapons: Knife
Other notes: Now, looking at Volke's stats and the fact
that he only gets to use a knife, you might think that he's
only good for his thief abilities. You'd be wrong. First
of all, he gets one of the best speed stats in the game (if
not THE best), great strength, and a totally sweet occult
skill with a high skill stat to go with it. And THEN you
get all of his thief skills on top of that. Lethality, his
occult skill, is a one-hit KO when it activates. He has a
naturally high crit rate with his knives, and stilettos get
a bonus vs. armor, so you can use him as a great knight
killer. Basically, I'd put him in the same category as
swordmasters, except with a little more penchant for the
one-hit kill and a little less power on the regular side of
combat. I love Volke, and I try to use him all the time.
The only downside is he promotes after chapter 19, so he'll
fall behind the rest of your units for a few levels, but it
isn't too hard to catch him back up considering his level
of awesomeness. Like a ninja.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Kieran=== [car]
Class: Axe Knight/Paladin
Joins: Chapter 10 (talk to with Oscar)
Weapons: Axe, Sword/Lance/Bow (P)
Other notes: Kieran is just plain awesome too. He comes at
level 12, so he won't need much work to catch up, if he even
needs any, and he's got good all-around stats. Compared to
Oscar, he's got a bit more str and def, but a bit less hp,
and since he uses axes he'll miss more often, but he can do
some big big damage. I always use him. His gamble skill
isn't all that useful IMO, but if you give him, say, Wrath
and Resolve...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Brom=== [cas]
Class: Knight/General
Joins: Chapter 10 (talk to with Ike)
Weapons: Lance, Sword (P)
Other notes: I actually used Brom on my first time through,
and he turned out to be pretty well off. I did notice that
he tended to fall behind everyone else a bit, due to his
limited movement limiting the kills he can get, but he's a
good alternative to Gatrie due to his higher speed and such.
You get Brom before Gatrie, so you can have time to build
him up if you wish, but in the end he's still overshadowed
by Tauroneo. He's good if you want to use him up until
that point, though.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Nephenee=== [cat]
Class: Soldier/Halberdier
Joins: Chapter 10 (talk to with Ike)
Weapons: Lance
Other notes: In between the knights and the swordmasters
lies the soldier. I love this class, and you get Nephenee
early enough to mold her into a veritable blue bringer of
death. Now, being female, she'll be lacking in the hp
department, but her awesome speed will more than make up for
that. The great thing about Nephenee is that you can use
her for pretty much anything. She's got at least mediocre
stats in every category, so she has no real glaring weakness
like a knight's low res or a swordmaster's low hp. Plus,
the only other halberdier you get is Devdan, and he doesn't
show up until chapter 16, and anyways Nephenee is better
than Devdan in most every category. There's no reason not
to use her if you're looking for a good versatile unit.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Zihark=== [cau]
Class: Myrmidon/Swordmaster
Joins: Chapter 11 (talk to with a laguz)
Weapons: Sword
Other notes: After using Zihark all throughout my hard mode
playthrough, I'm of the opinion that he's one of the top 3
units in the game, only inched out by Ike because Ike gets
Aether. Zihark will have great speed, great skill, good
luck, and enough strength to take on just about anything.
More than a few times he'd have Avo numbers higher than the
enemy's Hit, and it's always fun to see a 0 in the enemy's
Hit %. Give him a Killing Edge (he comes with one!) and he
is pretty much unstoppable, due to coming with Adept. I
like to give him Vantage as a second skill, but Resolve and
Wrath would also be totally awesome.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Jill=== [cav]
Class: Wyvern Rider/Wyvern Lord
Joins: Chapter 12 (talk to with Ike)
Weapons: Lance, Axe (P)
Other notes: Jill is the first really good flying unit you
get in the game. Marcia comes before her, but Jill is a bit
more durable and comes 5 levels higher than Marcia. She has
decent stats all around, and is basically good for anything
as long as you keep her away from wind mages and archers.
She's nothing too special, though, as you get units like
Tanith and Janaff and Haar later on, all of whom will likely
outshadow Jill in some department or another. If you can
get her promoted and leveled way up, expect a very solid
unit, though.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Sothe=== [caw]
Class: Thief
Joins: Chapter 12 (info conversation, your choice)
Weapons: Knife
Other notes: I've never used Sothe. However, I can venture
a guess as to how he works. First of all, he never
promotes, so you might think that he'll end up sucking in
the long run. He has a skill named Blossom which basically
makes a trade-off with a promotion, though. He gets less
exp, but when he levels, he gets way better stat growth
which makes up for having 20 less levels. You get him quite
late at level 1, so he can probably be a pain to train, but
he's a thief, and it sounds like he can have some absolutely
killer stats, so give him a try if you're intrigued.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Astrid=== [cax]
Class: Bow Knight/Paladin
Joins: Chapter 13 (talk to her with Ike)
Weapons: Bow, Sword/Lance/Axe (P)
Other notes: Astrid comes at level 1, but she has the
Paragon skill, which doubles all of her exp gain (bonus or
otherwise). So, at first you'll have to whittle enemies
down to 3 or 4 hp for her to finish them, but you're looking
at almost a level per kill, so by chapter 17 you could have
her promoted (which I usually do). Astrid, in short, is
awesome. She has all the traditional paladin traits,
modified for being female, except that her speed growth is
just freaking insane. I had her at level 16 with 20 speed
in fixed mode, which was on par with my swordmasters. All
in all, you'll find that she might lack a bit in the melee
combat department, but she easily makes up for that with
her skill with the bow. Expect her to be one of the first
units you have to hit 20/20 if you use her.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Makalov=== [cay]
Class: Sword Knight/Paladin
Joins: Chapter 14 (talk to him with Marcia)
Weapons: Sword, Lance/Axe/Bow (P)
Other notes: Why would you ever want to use this guy?
Unless you were trying to make a party with all of the
paladins in the game, you should run from this guy, because
I think he's on LSD. But seriously, I've never used him,
and like I said above, I never really had a reason to use
him because at that point in the game I had Oscar, Kieran,
Astrid, and maybe Titania, so I never had a need for another
strong mounted unit. I believe he comes at a fairly low
level, so training him would be an issue, but I've never
had a good look at his stats, so I can't go much further
than that.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Stefan=== [caz]
Class: Swordmaster
Joins: Chapter 15 (see FAQ for exact info)
Weapons: Sword
Other notes: Well, first of all, big points for style.
More importantly, bigger points for coming with an S-rank
sword. Stefan would be the best swordmaster in the game if
it wasn't for one little simple thing: he has horrible luck.
Seriously, it'll probably stay in the single digits for the
entire game, and on hard mode that's a big big problem.
When a single critical can mean death, you always want to
have units with high luck so you can avoid crits as much as
possible, and Stefan just tends to get criticaled a whole
lot, even though his speed is ungodly (I blame Mr. Murphy).
To be honest, I didn't use him on hard. Zihark was better.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Tormod=== [cba]
Class: Mage/Sage
Joins: Chapter 16, automatic
Weapons: Fire, Lighting, Wind magic, Staff/Knife (P)
Other notes: Tormod is another unit that I haven't used yet,
but a quick look at his skills will show you that he comes
with Celerity, which gives him great movement capabilities,
so right there you have a good reason to use him as a mage.
But the big downside is that he comes at such a low level:
he's going to take a lot of work. I'm not sure about his
stat growth. I'd probably stick with Calill as a second
mage.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Muarim=== [cbb]
Class: Beast laguz
Joins: Chapter 16, automatic
Weapons: Claw
Other notes: Muarim, on the other hand, comes at level 9,
which is basically like a level 9 promoted unit. So right
off the bat, he's viable for all kinds of combat. He comes
equipped with the demi band which keeps him in beast form at
the cost of lowering a few of his stats, but it's a fair
tradeoff to get around the lowered exp numbers laguz suffer
from. Statwise, Muarim is somewhere in between Mordecai and
Lethe. I usually prefer Mordecai, but on my first time
through the game, I ended up using Muarim simply because
his speed can drop a bit (from the demi band) and he can still
double up on enemies. Mordecai will lose the ability to
double most units if you give him the demi band, so Muarim is
better in that respect. I like him. If you're going to give
anyone the Demi Band, it should be either him or one of the
hawk laguz.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Devdan=== [cbc]
Class: Halberdier
Joins: Chapter 16 (talk to with Soren)
Weapons: Spear
Other notes: Oh dearie me. Well, you get Devdan already
promoted, but his stats don't look all that great. He's
rather slow, and that's a very bad thing to be in this game.
As such, I never use him much, but I have tried him after
getting him, but to no avail. Even a few levels lower,
Nephenee outperformed him in just general usefulness and
damage, what with her overkilled speed and all. Devdan's
probably good enough to provide you with a solid ground
spearman if you're not using Nephenee, but I'd stay away
from him if I could.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Reyson=== [cbd]
Class: Heron laguz (bird)
Joins: Chapter 18, automatic
Weapons: None (gasp!)
Other notes: Reyson is the most unique unit in the game,
full stop. He is probably the best support unit that you'll
stumble across. First of all, he heals any adjacent units
at the beginning of his turn, and his chant can give a unit
a second turn. If he's in laguz form...his chant effects
all adjacent units, potentially giving 4 of your troops
another turn. Holy crap. I've never actually used Reyson,
though. I hate having to protect softies, and Reyson is
probably the king softie. He starts at level 2, has
absymal hp, and just not much by the way of stats. It's his
skills that make him extremely useful. I'd say he's the
most difficult character to implement well in this entire
game. So, have at it, and if you succeed, you'll have a
great great unit. It just won't be easy getting there.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Janaff=== [cbe]
Class: Hawk laguz (bird)
Joins: Chapter 18, automatic
Weapons: Beak
Other notes: Janaff is called the eyes of the hawk king,
and he has a skill that increases his hit %. He has high
speed, decent attack power, and is overall a very viable unit
for any kind of combat. I've used him a bit, but laguz in
general don't get much use by me unless they have a Demi Band
or the Laguz Band. That's not to say that the hawks are bad,
it's just a bit tougher to use them, since they only work in
certain occasions. His partner is Ulki...
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Ulki=== [cbf]
Class: Hawk laguz (bird)
Joins: Chapter 18, automatic
Weapons: Beak
Other nots: ...and Ulki is to Janaff as Mordecai is to
Lethe. Actually, he doesn't quite have as much hp, due to
being a flying unit, but his str and speed are great, plus
his skill gives him an uber dodge %, so I'd prefer him over
Janaff since he'll be dodging more attacks, which means
less time spent healing, which means another attacker.
Both Janaff and Ulki come at decent levels, so it won't be a
problem to match them with the party.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Tanith=== [cbg]
Class: Falcon Knight
Joins: Chapter 18, automatic
Weapons: Sword, Spear
Other notes: Tanith, when you first get her, is great. She
has good speed, cool weapons, but suffers from the usual
female symptoms. I tried using her on trial maps after
getting her to 20, and I found that she got kicked around a
ton because of her low hp count. In other words, she'd be
good if she just had a bit more hp or a bit more defense,
because her speed isn't up to the point it needs to be to
prevent the big damage. However, she does come at level 10
promoted, and she is strong during most of the end half of
the game, so she's a good unit to have along. Heck, you can
even have her sit on the bench until chapter 26 and she'll
be effective. With her boosted mag score, she's a good
candidate for the flame lance you get off of Petrine, plus
she comes with a sonic sword, so in that respect she is
pretty unique. One last thing: her skill, Reinforce, is the
most unique skill in the game. You can use it twice a
battle to bring in a level 1 falcon knight and two level 10
pegasus knights. They are classified as allies, so Ike will
have to direct them to get them to do anything. These guys
are great for a decoy (chapter 19?), great for an extra
boost at a hard part, great for going kamikaze against
stronger enemies, etc. etc. You lose nothing if they die,
and if they get kills, the exp gain goes to your bonus pool.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Calill=== [cbh]
Class: Sage
Joins: Chapter 20 (info conversation, your choice)
Weapons: Fire, Thunder, Wind magic, Knife
Other notes: If she came with staff proficiency, she'd be
awesome. But no, she uses a knife. Alas. Well, anyways,
she does come with a 'B' rank in every magic, so she's very
handy to fill in any spot you might have open. She also
has good stats, so you won't find her lacking on the field.
Compared to Soren, I'd say she's inferior just because she
can't use staves, and staves can be oh-so-important in this
game--I think most people underestimate the value of some
of the various staves, like Sleep and Silence. But anyways,
she's a great sage regardless, and since she can use up to
a B rank in any magic, she's instantly more versatile than
any other sages you'll get. I love using her. If you
haven't been using Ilyana, then Calill's thunder magics will
help you immensely in those last 2 chapters where you have
to go dragon slaying. (Plus thunder magic is the best!)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Tauroneo=== [cbi]
Class: General
Joins: Chapter 21 (talk to with Ike, Mist, Tormod, Soren,
or Sothe)
Weapons: Lance, Sword
Other notes: Basically, Tauroneo is THE general. He has
great stats all around, plus he has a good res score, which
makes him the only knight in the game that can stand up to
magic. The only thing is that his class is a bit slow, but
you can usually make up for that by just placing him on the
outside of your deployment grid. He won't double many
people, but as far as tanks go, he's about as good as they
get. He comes at a great level too. My only worry about
him is his speed, and on hard mode he came very close to
dying several times and got saved only by Resolve. Just
don't make him a huge target.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Ranulf=== [cbj]
Class: Cat laguz (beast)
Joins: Chapter 23, automatic
Weapons: Claw
Other notes: I'd say that Ranulf is probably the best
fighting laguz you get in the game, save for the big three
in the end. He's got hp, speed, defense...everything that
the laguz have, just rounded out to a point that he's good
at everything except killing fire-wielding mages. He's
got a middling transformation, which I usually prefer over
an early one and a late one, so all in all he's awesome.
If you like using laguz, this is your man.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Haar=== [cbk]
Class: Wyvern Lord
Joins: Chapter 23 (talk to with Jill)
Weapons: Axe, Lance
Other notes: AAAAARRRRR MATEY! I love Haar. He's pretty
much just a beefier version of Jill. He comes with a brave
axe, which is totally sweet, and he wears an eyepatch. I'll
repeat that. He rides a wyvern and wears an eyepatch.
Convinced? Use him, because he's a great unit and can
really pull you out of jams later in the game with his
mobility.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Geoffrey=== [cbl]
Class: Paladin
Joins: Chapter 25, automatic (if he survives 24)
Weapons: Lance, Bow
Other notes: Geoffrey is the second unit in the game to get
the Paragon skill, so he's useful. He also comes with a
brave lance, so there are plenty of places where you can use
his extra power. If only he could have Adept...anyways, I
love using Geoffrey, because I love paladins, and because
he's a good solid unit. Statwise, he's somewhere around
Oscar and Astrid, but not quite as strong as Kieran. With
paragon, though, there's a good chance he'll hit 20 before
the end, even though you're getting him so close to the
last chapter. You'll probably at least find use for him in
chapter 26. The only problem is that on hard, he starts out
behind the curve statwise and will probably end up dying if
you use him like any other paladin. He's always my 4th
choice of paladin, behind Oscar, Astrid, and Kieran.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Lucia=== [cbm]
Class: Swordmaster
Joins: Chapter 24, automatic
Weapons: Sword
Other notes: Aaah, Lucia looks so cool. Sadly, though,
she's one of the not-so-good swordmasters. The upside to
that, though, is that all swordmasters are great, so really
as a standalone unit, she's solid with her excellent speed.
It's just that she comes so late, and you could have 3 other
swordmasters in your party at this point, and Ike is
basically another swordmaster with better stats all around,
so there's really nothing all that unique about Lucia. But
I'd still say she's cool, and you'll find uses for her in
chapters 24 and 26 for sure. Oh, and also, a team of 4
swordmasters, 2 male and 2 female, is just plain awesome to
have.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Bastian=== [cbo]
Class: Sage
Joins: Chapter 24, automatic
Weapons: Fire, Thunder, Wind magic, Knife
Other notes: Why does this guy look French? Eh, anyways,
I never liked Bastian. He doesn't really have any great
strengths, especially when compared to Soren's potential
beatdown-o-rama he gets with Adept. I don't see any reason
to use Bastian unless you just want to, or if you're trying
an offense that involves all the sages you get in the game.
He comes at a fairly decent level, so catching him up won't
be bad at all.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Largo=== [cbp]
Class: Berserker
Joins: Chapter 25 (info conversation, your choice)
Weapons: Axe
Other notes: Basically, Conan the Barbarian found his way
into this game. Largo's the only berserker you get in the
game, but alas, he comes a bit short on levels. I compare
him to Boyd most of the time. Basically, Largo is Boyd
without the bow, without Tempest, and with lower stats. I
honestly don't like him on paper, but I guess you could find
a use for him in battle. A paladin would seem like a better
choice though (Geoffrey or Kieran?).
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Elincia=== [cbq]
Class: Princess Crimea (Think Falcon Knight)
Joins: Chapter 26, automatic
Weapons: Sword, Staff
Other notes: The big plus with Elincia is that she's your
only flying healer. Other than that, there's nothing
special about her at all. Her sword, Amiti, is pretty cool,
but she doesn't have the str to use it effectively. I have
used her before in the final battle, but Rhys or Soren do
just as good of a job, plus they have better offensive
abilities...but it's your call. She is fragile, like the
other falcon knights, so be careful.
On a related note, why aren't there any male falcon knights,
but there is a female wyvern rider? I WANT GENDER EQUALITY!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Ena=== [cbr]
Class: Dragon laguz
Joins: Chapter 28 (if Black Knight isn't defeated)
Weapons: Breath
Other notes: Ugh, I hate using dragons. They have no
movement, their attack power doesn't make up for their
general slowness, and they're not as invincible as they look
to be. Aaargh. Worst of all, Ena comes at level 10, which
is way behind the curve at the end of the game, and that
pretty much kills her effectiveness, unless you dump a ton
of bonus exp on her at the end of the game and give her at
least half of the kills on chapter 28. The kicker is that
you have to use her in the final battle if you failed to
kill the black knight. Curses! The only thing Ena has
going for her is her interesting skill set--she can heal
units next to her like Reyson, plus she removes any
conditions on adjacent units at the beginning of her turn.
So, basically you might could use her as a frontline cleric.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Nasir=== [cbs]
Class: Dragon laguz
Joins: Chapter 28 (if Black Knight was defeated)
Weapons: Breath
Other notes: Thank the maker, at least Nasir comes at a
respectable level. In fact, 18 is high enough to instantly
make him useable for the last two chapters, so if you want
to have a gigantic white dragon fighting by your side, by
George, get that dragon and sick him on the bad guys. He
suffers from the low movement that Ena does, but his speed
and strength are high enough to make him nearly on par with
the big 3. His skills aren't as cool as Ena's, but he makes
up for it when he torches the crap out of an entire
battallion of enemy soldiers on the final chapter, where you
will have to use him if you have him.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Tibarn=== [cbt]
Class: Hawk laguz (bird)
Joins: Endgame (one of three choices)
Weapons: +12 Uber Beak of Justice and Doom
Other notes: Basically, Tibarn is unstoppable. Of the 3
generals you can choose from, I have had the best experience
with him, because he's fast, his cancel skill catches any
attacks that somehow find their way to him, and he's got
over 60 hp and, I believe, over 30 strength. All in all,
he's a demigod.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Naesala=== [cbu]
Class: Raven laguz (bird)
Joins: Endgame (one of three choices)
Weapons: +16 Sinister Beak of Malice and Rapine
Other notes: Naesala is, statwise, not quite as powerful as
his other counterparts, but he has the Vortex skill to make
up for that. Vortex is basically a wind spell, and he can
use it in either transformed or regular form. Naesala's
strength is in his high speed, so expect lots of doubles,
but the thing is that Tibarn's speed is also high enough to
double almost anyone, and since Tibarn's strength is
greater, you end up with Naesala getting a bit overshadowed.
But still, if you like to use magic and ranged attacks,
Naesala is definetly your man, as he'll add something to
that side of your game along with being a good frontliner.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
===Giffca=== [cbv]
Class: Lion laguz (beast)
Joins: Endgame (one of three choices)
Weapons: +13 Maiming Claw of Cruelty and Slaughter
Other notes: First of all, Giffca looks oh-so-awesome on the
battlefield (he's a lion!). Of the final 3, he's probably a
bit softer than Tibarn, but with his roar ability, he could
team up with Reyson to really spread some havoc. Also, he
has the best strength of the final three, so if you want
someone who will knock enemies to the moon, use Giffca.
I'd put him about even with Naesala, except that Giffca can
deliver some absolutely mind-blowing criticals, even if all
of them are limited by the enemy's max hp.
X==========================================================X
O----------------------------------------------------------O
I Weapons/Magic [daa] I
O----------------------------------------------------------O
I'm gonna go about this section by seperating all the
weapons into categories depending on their type, then I'll
list all the data about each weapon. About the price tag on
the items: I know that you can't buy some of the items that
I listed prices for, and you're probably wondering how in
the world I got those numbers. Well, they're accurate.
Let's just say I spent about 2 hours doing lots of math to
figure out how much each item costs from the shop. The
price is there so you can tell how much each buys/sells for;
sell price is half the buy price.
Weapon Notes:
'Brave' weapons and Amiti get two attacks per strike.
'Venin' weapons poison targets that are hit.
The Flame Lance, Sonic Sword, Runesword, and Bolt Axe are
treated as magical attacks (Mag vs. Res).
Nosferatu and Runesword heal the user for every point of
damage done.
'Laguz' weapons get a bonus vs. all laguz.
Fire magic gets a bonus vs. beast laguz.
Thunder magic gets a bonus vs. dragon laguz.
Wind magic gets a bonus vs. flying units.
All bows get a bonus vs. flying units. Note that laguz are
only considered as flying when they are transformed.
Hammer, Heavy Lance, and Armorslayer get a bonus vs. armor.
Poleax, Knight Killer, and Longsword get a bonus vs. mounts.
Regal Sword gets a bonus vs. armor and vs. mounts and can
only be used by Ike.
Ragnell can only be used by Ike.
Amiti can only be used by Elincia.
Rolf's Bow can only be used by Rolf.
Only Snipers can use the Longbow or the Double Bow.
ClawC is the claw that cat laguz use (eg. Lethe).
ClawB is the claw that beast laguz use (eg. Mordecai).
ClawG is the claw that Giffca uses.
BeakH is the beak that flying laguz use (eg. Janaff).
BeakT is the beak that Tibarn and Naesala use.
Weapon Bonuses:
Wishblade: Lck +3
Vague Katti: Def +3
Amiti: Def +3, Res +3
Ragnell: Def +5
Alondite: Def +5
Double Bow: Str +3
Rexbolt: Skill +3
Rexaura: Def +3
Type/Name
Axes Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
Iron Axe 45 E 8 75 0 10 1 270
Steel Axe 35 D 11 65 0 15 1 420
Silver Axe 25 A 16 70 0 14 1 1250
Hand Axe 25 E 7 55 0 13 1-2 375
Short Axe 15 C 10 65 0 13 1-2 1500
Tomahawk 15 B 13 65 0 17 1-2 5550
Hammer 20 D 10 55 0 13 1 800
Poleax 18 D 10 60 0 18 1 810
Laguz Axe 15 C 13 65 0 16 1 5250
Killer Axe 20 C 12 65 30 12 1 1000
Venin Axe 40 D 5 60 0 11 1 360
Brave Axe 30 B 10 65 0 20 1 5050
Bolt Axe 25 B 10 70 0 12 1-2 3750
Lances Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
Iron Lance 45 E 7 80 0 8 1 360
Slim Lance 35 E 4 85 5 6 1 525
Steel Lance 35 D 10 70 0 13 1 560
Silver Lance 25 A 15 75 0 12 1 1500
Javelin 25 E 6 60 0 11 1-2 500
Short Spear 15 C 9 70 0 12 1-2 1950
Spear 15 B 12 70 5 15 1-2 5700
Heavy Spear 18 C 8 80 0 18 1 1260
Knight Killer 18 D 7 70 0 16 1 1170
Laguz Lance 15 C 12 75 0 17 1 1620
Killer Lance 20 C 10 70 30 10 1 1200
Brave Lance 30 B 11 70 0 17 1 5700
Flame Lance 25 B 10 70 0 12 1-2 7500
Wishblade 20 S 16 80 5 15 1-2 ----
Swords Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
Iron Sword 46 E 5 90 0 7 1 460
Iron Blade 35 D 9 70 0 15 1 980
Slim Sword 35 E 3 100 5 5 1 560
Steel Sword 35 D 8 75 0 12 1 700
Steel Blade 35 C 11 75 0 17 1 1400
Silver Sword 25 A 13 80 0 11 1 1875
Silver Blade 15 A 15 60 0 14 1 1800
Armorslayer 18 D 8 80 0 11 1 1260
Longsword 18 D 6 85 0 15 1 1260
Laguzslayer 15 C 9 75 0 12 1 900
Killing Edge 20 C 9 75 30 9 1 1300
Venin Edge 40 D 3 70 0 8 1 520
Brave Sword 30 B 9 75 0 16 1 5400
Runesword 15 A 15 65 10 19 1-2 7200
Sonic Sword 25 B 10 70 0 9 1-2 2750
Vague Katti 25 S 12 80 35(!) 8 1 ----
Regal Sword 40 - 7 95 10 6 1 ----
Amiti -- - 9 75 0 12 1 ----
Ragnell -- - 18 80 5 20 1-2 ----
Alondite -- - 18 80 5 20 1-2 ----
Gurugant -- - 20 90 0 25 1-2 ----
Bows Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
Iron Bow 45 E 6 85 0 5 2 540
Steel Bow 35 D 9 70 0 9 2 840
Silver Bow 25 A 13 75 0 6 2 2000
Rolf's Bow 45 - 8 100 5 2 2 ----
Longbow 20 D 5 65 0 10 2-3 2000
Laguz Bow 15 C 10 75 0 10 2 1950
Killer Bow 15 C 9 75 30 7 2 1050
Venin Bow 40 D 4 65 0 5 2 600
Brave Bow 30 B 10 70 0 7 2 5650
Double Bow 20 S 7 65 0 10 4(!) ----
Fire Magic Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
Fire 40 E 3 95 0 3 1-2 560
Elfire 30 D 5 85 0 5 1-2 1800
Meteor 5 C 11 70 0 11 3-10 750
Bolganone 20 A 9 85 0 9 1-2 2000
Wind Magic Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
Wind 40 E 2 100 0 1 1-2 520
Elwind 30 D 4 90 0 2 1-2 1650
Blizzard 5 C 8 75 0 10 3-10 700
Tornado 20 A 6 90 0 5 1-2 1800
Thunder Magic Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
Thunder 40 E 4 85 5 3 1-2 600
Elthunder 30 D 7 75 10 6 1-2 1950
Bolting 5 C 13 65 5 13 3-10 800
Thoron 20 A 10 85 5 7 1-2 2200
Rexbolt 20 S 15 75 10 14 1-2 ----
Light Magic Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
Light 40 D 2 80 0 4 1-2 800
Shine 30 C 4 75 0 6 1-2 2100
Purge 5 B 10 70 0 8 3-10 1000
Nosferatu 20 A 7 70 0 12 1-2 3000
Rexaura 20 S 12 85 5 10 1-2 ----
Knives Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
Knife 30 - 2 100 5 2 1 320
Dagger 30 - 4 90 0 4 1 600
Stiletto 20 - 8 95 10 8 1 1500
Laguz Weapons Durab. Grade Mt Hit Crit Wt Rng Price
ClawC - - 8 90 0 1 1 ----
ClawB - - 9 90 0 1 1 ----
ClawG - - 10 95 0 1 1 ----
Beak - - 7 90 0 1 1 ----
BeakT - - 8 95 0 1 1 ----
Breath - - 10 90 0 1 1 ----
Staves Dur Grd Wt Rng Effect Price
Heal 40 E 2 1 10 + Mag heal 800
Mend 20 D 4 1 20 + Mag heal 1000
Physic 15 C 5 1-Mg/2 10 + Mag heal 3750
Recover 15 B 6 1 Full heal 2250
Fortify 8 A 7 1-Mg/2 10 + Mag heal area 6400
Ashera Staff 3 S 1-Mg/2 Full heal, all* ----
Restore 10 C 4 1 Nullify condition 2000
Rescue 3 B 6 1-Mg/2 Teleport* 1800
Sleep 3 B 8 1-Mg/2 Sleep 1500
Silence 3 B 8 1-Mg/2 Silence 1200
Hammerne 3 C 7 1 Repairs weapon 1800
Ward 15 C 4 1 +Res on ally 2250
*The Rescue staff will teleport an ally within range to a
space near the spellcaster.
*The Ashera Staff will fully heal all allied units and cure
any conditions they are suffering from.
-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O-I-O
(++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++)
| Items [eaa] |
(++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++)
At the end of each chapter's walkthrough, I made a list of
all of the items that can be found on the map, including
some of the rarer weapons. The other weapons, like killer
axes, javelins, etc., I didn't list--you can look for those
yourself. (Red items held by enemies will be dropped when
they die.)
Found here will just be a list of all the items, where to
find them, and what they do. I'm leaving out all of the
skill scrolls, even though they do show up in the item part
of a character's inventory, I'll be listing them all in the
skills section.
Vulnerary - Restores 10 hp. Comes in a pack of 3.
Where found: shop, most units come with one
Elixir - Restores all hp. Comes in a pack of 3.
Where found: houses, enemies, shop
Antitoxin - Counters the effect of poison. Comes in a pack
of 3.
Where found: enemies, shop
Pure Water - Increases unit's Res for a short time. Comes
in a pack of 3.
Where found: enemies, shop
Seraph Robe - Increases unit's HP by 7.
Where found: house (chapter 1), raven (chapter 12)
Speedwing - Increases unit's speed by 2.
Where found: boss (chapter 2), chest (chapter 13),
Bryce (chapter 29)
Talisman - Increases unit's resistance by 2.
Where found: house (chapter 9), chest (chapter 21)
Energy Drop - Increases unit's strength by 2.
Where found: chest (chapter 13), chest (chapter 21)
Statue Frag - Increases unit's constitution (Cn) by 2.
Where found: chest (chapter 10), sand (chapter 15)
Dracoshield - Increases unit's defense by 2.
Where found: house (chapter 11), chest (chapter 16)
Secret Book - Increases unit's skill by 2.
Where found: raven (chapter 12), house (chapter 14)
Spirit Dust - Increases unit's magic by 2.
Where found: house (chapter 14), chest (chapter 22)
Ashera Icon - Increases unit's luck by 2.
Where found: boss (chapter 5), chest (chapter 16)
Boots - Increases unit's movement range by 2.
Where found: sand (chapter 15)
Arms Scroll - Increases weapon level of currently equipped
weapon.
Where found: boss (chapter 9), boss (chapter 11),
raven (chapter 12)
Master Seal - Promotes a unit at level 10 or above.
Where found: boss (chapter 10, 11), chest (chapter 21)
Torch - Allows units to see in fog of war. Comes in a pack
of 5.
Where found: enemy drop (chapter 5), shop
Laguz Stone - Transforms a laguz. Comes in pack of 2.
Where found: Mordecai, various drops/houses
Coin - Can be sold for 1 gold at the base. (Uh?)
Where found: everywhere
Red Gem - Can be sold for money at the base.
Where found: priest (chapter 8)
Blue Gem - Can be sold for money at the base.
Where found: raven (chapter 12)
White Gem - Can be sold for money at the base.
Where found: sand (chapter 15)
Paladin Band - Adds chance of increasing HP and speed on
levelup.
Where found: Oscar
Fighter Band - Adds chance of increasing HP and strength on
levelup.
Where found: Boyd
Soldier Band - Adds chance of increasing HP and defense on
levelup.
Where found: boss (chapter 8)
Sword Band - Adds chance of increasing skill and luck on
levelup.
Where found: Mia
Archer Band - Adds chance of increasing skill and speed on
levelup.
Where found: Shinon
Thief Band - Adds chance of increasing skill and speed on
levelup.
Where found: boss (chapter 3)
Knight Band - Adds chance of increasing strength and
defense on levelup.
Where found: Gatrie
Mage Band - Adds chance of increasing Magic on levelup.
Where found: Soren
Pegasus Band - Adds chance of increasing luck and resistance
on levelup.
Where found: Marcia
Priest Band - Adds chance of increasing luck and resistance
on levelup.
Where found: Rhys
Full Guard - Denies any enemies bonuses to damage.
Where found: chest (chapter 16)
Laguzguard - Halves damage taken from laguz (beorc only).
Where found: Jill, Lucia
Beorcguard - Halves damage taken from beorc (laguz only).
Where found: Lethe
Knight Ward - Increases def and res by 3.
Where found: Astrid
Knight Ring - Allows unit to move after acting, just like a
cavalry unit.
Where found: chapter 19 (see chapter notes)
Demi Band - Allows laguz unit to always stay in beast form
at the cost of stat penalties.
Where found: Muarim
Laguz Band - Allows laguz unit to always stay in beast form
without suffering penalties to statists (royalty only).
Where found: Tibarn/Naesala/Giffca
)----------------------------------------------------------(
]xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[
X Skills [faa] X
]xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[
Here, I'm going to list each skill in the game, and for the
ones you can get and/or equip on your units, I'll list the
amount of points each skill takes (not much use knowing how
much it takes if you don't ever get it, eh?). Also, I'll
include who comes with each skill and where a scroll can be
found to learn the skill, if there's one available ingame.
Finally, I'll include a brief description of the skill
(mine, not the game's), followed by my thoughts on usage.
At the end of the list, I'll just list a few combos that
I've found to work and some other ones as well.
Skill Points Unit Scroll
Adept 10 Soren, Zihark 17
Activates on attack; the unit will get an extra attack.
This pairs great with Vantage and any other skill that
enhances your attacks. Just don't rely on it to activate
all the time.
Blossom 15 Sothe --
Passive; the unit will get less exp over time, but will
have increased stat growth for every level. Basically,
this skill is there to make up for the fact that Sothe
can't promote.
Canto 20 Reyson --
When used, the targetted unit will get an extra turn to
move and act. In laguz form, all adjacent units get an
extra turn. Potentially, this skill is awesome. The only
problem is that you have to get close to the action to use
it, and since Reyson is so fragile, you have to be very
cautious.
Celerity 15 Tormod --
Grants +2 movement range. Not the greatest of 15-point
skills, but really helps make up for sage's low move.
Corrosion 10 Bastian 21
Activated on attacks; the target will lose 5 points of
durability on the currently equipped weapon. I would say
that this skill is the worst skill ever. I see no use for
it in battle, because it's almost always easier to simply
kill an enemy or steal his weapon if he's giving you
problems.
Counter 10 Titania 10
Activates when taken damage; deals back half the damage
taken. Titania comes with it, but it was made for Boyd
and Largo. Someone who has high hp and low defense can
really do some handy extra damage with it, and couple it
with Boyd's already high attack and you get OHKOs quite
often.
Daunt 10 Daein Riders --
Passive; decreases hit % and critical % to units within 3
spaces. You can't use it, and it's annoying.
Gamble 10 Kieran 16
When used, gamble halves the unit's hit % but doubles the
critical %. Well now, most of the time this is a skill
you won't use. However, there are times where you need to
kill a certain unit to save your own unit or to win the
battle, but you can't get it without a crit. Say you give
this skill to Zihark. He's already got a high crit % and
high hit %, plus he's got Adept and he's fast, so you're
looking at 2-4 chances to score a crit, and with a Killing
Edge, your chance per hit is probably over the 70 mark.
It's really a situational skill, and I'd consider taking it
off Kieran for something like Sol or Resolve.
Guard 10 Haar 15
Activates on attack; will stop one enemy attack. Give
this skill to someone who has low Def and high skill and
you'll end up avoiding several attacks. Coupled with
Vantage you get a really great combo.
Insight 0 Janaff --
Passive; increases hit %. Not much to say here.
Mantle 0 Sephiran --
Passive; greatly reduces damage taken. If only you could
use it.
Miracle 5 Mist, Ena 7
Activates on attack; if attack is lethal, then damage
taken will be halved. This works well on Rhys and Mist,
but other than those two I don't see anyone who would
really benefit from it more than any other skill.
Nihil 15 Calill, Nasir 25
Passive; renders enemy's skills inactive during combat.
This is great vs. bosses with Daunt or Resolve. In fact,
this makes Calill a really good boss-killer late in the
game when you have to kill guys like Bertram and Petrine.
Paragon 15 Astrid, Geoffrey --
Passive; doubles experience gain (bonus and battle). Use
it, and when they hit 20, dump it for something else.
Parity 5 Lucia 21
Passive; eliminates terrain and support bonuses to both
units in combat. (Units in thickets get higher dodge %.)
I've never seen much use for this on most units, but maybe
a laguz could benefit from it, since they have the best raw
skill in the game.
Provoke 5 Shinon 20
Passive; enemies will tend to attack a unit with provoke
over other units. I usually slap this puppy on Ike. First
of all, he could always use some extra exp. Second of all,
since it only costs 5, you can use it alongside Aether,
making a great great combo.
Reinforce 15 Tanith --
When used, a level 1 falcon knight and two level 10
oegasus knights will come onto the field as allies. Can
be used twice per battle. Great when you first get Tanith,
but later on when the enemies get high, it loses its
effectiveness. It's always handy to have decoys, though.
Renewal 15 Elincia, Ena --
At the beginning of the unit's phase, the unit will have
HP restored. Cool skill. Full stop.
Resolve 10 Tauroneo 27
Passive; when the unit drops to 50% HP, that unit's str,
skill, and speed will increase by 50%. Since Nephenee
comes with Wrath, you can give her this skill and turn her
into some kind of monster. Once she drops below that 50%
HP mark, nothing will stop her. This works great with
Vantage too, so if you're using Mia, you might consider
holding out for this.
Savior 10 Tibarn 24
Passive; allows unit to rescue without stat penalties. I
never really used Rescue much, but there could be a time or
two when a unit will need to be rescued, so I like to give
this to someone who has 10 spare points, like Kieran for
example.
Serenity 5 Rhys, Devdan --
Passive; halves biorhythm effects. For Rhys, it's not too
bad, but for Devdan, it's horrible. Get rid of it on him
if for some reason you decide to use him.
Shade 5 Volke, Ilyana 18
Passive; enemies will tend to attack other units first.
Effect lessens when unit has taken damage. I always like
to give this to Rolf. Otherwise it's a great skill.
Smite 10 Mordecai 20
When used, smite works just like shove, except it moves
the target two spaces instead of one. This is actually a
really handy skill to have. If you have a heavy ground
unit with a few points to spare, give him this. I promise,
there are uses for shove, you just have to look for them.
Tempest 5 Boyd, Makalov --
Passive; doubles biorhythm effects. Boyd is an absolute
monster because of this skill, and Makalov would be too if
he didn't already look like a monster.
Vantage 10 Mia 14
Activates on attack; unit will always have first strike in
combat. Vantage is probably the most versatile skill in
the game. It pairs well with just about any other skill,
and Mia is a good unit mostly because she comes with this
skill. Vantage + Adept, Vantage + high crit weapons,
Vantage + Resolve, Vantage + Wrath, Vantage + Guard...I'm
sure the list has a few more entries.
Vigilance 0 Ulki --
Passive; increases dodge %. Moving right along...
Wrath 10 Nephenee 18
Passive; when unit's HP falls to 50%, crit chance will
increase dramatically. Give this to a unit with high HP
or one with low HP and high Def, and you will gawk at the
carnage that spews forth. Wrath has a few good combos too.
Occult Skills: All Occult skills can be learned by using
one of the four occult scrolls you can obtain throughout
the game. Each skill learned from the scroll depends upon
the class of the unit. All occult skills take up 20
capacity, so here I'll only list the skill, which class
learns it, and a description.
Locations of the 4 Scrolls:
#1 - Chapter 13, in a chest
#2 - Chapter 16, Info conversation with Stefan (pre-battle)
#3 - Chapter 21, Tauroneo
#4 - Chapter 27, Boss
Skill Class
Aether Lord
Activates on attack; 2-hit combo of Sol followed by Luna,
see individual skills below. There is no reason not to use
this skill for Ike.
Astra Swordmaster
Activates on attack; 5-hit combo all at half damage, but
each hit can critical. I personally don't like this skill
all that much, since there are other regular skill combos
which benefit swordmasters in a better way. However, Astra
does have some potential for huge damage, and simply giving
it to a unit will effectively give them two chances per
strike to score a critical, although 5 normal hits at half
damage only comes out to 2.5x a single hit.
Blessing Heron Laguz
At the beginning of the unit's phase, all adjacent units
will have some HP restored. This comes on Reyson and gives
him some capacity for healing.
Boon Dragon Laguz
At the beginning of the unit's phase, all adjacent units
will have their conditions restored (eg. poison, sleep).
Ena comes with this one and because of it she is a good
sort of frontline cleric. You shouldn't ever have much of
a problem with statuses, though.
Cancel Hawk Laguz
Activates on attack; totally nullifies enemy attacks. I
adore this skill. If a unit has a 50% chance to hit you,
with this skill you're adding another barrier which cuts
off another 25-30% of attacks, basically adding that much
to your avoid %.
Colossus Warrior, Berserker
Activates on attack; when unit's constitution score is
higher than the target's, damage will be increased. I've
never cared to use this on either Boyd or Largo since the
two already do absurd amounts of damage. It's overkill.
Deadeye Sniper
Activates on attack; puts enemy to sleep, hits 100%. I
never see much use for this: a sniper's purpose is to pick
off weak enemies and to get big criticals for the OHKO.
Deadeye doesn't really help either one of those purposes
much, except it gives you the off-chance of putting a fresh
target to sleep in one hit. I'd rather give my snipers
Gamble or Adept.
Flare Sage, Bishop
Activates on attack; decreases the target's resistance.
I wouldn't give Soren this, as he's got Adept, and Nihil is
good for Calill. Tormod is all cozy with Celerity, and Rhys
shouldn't be attacking much anyways, so there's really not
much use for this skill. It's good for extra damage if you
want the magical eqivalent to Luna, though.
Lethality Assassin
Activates on attack; kills the target instantly. NINJA!
Need I say more?
Luna Knight, Soldier
Activates on attack; halves the target's defense. Give
this skill to Gatrie or Brom and you can really boost their
usage in battle. Nephenee already has Wrath, and Devdan is
horrible. Finally, Tauroneo has Resolve. So basically, if
you have Gatrie or Brom and they have an empty skillbar,
Luna is your go-to skill.
Roar Beast Laguz
When used, target will be paralyzed for one turn. I never
use this: I like to kill my enemies, not immobilize them.
Sol Paladin, Valkyrie
Activates on attack; the attack will heal the unit for the
amount of damage done to the target. This is a great skill
for any paladin because it allows them to go out on their
own and take a hit or two, because with decent skill
they'll activate this once or twice and be fine on HP.
Stun Wyvern Lord, Falcon Knight
When used, target will be paralyzed for one turn. See
Roar.
Vortex Raven Laguz
When used, target will be able to attack with a wind spell
in either laguz or humanesque form (1-2 range). Naesala is
the only raven you get, and he's good mostly because of this
skill.
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<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Extras [gaa]
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
Upon completion of the game, the Extras menu will be
available to you from the Main Menu. From here, you can do
a few things. You have the Sound Room and Theater, both of
which are fairly self-explanitory. There's an Illustrations
menu where you can view each unit's portrait (if you've
recruited/seen the unit in the main game), and if you
connect your Game Boy Advance with either one of the Fire
Emblem titles in it, you can see some other illustrations
from those games. Finally, there are Trial Maps. Here's a
list of all the maps and unlockable characters you can get
to play on or with, and how to get them:
Map/Character How to Get
Hillside Battle Clear Story Mode on any difficulty
Lonely Isle Clear Story Mode on Normal or Hard.
Strange Turn Clear Story Mode on Hard.
Desperation Connect GBA with an English FE game.
Escape Connect GBA with an American FE game.
Trapped Connect GBA with FE: Sacred Stones.
Oliver Beat the game 3 times.
Shihiram Beat the game 5 times.
Petrine Beat the game 7 times.
Bryce Beat the game 10 times. (o_O)
Ashnard Beat the game 15 times. (-_-)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Final Words: [haa]
Special thanks to:
Broken Alleluia
Timothy
Jos
Everyone on the FE:PoR message boards that I visit
GameFAQs for being such a great resource for video games
Neoseeker.com
You, for reading this
Again, if you see this FAQ reproduced anywhere other than
an authorized site, contact me (ronirossa(at)hotmail.com).
This document is for use on the authorized site alone and is
not to be reproduced without permission from the author,
except for personal, private uses.
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
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http://www.neoseeker.com/
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http://www.supercheats.com/
## Version History ##
Ver. 0.5, 10/31/05 - Completed initial layout and
walkthrough for chapters 1-20 plus chapter 29. Also
included various general notes about the game.
Ver. 1.0, 11/02/05 - Finished walkthroughs for all 29
chapters, added FAQ section, added more general notes.
Size: 100kb
Ver. 1.1, 11/02/05 - Made a few small changes, added
Neoseeker.com to list of authorized websites.
Size: 101kb (+1kb)
Ver. 1.5, 11/04/05 - Added a general battle mechanics
section.
Size: 106kb (+5kb)
Ver. 1.7, 11/06/05 - Added GamePlayWorld to list of
authorized sites. Began character section. Began adding
tips for hard mode [Chapters 1-17].
Size: 128kb (+22kb)
Ver. 2.0, 11/16/05 - Finished character section. Added
items section. Expanded FAQ. Added Leveling Up section.
Added supercheats.com to list of authorized sites. Added
Skills section. Added Weapons/Magic section. Added
In-Depth Mechanics section. Added Extras section.
Finished hard mode tips.
Size: 214kb (+86kb)
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