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Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Walkthrough/FAQ
By Roni
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Version 2.1a (March 10, 2006)
Created by Ross Weaver, (c) 2005
Start date: October 28, 2005
Size: 210 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.
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: Steel and Silver weapons will level you up as fast as you
can level, so use them if you're wanting a level. Brave
weapons only get you 1 weapon exp per hit, due to the fact
that you get two swings per attack. Ballistas are the best,
as they net you 4 weapon exp per use (but you can only shoot
them once per turn).
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 43
characters that you can 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 and get the
Knight Ring:
Give Marcia or Jill or Tanith (whomever you prefer) the FUll
Guard you got back in chapter 16 and bring along Ulki/Janaff
and Reyson. Position your mounted flyer in the top left of
your deployment grid. Move her up as far as she can go, and
on the 2nd turn, move her into the outer band of Naesala's
range. He'll come foward and attack with his wind spell on
his phase. Then on your next turn, move your girl back so
that she's still on the outside of Naesala's attack range.
Make sure she is the only one inside his range. The Full
Guard will reduce the damage from his wind spell and from
the ballistae, and she should be able to take the wyvern
riders out with no problem. Once Naesala moves up and
attacks for the 2nd time, have your hawk come up and talk
to him. If the hawk is within range of a ballista (he
should be inside the outer reach of a ballista's range) have
Reyson come up and Chant so that your hawk can get clear.
On the next turn, Naesala will talk to Reyson and leave.
From here, use whatever tactic you want to move up through
the valley and finish off all the enemy soldiers. I usually
use Marcia or Tanith, since they have higher Res and Spd,
and I have them take out the ballistae. The strategy I
posted here earlier works, but this one is much simpler and
cuts down on the margin of error by quite a bit.
If you don't have Reyson, you're gonna be in trouble,
because Naesala is fast and very powerful (he's level 17),
so you'll most likely end up losing a unit or two before
you can take him down. I've done it on easy before, but
only because on easy my troops were at a higher level.
If you don't have the Full Guard, then you'll have to use
someone as a decoy to drain the two eastern ballistae of all
their ammo before moving in with Tanith/Jill/Marcia.
They'll take more damage from Naesala, but if you have a
healer handy with a Physic staff, you should still be able
to pull it off.
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