Current Events > Fire Emblem Three Houses Progressive Playthrough

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21 damage on nosferatu with raphael is surprising.

+2 magic, magic staff, and that maid cleanup battalion. His magic is actually only 11 so it's average. The Brawler I'm facing just has 1 Res lol.
His defense is crazy though. 6 def above average! It's a good thing I made him a dancer since his str is below average.
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Welp there it is. I honestly wonder what my reaction would've been to the reveal if I hadn't been spoiled on it beforehand. It's a very unique twist. There was some part of me that believed there might be some things I've misinterpreted but she's straight up the flame emperor and declared war on us. Some things I want to know so I can plan for future playthroughs. Are Edelgard and Hubert playable at all on Silver Snow? If not, does that mean training Edelgard and Hubert are a complete waste on that route? Also what church units are inaccessible/permanently leave on Crimson Flower?

Blue Lions blatantly spoils the twist.

It's dum and smells of butts.

GiftedACIII posted...

Are Edelgard and Hubert playable at all on Silver Snow? If not, does that mean training Edelgard and Hubert are a complete waste on that route?

Only in White Clouds. Training them would kind of be a waste, but also not really unless you heavily invest. Just because you can't use a unit forever doesn't mean it's invalid to strategize around using them while you can.

GiftedACIII posted...

Also what church units are inaccessible/permanently leave on Crimson Flower?

Catherine, Cyril, Flayn Seteth IIRC. But I think you just can't recruit them (apart from Flayn) if you choose Black Eagles as your house.

In Normal/Hard Silver Snow, training Edelgard and Hubert is kinda a waste.

In Maddening, you still want to train Edelgard though not to the extend that you optimize her by running through a bunch of classes for skills but early game Maddening is by far the hardest part of the game and Edelgard is very clearly one of your best units during that time. So even though you lose her, she's still really important to have up to that point.

I see, so they're basically just Jeigans in Silver Snow. What about Shamir and Alois? I'm assuming Manuela and Hanneman are still with you even in Crimson Flower.

GiftedACIII posted...

I see, so they're basically just Jeigans in Silver Snow. What about Shamir and Alois? I'm assuming Manuela and Hanneman are still with you even in Crimson Flower.

Anyone you recruit before the reveal will stay on your team. Really only Flayn can leave as Catherine, Cyril, and Hilda are unrecuitable on a Black Eagles playthrough until you make a fateful decision with the reveal.

By extension, Catherine, Cyril, and Hilda are not particularly good on a Silver Snow run.

Only people who likes the cookie would badmouth Hilda like that.

Hilda is like my third favorite character after Shaded Constance and Sunlight Constance. Actually she probably edges out Sunlight Constance.

But it's hard for her to contribute a lot when you are recruiting her at like chapter 12.

wait does the game skip Ignatz birthday on every route? lol as if he wasn't already lacking in Charm.

TIL there are auto-levels past the timeskip that it'd be better to be advanced units for... and I don't have enough advanced seals to promote everyone. Lacking 2 (and not counting Byleth, Claude, and Raphael who have their unique classes they can use). Luckily, the two I can afford to sit out are Marianne and Flayn who apparently only gain 1 level and 0 respectively so it's not too much of a loss.
I definitely need to remember to stock up on advanced seals for future runs.

A couple of levels means very little.

I've played the game... 7 times? Several maddening runs and I don't think I've ever remembered to min max for time skip autolevels.

Yeah, class growths ultimately matter very, very little. Like I think the biggest possible swing would be between a something like Assassin which had +20% speed and Mortal Savant which has -10% speed. That 30% speed means 3 points of speed every 10 levels. And that is the biggest possible impact over 10 levels. The timeskip is like 3 levels tops. So the biggest possible difference is like +1.

I don't think I have ever made a class decision based on class growths. It is so much less important compared to a classes innate skills in movement type.

The bigger timeskip thing to take advantage of is that all items in a units inventory are completely replenished. So you want to make sure all your good shit is in inventory, not sitting in the convoy.

You know, I actually knew Rhea was a dragon but the fact that she appeared on the map as some mage right beforehand I forgot about that and thought she was going to offer herself like Emmeryn lol.

And wow look how my babies have grown. Aside from a few characters I was completely unspoiled to their designs. They also wiped the floor with this map. I heard this chapter was one of the hardest in the game but I guess that's if you don't train your house units on maddening. It did look bad at first when it was just Byleth and Claude though. I'd been thinking of doing Silver Snow with mainly just the Church units while I use the Black Eagle units for Crimson Flower but it looks like I actually need to train up BE units for Silver Snow too.

I'm kind of surprised they're so cheery and that the monastery hasn't been taken over by Empire given that it seemed like the monastery was their main target whose defeat led to Rhea and Byleth vanishing. Edelgard had mainly declared war on the Church of Seiros, with Garegg Mach as their main headquarters, yet after they take Garegg Mach they just abandon it and start fighting with the Kingdom for 5 years? I'd have thought the Empire would be hunting the Knights of Seiros down but the Knights are just acting like Garegg Mach was destroyed by a natural disaster or something and not like they were the active enemy of the invading force. Unless they've been in hiding which they didn't say.

The chapter is really hard even with trained units on maddening. Assuming you want everyone to survibe and youre not using DLC.

But the blue lions is significantly harder. Unlike Claude he doesnt get flying for the chapter. And my god the lower left corner unit combo on blu lions.

Fuck right off.

There's a million archers on the map though so I had to have him dismounted for most of the map. He almost gets one-shot while flying. I think the worst hardest part is actually when Raphael, Lysithea, , and Marianne come since there's an Assassin there who doubles all three of them and one-shots the latter two. Luckily my Raphael was bulky enough that the Assassin did single digit damage but I can see that being much harder if Raphael didn't grow defense almost every level.

Yeah Hunting By Daybreak can be an actual run killer. Being forced to use your house units is a part of it but the bigger piece is just not having a battle prep screen. So you are locked into whatever classes, skills, and inventory you had at the end of the last chapter. And the only way to address it is to reload a save from the chapter before. So hopefully you have one of those.

Also Claude/Dimitri are forced into a new class with a new battalion. For Claude this isn't a big deal as Wyvern Master is great. For Dimitri it's problem because it destroys B.Wrathvantage. Which is the standard Maddening Dimitri build and effectively renders him an immortal murder machine who can solo entire maps. It probably also takes him off a mount.

GiftedACIII posted...

but I guess that's if you don't train your house units on maddening.

Maddening is just on an entirely different level from Hard. As mentioned, it's pretty nuts even if you trained them, you pretty much need to specifically prepare for this chapter with shit like Dimitri with Battlion Wrath/Vantage. And even then it's tricky due to having to set it up before you get him killed...

Speaking of maddening I've decided to play chapter 1 of Cindered Shadows just so I can access the DLC classes. I picked Hard since since regular Hard is 3H's normal even though there isn't a maddening difficulty there... and right out the gate there are ambush reinforcements. So lucky I actually had Edelgard and Dmitri coincidentally blocking their route to my fragile units since I was trying to feed some kills to them when they came.

Cindered Shadows Hard is harder than base game hard, but it's not quite maddening.

Hunting by Daybreak maddening is one of the worst chapters in the entire series. Doing it deathless is just awful, especially if you've neglected anyone in your house at all. There's so much pure dead weight on that map.

Cindered Shadows is probably the best raw gameplay in Three Houses. By limiting the units and classes available, they are really able to tailor the maps around tools they know you'll have and you get some really fun gameplay out of it.

If there is one major flaw to 3H's class system is that it exacerbates Fire Emblem's already existing issue with late game maps needing to be doable with a large variety of team compositions. So they lose a lot of character to make them more generic. It's why early to mid game maps are almost always tighter and better designed. Because they can be built around less varied team compositions.

I wish there was a difficulty between hard and maddening. Hard is too easy save for maybe very specific chapters (like the final battles for BL + GD), but going from that to maddening feels like too big of a jump in difficulty, with maddening often feeling more tedious than fun.

I've increasingly come around on Maddening. Besides HBD and a couple of other maps, the difficulty is pretty fair, but it absolutely requires some degree of efficiency to play well. Like you need to be mindful of how you are using your Instruction points each week. You need to be making stat boosting meals. You need a pretty defined build for each unit ahead of time and have a plan for reaching it.

Once you know what you are doing though it isn't too bad. Having Balthus also lets you just bulldoze Chapter 2, arguably one of the hardest Maddening chapters. That helps a lot.

Also each route gives you a player phase delete button (Bernie, Sylvain, and Leonie), and several enemy phase monsters which can actively trivialize large stretches of the game if you want.

Compsognathus posted...

Like you need to be mindful of how you are using your Instruction points each week. You need to be making stat boosting meals.

My biggest issue with the game right there, the endless, super boring and tedious chores.
You can mostly ignore them on normal and hard, but since they're nearly mandatory on Maddening...

Srk700 posted...

I wish there was a difficulty between hard and maddening. Hard is too easy save for maybe very specific chapters (like the final battles for BL + GD), but going from that to maddening feels like too big of a jump in difficulty, with maddening often feeling more tedious than fun.

Honestly there kind of is a more reasonable difficulty between Maddening and Hard. It's called Maddening with DLC. Though all the DLC together is pretty overpowered, but with a form of limited DLC you can make it sort of comfy without making it as easy as hard mode. I like to give myself a single rapier and some training weapons+ at the start.

You guys were right about the auto-levels not mattering. All my units only got like 2 stat boosts per level like my Bishop Lysithea who in 3 levels only got 1 magic and 0 speed and instead got them pumped into a couple HP, dex, and charm. Also wow they really make you have to pay 5000 renown to open up the abyss shop first. At least they hand out a free abyssian pass the instant it unlocks.

It's still a long way off but with all this maddening talk, I'm wondering what difficulty should one play for a first playthrough in Three Hopes for someone that hasn't played a single Musou game before? Is that a game that is generally balanced around a normal mode or is the normal mode actually easy mode like it is in three houses.

Wait, scratch that, guess it does matter for some of them. Ingrid as a Paladin at 2 levels had literally every stat boosted, dex, spd, def, and charm by 2.

GiftedACIII posted...

You guys were right about the auto-levels not mattering. All my units only got like 2 stat boosts per level like my Bishop Lysithea who in 3 levels only got 1 magic and 0 speed and instead got them pumped into a couple HP, dex, and charm. Also wow they really make you have to pay 5000 renown to open up the abyss shop first. At least they hand out a free abyssian pass the instant it unlocks.

It's still a long way off but with all this maddening talk, I'm wondering what difficulty should one play for a first playthrough in Three Hopes for someone that hasn't played a single Musou game before? Is that a game that is generally balanced around a normal mode or is the normal mode actually easy mode like it is in three houses.

Maddening is absolutely not meant for a first playthrough in Hopes. If you have never played a Mosou just do Normal until you get a feel for it. You can change difficulty at any time.

You dont unlock maddening til you beat the game in Hopes. I find hard mode tedious in yhe game on an NG file. Enemies block a lot more and it kills your combo streaks, which is what I enjoy in the game. You dont really have the tools to break through until you can upgrade your hit string, warrior guage fill rate, have some extra abilities to deal with it, etc.

Yeah Maddening is strictly a NG+ difficulty in Hopes, even if you CAN beat it on a regular NG. Not sure if you can beat the timer for any S ranks though...? Even so, I can't imagine it being any fun at all.

Golden Deer. Just for sake of GOD Shattering STAR!

Thanks for all the tips everyone. Hope you all had a merry holiday!

I got a very interesting occurrence today. My boy Ignatz missed a displayed 98%

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What's with all these worthless youth battalions I'm still getting in part 2? Are they supposed to be for NG+ or are you just supposed to sell them

GiftedACIII posted...

What's with all these worthless youth battalions I'm still getting in part 2? Are they supposed to be for NG+ or are you just supposed to sell them

I'm trying to think of the part 2 Battalions. Where are you getting them?

Compsognathus posted...

I'm trying to think of the part 2 Battalions. Where are you getting them?

The Pirates in the North and Dealing with Deserters quest in Chapter 14. They give these E rank Alliance Youths and Rogues/Pirates battalions. Looking it up they literally all share the exact same stats as the other youths/bandits given to you at the first few chapters where they were already bad then.

Wow this is the first time I had to rush to actually save the rare monster, putting my own unit's lives on the line to do so, instead of letting it clean up the stragglers. Usually the monster holds its own and defeats the other enemies by itself. This wolf gets annihilated by these pack of Assassins though. The scary party is that so do all my units. Swordbreaker and alert stance coming in clutch.

Just sell thrm. Man
ke a little money. The renown you get for doing the quest is worth more.

GiftedACIII posted...

The Pirates in the North and Dealing with Deserters quest in Chapter 14. They give these E rank Alliance Youths and Rogues/Pirates battalions. Looking it up they literally all share the exact same stats as the other youths/bandits given to you at the first few chapters where they were already bad then.
Now that I think of it, those youths also aged 5 years and probably aren't youths anymore lol.

Oh right. I completely forgot about them.

Frankly Part 2 (and honestly even late part 1) rewards are kinda whack. Like outside of paralogues there is really no noteworthy quest reward, chest, or stealable items. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Compsognathus posted...

Oh right. I completely forgot about them.

Frankly Part 2 (and honestly even late part 1) rewards are kinda whack. Like outside of paralogues there is really no noteworthy quest reward, chest, or stealable items. It doesn't make a lot of sense.

A bunch of the quests do give out gifts which are very helpful for motivation and some give money which is always appreciated since I splurged them all on Anna's stat boosters.

Finished Marianne's paralogue and wow, that was a ride! Fog of war and multiple demonic beasts everywhere coming out of the darkness. Honestly one of the most intimidating maps in the series imo. Helps that I forgot torches were a thing.
Also I learned Chapter 15 is already 3 chapters before the end of the game in Crimson Flower which is crazy since my units (that I want to make into master class) aren't even at master class level on Golden Deer.

GiftedACIII posted...

A bunch of the quests do give out gifts which are very helpful for motivation and some give money which is always appreciated since I splurged them all on Anna's stat boosters.

Finished Marianne's paralogue and wow, that was a ride! Fog of war and multiple demonic beasts everywhere coming out of the darkness. Honestly one of the most intimidating maps in the series imo. Helps that I forgot torches were a thing.
Also I learned Chapter 15 is already 3 chapters before the end of the game in Crimson Flower which is crazy since my units (that I want to make into master class) aren't even at master class level on Golden Deer.

Sure, gold is nice but by part 2 you are hardly under resource scarcity and typically have more Professor points than you know what to do with so things like motivation are easy to manage.

I will say that as a whole your team sounds pretty underleveled, likely because you are raising a lot of units. The game's progression is largely built around actively training about 10-12 units and not letting any of them die. Which is why they give you a million Divine Pulses and no later game recruits to fill your party in should you lose people. Again you'll be fine because the game isn't really difficult, but I'd recommend you'd scale your party back a bit for a Crimson Flower run, given how short it is.

I've been doing Sauna for all 9 activity points because my units seem too low on their skill ranks. That's actually their main problem in certifying even for my units who've hit level 30 Still got some C ranks for a bunch of them. All of my units are around 28-30 and the level recommendation is 29 . I've benched Manuela, Hanneman, and Seteth and I'm using everyone else plus 4 from the other houses.

GiftedACIII posted...

I've been doing Sauna for all 9 activity points because my units seem too low on their skill ranks. That's actually their main problem in certifying even for my units who've hit level 30 Still got some C ranks for a bunch of them. All of my units are around 28-30 and the level recommendation is 29 . I've benched Manuela, Hanneman, and Seteth and I'm using everyone else plus 4 from the other houses.

Developing units isn't just about levels. Those are the easiest things to get, especially if doing aux battles. Skill development is another, far more expensive, piece. Developing skill ranks in battle is just kinda slow. Tutoring is a major piece of skill development, at least until A rank. At max professor level you are tutoring 8 people per instruction session and that's all you get. That isn't too bad for a team of 10-12 because not all units need the same investment. But beyond that you start getting thin on the ability to instruct adequately and weapon ranks fall behind. And if you start going with some more out there builds that don't make use of boons, then those instruction points stretch even less far.

Compsognathus posted...

Developing units isn't just about levels. Those are the easiest things to get, especially if doing aux battles. Skill development is another, far more expensive, piece. Developing skill ranks in battle is just kinda slow. Tutoring is a major piece of skill development, at least until A rank. At max professor level you are tutoring 8 people per instruction session and that's all you get. That isn't too bad for a team of 10-12 because not all units need the same investment. But beyond that you start getting thin on the ability to instruct adequately and weapon ranks fall behind. And if you start going with some more out there builds that don't make use of boons, then those instruction points stretch even less far.

Yeah, that's exactly it I think. A bunch of my units aren't going with their boons and have some skills that started from E. I'll definitely have to keep this in mind in the future. Live and learn.
Anyway got back into the game after a few days off, finally managed to get Ashe back, I can see him being a problem in CF when you get him literally 2 chapters before the end. He did get some decent level ups though, making him a wyvern rider was a good decision. I like how the boss thinks Judith would be stronger than my crowd even though Judith was in an intermediate class and I actually had to Rescue her with Flayn before she gets obliterated by him and his Paladin squad.

I also got Rhea's paralogue which you apparently needed a C support for so I'm glad I got that. Is there anything like that in Silver Snow where having a C rank with Edelgard/Hubert lets you spare them or something? Also, now that I got A+ rank and started gardening I've got some rare veggies and goddess messengers that I can cook for stat boosting but I don't have any meat. Apparently the only way to get certain meat like Duscar Bear and Albinean Moose is to do the meat reward auxillaries that are completely random which is weird since you can get everything else in other places. You'd think the DLC would let you buy them with renown or something.

I just sell most the fancy meat/fish. The only thing I ever cook is speed or defense meals.

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RNG works in mysterious ways. Or anything happens if you go at it enough.

Ashe and Catherine's support chain was pretty touching. I paired Ashe up with Marianne and Catherine with Lorenz though.

Yo why is Dimitri gang trying to kill me? You want Edelgard's head and to destroy the empire but you have your entire army charge me while I was in the middle of cleaning up her forces? And then they continue to go after me when I tried to hang back and let him handle her army himself lol.

It's pretty sad to see that they survived for 5 years only to die so fast in this one battle though. Yeah, you sure didn't make Bernadetta lose her life in vain Edelgard... I wonder if it's possible to keep Bernadetta alive since even if you ignore her the Kingdom army eventually charges up there.

On another note I was not expecting Duke Aegir to look like that lol. Is it just me or are these paralogues (I also did Claude's) harder than the actual mission.

Ashe is also really putting in work for me.

Gronder 2 is the dumbest mission in the game and basically makes no sense. Like they could have at least made it a Fog of War map or something.

GiftedACIII posted...

It's pretty sad to see that they survived for 5 years only to die so fast in this one battle though. Yeah, you sure didn't make Bernadetta lose her life in vain Edelgard... I wonder if it's possible to keep Bernadetta alive since even if you ignore her the Kingdom army eventually charges up there

Yeah, it is possible to get through it without letting any of the former students die if you can get to and beat Edelgard + Dimitri quickly. Though it doesn't really have an effect on anything since you never see or hear about those characters again (except for the ones that escape instead of dying like Hubert).

Compsognathus posted...

Gronder 2 is the dumbest mission in the game and basically makes no sense. Like they could have at least made it a Fog of War map or something.

I feel like this point in the game is where the flaws in the structure of the game start to become apparent. Character motivation just starts to go out the window.

It's kinda at its worst in Silver Snow, where (major SS spoilers) a random NPC just sort of walks up to you and tells you that Claude & Dimitri probably died offscreen and they just exit the game entirely. It's really clear that the game had no idea what to do with them on that route.