Board 8 > Unicorn Overlord discussion zone

(+) Yeah! (+)

because the review zone threads should not be required to be tracked permanently

Finished what I suppose I would call "Chapter 1". The top half of the chapter 1 map is still untouched battlewise though. Going to finish Rebirth first and come back to clean up and continue. It's not so daunting when you realize a bunch of those purple fights are like 10-20 in-game seconds long.

I wonder how it's going to balance being able to go down to completely different sides of the map in whatever order you want? Maybe I'll just end up going back and forth, though, nothing really stopping you.

It's pretty easy to just book it through enemy territory on the top half of the chapter 1 map to collect all the resources. I could have gotten Ochiys ages ago by spending like 2 more Divine Shards, but I wanted to save for that Carnelian Pendant so bad. Finally got her though.....of course now I've collected 4 Lapis and 3 Carnelian Pendants through various means. Since I've managed to gain like 5 units over the course of 2 battles, guess it's time for a full squad and gear refresh.

more or less around the same point i suppose, i'd skipped a few things like the swamp before tacking the big objective so i'm getting on them now

I think I got to the same spot? level 8 MSQ

I need to just start gluing people together based on rapport conversations and making it work, rather than constantly fiddling with unit composition

but maybe thats the fun

I would not worry about grinding rapport in battle. Some of those combos are not great, but mainly because you get absurdly more rapport points from meals at taverns than you do from fighting in the same squad.

Also I dont see how all the reviews can be so down on the plot when the six sages are definitely four-dimensional beings

I feel like someone mentioned this before but I didn't take it in, but you get 2k gold from those test battle NPCs and there are tons of them. You have to be able to beat them though.

I decided to sequence break the game and cheese past the guards at the top of the mainland so I could recruit animal people.

Oh no what have I done?

I'm actually really happy about the ability to run through enemy territory and not have to do non story missions in sequence. There's a cool cavalry women at the top middle with a level....12 quest I think? There are a good half dozen side battle on either side of her, but you can just skip them all (I'm still gonna do them after of course).

It'd be different if actual story progress could be fucked with, but they do a good job of putting field enemies that make that impossible to run through, if not just literally blocking your path in some cases. As it stands, it means that in most cases you can do character unlock content whenever you're strong enough regardless of where you have progressed.

Alright, I got the character I wanted, now I can go back to the main quest and beat up everyone with my strong boi :)

So what are some good unit formations?

The basic mindset is generally to have somebody who can soak up damage (Hoplites, Gladiators, Thieves) in the front row and have mostly everyone else in the back. Lex and Alain start in the front row but I'm not so sure they do the trick.

But beyond that, I'm not sure I've seen any combos in particular that pop off. Classes have specialties like Soldier can pierce to units in the back, Hunters own flying units and thieves, etc, so that's good for countering, but I dont know what would be good inherent team ups.

alain definitely functions as a solo frontliner, maybe he needs josef's shield for it to work but the dude has a ton of self-healing

i feel like most of the important team-ups are defensive? like travis and flyers want some solution to arrows, so they get lex

but yeah agree, i'm not finding combos that pop off necessarily either, it's been more "can this group solve this problem"

Hmmm

Gryphon + Thief + Lex does make sense. The problem with flyers and Lex though is who is the leader? Lex gives ranged assist cover but the flyer wants to be leader to go fast

I stuck Travis with Alain's group because from the tutorial example and have left them there. It seems kinda nice because Travis only dodges perfectly for as long as he has PP, and Alain will block one shot and then heal himself so helps stretch out Travis's dodges. Gave him the silken scarf to improve his dodge even more so he's unlikely to ever take damage

picking leader just depends on what you need on that map, I think

made it to c rank now i guess and i'm glad i got all the squads up to 4 units each by now because oh god how else will i have room for all these class upgrades!!! lol, i bet you thought i'd be talking about something that actually fills more unit space

biggest issue i'm realising is that i've JUST reached the point where i actually have too many units to fit in any of the squads (even with a full 10 squads at 4 characters each) not sure if i'm gonna just boot all five of the generic recruits i got or just sideline everyone now

also i only just realised the dlc came with some pretty fun heraldry images. i think it's neat that every unit has an emblem representing the faction they came from, but i couldn't resist replacing all of them with this now
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/694f2055.png

CoolCly posted...

Gryphon + Thief + Lex does make sense. The problem with flyers and Lex though is who is the leader? Lex gives ranged assist cover but the flyer wants to be leader to go fast

I stuck Travis with Alain's group because from the tutorial example and have left them there. It seems kinda nice because Travis only dodges perfectly for as long as he has PP, and Alain will block one shot and then heal himself so helps stretch out Travis's dodges. Gave him the silken scarf to improve his dodge even more so he's unlikely to ever take damage

incidentally i've just had travis lex but with clive+adel instead which is admittedly also been very awkward for "who leader". still it's kind of been my best unit (maybe at least partially because i threw stat boosts at travis and just let them oneshot half the maps) besides josef/hodrick/renault/auch who have been for better or worse a godsend for the early game, though the other ones have been catching up

my alain group was just alain lead and yahna/chloe/selvie support for a while which was obviously pretty reliable for securing wins though not terribly efficient with his mid damage, now i've just put him in a unit with misc people i'm trying to level lol and passed the others off to better team comps. he's not even in my first squad any more, it's the 8th now lol

Is there ever any reason NOT to just take everyone into your army?

I mean, for moral reasons I suppose some people you shouldn't forgive but like... more options for your army is never going to be a bad thing lol

I think those two moral decisions fairly early on where you can execute or not execute the thief and the other guy later on give you divine shards or something to spend, so there's a bonus to not sparing them to recruit later (I assume). Otherwise, I'm not sure if there's any upside to ever not taking someone

Oh god I gave Travis the venom dagger which gives him new AP skill Poison Slash. It poisons the enemy which does a lot of damage which is sick, but I didn't realize how crucial Passive Steal was - he steals PP from enemies preventing them from doing stuff with it, but more importantly gives him more PP to evade with. His ability to survive goes down a ton without this.

in the middle of the elf area now. i've been finally retooling everyone and i'm becoming very wary of the many skill-embedded accessories for similar reasons to above. i mean they're good but, yeah it's a problem. like the one that you need to use all of your pp just to give another character an extra action, the only way i see that working out is if you team comp around giving it to somebody who can also just give you extra pp back somehow, because i mean basically only healers can get that and that means pretty much stopping them functioning as healers...

getting more ap+pp for everyone is kind of my goal now that i've mostly evo'd everyone. after that... the wall of 4 to 5 unit upgrades awaits and looks daunting...

Zigzagoon posted...

I mean, for moral reasons I suppose some people you shouldn't forgive but like... more options for your army is never going to be a bad thing lol

there technically is one valid reason actually. it's generally pretty inconvenient to get that item that lets you customise the stat spreads for characters so you're just stuck with the ones the characters have by default which aren't always optimal. just getting a custom guy in the respective class from a fort can arguably be better gameplay-wise (and it also means not being saddled with characters you don't like for other reasons)

Late game you'll be able to buy the respec item for 30 Honors infinitely. That's deep in, though.

have made zero story progress since yesterday but i decided to focus on clearing the colosseum to get that one character

somehow pulled it off with a team of josef/hodrick/selvie/mordon/berengaria, though i did have to grind the colosseum to get selvie a ruby pendant just so she could get a sandstorm off (and i guess i also did an hour of level grinding as well to get the team barely up to lv30 too, though i'm not sure if that was actually necessary). still shocked i managed to win that fight though, especially considering i'm pretty sure one of the skills they had was one to guarantee hits (combined with a ton of party-wide attacks...) and i wasn't even using evasion builds on any of them, but i guess it worked out.

and now i just have a whole squad of people at level 30 and a newly unlocked level 40 character to complement all my barely level 20 squads lol, guess i have an excuse to retire them so i can actually fit some of the elves in

anyway i guess here's finally where i try doing the rest of the plot so i'm actually ready to move onto the other games i wanted to play this month lol

edit: i'm taking the equipment off of them now and oh wow i didn't realise i'd even just left a golden egg on one of them lmao, i definitely had a chance even without the ruby pendant if i'd optimised them a bit better. also it's very nice that the trophy character also comes with legit great equipment (at least for this point in the game anyway. a free second ruby pendant among other things is super nice given how long it takes to grind the colosseum)

(spoiler warning)

ok in retrospect it is actually very funny i managed to get amalia this fast since i was able to just do this immediately
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/4/4b9eb451.jpg

The game keeps giving me characters I want to use BUT I DONT HAVE SPACE TO USE THEM

I didn't actually get around to starting until yesterday, oops. I just finished mapping out the Cornia region, and have only done the two Lv. 4 missions (for Bruno and Sharon recruits), but all my exploring got me enough shards to recruit Ochlys too (and I found the... shaman?). I'm still within the time frame allowed from the demo, so it's funny I could've done all this days ago.

I'm slowly figuring out my squads and tactics. Getting accessories for more PP and AP has helped make more characters and strategies click. Depending on the enemy formation, all four of my units can murder now.

I am free from the shackles of Rebirth.

I am so fucking happy I can keep going tonight.

fun fact i only recently found out about, the game's got a chrono trigger esque structure where you can get different endings depending on how much story progression you have before you beat it which i think is neat (though conversely it means there is a true ending and the rest are ungood)

still i really want to see people speedrunning min progression, but for now all youtube has is those bad AI voiced videos from "experts" that i desperately want to remove from my recommendations

I really wanted to save 200 Honors for a 5 man crew, but in the last 3 battles I've gained 6 units, so time to dump the 70 Honors to unlock my 6th squad and get it to a 4 man.

Even then I've already got a stack of benched characters, they don't let up here!

incidentally, something worth mentioning regarding crew limits i found out

if you pick the option to NOT recruit at least one of the characters (Gilbert) he will still show up for the final boss fight, notably allowing you to go over the 10 unit limit. there may be others like this too, not sure

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I really wanted to save 200 Honors for a 5 man crew

you can't do this until renown A anyway. i'm not even at B but i assume i'm dumping a bunch of honors into promotions when i get there

Immediately got into a battle where I recruited 3 new units lol.

Is there a reason that Werewolves and Paladins are banned in online coliseum? I haven't dabbled in Paladins, but from what I've been reading, most people consider werewolves not that great? It can't be due to the stronger at night stuff because the other animal classes aren't banned so ???????????

Is this a good game?

It's an incredible game.

Matsuno himself is raving about it.

Ohhh OK, I don't have it unlocked yet but promotions seem to be a completely separate thing from your level then, right? The reason this balance is off for some characters is that even though they're level 8 or 9, they're a promoted unit. So once promotions unlock I can do them whenever for that Honor cost and the timing does not matter at all?

Based on Ochlys leveling up slower despite starting at level 5, I imagine promoting early will make it harder for those characters to level up.

this game is so addicting holy shit

Sooooo close to Rank B and promotions.

Cleared out the entirety of the initial center landmass (that you can access, since endgame seems to be in the middle). Currently making my way through the desert.

Funny how just building a bridge takes you to the final battle. I wonder what happens if you grind enough to win before ever rescuing Scarlett...

Just did the mission with Adel. Was really cool how big and sprawling that fight is.

Berengaria is such a fucking carry. I cannot believe how powerful this woman is.

Unlocked promotion, did Alain immediately of course and WHOOOO BOOOOY horse on the overworld!

All of my units I'm using have hit 15 and many just learned a new ability, so I unequipped every item and tactic, did a bunch of promoting, and dismantled every squad. Going to do a full refresh on everything tomorrow.

After Rebirth this is definitely a step down for me, but I'm still plugging away at this. My track record for finishing games I'm not super into is awful but I'll definitely try to force myself through it.

It's not bad in any way, but it just ain't gripping me.

Did a respec on Alain from Double All-Rounder to Defensive Guardian. Seems what his kit is made for and his skill and growth rates definitely reflect it.

I'm having a hard time taking anything seriously when every sentence either has some medieval person's name or landmark. Some of these names in particular sound especially ridiculous lol.

Maybe it's just me, but it always just sounds weird when you have regular regular regular dialog and then weird ass sounding name/city thrown in each sentence.

I know that's par for the course for these types of games, like Fire Emblem, but it feels particularly bad / off? in this game.

Apparently I'm a weirdo for keeping Alain in the back.

My five units have Josef, Travis, Hodrick, Bruno, and Ochlys as the defensive leads. I'm not sure Ochlys is supposed to go in the front, but after giving her an Evasion +20 accessory, she's proven to be a good evasion tank so far.

I have Alain in Travis' unit, and it's funny that he'll still jump in front and protect him with Luminous Cover when he doesn't need it (though it keeps his Evade active longer, so probably still worth it).

Bruno has a +1 SP accessory so he can self-heal twice (and I have it to trigger at HP <75%), plus Sharon's in that unit too. It works.

Playing on Tactical, and I have not had any real struggles yet. Most of my problems have come from surprise enemy Valor skills.

I usually keep Alain in the back as well. 90% of the time before each battle starts, I'll swap him between front and back row and usually the damage will be higher if he's in the back row. I know it's all based on RNG for each fight, but it's been pretty consistent that I'll get more damage out of him being in the back row.

Alain in the back is good, I don't think that's weird at all. I mean he works better in the front when he doesn't have all his shield skills yet just for raw tanking, sure, but once you get more skills and especially more active and passive points after promoting, he's going to be hopping around defending anyways. He doesn't get a noteable offensive skill until level 30 besides Cav Slayer, and even that's a weak AoE attack just means to give him more PP.

Hmm, am I missing something where it tells you when certain equipment is locked to specific characters or classes?

imagine being able to take ff7 rebirths story seriously, but unicorns is too weird

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Hmm, am I missing something where it tells you when certain equipment is locked to specific characters or classes?

yeah, when you're actually trying to equip something, there's a button you can press (X on switch) to see "equippable classes"

Oh, I know, but I mean in the actual description.

I do wonder if the reason they even show up (thinking of staves here mainly) is because they can equip more types after promoting? Haven't promoted any magic users yet.

It's funny to me that all these staves are locked, but bows seem to be universal even though one class uses a regular bow and the other uses a crossbow.