You're playing Awakening Lunatic mode WRONG!!!
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- Опубликовано: 14 июн 2024
- I've seen quite a lot of discussion around Fire Emblem: Awakening's Lunatic mode. In this video I go over some common mistakes that I see people make as a result of some "common myths" that I see going around. I hope the tips I give in this video will help in your own playthrough!
Credits:
Music: • 2 Hour Synthwave MIX ...
by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
Maps: Fire Emblem WOD www.fireemblemwod.com/
Tables from serenesforest serenesforest.net/
Artwork is official stuff from the game.
Chapter Solutions:
Prologue: • Fire Emblem Awakening ...
Chapter 1: • Fire Emblem: Awakening...
Chapter 2: • Fire Emblem Awakening ...
Chapter 3: • Fire Emblem Awakening ...
If you have any questions at all, leave a comment and I'll do my best to help you out :) 
Игры
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??? just reclas robin into a dark mage and spam nosferatu, win
Pinning this because it's a good example of exactly the mindset I'm trying to combat.
Where is the second seal in the prologue? Where is the nosferatu tome in chapter 2? What do I do when I can't beat chapter 5? What if I want to be able to have a deathless playthrough? What if I want to transfer my skills to lunatic+?
@@Hiiyapow man, only chapter 2 is hard and if secure goods lvls up on robin and fred (if u want) the rest of the game is a meme, u dont need the nosferatu too early because avatar can reach insane stats even before the promo if u focus the exp on him
@@matiastorres2553
You've completely gone away from your original comment now.
Yes, lunatic mode is not that hard. I say as much in the video. But you specifically stated that you "just make robin dark mage and spam nos to win". Not only is that rude and unhelpful, it's not even relevant advice for half of the game
@@Hiiyapow Lmfao he never played Lunatic+ 😂
@@selassieaspen9940haha funni plus skills go brrrr
Yeah one tip you mentioned here that massively improved my success at winning fights is to tank with weak units. I didn't play Awakening Lunatic, but FE3h Maddening which to me was damn near unbeatable. Until I realized I that each and every one of the lovely students was a walking meatshield for AT LEAST 1 turn. It also helps that the math is super easy so you can see if someone is going to get doubled/one shot. But if they're not? That person is can soak up an enemies action. Basically treating your combined HP pool as a spendable resource without ever letting anyone hit 0
To reinforce this, I want to mention a saying in the yu gi oh comunity: "The only life point that matters is the last one" (specially for those based people that enjoy Dinomorphia). Essencially as long as it doesn't kill you, you can recover with strategies and planning.
Wonderful explanation of concepts I've learned over the years. And even then some. This video really said some things that can really encourage players to dip their toes into this mode without fear of "man it's impossible".
...I might have been partly responsible for facilitating that reputation when I made videos in 2012+ to spread those strategies like the water trick. My intention was only to make the trick more accessible but somehow things like that the reputation of being *required* and that makes me sad.
There is so much room to beat the mode even with no grind.
RUclips didn't let me know this comment was on the video so apologies for my late response.
I'll be honest, I use to grumble a bit about "Oh everyone just listens to 2 shadowofchaos videos and makes up their mind about the mode", but I think in retrospect it wasn't fair of me to do that. Really, I hadn't given enough credit for the fact you'd actually beaten the game back then and made it more accessible to people and that I have 10 years worth of strategy and discussion to look back on before making up my mind on the mode. (and even now, a massive amount of players disagree with me)
It's weird. You start internet discussion and see someone with thousands of views and subs and go "oh this person is just invincible and there's no way they'd see anything I say" and then you see that they're just a normal person making content they enjoy. I don't know if "starstruck" is the right word, but it definitely an odd feeling to have someone so pivotal to your current beliefs casually dropping in to praise your work.
Thank you for your kind words. It means a lot.
@@Hiiyapow I've recently picked up the game again.
It's been so long since I played it... That it it feels like I'm fresh again to the difficulty. Not completely mind you since after I die I'm like "Ok NOW I REMEMBER"...
I... Again... Regret being partly responsible for the prevalent mentality that you're trying to combat with this video.
It did not help that I was super enthusiastic for the DLC and people only ever saw my broken ass units from playing that content and think that stuff was also required. (Man it felt like a curse with how popular the content was back then)
Hope you have a good day!
wow look at shadow, so inspirational
@@shadowofchaos725I'm gonna be honest. I think to some extent, those old videos of yours were necessary to get to this point where Awakening gets overlooked and still offers so much with or without the DLC.
If you didn't make them, this video wouldn't have been made because it's in direct challenge to those ideas that people have been clinging to. Because of that, anyone who takes this video's advice in earnest will grow and be willing to gamble a little more on a game that exists purely for fun.
Maybe it's not the perfect outcome... but it's definitely far from the worst one.
7:02 I've seen a lot of people make this mistake when approaching CQ lunatic, they end up lacking enough firepower during the earlygame where attack stance is at its strongest, or they don't make good use of the transfer and separate commands to keep a strong momentum during a push, they just pair everyone up and then get overwhelmed.
Yoooo
This is a super interesting guide. I admit I myself fall into the habit of mindless pair up in both Awakening and CQ, especially in the lategame.
I was gonna do awakening lunatic for the first time, was pretty nervous about the early chapters. I found this video, this is really informative and helpful, I now know to play in a more open minded mind set, rather than the "alright, get in your pairs and turtle this map"
I'm now doing lunatic, and holy shit the prologue is hard.
how tf do you beat chapter 2
@@gurucheeks4510 I have solutions to the first 4 chapters (prologue, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3 in the description) if you're struggling, as the earlier maps tend to be harder due to the enemies being stronger and your lack of options
@@Hiiyapow damn just saw this now, thanks, I ended up deleting my Lunatic Run but I think I'll reattempt it somewhat soon.
@@gurucheeks4510 haha this was satisfying to watch, you watch this video and think "great I'll follow his tips, surely this will work" and then it just doesn't.
7:22 I didn’t mindlessly pair up in Fates, taking full advantage of it
But with Awakening, I realized I did do that. I never delved into the gameplay and just stuck with old habits from my very first play-through. This is super eye opening!
I need more of these please. SO good.
i attempted Lunatic after beating Awakening on Hard. In that Hrad playthrough i didnt wanna use Fredrick because i dont know where i read this but i read that any exp fredrick earns i wasted so i didnt use him and i went into lunatic with the same mindset, but then it made me realise how much of an asset Fredrick is to beating this mode
Not using jagen - the classic pitfall
Came back to this vid 2 years later, honestly can't believe this is your only vid. It's some of the best FE discussion on RUclips for sure, insanely high quality. I'd definitely be down to watch anything else you put out.
Hey, thanks for your comment, it means a lot to read stuff like this. I was originally planning to release a "Can you beat Awakening Lunatic+ without Robin" that would have been a run detailing all the Vaike strats I had for it, but in the middle of all that I made the Vaike>Robin post one evening and I suddenly had like a billion people I wanted to respond to about stuff. (Full disclosure, Mekkah asked me before making the video so it's not like he blindsided me or anything and I really appreciate him bringing everything into the spotlight that I wrote as well as the aVaikening streams).
But yeah, progress on editing that kinda stalled a bit because of that and while I could grind it out now, there's not as much point given how I'd be re-treading a lot of the same ground. It will come out eventually- I've refined a lot of strats and there's lots of exciting lunatic+ tech and crazy stuff, but it's unlikely to be out before next year.
What I *am* planning on doing is a follow up to the whole Vaike saga, just so I can consolidate everything in one place and respond to a lot of the arguments that I've been getting (because it's gotten to the point where I can't keep up by replying to literally everyone). My plan is basically to wait for Mekkah to finish up his avaikening project and see what everyone's final verdict is before I dive in- that way I can basically show what people are getting "wrong" or not, if that makes sense.
Aside from that, I have been meaning to do a Sumia/Dark Flier analysis (and why they suck), but that script is a lot harder to write because of how difficult it is to talk about one issue without dipping into another
But yeah, thanks again for dropping this comment. There is stuff planned for the future, but I'm not sure exactly when it's going to come out.
Lunatic’s first few chapters are absolutely brutal but once you get past them you can power through the rest of the game with a lot more freedom. The biggest mistake you can make is assuming Lunatic *needs* to be a ChRobin solo. Funneling all of your resources into two units can get you to the credits but you’ll make the end game way harder than it needs to be by limiting your options.
Pretty much.
So much of the difficulty of the first few maps is people thinking "I have to train Robin and Chrom" and refusing to use anyone else.
And then they beat the game, remember how hard it was using only Chrom and Robin for the early game and then recommends that everyone else ALSO only uses Chrom and Robin despite it making the game much harder.
I honestly love lunatic mode though, feels like a really great mode to just mess about it, especially in the midgame where you can get any unit to do anything and the game doesn't break too much unless you really go out of your way.
i must have missed the part where the endgame becomes hard with ChRobin solo, the only enemy in the game that can stand up to pumped Robin is Grima, and even he dies to forged weapons.
@@HiiyapowI often hear snowballing with Chrom in Robin is the best strategy to beat Lunatic and Lunatic +.
@@windwaker0rules Don't know why I never responded to this, but trying to Chrobin solo definitely makes the earlygame more difficult and I'd argue the lategame is still easier if you are able to do more things than AFK nosferatu tank.
Especially for a player new to Chrobin soloing. They probably don't realise how much you should be training Chrom and semi-softlock on Grima because Sorc Robin isn't realistically killing Grima without Chrom dualstrikes and a too low level Chrom will struggle to land enough hits.
It's not impossible to build up the hit rate, or try vengeance+ruin, but its enough of an obstacle for first time lunaticers that saying "ah just chrobin solo" dismissively is not helpful
@@Hiiyapow i disagree because its true that Grima is "harder" but she still can't stand up to stat capped robin with forged nosferatu and a few ignis procs, if you don't have enough money to forge a stack of nos then yes, it makes the final fight impossible but you sell everyones equipment to make the stack its basically auto pilot.
Okay.. Now do one for Lunatic+ 🤣
Great video. I enjoyed the subtle humor conveyed through editing and I appreciate the strong anti-elitist tone and explanations. Sometimes, I feel like the only reason the FE community isn't *massive* is because it's not very accessible. Most players in it aren't casuals, but people who have years, if not decades worth of knowledge or experience with the franchise under their belt. If we start acting like it's okay to not have all the information, I think people would ask more questions and feel more welcomed.
Also, It's really awesome to see content for Awakening, and it's content I could envision someone who isn't a hardcore FE nerd finding value in.
15:17 This whole sequence is so cool. I'll definitely try it out once I reach that chapter on my lunatic run.
Rescue is really broken, but do bear in mind that the clear of chapter 17 is more of a proof of concept designed to wow people than it is the absolute best way to take on that map. For every other map aside from 21 (and sometimes 20), 1-turns are not only doable, but easy once you know what you have to do with them, but I wouldn't go for that on ch17 on my first try.
I was definitely in the camp of people who are unnecessarily frightened by Lunatic mode. In fairness though, I have significantly improved at FE games in general over the past 3 or so years, and I haven't seriously attempted a Lunatic run in over 6. I like how a lot of these strats are more or less common sense, but for whatever reason (likely because Awakening functions quite differently on the easier difficulties), people just ignore the sensible decisions that are suggested here.
I definitely agree with a lot of things here, in particular the whole Sumia thing. She's really not great, and while Vaike/Frederick can help her out in pair up to give her exp, you're shooting yourself in the foot if you do this very often because both Vaike and Frederick are good units that you'll likely want elsewhere (also, Sumia's kinda a weirdo has restricted S supports so she can't even S support Vaike). And honestly, even if you go through with it all, Sumia doesn't really end up all that impressive long term... I've used Lissa reclassed to pegasus knight that functioned much better than Sumia. Is it really worth hamstringing Frederick so that Sumia can become somewhat passable at fighting?
The reason I personally feel Sumia is good isn't because of her combat but because she gives Fredrick a large boost to his speed which he will really need layer on and she keeps him going much longer. Plus in maps like chapter 8 and 9 she can fly him over the desert and then just swap to the back for Frederick to enemy phase. That is the main reason I would say she is really good.
“Intelligent system? More like UN-intelligent system”
God, that cracked me up much more than it should’ve
i enjoy Fe awakening Lunatic, nice to know another person
remember when FE11 H5 was daunting before we learned about forging effective weapon strats? We got the water trick as the first stepping stone to make Lunatic less of a headache.
this guide for pairup and rescue staff strats are nice too
I had a super strong itch to replay the series after Engage and I just started Awakening lunatic for the first time thinking why not cuz I had always avoided it cuz of what I heard about the mode but I agree with your sentiment. The first few chapters are tough but with trial and error possible (outside of turtling, cheese strats), but after those the difficulty feels more smoothed out, not "easier" but you actually have resources to counteract stuff (stat boosters, 2-range weapons). I was also surprised by how rewarding or valid aggressive play works out in Lunatic.
Holy shit, the guy who helped me git gud at fire emblem is the fucking Vaike man. You are an inspiration sir
I'll be completely honest here. I tried Lunatic once i completed Hard mode, and it took me so manny tries and so much mental gymnastics to try and beat even prologue, let alone chapter 2, that I kinda gave up on the idea. Like, it isn't for me, or I simply lacked the patience to achive my desired results in the time I had at my disposition. After watching your video, I may be bold enough to attempt again at it. Awakenig IS my favorite game of those I had the pleasure to play so far, and I would be making it a deservice by not trying to 100% percent it. Thanks for the sound advise, I'll probably come back numerous times in the future to rewatch this video as to not forget this tips anytime soon. Keep up the great work my good sir!
Great video man!! U def deserve more subs can’t wait for ur next one
I hope we get more videos from you someday. I could use advice on running an unoptimal robin since I'm trying to run him with +skill -magic he gets doubled most of
the time but all the guides I find just go +speed and they do the most basic strats. This video really helped with in my starting attempts for lunatic.
There is more content coming at some point. I've basically got caught on a giant script for a video that's never ending and it's eaten up a lot of time. I do have more stuff planned but I want to get it out the way first just so I can finally be done with it.
With regards to running with an unoptimal Robin, if it's just normal lunatic mode, you won't need to hit specific speed benchmarks unless you're going for very specific strategies. I don't have a lot of general advice for doing that sort of thing outside of "go dark mage at some point before the lategame" but if you let me know a map youre stuck on I can give you some more specifics to figure it out.
An anonymous user did luna+ 0% which can be found in a playlist on topaz’s channel but rengor is doing it on classic instead of casual
Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing something about this but I never fully looked into it. Seems like I was incorrect. Good catch!
I'd also love to see your unit rankings for this game, or at least your thoughts on units, if you ever felt up to it.
Really good video. I'm playing Lunatic for the first time. I'm 8 chapters in and have had to learn a lot of these things the hard way, but I learned even more from watching. Wish I'd known about whatever maneuver allowed you to walk on water in the first chapter, that would have been nice for getting MU early XP haha. But I'm chipping away at it and having a really good time with it! The difficulty is really fun, even if it's frustrating at times. Thanks for the info!
I did a a short playthrough of awakening lunatic and I found a good strategy for chapter 2 that I think is valid. Basically in that chapter you need to hog your hole army on a mountain to the left so that the barrage of enemies do not overwhelm your army. I did the same strat in the Cordelia chapter as well
Lunatic for me is actually pretty fun, once I knew what to do and adopting diffrent strategies I saw online. It was super rewarding to beat. Getting a lucky dodge, a lucky crit or getting a clutch dual gurad is always exciting. Although I am happy to hear that I didn't need to use specific units, back then I always tried to use more children units even if I didn't personal like them because I saw EVERYONE and their mom using them but its refreshing to hear "just use what you like"
Lunatic + is honestly the more scary mode, while its still rewarding to beat it's more a "finally a good luck streak" instead of a "I'm so smart" kinda feeling I get in lunatic
Lunatic+ is scary, but it also suffers from the same fate as lunatic where everyone hypes it up to way more than it is, which makes it seem far scarier than it otherwise would.
RNG doesn't play that big of a factor in determining whether or not a map is beatable, despite lots of high-sub-count youtubers saying so. I'd see it more like a roguelike- some setups are easier than others, but 99.9% of them are going to be possible if you play your cards right.
Even in lunatic+, lots of different units are viable. The only unit who I would say is truly, genuinely unuseable is Donnel and even he has ok return on investment by the midgame.
WAIT YOU'RE THE VAIKE PERSON FROM THE SUBREDDIT???
THAT'S SICK!
anyways, this video has made me want to give Lunatic another shot. I completed a playthrough many, many years ago but, of course, it was a Chrobin solo. It didn't really feel like I was playing the game so much as spamming end turn.
I started a Hard Mode run last year and got to Ch.25 (which I didn't finish...) but I was amazed by how much I was enjoying Awakening, despite my significant preference for Fates' take on many of the same mechanics. It never crossed my mind to try doing the same in Lunatic mode, but... well, after this video, I just might!
I think the comparison to FE6 Hard Mode really puts things into perspective. It's certainly different than the mental model I had of FE13 Lunatic(+) before, but the more I think about it the more reasonable it sounds.
I also really appreciated all of the footage you provided to demonstrate each of your points, as well as the fact you took the time to record multiple variants of some of the same strategies to really show that, despite the difficulty and inflated stats, the game remains flexible nonetheless.
So yeah, congrats for the great video! It was a very pleasant watch :D
This really makes me wanna give lunatic another shot. I appreciate the advice in the video and I hope to implement it when i get around to playing lunatic again. I have question though. What would you say is a good or perhaps best build even for Robin in lunatic? Like what asset/flaw combination would be best as well as best class for him/her? Im curious to hear your take on it as I usually stick to tactician/grandmaster but someone told me dark mage/sorcerer is way better because of the access to healing tomes like Nosferatu. Also should I early promote my units when I get master seals? Like if I just recruited Gregor and already had a master seal would it be wise to early promote him? Or should I wait?
For Robin, you can't go wrong with +speed and either -luck or -skill. +def is good too, makes those early levels a bit simpler, although Robin doesn't get snowballing as fast.
Classwise, I would second seal Robin to Dark Mage as soon as you get the option to, either from the 100 renown seal if you're using renown, or the seal in chapter 8. It's a generally good class for Robin as it increases their damage output a lot due to the fact it gives them a higher magic stat and more powerful tomes to use. They also get access to nosferatu, which is strong, but you only get 1 until chapter 13 where you can buy them, so it's more of a mid/lategame tool than something that's going to give you early dominance.
From there, some people opt into Dark Flier for galeforce, but to be honest just staying in Sorcerer is going to be just as good on vanilla lunatic as galeforce isn't really a super relevant skill until lunatic+.
But honestly, Robin is really strong anyway and I wouldn't feel bound by what you "should" be doing. Lunatic mode is not so back-breakingly difficult that Robin is going to struggle if you put them in a non-Dark mage class. It might be "optimal" to go Dark Mage-Sorc, but don't think optimal means "the only option".
As for promotion, I generally consider early promotion to be best in 99% of cases. For utility units (staffbots, pairup partners, fliers), promoting ASAP is just the best thing you can do to get them to their best strengths. For units that are more combat focused, you might find that if you promote them at the instant they hit 10 they'll fall off a little bit, but to be honest it's quite hard to end up in a situation where you're promoting a unit that early, due to when you get your first master seals.
I usually promote my combat units somewhere between level 12 and level 15, but that's less because I'm holding off on promotion and more because I give them a bigger share of the exp so they level up quicker than the seals are given to me. But yeah, I know some people will refuse to promote until level 14 or 15 or even 20 and that's waiting way too long because you'll miss out on awakening's crazy good promo bonuses as well as being slower to work towards skills/weapon ranks.
For Gregor specifically, he can completely dominate hard mode just being promoted right out of the box for the entire game. If you were doing it in lunatic, whether or not it's a good idea is more about what you want to do with him. Do you want a low investment fighter who is great for a bit and then you drop him? Go ahead. Do you want an 8 move utility unit with +move on pairup? Go ahead? Do you want a carry unit who will take you to lategame? You can get away with promoting him early, but I'd probably push for 2-3 more levels just because it's a little bit easier to get the stats up.
Just don't hold off forever, those promotion stats are really, really good and Gregor wants to start levelling towards Sol+Axebreaker.
Hope this helps!
@@Hiiyapow I am very appreciative of you taking time out of your day to respond to my questions. You a real one seriously. Ill keep all this in mind.
Sumia is a required pair-up to make Fredrick good in Lunatic Mode. Her +speed boost she gives increases Fredrick's speed to the point where he is a viable damage dealer. Unfortunately, this only puts him into the speed tier of not getting doubled. Doubling enemies with Fredrick even with Sumia with an S support is unreliable without deliberately feeding experience to Fredrick until he hits that speed tier. Sumia can become a Dark Flier, but lacks the damage to meet damage thresholds reliably. While Lissa can become a Sage first allowing you to both attack/heal with her while you build up your magic statistic first to make Lissa a viable damage dealer as a Dark Flier.
Imagine how long it would take to max frederick after limit break? That
Would be a trophy character
He doubles everything for a good chunk of the game with sumia
Best combined if you have amazing luck in IRL
Whenever your unit can crit, they WILL
And whenever they can dodge, THEY WILL
Except recruitable red enemies where your unit will avoid hitting them if they can so that you can figure how to recruit them
Funny considering fe12 Lunatic(specially reverse) is actually harder than fe13, you have to use all your units to beat fe12 lunatic while fe13 lunatic+ eventually becomes dark mage fest.
Also it's funny that RUclips recommended this video in the very same day I beat Lunatic+, while I understand the hate on Lunatic+, regular Lunatic is pretty fine, I was using units like Stahl Virion and Henry with no trouble.
i tried awakening lunatic once on a whim and got assblasted by the prologue, so i put it down for another time
but this video was pretty encouraging in giving it another shot
i think i also fell into the pitfall of not using frederick liberally to soften up the barbarians or get rid of myrmidons
Funnily enough i have no problem with playing Shadow Dragon on H5, but Awakening (or Fates for that matter) on Lunatic is off the table for me. When the cast consists of actual characters and puts emphasis on their interactions, having to play optimally is about the last thing i want to have in mind. In Shadow Dragon it's easy, because most characters are basically generics with names, so low manning doesn't bother me at all, while doing the same in FE13 or 14 just "feels" incorrect. I know i could beat those games on Lunatic, but i also know i wouldn't have much fun doing so.
That's fair. I wouldn't totally discount the mode, though. You don't have to play super optimally to win. You never know, you might just find your new favorite way to play the game.
@@Hiiyapow True, but Hard mode hits the spot when it's challenging enough to be engaging, but easy enough to let me deploy whoever i want and make the game harder that way. Lunatic doesn't have that flexibility to the same extent.
And regarding the discussion about it, i believe it's infamy comes primarily from Lunatic+. Something like Lunatic reverse in FE12 is stupidly difficult, but consistent - all enemies have vantage+. That's all you have to keep in mind and build strategy around it. In Lunatic+ difficulty varies greatly depending on what skills enemies roll. Hawkeye is propably the worst designed skill in FE, next to Nihil - regular enemies shouldn't have it, especially at random.
The reason why Nosferatu Crobin is most often recommended is primarily because of Lunatic+ - it can beat almost any combination of that randomness. And i don't think people even distinct Lunatic from Lunatic+ anymore. It's been ingrained that Lunatic in Awakening is bs, when it's really just Lunatic+ that is the problem.
My most challenging obstacle in lunatic is the desire to reset even though my lords are yet to die, and to allow myself to have permanent losses.
I might as well play casual if I cannot handle permanent failure lol
Very good video, I'm currently doing an awakening run and honestly it's hard but not impossible. As you said, you just have to actually THINK about your moves rather than chose one set path and brute force RNG until it works. Granted, sometimes I feel disappointed by the need to rely too much on frederick and lon'qu+vaike to clear most of the units on some maps and feel like I'm missing out on xp for my other guys but they are just too frail lol. I'm currently at chapter 8 and FINALLY reclassed Donnel to a merc. Having a blast so far :)
Great first video, and I'm glad to read that you have more planned. It's nice to see a 10+ year old game like Awakening get the reexamination it deserves.
Good video, I always say that Lunatic past the first few chapters is definitely more than playable and even fun until ch15 or so. Even then, the early game is much like a puzzle game with a little rng, something I like the most about difficult FE games.
Not much of a fan past those chapters past 15 as I mentioned, where rescue cheese is easy; and the pain of not relying on HP recovery starts to kick in; and high manned armies tend get out-scaled without careful investment
I honestly feel like lunatic (and +) actual difficulty isn't in those very early game maps. The reason people struggle with them is more due to flawed mindsets (which is why I made this video).
The hardest maps, in my opinion, are chapters 5 and 6 and while they are early maps, they often aren't considered "very early game" or included much in discussion at all. Which is funny, really, because they are likely the maps that put most players off the game if all they've heard is "first 4 are impossible and everything else is a cakewalk" which is the oft perpetuated myth of lunatic.
Past 15 feels like personal preference to me. I really like coming up with rescue skips and the rout maps only really start to drag at the very end of the game (23/24) and even then, if you really want to challenge yourself, you CAN do it highman if you want to
@@Hiiyapow I actually count those as the first few maps, so yeah I get what you mean. Chapters 0-4 can be beat with a reasonable amount of Freddy use for new players, 5 and 6 need more than using a lot Frederick. Imo when a player learned how to beat 0-4 by themselves they usually have earned the skills to beat the following maps as well. That’s probably one reason from where the myth comes from.
Actually mixed up 15 and 16 whoops. As for high manning, I only really attempted twice or thrice and that didn’t feel that good, had to make too many comprises for my tastes haha. I still have a stigma for that part of the game because of that, can’t count how often I played until ch 16 and stopped…
For L+, aside from counter, the skills aren’t too rough as they may seem. Most of the time the player is forced to play a little differently, e.g. Luna+ early on is like 5 extra damage at best. But gotta say those skill look extremely intimidating until the player learns what those skills mean for the gameplay. Counter though, I hate it above all, yes there are strategies to beat them but man does the skill make me paranoid. Literally walking nukes for 1 range attackers. KuroiTTV actually told me about a bow spam strat that makes L+ very consistent to beat, but he hasn’t linked me the play log yet D :
Despite its generous growth rates compared to the older titles it is still possible for units to get stat screwed in Awakening and fairly hard, too. Like a Stahl or Robin that gets no Speed for 5+ levels.
More hilariously I had a recent run where in 11 levels I had a Lissa who got like +9 defense. I made her a peg and she had 12 defense at level 1. She's literally a flying tank and it means the Owain I'm going to get is going to have hilarious stats, too.
Even if by some token Chrobin solo clear was "optimal," efficiency doesn't always mean fun, and the game gives you so many tools to beat it that you really don't have to do it in the most tedious and braindead way possible
Excellent video. Could you show us how you go about an Awakening lunatic playthrough? Perhaps by making a Let's Play or guide?
Bro bothered to show like only ch1 and that's it lol
You called out my bad advice in a reddit comment section once. I'm glad I found this. I really wish your perspective was the meta instead of the flawed stuff I was peddling (thanks for disagreeing with me).
I have also been known to confidently espouse wrong information about the game so you aren't alone there. (I used to rate Ricken far lower than he deserved based off of bias) so you aren't alone in that respect
dang this video is good
was helpful thanks
I found your point on "Not using all available resources" at 12:25 very interesting. What do you think qualifies as "cheating" when it comes to dlc and the renown system?
Also, what are your thoughts on Lunatic vs Lunatic+?
With regards to "cheating", you can't really "cheat" as such, given that it's a single player game.
That being said, I'd argue that there are things that simply aren't in the spirit of the game. Infinite grinding (through map battles or DLC) completely removes the difficulty from the game because you just eliminate the stat disparity between the enemies and yourself, for example.
I'd argue the spirit of the game requires resources that are limited in some way. It doesn't mean that they have to have a harsh limit, but having an infinite amount of gold or exp to draw from stops the game from being a challenge as there is essentially no punishment for playing "wrong".
DLC also suffers from the fact that not everyone has it and it is arguably pay-to-win, given the strength of some of the classes you can get with it. I personally just don't find it interesting to optimize or rate what are essentially free bonuses you can get by paying money.
For renown, I like to use base for lunatic because I want to talk about strategies that anyone could use even if they opened a new cartridge right now and played the game straight after.
It's an extreme example, but I'm sure you can imagine that there is a world of difference beween 0 renown lunatic and 99999 renown lunatic where you get the supreme emblem that essentially gives you infinite gold.
For lunatic+, I prefer playing on 270 renown, as you physically cannot unlock it without beating that many maps (as you have to beat lunatic mode to unlock it) and the lower-tier renown options are way more balanced than any of the high tier stuff.
I'd say those are the 2 most "standard" ways people play and most accurately reflect your normal FE experience. Not to say that the other ways to play are invalid, as I think many of those systems are fun and have great merit, but I'd argue the game isn't designed or balanced around them.
For lunatic vs lunatic+ generally, I like both modes. Lunatic has a lot more freedom and doesn't require as much thought so I find it as a great game to just relax and do dumb stuff with whereas lunatic+ is obviously much harder and I'll play it when I want to stretch my fire emblem muscles.
I appreciate the existence of both modes and can confidently say that awakening would be a worse game without either.
@@Hiiyapow Do you think Lunatic+ is designed well/fairly? I have no problems with Lunatic, but Lunatic+'s rng skills make if seem way too insane for me.
@@sleepytown6209
Yes and no. I don't think lunatic+ was intentionally designed to be good, but it is a good experience nonetheless and people tend to massively exaggerate the extent to which RNG impacts the game.
I view it similarly to a roguelike experience where RNG might shape the "level design" but whether or not you win is entirely down to how good you are at using what you've got to overcome different situations.
@@Hiiyapow Until happening across this I never understood why "270 renown" was a thing people did.
I'm seeing that you're still actively interacting with comments here, which is pretty cool! is there any chance of you making more informative guides and videos like this?
I wanted to post more, but I've been holding off on doing it because I wanted to be able to find a way to capture footage of the game without literally pointing my phone at my 3DS.
For guides like this where I'm not showing as much gameplay, it can function OK with some good editing behind it, but for anything with more of a gameplay focus it's not going to hold people's attention.
But yeah I absolutely plan to make more stuff in the future. I've got some guides, scripts, tier lists and a lunatic+ challenge run in the works. I just need to have more of a think about how I'm getting gameplay footage.
@@Hiiyapow that's nice, citra is always an option if you have a decent enough pc, but I'm sure you've already thought of that.
either way, I hope to see more, you definitely helped me want to give lunatic a real chance
@@Hiiyapow Wew exciting! Definitely waiting for those Chrom x Sully strats you’ve been teasing
I am so glad you called people out for overhyping sumia. Everyone seems to think she's one of the best units in the game because she has the pegasus knight class and shows up on map 4. I agree that she is more of a mid tier unit.
I wouldn't even go for Donnel in Lunatic for the early game. I waited till I had access to infinite master and second seals and then brought those units in on his paralogue with weapons and my "weaker" units to set up easy enough kills for him to get alongside a forged bronze Lance and a bulky Kellam or Stahl to support since he actually has support ranks with him.
I didn't leave him behind since I know he's a great dad due to passing on Galeforce to either Noire, Nah, or Kjelle. It could be said rushing for Donnel is not worth it since getting him up to speed is way too difficult on Lunatic without the DLC.
I'm making a FEA definitive guide so this definitely gave me some nice advice for when I play Lunatic again. It's been years and Hard felt mostly easy still
I do recommend doing Paralogue 1 between chapter 4 and 5, even if the map is "harder" then. This is for 2 reasons.
1) There's a lot of exp which can be given out. Chapter 5 is probably the hardest map in the game and paralogue 1 has a lot of weak enemies which don't move until approached which can be used to train any of the earlygame squad into a more viable unit to make chapter 5 easier.
2) Paralogue 1 contains the rescue staff, which can be used to save Ricken and Maribelle on turn 1 of chapter 5, making the entire map much much easier.
Donnel can be recruited simply by dropping him in front of the archer in the top left corner of the map and having him poke it to death. He'll level up once and then you can continue on your merry way.
...Not that he'll be great once recruited. He sucks as a unit and Galeforce is mostly overrated outside of apotheosis.
I no longer have my cartridge but my first playthrough was lunatic and my best units were Robin, Chrom, Tiki, Nah, Lonqu, and some spotpass.characters like Julius
I miss that save file
I’ve been saying it since my first Fire Emblem. HP is a resource. People are always so afraid of using their healers as meat bags but in practice they are some of the most reliable taunt tanks when used right. You can pull otherwise troublesome stacks of enemies apart by putting an enticing healer snack in range of one attack. Archers are similar but lack the utility of healers to be as good. It lets you get aggressive way more and once the player learns different patterns of unit placement you can snake a column of enemies into a kill corridor of your own design.
I think people focus on stat stick tanking in Awakening because its caps are so damn high. The moment the player starts falling behind, it begins to compound on difficulty and reliable strategies start to shrink, turning into Robin-Emblem for a lot of them. I think the key factor of Lunatic and Lunatic+ is understanding that the game really does start turn 1 on the prologue and your decision making in the early chapters will greatly affect your rest of the game.
I think the biggest fear I would have going into it would be the late game stuff, especially the child units, do you have any general advice on building them?
I'm about to give you the most important advice when it comes to awakening lunatic late game builds and child characters:
It doesn't matter.
Very anticlimactic, I know. But it doesn't. Certainly, if you enjoy optimizing your units to an absurd degree then there are countless resources on the internet that can help you with that, but if all you care about is being able to complete the game, it won't matter. Don't let your fear of the unknown lategame stop you from giving it a go.
If you want to use a child unit for fun, you can't really build them too "wrong". Certainly, I'd be looking to pass down skills that are as broken as possible and potentially try some combos like vantage/vengeance and the like, but I promise you that, say, Severas viability on lunatic is not going to be predicated on whether you did the perfect setup when building her.
I actually find that a lot of child units have good utility when straight up promoted from join. Kjelle can promote and only needs 5 levels to give the player access to rally defense. All the magic children can promote to have access to staves for healing and rescue, Severa/Inigo can go Bow Knight for the 8 mov unit with a mov pairup, and the fliers can go falcon etc. Won't make them great as combat units, but can work for filler utility.
Oh and I should mention that child units on the whole tend to be quite mediocre in awakening, which is why optimizing them doesn't matter all that much, because they aren't a large factor on your ability to beat the game
@@Hiiyapow Ah, thanks. This video makes the mode way less scary so I will probably give it a chance when I get the chance
Hi I started my lunatic playthrough a few days ago and saw in the comments that dark mage was the way to go in terms of second sealing robin. I was wondering what promotion for robin is the best one to go for after that.
Dark Mage is a great second sealing option for Robin because it gives access to nosferatu which massively increases your durability. (You get one in chapter 9 and then can buy infinite after chapter 13)
Sorceror is Robin's best promotion from Dark mage, as it allows them to continue to use nosferatu and stay incredibly bulky while also having access to two fantastic skills in vegeance which combines with nosferatu to increase healing further, and tomebreaker, which essentially makes all mages unable to damage Robin.
To be honest, you can get away with just looping through sorc over and over and you can break through lunatic and most of lunatic+ given just how strong sorceror robin is with nosferatu.
It is by far the easiest way to get yourself through lategame and I'd recommend it to people trying lunatic for the first time so they can learn the limits of the game and what the strength of the enemies is like.
Outside of that, you can in theory get away with pretty much anything and another fairly popular build is going either merc->hero->bow knight or merc->hero->sorceror.
I will say that there is an even more popular build for Robin that goes through Dark Flier, but I'd strongly advise against going through Dark Flier if you're new to lunatic mode, as the class has extremely poor combat and you'll never need the galeforce skill in regular lunatic.
For a more advanced strategy. bow classes (mainly warrior and bow knight) also have access to a very cheesey lategame strategy of simply sitting in the corner with a bow and spamming healing items every turn, reducing the number of melee threats you face in any given turn from 7+ to two. It's very, very, very slow and can be a bit of a pain to set up sometimes but can even break lunatic+ with ease.
So yeah. TLDR: Stick to Sorc if you want to make it easy on yourself. Hero is almost as good, and any non flier class will have great combat eventually too. Bow classes can break the game once they get enough stats, but I wouldn't try it on your first go.
The hardest classes to use will be fliers due to the fact that they gain massive weaknesses and you're going to constantly have to position Robin out of threat range to have them not die. They have their applications but I wouldn't go for them right away.
TLDR of the TLDR: Just go sorceror bro.
@@Hiiyapow Thats fair I mainly play male robin anyway. I thought as much that merc was the next best option, are there any other spicy class paths people go through or do people only stick with dark mage, merc and pegasus knight.
@@zeadly7991 It depends what you mean by "spicy", I suppose. There are plenty of funny builds that are noticeably worse such as:
Vantage Vengeance: Going into myrm earlier allows you to combine with the vengeance skill to take out enemies before they even have the chance to attack you.
Vantage Wrath Lethality . This is really quite bad, but the idea is that you equip robin with a killer weapon, put them in a high skill class and then watch them kill everything on enemy phase before it can reach them
Bowtanking: Explained this earlier.
Avoid stack: Between skills like myrms avoid+10, mercs patience, wyverns tantivy and cavs outdoor fighter, there are many ways of increasing Robin's avoid to comedically high levels. This gets less viable the further you get into the game as the enemies hit rate goes up, they gain the hit+10 skill and then they get double forged weapons with even more hit and gain hit+20 past chapter 24.
That's all I've got off the top of my head. If you're curious for more weird robin ideas, I'd ask the 3ds era channel of the r/fireemblem discord because there are loads of people there that have tried weird stuff.
My favorite way to play Lunatic is to do full deployment and no kids.
the biggest mistake me and many of my friends made on our first lunatic run was obliterating everything with robin for the whole game, using nothing but robin and then in the grima fight even on magic tonics our forged nosfers couldn't do enough damage and the war monks and war clerics kept healing grima
Even if you didn't use Robin as much that would still be an issue because Grima is a garbage unfair boss anyway
@@mysmallnoman really? i had no problem when i learnt from my mistakes...
and did the exact same thing except with chrom as well because of exalt falchion
@@jueymiah1810 it wasn't a mistake lol
That's like saying " Soloing FE8 with Seth is a mistake "
It's not
@@mysmallnoman really? i capped out my robin with sub-optimal but still good skills(vengance, tomefaire, that lvl 1 merc skill which i forgot the name of, galeforce and that lvl 10 myrmydon skill i forgor the name of)+magic -skill and still the war monks and clerics kept healing grima. maybe ur talking about with limit breaker or maybe i just got unlucky but i went over 200 turns without it breaking through
What do you do when a risen spawn blocks you from buying your tonics?
This is the best.
People have trouble with lunatic? I played normal one time then switched to hard for all my main replays as it gave some fun to it. Lunatic after ny second playthrough and i managed to get to the final map with just a robin Fredrick combo with chrom as back up
Lunatic at most is just playing hard but actually minding yout unit spots. Only issue i had was not getting donnel as i was rushing it.
Lunatic plus meanwhile is full rng and while i got through it. It wasn't worth it. Did the same with fates but i raised azura to have near max stats so replay of fates on lunatic will be easier
So, on chapter 1 it’s heavily RNG because you need Fredrick to deal with a large majority of the Risen. He has to dodge about 2 axe hits to not die.
Frederick on the fort does not die unless the hammer fighter hits him. (and even then he survives in some cases).
There are a number of ways to deal with it on lunatic, from simply dodgetanking with a bronze sword, giving the barbarian less than a 10% chance of hitting, or simple chipping him down and killing him on player phase.
You can also kite around a lot in this map due to the huge number of forest tiles.
If you want to see some RNG-less clears on lunatic mdoe, I'd recommend checking out KTT or Casey as they both have a lot of content where they have beaten the game on lunatic+ without resetting for RNG.
That should tell you what the situation is like on lunatic.
Made the mistake of pair up too much early game now it's getting really hard to progress, im at the Giant tree level and it's brutal
I think awakening lunatic from prologue until emeryn chapters were fine. It was like playing fe12 prologue. So more like solving a puzzle which i like it. However, the second part until the final part were the moment i dislike awakening lunatic. It devolved into chrobin+morgan juggernaut for every route map. For boss kill map i just cheese it with rescue staff.
IMO i still think lunatic awakening was going too far with enemy density and stats inflation. Sure engage also high enemy density and stats inflation on the late game but engage provided a lot of tool to tackle it. There were skills like galeforce, sol, aether and rally in awakening to help mostly for ep but for me it did not feel like playing strategy game.
Edit: i think you have good point about many players face dificulty on the early lunatic. They mindlessly paired up their unit instead of optimizing when to pair and unpair their unit. I think chapters 1-10 were good enough to test player skill about pair up but then everything collapse when they decided to put too much enemies for the following chapters.
and then there is berwick saga that has only one difficulty mode: hell!!! and it gets only harder until the end. but same as said here there are endless strategies anyone can come up with to win (with luck on their side…). that’s the hallmark of a good strategy game.
Pairing up all of your units on turn one instantly especially on Chapter 3 which is used in the example is a terrible idea. Chapter 3 is tightly mathed out leading to runs which cannot be won without perfect strategy plus rng to be on your side. Pairing up your units as soon as the match starts takes away some of your damage lowering the odds that you will succeed in Chapter 3.
2:40 hmm this seems kind of familiar
3:35 *notices username*
ah
At any rate, good video, one thing it could've used was possibly a section on exp distribution, as I see a lot of players new to lunatic spreading it out evenly(and later on struggling) like any other game when Awakening is geared more towards lowmanning.
I guess my opinion on Sumia has gained more infamy as I've continually expressed it, lol.
With regards to lowmanning, I completely understand where you're coming from with regards to exp distribution, but I felt like it was more important to tell people to highman the earlygame (because it is a million times easier) and that saying to lowman late game, while helpful, could have hurt that message, especially when it isn't strictly necessary.
Don't get me wrong, Robin soloing or whatever certainly is one of the easiest ways to beat the game. But it isn't the ONLY way. And that's really a lot of the point I'm trying to put forward in this video. I don't want people to see lunatic as an overly restrictive mode where you absolutely HAVE to do x y and z to succeed, because in most cases, it isn't that cutthroat.
There's also no shortage of guides on the internet telling people to lowman, so I consider it really important to let people know that it's way easier to deploy all your units up until roughly chapter 17/18.
Let's be real, if the player is using Sorc Robin then the lategame can be grinded down by end-turn turbo. It certainly isn't the most efficient, fastest, or even fun method, but Awakening does offer you that failsafe in case you ever "get stuck", even if your Robin is underlevelled.
I'd rather players manage to get through most of the game and say to themselves "Maybe I could have given x unit more exp at y point to make this slightly easier", than people getting stuck in the prologue because they want to have Robin get all the exp or collapsing in chapters 5/6 because they aren't used to using multiple units to fight on Lunatic.
I hope that makes sense.
@@Hiiyapow I gotta know your tier list!
@@JovanaSanchez000
I'm planning on covering this at some point, but this is my current gen 1 tier list (minus tiki because I don't use her enough to tier her) imgur.com/a/TC4UxiR
Training Robin is of course very easy. And doing robin x chrom makes it very easy to make them a delete button for any threatening enemy or boss but I lost every single chapter 2 and 3 unit. Sully, Virion, Stahl, Vaike. The only units who lived was Miriel. Of course I used Chrom, Robin, Lissa, Freddy, Sumia, Kellam, and Miriel early on but all of them were so weak except for Robin and Freddy that it was hard to train them. The best strat I could use is to get a few good combat units and have the others wait to take out the enemy. Lissa was really good since she didn't require combat exp to get strong. Sumia was a unit I used for a while until I got cordelia. Technically Sumia might have been better then Cordi but I wanted to have freddy with Cordelia so.... Uh bye Sumia. After that it was basically my two main combat units, Robin and Cordelia solo the whole game while being healed by the healers who gain passive exp. Lissa ended up pretty good. Maribelle got magic screwed though. Healers are really good since rescue is buyable and super valueable
One for the algorithm!
all characters are usable in luna (as a carry or supp pairing)
this a fair difficulty it just become a bit boring if u always use the same character over and over
Still convinced the devs didn’t play test it though.
One thing I wish was touched on was how many units are best to train for the mode. I enjoy FE best when training (not just fielding, training) as many units as the average deployment limit allows, and that habit is so hard for me to break on higher difficulty because I don’t know how much I should scale back and don’t want to invest into a certain amount only to find out I screwed myself over. ESPECIALLY where earlygame Frederick is concerned. I don’t know how much use of him is too much.
How many units you want to train depends what you want out of the game. You can absolutely play "highman" awakening all the way up until the end of the game and highman lunatic is an extremely fun experience, although it can be difficult if you're not experienced with it.
Obviously it's fire emblem so lower numbers of player units tends to be easier to use and lategame awakening can be soloed with 1 unit generally, but you can use some more if you want to and it's still more "efficient" to deploy more units for utility purposes.
On using Fred: Fred is really, really broken. I regularly use Fred to wipe almost the entire of ch2 on his own and like 50% of all the maps after that. He is really, really strong and as long as he keeps doing work, he stays good for a long while with a speed pairup. Exp on Fred is never "wasted" and you should never be afraid of using him at all.
Interesting to know that high deployment still works. Do enemy stats not catch up as fast as the player’s? What about maps with lots of reinforcements, do you have to typically rush those?
(I don’t want to ask too many more questions since I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to trying a lunatic playthrough but I enjoy learning about these things from the outside and I appreciate you still replying to comments)
@@emblemblade9245 Enemy stats tend to slow off a good amount in the midgame and you'll have access to multiple rallies which are extremely powerful in highman.
You'll also gain access to a couple of prepromotes with workable combat like Anna and Say'ri to help fill out your team. It is definitely a harder playthrough, but it's very fun.
For maps with lots of reinforcements I honestly just recommend checking them on the wiki. There are only a few maps I consider really bad for it- ch17 and ch19 are probably the worst offenders.
I tried Lunatic and couldn't get past chapter 1 without death 😅
Lunatic can certainly feel a lot scarier in the early levels due to the fact that most awakening players aren't going to be used to be being punished for their mistakes (not flame, I was like this a long time as well) and so it might take a second to recalibrate what you think is good. Still though, it should definitely be achievable, if you ever wanted to give it another try.
As I mentioned in the video, I realized that sometimes general advice isn't going to help people who are having trouble "getting their footing" in the mode, so I put some links to some easier clears of the early maps in the description, should you ever want to take another look at it.
@@Hiiyapow When I watched this the first time I was trying a hard ironman so today I finally got back to trying a Lunatic run (also it's kinda funny, but I have like 180 hours in Awakening and have never gotten the game. I have gotten to Chpt. 24 on two separate files, and my army was more than strong enough I just... stopped, but that's besides the point.)
So I started a new run and it started good with me doing prologue second try (death was getting re-used to lunatic). For chapter one I used a lot of the tips you mentioned. I had Chrom/Fred pair up on lower fort and with a Gaius Confect I was able to have Chrom in front, but without I'm sure it would have fine, just a little more careful for the hammer. Originally I had Robin pair with Sully and lure a few of the enemies up so the larger group could take some pressure off Chr/Fred, but I realized with keeping them separate I could have Robin enemy phase a guy and Virion+Robin+Sully was able to finish it.
Overall, while it is just the beginning I appreciate the advice and hope to maybe eventually finish Awakening after many years. It would be funny if my first actual completion was on Lunatic.
Honestly I'm not great at strategy games. (I'm at like chapter 7 in engage maddening classic and only lost Etie). My first and current Awakening playthrough is on Hard Casual, and if I was playing Classic a lot of my characters would be gone or I'd be a lot less far into the game. My biggest concern is my own intelligence or lack thereof to properly play and beat maps without losing everyone.
Holy shit i am just bad
To be honest I reckon most players could handle lunatic mode and most of the difficulty they face is from the bad advice that has plagued the internet.
Give it a try sometime with the intent to play how you want and to ignore a lot of the common advice given out. You'll be surprised at the result.
Isn’t to say “look noobs you’re terrible at fire emblem”
Except I am a noob who’s terrible at fire emblem 😂
people think this game is hard on lunatic???? any unit can easily juggernaut through huge portions of maps with very little effort. only the first few chapters are any challenge
I will admit though, a lot of this is great advice
fire emblem avaikening
Why don't you mention class changes extensively? Is it not worth it? Also I'm sure these tips start to break down on Lunatic + considering how warped the offensive of each enemy is
It's not the most important thing in the game, basically. The three things I mentioned are, in my opinion, the biggest things that will help people improve their gameplay. Class changing can give you an advantage in some cases, but you can win with basically any unit in any class.
I also value master sealing first over second sealing first because it gives you more of your stats right away, doesn't make you re-grind through E rank weaopns in a new class, and gets you faster access to more powerful skills. It also makes your internal level better for second sealing later.
With regards to lunatic+, I actually think these tips remain relevant there, if anything they are even more relevant. Using Frederick is even more relevant, remained unpaired on PP helps you punch through units and such.
I really don't appreciate you shiting on my girl Sumia but hey lunatic mode is fun.
The thing with pairing up is, you are basically REQUIRED to have the paired units to AT LEAST do all what they would've done separately.
This means, if you have two units that harm 2 enemies in player phase and 2 in enemy phase, then the pair most harm 1 in player's and 3 in enemy's to consider it was a decent pair up.
imo fe13lunatic does kinda deserve the reputation it gets given how the other difficulties scale into it and how the other two difficulties play (and to some degree the late game of lunatic) in that awakening mostly allows you to pair units into juggernauts that cant die on enemy phase (in the mid to late game on all 3 difficulties) so when a difficulty option asks you to carefully use your player phase and not just spam pair up, it understandably makes people upset when those strategies dont work in the brutal early game. it sets itself up for failure (a large part of that imo is how horribly unbalanced the pair up system is in this game). conquest lunatic doesnt have this issue as much because like a majority of games, is starts out fairly simple (but challenging) but gets harder and harder as the game progresses with a much more balanced pair up system that encourages dynamic play (yes there are very good enemy phase tank setups like sol ninja soleil and sol xander and vantage nuke ophelia but those require very specific setups and planning as opposed to go into hero or dark mage and heal tank everything.)
i like the points you make, the difficulty asks a lot more of you (at least in the early game until your units become broken and you can shut your brain off) but i think awakening is just the wrong game to ask people to think given how easy it can be once the early game is over. i enjoyed lunatic because i can say ive beaten it but its not really something i want to replay for its challenge. conquest fills that role for me on a pure gameplay level. good video.
Not sure about awakening but you made me realize that I’m bad at English 😂
Rlly good and informative video but you rlly gotta speak slower, esp when you go into depth for certain parts.
Thanks. Think that's a fair criticism, I just talk faster when I'm nervous 💀💀
Lunatic gamplay is just about being creative to find cheese strategys
also get Thebes+Gay awakening+Unofficial Gay Awakening for the expanded supports and marriage that will help you in the long run
I just think it is not very fun. Comparing it with FE6 HM is not a good thing either because its insane early game is very clearly not intended.
In the first 5 chapters, non-reinforcement enemies get double HM bonusses(which yes, means that for a few chapters afterwards, enemies actually get weaker due to not having those).
I still think Awakening lunatic isn't a very well designed mode. The early game is brutal as it's full of aggressive enemies in open spaces meaning it's rather hard to wall of your squishy units that literally die in 1 hit or get doubled, you also don't have access to many tools like tonics or second seal to make things a bit more bearable. If you fail to train some early units at least a bit because you relied too much on Fred you're also in a bit of a bind once the enemies catch up to him. One difference this game has compared to others is that it feels like the game is allergic to giving you pre-promotes, the ones you get either come really late or are not that much stronger than your trainees at the point you get them. The child units also need babying instead of being powerful out of the gate, besides some of their paralogues are really difficult to complete.
Lunatic + is even more of a mess, random counter is bs and some early maps being borderline impossible if enemies roll the right skills shouldn't be a thing in fire emblem. Grinding is almost required if you don't do some specific strategy and grinding is really tedious because the reeking box is almost 10 times more expensive than on normal difficulty and spawns really hard encounter by the time it's first available.
Overall I think the game could have been better if they made the difficulty lower early and allowed more room for trainees to breathe while also giving a more pre-promotes to smooth out the mid game.
The enemies are aggressive, but that just prevents you from turtling and bait-and-switching your way through the maps.
While some of your units won't have a good enemy phase (Miriel, Sumia, Lissa), many of them are perfectly capable of taking a hit with the right pairup. Chrom and Robin can do it with no assistance, Fred is obviously really good, Sully needs Stahl to pair into her and nothing can double or OHKO her, Vaike needs a cav to pair into him and he can tank 2 hits from ch2 soldiers and survive, Virion can use speed pairs to fight archers.
I could go on but you get the point, it's not as bad as it first seems if you get the right pairups in the right places. Really forces you to think because you have to decide whether you need the extra unit on playerphase or whether you can get away with having the two units pair for some enemy phase action. IMO that is good game design.
I actually don't agree that "over Fredericking" will get you stuck. So long as Frederick does not kill literally every single enemy in the game from the prologue all the way up to chapter 8, you should be fine anyway, but even if you did somehow manage that, chapter 8 gives you Gregor and a master seal. You can take Gregor to the paralogues 2 and 3and give him a couple of levels and then promote him into a hero.
That's basically a "prepromote" and he's really solid. Give him a Str/Spd/Def tonics and a Sully pairup and he'll be fantastic and scale very well with Sol too. Libra and Anna are great utility prepromotes, but Anna also has pretty decent combat in sage. Simply spam staves for her to reach level 10, reclass to sage and you'll have a unit that's pretty dodgy and able to get you through a lot of the game on her own.
Morgan is also kind of a prepromote, although that's stretching the definition a bit. But the point is that Morgan's map is easy and second sealing them to tactician will cause them to gain a level for every unit they kill. So if you kill 10 units in their join map with them and promote them their stats will look decent at worst.
And while the kids often need training to be viable, they do join at level 10, instantly able to be master sealed. From a purely combat perspective, I think Kjelle often gets underrated. She isn't going to be soloing entire armies, especially if her parents are untrained, but General promo bonuses are good enough to where she can at the very least not die in 1 round and she provides pretty good pairup bonuses too.
For some actual prepromotes, Say'ri is honestly really underrated. She actually is enough to get you quite far if you keep using her. She does have a few issues, but she's definitely useable if you stick a good pairup on her (Kjelle is good for this I find). She also gets much better once you get the swords Sol and Amatsu from Walhart and Yenfay as they fix her two biggest issues (no EP healing and 1-2 range).
I kind of get what you're saying that there aren't as many instant "plug-and-play" style units like Harken or Hawkeye from fe7, but you can work with what you have plenty fine anyway. I use Frederick a ridiculous amount when I play the game and still have room to train up my units. And I will say, one benefit of awakening is that if you DO get stuck somewhere, you always COULD have the option of grinding to get someone up to par. Not that you ever have to or that I'd recommend it, but it's a safety net if you ever were concerned about getting softlocked.
Lunatic+ actually isn't impossible with certain setups- it's an urban myth that gets said a lot but it isn't actually true. Anyone who's telling you they lost because they got an "impossible" setup is lying to you. Grinding is not required at all and while you don't have to do one specific strategy, I think I should point out that "literally every strategy works" is not possible to have on a hard mode. That's what makes hard modes hard. If every single move you could make worked, then it wouldn't be a hard mode. It would be easy mode.
Es un nuzlocke. Pero para eso jugar mejor Lunatic + sin DLC
but i didn’t see u later😢
I have something coming up but it is taking much longer than I originally anticipated because it's a massive project and I'm very new to making videos.
Will be more stuff eventually though :)
@@Hiiyapow ok!
I played Fire Emblem Awakening for years on my 3DS. I did not have Wi-fi in my house for many years so I could not access the wireless features or dlc in the game. I did not use the clock glitch because it is an exploit not intended by the developers. I was hard stuck in Lunatic mode until I started watching videos made by stronger players than myself. Eventually, I managed to beat Lunatic mode. Currently, I have beaten Lunatic classic and casual several times. Lunatic+ on the other hand is literally impossible. I tried directly copying techniques used by other players only to find out they were extremely lucky. The path shown in a RUclips video is not always reliable. Some just minor RNG which required a few resets which I am fine with. Those 1 in 50 to 1 in several hundred RNG moves made in RUclips videos are simply not reliable. I spent hundreds of hours across many resets trying to beat Lunatic+. Without DLC and the clock glitch this mode is not possible to beat unless you are getting ridiculously lucky. I made it as far as chapter 16-20 in Lunatic+. My current attempt which has the best stat distribution to date is hard stuck on chapter 12. I barely managed to get past the mad king after several dozen attempts on this run. I even have some of the dlc these days. The dlc is not helping me since I do not know how to use it properly. Lunatic+ is nearly impossible to beat.
Thanks for your comment, was an interesting read through.
I will say that Lunatic+ is not impossible or RNG based, but it is hard to make consistent guides for that don't drag on forever as a lot of the skill is making minor adjustments or adaptions based on what skills the enemies have. Turn-by-turn, move-by-move guides aren't going to help quite as much in that respect.
If you haven't already, I'd recommend checking out KTT's lunatic+ Deathless resetless runs as they all use some very unique and consistent strategies to beat the game.
FEs Lunatic modes are some of the worst balancing I've seen in the games I've played.
It just isn't rewarding getting through map after map of enemies that are too strong and too bulky when RNG will likely ruin you due to bad level ups.
Also the difficulty essentially discouraging using too many units because of how stretched resources are due to the lower exp yields in general since my main love of the games is how I can raise nearly anyone whenever they are recruited. Lunatic modes simply don't allow this because heaven forbid a unit not have a good starting chapter or class especially if they can't take a hit even on lower diffculties. Grinding maps over and over isn't the solution this either because you're just wasting time and gold for weapons.
I honestly find it more fun to play Awakening Lunatic than like FE 6 hard mode, 'cause FE 6 hard mode feels just more of a slog than Awakening Lunatic.
I think part of that comes from the fact that you can 1 turn every map except the Validar Map once you get past the Say'ri map, but that's what I find fun so...I enjoy it.
Хорошее видео, но так играть очень душно
FE games often have a bunch of niche items and mechanics that are completely pointless on the intended difficulty, but not playtested at all on the hardest difficulty. something about this seems like a waste.
Weakest Vaike Enjoyer
Just nosferatu spam lmao
You are trying too hard to be pinned 🤔
@@Hiiyapow Nah, I do agree with the pinned comment bc, c’mon, this _is_ awakening. Yes, the first couple chapters can be tough and yes, Grima _can_ become problematic but outside of those 2 points it’s a roflstomp assuming the person attempting luna(+) got at least two (2) working braincells ._.
Considering most of this advice is pretty useful for just about any fe experience, im wondering why you emphasize it on an objectively poorly and contradictory designed difficulty option.
Because people only see lunatic as "objectively poorly designed and contradictory" when they stop applying sensible fire emblem logic and listen to "guides" that tell them to walk Chrom and Robin into every single enemy to try to win.
@@Hiiyapow I would say applying "sensible Fire emblem logic" is actually what makes it harder, not easier, and thats kinda the point of why it isn't well designed.
You do know its easier to solo the game, rather than using all the units. (some sensible fire emblem logic that is!) Some of the early chapters can be reminiscent of standard Fire emblem gameplay but obviously that doesn't last long.
The map design and support system is fundamentally unchanged from the normal/hard modes, which are rooted in grindy RPG mechanics, not limited economy strategy games, like every other Fire Emblem with a 'Lunatic mode'. Slapping higher stats on the enemies with zero other balance changes and its obvious why this mode was a spectacular failure, especially coming from the brilliance of what they created with FE12's lunatic.
@@DoTtA1123 It is not easier to solo the game in the early game. From prologue to c11, it is demonstrably easier to use multiple units.
Which maps do you think people are struggling with the most? The ones where you can press end turn and win or the ones before that? That's why I'm talking about a lot of strategies that help for the first third of the game, because it's the hardest bit (although it should be noted that late game can be hard enough to warrant some of the other advice I gave).
I also don't find "I don't like the support system" to be a real argument. Not sure what else to say.
Awakening on lunatic is basically like playing traditional fire emblem on a high difficulty.
The "problem" many players end up facing tends to be the consequences of how they played awakening on hard/normal. It is understandable why newer fe fans had this type of reaction to the jump in difficulty between hard and lunatic, but it surprises me how back when the game was new even most older fans were upset and calling it bs.
My personal theory (obviously not based on any actual evidence) is that older fans at the time forgot how to approach a high difficulty fe mode because the pair-up system (that was so easily abused in hard/normal) taught them a completely different way to play the game. So when they tried using the same strats on lunatic it left them upset even though all they had to do was apply the usual traditional fe tactics one would use for hard difficulties in previous entries (use jagans, feed easy kills, use healers, be proactive, etc).
I'm an "awakening baby" myself but have since gone on to play many of the older titles. Awakening on lunatic is still probably one of the hardest modes in all of fe, but it is doable.
And then there's lunatic+... in all honesty that mode deserves the infamy that is attributed to it lol. Great video btw.
Really good writeup and I agree with it.
Except for that bit about lunatic+. Got something in the works for that.
You talk way too fast, I kept having to rewind
?
Change your playback speed in the RUclips video settings.
Most basic tips ever lol
" Um you should use your resources " like yeah dude who would have thought ???
Some tips are very specific like " don't paid great units with weak ones " i mean if someone was willing to do that they're probably going to grind anyway, which makes your tips redundant
Barely any eloberation or examples about many stuff too, except for ch1 where you actually bothered to show a strategy
My friend, I do read these comments you know...
Some of these tips are basic. That's the point- people often overfocus on bad online advice and forget to do basic things like making use of strong units.
Specifically pairing Fred into sumia or Robin is very widely circulated advice that is terrible. This is, as far as I'm concerned, inarugable.
As for elaboration and examples, this is literally my first video about the game back when my recording setup was my 3ds turned upside down over a stack of dvd cases and a piggy bank with my phone on top. That is to say, getting any footage was difficult enough.
Normally I'd take this as something to build on, but I know you and you know me and this comment was made to just hate for reasons that are unbeknownst to me.
@@Hiiyapow no this comment wasn't made for hate lol, if that's how you gonna see it, then no wonder lol
@@mysmallnoman I'm judging based on our previous interactions. There's really no reason to be so rude
@@Hiiyapow I don't even remember those
You should just understand.....IQ is largely genetic and for smart people Awakening Lunatic isn't THAT hard(if not a bit tedious at times) but for **most** people (especially in America) they're going to heavily struggle with this game without online guides thats tell them how to play.
bit weird mate
IQ isn't even real, let alone genetic.