User blog:Nauibotics/Naui's Lunatic Journal

Hello folks, Naui here! Fire Emblem: Awakening has been out for 9 months now and I still find myself playing it to no end…along with Pokémon Y. After defeating Normal difficulty without any trouble and Hard mode with a bit of some opposition, I finally decided to start a Lunatic Playthrough. I'll be posting in here regularly on my progress along with a few notes of my run through.

Rules
I don't really have any limitations to this run, minimal grinding at best, I wanted to experience the full force of Lunatic just as I did with Normal and Hard difficulties. I.E. no grinding until Chapter 12 only to promote all units I plan on using. No reclassing until Endgame…or so I had thought. I now know I will need to do level grinding to stand a chance.


 * 1) I will only grind a little after Chapter 4 in order to let my units be usable (i.e. limit is Level 7 at that point).
 * 2) Everyone who is recruited afterward will be level grinded to the average of the Levels of the main 10 units I use (Frederick counts for 2/3 of his Level) at that moment) minus 3 rounded down. I.E. if the average level of my units is 11.7, I will grind those units to level 8.
 * 3) All items will be bought via shops/merchants with the gold I'm given or received via Chests and Event Tiles.
 * 4) No Avatar Logbook units or SpotPass/DLC units either. Solely the 49 characters I can get.
 * 5) I do not have as set time to start the Paralogues so I may do them whenever I please.
 * 6) No DLC skills

Naui's Avatar
After my very first playthrough, I always went with a HP/Luck Asset/Flaw combo but for this run, I decided to go back to my original set-up for my Avatar's Asset/Flaw.

Name: Naui Gender: Male Body: 1 Hair: 1 Color: 3 Voice: 1 Asset: Luck (because I'm lucky)

Premonition
Well, Validar wasn't too hard…as expected. Not like he changes much between difficulties…although his attacks have significantly more sting…wonder what Lunatic+ is like...

MVP: None Turn count: 4 Major Event: Nothing…usual beginning

Prologue
And now the first chapter of the game. We meet again Chrom, Lissa, and Frederick, for the 4th variation of this story. Oh god, is everyone SIGNIFICANTLY harder. Welp, they weren't too much trouble. One restart and I managed to beat them and moderately train all 4 of them. Plus Lissa got a Perfect All Stats promotion! Not bad for a first map.

MVP: Chrom & Naui Turn count: 10 Major Event: Lissa's magnificent Perfect Level Up!

Chapter 1
Oookay, well this one proved to be much more difficult than the last one. Sully and Virion proved useless as they consistently got one shot-ed by all the enemies and barely inflicted any damage…Luckily Chrom and the Avatar proved useful to pick off enemies. I get the feeling the Frederick is going to be the key to my success to this run.

MVP: Chrom & Frederick Turn count: 16 Major Event: Y U so useless, new guys?!

Chapter 2
Holy s***! The aggressiveness of this map is impossible! If it wasn't for the fact that Frederick got decent growths over the past 2 chapters, I probably wouldn't have made it past this map and I'd have to start over from scratch! Even then, I had to reset countless times because someone, not Frederick, got killed by a peripheral enemy because I couldn't get my units out of range while Frederick could pick them off slowly. Even then he struggled and luckily Virion packed an Elixir. Gotta say, despite the low hit rates of those enemies, they sure do hit a lot…and I hated that Warrior with the dang Hammer! I must have attempted this map at least 20 times before I could finally move on! Dammit! I'm worried for Chapter 3 and 4

MVP: Frederick & Sully Turn count: N/A (Will pull once game is finished) Major Events: Goddam déjà vu 20x over! Flux this difficulty!

Chapter 3
Well this one wasn't AS bad as Chapter 2, but it certainly wasn't easy. At least this map gave me some fodder to give some EXP to my units. Once I managed to effectively take down the southwestern group of Feroxi soldiers, the rest went easily. Once again, Frederick is proving to be my MVP for these initial maps. One more to go before I can finally start using the others! Good news is that Frederick learned Luna!

MVP: Naui & Frederick Turn count: N/A (Will pull once game is finished) Major Events: Team Frederick FTW

Chapter 4
It's Chapter 2 redux! The enemy range, those weapons, those stats! I could barely make it past the 3rd enemy before that darn 2nd Elthunder wielding mage was on Frederick to kill him. Marth proved to be the least troublesome of the lot as big of a surprise as it was, though I guess Frederick's Luna-fueled rampage had something to do with the 16th's retry ease. Good news is that with the completion of this chapter…it's time to grind!

MVP: Chrom & Frederick Turn count: N/A (Will pull once game is finished) Major Events: Frederick's unstoppable Luna rampage!

Paralogue 1
Well I started this one a chapter after it was available, but time to get my Pot-Helmet Village Boy, Donnel. Well with about 2 hours of grinding I finally was able to deal with these enemies with a bit more ease. They still proved challenging, but now I felt like the AI/Stat was fair to my actual levels…but I had significantly less stats than them so it was my first map with a truly capable army against a formidable opponent. Stuck to my original plan of killing the non-archer units above me and swarm the archer to let Donnel slowly hack away at his health until he leveled up. But hey, I scored a few good items from those chests and recruited one of my favorite units.

MVP: Chrom & Naui Turn count: N/A (Will pull once game is finished) Major Events: Donnel Poke…Poke…Poke…Poke…Level Up!

Chapter 5
I will have to accept that from now on, all units I will recruit will be in mortal peril the minute I recruit them because they will not start off with the decent stats that I managed to grind into my units. Luckily Ricken and Maribelle managed to fare well until I could converge with them. Still those Wyvern Riders were pretty problematic and nearly killed off my Avatar. Still thankfully Frederick had a rampage of the different kind with a string of constant Dual Guards despite not having the Dual Guard+ skill and my poor defenses.

MVP: Chrom & Sumia Turn count: N/A (Will pull once game is finished) Major Event: Crisis evasion…the Frederick Foretress!

Chapter 6
Ah, another chapter with another one of my favorite Awakening character's, Gaius…oh and Panne shows up too. Now that that's over with I can deal with the other enemies. Other than Virion who nearly got killed by those Dark Mages nothing too major happened. Just stuck to my usual funnel strategy and things went rather smooth. Oh and I managed to Crit kill Validar with my Avatar…suck it, Validar!

MVP: Vaike & Sully Turn count: 7 Major Event: My epic crit finish!

Chapter 7
And thus the story moves forward with Emmeryn leaving the capital. I can't figure out why I'm so excited for this chapter…I wonder. Oh, look Cordelia…that's right. I find it a bit cruel that in this chapter, she finally gets to spend time with her long time crush…and then immediately after returning to the world map I see that Chrom and Sumia are ready for their S-Support…how unfortunate. Luckily the first time I attempted this map, I was killed before Cordelia had to see that…but at least the second run went much smoother aside from some spectacular critical life dodging by Miriel when she was sitting on 1 HP against an archer with 88% hit rate…oh and 1% crit by her too. Aw well, moving on, time to get my Avatar ready to get hitched…it's gonna be a long run.

MVP: Chrom & Sumia Turn count: 8 Major Events: First S-Support achieved! Chrom x Sumia! Cordelia is crestfallen...