User blog:Brainwasher5/Maddening NG Blue Lions Thoughts

General Tips

• Exp growth is greatly reduced. Always try to have Byleth adjacent to the unit getting exp, particularly for the killing blow.
• Give a bow to every physical fighter. Some guides recommend giving a bow to every person, period, but I think I can trade them around if my mages really need them.
• Healing exp is not nerfed, unlike other exp. Get as many people as possible Faith D for heal. 
• Every physical fighter will master Brigand and Archer if they have the time. Physical female fighters will try to master Pegasus. Every mage will master Fiendish Blow. No other beginner class is worth the seals or time for most characters, with a couple of exceptions.
• Going on that vein, every physical character should get to at least D+ in axes and then save scum until they pass their certification for brigand, as well as D+ for bows if I have the time and money. Every mage, even ones that are faith based, should start off trying to get at least D+ in reason.
• Depending on how their stats turn out, I may also train female characters in flying and have them master pegasus knight. This of course would be pointless if their speed turns out so awfully that enemies will double them no matter what. I will use auxiliary battles for mage women (Annette, Mercedes, Lysithea) where they can grind levels super fast so that they won't be stuck using physical weapons for too many maps.
• Maddening enemies carry loot that they don't normally drop, but have to be stolen. It is worth making at least one character (your highest speed one) a thief so that you can get these items. The thief will have a hard job topping the insane speed of some maddening units, but you can aid them with getting C+ authority with Annette (+4 speed from rally), mastering myrmidon (speed +2), and getting seal speed from Ferdinand/Hilda (enemy speed -6). You could grow Nordsalat seeds or pale blue flower seeds to get speed carrots. Alternatively, save scum on your designated thief/thieves till they get speed levels.

On Grinding

Grinding in maddening is capped at 99 turns per map. It boils down to having the bad guys whack your highest defense person until all their weapons break on his face. In the meantime, if he needs training he can reciprocate by hitting back with a broken weapon, therefore guaranteeing that you will get weapon and class exp for as long as possible. Problem is, given the 99 turn limit, causing the bad guys to break their weapons eats up about 40-60 turns already. With a unit with sufficiently high defense, however, this can be an incredibly fast way for one, or more, units to train.

WIth that in mind, it's good to have at least one of every broken weapon type in your convoy, so you can take them out at your leisure. To get these quickly, use lots of combat arts. You probably have to anyway given the extremely low damage output of units in the beginning with standard attacks. 

I will save scum so that Byleth and/or Dedue get a defense level every level. Then I will give them a silver shield, Duscur heavy soldiers, and have the other be an adjutant to maximize their defense. This is crucial for recruiting other units, as it'll allow my Byleth to quickly train all the physical weapons, authority, as well as riding/flying/heavy armor if they're in the appropriate classes. Other units will try to train as much as possible on enemies that have broken their weapons, so that we can save time on lectures. 

The things that Byleth CAN'T grind are Reason and Faith, as well as initially Heavy Armor, Flying, and Riding. With that in mind, it is VERY useful to do the choir activity every time until you hit at least D in faith, and when you are doing faculty training, to train armor, flying, and riding. Once you hit E+ for heavy armor/flying/riding you can save scum while taking certifications and then grind the levels. Just remember to use magic and faith as much as you can every chapter. 

Recruitment

The units I want to recruit for Blue Lions include Hilda, Leonie, Petra, and/or Lysithea (what can I say...women in this game are just better imo). Bernadetta is also worth considering if she doesn't get strength screwed, because aside from her terrible strength she's awesome: Encloser basically turns her attacks into mini battalions, getting her hurt makes her stronger, and she's got a useful crest. BUT, using her is also a huge risk without a great deal of save scumming because her strength is just...ugh. Ideally, I want to just train the stats needed to recruit them because I am very afraid of getting screwed with the random recruitment system...but I may not get the luxury for that. For future reference though, they require C in axe, C in lance, C in riding, and C or B in Faith respectively. All these are relatively easy except riding which I'll need to go out of my way for. I want to recruit everyone eventually for their paralogues and also because I don't enjoy killing students. I will be using every Blue Lion except Ashe: his personal skill can be easily substituted with a couple hundred gold, and his poor strength growth kneecaps him too much in a mode where most of your units can barely scratch their opponents, anyway. 

Balancing Professor Level training with my objectives

Aside from obviously gardening each time and fishing during fistfuls of fish, the best single way to get experience is to win tournaments. I will use points every week for choir practice until I get D faith, and I will eat at least once per week for the free special meal and more times to ensure I am making the most out of lecture points every time, but aside from that tournament spam is the way to go. The additional money is also welcome.

The first fistfuls of fish event happens right as you get the missions to get the merchants back, so you won't have time to save up bait and grind. The second one occurs in December, and by then you've accumulated so much bait that you can easily grind up a level or two. 

If you've done everything to increase your professor level, you should hit B+ by early October. You can then do paralogues for all of October (you kind of have to in order to be adequately leveled for Chapter 7), and then enter November and fish like crazy for the last two professor levels. After I hit A+, I will then do a combination of faculty training and grinding aux battles until I can recruit everyone.

Aside from units that I specifically want to recruit and use, I should interact with other characters as little as possible. They'll soak up experience and be a waste of time for me.

Lectures and Goals

As much motivation as possible will be spent on skills units are proficient with. I will try to save group tasks for people who do not have proficiency in riding/flying. The non-proficient skills will be assigned as goals because the experience here is not reduced by poor proficiencies.

With maybe one or two exceptions, everyone will get Faith D for the free uses of heal through both proficiency and manual lecturing. The next thing to focus on will be Axe and Authority, until they get at least Axe D+, then switch to Bow and Authority till they get at least Bow D+, for Brigand and Archer. Then they move on to skills their main classes will need.

Character Progression

All male characters will get death blow and hit rate +20. All female units will get the same (or fiendish for magic units) and darting blow--hit rate may not matter for the mages since they seem to always have 100% to hit even on maddening. The magic female characters can reclass to pegasus and be an adjutant while another character grinds so putting them in pegasus is fine even on maddening. 

• Byleth: Has brawl and sword combat arts. Focus on training sword. Faith is an option if magic turns out good. Wyvern Lord may be the best final class due to weak magic, or swordmaster/enlightened one to use swordfaire.

• Dimitri: a riding tank, particularly with glowing ember art. Focus on sword and lance as well as enough riding for cav classes. Dimitri is a potential hyper mode character: he has access to both battalion wrath and battalion vantage. Combine this with a killer lance+, lance crit+10, his personal skill post time skip and/or lance skill+5, and he can single handedly clear most maps, even on maddening. For the map Reunion at Dawn specifically, he benefits greatly from having Alert Stance (+), so train him in flying if his other skills are adequately leveled.

• Dedue: Dedue will be in auxiliary battles as a tank so much that he'll get high ranks for everything; don't prioritize training him during lectures. Dedue will be a war master, as well as grabbing Aegis/Pavise. He becomes an indispensable tank pre-time skip, particularly for the earlier chapters. Just keep him away from mages.

• Felix: Bow/Gauntlet/Sword. Felix with bonds and a gauntlet plus his crest can work wonders. Swordmaster and war master are both natural classes for him to end in. Felix could potentially be a powerful desperation character, with access to battalion vantage. Using him with gauntlets and wrath could be very powerful.

• Mercedes: Learns no unique arts. Mercedes will go Faith/Reason naturally, and do the Gremory thing because it is the only serious build for a mage. 

• Annette: Learns a single axe art, but it's very good: Lightning Axe at C+. Focus on authority, reason and faith, but take a little time to train axe. Annette is a multi-role unit: she learns a great list of powerful rallies, her lightning axe can destroy single enemies comfortably even on maddening, and she's a powerful spellcaster to boot. 

• Sylvain: A wild card...kind of good at everything. Has arts in Lance/Axe. Focus on riding as well as these for a fast and powerful cav unit. Alternatively, going heavy on the axe and strength branches with Warrior may be usable.

• Ingrid: A doozy. She is kneecapped HARD by her anemic strength, so may need strength boosting items and getting deathblow early is good. To compensate, she is solid elsewhere: her magic is the same as her strength so she could possibly make use of Frozen Lance, Luin's pretty good, and her speed is the highest out of all the blue lions. On maddening, where most people won't double, this is pretty significant. Train lance/flying. If her magic turns out well, she is a serious contender for being a mage due to her excellent spell and faith magic list: thoron, physic, and fimbulvetr. 

• Hilda: Hilda's strong, has good speed, and high charm. Her weakness offensively is her shaky dex, so grab hit rate +20 early. She's got good debuffs thanks to her seal speed and her shatter slash. Hilda's a straightforwardly strong physical unit, but if I'm lucky with her magic then she's one of only two characters who knows Bolting, which is nuts. 

• Lysithea: No arts! Doesn't matter! Reason and faith, gremory, and she's good to go! Get her darting blow as her speed is 50% by default so she should be able to double with a bit of grooming. Lysithea is one of the very few people who stand a chance against the Death Knight on maddening, making her nearly a required recruit.

• Leonie: Leonie's one of the few physical classes that makes sense, trading magic and resistance for great physical stats all-round. Strong and dependable, Leonie should focus on bow/lance for the arts, and she's a good cavalry class.

• Petra: Strong offensively, with good speed, strength, luck and dex. Train in sword/bow/axe. Finesse blade is strong due to her good dex. Petra's a great finisher for tough enemies due to her personal skill. 

• Cyril: With just ok stats and growths, Cyril's saving grace is his good combat art list, with vengeance and point blank volley in lance/bow respectively. Pick him up if you can't fill your roster out otherwise.

• Catherine: Train in brawl/sword. The fact that the best brawl classes are male only hurts her here, so maybe just do sword. Pick her up if you can't fill your roster out otherwise, and if you're using Shamir.

• Shamir: Train in bow/lance. Same deal as Catherine.

Chapter Rundown

• Prologue:
• Chapter 1:
• Aux Battle:
• Chapter 2:
• Chapter 3:
• Chapter 4:

Trade Claude and Edelgard's weapons and vulneraries to Dimitri and/or Byleth. Dimitri and Byleth take all the hits and do all the damage for max exp. Use forests to your advantage.

Try to head north with Claude and Edelgard to draw the enemy soldiers north, hopefully causing Jeralt to steal fewer kills near the end. Jeralt can't kill the boss so if he can only target the boss it's fine. 

I bring Sylvain, Annette, Mercedes, Dimitri and Byleth. Felix does a lot of damage and I want to try to grind. Given that I had shared a meal with Annette and Mercedes maybe I should have left them home.

The A.I was really fascinating on this one. Advancing north causes all units to jump on you, which is messy at best and impossible at worst. Going west and killing Hilda, Claude and Hanneman causes the black eagles to all aggro and attack you in a way that's awkward to defend against as Hubert is within supporting distance of Ferdinand.

The best way to approach the mission is to go west, kill Claude and Hilda, then go back east to the starting position. Inch your way to the single square that only aggros Ferdinand, kill him with focus fire, then aggro Hanneman and kill him. With just Edelgard and Manuela left, cleanup should be relatively easy.

I trapped Manuela and farmed. Everyone got ok to good levels, except Sylvain who got a whopping +9 level. Trained most to level 4ish, and trained Dimitri's lance to C. Should have given his broken lance to Byleth. She did get some uses, reaching E+. 

The game forces you to do an aux battle after Chapter 2. The enemy stats are more in line with hard mode than maddening, making it rather easy. Park all the units in trees and heal as necessary. 

I gave Dedue the broken lance and got four enemies to attack him until they broke their weapons. Meanwhile the others kill everyone else. I then give Byleth the broken lance and grind.

Almost all characters ended up mastering commoner/noble, which is great. Dedue and Byleth were able to go straight to rank C on both authority and lance, which is amazing. Funnily enough, not a single person got a level up.

I will try to get one broken weapon of each type so she can hit C rank on everything. Given the 99 turn limit, she will be able to hit rank C for two weapons per auxiliary battle if she ever gets her Def high enough. 

Following the lectures, the saint's day, and the seminar (which nicely bumps all my half motivations to full motivation), Annette can now use heal. Ashe and Sylvain JUST didn't make it. Arghhhh....I guess we'll have to go into the next match with just ten uses. 

The enemies approach 3 at a time until they're mostly dead. Keep all the units near the starting position in a concave formation, sending Dedue out to lure if they stop coming at you. 

I was tempted to trap the enemy priest in a forest and grind on him, but thickets on this map for some reason have their defensive bonuses halved, and I figure it wasn't worth the trouble given that he had 12 nosferatu uses. However...Ingrid would have taken double hits and 1 damage per hit, allowing me to deplete him in 6 turns. Had I managed to separate him from the other bandits a grinding opportunity may have been possible. Oh well. I'm getting tired of spending 99 turns per battle anyway.

Thanks to his Authority C, Dedue has Battalion Wrath, which would have been amazing if he had hit something on enemy phase, but alas he did not. 

I manage to get all characters except Dedue Faith D. I figure Dedue won't need it since he'll be getting crazy bonuses from mastering al lthe skills anyway. I reclass Byleth and Dimitri to Monk, and switch almost everyone's goals to axe/bow, forgetting that I should have done axe/authority. Not a big deal, hopefully. Now that both Mercedes and Annette can use reason and faith magic, I change their goals to reason/authority on the assumption that they will use all their uses of heal every chapter and therefore get fast faith exp anyway. 

With a whopping 8 units that know heal, as well as my brand new Leonie, I should have both enough firepower and enough healing to power through this mission. A couple of wrinkles however...it's a fog map, so I'll need to be super cautious moving forward. Dedue, Dimitri and Byleth will always be the front-most units.

The second problem is that there are NPCs I need to protect for rewards. I will heal them like crazy. Good thing I got everyone heal. The combination of the first and second problems turns the map into a unique challenge. Were it not for Catherine and her two guys, I would advance slowly and steadily through the map, always keeping my strongest units in the front. But the fact that they are charging forward means that I have to charge right alongside them.

The weaker characters (Ingrid and Ashe at this point) will be relegated to mostly healing, while the strong characters will tank.

The third problem is that I can't infinite grind because Catherine will eventually kill Lonato or die, though again the healing exp is a nice consolation prize. 

I purchased kingdom soldiers and the stride battalion for a couple of units. By chapter 10 or so on hard you have more battalions than you know what to do with so I want to keep battalion purchase to a minimum. Plus, enemies do so much damage that a couple of hits would wipe out a battalion anyway so I like having a couple of units with no battalions to soak the hits.

The battle was very gnarly. I used torches everywhere for a test run and memorized enemy positions before restarting and using stride, hoping to kill a bunch of enemies off the bat. However, my plans fell through because this is Maddening: all enemy units have high avoid by default as is, let alone when they're standing in woods and thickets, so consistently hitting them is impossible. I had to turtle and even then I had many restarts due to being jumped by enemies in the fog. I lost one of the NPC soldiers but I had to continue because the turn he died on was so pivotal.

All of my guys were going on a healing frenzy, so they were all able to level to 4-6. In classic Ingrid and Ashe fashion, neither of them got a single strength level. Ingrid at this point can only damage people using steel lances and/or combat arts, while Ashe has been reduced to doing one or two damage per turn. If they do not get strength levels soon I'll be forced to ditch them and recruit other units. Dedue also has not gotten a single strength, defense or HP level which is amazing and upsetting to me. However, Dimitri, Sylvain and Felix are turning out very well.

Explored every time. Asked Lysithea for assistance. She's an adjutant on MU for the next mission.

I've discovered that training manually with proficiencies is better but that the exp you get for free at the end of each week following a lecture is not influenced by proficiencies. Therefore it is best to manually train people in things they're proficient with and set goals for things they're not proficient in.

I have managed to get most units to D+ in axe and bow, to barely make the threshold for Brigand and Archer. Authority is the next goal alongside whatever bases they will need for the future, so that everyone can use battalions.

Had Dedue gotten just two strength levels, he would have potentially been able to one shot the death knight with battalion wrath, a steel axe, and a bit of luck. Unfortunately for me his strength level is still base, and he's level 4 so he can't use reclassing to bump up his stats. So I'll have to avoid the entire center of the map.

I start from the bottom and move clockwise around the entire map, but FIRST I save scum literally a dozen times until Ingrid finally got her first strength level. I just couldn't take her crappy stats any more. 

Clearing out the enemy in this fashion was actually relatively easy: I have so many healers that everyone was fully patched up following a round and I could advance on the next couple of units. The only hiccup was when an enemy used a battalion to shove one of my characters into the death knight's range, which resulted in an instant death and divine pulse.

The three mage reinforcements show up as I am reaching about the nine o'clock position. I meet them in the top center of the map, where I use one stride battalion to make all my units attack and use their own battalions. Thank god I brought battalions that have a wide hit radius, and I was also lucky that none of said battalions missed. To my surprise, I was able to go as far as the chest to the right, kill every enemy aside from the daeth knight, AND neatly finish off the boss right as the round limit was coming up. Leveling up was about average. My only regret was that Byleth didn't get to heal much. I'd very much like her to hit C rank Faith soon.

Overall, a surprisingly easy level. Every time I run this level on any difficulty should be like this.

• Chapter 5:
• Chapter 6:
• Ingrid/Dedue/Sylvain Paralogues
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Byleth Paralogue

Explored the first time, and got two requests for battles which would give merchants and renown; did battles and explored the rest of the days. 

Ate meals all times except the tea time with Rhea, a quest for renown. Not sure if the tea was worth it. 

This mission (the one to kill Miklan) was frustrating a couple of runs but ultimately I got lucky and got through. Basically, you kill everyone near the beginning, including the reinforements from behind you. At the same time, lure the enemy archers into attacking you at the corners of their plateau so you can kill them off with counter fire. The (massive) bulk of enemy troops start walking toward you en masse. Using battalions (the bigger the AoE, the better) to immobilize the lot, and kill them all, making sure you keep your squishier units aren't in range of the remaining archers because they can pretty much OHKO them. 

Advance to Miklan (don't forget to grab the accuracy ring from the lone knight on the way), bait him with your chunkiest unit, kill him, then use your remaining battalions to kill his monster form. This second half is easier than I'd thought since after the cutscene you get all your divine pulse charges back.

Explored every time. Recruited Lysithea but was too late to get her to B rank in reason; won't bother trying to kill the Death Knight. Also recruited Ignatz as he's the only other person I can recruit and I had an extra adjutant slot available. I won't use him though, particularly as in the following battles all have his levels so far have been atrocious.

Somehow beat the level in a single try. Sent Annette and Dedue east to do all the switch flipping and stuff while everyone else went east. The avoid tiles were extremely tricky because of the massive +40% avoid; luring enemies off them helps a lot. 

I was too underleveled to do Chapter 7 so I am doing some paralogues early. Recruited Cyril.

Ingrid's paralogue features a lot of lava. This is a good thing: I can bring as many healers as I can and use the chip damage to farm the exp I sorely need. Unfortunately the one knock against this is that Dorothea, who I'm required to bring, doesn't have heal yet. Oh well. I was half planning on not using her in the late game anyway. Ingrid's paralogue also gives her Luin and maybe then she'll stop sucking.

Ingrid's paralogue is the first map so far where the enemy spawns literally unlimited reinforcements: in this case, two thieves keep spawning next to the bishop on the top right. Guides have claimed that they do so only for every 3/5 turns but in my experience they spawn every turn.

My first reaction was "Great! Unlimited exp!" but these enemies seem to give even tinier amounts of exp than regular Maddening units: they vastly out-level my troops but I am only getting 1 or 2 exp killing them. So the best thing to do is make a mad dash for the bishop and kill him as quickly as possible. The chapter is still excellent for grinding thanks to the lava anyway.

I go the northernmost route, and with some luck I am able to stride once near to the enemy priest and kill him, and then gradually moving south. I was even able to trap a couple of archers and grind a few units on them. The map has several instances of reinforcements spawning, but to my surprise the group of 6 at the south-west did not spawn. I was thus able to finish the chapter much more quickly and cleanly than I anticipated, though I end up aggroing the last group too early out of fear of the reinforcements showing up and ruining my run.

Nevertheless, the chapter allows me to get a couple of levels for nearly everyone, allowing me to then breeze through Dedue's paralogue.

The following week, I am still unsure about my ability to do the next chapter so I decide to use up Sylvain's paralogue as well as one of the quest auxiliary battles.

The auxiliary battles grant very little experience as the enemies are comparatively underleveled. However, I give Byleth, Dedue and Dimitri broken weapons, and rush them into the thickets. I also place Ingrid as an adjutant on Byleth and Felix on Dimitri. 40 turns later, all five characters have mastered their classes, which will prove very valuable in the coming chapter.

I could have done more. Problem is that Byleth is so accurate at this point that even with a broken sword and attacking another unit in a forest, she still had a 15% to hit, so I wasn't able to milk the training for all it was worth as I had to eventually unequip her sword. I tried to switch up Dedue and Byleth for Hilda and Sylvain, but the enemy ended up doing too much damage to them for it to be sustainable and I had gotten fed up with the grinding, so I ended it.

In the future, it may be worth bringing Flayn purely to rescue characters so I can cycle in new ones. I could also use the heal tiles to the north of the map for weaker units so that they can heal and fight indefinitely.

I could have chosen to do another auxiliary quest battle, but Sylvain's paralogue offered more enemies at a higher level and so seemed a better opportunity to train, and so did that next.

Sylvain's paralogue turned out to be an amazing grinding opportunity. Killed the large group in the lower center, then used stride and killed all the thieves in the middle with battalions. This let me finish the rest of the map at any pace I wanted. On the far right, I had Ingrid/Mercedes/Dorothea tank the mage boss until he ran out of spell uses, then equipped a bunch of people with broken weapons and went to town on him. The rest of the characters, spell users mainly, took out the rest of the map at a leisurely pace, before having one spellcaster each (Lysithea, Annette, Mercedes, Dorothea) use up all their spells on each of the bosses.

I lost my patience at about turn 60 and killed off the bosses. I regret doing it because it would have been great to get everyone's authority high enough to use the better battalions.

With my units averaging about level 15, and with plenty of useful skills mastered, I easily breezed through chapter 7. I marched everyone down the middle, immobilizing others with battalions when necessary, and took the middle of the map. I was then able to use the ballista multiple times by shoving/repositioning/drawing back users, allowing me to steal kills from the black eagles and golden deer before they got too many kills. With thief Felix, Hilda's seal speed and Annette's rally speed I am able to steal both rings easily from the two lords.

Recruited Manuela, Hanneman, Dorothea, and Marianne.

I've decided to try getting and mastering Pegasus Knight for all my female mages: they've mastered mage so there's no good classes for them to train in for a while. I reason that it should be pretty easy to have them master PK with adjutant training and getting enemies to break their weapons. Getting them to do archer for Hit Rate +20 is tempting but none of my mages actually have issues hitting their targets.

For the chapter, I make some competent fliers (Leonie, Byleth, Ingrid) due to the rough terrain, and they go right to rescue the villagers there. Practically everyone else goes left, to get the chests and prepare for the Death Knight. Lysithea is able to one shot him (even on maddening!), and aside from some surprise villager spawns catching me off guard, the chapter was relatively easy.

Strangely, Jeralt could not kill Solon, and Solon didn't even bother counterattacking Jeralt. I can only assume this happens on all difficulties, and it made completing the chapter much easier.

Recruited Shamir and Catherine. Finally hit A+ professor rank so now I can start dusting off the paralogues in earnest. I made a mistake and didn't recruit Raphael. I guess it's not a huge deal to just do his paralogue and miss the EXP he might get since I don't plan on using him.

Byleth is so strong at this point that with the Duscur Heavy Soldiers she only takes 1 damage from the beasts. The blessed lance and anti-monster combat arts came in very useful here to deal massive damage. Many of the enemies were also fliers so bringing many bow users was useful. On a different run, with a weaker Byleth, it would still be relatively easy to save her by reclassing her to a Pegasus knight.

Through good use of multi-use battalions, I was able to neatly finish the map right as I ran out of them.

• Seteth/Flayn Paralogue:
• Felix Paralogue
• Following weekend...options?

This one turned out to be a semi-useful grinding paralogue, as a couple of the enemies stand on healing tiles with Renewal and have spell uses that run out quickly. I bring a bunch of female mages in the hopes of training them with broken lances and bows so they can start augmenting their hit rate and AS with reclassing later. A couple of characters were able to get multiple levels by using up some iron and training weapons on said bosses, which was good. Marring the grinding potential was the fact that it was much slower than an aux paralogue since my units weren't being attacked from multiple sides per turn.

Tactically the level was rather boring and easy. The individual units are scary, but practically the entire paralogue takes place on sand, and the enemies don't move unless aggro'd, so you can take it as slowly and safely as you need.

You have to ensure the survival of multiple villagers and Rodrigue, who are all rather weak and enthusiastically suicide themselves into the enemy. Kind of reminds me of that one paralogue in Awakening.

To make up for it, each villager is guarded by one mercenary who is actually rather badass. And the villagers farthest away from you are thankfully rather well protected and don't leave their protection for a couple of turns.

Rodrigue has the same stats as he did in normal and hard. In practical terms, that means he can only survive one round of combat with one enemy. You can reposition, heal, or rescue him to buy time. One of the best ways to keep him alive is to distract him in a different direction by tempting him to attack a weak enemy somewhere far from other enemies.

I put my strongest and tankiest units, Byleth and Dimitri, on high mobility classes, stride them and sprint them into the middle of the map. They aren't invincible, but they buy time. Dimitri is able to immobilize three guys with his Duscur battalion, saving Rodrigue from immediate death. Dedue headed south-west and thanks to stride many were able to aggro on him. Felix heads south and while he's not as tanky, he gets the job done. The rest of the team are on cleanup duty.

Byleth, Lysithea, Ingrid, Manuela, Annette, and Mercedes all fail their certifications (despite all of them having 60% or higher to pass). Shamir, Dimitri, Hilda, and Flayn pass.

Had a majority of them passed, the clear choice would have been to continue doing battles so I can get them to master a bunch of skills. As it is the paralogues seem rather wasted, with only three units getting more skills to master.

On the other hand, I already have 8 units that have maxed motivation, will be getting one more with max motivation given the upcoming battle, and then the following week I am strongly incentivized to explore on the first weekend of the month before the lecture. With no more professor points to level, I'd spend some points training with faculty, maybe get tea with Rhea, and eat with students I haven't recruit yet.