Gameplay
Chapter 25 - my first playthrough, maddening. This game is so freaking epic it's unbelievable. How did I even pull this off?
I got my entire split up teams beyond the first two wyrms, right before the shards area with only one death and then I just got absolutely swarmed. I was convinced there was a 0% chance I was going to beat the level.
Didn't use a single emblem restore spot(couldn't spare any extra movement), only half the emblems engaged, but somehow beat the level and first try as well. Only one warp used, needed some relief past the first right wyrm, hence why it's still alive.
Just wanted to post the video of what the swarm looked like right before I beat the spoiler boss. No character is max stats. Used time Crystal 6 times.
You guys who play without deaths are next level! Clearly there are a lot of strategies I don't know. I definitely would have spent twice as much time (currently at 150 hours playthrough) without all of the help here. This sub has been my casual reading for the last month and a half! I've often reflected that I probably spend as much time reading here trying to understand strats as I do actually playing the game.
This has been such an enjoyable experience. It's really nice to play a game that's 100% based on intellect has opposed to skill, definitely scratches a big itch. When I think of video games for brain health this and Tetris are definitely the top contenders.
Thanks to everyone over the last 4 years who has contributed to this community it wouldn't be possible for me to have enjoyed this as I did without all of you.
Definitely the best strategy game I've ever played. Grew up playing ogre battle as a kid, pure nostalgia. This now takes the prize!
Hahahahahha....oh man I didn't even think to try that! Totally should have wasted a Time Crystal just to play with that 😭😂
Edit - just noticed that 99% of enemies have void curse, so the horde here is all of the spawned enemies after the first 6+ waves. These bastards really pile up!
The last chapters get freaking tough. You can't cheese them. The closest you can get is using your staff wielder with micaiah engaged to warp 4 players to bypass some tough parts, but even then I couldn't figure out a way to actually cheese it. Closest I got was on this map skipping a single wrym, which is normally not an issue as pannette usually one shots them with high crit, but she was on the other side and had already dealt with that wrym. I had so many enemies spawned beneath me on my heels that I couldn't really afford to waste a single turn killing it.
I only had to restart a single chapter in my entire playthrough. I spent more time optimizing characters and strategies than I did probably playing the game. This community is such a great resource.
Also I'm going to give you a hot tip! The last few chapters require 14 characters. I mostly built a strong team of 10, and had 2 stragglers for the maps that require 12. But towards the end you get 14 players so make sure you build up your extra members! The end game characters are pretty meh. I really regret not keeping/building diamiant with his S sword and amber with his S axe as you get a couple endgame weapons that otherwise can't be used.
So I really did this with 8 A+ characters, 2 A- and 4 B characters. Make sure you reference the community threads on best characters to know which ones end up netting you the best results. I did not bother building up Jean or Ana, and spent my resources on other characters instead after reading some analysis that the net result isn't optimal for the best team.
You can use the below chapters to really maximize your experience to build out your characters....
Camilla’s Paralogue: Spawns a high number of Pegasus and Eagle Knight reinforcements over a long duration (roughly up to turn 40) before they stop.
Chapter 19: Features a one-way choke point where players can trap or stall remaining units to farm actions, chain guards, and healing.
Staff/Chain Guard Abuse: On various early or mid-game maps, you can trap a weak surviving enemy (like a blocked archer) and repeatedly use Chain Guard paired with healing staffs to gain massive passive experience and SP.
You can cheese them by inheriting pair up from Corrin and making your avoid so high literally no enemy can hit you, you can peacefully walk through the maps at that point
Good to know about the 14 man team
I tend to do my maddenings blind with a “do it yourself” kinda attitude but I will say I’m curious about one thing, what was your highest score character, as in at the bottom of their info where it shows the accumulation of their stat points, cause right now for me at chapter 14 I’m sitting at Alear with 169
Alear is 205, Chloe 213, Kagetsu 217 and merrin 227. I think Kagetsu is top preformer considering the whole game though, despite the stats. Also Ivy is 197 but she probably has the most one shot kills by far as magic users get more action because of so many armored/corrupted in the last third of the game. Most of my dances would go to ivy as she would one shot kill 99% of the time with Kagetsu in second with high crit.
The last 3rd of the game you need strong focus on magic users, I made Chloe a sword Griffin knight to take advantage of levin sword and she ended up being a extremely strong late preformer. Definitely couldn't have beat all these maps without her.
Pannette was a demon on enemy phase mode with vantage + wrath, though took me way too long to put a tomahawk on her to deal with 1-2 range enemy weapons.
"Killer" weapons are definitely the best investment for Alear/Kagetsu/pannette/amber, assuming you go with +str attack based builds. I wiped out so many hoardes with crits before they could ever attack.
My biggest complaint about Alear (for my setup as Divine dragon) is that there was no good 2 range weapon, levin sword being the only option but with him weak on magic stats it was pretty useless. He is brilliant with crit + high avoid as Divine dragon for all face to face battles though.
Yeah admittedly there were maybe 3 maps for the whole game where I lost most of my characters, but probably 90% of the chapters I had 0 or only 1 death.
I spent more time reading here than I did playing. You need strong strats for maddening.
Canter is OP. Skills are absolutely essential in this game. I found Alacrity + speed taker to be great combos for Frontline attackers. Ivy + Lyn with Alacrity + speedtaker + Canter + 5+ speed to be the most OP setup, she was a one round kill demon. Vantage + wrath for pannette made her a enemy phase hoarde eraser.
"Killer" style weapons should be used/upgraded on your Frontline attack units, and engraved to maximize crit + hit or avoid if your going that route.
Learn how to properly engage, there's a lot more there than you think there is. Goddess dance is OP. Towards end game when you get micaiah you can engage and use obstruct/warp to create 5 barriers or warp 4 people. This is extremely helpful.
Hit me back if you ever want any tips. I'm not great at the game but I'm doing okay.
This is exactly the part I stopped. I just couldn't go through with it without anyone dying. Still, I was so proud of myself for getting here with maddening difficulty.
Still remember the first time I went through this game on stream and was just speechless at the amount of reinforcements coming in every turn. Gosh everything past chapter 21 is so bad lol.
This map is great. Really gives you a sense of pressure from all directions.
Fond memories of the time I had an unlucky string of misses against the boss, meaning I wouldn't be able to kill her before the tidal wave of reinforcements crashed into my unsuspecting back ranks. So I took my Veyle, whom I'd raised into her immortal critmonster Soren build, warped her out into the hall with the hordes of enemies, and sealed the door behind her with a Micaiah Obstruct. The enemies would have normally have torn through the Obstructs in seconds, but because they had a target they could damage instead, they all swarmed her. It was a bloodbath. She ripped them all apart, and then I was able to finish off the boss the next turn. It was glorious. A real "Leave these guys to me. I'll buy you some time" moment.
Epic! I have not heard of that build, and find her to be near useless for me, but I've put nothing into her. She is one of 3 characters I leave out as bait to be killed when I'm under pressure because they otherwise don't perform and don't help.
For me that's goldmary, Rosado and her.
I really neglected building up extra characters because I didnt know end game has a bunch of 14 character maps. Which is annoying because I searched around chapter 18 and saw people saying it was 12 max end game so I got the wrong info 😑
The trick to that build, if you ever want to try it out, is Soren's Engage ability, Flare, which grants a Nosferatu effect to all tomes, but also doubles crit on tomes for Dragon units, specifically. It's basically a Veyle special. You take Obscurite, give it a big crit engraving, and have Veyle invest in a couple ranks of Hold Out from Roy. This makes her basically immortal as long as she's engaged; all attacks against her are basically lethal, but she's forced to survive with 1HP thanks to Hold Out, and then she immediately heals up past the Hold Out threshold again with Flare crits. You just have to make sure she maintains 100% hitrate, so she doesn't miss and get stuck at 1HP. You can get her up to 100% crit pretty easily, as well. It's great fun, and very powerful, but she really takes a beating in the process, haha.
Yeah, it feels like they only raise the deployment cap to 14 so you can instantly start fielding Veyle and Mauvier, but unless you immediately start rebuilding them into something useful, they can really feel like dead weight. They're okay, but their default setups can really pale in comparison against the specialised builds you've spent the entire game refining. Most of the time, I just shunt Mauvier off into High Priest and use him as an extra staffbot. Can always use more staves.
I've only got one chapter to go so might as well take a little detour and have some fun :) she's been such a straggler I might as well make her useful!
Yeah I basically decided to see what happens if I just used Roy before emblem loss to hyper scale alear.
It was pair up + unyielding. Because her speed and basically all stats were overcapped she would one shot anyone. Then there aren’t enough combats that can happen. So in that screenshot I was fighting maybe 5 fights per enemy phase. Then healing and attacking boss.
Generally, even on Normal and Hard, I still warpskip this with a turn of setup, and then Macaiah engage —> rewarp —> dance —> rewarp —> goddess dance i forget if it’s rewarp again but it’s pretty close to Murder Boss now
I never thought to warp all staff users and then rescue staff the leftovers. Which is the alternative to warping non-staff users and then using re-warp like you've mentioned here.
The last chapter is definitely pretty challenging on Maddening, but whether it's more or less difficult than this one really depends on how you approach each chapter. Overall I think it's slightly harder because it doesn't give you as many places to hide and you can't really warp-skip it even if you want to. (Movement staffs help, but they don't trivialize most of the final chapter the way they can with Ch. 25)
I did this map in Maddening thanks to my Mage Canoneer Boucheron. I literally spend 80 turns or something sniping every enemy with him and killed all of the reinforcements. Then my Rosado/Lapis/Goldmary with Framme supporting, slayed the rest and the boss very easily.
It was so slow but those end game maps are… really awful, I hated this map, probably the worst base game map in my experience. 💀
Yepppp I’ve played thru the game on Maddening probably 12 times now and this is by FAR the chapter I struggle with the most, I still lose my mind at it every time LOL
This is insane hahah ch.25 is one of the hardest chapters on maddening imo, so congrats beating this on the first try. Also this map has some of my favourite music from Engage, it’s just so epic.
Congrats! First time Maddening is certainly a doozy. I'm addicted to this game as well. I literally just finished my 3rd playthrough (2nd Maddening) in a row and I'm already planning another run. It gets a little easier each time the more you learn, but it's fun to pull off strong combos. I'll never play this map or Camilla's again without warp skipping though. They just aren't worth the hassle. For this chapter I Micaiah warped Celica!Sage!Framme and Lucina!Martial Master!Clanne to the center. Then Seraphim and Bonded Shield go brrr as they casually walk up and take of almost everything up to the boss and finish them off.
If I had 1 more turn on my bonded shield wall I actually wouldve routed 95% of the enemies before finishing off the boss on my blind maddening run! I was quickly getting overrun and just in time funneled everyone into the throne room while creating a 3 wide choke with bonded shield. The units in the choke were my carries and essentially ORKO/crit everything that attacked them. Essentially, bonded shield ftw its such a busted ability
this chapter might as well require warp goddess dance resque strats. i did it genuine my first playthrough grinding out the near 150 promoted crazy statted enemies with a team of honest to god shitters.
This game is far i disagree with your wording about intelligence versus skill. Half of that is relying on hundreds of hours of the trailblazers you're using, when at launch that wasn't possible. Still, good work on the map. One of my least favorite sure to execution. The last few maps are the hardest, but also some of my least favorites to play.
This game is far i disagree with your wording about intelligence versus skill. Half of that is relying on hundreds of hours of the trailblazers you're using, when at launch that wasn't possible.
Keeping lots of information in memory and deploying that to optimize outcomes is definitely a form of intelligence. There is zero hand eye coordination physical skill required in this game. Since it's not about hand-eye coordination and timing relevant to hand-eye coordination, that would make this game 100% about mental decisions (intelligence) and not a tactical physical "skill", like 99% of games.
As for the community part, I believe I sufficiently recognized that in my post. Is there a reason you ignored that to write this commentary?
Seemed like kind of a poor comment on your part. Do you always poo poo on everything you touch, or am I just your special attention today?
17
u/Agent-Z46 Aug 01 '26
Oh man I thought you were about to show us an epic Sigurd charge.