Fire Emblem: Three Houses, or: 3 Fires, 3 Emblems, 3 Houses

Put your Let's Plays in here.
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One minor benefit of Thyrsus that can be overlooked: the extended range means you can help set up gambit boosts better by parking the wielder within at least 4 tiles of the gambit's target. It helps a lot with securing hits with gambits, especially on dodgy enemies and/or moments when the RNG says "fuck you, you're missing on a 95% chance to hit".

On the other hand, Black Market Scheme is not a friendly map at all. Best of luck with that nonsense.

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Kind of an odd map. Having your units all spread out like that makes it less of a strategy challenge and more of a "do I have enough strong units" gate.

Could be an interesting place to use Rescue I guess.

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I've never been able to figure out how the enemy AI prioritizes gambits over plain normal attacks. From my own experiences, the AI seems to be built like this: "Gambit-->if there is a gambit use left, gambit again-->attack weakened/rattled enemy on the next turn-->profit". Except, that mindset can be easily foiled and turn a dangerous enemy (like Petra or her replacement on this map) into a complete joke by luring them out with any unit that can reliably dodge a gambit. It's so weird and I wonder if that is a leftover programming quirk from when battalions and gambits were going to play a much bigger role in 3H.

AradoBalanga wrote:
Thu Sep 17, 2020 9:31 pm
I've never been able to figure out how the enemy AI prioritizes gambits over plain normal attacks. From my own experiences, the AI seems to be built like this: "Gambit-->if there is a gambit use left, gambit again-->attack weakened/rattled enemy on the next turn-->profit". Except, that mindset can be easily foiled and turn a dangerous enemy (like Petra or her replacement on this map) into a complete joke by luring them out with any unit that can reliably dodge a gambit. It's so weird and I wonder if that is a leftover programming quirk from when battalions and gambits were going to play a much bigger role in 3H.
Feels more like the AI trying to prioritize not getting counterattacked over being more effective, and since Gambits can’t be countered, that’s the option they go with.

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Manning the central hill for the Black Eagles (how is it fair that they start with control of it?) is Bernadetta.
I like to think it's not so much that they start with control of it, but that they got the first turn off-screen.

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Update 65.


That was a hell of a break, wasn't it? Sorry about that. Back to it!

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So, one thing that the game doesn't tell you about Duke Gerth is that once you make contact with him, he'll follow the unit he made contact with for the rest of the map. This can lead to certain issues where he's perfectly fine one minute, and then knee deep in the reinforcement spawns the next minute because you moved Yuri/Constance/Adan/Abby to help clean up the map. It can get really annoying, to the point you are better off placing the contacting unit out of commission or limit their movement for the rest of the map on higher difficulties.

As for Death Toll, the only reason one should attempt to do it legit is because the giant wolves drop Wootz Steel when you break their barriers, which is extremely rare to come by unless you go out of your way to do monster battles on days off.

Can't argue with the "feed the chumpy boss to the pegasus knight" approach to Death Toll considering how bleh the side Raphael is on can be. RIP that free wootz steel though.

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Technically, we've seen the map of Falling Short of Heaven before. It's the Brioniac Plateau map, just with fog-of-war slapped onto it and thus creating an entirely new map! No really, this map is treated as a separate map in the game files called "Western Church Suppression" when it pops up in the random battle rotation.

On the other hand, I fully approve of disrespecting Solon like that. :allears:

Falling Short of Heaven is weirdly tolerable for a fog map, even on Maddening. Granted the pegasus knight reinforcements come from an awful spot but being able to stop them before they even start helps.

So many ways to disrespect Solon, so little time.

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It's unit writeup time!

Image Here's Ashe.
Image And here's Manuela.

Ashe is... well at least he's not Caspar, who I've regretted using every time I've tried. I go back and forth on whether or not he or Ignatz is the less impressive default archer but at least he's low-investment for his overall lowish-reward.

Manuela is one of the few characters I've never given a fair shake but "strictly worse Ingrid" has never really encouraged me to try.

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Yeah, Manuela feels like she was designed with a specific role in mind (swords and healing), but in reality is so all over the place that she struggles to carve out a niche. Her personal skill is interesting in terms of defensive tactics, but overall peters out as time passes. And while she can roll as a Swordmaster or Assassin, there are other units who can do that job much easier and/or with better tools than Manuela gets. And to top it all off, Manuela could work as a Trickster....if this was the Awakening or Fates version of the class, where Trickster wasn't given an arbitrary handicap to magic charges.

On the other hand, I do rate Ashe a little higher than some do. His supports are wonderful and Ashe can bounce off characters quite well. Sure, his strengths overlap with a lot of people (there are a lot of bow, lance, and/or axe specialists in the game, if you think about it), but I do find he works best as either Sniper/Bow Knight as Deadeye is an extremely useful combat art. And while Lockpick isn't always useful on a map, having someone who can pop open a chest when needed is very good to have. Basically, Ashe is in the "extremely solid" group of characters in this game for me.

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I used to think Indech Swordfighters were pretty worthless but I've come around a bit on them since, but only a bit since there are much better bonuses out there than +8 physical attack/+20 hit. Chalice of Beginnings existing does make Retribution a bit less attractive though.

Oil and Water is just... ugh. Everything about it just seems to be as irritating as possible and neither the Experience Gem or the Rapier are so amazing as to justify doing it without cheaping out by killing the boss first. At least on Hard a base level Manuela can still fight her way out with some care (and not whiffing) which is the one silver lining and it's not really much of one.

Hell Man continues to be Hell Man, even when he's actually trying he still manages to step on all these rakes.

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I think the biggest problem with Leonie's B support is timing. It can be unlocked only after Jeralt dies, thus the player is still reeling from Jeralt's death only to get this slapped in their face. If it had unlocked at the start of the previous month, then it'd be mostly harmless and only paint Leonie as a bit of a jerk. Personally, if that is what they wanted to go with, there should have been a B+ support that unlocked shortly afterwards, or move her A support to be the B+ support (since it is written like it is supposed to be right after the B support and not 5 years later) and give Leonie a new A support. Regardless, Leonie's mechanical usefulness far outshines her having a bad support because she is the most reliable unit you can recruit in the game, and I love my dumb redheaded death goddess, bad supports and all.

But yeah, Oil and Water is a bizarre paralogue that rudely cuts your deployment slots in half because...????, while forcing you into a very aggressive behavior in order to save Manuela. But at least it's not Anna's paralogue, aka "we balanced this for Crimson Flower and did not take into account what it'd be like to place this earlier in Verdant Wind/Azure Moon, so...have fun!"

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Manuela's paralogue is rough and not all that fun. Wouldn't blame you for cheesing it. Unless I grind her up a lot, I usually end up having to Warp someone up there and use a lot of Physic.

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Slight correction: the large bullions sell for 5,000 gold each, not 10,000. But yes, the financial rewards are the main reason you do Anna's paralogue. All that gold and weapons you may or may not use is worth having to slog through the rudeness of dealing with Bow Knights when your units are not quite up to speed with a Master class.

Also, fun fact about Ashe/Hapi C. This is one of those supports you must unlock during White Clouds, or else you'll be locked out of the rest of the support chain. Granted, the game is very bad at hinting which supports get cut off permanently at certain points of the game, so yeah.

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Update 69.


This is a quick one, basically just fast-forwarding through the final bits of Part 1.

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Hello best battalion in the game and Hilda's new best friend.

Sadly unless there was a bunch of speed carrots I missed/forgot about 19 speed on Ignatz at Lv25 isn't too far off from where he "should" be.

18 magic on Claude, jeez. If only it were actually useful.

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That Mag/Res level on Raphael a couple updates ago was comedy gold

I never tried Felix as a Wyvern Rider before. I usually take him the traditional route through Swordmaster and then leave him in Assassin for extra +Mv.

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Ah yes, the Immortal Corps, quite honestly the most busted battalion in the game, imo. It is hands-down one of the reasons why Verdant Wind is a good choice for a first run, if only because it's a C rank battalion, something fliers are extremely limited in receiving. I wouldn't be surprised if that's also part of the reason why Wyvern Master lacks Bow Range; Claude can aim the Ashes and Dust gambit at a relatively safe distance whereas Dimitri's King of Lions Corps and Edelgard's Supreme Armored Co. both are range 1 battalions.

But yeah, no matter how you slice it, Reunion at Dawn is a bone fide clusterfuck regardless of the route you're playing. And it is made worse if you're not focusing on the respective house characters before this map, because dragging a low level Lorenz and Ignatz through this hellscape is not fun at all, let me tell you about that.

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I approve of Balthus committing to his one job of casting FIST. On the other hand, that Balthus quest can be frustrating because the majority of the enemies in that quest are Wyvern Riders, which as this game has shown are among the best classes in the game.

But, man I forget how slow Alois can be. At least he has an out of joining with a B rank in Brawling, so Alois has something he can use to double.

So now that we're seeing Actually New part 2 plot content, I can talk a bit about why I didn't end up liking Verdant Wind (and Claude by extension) as much as I would've liked. Admittedly some of it is just finding the Golden Deer kind of shallow compared to the other two houses but IMO Claude has a bad habit of thinking he's the smartest person in the room and ends up overlooking some very glaring pitfalls because of it, plus honestly he comes across as a bit more manipulative than I'm comfortable with.

Also I was going to say something about Balthus being as fast as Claude but I forgot how weirdly underwhelming Wyvern Master's boosts are.

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Update 72.


If you're wondering "what's with this sudden burst of updates," the answer is "my work laptop somehow fucked up and won't let me log in with my account, so it has to be replaced, but then FedEx fucked up and now I don't know when it'll arrive." I've basically had the entire week off.

Pretty glorious Hilda there.

Linhardt... yeah that's pretty depressing especially considering what's in his future. I don't think he's ever turned out well for me either although given that he's working against the combo of bad bases, mediocre Reason list, and no magic-based combat art that's probably not surprising. I wouldn't say he's the most shafted mage in the game by any stretch of the imagination but pure Faith utility isn't all that exciting unless you're in love with Warp the way some are.

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RandomKesaranPasaran wrote:
Thu Dec 31, 2020 6:57 am
Linhardt... yeah that's pretty depressing especially considering what's in his future. I don't think he's ever turned out well for me either although given that he's working against the combo of bad bases, mediocre Reason list, and no magic-based combat art that's probably not surprising. I wouldn't say he's the most shafted mage in the game by any stretch of the imagination but pure Faith utility isn't all that exciting unless you're in love with Warp the way some are.
Linhardt has an interesting quirk with his spell list: nearly all of them are low weight spells. Couple that with Linhardt being one of the few mages in the game who does NOT have a weakness in Heavy Armor, and Linhardt can mostly erase the weight penalties of his spells (outside of Excalibur and Nosferatu) once you get him the Weight -3 ability. Linhardt can work, but he has to be hitting his Magic growth at the bare minimum. If he can do that, Linhardt can effectively be able to one-shot or severely cripple units with low resistance while being an effective magic tank (since his Resistance growth ain't bad, on top of Bishop/Warlock giving good bonuses to Resistance) on the other side of combat.

It's just that, true to his character, getting the lazy genius to put in effort is an uphill battle some don't want to deal with.

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As one of the few big black licorice lovers in the US... what the fuck, Constance

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What, you don't appreciate the idea of licking an entire boot made of licorice?

I can see I've been missing out by not having Cindered Shadows. Well, except for Balthus's thirst for older women. Constance in particular is just :allears:. No sense whatsoever and I love it.

Meanwhile I have nothing nice to say about Legend of the Lake that doesn't involve Leonie's dialogue, I actually do like her a fair bit when she isn't going on about Jeralt.
AradoBalanga wrote:
Thu Dec 31, 2020 7:18 pm
Linhardt has an interesting quirk with his spell list: nearly all of them are low weight spells. Couple that with Linhardt being one of the few mages in the game who does NOT have a weakness in Heavy Armor, and Linhardt can mostly erase the weight penalties of his spells (outside of Excalibur and Nosferatu) once you get him the Weight -3 ability. Linhardt can work, but he has to be hitting his Magic growth at the bare minimum. If he can do that, Linhardt can effectively be able to one-shot or severely cripple units with low resistance while being an effective magic tank (since his Resistance growth ain't bad, on top of Bishop/Warlock giving good bonuses to Resistance) on the other side of combat.

It's just that, true to his character, getting the lazy genius to put in effort is an uphill battle some don't want to deal with.
Eh, the problem is that Weight -3, while nice, simply isn't as good as having 2-3 extra points of speed, and his spell list isn't that much lighter than Mercedes for example and they have pretty much the exact same stat build except that she has 8 speed instead of 5 (as well as much better charm in the event that it ends up mattering) while he just has slightly better defense growth and better performance against fliers, and while I don't really have an interest in debating Warp vs. Fortify, it's probably one of the most damning direct comparisons you can make between students even without taking DLC into consideration. I don't even think it's that particularly uphill of a battle (unlike some of his fellow Black Eagles I could name), just everything encourages the player to just let him hand back and take naps. Which is fitting, but still kind of depressing.

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Are there lines for Bernadetta/Hanneman with the Immovable? Doesn't they also have an Indech crest, or am I mis-remembering?

The Quick Riposte skill completely changed how I played certain units. The slow tanky types like Raphael and Alois become absolutely devastating with it.

I usually stuck Linhardt into the Holy Knight master class as a utility unit with Warp and Physic. I tried him in the Dark Knight class once and he was barely passable there. He's sometimes better off staying in Bishop even after it's mastered, to stick with double white magic uses (which would've made Gremory a better master class for him, if it were available).

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DKII wrote:
Thu Dec 31, 2020 11:21 pm
Are there lines for Bernadetta/Hanneman with the Immovable? Doesn't they also have an Indech crest, or am I mis-remembering?
Bernadetta and Hanneman do not have any lines against the Immovable, no.

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Update 74.


Happy new year, everyone.

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