after 39 attempts, finally completed an ironman of this game because i have zero clue how i’m not tired of it yet. (also unironically marks the first time i actually ironmanned anything lmao)
took a while to figure out how to get through earlygame safely but after about 20 attempts i finally got the hang of it. this was the fifth attempt (out of 39) that made it to chapter 10 and the third one that got past it, with my old PB being dying on chapter 18 (IRyS map) at attempt 36.
unfortunately it wasn’t deathless because my dumb ass decided imitating real life was funny. the good news is the deaths happened pretty much on the penultimate chapter so eh, no harm done. other blooper moments include accidentally exposing Anya to a potential aether proc death in identity gaiden which would have unironically been a wipe, and Suisei dodging a fatal double attack at 40+ hit on literally the following map.
some personal thoughts/notes on this:
Long
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blossom Laplus is unironically the best unit in the game in ironman context. i’ve said that blossom breaks just about any unit, but Laplus has traits that makes her stand out among other candidates: she starts in a class with T2 caps, meaning you dont need to spend a holo emblem on her, she has the best growths in the game (her raw growths without aptitude are like 20 higher in every stat versus Matsuri with aptitude), she gets corona at level 30 which allows her to completely ignore resistance, and chapter 10 is actually perfect for training her because the inner room is full of enemies that are aggressive and will move towards you but only has 1 range so you can funnel them into a 1 tile wide chokepoint in the right corner of the map, use Polka to choke the point, and have Laplus basically potshot them all from behind until she kills everything. It’s also trivial to keep Polka alive at this point given only the shaver mages actually do anything threatening, you have Lamy Water or Rally Resistance from Luna to keep Polka alive, and you get two units with drive defense/resistance in literally the previous chapter which means Polka has like over 20 in both defenses while not yet accounting for the possibility of implementing Fauna to further reduce damage. The tl;dr is you can get Laplus to like level 15+ by the end of chapter 10 very trivially at which point she basically has the best stats in your entire army and steamrolls the game as soon as she returns in chapter 12.
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Rally spectrum Fauna from her event in chapter 21 makes her an insanely powerful rallybot that got deployed for pretty much the rest of the game just because she has that and canto+ in ranger. this is to the point where I’m unironically considering if I could’ve used her on 0 growths lol.
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Early promo Suisei and Akirose is still the play just like 0 growths, but instead of the third promo going to Noel it instead goes to Miko, mostly so that you get to use Physic and status staves asap. This is also a route that I have theory’d for a revised 0%, but I’m currently not in the mood to touch 0% for this again. Noel actually is a lot less important when you dont need a unit with her level of bulk that badly now, since Choco and 10/1 Aki with a robe basically suffices.
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As a personal challenge I banned the usage of dancer Baelz because bardtraining unironically kills the game’s difficulty. It may have been useful to make sure I dont go insane on 0 growths but with growths it’s overkill. The upside is I get to try Bishop Baelz instead (which I have never actually done) and this thing is silly lol, at 20/5 her skill setup gives her 100 base crit just by existing and when combined with slayer she was one of the MVPs through monster arc
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Choco can easily grind lance wexp on the ch8 brigand because she gets terrain bonuses despite being a flying unit, making it so the brigand has single digit hit on her in the mountain despite having wta. she also has terrible hit against the brigand, which is actually good here because it means with steel lance she can basically attack the brigand ad infinitum. I ended up with silver lance choco by chapter 10 as a result. Strictly speaking this isnt really necessary because choco has lifetaker so she doesnt mind eating damage from orkoing enemies instead of ohkoing but it is quite funny. (spear access is good to have though)
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I think Matsuri is ass. That said I have used her and she is surprisingly okay to train, but if she doesnt get level 10 on her join map its basically doomed for her. If she does then she can go cavalier for the pirate map which lets her farm exp easily with elite sword and her luck growth is high enough that she can unironically use the devil axe as a regular weapon in great knight which lets her farm axe WEXP. As a fun fact she has cap breaking WEXP for lances in cavalier since she already starts with C lances in recruit, and she keeps this wexp as long as she doesnt use lances in combat. If she can keep the exp theoretically she promotes to innate A lance access in t2. Lategame matsuri was useful as one of the few things with high enough speed to do anything, but it also requires her to go Great Knight to get the stat boosts and somehow get her to level 10 for her free promotion to Master Knight. How easy one thinks this investment can be is up to personal discretion, but lets just say elite sword goes a long way. I guess one good part about using her is she is built for ‘mini’ thighforce setups with Marine and Ame which lets her farm EXP easier when she can reap the damage bonuses from being adjacent to them and then get refreshed automatically.
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Entrap is still funny and broken.
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Use nihil. unironically top 5 skill in the game, probably top 3 even. lots of bullshit skill combos you just completely ignore just by having access to this