I don’t really post here, but just wanna share something dumb I’ve done on this game - beating it with minimum growths.
Quick background: this is not my first runthrough of the game, I beat it on v1.1.3 but with growths, while playing I thought 0 growths might be an interesting challenge (because the game devolved into basically a Garcia/Ross destruction derby by endgame) so I decided to try another run of it.
Basic gist of it is character growths of all playable units are set to 0%, unless a particular growth is over 100% in which case it’s set to 100%. I personally debated between whether to do pure 0% (no guaranteed stats) or do min growths (yes guaranteed stats), but since some units genuinely needed to level up for promotions (spider comes to mind) and I didn’t like the idea of stats being kept the same when by design they were intended to be guaranteed to go up, so I did the latter instead.
0 growths vs min growths differences
Characters which get growth rates are Myrrh (HP/Def), Margaret (HP/Skill), Melville (HP/Luck) and D’Erica (HP).
(For the curious, the main ramifications mainly affect Melville and Myrrh - in carcino map Melville’s high HP was used to tank some hits, while on endgame Myrrh was used to tank 2 dogs and counter OHKO with Dragonstone, the latter would have been impossible if she didn’t gain HP/Def per level)
Chapter thoughts
For the most part I expected the hardest map to be Rausten (Chapter 25), since you can’t LTC the map now as you have to wait for Jude to spawn on turn 8. This means sitting through the series of reinforcements, which you have to actively engage because I ran into perhaps the funniest bug ever (more on that later). The real hardest map however is the desert map (Chapter 21), since Eirika’s group has very limited amount of people while you have to deal with aggro enemies from Caellach’s group + flier reinforcements + time limit to save Ismaire so you can’t exactly turtle it either.
The rest of the maps were okay though Melkaen Coast (Chapter 26) is probably slightly overtuned for my party with a shitload of reinforcements.
The final map with 3 DK was also silly but basically i had to hope the reinforcements didn’t fuck up my game (first run I did it managed to glitch the convoy). Went right first as the dracozombie reinforcements start from the left. Because I had limited units I had to rig a killer bow pierce crit against the right DK, middle one was easy as I could just drop gleipnir nukes and while i could do killer bow pierce crit on the left DK i decided to set up for a Garcia kill with Nidhogg by repeatedly using the eclipse tome to chip DK down to 15 HP.
Character reviews
Will be talking about them in order of killcounts, the relevant characters that is:
A swords S Lances
Killcount: 241
Statboosters: everything that I could get my hands on except for 1 speedwing (Joshua) and 1 secret book (Innes)
Most 0 growth runs tend to invest heavily into one unit in order for them to juggernaut through the game (think say FE6 Perceval). TPL has a bit of an issue where there isn’t really an obviously good lategame candidate, in fact most lategame joiners tend to have some serious flaws that make using them difficult. Syrene was eventually chosen after quite a lot of consideration: she flies, has a high enough speed cap to enable doubling lategame mobs, and has competitive enough stats relative to the later units anyway. Syrene however suffers from a low strength cap, meaning that she actually misses out on quite a good amount of ORKO thresholds lategame. Filla’s Might+Demon Surge remedies this to some extent but it also means I can’t use Ninis’ Grace to tank hits which makes things a lot trickier.
Investing hard into Syrene early on also has the side effect of making the Ephraim split a lot easier to play, since there’s a strong unit now that can be reliably fallen back upon. Eirika split however gets their own carry…
S Axes, S Bows, A support Ross, B support Fado
Killcount: 168
Promotion: Chapter 6 (Warrior)
Syrene may have the higher killcount but Garcia is the true hero of the run, even if his stats don’t look like it. As it turns out, he doesn’t even need statboosters! Grinding out A support with Ross asap for the double fire support is insane for his damage output and turns Garcia into the best unit of the party for a long period of time. I expected Garcia to fall off lategame but he turned out to still be relevant with the ability to crit things using Killer Bows and even gets a second lease of life with B Fado. I did not plan for S Bows at all but after Garcia was able to grind to D rank he just popped off with steel kills followed by killer crits… etc you get the idea. This man is nuts.
S bows, B support Gerik/Eirika, C support Drau
Killcount: 123
Statboosters: 1 secret book, enough energy rings to cap str
The 3rd and final carry of the run, Innes is more a late bloomer that comes into his own due to snipers getting the pierce skill in this game. Several lategame bosses (Jude, Lyon) have ridiculous enough stats that the only real answer is to rig pierce crits, and Innes happens to be the perfect man for the job. Bows in general are solid for this run and Innes basically spends most of his existence sniping things with killer/silver bow/the nidhogg.
A swords, D lances, S axes, S bows, C support Ephraim, B support Eirika/Garcia
Killcount: 84
Standard lategame prepromote, but Fado comes with pretty solid stats and weapon ranks (not axes, I grinded that with devil axe for lulz) and being able to use things like the arbalest is pretty clutch.
S axes, A support Garcia
Killcount: 81
Promotion: Chapter 4 (Pirate), Chapter 11 (Berserker)
The real cursed unit of the run. Yes, the killcount is not a joke. While Ross spends most of his existence as Garcia’s personal moral support backpack, he also demonstrates how stupid double fire is by being able to pickup kills on his own with effective weaponry/the devil axe and crit rigs. Berserker is used for the ability to walk on mountains, which came in handy exactly once (Berserker Ross was used with swordslayer to neutralise the swordmaster in carcino map by sitting on a peak so the swordmaster had 0 hit on Ross)
Novala: S Dark, A support Melville
Na’amah: S Dark
Killcounts: 55 (Novala), 35 (Na’amah), 2 (Dara)
Promotions: Chapter 8 (Novala - Summoner), Chapter 14 (Na’amah - Summoner)
putting these 3 together since they mostly do the same thing - summon shit to piss the AI off. Novala has pretty solid combat at base though and Na’amah’s PRF is silly busted (brave nosferatu lmao). Gleipnir usage at endgame is also neat since it can one shot nearly everything.
Gotoh and the Jagen. Monster characters sharing the same lock means Bastion gets to use two weapons that are effectively an upgrade over his default weaponry - flesh render and crimson eye. Bastion also gets shadowshot which can be used to snipe some random things, and he doesn’t even lose AS from it which is the funniest part. Main complaint about this doggo is probably the relatively low-ish speed: a 29AS Gwyllgi spawned as a reinforcement in darkling woods and this actually made things tricky because Bastion suddenly had a much bigger death risk than intended. I could talk about his actual identity but I mean we all kinda know how he played out when we had access to him, minus the part where Garcia took over as the carry as soon as he promoted.
A swords, C Marisa/Gerik
Killcount: 42
Promotion: Chapter 7 (Assassin)
Joshua was used in order to steal a speedwing on chapter 9. While I could have also promoted Colm, Joshua starts as a higher level, with better stats, and crucially more speed. Joshua took over as thief from Colm following promotion and was basically used until the merge before I switched over to Rennac.
S swords, C bows, C Ephraim, B Fado/Innes
Promotion: Chapter 22 (Master Lord)
Killcount: 42
Standard bad lord. She gets kills mostly to finish off things. Post-promo she gets a horse and Killer bows which makes her a bit less shit but still overall ew.
Most of the other units are fillers which aren’t that worth talking about. For a general idea:
Duessel - used until the merge, okay stats, doesn’t really fly or have funny utility so yeah
Gerik/Melville - same as Duessel.
Dozla/Rennac/Glen/Drau/Ismaire - lategame fillers. Dozla gets used for crit boost+peak walking (ross with actual stats), Rennac actually has some solid ass stats and +2 move by default so pretty okay
Ephraim - Reginleif-bot early on. Falls into a volcano after eating too many omelettes so he missed out on a few maps.
Myrrh - endgame filler, dragonstone is strong enough to OHKO most monsters so she didn’t need much investment.
Amelia - lunaaxeslayer lance PRF is actually pretty neat and she saw use on quite a lot more occasions than expected. Her stats eventually catches up to her, as does Fauchard’s durability, but she’s earned her fair share of kills by then.
Harriett - Bootleg innes on ephraim split. Got replaced by the OG on the merge.
Klimt - was picked over Salvador, mostly because Salvador doesnt provide anything interesting while Klimt can rescue drop Fado and Garcia. Klimt ended up being brought along for the rest of the game though he didn’t do anything else interesting outside of staff duty, rescuedrop and some warps.
Albertus/Cormag/Knoll - neither were particularly impressive beyond being random filler on Eph split, but both of them were used on gorgon eggs map as filler alongside Syrene and Glen to help clear the eggs fast. Knoll might be a good alternative as a late carry over Syrene but he doesn’t have the availability, which is why I eventually passed on him.
Glitches found
Not exactly one per se, more of a GBAFE limitation, but in the Rausten map it is possible to softlock if Jude is unable to load as a reinforcement due to 50 enemy unit cap. This glitch meant that I wasn’t able to just lolturtle with unequipped units choking the bottom left corridor until the map ended
