Part 57: Epilogue

The Epilogue Story Section:



The epilogue begins much the same way Hector’s story did.




Hector is going to have either the funeral for his brother or his own ascension ceremony or something. It’s actually a bit ambiguous, at least in this default version of the epilogue. If Hector got an A with one of his possible wives, that character will appear here too and the dialogue will be different and such.
And Market has arrived for the ceremony.




But she’s leaving almost immediately. Always on the move, Market. I’m not really sure why unless this world is actually full of dozens of stories like this all the time. What else would there be for an unstoppable genius tactician to do after saving the world?




But she stays long enough to have a little talk with Hector about the future. Hector is finding the new job harder than smashing people’s faces in with his axe, as he expected.




He’s realized that Uther really gave him a lot of leeway to do whatever he wanted.




But now he’s ready to settle down and be a responsible ruler.




And he’s even realized that that’s not going to be easy or straightforward. He’s matured a lot.




It looks like Market tried to slip out after the ceremony but Hector ran out to talk to her again.




He reminds her of Athos’s prophecy that all of Elibe will be embroiled in war someday.




And asks her to return to help when that day comes.




I’m surprised Market doesn’t just stay with Hector or Eliwood or Lyn anyway. Eliwood in particular is sure to have a lot of fighting to do for the next few years stabilizing Pherae without most of his knights around to keep it secure (we saw bandits were already becoming a problem a year ago for one thing). Plus any allies of Laus who don’t know what Darin was up to might want to attack him now.
And Lyn is going to go try to kill the Taliver bandits only to find Wallace stole her kills. Such a Jeigan.




A pretty painting of Hector in his formal dress bidding Market farewell.




The ending is a lot less sad if you assume Hector knows what he’s talking about for once.




Scene break to Castle Ostia in the future.




Hector and Eliwood, now looking distinctly less cool, meet up for the first time in years.




It’s a shame they can’t see each other more often than not. I’d assume there are Lycian League meetings of the marquesses and such, but apparently not.




And they talk openly about their past adventures in front of anyone around. Nor is there at any point any mention of trying to keep these things secret other than returning Armads to the cave it came from.




Even now, with all the time in the world to investigate, they’ve learned nothing of the truth. They don’t know there was ever anything else to him, nor does anyone still living.




And they were talking about Nergal in front of him, yes.







Y’know, the closest Roy has to a canonical parentage is being ½ greatest knight in all of Lycia (and ¼ his even stronger father), ¼ dragon, and ¼ second greatest dark wizard who ever lived. It’s too bad he takes after his lame grandma Eleanora.




And Lilina is introduced to Eliwood. I’d be nervous around a guy who wielded Durandal, was friends with one of the 8 legends, and cut down dozens of elite soldiers, mercenaries, assassins, bandits, and not-quite-human warrior creatures made to kill him in 3 countries too.




And the bland canon couple.




And Eliwood brings up a recent and plot significant rumor.




Hector explains more of what happened to Eliwood.




And this pretty much makes no sense. I mean, the true story is that Desmond poisoned Zephiel who barely survived and was sick for days. But Murdock conspired with Zephiel to pretend he’d actually died. Then at the funeral, he stood up in his casket and stabbed Desmond then and there.

How Hector got the idea that there was only one assassination attempt and that people just got confused about who was assassinated is a complete mystery since the two incidents were spaced at least 10 days apart and bore no resemblance to each other.

Also Ostia’s spies seemed to know almost absolutely everything going on in Bern – and everywhere else- in 7. How they came to be so inefficient and confused is unclear but probably has to do with Hector being dumb.




And Eliwood points out that this is clearly a sign of what Athos said about a dark star rising in Bern and embroiling all of Lycia in war. Then they apparently go on to ignore that and that they know all about the internal family politics of Bern firsthand and talked to Zephiel while saving his life and that he knows they did that and everything else. So they apparently do nothing at all. And tell no one at all in their courts what they know. Or anything that would make sense. Again, it makes more sense if you don’t treat FE6 and 7 as canon in the same continuity. There are like a zillion ways these guys could prevent the plot of FE6 from ever occurring given what they know from this game. Take your pick and assume they do that and both games make more sense.




Pony product placement.




Just think how history could have changed if they’d listened to this conversation instead of playing with ponies.




So clearly he’s not planning to just do nothing.




Meanwhile, in the castle of what is clearly not an evil king…




That candle there is actually animated, the flame wavers back and forth. Pretty cool, but it’s too bad they didn’t do more of that kind of thing before.




Yahn appears.




Zephiel is evil and out of character.




And now back to an interesting part of the epilogue. This picture of a mysterious caped man and an ice dragon only appears if you’ve done A Glimpse In Time. That plus Ninian and Nils being ice dragons and Nergal’s children lets us know that this is probably Nergal with his dragon wife, Aenir.

The One Use of the Link Arena:




So I was trying to figure out the best way to check everyone’s final XP and stats since I didn’t take a screenshot of all of them right before killing the dragon. Fortunately I remembered that the link arena exists in the extras menu.
It lets you access all the characters from any of your currently existing save files so you can make teams out of them and then play rather dull multiplayer matches with them.




Oh and for some reason Ninian appears in the link arena separately from Nils with the stats they had at level 1.


Character Epilogues and Commentary:


The game presents individual epilogues for each character (presented mostly in the order they were recruited with the lords at the end). These can be changed if some of your characters have A supports with each other. I’ve got none of those of course. I’ll also post my characters’ final stats and talk about how those compared to their averages and the impact that had. Oh and the epilogue pictures list how many times the character was in a fight, how many times they killed the opponent, and how many times they were killed (and I restarted).




It’s a shame about Leila, she and Matthew were a nice couple. Honestly, Matthew deserved at least one more scene with Hector before the end talking about Leila and Ostia and what they’ll do after the conflict ends or the like.




Quite a few battles but few kills, since his main job in fights was using his high accuracy and low damage to weaken enemies for other people to kill.

HP: 2.25 Str: 0.9 Skill: -2.8 Speed: -1 Luck: 0.5 Def: -2.25 Res: 1.6 Total: -0.8

It’s worse than it looks actually. For one thing, his Str only turned around in the later levels. For another, he’s actually like 6 speed below what he should have if it weren’t for the 20 cap he’s supposed to hit fast. Not getting to 20 speed meant he was outright unusable on many chapters since he couldn’t steal items from the many 20 speed enemy thieves.

He was pretty terrible really. And that hurt, but not as much as it could have since I got Legault at the point where Matthew was really going downhill.




Oswin continued to be boring and respectable. “Bern is invading? Sounds like a convenient excuse for more violence.” It does sound like Hector forgave him and the two of them worked together well enough, so Hector must have taken Eliwood’s advice to heart.




More battles than I can remember him having.

HP: -0.7 Str: 0.8 Skill: -2.9 Speed: 1.1 Luck: -1.05 Def: -0.65 Res: 0.1 Total: -3.3

Not a good Oswin, though at least most of his badness was in relatively unimportant stats. It made it really hard to train him on Night of Farewells, but it was juuuuust manageable. Of course, I undid all of that to use Bartre instead when it became clear people wanted to see a run where I recruited Karla.

Fortunately, his base stats are good and that’s all a slow Jeigan needs for the 2 chapters you should let him fight.




A sad ending for her without any people like Erk to torment. She was a joke character, but at least a funny one.




HP: 1.5 Str: -1.5 Skill: -0.5 Speed: 2 Luck: -1.05 Def: -0.75 Res: 0.25 Total: -0.05

About average. More Mag would have been nice for Sands of Time, Guy almost died because her Mag was so bad.




And became a more useful character in FE6. Unfortunately, like most people, he gets no depth or characterization there outside some fairly mediocre supports. He was pretty cool in FE7. And he should have some awesome stories to tell.




He has more kills than I wanted, but at least he didn’t break 20.

HP: 0.35 Str: 0.7 Skill -0.5 Speed: -0.25 Luck: -0.7 Def: -0.15 Res: -0.35 Total: -0.9

One bad level.




Well that’s pretty much what he always wanted, good for him.




HP: -0.6 Str: 1.8 Skill -1.2 Speed: -0.2 Luck: -1 Def: 2.4 Res: 0.8 Total: 2

I used him about as often as I could and he turned out slightly above average, but he was still useless and not even easy to train. Lowen is much worse than I thought.







HP: -0.2 Str: 1.2 Skill -1 Speed: -0.8 Luck: 0 Def: -0.3 Res: 0.1 Total: -1

I regret every kill she got, but it was impossible to not have her be the one finishing those enemies at the time. Oh well. Slightly below average.




At long last!




HP: -0.4 Str: 0.2 Skill -0.2 Speed: 0.4 Luck: 0.8 Def: -0.25 Res: -0.95 Total: -0.4

Average. He started out surprisingly easy to train, but his terribleness rapidly made him unusable.




And you call yourself the toughest mortal enemy alive?! Bartre is a lot less of a moron in 6 but still uninteresting and not worth using.




HP: -3.4 Str: -1 Skill 1.6 Speed: -0.6 Luck: 0.8 Def: -0.2 Res: -3 Total: -5.8

A bad Bartre and that’s saying a lot. He really started off terrible but turned around rapidly in his later fighter levels, briefly becoming very good for Bartre. Anyway, a terrible character but necessary for getting Karla. Who is herself even more terrible. So he’s totally unnecesarry.




Mounted swordsman? A lot of these titles are nonsense. His epilogue seems to mix him up with Karel who ends up with the same title.




He was in many fewer battles than I expected. I suppose not that many pirates actually spawn in Crazed Beast.

HP: 0.5 Str: 0.8 Skill -3 Speed: -2 Luck: -0.3 Def: -0.1 Res: -3.5 Total: -7.6

He’s a very bad Guy considering his HHM boosts but still better overall than he would be in any other mode. Which is to say still bad.




Some of these epilogues are kind of out of order since they’re shown in the order that you recruited the characters, so we hear about Erk being asked to replace Pent before Pent retiring.




207 battles, 131 wins!

HP: 0.9 Str: 8.4 Skill -0.6 Speed: 2 Luck: 0.2 Def: 2.2 Res: 4.4 Total: 17.5

A better Erk is barely imaginable. As I mentioned, he could beat Athos in a battle with Fire or Thunder or the like. Erk is always a very good unit, as demonstrated I think by the fact that mine was actually not very strong until his massive growth after giving him the Afa’s drops and having him harvest all the monks on Crazed Beast. Even at level 1 it’s easy to start training him up any point in the game, same as most mages.




This implies that she ran or slipped away in search of Raven, but there wasn’t any mention of that before and she seemed to be traveling at least semi-officially with Erk as a bodyguard assigned by Lord Pent.




HP: 3.8 Str: 0.6 Skill -2 Speed: 2.6 Luck: 0.6 Def: -0.4 Res: -2 Total: 3.2

Actually a pretty good Priscilla, not that that’s saying much. And she didn’t even reach level 20 by the end of the game. Staff XP is just too slow in this game.




Even her epilogue is dominated by her one, annoying character trait! She’s like an Awakening character. I’m surprised she didn’t go back with Lyn though. Even if they have an A support they still go their separate ways.




HP: -1 Str: 2 Skill -1.5 Speed: -0.75 Luck: -1.5 Def: -2.75 Res: -0.75 Total: -6.25

Remember she had that angelic robe, so her HP is actually below average. She had a nice and necessary Str bonus but still came out terrible overall. There was no more disappointing member of my core team and her awful defense made her almost unusable later in the game.




Again, the order is confusing here so we don’t find out that Lyn abdicated till the end. Kent would make a darned good quasi-Marquess.




It really doesn’t take many wins to go from level 1 to nearly level 20 late in the game.

HP: -0.45 Str: 3.2 Skill 0.5 Speed: 1.35 Luck: -0.6 Def: 0.75 Res: 2.75 Total: 7.5

A fantastic Kent. Not only is he significantly above average, but he’s above average in important stats like Str and Speed. This guy could actually have made a pretty good replacement Sain.




Aww, I guess he and Kent broke up then. That’s a shame. Sain would surely be happy as a roving knight errant though, that’s how he’s often tried to style himself.




You’ll notice that he doesn’t actually have that many battles or wins. I was careful not to overuse him and to have him fight only when it was important. And then of course the end of the game came and I could use him freely but he wasn’t that good anymore.


HP: 0.4 Str: 0 Skill 0.8 Speed: 4.2 Luck: -0.2 Def: -0.4 Res: -0.4 Total: 4.4

As I said it would, his massive early game edge was gradually eroded so that now he looks only pretty good compared to his averages. What this total + or – can’t capture is that he was waaaaaay stronger at a time in the game when that was really important.




Exceeded often but never equaled! I guess he never returned to his family or Dart or Rebecca in Pherae then. That’s a shame since his supports establish that the main reason he hadn’t returned yet was that he was ashamed his adventures hadn’t gone as he’d hoped before winding up in Caelin.




He never gained a level so there’s nothing to say.




A happy ending because this means he gave up on his mis-aimed vengeance against Hector and moved on with his life. What’s more, Lucius is in Araphen so the two friends are together. Good




Note that he doesn’t have that many kills considering his level and usefulness. Much like Sain, he’s a fantastic early game unit but then he hits his important caps rather early and can stagnate a bit. What’s more, at the time I promoted him I still had lots of other important people to train, so I basically benched him for 6 major chapters or so and pulled him out to dominate the end.

HP: 3.05 Str: 0.15 Skill -2.8 Speed: -1 Luck: -0.45 Def: 1.25 Res: -0.05 Total: 0.15

Pretty much average considering his HHM bonus. He got an early game Def blessing that eroded over time that was nice though.




It looks pretty great at first glance since all Lucius has ever wanted was to help other people- especially children- and his friend Raven is there. Plus having been raised in an orphanage by a cruel and abusive man was the worst part of his life, so this is a chance for him to help people in a way that will probably seem especially important to him.
But see, near the start of FE6 a bunch of children from an orphanage in Araphen are being rescued by the Elimine church after the nice man who ran their orphanage was murdered defending them from Bern soldiers. How many orphanages run by great guys with connections to the Elimine church do you think there are in Araphen? Darn it, Zephiel, he was the sweetest guy ever and you killed him!
The only better ending available for Lucius is pairing him up with Raven in which case he doesn’t start an orphanage, but might survive. But he’s stuck with that jerk Raven! Poor Lucius.




Clear to 20 in just a handful of battles. Lucius is even easier than Erk to train and is a marvelously powerful and helpful unit. In retrospect, it might well have been worthwhile to get Kenneth’s level instead of Jerme’s so that I could use him and Erk more freely in the early game.

HP: -0.35 Str: 0.8 Skill 4.5 Speed: 0.8 Luck: 0.6 Def: -0.7 Res: 1.8 Total: 7.45

Looks awesome at first glance and he’s well above average… but almost all of that comes from a worthless Skill blessing. Lucius is just that good. Spectacular magic, almost matchless resistance, excellent skill, and very high speed too. And he jumps to a starting C in staves when promoted, making him an excellent staff user almost right away.




For many years I was annoyed that there was no better ending for this man than to die with his wife and have his son raised by his absolutely horrible mother. But, thinking about it, dying is about the best thing that could have happened to him. Otherwise he would inevitably have lost himself more and more to the darkness and ultimately become a drooling vegetable like his brothers or a monster like Nergal. This way he can be remembered for the totally swell guy he was.




You’ll note that for a guy I brought to every single chapter except 32x and 30 and frequently touted as the best guy on my team and in the game, he has very few battles and kills. I was very careful not to ever overuse him and to outright never have him fight on many levels, just having him heal and restore and the like. And he still got to nearly level 20. Canas is incredibly easy to overlevel no matter how hard you try because he’s the best man for every job.

HP: 0.7 Str: 1.95 Skill -2.6 Speed: 2.85 Luck: -0.25 Def: 4.75 Res: 1.95 Total: 9.35

One of the best Canases I’ve ever seen. But the crazy part is (other than Def) he’s not actually THAT above average. Canas is just that good. Even if he were average he’d still have smashed just about everything up just as well. As always, what really makes him amazing is what an all-rounder he is. He doesn’t have the best Mag, but he has very good Mag. Not the best Res, but very good Res. Not the best speed, but good enough speed, and so on. And he does have the best Def and HP pretty much. Oh and his caps are nice and high. The other mages are too specialized. Lucius is great on offense and with Res, but he can’t take a hit. Erk has blinding speed, but lacks power. And so on.




And his supports reveal he was actually Dan, Rebecca’s brother, from Pherae but lost his memory. This suggests he got it back and was reunited with his family- after having many adventures as he’d hoped and also repaying Fargus for Fargus saving him, again as he’d hoped. A happy ending across the board for him except for not being reunited with Wil since Wil stayed in Caelin.




Quite a few battles since he was being trained up in the early levels where things give less XP a fair amount of the time. Plus remember his fight vs all those wyverns in Four-Fanged Offense? His finest hour, but it took like 4 rounds to kill each of them till he got his speed up.

HP: 3.6 Str: 0.2 Skill 0.6 Speed: 1.8 Luck: -1.2 Def: -0.4 Res: 0.2 Total: 4.8

Pretty much average except a nice speed bonus and useless HP one. Dart is really good.




Nothing too interesting, but probably the kind of life she would have wanted.




HP: 1.2 Str: 2.6 Skill 0 Speed: -5 Luck: -1.2 Def: 1.2 Res: 2 Total: 0.8

Very unusual stats. That -5 speed hurt badly and she was suffering from that pretty much all game, but she was pretty tough and quite strong. Kind of like a sucky wyvern rider. All in all I’d say she was roughly the same power level as normal, but she played a different kind of role than she usually does.




I guess the loss in question was the Black Fang as a whole. Maybe Lloyd in particular given some of his interactions with him?




I’m surprised he got to 20 in so few fights, but thieves do gain some bonus XP. Plus he did some stealing, that might have earned him another level or so overall.

HP: 1.2 Str: -1 Skill 1.4 Speed: -1.8 Luck: -0.8 Def: -1 Res: 1 Total: -1

A bad Legault. Especially because his penalties are in important places. Both my thieves turned out badly. It’s a shame because Legault is often pretty useful.




The only way to change this is for Ninian to marry Eliwood and remain behind. Nils can’t get supports with anyone.




HP: 0.85 Str: -0.95 Skill 1.05 Speed: 0.7 Luck: 2.8 Def: 2.3 Res: -0.3 Total: 6.45

He turned out well, not that that matters at all.




Presumably it was Harken she eventually married.




Never gained a level.




Wasn’t allowed to return to Bern afterall it seems. Oh well, it’s a sucky country anyway. Ilia is worse, but at least it’s full of mercenary knights who fight for justice so he’ll fit right in.




HP: 0.4 Str: -2.5 Skill -0.5 Speed: -0.15 Luck: -0.4 Def: 5.9 Res: -1.4 Total: 1.35

Doesn’t look good overall when you count his HHM bonuses but seriously, check out that def bonus! That was awesome. The other thing that isn’t shown here is that his Speed was waaaaay above average until he capped it at like level 5. He was going to cap HP, Str, Skill, Speed, and Def. And that’s not even that unusual for Heath. So awesome.




Although it isn’t obvious unless you get pretty deep into some of his supports, Rath had been banished from his tribe because it was prophesied that only if he left could he save the world from disaster (it being clear that this was the return of the dragons, though his tribe didn’t know that). He was quite unhappy living in exile, so being welcomed back is great. Oh also this means he totally told them all about his deeds. And how he saved the world. So again, there’s no way the story would remain secret.




HP: 0.6 Str: 0.5 Skill 1.2 Speed: 2.5 Luck: 3.1 Def: -0.3 Res: 1.75 Total: 9.35

Didn’t take many battles to get him to 20 and he’s looking pretty good. If I’d continued using him, he might have actually hit 30 speed! Rath is a really good promoted unit, but I already had too many promoted people on the team.




Not sure how he died before 6. His daughter is even worse and much less cool.




HP: -0.5 Str: -0.4 Skill -0.3 Speed: -0.25 Luck: 0.6 Def: -0.2 Res: -0.35 Total: -1.4

One level and it was a bad one.




He’s the kind of guy who could have appeared in 6. His somewhat similar brother did. But he just vanishes and it’s no big loss. He wasn’t exactly a boring character in his supports, but he didn’t really have any kind of role in the story.




Didn’t gain any levels.




And what the heck happened to him? Why does no one mention that someone is taking over as the new Archsage in Arcadia or that the Archsage’s existence up until a few years ago was totally known by the heads of several countries?

Louise continues to have no personality or goals apart from her husband.




HP: -1.5 Str: -0.5 Skill -1 Speed: 2 Luck: -1 Def: -0.5 Res: 0.25 Total: -2.25

In theory he turned out badly, but more speed isn’t bad for him and it’s not like he’s a very good or important unit regardless.




Never gained a level.




And he maybe married Isadora? Well in Pherae working with Marcus, Isadora, and Eliwood is probably the healthiest place for him to be.




Never gained a level, remains awesome.




What cemetery do evil assassin people who died in an underwater temple fortress place with no witnesses around get buried in anyway? Or assassin warrior guys lurking around the most secret location in the country, again with no witnesses around?

And who would be burying these guys anyway? I’m pretty sure Lloyd was just left to rot on top of the shrine of seals and if anything is even left of Brendan’s body after Limstella did that flashy light thing to it, I don’t know where it would have been taken to or by who. It sounds like she never did try to reconnect with Jan or what remained of her old family. On the other hand, Pherae is the place to be since it’s got the best ruler ever.




HP: 2.45 Str: -0.5 Skill -0.55 Speed: -2.6 Luck: -1.45 Def: 3.85 Res: -0.5 Total: 0.7

She turned out badly other than being really tough- which is actually pretty good overall. But she was surprisingly useless actually and never really contributed anything.




Surprisingly, he only stays with Nino (and then only before he leaves to make sure bounty hunters don’t come after their new family) if they get an A support. And this ending is probably actually the happier one.




Didn’t gain a level, is the best assassin in the game.




How in the world is it unclear which of those things happened? No one in Elibe looks or acts like she does and it’s not like peacefully joining Zephiel’s army looks like the kind of giant air battle that would be required to take her down.




Didn’t gain a level, is still very good.




No one cares.




No one cares.




This one I wonder about. He might not be immortal, but he at least ages slowly. And he was apparently an ordained bishop and everything. Plus there’d be a fair number of people (including Canas) who wanted to talk to him. Honestly, I’d guess he killed himself.




Never gained a level.




I think it would have been worthwhile to have a scene in Arcadia of Hawkeye and the others talking about his legacy. It would be good to learn more about Arcadia for one thing, but also the character just deserves a better sendoff.




(Obviously) never gained a level.




But then instead he ends up as a family advisor or something? And no longer capable of dodging things? Or necessary to bring to battles ever?




I’m confused as to why 9, rather than 10, is listed as his max level. See I didn’t bring him to 19x so as to train Canas more easily and Florina killed him on 23x, so shouldn’t he be 2 levels short of his max?

HP: 0.6 Str: 0 Skill 0 Speed: 0 Luck: 0 Def: 1.4 Res: -1.3 Total: 0.7

It’s not like he can really turn out different, but good I guess?




Presumably this is after her grandfather died, though we don’t know how long it was until that happened. Seeing as absolutely no one is waiting for her on the plains and the Taliver bandits have already been killed, I guess she pretty much just goes back to sitting alone in a hut with no one around and not even Florina visiting anymore. Probably should have stayed in Caelin. Or married Hector or something.




HP: -1.2 Str: 0.6 Skill -0.6 Speed: -0.6 Luck: 0.2 Def: 0.8 Res: 5.2 Total: 4.4

She came out of Lyn’s story great but then gained pretty much nothing but Res. Doesn’t matter. Even a really lucky Lyn is still useless.




Hooray! There’s nothing better than being Elbert’s equal.




HP: 2.2 Str: -0.2 Skill -3 Speed: 1.6 Luck: 4.8 Def: 3.2 Res: 5.4 Total: 14


Massive overall bonuses, most of them not in important places but the sheer scale made him excellent. He was a very unusual Eliwood and has actually gone downhill a fair amount since he promoted. He ended up like a really good Lowen instead of his usual good Kent or Sain.




Maybe they wrote letters back and forth since they only saw each other once in 15 years.




HP: 1.2 Str: -0.8 Skill 2.6 Speed: 3.8 Luck: -1.6 Def: 2 Res: -4 Total: 3.2


A demonstration that what matters isn’t your overall plusses but their distribution and the point in the game where you get them. He needs all the speed and def he can get and if he gets them, he becomes amazing. Mine got a huge speed bless early and then briefly fell apart before his lategame comeback. But being good early and then slumping toward average late is way better than starting bad and then growing really well up to average late.




Either this ending isn’t canon or Market tied both sides in a knot so fast no one ever even mentions this war in the future.


Final Results:




Obviously, this is not the Lyn’s story ranking from this run.




And the Eliwood’s normal run I did just before this. As I mentioned, it was actually more challenging in some ways. You have to do a lot of really clever tactics to steal all the extra items that show up and can still only promote a total of 4 people.



And so that you can see that the upcoming ranking screen is really from this run, here’s what this screen looked like before I finished Light.

Now that I think about it, I’m not actually 100% sure I ever max ranked HHM successfully before. The reason it’s hard to check is that I’m now on my 3rd Fire Emblem cartridge because my first two started erasing all data every couple of hours, including my previous rankings. The only HHM ranking run I clearly remember as not being a different mode was my first one which actually ending in failure when I suddenly dropped 2 XP stars after Light. I’m still like 90% sure that I max ranked it successfully at least once before. Certainly I’ve done all the other modes at least once.


And the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The moment all this suspense that there hasn’t actually been any of is building up to:




Hooray! Someday I should try to get more than 117 tactician stars. That’s the number I always seem to end up with.


Tactics Details:




You can see here that survival chapters like The Peddler Merlinus always count an extra turn unless you can end them early by killing a boss or the like.













So Light actually ties Birds of a Father for quickest win. Cog of Destiny and Pale Flower of Darkness are the longest at 19.




The two chapters with names in red are the ones where I went overtime that weren’t 0 chapters or survival ones (in other words, the one where it’s possible not to go over the limit). I’d be interested in seeing a max ranking runner do those chapters faster while still accomplishing everything.

Oh and in a BIG surprise, I’ve been wrong about my turn surplus since Crazed Beast. You may recall that on that chapter I realized I’d lost track of what turn I won on and had no way to check. I went with what I thought was the worst case scenario of having 14 turns left. Turns out I only had 12. I’m not sure how that happened, but it’s a good thing I didn’t slack off on saving turns anymore than I did.

Anyway, in the end I had 5 turns to spare. Not a ton, but not nothing either. I could have easily made that 10 by not standing still and grinding XP on 32x and 13 with Victory or Death without changing anything substantive.
Had I kept everything the same but not done 19xx or 32x, the traditionally skipped max ranking chapters, I’d have had 27 turns to spare at the end.


Funds Details:




So the total funds listings for every chapter I did was 1,052,500. To get 5 star funds, you need at least 80% of that- so 842,000.

My assets at the end were 962,693 meaning I had more than 120,000 more gold than I needed- even after spending quite a lot of it promoting people I didn’t need to promote.

Farina’s true hard mode cost in assets is 38,100. She costs 20,000 in cash but with the silver card, that’s worth 40,000 in assets I acquired instead (or conversely, you have to sell 40,000 worth of stuff to get that much money). However, she has a killer lance and a javelin and a vulnerary totaling to a value of 1,900 so her true price is 38,100.

Subtracting that out from my assets acquired, you can see that even if I had paid for her to join I would still have 82,593 more gold than I need. That’s enough to promote 8 people or use 10 stat boosters. Or heck promote Dart, Farina, and Lyn.


XP Details:




This chart ranks every character from most XP gained to least. Everyone except Karla was used.

Now XP gained in Lyn’s story doesn’t count, but the only people I used at all in Lyn’s story were Lyn, Sain, Florina, and Matthew. Sain promoted on the last turn, gaining no more XP, so there’s no doubt about how much XP he gained. However, I didn’t make a note of exactly how much XP Lyn, Florina, and Matthew ended up at, only their level. Thus I might have earned as much as 297 more XP than the minimum I know I did in Hector’s story

The high estimate is probably closer to the truth. So, I netted out to have about 8,000 more XP gained in total than needed. That’s the requirement I really nailed actually. It would have been possible to do better, but not very much. Other than the archers, there just aren’t many more characters left who aren’t level 20 or promoted. Pretty much just Oswin and a couple of guys who are level 18 with 89 XP or some such thing.

Oh and just to note how crazy the XP requirement of Victory or Death is, my total XP gained on Victory or Death + The Value of Life + Light –despite significant XP grinding on 32 and 32x- was not even enough to reach the 6150 required on VoD alone. And Light’s requirement is just impossible barring something silly like massive dance grinding after not using Nils most of the game. Even if every enemy on the chapter gave 100 XP. Including the impossible to reach without Warp ones!

Even if I had impossibly managed to train Lyn, Priscilla, Kent, Guy, Matthew, Serra, Dorcas, Lowen, AND Oswin up the remaining XP to 20 without anyone else getting less on those 3 chapters, I would still have only barely met the XP requirement for them.


Combat Details:

So I’m not actually sure if there’s any other way of checking this or if it’s at all accurate, but I’ve tried to put together a chart for the combat ranking. The only data I have to work with are the listed battles and kills for each character in the epilogues.

The reason I don’t trust that is that it also lists losses for each character even though those are undone every time you restart. So possibly it’s double or triple counting battles and kills just like it can count one character dying multiple times if you restart. Assuming it IS accurate though, this chart ranks every character by the number of kills they got:




My ratio was well above the required 40%. I could have fought another 900 or so battles that I didn’t get a kill in in fact. The combat ranking is pretty darned easy.


Conclusion:

Well I did it! Every chapter, every character (sort of) even though that wasn’t originally in the plan, no RNG manipulation, no arena grinding, no gate grinding, no mine glitch. And I finished with more than 80,000 spare funds, 8000 extra XP, and 5 turns in the bank. Not bad, but it’s definitely possible to do a lot better.

I’ve learned a lot doing this LP and talking with you guys and am a much stronger player now than I was at the beginning. If I did it all over again, I could do much better across the board. “A terrifying thought isn’t it! Ha ha ha haaa!”

I hope that I’ve inspired some of you to do your own max ranking runs of this or other FE games and maybe into making your own LP. And I hope I’ve also made a good case for why I consider this little gem to be the greatest Fire Emblem to date, if not the greatest video game outright.