Stuck in Chapter 9, Help Appreciated!

[Flamber]

Hello! I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I hope I could get some help!

Basically, I am not good in strategy games. The only strategy I had back in the Fire Emblem days is throwing Hector and watch him cleave everything.

Anyways, I'm stuck in Chapter 9 at Normal Difficulty, and my small brain cannot compute how to beat this chapter. I split my forces, with one heading to the forest, and another at the bottom, and the allied units + Lysander gets swarmed by the overwhelming numbers, and everyone falls like flies.

Tried to station myself in the fort too with Diana, but that's not enough either because the allied green calvary just charged in and dropped like flies too.

I'm out of Arena tokens, so no grinding for me. Help is appreciated, thanks!

https://youtu.be/0LN-CLi4vww

EDIT: Artifact list here, if needed!
https://i.imgur.com/hYrFsZF.png

[abaoabao2010]

Chapter 9 is basically a damage check.
1. any squad with 2 healers, remove one.
2. always use the aggressive attack instead of cautious/normal/target leader.
3. make a couple more squads and train them to t2 with books
4. try to bait enemies into you instead of running into the enemies
5. Push with your entire army down the center.
6. Send a squad north and a squad west only after you cleared the initial clump of enemies in the center, preferably squads that are on its last legs and no longer combat capable.

[grognardgary]

Squads don't have enough members high loyalty people need to be squad leaders that allows you to put more people into them Use artifacts and items that boost leader loyalty Until you are maxed know which of your leaders are closest to picking up another squadmember and use them to take objectives especially in Arena fights. Don't use your MC to capture objective in Arena he gets a point anyway

[MrPibbs]

Alright a couple of tips from watching your video.

- Use the full deployment limit. I only saw 9 squads on your video, and iirc the deployment limit is 12 squads for chapter 9. You've got plenty of money, hire some mercenaries and even some conscripts if needed, but make 3 additional squads. You can use another archer squad to soften targets, a generic tanky squad to take attacks instead of your important squads, an all offense squad to try and deal as much damage as possible before they die, or even just a single dude that you send to the southwest corner for the town and chests. With no permadeath it doesn't even matter if the squads die.

- Try and position people in the squad to spread damage. For example in your Narima squad you have a single frontliner covering Narima, who's maybe the tankiest unit in that squad. If you move Narima and the Soldier both on the frontline blocking everyone else, that would drastically increase the chance of this squad taking an attack with no losses. Another is Abigayle's squad. Right now all melee damage is focused on the 2 Acolytes in front. Move Nibbler into the front to soak some damage as well, and the squad is less likely to lose an Acolyte to concentrated damage. This also applies to Stefan's squad and maybe also Raskuja's squad.

- Use your capacity. Right now specifically Jules and Raskuja could fit another unit in their squads. You may have to take the artifacts off Jules and use a committed/loyal unit in Raskuja's squad, or use one of your 4 medals of valor on them, but an additional unit is a big increase in a squad's power.

- Use your traits. Your main character currently has 0 traits and you are sitting on a bank of them. If you use them and don't like them you can replace them later. If you're afraid of them not getting their best use putting them on a certain person, well they're still getting better use than just sitting in your inventory.

- Use your affinities. Try and give your important characters affinities that focus on their best stats. As an example I believe Jules has the Water Affinity by default, which is literally his worst Affinity. Give him a Fire/Lightning/Dark (maybe not dark, it's rare and the magic boost is useless) Affinity to boost his damage, or even a Light Affinity if you can try and squeeze another unit into his squad with the Leadership boost.

[grognardgary]

Originally posted by MrPibbs:

Alright a couple of tips from watching your video.

- Use the full deployment limit. I only saw 9 squads on your video, and iirc the deployment limit is 12 squads for chapter 9. You've got plenty of money, hire some mercenaries and even some conscripts if needed, but make 3 additional squads. You can use another archer squad to soften targets, a generic tanky squad to take attacks instead of your important squads, an all offense squad to try and deal as much damage as possible before they die, or even just a single dude that you send to the southwest corner for the town and chests. With no permadeath it doesn't even matter if the squads die.

- Try and position people in the squad to spread damage. For example in your Narima squad you have a single frontliner covering Narima, who's maybe the tankiest unit in that squad. If you move Narima and the Soldier both on the frontline blocking everyone else, that would drastically increase the chance of this squad taking an attack with no losses. Another is Abigayle's squad. Right now all melee damage is focused on the 2 Acolytes in front. Move Nibbler into the front to soak some damage as well, and the squad is less likely to lose an Acolyte to concentrated damage. This also applies to Stefan's squad and maybe also Raskuja's squad.

- Use your capacity. Right now specifically Jules and Raskuja could fit another unit in their squads. You may have to take the artifacts off Jules and use a committed/loyal unit in Raskuja's squad, or use one of your 4 medals of valor on them, but an additional unit is a big increase in a squad's power.

- Use your traits. Your main character currently has 0 traits and you are sitting on a bank of them. If you use them and don't like them you can replace them later. If you're afraid of them not getting their best use putting them on a certain person, well they're still getting better use than just sitting in your inventory.

- Use your affinities. Try and give your important characters affinities that focus on their best stats. As an example I believe Jules has the Water Affinity by default, which is literally his worst Affinity. Give him a Fire/Lightning/Dark (maybe not dark, it's rare and the magic boost is useless) Affinity to boost his damage, or even a Light Affinity if you can try and squeeze another unit into his squad with the Leadership boost.

Very good sir. that's the first thing I notice he has a lot of under strength squads for chapter nine. And not enough of them.

[abaoabao2010]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Don't use your MC to capture objective in Arena he gets a point anyway

Don't shy from capturing with MC. MC is one of the good leaders, and you get significantly more LDR exp on MC when capturing than when someone else captures. That, and LDR has increasing returns so you should always get a few full power squads up fast rather than spreading your resource out across way too many half-assed squads.

[grognardgary]

Originally posted by abaoabao2010:

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Don't use your MC to capture objective in Arena he gets a point anyway

Don't shy from capturing with MC. MC is one of the good leaders, and you get significantly more LDR exp on MC when capturing than when someone else captures. That, and LDR has increasing returns so you should always get a few full power squads up fast rather than spreading your resource out across way too many half-assed squads.

Not that I've notice unless you get very lucky and get mentor for your MC he gets the same one points as anyone else. If you want points with one leader spread over the whole squad use ole sarge he starts out with mentor. And most of my later leader come out of his squad.

[Flamber]

Hello! Just a small update from my side!

It took a bit of customization and planning thanks to the advice of you guys, but I finally managed to beat the level! With my team nearly dying and the MC at 10% HP or something

If the enemies are this hard right now, I'm kind of bracing myself on future chapters, ahaha-... But still, thank you all so much for the help, I appreciate it!

https://i.imgur.com/zg8Qqt3.jpeg

[MrPibbs]

Originally posted by Flamber:

Hello! Just a small update from my side!

It took a bit of customization and planning thanks to the advice of you guys, but I finally managed to beat the level! With my team nearly dying and the MC at 10% HP or something

If the enemies are this hard right now, I'm kind of bracing myself on future chapters, ahaha-... But still, thank you all so much for the help, I appreciate it!

https://i.imgur.com/zg8Qqt3.jpeg

Chapter 9 is a bit of a spike in difficulty, don't worry too much. It's the first time you're fighting tier 3 heavy infantry and cavalry, which put a big dent in your offense while also being much more threatening than tier 2 variants. The past chapters have been primarily light enemies or ineffective hodgepodges of units. As you start getting bigger squads, stronger artifacts, and your own tier 3 units the gap closes quickly.

You've already beaten chapters 5 and 9, two of the toughest main story missions in the game, chin up! And you're welcome.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

Well, positioning is usually one of the biggest factor in those kind of strategy games.
For example, I'm playing the normal difficulty but changed nothing from initial squads, because I considered it to be intended. I'm going to chapter 12 with a few changes because I was wondering why some squads get money and artifacts and other don't. Turns out I can specialize better, exactly like with affinities. I've kept them as they were until I understood I can make them better. So far, no problem with difficulty, so optimization doesn't seem to be required for this difficulty.

So, a good tip is given by characters quite often: using choke point and forts help a lot. Avoiding being surrounded too as even tanky squads with healers will slowly lose members, notably against cavalry that can discard and let a new squad attack you.
With positioning you'll do 50-60% of the job. Then, some squads are better than others against some enemies.
Plus, note that your ambush specialists can decimate strong enemy squads without getting damaged. Same goes for full ranged squads with high ground.

[abaoabao2010]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Originally posted by abaoabao2010:

Don't shy from capturing with MC. MC is one of the good leaders, and you get significantly more LDR exp on MC when capturing than when someone else captures. That, and LDR has increasing returns so you should always get a few full power squads up fast rather than spreading your resource out across way too many half-assed squads.

Not that I've notice unless you get very lucky and get mentor for your MC he gets the same one points as anyone else. If you want points with one leader spread over the whole squad use ole sarge he starts out with mentor. And most of my later leader come out of his squad.

There is no "one point" when you capture.

LDR growth uses a hidden LDR exp bar that fills up as you do combat and capture, and when it fills up, it "levels up", increasing your LDR by 1.

The flag icon appearing once when you capture an objective does not mean the MC gains 1 LDR exp nor 1 LDR level. It means at least one of the units in the squad gains at least 1 LDR level.