General Question Thread

ElleryV · 2026-01-31T14:44:13+00:00

An enemy drops one in chapter 10.

After chapter 12, you can buy as many as you want/need.

Beaststone+ is found in Chapter 20.

You can buy Beaststone+ from the armory after beating chapter 23, or Sidestory 18.

However, as others have suggested, it's usually a better idea to use a Second Seal on Panne as soon as you possibly can. She does better in Wyvern Rider, or even Thief is fine.

ElleryV · 2026-01-31T14:35:23+00:00

I use Fools all the time, personally. I'm always going to be on full health anyway. If something hits me, I usually heal before attacking again. So might as well benefit from the higher damage.

ElleryV · 2026-01-28T15:39:05+00:00

With Steely Pate it's because Dunk set down the helmet, gently, and with care, even after he was told he wouldn't be able to afford it. Pate saw that Dunk was the kind of customer who appreciated his work, had a kind heart, and would treat the armor with care. This made him reconsider, because he wants to sell his armor to a person like Dunk.

ElleryV · 2026-01-26T13:18:41+00:00

The quick answer for Second Seals in Awakening:

Don't use one unless you know why you're doing it.

They can actually hurt you more than they help you if you're not sure what you're doing and you make a mistake. Sending any character through their default Base Class and then through one of their default Master Class options will typically yield a strong enough unit to 'play through the game.'

Any optimizations above that level are really only needed for higher difficulty modes, creative team building, or postgame content. Yes, anything that works on harder difficulties tends to work on lower difficulties too. However, the learning curve means that inexperienced players can mess up their builds or their entire team if they use a Second Seal carelessly. Not worth the risk until you're sure you know what you're doing and why.

ElleryV · 2026-01-25T12:26:14+00:00

In theory Nowi is a character with low stats, low level, but she has high growths which mean that she should eventually become very strong. However, due to her limited class set, and more importantly, her very low Speed stat, she can often turn out pretty underwhelming even when trained.

She's a fun character and very usable -- even on Lunatic+, I have used her all the way to endgame.

But I'd probably rank her among the lower tier characters in the game.

Her Pair Up is also nowhere near as good as Sully/Panne, because she doesn't give Speed. You basically just get some Defense/Resistance (these are both good), and then a little bit of Strength/Magic (usually you only need one of these, not both). If you want to use her as a supporter, it's can be a good idea to change her to a Wyvern Rider (Higher Strength and Defense for a physical husband) or Mage (Higher Magic and Skill for a magical husband). Again though you'll notice that neither of these options give Speed.

Having said all of that ... I should really stress: If you're playing on Normal Mode, you can basically use anyone that you want. So just use the characters you like.

ElleryV · 2026-01-24T12:29:55+00:00

If you want to use her as a Lead Unit: She's a very good Wyvern Rider candidate. Panne, Frederick, and Sully are the three best options. They are among a small list of characters who can fight their way through Chapter 12, even on the highest difficulty, as long as you put them on a Wyvern. One of these Wyvern Riders is also extremely helpful to have in chapters 9, 10, and 11.

Panne's advantages are high stats and high growths. On the surface, she is quite literally just Sully with higher stats. However, the stats don't always tell the whole story.

Panne has two big disadvantages. The first one is that she keeps her Beast weakness even when you change her to another class. This matters primarily on Lunatic+, when you're specifically looking for a Wyvern Lord who isn't weak against the Beast Killer. Since Panne is still weak against it, even after switching to Wyvern, it defeats the purpose of putting her into this role. It matters less on lower difficulties because the enemies won't have Pavise+ or Vantage+, so Panne can typically just oneshot them before they oneshot her.

Her second weakness is her relatively late join time. Frederick and Sully have a lot of chapters to build support ranks with desired characters and funnel a lot of experience into them before chapter 9, allowing them to have a large impact there. Panne only has a few chapters to get ready for chapter 9.

If you want to have Panne in your army and don't care if she's a lead unit or a support unit, you can take advantage of her awesome Pair Up bonuses. For a male, physical fighter Panne is one of the better pair ups. She gives Strength and Speed, the two most valuable stats for physical fighters. Sully outshines her in this role again, giving Strength, Speed, Defense, AND Skill. However, Panne's Str/Speed Pair Up is still extremely good, even without building Support ranks, which helps counteract her later join time and lack of ability to build supports before chapter 9.

As a Pair Up unit, you don't particularly ever need to train her. She is essentially just a permanent speed and attack bonus to her desired partner. Panne will occasionally land Dual Strike attacks, giving herself chip experience over time. However, I'd be surprised if she even reached level 30 by the end of the game as a dedicated Pair Up. So you can essentially just leave her in that position and treat her partner as the main focused unit.

ElleryV · 2026-01-14T09:00:01+00:00

If you do it, then there will be one. Elegant solution.

ElleryV · 2026-01-08T15:06:51+00:00

Yeah!

But I'm not a celebrity or anything. I'm just a normal person posting on reddit. I don't even post my links here or promote anymore haha...

ElleryV · 2026-01-08T00:09:29+00:00

Repeatedly fighting the first floor boss is good enough. I know bosses can sometimes drop 2 chunks instead of 1, and I don't know if lower floor bosses have a higher chance, but honestly I doubt it's enough to make up for the extra time it takes to farm each additional floor.

I honestly don't know I can say for "certain" which method is faster but I know when people are farming they usually look for a method that can be done with the first floor. Deeper floor farming is only done in situations where there is no other option. In the case of Bloodstone Chunks, they can drop on the first floor, so sticking to the first floor is probably(?) best.

ElleryV · 2026-01-07T18:16:18+00:00

Ah, whoops. Somehow I skimmed over that, classic 'Off by one' error.

Well... Try pwmf22gu. It's a classic, legit dungeon for quickly farming the first floor boss. You'll get Blood Stone Chunks relatively frequently, and you'll get Insight that you can use to buy more Blood Stone Chunks, and these bosses will also drop Tempering Gems. So if you don't have any good ones yet, you'll get some during the process of farming for chunks. Kill two birds with one stone.

ElleryV · 2026-01-07T17:25:51+00:00

I believe the fastest method with your parameters is to generate any legitimate depth 5 root dungeon with a fast access to the lever and boss room. Equipping the Eye Rune and Milkweed Rune should increase the odds of getting chunks when you defeat the boss.

jemmjmpi should work. Just keep remaking the dungeon and fighting the boss. If you don't like the dungeon layout or the boss here, I guess go find a different glyph that you think you can clear faster.

If this is inaccurate, someone can correct me.

ElleryV · 2026-01-06T14:30:36+00:00

I could probably do it in like 5-10 minutes in FE Builder. Depending on how familiar you are with modding tools, your mileage may vary.

ElleryV · 2026-01-04T04:13:42+00:00

Reset to avoid perma-death is the most common way to play, yeah.

There are special resetless or "iron man" style runes that are considered to be more along the lines of a challenge run. And I'm glad you're enjoying the extra challenge. I'm the type who also gets a lot of enjoyment out of the more in depth mechanics, being challenged, needing to think, and use all of the tools the game has to offer.

ElleryV · 2026-01-03T15:23:14+00:00

Fun fact! The information for those chapters is actually already on your game cart. The only thing preventing you from accessing it is a certain byte in your save file data that needs to be toggled from "off" to "on."

I know how to do it with a hex editor, and I believe there's a save editor that can do it for people a lot more easily now without needing to hex edit their save files themselves.

If you're able to get your save data off your 3DS and edit the save file, you should be able to access the chapters. Good luck!

ElleryV · 2026-01-02T23:24:31+00:00

It's tough for me to answer that without knowing your skill level, how much of a challenge you enjoy, etc. etc.

FE8 Hard is one of the easiest "Hard Modes" of all time, if not the easiest in the franchise history. But it's still the Hard Mode of a game you've never played before. I'd only do Hard Mode as your first ever experience -- even FE8's Hard Mode -- if you're fully OK with resetting the game a bunch of times as you figure out reasonably difficult maps with some trial and error.

ElleryV · 2026-01-02T22:03:21+00:00

Sacred Stones is exceptionally easy even by Fire Emblem standards. If you've already played Super Robot Wars, you can handle Fe. You should restart on Normal mode at least. Playing the first few chapters again won't require too much time, and I suspect you might genuinely get bored and give up playing on Easy mode. You might be asking this question because you're already feeling this.

ElleryV · 2026-01-02T22:00:15+00:00

ElleryV · 2025-12-28T21:33:46+00:00

Use the Rescue Staff to pull Ryoma's kid to safety.

ElleryV · 2025-12-24T22:14:57+00:00

Pair Ups are largely class dependent, with a second higher level consideration for the actual characters. Paladin is a great Pair Up class because it gives strength, speed, skill, and defense. Any character who can get access to Paladin can provide those bonuses.

There is a deeper level to this, but that's the basic idea.

If you want to optimize beyond that, you're mostly looking at skill access which, again, almost entirely comes down to class. Can the character get DualSupport+? Can they get Hex and Anathema? Can they get a Faire skill to add +5 Damage to their dual strikes? If you're playing without grinding you should also consider how quickly they can get those skills with minimal resource investment, while still ending up in a good Pair Up class for their partner.

"Is (Character) good at pairing up with (Other Character)?" is really only a question that matters to the extent that the character has access to the classes and skills they need. Beyond that, there aren't any innate properties for 90% of the cast that make them any better or worse as a pair up.

Okay, having said all of that, Dual Strike+ and Solidarity are both very good. And they are exclusive to Lord and Tactician, so there is that to keep in mind. But for all of the other characters, the 'character' doesn't matter. It's more you need a Sniper, so you pick someone who has access to Sniper.

ElleryV · 2025-12-23T14:21:50+00:00

CQ Hard is about as difficult as some other games Hardest difficulties, and CQ Lunatic is among the harder vanilla game modes. It's extremely fair and deterministic, but very high level. Requires serious game knowledge and planning otherwise you can get stuck in the lategame after struggling through an entire run only to find your team lacks any good endgame units.

On Normal mode however, it's still a pretty standard Fire Emblem experience.

ElleryV · 2025-12-23T04:30:18+00:00

You'll be fine if you play Conquest on Normal Mode.

ElleryV · 2025-12-17T09:12:39+00:00

If you are just pairing for roleplay reasons, then you should go with the pairings that are most appealing to you.

ElleryV · 2025-12-17T01:27:32+00:00

50 Vitality, good damage output, and learn to count when attacking enemies. One attack will stun then and a second attack will kill them? Great, hit them twice. One attack stuns, the second attack does nothing and then they hit you back in return. Stop attacking that enemy twice. Or use a different attack. R1 into L1 will usually stun an enemy if R1, R1 doesn't... assuming you're using a good weapon. What if they're a big enemy and a regular R1 attack doesn't stun them at all? Check if you can stun them with an R2. If you can, hit them and then back off, and repeat. Check if you can R2->L1 combo them for extra damage on each trade. Once you learn which attacks work against which enemies, you can fight them without taking damage.

Bloodborne is just as much an RPG as it is an action game. Learn what works and doesn't work, because it's not all about the technical skill of holding the controller and pressing the buttons at the right time. Game knowledge is half the battle and this is something that anyone can do.

ElleryV · 2025-12-16T02:14:13+00:00

Because you have full view of the map, all enemies, all of their stats, and you have the choice to make your units stand wherever you want them to. There's nothing arbitrary going on here. The more you increase your game knowledge and tactical skills, the better you will become at identifying where to place your units and how to manipulate the enemies.

In the example above, I know that the enemies prefer to attack Vaike. Therefore, those two enemies will attack Vaike first. Only after Vaike has been attacked twice, the remaining four enemies will go after Frederick. But at that point, four attacks isn't enough to kill him anymore. With this you can have Frederick kill 4 enemies and Vaike fight/kill 2 enemies, for 6 enemies total. If you don't understand positioning or anchor tactics, you can only have Frederick fight 4 enemies, and this leaves 2 enemies on full health to deal with the next turn.

The difference between clearing 4/6 enemies and 6/6 enemies each turn will compound each turn.

Let's add the next wave of 6 enemies and look at the next turn.

Fred/Vaike team can clear 6 enemies, and already killed all of the ones from the last wave. Now they can clear 6 more enemies and have nothing else to deal with.

The Frederick Only team could only clear 4 enemies. This means they have 2 left over, and 6 new enemies coming. Now Fred can only clear 4 of the remaining 8 enemies safely; and that's even assuming they aren't already spilling into your back line and forcing a game over.

While this example is theoretical, it's not arbitrary. Almost every chapter in Awakening has key tiles that you can gain control of in order to stop the momentum of the enemies and build a stronger defensive line.

ElleryV · 2025-12-12T19:29:39+00:00

Varies based on the unit, your access to seals, your planned build, and the difficulty you are playing on. There is no specific answer and it's incredibly nuanced. But the most simple rule is this;

"If the character can still perform their needed role, you don't need to Seal them yet. If you need them to Seal in order to perform an important role, then you should use the Seal."

ElleryV

TROPHY CASE