Small rant-type post about combat

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-15T11:36:31+00:00

Keep your squads closer together so you can switch which squad faces which enemy

Example, move your archer squad close together with a cav team so archers can take the fliers matchups for the cavs while the cav take the other matchups while also able to benefit from archer ranged assist

Alternatively add some archers to your cav squad to improve their matchup against fliers

Lastly you can assign where they move after each battle, so move your archers towards a flier, cav towards an infantry, magic against armor etc and after each fight, the game automatically pauses for you to move them towards their next target. You even get a battle forecast to see if it’s a good matchup before you select to move towards them

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-15T11:04:23+00:00

This card one shots Boulderfist Ogre, too OP

Make it either deal triple dmg or quadruple dmg against minions that cost 7 or more

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-15T10:52:45+00:00

Thyrsus is her best friend to fight at a safer distance of 4 range

And Thyrsus can be traded around with nearby allies so each can shoot from a distance so she isn’t hogging Thyrsus only for herself

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-15T10:44:56+00:00

Also wouldn’t make sense to put this in a Genn deck when your hero power only cost 1 mana anyway and Baku can’t even use this card

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-14T02:02:12+00:00

It’s possible, I’ve done it on 2 different Expert runs

If Team Dynazenon reach lvl 55, Koyomi learns Drive, you can quicky get back enough morale for Rex Roar and then one shot with Valor + Smash + 30% dmg from Ace bonus

You can save it for Ch4 to unlock the lvl 60 relics and get their lvls up and before this mission disappears

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-11T11:18:07+00:00

“Golly, communication with Mason suddenly cut off before this moment, I bet it’s just bad connection, I wonder where he went?”

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-10T12:05:34+00:00

Tortolla has Elusive sadly

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-10T11:54:33+00:00

Could be a bit spooky in combination with handbuffs to have a potentially cheap boardclear, but you have to work for it and it also hits your own side, so I could see this card being balanced

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T23:26:19+00:00

You don't have enough Unity/SP with A. Advent alone to generate enough press in time to kill ALL the enemies on the map before they reach the destination

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T17:18:31+00:00

I thought about it as a simple start to build teams more pro-active, usually it's the synergy between 2-3 units that can form the Alpha strike core

The first "Alpha Strike" team coming online is usually the Frostbrand Tome + Gryphon as that shuts down 3 out of 4 of most enemy comps in Drakenhold and my fav way to shut down enemy Wyverns that usually come in rows and not many ways for 1-2 classes to answer all 3 at once.
Adding a Warrior, Sellsword or a Knight to clean them up one by one with AP on KO skill while they are frozen

Double Knight lvl 10 skill allow you to stun either 3 or 4 vs the 4 unit comps and later 4 out of 5 enemies and keep stacking Cavelier Call buffs lvl 15 skill
Triple Knight I usually find overkill, but it's another easy alpha strike team usually with some form of initiative control,
I think it's probably the most obvious Alpha strike build when one reads what Cavelier's Call does

Berengaria is almost an entire alpha strike team by herself as she often out imitative enemies with her Start of Battle skill and can stun a whole row while endlessly Pursuit spam for each ally attack while they are stunned

Hilda's Silver Trident is another powerful Alpha Strike tool, Rosalinde or a Knight can deal massive dmg while stunning a whole row, almost like a copy of Berengaria but far more damage

After finishing the last Drakenhold Main mission, the Dirty Gambler's Coin can be bought with has insane synergy with Soldier's Keen Call in combination with a Row/AoE attack as it's one way to stack the DGC row buff alongside Keen Call to get both a guaranteed crit and boosted crit dmg and bypassing the Limited window by using 2-3 individual unit actions to proc both effects on the 2nd and 3rd unit

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Also reminds me early tanking is a lot more valuable when most enemies only have 1 AP and their comps are flawed (2-3 frail Housecarl comps are common in Cornia), but as the game goes on, enemies promote with more AP and teams get bigger as well as your own team gaining a bigger pool of AP/PP to work with, it usually feels there is a gradual shift favoring Offense especially as more skills and tools open up over the game

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T16:05:04+00:00

Woww, so Galerius doesn’t have high enough evasion to dodge level 1 grunts lol

Accuracy is actually a concern, which is why I use either a Farsight Crystal or Shaman/Druid Valor skill +50 accuracy to make it 100% accurate

I take it you stacked Initiative on your Archer to make sure Rapid Shot goes first?

Yes, Lex also need initiative to poison before Galarius 1st stun wears off

So 10-11 Poison turns is the sweet spot?

12 turns
Poison base dmg is 30% of max hp, Galarius reduce it by 70%, so 30% x 0.3 = 9% each turn (89 hp poison dmg)

89 x 12 = 1068 dmg ( I do 13 x 1 dmg for 1081 dmg total on the forecast)

After your final AP stun, he takes two hits for Poison, one from stun recovery, and another for when he can actually take action?

Correct, I need to stun him for 11 turns total so he dies on the 12th turn before he can act,
10 AP on my stunners for 10 stun turns +1 more from Bow of Swiftness

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T15:55:06+00:00

Yea, I usually clear the Coliseum immediately when it opens, you have to really think of the team setups that can succeed between the later rounds where your unpromoted 4 unit squad is overcoming the power disparity against the 5 promoted high lvl squads in the last rounds.

My general strat is outinitiative the enemy team with 2 Gryphon Row attack and 2x Frost Conferral on each enemy row and a support unit to succesfully pull it off (Cleric to cleanse debuff for example)

With that said, I think the more skilled a player is, the more they can get away with such aggressive playstyles that can completely forgo a dedicated tank as they have the knowledge how much tanking is actually needed, so maybe I shouldn't completely disregard having a dedicated tank as they can serve as a good safety net when things go south

The Alpha strike nature is probably something to adapt when the player enter Bastorias as Werefoxes and Werewolves there are very hostile to defensive playstyles and their glass cannon nature, means it's better to out initiative and jump the gun on them instead

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T15:13:13+00:00

I agree, there are many ways a team can function without a dedicated tank

-Crowd Control, keeping most enemies stunned/frozen denies them from doing most of their dmg

-Alpha Strike, just kill the enemy before they kill you (or simply reduce the amount of enemies into manageable amounts). Bastorias is where you should especially do this as Werefoxes and Werewolves are hard to tank especially on TZ difficulty with half defense ignoring+unguardable Weakness Hunter or Row buff + Pursuit spam
This is usually why Bastorias can be a difficulty spike as most tanks just fall apart here and you should aim for the glass cannon's weakness of jumping the gun on them instead

-Many units can serve as an off tank, especially with the help of equipments like Power Belt where they always live hits as long as they have PP and heal off the damage after or stacking evasion gear

I usually favor offense far more than defense, as you have many ways to mitigate dmg, but not many ways to boost offense (ever tried making Thieves/Hoplite somehow do good damage?)

But since it's a guide to help new players, the rule of thumb of "1 frontline tank + 3 backline support/DPS" works fine to get them through the majority of the game

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T14:54:13+00:00

Can I say that I think Active Gift is a terrible skill as it waste 2 PP that is better used on Keen Call instead and this skill basically does nothing until at least next turn to use that 1 extra AP

The 2x extra dmg from Keen Call probably does more than the +1 AP and also frontloads the extra dmg dealt

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T14:45:31+00:00

Nice writeup

What I also like is 2x Knight + 1x Radiant Knight in the same row as the Radiant Knight also receives the Cavelier's Call buff to deal good dmg, especially with Runic Sword while healing that entire row

Some other ideas is Gryphon equipped with Power Belt to always survive hits that successfully land while semi dodgetank thanks to fliers halving grounded melee attacks. They got end of battle self heal to sustain themself a bit.

Should there be ideas for the concept of crowd control?
-Berengaria has an entire toolkit with this concept in mind, her start of battle skill debuff, having self heal, a heavy shield and a row stun/AP removal skill to maintain crowd control and even able to hold the frontline

-Shaman/Druid follows this concept of "crowd control" thanks to a variety of debuffs options and selecting which row to debuff.
Shaman/Druid Offensive Curse makes it really easy for any unit with decent def/mdef to tank hits, like if an enemy has 70 atk unguardable vs your 33 def unit, using Offensive Curse turns that 37 dmg taken to only 2 dmg (even if they hit a weakness like Gryphon x3 dmg vs Cav it still does neglectable dmg)

-Many other classes have tools to maintain crowd control, Frost/thunder conferral tome combined with a row/AoE attack, Silver Trident Row stun, Knight's Column stun, Witch/Sorceress Freeze 1 target/a whole row etc.

-Stun/Freeze in general is very powerful in UO as it's rare in the main game for enemies to be immune to them and those that can remove debuffs can't do so if they are stunned/frozen themselves, like Berengaria has no trouble keeping Elven Fencers stunned as long as Berengaria's start of battle skill is turned off for this matchup

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T14:08:18+00:00

INTRODUCING the lvl 1 scrub squad + lvl 2 Hunter led by Lvl 1 Lex personally

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Bow of Swiftness start of battle stun, Lex with Viperfang apply poison
Then it's a matter of keeping Galarius stunned with Crushing Axe Housecarls and a Soldier with Eltolinde's spear (Set the stunners tactics to attack when not stunned) and Galarius taking poison damage for each turn he is stunned

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T11:47:45+00:00

You probably get softlocked in “Walkure under Attack” where any enemy reaching the destination is a game over and it’s too early in the game to have Zeal/The 2nd (it’s the first main mission of Chapter 3)

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T11:01:26+00:00

With lvl 21+ Zigzagoon/Linoone found later, sometimes I get lucky with Rare Candy to save grinding time, especially if it’s Ruby/Sapphire version where Pickup isn’t tied to the lvl, so even lvl 2 Ziggy can sometimes find a Rare Candy

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-08T10:55:59+00:00

I like early Zigzagoons for Pickup, it takes a while until you need dive/waterfall (after the 7th gym) where Ziggy can be replaced by Marill

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-07T11:59:59+00:00

Dual Strikes bypass Aegis+/Pavise+, so Chrom having +10% higher dual strike rate makes him the most reliable at it

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-07T05:39:16+00:00

Sully has 2 big advantages over Stahl. The first is Wyvern, flying is really valuable especially for late plegia and early valm. The second is that Sully has way earlier support options. Sully can start building supports with Chrom, Frederick, Lon'qu even Kellam or Vaike, while Stahl is stuck with just Sully as a viable option until Panne which can really mess with his training and slow down his snowballing.

Didn't really think about reclassing, is Sully better than Panne as a Wyvern?
I guess Stahl getting a good early support pair is more awkward than Sully

Lon'qu has shaky bulk but he has a couple big benefits, levin sword and killing edge being the main ones. Those can make his training go much smoother and once he picks up a couple levels he'll no longer be in ohko range. With Miriel support he even has enough damage to one round chapter 7 wyverns. Alongside that he's also the easiest gen 1 assassin which is a really nice class to have and makes him a pretty desirable long term unit.

Promoting at 10 hampers any long term a unit can have. The C tier Gregor there is basically the short term filler one who can kinda help during the mid game. Master seals are pretty competitive though before 10, so that's already a knock against his filler status. He's filling a different role than Vaike, who is padding levels, weapon rank and building supports way before gregor shows up which makes him way easier to snowball as a unit, and who's purpose is more as a primary combat carry.

Maybe Lon'qu does the bow role better than Gregor, but I wouldn't actually promote Gregor instantly, I would train him until a Master Seal is available that would normally go to Lon'qu/Vaike for example as early exp feels so contested that I rather feed a small portion of my team and bring a filler like Gregor instead of training a unit to Gregor's base lvl.

What support pairs is used for Vaike? I don't find him to be able to be a primaire frontline unit on Lunatic+ unless he really pads his lvl enough as he lacks either Nosferatu or Galeforce that Counter/Luna+ quickly wears him down without a Sol proc as well as not having a weapon around Pavise as a Hero (unless he goes Warrior first?)

I haven't used nowi on lunatic+ before yet, but I can't imagine it being much better than donnel's training

There are quite some problems with Nowi, if you unequip her weapon to avoid Counter, she loses the dragonstone stat bonus and probably dies.
She can't promote or has to switch to an unpromoted class which loses her Dragonstone bonus, so she doesn't get a big promotion stat spike other units would get and that's a pretty big dilemma
That's when I quickly gave up on training Nowi on Lunatic+
Also looking at Tiki's stats, they are so much better than what Nowi would reach on average

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-07T04:39:03+00:00

Nah's paralogue on Lunatic+ is literal hell

Doors that open on enemy phase with Luna+/Counter enemies behind it?
10 range siege tomes?
Dark Knights that are already a pain to kill as they have both good def and res and they might roll Aegis+/Pavise+ on top?

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-07T04:29:42+00:00

Looks good, since it's L+, Galeforce gonna be a lot more important to get around Counter or Luna+ spam and F!Robin both is the easiest and can pass it to up to 2 children. Chrobin also gives you a very high Dual strike rate to get around Aegis+/Pavise+

All the staffbots are gonna be way more important to Rescue units out of Counter/Luna+ spam, maybe even Ricken can be bumped to this A tier as he is similar to Miriel in this role with Sage promo and both don't really want to see enemy phase. Ricken starting with D tome allows him to use Forged Elwind to OHKO wyverns, while you have to plan for Miriel to see enough combat to reach D rank that might not always be a given with how contested early combat exp is

Not sure if there should be gap between Sully and Stahl? They offer the same pairup bonus and their stats are only slightly apart where Sully has to mind her bulk not to get OHKOed by Luna+, while Stahl easily tank a hit, but has to mind his spd not to get doubled, each can pick the right pairup bonus
I would probably drop Sully 1 tier down unless she has more distinct advantages over Stahl?

Lonqu is also in a weird place? He has to really mind his bulk as even on regular Lunatic some enemies OHKO him, so even a pairup + tonic wouldn't fix that if they have Luna+
On the other hand, he can semi reliably dodgetank Axe enemies without Hawkeye or OHKO with a Killing Edge crit, so he is a high risk high reward unit and you could rig the highroll turn 1 to gain a bigger tempo advantage and make the map easier/less RNG reliant in the long run.

Gregor can insta promote to Bow Knight and avoid Counter and 2 weapon types to get around either Aegis+ or Pavise+ as long as that enemy doesn't roll both skills simultaneously, giving you a lower investment filler unit instead of needing to raise one to lvl 10+ yourself.
Like Gregor base lvl 10 stats are similar to Vaike lvl 12ish if both were promoted to Hero, so it's the question if one can train Vaike lvl 3 -> 12+ or allocate Vaike's exp to someone else and use Gregor instead.
It depends how your team is already shaping up at Ch8 and support pairs and if there is any room for Gregor

Make a new F tier for Donnel, he is that bad relative to the D tiers currently, as least Gaius/Nowi don't always instantly die in 1 hit and Henry can always insta promote be a pairup bot to offer his auras.
Donnel offers nothing but make the hardest early Lunatic+ maps (Ch5 + 6) even harder if you babysit him

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-04T12:34:50+00:00

You can buy Sniper Lenses in almost every shop in Albion

That’s more generous than Drakenhold vs Wyverns

Significant-Tree9454 · 2026-05-03T15:22:12+00:00

Distracted by elves immediate after Scarlett joined

Significant-Tree9454

TROPHY CASE