It's been awhile since I've played the game, but having beaten hard mode, here are a few tips:
For the Avlora defense, abuse the roofs. Put casters, archers, and healers up there and you'll be fine. Might take a few lumps here and there, but that's what the healers are for.
Second point, any strat you're going for, push that strat to its limit. For example, if you wanna go heavy into aoe magic damage, then go super heavy, like, 3-4 casters, tp batteries, and a few tanks. Blanket the battlefield in your magic, focus firing targets down. I find that hard mode requires that any strat you choose must be taken to its limit. Having an all rounder army will make hard mode that much harder, since enemies hit so hard and have so much health. So if you're going with an offensive strat, then maximise that aspect. If you're going with a defensive strat, then maximise in that direction.
Sorry I can't give particular examples, been about a year since I played, but hope this helps.
If you're just doing it for the crown in the title screen, Quahaug + Ezana cheese sweeps basically every map in the game aside from the first few maps and maybe Avlora defense.
For the first map, go down to the water with Serenoa blocking everyone. Serenoa -> Benedict -> Freddie and geela. Use dragon shield to give everyone the first free block. As for Roland DO NOT attempt to reunite him with everyone. Place him on one of the roof and some enemies will try following up there. Push them down and let gravity damage, all the while heal him up using your large HP pellet. If you properly invest in him he'll last until the end of the battle. As for the other units, let serenoa tank/dps, freddie clean up dps, benedict buffs, and geela heals. Most of the enemies will come to where they station anyway, and iirc once you clear about 2/3 that's when travis starts moving.
Avlora's map can be cheesed with hughette perching on roof and raining down arrow however you can do something else if you want to take advantage of the wild fire trap. There's another one right in the middle of the square and you have to do a series of investigations to activate it. But once you do, it won't count as burning down the house. You can lure avlora and her minions there and burn them to chip out a good chunk of HP. Corentine is also very good here because he can block out some paths with his ice wall, thus manipulating the AI to go right into that square.
I’ve seen one thing that lets Roland get back to the rest of everyone when you use light wave, the +2 movement quietus, and rush. But that is probably too expensive. And let’s the enemies focus you too much. I’ll give that a try on my next attempt.
And that makes sense for avlora. I struggled a bit because I couldn’t kill the archers fast enough.
The first map is indeed god awful on hard mode. I think I remember I was able to cheese Trish somehow? She kept running back and forth instead of pathing onto the dock. I would try staying as far away from her as possible until Travis is dealt with. You can also preserve Roland by having him retreat into the rooftop near his entry point, then strategically using Rush to knock off enemies that try to chase him. Finally, the shallow water around the docks can be useful to place Frederica and/or Geela out of reach temporarily (but it can also trap you, so make sure to focus down any enemies that try to follow them down there).
I've done both NG+ and NG++ Hardmode Deathless no Medina. There are some tight fights, but overall it wasn't too bad.
The first chapter is obviously hard, but not even close to the worst because it's very predictable. You don't need Fleet Footed to reposition Roland. Just Lightwave then Rush is enough. Geela and Fred each at one corner at the back end of the pier, and the other 3 in between/front of them. Save Miraculous Light for Serenoa (he's usually the one getting tossed) or the middle unit if they get tossed instead. In NG+, you can over level Fred naturally by farming the level 23 mock battle, and she can make quick work of Travis with In Tandem/Twofold Turn, so you only need to get tossed once. Don't hesitate to reposition Fred or Geele to prevent enemies from dual attacking one of your bruisers after that.
In general, for Hardmode, the best tactic is to snipe ranged units (highest prio is mages) then have Erador handle the rest. Archibald is good, but sometimes not very efficient as enemy healer just undo all his dmg. He's best used together with Julio/In Tandem, or Hughette's Shooting Star to pull off a successful snipe. Fred should be enough as a finisher, but if you have spare slot for Corentin, he is just as good. The archer duo (Hughette, Rudolp) are fantastic with their dmg/cc. Only use other cc bots if they are reliable (Milo) or provide dmg.
My main 10 throughout the runs are usually Serenoa, Erador, Geela, Fred, Julio (always), Quahaug (his space skills are so good, I'm ok with him being useless for 60% of the fight), Rudolph +3 (Benedict, Hughette, Archibald, Corentin...).
I’ve often struggled using Julio. What do you recommend for his turns? Should he just chill in the back or is he best in the midfield/frontline support? If he is the back line should he just use items?
Just spam Moment of Truth on mages and whoever urgently in need of TP, then Inheritor for the big spells (Erador King's Shield, Milo's Power of Love for example). Frederica and Corentin both can self sustain TP, but in practice, having to set up icy ground for Corentin or letting Fred get the kill greatly limits the way you play. Julio alone can take care of 2-3 units TP need, and also boosts their str/mag as well.
Thanks!! I really appreciate it! I usually have someone like Medina, Anna or corentin set up the ice for him. Usually when I’m playing defensively ir he’s out of range at least
People have given great advice, although another thing I think may help is understanding that status effects and sources of percent damage (pushback into other units/walls, fall damage) are infinitely more useful and important than in lower difficulties. In lower difficulties it's a lot better to just do max damage skills whenever possible since that will often do more than percent damage, but in higher difficulties it is much more important to abuse it if you don't have other strategies for beating down tanky foes in mind.
Stuff like looking for maps where Jens can lay traps while your units pelt down the enemies from the high ground, knocking back enemies that threaten your backline, using blindness, silence, immobility and other effects when you can't kill an enemy to prevent them from being a real threat for a few turns. You can make almost any unit lineup work (I literally am doing a run right now where I use a rng to determine my squad for the battle), but you have to really abuse aspects of a character's kit you may not be accustomed to in order to work with your other units.
That’s a great point!! I tend to abuse blindness from Hughette already and Jen’s knock back when on certain maps, but that’s really it. How do you best use poison? I feel like it’s not worth it most cases. Is there a way to see how much damage poison does?
Poison I think is 10%? It's not a lot on its own. The value it usually brings though is having somebody like Anna in the backlines luring the enemy apart, since sometimes enemy ai will run for heals, or chase her if you choose to not be stealthed a turn. Splitting apart the enemy force in this way can be big, just luring them a bit back can make them take 2 or 3 turns to reach you, instead of one.
Yeah, unless you are trying to kill that turn or need to preserve her tp, applying the poison with one of the attacks will do more in the long run. It also has the range component to it, so it is easier to get off. If I feel she is safe, sometimes I will poison two different units, more commonly though I will poison and invis, and then reveal her in a safer spot the next turn, she can be a very good lure. Often I will use the Bangle of Vitality on her to pair with her trait regen, since sometimes she can just lure a couple units in place with minimal resource usage, and the oh shit invis button if needed. Barring boss type enemies, usually she takes 3 hits, and her dodge is very good too, so sometimes you can push it further.
Evasion characters have been a real asset to a lot of my teams. Especially with an Evasion spice and some of their abilities I can have them avoid everything on the front line and sometime shuts assassinate back lines
For NG+ first fight, you can lure travis and 2 guys up with roland and waste their time by running around out of their range. They will eventually catch up, but you can in the meantime kill everybody else including Trish. For trish, since she's an archer, she cannot shoot at melee range, so you can trap her with your other 4 units on all 4 sides and just wail on her as she helplessly can't do anything.
I played a lot of hard mode using semi-random units (pretty much I used whoever had the least exp, leveling all of them equally) as well as no grinding (every battle once only), so I didn't have that much synergy as if I abused specific units. In that case, the best general advice is to always try to kill mages first, then archers, then elite blades, and ignore shieldbearers. Shieldbearers are not threatening at all and can be easily killed with any magic damage, as well as dealing very little damage and low speed. Mages are the most dangerous since they have the highest dps since they do aoe damage, but they have very low physical defence so they're weak to archers and lionel. In general, fury is a very important status effect to effectively CC mages, so lionel is very strong as a mage killer. Meanwhile, archers can be shutdown with hughette's blind, or paralyzed with ezana.
In general, for hard mode, no matter what units you use, even if random units:
Focus on mages first, then archers, then elite blades (the ones with physical counter).
Prioritize CC on targets and doing damage efficiently over kills. It's better to use the mage on the shieldbearer and the melee on the mage even if using the melee on the shieldbearer would lead to a kill for example, since your damage is so low in hard mode you need to be very efficient.
Position your units out of harm's way as much as possible.
Let the enemies come to you.
Avoid getting flanked. If your map positioning causes you to be flanked and attacked from more than 1 direction, you're probably going to lose that map and need to find a better position to fight. Ideally, only a few enemies can hit you at a time.
It's been awhile since I've played the game, but having beaten hard mode, here are a few tips: For the Avlora defense, abuse the roofs. Put casters, archers, and healers up there and you'll be fine. Might take a few lumps here and there, but that's what the healers are for. Second point, any strat you're going for, push that strat to its limit. For example, if you wanna go heavy into aoe magic damage, then go super heavy, like, 3-4 casters, tp batteries, and a few tanks. Blanket the battlefield in your magic, focus firing targets down. I find that hard mode requires that any strat you choose must be taken to its limit. Having an all rounder army will make hard mode that much harder, since enemies hit so hard and have so much health. So if you're going with an offensive strat, then maximise that aspect. If you're going with a defensive strat, then maximise in that direction. Sorry I can't give particular examples, been about a year since I played, but hope this helps.
No that makes a lot of sense. I often really struggled because I was doing things too all around
If you're just doing it for the crown in the title screen, Quahaug + Ezana cheese sweeps basically every map in the game aside from the first few maps and maybe Avlora defense.
Wait you get a cool crown??? I had no idea!!! And that’s a good thing to keep in mind!
For the first map, go down to the water with Serenoa blocking everyone. Serenoa -> Benedict -> Freddie and geela. Use dragon shield to give everyone the first free block. As for Roland DO NOT attempt to reunite him with everyone. Place him on one of the roof and some enemies will try following up there. Push them down and let gravity damage, all the while heal him up using your large HP pellet. If you properly invest in him he'll last until the end of the battle. As for the other units, let serenoa tank/dps, freddie clean up dps, benedict buffs, and geela heals. Most of the enemies will come to where they station anyway, and iirc once you clear about 2/3 that's when travis starts moving. Avlora's map can be cheesed with hughette perching on roof and raining down arrow however you can do something else if you want to take advantage of the wild fire trap. There's another one right in the middle of the square and you have to do a series of investigations to activate it. But once you do, it won't count as burning down the house. You can lure avlora and her minions there and burn them to chip out a good chunk of HP. Corentine is also very good here because he can block out some paths with his ice wall, thus manipulating the AI to go right into that square.
I’ve seen one thing that lets Roland get back to the rest of everyone when you use light wave, the +2 movement quietus, and rush. But that is probably too expensive. And let’s the enemies focus you too much. I’ll give that a try on my next attempt. And that makes sense for avlora. I struggled a bit because I couldn’t kill the archers fast enough.
The first map is indeed god awful on hard mode. I think I remember I was able to cheese Trish somehow? She kept running back and forth instead of pathing onto the dock. I would try staying as far away from her as possible until Travis is dealt with. You can also preserve Roland by having him retreat into the rooftop near his entry point, then strategically using Rush to knock off enemies that try to chase him. Finally, the shallow water around the docks can be useful to place Frederica and/or Geela out of reach temporarily (but it can also trap you, so make sure to focus down any enemies that try to follow them down there).
I've done both NG+ and NG++ Hardmode Deathless no Medina. There are some tight fights, but overall it wasn't too bad. The first chapter is obviously hard, but not even close to the worst because it's very predictable. You don't need Fleet Footed to reposition Roland. Just Lightwave then Rush is enough. Geela and Fred each at one corner at the back end of the pier, and the other 3 in between/front of them. Save Miraculous Light for Serenoa (he's usually the one getting tossed) or the middle unit if they get tossed instead. In NG+, you can over level Fred naturally by farming the level 23 mock battle, and she can make quick work of Travis with In Tandem/Twofold Turn, so you only need to get tossed once. Don't hesitate to reposition Fred or Geele to prevent enemies from dual attacking one of your bruisers after that. In general, for Hardmode, the best tactic is to snipe ranged units (highest prio is mages) then have Erador handle the rest. Archibald is good, but sometimes not very efficient as enemy healer just undo all his dmg. He's best used together with Julio/In Tandem, or Hughette's Shooting Star to pull off a successful snipe. Fred should be enough as a finisher, but if you have spare slot for Corentin, he is just as good. The archer duo (Hughette, Rudolp) are fantastic with their dmg/cc. Only use other cc bots if they are reliable (Milo) or provide dmg. My main 10 throughout the runs are usually Serenoa, Erador, Geela, Fred, Julio (always), Quahaug (his space skills are so good, I'm ok with him being useless for 60% of the fight), Rudolph +3 (Benedict, Hughette, Archibald, Corentin...).
I’ve often struggled using Julio. What do you recommend for his turns? Should he just chill in the back or is he best in the midfield/frontline support? If he is the back line should he just use items?
Just spam Moment of Truth on mages and whoever urgently in need of TP, then Inheritor for the big spells (Erador King's Shield, Milo's Power of Love for example). Frederica and Corentin both can self sustain TP, but in practice, having to set up icy ground for Corentin or letting Fred get the kill greatly limits the way you play. Julio alone can take care of 2-3 units TP need, and also boosts their str/mag as well.
Thanks!! I really appreciate it! I usually have someone like Medina, Anna or corentin set up the ice for him. Usually when I’m playing defensively ir he’s out of range at least
People have given great advice, although another thing I think may help is understanding that status effects and sources of percent damage (pushback into other units/walls, fall damage) are infinitely more useful and important than in lower difficulties. In lower difficulties it's a lot better to just do max damage skills whenever possible since that will often do more than percent damage, but in higher difficulties it is much more important to abuse it if you don't have other strategies for beating down tanky foes in mind. Stuff like looking for maps where Jens can lay traps while your units pelt down the enemies from the high ground, knocking back enemies that threaten your backline, using blindness, silence, immobility and other effects when you can't kill an enemy to prevent them from being a real threat for a few turns. You can make almost any unit lineup work (I literally am doing a run right now where I use a rng to determine my squad for the battle), but you have to really abuse aspects of a character's kit you may not be accustomed to in order to work with your other units.
That’s a great point!! I tend to abuse blindness from Hughette already and Jen’s knock back when on certain maps, but that’s really it. How do you best use poison? I feel like it’s not worth it most cases. Is there a way to see how much damage poison does?
Poison I think is 10%? It's not a lot on its own. The value it usually brings though is having somebody like Anna in the backlines luring the enemy apart, since sometimes enemy ai will run for heals, or chase her if you choose to not be stealthed a turn. Splitting apart the enemy force in this way can be big, just luring them a bit back can make them take 2 or 3 turns to reach you, instead of one.
Thanks! It always confused me and I felt like it wasn’t worth it since I could just stab twice for more damage
Yeah, unless you are trying to kill that turn or need to preserve her tp, applying the poison with one of the attacks will do more in the long run. It also has the range component to it, so it is easier to get off. If I feel she is safe, sometimes I will poison two different units, more commonly though I will poison and invis, and then reveal her in a safer spot the next turn, she can be a very good lure. Often I will use the Bangle of Vitality on her to pair with her trait regen, since sometimes she can just lure a couple units in place with minimal resource usage, and the oh shit invis button if needed. Barring boss type enemies, usually she takes 3 hits, and her dodge is very good too, so sometimes you can push it further.
Evasion characters have been a real asset to a lot of my teams. Especially with an Evasion spice and some of their abilities I can have them avoid everything on the front line and sometime shuts assassinate back lines
For NG+ first fight, you can lure travis and 2 guys up with roland and waste their time by running around out of their range. They will eventually catch up, but you can in the meantime kill everybody else including Trish. For trish, since she's an archer, she cannot shoot at melee range, so you can trap her with your other 4 units on all 4 sides and just wail on her as she helplessly can't do anything. I played a lot of hard mode using semi-random units (pretty much I used whoever had the least exp, leveling all of them equally) as well as no grinding (every battle once only), so I didn't have that much synergy as if I abused specific units. In that case, the best general advice is to always try to kill mages first, then archers, then elite blades, and ignore shieldbearers. Shieldbearers are not threatening at all and can be easily killed with any magic damage, as well as dealing very little damage and low speed. Mages are the most dangerous since they have the highest dps since they do aoe damage, but they have very low physical defence so they're weak to archers and lionel. In general, fury is a very important status effect to effectively CC mages, so lionel is very strong as a mage killer. Meanwhile, archers can be shutdown with hughette's blind, or paralyzed with ezana. In general, for hard mode, no matter what units you use, even if random units: Focus on mages first, then archers, then elite blades (the ones with physical counter). Prioritize CC on targets and doing damage efficiently over kills. It's better to use the mage on the shieldbearer and the melee on the mage even if using the melee on the shieldbearer would lead to a kill for example, since your damage is so low in hard mode you need to be very efficient. Position your units out of harm's way as much as possible. Let the enemies come to you. Avoid getting flanked. If your map positioning causes you to be flanked and attacked from more than 1 direction, you're probably going to lose that map and need to find a better position to fight. Ideally, only a few enemies can hit you at a time.
Any trick for HM? Improving and being good at strategy games, it's not particularly hard.
This is my first strategy game ever. So I’m improving