Kingdom of Altea

You can never have too many mercs.

Never.

Lief Katano wrote:You can never have too many mercs.

Never.

*walks in with no prior knowledge*

*immediately thinks of the unreliable piles of crap that are Mercedes Benzs*

Might as well never have enough Mercs, since several of them will be breaking down at once.

Oh, I forgot about Deen.

Yeah, if you pick him instead of Sonya, you'll have four Mercenaries and only one Archer.

But then again, WHY WOULD YOU PICK DEEN OVER SONYA?!

I can confirm that Deen is lame compared to Sonya.

Like, he has some perks (higher Speed, namely; he has higher Defense, HP, and Skill, but play your cards right with Sonya and Defense and HP shouldn't be a huge issue, and presuming calculations remain the same as OG Gaiden - and I've seen no reason to assume that they've changed - Skill is literally useless for mages skill is useful for mages but Excalibur has 30 Crit anyways and also it doesn't affect too much re: crit), but Sonya's a really good mage; she has Excalibur (which is a really nice spell) and learns Rewarp (can teleport self) and Entrap (drags an enemy to you, 70% chance) after promotion. It's a step down from Gaiden, admittedly, where she got Arrow/Sagittae (upgraded sniper spell), but that's more range than Deen!

Also, you get the item they'd give upon joining you after you beat them. Deen's is a brave sword, one of the sexiest swords in the game (but not for the reason you'd think, if you played any other FE game!). Sonya gives you...a steel shield.

Also you have to fight witches on a desert map to get Deen. Fuck that noise.

Also Sonya starts with higher resistance than Deen. Deen'll technically surpass her later, due to Dread Fighter passives, but that's later.

well I'm on act 4 now.
and I picked sonya.

Lief Katano wrote:Skill is literally useless for mages

I mean, I know magic accuracy is fixed or whatever, but doesn't Skill also affect crit rate?

...I have no idea how I forgot about that.

The base critical rate for Echoes is (Skill + Luck) / 2; Deen is, as such, naturally more crittier than Sonya. This is the same as it was in OG Gaiden.

Critical avoid rate, on the flipside, is new to Echoes, and it appears to be Luck / 2.

I'm also pretty sure the spell avoid (/hit?) formula has changed; in OG Gaiden it was governed by the target's Luck and Speed and the spell's Hit, but I've had perfect (or, well, no decrease) accuracy for nigh-on every spell that I cast, which indicates that it's probably based just on Luck (since enemies have no Luck).

I am now currently stuck on the map before fighting Rudolf.

The Last Bastion?

Yeah, I had trouble with that one too.

my strategy:

Okay, Passed that, Now I'm on my way to destroy Duma.

I beat it yesterday.

So, does Echo have paired endings or something completely else?

Echoes has multiple endings, depending on who died and who didn't (e.g. if Tobin dies Gray becomes a drunkard who gets slapped out of it by Clair, if not he just smugly passes up Tobin and marries Clair), but it doesn't have any support-based endings, if that's what you mean (most likely because you can get multiple A Ranks, and there's no S Rank).

Some characters do get together in their endings (the aforementioned Gray and Clair, for example), but those always happen (sans, again, deaths).

No, but the endings do change for certain characters if others close to them die...which is sorta rendered moot if you're playing on Casual.