This article was posted concurrently in the r/fireemblem subreddit, where it presumably will have some discussion in the comments if you want to check that out.
TL;DR: I’m doing a challenge run of Binding Blade Hard Mode where I’ve randomly picked Saul, Niime, Lugh, Clarine, Dorothy, Juno, Douglas, and Zelot to be the team I have to bring into the final chapter. Any and all advice on how to make my life easier is greatly appreciated. I’ll be starting the run in a couple weeks and posting weekly updates after that.
I’ve done it!
I’ve traveled the continent, liberating the people of Elibe from the treacherous clutches of Bern. I took back my country, returned freedom to the Western Isles, quashed the Etrurian coup, and brought peace to the plains of Sacae. I took the fight all the way to King Zephiel’s own palace, and struck him down with my own two hands, finally bringing an end to this senseless war.
However, I can’t help but feel that my time in Elibe isn’t over. Like there’s something more to be discovered along the way. Like there are more enemies yet to fight, and more wrongs yet to right…
Ok, that’s enough with the theatrics.
Long story short, I just finished up my first-ever playthrough of Binding Blade. I did so on Nintendo Switch Online, which had the added bonus of letting me claim that I was studying Japanese while getting to play video games. I played on Normal Mode, recruited Echidna, went to Sacae, and used the ever-living FRICK out of the rewind feature (screw you fighter that killed Larum with literally zero chance of me reacting). I intentionally used the legendary weapons to the point of a few breaking in the titular Chapter 21 so I could experience all the side quests without going all the way to the true ending.
I’ve done this specifically knowing that I would be playing through the game again on Hard Mode with a set of rules that I have dubbed The Pumpkin Mandomizer.
Because, y’know, I’m Carl The Pumpkin Man.
What is The Pumpkin Mandomizer?
The rules are pretty simple. There are 8 S-Ranked weapons in the game, and 8 open spots in the final chapter (Roy and Fae are force-deployed). So, I’ve randomly picked a team of 8 units–one to wield each of the Divine Weapons, and will beat the game with them in the final chapter.
My aim is to play the game again, but with a little twist to encourage myself to use a whole different team to get a fresh experience.
I’ll get into the specifics of the rules later down in this post if anyone is interested in them, but essentially I need to:
Get the best ending of the game.
In the final chapter, bring only the randomly chosen units.
Recruit all possible characters and keep them alive until the end.
Visit all villages/pillage all chests/keep all green units alive.
Refrain from infinite experience abuse (arenas, bullying bosses, etc).
Refrain from using the NSO rewind feature or save states.
I also would like to take the opportunity to experience the other two routes that I missed on my first playthrough.
And as you may have guessed by my talking about it in the past tense, here are my random picks for who wields what!
Durandal: Zelot
Armads: Douglas
Maltet: Juno
Murgleis: Dorothy
Forblaze: Lugh
Aureola: Saul
Apocalypse: Niime
Staff of the Saint: Clarine
And for the untrusting among you, here’s proof I indeed did it randomly. Although to be transparent, I asked my girlfriend to look first and respin if I had duplicates, which did happen once.
If anyone has any advice at all on how to use this team to the fullest, please let me know!
Here’s my Strategy:
While I know that not all of these units are considered the highest on the tier list when trying to play “optimally,” the general plan is to feed them all kills and take advantage of every level up that I can. In my first playthrough, I used a good variety of units based on who I happened to have at the time, and even though I promoted pretty much everyone ASAP, I still didn’t have a lot of units reaching level 20 promoted.
This time, however, I plan on hard-prioritizing each of my units as I get them, leveling them up to 20 before promoting, and then seeing if I can get them strong enough that they just kind of become gods among men on the battlefield–lemme know if and how badly that will backfire lol. Stat-raising items will of course be prioritized on them as well. My hope is that they don’t become just a bunch of experience-hogs who lead me to have a severely underleveled army. I still need to get to the final chapter before I can beat it.
Reinforcements will also be a boon to my strategy–last playthrough I seized many thrones while there were still enemies on the map. Sometimes it was because I just wanted to finish, but sometimes it was so I wouldn’t become overrun (Chapter 21). This time, I want to convert them to experience as much as possible. Speaking of Chapter 21, using the secret shop there to patch up any potential weaknesses on my team will be a key part of my late-game strategy, so if anyone knows of good ways to get more money, let me know.
Also, since I’m stuck with certain units, a lot of the general logic of who’s good on tier lists has been thrown out the window. To see how worried I should be, I compiled Serenes Forest’s data on the average stats for each unit at max level on Hard Mode into this spreadsheet. Marcus, for example, is high on most tier lists since he’s invaluable in early game, but he falls off hard later, so he wouldn’t be a great pick for this challenge. Along those lines, many characters that join late have a similar problem, which worries me since I have the 5th, 4th, and 3rd-latest-joining units in the game.
Niime is great because of her high magic and A staff rank, but she literally has the lowest average max level stat total out of any unit that can promote/is promoted. Juno, Zelot, and Douglas aren’t much better. I don’t know how much getting them to the stat cap will help me, but I definitely want to invest in the secret shop in Chapter 21. Given that I’ll be going to Ilia either way, it might behoove me to buff up her sisters so they can triangle attack to secure kills.
I’ll have to make sure I get a bunch of light tomes for Saul and then pivot him into an attacker as soon as he hits level 20, since he’ll probably only hit it later in the game given staves’ pitiful experience gains. As long as I keep Clarine using special staves and whatnot through late game, I think she’ll be able to hit S by the end relatively easily. Thank god I got a main staff user for the Staff of the Saint. Dorothy’s gonna be a pain to baby, but if I feed her kills I think I’ll do alright.
Support-Wise, luckily I have a few in Saul-Dorothy, Juno-Zelot, Clarine-Dorothy, and Fae-Niime, but unfortunately it seems Roy, Lugh, and Douglas will be lonely out there. Dunno whether Saul-Dorothy or Clarine-Dorothy should be prioritized.
Those are my thoughts, though! I plan on playing a little bit each week and reporting out sometime during the weekends here, so stay tuned!
Except…not next week. Friday’s a holiday here in Japan so I’m taking advantage of the 3-day weekend to head into town and meet a friend. So I start the week after!
But here are the rules in more detail, if anyone is curious.
In general, most of these personal rules are ones that I self-impose on all of my Fire Emblem playthroughs, because I like the idea of getting everything. If anyone wants to use them as well, feel free to tweak them to your liking! Maybe I’ll figure out how to code a rudimentary app that picks them all for you. Who knows. Probably not.
Get the best ending of the game. Achieved by gathering all the Divine Weapons and keeping them intact when Zephiel is defeated, and then landing the final hit on the true final boss with the Binding Blade.
In the final chapter, bring only the randomly chosen units. Originally I was thinking of sorting everyone into groups by what their highest weapon rank was when they joined to avoid overlap, but given a few characters have ties and literally 0 have light magic highest on joining, I dropped that; instead, I just randomly picked all 8 at once and had my girlfriend look and reroll if there was any repeated names. Any character that can get S-rank in a weapon type is considered as a potential candidate for its respective Divine Weapon.
In addition, I’m going to save all the weapons until the actual Dragon Temple, and I won’t let anyone use a Divine Weapon that wasn’t chosen for them.
It should be noted that I am free to use any characters I want to aside from the randomly picked ones during gameplay. The challenge comes from making sure the 8 that I have are ready and able to take on the final chapter.
Recruit all possible characters and keep them alive until the end. I usually do this anyway, so I feel like I may as well do it here. Essentially, this means that at the end of the game, all of the characters listed here as being playable characters in the main story with the exception of Larum, Echidna, and Dayan need to be recruited due to the routes I plan on going on.
Visit all villages/pillage all chests/keep all green units alive. More completionist stuff; all villages possible to visit (not the wrecked one in chapter one and one of the two in the Western Isles chapter before the split path), I need to open all chests or steal back anything opened by an enemy thief (maybe not in Armads’ chapter; lemme know how feasible that is to get them all), and any map that has green NPC units must have them all either escape the chapter or end it alive.
Refrain from infinite experience abuse. Visiting Arenas at all is not allowed, and doing things like breaking a boss’s weapons and then doing repeated chip damage while letting them heal is a no-no. I believe there are no infinite reinforcements in the game, so I’m fine with letting myself take out reinforcements if I have the strategy to do so.
Refrain from using the NSO rewind/save states features. Every choice I make needs to stand, and if I want to redo anything, I have to redo the entire chapter. Rewinding during dialogue to go back and read the last thing is fine (which happened quite a lot in my first playthrough since bumping either control stick proceeds the dialogue and I took a while to translate things). Breaking any of the other rules means I immediately reset.
How to Choose Units for the Pumpkin Mandomizer:
From the groups of characters below, choose one randomly for Aureola, then Apocalypse, then Forblaze, Staff of the Saint, Murgleis, Maltet, Armads, and finally Durandal. Remove any character that was already chosen from future spins. Or, y’know, you can just randomly pick them all at the same time, and respin like I did if you see any duplicates. If you’re curious, each weapon lists which characters have the highest weapon rank in that weapon upon joining, with all other characters that can use that weapon listed afterwards. If you want to make your life a bit easier, you may want to just choose from those units in the first group, though notice how Aureola necessarily has to be chosen from people that don’t specialize in Light, and that additionally Perceval, Douglas, and Niime have ties for which weapon they’re best at, so they appear in two different lists.
Also, note that Merlinus, Chad, Astore, Cath, Larum, and Elffin are all not listed, as they are unable to reach S rank in any weapon level.
Aureola (Light)
(0+3)
Elen
Saul
Yoder
Apocalypse (Dark)
(3+0)
Raigh
Sophia
Niime
Forblaze (Anima)
(4+1)
Lugh
Lilina
Cecilia
Hugh
Clarine
Staff of the Saint (Staff)
(5+7)
Elen
Clarine
Saul
Niime
Yoder
Lugh
Lilina
Raigh
Cecilia
Sophia
Hugh
Mulagir (Bow)
(7+3)
Wolt
Dorothy
Sue
Sin
Klein
Igrene
Dayan
Ward
Lot
Bartre
Maltet (Lance)
(15+1)
Marcus
Alen
Lance
Bors
Shanna
Zelot
Trec
Barthe
Gwendolyn
Thea
Melady
Perceval
Zeiss
Douglas
Juno
Noah
Armads (Axe)
(8+12)
Ward
Lot
Geese
Gonzalez
Echidna
Bartre
Garret
Douglas
Marcus
Alen
Lance
Bors
Dieck
Zelot
Trec
Noah
Barthe
Ogier
Gwendolyn
PercevalDurandal (Sword)
(7+14)
Dieck
Rutger
Noah
Ogier
Fir
Perceval
Karel
Marcus
Alen
Lance
Shanna
Sue
Zelot
Trec
Sin
Thea
Echidna
Melady
Zeiss
Juno
Dayan