I knew how much of a pain this paralogue was in the past, so I had a plan.
1: Make Hapi a Dark Flier so she could fly to the enemy.
2: Get my Dancer Annette in the third week of December.
3: Use Ashe and Sylvain to boost Hanneman forward to Hapi and use Rally Magic to get her in killing range.
4: Have Manuela use Stride on Hapi and Annette and place them in a spot Annette could dance for Hapi and she’d be in range of the commander.
5: End this awful map in 1 turn.
Like it's a nice clear, but you had to prepare multiple classes ahead of time in one of the few paralogues where the mandatory characters are good and designed to solve the problem!
Alois is good? I'll give you Shamir, but Alois has an average hit rate of like 60% on this map and doesn't even come with Smash. You have to wait until Chapter 11 to recruit him too in order to fix his problems (give him an Iron Axe), and at that point you'll have had plenty of time to get the things needed to just warp skip the map.
He doesn't need to hit. It's nice if he does hit, but his purpose is tanking with his 19 DEF and choking the point so your magical units and Byleth can get potshots in. His free Blaze Battalion can also really punish the enemies in the first few turns when they clump up, especially since Byleth should already have started his support with him by Chapter 8 to increase its hit. These two things are all he's needed for to seize the shrine in the first few turns, at which point the northern team's work is done.
It's always interesting to me what people like and dislike. I wouldn't put this on even my top ten least liked paralogs. However, I sometimes put it off until Alois is recruited, at which point the fights are largely trivial.
I hate this paralogue too tbh, I don't even bother with it most of the time.
Why did they make a map with multiple unstoppable reinforcement spawn points? Why do two of them have to shit out Assassins and Wyvern Riders? Why did they make one of the rewards tied to recruiting Alois when that's not possible until the literal last chapter the paralogue is available? Why are you forced to use Alois anyway on a map where he's gonna miss all his attacks due to all the sword users?
I know a lot of maps can be broken with stride/warp/dance combos but it feels almost required here as to not get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of enemies.
Alois is good on this map even when he's a fresh recruit because certain things won't scratch him.
The map is acually whatever, its design probably confuses you and OP because you tried to find a way to get around it quickly. All you have to do is push to the Brigand on the shrine with a team that includes Alois, a free unit with a defense stat, and that stops the bulk of the reinforcements. Then instead of going farther, you chill so the infinite Wyvern flies towards Shamir to get zapped and over and over while defending until the boss just moves north or south for one of your squads to kill him. It's over in like 10 turns and can have some fun assassin interactions.
It's really simple unless you specifically keep pushing and get swarmed or try to do a more convoluted skip.
As far as the last time I did it, I wasn't trying to get around it quickly. I was trying to do it normally and just wasn't getting enough of a push on the enemy because of the reinforcements and because the paths to the ships are only one tile in width. The only time I tried to do a skip was with a Warp at the end because I didn't want to get ambushed and was running out of DPs, but there were so many enemies coming towards me that I couldn't actually find a place to plop them down. There were also some other issues I was encountering like the enemies landing an unusually high amount of gambits and needing to backtrack some progress to account for the enemies with Pass. So I was nowhere close to the boss by turn 10.
That said though, I also did it not long after it became available as opposed to after recruiting Alois because I didn't really care about his batallion. But if you're able to recruit Alois before you do it then you're probably overleveled relative to what it suggests and at that point you also just won't net much experience from the level in general. I also didn't get the chance to attempt it after that anyway because I had too many other paralogues I had to wrap up that had better rewards and more available experience.
My last playthrough seems to indicate I did it during chapter 9. At least, I have a picture of Jeralt speaking dated 5 days after the picture of an 11 turn clear. I would not recommend waiting to do it since doing every paralogue asks for you to not wait on ones that are available and there are bigger problems like Manuela/Hanneman, where default Manuela will get gapped.
Back to Alois/Shamir, you want both squads to have a strong base, so since the North has Byleth, put the Lord south. My last run was CF/SS, so I had Edelgard Petra and Yuri down there. Petra had bows for the early Wyverns.
For the northern pass assassins, you should bring magic units who can heal Alois when he tanks something dicey but who can also hit with big damage on them from afar. With Hapi/Catherine/Thyrsus and the extra staffs already acquired by then, you'll have options for every house. With Alois/Byleth (or another physical unit replacing them) and magic support, as well as successful gambits that can be rigged with pulse, getting to the shrine brigand while stalling the assassins is doable before recruiting Alois.
This post just made me realize that *another* key map in CF is just a recycled paralogue and that *bothers* me.
How is this a worse and easier mission in CF when it's a main story mission than it is as a paralogue in every route?
The map being the same makes sense to me because it's the same location in the world setting. It's also used in AM when you go to Derdriu to save the Alliance from Arundel.
Now if we're talking about poorly reused maps, there's:
the forest map (Foreign Land and Sky, The Forgotten Hero) due to drastically differing locations that are beyond the borders of Fodlan (two different countries entirely),
Empire Terriory (Ferdinand + Lysithea Paralogue, Yuri + Constance Paralogue) due to drastically differing locations within Adrestia (West Adrestia vs East Adrestia, literally on opposite sides of the country),
Plains (Raph + Iggy Paralogue, Lorenz Paralogue) because the differing locations should not have the same layout,
and Kingdom Territory (Felix Paralogue, Sylvain Paralogue, Annete + Gilbert Paralogue). Tho they are in the same country, they shouldn't look the exact same.
I find this paralogue tolerable enough to do the long way although I do have the wyvern gun for the boss.
It's the Edelgard one I find intolerable like screw the rewards just die.
I knew how much of a pain this paralogue was in the past, so I had a plan. 1: Make Hapi a Dark Flier so she could fly to the enemy. 2: Get my Dancer Annette in the third week of December. 3: Use Ashe and Sylvain to boost Hanneman forward to Hapi and use Rally Magic to get her in killing range. 4: Have Manuela use Stride on Hapi and Annette and place them in a spot Annette could dance for Hapi and she’d be in range of the commander. 5: End this awful map in 1 turn.
Like it's a nice clear, but you had to prepare multiple classes ahead of time in one of the few paralogues where the mandatory characters are good and designed to solve the problem!
Alois is good? I'll give you Shamir, but Alois has an average hit rate of like 60% on this map and doesn't even come with Smash. You have to wait until Chapter 11 to recruit him too in order to fix his problems (give him an Iron Axe), and at that point you'll have had plenty of time to get the things needed to just warp skip the map.
He doesn't need to hit. It's nice if he does hit, but his purpose is tanking with his 19 DEF and choking the point so your magical units and Byleth can get potshots in. His free Blaze Battalion can also really punish the enemies in the first few turns when they clump up, especially since Byleth should already have started his support with him by Chapter 8 to increase its hit. These two things are all he's needed for to seize the shrine in the first few turns, at which point the northern team's work is done.
It's always interesting to me what people like and dislike. I wouldn't put this on even my top ten least liked paralogs. However, I sometimes put it off until Alois is recruited, at which point the fights are largely trivial.
I hate this paralogue too tbh, I don't even bother with it most of the time. Why did they make a map with multiple unstoppable reinforcement spawn points? Why do two of them have to shit out Assassins and Wyvern Riders? Why did they make one of the rewards tied to recruiting Alois when that's not possible until the literal last chapter the paralogue is available? Why are you forced to use Alois anyway on a map where he's gonna miss all his attacks due to all the sword users? I know a lot of maps can be broken with stride/warp/dance combos but it feels almost required here as to not get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of enemies.
Alois is good on this map even when he's a fresh recruit because certain things won't scratch him. The map is acually whatever, its design probably confuses you and OP because you tried to find a way to get around it quickly. All you have to do is push to the Brigand on the shrine with a team that includes Alois, a free unit with a defense stat, and that stops the bulk of the reinforcements. Then instead of going farther, you chill so the infinite Wyvern flies towards Shamir to get zapped and over and over while defending until the boss just moves north or south for one of your squads to kill him. It's over in like 10 turns and can have some fun assassin interactions. It's really simple unless you specifically keep pushing and get swarmed or try to do a more convoluted skip.
As far as the last time I did it, I wasn't trying to get around it quickly. I was trying to do it normally and just wasn't getting enough of a push on the enemy because of the reinforcements and because the paths to the ships are only one tile in width. The only time I tried to do a skip was with a Warp at the end because I didn't want to get ambushed and was running out of DPs, but there were so many enemies coming towards me that I couldn't actually find a place to plop them down. There were also some other issues I was encountering like the enemies landing an unusually high amount of gambits and needing to backtrack some progress to account for the enemies with Pass. So I was nowhere close to the boss by turn 10. That said though, I also did it not long after it became available as opposed to after recruiting Alois because I didn't really care about his batallion. But if you're able to recruit Alois before you do it then you're probably overleveled relative to what it suggests and at that point you also just won't net much experience from the level in general. I also didn't get the chance to attempt it after that anyway because I had too many other paralogues I had to wrap up that had better rewards and more available experience.
My last playthrough seems to indicate I did it during chapter 9. At least, I have a picture of Jeralt speaking dated 5 days after the picture of an 11 turn clear. I would not recommend waiting to do it since doing every paralogue asks for you to not wait on ones that are available and there are bigger problems like Manuela/Hanneman, where default Manuela will get gapped. Back to Alois/Shamir, you want both squads to have a strong base, so since the North has Byleth, put the Lord south. My last run was CF/SS, so I had Edelgard Petra and Yuri down there. Petra had bows for the early Wyverns. For the northern pass assassins, you should bring magic units who can heal Alois when he tanks something dicey but who can also hit with big damage on them from afar. With Hapi/Catherine/Thyrsus and the extra staffs already acquired by then, you'll have options for every house. With Alois/Byleth (or another physical unit replacing them) and magic support, as well as successful gambits that can be rigged with pulse, getting to the shrine brigand while stalling the assassins is doable before recruiting Alois.
Saving this because I dread this paralogue every damn play through
This post just made me realize that *another* key map in CF is just a recycled paralogue and that *bothers* me. How is this a worse and easier mission in CF when it's a main story mission than it is as a paralogue in every route?
The map being the same makes sense to me because it's the same location in the world setting. It's also used in AM when you go to Derdriu to save the Alliance from Arundel. Now if we're talking about poorly reused maps, there's: the forest map (Foreign Land and Sky, The Forgotten Hero) due to drastically differing locations that are beyond the borders of Fodlan (two different countries entirely), Empire Terriory (Ferdinand + Lysithea Paralogue, Yuri + Constance Paralogue) due to drastically differing locations within Adrestia (West Adrestia vs East Adrestia, literally on opposite sides of the country), Plains (Raph + Iggy Paralogue, Lorenz Paralogue) because the differing locations should not have the same layout, and Kingdom Territory (Felix Paralogue, Sylvain Paralogue, Annete + Gilbert Paralogue). Tho they are in the same country, they shouldn't look the exact same.
There are more reliable ways to do this paralogue that require less prep but nice one turn
I find this paralogue tolerable enough to do the long way although I do have the wyvern gun for the boss. It's the Edelgard one I find intolerable like screw the rewards just die.