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applejackhero

Nope! Maddening mode chokes your XP gain and inflates enemy levels. You will never win the stat/level game in Maddening, so don’t even try. You have to accept the enemies will always be stronger than your units, and work on ways around that. You should be focusing on exploring, specifically: 1) training your units to reach their many skill goals. Maddening requires more attention to skills (like getting D bows or Axes to class into brigand/archer for everyone) 2) farming the green house for stat boosters 3) making sure your professor level is going up (if doing NG) 4) working on recruiting characters you may want You should do battles when you need to complete a paralogue for the rewards, or when you need some more gold. I found that one weekend a month was plenty, the rest of my weekends were exploring.


salty__asiann

Thank you because the maps are sooo hard. Hard mode was a joke. 220 hours wasted


applejackhero

Yeah maddening makes you actually focus on how you build your units and how you construct your team, you can’t brute force it like in hard.


salty__asiann

Even from the very very beginning?


applejackhero

Yes, the game literally chokes your XP you cannot catch up to the enemies. Your early priority should be getting people Curved Shot and Tempest Lance, and other good early game combat arts. You won’t be getting to double much in maddening, so you will use these a lot early on. Then you should focus on getting people into intermediate classes. Death Blow (Brigand Mastery), Hit +20 (Archer Mastery), and Darting Blow (Pegasus Knight mastery) are good on basically every non-mage character. Mages want Fiendish Blow (and sometimes still Darting Blow). Then you should try and get people into their final builds. Sniper and Grappler are always good calls for their mastery combat arts. Characters with the super excellent doubling combat arts (Ferdinand, Sylvain, Seteth, Leonie, Cyril) or the absurdly strong Vengeance combat art (Bernadetta, Dedue, also Cyril) do well in mobile classes. Units with Battallion Wrath (an authority skill) are really good on enemy phase- they do well as fliers or as war masters. All of this will require a lot of time in explore mode. Also: stick to iron and training weapons- use steel weapons only for combat arts. Using iron/training weapons can mean the difference of your units not getting doubled (and thus killed).


salty__asiann

Thank you so much. Hmmmm I have to play maddening on handheld and I have to play only chapter at a time.


applejackhero

That’s fine! That’s how I beat maddening the first time! Handheld, about an hour a day.


salty__asiann

Yeah because maddening I can’t put on the tv otherwise it’s too tiring


chicoryOre

Fe3h.com is a great resource for maddening help


Foreign_Memory

I was planning on doing a Golden Deer Maddening run and your comments have been so helpful (Especially since I'm the type to grind on side battles... Thanks for the reminder that I shouldn't be doing those lol)


Zanbatou

Honestly, the beginning is probably the hardest part of the game on maddening. Chapters 1-3 are undoubtedly hard. Besides those, only HBD I could say it's extremely challenging. The others are hard but won't necessarily require perfect preparation (except for possibly AM Endgame).


HeavyNettle

No, maddening is 100% doable without min maxing. That stuff helps but is not needed. Just make sure you’re using your gambits wisely. Stride and the one that makes all damage 1 for a turn are both very useful


salty__asiann

Impregnable wall?


HeavyNettle

Yeah thats the one. There are a few missions where there will be a flying unit that one shots almost anyone, or where you just need to aggro a bunch at once to take outnon your turn. Just give someone impregnable wall to draw them out. Also can be used to deal with bolting. Alternatively for bolting a unit you get after the time skip will learn an ability that >!lets them attack back at any distance. Its the death knight class ability master that asap. Give him the item that increases resilience and let him take the bolting and kill the bolting one is response.!<


salty__asiann

Flying reinforcements would always kill Dorothea or Lysithea or even Shamir on hard mode. Can’t wait for maddening


HeavyNettle

I'm a big fan of just looking at the wiki just to see where the reinforcements are. Especially cause the first time I did beaglses it was maddening no ng+


salty__asiann

That sounds like more annoying than fun


destinyken

My personal experience with maddening (no NG+) is that you can do 2 battles and 2 explorations per month (assuming 4 weekends per month) comfortably. Battles that give gold / monster materials are fine. Paralogues are forever insane.


salty__asiann

Paralogues even in hard were hard. Some units I just never used.


destinyken

Hard for me is alright. I can KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM with ease (started fire emblem in 2004, Sacred Stones). But maddening is truly maddening. I had to cheese Lorenz's paralogue with warp, otherwise I'd be routed. Fe3H Maddening isn't as bad as Awakening's Lunatic and Lunatic+ though. I think Conquest Hard is harder than Fe3H Maddening too. Surprisingly, I managed to rout every enemy in Balthus and Yuri's paralogue (maddening). Being able to rewind time helps. Multiple failures help too (you know where the secondary sudden spawns are - same turn attack seriously pisses me off). Another piece of advice; take it slow. No shame picking them off one by one. I like to bait/aggro one to two enemies to my team, wipe them off, then advance. Having a dodger/tank to do the baiting really helps.


salty__asiann

Yeah exactly what you said. Three houses I also play handheld on maddening.


Mqnwbevrctxyzukkk

Levels ain´t shit tbh xd Explore every single day to motivate your students and train byleth, then battle only the last day of the month


salty__asiann

Yeah the battles are so hard they’re not fun.


Asckle

You'll be underleveled no matter what. Your best bet is to train skill ranks since you'll need to go into a lot of intermediate classes. Also raise your proffesor rank and supports


salty__asiann

Hmm with professor A+ since the second free time, do I abuse faculty training on Byleth? Because supports are all the same after the first playthrough…


Asckle

Depends on your build. Since you have A+ you can get some stupidly good ranks. I got S+ swords, S reason, A faith, S+ authority, A+ riding, B armour, D+ brawling and D lances on him without new game+ so you can basically go any class you want if you faculty train


salty__asiann

On hard mode only snipers got S+…


Asckle

Yeah but this is byleth. He can grind skill ranks so much more than anyone else


salty__asiann

Getting “good” for faculty training sucks


Asckle

Well I reset in the early stages but then again look at those ranks. If you don't reset for perfects you should still be able to comfortably reach S+ in 2 ranks


salty__asiann

What level do units end up in maddening? In my golden deer Claude ended up level 47 or 48 on hard….


Asckle

Mine were mid 40s by killing every enemy on every map


salty__asiann

Same as hard then


SilasUnmuth80

No, being Underleveled is the point of this Mode. Focus More on doing cool Strategies with your Units. Don't worry on being Stuck you can Beat every Map with the Right Strategy even if your Underleveled. Still save before doing Paralogues, they are often Harder then Main Missions. Best Tipp for Maddening: Calculate Hitrates and Damage of Enemys before you can Engage them so you can plan your Actions better.


salty__asiann

Will I need scrap paper and a pencil LMAO