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The War Room, Part 2 (The Elite Ring, the Arena, and Why We've GOT to Have, Moneyyy...Potentially Outdated Btw)

So let's talk about money, shall we? In all Fire Emblem games except the 2nd one, you always had Gold that you would get more and more of as you went throughout the game, whether it was given to you in a story event, whether you got it from a chest, or just got it through some other way. And in most games, all the Gold was stored in one place, meaning that you could visit a shop with ANY character, and still have the same amount of Gold to throw around.

THIS game however (and maybe FE5) is different. Instead of the money all being pooled in one place, each character has their own stash of cash. For example, Cuan, Lex, Azel and Sigurd start with 5000G, Ethlin starts with 4000G, and all of Cuan and Sigurd's cronies start with 2000G...

So here's where things get tricky. In fact, we're going to be jumping ahead a bit in order to talk about a lot of nuanced things that aren't going to become relevant until Chapter 2. So if you're new to this LP, and you don't fully understand everything I am about to say, that's ok for right now. In fact, you can skip all of this until Chapter 2 if you want. As long as you follow the LP until then, you won't miss anything at all! But, if you HAVE played this game before, but have not done an AAAA Ranked Log, then this War Room here will be perhaps the most important one you can possibly read before trying to do one on your own.

Now then, for the purposes of this playthrough, we need to make sure that almost all of our guys can raise up to 40,000G or more in order to level them up effectively. Why 40,000G exactly? Well, it's because there's one specific item, the Elite Ring, that happens to cost that much. And this item is SO critically important, that your Exp. Rank will be all but determined by how well you use it, and how often you are able to pass it around for everyone to use. Why is that?

Well, whoever has this in their inventory will gain the Elite Skill for as long as they have it, doubling their experience gain. However, the Elite Ring is also VERY expensive, costing 40,000G in a game where the Gold cap for each unit is 50,000G. So passing it around isn't something you can do just like that. No, you have to plan things EXTREMELY carefully, so that everyone can have a turn with it while still making sure that they have enough money for it in the next chapter. And considering that most characters will start with just 5000G (at best)...well, getting everyone that kind of money will be very tricky.

So let's go over all of our options, shall we?

1) Every chapter besides the Prologue and Chapter 6 has something called the Arena, a fighting pit with 7 opponents in it. Each time you beat an opponent, you get a progressively larger sum of money, getting 1000G from the 1st opponent, 1500G from the 2nd opponent, 2000G from the 3rd opponent, 2500G from the 4th opponent, and so on and so forth. But you can only beat these guys up once for each character you have. So what this means is that each character can win up to 17500G from each Arena they fight in...

Not only is this by far the most lucrative way of gaining money, but Arena enemies also tend to be extremely high leveled. In fact, they are SO high leveled, that most units can literally gain five whole levels just by beating every enemy with the Elite Ring on! So THAT'S pretty cool...

Except, clearing the Arena is much easier said than done. Because the thing with higher level opponents, is that they ALSO tend to have much higher stats, especially once you start getting to the later opponents. And while units like Sigurd will still be beating them with ease, units like Noish and Alec will spend pretty much the entire game struggling just getting past the 4th opponent if we try to make them fight as they are!

So due to their limitations, we also need to make sure they're properly geared up with awesome weapons and everything. But that in itself costs even MORE money! So if our weaker units are ever going to have any hope of consistently clearing Arena's, they will have to resort to alternative means of raising money, like...

2) Visiting villages the way Noish just did. Villages give a maximum of 5000G to whoever saves it, but will give 500 less for each and every turn that it's attacked by an MBandit. For example, that village Noish could only give 4500G since we couldn't stop the MBandit from attacking it at least once. What this also means is that a village can be attacked 10 times before it's finally just reduced to rubble, so you don't actually HAVE to rescue them immediately. It'd just be preferably to rescue them sooner, that's all.

Anyways, I'd consider this one of the easiest and most profitable ways of gaining cash...but Villages don't exactly grow on trees. In fact, Noish here will literally visit almost every single one of them this Chapter, and STILL only get 15,000G! So villages alone will not be enough for us.

3) Our characters can sell their weapons and items for half of their buying price. Not very lucrative, and the penalties are obvious. BUT, it also means that each character will get back 20,000G for every time they have to sell the ring to someone else, so that's pretty nice!

4) Each and every character will get 1000G for every castle we're able to protect from the enemies. For example, we liberated Jungby by "Conquering" it with Sigurd (which only he can do). Therefore, if we end the Prologue with it intact, each character will get an extra 1000G at the start of the next map. However, if an enemy manages to get to Jungby's entrance, they will level it to the ground just like this...



And, one thing I forgot to mention, your Tactics rank will automatically drop for each and every castle that's destroyed. Plus, if they do this to your starting castle (Chalphy in this case), then that's an automatic game over. So that's bad !

Fortunately, as Ardan and DiMaggio have already demonstrated, you can choose to have someone Guard the castle, meaning that no one can capture or destroy anything until said unit is defeated. What's more, whosoever guards the castle will get a 30+ boost to their Evade, and will ALSO get to gain back 20% of their maximum HP per turn.

So this here is the easiest way of gaining Gold. But the downside is that the Gold it does give is minimal at best, and therefore, nowhere near enough to solve all of our money problems. Still helps though !

5) Later in the game, your male units can become married to one of your female units in a purely monogamous relationship. THAT is something we will get into later, but for now, just know that when they tie the knot, they gain the ability to use the "Give" command on each other, which allows one of them to give the other all of their Gold. However, even if you manage to pair the right units with each other (which is in itself an exercise in planning), they'll still only have the ability to Give to each other, and not to other units.

6) There's also a unit class called a thief that can use the "Give" command on anyone (though no one but their Lover can "Give" back to them), and can also steal whatever Gold an enemy unit has just by attacking it once. Plus, there's a C Rank weapon called the "Thief Sword" that allows anyone who can wield it (like Alec) to do the same. However, we're only getting one thief for each Generation, and both of them are very weak and fragile. So actually GETTING them money without them dying can be a problem.

The method I used to get thieves money in my 0% growths playthrough (where they're even more pitiful than usual) was to have them attack bandits, who all have a rather hefty 5000 gold. Axes are so bad that no matter how strong they become your thieves should be safe.

Well...as long as they can't one-shot them. That's not generally a problem anyway due to the save system, but considering the Combat Rank, I still end up having to do some fancy stuff to cut that risk out of leveling Dew in Chapter 1.

So anyway, there's all our options. And despite the problems that come with each one, we'll still be using every single one of them to use the Elite Ring the way we want to. For example, when you combine the 17,500G that comes with Method 1, the 20,000G that comes from selling the Elite Ring in Method 3, and the free Gold that comes from Method 4, that's enough for units like Cuan to buy the Elite Ring every Chapter, WITHOUT any help...But not everyone is Cuan. In fact, Generation 1 specifically has seven different units that struggle to accomplish anything in the Arena, and they are as follows...

Alec (Needs a Speed Ring in Chapters 1 and 2, and wants a Defense Ring in Chapter 3. Benefits from an amazing weapon we'll be getting.)

Noish (Needs the Speed and Pursuit Rings, and wants the Defense Ring in Chapter 3. Benefits from an amazing weapon we'll be getting.)

Ardan (Needs an amazing weapon we'll be getting, and a ton of kills in Chapter 3 or 5)

Azel (Needs a Wind Tome from Chapter 4, and a ton of kills in Chapter 3)

Midir (Needs a Killer Bow and a ton of kills in Chapter 4)

Dew (Needs an amazing weapon we'll be getting.)

Beowulf (Needs to rig two points of Speed in Chapter 2, and wants the Defense Ring in Chapter 3. Benefits from an amazing weapon we'll be getting.)

So out of those seven, we need to pick at least 5 of them that we want to train. Me personally though, I'm going to invest in all of them except Azel, but only because I think it's faster to do that rather than grinding Sylvia (a later character) up to Level 30, or getting EVERYONE in Gen 2 up to Level 30, or doing something like that. So that's our plan as far as they go.