Temporarily adding the game title to the thread title until that gets fixed.

So I've caught the terrible bug known as wanting to min-max my stats. I'm wondering if using a second seal on a class that I already promoted to one of the master classes (and about 15 levels in) will significantly hurt my stats, or will I be able to have a level 1 base unit with all the crazy stats I got from the other classes it went through?

if you depromote to a 1st teir unit you will get a stat drop

just depromote to a promoted class, which you can do, they usually have the better skills, just an fyi you will still need to lvl to 10 to change again

oh and i maxed my str, made me sad =(

Yeah, I need to start getting back to the main storyline, but I NEED to get those kids recruited, which requires me to grind a bit, and then once I get the kids I have to get them leveled up and so on.

It's an endless cycle.

It may hurt your stats, but only in minor ways. Stats fall into two categories, character stats and class stats. The only stats that change when you use a Second Seal are you class stats, which may result in a few losses when going from promoted to non-promoted, but nothing significant. Here's a list of the stats for each class so you can see what to expect - http://www.serenesforest.net/fe13/class_base.html

Because of Second Seals you effectively have infinite levels to gain so you never have to worry about screwing yourself out of max stats. It is generally recommended that you always Promote/Reclass as soon as you have learned both passive skills available to your current class as skills are much more hard to come-by.

EDIT: As a reminder, non-promoted classes learn skills at 1 and 10, promoted classes learn skills at 5 and 15, and non-promoting classes (such as Villager) learn skills at 1 and 15.

I changed my avatar and Chrom when they hit 15 on their promoted units, Chrom to a bow knight and my avatar to a sorcerer. They both stayed about the same in HP, and went up 1/2 in a few stats and down 1/2 points in a couple others. In the end it wasn't much of a change and now they have more room to grow and more skills to earn.

@starvinggamer:Thanks! I was under the mistaken impression that all classes learned a skill at 15. I have a bunch of guys between 10 and 14 to promote, I guess. Good thing I have a bunch of gold and seals stashed up.

those are both still promoted class so of course there shouldnt be a big drop

So I made the mistake of going to Mercenary after maxing out Swordmaster and Assassin on my avatar. The results:

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu--

EDIT: Even worse, while trying to level Mercenary up to 20, I went 6 levels without gaining any stats. On level 7, I got +1 to Resistance.

@morbid_coffee: Wow, that's rough. Here's hoping you get a mega buff once you promote again.

@starvinggamer: This thread is super old, but I have a question that is hard to gauge from Serenes Forest because I'm not getting a good sense of how many levels I can realistically gain. I'm trying to setup a crazy class change with Kellam, like so:

Knight -> Great Knight (only going as high as lvl 5 to learn Luna) -> Thief (to lvl 10, mostly for movement +1) -> Trickster (all the way to lvl 15) -> Assassin (only to lvl 10) -> General

I like the idea of eventually having a General with the movement skills of a Thief and Trickster, but I'm not sure it's worth the stat drop when I change him to a Thief, and if I understand how leveling works in this game, I think I'm really pushing my luck, and he'll be gaining levels pretty slowly by the time I finally make him a General?

Should I cut out the Thief step entirely? +1 movement would be nice, but it's competing with Luna, both Trickster skills, Lethality, and the General skills.

@bisonhero: I guess it depends on how much time you're willing to spend grinding, and whether or not you're willing to pay for the EXPonential Growth DLC map.

OK, so, first off, there is no real penalty for leveling as Thief then promoting yourself to Trickster vs going straight into Trickster. Bear with me, this is going to get a bit complicated.

Your character's EXP gain is determined by their Internal Level which is made up of two factors, their Current Level and their Cumulative Level. Current Level is easy to figure out, it's just whatever level your character is. If they are a promoted class their Current Level is their displayed level +20. So for example, gaining EXP as a Knight initially will always be scaled off of your current level up until you promote, at which point it becomes your current level +20. So whether you choose to promote right at level 10 or wait until 20, your first level of Great Knight will always be effectively level 21. Depending on your goals, it may be advantageous to keep leveling your Knight beyond 10 for the easier stats gains early on.

Now comes the tricky part, your Cumulative Level. Cumulative Level is a secondary level modifier that accumulates over time as you use Secondary Seals. First off, know that there is a hard-cap on your Cumulative Level, 20, 30, and 50 for Normal, Hard, and Lunatic respectively. Going from Knight through Great Knight, your Cumulative Level will always be 0 because you have not used any Secondary Seals yet. However, once you want to switch out of Great Knight you will be forced to Secondary Seal at which point your Cumulative Level starts to become a factor.

The way to determine how much Cumulative Level is added with every Secondary Seal is with the following formula: (Current Level - 1) / 2

So, in your example you are only planning to go up to level 5 as a Great Knight before using your Secondary Seal. This means you will have a Current Level of 25 (5 + 20 for being a promoted class). Using the Cumulative Level formula it comes out to (25 - 1) / 2 = 12. From this point on, whenever the game checks your level vs your enemy's to determine you EXP gain, it will always be adding 12 to your Current Level to determine your Internal Level. So even though Kellam will be a level 1 Thief, he will be gaining EXP as if he was level 13 (12 + 1).

But because you will be using a Master Seal to become a Trickster, your Cumulative Level will remain the same until you Secondary Seal from Trickster to Assassin. So whether you spent 0 levels as a Thief or 20 levels as a Thief, your Internal Level at level 1 Trickster will always be 33 (Trickster Level 1 + 20 for being promoted + 12 Cumulative Level).

In conclusion, leveling as a Thief before leveling as a Trickster will have no impact on your future EXP gain. Movement +1 may not be worth it depending on how you end up using him, but the additional stat bumps will make the whole process smoother and have no impact on your future growth rate. And if you're playing on Normal, by the time your reach level 15 Trickster to Secondary Seal into Assassin (or anything else), you're going to be maxing out your Cumulative Level at 20 so your EXP gain is going to be uniformly shitty from that point on.

Also, I'm assuming you plan to level you Assassin to 15, not 10, for Pass. Yes?

@starvinggamer: Thanks for the explanation. I'm playing on Hard, btw.

I thought about Pass, but if I'm switching him over to General soon after, and I think I'll just skip Thief altogether (don't think it's worth my time), then I figure Pass won't be very useful that often. In most cases, Generals are struggling to not lag behind, and passing through enemies doesn't seem like a huge priority.

Think I should just take Kellam up to Great Knight lvl 15, since it doesn't affect my cumulative level? Now that I guess I'm going right to Trickster, I at least have to take him to Great Knight lvl 10, but keeping in mind the other skills, is the Great Knight's 2nd skill actually worth Kellam toiling away another 5 level-ups, when I could save time and jump on over to Trickster?

@bisonhero: Since your Cumulative Level is calculated according to your current level, taking your Great Knight up to 15 instead of 5 will increase your Cumulative Level from 12 to 17. That said, the sooner you Secondary Seal out of Great Knight, the slower your overall EXP gain is going to be. The following sequences track your Internal Level starting at Great Knight level 1 then making the switch to Trickster at the indicated level.

Seal at Great Knight level 15 - 21>22>23>24>25>26>27>28>29>30>31>32>33>34>35>Secondary Seal>38

Seal at Great Knight level 10 - 21>22>23>24>25>26>27>28>29>30>Secondary Seal>35>36>37>38>39>40

Of course, if you were to Secondary Seal into Thief instead at level 5 then promote into Trickster at level 10 it would look like this:

Seal at Knight 5 Thief 10 - 21>22>23>24>25>Secondary Seal>13>14>15>16>17>18>19>20>21>22>Master Seal>33

So the balancing act becomes how much do you want to gimp your stats to expedite your skill acquisition. Also where do you want to focus your stat gain? Because remember, different classes have different growth rates. As a Great Knight Kellam is more likely to gain Str and Def. As a Trickster he is more likely to gain Skl and Spd.

@starvinggamer: I'm still debating whether to bother with Thief or not. I'll test it out and see what my stat loss is, I guess. Overall, I like the idea of going Trickster>Assassin>General, resulting in my level 1 General presumably having a pretty solid Skl and Spd, and hopefully as he levels up he will gain Def and Str.

Why are the cumulative level caps different on the different difficulties? I assume it scales your XP more and more, so it's harder to grind XP on Lunatic?

Anyway, overall, am I trying to do too many class changes? I'm doing a fair amount of random Risen and StreetPass fights, but am I likely to even do this many class changes by the end of the game, or does it basically require I get the EXPonential Growth thing?

While we're at it, do you (or anybody else) care to give me your thoughts on the DLC?

@bisonhero: Right, on harder difficulties it will become progressively harder to level your characters as you move on to their third promoted class and beyond.

As far as how many class changes you can reasonably expect on a single playthrough, well, I did a not insignificant amount of grinding and still had only done about 2 non-promoted and 2 promoted classes for my most-used characters by the time I reached the end of the game. That said, I did keep everyone within a level of each other more or less (outside of Crom and the Tactician because using them is sorta unavoidable). If you were using Kellam for every single mission and letting him lead the vanguard and pick up a bunch of EXP on the defensive as well, you might be able to accomplish what you're planning without having to grind too much.

For the rest of the DLC, well, I'm buying it as it comes because this is quite literally the best TRPG release since Final Fantasy Tactics in 1998. The actual missions won't offer you anything particularly meaningful content-wise unless you're well versed in the FE universe and will recognize all the callbacks. The real draw of the DLC comes from all the unique items and skills they provide you with. You can check serenesforest to see which mission gives you what. There's an All Stats +2 skill, the double EXP skill, items to turn male characters into Demon Fighters and female characters into Brides, both of which have awesome skills to learn, and Infinite Regalia gives you farmable A-level gear. Golden Gaffe makes money inconsequential and EXPonential Growth lets you grind almost through anything in the blink of an eye.

If I had to make any recommendations, it would be Champions of Yore 3, Lost Bloodlines 2, Smash Brethren 2, and Rogues and Redeemers 3 when it comes out.

@starvinggamer: How many non-promoted classes are actually worth Second Sealing to, in your opinion? As my player avatar comes close to Grandmaster lvl 15, does it make sense to bust him down to a non-promoted class, or should I just try to rotate him around promoted classes to get the better skills? I've been playing him mostly as a magic user, so I've been looking at the various classes that still use tomes.

@bisonhero: Well, skill-wise not very many non-promoted classes are worth it. What you're looking for is the accelerated stat growth due to the higher rate of EXP gain. I'd start by going non-promoted>promoted>non-promoted>promoted. By this point your stats will likely be high enough to start bumping up against the lower stat caps for any non-promoted class you might want to Second Seal into so, unless you're in it for the skills, you'd be better served skipping it and going straight into another promoted class.

These are the non-promoted skills I've found to be continually useful.

• Discipline (Cavalier 1) - The double weapon exp is great when you've switched to a new class and want to stop having to fight level 35 guys with a Bronze Axe ASAP
• Armsthrift (Mercenary 1) - Once you're capping out your luck as a promoted class, this skill can greatly extend the life-span of your awesome A weapons
• Locktouch (Thief 1) - Self-explanatory
• Move +1 (Thief 10) - Totally unnecessary until you find yourself one tile away from the decisive attack that will win/lose you the chapter, YMMV
• Speed +2 (Pegasus Knight 1) - The difference between attacking once or twice or, even more importantly, being attacked once or twice is huge
• Anathema (Dark Mage 10) - Effectively +10 hit and crit for all allies attacking an enemy within 3 squares of the user
• Healtouch (Priest/Cleric 10) - A must-have for healing

For your avatar specifically, if you're focusing on being a magic user I'd say definitely get Anathema and maybe get Armsthrift if you plan on using your best gear and Healtouch if you end up going the Sage route.

@starvinggamer: Sorry for the continuous stream of questions, but do you feel like the DLC skills (and the effectively endless gold and XP) sorta break the game? Or is the game just already kinda broken given how reclassing works, and the fact that you can have five skills, which I think is considerably higher than most past FE games?

I guess I would've expected the DLC to be additional Paralogues or something with narrative relevance, but then I guess I'm glad that those are all in the proper game. Except now it feels like I'm just buying permanent gold boost and XP boost and OP equipment, as if this were a F2P game, which is weird in its own way.

@bisonhero: The bonus skills, gold, and exp stages are ultimately a smaller portion of the DLC offerings. The bulk of it focuses on fanservice of the usual variety, from DLC characters from previous games (very tempted by that stage that will give me Sigurd) to special classes (Demon Fighter and Bride.)

As far as breaking the game goes, the reclassing and 5 equippable skills certainly does go a long way to do that. But the core structure of the game adds to it as well, as you are able to grind (for both exp and gold), and buy items anywhere. The DLC skills does make things easier, but this is already the easiest FE game I've played.

@bisonhero: The Gold and EXP maps can break the game, but only if you let them. I didn't really use them until after I had reached the end and just started grinding for grinding's sake because the game is so fun. There are plenty of other ways to brake the game sans DLC that really all you're saving yourself is time. The additional skills and classes are slightly better than the rest, but only slightly. They won't make or break any of your characters.