How to LTC fire emblem without actually being good at fire emblem
Note:
Low turn count playthrough’s are at their core a game about counting squares to (typically) 1 critical square and optimizing movement along that path to reach the destination.
This guide will mostly focus on GBA fire emblem games and ROMhacks, with minor mentions to Tellius, DSFE and the Kaga games. Games past awakening aside from Shadows of Valentia are beyond the scope of this post.
We will be assuming a friction-less vacuum with spherical cows, that is enemies will never impede your movement, there exists 1 critical square you must reach and all boss kills can be done by any unit within range. These assumptions produce a minimum for how fast a clear can go in theory, but in practice they turn out to work in fully rigged 100% growths LTCs. A unit that can kill enemies like this will be referred to as having Algorithm Tier combat:
Square counting
At the heart of all LTCing is counting squares to create a critical path, fire emblem games use Taxicab geometry which is a fancy way of saying that if a square is 10 tiles up and 5 tiles to the right the distance is 10+5 = 15 away from your character. This works except for winding hallways or with terrain. With winding hallways you should treat each leg of the journey as it’s own separate set, as you try to count squares until the hallway turns, then after the turn of the hallway start a new count, finally add up all the counts to get the total squares. Terrain by contrast is easier. Look at the terrain data for your game, and treat a square that costs 2 as 2 squares rather than 1, remember that rescue drops will save extra squares when looking at terrain. When square counting there exists a single “critical square” which is the square that when reached allows you to win the map. Each objective is best thought of in this light, with the notable exception of rout which often has many critical squares.
Square counting specific Objectives
Defeat boss
Defeat boss is the simplest objective, but it has 2 major quirks. The first is that the map can be ended on enemy phase rather than player phase, this allows a dropped unit to be the unit that defeats the boss instead of requiring that you defeat the boss on player phase. The second major quirk is that sometimes bosses move, when a boss moves the critical square is not the location of the boss, but instead the farthest square of what I call the Zone of control. The zone of control is the range by which an enemy can move to and attack on the same turn. Later fire emblem games let you see this by highlighting the range of a single enemy. once you find out what the critical square is, it’s just a matter of finding a unit that can kill the boss (frequently with a critical hit) and getting them to the square.
Seize
Seize is a lot like defeat boss except that you cannot beat the map on enemy phase, and you must lug a lord to the throne.
The key way to think about seize (without dancers) is to look not at the final turn, but the *penultimate* turn. You must get your lord to within movement distance of the seize point by dropping them on the penultimate turn. To calculate this, first subtract the lords movement range, the critical square for the rescue dropper is the square 1 square away from that square. Ex if a throne is 31 tiles away, the critical square for the paladin is square 26. Remember that on the penultimate turn you need your front paladin to drop, so you cannot use movement tricks like a 3 paladin scooch on the penultimate turn.
Rout
Rout is the most complicated objective, as there doesn’t exist a single critical square. Instead, we must look at 2 major concepts, Passive enemies and a review of Zone of control.
Passive Enemies: A passive enemy is an enemy that must be killed on player phase, examples include, enemy healers, enemies that don’t move and enemies with more range than your units.
Zone of control The Zone of control of an enemy is the range it will move into and attack on its turn. In modern fire emblem games you can see this by pressing on the enemy twice, however tapping on multiple enemies will show the union (that is if any enemy is in range) but you want the intersection (that is all enemies selected are in range).
The goal of a rout map is to kill every passive enemy on player phase, often with Siege tomes. While also having a unit with algorithm tier combat enter the zone of control of every single enemy. Sometimes player units will only have algorithm tier combat at 1 range instead of 1-2 range, and in those cases you can treat enemies with 2 range that they would fight as passive. The critical squares of a rout map are the farthest-away zones of control of the enemy army, and the farthest away Passive enemy. In some rout maps counting passive enemies is more important than counting the distances to zones of control, and in some getting to *every* zone of control ends up being the limiting factor. A special note should be made to the berserk staff which can turn otherwise passive enemies active, or even both turn an enemy active AND kill passive enemies.
Gaining extra squares
The baseline is moving the maximum movement of your highest move unit every turn. Typically in GBA games that is 8 tiles with your paladin or main flyer. From there most games has various tricks that allow you to gain squares on top of that
The paladin scooch Series
Paladin scooches are a mechanic that is exclusively used in GBA fire emblem games. Paladin scooches have various forms, but there are 2 major techniques that drive all of them.
The take-Drop: This is the most common way to gain squares. The strategy is to have 1 unit 1 square away from the square your farthest forward highest movement unit will reach, with 1 unit in the first units saddlebags, then have the second unit move forward and Take>Drop the unit in the first units saddlebags. This on net lets you gain 1 square from the highest move units starting square
The Give>drop, Give a unit to the highest move unit then have your highest move unit with best position drop them.
Specific Scooches
In (parentheses) I will be putting the square that the unit will end up on if you look at the map as a 1 dimensional line to the critical square. I will be using names of various GBA units to prevent awkward phrases like “paladin A”.
The 3 Paladin Scooch
This is the simplest, most powerful and most basic paladin scooch. We’ll have 3 max move units, say Isadora, Perceval and Seth. Seth starts out in the best position, Isadora starts out 1 square behind Seth, and Perceval starts out at any square.
A/Walk Perceval onto a square on the critical path or 1 off to the side (that is a square isadora can pick him up from without going on a detour), and have him do any action (frequently in a 3 paladin scooch the free action will involve dropping a low move unit forward or killing an enemy in the way/opening a door)
B.Walk Isadora to pick up Perceval and have her canto her maximum range(7)
C. Walk Seth(8) and have him take>drop Perceval forward. As a result Perceval is now 9 squares forward instead of the typical 8.
Example of 3 Paladin Scooch
Here the critical square is 50 squares away from the seize point. Our lord has 5 move, 9+9+9+9+8+1+5=50 so with 4 3 paladin scooches, and then dropping our lord with the front paladin on the penultimate turn we reach the objective with 0 squares to spare. This also adds the extra complication of needing a door opener with the unlock staff to open the door on the final turn but that’s an implementation detail.
The 2 Paladin Scooch,
There are 3 variations of the 2 paladin scooch.
i. Give-Drop Variation: You’ll need 2 paladins, and a 3rd unit which can even be a filthy foot unit. We’ll use Seth Marcus and Lowen as our example units
A. Move Seth their full move (ending on square 8
B. Put Marcus into lowens saddlebag.
Turn 2
Lowen gives Marcus to Seth
Seth moves full move(16) and drops Marcus(17)
This allows for 1 extra square to be gained every other turn. On a defeat boss map you can even gain 1 extra square on an odd numbered turn by putting any bosskiller into the front paladins saddlebags and having that one give>drop (Ex in a 3 turn of a map you could do the 2Paladin scooch as above and then give Raven to Marcus on turn 3 to have marcus drop raven on square 26 on turn 3)
Take-Drop Variation: this variation is more powerful than the first. It works as follows
Turn 1. 3 Paladin scooch a cav forward
Turn 2.Have the cav be the back paladin in a 3 paladin scooch
Repeat.
Example, Marcus starts at best square and Seth starts 1 square off of optimal, Lowen gets rescued by seth and Seth cantos(7) Marcus(8) Take>drops Lowen(9)
Turn 2 Lowen Grabs seth and moves 1 square off of his optimal movement range(15) (seth has a free action) Marcus(16) Take drops Seth(17)
The accelerated 2 Paladin Scooch
If there exists 2 equally optimal spaces, you can do a 3 paladin scooch on turn 1 with 2 paladins, using a cav to replace the back paladin.
Marcus and Lowen start in the optimal squares, then Lowen rescues Seth and cantos(7) Marcus(8) take>drops Seth(9)
From there you can just do regular 2 paladin scooches.
Example of 2 Paladin scooch
In this clear the seize point is 47 tiles away. Which means you need to boost your front paladin 1 extra square to get to the seize point.
The 4 Step Shuffle
The 4 step Shuffle works as follows, (requires 3 cavs say Kent, Lowen and Sain and 1 paladin Say Marcus
The overview of the 4 step shuffle is
Turn 1 setup
Turn 2. Handoff Scooch Lowen
Turn 3 Handoff scooch Kent
Turn 4, Do a 3 paladin scooch with Kent as front Paladin Lowen as back paladin on Marcus
Specific example
i. Put Kent in Lowen’s saddlebags and move Marcus(8) max move
ii. Give Kent to Marcus(8) and drop Kent Forward, put Lowen in Sain’s Saddlebags (this could also be putting any cav in saddlebags)
iii. Give Lowen to either kent or Marcus, have the unit move max movement(16) then drop Lowen(17), Kent = needs to be on square 16 for this to work
iiii. Have Kent Rescue Marcus and Canto(23), Lowen(24) take>drops marcus(25)
If 2 optimal deployment slots exist you can do the accelerated 2 paladin scooch on turn 1.
4 Step shuffle example
One of the few 4 step shuffles used in an LTC, here ruadath sees that in order to reach 47 tiles in 6 turns you need 1 extra square so with 1 4 step shuffle he’ll reach the turnfloor.
Shove Trains: Each time you use shove on a unit you gain 1 square. You can typically shove a unit up to the movement range of your highest move shover -1 tile on turn 1. On turn 2 you can typically gain a few extra squares by shoving your shovebots to shove your front unit.
Example:
In this clear Chiki shoved sothe 7 times on turn 1 then shove trains illyana to shove sothe 2 more times, once with volug and once with ilyana.
Recruitable units: Recruitable units are able to move the turn they are recruited, so if the recruitable is sufficiently close to the critical path the recruitable unit ends up having the best deployment slot
Example
Here Tormod is slightly off the critical path but Vika/Muarim are on it. Tormod is 17 squares away from being recruited so we need to shove sothe twice to get him to reach 16 tiles. The rest of the clear is moving tormod to break through the mage that is blocking the critical path and watching Zihark farm exp uselessly in the corner.
The Dancer Series
Dancers are typically obtained halfway through a fire emblem game and they have their own set of movement tricks, unlike paladin scooches where the 3 paladin scooch strictly dominates the others, the Dancer strategies are able to co-exist with each other and no one strictly dominates any other. Typically the most important thing with dancers is the square the dancer ends up on, as your highest movement units. Since dancers tend to be frail units with no counter attacking ability a lot of these tricks are mostly theoretical but with careful use of statboosters and getting units to unblock your dancer you can often get the full extent of dancer power
The basic dance: At it’s core this is the most important thing dancers provide. I’ll be using Ninian Marcus and Isadora for explanation
Step 1 put Ninian in best starting space
Step 2: Have Isadora move, then have Marcus rescue Isadora and move 5 tiles away from dancer (6)
Step 3: Have ninian dance for Marcus
Step 4: Marcus moves(14) and drops isadora(15)
Example of a basic dance (skip to 37:27)
Here Toffee basic dances Florina carrying sain (6) and drops Sain(15) . Straightforward simple basic dance.
The Dancer Scooch: Dancers can actually generate 1 additional square compared to a standard 3 paladin scooch. It seemlessly integrates into a turn 2 basic dance, meaning that in 2 turns a dancer can generate 25 tiles for a defeat boss map. This is mostly only going to be useful if there are an even number of turns in the clear
Step 1 put Marcus in best starting space
Step 2 Move Isadora, then dance for isadora
Step 3 Marcus rescue’s ninian and cantos (8)
Step 4 Isadora(9) takes ninian and drops Ninian(10)
The Reset Dance: Reset Dancing is a technique where you can do another dance for your highest move unit even after dancing them the first time, by using a rescue chain
The turn sequence looks like
Turn 1 Basic Dance+Rescue dancer in saddlebags
Turn 2 Give dancer to front Drop dancer
Turn 3 Dance again
Specifically it might look like
Turn 1: Ninian Basic dances Marcus(14)+Isadora(15) and is rescued by lowen (6)
Turn 2: Lowen(13) gives Ninian to Isadora(14) and Isadora moves(23) and drops Ninian(24) Marcus/kent/whoever picks up Raven(or any bosskiller)
Turn 3: Marcus gives Isadora Raven/other boskiller, Isadora moves(30) and gets danced by Ninian (29) then Isadora) moves(38) and drops Raven(39)
This can combine with the dancer schooch to allow for a maximum of 49 squares to be traversed in 4 turns. I refer to this as the saddlebag variation of the reset dance.
A different variation is as follows
Turn 1 Ninian basic dances Marcus(14)+Isadora(15) and lowen moves to square 7 without rescuing ninian
Turn 2 Ninian dances for somebody, then lowen rescues ninian and cantos(13)
Marcus Takes Ninian and cantos (22) Isadora moves(23) and take>drops ninian)
Turn 3 is identical.
This variation I refer to as the 3 paladin shuffle, the 3 paladin shuffle allows for the player to get an extra dance off, which is typically used to fulfill a side objective,
Example:
This clear has snow so the square counting is a little funky. Ninian can only move 2 squares at a time in the snow area while the flyers/Rath move 4 squares.
The distance to the critical square has 12 snow tiles and 19 non snow tiles.
On turn 1 Juan Basic dances Florina to drop rath onto the forest (rath suffers 3 terrain penalty on the forest). Passing 3+4+1=8 tiles of snow.
On turn 2 Juan Dances Hawkeye so he can drop marcus into Rath, Passing all the remaining tiles of snow and putting Marcus on the first non-snow tile, he also puts Ninian in Louise’s saddlebags to start a reset dance
Turn 3 is the reset turn, and we 3 paladin scooch eliwood forward clearing 11 of the non snow tiles, dropping Ninian 3 tiles behind, allowing her to give eliwood the 3 tiles needed to seize (this is common with reset dances in practice as unfortunately we do not exist in frictionless vaccuums with spherical cows, and only have spherical cows).
Boots Flyer Variation.
Boots Flyers are going to mess up the reset dance a bit. Specifically a boots flyer only allows you to drop your dancer on square 27 on turn 2 for a total of 44 tiles in 3 turns (counting from the furthest dropped unit). since you only have 1 unit with boots. This means the boots only gain 3 squares in 2 turns instead of the expected 4. Also you have to dance for the unit that rescues your dancer on turn 2 if you go for the 3 paladin shuffle variation.
The Dancer Seize.
A sub-variation of the Reset dance the dancer-seize allows a player to dance for the lord and seize, one notable part of this is that it means you can have the lord in a Paladin’s saddlebags on the penultimate turn, then drop the lord 5 squares away from the dancer on the final turn.
A typical variation looks like
Turn 1: Ninian Basic dances Marcus(14)+Isadora(15) and is rescued by lowen (7)
Turn 2: Lowen gives Ninian to Isadora(14) and Isadora moves(23) and drops Ninian(24) Kent picks up the Eliwood
Turn 3: Kent drops Eliwood(30) Ninian dances for Eliwood Isadora moves (31) and kills boss Eliwood seizes(33).
Note that with a bolting boi you could clear the map with 35 tiles instead of 33.
Reset Dance example with a boots flyer.
Here our boots flier is Lani and our dancer is Katarina. The Seize point is 34 squares away from the best starting location but the path involves flying and walking . Toffee Basic dances for lani and uses lani to drop auguste forward. Due to the terrain that basic dance only generates 3 squares. Dione sets up the reset dance for Katarina. On turn 2 Lani drops Katarina forward. Turn 3 you dance for the lord to have him reach the seize point. In practice it’s rarely necessary to use the full movement option of putting the lord in saddlebags then dropping them the maximum squares away from the dancer. On turn 3 you clear the way, with your remaining flyers.
Warp and Rescue
The warp and rescue staffs tend to come at roughly similar times in the GBA games. The warp staff tends to have 2 versions, the first has its range limited by the staffer, which exists in GBA and Time travel Fire emblems (Echoes, 3 houses, engage). Other games tend to have the warp staff have infinite range. In such games like Thracia 776 and Shadow dragon, the algorithm for those maps breaks down and it becomes a game of Staffer action economy and staff use management instead. Such situations are beyond the scope of this article.
Typically rescue staffs are concurrent with dancers Rescue staffs are able to maximize movement when exactly 1 use is used in a single map, however most fire emblem games give you a massive abundance of rescue/warp/hammerne by the time you get them. You can actually go absurdly far with rescue staffs+dancers. Only 6 games in the series have warp with non-infinite range (GBA and time travel FE). While Rescue staffs without warp are fairly common (Tellius, fe12 Hard 3+, Awakening, Fates).. While Fates/Awakening are beyond the scope of this article (ask Bad at life or Zoran to explain shelter Dancing to understand why) Tellius and Fe12 are not.
One thing to consider is that boots on mounted staff users
The basic rescue
Turn 1. Basic dance Boots flyer(16) drop rescue boi (17) 3 Paladin scooch Dancer forward (9) (this can be cut depending on how far you need your dancer ot be)
Turn 2 Rescue Dancer (20 - 1 per rescue range below 10), move boots flyer (26) Dance for Boots flyer(25) Move boots flyer again(36) and drop lord/bosskiller(37)
The 1 turn variation
Turn 1. Rescue dancer (5) boots flyer picks up lord/bosskiller and flies(10) Dancer dances for boots flyer, Boots flyer moves again(20) and drops(21)
Basic Rescue Without Dancer or rescue command
Move rescue bot forward
use rescue on highest move unit (rescue range +1)
RescueBoosting
If you surround the tiles adjacent to the rescue user you can gain extra squares, this is highly dependent on rescue space priority, and can be used to manipulate which tile a unit gets rescued to. It can even be used to rescue past a wall (GBA/Tellius only)
Example (rescue is at 5:07)
Rescue Seizing
Sometimes your lord might have just barely not enough movement to get to a position. In such cases your boots flyer can drop your rescue Boi then you can have your rescue boi rescue your lord. This is often best used when there is a winding corridor so your as the rescue staff goes distance is low even if the distance as the Wyvern Flies is not.
Heath rescues Pent and flies (6)
basic dance heath and fly him away, dropping pent (16/17)
Heath flies (26) and Kills boss (28) pent walks (23 and rescues lord (24) lord seizes (28).
With a bolting boi you can gain 2 extra squares by 3 paladin scooching your dancer, then dancing for your bolting boi to kill the boss.
Sample Clear:
Warp
Warp is so broken that if you have warp and rescue (which is common) then you should try a completely different algorithm for trying to beat the map. This algorithm is referred to as Valks backward induction algorithm, and it works as follows
1st compute every action that would need to happen to 1 turn the map
if you can 1 turn it do so
if you can’t compute what actions would need to be taken to 2 turn the map
then do so
strategies taking more than 2 turns are extremely rare, and >3 turn strategies only happen in maps with more than 1 critical square.
The Basic Warp
Have Heath rescue lord/Bosskiller and fly(6)
Ninian Dances for heath
Pent warps Heath(6+warp Range)
Heath flies the rest (16+Warp Range)
Sample clear(t=26:55):
The warp+rescue
as the name implies this uses 1 warp and 1 rescue, I’ll use Heath as the boots flyer, Pent as my warper and Priscilla as the secondary warper and Seige Tome user
Sample clear:
2 turn variation
Heath rescues priscilla
Basic Dance Heath (6)
Pent Warps Heath (6+Warp range)
Heath drops priscilla (17+Warp range)
Turn 2
Priscilla rescue staffs heath (26+warp range)
Heath flies to boss (36+warp range+2 for javelin)
Sample clear(t=28:21):
3 Turn variation
Basic Dance Heath carrying rescue user (17)
Pent moves (6)
Turn 2
Basic dance Pent carrying Lord (11)
Priscilla (11+rescue range) rescues Pent (24 if max rescue range -1 per rescue range)
Pent(18+rescue range) moves and drops lord (19+priscilla rescue range)
Turn 3
Pent Boltings boss(24+10+rescue range for bolting range=34 tiles+rescue range (max 47))
Priscilla Warps Lord (19+2*(warp range)
lord seizes (24+2*warp range)
note that if warp range is greater than 10 then the limit is 34+warp range so capped priscilla would max out at 47 tiles.
As you can tell the strategy space for the warp and rescue staff gets too large too quickly, rout maps with warp are a completely different animal, however one extremely important thing to note is that the warp staff is so powerful that turn counts above 3 are rare, so even though complexity can explode the existence of the Hammerne staff and the general lateness of the warp staff mean that things like conserving warp uses rarely come up, and it’s generally pretty easy to determine if a map can be 1 turned. 2 vs 3 tends to be much harder but the amount of extra squares the 3rd turn gives just tends to floor every map at 3.
A Note on Boots:
There are theoretically 4 different types of units that can optimally use boots
Lords: Lords are often needed to seize, and boots reduce the distance they have to travel to seize, however rescue chains typically mean that boots on your lord is suboptimal since you can just as easily put boots on a different unit and use their increased movement to boost your lord forward in any map that is not 1 turned. There are rare exceptions in certain maps.
Valkyries: Valks can use the rescue staff and warp staff with 10 movement. This can come in handy especially when combined with siege tomes to kill the boss in the way. A boots Valkyrie can use the rescue staff as a way of generating 10 easy squares. Boots Valkyries are also often able to boost the movement of multiple units by using the rescue staff twice, once on turn 1 for the main flyer + his cargo, and once on turn 2 for a secondary unit, this is more important in rout than other map types <technically Sages can do something similar in GBA due to the interaction of Magic caps and base movement - see Juan Eliwood solo with Boots Pent>
Flyers: this is the most common boots target. If a map has annoying terrain in the critical path a flyer can often easily skip the entire section if they have boots, and when combined with dancers a boots flyer can generate many more squares, since boots+reset dance+Basic dance generates 44 tiles in 3 turns.
Dancers: to my knowledge 0 GBA or ROMhack LTC’s use boots dancers, however in theory boots dancers should be able to generate 1 more square on a reset dance than a boots flyer, The main issue with a boots dancer is that while they theoretically generate tiles, in the time period when you have warp/rescue the boots flyer or Valkyries movement generates extra squares compared to a dancer. Also on a practical level Reset dances often don’t generate squares do to the annoying fact that dancers are unable to counterattack.
Other Ways of generating squares
These are the cool and fun ways of generating squares, only reserved for people who aren’t limited by self imposed restrictions as to what is and isn’t fire emblem.
Flyer Death: In the right circumstances a flyer(this includes phantoms) can die in such a way that the unit they are carrying (typically a paladin) has the closest legal square closer to the critical square than to the square the flyer flew to, this will allow you to gain extra squares.
Example Time = 36:22
Rescue Death: In Fe6 if a unit rescuing another unit dies then the unit they were rescuing has their “able to move” value set to 1 instead of 0 like it is in other fire emblem games. So you can effectively turn any unit into a 1 use again staff.
Enemy control Glitch: in Fe7/8 by resetting during an action tile animation you can reset the game to control the enemies. In a rout map this can be used to turn formerly passive enemies active, if the action tile Killed the unit that steps onto it you can even rout the map on the turn you used the glitch. This glitch unfortunately doesn’t gain squares unless the enemy was a non moving one before you attacked them. ECG can be combined with flyer death for good results.
Example (time = 8:36)
Infinite move Rescue: In fire emblem 4 genealogy of the holy war, by using the rescue staff on a unit guarding the castle, you can give the unit infinite movement and have them always able to attack at 2 range on player phase. However you can only do this glitch to one unit at a time (which means it’s limited to basically only seliph) It’s a powerful glitch that unfortunately lacks an LTC that has used it.
(2:43:53)
Unit stacking: unit stacking is a sadly mostly useless glitch, it is performed as follows
frame 1: press a direction into another allied unti
Frame 2: press the opposite direction and A
The unit will stack on top of each other
Example
Skillsystems ROMhack only tricks
The Take-Support/talk-give: probably one of the most powerful mechanics you can use in a Romhack. It can be used to reset dance a turn faster, or to get 1 turn faster on your 2 paladin scooch or 3 step shuffle.
Reset dance example (clear is at 3:39)
Top of inventory glitch, Technically it depends on the hack, but some hacks like 4 kings you can use it with powerstaff 4 kings example (timestamp 2:34
Some additional rout map examples
Rout map examples
Since Rout is the most complicated objective and explaining it in pure square terms is hard Toffee graciously provided us with a few examples from his own LTC’s.
Deity Device Chapter 11
This map gives us just 2 units – the lord Carson, and the dancer/healer Vesta, and both of them start with well-defined base stats. Vesta does have the Powerstaff skill which lets her move again after using her healing spell. Since only Carson can actually attack, what this means in practice is that Vesta can keep up with Carson, and he gets 2 actions on each player phase. Carson has 1-2 range, Adept, and a high crit rate, which means that with enough rigging, he can 1-round any enemy(which meets the offensive criterion to apply the algorithm). Vesta keeps him topped off so with some dodges he can also survive each enemy phase. Vesta is also a liability in this rout in the standard way dancers are – in a map where the objective is to kill every last one of them, a unit who cannot fight back will be a magnet that keeps enemies from suiciding into the player. On turn 1, we have Carson kill the nearby soldier, since he would otherwise go for Vesta. He gets danced, and then he moves up to a precise location where he can kill another enemy who threatens Vesta, and maximize his EP exposure. The long rig is to make sure Carson survives, and crits and procs Adept enough to kill every enemy who attacks him.
Now, we need to mop up the remaining parts of the map. The enemies in the north are out of the way, and do not charge at us, so we need to go up there. Thankfully, their positioning lets us pick them both off on PP, which means Vesta can stay close to Carson. The location where Carson ends T2 lets him once again maximize his enemy phase exposure, which means Vesta can move freely on T3. On turn 3, the boss and the soldier in the bottom right are the only enemies who are left alive, and the forest is a convenient location for Carson to enemy phase them from. This does require him to get a small boost from Vesta to make it there.
This clear illustrates some key ideas and heuristics. On a rout map, we usually want to maximize enemy phase exposure with each unit to get as much work done as possible, while still making sure units move as far as they can to reach the enemies that are furthest away.
Eirika Route Chapter 15(t=02:08:22)
This is a rout map in a desert(an oddly recurring theme in many FE games, which several ROMhacks have picked up on too), which already makes it a challenge – several units have their movement curtailed. In the context of FE8 Eirika route specifically, there is also some staff grinding which needs to happen, which I will skate over. Just know that Artur needs to have something tag along with him so he can use Barrier, Moulder needs to be deployed to gain some EXP, and Saleh needs to get in a Barrier and 2 Silence uses(which means that Tethys’ T2 dance is spoken for).
While chapter 15 looks pretty intimidating at first glance(to the extent that as far as I’m aware, I’m the first person to ever 2 turn it on the English version on both routes), the algorithm does a great job of distilling out the enemies that really matter. Since this clear is part of a full recruitment run, we have Vanessa, Tana, and Cormag, and can promote all of them to Wyvern Knight for 8 movement, Pierce, and improved combat stats. Artur, Saleh and Lute are the next tier of movement at 6, able to run across the desert to help cover the enemies our fliers can’t. Broadly speaking, we can divide the enemies into a few different groups – Caellach’s squad in the northwest, the shaman and merc in the west, the mercs and berserker in the northeast, the wyverns in the east, the mercs in the center, and Valter’s squad in the southeast. The good news is that even though the map starts with 46 enemies, only 5 them are passive or stationary. These are Caellach, Valter, the 2 troubadours, and the Eclipse Shaman. Caellach and Valter can be counterattacked on enemy phase, so they just need competent combat units in the right position to take them out. Caellach is actually a problem for combat units because of his high stats and Hoplon Guard – we can’t just dispose of him by rigging a crit. However, the existence of Pierce means that we can have a wyvern just Pierce him to death. This requires sending one of our fliers to handle him, and consequently, his squad. Tana is the ideal candidate for this job. Furthermore, because we want this wyvern to also pick up the Silence staff for Saleh, it turns out we need her to use Boots on turn 1 to get to it(since it is 10 squares away from the best starting position). Due to the positioning this requires, one of the mercs in Caellach’s squad would be left out, but thankfully, he can be dealt with while solving our next problem. The mercenary in the western part of the desert and the shaman are awkward to get to, since Tana is preoccupied with getting Silence and then killing Caellach. Since the critical square to enemy phase the mercenary is inside the desert(9 regular and 2 desert tiles away from the next best starting spot), we can’t just send a paladin to handle them(and as a practical matter, Seth and Forde aren’t fast enough to double several of the enemies they would be exposed to along the way, necessitating hell rigs). A promoted mage can get to the key tile in 2 turns, and can handle the mercenary that is out of Tana’s range. Since this mage does not need any player phase actions or to be boosted, we use Artur for the job, and Seth just tags along to give him a staff target.
Next let’s look at the northeast. There are 2 mercenaries and a berserker. Eirika starts in range of the mercenaries, letting her pick one off. Conveniently, this position lets Saleh get in his Barrier, while also being in position to enemy phase the berserker. The last mercenary isn’t in range of our noncombatants, so he’s not an issue. Lute is more of a sanity assist than anything – the only enemy she kills that couldn’t have suicided into our lead combat units is the mercenary in the middle of the map, and someone like Gerik could have gotten to him by turn 2. This leaves the wyvern squad to the east and Valter’s squad as the last big obstacles to the 2 turn. The wyvern squad can be handled by having Cormag fly into their range, which we want him to do anyway since he gets us the Swiftsoles on T1, and assists with Valter’s squad on T2. Valter is aggressive but stationary, meaning we need to get a combat unit all the way up to him to kill him. His squad also includes 2 troubadours, who cannot possibly attack, and hence require player phase actions to take out. There is also an Eclipse shaman who is extremely unlikely to suicide into us with Flux unless he thinks he can kill someone, which as a spoiler, isn’t going to happen. They’re all out of range on T1, meaning we need to get at least 3 PP actions down there on T2. Lute doesn’t quite make it far enough to help pick any of them off, so we have to rely on Vanessa and Cormag. Thankfully, because Tethys can dance on T1, we can have Vanessa pick up Franz and drop him forward, skipping past all the desert terrain and letting us get our best combat unit to the front to help. This isn’t particularly movement intensive – Tethys grants 4 extra squares with her dance, and the act of flying across all the desert tiles is enough to let Franz kill a Troubadour. There are a few other candidate locations for their positioning – Lute could have mopped up the leftmost enemies in Valter’s squad if Franz and Vanessa weren’t in range of them. Most of the enemies die on turn 1 thanks to our careful positioning, leaving turn 2 as a cleanup job.
Vision Quest 3-E
Unfortunately VQ 3-E’s rout condition was removed because the creators like cowards prioritize story integrity over LTC pedagogy.
The units who are available to use on this map don’t have perfect EP combat, necessitating a lot of rigging for the best turncount. The boss of this map, Lori, is stationary, and is very far away from the starting area. The shortest path to her requires flying right through several packs of dangerous enemies, and part 3 of VQ only gives you one flier – Onderdonk. Lori also has bonkers stats(for one thing, she has too much Luck for any of our units to pull crit on her without help from a weapon), necessitating getting to 1-range of her to reasonably kill her. There is a stationary Druid 2 squares to the west of her, and the critical square to handle the both of them is 30 squares away from the best starting position. The other enemies that are particularly annoying to deal with are the 3 armor knights in the middle of the map – they’re all stationary, and the layout of the map means you either need to kill them from 3 range from above, or run all the way around to get to them. Chief Waluyo did bring along a couple of other mounted archers(Kusuma and Seruni) who can use 3-range weaponry, so we want them to handle the armors.
The bottom right part of the map is also rather movement intensive to get to, especially since 4 of our 6 mounted units already have other jobs they need to handle. We do have universal infantry Shove, Stina’s Reposition and Michael’s dances on turns 2 and 3, which is nice because neither Cajon nor Stina has good enough 1-2 range combat to plough through the enemies over there. The next best candidates are Bulan and Radoslav who have strong 1-2 range. For reasons to do with the rest of the run, I used Bulan.
Ephraim Route Chapter 18(t=02:21:52)
the map starts with 24 eggs, and a Gorgon with Shadowshot. There are also 2 Gorgons that have both Demon Surge and Stone, which require special care to kill on enemy phase. One of the eggs is scheduled to hatch on T2, and the Gorgon that hatches has AI where it will not move right after hatching, meaning it can be conveniently enemy phased. This means that there are 24 truly passive enemies. This map has 12 deployment slots, meaning that there are a total of 36 meaningful player phase actions(ignoring phantoms) in 3 turns. This shows that a 2 turn is impossible since you can’t kill a passive enemy with every unit on T1, but a 3 turn is still very tight on action economy with 12 actions to use on Warp/Rescue/movement tricks. We’ll look at Ephraim’s version of this chapter, because Ephraim’s access to 1-2 range greatly simplifies things. Eirika’s version of this chapter can be 3 turned as well as I demonstrated in my run, but it’s much harder to figure out in a vacuum. To kill the Stone Gorgons, we can use near-broken Javelins to trick them into attacking with Demon Surge, letting us enemy phase them. One additional resource at the player’s disposal is the Purge tome from Chapter 16, to kill 5 passive enemies from long range. To figure out the optimal clear, it is helpful to assume that a solution exists, and work backwards from there. The bottom right of the map has 3 eggs, and is accessible with a T1 Warp use. Thus, they can be handled by spending 1 of the extra actions to Warp a unit in(Ross), who uses their 3 PP actions to kill the eggs(21 passives/32 actions). A boots flier(Vanessa) can make it to the top center of the map by using almost their full movement from one of the best starting squares, killing 3 passive enemies along the way(1 of them is the Shadowshot Gorgon, but that requires some AI manipulation)(18 passives/29 actions). A paladin(Forde) can kill an egg on T1 from one of the best starting tiles(17 passives/28 actions). The other egg in the first cluster is the one that hatches on T2.
I’ll get into the details of using Purge later, but the relevant part for now is that the two primary candidates for Tethys’ dance on T1 are our Purge user Saleh, and our Warp user Artur. If Artur is danced, it is possible for him to do a T1 Take-Warp-Give-Warp, which lets us transport a total of 3 units to other parts of the map. Since we need to maximize our PP egg-killing options, and a lot of the eggs are far away, the latter ends up being the better option. It costs 2 extra PP actions to Rescue(with Gerik) and Drop the unit Artur Gives, so we want to send the pair of units to a place where they can pick off 4 eggs. The top right part of the map meets this requirement, though it’s very far away(the critical square is 27 squares away from Ephraim’s starting location). When we count the squares needed once we actually get there, it turns out the carrying unit only needs 7 movement on turns 2 and 3, so Ephraim is a good candidate to send in here, since he does need to find eggs to kill to make himself useful. Since he needs to move very far on T1, and as we’ll see, Artur also needs to end the turn somewhat further ahead, we Rescue him forward with Moulder, and then Warp him. As an implementation detail, his partner’s T1 PP actions can’t really be used for anything(outside of maybe chugging a Pure Water) When we work out the movement required on later turns, it turns out his partner needs to fly, and combined with the constraint that Artur needs to carry them, the only possible candidates are Falcoknights. We’ll use Tana without really getting into the justification for why. Tana does need to kill the Gorgons, which requires using near-broken Javelins. (13 passives/19 actions)
A quick digression on the Shadowshot Gorgon. With the positioning on T1, Tana and Forde are the 2 possible targets for her. We want her to move down so Vanessa can deal with her, and this means we want her to attack Forde over Tana. She does this if Forde has worse defensive parameters(which is, in fact, the reason I used Forde for this job – my Kyle, Seth and Franz were too bulky).
With a T2 Warp use, Forde can kill 2 eggs over 2 turns in the northwest(11 passives/16 actions). If we Rescue-drop Gerik forward on T1 and Warp him on T2, he can also kill 2 eggs there with the Longbow(9 passives/11 actions). The final egg there can be reached by Rescuing a flier(Cormag) forward with Moulder on T2, and he can also pick off one of the eggs near the Shadowshot Gorgon along the way.(7 passives/8 actions). 5 of the eggs will be picked off with Purge, meaning we just need to find 2 that Syrene can handle. 1 of the eggs on the cliff can be killed by her on T2, and we will choose the one on the right, since we can have Moulder Rescue her forward on T3 to kill one of the eggs in the east(5 passives/5 actions).
The locations of the remaining 5 eggs are perfect to pick off with Purge. This completes the 3-turn.
Cog of Destiny(t=07:29)
In cog of destiny there are several enemies who are reluctant to suicide on enemy phase, and some are also so bulky that they can’t be 1 rounded without critical hits by units with capped stats. There are enemies all over the map. However, even this map can be defeated by the algorithm. The key idea to keep in mind this time around is the large number of enemies who would be passive in a conventional playthrough, but can be manipulated into attacking and dying on enemy phase. The large groups of scrub enemies like unpromoted mages do not really matter – they just require putting someone in range who can counter them. The key enemies to worry about are Linus, the 2 throne Druids, the 2 throne Bishops, the 5 Valkyries in the northwest, the 2 Valkyries with weapons in the north, the Bolting Sage in the north, the Troubadour in the north, the Valkyrie without weapons in the north, the Sniper, the Purge bishop and the 2 Valkyries in the center of the map – they number 19 in all. 19 potentially passive enemies is a lot, and unlike with FE8 Chapter 18, we don’t start with the Warp staff to accelerate a lot of units to the front. There are also 4 reinforcement zones to consider. The one surrounding the throne area is unavoidable due to the presence of passive enemies in it, and triggers Vaida and the wyvern riders to spawn. Vaida can thankfully clean up the mess she arrives with. As a practical matter, we also need to walk through the central reinforcement zone near the starting area, which triggers monk and bishop reinforcements, but they can still be killed on enemy phase. The mage squad on the right charge right from the beginning, meaning we can avoid the Valkyrie reinforcement zone. As for the shaman reinforcement zone, with some precise positioning we can enemy phase the ones who start there without entering the zone.
The one side-objective on the map is the Warp staff, located 23 squares away from the best starting location, and needless to say, it’s very important to get. We can send an 8 move flier(Florina) to get it, while picking off the enemies in the southern side of the map along the way using the leeway in movement she has.As such, we need to convince as many of the passive enemies to suicide into our army as we can. A quick primer on enemy status staff behavior – enemies with Silence only target player units who have usable staves in their inventory, enemies with Sleep or Berserk target player units with usable weapons or staves in their inventory, and all status staff users will only target player units if they can pull at least 5 staff hit on them from 5 range. The Valkyries with weapons and status staves can be persuaded to attack if player units in range have a lot of Resistance. As such, we spend a lot of our spare PP actions on using Barrier on all of our units. A rule of thumb when dealing with GBA status staves is that they encourage lowmanning – it is easier to have one unit with enough Resistance to handle them than it is to have more. As such, we perform a specific maneuver on T1 that lets us maximize the number of passive enemies who are turned aggressive – Priscilla is Rescued 11(+1 because of how the Rescue staff works) squares on T1, and with the help of Boots, moves 10 tiles to a specific critical square and uses a 1 use Berserk(which has 12 range with her capped Magic) on the Sleep Druid. This particular square is important because it is in range of the 2 central status staff Valkyries, is in range to status the Sleep Druid, and is in a position where when she has between 10 and 20 HP, the Sniper will suicide into Priscilla with a Silver bow instead of using his Longbow. The 1 use Berserk staff breaks, which means Priscilla is no longer a legal target for Silence, and the use of Berserk turns the Sleep Druid aggressive. As a bonus, she then starts attacking the other enemies in the throne room, which isn’t strictly necessary, but greatly improves the sanity of the strategy. Priscilla will go on to deal with every enemy in the northwest part of the map except Linus, prioritizing killing the Berserk Valkyrie on T2 and the left Purge Bishop on T3 since they can be annoying near other units. Linus isn’t *quite* in range of her on T2, so there is no way to beat the map in 2 turns(not without glitches anyway). Priscilla also needs to critkill some Valkyries on EP so as to keep them from being nuisances later/blocking the path on T3.
The rest of the map doesn’t stretch our movement requirements beyond just using our mounts’, outside of having to Rescue-Drop Lucius to the front. The Purge Bishop and Bolting Sage go for Ninian, which puts them in range to be killed. The weaponless Valkyrie and Troubadour try to run to the throne room, which would be bad since we’re shorthanded on PP actions there, so Pent and Lucius stop them. Lucius picks off the Troubadour with a Purge crit, and Pent puts the Valkyrie to Sleep so that she can be picked off on T3 instead. Our non-Priscilla units mostly just focus on going where she isn’t to mop up the remaining scrub enemies, and the central path between the mountains ends up letting us encounter basically everyone.
Linus is a special enemy in that he is basically impossible to 1-round. Priscilla can’t even 2-round him, which is why we can’t just have her handle the throne room entirely on her own. To deal with him, we Warp in Sain, who can 2-round him with the Brave lance, and convoy warp it to switch to the Javelin.
Mila Temple (53:57)
In this clear by clever use of the saunion we can treat enemy arcanists as active enemies and treat the boss and the snipers as passive enemies. A group of paladin map spawns was added, which doesn’t increase the turn count because they are active enemies who’s Zone of control overlaps with Palla’s position on turn 1. In general adding enemies doesn’t matter unless they are passive enemies or are enemies that are far away from the rest of the action. There are functionally 5 passive enemies on the map, The stationary arcanist, the 3 snipers and the Boss. Since Est has worse res than catria the Arcanist goes after Est instead of Catria. After turn 1 by moving in such a way that the arcanists cannot engage from 1 range, Toffee snipes the snipers with the saunion. And he snipes the boss with leon’s killer bow.
Where to go from here
Take the ultimate square counting test
Here’s a cheat sheet for it https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g51sotUG8IwJ9cfdGSuLY7VXXt7Qcy2wRzR73hV4dqI/edit?usp=sharing
In spite of Low turn count playthroughs being fairly old, the total number of people who do them is not all that many. 3 individuals account for over half of all LTC’s completed in the year 2022. There is a lot of low hanging fruit as far as games you can turnfloor are concerned.
Fe4 Genealogy of the Holy war w/Rescue Glitch: Sadly you’d have to basically copy a current LTC for chapters 1-4, and probably chapter 5. Then once gen 2 rolls around you’ll be smooth sailing from there.
Fe6 Complete recruitment deathless: There is 1 turn to save over Toffee’s play through in chapter 8. Ask Toffee for a Savestate starting from chapter 7 to make a complete run.
Fe6 incomplete recruitment w/deaths (Hard mode): This is an ambitious project, Nobody has completed a meaningful LTC of this category in hard mode. The goal would be to see how few turns you can lose compared to Legrandgrand . I’d reccommend editing growths so that the playthrough is 100% growths (except luck and def/res) for the units that need to kill themselves
Fe7 Hector hard mode without lyn mode: You can incorporate most of toffee’s turnsaves into the run, but you wouldn’t find any new ones
Fe8 Eirika route Incomplete recruitment w/Control enemy glitch. You can ask Toffee for a savestate that starts you in chapter 10 and from there you’ll need to save a few turns over Juan776 w/better square counting and some control enemy glitch.
ROMhacks, there are a lot of new romhacks coming out pick one that looks interesting.
Of these Eirika route Incomplete recruitment is probably the easiest followed by Genealogy of the holy war then Fe7 hector hard mode. POR’s main difficulty would be finding a good way to either rig the crits manually or edit the game files to make ike have perfect crit. The Fe6 ones are much harder.
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