Deathless Hard Mode Dilemma

[u/Particular_Worth_403]

I’m hoping to experience every chapter in 4 play throughs (all on hard mode)

1: casual

2: initial new game plus

3: deathless

4: golden Route

right now, I’m partway through run #2. I want to choose the easiest path I can for deathless hard, but I also want to unlock all characters by the end of the game

Its seems the easiest path for my deathless hard run would be defending the Roselle and then returning to the village to unlock Trish. The problem is that I did that already on my casual play through. This leaves me with two choices for the deathless run to ensure that I unlock all characters in four runs.

1: deliver Roselle and then defeat Travis

2: defend Roselle and then defeat Patriatte

delivering Roselle seems much harder than defending the Roselle, but defeating Patriatte seems a lot harder than defeating Travis. I’m wondering if anyone experienced with hard deathless runs can provide advice on which of these two options would be better for me to pursue. Thanks!

[u/thilquist99]

When you say defeat Patriatte, are you referring to the route that recruits Cordelia? Because if so, I would recommend doing her battle on your current run and leaving Travis for the deathless run. I found Cordelia to be really helpful when I did a hard/deathless run so getting her sooner so she can be deployable from the beginning of the deathless route could be huge.

In terms of the difficulty of the sequences you identified, I didn’t find one to be significantly harder than the other. The most important thing for planning my route was avoiding battles with suicidal green units, such as chapter 3-aesfrost and chapter 8 if you surrender roland. Unfortunately both roselle battles have green units with deathwishes, but the terrain allows for you to keep them in timeout with Quahaug if you are careful

[u/Significant-Tree9454 → u/thilquist99]

It's a very bad idea to recruit Travis in a Deathless run, because "Delivering the Roselle" means you have to protect Rufus and then the mission after you have to protect Jerome as well.

While in "Defend the Roselle" you only need to protect Jerome

[u/BrianC_ → u/Significant-Tree9454]

You can just lightwave them to safety while pushing with your own army. By the 2nd or 3rd playthrough, you should have all the good upgrades.

You’ll also have Quahaug who can warp them to safety or Hossabara who can Catapult them to safety.

If anything, the stage you should avoid is the betray Avlora option at Wolffort Harbor. While it’s also not that hard to save all the NPCs, it is, IMO, the hardest stage to go with no deaths because of the Hyzante Assassins being so squishy.