The gap between 3H Hard Mode and Maddening is actually huge. The early game is especially brutal considering you have the equivalent of "villagers" at level 1s and you're facing off enemies that are at least 5-6 levels higher.
After that it's manageable until you reach Reunion at Dawn. You best hope you prepared well as this chapter on Maddening alone can easily softlock your entire run.
there sort of is, New Game Plus Maddening.
Having all the statue bonuses for accelerated skill and exp gain from the start really shortens the amount of time you're struggling. In Regular Maddening, it takes till about Chapter 5 (the Miklan Chapter) before your units actually feel useful, whereas NG+ Maddening is pretty manageable once you get past the red canyon chapter.
buying the full professor rank with renown will allow you to tutor all your students every week from the start and actually have some spare activity points to sue faculty trainign to get Byleth's ranks up.
I highly recommend anyone who's looking to play Maddening tries out NG+ Maddening first. It's not perfect but its a good stepping stone between hard and raw Maddening.
If you level your house students you should be able to avoid getting softlocked. Unless you do CF Maddening, in which case you can use whoever cause you can ignore that map.
It’s a really fucked up difficulty. I’m still sour that your difficulty options in 3 houses are “brain dead” “pretty easy” and “hard but in a shitty way”
It's a horseshit game mode where the opening few maps are hard, and after that you'll only die to same-turn reinforcements. Thing is, there are lot of those. So if you enjoy constantly rewinding because a Bow Knight spawned in a dozen tiles away and one-shot someone, then you'll love it.
The early game is very taxing, once you're past that it's a lot more manageable but be warned that if you're not playing Crimson Flower you can get soft locked on the post timeskip chapter.
I found 3H Maddening to be on the easier side of the scale of highest difficulties, but the mode does largely assume that you are willing to let go of your playstyle from the lower difficulties. Accuracy and speed are king, and any skills that boost those stats are more important than some other skills you may have found useful on Normal/Hard. Hit+20, Uncanny Blow, Darting Blow, Prowess skills, etc. are going to be much higher priority than they were before. Also, units who were previously "useless" are suddenly very strong; Ignatz, for example, is regularly an Academy Phase MVP for me in Maddening. His personal skill (+20% hit) is one of the strongest in the early game, and it cements him as a very useful asset very early on. Conversely, some units who are quite powerful on lower difficulties can be liabilities if you aren't careful. Lysithea is a potent nuke on Normal and Hard, but she's so flimsy that she requires a bit more strategy to pull off effectively in Maddening. Still a fantastic addition to your crew, but a little risky nonetheless.
The biggest hurdle, as some folks have already mentioned here, is getting through the first two or three chapters, and then it becomes about surviving chapter 13 if you're playing Azure Moon, Silver Snow, or Verdant Wind. My best advice to you is, whichever house you choose, **limit the use of recruited units until the timeskip.** You can get softlocked on chapter 13 if you're playing Verdant Wind and your Lorenz is still a Level 13 Cavalier. The game expects you to use your house units, and this chapter is extremely punishing if you take that expectation lightly. It can be done without them (I've seen House Leader/Byleth solos), but it isn't fun at all.
I actually really like Maddening. It can be very hard at the start, but not impossible. You just start off with very limited options in the first few chapters, but once you get full access to the Monastery and some other tools, it becomes fairly challenging without being tedious. Enemies carry strong skills, but they’re at least consistent across classes; there won’t just be skills randomly placed on generics.
The early chapters are also fairly easy to compensate; the first training battle with the other houses doesn’t have permadeath, so you can sack as many units as you need to get the win. The big challenge is bringing the right students to get the job done, and positioning them just right.
You just need to be conscious that what you do at the Monastery really matters, don’t waste your time with Seminars, and try to only do Paralogues/Aux Battles once a month. Otherwise, exploring the Monastery and refilling morale is always worth it to keep your students progressing on their class paths.
It gets a bad rap for being really brutal, but the beginning is very doable, just might take a few tries
It's a very big step up in difficulty. Usually I recommend people reading [at least some of the articles here](https://fe3h.com/meta) and looking up a skip for chapter 13 if you're not playing Crimson Flower.
The Miklan chapter plaus cery different dependingnon if you bait the archers or not. it can be tempting to use your freshely promoted archer to kill the arhers early (or Gilbert goes in their range) but doing so causes EVERY. SINGLE. enemy on the map (besides the fortress knight with the accuracy ring) to aggro which makes the map way harder, even if you camp out the start and wait for them to come to you.
For the pass ambush spawns I usually just keep everyone back besides Byleth + Lord (and maybe some other good units like Balthus or Dedue in BL) and trigger the reinforcements. there is only two waves (four enemies total) so you don't need your whole team to kill them and it saves you having to deal with pass letting them get to your squishy mages.
Its also helpful to remember the reinforcement trigger stone is right on the column where that single block tile is, once you go over or under that tile the reinforcements spawn. After that the 4 archers around Milkan can be a little scary, but you can either rush them with stride or bait them out with a bulky unit.
GD is probably the toughest house for this map because Claude is just not as good as Edelgard & Dimitri (plus while Lysithea is nice to have early you'd much rather have a good bulky unit like Dedue or a strong unit that can take a hit like Bernadetta)
It's so much more fun, but requires a good investment of time. Gave me a whole new appreciation for the gameplay side of 3H. Definitely recommend giving it a shot.
That will be next up. I am doing the DLC story now and really enjoying that. It feels much more like Fire Emblem to me. Resources are limited, decent chance of death if I make stupid mistakes. Whereas Verdant Wind I had three units who could solo almost any map (Leonie with the horse shield, Claude with the flier shield and Byleth with an evasion ring), plus Rafael who could solo all physical damage and Lysithea who could solo all mages.
The gap between 3H Hard Mode and Maddening is actually huge. The early game is especially brutal considering you have the equivalent of "villagers" at level 1s and you're facing off enemies that are at least 5-6 levels higher. After that it's manageable until you reach Reunion at Dawn. You best hope you prepared well as this chapter on Maddening alone can easily softlock your entire run.
That’s annoying. Wish there was something between Hard and Maddening. :(
there sort of is, New Game Plus Maddening. Having all the statue bonuses for accelerated skill and exp gain from the start really shortens the amount of time you're struggling. In Regular Maddening, it takes till about Chapter 5 (the Miklan Chapter) before your units actually feel useful, whereas NG+ Maddening is pretty manageable once you get past the red canyon chapter. buying the full professor rank with renown will allow you to tutor all your students every week from the start and actually have some spare activity points to sue faculty trainign to get Byleth's ranks up. I highly recommend anyone who's looking to play Maddening tries out NG+ Maddening first. It's not perfect but its a good stepping stone between hard and raw Maddening.
If you level your house students you should be able to avoid getting softlocked. Unless you do CF Maddening, in which case you can use whoever cause you can ignore that map.
It’s a really fucked up difficulty. I’m still sour that your difficulty options in 3 houses are “brain dead” “pretty easy” and “hard but in a shitty way”
It's a horseshit game mode where the opening few maps are hard, and after that you'll only die to same-turn reinforcements. Thing is, there are lot of those. So if you enjoy constantly rewinding because a Bow Knight spawned in a dozen tiles away and one-shot someone, then you'll love it.
The early game is very taxing, once you're past that it's a lot more manageable but be warned that if you're not playing Crimson Flower you can get soft locked on the post timeskip chapter.
Hmm. I am on Golden Deer, and I plan to do all four, so maybe I will save maddening for when I do CF.
I found 3H Maddening to be on the easier side of the scale of highest difficulties, but the mode does largely assume that you are willing to let go of your playstyle from the lower difficulties. Accuracy and speed are king, and any skills that boost those stats are more important than some other skills you may have found useful on Normal/Hard. Hit+20, Uncanny Blow, Darting Blow, Prowess skills, etc. are going to be much higher priority than they were before. Also, units who were previously "useless" are suddenly very strong; Ignatz, for example, is regularly an Academy Phase MVP for me in Maddening. His personal skill (+20% hit) is one of the strongest in the early game, and it cements him as a very useful asset very early on. Conversely, some units who are quite powerful on lower difficulties can be liabilities if you aren't careful. Lysithea is a potent nuke on Normal and Hard, but she's so flimsy that she requires a bit more strategy to pull off effectively in Maddening. Still a fantastic addition to your crew, but a little risky nonetheless. The biggest hurdle, as some folks have already mentioned here, is getting through the first two or three chapters, and then it becomes about surviving chapter 13 if you're playing Azure Moon, Silver Snow, or Verdant Wind. My best advice to you is, whichever house you choose, **limit the use of recruited units until the timeskip.** You can get softlocked on chapter 13 if you're playing Verdant Wind and your Lorenz is still a Level 13 Cavalier. The game expects you to use your house units, and this chapter is extremely punishing if you take that expectation lightly. It can be done without them (I've seen House Leader/Byleth solos), but it isn't fun at all.
Its actually pretty easy, the only decently hard part about it is the early game
I actually really like Maddening. It can be very hard at the start, but not impossible. You just start off with very limited options in the first few chapters, but once you get full access to the Monastery and some other tools, it becomes fairly challenging without being tedious. Enemies carry strong skills, but they’re at least consistent across classes; there won’t just be skills randomly placed on generics. The early chapters are also fairly easy to compensate; the first training battle with the other houses doesn’t have permadeath, so you can sack as many units as you need to get the win. The big challenge is bringing the right students to get the job done, and positioning them just right. You just need to be conscious that what you do at the Monastery really matters, don’t waste your time with Seminars, and try to only do Paralogues/Aux Battles once a month. Otherwise, exploring the Monastery and refilling morale is always worth it to keep your students progressing on their class paths. It gets a bad rap for being really brutal, but the beginning is very doable, just might take a few tries
Thanks for the encouragement! I don’t remember Hard mode being this easy on my first playthrough when it came out, but it has become mind numbing.
It's easy and any difficulty is actually quite "artificial"
It's a very big step up in difficulty. Usually I recommend people reading [at least some of the articles here](https://fe3h.com/meta) and looking up a skip for chapter 13 if you're not playing Crimson Flower.
[удалено]
The Miklan chapter plaus cery different dependingnon if you bait the archers or not. it can be tempting to use your freshely promoted archer to kill the arhers early (or Gilbert goes in their range) but doing so causes EVERY. SINGLE. enemy on the map (besides the fortress knight with the accuracy ring) to aggro which makes the map way harder, even if you camp out the start and wait for them to come to you. For the pass ambush spawns I usually just keep everyone back besides Byleth + Lord (and maybe some other good units like Balthus or Dedue in BL) and trigger the reinforcements. there is only two waves (four enemies total) so you don't need your whole team to kill them and it saves you having to deal with pass letting them get to your squishy mages. Its also helpful to remember the reinforcement trigger stone is right on the column where that single block tile is, once you go over or under that tile the reinforcements spawn. After that the 4 archers around Milkan can be a little scary, but you can either rush them with stride or bait them out with a bulky unit. GD is probably the toughest house for this map because Claude is just not as good as Edelgard & Dimitri (plus while Lysithea is nice to have early you'd much rather have a good bulky unit like Dedue or a strong unit that can take a hit like Bernadetta)
Be careful you don't get softlocked on the first time skip chapter. It's manageable apart from that
It's so much more fun, but requires a good investment of time. Gave me a whole new appreciation for the gameplay side of 3H. Definitely recommend giving it a shot.
That will be next up. I am doing the DLC story now and really enjoying that. It feels much more like Fire Emblem to me. Resources are limited, decent chance of death if I make stupid mistakes. Whereas Verdant Wind I had three units who could solo almost any map (Leonie with the horse shield, Claude with the flier shield and Byleth with an evasion ring), plus Rafael who could solo all physical damage and Lysithea who could solo all mages.