FEH Abyssal F2P Guide

hiya i’m an f2p player and i’ve beaten every daily abyssal ghb rotation thus far except navarre (slept through him ahahah) with units at 0-2 merges, so i thought i’d share what worked for me!! :D

ghb-specific tips as well as general advice below the cut! i’m working on navarre rn and will update with him when i’m done. navarre dead, will write him up in the morning

In general:

- when you’re f2p, the best way to match the balls as fuck abyssal stat inflation is with buffs, but units that need to be next to each other to get the buff at the start of the turn (hones/etc) force you to take positioning into account much more. tactics and other AoE buffs (rally up, veronica, etc) are really helpful

- each abyssal map is its own beast so you can’t necessarily expect a team that swept one map to do well on another. taking the opposition and terrain into account, tailor your team to each map and swap out skills/units if things aren’t working.

- TANK TANK TANK TANK TANK. you CANNOT get through these as f2p without being able to take heavy punishing bc even the cannon-est of glass cannons will not be able to punch through 80+ hp 8+ times before getting obliterated.

- don’t run armor without movement buffs of some kind. guidance with a flier is good but not AS helpful as a pair with armor march

- if your team can’t fit a healer and refresher alongside the tank/damager(s), prioritize the healer unless noted individually.

- engage on your own terms as much as possible. if you can get them to come to you, it’s a lot safer than going in and trying to tank 2-4 units with a single tank (as they usually are set up with).

- don’t get discouraged if you get your ass kicked 50 times in a row! xander took me literally 5 hours of experimenting before i beat him u_u but also keep in mind taking a break can help you see new possibilities when you come back to it. ALSO good to keep in mind is that the “easiest ghb” might not be the same for everyone, it’s totally dependent on playstyle and units; don’t get discouraged if you’re struggling with one everyone else says was easy! i do think we can all agree on xander and his panic ploy/heal side hoes as the worst though ~_~

Robin (F):

- due to how the map is set up, units that can counter AND initiate over walls (preferably leaving an AoE debuff) are a godsend. piggybacking on that, if you have AoE debuffs (smokes, feint; you probably won’t be able to land any ploys) it’s really helpful. i used innes with refined nidhogg, rally up atk, and spd feint and he was MVP.

- swap on your tank can be more useful than repo, especially if they’re an armor without boots. infantry dragons make the best tanks here, imo.

- tank placed in the chokepoint is very very useful to hide a gravity healer behind. stacking up your drives and spurs in addition to visible buffs can make or break this map.

- robin’s ignis will oneshot basically anything from full hp except the tankiest of tanks, and if she doubles with an ignis proc it’s over, no exceptions. possibly ta3, but i didn’t try it. avoid letting her initiate on you and whittle her down with chip damage. once again gravity is an absolute godsend.

- most of the melee infantry won’t be able to double your tank with 35ish spd if they’ve been spd smoked. they hit really hard and a lot carry seal b skills so it’s best to prioritize minimizing hits > charging specials.

- you won’t be able to avoid being hit with mag and phys on a single unit, sometimes more than one per turn, so whatever you use to tank in particular has to have mixed bulk.

- i didn’t think of it until way later, but jaffar in particular could be very very helpful with chip damage, debuffs, and magic counter canceling. this one took a fuckton of experimenting on the map itself, less so in team composition.

- physic+ on your healer from over a wall can and will save your tank’s beleagured ass. for extra help, put a drive on them.

Ursula:

- the poison dagger enemies CANNOT be tanked by 99% of infantry tanks, esp. bc they won’t be the only attack that tank has to weather in almost all cases. armor tanks with swap and repo are EXTREMELY useful here and synergize very well with a cav partner who can dart in, make a hit, and get ferried out by your armors. i prefer a red cav (i used sigurd) if the rest of your team is low def or armored bc of the hammer enemy.

- let the enemies break the walls. the map is pretty boxed in you if you can use the 1st turn to counterkill the bottom left poison dagger and have everything else be blocked by the walls, it helps a lot.

- note bc i kept forgetting and consqeuentially getting fucked up– the top right poison dagger hiding behind the hammer armor has wings of mercy!! don’t forget!!

- once her buff supports are dead, ursula doesn’t hit all that hard even with her pre-combat special, nearly any reasonably res tanky blue or green can deal with her.

- refresher > healer should be prioritized in team comp as long as your tanks can reliably self heal.

Xander:

- bring trigger buffs (rallies and staff specials, link, etc; leave hones/tactics/etc on the bench). veronica can be a godsend IF your team has good enough counter to punch through the 2 panic ployers by the 2nd engagement; if not, bring a dazzling healer with chip damage and/or gravity and do a hit and run strategy. wrathful as well helps out a LOT, but it’s not like it’s “required”.

- stack invisible buffs. you want at LEAST 50 effective res and reliable self healing if you plan to tank every mage on the map with a single unit. for context, i ran v!eliwood with vengeful fighter/aether and 52 res upon being initiated on and he still could only tank the green cav at ~100% HP; anything less than ~52/58 hp and he’d get murdered.

- armors are good here bc movement is limited anyway. if you’re relying on an aether tank you’re gonna want something that can double with heavy damage on initiation (i used bold fighter w!robin with def stacking, and b!ephraim sitting back with ward/drive atk who could initiate on mages). that said, maneuverability still makes a lot of difference.

- if you run veronica and panic ploy is still active, be careful with using her to attack. sometimes the debuff on the enemy is more important than avoiding the debuff on yours, other times not.

- extra note on veronica: she can tank a single hit from most melee units on this map if both are unbuffed, so don’t be afraid to use her as a wall in an emergency. mine was +def but would survive with over half her hp left, not sure if a +res veronica would be able to tank a mage but i’m more doubtful of that. a -spd would get most likely get doubled and killed though.

Michalis:

- my memory’s a bit foggy on this one so bear with me plx sorry

- refresher >>>> healer. nearly every unit on your team will take a hit at some point given all the flier positioning skills/movement, so make sure everyone you bring won’t die in a single engagement.

- sometimes it can be really helpful to not counterkill on enemy phase bc they can plug gaps that would otherwise deliver a nuke courtesy of flier formation.

- if anything in rage has glacies primed, chances are the target will be obliterated– destroy on sight.

- archers are obviously useful, but if you can hide them behind the right wall/tanks and snipe you can get pretty far. doubling >>> high burst damage since they’re not super def tanky. i’d imagine bold fighter h!jakob would be amazing here.

- like ursula, michalis isn’t much of a threat without his buffer squad.

- if you use armors to tank (or even infantry), guidance can save your ass. also, there’s like.. one magic threat on this map, so stacking everything into def is the way to go.

- AoE debuffs are helpful here too bc they tend to line up in front of your tank like on narcian’s map; though you will definitely not be able to land ploys. feints are very very useful, even better if it simultaneously buffs your team (rally up atk/spd feint is my abyssal bread n butter in any map with tight quarters).

- leave your dragons and mages at home if they run any special other than aether.

Narcian:

- initiate on your own terms is the most important advice for this map. it’s gonna be really hard to tank 3 units (including narcian thanks to his aerobatics) across a mix of def/res hits– which is the only option for teams without a flier tank– so however that is, make sure you can get in, get out without taking damage either on counter or enemy phase and pick them off as they come to you.

- flier movement and refreshing could probably do it just as well, but i found the simplest hit and run to be hitting the archer near the bottom with a melee hit and run (drag back WILL NOT work) flier and then repositioning them the rest of the way (alternatively, a ranged fire/windsweeper). if you go with this strategy, guidance + repo/draw back on that unit makes them hugely useful even if that’s their only engagement for the whole map.

- narcian will usually try to fly straight over the mountain to hit you and he can be easily nuked to smithereens by a red blade mage.

- the map is mostly ranged infantry/cavs, so once narcian is down you’re pretty much safe to plonk a tank in the far left column and choke them; try to get them one or two at a time at most. gravity with chip damage would probably be absurdly cheese here, but i chose a refresher over a healer for this map since the enemy offense would be easier to weather than xander abyssal with res stacked v!eliwood, but without him i would’ve gone with a healer.

Lloyd:

- if you have a red or green non-armored tank you can probably go straight up the front as a pack and cheese it. if you don’t have anything that can tank the hammer and its friends in a single phase, using guidance to set up bait & tank on the other side of the river makes for an easier start but a tougher middlegame.

- ^ after the initial baiting, you can ferry back across the river to give yourself more elbow room (and optionally split the enemies). i wouldn’t suggest this without a refresher or primarily flier team though bc you can only guidance 1 unit per turn thanks to the map layout. if you leave your tank to keep whatever took the bait busy, you should probably bring them over on the next turn bc the ranged cavs will arrive and start beating on whatever’s on the left side.

- if you can’t initiate and kill something with vengeance in a single player phase, leave it alone. vengeance proc from 80+ hp is nasty af.

- some units can shrug it off, but lloyd’s iceberg is pretty scary. if your tank weathers an iceberg and there are other enemies in range, they’ll probably get killed by the next or 3rd attacker. i preferred to leave him for last and gang up on him since he’s usually the last to the party.



good luck!! also feel free to add on if nyall got something to add!