Hard Mode. Normal Mode doesn't have ambush spawns, but is also super easy (easier than the original FE3). Maniac Mode is where things really get tricky and you're kind of meant to use save points and know how the chapters work, and Lunatic really isn't meant for a new playthrough.

Access to Gamecube games (including POR) is restricted to only people who have a Switch 2 with the expanded subscription

GameCube games are Switch 2 only.

No, unless you have a J-account where it is available in that language only.

PoR BEXP levels function like normal levels.

The augury https://fireemblemwiki.org/wiki/Castle#Augury If two characters are in love it will also display that they are lovers on their status screens (you can see this with Quan and Ethlyn).

The wiki has the mechanics documented.

In Radiant Dawn, however, when a unit levels up via bonus experience, exactly three of the unit's stats will be increased, unless there are fewer than three uncapped stats. Mechanically, the stat with the highest growth rate will have a chance to increase first, followed by the stat with the second-highest growth, and so on. In case of a tie, the priority is as follows: resistance → defense → luck → speed → skill → magic → strength → HP. The game will roll the stats in this order until three stats have grown; as a consequence, a unit's high-growth stats will increase disproportionately often. However, if a stat is capped, it will not be considered for one of the three stat increases—this means that, if a unit has some stats capped, bonus experience can be used to "force" lower-growth stats to be increased. For example, if Ike has capped strength and skill, neither stat will ever be boosted by a bonus experience level up; this indirectly increases the chance of him growing in a different stat, such as speed. It can even force a character to gain a point in a stat with a 0% growth rate, such as Leanne's strength, if the game is unable to otherwise increase three stats.

You have to get full recruitment deathless on both books and then it plays after the ending of book 2.

Medeus without Falchion will likely require you to rig crits. He has 40 defense, 30 resistance, and 99 hp, and nothing comes close to the 36 effective might of the Falchion. The next best bet is a Sage with a mega Thoron forge, and Medeus has 30 speed so even a capped hp and defense Sage will be one-rounded. There's a reason 0% growth runs will dump a dozen stat boosters into Katarina and then rig a Nos crit just so she can deal chip without exploding.

Gharnef does move, so if you can bait him off the throne and deal with everyone else in the area so that they're not blocking the path, you can seize without actually killing him.

I've done the first 9 chapters on easy and hard back to back. Easy has less enemy units that are also less aggressive. Your units will level up faster which will also relieve some of the pressure. This means the game starts becoming really easy around chapter 11 (when Boyd, Oscar and Soren might be promoting), but only if you continue to focus exp into a few units instead of spreading it around and testing out new characters. I think it's a very well made difficulty and if you having fun keep going.

if you're not finding it boring then by all means stick with Easy, there's nothing flawed with it beyond it generally being a bit too easy for longtime fans. Path of Radiance is generally considered one of the easiest games in the series, and if you're at all familiar with Fire Emblem you can definitely manage Normal mode, but there no shame in sticking with Easy if you prefer it.

The only real problem with Easy mode is that you can run into issues attempting to transfer your save to it's sequel (Radiant Dawn) but if you're playing Path of Radiance bia Nintendo Switch Online, then you can't even transfer to Radiant Dawn givens it's not on NSO, and if they do ever add it they'll presumably use the revised version that fixes the transfer bug.

Hard mode was kept the same. It was Maniac Mode that was removed.

Ike's four Iron Swords is the biggest difference between the two English versions, I'm pretty sure. Which should tell you all you need to know.

Hardest (English) PoR difficulty is pretty comfortably on the easy end of the series. I would consider it even a touch easier than Difficult on Sacred Stones.

yeah you'll be fine

Maybe a hard mode no somniel run?

I think just give it another shot, use the resources you have, and remember that the game "intends" for you to beat it with the units and resources it gives you. They've made the game easier since launch with free updates (specifically the Well). You can very comfortably beat the game without ever having to do any sort of grinding. There's build and unit advice out there, but you don't need to leverage everything and can take it at your own pace. Incorporate various build strategies or advice gradually and when relevant instead of feeling like you need to learn and plan everything in advance. And of course, having beaten it once should mean that it feels less overwhelming

there was just too much to do and it was grindy. Having too many things to keep track of and a lot of sub menus frustrated me

All that is in Three Houses so IDK what you're doing different. Ignore the somniel minigames and don't do optional skirmishes.

it also felt like I never had enough silver coin.

Yeah, that's the point of a limited resource. You're supposed to be limited in how you use it.

Using Vander lategame is pain. So far the class I like best on him in Maddening is Great Knight since his defense is sort of acceptable there. But dedicating him to support on Micaiah or Byleth is probably your best option.

Royal knight is basically just a landlocked griffin that is limited only to lances. It is slower and has a bit more defense but they are essentially the same class. At that point it's your choice which one you want but I'd rather give him flying and a canter skill inherit.

If you really want him to do combat his growths and bases just won't hold up to other characters so just go with something with a bit more utility (e.g. hero) or generically strong choices like wyvern, warrior.

First, absolutely promote ASAP. I can only think of two reasons not to; a personal preference to level units to 20 unpromoted, or that you don't want to potentially spend money on second seals at the end of the game to reset lv.20 characters to lv.1. But that's probably a very minor concern.

Mekkah is doing a Maddening run on Youtube where he's bringing Vander along the whole way, so that may have some ideas for what to do with Vander.

Promoting in engage does not change your exp gain. You get better stats and better growths. It's a net positive, really no reason to wait with promotions

Promoting in engage doesn't reduce exp gain (your internal level is unchanged) and as a result there's essentially no reason to wait. About the only reason is you're at like 99 exp towards the next level, but even then it's probably better to just promote if you're otherwise ready.

Can't really say for Vander. His combat is pretty mediocre so anything that lets him provide utility roles may be best.

FE12 is a totally different difficulty experience from FE11.

Ryoma can basically solo the game by himself but this isn't very interesting. I like Oboro, she's a more reasonable tank who can survive a good amount of hits while not being invincible

You won't be punished per sey if you just stick with using whichever units appeal to you most. But the best units, Corrin aside, are usually going to be those who have flexible 1-2 range and decent stats (I have to specify the latter because the two early mages you join you, Hayato & Orochi, are not great despite having the best weapon type in the game).

You can't really go wrong with a core of Corrin and Ryoma plus their respective pair ups to handle the majority of mid and late game content. Outside of that, all the Ninjas are quite good as well with the right pair up. You'll want to use Kaze anyway as he has to get to A Support with Corrin before Ch15 for story reasons I can't spoil.

Just make sure to make frequent use out of whatever means you have to boost your stats for frontline combat units, that being pair ups, tonics, forges, meals and skills.

Which ever ones you want. The level curve of Fates kind of enables / encourage not overleving a few units, so mess around with the whole cast.

If you pair every male character off that can have a child to unlock their paralogues for more resources and child units you get more stuff to play with.

Once you get Ryoma, use him. He can solo the game pretty much.

Dark Mage Corrin also gives Diviner to Ophelia as her husband, because of how parallel classes work. DM is also better as a magic class than Diviner for Corrin himself (and he probably wants to go into it before he'd have access from marriage).

I imagine +Mag or +Spd even, Corrin would be a good mother for Ophelia. I believe Diviner talent would be the only way to pass Tomefaire to her.

I like Byleth on Ivy for flying Goddess Dance

Alear/Byleth is very good, as some folks below mentioned. It's a great dance/instruct, the stats are good for an occasional fist-break, and Sword Of The Creator is a nice little value-add at high rank.

Alternate Byleth options tend to be Covert for speed dance, or Mystic for mag dance and Thyrsus. I haven't really used covert classes much, but a sage or high priest who's otherwise on utility duty could carry Byleth very effectively while also not needing to inherit Divine Pulse.

Eirika is a bit of a hybrid emblem in terms of providing magic but Lunar Brace requiring physical attacks. Fists are the only real way to use all of the features all the time, but I don't think that's really essential. Bouch and Fogado are both pretty good candidates. I think you can loosely group Sigurd, Eirika, and Roy into emblems that you just kinda scrap with, and IMO give Sigurd to the most self-sufficient, Eirika to the next best, and Roy to whoever is just kinda around.

The best pairings is to pay attention to which unit isn't doing much on their turns, and then arranging the emblems so every unit feels productive on their turn. If Alear is doing really good combat, then I probably would not put Byleth on him. Boucheron with Ike and a tomahawk with the Blazing Engraved can be really good.

There's a few ways you can use byleth. Most obvious is on alear in dragon class for the +3 stats dance. However, the stat bonuses the emblem itself give are more aligned for magical units, so you can also use it to boost the magical damage of someone. If im doing this i prefer to do it on a sage for team +magic buff and the thyrsus range boost when engaged. Another thing you can do is put it on a covert like alcryst. You wont get much benefit from the magic stats of the ring but you do get a +speed buff when dancing.

Regarding eirika, its a good fit for speedy physical damage dealers that appreciate a little bit of damage reduction. I often run it on timerra so i can have someone else like kagetsu on ike but it depends a lot on your team. Fogado or diamant could work with it but will probably need speed inherits.

Alear and Byleth is plenty good. Speed and Magic make for more Arts damage if you use them, and making action refresh an even bigger force multiplier never hurts. Alear's strongest quality is flexibility, after all. No need to pigeonhole him into one role, even if he's already doing great there.

Eirika also works alright with Fogado. Really, she works with any unit that does physical damage, thanks to Lunar Brace. Fogado can also make use of that Magic bump in combination with the Radiant Bow. He's flexible like that.

You've got a good train of thought going already, honestly. Just don't forget you can always change things up if you find something else that works. You've got time.

If you didn't do the child paralogues for Kana and other kid if F!Corrin, they are permanently lost. You can't get another S Support for Corrin either. The Private Quarters goes back to the way it was before S Support.

Infinite reinforcement penalty

I hope there is, but I don't expect there to be one

I think it would be unlikely.

You can just look at the children's support lists. They can only support gen 1 units who are their parents with the exception of Corrin. Also, all static parents other than Azura and F!Corrin are male in Fates, so the women are almost always the variable parent.

Oboro!Caeldori will have a 7% Str growth lead over the Rinkah one so I'd say she's better. I don't think the skill options from either are too important, particularly taking into account the cost of training the mothers for the strongest skills they can provide.

-Def on a sol ninja (or in general, honestly) is...a choice. You're sure you don't wanna reset and go -Lck? If you're early enough in the game (like, before Ch 10) I would honestly suggest it.

For this build I'd stick with Noble until you're promoted Lv 2 and have gotten A support with Selena. It'll take 5 maps to get her to A if you're perfectly efficient, and Xander shows up in Ch 16, so if you stick with Selena through 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, you should be fine. Reclass into Hero there, get the Hero skills at lv 3 4 and 5, and then you can go straight into Ninja and only have to leave it if you want to pick up some quick damage stack skills like Elbow Room and Str+2 (fortunately you'll already have Quick Reposte from Merc, which is nice)

It depends on the Talent I've picked.

If you're going something like Wyvern or Mage, you will not have any weapons to equip after Heart Sealing in Ch7, so Ch8 is the earliest opportunity. If it's something that can equip Yato like Cavalier, I'll reclass after getting Dragon Fang. This is usually in or after Ch7.

Normally the most meta Corrin builds aren't so frail that there is a meaningful difference between using the Dragonstone and not. Cavalier, Wyvern and Mage are all comparably tanky in my experience.

But you've gone for an especially frail build of -Def Ninja. It's going to be a bit awkward as you also need to be paired up to Selena or Charlotte to get Hero access I believe, neither of which provide a Ninja Corrin the +Def pair up bonuses she especially needs. You probably want to go from Hero first and then to Master Ninja to avoid burning more than 1 Heart Seal. I think in any case it doesn't look like you'll get a good opportunity to go to Master Ninja until mid-late game.

It depends on if you're using your other early heart seals on other units. The dragonstone (on a non +mag Corrin) starts falling off a bit after chapter 10, and since you're +str I imagine the Yato is better in combat anyway.

Your situation is a bit awkward though - you can only get Sol from Selena A support, which will take quite some time to obtain, probably not until after Chapter 14/16 at the earliest, meaning that if you wait that long to go Ninja after you pick up Sol, you probably won't get your Sol Master Ninja online until like, Chapter 20 at the absolute earliest, if you do some paralogues as well, and then you'll have to escape E rank Shurikens, which admittedly is not too bad, but you can't proc Sol until D. You need to spend 3 levels in Hero as well, which might take some time.

I think the early second seal would be a waste on Corrin UNLESS you aren't using any other locktouch users. If Niles and Kaze are staying home, i'd use one of the early ones on Corrin after Chapter 10 so she can get the chests in Chapter 11/12 and beyond.

other than fire / levin sword / thunder magic, i never found much use out of other the magical weapon types. id throw a couple elixirs in there if you want everyone to have a full inventory, but if the levin sword is working, why fix something that isnt broke?

1. Yep, you’re right - it’s probably a net negative, but I think it has a niche by making Zelestia a good EP character - her ability to position and have high speed makes her solid at baiting on maddening, and Chrom/Robin ring on her makes swords really really good. I enjoyed that I could throw Zelestia onto the outskirts of a mixed squad and know most would be dead or nearly dead. I think it makes Zelestia predictable, which I really appreciated given how much of a grind Engage becomes by the end (especially with the DLC - I think it amounts to 52 chapters)

2. Thunder is always good, if only to bait.

A 3 range tome is usually handy to have on the off chance its the only spell he can use to hit an enemy on his turn. But tomes don't really have much in terms of utility weapons.

One other option is to give him Micaiah so he can use staves and load up that.

I could probably do it in like 5-10 minutes in FE Builder. Depending on how familiar you are with modding tools, your mileage may vary.

It would not be a difficult edit to do in FEBuilder. I'd imagine you're mostly just looking at replacing the battle animation, map sprite, class card and the walking sound. You'll likely be able to access most of these data points from the Class Editor.

I think this exists because I've heard of (another?) arachnophobe talk about it, but I wouldn't know where to find it. It's easy enough to do yourself. You'd just go to the Class Editor in FE Builder and replace all the spider data with all a non-spider enemy, preferably one that moves on mountains like a brigand. Remember to get both the unpromoted and promoted class.

Often it will just be a forged Fire tome because it has the highest Hit and despite its lower Mt, with the right support Malig Corrin will ORKO regardless with it.

Horse Spirit and Calamity Gate via Ophelia's paralogue are also worth having on hand occasionally, although Leo also wants them at times so you may find yourself trading them both between the two characters on some maps.

The Lightning tome is also noteworthy for letting you get around Wary Fighter enemies or to kill Bow users on player phase safely.

Regular physical Axes like Bronzes or Irons are also handy for killing very high Res enemies like Falcon Knights or Ninjas too.

For a Sorc, your best bet is probably Hayato, since he's already the best magic unit in Rev. Giving Dark Mage as Corrin's talent and then marrying him is probably the easiest way to make that happen, although he does get Nyx as a cross-route romance so you can make her into his backpack for a while to do that if you don't want to commit the talent. Nyx!Rhajat also works, and for bonus points you can pretend you're playing Awakening even more than usual with her.

Berserker is hard because all the axe units in Rev kinda suck aside from Camilla, so you're probably going to have to grind up from E rank on someone who joins midgame, which means youre going to have to likely burn an Arms Scroll or two. Shura gets Fighter as a reclass naturally and he's pretty good though, or you could pick Fighter talent and marry Reina who is even better. If you really want someone who starts with Axe rank, I guess Beruka is your top option, but like. She's so mid lmao

No. Friendship and Marriage don't interact at all.

I think the most you can have is 21. Camilla, Beruka, Corrin, Xander, Elise, Gunter, Siegbert, Kana, and Percy all have it naturally. Selena, Charlotte, Ignatius, and Dwyer can get it via Friendship with Camilla, Beruka, or Percy. Corrin, Camilla, Beruka, Kana, and Percy can all give it to their spouses. Camilla and Beruka (but not Corrin if they have a second child aside from Kana) will pass it on to their children. Finally, due to some weird class inheritance stuff, marrying Jakob and Azura will result in Shigure having Wyvern access naturally.

I think who you early promote depends on your strategy long term; depending on who you're pairing off with each other, who you want to use endgame, and often your approach for Chapter 10. I think its also viable to train, at least to a point, most everyone in Conquest especially if you aim to unlock every child paralogue, and especially if you're not on Lunatic (but still true of Lunatic). I think Arthur has longer term viability that early promote doesn't necessarily benefit, I think friendsealing him to Outlaw for move+1 is one of the better things he can pass to early Percy than Sol, since he has native Fighter access anyway. He's otherwise a fine Berserker to pair with a flier for mid-lategame.

I've done Bow Knight Selena to help clear the Sky Knights on 10, and close to immediate Nyx to get Dark Knight backpack for better pairup bonuses and bulk on her before, fitting into my broader strategies around either of them being typically pair ups and moms for particular units I'd rather use (Soleil and Nina or NyxOphelia)

I think early promotion for Laslow is also suitable, since he's not exactly a combat powerhouse and prefers to be built as a rally bot so getting rally skill off bow knight is good for him. Otherwise if you don't want to use them in their best builds, /u/Zmr56's suggestions of Effie and Silas can be good promotes to GK Chapter 10.

For the first 3 Master Seals or so you get early game, I typically focus on promoting Silas, Effie and then Nyx or Selena. Most of those units can be substituted by Xander later on or Leo for Nyx so I've never seen a reason to preserve their long term viability. Any Master Seals I get after that tend to go on Corrin, Kaze or pair up bots. At the very least, I make sure all my main units are promoted before Ch16 starts if they're not already. I find they struggle to keep up with Xander if they're not.

I only have one account, no DLC, and I don't believe I ever did any Heroes integration, yet still have the Order of Heroes bonuses (that's the three special weapons and three special bond rings, right?), for what that's worth. Did have to update the game a couple times after startup from a physical copy, though.

youtube has less of that stuff ime

Use the Nintendo today app maybe?

That boss has the hidden Miracle+ skill (you can see this for yourself if you're using the latest version of Lil' Manster and set "Hidden Data" to 3), which blocks status and causes the unit to dodge all fatal blows. It goes away after a few turns (don't question why).

You need Spotpass which unless you downloaded the data for before online shutdown is now permanently inaccessible.

You are out of luck, but there are not that many chapters left. So if you don't feel like resetting, you don't have to.

Yes

There are a lot of viable units with locktouch access such that I think trying to get that on a staff user is a bit convoluted. If you use someone like Nina as a staff bot it can work though.

Do I just grab the stats and go back to being a malig knight?

Yes, but ideally you don't bother with getting Hex at all as Malig Corrin does far too much damage to enemies already that they don't kill in one round for Hex to make a meaningful difference to any thresholds.

Is Elise’s best class also malig knight?

This is more of an early game build as Elise gets to make use of Wyvern Rider's relatively high base Strength for that point in the game to build up her Axe rank and thereby letting her use a Bolt Axe potentially. This late into the game it's harder to justify going into Malig. Particularly when there is a greater choice of Maligs to deploy. Camilla & Corrin will be more reliable and Leo also wants contested Tomes at times too like Calamity Gate or Horse Spirit.

Personally I have never been interested in Wyvern Elise and I just keep her in Troubadour. Then later on I replace her with Shigure, Felicia!Forrest and Izana as my staffers. With both Gentilhomme & Demoiselle, Forrest can sort of replicate the functionality of Elise's Lily's Poise but with greater flexibility.

Sacred Stones is exceptionally easy even by Fire Emblem standards. If you've already played Super Robot Wars, you can handle Fe. You should restart on Normal mode at least. Playing the first few chapters again won't require too much time, and I suspect you might genuinely get bored and give up playing on Easy mode. You might be asking this question because you're already feeling this.

No way to change difficulty.

Mainly spoilers. Sigurd is the most brazen apparently.

Units that have capturing niches (Finn) or are bulky but could use more oomph (Ilios) are options. That said it's a tradeoff with their good bulk.

Accost is unironically great on a trained and promoted marty if you swing that way 

Vantage is nice for reliability in Xavier recruitment. That's just about the only time where it really matters. Aside from that you can give it to someone with braves or effectives to one-shot enemies. Asbel has Adept and high crit so he can use it to avoid counters and improve his dodge-tanking.

I often let Accost go unused, haha. Its main use is boosting your offense but killing enemies in one round is one of the easiest parts of Thracia, so the potential downsides of Accost make it more likely I'll get rekt by it. You can use it on someone to soak ballista fire if you care about that. Whoever you use it on make sure they're bulky.

Vantage is also mostly irrelevant. If you have someone who can KO before they get attacked that's the best use. Like someone with a brave weapon, an effective weapon, or just someone who straight up oneshots. But yes, it does very little, and I usually don't go through the pain of trying to get it from that one boss who has it.

Accost is just generally low on the list of priorities for skills. I've tried putting it on Deen or Diarmuid to make capturing easier, or consider someone you've pumped up with scroll-levels for sufficient bulk to mitigate downside risk. If you like Dagdar's use of it, Halvan is an option I've seen some people use to fill a similar role. But I know at least some people sell Accost because they find the drawback too annoying, while gold is always nice to have.

For Vantage, I personally generally don't bother with Olwen at all. You can make Nosferatu Linoan work with it (edit: I think she often uses Wrath instead though, like in some old LTCs I saw), or Ralf with the Master Axe (edit: or A-rank sword users, between the Sleep and Master/Brave/King sword).

I just have Scarlet ferrying Ryoma to reach Shiro and I've managed to reach him in time. If you're trying to cover distance ever so slightly faster, you can switch out to Ryoma at the end of your turn and then separate Scarlet a tile ahead. Then at the start of your next turn, just pair up Ryoma into Scarlet again. This way you'll effectively gain +1 Mov each time. For what it's worth my Ryoma was also reclassed into a Paladin which has the benefit of giving Scarlet another +1 Mov. But there's not really any reason not to put Ryoma in Paladin.

Use the Rescue Staff to pull Ryoma's kid to safety.

The paralogues (both the enemies and the child units) scale with story progress. You should generally still be able to deal with them without dying in one attack. Use tonics, meals, pairup, and forges to hit stat thresholds. I'm also assuming you haven't spread your EXP out too thin; you generally shouldn't be trying to train your entire army, with some units filling various supportive roles and not necessarily needing to 1v1 enemies.

For Shiro's paralogue in particular, the later you do it, the more I'd recommend burning a use of the Rescue rod to pull him out of danger and closer to your units. Once you save him, the map is an easy rout. After Chapter 19 means that he should have an offspring seal, so talking to him and promoting him immediately with it will boost his stats and help him be more self-sufficient, but IIRC you have to talk to him to recruit him first to be able to control him and use the item.

What chapter are you on, which route, and what difficulty?

There are obviously wiki summaries from the story side of things. In game conversations with characters will assume you already know what's going on.

For gameplay, if you're playing on Maddening, https://www.fe3h.com/meta can give you some good tips on gameplay priorities, but it's not necessary on lower difficulties where your units may be good enough to easily juggernaut on enemy phase.

It's the DLC paralogues that people think mess up the balance. The base game paralogues are "budgeted in" for the balance of the main game - they can give you a boost to get over a hump, but the exp formula is such that you can't really gain a massive lead that trivializes otherwise difficult maps.

each paralogue and main chapter has a recommended level - basically just do the chapters in order of the recommended level. (except for Lyn's which id maybe wait for later since it's weirdly hard for the suggested level)

Assuming you're on Maddening, the late game maps Chapter 21+ are really tough without the extra EXP from paralogues. The only one I'd recommend doing before getting the Byleth Emblem is Lucina's because it is very short and relatively easy. A general rule I follow is to do the paralogue 2-3 chapters after it unlocks.

You can move the right stick to pan the camera slightly, but that's it.

At least on Maddening, level up gains are fixed when you start the run (even with Random growths). Bond ring RNG can be advanced by entering a non-skirmish encounter, since RNG is used to determine certain aspects of enemy spawns.

1) They both do, but Engage's tends to be like a level or two above wherever you're at, so it's a bit harder in Engage. 

2) Correct, but with a modded 3DS or a laptop, it's very easy to sail the high seas and get the DLC. 

As for which one you should get, it sorta depends on what you're looking for since 3H and Engage are vastly different experiences. 3H is there for a story-based experience but rather meh and sorta convoluted gameplay that seems deep but isn't. Engage has a more classic FE gameplay everyone knows and loves with mechanics that make you feel like you gotta use everything at your disposal to win and even then, it shakes up to be a fair fight, but the story is a literal Saturday morning cartoon. They fulfill different needs. Whichever you prefer is totally up to you 

Silas wants to hold off on reclassing yet. Eventually he wants to spend a few levels in Hero to be able to grab Sol at Lv 5, so if you swap him to Ninja now, then you have to spend an extra seal going back into Ninja later. Even with that aside, Silas's bulk in Cav is also a bit better than as a Ninja, he has weapon triangle control, and with a decent defense stack (such as from a Meal, a Defense Tonic, and the +4 Defense Surge pot on the left near the start) he can wall out a lot of the enemies on this map pretty well. The grind out of E rank daggers is also not that hard, and you can skip it entirely with a Arms Scroll later on if you want.

Corrin getting Cav here is better, since it upgrades her movement and lets her keep the sword rank she's earned already. The Cav promotions aren't great, and she probably wants to swap out of them eventually, but for the midgame it's fine and it lets her start getting Lance rank now, which makes an eventual Wyvern Lord promotion happy.

If you're interested in Fortune's Weave, I think getting started on the Fodlanverse with Three Houses makes a lot of sense. It is, admittedly, a bit different from some of the older games, though.

In your shoes, I personally would do a replay

Tbh, I really don't think focusing on caps matters for CC either. Endgame enemies are stronger, sure, but it's not like FE12 where they are ramming their caps and are impossible to fight effectively for some classes. You also have infinite access to super strong weapons like braves, so stat caps simply aren't your main concern. Good movement and access to good weapon types is much more relevant. In particular, brave bows are key for deleting draco zombies, but even one guy with this ability is enough if you use lowman strats.

Wyvern Knight has a much better speed cap, and from what I've heard CC enemies are super bulky so pierce should be useful. That being said, most monster classes don't have that much speed outside of Gwyllgis, while Gorgons, Dracozombies, Deathgoyles, and Cyclopses can sometimes have huge speed. The other thing is Vanessa and Tana can go to WK and they have slighly better speed caps. Overall I think Lord is better for the +2 str and +4 def.