Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Chapter 8: Despair and Hope

After being saved from the wrath of general Petrine by Ranulf and the other Gallian warriors, the group is led to an old castle by Greil. In the night, Greil leaves the castle for a stroll and is accompanied by Ike. Half-way through, he tells Ike not to go any further and to go back to the castle. Ike disobeys once his father is out of sight and follows Greil into the heart of the forest where he and the black knight are fighting. The latter stabbed Greil, wounding him. The black knight wanted to know where the medallion is and threatened to kill Ike if Greil did not reveal it's location. He is scared off, however, once he hears a loud roar.

Ike takes Greil back to the castle where he is greeted by the rest of the Greil mercenaries. Greil dies before he can be healed. Once Titania revealed to the rest of the group that Ike would become the new commander, Shinon and Gatrie left. Boyd and Oscar tried to convince them to stay but their efforts were in vain. Despite this, Ike still accepts the role as leader and prepares for the march to the Gallian capital.

Base preparation
This is the first level where you can prepare for the next battle at a base. The first thing you should do is to go to the outfit section. Send to the convoy all items that cannot be wielded by the character holding them. After this is done you should use the shop. There are four options after doing this, choose the forge option. Make a Javelin (A throwing Lance) and increase it's attack and accuracy to max and reduce it's weight to it's lowest, give this javelin to Oscar. Once this is done you should make sure everyone has a ranged weapon and an iron and steel version of their weapon. The only exceptions to this are Ike and Boyd, instead of a steel sword, give Ike the armour slayer in the treasure chest from Chapter 7 and if it's durability isn't lower than 5, replace Boyd's steel axe with the Hammer. If you lack the funds to buy two hand axes from the Armoury sell some of the items that have low durability or the ones you can't use at this time.

Next up is the bonus experience and skills sections, from these seven levels you should have accumulated about 1000 bonus experience, use this to level up your characters. Boyd and Oscar should be level 12 before entering the next level and Rhys and Soren should be as close to level 10 as possible. Also make sure that Ike is above level 10 - level 15 is a good level for this chapter. Now onto Skills, You should have obtained the skill Miracle from one of the treasure chests from chapter 7, use it on Soren, Rhys or Ike. Be careful though, once you've taught a skill to a character, you cannot give it to another character.

Ike should be able to activate a support conversation with Oscar, decide for yourself if this will give you an advantage in battle as a character will get a bonus if they are near their support partner. Only allow Ike and Oscar to support each other if they are commonly fighting alongside each other.

Last is the Info section, use this to hear conversations and gather information about the plot, certain aspects of the game of even to collect items. View each one if you wish but remember to always view the two and three stared conversations as they are very important.

Once you've saved you should leave your base and start the next battle.

The Battle
There is very little left to do except reposition and choose your characters, you shouldn't bother with either, just save the game and begin the mission.

You should notice that there are three entrances into the section you are currently in. Move Ike to block the western entrance and equip the armour slayer, move Boyd to block the Eastern entrance and equip the hammer (or steel axe if the hammer's broken) and move Oscar to block the southern entrance and equip the forged Javelin (it's in green text).

This is all you need to do for the eight turns. Use Rhys to heal any of the three that gets seriously injured and then shove him out of the way of enemy fire using Mia or rescue him with Titania. Be careful when healing Boyd and then shoving, however, as there is a longbow-wielding archer who can still hit Rhys if he's directly next to Boyd. Move Boyd right a square or rescue him with Titania to solve this problem, when healing Ike, rescue Rhys with Titania and then drop him the next turn. You might think Soren is left out of the plan completely, but he can actually be useful in dealing the finishing bows to any weakened unit. If he's level 7 or higher, don't bother moving him away from danger by shoving or rescuing him.

After 8 turns you will have won the level.

How to win if Oscar is weak
If your Oscar is not good enough to hold the breech against those horsemen from the south who can all attack him, don't worry. You can fly Titania down on the first turn and attack one of the javelins - even if you don't beat it it will heal on its next turn instead of attacking. Leave the south open and Boyd within reach of one of the horsemen, who will take the bait - you can kill him next turn with Soren, Mia, Boyd and Oscar if necessary. Leave the east open, no one can reach it first turn. All of the horses that can't reach Boyd will attack Titania. They can't hurt her and will mostly all die. She still has time on turn two to plug the east breech, and Oscar can then hold the much weakened southern contingent. Then Rhys will be sure to get healing in on every turn, boosting his XP as best you can.