How the hell did you manage to marry Sothis on the Empire route? 

She was just in the list under ??? when i could chose a waifu who would get Jeralts ring.

It's rather funny when Byleth tried to give her the ring: link

New update has been stealth dropped, Lunatic mode, now called Maddening mode, is here! I'm still in the middle of my fortress knight only blue lions run, but no way can I wait, starting on black eagles right now!

Alright so I just finished my 2nd playthrough of this game. There are some serious flaws but overall the game is excellent.

On the first playthrough the monastery section just takes way too much time, especially before the timeskip. There are too many lost and found items to return, some of which you can't even return because they belong to a house leader or retainer. There are too many people to talk to in the first half of the game, and most of them provide dialog without context because they are not part of your house. You don't have enough mission points to do side battles, and doing side battles takes away from time needed to keep your class motivated. You kind of have to grind professor points by fishing. All in all the first playthrough is something like 70% monastery stuff and 30% battling before you get to the timeskip. 

But on the 2nd playthrough the game massively improves. You don't need to talk to everyone anymore, because you've already talked to them in the last game. You can boost your professor level to the max at the start of the game. This makes it so that you have plenty of professor points to spend on keeping your class motivated. This makes sure your class doesn't miss out on motivation by doing side battles. You have 3 battle points per week, which can be spent on doing side battles, as opposed to 1-2 in the first playthrough. New Game+ makes the game 40% monastery and 60% battling. After the timeskip it focuses even more on battling. 

There are still a few flaws in the game that New Game+ doesn't fix though. Cutscenes for support levels tend to overwhelm with sheer numbers. Then there's the fact that Assassins, Paladins, Heroes, and Swordmasters don't really have a good option for Master Classes. If you Masterclass an Assassin you lose the ability to open chests and doors, which is their best ability. You could wind up being a Mortal Savant, but that requires learning Reason. Likewise all these classes lack a good route to Master Class because they have to learn a skill that has nothing to do with what they initially learned. Of course, there's more to a character than making Mastery Class. You can add adjutants, give them a unique weapon, feed them stat boosters, or cross-class by unlocking extra abilities. For example: I gave Leonie a legendary Spear, Bow, and Shield to make up for the fact that she couldn't really make Great Knight without huge investments in Axe and Armor. And I wound up putting a battalion with insane endurance on  Hero Class Ignatz along with a ton of Leadership based skills, and a healer Adjutant, to make him keep pace with the Master Classes. 

Yeeeeeessssss!!!

Master classes while generally better aren't necessary, advanced classes are also viable so you don't gotta feel like you have to have all your units in master classes.

As for maddening mode, the first mock battle took me like 5 trys, so yeah I'm liking it already!

Yeah that's basically what I was saying to an extent. 

I started maddening mode yesterday. Took me seven tries to beat the just mock battle, and I still lost two units in the fight. Then I remembered that I have to activate Sothis' Shield if I want to not have my tank nuked by their magic users. 

By the end of Hard/Classic mode I was pretty much trolling the enemy units, so maddening should offer a good challenge. Death Knight will be insane though. I'm scared!

Edit: Also, there's no Divine Pulse in maddening mode! Lots of enemies can kill you in one hit. So a single mistake and you lose a unit! 

What is Sothis' Shield? Never heard of that. Divine Pulse is still there, 3 uses to start with which I think is less than hard mode. Given the game has same turn reinforcements and fog maps I'm glad it remains.

Hmmm. Maybe you just can' use Divine Pulse during the mock battle? 

Sothis' Shield is an ability you get by visiting the Tomb of the Progenitor God  and talking to a sleepy Sothis. You can get to this tomb in New Game+ by interacting with the Amiibo Gazebo. Anyway, Sothis' Shield buffs all party members' resistance to spells for a few turns. 

I broke down and got the expansion pass last night. The extra costumes were disappointing. They were really just pajamas for your classmates, and one extra costume for Byleth. The bonus items were pretty cool though. Especially the consumable that boosts movement by 2.

But was it worth $15? :L

I'll grant that regardless of the content, it's still the best dlc of any fire emblem for the price alone, but I still need the content itself to sell me on it.