Leif’s The Sage Lord paralogue in Fire Emblem Engage is admittedly one stage that has given me a lot of trouble to beat on Hard + Permadeath. This guide will include some advice on how I managed to beat it.
The two Ballista artilleries and the status-inflicting High Priests at the bottom of the map are the most troublesome. It’s a long distance to reach them and they will continue to cripple your movement and hit you with long-range arrows. All of this happens while you try to defeat the runaway enemies holding item drops.
I didn’t want to give up on the treasure so I didn’t take my time to move down to the Ballista artilleries. I used my high HP units combined with Dance (for the extra action) to attack the enemies with item drops. Most of them run away and do not attack back, which makes the artilleries your only threat. If you have long-range healers, it helps recover the HP lost from the Ballista artilleries. Just make sure both Ballista artilleries aren’t within range to fire at the same unit in a single turn.
While using your main units to get the drop items, your armored unit with Sigurd should be making their way to the Ballista artilleries. It should be easy to defeat them and the High Priests once you get there. The High Priests also have a limit to their staff usage. They won’t be able to attack after running out of uses, but they still wouldn’t be able to damage your armored unit even if they could attack.
After dealing with the bottom Ballista artilleries, your next move is the bridge confrontation. There will be many armored units and horsemen awaiting you. What I did was group up all my units on the bridge and used Corrin’s Fog to help protect them. My Berserker-class unit took the point with Ike’s Great Aether engage skill. The enemies attacked within a 1-2 block range but none of my units died. Ike’s Great Aether skill activated on my turn, heavily damaging or killing them and opening up a path for me to advance.
Around this time, Leif might command the bridge’s destruction. If any units haven’t crossed yet, it will make it slower for them to do so. Rescue (staff) can help get them across faster. A Sigurd emblem user can activate engage form (after recovering) and cross before the bridge is destroyed. Then Warp can teleport them nearer to the enemy’s Ballista.
The units on the right side of the bridge will have to take out the remaining Ballista artilleries. Remember to keep your low HP units behind because the Ballista will OHKO them. It would help if you had recovered engage forms by this time, too. But from here, once you’ve defeated all Ballista users, it should be able to win the stage and defeat Leif. Leif will begin when you’re near the last set of Ballistas.
