Could someone give me a list of how to get ALL of the characters in awakening

[yourlocalguy]

I just finished unlocking all of the kids. I have a few of the classic characters from the skirmishes (Florina, etc.)
Once I finish those, are there any more characters I can get? If so, how?

 

[yourlocalguy]

also, I am going to try another playthrough with different pairings so if someone could give me some recommendations on optimal pairings and such I would be thrilled, I know there's a thread about this, but a lot of it seemed to be people just saying who they paired together
also, I heard you can unlock different classes via DLC

@YourVeryOwnGeek you seem to know a lot about what you're talking about, gimme some tips.

 

[YourVeryOwnGeek]

For recruiting characters.

Pairings come down to weighing personal preference against math. No matter how you pair your units, there will be some that get the short end of the stick. I found that even in my optimal playthrough, there were some children that just weren't as useful as others, no matter who the father was. Noire and Owain stand out as some of the less useful children, as they have mage parents with physical class sets. I'll quote all of the relevant posts I made about my optimal PT.

Third playthrough (almost) optimal pairings.

Chrom/Olivia = Lucina with Lord/Myrm/Peg/Cav/Arch trees. Nearly perfect skill coverage.
Chrom/Olivia = Inigo with Merc/Myrm/Barb/Cav/Arch. Almost as good as Lucina, with Hero making up for the lack of Aether.

Avatar/Lucina = Morgan with everything. Aether/Counter inheritance.

Vaike/Sully = Kjelle with Knight/Cav/Myrm/Merc/Thief. Good skill coverage, high caps.

Ricken/Miriel = Laurent with Mage/Barb/DMage/Cav/Arch. Dat magic cap.

Gaius/Tharja = Noire with Arch/Knight/DMage/Peg/Thief/Myrm. Gaius' Fighter class becomes Pegasus Knight for Noire, which means free Galeforce.

Donnel/Nowi = Nah with Mkte/Wyvr/Mage/Merc/Troub/Peg. Villager becomes Peg, free Galeforce.

Stahl/Panne = Yarne with Tag/Thief/Barb/Cav/Arch/Myrm. Good skill coverage.

Gregor/Cherche = Gerome with Wyvr/Fighter/Priest/Merc/Barb/Myrm. That's about as good as Gerome will get.

Libra/Maribelle = Brady with Priest/Cav/Mage/DMage. I was running out of options at this point.

Henry/Sumia = Cynthia with Peg/Knight/Priest/Troub/Dmage/Thief. Sumia doesn't have many options.

Frederick/Lissa = Owain with Myrm/Priest/Barb/Cav/Knight/Wyvr. It was Freddy or Kellam, and Freddy won.

It feels like old times when I'm using spreadsheets to weigh the benefits of pairings. FE4's pairings were no-brainers most of the time, but Awakening had to throw classes into the mix. One thing never changes though, and that's that Arden and Kellam will remain forever alone.

Can you tell us what skills you passed on to each child?

Those are my plans. The only child I have so far is Lucina, but I'm working on the supports right now. She got Avoid +10 and Aether since I didn't have anything better to pass down and I knew I would be able to get whatever skills I wanted from grinding. I'll plan inheritance now.

Inigo: Rightful King from Chrom and Galeforce from Olivia. Chrom's son always gets Rightful King, and Galeforce is going to be the default mother skill.
Brady: Renewal from Libra and Galeforce from Maribelle. I don't plan to level Brady as a War Monk since I'm not fond of the class.
Morgan: Counter from MU and Aether from Lucina. Both are skills female Morgan can't learn on her own.
Owain: Luna from Frederick and Galeforce from Lissa.
Kjelle: Axefaire or Counter from Vaike, Astra from Sully.
Cynthia: Counter from Henry, Galeforce from Sumia.
Severa: Astra from Lon'qu, Galeforce from Cordelia.
Gerome: doesn't matter.
Yarne: Astra from Stahl, Swordbreaker from Panne.
Laurent: doesn't really matter, probably Lifetaker and Tomefaire.
Noire: Sol from Gaius, anything from Tharja.
Nah: Aptitude from Donnel(COUNTER IS OPTIMAL, BUT I'M LAZY), anything from Nowi.

So basically, pass down Counter to daughters, Galeforce to sons.

Keep in mind there's very little wiggle room in these pairings. This was an experiment in finding the way to best utilize class inheritance. I greatly underestimated Gerome, but he became a walking(flying) death machine with Swordbreaker and Armsthrift.

I recommend you play swingers with Tharja and Sully, giving Kjelle access to Galeforce instead of Noire. Noire would get slightly better caps this way, but she's the worst of the children imo so it doesn't matter.

 

[yourlocalguy]

For recruiting characters.

What about all of the oldschool characters? I already have a few of those, so I feel like I need to get all of them.
edit: NVM, there was a DLC tab thing

 

[yourlocalguy]

What classes should I make Morgan btw?

 

[YourVeryOwnGeek]

She has access to every class, so pick and choose which skills you want her to have. Galeforce, Aether(from Lucina/Cynthia inheritance), Lifetaker, Counter(from Avatar's inheritance), and Armsthrift are good baselines to have.

 

[yourlocalguy]

Is Armsthrift really any good?

 

[YourVeryOwnGeek]

It's next to useless at low levels, but when your units have maxed stats, it will save you a lot of hassle and gold by essentially giving expensive weapons infinite uses. If I'm using forged character or Brave weapons, I'll only give them to characters with Armsthrift. Plus, there aren't so many must-have skills that you can't stick Armsthrift on them while grinding. The procs (Luna/Sol/Aether/Vengeance/Ignis) can't activate off each other, so I usually stick with one and some passives.

 

[YourVeryOwnGeek]

I just realized how much better Cynthia, Brady, and Owain would be if I swapped their pairings. Sumia/Frederick for a pure physical Cynthia, Henry/Maribelle for a caster Brady with more skill options, and Lissa/Libra for a full caster Owain.

 

[yourlocalguy]

BTW, I have Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon. I played through a couple of missions, but I never beat it, and if I pick it back up, I'll start over. Is it worth playing? I might just replay FE 7 or 8 instead.. or maybe get an FE 6 rom. Never beat that one. I imported it a long time ago and got a little bit far, but I can't read japanese

 

[YourVeryOwnGeek]

Shadow Dragon is easily the worst game in the series. It's a direct remake of a twenty+ year old game with a minimal amount of new content to bring the game up to the current Fire Emblem standard. You will always feel that your units are weak, because they always are. No interesting characters, and just general player unfriendliness. The sequel, Heroes of Light and Shadow is worth playing. It was never released in English, but there's a really good translation patch for the rom that was finished a few months ago. It's like Shadow Dragon without the suck.

FE6 is good, not perfect. It's like FE7, but a little more bare bones because it was a transitional game from consoles to the GBA. It's worth playing if you liked FE7. I highly recommend playing FE4 and FE5 for the SNES. Both have good translation patches and are incredibly unique games. The idea for the marriage system in Awakening is basically lifted from FE4 but rounded out so the choices didn't matter so much. FE5 is like a proto-Path of Radiance, and by that I mean it's goooooood. It has a lot of chapter and character variation, has unique battle mechanics that were never revisited in the series, and is generally just hard as hell.