Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance Help

[Skyblade]

Since I recently obtained Radiant Dawn, I've been playing Path of Radiance again, and I remain stuck at one particular mission: Feral Frontier. The mission itself is fairly easy. My Soren is powerful enough to basically solo the entire thing, including the boss, but I still have problems. Basically, I love the bonus exp system, and I want the 2100+ bonus exp I get if I let all the Laguz live, but I also want to acquire all the hidden items. My problem is that I can't get both. If I have any of my characters equipped with weapons, they'll slaughter the laguz and rob me of my bonus exp. But, if I don't give them weapons, they'll be surrounded and unable to reach the boss, since even when they're in human form the laguz won't run away. So, does anyone have any advice for collecting all the shinies without killing any of the laguz?

[Creeping Shadow]

The easiest way to do this unfourtunatly is to have someone with the shade ability go trough and get all the treasure while you send everyone else in with no weapons. Then have the shade ability guy trade a weapon or spell to one of your strongest units and have them take care of the boss. Also have soren go to the top righthand corner of the map in the oasis area youll be rewarded so to say... (if none of that work refer to gamefaqs.)

[Skyblade]

The problem is that even with Shade, if that character is the only character in their attack range, they'll attack it. The way to do it is to use high Defense/Evade characters as tanks to hold off the enemies until the items are obtained.

Anyway, I finally did it. My team was Ike, Soren, Nephenee, Volke, Lethe, Mordecai, and Gatrie (Soren, Nephenee, and Gatrie were promoted). Gatrie was the key my previous attempts had been missing. I had to push enough bonus Exp to make him a General, so that he'd have two movement, but once I did that he was able to serve as a quite decent tank against the enemies around the Boots. All items obtained, Soren killed the boss in one turn, total bonus Exp: 2010. Yay!

[Heath]

Congratulations. Thanks for actually telling us how you got on because I had a think about the situation myself and couldn't really think of anything that would have been of a great deal of use.

[Skyblade]

Thanks, and NP.

Soren was my most powerful character, and, while his Defense is low (9 Defense is not good against laguz), his Speed let him dodge most hits, and I gave him Jill's Laguzguard. Nephenee was my most powerful physical attacker, and she had the Knight Ward to boost her Def to 22, allowing her to solo over to the Statue Fragment area. She got surrounded due to a slight mistake right before she reached there, but I sent Ike over as a distraction (he was level 20), and he pulled one of the laguz away (and a couple others had ended their transformation time) from her long enough for them to grab it together. Volke started at the bottom left of the area and moved to the left 1 square short of his max range on the first move. That grabbed the Guard. Then move his full distance to the top, and he'll grab the Silver Blade, then went to the side to get the Coin, and finally travelled all along the bottom of the screen until he reached the right side and headed up to get the White Gem (since Lethe and Stefan weren't be lucky enough to get it). Soren starts out at the top left area, and moving 1 Square left and the rest up gets him to the Shine area, which he got. Then his full movement to the right next turn grabbed him the Physic (Soren seemed to have a 50-50 chance on the Shine, but I got lucky with the Physic). Mordecai followed, Smiting Gatrie up to the Boots, and carrying Soren's weapons. Most of the laguz focused on Soren, with Gatrie as the secondary target. I had originally ignored Gatrie due to his terrible movement of 1 in the desert, but, by making him a General (extra 1 move in Desert!) and combining him with Mordecai's Smite, he was able to reach the Boots and was lucky enough to get them. Oh, and Ike picked up the Coin near the starting area, not that that was a terribly important item to get. And Lethe jumped up to recruit Stefan.

There, clear as mud, right? I'll make a JPG of my movements/starting placement and send it to you if you want.

Oh, and I didn't use my Knights because they had crummy movement and not enough Def (Gatrie had crummy movement, but Def to compensate), I didn't use Ilyana because she wasn't a Sage yet and I was afraid she'd die even with Shade, since she didn't have stats quite as uber as Soren's or the Laguzguard, and I didn't use Boyd or the swordmasters due to too low defense.