FashionEmblem

I don't know of a canonical recommended order. I think there's a lot of variation based on your level (i.e., when you tackle them), team composition, and how you want to use the DLC emblems. First, to clarify, the Divine Paralogues don't scale with the story chapter, but with the level of your team. I forget what the exact formula is, but for a map with "n" deployment slots, it will be the average level of your "n" highest level units (excluding Vander in the early game) plus a small number (e.g., 2). So, say the map has 10 deployment slots and your 10 strongest units average to level 12, then the Divine Paralogue enemies could be level 14. Because the Divine Paralogues grant a good amount of experience on their own, if you try to do them in succession, the enemies will in fact get stronger for each subsequent map. There is a notable difficulty spike where the enemies go from unpromoted to promoted (i.e., the enemy levels go above level 20). Also, in this game being promoted vs. not has no impact on experience gains; it's all about your unit's internal level relative to the enemies. For example, on recruitment Kagetsu is a level 1 Swordmaster with internal level 15, which is the equivalent of a level 16 unit without promotion. Ivy and Zelkov, whom join alongside him at level 17 unpromoted, will gain less experience since they are a level higher. Regarding order, the simplest order is how the DLC emblems make subsequent Divine Paralogues easier: Chrom -> Camilla -> Soren. Camilla's map is flier heavy, so the +10 magic and chain attack from engaging with Chrom can make it easy to one shot fliers with the Radiant Bow. Soren's map has the very annoying smoke terrain, which Camilla's Dragon Vein helps keep in check (especially before you have Corrin). Veronica can be helpful sooner than later since Reprisal is a very strong damage boost, but since it's one of the easier maps it can also be deferred to later. Hector is probably the least generally useful DLC emblem and one of the easier Divine Paralogues, so he can be left until last. Since Divine Paralogues scale with your team's levels, you will generally want to do harder ones earlier since enemies get very stat inflated in late-game Engage. Difficulty wise I'd rank Soren > Camilla > Chrom > Hector > Veronica. If you are shooting for early game, I'd say you ideally get through Soren, Camilla, and Chrom before enemies promote (though, in practice that can be hard/impossible to do them all since the Divine Paralogues tend to yield a lot of experience). In terms of emblem usage, it's much more bespoke to your playthrough. Veronica's SP boost skill is a pretty nice cheap-SP inherit that pays off better the sooner you get it, so you might want to rush her (though, Bond Fragment availability is rather low before fishing opens up after Chapter 16, which makes the higher bond level inherit more difficult). Soren pairs well with your later game dragon recruit since Dragon!Flare yields obscene tome crit rates alongside the healing effect, which means Soren might be prioritized around that recruitment. Chrom is a great emblem to get before flier heavy maps, such as Chapter 18, for Radiant Bow one-shots. Camilla's great before any maps where terrain gives you grief (e.g., put out some of the fire in Chapter 17 or remove more miasma in Chapters 15 and 19). And of course, if you have any particular build you want to get online sooner, then that should get priority.

My personal choices: Chloé: Early flier is a great target for the first Master Seal. Even more move/mobility, more speed, and more offense. Also a good opportunity for Chloé to gain access to swords as either a Griffin or Wyvern, and she is a good candidate for the Levin Sword. Citrinne: The staff utility gained on Sage or extra movement as a Mage Knight are neat. Levin Sword access as a Mage Knight is a cheap forge and strong in the early/mid game relative to tomes. Boucheron: This is more about Warrior being good than Boucheron. Can be done more effectively with Etie and Amber, but they also need a Second Seal. Anna can do Warrior well, especially with a Radiant Bow, but you have to deal with catching Anna's level up. If you have DLC, it's actually pretty easy to get Boucheron enough speed and build to double the dragon's in Tiki's paralogue with the Long Bow to one-round them in enemy phase, which makes that particular map much easier. Diamant: Gaining Hand Axes improves his early/mid game a lot thanks to 1-2 range backup. But, Diamant is a unit I've ultimately been pretty disappointed with in the long run—his stats just can't keep up. Alear: Promoting Alear before Chapter 11 is nice so they can have more movement for escape. However, they are usually my 5th promotion, which means they get the seal gained during Chapter 11 itself in my playthroughs. For what it's worth, they do need to be promoted in order to gain access to the Wyvern Ride minigame in the Somniel after Chapter 11, which gives some early bond fragments before fishing really opens up and items which can be sold (the Pure Waters are quite good if you are running Enchanters from DLC). I stand by the above in my experience aside from Diamant whom is probably best relegated to the bench after Chapter 11, thus should be left unpromoted. The additional promotions I would consider are: Céline: Gaining staff utility is nice, especially since I dislike Framme and am happy to bench her ASAP. Thing is, if I promote Chloé to Griffin and Citrinne to Sage, that staff utility is already covered. Overall I'd say Céline is worse than Citrinne because Céline is supposed to be faster but weaker, but is not fast enough to perform particularly well, unfortunately. Amber/Etie: Mentioned them above alongside Boucheron, but they deserve their own shout-out. They are both characters with lopsided stats very focused on strength. This is good in Engage—it's usually much easier to focus on patching up concentrated stat weaknesses or lean into points of strength in Engage than trying to take overall ok units and make them great. I put them lower in priority because they actually work fine without promotion throughout the early game. Amber has horse movement and works fine until more seals become available. Etie prefers Warrior to Sniper (though, a Lyn!Sniper!Etie can put in work with patched speed and high-range Astra Storms) but does appreciate the covert tag for hiding amongst the trees in Chapter 11, so she doesn't particularly need to rush a promotion or reclass. Alcryst: A lot of Alcryst's power comes from Luna, so rushing promotion for the skill is not an unwise choice. However, Alcryst needs time to grow into a Dexterity stat that can make Luna more reliable, so there isn't actually much bang for your buck in rushing. Lapis is pretty similar to Chloé stats wise, though with notably weaker magic (i.e., she can't Levin Sword her way around her low strength stat). Unfortunately for Lapis, she starts off as a Sword Fighter, so getting her into a better class line for her stats (e.g., Wyvern Knight) requires a Second Seal, whereas Chloé need only promote. Plus, this batch of units joins with low initial SP and Chloé has had the opportunity to snowball in the prior chapters and outclass Lapis at join. Lapis can also make a beeline for Hero's Brave Assist with an early promotion. Also, a Swordmaster Lapis does have good stats if instant promoted—she can double the Sword Fighters in Chapter 8. Anna has the lot of potential to grow well with good magic and speed growths, but suffers from joining underleveled. She's a project to train up to promotion, and her contributions in the meantime, aside from chain attack utility (for which she does not gain experience), are mediocre until she promotes and either gains bows as a Warrior or tomes from a reclass.

Alcryst shouldn't be a Sniper, but his personal class (which is the word sniper in French). Agreed that Alcryst is all about building a gambling build, though his dexterity is so high he can turn into a surprisingly good gamble. I did use him with Lyn because he takes her speed to run off quading with the Brave Bow to roll more for Luna procs. It's ... fine. I find his gambling fun, but I will not deny it's a gamble and there are more consistent strategies, especially since Lyn is a highly sought ring. Somebody like Amber or Etie can put in a lot more consistent work by using their higher strength stat to double with Lyn instead of relying on Luna chances for damage. However, since they typically would want Warrior to maximize for strength, it is nice that Alcryst brings the covert bonus of 20-range Astra Storms and Luna can boost damage of each individual hit. Alfred is mediocre. I think he's probably less bad than his bad start suggests—but on Maddening he gets doubled by so much of Chapter 5 and doesn't contribute much offensively by Chapter 6. His personal class line is also unimpressive—a gambling skill for defence when he could just go into Great Knight. Part of the issue is that even if he can grow out of some of his early mediocrity, what's the point when the game stacks so much power into later-joining units? Radiant Bow is really strong and Fogado is one of the better users of it (second best behind Anna of those with innate Bow talents). Radiant Bow +5 has 24 MT, which tripples to 72 magic attack against fliers. Endgame fliers have 95-96 magical bulk on Maddening. If you do Radiant Bow, +3 MT engrave (e.g., Radiance), +5 magic from an emblem (e.g., maxed Celica) that is 27 MT x 3 = 81 MT + 5 emblem magic = 86 magical attack. Fogado instant promoted to Cupido has 9 magic to start, and can go up to 10 easily with a meal (or 11 with a tonic). Boom, Fogado at level 17 (promoted to Cupido, but gaining no magic levels since) has enough power to one-shot endgame fliers at level ~40 with the Radiant Bow. Since Fogado will grow his magic (guaranteed on fixed growth Maddening), you can reduce the MT of the engraving or use different emblems accordingly. Cupido!Fogado works well with Eirika since his physical bows like Lunar Brace, the Radiant Bow appreciates Bravery and the magic bonus, and cavalry get a boost to power on Twin Strike. Cupido!Fogado is fast, so can potentially quad some things with the Brave Bow, buttressed by Lunar Brace. Warrior!Fogado has less magic, dexterity, and speed but much more strength and chain attacks as a viable alternative, though has less flexibility for weaker engraving to still hit Radiant Bow one-shots. Lapis is ok. Kagetsu does invalidate her if you don't want to run both. Lapis is like Chloé without magic, which is to say notably much weaker since she can't Levin Sword her way through enemy physical bulk. Lapis, like Kagetsu, wants a reclass to a more strength focused class like Wyvern. Unlike her early game competitor, Chloé, she needs both a Master and Second Seal to get there. She can stay in speedy weaker classes if you are willing to buttress her damage through emblem/skills. She can easily promote into Hero instead of Swordmaster to try rushing Brave Assist for a damage support role since Lucina and Dual Assist are not too far off. Her big problem is she desperately needs an early game Master Seal for any of these machinations but has really stiff competition for them. You can manipulate the bond ring RNG to get the Olwen S rank bond ring from Leif's set. Olwen S gives Dire Thunder, a skill that turns the Thunder tome into a brave weapon. This is quite strong and the easiest way to make use of her since her high magic lets her hit like a truck twice from three range. As enemy resistance increases this build falls off, but she can become more of a utility character with staff access as a Sage or High Priest. She can run Corrin for fire terrain as a mystical unit and 3 range Dracon Hex/Dreaful Aura from an electric tome. Otherwise, she can go Mage Knight and receive heavy favoritism to patch speed; inherit Speedtaker from Lyn and equip a +5 speed ring and she can hit doubling thresholds. On off-brand build I have considered is Sniper Citrinne. She can equip the Radiant Bow and put in good work despite the lower magic cap thanks to the crazy MT. Equip Lyn as her emblem to patch her speed and she can do 20 range covert Astra Storms off the Radiant Bow for big damage. As a downside relative to Alcryst, she will do little damage to enemy staff users, which are often the ones I want to one-round with Astra Storm from a big distance. With DLC Citrinne can actually work on enemy phase with emblem Veronica. Veronica gives a skill Reprisal which converts up to 50% of missing HP into attack power. Combined with Hold Out to survive at 1 HP and Vantage, Citrinne has high magic to hit one hit kills with Thoron at 1-3 range with some planning (mostly stat boosters to ensure thresholds in HP and Magic are met). Just keep her away from 4 range attackers (e.g., wyrms) and break (Fracture staff and fisticuffs enemies) and she can do this surprisingly safely. Well, his gimmick is doubling class growths, so you can do whatever you want with him if you invest the effort. Most, including myself, would say he is not worth the effort, but the potential is certainly there. Jean suffers from the fact that you really want to promote a unit to an advanced class before reclassing them since you want to minimize time spent on base classes (especially for a character that cares so much about class growths). Since Jean joins at base level 1, he ideally wants to reclass to another base class immediately to align his growths and spend no time leveling as a Martial Monk (though, it at least gives more magic, so the reclass may not be necessary). However, his paralogue opens up after Chapter 5 and there is no Second Seal in sight until after Chapter 8—feels like an oversight when proximal Anna's paralogue gives a Master Seal. For some form of mage build this is not a big deal since Martial Monk has a good magic growth, but for physical builds this is quite frustrating. With DLC you can do the Fell Xenologue early for a Second Seal reward on completion, but then you have a bunch of level 20 promoted characters in your army at Chapter 6 and have broken the game balance (and also broken the balance of Divine Paralogues and eventual skirmishes which scale level based on the average of your highest level units). If I were opitimizing him for a physical class, I would probably defer Anna's paralogue until after getting a Second Seal after Chapter 8 (which also means deferring the Master Seal from Anna's paralogue ...), then bringing Jean to Anna's paralogue and Chapters 9 and 10 while spamming Great Sacrifice from Micaiah in an attempt to power level him to catch up with the team. It would work, but I have always just skipped Jean instead of dealing with all that.

Engage has different mechanics than many other fire emblems and you should promote ASAP. The game works like Awakening where characters can Second Seal after hitting the level cap of 20 promoted back to level 1, so there are no lost opportunities to level from early promotion. Furthermore, the level curve for the game gives no penalty for promoting as it is based purely on internal level and promoting/reclassing does not increase internal level (by contrast, in Awakening promotion does increase internal level for the exp calculation). With no downside, you want to promote early for swifter access to class skills and improved class growth rates (though, these increased growths only matter at the margins, if at all). I think this contradicts your point about the spirit of the game—the game's spirit is often encouraging you to use staves and several maps are puzzles you want to solve with staves. A good example is on the enemy's side in Byleth's paralogue, where Byleth is flanked by two warp staffers that will activate on your approach and warp not-Dimitri and not-Edelgard forward, then Byleth Goddess Dances the warpers, whom proceed to warp forward an additional pair of enemies forward. Finally, the warpers will even chain warp afterwards to warp one of themselves and an enemy even further into your backline to threaten more crystals to ruin your bonus objective. If the enemy AI can be clever about staff usage, why not the player? The emblems give the players a lot of crazy strategic options and the game is designed—for the most part—around you using them so I don't think you need this restriction because the line is arbitrary (i.e., why no "trick" staves but yes to Bonded Shield, Goddess Dance, Corrin terrain, Dreadful Aura, Astra Storm AI manipulation, etc?) Of course, it is your playthrough so you can do whatever challenge set or restrictions you desire, but you can use a conservative amount of "trick" staves without banning them entirely—some maps very clearly scream for them (e.g., ) Overall note about skills is I'm not noticing many mentions of Canter—it is easily one of the strongest inheritable skills in the game and I stick it on nearly everyone except some of my more dedicated enemy phase builds. Also, in the proceeding section, some of my skill recommendations are SP intensive, but I'm assuming you will make use of the well and gain some SP books along the way. Alear is more of a utility character than a dodge-tank or any kind of combatant really, but they can do dogetanking (and soloing the game with Alear depends on avoiding for survival). Main problem is Alear as a Divine Dragon lacks 2-range aside from Levin Sword off their weak magic stat to do any counters as a dodgetank. Forging Liberation early is good since it's fairly cheap to improve Alear's combat and get some experience rolling, but their combat does inevitably fall off and despite the forging so will Liberation itself. Dawn engrave is a big hit to MT and with Alear already being rather weak, you are hampering their combat even further. I personally use the Dawn Engrave on Shielding Arts for avoid on my support units, primarily Seadall (though, promoted Alear does use that for holding chokepoints as a dodgetank until Seadall's recruitment). I recommend looking at Alear as a support/utility character instead of their combat contributions. With Emblems, Divine Dragon!Alear can control all terrains with Corrin or apply Rally Spectrum with Byleth's Goddess Dance/Instruct. Alear also makes a versatile staff user thanks to convoy access, which can be achieved with Micaiah or a reclass to Griffin Knight or Martial Master. Finally, as you are already aware, Alear can make a great Lucina user thanks to supporting everyone and the Dual Support skill. It's also nice that Alear has a 90% success rate for Bonded Shield as a Divine Dragon and 100% as a Qi Adept (which combines nicely with staff access in Martial Master or dagger chain attacks from the Enchanter DLC class). If you want combat Alear, go with a reclass to buttress strength such a Wyvern Knight. In Maddening difficulty, enemies will not attack if they have 0 damage or hit, which mitigates Corrin!Covert dodgetanking. You can still use the strategy, but you want to keep enemy hit rates above 0, so going for engraves that give weaker avoid, ~10 in my experience (e.g., Genealogy or Rivalry engraves). Yunaka is actually the better choice here since she has more resistance—mystic units ignoring the 60 avoid from the fog are the Achilles heel of this strategy. Zelkov has better strength, physical bulk, avoid (thanks to his personal skill), and level, but the strength difference is small (2 if equivalently leveled) and not enough to compensate for Yunaka's better resistance and crit (from her personal skill in terrain). I recommend Steel Dagger +4 as a weapon since it has 10 crit and a good amount of might. Note that your damage will fall off as the game goes on because enemy bulk in Maddening is crazy high towards the late-game and Thief class strength stats do not keep up, but it's still helpful for softening enemies just beyond one-rounding thresholds and applying some poison (and a couple of crits can still net kills sometimes). Kagetsu has amazing base stats but is held back by Swordmaster being a mediocre class. Swordlocked means melee locked aside from the Levin Sword, but Kagetsu does not get good magic. 5 move infantry is generally unimpressive without some additional oomph (e.g., long bow chain attack and great physical offense stats from Warrior or Brave Assist Heroes). Kagetsu's base strength is amazing, but his growth is actually a little bit low—I recommend a reclass to a strength boosting class such as Wyvern Knight. Sword/Axe Wyvern!Kagetsu is popular since it's the quickest he will hit a reclass without DLC (axes from Ike after Chapter 13), but I think lances are also viable if you are patient (Eirika gives lances after Chapter 16) or have DLC (Edelgard with Dimitri and Claude, which is available with no divine paralogue) because lances have higher hit and more accuracy (late game enemy avoid is annoyingly high—Poleaxe in particular feel useless with it's super-low hit). This is a good build because Ivy wants speed (lots of it) and dexterity. In the long-run though, Lyn on a physical attacker is nice because many also need speed help and Mulagir is a great weapon that a mage like Ivy can't make use of. With the well update, you can easily get enough SP for Ivy to inherit Speedtaker and/or Speed+ from Lyn (or, even better, Speed/Dex+ from Chrobin with DLC) to free up the emblem. I actually like running Ivy with Sigurd since Override isn't as useful to me as Astra Storm nor Mulagir once Sigurd is back and Ivy can make use of Canter from the ring and focus on inherits for her speed and/or hit issues. You mention it in your post, to some extent, but I'd say swords are the better way to go for a Griffin Knight Chloé. She is super strong in the early game thanks to flight and speed, but her physical damage can wind up lacking in the late-game. She can overcome this by running swords because Levin Sword >> Flame Lance for magic damage (Flame Lance has lower MT, lower hit, and weighs a bunch more). Eirika is also a good synergy because Lunar Brace boosts physical damage, the magic boost and bravery can boost magic damage and she's fast enough to double a lot of enemies and wring out the most out of the extra damage. Regarding skills, I'm very surprised by the lack of Canter on your high mobility unit that can swoop in, act, and most easily retreat to safety (or move forward for aggressive plays). Finally, and this is an unfortunate thing about Fire Emblem English, but avoid and dodge are different stats—avoid is lowering enemy hit and dodge is lowering enemy crit. Dodge probably is not doing much for Chloé, though I see the utility of some avoid on a speedy unit (but, that is cancelled out by a Sword/Lance Power skill, so she can't really stack avoid—especially without terrain bonuses as a flier). I'd say just go with Canter and Sword Power on a Sword Griffin. I had a lot of success on a recent playthrough with Martial Master Chloé. Her solid mix of strength and magic means she gets solid physical attacks with arts on the average of the two stats. Her high speed modifier allows her to cap speed at 31 as a Martial Master, and equipping the A-rank Flashing Fist Arts adds an additional 5 speed up to 36, where a +2 meal or Speed Tonic brings her up 38 speed at which she can quad attack endgame Halberdiers. Combine quad hitting with Eirika's ring and you get a lot of damage, then for the skills you can inherit Canter (hit and run) and/or Speed+ (get her up to 43 speed with Speed +5 and she can now quad-hit endgame Heroes) or Alacrity++ (she will quad hit before a counter, often killing an enemy before suffering any repercussions). Alternatively, this build can run Lyn for crazy speed (Speedtaker is overkill, however) and inherit Lunar Brace for the damage. You do have to be a bit deliberate with class pathing (or DLC Starsphere) to ensure Chloé hits her speed cap and 9 build as a Martial Master so she does not get weighed down by the Flashing Fist Arts. Actually, I'd say Panette works better as an enemy phase unit thanks to her ability to stack crit so high. I recommend for skills inheriting either Wrath from Ike or Vantage from Leif and run the other emblem. Vantage/Wrath creates a semi-invulnerable combination on enemy phase where after taking enough damage to hit the Vantage threshold, you will counterattack and kill subsequent enemies with crit before they have the chance to kill you. With the extra skill slot you can fine tune the build with either more bulk (e.g., Hold Out, Resolve) or more hit/consistency (e.g., Hit+, Dexterity+, or Divine Pulse). Berserker is a mediocre class, so I would recommend Warrior instead. You keep a similarly high strength stat, but gain access to bows for Long Bow chain attacks and maiming fliers. Leif in particularly synergizes well with Warriors, but you must keep their bond level below 10 (easily achievable since the bond level will stay locked at 9 if you never trigger the bond conversation). Adaptable on Leif will switch your weapon when engaged to always counterattack and for weapon triangle advantage. Warriors have the benefit that they can switch between a Killer Axe, Killer Bow, and Long Bow to best have the chance of criting/killing the enemy in the Vantage/Wrath set-up for 1-3 range. However, Leif can also switch to his engage weapons which messes up this strategy, so you want to stay below bond level 10 to avoid switching into the Master Lance (low hit, no crit) nor Light Brand (has some crit, but off magic instead of strength). For the Leif version of the build, I recommend inheriting Hold Out+ alongside Wrath to make it easier to hit the Vantage threshold (only at 25% if you don't level up bond further than 9). For Vantage/Wrath, I would say Sacred Engrave is better than Corrin since it gives hit, maintains might (unlike Blazing engrave) and the penalty to dodge is mitigated by the Vantage/Wrath set-up (you should crit and kill your enemies before they have the chance to crit you). But, you likely want a crit engrave on all three of the aforementioned weapons in the Leif setup. The Ike variant can't swap weapons on a whim, so you are probably using two crit engraves for Killer Axe and Tomahawk. Diamant is like, my most dissapointing child in this game. Love his design and character, he puts in solid work when he first joins, and then the game turns into the steady march of him falling off. Successor is unfortunately a mediocre class since it doesn't have any noteable niche. The dexterity stat is simply too low to rely on Sol, and amongst backup classes it's outclassed by Hero, Warrior, and even Halberdier. Unfortunately, Diamant doesn't make a great reclass candidate because his personal base stats are medicore and his stats are mostly carried by his personal class bases. As a Hero, his stats are mostly irrelevant as a Brave Assist/Dual Assist bot, but his innate proficiency is in swords so he is stuck at C rank axes or lances and no access to Tomahawks or Spears should he want to chip into combat directly. He does fine in Warrior, but he loses enough speed from Successor for it to be a problem and he's rather outclassed by many other potential Warriors. Diamant's stats are also too spread out to make things work for him—not enough strength, speed, nor defense to really pull off a strong physical presence in your army, unfortunately. Sage has a low speed cap, so it's probably not the best magic class for Anna. Mage Knight has better speed combined with the Chaos Storm skill for even more speed. High Priest gives more luck if you want Anna to farm gold, but being stuck at B tomes is a notable penalty (access to A rank staves is nice though). Radiant Bow Warrior!Anna actually works quite well with her magic—she has an easy time one-shotting fliers with that since the bow has crazy high MT. Pandreo is praised as the only mighty mage in the game with a good speed stat and a solid build stat (enough to ultimately wield Bolganone without being weighed down). Clanne and Céline have some speed but require investment to reach promotion level AND have medicore magic and build stats (and Céline's speed isn't even that good). Hortensia can promote on join and is speedy, but lacks a magic stat and tome rank and is really a staff utility bot. Ivy and Citrinne have better magic than Pandreo, but MUCH worse speed (and Citrinne has abyssmal speed). Pandreo stands-out among his native mage bretheren for being able to actually double a good slice of enemies with Bolganone without substantial investment. Sage Pandreo is good since he gets A rank staves and his personal skill can improve hit rates. Sage's main problem is its low speed cap combined with Pandreo's negative modifer to speed—he caps Sage speed at a mere 29 (btu he does have a good growth/base to hit that cap surprisingly early). He wants an emblem that pumps up his speed a little bit more—Byleth for Thyrsus increased range alongside the magic and speed boost and Divine Pulse improving staff accuracy is my usual choice. If you wanted the luck from Byleth for Anna's gold farm, then Pandreo will do ok with a speed boost but no magic boost. Mage Knight is a better offensive variant since he isn't hampered as much by the low speed cap and can reliably double without particular emblem love (gives option to run Celica for more magic power, for example). Her offense is mediocre on fixed-growth Maddening. She just doesn't have enough base magic or growth and is stuck at B rank tomes. Her staff utility is unrivaled thanks to extra range, World Tree conservation, and flight, Skills wise, Divine Pulse is often a better way to boost her staff accuracy instead of Staff Mastery. Besides that, she wants Canter, especially since she is frail and wants to do her staff support and flee to safety. I am confused here. Mage Knight gives no staff access—did you mean Sage? Royal Knight? Byleth also does +3 to all stats for dragons, not +7. She actually joins overleveled in Maddening by a smidge due to the reduced experience curve. She's fine—most will run her (and Mauvier) if they've only been using 12 units up to this point since they join on level alongside the extra deployment slots they need. Her combat isn't too impressive in the base game—she's hampered by her low attack speed and near non-existent bulk (sometimes you want to one round armored opponents whom will oneshot her with Spears/Tomahawks). She does give dragon utility and can take over Corrin or Byleth from Alear as Alear maybe switches over to using Engage+. Veyle is one of the best Corrin users with access to all terrains and 3-range electric magic to apply Draconic Hex and Dreadful Aura with the most range flexibility. She appreciates the speed from Byleth, though I don't know if it helps her actually hit any particular doubling thresholds. As a dragon with daggers, she can do Lucina's Bonded Shield with an elevated 90% success rate while spreading poison with Dual Strike chain attacks (which is only outclassed by the DLC enchanter class). With DLC, her combat is crazy strong with emblem Soren. Flare from Soren heals 50% damage dealt and doubles tome crit rate for dragons, yielding a crazy crit-Nosferatu build. The Fell Dragon exclusive Obscurite tome has 10 inherent crit, so a crit engrave (e.g., Fates or Revelations) will make her an amazing enemy phase combatant while engaged to Soren. Skills wise she wants Hold Out and probably a hit boosting skill (Divine Pulse is often the best choice among them). Merrin is actually quite strong. Her base stats are very similar to Kagetsu with a little bit less strength but a bunch more magic, which is actually good for punching through high defense in the late game with magic weapons. I'm surprised you mention her failing to avoid since she is super speedy and one of my better avoid units—maybe a combination of bad luck on combat rolls or she was RNG screwed in speed for your playthrough? Alternatively, if her avoid is compared to a Dual Support Alear or Coverts in fog, then yes it will seem lackluster (but, as mentioned about Zelkov and Yunaka, you actually need enemies to have >0 hit for them to attack in Maddening difficulty). Merrin's flaw is that her personal strength growth is on the lower side, so she wants a class that helps patch it up, which Wolf Knight does not. She does well as a Wyvern Knight or a Warrior to patch up her strength class base/growth. Warrior is actually a really nice option because she can apply her magic stat to the Radiant Bow to one shot fliers with its crazy might. For context, endgame Maddening Wyverns have 95 magical bulk (HP + Res) and Griffins have 96. Radiant Bow +5 has 24 MT, which equated to 72 attack against those fliers. Then you can use engraves to boost might further and end up with a surprisingly low magic stat to one-shot fliers, which Merrin can hit. Regarding Draconic Hex—that's a great skill but probably best used by someone with 1-3 ranged attacks for the most flexibility applying the debuff. Finally, your Merrin probably didn't contribute much in combat due to the aforementioned Wolf Knight strength issues, especially since Lucina gives no strength.

Going into this with a Maddening mindset. What stands out about Ivy is she is one of only two (three with Zelestia from DLC) fliers with tomes. Ivy does have speed and hit issues, so as a nuker she will need to correct for those, which can be worth if you really want that tome flier. Hortensia has low magic and caps at B rank tomes—she really wants to focus on staff utility not combat. And Zelestia has good speed, but mediocre magic, and I think it ends up being easier to patch low speed than magic. Ivy will want some hit engraves, however. You can get similar results out of Levin Sword Griffin Knights, but they may have worse staff rank, do not have access to 3 range, and the Levin Sword can be exceeded in might by Bolganone depending on how you want to allocate your forging resources. To be honest, even if you prefer Levin Sword Griffins to Ivy, why not use both? Only Pandreo, Lindon, and Mauvier (and Gregory with DLC) can hit B staves as Griffins, and only really Pandreo (and Gregory) crowd out Ivy since Lindon and Mauvier have worse availability. I'm not sure why Ivy needing investment for her speed issues automatically yields the assumption that she needs to run Lyn, a heavily contested emblem, specifically. Ivy can also work really well if you inherit Speedtaker from Lyn (requiring only level 5 bond) and run another emblem. I think in an ideal world, an offensive Ivy inherits Speedtaker and Spd +3-5 (or, with DLC, Spd/Dex +3-5) and can equip Sigurd for Canter (+). Even without the well she should be able to accumulate 2000 SP for Speedtaker and Speed +4 rather easily. Sigurd gives her some extra Dex, Def, and Bld, all of which she appreciates. At internal level 39 Ivy has 10 build, so Sigurd's build helps her fully negate the weight penalty for Bolganone and bring down the weight penalty for Nova to just 1. Momentum from Sigurd gives her a little bit of a power boost despite Sigurd giving no magic, and as a flier she has the greatest flexibility to maximize Momentum without engaging. Having the extra point of movement and upgraded Canter + is also nice for a flying mage to hit and run or get maximal range from staves. I find greater use for Astra Storm than Override once Sigurd becomes available again, so I personally prefer going this route. In my playthrough, Ivy was even able to one shot a column of Mage Knights with Ridersbane!Override in the bond paralogue, which exceeded my expectations. Ivy with full Speedtaker and Speed +4 hits 37 speed at internal level 39, which is pretty good, though not enough to double speedier enemies (I think they top out at 44 speed on Maddening). Another option is to run Marth for speed and dexterity, but Marth has bad availability after Ivy's join, the strength does nothing for her, and +strength/+speed is a desirable combination for any physical attacker. Other options for Ivy are a flying Draconic Hex user that can debuff at three range with electric magic. Either inherit Draconic Hex or run Corrin; the flier dragon vein is mediocre, but flier 3-range Dreadful Aura when engaged is quite powerful—up to the player which they value more. Ivy can also use the flier bonus for extra-range Warp Ragnarok with Celica, though I find Warp Ragnarok to be pretty mediocre once Celica returns—maybe occasionally useful for sniping out a thief combined with an Astra Storm, if it doesn't leave Ivy surrounded by enemies. With DLC, Ivy can rock Chrom for a speed and dexterity boost similar to Marth, but with better synergy when engaged thanks to +10 magic and magical engage weapons. Similar to Marth, not using Chrom's strength/speed combination is a bit of a shame, and Chrom is really good for taking any bow user into Radiant Bow flier one rounds regardless of their magic stat. Camilla also gives a good speed boost and magical engage weapons, but I'd rather use Soar to get an additional flier. Soren and Veronica work well too, though Soren in particular has a much better user in Veyle. Veronica's Reprisal bonus damage works better on a hybrid attacker, in my opinion, since it can boost both physical and magical damage. For example, Veronica!Warrior!Fogado can hit one round thresholds for Radiant Bow thanks to bonus magic, and use Reprisal to hit like a truck either physically or magically against other enemies.

Amber is more or less a physical version of Citrinne: great strength, and not much else going on. Unfortunately for Amber, enemy defense scales much better than resistance, Citrinne can get staff utility, and Citrinne gets to attack from range. While Amber is certainly physically bulkier than Citrinne (a low bar), he also has to attack more in melee and suffer more counterattacks, which can rack up big damage since Amber has rather poor speed and his defense is rather mid. Amber also faces stiff competition on the physical side for high strength from Panette and characters with good speed (e.g., Kagetsu) or good speed and enough magic to dip into magic weapons (e.g., Chloé, Fogado, and Merrin). Much like Citrinne (e.g., Dire Thunder), if you want to use Amber you need to lean into using his high attack stat. Most straightforward way to do this is a reclass into Halberdier for access to Pincer Attack. Who cares if Amber can ever double from his speed stat when Pincer Attack guarantees doubles? Good synergy here is combining with a forged Brave Lance (x4 attacks), Lunar Brace (extra true damage for each hit), and maybe emblem Roy (Hold Out to deal with counterattack damage at melee and extra strength). As a slight negative, Pincer Attack does negate Amber's personal ability, so no extra hit for him, unfortunately. Since Amber has a good strength base/growth, he can also go into classes that typically have low strength and still dish out good damage from them, such as Thief, Wolf Knight (no second seal required, even), or Bow Knight. Some of these classes even give him enough speed where he can be patched into a good speed territory. For example, on fixed growths (i.e., Maddening) instant promote Wolf Knight!Amber hits 28 speed at internal level 39, which can be boosted pretty easily with Speed +5 and a speed boosting emblem (e.g., Marth or Lyn, or Chrom and Camilla with DLC) to ~38 speed (without any Speedtaker set up, if Lyn is chosen), the same as an internal level 39 WolfKnight!Merrin without any speed boosts. Meanwhile, WolfKnight!Amber hits 29 strength while WolfKnight!Merrin hits 22. This isn't to say Amber is better than Merrin, since she can also receive speed investment (get to a place where she can double even the speediest of enemies) and attack buffs, plus Merrin has the flexibility to target Res sometimes, but a speed invested Amber can do good work. Finally Amber can do anything that puts his strength to work decently well, such as Warrior or Hero. With his strength Amber can toss stronger Javelins and Spears as a Hero for better chip while avoiding the counterattacks he despises to keep Brave Assist up, for example. Availability wise I think Amber does alright. He can rock Cavalier until Master Seals become more available, can gain a lot of weapon proficiencies for reclassing, and has 800 base SP which means it's quite doable to get him Canter via Chapter 9 with only one chapter of favoritism.

So much to say, so little time about overall opinions on Engage. It really does come down to story vs. gameplay for me as it does for most people. Story The story is rather mediocre, but it has a few moments that work well. Chapter 10 works well emotionally if you get Diamant's and Alcryst's dialogue with the second boss of the map. Chapter 11 is a great moment for handing the player's their lowest moment and raising the stakes in both story and gameplay. I like the scene you get after Chapter 24 between I also like subtle story details you notice on repeat like Lumera asking Alear how they summoned Marth pre-Chapter 2 for And, that's about it for the good to me. For the bad, we start of with Lumera's immediate death flag at the outset of the game. Killing off the young protagonist's parent at the outset of a fantasy adventure is a standard trope. Petty cliché at this point, but also narratively functional as it makes for a good inciting incident forcing the protagonist to abandon their innocence and set forth with some inherent drama and trauma. Problem is, if you also make the protagonist an amnesiac (also a standard utility trope, to diegetically justify exposition to the audience), the death of their parent loses all of the punch. And when you contrast it with later good boss dialogue from sons, who do have their memories intact, killing their father, it's extra infuriating that some of the writing staff does understand how to make a short-lived parent's death have some punch. Even worse, they have done this twice now with Fates! In a row! (excluding SoV as a remake and Three Houses due to Koe Tecmo's involvement). It feels like one of two things: either their writing staff has a rudimentary understanding of the functional uses of these tropes and thinks you can slap them all together with wanton abandon, or we are getting an early draft of their script with time/resources/budget preventing them from fixing these glaring flaws. Add onto this the under-baking of all the backstories for the villains My final big story gripe is Chapter 22 Otherwise the story is a straightforward mediocre macguffin fetch quest. Character writing I would also say is average to mediocre with a few stand outs in some supports (e.g., Yunaka, Citrinne, Céline, Fogado, and Rosado). I guess the reason Engage's story bothers me so much is because it borrows so much from Fates, and feels like they learned nothing from their past mistakes. Seriously, our avatar protagonist is an amnesiac dragon child, who turns out Then their mom dies pretty much immediately upon reunion. Then you set forth on your fantasy adventure where you recruit units mostly based on them being royals with two retainers each (there are even 8 royal siblings in both games). And, in the late moment of desperation It was uninspiring in Fates, where at least Conquest has an interesting premise. In Engage, the story is executed a bit more competently, but does not even have an interesting premise nor fail in interesting ways. Gameplay Gameplay is pretty great. I personally like this more than Conquest, but that's also largely because I have become a better Fire Emblem player since and if the game is going to be a creative challenge I appreciate a rewind mechanic as a quality of life upgrade for my stumbles. I like the map design and I like the emblem powers for giving tools to the player (and the enemies). Early game Maddening with fixed growth is very tightly balanced and forces you to really use all your tools. For example, Etie falls 3 attack short of one-shotting fliers in Chapter 4, which means that Alear's personal skill can help her score those one hit kills. At the start of Chapter 5, you have an armored knight that Céline leaves with 1 HP when attacking with Fire, Celica, and Resonance, so better use either a chain attack or Alear's personal to score that kill. Special shout outs to Chapter 11 for the gameplay/story integration as you make a desperate break for it, Chapter 14 for encouraging you to use Astra Storm to bait out the Hounds one by one, Chapter 17 for the epic 6 on 6 emblem cage match, Chapter 19 for giving a boss a Warp staff and Micaiah to flood your side of the map with reinforcements, and Chapter 25 for rewarding the player if they realize they can rewarp/rescue half their deployment into the center of the map on turn 1. There's also a lot of fun to be had in paralogues, but to avoid making this list too long, special shot outs to Leif's paralogue for incentivizing a Micaiah Rewarp to deal with those cracked out southern ballistae. I also think the class system is one of the better ones. Reclassing is mostly easy since bond fragments are plentiful (sometimes emblem availability can make it difficult, however) and the classes are more balanced than usual, with actual reason to use some infantry in addition to your fliers thanks to chain attacks for backups and covert avoid bonuses. Being immune to break and just obscenely defensive is great for armors, just wish they got a point of movement on promotion or Wary Fighter returned from Fates (though the combination with Ike might be too strong, so I understand its exclusion). Cavalry are maybe a bit too nerfed (or, rather, fliers should be more nerfed), and a lot of infantry classes lack great niches (Generals, Swordmasters, Berserkers and Snipers are rather underwhelming), but I will take the improvements. My only complaint about the map design is that towards the end the game relies a bit too much on making the enemies super bulky stat balls. The most egregious to me is Marth's paralogue where the enemy quality is a bit too high in my opinion and overly incentivizes a defeat boss warp skip—I'd like the choice to play the map without abject suffering (Chapter 25, which I praise above, has a similar issue but the warp skip there makes me feel clever for creating a free choke point for a third of the map, rather than just skipping the entire level—although further skipping Chapter 25 is an option too, if desired). My other complaint is one mentioned by others, which is the strange power leveling for recruitable units. Typically, I would think of most later recruits of being sidegrades or downgrades for the characters you have trained up to that point—i.e., if you train your zeroes to heroes you are rewarded and if you let them die (or hit the bench) you get a viable replacement, but it's often a bit of a punishment. This is inverted in Engage where the later recruits having better stats, free levels, and often prepromoted (saving you the expense of a Master Seal) so that you are disincentivized from training anyone up. For example, why bother with Clanne, Céline, or Citrinne when Ivy and Pandreo are around the corner? Building/training your units is also hampered by the SP system making it difficult to equip skills that improve characters (especially early ones who join with bad SP and a dearth of emblems to accumulate SP), but that has been mitigated by the free well update. tl;dr Overall, I would say Engage is a great strategy game, but a poor RPG. Lots of tactical depth in the map design, interesting tools for the player to concoct creative strategies, and an improved class balance, combined with a lackluster story and lack of a training arc for your combatants.

In my Maddening experience, Diamant is unfortunately one of those characters that falls short of excelling. Enough speed to avoid being doubled, but not enough to double. Pretty strong, but not enough to keep up with enemy defense, especially without doubling. Fairly bulky for a non-armor, but not quite bulky enough and unfortunately Sol off his low dexterity does not bridge the gap. Since Sol is mediocre on him, his personal class doesn't offer much since it's an axe Hero with better weapon ranks but a much worse class skill. Unfortunately, I found that Diamant's stats are tied up in his personal class having good bases, so reclassing him out doesn't really help him aside from being some form of support (e.g., a Brave Assist/Dual Assist bot). Aside from all that, Diamant's personal skill is nice for boosting the accuracy of axes on player phase and he has good build to weild heavy weapons such as those axes well. At his best Diamant is probably in his personal class focused on tanking. He can use Roy for Hold Out and with enough other tanking support (e.g., inheriting Resolve) Sol is probably reliable enough to keep him from dying. He can also run Ike and go for Vantage + Wrath, but that has some unfortunate anti-synergy with Sol, especially if Sol procs at an unfortunate moment to take you out of Vantage range and set you up for a subsequent death. On the bright side, Diamant is more likely to crit in such a scenario thanks to Wrath, so a Sol crit is more likely than not to top out his HP rather than leading him to the grave, but the situations where that fails will sting. From DLC, Hector works well enough for Diamant, improving his bulk, allowing him to double early in enemy phase with Quick Riposte, and Sol can even re-up Quick Riposte occasionally. As a physical bruiser with middling speed, Diamant can also benefit from all of Lyn's speed boosts, but that's not a particular niche to him.

I played on Maddening and am a fan of gambling Alcryst, but I won't deny that it's a gamble. He hits 30 Dex at internal level 25, and 40 Dex at internal level 39. That's a quite solid chance of proccing Luna once when attacking 4 times with a Brave Bow. Unfortunately, Alcryst does not have the speed to consistently quad with the Brave Bow, but you can also rely on that dexterity to fuel crits and run a Killer Bow for Luna crits. It's a lot of fun, but not exactly reliable. Alcryst is at his best probably running Lyn, with all the extra speed to quad with the Brave Bow and fish for crits and some extra dexterity too. Lyn is a heavily contested resource, however, but that is somewhat lessened thanks to the well making it easier to gain SP to inherit Speed +x or Speedtaker without holding onto the Lyn ring. Covert + Lyn is nice for the long range Astra storms. Among coverts, Thieves are stuck using emblem weapons (though, Mulagir is quite nice) and Alcryst's personal class is better than Sniper. As an example, that extra range makes it much easier to bait out the Hounds in Chapter 14 so you need not fight all of them all at once (though, it's not essential). Luna can proc per hit of Astra Storm, which is a gamble but at least you get 5 rolls. He appreciates emblems that give strength, speed or dexterity, such as Roy or Marth, though I see little particular reason to grant them to Alcryst specifically. With DLC other options include Edelgard (extra strength and dex, Weapon Sync with Claude, 3 range Flame Gambit and Poison Tactic from the Longbow without engaging) and Chrom (extra strength, dex, and speed, +10 magic while engaged + Robin's chain attack makes it possible for pretty much any archer to 1-shot fliers with a maxed out Radiant Bow). Overall, I still prefer using Alcryst to Etie since she is just so frail. Neither should take a hit, but at least Alcryst has some room to not get one rounded should mistakes happen. I'd say Fogado is better than Alcryst, as either a Cupido or Warrior, and there are many characters that can achieve better archery than Alcryst as a Warrior. Alcryst does have the niche of being one of only 4 characters able to wield B rank bows as a Warrior, but I don't think that makes him better than a character with the magic to wield the Radiant Bow well (e.g., Merrin, Chloé). Alcryst's niches are Luna and being in the best class for high-range Astra Storm, so if those niches don't appeal to you he's probably hitting the bench once you have a couple of Warrior reclasses under your belt.

Citrinne isn't that strong without rigging bond rings or DLC. She is all Magic, which most notably means no Speed. She can work as a 3 range attacker for some big chip off her high Magic stat, but she can struggle to double even Generals at parts of the game when factoring in Bolganone's weight and her abysmal build stat. In a lot of ways, Citrinne is worse Ivy since she has to choose between staff utility (Sage) or mobility (Mage Knight), and even then her mobility isn't flight. I suppose Citrinne has somewhat more Magic and accuracy to her benefit in the trade-off. She can hold her own offensively when she joins, so she can easily take over a spot for Clanne or Céline before relinquishing it to Ivy and Pandreo in a few chapters. I'd say she's one of the better candidates for early game units that make it past Chapter 11, but her join time is the worst for gaining Canter pre-Chapter 10 and she gets a ding for that. Bond rings turn Citrinne from snooze to hero since Dire Thunder from Olwen or Great Thunder from Mae are excellent. Generally I would say Dire Thunder is better in the short term, unless you want to invest in forging a Thoron super early into the game. Later on, I could see arguments for these Bond Rings instead of the mage emblems in the base game, though with DLC it's harder to imagine sticking to Bond Rings. Speaking of DLC, my favorite way to run Citrinne nowadays is speed focused Mage Knight with Speedtaker and the Camilla emblem. At internal level 39, MageKnight!Citrinne ends up with ~23 speed, which fully realized Speedtaker ups to 33 speed, then 38 with fully bonded Camilla. This compares with a Wolf Knight!Merrin whom hits ~38 speed at internal level 39. Plus, being able to do a Divine Paralogue prior to Chapter 10 makes it easier for her to gain Canter despite her bad base SP.

No disagreements from me that Corrin + mystical is strong due to Fire Vein and 3 range Dreadful Aura and Corrin + high movement + 3 range makes for even better Dreadful Aura too, at the cost of mediocre veins. However, I've recently been going in a different direction and focusing on patching up my mages' speed so they can double with Bolganone and get more one rounds, which is much easier to do with the well. Ivy + Speedtaker + Speed +5 or Mage Knight!Citrinne + Camilla + Speedtaker, for example. For context, internal level 39 Ivy and Mage Knight!Citrinne have 23 speed. Certainly unimpressive, but filled up with Speedtaker you get to 33 speed. Add in Speed +5 (or an emblem with a speed bonus, such as Camilla), and that's 38 speed. Some of this speed is unfortunately lost to weight, especially for Citrinne (but, that is offset thanks to Chaos Style), but by comparison internal Level 39 Wyvern!Kagetsu has ~34 speed and WolfKnight!Merrin has ~38 speed. Big investment yields big payoff when doubling from their high magic stats, but definitely not something to be pulled off without SP books from the well. I also like that thieves can apply poison alongside Dreadful Aura and Draconic Hex for bosses. The poison is overkill on most enemies due to the Draconic Hex debuff, but it's appreciated when you have to deal with multiple HP bars. And regarding maddening avoid, while it's true you have to maintain avoid within the range that the enemy still has some hit, I never found it too much of an issue. You do need to run multiple knives with different avoid engraves to do it, but perhaps that's too much investment in a single character for most. In the late game, only really had issues tuning avoid down to ~100 for some of the axe enemies, which I didn't find too big a deal since they were easy fodder for the above mages due to their low speed/res, you can still trick the backups to attack you for Chain Attacks since they don't account for Corrin's Pair-Up skill, their crazy high attack means you might actually just want to avoid combat entirely and merely slow them down a bit with fog, and you can run the heavier S-rank smash dagger to reduce your avoid if desired.

I've played the game on Maddening. Yunaka is a thief with Res, which is a decent niche that I quite enjoy though I can see why many wouldn't. Thieves mostly just want to run Corrin, set up fog, and dodge tank while inflicting poison on their would be assailants. Res is nice and notably lacking in her thievery competition from Zelkov, since enemy mystical units will ignore the +60 avoid from the fog cover. The thief class has pretty low strength, so their damage falls off and I'm not sure how much it's worth trying to offset this with forging (at least daggers forge well with +2 MT at every tier). Yunaka's personal skill synergizes well with this build since the fog terrain gives her a bit of extra crit, though unfortunately the ranged daggers don't carry inherent crit aside from steel. You'll likely want to carry a variety of avoid engraves on a thief since enemies have quite variable hit rates but they still need >0 hit (or chain attack set up) to bother attacking. As a player of the Trails series, I enjoy setting up a good dodge tank, but Engage is also a game with Soren!Veyle or Ike!Panette (or, really Ike!anyone can get close too) to set up characters that can enemy phase and KILL, which thieves aren't offensive enough to do. Unfortunately, thief's status as a "special" class also hurts Yunaka's reclassing ability. She has to hit level 21 to reclass into an advanced class, which is quite a slog. There is the option to reclass first thing then rush level 10 unpromoted instead, but unfortunately Yunaka joins a ways away from your first Second Seal, and if you don't use her upon recruitment she falls even further behind Zelkov in levels by his join time.

I've played the game on Maddening and when I've tried to use Céline I've been very disappointed by her stats. Lacks magic to do good damage, lacks the speed to consistently double, and her decent strength is rather squandered since targeting the often lower Res stat at range is generally the better choice. Feels like her mediocre stats are balanced around her having access to Ignis and that being a supposedly good skill, but it's really just ok—she does not have the dex to pull it off well. If you want to use her as a Vidame, you can run her with Byleth since her high Luck meshes well with Divine Pulse and hitting with offensive staves and as a Mystical she can use Thyrsus for ranged magic when engaged. For DLC, I think she makes a decent Enchantress. Enchantress is a support class, so her mediocre stats don't hold her back. She has balanced strength and magic, so if you want to pull out fists from the convoy for the occasional attack, she can contribute better than many, though she will be capped with silvers at B. Emblem wise, as a Qi Adept with Daggers, Lucina is a great pairing for 100% Bonded Shield and poison chain attacks. Micaiah works well after you gain convoy access from the level 5 class skill and can pull any staff out of the convoy. Finally, Eirika could work well for a combat focused variation on the class, though that build is really better suited to Martial Master with its better weapon ranks.

Reviving the Boucheron thread just to bring up that he benefits a LOT from the DLC, even on Maddening. Not within the rules of this discussion, thus I will omit giving him a score. However, for anyone who wants to invest into him he has two notable claims he lacks in the base game: Early access to Warrior combined with his high speed and build allows him to double and one round the wyrms in Tiki's Divine Paralogue at ~level 12 with a Long Bow. This is notable because the Long Bow allows him to retaliate against the wyrms on Enemy Phase. Bonus points if you raise his bond level enough with Sigurd to gain immunity to the Freeze status from the wyrm's ice breath. This paralogue gatekeeps the other Divine Paralogues, so having a unit able to easily thin out the ranks of all those wyrm reinforcements is much appreciated. Of course, this may not be the use of an early Master Seal, but if that map gives you trouble this is a potential out. He makes a great Mage Cannoneer. Mage Cannoneer damage scales of Dex, which is one of Boucheron's higher stats. His strength is mediocre, but his high build and dex help offset this for hit rate calculations. Thanks to his high HP pool, he can exploit Reprisal and Hold Out to stack a lot of damage, and run the Piercing Blast to punch through enemy defenses. At his best he probably runs Roy and inherits Reprisal + to safely hit 1 HP and convert that missing HP into big damage. Roy gives boosts to HP and strength which help fuel his damage (after Reprisal) and accuracy, respectively. You can inherit Divine Pulse + to improve the success rate of his long shots or Canter to help with keeping up with the rest of your army (and attacking at closer range, with fewer hit rate penalties). A more SP efficient approach is to run Veronica as his emblem and inherit Hold Out from Roy instead. A bit weaker in reverse since Veronica's stats don't mesh well with the Bouch, but you do save potentially a lot of SP if you are willing to inherit a lower tier of Hold Out.

For Enchanter as a support class, I think most anyone can make it work. As a support unit, I would think of it like Three Houses dancer, where the class can make anyone useful regardless of their stats, so stick it on your worst character you don't want to bench. I'm thinking two builds for the class: Lucina!Enchanter - As a Qi Adept unit, an Enchanter gets 100% bonded shield success rate. With a knife equipped, Enchanter can apply poison through chain attacks. Also, Enchanter applies buffs to themselves and adjacent allies, which synergizes well for enemy phase positioning with how Lucina increases support bonuses. Micaiah!Enchanter - Use up to A rank staves while having access to the convoy. Since this utility is now not exclusive to Alear, you can use it on a character with an actual magic stat. Characters with personal skills to boost hit rates of offensive staves can be considered in lieu of a magic stat. The class gets B arts and B knives, both of which can go up to A with an innate talent. You don't gain too much from A daggers (possible with Yunaka, Zelkov, and Merrin) but A arts gives access to Flashing Fist Art (possible on Framme, Jean, and Seadall, though Seadall has no reason to reclass out of Dancer). For damage output, quading with good arts damage (high average of strength and magic) is the way to go. It's interestingly kind of the mirror of the Martial Master class stats wise, where Martial Master is limited by low speed cap and Enchanter by low strength and magic caps. Lyn!Martial Master and Eirika!Enchanter (Lunar Brace true damage quading) can fix the respective short comings, but fixing speed on Martial Master seems easier (and you can use Lunar Brace AND speed simultaneously). So, anyone who makes a good Martial Master would do well here, but if that's how you want to use them, stick to Martial Master.

For more clarification, I said promoted at level 15. Rosado and Goldmary join as level 3 promoted, so internal level 17 is consistent with promotion at 15. It's true I was not thinking about the later joins of Lindon, Saphir and Mauvier, but those levels seem quite low for internal level for Mauvier at that point in the story? Or do you mean those are the levels they promoted at. Mauvier joins as a level 12 Royal Knight so 20 + 12 - 1 = 31 for internal level? That's more consistent with the character that joins the chapter after him at 35.

Also, I saw here that Mage Cannoneer status ailments don't stack with Lucina chain attacks (unlike knives). Is that confirmed now? "Mage Cannoneers can participate in Chain Attacks if they equip Emblem Lucina. However, their status afflictions do not trigger, since they’re all counted as skills (this includes the poison from Venom Blast)." https://serenesforest.net/2023/03/30/fire-emblem-engage-four-wings-another-firene-twitter-tidbits/

The characters with special classes are obviously internal level 20, but what about the characters that join as promoted level 1? All of the other prepromotes in the game have internal level consistent with promoting at level 15. Can you buy seals for the new classes before beating the fell xenologue? Downside to waiting for new character levels to match story progression would be delaying class skills on these new classes if not.

Interesting, so rather than scale off strength/magic, the cannons seem to scale off Dexterity instead? The attack stat is still labeled Magic Attack, so I guess it targets res? And the bit at the end with Céline's uber cannon seem to be hacked stats.

Well, somebody hacked it onto the player and that's a lot more versatility on the new weapon type than I expected. They seem to have gotten around sinking resources into weapon variety by changing the cannon blast animations but not the cannon model itself. Lots of variety here as a debuffing class since the cannons include infinite-use freeze, silence, and fracture. Also, Lucina chain attack can spread poison off daggers, so can it spread all the debuffs the status cannons provide? At 3-8 range (+ movement for Dual Assist (+))? This suddenly became a much more interesting class to me.

The Convoy skill seems like something that's more for the player's hands than the enemy. Soren's Enchanters I don't believe use the convoy; they just filled out their inventory with items at the start of the map. Adding a new weapon type is a bit odd, but it being a siege attack class makes me think of the Ballistician class, so I don't think it is unprecedented either. Arts only have 7 weapons outside engages, so I could see them adding ~4 different cannons to fill out this DLC class and calling it a day. The odd thing moreso is that the class has no secondary weapon but the enemy has physically oriented stats. It's a magic cannoneer—will there be any physical cannons to make use of that enemy's stat distribution? This enemy may just have low magic to reduce the burden on players of dealing with an enemy siege weapon.

It's mostly RNG based on the rewards from the well which include skill books. I'm not really sure how the RNG works since the percentages add up to more than 100% (but you also get more than 1 item at a time, so that's probably part of how it should be normalized). Still, the Tier 2 rewards for 1000G worth of items seems like a good way to get a bunch of 100-500 SP books, which you can attempt every map. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qFcABi455ZzLh0Drz1yZAxat5i_GWxIv3SPEDdlcZRE/edit#gid=1480084607 On top of that Veronica has the skill that gives +20SP on kill and is inheritable for cheap. However, despite costing low SP it does require a high bond level, so I'm not sure how widely useful it really is. The trade-off is that bond fragments eventually end up being quite abundant, but you want to inherit the skill ASAP to start reaping the SP. It probably does make Veronica the best bracelet to get after Tiki's paralogue so you can start gunning for it sooner.

I'm not sure about the part where Chloé requires particular favoritism to hit level 10 by Lapis' join? If I do both Jean and Anna's paralogue before Chapter 7, then Chloé hits level 10 and promotes with the Master Seal from Anna's. If I hold off on Anna's paralogue (e.g., use it as an SP opportunity for Alcyrst/Citrinne/Lapis) then she hits level 10 during Chapter 7 and promotes with the Master Seal dropped there. There was some favoritism since I knew I wanted to use her long-term and others less so (by contrast, Louis hit level 10 during Chapter 9, since I was tossing him onto the bench) but also not exclusive favoritism (Alear, Boucheron, Yunaka, and Céline were about the same level as Chloé). Still I have been convinced a bit of Lapis' upside. Her stats really do make her a bit of Chloé II (with less magic), but I do think still think she's a bit worse. Wyvern!Chloé for me kept up respectable damage in the late game by relying on the Levin Sword to target lower enemy res. Plus, Griffin Knight is a better class than Swordmaster. Even if both want to end up something like Wyvern eventually, Chloé has extra flexibility delaying the reclass if you so desire (e.g., Second Seals and gold are finite and maybe you are prioritizing other things first). Chloé can also easily gain an SP advantage on Lapis' join. Finally, I added a bit of challenge to my run by not using stat boosters, but when accounting for those only one of Lapis or Chloé likely gets the investment and Chloé just has more going for her at that early point in time (even if Lapis can catch-up soon). I am more convinced about Lapis relative to the other nearby sword backup Diamant. Diamant is notably slower than Lapis and can't double the way she can promoted into Swordmaster. Diamant has a marginally easier time getting to ranged chain attacks if you value that, and while Lapis can get there too pretty easily as a Hero, then you don't hit those doubling thresholds. Diamant also has a notable SP advantage of 300, which you can only narrow so much if you keep Anna's paralogue until after recruiting Lapis. Diamant has a pretty straightforward time getting Canter before Chapter 10 if you don't rush Chapters 8 and 9. Around their join I'd give the advantage to Diamant probably (I'm inclined to focus the first two Master Seals to get more staff users, so Lapis' speed advantage is mostly moot), but in the longer-term I can see Lapis' speed being more helpful than Diamant's pseudo-tankiness. I think both ultimately suffer that in optimal play most early game units get shelved for stronger mid-game units though.

Delayed response, but the Enchanter class has an Item Surge skill to give buffs to nearby allies by consuming an item. In this case a Luck Tonic can be consumed to give a 30% chance to nullify damage for 1 turn for the Enchanter and adjacent allies.

So, we have now been introduced to 2 classes and I'm wondering what people think of them. Starting out with the more recent introduction first because I have less to say about it is the Mage Cannoneer: The class is armored, and is a mono-weapon class with S-rank in cannons. The Magic Blast used in the paralogue is a B rank siege weapon with 3-8 range but accuracy reduces at high range. Despite the weapon running on magic and the class' name, this enemy's stats are more physically oriented. Then there are the Enchanters from Soren's paralogue: The class is support-focused with B arts and B daggers, level 5 access to the convoy, and provides a variety of buffs based on item usage or weapon syncs. I'm really interested to run this class eventually. Initially I thought this would be more of an apothecary item-throwing class, but is instead focused around consuming items and spreading buffs to nearby allies. The buffs you can get from the weapon syncing side are also intriguing. I imagine the class could pair very well with Micaiah, being able to pull any staff you need out of the convoy on a whim (without being stuck with Alear's bad magic stat). It could also work with Lucina, since you get chain attack poison from daggers and Qi-Adept 100% bond shield. The focus on support makes me think that for the most part the stats don't matter and it can be good on any character (except magic for staves if running Micaiah).