The Worst Mistake You Made When You First Started Playing FE

[Sentacotus]

Using Marcus and not using my Lords at all since I was scared shitless of them dying and having to restart entire chapters.

[PersonWithTime]

Blazing Sword (my first FE game)

I didn't know Gaiden chapters were a thing

I also didn't know how much damage my units were doing and how much they could take.

I saw Anna when I wanted to suspend my game and thought, "Who's this random ass bitch?"

Luckily I played it on the Wii U, so I just saved any time before I made a risky move, or else I would have never beaten that game!

For Binding Blade

I maxed out Roy's levels in Chapter 7... but in my defense I was just so excited to use him!

[Melissa]

Not get Donnel in one of my early playthroughs of Awakening

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Let Caeda die to an archer, halfway through chapter 1 of Shadow Dragon. RIP Navarre, Roger, and Jake.

[IcyRaven93]

My very first time playing Fire Emblem was fairly recent. It was FE4, and Alec, Lex, and Azel all died (I was and still am a noob). I thought they would come back next turn, but no, death in Fire Emblem is permanent.

Also, I somehow managed to complete FE7 first time around without training a single bow user or non-Hector axe user.

Also, in FE8, I still think Seth is God (not sure whether this really qualifies as a mistake or not).

[Pandoria]

My first game was Awakening and hoo boy did I make some mistakes (I really should have researched the game a little before I played it)

- Donnel. Right, so I actually went to recruit him, yet didn't actually level him up when recruiting, so good ol' Donnel stayed back at the farm with his Ma.

- Killed Gaius and Tharja. I was 100% unaware you could even talk to them, and straight up took them out when they neared me. Although, I did wonder why do these two non-boss enemies have names?

- I only recruited four kids in my first playthrough, that being Morgan, Lucina, Kjelle and Nah. I didn't actually understand the mechanisms of the kids, so when S-Supports showed up, I just went 'ohh, more conversations nice' and didn't quite figure out until I finished my game that those S-Supports gave you kids. I look back on my first playthrough and go 'You're an idiot, me.'

- I also never re-classed a single unit in my first playthrough, because I had no idea that Second Seals were even a thing. I'm honestly surprised I managed to get through the game with my army of extremely weak units.

[sinicaphaulls]

My first play through giving my MU every single stats boosting option available.... including Tiki's tear. Sure it wasn't a horrible game ruining situation but just watching as MU plowed through Grima was just so sad.

[Ria]

Awakening was my first game. So here goes.

~Promoting at level 10. Never used second seals.

~Not using stat boosting items(in fact I still kind of do this. I tend to hoard all my items and never end up using them)

~Constantly confusing Frederick and Stahl with each other(which led to some unfortunate cases of Stahl getting murdered). Same could be said for Cherche/Corderlia. In both cases they looked way too similar too each other.

~Speaking of Fred, giving all the kills to him wasn't a great idea either.

~Pairing up Sumia and Lon'qu thinking they would be cute together. Found out they couldn't support. And yes. I did spend a while trying to grind their imaginary supports. And yes I am salty they can't even support at all.

~Didn't understand what Dancer class was so I tried to use Olivia as a fighting unit. And while she's okay once she reclasses.....she can't do much as a dancer haha.

~Putting poor Sumia in the path of bows, since for some reason it didn't occur to me that pegasus knights were weak to archers(not sure why I thought this)

And yeah. That's all I can think of ^-^.

I was very much a noobie haha.

[LFM]

Awakening was my first game and playing it blind.

- My Avatar never got married.

- Donnel didn't gained a level (only around 60 exp) in his paralogue. No resetting because he didn't seem strong.

- Somehow I got Anna and Tiki (+ Gaius and Tharja) but never played the paralogues to recruit the kids.

- I did promote my units at lvl 20 but never used the Second Seals. I thought they would be worthless if I reset them to lvl 1.

- All my fighting units were 20/20 but I still played the enemy respawns on the map.

[onvars]

Some of these aren't even mistakes lol. Not using Donnel? Giving Robin all the statboosters? Not using any bow users in FE7? Using Seth as much as you want? These aren't mistakes, they're optimal play.

[eclipse]

I refused to use the Mani Katti/Rapier/Wolf Beil. Why? Because I couldn't replace them.

[Cyas]

-Exposing Sumia to an Archer in her join chapter. I thought she could at least take one hit, good thing I was playing on Casual mode.

-Thinking Donnel is a decent unit.

-Thinking Knight Kellam can tank the Berserkers in Severa's paralogue. The Berserker that attacked him even had a Hammer but didn't double or one-shot. Kellam somehow dodged anyway.

[Cornguy]

I feel as though I've told this story before, but for whatever reason, the "talk to enemies" lesson you're taught in the goddamned tutorial, that forces you to talk to Dorcas, never sunk in. Guy mentions Matthew, so I fucking kill Guy, thinking "I'm sure he'll be back later to join me." I proceeded to insure that I kill every red unit with a portrait, because that's gotta be how you unlock them. They'll just show up later, I'm sure.

Also believed restarting chapter would force me to start from the beginning of Eliwood's tale. A surprisingly low amount of characters died, until I got a gameover and realized how stupid I was. I think Rebecca, Lowen and Bartre were the casualties, but Marcus and for no real reason, Erk were way over-leveled, so we were screwed anyways.

So next playthrough, we get Guy, Raven still dies because I can't read between the lines. We think Guy's awesome, and things seem to be going okay, though no one other than Guy was in fighting-form by the time we reached "Night of Farewells". Annnnnd, surpise! You're out of swords, and you have no one left who can do a damn thing.

I also had a friend whom I introduced to the game. I never found out how his game got to this point, but I remembered trying to help him on the chapter you fight Darin, and somehow his only surviving units were the lords, and Oswin. I have no idea how he even cleared enough chapters to get to this point, but here we were.

Well, that's all the shame I got for now. Hope it was entertaining to someone.

[onvars]

I refused to use the Mani Katti/Rapier/Wolf Beil. Why? Because I couldn't replace them.

I still do this lol.

But what if I neeeeeed it laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaateeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer.........

I am the reason weapon durability was removed in Fates.

[Sire]

I think I'll just list more of my noob mistakes or misplays during my first playthrough or so...

Play Order = 8, 7 or 10, 7 or 10, 9, 11, 13, 14

Blazing Sword & Path of Radiance:

- Not being able to properly duel the Black Knight in PoR because I had no idea what to do.

- Otherwise, I don't remember much mistakes in these as I played these later.

Sacred Stones:

- Deleting my cleared saved files. I think I also happened to delete my Creature Campaign file, so I never really got to do postgame...

- Killing off Lute and Artur. Eh, they won't be missed.

- Not going Berserker on Ross.

- Making Kyle a Great Knight. While they look awesome and may make sense from a lore perspective, Paladins seem so much better.

Radiant Dawn:

- Preferring Rafiel out of all of the Herons.

- Getting Voulg killed.

- Getting Mist permanently killed during Part 4.

- Killing off practically all of the Crimea Knights save for Geoffrey. Hey, Part 2 was hard for me back then!

- Disliking Soren. He may be one of the better mages, but I care little for his character.

- Having suboptional characters for the finale. Oliver is magnificent, more so with a Purge that does absolutely nothing. Volke is cool, Renning is cool, but other characters were probably better than them.

Shadow Dragon:

- Don't really remember any mistakes save for that Shadow Dragon was the least favorite Fire Emblem I played. It was far too simplistic compared to all the fun stuff I was used to from Radiant Dawn (which was my favorite entry at the time.)

Awakening:

- Relying too much on the Avatar and neglecting leveling other units. When I got to the Valm arc, my units quickly started falling behind in terms of stats, so much so that I took time off to obtain Morgan and grind levels. Father and Daughter then proceeded to annihilate the rest of the game.

- Thinking I could handle Lunatic. If the first five chapters of classic, deathless Lunatic made me a man, the first five chapters of classic, deathless Lunatic + made me a legend. Afterwards, I rushed to endgame as the main purpose was to obtain a Lunatic+ file so I could mess around in postgame with skirmishes that may be somewhat challenging.

Fates:

- Relying too much on the Avatar and Royals while neglecting to level other units. By Conquest Endgame, only the Avatar, Kana, Xander, and Camilla were usable as everyone else did not have good enough stats. Seeking to speed up the playthrough, I cheated my way through Conquest's finale by adding a single Einherjar unit to my roster.

-- I didn't really have this problem in Birthright as I leveled more units instead of focusing on a few and the fact Birthright was easier. Then, there were also the skirmishes, but I don't know if I did any of them during my first playthrough.

-- I didn't finish Revelations yet because the gimmicks and the fact I was burnt out after marathoning through Conquest and Birthright. I also wanted to make an Ultimate Revelations file, but the My Castle resources were not to my liking.

- Being a story person. It was sad to realize the complaints about the story were so very real when I played through Fates. However, the art, gameplay, and music are still good!

[MasashiH]

Abusing prepromoted units as soon as they're available. Had to restart Eliwood's Story from the beginning because of low leveled units and out of grinding options.

Sacrificing someone other than Jagen when prompted (corrected this after restarting the chapter)

[Dinar87]

My main mistake (and has stayed as a bad habit of mine) is not using jaegans at all...even ones like titania or marcus.

[wheelsonfire]

Letting people die instead of resetting... Also had trouble keeping Lords alive and never leveled them up... It was because they were so much weaker than my other units... Then I got to FE9 with Ike, realized that he was powerful enough be used normally, and resolved to do the same with my other units...

Also had a lot of trouble leveling up healers that weren't already promoted... I also didn't bring my healers with my other units, instead leaving them near the start and having other units rush back to them... Got out of that habit when I played FE8, though...

Not using reclassing effectively in FE11, and not using BEXP effectively in FE9... Also, I believed all those rumors that you could get Marth in games other than the ones he appears in...

[JediJose]

I beat all of you in this. In FE 7 I.....

Didnt use Hector or Raven. Until the final chapter I had to restart because units were not strong enough. The only strong unit I had was 16/20 promoted Lyndis. Which wouldnt have been so bad. But, I fed all the exp to Lyndis. In the brightside. She fucking destroyed everything with ease. Everytime I use Lyn she always gets around 12-14 strength unpromoted. And always maxes out skill and Speed. She can dodge.

[Naturesshadow]

My main mistake (and has stayed as a bad habit of mine) is not using jaegans at all...even ones like titania or marcus.

You and me both mate. I've never tried prepromoted units (or any laguz in the Tellius series with an exception or two for ones like Ranulf and the royals). Made most of my early runs rather predictable and made me miss out on some good ones to use, I guess this is more of a mistake in limiting myself unintentionally. Did an Awakening run this year and tried out Anna, Libra and Say'ri and they were pretty good in that run. Gonna be using a hell of alot of them prepromotes for my next run of Blazing Sword.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Naturesshadow

[DoctorSpectrum]

Going straight for the objective of a level rather than killing everyone in it for EXP because it's what I need to do to advance, right?

As many people have said, pre-promoting at level 10.

I don't usually use pre-promotes unless it's late game and I've got the room, but I'm cool with it. It's certainly inexcusable for some units, but Jagens? Eh, not worth it.

I also have the habit of using all of the early game units they give you and then only begrudgingly using newer units given when room in the roster opens up (though there are exceptions).

[TheVinceKnight]

I... let my guys die... very quickly. No emotional attachment or anything.

This was Fire Emblem 7 by the way.

I lost almost everyone and I thought Hawkeye was amazing.

[BlueBloodEmblazer]

My first game was Awakening Normal-Casual.

I somehow recruited Gaius, but killed Tharja. I never bothered with chests. My MU basically solo'd awakening.

[Chrom-ulent]

Blazing Sword: (when I was around 13 or 14)

Promoted before level 20 (and not just Lyn Normal Wallace)

Killed both Guy and Raven, then wondered why the Hero Crest was called that. Me at the time: "Mercenaries sound rather shady. What? They're the units that promote into Heroes?"

Got Athos killed in the final chapter, was disappointed to see a generic "died at Light" ending for him.

Interlude: Skipping the Tellius games. The Laguz did not appeal to me.

Awakening:

Playing on Hard/Casual made me pick up very un-FE tactics. Normal/Classic helped me unlearn them.

Fates: (just now, so I have no excuse)

Not starting with Birthright on Hard, so I could take that same file at the Branch of Fate and drop down to Normal for Conquest. I also get the feeling that the story is meant to be played Birthright first.

Chapter 10 (Conquest) - massive brain fart. did not realize the ballista could inflict friendly fire. Blew my flying units down to one hit point. That's a restart.

And an honorable mention: Before all of this, when I got Super Smash Bros. Melee and looked at the character unlock list, when I was around 12, my response at the time: "Marth and Roy? Fire Emblem? Sounds like a weird cowboy circus game. Mr. Game and Watch? I'm expecting some cool guy with a cape, if he's unlocked like last. Oh well. I'll see them when I unlock them." I was so disappointed to discover Mr. Game and Watch was just some little beeping LCD blot guy.

[Rapier]

I trained and Promoted Dorcas

you may give the look of shame

I trained and promoted Dorcas early. It obviously backfired. Horribly.

Also, feeding too much exp to Marcus on FE7 and neglecting other units.