Need help with FE4 (Geneology of the Holy War)

[Radrex92]

I need help with FE4 (Geneology of the Holy War). I was wondering if anyone could lend me aid? I know nothing about this game. And I NEED help with if I want to play it!

[Laura]

Can you be more specific about what kind of help you need? Like the topics, the mechanics, ect?

[Captain Karnage]

save constantly

be prepaired to go through some tedious moments

maps can take multiple hours to get through

[Baldrick]

[spoiler=Genealogy 101]In Fire Emblem 4, your goal is to seize every enemy castle (usually in a set order). The enemy can seize your castles if they’re unguarded; if they take your home castle, it’s a game over. You can save each turn before moving any units. Keep a separate save file at the beginning of each chapter/castle in case you need to restart.

There’s no trading or vulneraries/elixirs, and each unit has their own pool of gold. The only way to trade items is to sell it in the shop and have another unit buy it. Villages take 10 turns to be destroyed, but the quicker you save them the more gold you get.

[spoiler=Genealogy 102]
There’s no deployment limit, and arenas function differently. They have a set, finite number of enemies, and if you die you aren’t killed and don’t lose any money. Get each unit as far as they can in them.

There’s a marriage/children system like in Awakening/Fates. Don’t worry about optimising them on your first playthrough; you have to go out of your way to get bad pairings, and even if you do so, you get most of the best units by default. Watch out for talk events after you seize each castle, you’ll get items and some units will get love points with each other.

There are some hidden items. Nothing too important, but they're nice to have. Some spoilers in the link. You can find how to get them here

Make sure Levin visits his mother. It'll make sense when you get to that point.

[FionordeQuester]

I need help with FE4 (Geneology of the Holy War). I was wondering if anyone could lend me aid? I know nothing about this game. And I NEED help with if I want to play it!

I would find this helpful as well :)

[The Geek]

We can only give general advice unless you're more specific. A few things to keep in mind:

1. There are no healing items, all healing must be done by characters using Staves or on specific tiles (which charge you 5 gold to do so)

2. Speaking of gold, each character has their own personal stash of gold, which they can only trade with their spouse. Each character's personal gold maxes out at 50,000

3. You can't trade weapons or items, if you want to transfer items between characters you have to have one character sell the item in question to the shop and then the other unit has to buy it.

4. Weapon levels only increase via promotion, there is no such thing as weapon experience in this title.

5. Your characters' levels don't reset when you promote them, so there's no point in waiting to promote your units, which you can't do until they reach level 20. The only units who can't promote are Sigurd, Quan, Oifey (who are all considered pre-promotes), and Dancers.

6. Pay attention to the "Lover" space in your characters' status screen. Pairing your units properly is important, since doing so will make it so you have a much easier time in the second generation.

[Mekkah]

Here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/3vnqgy/newcomers_companion_to_fe4_genealogy_of_the_holy/

[Lord Tullus]

Replies are in bold.

5. Your characters' levels don't reset when you promote them, so there's no point in waiting to promote your units, which you can't do until they reach level 20. The only units who can't promote are Sigurd, Quan, Oifey (who are all considered pre-promotes), and Dancers.

What about Shannan or Brigget? They're pre-promotes as well, right? I guess those are spoilers but I'm not saying anything about them that is important... am I?

6. Pay attention to the "Lover" space in your characters' status screen. Pairing your units properly is important, since doing so will make it so you have a much easier time in the second generation.

Properly or at all, I'd say. I paired Arden with Raquesis recently and a certain "horseback unit" is being about as great as Fergus from FE 5.

Oh, and some additional advice for FE 4, and something that I just found out recently. You get small [base] stat bonuses when a child inherits stuff from his/her parent. With this in mind, it might be wise to promote everyone you are using/pairing up. (Some say to get to level 30, but I find that to be a major issue if you are using everyone, as there are limits to how much experience 3 units can get in 1 map) There are not enough females in the first generation to match every male, so you probably won't be using everyone as far as pairings go.

Other advice: Drop able items have a bag next to the item name on the far right side of the inventory screen. Try and give the kill to whoever you want to have that item so you can save money. (this goes for weapons too)

Edited September 20, 2016 by Lord Tullus

[sirmola]

5. Your characters' levels don't reset when you promote them, so there's no point in waiting to promote your units, which you can't do until they reach level 20. The only units who can't promote are Sigurd, Quan, Oifey (who are all considered pre-promotes), and Dancers.

Not true. Claude, brigid, shannan, ced, and hanibal are also prepromotes. Diadora can't promote either for some reason, despite sharing a class with someone who can.

Make sure that levin enters silesia castle at some point.