How Much Time Did You Spend At the Monastery/School?

[Interdimensional Observer]

A fairly simple question. How much of your total playtime do you think you spent off the battlefield doing other things?

 

I know it hasn't been that long since its release, but I want to get this very annoying inquiry out of my system. I'm asking now that some people have completed at least one route. Although subsequent runs I'd hazard would, due to having knowledge of how the game functions and what is necessary to succeed from a first run, be shorter in terms of non-battle time.

I just want an idea of this before I consider actually spending money for this game.

[Humanoid]

Hmm, hard to estimate based on feel. I have been playing for seven days now, maybe 4+ hours a day on average, and have just started chapter 6. That's slightly misleading because I'm doing a synced run with my sister so we frequently have to wait for each other. That said, call it 30 hours total played, 5 story maps plus 5 non-story maps at about an hour each, that makes it about one third of the playtime spent fighting? This is with manual monastery exploration to find hidden objects which is probably the most time-consuming but completely optional part of the game. I imagine many people would use the fast travel system instead.

The fighting percentage would have increased slightly today because of a weird quirk/glitch I encountered in the chapter 5 story map that made me need to rewind a long way back, a painful task when most of my units are still locked to 4 movement.

[Sire]

Honestly, it depends on how much time you want to invest into the Monastery. While Three Houses shines a spotlight on it, you could glance over the exploration aspect if you want more traditional Fire Emblem gameplay of going "map to map." It helps you have access to all your shops on the preparation screen, so the Monastery is almost entirely optional.

On my first "completionist" Black Eagles run, I had a playtime about 58 hours. This is me doing all the battles (animations on), completing all quests, and listening to all dialogue for Supports and the Monastery. Remember, this is just one route. There are other paths to play as well.
On my current second playthrough as Blue Lions, I'm skimming over dialogue I've already seen while listening to new ones. It goes by much faster and I'm getting battles in much more "easily" than my first playthrough. This may change once I hit Part II though.
* * * * *
At the bare minimum, you will want to explore the Monastery at least once a month to complete quests. If you just do the basics and not talk to everybody (or skim through their dialogue) the Monastery section is a lot shorter. The time consuming part is sitting still and listening to the voiced lines.

If you are min-maxing, though, I want to say the exploring the Monastery is one of the best options as you can max out student Motivation easily as well as Byleth's skills. Again, though, the time consuming part is the dialogue if you wish to listen to it. Rushing to spend all the activity points and do the basic routine does not take that much time (although Seminars and Rest are of course shorter).

Hope this helps!

[know_naim]

Too much. Especially in the first half of the game. My Black Eagles playtrough clocked at around 51hrs and I was dissatisfied with the amount of maps/fighting. You miss out on a lot of benefits skipping the monastery. Wanna build support? Gifting, dining, inviting to tea time etc. is all done in the monastery. Wanna bulk up your Byleth? Faculty training's done in the monastery. Don't even get me started on the lost items. 

Depending on what kind of playstyle you prefer the monastery sections can get quite tedious. I'm the kind of guy who can't leave a speech bubble untouched and wants to be efficient. So, for example, I was fishing A LOT to get my 'free' professor level exp. Takes time, you don't really need to do that but it's tempting none the less, especially on the first run I'd say. 

My biggest gripe with the monastery is it's lack of polish. Wonky camera movement, stiff character animations, annoying map/fast travel system. If the presentation would be better I wouldn't mind the social sim part of FE3H but now on subsequent playtroughs I find myself annoyed whenever a new month starts and you need that monastery section done. Loved playing a paralogue or skrimish here and there on the 3DS while commuting to work. Now I boot up the Switch and skip FE whenever my save is inside the monastery. 😕

[CrimsonRaven]

Started with BE while it was nice and new you start to nice that it gets repetitive too fast. Just started BL I either choose to battle or seminar most days I don't bother with the lost items any more. The camera is definitely wonky. Thank god for NG+ because I'm blazing through chapters and rarely doing monastery time

[timon]

A lot, but that's because I enjoy it a lot. Probably in a second playthrough I'd skip more.

If you don't, it's almost entirely optional, you sometimes need it for story quests, but just teleport to the NPC you need and it's done. The other thing you actually need it for is building Byleth's skill levels, but it's the same, just teleport to the faculty teacher you need.

It's obviously useful for building up support levels (but you can do that in battle just fine) and increasing your professor level (but if you're not using the monastery it's relevant just for battle/instruct points). And obviously it's the only way to interact with people who are not in your house (for recruiting or just getting to know the character), but if you want the traditional FE "battle after battle" experience it's likely that you don't give much of a fuck about people who are not in your party anyway.

tl;dr: you can skip it almost entirely, but I'd suggest to try it a bit before dismissing it, at least in the first playthrough it's definitely a fun part, and you get to know the circumstances of the story a bit better.

[mariogamer]

not been long since I finished pre time skip (Golden deer). Took me a huge while for some reason. (40h ish)

Then I realized I only needed 3 characters to complete the game. In other words I realized how repetitive these sections are. Overall probably spent part of this time grinding or exploring, somybe 25-30 hours? After that, I spent mostly no time except for gardening and some other stuff.

Edited August 3, 2019 by mariogamer

[starburst]

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

A fairly simple question. How much of your total playtime do you think you spent off the battlefield doing other things?

I think that we are in the same boat, mate. I understand your concern and, ethics aside, I am glad that I could try the game before deciding whether to purchase it or not.

I started a campaign last weekend and got bored very soon. Too much filler and plain early maps.

I deleted all data and started a new campaign last night. This time I am only talking to my party members and two-three other characters that I may recruit, and set all teachings and stuff to automatic in order to actually see more maps and focus on gameplay.

Edited August 3, 2019 by starburst

[Strullemia]

A lot. Probably slightly more than battling, which is why now that I'm on my third run doing a NG+ GD run I'm trying to limit my time in the monastery.

I mean it's fun the first run but after that one I just now spend time eating with my students to get their motivation up, do the monthly side quests and then skip ahead. I've even limited the amount of battles I do because they're just not fun after a while (and they also end up overleveling you which is another problem).

 

[ShadowAUS]

I finished my first playthrough (BE) in about 32 hours (I did pretty much everything other than recruit all the other students as I wanted to save them for their respective house playthroughs) and I definetly spent more time in the campus than in battles. The game is fairly easy so each battle only took between 3 (when I was auto-battle grinding) and 30 minutes (the couple of major large map battles) but the average was about 12 - 15 minutes a map, note that I have animations off. My subsequent playtime has had slightly less time in the campus due to knowing where all the lost items (the biggest time sink) are and who they belong to as well as making more liberal use of the teleport.

[Azure the Scale Tipper]

21 hours ago, Sire said:

Honestly, it depends on how much time you want to invest into the Monastery. While Three Houses shines a spotlight on it, you could glance over the exploration aspect if you want more traditional Fire Emblem gameplay of going "map to map." It helps you have access to all your shops on the preparation screen, so the Monastery is almost entirely optional.

On my first "completionist" Black Eagles run, I had a playtime about 58 hours. This is me doing all the battles (animations on), completing all quests, and listening to all dialogue for Supports and the Monastery. Remember, this is just one route. There are other paths to play as well.
On my current second playthrough as Blue Lions, I'm skimming over dialogue I've already seen while listening to new ones. It goes by much faster and I'm getting battles in much more "easily" than my first playthrough. This may change once I hit Part II though.
* * * * *
At the bare minimum, you will want to explore the Monastery at least once a month to complete quests. If you just do the basics and not talk to everybody (or skim through their dialogue) the Monastery section is a lot shorter. The time consuming part is sitting still and listening to the voiced lines.

If you are min-maxing, though, I want to say the exploring the Monastery is one of the best options as you can max out student Motivation easily as well as Byleth's skills. Again, though, the time consuming part is the dialogue if you wish to listen to it. Rushing to spend all the activity points and do the basic routine does not take that much time (although Seminars and Rest are of course shorter).

Hope this helps!

I agree with this a lot.

[iavasechui]

It took me around 50 hours to get to the timeskip but to be fair I took my time looking for lost items and fishing and sometimes go do something like dinner and just putting the switch to sleep

[Interdimensional Observer]

On 8/3/2019 at 1:34 PM, Sire said:

you could glance over the exploration aspect if you want more traditional Fire Emblem gameplay of going "map to map." It helps you have access to all your shops on the preparation screen, so the Monastery is almost entirely optional.

That is what I'm more wanting of it's true.

On 8/3/2019 at 1:34 PM, Sire said:

At the bare minimum, you will want to explore the Monastery at least once a month to complete quests. If you just do the basics and not talk to everybody (or skim through their dialogue) the Monastery section is a lot shorter. The time consuming part is sitting still and listening to the voiced lines.

I didn't mind doing SoV's handful of sidequests, so I'm fine with a little investment into the same here.

I'm just not looking to make the game half or more non-battlefield. I'm not a modern Persona fan, the only one I've played is from before it went to its current beloved format (and there is nothing wrong with it, it just isn't for me). And no TMS#FE is NOT MODERN PERSONA! I'm sure actual Persona fans would be utterly remiss at the absence of a school life, a calendar, part-time jobs, and having Social Links/Confidants watered down to a mere three sidequests per characters. They would be so saddened they'd summon Yaldanamiyx to destroy it.
 

On 8/3/2019 at 2:21 PM, know_naim said:

Depending on what kind of playstyle you prefer the monastery sections can get quite tedious. I'm the kind of guy who can't leave a speech bubble untouched and wants to be efficient.

I vary on this. For Persona 2: Innocent Sin, I talked with everyone I could, and often took a break between dungeon arcs to see the dialogue. It did a fair bit for the world I think doing this. I talk a lot in Dragon Quests too, since the zesty translations make for good text even when the contents are ordinary. Tales of Vesperia on the other hand, I ignored basically all minor NPCs as having nothing of flavor to say at all.

 

On 8/3/2019 at 2:41 PM, timon said:

but just teleport to the NPC you need and it's done.

A good teleport system in a home base is much obliged. 7th Dragon has been distilling that into me with its easy to access and quick warp system.

 

On 8/3/2019 at 6:17 PM, ShadowAUS said:

note that I have animations off.

I'll probably be also doing without animations, since I played Fates and SoV the same way. It makes things go by so much faster having them on only on rare occasion.

Having dynamic map animations like Jugdral and Tellius would be appreciated, since they've a simple, crisp beauty to them. They're simpler and faster than full animations, but I can still feel the solid thuds of hits and the airiness of dodges. Ideally I'd want FE to match Radiant Dawn with its three options of:

• Full Animations
• Map Animations that are more than just nudging oneself at the enemy
• No Animations whatsoever besides listing skill/crit triggers and showing damage taken, dealt, and dodged. Not a single millimeter of movement from either unit.

-but I don't see this happening again. It's easier to just have full animations and the basic map animations of 6-8 and 11-15. (And please have No Animations unlocked from the start, that would have sped up Radiant Slog Dawn and reduce complaints.)

 

On 8/3/2019 at 6:17 PM, ShadowAUS said:

My subsequent playtime has had slightly less time in the campus due to knowing where all the lost items (the biggest time sink) are and who they belong to as well

What school doesn't have a proper lost and found? Why must they leave it to the professors? Can't they find a good and trusting sleepy dog-person to put in charge of that?👮‍♂️🐶

 

 

I was hoping the ratio for Three Houses would be to 66% FE SRPG goodness to 33% Monastery, or even 75-25 (ignoring any percentage taken by story and supports, which I can always skip/mash through if they ever hit a dull moment). It sounds like I might be able to manage that if I try.

Who knows, maybe I'll come to like the monastery. But I just wanted to err on the side of caution that I wouldn't.

 

Thank you everyone for their answers! I'm a bit more optimistic now and can exile my more worrisome doubts.

[Humanoid]

17 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

What school doesn't have a proper lost and found? Why must they leave it to the professors? Can't they find a good and trusting sleepy dog-person to put in charge of that?

Sometimes the items aren't even lost, you pick it up from their room while they're not there then head out and give it to them. That's not being helpful, that's being a creepy stalker. 😛

Fortunately the random item hunt is once per month rather than once per week/explore. So is the chatting to people and vendor restocking, so after the first explore per month, on subsequent even new players are just encouraged to teleport everywhere and spend their points on known activities without worrying about missables.

Aside, I do find it less annoying than SoV's pixel-hunt static screens, even though it is more time consuming.

[SimplyUnknown]

25 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Sometimes the items aren't even lost, you pick it up from their room while they're not there then head out and give it to them. That's not being helpful, that's being a creepy stalker. 😛

That's nothing; I once picked up a lost item from Seteth's office and handed it to him since he was literally 2 feet away. I'm not sure what makes it sillier, the fact that I did this or the fact that Seteth was honestly grateful that I picked up the quill that had fallen on the floor and handed it to him.

[Humanoid]

Yeah, it's the little absurdist things. Catherine told me I wasn't particularly good-looking, then not 10 minutes later in a separate conversation said that I was good-looking. Make up your mind already!

[Vorena]

47 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

Yeah, it's the little absurdist things. Catherine told me I wasn't particularly good-looking, then not 10 minutes later in a separate conversation said that I was good-looking. Make up your mind already!

Dang, you have some pretty high charm stats there humanoid. You can even charm someone who thought you were not good looking into changing her mind.

[De Geso]

I think I've spent about 75% of the time in the game at the monastery, so far.

A lot of that time is spent fishing...

[Jingle Jangle]

In my first playthough, most of my time was figuring out who likes what. As if every week was Christmas.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Hard to estimate total time. I visited the monastery roughly once per calendar month. The game doesn't really incentivize you to do more than that unless you really want to prioritize faculty training.

[timon]

1 hour ago, Etheus said:

Hard to estimate total time. I visited the monastery roughly once per calendar month. The game doesn't really incentivize you to do more than that unless you really want to prioritize faculty training.

I agree that the first sunday is always heavily pushed to explore (there are usually a lot of events), but I always end up exploring twice a month anyways. You've got on average 3 free days, the first one is exploring, I usually use the second for battles, and now the third one is left hanging.

Especially if there's lectures coming up you're probably left with unmotivated people and a kind of useless day for anything but explore (since resting is worthless, seminars become worthless after the second month, and doing 4 battles a month makes the game far too easy). At least by exploring you can get the right number of people motivated to the max (much better than rest, which is so useless it doesn't even max out) and raise some supports/get some faculty. And you get to do fishing events/use the greenhouse an extra time.

[Fabulously Olivier]

3 minutes ago, timon said:

I agree that the first sunday is always heavily pushed to explore (there are usually a lot of events), but I always end up exploring twice a month anyways. You've got on average 3 free days, the first one is exploring, I usually use the second for battles, and now the third one is left hanging.

Especially if there's lectures coming up you're probably left with unmotivated people and a kind of useless day for anything but explore (since resting is worthless, seminars become worthless after the second month, and doing 4 battles a month makes the game far too easy). At least by exploring you can get the right number of people motivated to the max (much better than rest, which is so useless it doesn't even max out) and raise some supports/get some faculty. And you get to do fishing events/use the greenhouse an extra time.

Well, even in that event, the second exploration wouldn't substantially increase playtime. You know where everyone is and likely know which faculty trainings you're going for. 

 

Unless you really like fishing. I don't.

[Landmaster]

I just finished the Blue Lions Route and I spent a lot of time at the Monastery. Mainly because I waited too long to start actually trying to recruit other students and I had to spend as much time as I could trying to get them before the time skip happened. I also have a bad habit of being blind so I was constantly getting lost and had to spend some time just finding out where everything is.

I spent most time Exploring, once I was able to do multiple battles in a day to get the Paralogues out of the way, I was able to focus more on the Monastery. I also tried to talk to everyone at least once a month.