DefyingFates

Reading the bit in bold gave me such a huge "Eureka" moment. I'd completely forgotten that Obscurite only states "Fell Dragon-only" unlike Veyle's dagger. An early hint that IS wanted to add other Fell Dragons down the line clearly. Sneaky! Anyway, it's a weird sort of poetry to give it to another Dragon while Veyle doubles down on using her knife. Neat! F for your Sage!Vander plans though.

That makes sense, thanks!

Does the Rating sort option show how well units score in Arena? Because it also increases based on Dragonflower usage, and I thought DF didn't affect Arena score. Thanks in advance as always!

It would certainly make it more fun to experiment with Alear if they kept their Dragon type in all classes... at the cost of possibly breaking the game if you gave Dragon!Byleth or Corrin to a flier or something...

Huh. I admit I don't have faith in the writers wanting to write something as complex as that, but it would be an interesting twist - even if it could probably be considered cheating given all the hints to the contrary.

Everyone has a fixed inventory based on their level and class, but these can be shuffled around pre-battle. However, guest part members (i.e. everyone new to FX) can't change inventories, so you either need to put them next to Alear and access the convoy OR put whatever you want to give them on another character and trade it to them... but both of these can only be done during battle. That... really feels like an oversight.

I think this may be why we're getting two Sparks out of nowhere? I think it's funny that Byleth's sword gets both Bulwark and Spd Preempt, two brand new skills introduced last year (and one of them from her Brave self at that). Chrom adding a Spd-focused Arcane Sword will be nice for my og!Eirika... after we get easier-to-access sources for Chrom's other skills. A shame that Byleth wasn't the Rearmed Hero because her fodder is incredible. Also, Anankos is a Spd Save Armor? Didn't expect one of those so soon! And he's debuting right alongside Maria who's going to make Saviors even more difficult to deal with... yay? Also also: IS has broken the rule that units only get at most 5 skills on release. I wonder if that's going to persist after this banner, and if that means demote units will get 5 skills as well (Clash 3 skills and the like would be nice to have).

The Well made some of the 3k SP skills more worthwhile (e.g. base Lunar Brace) but the skills costing 5k and up are still quite demanding.

Chapter 3 is out!

Cool! What's the second skill you're running on her, Canter?

What are you using for Mag coverage, Flame Lance?

@AnonymousSpeed Those are all really well thought out, I love it! If you want to go more in depth, feel free! Just put everything in spoiler tags if you're worried about them taking up too much room 🙂

Thank you for those, @Diovani Bressan! Tempest Trials also count for achievements if you want to blitz through the Deploy X and Defeat X enemies ones. By the way, if you've maxed out a unit's stats, do you lose anything by keeping them at Lv 20/ 40 instead of reclassing them?

Clearly the most important thing to consider 😛 Seriously though, it is funny that despite how different Engage is to 3H, "Wyvern Knight is the best" stayed the same. Well, Warrior and possibly Hero are also really popular, but still! In any case, how do you plan on building her once she's back to being a Dragon, was this detour just to bulk up her stats or to try and use her Magic for something?

I'm just thinking of how much time each option would take. 10,000 fragments is enough to max out a single Emblem for one character and get them roughly half the way through a second, and as I said that only takes ~20 minutes. Is a 20 minute skirmish really going to have as much value? That said, giving everyone Reposition was a very recent thing I started trying, so it could very well be the smarter decision - I'm close to 2m fragments right now, so at worst I could Reposition my main units into maxing out Bonds and use fragments for those I didn't use. I'll be taking a small break starting tomorrow, but I'll think about it once I get back to it! Ooh, color me intrigued!

I did the math (though most of the work was done by plugging numbers into a spreadsheet) and I still a bit over 77 hours of straight fishing to get the fragments I need. If you set the bonus fish to Bisot Tuna you can get 10,000 fragments every 20 minutes or so so I think that's the most efficient method. The alternative is giving everyone on your party Reposition or other assist skills and spamming those each turn. I'm going to try that for a bit after today I think, just so I don't get too burnt out.

Yeah, doing FX before the Paralogues does make sense in terms of giving you time with the newcomers (and maybe even the new classes if you're so inclined), so it's only logical that you'd do it first. Tiki's pretty useful in later maps though, so maybe you'd want to dip into the DPs for her if nothing else? In any case, that you want to do FX on Maddening without the Bracelets AND while keeping everyone alive is... pretty intense, best of luck with all of that! Please take your time with it, just getting through it is going to be painful, let alone trying to take notes of everything! Thanks again for the great work!! Also: Hey, you still put more thought into everything than I did 😛

I'd like to eventually, but I'd also like to get all the Bond conversations for everyone which is... going to take quite some time so I'll be working at that first. It's good to take breaks while doing all this, isn't it?

I'm loathe to change any of the Dragons out of their default classes, but it is useful to know Nel has a class that works so well for her! Does Wyvern Knight have a good enough Mag growth/ cap to use magic weapons? Actually, I'm assuming so since you mentioned them. Oops xD Thank you very much for this! I imagined Divine Pulse would be useful to her, but if you're going to use QR+, would you give her Canter+ for her second slot?

That was such a comprehensive write-up, thank you so much! I admit I'm not meta-minded enough to parse the optimality of everything you wrote but it was still very interesting to read through your thought processes. I appreciated the Engravings section in particular as someone who has trouble deciding which weapon should have which myself. It's great that you did all of this without the DLC, but I'm curious what you'll make of Fell Xenologue and the Divine Paralogues if you have them installed. I'd love to hear your take on the new maps and characters (as well as the Emblems and Engravings, of course). For now though, thanks again for the great post!!

Which variants did you choose for these two, their innate weapon + swords?

And then you have weirdos like me who were okay with it from Day One 😛

I'm glad people were willing to give them a chance, even if I've seen plenty of playthroughs calling them the obvious memes.

Okay, I see what you mean. I hadn't thought of that, but that's a good point! I wonder what would happen if this poll were to be conducted again (say a month from now so that everyone has time to get to know the DLC cast too)...

Does Veyle really count? I don't think she really counts as an avatar worshipper, and I think the "other things" make up far more of who she is. Obvious Engage spoilers: Framme and Clanne though, those two definitely count - though they're at least a bit more justified than other examples (particularly in FE) since they're kids who have been told stories about how cool Alear is since they were little. That's straying outside the bounds of this topic though 😛