Ice Dragon

This week's free Arena ticket gets me regular Lysithea: 84 pulls on the Ascended/Rearmed banner: 1 Grima (+1 spark) 5 Elincia 1 Ganglot (+1 spark) This banner reminded me that Ganglot is still the only human (class-wise) melee infantry Rearmed/Attuned Hero in the game and is therefore still the only way to duplicate Vital Astra, Godlike Reflexes, Dodge, etc. I'm still sniping colorless because Grima is also still the only armored Rearmed/Attuned Hero (and Elincia has good staff skills for fodder), but green is my first backup color. Only 1 copy of Grima plus the spark is a bit disappointing, but getting an extra Ganglot and a ton of copies of Elincia kind of makes up for it. And at the very least, Elincia is actually useful (especially since staff skills can't be duplicated yet), unlike Faval. I now have 15 spare copies of Grima (including the merge base that still has inheritance available), 6 spare copies of Elincia, and 6 spare copies of Ganglot (including the merge base that still has inheritance available). Also, this like the second or third time I've pulled Patty since she was released, and each time I've had to stare really hard to figure out what the giant walnut on her back is supposed to be.

And next is Nifl Fir, leaving us with only 3 more slots before the end of the year and still no Nidavellir in sight: Embla Gordin Dokkalfheimr Female Corrin Muspell Brave Roy Askr Innes Muspell Brave Lyn Ljosalfheimr Palla Ljosalfheimr Aversa Dokkalfheimr Cecilia Hel Surtr Nifl Ninian Hel Sigurd Hel Female Robin Ljosalfheimr Nina Muspell Lucius Jotunheimr Nephenee Muspell Male Morgan Dokkalfheimr Rhajat Dokkalfheimr Ursula Nifl Shigure Embla Sheena Nifl Fir Nifl has now caught up to Askr to no longer be untied as the least-used theme from the launch of Resplendent Heroes. Meanwhile, Askr is soon to join Nidavellir in forever-ago limbo, as the most recent unit with the theme is Innes from February of this year. Not quite as bad as Nidavellir, which still hasn't had a new unit since November of last year, but we've had at least one of each of all of the other themes within just the last 5 months.

Given that both of the Engage Rearmed Heroes are "normal" versions of the character, making any of the characters that aren't already in the game into a Rearmed Hero is a completely viable option, which so far hasn't been the case for Ascended Heroes. And we still have plenty of weapons left in the existing archetypes without the need to start overlapping or making new weapon archetypes: With guaranteed follow-up: Axe Dagger Colorless tome Staff All beasts With Null Follow-Up: Axe Dagger All tomes Staff Dragonstone All beasts except cavalry

They could always just put a Rearmed Hero on it with no Ascended Hero. Six of the last 9 New Heroes banners (starting from Ophelia's banner and excluding the fallen and CYL banners) have had a Rearmed Hero on it with no Ascended Hero.

The next Resplendent Hero is Nifl Fir: The scarf is adorable. But this still isn't a Nidavellir outfit. And we only have 3 more Resplendent outfits left this year. Fir's stats are 49/33/44/32/39 with the Resplendent boost. Her Spd isn't super awful, but her Atk is pretty bad. For comparison, the current best 4-star sword infantry is Lapis, who has 43/43/47/31/34, which is a full 10 points of Atk ahead. With a Spd Asset on both, Lapis is also ahead by 4 points of Spd due to a superboon. And if you don't have Lapis yet, Guy and Kamui are both still better than Fir, not to mention any recent fast sword infantry will be better even at +0 merge.

I went to check the Fire Emblem Fandom wiki to see who these were, and, while browsing their art gallery pages, found the cutscene screenshots captioned "bad ending" and all I could think was, "Well of course this is a bad ending. Pepsi-chan's hair has been turned into Coca-Cola." Given that all of the evil final boss characters have been defensive elements, I would expect another one to follow suit. So yeah, Sombron is probably out of the running for this month. Doing some more brainstorming, Soane is kind of a stretch, given that he doesn't even have a canon untransformed appearance (and doesn't have a Lyon puppet to sub for him), but is a possibility. If they want to come straight out of left field, there's still Fafnir sitting in limbo (now that we finally got Freyr), though I think he more likely fits a defensive element.

Here's the listing of banners by origin mark ordered by how long it's been since the most recent New Heroes banner: TMS (January 2020) Path of Radiance (November 2021) Thracia (March 2022) Blazing (June 2022) Awakening (October 2022) Akaneia (November 2022) Fates (December 2022) Radiant Dawn (February 2023) Sacred Stones (March 2023) Fodlan (April 2023) Binding (June 2023) Engage (July 2023) Genealogy (September 2023) Echoes (October 2023) TMS is obviously unlikely. Path of Radiance is starting to run low on remaining playable characters, but not so low that it can't fill out several more banners without entirely scraping the bottom of the barrel. Remaining playable characters excluding Laguz, who are all counted as Radiant Dawn, and characters that are already in the game, but counted as Radiant Dawn: Boyd (has seasonal alt) Rolf (has seasonal alt) Rhys (has seasonal alt) Kieran Brom Calill Largo Devdan Makalov Stefan Thracia has a huge chunk of its cast still available. Blazing is also starting to run low, and is arguably closer to the bottom of the barrel than Path of Radiance. Remaining playable characters excluding characters that are already in the game from Binding: Oswin Wallace Wil Harken Isadora Marcus Lowen Dart Vaida Geitz Renault Athos (likely Mythic) Awakening is basically out of playable characters: Vaike Kellam (has seasonal alt) Inigo (has seasonal alt) Laurent Severa (has seasonal alt) Noire (has seasonal alt) Akaneia has a ton of remaining playable characters, but only a handful that people would actually give a shit about.

Colorless is the most likely color to have a new unit next month because Guinevere is the most recently released unit returning on the banner, and this will be her first rerun. While Nerthuz is the second most recently released unit on the banner, she and Yuri are only one month apart from each other, and Yuri's only rerun so far has been on Guinevere's banner, which means he didn't share a color with the new unit, whereas Nerthuz's only rerun was on Freyr's banner. Also, November has had two units release on the same banner for the past 3 years with both units being Heroes characters, so it's likely we'll get both Gullveig and Kvasir, which will give Guinevere and Yuri their first reruns on a banner sharing a color with a new unit. As for this month, your guess is as good as mine. I'm expecting someone from Engage in order to give us more units to play with, but having not played the game yet, I wouldn't know who the candidates are. Or it could be Future Past Tiki. Crushing the attacking team with overwhelming offense is the most common Aether Raids defense team win condition, and that's exactly what Gullveig's known kit does.

I find it hilarious that this week's Resonant Battle is TMS and Engage, which has only 1 Harmonized Hero between the two titles combined and only 22 units total. Well, at the very least, if you have Anna, it's super easy to just have Alear Charge down one side and Anna Rein Snap with another unit down the other side.

Managed to get Female Byleth on the free pull off of her revival banner. 40 pulls from the Hall of Forms banner: 1 Artur (+1 spark) 2 pity breakers: Fallen Lilith Ascended Eir Pretty decent pulls. Artur has a Def Asset, which is good enough and is better than my previous neutral copy. Unfortunately, this banner is a day late for the ranged special training maps, so I'll have to wait to level him up.

You need a minimum of 3 stacks of Pulse to activate Blazing Wind on the first round of combat with Arcane Caliburnus (and any other weapon with the Slaying effect). Time's Pulse provides 1 stack, but that's all you're getting since Special Spiral doesn't activate before the first round of combat, and Time's Pulse only activates if the unit's cooldown is at maximum, so you can't get more than 1 cooldown from it. If you want the unit to be self-sufficient, you'll need Infantry Pulse 4 instead of Time's Pulse since Infantry Pulse 4 activates on every turn regardless of the unit's current cooldown, which means Blazing Wind will be ready at the start of turn 3 if you have no other Pulse effects (turn 2 if you also have Quickened Pulse in the Sacred Seal slot). You can also run Pulse effects on teammates (Gerik's weapon, Askr's exclusive passive, etc.). Null Follow-Up nullifies "effects that guarantee foe's follow-up attacks" and "effects that prevent unit's follow-up attacks". Mareeta's Null Follow-Up is nullifying Brash Assault's guaranteed follow-up. Nullifying a guaranteed follow-up is not the same as follow-up prevention, and so your own Null Follow-Up does nothing to stop this effect. "Effects that prevent unit's follow-up attacks" refers specifically to the effect that is worded "[unit / foe] cannot make a follow-up attack" and to no other effect.

I managed to get 20 spaces clear in my barracks again, and we have the melee and ranged special training maps this weekend, so I decided to do my Halloween and Attuned pulls. 247 pulls from the Halloween banner: 6 Anna (+1 spark) 1 Timerra 2 Flayn 5 5-star Seadall 6 4-star Seadall 7 pity breakers Pent Brave Corrin Brave Soren Ascended Laegjarn Ymir Fallen Gustav Galzus 5.7% focus rate is kind of insane, as that would still be a 3.6% focus rate even if all of the 5-star copies of Seadall weren't 5-star. 8.5% total 5-star rate. Does Seadall have a grudge against me or something? For most of the time I was pulling on this banner, I had more copies of Anna than Seadall, which is flat-out bizarre. I pulled Anna before Seadall. By the time I pulled a second Seadall, I already had 3 copies of Anna not including the spark. My fourth (non-spark) copy of Anna came when I had 4 copies of Seadall, and my fifth copy of Anna came when I had 5 copies of Seadall. The next 5 copies of him came at a more reasonable pace, but then there was yet another huge gap without one where I got another Anna before finally finishing off this banner with my last Seadall. And the fact that I ended up with 5 of the 11 copies of him as 5-star copies is equally bizarre. I got a [+Spd, -Res] copy of Anna and an [+Spd, -Def] copy of Seadall, which is nice. Flayn's best Asset is Res, and Timerra has an Atk Asset. I got an Azel from the 4-star SR pool that is my first copy with a Spd Asset. I also got Eyvel to +7 and Ymir to +9 with the pity breakers. I'm pretty sure the reason Seadall was trolling me is because I wasn't originally going to pull for merges for him, but then I changed my mind after seeing how abysmally awful all of the other infantry candidates for Arcane Eclipse are. 136 pulls on the Attuned banner: 3 Sonya (+1 spark) 6 Peony (+1 spark) 0 Triandra (+1 spark) 7 pity breakers Female Alear Hugh Brave Tiki Citrinne Ascended Hilda Ascended Fir Dedue 6.7% focus rate is a bit above average for a color-sharing banner by maybe 1-2 pulls. 11.8% overall 5-star rate is quite a bit above average. I got a Peony with a Spd Asset, which is nice. No copy of Sonya better than neutral, though. Alear is my first copy with a Spd Asset. Citrinne is my first copy of her. And somehow I managed to get 3 red pity breakers, but no Triandra, which is disappointing because (1) Triandra is my favorite of the fairies, but she's never sharing a color with another character worth pulling for, and (2) Attuned Triandra has way better skills for fodder than Attuned Peony. Overall good haul today, though.

I kind of want ballistae to be implemented as a passive effect where if you end the unit's action without attacking, it deals damage in a pattern around the unit, like all squares exactly 4 spaces away or something like that. This lets it actually behave more like a siege unit and no longer interact with Distant Counter and Null C-Disrupt. Now that we have crazier stuff in the game like the Divine Vein effects, I think this would fit in pretty well.

I want Jake. The one with the ballista. Mostly because I want to see how they implement ballistae.

Yes. The one where she has a sword coming out her back.

Last week's free Arena ticket got me Laevatein again. This week's gets me Brave Lysithea: Did the customary full first session on the Harmonized Mystery Tiki Halloween banner and somehow got TIki. 58 pulls on the Double Special Heroes banner because it took 18 pulls to clear my pity rate after the spark: 3 Bernadetta 1 Anna 0 Tiki (+1 spark) Pretty decent. One of the copies of Bernadetta has a Spd Asset, which will be the new merge base. Anna's still stuck with a junk Asset since my previous one has HP and the new one has Def. I might pull on the Halloween banner and Attuned Heroes banner this weekend, but that's really only if I can be bothered clean up my barracks since I'm back down to 10 open slots again. If not, it's back to procrastination again.

He has the same purple flame aura on his map/battle sprite that most units on the fallen banners have.

I'm finally actually taking a look at Hestia's and Marla's stats since the ranged special training maps are on rotation today, and holy crap Hestia is disappointing. Marla manages to basically be red Bastian, having the highest Res stat and second-highest Atk stat of all red tomes with 47 Atk and 46+ Res with maximum Dragonflowers. For comparison, Bastian has 46 Atk and 47+ Res. Good stuff all around. Hestia, on the other hand, is just a budget version of Desert Soren. She only has 46 Atk and 44+ Res, whereas Soren has 45 Atk and 47 Res. Sure, she has 1 more Atk, but this stat spread is pretty much made to use Sabotage and Ploy, and Soren is just flat-out better. She scores one bucket higher than Soren in the Arena, but that's it. As far as I can remember, yes, this is the first time the Japanese epithets for two characters are identical to each other.

Not strictly the best, but this is basically the cookie-cutter build for any fast infantry tome unit that doesn't have a special gimmick to build around. Everything else is pretty much a side-grade. Mag. Null Follow is the easiest general-use premium B skill to get since you're pretty much always going to grab it from Brave Soren at the same time that you grab Flare (and if you're using Ophelia or Sonya to duplicate Flare, then you'll also always have it available for the same reason). There are quite a few other cookie-cutter options with different B skills depending on what you want to do with the unit (all of these assume an Arcane weapon for simplicity of listing alternate options): Flare + Remote Sparrow + Mag. Null Follow + Atk/Spd Oath 4 This is the vanilla cookie-cutter build. With Arcane Euphoria, you can replace the A skill with Atk/Spd Finish 4 if you don't need the additional damage reduction. With any weapon other than Arcane Caliburnus, you can replace the C skill with Atk/Spd Pledge to counter Guard or land Flare on opponents that can't counterattack. Flare + Atk/Spd Finish 4 + Desperation 4 + Atk/Spd Pledge Desperation 4 is generally safer than damage reduction, but you lose a counterattack to charge your Special. With Arcane Caliburnus, replace the C skill with Atk/Spd Oath 4. With any other weapon, you can alternatively run Flash Sparrow + Atk/Spd Oath 4 or Ruptured Sky + Atk/Spd Oath 4 if you want teleportation. Flare + Atk/Spd Finish 4 + Brash Assault 4 + Atk/Spd Oath 4 This gives you a bunch of additional damage on your follow-up from Finish 4 and Brash Assault 4. The more damage you take from the opponent's counterattack, the more additional damage you get, so you'll get more mileage if both the unit's Def and Res are low instead of having lopsided defenses. You can replace the A skill with Remote Sparrow for more safety. With any weapon other than Arcane Caliburnus, you can replace the C skill with Atk/Spd Pledge to counter Guard or land Flare on opponents that can't counterattack. Flare + Remote Sparrow + Escape Route 4 + Atk/Spd Pledge This gives you Canto. With Arcane Euphoria, you can replace the A skill with Atk/Spd Finish 4 if you don't need the additional damage reduction. With Arcane Caliburnus, replace the C skill with Atk/Spd Oath 4. With any weapon other than Arcane Caliburnus, you can also replace the C skill with Atk/Spd Oath 4 if you want teleportation before taking damage. Flare + Remote Sparrow + Special Spiral 4 + Atk/Spd Pledge This lets you land Flare on both attacks (starting from the second round of combat unless you have Pulse support) and fully nullify percentage damage reduction. With Arcane Euphoria, you can run Atk/Spd Finish 4 + Atk/Spd Pledge or Flash Sparrow + Atk/Spd Oath 4 if you don't need the additional damage reduction. With Arcane Caliburnus, replace the C skill with Atk/Spd Oath 4. Flare + Atk/Spd Finish 4 + Special Spiral 4 + Atk/Spd Oath 4 This is the standard one-hit-kill build for Flare. You need 2 stacks of Pulse from any source to have Flare charged for the first round of combat. With Arcane Eclipse, you can replace the C skill with Infantry Pulse 4 or Time's Pulse 4 to not have to rely on Pulse support from a teammate. Atk/Spd Oath 4 on any of the above builds that have it can be replaced with Def/Res Smoke 3 if you want Pathfinder support and can pass up on some combat performance.

Off the top of my head, Legendary Eliwood, Harmonized Caeda, and Sumia all would do well with Flow Refresh 4. All three of them have Canto on a different skill slot, and none of them have the Slaying effect on their weapon, so they need to take a counterattack to land a 2-cooldown Special and therefore can't run the safer Flow Desperation and still reliably land a Special. Eliwood and Caeda also have the convenience of already having Flow Refresh 3. It also works well on a setup with Arcane Downfall + Galeforce / Aether + Flow Refresh 4 + Alarm Atk/Spd, though the inheritance to get to this build is pretty inefficient, and we don't actually have any axe cavalry with a modern high Spd stat that doesn't already have a good exclusive weapon (Desert Kris is the fastest, and he's not even that fast anymore).

Flow Refresh 4 is actually pretty decent for units that want both the Null Follow-Up effect and percentage damage reduction and get neither from their weapon. It's still a somewhat niche skill, but it's more generally useful than Atk/Spd Unity at the very least. The passive healing also allows units to run a more offensive A skill instead of Surge Sparrow when sustain is necessary (and is also good for sustain on Galeforce units since they couldn't use Surge Sparrow for sustain in the first place). Spd/Def Hold is not terribly useful since Spd/Def Rein 3 is usually good enough, but if you can eventually get S/D Rein Snap on her, it would be good to let her duplicate that, too.

Normally, you'd obviously be running Lunar Brace II, but in the event that you need to switch it to Gambit 4 for a map, you'll also want to switch her Special to either Dragon Fang (if you need a functional Special and are running a weapon with +1 Special charge rate, like Storm Sieglinde or Arcane Devourer) or Aether (if you don't need a functional Special or if you have some way to make up for the 1 point of additional cooldown needed to activate it on each round of combat). Atk/Spd Unity is a pretty niche skill since without debuffs it grants fewer points of stats than most other relevant A skills. All of the other relevant A skills except for the Distant Counter skills all grant strictly more stats when the unit doesn't have debuffs. The only times when you'll want to use it over something else are in game modes where debuffs are common (namely Aether Raids and Arena) or when you're running Grand Strategy, and even then, it's really only reliable on enemy-phase units and teleporters due to the positioning condition. I would definitely recommend using her to duplicate an A skill that is better for general use (Flared Sparrow, Atk/Spd Clash 4, Distant A/S Solo, etc.).

This actually made me think of something. I mentioned in Rearmed Plumeria's banner's translation notes that all of the fairies' exclusive dance skills were written entirely phonetically, that that is extremely strange, and that I had no idea why they did that. Well, for practical purposes, there are really only four reasons why you'd write Japanese purely phonetically (other than purely for stylistic purposes): The medium you're using doesn't support kanji. For example, video games need every character that can be displayed to be stored somewhere in the game data as an image. Nowadays, that can be done by simply importing a font, but before that was possible, these images had to be manually drawn. This is obviously a lot of work and could actually take up a sizable amount of limited storage space back in the day, and so older games would typically have a limited set of kanji available to be used and often none at all if you go far enough back. You're a child and haven't learned enough kanji to read and/or write yet (or the work is intended to be read by children). You're learning the language and haven't learned enough kanji to read and/or write yet (or the work is intended to be read by people learning the language). When the ambiguity is necessary (such as for puns involving homophones). Number 2 above is looking to be an interesting possibility. If these skills are intended to be interpreted as being seen from a child's point of view, they would make sense to be written phonetically. Additionally, it's worth mentioning that all of the fairies' dance skills use extremely simple words (especially in contrast to their epithets and weapons) and are words that children would be expected to know how to say (even if they don't know how to read or write them): Peony has "やさしいゆめ" (yasashii yume), "Kind Dream" and "やさしいひとのゆめ" (yasashii hito no yume), "Dream of a Kind Person". Mirabilis has "しろいゆめ" (shiroi yume), "White Dream". This is clearly a play on "白昼夢" (hakuchūmu), "daydream" or "fantasy", which literally translates as "to dream in the white [light] of day" (white being the color most closely associated with daytime in both Japanese and Chinese), simplifying it to something easier to write and pronounce. Triandra has "こわいゆめ" (kowai yume), "Frightening Dream" and "こわいかこのゆめ" (kowai kako no yume), "Dream of a Frightening Past". Plumeria has "あまいゆめ" (amai yume), "Sweet Dream" and "あまいみつのゆめ" (amai mitsu no yume), "Dream of Sweet Nectar". These sound like names you would find in an actual fairy tale. (And yes, the skills for the fancier versions of each character all use the same adjective as the skill from the regular version, but with the adjective applied to a new noun instead of to "dream".)

The official announcement hasn't been made yet, but we can probably safely assume that skills up through Legendary Alear should now be available (since the previous one didn't add anything new, and the one before that added skills through Freyr). Notably, this means we now have access to Desperation 4, Atk/Spd Pledge, and all of the CYL banner skills. Not listing exclusive skills because there's no reason to grab them from Hall of Forms if you're keeping the unit (unless you haven't refined the weapon yet and want to save dew on the refine). The Assist slot can be anything with maximum SP. I typically prefer one of Rally Atk/Spd+ or Harsh Command+, but use whatever suits your play style best. Legendary Eirika [+Spd] Petalfall Blade+ [Spd] [Assist] Ruptured Sky Flared Sparrow / Atk/Spd Clash 4 / Distant A/S Solo Gambit 4 / Desperation 4 Alarm Atk/Spd Storm Sieglinde [unique], Lunar Brace II, and Galeforce are more optimal; however, it's obviously best to grab skills that are harder to get in those slots. While the Canto effect from Alarm is obviously not necessary due to Lunar Brace II having a better Canto effect, Alarm is still the preferred skill in the C slot due to the in-combat stat boost (same reason Oath 4 and Pledge were recommended for Lumera previously). Legendary Ephraim [+Atk] Hare's Lance+ [Def / Atk] [Assist] Ruptured Sky Atk/Def Clash 4 Gambit 4 / Brash Assault 4 / Desperation 4 / Flow Desperation / Flow Near Trace 3 Alarm Atk/Def Basically identical notes as for Eirika, but replace the Eirika's skills with the corresponding ones for Ephraim. Winter Artur [+Res] Teacake Tower+ [Res] [Assist] Armored Floe Fireflood Boost 3 / Def/Res Unity Special Fighter 4 D/R Far Save 3 The addition of Arcane Caliburnus makes things a bit weird for Artur because it overlaps Artur's B options quite a bit. And if it wasn't already clear, he should be switching his weapon to Arcane Caliburnus [Res] as soon as possible. Special Fighter 4 is still the preferred B skill due to its healing effect, even if its Special acceleration won't stack with Arcane Caliburnus. However, Vengeful Fighter 4 and Guard 4 also have effects that are at least somewhat worth considering. Def/Res Unity is really only useful for Aether Raids, but it's harder to get than Distant Def 4, which is more generally useful (although it doesn't play nice with Teacake Tower if you don't have Arcane Caliburnus). Fireflood Boost 3 isn't the correct stat combination, but it's the only Boost 4 skill currently available and is decent enough if aren't being haunted by the increasingly prevalent bows and daggers. Young Innes [+Spd] Whitecap Bow+ [Spd] [Assist] Ruptured Sky / Deadeye Flash Sparrow / Remote Sparrow / Atk/Spd Hexblade / Atk/Spd Finish 4 Phys. Null Follow / Brash Assault 4 / Desperation 4 / Escape Route 4 Atk/Spd Oath 4 / Atk/Spd Pledge Innes is a bit interesting because Whitecap Bow+ [Spd], Whitewind Bow+ [Spd], Arcane Nastrond [Spd], and Arcane Darkbow [Spd] are all really strong and are very much competitive with Bow of Frelia due to all of them granting a larger boost to Spd, and it'll be a while before Bow of Frelia finally gets a refine since we haven't even gotten to the first set of children yet. Whitecap Bow is the only one that's actually available from Hall of Forms, though, so that's the one being recommended. The skills for each slot depend entirely on what you have in other slots and the weapon you intend to run. Obviously, don't run skills that render the unique bonuses from another skill slot useless (like Desperation 4 making Remote Sparrow's damage reduction mostly useless). It's worth noting that Brash Assault 4 is still usable with Arcane Nastrond even though you're doubling up on guaranteed follow-ups because the damage boost from Brash Assault is really good and still worth considering.