Currently on FINAL CHAPTER of my first ever run of FE4; any last minute advice?

[Silver Lightning]

I finally figured out to play this game, so I'm very excited to start! Other than FE 6, this is my first foray into the Japan-only games, so any advice or tips would be appreciated. I was interested in playing this since I have heard great things about it and that the famous marriage system originated here. Since I have mostly only played the newer, localized games, is there anything I need to know about this game in advance that I wouldn't know from playing other Fire Emblem games?

Also, how does the marriage system work? I know there is a first gen and second gen, so what are certain things I should know about that? Are there people I should use/avoid using or pairings I should make/avoid making (I have very little knowledge of the Holy Blood system and what makes good children)? Lots of questions and more...

Basically, I'm coming into this game almost completely blind, so if you feel there is anything that needs to be known, please enlighten me! Thanks!

Edited July 16, 2013 by Silver Lightning

[PKLucas531]

I'm probably just going to ramble about whatever comes to my head.

You have Map Saves, so make a save at the beginning of each chapter, then set the Autosave in the Options menu to a different file so you always have two backups. Try to keep a really weak character at your home castle so they can lose in the Arena and change the RNG if you save yourself into a bad situation(people who die in the Arena just come out at 1 HP, unlike newer games)

Also, you can't trade items. You have to sell an item to the Pawn Shop and then have the person who wants it, buy it with their own money(everyone has their own individual amount of gold) so if an enemy has a droppable item, try to let someone who can use said item kill the enemy. The Arena is basically free money for the good characters, and free EXP, so abuse it at the start of each chapter.

I recommend using the Events/Secret Events guide on the main site. You wouldn't want to miss out on things like Lex's Brave Axe, the Pursuit Ring, or any of the talks that give stat boosts/items as well. It would be a really bad thing if you missed out on getting Holsety by not visiting a certain castle :B

I believe the mainsite also has a good pairings guide that tells you what gets the kids what, which is way more important than in FE13. You can really screw over some kids (like, pairing anyone with Arden basically means their kids become worthless, iirc) You want to plan out your pairings in advance to have an even easier time with Gen 2. You also definitely don't want to end up pairing people that make a Holy weapon unusable(like having Lewyn marry someone w/o a magic using kid)

The game gives you a lot of freebie characters that can wreck stuff. Sigurd can handle most of Gen 1 with help from Lex, Finn, Quan, Ethlyn and Lewyn. Then in Gen 2 you're guaranteed Seliph, Ares, and Shanan, who can very well take on all of Gen 2 with little problems. Also unlike the newer FEs, there are some legitimately bad characters that you probably shouldn't waste your time on unless you just plain like them, like Arden, Alec, Noish(the 2 Cavs make good filler dads though)

The two characters you want to marry gain love points just by being deployed on the map, but also gain +5 points for ending a turn next to each other. So if you haven't recruited someone in a pair, try to keep the guy/girl away from others whom they might have a fast building marriage with. There is also a cut-off point for ALL marriages, unlike FE13. If a woman is unpaired by the time Gen 1 ends, you'll end up getting two "substitute" characters for those children later on in Gen 2 who are usually worse than the kids themselves.

Edited May 12, 2013 by PKLucas531

[Tamanoir]

Thiefs can't steal Items, but automatically takes all the ennemy's gold after the fight.

The Arena works very differently than other games, you have a set of ennemies for each chapter, Prologue exclude, who becomes progressively stronger.

every ennemy can be beaten only once by every character. You can find the data on the site.

It's a good thing to try to beat as many Arena Ennemies with all your useable characters before the chapter ends.

You can repair every weapons, including legendary. Legendary cost 1000 per cost, though.

Pursuit (doubling when Speed is High enough) and Critical aren't build up skills, only a set of characters have them. You can learn Critical if you kill 50 ennemies with a same weapons. Then it adds 1% more critical with every other kills up to 50%

Roads weakens your avoid, but boost your movement, so they are really important terrains.

Villages aren't automatically destroyed, but you lose 500 Gold with any turns of Attacks.

You can deploy every characters, but some aren't worth it. Arden will generally be benched immediately. Noish and Alec have some uses early on but they can find behind rapidly.

In later chapters, try to keep a character to protect your main castle, because else it's instant Game Over.

[BrightBow]

-Just to be sure: The first generation and the second generation are not playable at the same time.

-Each female character will get two children for the second generation. The female child will get the full growths of her mother + half the growths of her father and the other way around.

They will also inherit all items of the parent with the same gender (it's reversed with Ethlin and Briggid's children) as long as they can use them. And all the Private skills of both parents.

-Each skill can be either a Private skill or a Class skill. Private skills are part of a unit and will be inherited by their children. Class skills are shared by all units of the same class. They won't be inherited.

So Sigurd and Jamka both have the Pursuit skill. Sigurd's Pursuit is a private skill while Jamka only has it as a class skill. In Sigurd's case, this means that his kids will inherit the skill. But Jamka only has it because he is a Bow Fighter, so his kids won't inherit it.

-If a couple's love points reach 500, they WILL change their status to lovers. You are not asked for permission.

Also, characters will stop gaining love points at turn 50, so you can't just have anyone fall in love in the same chapter they joined.

-You can't check the lover points directly but the fortune teller actually gives you valuable information in that regard.

-If a female character has no lover (or died) before the end of the second generation, their children will be replaced by substitute characters.

-Holy Blood gives you bonuses to your growth rates and weapon ranks. The boni depend on the kind of blood. For example Odo blood gives a huge boast in skill and increases your sword rank while Ulir boasts luck and increases the bow rank.

Each kind of Holy Blood comes in two variations: Major and Minor.

The growth bonus from Major holy blood is twice as high as minor. Also minor blood will only raise weapon rank by one while Major puts it all the way to max.

Minor holy blood will be inherited by both children. Major Holy blood will only be inherited by one child, while the other gets minor.

-Technically Major blood also allows you to use the respective Holy Weapon. But since these weapons can't be traded, the characters who get them are those that have major blood anyway.

And the weapons will be inherited by the child with the Major holy blood, so it really doesn't matter.

-You can check a unit's holy blood by pressing A on the unit's status screen.

-A unit's status shows which ally they can currently talk to. You get plenty of items that way, so check that ever now and then.

-Getting Ayra is chapter 1 is rather troublesome since she guards the very castle that you have to conquer before you can talk to her.

You pretty much have to lure her away first. Use Alec since his Nihil skill prevents Ayra from killing him with Astra. Once Sigurd is done with the castle, make him talk to her.

-Weapon weight lowers your speed. There is no Con or Build stat to negate that. Also the game conveniently directly displays your agility.

-Weapon rank is determined by class and holy blood. That's why Sigurd's sword rank is already at max. The only way to raise it, is to promote or to arrange parents with holy blood.

-The level cap is 30. Promotions can be done any time starting with level 20. The level will stay the way it is and will not reset to level 1.

Also the promotion gains are the difference between the caps of the old class and the new one. Which means that a character who has stats capped in his first class will already have all stats capped immediately after promotion.

So you don't need to worry about wasting levels if you don't promote immediately.

That is very convenient because you can only promote at your main castle. So you can just wait to the beginning of the next map to promote.

-A mounted unit can still do all tasks when using their remaining movement after attacking. So they can still talk to others or visit a city and stuff.

-Critical hits are a bit funny in this one. You need a skill for them. If you don't have it, there are a few ways to get around that.

-be next to a lover

-be next to a sibling

-have a weapon that gives the skill, like the Killer Bow.

-use a weapon with over 50 kills.

But I would say that the game is so easy, you should be fine either way.

Edited May 12, 2013 by BrightBow

[Baldrick]

Re: the marriage system, make sure you activate every conversation, because some of them give lover points.

In the home base, there's an option called "Fortune Teller" where you can see who has the most points with each character. By around chapter 4, if they haven't been married yet, you should stick them together. But you don't really need to plan your pairings beforehand, most of the optimal ones will happen naturally and most of your strongest characters will still be there even if you choose bad pairings.

[LeaderR Elliot]

Sigurd likes either Silver sword or hero(brave) Sword, just pick one and get it 50+ kills

[monkymeet]

Thieves also can give their money. This is important for units that can't gain money on their own (like staff users, and dancers, to an extent). Married couples can also give money to each other, though it caps at 50,000.

[BluBlaDe]

Don't pair Ayra too fast, she can obtains the awesome Hero sword in chapter 3 if she has no lovers yet.

Pair Aidean before chapter 4

For Gen 2 if you don't pair characters at all they will have some random conversation that will give them bonus stats. However you won't be able to use the lover crit system if they aren't paired and most characters will have really high stats anyway.

If you feel lazy use only the girls and their lovers, you don't have to use every single characters.

Your thief is really useful if you want to have a lot of money and abuse the elite ring ( you can also play the game the normal way just fine or do some boss abuse which is damn boring)

Also Enjoy the game. Definitely one of the best plot of the whole series.

[Guy Starwind]

Everyone is giving good advice. I'm just going to say my normal things of advice to new players.

1. Make 2 save files. You can't restart chapters. I learned this the hard way.

2. Use Fin

3. Not to sound mean or rude but you should leave these forums while you're playing this. People will spoil this game for you. They will tell you who to pair and who are the best children. Screw them! Pair who you want. I went blind my first time and most of my choices sucked but I had a blast.

[Silver Lightning]

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

I feel really really embarrassed about this, but I'm having trouble already....on the first chapter no less! I think its because this is a far different gameplay style than any other FE I have played; I'm not used to not being able to double or crit with most everyone, I don't quite understand the castle and conquering stuff, road terrain sucks now, I keep feeling like I have to rush to save villages, since I can deploy everyone I don't know whether i should ignore people I don't plan to ultimately use in pairings (like the cavaliers and Arden), and I'm not sure why but some times my sword users randomly get hit by axe users with low hit rate and since healing is so limited only to Ethlyn so far everyone has injuries all the time and there's so many damn enemies and the map is flippin HUGE...and I've had to restart 3 times already....AGAINST FREAKING BARBARIANS.....ON THE FIRST CHAPTER!!!!

I don't know whether to feel ashamed or stupid....or both....I feel like I've lost all respect as an FE veteran....I'm taking a break for now and I'll try again tomorrow...

[Guy Starwind]

Don't feel bad that's just normal FE4. Friend this is the smallest map in the game. You were asking if you should ignore people you weren't going to use for pairings and I say yes. Well, at least I do. Also since you can repair items I would spam the crap out of healers. FE4 is different but if you keep with it I think you'll have a lot of fun.

[Silver Lightning]

Don't feel bad that's just normal FE4. Friend this is the smallest map in the game. You were asking if you should ignore people you weren't going to use for pairings and I say yes. Well, at least I do. Also since you can repair items I would spam the crap out of healers. FE4 is different but if you keep with it I think you'll have a lot of fun.

Thanks. I guess I just have to sit back and re-work how I look at my strategies; its so different from any game or chapter I have ever played. I guess I'll ignore Arden right off the bat, but I'm gonna need Alec and Noish for now if I want to save the villages. I'll bench them eventually. And I do plan on using Finn, but its hard right now because he doesn't mix well with axe country...and sadly, I have already been spoiled about a number of things in this game long before I even knew what they meant. But that's what got me interested enough to play this one before any of the other JPN games. It'll just take time to get used to it I suppose.

And what exactly do you mean that you can't restart chapters?? Like, if I save and keep going and then lose someone, I can't just reload the save???

And do you have to repair a weapon before all of its uses run out? Or does it just sit broken in your inventory to be repaired?

[PKLucas531]

You don't have to repair a weapon before all of its uses run out. If it reaches 0 it becomes "Broken" but you can still pay for the repair and it'll return to normal.

Finn is a cool guy, especially when he gets his Brave Lance. He's also the only character from Gen 1 that's usable in Gen 2, so he can go crazy in Gen 2 if he gets a lot of levels in Gen 1. Sometimes its even recommended you don't pair him off with anyone, because if you do he loses his weapons from Gen 1 when he comes back in Gen 2, whereas if you don't, he keeps all of his stuff.

You can't restart chapters, unless you have a save file at the very beginning of the chapter. So say you save yourself on a turn where someone is going to die and there's no one around to change the RNG(like no one can move/attack something else/etc) you've basically saved yourself into that person always dying. Still, you have 5 files and can save whenever you want, so I recommend making a save at the start of the chapter, or whenever you conquer a castle, then setting the autosave to another file for saving each turn.

[Guy Starwind]

Thanks. I guess I just have to sit back and re-work how I look at my strategies; its so different from any game or chapter I have ever played. I guess I'll ignore Arden right off the bat, but I'm gonna need Alec and Noish for now if I want to save the villages. I'll bench them eventually. And I do plan on using Finn, but its hard right now because he doesn't mix well with axe country...and sadly, I have already been spoiled about a number of things in this game long before I even knew what they meant. But that's what got me interested enough to play this one before any of the other JPN games. It'll just take time to get used to it I suppose.

And what exactly do you mean that you can't restart chapters?? Like, if I save and keep going and then lose someone, I can't just reload the save???

And do you have to repair a weapon before all of its uses run out? Or does it just sit broken in your inventory to be repaired?

You can repair weapons even after they break. In fact you can use broken weapons if you really wanted to make it interesting.

To answer your chapter restart question: Do you know how most FE games have a restart chapter option? Well, this doesn't. If you miss an item or someone dies and you save it you aren't able to restart the chapter. I suppose you don't have to save but since you have the option with every turn I don't know why you wouldn't. Anyways it's good to have a second save just in case you have to start back from square one.

[monkymeet]

About villages, don't feel too bad about saving most of them... Only a few are actually really dire , the rest will supply money for your poorer units. Don't feel bad abusing Sigurd, despite him being pre-promoted. He's awesome, and he knows it.

[MacLovin]

Have Finn go to the southern village in prologue, the one below the first boss castle that MIdayle spawns out of.

Mounts are good, some subs are decent enough and spam anything you want.

USE THE ARENA.

[Byte2222]

Most of the advice being given here is actually pretty good, I don't really have anything to add. Don't worry about struggling to begin with, FE4 is a pretty weird game compared to the rest of the series.

Everyone is giving good advice. I'm just going to say my normal things of advice to new players.

1. Make 2 save files. You can't restart chapters. I learned this the hard way.

2. Use Fin

3. Not to sound mean or rude but you should leave these forums while you're playing this. People will spoil this game for you. They will tell you who to pair and who are the best children. Screw them! Pair who you want. I went blind my first time and most of my choices sucked but I had a blast.

No.3 is probably the best advice in this thread: in my experience loads of people offer specific advice (pairings, items etc.) and try to micromanage you and you're better off without them.

[Kiriane]

The Unit menu is super, super helpful for knowing who can talk to whom. Okay. I'm done here.

[Fargo294]

There are a lot of preferred pairings for the children in the second generation. Aira is usually preferred to marry Holyn or Lex because of Aira getting the Hero Sword from either of them in Chapter three if they aren't married yet and making her children excellent physical units. Tiltyu is best paired with either Levin or Azel because of being able to pass down great magical power; Claud makes a nice parent too giving his children good resistance but her son Arthur won't be able to put to use the ability to use staffs. Same husbands for Fury for magical prowess. Although it may take a while, I recommend pairing Briggid with Dew(He's able to get the wind sword); this will require the two standing next to each other for quite a while. If you don't have the patience for that, Holyn pairing up with her will take less time and still make Patty, Briggid's daughter, a good unit; Holyn should get a hold of a B rank sword and a magic sword since ,respectively, Patty won't be able to wield A rank weapons until she promotes and she'll be able to attack enemies from a distance. Lachesis is best with Beowulf, since he can pass down pursuit(2x attack), or Dew, since he can pass down some good swords if he gets a hand on any and the Bargain skill. Adean, I personally feel, should be paired with Midayle since he has good growths and he can pass down the pursuit skill while Jamka has uneven stats and can't pass down the pursuit skill for some reason, though he does have the killer bow to pass down, so that might make up for it. Sylvia is best with Claud, hands down. The other magic users may be good parents, but they should be saved for other characters. On a positive side, Claud will bestow great magic and resistance growths and pass down the staffs he bought as well as the reserve staff. These are only my opinions, but I hope this helps.

[Soledai]

Huh, I came here to give some advice, but isn't necessary it seems as most of this is pretty good, I'd say.

Maybe I'll be quicker to the punch if you have another issue, anyways, good luck

[MacLovin]

Lex pairs well with any mom.

Even Aideen, because elite!Lana and pursuit ring Lester.

And Sylvia because corple wants levels.

Finn also pairs well with anyone due to prayer, and some of his kids get boost covos with him.

Noish is a fun dad who passes hp/str/def growth to kids.

Jamka/Midayle pair well with the Jungby sisters due to passing down bows. Dunno about Ardan, but he lacks pursuit.

Claude works well if the child can use magic/magic swords and passes the fe4 equivalent of the Aum Staff to sety/corple.

Azel is a surprisingly decent dad for magic/swordie kids due to pursoot.

Finn is a god, Oifaye is also a god, Cuan is a total bro when he's there and Lex/Delmud are very bro.

Screw Sharlow, he took the cookie jar.

[BluBlaDe]

Don't worry too much about the villages. Make sure you save them and even if there's still an house standing it's alright. You only loose some money.

For the Intro it can be a little hard but Sigurd on a forest is basically a god.

Send Sigurd alone southwest to save the village ASAP ( he's gonna get attacked like crazy but he'll survive, send Ethlin, Finn and Cuan this way too.

Send Adan, Noish and Alec west ( kill the brigand too)

Azel and Lex should be fine, they rock. Try not to expose Azel too much although.

As for the first chapter the beginning IS hard. You got to keep your distance and position your units real good. Also get the kill on Kimbois with Lex.

You can also put Dew on a forest instead or running away with Edean. He's gonna get some sweet cash from the barbarians although he'll have something like 10 % of getting hit by one of the barbarian.

[MacLovin]

dew on church works better IMO.

To be honest, just play the game. It's better to discover it blindly.

[Silver Lightning]

Ok, after going on a little hiatus to attend my sisters graduation, I'm back to playing! I took a lot of you guy's advice and I managed to get through the prologue. Now I'm on Chapter 1 with lots of enemies and new stuff unlocked in town. Any advice for this chapter will be appreciated! (Also, since this is a volutary advice topic for me, I'll be updating the topic title with where I am in the game currently.)

A few questions though:

How do arena's work exactly? I know they can be abused better cuz characters won't die, but can everyone use it fully in a chapter? Or can only a couple use it before they run out of fights?

I read that thieves can give units money. Can they take money too? Like, could I have the thief take money from a unit then give it to a unit who needs it more???

Thanks for all the advice so far!

[secondworld]

Each arena has seven battles, every character can fight all of them.

Also, if a character loses in the arena they will be left with one HP left.

You can have a character fight again even if they lost before, and their HP will be restored if they win.

Edited May 20, 2013 by David the SecondWorld