Basic Questions

[Chocoburger]

I played this game for a few chapters about a year ago before I got distracted by other things, and I have a few leftover beginner questions. If they've already been covered and there are links handy, feel free to do that if you like, or if there are good "general" guides that aren't walkthroughs or full of spoilers.

I made it to chapter 5 or 6 last time before I stopped playing, I think, on Hard/Classic. This time I'll be playing on Hard/Classic again, and I won't be using any DLC, paid or otherwise, for this run. With that in mind, the questions:

1. Should I be concerned about switching around the active char/support in a pair to try and equalize experience gains? It seemed to me that Chrom and Robin quickly and significantly outleveled both their supporting partners and the other pairs. They basically carried everyone else, and were always more than a few levels ahead.

I don't recall exactly, but Chrom and Robin were pushing level 10, I believe, their supports were around six, and the rest of the team was five or lower (these numbers may not be exact, or even correct for that point in the game, but I think they are proportionally right). How can I manage experience better?

2. Is there a rough guideline for the number of class changes to make assuming I'm not grinding? I understand it varies based on what level you're planning to make the changes, and whether you just want skills, but I'm kind of afraid of gimping a character by making his internal level too high and ending up in a situation where I need to grind to fix him. I think I'm going to plan around having four pairs.

3. Are there any classes that are better served going it alone? I've heard healers might be better being unpaired, but I don't know for sure, and I think I would be annoyed to have a single unpaired character.

As you can see, most of my questions relate to pairing up, but a lot of the information and discussion about the process relates to producing optimal children, which is something I'm not super concerned about for a first playthrough with no post-game ambitions. Thanks for any thoughts on the matter, and I apologize if these are all covered in-depth somewhere else.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Chocoburger

[Lantairu]

I played this game for a few chapters about a year ago before I got distracted by other things, and I have a few leftover beginner questions. If they've already been covered and there are links handy, feel free to do that if you like, or if there are good "general" guides that aren't walkthroughs or full of spoilers.

I made it to chapter 5 or 6 last time before I stopped playing, I think, on Hard/Classic. This time I'll be playing on Hard/Classic again, and I won't be using any DLC, paid or otherwise, for this run. With that in mind, the questions:

1. Should I be concerned about switching around the active char/support in a pair to try and equalize experience gains? It seemed to me that Chrom and Robin quickly and significantly outleveled both their supporting partners and the other pairs. They basically carried everyone else, and were always more than a few levels ahead.

I don't recall exactly, but Chrom and Robin were pushing level 10, I believe, their supports were around six, and the rest of the team was five or lower (these numbers may not be exact, or even correct for that point in the game, but I think they are proportionally right). How can I manage experience better?

2. Is there a rough guideline for the number of class changes to make assuming I'm not grinding? I understand it varies based on what level you're planning to make the changes, and whether you just want skills, but I'm kind of afraid of gimping a character by making his internal level too high and ending up in a situation where I need to grind to fix him. I think I'm going to plan around having four pairs.

3. Are there any classes that are better served going it alone? I've heard healers might be better being unpaired, but I don't know for sure, and I think I would be annoyed to have a single unpaired character.

As you can see, most of my questions relate to pairing up, but a lot of the information and discussion about the process relates to producing optimal children, which is something I'm not super concerned about for a first playthrough with no post-game ambitions. Thanks for any thoughts on the matter, and I apologize if these are all covered in-depth somewhere else.

1: I just switch around when one's level is higher than the other.

2: It doesn't matter how many class changes you make, because you, for the most part, retain most of your stats, unless it's like a sorcerer to a general. That's just my experience at least.

3: No. In chapters with an odd number of units to send out, I just leave one out.

Honestly, this is a very easy chapter, even on Hard/Classic. Maybe if your a first timer to the FE series it can be challenging, but if you have any experience with Fire Emblem, you should be fine.

Edited September 10, 2015 by Lantairu

[Shinehollow]

I played this game for a few chapters about a year ago before I got distracted by other things, and I have a few leftover beginner questions. If they've already been covered and there are links handy, feel free to do that if you like, or if there are good "general" guides that aren't walkthroughs or full of spoilers.

I made it to chapter 5 or 6 last time before I stopped playing, I think, on Hard/Classic. This time I'll be playing on Hard/Classic again, and I won't be using any DLC, paid or otherwise, for this run. With that in mind, the questions:

1. Should I be concerned about switching around the active char/support in a pair to try and equalize experience gains? It seemed to me that Chrom and Robin quickly and significantly outleveled both their supporting partners and the other pairs. They basically carried everyone else, and were always more than a few levels ahead.

I don't recall exactly, but Chrom and Robin were pushing level 10, I believe, their supports were around six, and the rest of the team was five or lower (these numbers may not be exact, or even correct for that point in the game, but I think they are proportionally right). How can I manage experience better?

2. Is there a rough guideline for the number of class changes to make assuming I'm not grinding? I understand it varies based on what level you're planning to make the changes, and whether you just want skills, but I'm kind of afraid of gimping a character by making his internal level too high and ending up in a situation where I need to grind to fix him. I think I'm going to plan around having four pairs.

3. Are there any classes that are better served going it alone? I've heard healers might be better being unpaired, but I don't know for sure, and I think I would be annoyed to have a single unpaired character.

As you can see, most of my questions relate to pairing up, but a lot of the information and discussion about the process relates to producing optimal children, which is something I'm not super concerned about for a first playthrough with no post-game ambitions. Thanks for any thoughts on the matter, and I apologize if these are all covered in-depth somewhere else.

1.No.The Risen are there for you to train on.And it's super easy to get your other characters on par with your main team.

2.Don't think you need that,either.But,most of the time,at least battling Risen is not avoidable if you want to get to shops,and unlike The Sacred Stones,you can't retreat out of these.

3.Most-if not all-are better paired.With high enough supports it gives you great stat bonuses and hit and avoid rates.

Well,this may suck,but I don't play Awakening that seriously.

[Thor Odinson]

wrt active char/support it depends on how much you really want to train up an entire party or is cool with only 6 people who can really fight

Switching them around is a good plan, though I often forget to switch back haha, or if one is really tanky and i put them in front of enemies for an entire EP all the enemies are dead whoops

I've mostly started playing FE13HM as, well, I play a lot of themed runs and I'm very strict on giving exp (if you're not the subset of units I'm using you're not getting any exp if I can help it) to units, so earlygame is actually quite lowman and as a result, especially robin (robin will be easily overlevelled if you are using them and don't remove veteran/don't pair them up, because it's 1.5x exp on pairup) gets a lot of exp fast and what I do is I let them get overlevelled then use their really nice support bonuses to train up laterjoiners. Around midgame is where I start playing mostly unpaired so everyone get a good amount of exp, with pairing only to secure certain kills, and in 21 is where I start fully pairing again.

Honestly, it really depends on who you want to train and who you like, because if you only like 6 characters and wanna just get their partners to promotion and shove them in the back forever I got away with doing that on Lunatic nogrind so I don't see why not on Hard. If you want to train a full team, that's where switching is good.

Risen is "avoidable" if you plan out your purchases and just buy everything you need for the next n chapters so you don't have to shop in case it's closed. Or if you're me and basically play all axes, buy 30 handaxes at a time.

Paired up IS better, there's no real drawback unless you count having less units occupying the map but really this game only gets easier with lowmanning so not really an issue.

If you want to conserve exp--although this does take quite a bit of second seals and they're not very common early--I recommend staying unpromoted until you're close or at your unpromoted caps since exp goes a lot faster that way and unpromoted caps can carry you a good long while. That is, unless you're rushing Dark Flier galeforce, but that's a different story. If you're not rushing for any high level promoted skills, going through a second unpromoted class before promotion helps with exp management.

[Czar_Yoshi]

EXP management: I find it beneficial to let one or two units get way ahead of the pack, then have them act as decoys, removing dangerous threats etc and generally making it easier to feed lower-level units. All in all I do better managing large teams that way than I do trying to pretend it's Pokemon and never letting anybody get more than a level ahead of the pack.

[Phoenix_Kensai]

I think others have answered the questions pretty well, so the one thing...

Personally, I recommend trying to keep levels on your team relatively even, Frederick aside. Focusing on a small number of units (even one or two) does make the game easier, but... well, that's why; I find the game to be more fun when it's more of a challenge, and I like the characters, so having more of them is a plus. Plowing through the game with a couple of overpowered characters is quite possible, but not really the sort of thing I like to do in Fire Emblem.

But your experience may vary. (And don't try to use everyone. Down that path lies madness... and maybe an interesting challenge run.)

(...Also, don't worry too much about keeping levels even. That's a headache. Trust me; I do that sometimes, so I know.)

[Kuroi Tsubasa Tenshi]

Characters with support abilities aren't necessariliy individually better off going alone, but the boosts for them are typically low enough that they can get away with going unpaired. Like, your Dancer, rallybots and healers would like having a +1 Mov pair-up (and +Mag, in the case of the staffers), but they don't receive the same huge benefits, as, say a lead combat unit, who picks up Dual Strike and Dual Guard chances, as well as making more general use of all pair-up +stats, since they'll typically be in the thick of things.

Also, consider that when you get to multiple healers, there's a big difference in amount of actions taken. For instance, both healers could pair up so that the one in the lead can heal for marginally more, or both healers could heal individually, which the army would benefit more from in 9 cases out of 10. Sure, each healer could pick up their own non-healer support partner, but then that partner is stuck not doing much every time the healer heals—not to mention not gaining any EXP.

[Chocoburger]

Thanks for the tips, all, I appreciate them—they were quite helpful.

This is my first Fire Emblem game, and I am rather enjoying it.