The Fire Emblem 3 Houses General Questions Thread

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Ncknck said:

I'm a complete new player starting a maddening run and have a couple of questions

-Fliers are the strongest classes followed by War Master and Bow Knight?
-The thread somewhere here said to make Dimitri a Bow Knight?
-What does brawling do? seems kinda redundant, but i guess the skills are good?
-What do 3 little unlit stars in the status display do?
-Are there fixed growths in fe3h?
-Should i mb start with Engage?

Doing a maddening run as your first run is pretty ambitious. Definitely possible, but I'd only recommend it if you're very experienced with Fire Emblem or similar turn based tactics games or if you're the sort of player who really enjoys struggling through difficulty. Addressing your questions in order:

• Fliers are generally considered the strongest classes, yes. Doing an exact ranking of what classes are next in line behind them is tricky and people will have their own opinions, but War Master and Bow Knight are certainly good classes, at least.
• Bow Knight Dimitri isn't a build I've ever used, nor have I really seen many people advocating for it. It could probably work OK, I guess, but it isn't an OP must-have build or anything like that.
• The main selling point of gauntlets is that you get to attack twice (or four times if you would otherwise double attack) when you attack on player phase. Basically like Brave weapons in other FE games.
• They indicate a budding talent. Basically, if you tutor the unit in that weapon enough times, they'll become proficient in it and gain an extra skill.
• Nope, no fixed growth mode here.
• Up to you. Engage is new, so it's probably easier to find people talking about it, while Three Houses is older so there's more and better information about it available. Engage is probably closer to a traditional Fire Emblem experience, whereas Three Houses is a bit more of its own thing and has more social sim elements. Go with whichever one sounds more fun to you.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I've used Bow Knight Dimitri and it's very good, with a major caveat. If you aren't planning to use his skill combination of Battalion Wrath + Battalion Vantage + Retribution, it's arguably his best class (incredible ranged offence and linked attack potential + can still do mean things with Atrocity). If you are planning to aforementioned skill combo, then it's far worse, because bows don't play well with Retribution. Paladin, Wyvern lord, and War Master all probably make more sense in that case. His personal class is solid enough too.

[Shadow Mir]

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

The main selling point of gauntlets is that you get to attack twice (or four times if you would otherwise double attack) when you attack on player phase. Basically like Brave weapons in other FE games.

I would note that Fates was where brave weapons started requiring initiation for the double attack. They had no restrictions before then.

[Ncknck]

5 hours ago, lenticular said:

Up to you

Thx, i'll go with the flow and see where it leads me.
Engage has the weapon triangle, fixed growths and last but not least thicc girls. But this trainer sim in three houses is intriguing ngl.

[Ncknck]

Man, the more i look at it the more underwhelming the Blue Lions lineup looks, it's like Dimitri is good and everyone else is mediocre or worse. And the cool units are in other classes, is it the "grass is always greener on the other side" effect?

 

How's this BL roster?

Spoiler

1. M!Byleth-War Master
2. Dedue-War Master
3. Felix-War Master
4. Dimitri-Wyvern Lord
5. Sylvain-Wyvern Lord
6. Ashe-Sniper
7. Mercedes-Bishop
8. Annette-Dark Flier
9. Ingrid-Dancer

10. Catherine-Falcon Knight
11. Cyril-Wyvern Lord
12. Seteth-Wyvern Lord
13. Shamir-Sniper

 

I wanted to play 100% in-house, but let's say i recruit Lysithea for Warp, actually lets say i recruit everyone, doesn't it break some game lore?

Edited February 5, 2023 by Ncknck

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

2 hours ago, Ncknck said:

How's this BL roster?

All solid picks. I do think Teach would have an easier time just certifying in Grappler, and sticking with that - with Fierce Iron Fist making up for the power difference. As for the five physical fliers, there might not be enough good flying battalions to go around. If there's anything missing here, it's another magical attacker. Speaking of which...

2 hours ago, Ncknck said:

I wanted to play 100% in-house, but let's say i recruit Lysithea for Warp, actually lets say i recruit everyone, doesn't it break some game lore?

It doesn't break the lore, necessarily, but it does mean you'll be facing fewer students in the post-skip. Namely at Gronder II. For my part, I do just a handful of out-of-house recruits. As for Lysithea, she's a great pick on any route. 

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Ncknck said:

Man, the more i look at it the more underwhelming the Blue Lions lineup looks, it's like Dimitri is good and everyone else is mediocre or worse. And the cool units are in other classes, is it the "grass is always greener on the other side" effect?

 

How's this BL roster?

  Reveal hidden contents

1. M!Byleth-War Master
2. Dedue-War Master
3. Felix-War Master
4. Dimitri-Wyvern Lord
5. Sylvain-Wyvern Lord
6. Ashe-Sniper
7. Mercedes-Bishop
8. Annette-Dark Flier
9. Ingrid-Dancer

10. Catherine-Falcon Knight
11. Cyril-Wyvern Lord
12. Seteth-Wyvern Lord
13. Shamir-Sniper

 

I wanted to play 100% in-house, but let's say i recruit Lysithea for Warp, actually lets say i recruit everyone, doesn't it break some game lore?

I'd honestly say theirs is the best initial roster of the 3 houses. The other two have more obvious weak links.

As to your roster, you're using too many fliers. Fliers can only use flying battalions, and there are only so many quality flying battalions to go around.

Recruiting everyone wouldn't break game lore, but it's impractical to do without NG+. Anyways, some paralogues require recruiting students from out of house.

[Ncknck]

Ye Cyril and Seteth are more of a filler pick, by the time Seteth joins i either learned how the game works to whip them into shape... or restarted. Rn the game mercilessly faced me with a  "Set Goals"  screen for the starter characters and nothing else. It's brutal. Anyhow it seems i didn't make any horrible mistakes with the in-house students, so i just go with that and mb make Byleth or Felix a grappler indeed.

[vikingsfan92]

On 2/4/2023 at 12:09 PM, Ncknck said:

I'm a complete new player starting a maddening run and have a couple of questions

-Fliers are the strongest classes followed by War Master and Bow Knight?
-The thread somewhere here said to make Dimitri a Bow Knight?
-What does brawling do? seems kinda redundant, but i guess the skills are good?
-What do 3 little unlit stars in the status display do?
-Are there fixed growths in fe3h?
-Should i mb start with Engage?

 

thanks!

 

I guess it depends on how "new" you are to fire emblem but you might get more enjoyment and less frustration out of a lower difficulty first but this is highly personal so this is only a very very soft recommendation. I think three houses is a decent starting game just maybe not on the hardest difficulty right away.  Brawling is skill for the fist weapon type that a couple classes get like grappler, war master and war cleric .  Unfortunately alot of the classes that use fist weapons are gender locked other than war cleric which is dlc so Females don't really get the most out of them. You can use the fist weapons without the skills or class you just won't get their full potential.

Generally I think you can do what ever you like with units and play how you want. I have made physical Lysethia who can't use her best attribute magic work on maddening. That being said if you do such builds you can be making it harder for yourself (as in my specific example I am making one of the best mages in the game not use magic and she also isn't very tanky)  so again you might want to play on lower difficulty first to learn what each character is good at but again this is only a soft recommendation. There probably a ton of different suggestions for each character build wise just bear in mind a lot of them probably have a bit of subjective personal preferences in them.  So find something that works for you and your probably going to be fine. Maddening is a lot more forgiving in allowing weird builds to work than people expect.

As for classes comparison its more subjective imo but horses and fliers give access to a skill called canto which allows movement after attacks which is generally really strong at getting out of foes ranges.  Some of the flier classes also just have really good stats so they have that going for them too but you can make anything work if your smart about it.

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Recruiting everyone wouldn't break game lore, but it's impractical to do without NG+. Anyways, some paralogues require recruiting students from out of house.

Eh I did just fine at recruiting everyone on my first playthrough its actually not that bad. I think it gets a little more of a reputation for being difficult than it deserves. You really just need to get to B support and then gift spam and you can get by just fine. Spamming eating with people you are recruiting goes a long way.

Edited February 5, 2023 by vikingsfan92

[Shadow Mir]

8 hours ago, vikingsfan92 said:

Eh I did just fine at recruiting everyone on my first playthrough its actually not that bad. I think it gets a little more of a reputation for being difficult than it deserves. You really just need to get to B support and then gift spam and you can get by just fine. Spamming eating with people you are recruiting goes a long way.

Except with Caspar and Ferdinand, who have to be recruited the hard way thanks to their B support being locked until after the timeskip. Also, iirc, gift spam strats involve growing flowers... which do not grow their own seeds.

[Dark Holy Elf]

 

33 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Except with Caspar and Ferdinand, who have to be recruited the hard way thanks to their B support being locked until after the timeskip. Also, iirc, gift spam strats involve growing flowers... which do not grow their own seeds.

You can also buy gifts after chapter 5, and planting flower seeds absolutely does give you more flower seeds (though even if it didn't, you can buy those too). I don't think it's terribly hard to recruit everyone if you make it a goal. I've done it on various challenge runs with unusual demands on my time otherwise.

Caspar and Ferdinand do both have an extra faculty training requirement but that mostly just means you have to keep it in mind. Even assuming worst-case luck with faculty training + no sauna or saint statues, it takes at most 9 tutoring sessions to get Ferdinand, and 5 to get Caspar. Both are complicated slightly by most of their tutors taking Chapter 10 off, but if you start on it in e.g. Chapter 8, you should be able to get them without much issue.

I do think recruiting everyone has a negative effect on the feel of part 2, but some might disagree with me on that.

[vikingsfan92]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I do think recruiting everyone has a negative effect on the feel of part 2, but some might disagree with me on that.

possibly light spoiler probably fine but eh just incase

Spoiler

I think its subjective more than anything but personally I feel part 2 with non-recruits kind of feels lacking both ways. I just side more on the side that it kind of feels worse without recruits as the logic against it is more shaky imo with alot of characters.  Maybe I would feel different if there were cutscenes about the students interacting with people outside of Byleth that aren't support locked.  Especially for characters outside of your house you only really see interact with others if you force them to support another character and they never appear in the main cutscenes. So at that point they are becoming friends with your house so it only makes the argument to recruit them even stronger imo. Also I think the main reason people stay is patriotism and honestly it is kind of a weak motive imo mainly because we don't really get to see it expressed in any meaningful way beforehand unless you played that houses route and know its not that strong because they can be recruited to other houses. To use a couple specfic examples just recruiting one of Ignatz/Raph or Mercedes/Annette doesn't really have a strong justification for the other choosing their lord over their clear best friend character based on information in other routes. 

This is one time I think all routes having similar scenes with intermingling would actually have benefited the game. As it stands the two other lords bonds with in there house might as well not exist in a first play through of part 1 as its all of screen stuff and passing mentions 90% of the time if not more Where as the supports you see are real and have more effect because you can see what the relationships are like but suffer because you have to go about recruiting them to really see them in action because they are locked behind supports.

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by vikingsfan92

[SnowFire]

Re @vikingsfan92: Hmm, not my take.

Spoiler

First off, usual disclaimer that fiction is not reality, and what makes a good story does not always equal what is realistic.  But..  I can't say I agree either from a sense of drama and what makes the best story, nor from "realism", on the argument that everyone is becoming friends with Byleth's house so why are we fighting.  A very, VERY common motif in fiction is former friends who find themselves fighting each other, because this is really dramatic - everything from Shakespeare (Macbeth offing his friend Banquo, Romeo killing his new in-law Tybalt) to comics (Professor X & Magneto were best friends).  And if we decide to judge by realism instead, the case is even stronger.  Maybe the most famous example as an American is the Civil War - lots of the commanders on both sides were classmates at West Point, or even outright interrelated by family.  And this proved a poor predictor of which side people fought on: there were Southerners with no particularly strong connections North who stayed Unionist, and there were Southerners with deep friendships which were split by the fighting, and felt really angsty about it. (And if both survived the war, often resumed their friendship.)  Hell, Lincoln's brother-in-law fought for the Confederacy.  Friendship is weaker than principles / nationalism.

Really, recruiting out-of-house is mostly a gameplay thing IMO. It's cool that it exists because it lets people customize their team, always deploy their favorites, mix things up on replays, etc., but I approve of the game mostly treating the out-of-house recruits as if they don't exist (excluding the Wolves, of course).  There's a *few* characters who can be reasonably justified - perversely enough, Ferdinand, despite him being one of the hardest recruits to get, seems like he'd be easy to recruit in C12 if he assumes he'll be arrested if he returns too.  And Raphael / Ignatz / (Leonie?) don't appear too strongly linked to the Alliance and could reasonably be swiped elsewhere, and you can make an argument that Crimson Flower could recruit Ashe or Lorenz due to Ashe's backstory or Lorenz's family's close links with the Empire.  But other than that, it's tough to justify beyond "Byleth really does have superhuman charisma."  Which is flattering for the audience that really likes awesome self-insert characters, at least.

 

[vikingsfan92]

3 hours ago, SnowFire said:

Re @vikingsfan92: Hmm, not my take.

  Hide contents

First off, usual disclaimer that fiction is not reality, and what makes a good story does not always equal what is realistic.  But..  I can't say I agree either from a sense of drama and what makes the best story, nor from "realism", on the argument that everyone is becoming friends with Byleth's house so why are we fighting.  A very, VERY common motif in fiction is former friends who find themselves fighting each other, because this is really dramatic - everything from Shakespeare (Macbeth offing his friend Banquo, Romeo killing his new in-law Tybalt) to comics (Professor X & Magneto were best friends).  And if we decide to judge by realism instead, the case is even stronger.  Maybe the most famous example as an American is the Civil War - lots of the commanders on both sides were classmates at West Point, or even outright interrelated by family.  And this proved a poor predictor of which side people fought on: there were Southerners with no particularly strong connections North who stayed Unionist, and there were Southerners with deep friendships which were split by the fighting, and felt really angsty about it. (And if both survived the war, often resumed their friendship.)  Hell, Lincoln's brother-in-law fought for the Confederacy.  Friendship is weaker than principles / nationalism.

Really, recruiting out-of-house is mostly a gameplay thing IMO. It's cool that it exists because it lets people customize their team, always deploy their favorites, mix things up on replays, etc., but I approve of the game mostly treating the out-of-house recruits as if they don't exist (excluding the Wolves, of course).  There's a *few* characters who can be reasonably justified - perversely enough, Ferdinand, despite him being one of the hardest recruits to get, seems like he'd be easy to recruit in C12 if he assumes he'll be arrested if he returns too.  And Raphael / Ignatz / (Leonie?) don't appear too strongly linked to the Alliance and could reasonably be swiped elsewhere, and you can make an argument that Crimson Flower could recruit Ashe or Lorenz due to Ashe's backstory or Lorenz's family's close links with the Empire.  But other than that, it's tough to justify beyond "Byleth really does have superhuman charisma."  Which is flattering for the audience that really likes awesome self-insert characters, at least.

 

Spoiler

While I do think nationalism is a legitimate thing in the case of three houses specifically I would argue that nationalism is weak. I would also say I personally am not high on it as a motive in general as others but I think my issue goes beyond that for three houses specifically.  Again I go back to the fact we don't really see the classmates  of their house show any real interaction towards their countries and their future rulers unless we are on their route so it kind of defeats the point for not recruiting them because of it because you are on their route.  I think the real issue for me is that its more of a case of it should be more of a shown thing rather than being told about it. Plus I think the what we are told part could be improved upon as well.

Lets look at Hilda for instance who can join any route but CF the answers we get on why this is the case are extremely vague and kind of come across as an ingame excuse of leaving her unrecruitable for the  route.  Hilda doesn't ever really talk about Edelgard in part 1 other than talking about Monica's return being weird in her opinion. And she is more specifically talking about Monica than anyone else in that conversation. If you are going to use an Edelgard and Hilda don't get along argument to leave Hilda  out of CF you should probably build that up more than they did imo before it matters. I have seen streamers who play black eagles really not understand why Hilda can't join you or why she has lost items that you can't give back. Where as Deudue and the other members of the cast that are unrecruitable make more sense as why they are not in black eagles.  Also this one in particular seems weird with the Cindered shadows dlc where they really didn't seem to have problems with each other but thats probably just a dlc thing. The same is true with people and their nations imo.  I think I just feel like we are told they are for their country and not shown it.

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by vikingsfan92

[Dark Holy Elf]

Hilda's an odd case.

Spoiler

Three Houses is on the fence about whether she's Claude's "retainer" or not, I feel like. She certainly plays the role on VW, even if her personality is completely different than the others, offering the retainer quests on post-timeskip Verdant Wind, and gets a very prominent position at Claude's side in the Derdriu fights on both Crimson Flower and especially Azure Moon where she holds the line and essentially acts as the de facto time limit on that fight. Three Hopes also definitely came down hard on the retainer side and made her the only non-Claude Deer to be unrecruitable outside Golden Wildfire, but in Houses they seemed indecisive about it, and I feel like they eventually "compromised" by making Hilda only unrecruitable if you go on the route which can fight the Alliance directly. Except that still doesn't really fully satisfy as an explanation because she can certainly fight the Alliance at Gronder in Azure Moon (although you can argue that confrontation snuck up on her).

 

[Shadow Mir]

20 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

You can also buy gifts after chapter 5, and planting flower seeds absolutely does give you more flower seeds (though even if it didn't, you can buy those too). I don't think it's terribly hard to recruit everyone if you make it a goal. I've done it on various challenge runs with unusual demands on my time otherwise.

Caspar and Ferdinand do both have an extra faculty training requirement but that mostly just means you have to keep it in mind. Even assuming worst-case luck with faculty training + no sauna or saint statues, it takes at most 9 tutoring sessions to get Ferdinand, and 5 to get Caspar. Both are complicated slightly by most of their tutors taking Chapter 10 off, but if you start on it in e.g. Chapter 8, you should be able to get them without much issue.

I do think recruiting everyone has a negative effect on the feel of part 2, but some might disagree with me on that.

More so Ferdinand, as Caspar requires brawling, which is not too hard for Byleth.

On gardening, I spend most of part 1 using the big moneymaker seeds, the 4-5 star ones. They really coulda stood to make it more obvious how it worked, though, as they barely explain anything about how it works.

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 2/6/2023 at 5:21 PM, Shadow Mir said:

More so Ferdinand, as Caspar requires brawling, which is not too hard for Byleth.

On gardening, I spend most of part 1 using the big moneymaker seeds, the 4-5 star ones. They really coulda stood to make it more obvious how it worked, though, as they barely explain anything about how it works.

Yep. If you actually read my post you'll notice I said it was max 9 sessions for Ferdinand, and 5 for Caspar.

Flowers are 3 star. Not much less than the 4-star ones, and you get something much more useful items, both gifts and stat boosters. My usual strategy is to plant exclusively flowers from the time I get them (which admittedly is a bit RNG-reliant) until I hit B professor rank (for the 6th instruct action), which tends to coincide with when I'm starting to run out of food, at which point I switch to the food seeds. Also, by this point you can just buy gifts directly if desired.

[Shadow Mir]

11 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yep. If you actually read my post you'll notice I said it was max 9 sessions for Ferdinand, and 5 for Caspar.

Flowers are 3 star. Not much less than the 4-star ones, and you get something much more useful items, both gifts and stat boosters. My usual strategy is to plant exclusively flowers from the time I get them (which admittedly is a bit RNG-reliant) until I hit B professor rank (for the 6th instruct action), which tends to coincide with when I'm starting to run out of food, at which point I switch to the food seeds. Also, by this point you can just buy gifts directly if desired.

That... wasn't quite what I meant. I meant that brawling could be worked on in battles.

Don't the Angelica and Nordsalat seeds (two of the big four, iirc) have some notable stat boosters themselves?

[haarhaarhaar]

2 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Don't the Angelica and Nordsalat seeds (two of the big four, iirc) have some notable stat boosters themselves?

Str and Spd respectively - both are great for early game Maddening. Angelica is also the premier seed for optimising prof rank acquisition, and both seeds have a chance to self-replicate at first/second yield level, so getting 1 seed should mean you're set for the rest of the game. And you can get one of them in Ch.2 Explore. 

There's no reason beyond favouritism to use Caspar if you aren't BE, so there's really no pressure on recruitment and arguably you should recruit at Ch 12 if you're on VW/AM. Ferdinand is admittedly a bit tougher to recruit, but very doable by Ch. 6 when he gets Cavalier and Axe ranks for free (and Weight-3 on Byleth is not the worst thing on the world, if you are training Armour).

[Dark Holy Elf]

13 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

That... wasn't quite what I meant. I meant that brawling could be worked on in battles.

Combat time spent working on brawling is combat time spent not working towards another weapon skill (such as the one for Byleth's intended advanced class if any, or Windsweep if going a sword build), so I'd consider that a wash.

(You also technically can work on armour in battles, although I agree that you probably shouldn't because armour classes suck.)

 

13 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Don't the Angelica and Nordsalat seeds (two of the big four, iirc) have some notable stat boosters themselves?

Still not worth giving up a big pile of gifts IMO. Those actually save you a bunch of faculty training, since they let you recruit some characters with early B supports much more reliably, which helps pay for the 100 prof exp / week difference. They also make it much easier to get certain characters like early Catherine who is one of the most notable improvements in your early power level on BL/GD.

This of course assumes you even get one. I've had lots of runs where I don't... not sure what their frequency is.

[haarhaarhaar]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

This of course assumes you even get one. I've had lots of runs where I don't... not sure what their frequency is.

They can be save-scummed in Ch. 1 explore (not Ch. 2 as in my previous post, my mistake) - the direction of approach to the item drop influences the RNG, so it's not super hard to pick one of them up. It's the drop amongst some barrels etc. between the dining hall and the marquee where randoms are having tea. 

Gifts pre-Ch. 5 is a pretty big deal for recruitment as you say, although it's at least a toss-up which is the better approach. Angelica in particular is 500 prof exp per week, so a 200 exp difference between it and the 3-star seeds makes a difference with getting prof ranks as early as Ch. 2. Nothing you get from early ranks will equal the sheer power boost of early Catherine - but Catherine should still be recruitable by the Ch. 5 battle without gifts from gardening, so it's basically how determined are you to beat the Death Knight in Ch. 4? And, I suppose, how many units do you want to recruit early and before the Ch. 6 power boost? I think beyond a specific focus on early recruitment, raising prof level wins out. 

[Ncknck]

Not gonna lie the game is pretty "in your face" with recruitment and this yuuge dialog box. I thought it was gonna be like sneaky snatching students from other houses via trickery and court intrigues. But it turned out to be more like a buffet, where they are throwing themselves at me, and it feels like a mini-game to recruit everyone lol.

That having said i wouldn't know what to do with them all.. not only because of limited xp, but i'm also kinda strapped for money == weapons== damage. Got down to Training weapons.. Also wtf is with these enemy stats. And i mean i don't even have the means to customize anything, everything is locked.. early chapters are brutal lol. Slowly getting the hang of game mechanics, pretty fun.

Anyway i thought i'd ask about all these DLCs and side stories.. paralogues?, when is a proper time to start those without breaking things, the internet is pretty divided on this. I heard Hapi is good for Blue Lions, if not for meta, but at least for the lore, thx.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Ncknck

[Dark Holy Elf]

9 hours ago, haarhaarhaar said:

They can be save-scummed in Ch. 1 explore (not Ch. 2 as in my previous post, my mistake) - the direction of approach to the item drop influences the RNG, so it's not super hard to pick one of them up. It's the drop amongst some barrels etc. between the dining hall and the marquee where randoms are having tea. 

Gifts pre-Ch. 5 is a pretty big deal for recruitment as you say, although it's at least a toss-up which is the better approach. Angelica in particular is 500 prof exp per week, so a 200 exp difference between it and the 3-star seeds makes a difference with getting prof ranks as early as Ch. 2. Nothing you get from early ranks will equal the sheer power boost of early Catherine - but Catherine should still be recruitable by the Ch. 5 battle without gifts from gardening, so it's basically how determined are you to beat the Death Knight in Ch. 4? And, I suppose, how many units do you want to recruit early and before the Ch. 6 power boost? I think beyond a specific focus on early recruitment, raising prof level wins out. 

Hmm, yeah, that makes sense. I didn't know about the RNG manipulation to get the seeds (I had heard about save/reloading but I'm not terribly inclined to respect that). At that point it probably does depend on how much early recruitment you want to do. The bonus prof rank effectively allows you to further power up the units you already have (getting to 5 and 6 instruct sessions faster), at the cost of getting other units. So the more you plan to focus in-house, the better the 5-star seeds get.

[haarhaarhaar]

27 minutes ago, Ncknck said:

Not gonna lie the game is pretty "in your face" with recruitment and this yuuge dialog box. I thought it was gonna be like sneaky snatching students from other houses via trickery and court intrigues. But it turned out to be more like a buffet, where they are throwing themselves at me, and it feels like a mini-game to recruit everyone lol.

That having said i wouldn't know what to do with them all.. not only because of limited xp, but i'm also kinda strapped for money == weapons== damage. Got down to Training weapons.. Also wtf is with these enemy stats. And i mean i don't even have the means to customize anything, everything is locked.. early chapters are brutal lol. Slowly getting the hang of game mechanics, pretty fun.

Early-game Maddening is quite punishing resource-wise on 3H. Worth mentioning that after Ch 6 I think, many of the recruits come with a Bullion or a stat booster, which might help a bit with your resource woes. Smithing doesn't come online for a couple of chapters, and increased money/smithing capacity are both locked behind professor level, which is a big reason (amongst others) to raise prof level. If it's any consolation, Ch. 1 and 2 on Maddening are some of the toughest chapters in the game without question, so getting through those is already a big deal. 

30 minutes ago, Ncknck said:

Anyway i thought i'd ask about all these DLCs and side stories.. paralogues?, when is a proper time to start those without breaking things, the internet is pretty divided on this. I heard Hapi is good for Blue Lions, if not for meta, but at least for the lore, thx.

If you're the kind of player who's happy not to use things that are made available to you, then it won't matter when you do the DLC. Hard/Classic for the DLC side story is a good level of challenge, though not as hard as early-game Maddening. Considering story events, you should attempt it after Ch. 4 and before Ch. 5 - it's an alternate timeline but that's roughly where it fits with the main game. Although the goodies/characters you get from clearing side story chapters (as well as Abyss facilities) can all become available to you in Ch. 2-3 if you'd rather get them early.

The DLC recruits are all good-quality units - it sounds like you're on Blue Lions, so the mage recruits in particular are helpful, and Hapi has some interesting supports lore-wise (with Dimitri in particular). As for the non-recruit items, the DLC stat boosters are stronger than normal ones and can make the difference (especially Mv+2), and the side story rewards are powerful but not game-breaking IMO. Actually, the Renown reward for clearing the DLC is quite good, and accumulating Renown in this game mostly involves doing chores anyway, so it's up to you whether getting the benefits from the saint statues (they unlock in Ch. 5 IIRC?) is game-breaking or time-saving. 

Not sure if you also meant paralogues as well, but they're a separate thing to the DLC, and you can just start them whenever you like once the game makes them available. Delaying them makes them easier for obvious reasons, but they also have time limits that will be flagged when you look at them. 

18 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

So the more you plan to focus in-house, the better the 5-star seeds get.

Absolutely, yeah. When I did runs that focused on raising everybody, early gifts was game-changing so I could attempt off-base builds on more units. 

[Mordred]

On 2/4/2023 at 10:09 AM, Ncknck said:

I'm a complete new player starting a maddening run and have a couple of questions

-Fliers are the strongest classes followed by War Master and Bow Knight?
-The thread somewhere here said to make Dimitri a Bow Knight?
-What does brawling do? seems kinda redundant, but i guess the skills are good?
-What do 3 little unlit stars in the status display do?
-Are there fixed growths in fe3h?
-Should i mb start with Engage?

 

thanks!

 

YOOOO, glad to see someone making the maddening jump!  First of all let me say the strongest physical class in this game is Wyvern Lord for a large amount of reasons, but don't go overboard with the flyers as they have diminishing returns past 3 on most routes.  War Master is a strong Enemy Phase class so if you want an enemy phase unit, War Master is the go to while Grappler is its player phase counterpart.  Bow Knight is sometimes good sometimes bad, it depends largely on if the unit's learnable weapon arts.

I don't know the thread but I personally don't see the reason for Bow Knight Dimitri, while Dimitri would want to be in Wyvern Lord, he has a lot of difficulty getting to the class so his second best option ends up being Paladin.

Do you mean the Brawler class or the Gauntlet weapon type?  If you're asking about the Brawler class it is great as an Adjunct as they can halve the dmg the unit they are supporting will take.  If you are asking about the Gauntlet weapon type then the big bonus about them is that they can double regardless of their speed and even quad hit as long as they initiate combat.

I'm not sure what you mean by the 3 little unlit stars you're talking about?

I believe every time you enter a map the growths are locked but I may be wrong.  Tbh growths aren't extremely important and their combat arts/ease to obtain skills or classes/prf weapon are usually more important with a few outliers.

If you think Engage looks more fun then go ahead and play maddening on it first, it's really your choice.

Btw a good start on planning your units is to look at FE3H.com, it's a great resource and there's also an excellent class review done by Rengor in the meta section of the website.  You can also browse the FE3H section for other people's teams and an example of what you can go for.

Edited February 9, 2023 by Mordred