What we know of Engage's mechanics so far.

[DefyingFates]

Okay, thanks! Is there anything we may have missed? I had no idea about Roy and Leif's weapons, for example.

Also, will we see other -reaver weapons or just the sword ones to make up for most Emblems having swords?

[Keikyushi]

I don't really know about other weapons, since that's all I've gathered from the pictures and topics and videos. I can't really say anything else that's not shown

[DefyingFates]

Okay, thank you! Where did you see Killer Axe and Lancereaver please? Were they in the English trailer?

[tipperthescales]

Kind of late since I was spending 4 hours going through a few things, and kienquocsi already covered stuff from the Topics page, but I made a writeup of the Topics page / DLC Wave 1 Trailer / some passing observations of character battle videos over on Reddit. Hopefully image links match where they're meant to be.

Quote

Okay, thank you! Where did you see Killer Axe and Lancereaver please? Were they in the English trailer?

Killer Axe: 

Lancereaver: 

Edited December 9, 2022 by tipperthescales

[DefyingFates]

1 hour ago, tipperthescales said:

Kind of late since I was spending 4 hours going through a few things, and kienquocsi already covered stuff from the Topics page, but I made a writeup of the Topics page / DLC Wave 1 Trailer / some passing observations of character battle videos over on Reddit. Hopefully image links match where they're meant to be.

Killer Axe: 

Lancereaver: 

Thank you so much, Tipper! I loved your reddit thread too!!

[Armchair General]

Well, with the recent wave of retainers, at least we have proof that the Wolf Knight is geared towards being evasive while potentially falling behind on their damage output

However, her evasion stat is outclassed by the playable swordmaster and thieves at an margin of around 5 points or so. The berserker, Lapis (in an earlier level), Sedall, and wyvern riders has an Avoid of around 30 or so.

I also noticed that Rosado's Def and Res are unusually equal for an wyvern rider, but this might be pretty close to their base stats.

Bunet is exactly what you'd expect from heavy cavalry, but with 20 Def at lv. 1 is kind of leaves me concerned as to how the rest of game will pan out.

Other than that, nearly everything is more or less what we're already used to from FE, but with potentially lower stat caps. Amber's class is one of the few cavalry units that I've seen that naturally has high Avo (to be fair, the only other options is the great & royal knights against the wolf knights).

Edited December 9, 2022 by Armchair General

[Azz]

I'm really curious to see how promotion works in Engage. No one really seems to be promoting into the same things and what weapons classes can use are interesting to say the least (like Hero using lances instead of axes is certainly smth).

I have a feeling there will definitely be branching promotions (based on how we've seen Chloé as both a Griffon Knight and Wyvern Knight which seem like pretty natural promotions of Peg. Knight)

[DefyingFates]

1 hour ago, Azz said:

I have a feeling there will definitely be branching promotions (based on how we've seen Chloé as both a Griffon Knight and Wyvern Knight which seem like pretty natural promotions of Peg. Knight)

That's the sense I'm getting too. That and possibly a return of Tellius' "pick a new weapon to start using" option. There's a part of me that hopes we won't see that before release, but we've seen so much that I think that that's inevitable at this point.

Speaking of the new info: I know it was inevitable that Lucina was getting Parallel Falchion, but I'm surprised about "Noble Rapier". I wonder if it's better than Marth and Eirika's (poor them ig so!) or just different (like not having armor/ cav effectiveness). I imagine Thogn or some other bow is guaranteed so we don't have to worry about her stealing another weapon from anyone 😛

[Moondrag]

Micaiah's Engage Skill not only increases the Range of staffs, but also the AoE of them. So a target 1 staff increases to target 1 and the 4 spots adjacent to them.

[Keikyushi]

28 minutes ago, Moondrag said:

Micaiah's Engage Skill not only increases the Range of staffs, but also the AoE of them. So a target 1 staff increases to target 1 and the 4 spots adjacent to them.

Oh, that's true, thanks for pointing it out. I will update my post asap

[Keikyushi]

6 hours ago, Armchair General said:

However, her evasion stat is outclassed by the playable swordmaster and thieves at an margin of around 5 points or so. The berserker, Lapis (in an earlier level), Sedall, and wyvern riders has an Avoid of around 30 or so.

Swordmaster and Thieves are traditionally dodge tank, so it would make sense for them to have high avoid stat. Plus they are foot locked, so giving them something better than Wolf Knight is reasonable.

Plus, being able to use dagger make them as scary as mounted ninja, so I don't think they need more attacking power

Edited December 10, 2022 by kienquocsi

[tipperthescales]

1 hour ago, Moondrag said:

Micaiah's Engage Skill not only increases the Range of staffs, but also the AoE of them. So a target 1 staff increases to target 1 and the 4 spots adjacent to them.

I wonder if the AOE would lead to Seadall!Micaiah healing himself with that Amplified staff use; it's not reflected in the forecast (since he isn't targeting himself).

[Keikyushi]

5 hours ago, tipperthescales said:

I wonder if the AOE would lead to Seadall!Micaiah healing himself with that Amplified staff use; it's not reflected in the forecast (since he isn't targeting himself).

He's actually targeting himself too, the new effect range is shaped like a cross. But we still don't know anyways, since he's at full health

[DefyingFates]

6 hours ago, Moondrag said:

Micaiah's Engage Skill not only increases the Range of staffs, but also the AoE of them. So a target 1 staff increases to target 1 and the 4 spots adjacent to them.

Ah, I missed that too! Thank you very much!

P.S. And man, what on earth are they going to show off for the remaining 41 days before release? I think we'll get a breakdown of how classes and weapons work, but I'm really scared they'll dive deep into spoiler territory afterwards (and they've been wallowing in it for the past two weeks or so already).

Edited December 10, 2022 by DefyingFates

[Keikyushi]

I wasn't around the time of 3 Houses marketing, but I heard 3H revealed a lot of characters early on too. What did it do in the last month before release?

[Crubat]

7 minutes ago, kienquocsi said:

I wasn't around the time of 3 Houses marketing, but I heard 3H revealed a lot of characters early on too. What did it do in the last month before release?

they revealed the timeskip part during E3 which is a month prior, which also convinced a lot of fans to buy the game

[DefyingFates]

1 hour ago, Crubat said:

they revealed the timeskip part during E3 which is a month prior, which also convinced a lot of fans to buy the game

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I've already said stuff like this before, but I really hope they don't do that again. On one hand, there's no E3 this time. On the other, we usually get a Nintendo Direct in January and a huge reveal like "evil Alear" or "dragon Alear" or bigger sounds right up that alley.

[tipperthescales]

I think the beginning-of-year direct has been in February the past few years (2019, 2021, 2022), and given that there's not really anything else competing with Engage in terms of nearby release timing I wouldn't anticipate a general Direct just to include the last bit of Engage pre-release advertising (after all, DLC1 has already been advertised!).

On the note of a '1 month before release' overview - it's hard to say since the pair of Engaging with Emblems and The Divine Dragon Awakens feels like an Overview trailer equivalent for western audiences. However, I'd still expect some sort of revelation shaking trailer in this timeframe (I'm leaning a bit more towards dragon Alear over evil Alear at this stage).

[DefyingFates]

Some stray thoughts about yesterday's Emblem info dump:

1. If Eirika and Ephraim share weapon slots regardless of who's in charge, it's possible that Siegmund fills the "signature weapon" slot and we'll get a completely different third weapon - maybbe Reginleif? On the other hand, Sieglinde is on the mural, so it's probably a lock. In that case, I wonder if they'll do different things or have the same effect (as in FE8). Their Sync Skills are borrowed from Heroes, so maybe their weapons will be different too? Nice to have one Emblem where we can't be sure of something as simple as that just yet.
2. Ike: This hit me out of nowhere, but he may have a Hammer of all things because it's been meme'd to heck and back as
   Spoiler

   the easiest way to beat Black Knight in FE10.

   If that's indeed why he has it here, that's going to be hilarious. Since Urvan is canon to Tellius and a weapon of significance to Ike himself, I think we can safely assume he'll have it along with Ragnell. On the other hand, he and Micaiah are the only other potential sources of daggers for Emblem units - maybe Micaiah gets Baselard (or Peshkatz despite it being available for regular units)?

3. Lucina: even if you don't think Thogn should be in Engage, she still has a bow in the mural so I think she may end up with one here too. Lyn has the Killer Bow, so maybe she could get a Brave Bow, with her Falchion to top things off?

Also, I wonder if Killer and Brave weapons will be locked to Emblems or if they'll be available to other units as well, ditto for -reavers as I've asked in the past. Maybe Leif could get Killer Lance to go with his Killer Axe and Eirika could have Killer Sword or Brave Sword, for example? It's funny that Marth gets three Prf swords but no form of adaptability like Corrin and Roy (who's also sword-locked) with their -reaver swords.

Also also, I wonder if we'll get Artreaver weapons to counterattack martial arts? I'm not too sure, but you never know!

Edited December 10, 2022 by DefyingFates

[Keikyushi]

33 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

If Eirika and Ephraim share weapon slots regardless of who's in charge, it's possible that Siegmund fills the "signature weapon" slot and we'll get a completely different third weapon - maybbe Reginleif? On the other hand, Sieglinde is on the mural, so it's probably a lock. In that case, I wonder if they'll do different things or have the same effect (as in FE8). Their Sync Skills are borrowed from Heroes, so maybe their weapons will be different too? Nice to have one Emblem where we can't be sure of something as simple as that just yet.

I think Eirika and Ephraim will have their own inventory, since the weapons only matter when you engage, and I don't think you can switch between them when engaging. So Reginleif, Sieglinde and Siegmund are all possible weapons

35 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Lucina: even if you don't think Thogn should be in Engage, she still has a bow in the mural so I think she may end up with one here too. Lyn has the Killer Bow, so maybe she could get a Brave Bow, with her Falchion to top things off?

Brave Bow seems like a nice choice for Lucina. I don't know why, but I associate a lot of Brave weapons with Awakening. Maybe because almost all later games use their string-like design (which I quite like btw)

37 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Also, I wonder if Killer and Brave weapons will be locked to Emblems or if they'll be available to other units as well, ditto for -reavers as I've asked in the past

Killer Weapons is all but confirmed, since we saw Killing Edge and Killer Lance sold in the armory. Brave Weapon is a staple too, so I don't think that will be left out. Reaver weapon is harder to say though, but we only have Lancereaver and Dual Katana (which is basically the same), so I think the other two (and a normal Lancereaver) have a high chance to appear (Well this game has everything from slim weapons to blades, so adding reaver weapons is not much of a stretch)

Art reaver though, I don't think we will have anything like that, since art is already pretty niche and not that strong anyways (not like the weapon itself is weak, innate brave effect is crazy, but users so far are healers and dancer, not the best physical attackers)

[DefyingFates]

10 minutes ago, kienquocsi said:

Art reaver though, I don't think we will have anything like that, since art is already pretty niche and not that strong anyways (not like the weapon itself is weak, innate brave effect is crazy, but users so far are healers and dancer, not the best physical attackers)

Fair enough. And thank you for the full reply! I didn't want to quote all of it, but I appreciate it! I didn't know the stuff in the armory had been translated, for example.

[tipperthescales]

58 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Some stray thoughts about yesterday's Emblem info dump:

1. If Eirika and Ephraim share weapon slots regardless of who's in charge, it's possible that Siegmund fills the "signature weapon" slot and we'll get a completely different third weapon - maybbe Reginleif? On the other hand, Sieglinde is on the mural, so it's probably a lock. In that case, I wonder if they'll do different things or have the same effect (as in FE8). Their Sync Skills are borrowed from Heroes, so maybe their weapons will be different too? Nice to have one Emblem where we can't be sure of something as simple as that just yet.
2. Ike: This hit me out of nowhere, but he may have a Hammer of all things because it's been meme'd to heck and back as
     Reveal hidden contents

   the easiest way to beat Black Knight in FE10.

   If that's indeed why he has it here, that's going to be hilarious. Since Urvan is canon to Tellius and a weapon of significance to Ike himself, I think we can safely assume he'll have it along with Ragnell. On the other hand, he and Micaiah are the only other potential sources of daggers for Emblem units - maybe Micaiah gets Baselard (or Peshkatz despite it being available for regular units)?

3. Lucina: even if you don't think Thogn should be in Engage, she still has a bow in the mural so I think she may end up with one here too. Lyn has the Killer Bow, so maybe she could get a Brave Bow, with her Falchion to top things off?

Also, I wonder if Killer and Brave weapons will be locked to Emblems or if they'll be available to other units as well, ditto for -reavers as I've asked in the past. Maybe Leif could get Killer Lance to go with his Killer Axe and Eirika could have Killer Sword or Brave Sword, for example? It's funny that Marth gets three Prf swords but no form of adaptability like Corrin and Roy (who's also sword-locked) with their -reaver swords.

Also also, I wonder if we'll get Artreaver weapons to counterattack martial arts? I'm not too sure, but you never know!

I think I'm reinforcing what kienquocsi's already said orz, but:

1. I think the Renais twins' inventories are separate. Not too sure what the 2nd Engage weapon for both should be, but if we go by Eirika's English profile mentioning "flashing sword shatters [...] foes' defenses" (probably meaning the Lunar Brace) she may have another effective weapon, but I'm not sure honestly... (your Killing Edge / Brave Sword idea is a good thought for Engage Weapon 2 here)

2. Yeah I'd be surprised if we didn't get Hammer / Urvan / Ragnell. On that note are we thinking the latter two will be greataxe / blade-like (similar to how Aymr acts like a special greataxe)?

3. Come to think of it, didn't Celica have a sword in the mural art, yet she has no sword Engage Weapon? For whatever reason I'd feel like Lucina would prefer to take up the lance (whether Geirskogul or something more canon to Ylisse) over the bow personally. I'd be shocked if she doesn't have the Parallel Falchion.

I don't recall seeing Brave weapons outside of Sigurd's inventory so far, which is quite strange. It'd be a loss if they didn't return in a general sense. Killers are definitely confirmed.

Reavers more generally would be interesting, given that they felt it worth to bring back the great- and slim weapons again.

Reversing the tome/bow/dagger < arts advantage just feels like rubbing the latter's general frailty in their face tbh; I'd be super surprised if artsreaver weapons became a thing.

[Cysx]

Okay ! Okay. Apologies in advance if I repeat anything.

Roy :

• Lapis gains 4 HP, 2 Str, 4 Spd, 3 Def, 2 Res, and presumably 2 Skl and 2 Lck from Roy's stat up skill. My understanding is that it gives you the equivalent of several levels in stat boosts(I'd bank on 5 or more here)?; if that's the case it gives us some nice insight at Lapis' growths, namely that she's got great Spd, but also pretty good Def.
  This does pose the question of how the game calculates the stats, aka is there a random aspect to it, or is it a kind of fixed growths, etc.
  Also, does this skill even do anything if you've capped your level/stat? Guess we'll see.
• Lapis(we know it's still her because of the personal skill on display) has the same green reposition skill as Paladin Amber. This confirms these are not tied to characters, but does that mean Lapis's mysterious promotion is simply Paladin ? Maybe.

Ike :

• It is a wonder what the difference between those two is :
  (Amber, Lapis)
  (Ike)
  ... I mean, yes they're reversed, but in practice those have never been side dependent. Like, the first one would only work north and east and the other south and west? Seems unlikely to me.

Micaiah :

• She also seems to grant staff access, period. We'd seen hints of this in the reveal trailer, with mage Cranne having a staff icon. Similarly in this article, Seadall can use staves as a dancer, which I don't think we'd seen thus far. That's probably what her Sync skill does.
• Now assuming this is correct, what weapon rank she grants is anyone's guess I suppose. Maybe it can be upgraded for better ranks.

Also, random observations from the character videos:

• Thunder tomes may be very heavy on top of preventing doubling. Citrinne's stats and levels correspond exactly with her stat page in the engage trailer(probably her bases), except she's weighed down from 10 to 4 AS in the new one. Considering she has 4 Bld, this implies that the Thunder tome weighs 10. Also, in the Celica trailer we saw her as a -/14 Sage and she was weighed down to 9 AS by Thoron, when her other stats average around 20.

• Seadall dancing Ike!Alear only gave him 9 Exp, even though Alear has a level lead (level difference affects exp gains from support actions in 3H, and I think Fates too). That's not abnormal, but yeah, slow levelling dancer once again.
   
• Judging from the difference in damage on the health bar after Zelkov has poisoned his foe, the effect of level 1 poison seems to be -1 Def. From an Iron Knife, at the very least:

Spoiler

This is 6 x2 = 12 damage

Pixel wise, this hits for just under half of his remaining health, which is at 30 HP. Hence, 14 = 7 x2, so -1 Def

Season pass trailer :

• Just in case because I don't remember anyone bringing it up here directly, we get world map roaming once more, with Terror popups. The colors of chapters icons seem easy to explain, although I'm not quite so sure of why some are round and others are square.
• We do see a place with these nomad-like structures in Firene, implying that the throwback chapters really could exist directly on the world map(additionally, this suggests they can be progression locked, just like children paralogues in Awakening) :
  Spoiler

  

• Alear has A swords in his base class here, while we've always seen him at B. Implies that you can raise ranks somehow.
• Similarly, both him and Jade have their second skill(and more) while unpromoted. Jade's is the same as General Louis.
• Looks like the gems under the health bar may not be additional bars after all, but rather special effects. Tiki's blue one seems to resurrect the character if they die?
• Finally a level up screen, and Bld is present in it. Doesn't necessarily mean anything, it was the case in the GBA games too(for Con).
   

Thanks a lot for the compiling and sharing everyone. I'll see if I can find more, barely even looked at the Somniel one.

Edited December 11, 2022 by Cysx

[tipperthescales]

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

Okay ! Okay. Apologies in advance if I repeat anything.

Roy :

• Lapis gains 4 HP, 2 Str, 4 Spd, 3 Def, 2 Res, and presumably 2 Skl and 2 Lck from Roy's stat up skill. My understanding is that it gives you the equivalent of several levels in stat boosts(I'd bank on 5 or more here)?; if that's the case it gives us some nice insight at Lapis' growths, namely that she's got great Spd, but also pretty good Def.
  This does pose the question of how the game calculates the stats, aka is there a random aspect to it, or is it a kind of fixed growths, etc.
  Also, does this skill even do anything if you've capped your level/stat? Guess we'll see.

Nintendo of Korea has Lapis as her base Sword Fighter class (Japan has her presumably in her Sword cavalry class) used as the example for her Transcendence boost:

which gives +3HP (and MaxHP), +2 presumably Str, +2 Def, +2 Res, +4 Spd, and whatever amount of Dex and Lck to increase Hit by 7 and Avo by 9.

 

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

Ike :

• It is a wonder what the difference between those two is :
  (Amber, Lapis)
  (Ike)
  ... I mean, yes they're reversed, but in practice those have never been side dependent. Like, the first one would only work north and east and the other south and west? Seems unlikely to me.

It's a little annoying that it's not super clear if the player character is the darker or lighter circle here. Without knowing what other classes share Ike's movement skill, my poor guess is that if it's not a weird direction locked Reposition, that the green one may possibly be Pivot instead.

 

3 hours ago, Cysx said:

• Similarly, both him and Jade have their second skill(and more) while unpromoted. Jade's is the same as General Louis.
• Looks like the gems under the health bar may not be additional bars after all, but rather special effects. Tiki's blue one seems to resurrect the character if they die?
• Finally a level up screen, and Bld is present in it. Doesn't necessarily mean anything, it was the case in the GBA games too(for Con).

For the record, Jade and Louis share Swap, which would make sense for the armors to have (though Louis has been seen with it as a General, rather than Lance Armor even when shown at Lv 19; whereas Jade has it as Axe Armor Lv 17).

I can't really see why enemies and player units would share the gem icons (color notwithstanding) yet somehow have different properties. After all isn't reviving when HP is depleted essentially refilling the life meter again (well, dependent on if the gem restores 100% HP)?

[egobarrier]

If the purple one has been confirmed to be Swap, then my money is on brown being Draw Back and teal being Shove, and the designs are just over-simplified approximations for the sake of easy recognizably. I would guess Reposition would be the only one to get 3 circles.

The alternative could be one of them is Pivot, but honestly I don't see them giving us Pivot, it's just not a very useful tactic in a full-scale FE. It makes sense in Heroes since the movement range is so limited and there are no other commands beyond "Fight", "Assist" and "Wait", but in a game with much larger movement ranges and many more options to choose from it doesn't make much sense to use up a skill slot for Pivot, a turn-ending action that does nothing but conditionally let your unit move 2 extra spaces. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's the only Heroes positional assist that DIDN'T reappear in 3H.