Fire Emblem Engage General Questions Thread

[DefyingFates]

On 5/27/2023 at 12:13 AM, Hrothgar777 said:

Are the Emblems fixed in terms of order you obtain them?

Yes, they're all tied to the story. The Paralogues are just written that way because you can play them at any time... and it's probably best to wait for at least a little bit before doing them anyway, so at least the dialogue checks out that way too.

On 5/27/2023 at 9:34 PM, King Marth 64 said:

What highest promoted level should I used in the final battle? I was going to use Panette but I had her as a Lv. 8 Berserker (but going to use Ike Ring), Celine as an around Lv. 10 Verlaine, and Chloe as a Lv. 9 Griffin Rider (but going to use the Tiki Bracelet for survival encounters and going to use Divine Revival Stones for Alear and others later on)

You should be fine but you may want to get just a few levels to be safe. I don't know what internal Levels enemy units use so a direct comparison to your own units' may not be ideal.

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Just started playing it, still kinda dodging spoilers.

 

I know there are Second Seals in the game, how early can I get some? Should I actually worry about them as a resource?

[Mizerous]

A direct is tomorrow hmm that FE 4 rumor might be real...   As for your question I usually don't waste money on stuff until I get enough to save so I would hold off on buying stones imo.

Edited June 20, 2023 by Mizerous

[Randoman]

  If you hack the game so all characters have access to royal classes, do characters swapped to royal classes have the exact same color scheme as the character who normally has the royal class, or does the color scheme match the character. For example, if Boucheron is hacked to have the Successeur class, will he have a red outfit like Diamant, or will he have an orange outfit since Boucheron's color outfit scheme is orange? Or if Lapis is hacked to have the Vidame class, will she have a green outfit like Celine, or will she have a red outfit since Lapis' color outfit scheme is red?

And if possible, could you provide pictures/videos of non-royal characters hacked to have royal classes?

On 6/19/2023 at 9:57 AM, Volt-Ikazuchi said:

I know there are Second Seals in the game, how early can I get some? Should I actually worry about them as a resource?

Around Chapter 7 from what I recall. As long as you use your Master Seals and Second Seals wisely, and don't go too wild or experimental in how you use them, you should be okay. You can buy an infinite amount of both seals around the 2/3rd point of the game.

[Hrothgar777]

So I decided to replay it, this time on Hard Mode, and I just started Chapter 9.

I've been pleasantly surprised by how manageable this is (so far, at least), considering the frustrations I had on my first playthrough. I expected this to be a lot rougher but now I'm on Chapter 9 and I have no reason to think I won't be able to keep going. I'm paying more attention to stuff like bond rings, using emblem rings for quicker level grinding, forging, etc., and that should probably make a difference.

 

But anyways, my question:

Is it true that a unit can only have two inherited skills? It looks like there's only two slots, so I've been cautious and I haven't let anyone inherit yet (I plan to before the Chapter 10 fight). In my first playthrough I had units like Alear inherit way more than two, and the game didn't stop me, so I'm a little confused. How does this work?

Edited June 28, 2023 by Hrothgar777

[Randoman]

On 6/28/2023 at 2:09 AM, Hrothgar777 said:

Is it true that a unit can only have two inherited skills? It looks like there's only two slots, so I've been cautious and I haven't let anyone inherit yet (I plan to before the Chapter 10 fight). In my first playthrough I had units like Alear inherit way more than two, and the game didn't stop me, so I'm a little confused. How does this work?

It's true that a unit can equip two inherited skills, not inherit two skills.

For example, you can get Celine to inherit Avoid +20, Staff Mastery 2, and Silence Ward, despite that being more than two skills. However, only two of those three inherited skills can be equipped/active (unless you equip Micaiah's Emblem Ring on Celine, to make the latter two skills active without using up inherited skill slots).

Also note, that after you inherit a skill, it has to be equipped on the item menu for it to be active. That's a mistake I still make to this day.

[Hrothgar777]

On 7/3/2023 at 4:28 PM, Randoman said:

It's true that a unit can equip two inherited skills, not inherit two skills.

For example, you can get Celine to inherit Avoid +20, Staff Mastery 2, and Silence Ward, despite that being more than two skills. However, only two of those three inherited skills can be equipped/active (unless you equip Micaiah's Emblem Ring on Celine, to make the latter two skills active without using up inherited skill slots).

Also note, that after you inherit a skill, it has to be equipped on the item menu for it to be active. That's a mistake I still make to this day.

Thank you very much. Next time I boot it up, I'll be sure to follow up on this. I guess up until now I've been playing Engage without the benefit of inherited skills, which would help explain why I was struggling so much even on Normal.

 

This next question is completely trivial but it's something I've been wondering about since last night, when I played through the chapter 10 battle again.

Spoiler

When Hortensia removes evil Veyle's hood obscuring her face, Veyle remarked "You ruined my fun". It seems in hindsight that evil Veyle was, up to this point, unaware of good Veyle's encounters with Alear. But the line definitely would've given first-time players the impression that she was only pretending to be nice to this guy/girl just to relish stabbing him/her in the back later. Which I guess was the point.

Spoiler

But how is this line justified in retrospect, given that she didn't know who Alear was? Was it just supposed to mean she enjoyed coming across as an intimidating hooded stranger?

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Hrothgar777
Added spoiler tags.

[DefyingFates]

@Hrothgar777 You should use spoiler tags, but I think that is meant to be the implication. I agree that it sounds weird in hindsight, though I haven't seen that exchange in quite some time myself.

Edited July 23, 2023 by DefyingFates

[Azz]

Are relay trials region locked or have I just been unlucky with trying to put random codes in from Reddit from their relay trials thread?

Have started trying to get the relay trials achievements (do 200, win 100) on my 100% file but the idea of trying to do so is very daunting lol

[Hrothgar777]

(Reposted from another thread where this question didn't belong.)

 

Do you guys have any tips for Chapter 26 (Hard)?

 

Chapter 25 was perhaps slightly harder than me "breezing through it". Anyhow I walked away confident of my prospects for clearing the final battle. So, against my better judgment, I decided to just give it a whack on the same night, with no additional level grinding or whatnot (when I finish I'll post a thread detailing my party, their stats, my evaluation of their performance, etc., and I think this'll make it clear I wasn't underleveled going into this).

Let me tell you: I was not prepared for the massive out-of-the-blue difficulty spike between 25 and 26. Granted, this feels more like a proper final boss battle and I did sign up for exactly this kind of challenge. But if I downright can't beat it, that'll be a disappointing end to something like a month and a half of my time sunk.

 

For context:

Sombron (big cobra form) has a total of 4 bars of health, each with 100 HP. If you don't take out the dark emblem rings, then attacking him is a fool's errand. You'll deal very little damage to him, and he'll take out like half the attacking unit's HP in the process. Whether you're attacking from up close or 2-3 spaces away it makes no difference.

And if you're stubborn enough to actually try this? Well, he'll just have healers spawn on the opposite end of the map and effortlessly get him back up to 100.

The solution at this point seems obvious, right? Well, the thing is, the dark emblems are scattered on different sides of the map and it's a pain to get to them and take them out. But once you do and the barrier is down, you get to strike Sombron with however many units haven't yet moved on that turn. And that's it, because he'll then proceed to summon more dark emblems.

Oh, and have I mentioned he has an attack that instantly turns your Engaged units back to normal?

 

Anyways, some help would be appreciated.

[SnowFire]

19 minutes ago, Hrothgar777 said:

Do you guys have any tips for Chapter 26 (Hard)?

...And if you're stubborn enough to actually try this? Well, he'll just have healers spawn on the opposite end of the map and effortlessly get him back up to 100.

The final map is no joke, yeah.  There are two rough suggestions here.

Option A) Don't ever kill all 4 Dark Emblems.  Just kill 3 of them.  To my understanding, Sombron won't summon more until you kill all 4.  Now, the bad news about doing this is that he won't lose his fell dragon type weakness immunity.  But...  if you have some high enough offense characters, you can make steady progress even with him reducing damage by 60% or so.  Your characters who can't safely tangle with Sombron worry about killing the reinforcements, especially any Griffin Knights with healing staves.  I believe Sombron will "call" his attack that forcibly disengages everyone and you'll be warned, so there's that at least - I think it's every 10 turns or so?  I'd say that timing Micaiah's Great Sacrifice is probably the most important part - you can go nuts with smashing into Sombron if you know you'll be able to safely GS everyone back to health.  Anyway, this will eventually work.

Option B) This is what IS "wants" you to do, I think.  Get ready for turns of massive offense when the barrier totally falls.  Notably, Sombron has a Fell Dragon weakness then, and the 13th Emblem's Engage attack and Engage weapons hit fell dragon weakness.  This means Alear + an A-rank partner can just go wild on Sombron.  Basically, be ready (i.e. kill the 4th Dark Emblem early in the turn; if you can't, then wait until the next player phase), and then Alear + their partner goes nuts.  If you've been sitting on a Byleth engage, this is the time to blow it, and now the Alear + partner get another turn.  If you're deploying Seadall, throw in even more actions.  High-offense characters can also do their thing (e.g. a Brave Lance Eirika user).  You can actually one-round Sombron this way, but that's hard and requires special setups (e.g. Halberdiers quadding with a Brave Lance), but you don't need to - you just shoot off two life bars upon killing the 4th Dark Emblem, and 2 more upon killing the 8th Dark Emblem.  If you do this, the healers aren't really relevant, because you're never really leaving Sombron damaged during enemy phase - your sole goal is to strip revival stones, which the healers can't affect. 

Option C) This is the hard way.  If your offense just sucks and you find yourself needing to engage Alear "early" and can't keep their meter up, just don't bother with Sombron and concentrate on marching around in a big group from Dark Emblem to Dark Emblem, wiping them out with excessive force.  Do this 12 times, and Sombron runs out of barrier juice.  If you have trouble juggling separate teams, this approach at least enables you to stay mostly clustered up.  Healers again don't really matter that much - knock off a lifebar if you have the opportunity, but you just don't care about fighting with Sombron that much in this approach.

[Shadow Mir]

So... how exactly does Air Raid work? Because having thought about it, it sounds really niche... especially if I'm thinking of it as working the way I think it does.

[samthedigital]

54 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

So... how exactly does Air Raid work? Because having thought about it, it sounds really niche... especially if I'm thinking of it as working the way I think it does.

The unit will get the bonus speed if it's a flier only tile and the enemy isn't a flier basically. It's as situational as it sounds; Engage class skills in a nutshell.

[Shadow Mir]

31 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

The unit will get the bonus speed if it's a flier only tile and the enemy isn't a flier basically. It's as situational as it sounds; Engage class skills in a nutshell.

Figures. At least it's no Careful Aim, which is one of the worst class skills in the game; the +40 hit is nothing to sneeze at, but the part where you can't move before attacking makes it nigh useless unless you were already in position beforehand. Which would likely require them attacking you first. I asked because it had gotten a lot of hype and I thought it was really overhyped for something that niche.

On 8/3/2023 at 2:48 PM, Hrothgar777 said:

For context:

Sombron (big cobra form) has a total of 4 bars of health, each with 100 HP. If you don't take out the dark emblem rings, then attacking him is a fool's errand. You'll deal very little damage to him, and he'll take out like half the attacking unit's HP in the process. Whether you're attacking from up close or 2-3 spaces away it makes no difference.

And if you're stubborn enough to actually try this? Well, he'll just have healers spawn on the opposite end of the map and effortlessly get him back up to 100.

The solution at this point seems obvious, right? Well, the thing is, the dark emblems are scattered on different sides of the map and it's a pain to get to them and take them out. But once you do and the barrier is down, you get to strike Sombron with however many units haven't yet moved on that turn. And that's it, because he'll then proceed to summon more dark emblems.

Oh, and have I mentioned he has an attack that instantly turns your Engaged units back to normal?

 

Anyways, some help would be appreciated.

 

On 8/3/2023 at 3:29 PM, SnowFire said:

The final map is no joke, yeah.  There are two rough suggestions here.

Option A) Don't ever kill all 4 Dark Emblems.  Just kill 3 of them.  To my understanding, Sombron won't summon more until you kill all 4.  Now, the bad news about doing this is that he won't lose his fell dragon type weakness immunity.  But...  if you have some high enough offense characters, you can make steady progress even with him reducing damage by 60% or so.  Your characters who can't safely tangle with Sombron worry about killing the reinforcements, especially any Griffin Knights with healing staves.  I believe Sombron will "call" his attack that forcibly disengages everyone and you'll be warned, so there's that at least - I think it's every 10 turns or so?  I'd say that timing Micaiah's Great Sacrifice is probably the most important part - you can go nuts with smashing into Sombron if you know you'll be able to safely GS everyone back to health.  Anyway, this will eventually work.

Option B) This is what IS "wants" you to do, I think.  Get ready for turns of massive offense when the barrier totally falls.  Notably, Sombron has a Fell Dragon weakness then, and the 13th Emblem's Engage attack and Engage weapons hit fell dragon weakness.  This means Alear + an A-rank partner can just go wild on Sombron.  Basically, be ready (i.e. kill the 4th Dark Emblem early in the turn; if you can't, then wait until the next player phase), and then Alear + their partner goes nuts.  If you've been sitting on a Byleth engage, this is the time to blow it, and now the Alear + partner get another turn.  If you're deploying Seadall, throw in even more actions.  High-offense characters can also do their thing (e.g. a Brave Lance Eirika user).  You can actually one-round Sombron this way, but that's hard and requires special setups (e.g. Halberdiers quadding with a Brave Lance), but you don't need to - you just shoot off two life bars upon killing the 4th Dark Emblem, and 2 more upon killing the 8th Dark Emblem.  If you do this, the healers aren't really relevant, because you're never really leaving Sombron damaged during enemy phase - your sole goal is to strip revival stones, which the healers can't affect. 

Option C) This is the hard way.  If your offense just sucks and you find yourself needing to engage Alear "early" and can't keep their meter up, just don't bother with Sombron and concentrate on marching around in a big group from Dark Emblem to Dark Emblem, wiping them out with excessive force.  Do this 12 times, and Sombron runs out of barrier juice.  If you have trouble juggling separate teams, this approach at least enables you to stay mostly clustered up.  Healers again don't really matter that much - knock off a lifebar if you have the opportunity, but you just don't care about fighting with Sombron that much in this approach.

I would also add that the units that have Dark Emblems also have weaknesses to any attacks from whomever is synced with the Emblems from their respective games. Which is ironic in at least one case....

Spoiler

Judgment, AKA Ashera, is weak to Micaiah... In their original game, Ashera was pretty much immune to magic (also, Radiant Dawn was THE worst game for mages), and second, Ike had to finish her off. For bonus irony points, the unit in question is a Great Knight... which, aside from being weak to magic in general, ALSO happens to be weak against Micaiah's signature weapon Thani (admittedly though, that's redundant when any weapon from whoever has her is effective). 

This said, they are still weak to anti-Corrupted attacks, as well as whatever their classes are innately weak against, if applicable.

Edited September 4, 2023 by Shadow Mir

[Crows n Murder]

When it comes to the divine paralouges, is there a good order to do them in? Obviously, Tiki's comes first, but after that you have free rein. I always seem to do Veronica's after that, but afterwards I'm unsure. I know that they scale based on what chapter you're on, so the levels of all the enemies should be the same, but some of the maps are bigger, and they all throw gimmicks at you, but some seem more irritating than others. For example, I got the dlc during a second or third ( I can't quite recall) playthrough and I went back to my (beaten) save and did the paralouges, and after beating all the others Camilla's was still tricky. Maybe it was because everyone was in promoted classes so got less exp? If it is, then maybe I'll be okay if I do them when I first unlock them. The question still stands, though; is there an optimal order?

(this is for a maddening playthrough. I suppose it matters less on lower difficulty.)

[FashionEmblem]

On 4/15/2024 at 12:18 PM, Crows n Murder said:

When it comes to the divine paralouges, is there a good order to do them in? Obviously, Tiki's comes first, but after that you have free rein. I always seem to do Veronica's after that, but afterwards I'm unsure. I know that they scale based on what chapter you're on, so the levels of all the enemies should be the same, but some of the maps are bigger, and they all throw gimmicks at you, but some seem more irritating than others. For example, I got the dlc during a second or third ( I can't quite recall) playthrough and I went back to my (beaten) save and did the paralouges, and after beating all the others Camilla's was still tricky. Maybe it was because everyone was in promoted classes so got less exp? If it is, then maybe I'll be okay if I do them when I first unlock them. The question still stands, though; is there an optimal order?

(this is for a maddening playthrough. I suppose it matters less on lower difficulty.)

I don't know of a canonical recommended order. I think there's a lot of variation based on your level (i.e., when you tackle them), team composition, and how you want to use the DLC emblems.

First, to clarify, the Divine Paralogues don't scale with the story chapter, but with the level of your team. I forget what the exact formula is, but for a map with "n" deployment slots, it will be the average level of your "n" highest level units (excluding Vander in the early game) plus a small number (e.g., 2). So, say the map has 10 deployment slots and your 10 strongest units average to level 12, then the Divine Paralogue enemies could be level 14. Because the Divine Paralogues grant a good amount of experience on their own, if you try to do them in succession, the enemies will in fact get stronger for each subsequent map. There is a notable difficulty spike where the enemies go from unpromoted to promoted (i.e., the enemy levels go above level 20).

Also, in this game being promoted vs. not has no impact on experience gains; it's all about your unit's internal level relative to the enemies. For example, on recruitment Kagetsu is a level 1 Swordmaster with internal level 15, which is the equivalent of a level 16 unit without promotion. Ivy and Zelkov, whom join alongside him at level 17 unpromoted, will gain less experience since they are a level higher.

 

Regarding order, the simplest order is how the DLC emblems make subsequent Divine Paralogues easier: Chrom -> Camilla -> Soren. Camilla's map is flier heavy, so the +10 magic and chain attack from engaging with Chrom can make it easy to one shot fliers with the Radiant Bow. Soren's map has the very annoying smoke terrain, which Camilla's Dragon Vein helps keep in check (especially before you have Corrin). Veronica can be helpful sooner than later since Reprisal is a very strong damage boost, but since it's one of the easier maps it can also be deferred to later. Hector is probably the least generally useful DLC emblem and one of the easier Divine Paralogues, so he can be left until last.

Since Divine Paralogues scale with your team's levels, you will generally want to do harder ones earlier since enemies get very stat inflated in late-game Engage. Difficulty wise I'd rank Soren > Camilla > Chrom > Hector > Veronica. If you are shooting for early game, I'd say you ideally get through Soren, Camilla, and Chrom before enemies promote (though, in practice that can be hard/impossible to do them all since the Divine Paralogues tend to yield a lot of experience).

In terms of emblem usage, it's much more bespoke to your playthrough. Veronica's SP boost skill is a pretty nice cheap-SP inherit that pays off better the sooner you get it, so you might want to rush her (though, Bond Fragment availability is rather low before fishing opens up after Chapter 16, which makes the higher bond level inherit more difficult). Soren pairs well with your later game dragon recruit since Dragon!Flare yields obscene tome crit rates alongside the healing effect, which means Soren might be prioritized around that recruitment. Chrom is a great emblem to get before flier heavy maps, such as Chapter 18, for Radiant Bow one-shots. Camilla's great before any maps where terrain gives you grief (e.g., put out some of the fire in Chapter 17 or remove more miasma in Chapters 15 and 19). And of course, if you have any particular build you want to get online sooner, then that should get priority.

Edited April 18 by FashionEmblem