advice How To Be A Better Fire Emblem Player

[MegaCowsamMan]

Copied this from FEU.

Yes, just as the title says, what sort of tips and advice can you guys provide for how to better oneself to be a better Fire Emblem player?

Edit: To be more specific, I mean improving on strategy, item management, which stat matters the most, what items should my units have, etc.

Edit 2: To be a little more clear, I’m very good at it myself, this post was just for my friends and family that are interested at getting better.-MegaCowsamMan

Edited July 28, 2023 by MegaCowsamMan

[Armchair General]

As long as you understand how algebra and probability works, you'll be fine, for the most part

[Zapp Branniglenn]

2 hours ago, MegaCowsamMan said:

Edit: To be more specific, I mean improving on strategy, item management, which stat matters the most, what items should my units have, etc.

Item management is rarely the make or break point of strategy. Just make sure all your units have something to fight with. Iron weapons are fine if you want to be frugal with your money. I don't often use vulneraries because my healers can gain exp out of that heal instead.

A lot of specific tips are going to be game to game. Stuff like don't give Florina a steel lance because it will weigh her down by 9 points. But Sumia would be fine because weapon weight is not a thing in her game. Really a lot of what makes a good fire emblem player is just knowledge about that game, and taking the time to do some math on whether all your units will survive the upcoming enemy phase assuming every enemy in range A) targets them and B) hits them.

My best general tip for a new player is don't take on more than your units can handle. Run the math regarding their Attack stat and your guys' defenses and HP. You can take your time through most maps because 99% of them have no time limit. Not every map has something that's prompting you to move quickly. Like a thief stealing treasure, or a bandit approaching a village. And if a map does have those things, identify those early and think hard about who you need to send to deal with it. Ideally someone with high movement and good enough at fighting that he won't need to retreat to heal (in fact this is the most common) scenario where I'll put a vulnerary in someone's inventory and use it, so that they can keep moving and stay topped off on health). Even if you fail one of these side objectives, it's not the end of the world. Just like how losing a unit is not the end of the world. 

Edited July 28, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Dark Holy Elf]

 

I think the best advice I've seen for Fire Emblem (and it applies to a lot of FE-like games as well) goes roughly as follows:

At the start of every turn, estimate which enemies you think you can reasonably defeat (or immobilize, in the case of the FE games that allow that). You can use the battle projections to figure out specifics if needed. Then, as you move each of your units, consider any enemies you're leaving them in range of who you don't think you'll defeat this turn. Consider if this unit can survive all of those enemies attacking them. If necessary, check their atk stats against your unit's def/res. Try to position units in such a way that they will not face enough damage to kill them (however, letting them take non-lethal damage is usually fine, and often desirable if they're able to counter).

Otherwise, though, you should generally take an offensive approach; defeat as many enemies you can, and for in general keep moving your units forward, toward future enemies or other objectives (e.g. the seize point, treasure, etc.). Resist the temptation to leave a unit further back just because they're squishier; getting units too far behind where they can't contribute on a difficult turn is one of the more common ways to get into trouble, from observing new players.

Basically, unit losses occur when you leave a unit in range of too many enemies; following this method of thinking will avoid that, while also allowing you to push forward offensively and be prepared for future turns.

 

[Capt. Fargus]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

 

I think the best advice I've seen for Fire Emblem (and it applies to a lot of FE-like games as well) goes roughly as follows:

At the start of every turn, estimate which enemies you think you can reasonably defeat (or immobilize, in the case of the FE games that allow that). You can use the battle projections to figure out specifics if needed. Then, as you move each of your units, consider any enemies you're leaving them in range of who you don't think you'll defeat this turn. Consider if this unit can survive all of those enemies attacking them. If necessary, check their atk stats against your unit's def/res. Try to position units in such a way that they will not face enough damage to kill them (however, letting them take non-lethal damage is usually fine, and often desirable if they're able to counter).

 

One thing I would add in regards to that last point is if like one of your myrmidons or somebody else who’s defense might be a bit on the low side gets attacked on a enemy phase and takes a hard hit but counterattacks and kills the enemy, your guy might not survive the next one, where if he doesnt kill the enemy a second one cant attack

[lenticular]

Plan around having bad luck. A typical Fire Emblem game has somewhere around 20-30 maps, each of which will likely take something like 5-10 turns. So that's about 100-300 turns in total. It might seem that 1% likelihood bad luck is something you can safely ignore, but you can expect that level of bad luck to happen 1-3 times per game. And that's just for 1% likelihood turns. Individual attacks are much more common so you get a lot more low probability ones. So you generally want for your plan to be able to survive even the worst possible luck. If you don't then you will get punished for it eventually.

[samthedigital]

12 hours ago, lenticular said:

Plan around having bad luck. A typical Fire Emblem game has somewhere around 20-30 maps, each of which will likely take something like 5-10 turns. So that's about 100-300 turns in total. It might seem that 1% likelihood bad luck is something you can safely ignore, but you can expect that level of bad luck to happen 1-3 times per game. And that's just for 1% likelihood turns. Individual attacks are much more common so you get a lot more low probability ones. So you generally want for your plan to be able to survive even the worst possible luck. If you don't then you will get punished for it eventually.

This is great advice for an ironman run. It's a little more nuanced than that otherwise; sometimes the riskier strategy has enough of a payoff to offset the luck factor. To be sure it leans a lot more on safety in the titles without any form of battle saves/turn wheels/etc, but that's not always the case.

Chapter 20 of my latest Conquest playthrough comes to mind. I don't remember the specifics because it's been a while since I played it, but I developed a strategy that got to the boss in 5? turns using the wind, but killing the boss required a bit of luck since the hit rates weren't ideal. The alternative was developing a strategy that cleared out the map a lot more slowly and methodically which would have taken significantly more time to do.

18 hours ago, MegaCowsamMan said:

I mean improving on strategy, item management, which stat matters the most, what items should my units have, etc.

The best advice you can give to someone who struggles with item management is to tell them not to worry about it too much. I find that people tend to be more conservative with their resources to the point of not using them or saving them for the end of the game when it's not going to have nearly the same impact. It takes experience (multiple playthroughs) to get a good idea of where resources are best spent, but most of the time hoarding resources is worse than using them "badly".

If your friends are interested in getting a lot better though there are two options. Playing a lot is one way to do it, but watching good players play and doing research speeds up the process.

[Capt. Fargus]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

The best advice you can give to someone who struggles with item management is to tell them not to worry about it too much. I find that people tend to be more conservative with their resources to the point of not using them or saving them for the end of the game when it's not going to have nearly the same impact. It takes experience (multiple playthroughs) to get a good idea of where resources are best spent, but most of the time hoarding resources is worse than using them "badly".

In the relatively short I been playing FE I’ve noticed this is one of if not the easiest trap to fall into, holdin on to stuff forever because “you might need it later”

One example, vulneraries. Aint much more need for those by the time you got 2 healers on the squad

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

If your friends are interested in getting a lot better though there are two options. Playing a lot is one way to do it, but watching good players play and doing research speeds up the process.

Agreed... practice is always good, but a point in the right direction at least is important. Cant fix it if you dont know what’s broken

[lenticular]

9 hours ago, samthedigital said:

This is great advice for an ironman run. It's a little more nuanced than that otherwise; sometimes the riskier strategy has enough of a payoff to offset the luck factor. To be sure it leans a lot more on safety in the titles without any form of battle saves/turn wheels/etc, but that's not always the case.

Yeah, I agree that there's nuance to things. And there definitely are circumstances where pushing your luck can be the "correct" play, depending on what your goals are. But I think that assuming bad luck should typically be the default position. You have to know the rule to break it, that sort of thing. So, yeah, you absolutely can take risky decisions, but you should typically only do so once you know what the risk is, know why taking risks is genenerally bad, and are able to explain why your specific situation is an exception to the rule.

[Jotari]

On 7/29/2023 at 3:48 PM, Capt. Fargus said:

In the relatively short I been playing FE I’ve noticed this is one of if not the easiest trap to fall into, holdin on to stuff forever because “you might need it later”

One example, vulneraries. Aint much more need for those by the time you got 2 healers on the squad

Agreed... practice is always good, but a point in the right direction at least is important. Cant fix it if you dont know what’s broken

It'd be great if they gave an auto potion skill so vulneraries maintain their use even longer. Because even before you get healers, in most games, healing items are not that great, as the act of using one costs a unit's turn where they could otherwise be killing something. We certainly do hoard them unnecessarily as players, but a lot of the time when you're playing you want to hold off using them until you absolutely have to or when you just so happen to have a unit that can't reach any enemies. But if you got a skill that let you use them automatically at the start of a turn or, even better, after taking a hit, then suddenly they would be amazingly useful items (well, I suppose if it's auto at the start of turn it would be a slightly worse renewal, but renewal is a pretty great skill). Making it so you can use vulneraries on other units and not just on oneself would also highly improve them as items. And if you try to put some logic into it...why would you not be able to give someone else medicine like that. In fact, you'd think it would be easier to apply one to someone else than yourself if you're injured. Why you can't use a staff on yourself makes some sense if you rationlize that stance and position and distance all matter, but wether it's a salve you spread, a drink you take or a pill you pop, there's no real reason an item would be more difficult to use on someone else than oneself, unless it's  like really chewey or something? But even then that'd only be the patient is outright unconscious.

[lenticular]

40 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It'd be great if they gave an auto potion skill so vulneraries maintain their use even longer. Because even before you get healers, in most games, healing items are not that great, as the act of using one costs a unit's turn where they could otherwise be killing something. We certainly do hoard them unnecessarily as players, but a lot of the time when you're playing you want to hold off using them until you absolutely have to or when you just so happen to have a unit that can't reach any enemies. But if you got a skill that let you use them automatically at the start of a turn or, even better, after taking a hit, then suddenly they would be amazingly useful items (well, I suppose if it's auto at the start of turn it would be a slightly worse renewal, but renewal is a pretty great skill). Making it so you can use vulneraries on other units and not just on oneself would also highly improve them as items. And if you try to put some logic into it...why would you not be able to give someone else medicine like that. In fact, you'd think it would be easier to apply one to someone else than yourself if you're injured. Why you can't use a staff on yourself makes some sense if you rationlize that stance and position and distance all matter, but wether it's a salve you spread, a drink you take or a pill you pop, there's no real reason an item would be more difficult to use on someone else than oneself, unless it's  like really chewey or something? But even then that'd only be the patient is outright unconscious.

Another issue with vulneraries is that they don't give any xp. If I have the choice between healing someone with a vulnerary or healing them with a staff, I'm going to choose the staff because I want to level up my healer. This isn't as much of an issue in modern games as it used to be, but units like Laura or Priscilla want every last scrap of xp they can get their hands on, and using a vulnerary means taking 12xp away from them.

Auto-use vulneraries just make me think of berries from Pokémon, though. Which may or may not be a bad thing. There's an awfully big design space they could make use of for "item that a character automatically consumes if certain conditions are met" though, for sure.

[Shadow Mir]

On 7/30/2023 at 1:33 PM, lenticular said:

Auto-use vulneraries just make me think of berries from Pokémon, though. Which may or may not be a bad thing. There's an awfully big design space they could make use of for "item that a character automatically consumes if certain conditions are met" though, for sure.

Personally, I think of Final Fantasy and Auto-Potion instead.

On 7/30/2023 at 1:33 PM, lenticular said:

Another issue with vulneraries is that they don't give any xp. If I have the choice between healing someone with a vulnerary or healing them with a staff, I'm going to choose the staff because I want to level up my healer. This isn't as much of an issue in modern games as it used to be, but units like Laura or Priscilla want every last scrap of xp they can get their hands on, and using a vulnerary means taking 12xp away from them.

It isn't so much an issue for the latter, but it's especially likely to come up in Radiant Dawn as vulneraries got buffed to heal 20 HP and also have 8 uses.

On 7/30/2023 at 12:36 PM, Jotari said:

It'd be great if they gave an auto potion skill so vulneraries maintain their use even longer. Because even before you get healers, in most games, healing items are not that great, as the act of using one costs a unit's turn where they could otherwise be killing something. We certainly do hoard them unnecessarily as players, but a lot of the time when you're playing you want to hold off using them until you absolutely have to or when you just so happen to have a unit that can't reach any enemies. But if you got a skill that let you use them automatically at the start of a turn or, even better, after taking a hit, then suddenly they would be amazingly useful items (well, I suppose if it's auto at the start of turn it would be a slightly worse renewal, but renewal is a pretty great skill). Making it so you can use vulneraries on other units and not just on oneself would also highly improve them as items. And if you try to put some logic into it...why would you not be able to give someone else medicine like that. In fact, you'd think it would be easier to apply one to someone else than yourself if you're injured. Why you can't use a staff on yourself makes some sense if you rationlize that stance and position and distance all matter, but wether it's a salve you spread, a drink you take or a pill you pop, there's no real reason an item would be more difficult to use on someone else than oneself, unless it's  like really chewey or something? But even then that'd only be the patient is outright unconscious.

You would have to increase their uses for an Auto-Potion effect to actually be useful imho. 3 uses ain't a lot. Besides that, I think it would be more of a hindrance than a help.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Personally, I think of Final Fantasy and Auto-Potion instead.

It isn't so much an issue for the latter, but it's especially likely to come up in Radiant Dawn as vulneraries got buffed to heal 20 HP and also have 8 uses.

You would have to increase their uses for an Auto-Potion effect to actually be useful imho. 3 uses ain't a lot. Besides that, I think it would be more of a hindrance than a help.

It categorically would not be more of a hindrance than a help, as auto using is objectively better than spending your turn doing the same thing. What you really mean is that there would still be issues and that a skill like Renewal would trump it. But a build around auto vulnerary use could definitely still work, particularly if mid map convoy access exists (which it does in almost every game) and if it's a system where skills are a resource to distribute rather than tied to class and level.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Jotari

[Dark Holy Elf]

21 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

You would have to increase their uses for an Auto-Potion effect to actually be useful imho. 3 uses ain't a lot. Besides that, I think it would be more of a hindrance than a help.

Auto-Potion is famously game-breakingly strong in at least one strategy RPG it has appeared in (Final Fantasy Tactics). While FE's version would likely be less broken for a variety of reasons it would still potentially be a really useful skill. If enemies aren't dealing more damage than your potions restore, you can't die. Inventory limits might be a potential issue, but given that every recent FE has put the convoy on the main character, they at least would still be able to restock every turn. Similarly, money cost could be a potential issue, but every recent FE gives you more than enough. So it's definitely a skill that would need to be carefully balanced, and I think it probably goes against the current design ethos of FE where no-brainer enemy phase abilities are mostly frowned at.

[Shadow Mir]

18 hours ago, Jotari said:

It categorically would not be more of a hindrance than a help, as auto using is objectively better than spending your turn doing the same thing. What you really mean is that there would still be issues and that a skill like Renewal would trump it. But a build around auto vulnerary use could definitely still work, particularly if mid map convoy access exists (which it does in almost every game) and if it's a system where skills are a resource to distribute rather than tied to class and level.

The thing is, in most games, vulneraries heal for 10, and I'd find it aggravating for them to be wasted healing something like 3 or 4 damage hits.

11 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Auto-Potion is famously game-breakingly strong in at least one strategy RPG it has appeared in (Final Fantasy Tactics). While FE's version would likely be less broken for a variety of reasons it would still potentially be a really useful skill. If enemies aren't dealing more damage than your potions restore, you can't die. Inventory limits might be a potential issue, but given that every recent FE has put the convoy on the main character, they at least would still be able to restock every turn. Similarly, money cost could be a potential issue, but every recent FE gives you more than enough. So it's definitely a skill that would need to be carefully balanced, and I think it probably goes against the current design ethos of FE where no-brainer enemy phase abilities are mostly frowned at.

I have not played FFT, so... I wouldn't have known that. Maybe you can fill me in? ...or maybe you already did.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Shadow Mir