Tips and Tricks

Soft Reboot

Soft reboot your game anytime by pressing L+R+Start. This is good for reloading your save file in case you mess something up.

Save Slots

The game has three main save slots (saved in the cartridge) and 6 additional “extra data” slots saved in your 3DS’s memory card. Additionally, the game lets you keep up to two different in-battle saves. Use these files to try out various stuff and create valuable backups, especially if you’re playing in Classic mode.

Save Often

As mentioned before, the game has several save file slots you can utilize. It’s recommended to save before major battles, or preferably have a save of your pre-battle preparation screen. This is quite important especially for those playing the game in higher difficulty or in Classic mode. There’s also a limited number of times you can save in mid-battle.

Boon and Bane

The game’s character creation is simple with limited variety. However, when you’re editing the profile of your character, you’ll come across two very important factors in your character’s growth: Boon and Bane. These determine how fast or how slow your stats will increase upon leveling up respectively.

Battle Preparations

Before starting a battle, the game gives you all the time you need to position your characters, check their inventory, pair the ones you want to increase their relationships on, and select the fighters you want to bring in battle. Furthermore, you can select “View Map” in the preparation screen to get a free overview of the battlefield and the initial forces you have to deal with. This intel is very important since this will surely affect the type of characters you’ll need to bring out and their equipment loadout. You can freely examine the map’s terrain and more importantly, dragon vein spots and their respective effects. Don’t underestimate the importance of this pre-battle preparation.

Be Versatile

There will be Classes that are proficient in multiple weapon types. It's always a good idea to carry at least one of each type to give your unit versatility in the battlefield. Also, check if there's a ranged/thrown version of the character's main weapon. For example, spears have Javelin, clubs have throwing clubs, katanas have kodachi/wakizashi, axes have hand axes, etc. This will give your melee units an option to attack from a distance, which can help a lot in various Combat situations.

Build your "core" team

The game offers a large roster of characters to choose from. Though some may have recurring Classes, most of them have unique skills. Furthermore, these skills can be inherited to child characters or offsprings if you pair your characters with each other and raise their relationship to the romantic level. It can be daunting micro-managing everyone so focusing on your core team - usually at least 10 characters, will allow you properly monitor their growth and give them the best equipment you can afford.

Upgrading your weapons

Weapons play an integral part of the game, thanks to the Weapon Triangle (rock-paper-scissors system) concept of weapons and bonus damage against specific enemy and weapon types. Lower-rank weapons usually have low damage output but with positive effects. Higher weapon rank has better damage but with usually negative side effects (like stat decrease). Upgrading low rank weapons can be a good but expensive option if you want to have good damage and positive effects at the same time.

Note: You can only forge weapons belonging to your country in your Castle smithy. To forge weapons from the other country, you have to visit another player's smithy and forge it there.

Command Skills

There are characters with unique skills that can be used outside Combat. For example, Azura can Sing to another unit who just finished the turn and allow it to take another turn. Orochi (Hoshido) or Niles (Nohr) can use the Capture/Kidnap command to imprison an enemy unit which can be later recruited to your army through bribing or persuading. Rinkah has the Shove ability which can push an allied unit by one space. Other commands you can issue outside combat is Rally (healer skill), Staff (available to staff users), and Door/Chest (available to ninja/ rogue characters).

Note: Azura loses her Sing command if she re-Classes. Orochi in the other hand retains her Capture command even if you re-class her to an advanced class.

Mid-Battle Conversations

There will many instances in main quests and paralogues where you’ll need to talk to an allied character (color scheme: green) in order to recruit them to your army. For the main story, it’s usually the avatar who needs to do the talking while in “offspring” paralogues, it’s the father.

Dragon Veins

These are very helpful, environment-altering nodes that can turn the tide of battle to your advantage. These nodes are immediately visible in the map and their effects are displayed as well, giving you the chance to plan ahead. They can only be activated by the members of the royal family (look for the crown icon beside the character’s name) so don’t let your main character do all the activation. Furthermore, be careful of dragon veins within the reach of the opposing royal family members as their effects can be used against your army.

Danger Zones

You can toggle the visibility of the enemy attack zones by pressing X when your pointer is over an enemy unit. Most enemies will get aggro’d by any allied unit that enters its attack zone. This will help in your character placement, especially if you’re trying protect a wounded unit or try to regroup your forces without triggering unnecessary battles. Most importantly, staying out of an enemy’s attack range will allow you to take the initiative, which is crucial in almost all engagements.

Changing Classes and Master Seals

Most characters will start with a base class with moderate stat ratings and weapon efficiency. At LV10 however, players can use Master Seals to upgrade their class to advanced version of their current class. (Nohr Prince/ Princess > Nohr Noble) Advanced Classes will have better stats, skills, and even allow you use additional equipment types. It’s actually strongly recommended to hit a base class’ level cap of 20 before using a Master Seal. That’s because you get to keep the stats you have at that level while getting the class-change stat bonuses/reductions. Changing to an advanced class also resets your level to 1 while keeping your already high stats, allowing more space to grow.

Master seals are quite rare and expensive. After exhausting your stocks from story chapters or from your store, you’ll have to visit the shops of the upgraded castles of other players in hopes of finding more. There are other seals that you can use to change a character’s class but more of that will be discussed in this guide’s separate page.

Support Pairs

Pairing characters doesn’t only boost their stats during battle but it also improves their relationships. Some characters only have a specific list of characters they’ll improve their relationships on; however, that doesn’t mean that you can’t pair non-compatible characters. The benefits of triggering support attacks, guard, and stat boosts are invaluable especially if you’re taking on more powerful enemies.

Pairing characters also give you the versatility to tackle most Combat situations. For example, pairing a ground unit with a flying unit will allow the former to cover more ground by acting as the support. Another example is that you can “carry” a vulnerable healer unit as a support for your sturdier combat unit then switch out the healer should the need arise.

“Shipping” and Pairing

Before pairing characters to build their relationships, always check the Support menu to learn the compatible characters they can improve their relationships with. Higher relationship levels give more stat boosts when paired in Combat. Also, most female and male characters can achieve an S-rank relationship level, which is basically marrying them to each other.

Unlike in Fire Emblem: Awakening, male characters in Fire Emblem Fates who achieved S-rank with another female character will unlock an “offspring” character which can be recruited after completing his/her paralogue quest. Offsprings are unusually powerful because of their inherited skills and the averaged stats of their parents. Paralogue quests are also a good source of extra exp and chance to improve relationships, especially in the Conquest version of the game where Challenge missions are scarce and not freely obtained.

Visit other Castles

By visiting castles, you earn a bit of DVP (currency for buying/upgrading buildings in your own castle), the freedom to obtain two types of resources from the host castle’s resource nodes, freedom to use any of the host’s facilities, and many more. It's recommended to visit high-level castles with "gold" colored facilities. Their resource nodes can give you up to x3 of their materials, shops with better inventory, and their arena can hold up to three rounds, allowing you to earn as much up to 8 of the material you've bet if the character wins all three rounds.

If you're looking for a particular node, remember that you can check what type of resource another player's castle has by tapping the building's icon on the lower screen.

You’ll earn also get free items from Visit Bonuses which counts how many castles you visited and how many players visited yours. Furthermore, you can battle the castle owner and his forces which will also give you experience and chance to boost your character relationships.

Castle Battles

You have the option to battle other players in an attempt to seize their throne. If you successfully seized the throne, you can either recruit any one ally from the castle lord’s army (even the castle lord’s main character) or get any non-unique skill at a discounted cost. There will be castles with deliberately undefended thrones to entice other players to visit them. These castles may also have easily defeated units where you can acquire new skills for your characters. Take note that a character can only learn skills from another character of the same name. For example, your Azura can't learn the skill Hoshidan Unity from another player's Corrin.