I lost a unit last night on Ch 19 too. But it was a new unit that you can recruit during the mission. So I got them and then 2 turns later they were dead.
I decided if they couldn't hack it at the same level as the rest of my team they weren't worth my time to save and level. Farewell what's-your-name. Maybe next playthrough.
My ring collection is getting large and I decided to flip a couple around. We'll see how that works.
The story makes things seem urgent but I really have to do some paralogue missions due to what they unlock or I'm just wasting time and making regular missions harder. It's a weird dynamic. Or at least weird placement. Make the paralogue missions beside the story ones. Or hell for a certain set of them just make them in the combat arena or something. It makes little sense when I'm sailing off to fight in a hurry that I'll sail back to a different area just for a side mission.
Just one of those mechanics vs story things that you have to ignore apparently.
If I remember the key on Awakenings is to use pair up.
Yeah, both Fates and Awakenings have that mechanic (although the mechanics of what's enabled by pairing up are slightly different in each), and that definitely adds an extra dimension to the tactics to think about that's not present in the more recent games. Also, I think the answer to the question of when to pair up becomes simpler as you reach higher support levels, since in both cases that makes the frequency of support actions (extra strikes, defense, etc) higher. But especially early on it's mostly adding extra complexity to consider balancing stat bonuses and protection of weaker units vs action availability and map control.
It's a very cool system, though, and I'm actually really excited to play more in part because of it. It's also very interesting to wonder why they left the system behind in Three Houses and Engage (aside from the fact that the Three Houses adjutant system and the Engage emblem system are distant cousins of it that are ultimately a bit less complex in terms of moment to moment tactical choices).
In terms of your difficulty discussion, I think it is generally agreed that starting with Fates, the difficulty rating system stepped down a notch. What used to be normal is now hard. Hard Engage definitely feels about the difficulty I remember from Sacred Stones and Awakenings, even though I have not played either of those in a decade or more.
My weekend was consumed by other obligations so I am still sitting back just after chapter 11. I need to start pushing the story forward a little bit.
Whoa, second DLC drop already, with four more emblems.
I was expecting a schedule similar to recent Xenoblade DLC passes, with months between drops.
Wild.
Had to download a patch tonight. Was that just the DLC or anything else change?
EDIT: Found some.
- Compatible with Wave 2 of the Expansion Pass.
- From chapter 8 forward, you’ll be able to use the “Recreation” feature at the pool, orchard, and stable on the Somniel.
- Fixed an issue in Relay Trials where “No data to take over.” would be displayed even if you selected “Random” from the “Take Over” section.
- Issues have been fixed to make for a more pleasant gaming experience.
That took am embarrassing long time to realize it said "recreation" and not "re-creation". Sitting here wondering what "re-creation" would entail.
Hm, the game just showed me patch notes before the main menu when I first booted it up after the update.
But, maybe that's only if you have the DLC pass? I know the notes I saw were divided into "here's what you get if you have the DLC pass, and here's what everyone gets."
There were a bunch of extra outfits added to the store too. In the in game notes but not the ones I posted above from some googling.
Played the Soren and Hector maps the last two nights, and very much enjoyed them -- like the Tiki map, there was a bit more gimmick to the encounters than most of the story missions, but in a way that was quite fun. Also, I'm not sure if this is the case with normal paralogues, since I've only done one so far, but the DLC ones seem to scale with your level (presumably the same way skirmishes do?) so even though presumably one could do these immediately after Tiki in chapter 6 if they were playing from the start, the enemies were still appropriately scaled to keep me on my toes a bit, but not unfairly so.
I haven't really had a chance to use either emblem yet though. I did the Soren map first, which is a 12 unit fight, and then Hector was an 8 unit team and the units that made the most sense for the fight had more ideal emblem pairings amongst my roster. But, on paper they seem to be balanced similarly to Tiki and Edelgard. They aren't absurdly overpowered, but they fill since useful niches not covered by the base 12 emblems, and offer some skills that are useful but don't feel required by any stretch of the imagination, and mostly just flesh out the matrix of options you'd want to consider for your characters.
Like, for example, the free SP items I mostly used to get a few characters some of the higher price skills from the core cast. To be specific, (spoilers for the existence of a later game emblem, and a skill they offer)
I used the free SP items to pick up Corrin's Draconic Hex on both Alcryst and Ivy, because even though it's pricy at 2000 sp, it's worth it. Having three characters (ie, the two of them, plus the character equipping Corrin -- usually Yunaka, since she can then make her own avoid tank zone with dragon vein) who can apply that overwhelmingly powerful debuff at a distance is absurd. Like seriously, a 100% chance for any attack to effectively drop ALL of your targets stats by four, which is... I dunno, the equivalent of like four to six, maybe even seven levels worth of stats? Wild.
Add to that Alcryst using Lyn so in a pinch he can apply Draconic Hex at extreme range with her engage attack, and Ivy now using Soren who afflicts extra debuffs based on what magic you attack with, and has an engage attack that hits an area with all three magics, applying all three on his smaller debuffs plus Draconic Hex -- seriously, 2000 sp is an absolute steal if you buy that skill with the right characters.
So yeah, it wasn't like "here's your new emblems and inheritable skills, now they're they only one's you'll want to use." But also, they are interesting and I'm glad to have them now, and I'm looking forward to picking up Camilla next.
That said, while it's all well and good to be picking up these extra options here after having finished chapter 17, man, having five extra emblems rather than two as early as chapter 6, that could really trivialize things. Definitely, DEFINITELY do not recommend playing on normal if you have the DLC now. Having Tiki and Edelgard already made you powerful in that early to midgame section -- having five (and eventually seven) that early would be silly.
Anyway, spoilers for each of their niches/skill sets:
Soren is a magic based nuker and debuffer, and fills in the maybe slightly neglected niche of emblems that focus on enhancing tome user units, especially at times where you don't have Celica.
Hector offers another set of tank focused skills that focus on making a unit dangerous and hard to attack without heavy retribution.
Camilla is about mobility and map control; she doesn't give as mov as Sigurd, but adds flying to units that don't have it (and more mov to ones that do), and she offers Dragon Vein abilities like Corrin. (Some unit types get the same abilities as Corrin, but others get different ones. Notably, covert units with Camilla create an avo/def debuff field instead of an avo buff field, and qi adepts create a movement enhancing ice field rather than a movement blocking one).
Oh, and finally, just like Edelgard and Tiki, all three of the new emblems have engage attacks that are enhanced if you have them adjacent to the emblem from the core set of twelve that originates from the same game, which is quite fun and also adds an extra thing to consider when planning your tactics.
Free SP? That's nice. It's a brutal grind in the regular game. Several characters I only have 1 passive instead of 2 because I can't afford more.
Pretty sure I'm going to finish the game without ever buying a 2k SP power
Free SP? That's nice. It's a brutal grind in the regular game. Several characters I only have 1 passive instead of 2 because I can't afford more.
Pretty sure I'm going to finish the game without ever buying a 2k SP power
Yeah, this DLC drop also granted a handful of skill books, maybe totaling 3500 sp or something?
And yeah, aside from the issue in the early to mid game where the timing and rate of master seal acquisition wasn't quite balanced right, my other main mechanical complaint about the game is the SP economy.
The issue is that your SP gain is managed using the same formulas as XP gain -- or actually, it seems like there's an even harsher level penalty involved. As such, you can very quickly get to a place where you've accidentally overleveled a character and they effectively stop gaining SP unless they are getting last hits on bosses.
My Alear has earned a bit more than 2500 sp throughout the entire game, but my next most successful murder machines (Diamont and Boucheron) are struggling through the last hundred points or so they each need to reach a total of 2000 sp each, so they can both by a second 1000 sp skill each. And with Alear, I've actually been sitting on 2000 sp to spend for a couple battles because I can't decide what the best choice for her is. I've got a lot of good options now, but
(spoilers for mid to late game events)
I'm kind of thinking waiting until I get Roy back to get her Hold Out, so I can be a bit more careless about throwing her into enemies without being in danger of an instant mission failure, but I'm still two story missions from getting him back, and I really want to do some Paralogues...
Anyway, you get the picture. The scarcity of SP sucks, especially given how easy it is to get your best units to a place where they can't earn. That said, if you do decide to catch up a unit that's behind on leveling, the level balancing does help out a lot.
Last night I decided to bring Jade into the Hector map, since I wanted to expand my tank options beyond Louis. She was maybe level 13 or 14 when I promoted her, and I hadn't used her since then, and most of my characters and the enemies I'm fighting are probably internal levels in the low to mid 20s, maybe even high 20s. By carefully choosing her fights and feeding her a lot of kills, she gained like five levels and more than 500 sp (putting her around 1400 sp total). Still a ways to go it I want to get her a 2000 sp skill (ie, Gentility), but not nothing.
So yeah, that being the case, even more reasons to add to things I discussed earlier in the thread as to why it's not a bad thing to take the time to use a more expanded roster than you necessarily need to.
Yeah I've got a pretty solid 12 now with maybe 3 others that were in the 12 but got replaced so they're only 4-7 levels behind the main group. And then few others that are 10 levels back now, joined as prepromote or whatever. Could drag them up but not sure it's worth it for ability. Just if I liked the character.
I really like a certain swordmaster personality wise but I already had Lapis built up and she's been kicking ass, especially once I got an emblem on her. So he got left behind even though the royalty he joined with has been one of my mains.
Somebody mentioned it last week but it almost feels like they want you to play with Alear and all the princes and princesses that join and leave all their retainers behind. Except Louis of course because he's an unstoppable rock.
Somebody mentioned it last week but it almost feels like they want you to play with Alear and all the princes and princesses that join and leave all their retainers behind. Except Louis of course because he's an unstoppable rock.
Yeah, I mean, the stat growths on paper would definitely make you think that, but it has continued to not really play out that way for me at all.
Light spoilers about names and roles of characters.
Okay, admittedly, the Brodia princes are just top tier. Their growths have both proved to be super good, and their unique classes are better versions of the closest generic equivalent.
But, six of my active duty characters are still Firene characters, and none of them are Alfred or Celine.
Boucheron is up there with Diamant as top tier front line semi-tank absolute murder machine. He might be ahead by one or two internal levels, but he's significantly ahead in all the important stats.
Yunaka is an avo-tanking god, especially with Corrin's Dragon Vein. Granted, there are no lord characters directly competing with her niche, but she was way ahead in terms of stats when Zelkov joined, plus she had the chance to grab avo+10 from Marth where he didn't.
Louis is Louis. Granted, he really only has two competitors in the full tank world until much later in the game than I currently am, and none of them are lords. Theoretically, though, Timerra could be moved that way.
Chloe is a monster who can be counted on to double and crit in nearly any combat encounter, with the highest second highest spd+dex combo in my roster (Alcryst has a higher total, and Anna has a higher dex and close on speed), and has a higher total stat rank than anyone but Anna and Jean (and that includes Alear). Partly that's because her mag is nearly as good as her str, which matters since she's ALSO a highly mobile healer. Yeah, in theory I now have Hortensia who I'm sure could become a similarly impressive magic analog whenever I actually use her, but the problem with that is...
Anna, who as a sage will always be my first chair magic user. Ivy is definitely a strong competitor, and now that I've got her set up as an ultimate debuffer she's got a niche other than mobility where Anna doesn't pull ahead. But, you know, 500 gold from a great many kills is a BIG incentive.
And, of course, Jean. I did cheat a little by pairing him with Tiki from about level 8 on, but he's constantly neck and neck with Anna for the highest total stats in my roster, and as a wyvern knight I can set him up with a nice mixture of physical and magic weapons and send him out as one of the most versatile heavy hitters I have, where the only match up I have to worry about is archers.
So then there's Diamant and Alcryst, and Ivy, who definitely are the lords who have really stood out and claimed spots. Fogado is my second archer, but I don't often need that, with Boucheron being able to use bows in a pinch (he's a warrior) and mages being able to do anti-air duty as well.
And Timerra, I dunno, I just don't have much use for an infantry lancer I guess? I have Chloe and Jean running spears in the sky, Louis (and Jade) using them in the full tank space. Yeah, I don't have a front line scrapper who can use spears, but Diamant and Boucheron never really run into a situation where I'm like, "damn, if only you had a spear, and nothing else." Her personal skill is a very powerful defensive utility, which I imagine becomes even more useful the more you push into the late game but still, not enough overall juice in her unique class, and no real niche left to reclass her into.
So the rest of my active duty roster is a collection of retainer tier characters.
Seadall because dancer.
Jade as my second tank, or for when lances alone would be a big disadvantage (although I did make her axe/lance, because I have enough sword options in my roster and that way she can share some upgraded tank weapons with Louis if she's completely replacing him).
Rosado, because he joins well leveled, and wyvern knights are just really strong all around so having two on field can sometimes make a lot of sense on larger deployment maps. Also, fun support scenes with a lot of my other active characters.
Kagetsu gets to be a single weapon specialist because his stats are absurd (and I never had time to build Lapis before I recruited him), but he's a situational team add, competing for the same kind of extra muscle spots on larger deployment maps as Rosado.
And when I need a more versatile player for a similar niche as Kagetsu, Goldmary dropped in with solid stats and adds lances as a backup weapon option, although I haven't used her after her intro mission yet.
And then I also have Pandreo and Hortensia both on tap as healer/mage options, leveled enough to be usable if necessary, but so far I really haven't found a need for dedicated healing, and what Chloe, Anna, and Ivy provide, small bits of passive healing from emblem abilities, and items has more than sufficed.
So yeah, my lord totals really remain just three on frequent active duty, with one as secondary in their role that I haven't used in a while, another as a potential secondary I haven't used yet, one usable but completely overshadowed by various retainers, and two completely benched with no real reason other than shits and giggles to consider using them.
But maybe if stat rolls had gone differently it would be more the case? Certainly, most of them have good growth potential on paper, and most of their unique classes are at least solid.
So I wonder if it's maybe a bit more like they wanted to make it possible for players who wanted it that way to build a successful, rounded team just out of the lords -- but at least from my experience, it doesn't feel like the game is working hard to steer me that way.
Yeah interesting we made a couple of the exact same choices and a couple exact opposite.
I keep trying to use Celine but Chloe has better healing range and Anna and Hortensia are mostly better mages. Ivy is a goddess. Nothing but bows can kill her and even then they better be fast because she has Lyn and doubles up everyone before they get a turn. After a couple warm up skills to steal speed I could just park her out front and kill everything if I really wanted.
Diamant and Alcryst are both great. Jade as Louis backup yes. And as I hinted Lapis over Kagetsu. Same with Yuneka over Zelkov.
I also ignored Jean entirely. He's level 2. No DLC here either.
And Boucheron just sucked for me. Never really got going. So either when I got Diamant I promoted him early for axes or I used Jade, can't remember which was first now. But he's benched at level 7 or something.
Agree on Timerra, Goldmary, and Rosado. Good but I'm covered for that role. Pandreo was really good when he joined but I left him out for too long now I think.
I got Lindon to join but again covered for mages and healers. He's nice though. And I let Saphir die in the mission I recruited her. She seemed like maybe a cool axe user but oh well too late.
You really should try Hortensia.
About Anna, she was my first character to max a stat. I'm on Ch 20 and her health as Sage is capped at 43. I'm considering changing her to mage knight or high priest. Lose a bit of magic but gain some HP and other stats. Will probably do something tonight after my current battle
Holy crap, this Camilla map.
Not necessarily hard, but an endurance test — the gimmick essentially boiling down to “it takes a long time to make your way through, and there are endless reinforcements.”
Bring a well rounded team and as many fliers as you can.
Apparently we have been asking the wrong people to fund our war against the Fell Dragon (chapter 13 spoilers?)...
Sitting here with less than 1500g to my war fund and here Citrine is offering 50k for some fabric.
So I took Anna to high priest and she's still kicking ass.
I got my other magic princess maxed out and reset her to level 1 of her unique advanced class. Looks like she just keeps leveling until stats hit max.
Ivy
Talked about her in my spoiler above. She really can't be killed. I threw her out in front of 5 enemies in range on a paralogue map and she killed them all. Only 2 even hit her. Then in Ch 20 I had her facing off against 3 and one of them got a crit on her but she had enough HP to take it and kept on trucking. My MVP pretty much every map.
But again the reset with second seal confirms no real penalty for promotion before 20 in this one. May cost you a little gold to buy more seals eventually but I think every time the advantages of going to a promoted class early are worth it.
Good to know. I am close enough at this point I think I will hold out for 20 so I can farm a bunch of gold corrupted for money and SP without overleveling the story content. I have never had so much of a money constraint in a Fire Emblem game as I have in this one. I guess I am probably spreading my weapon upgrades too thin.
Well Ch 21 is wild. I was doing ok, hadn't lost anyone yet, but I could tell it was going to end badly. My team got a bit too spread out and it just didn't feel right. So I pushed Alear forward and sacrificed her, to restart and keep XP. I had played it for probably 8 or 10 turns and leveled up 4 or 5 units, so I didn't want to piss that away. But I also wasn't sure how far I could go back to find a place to adjust my strategy and win.
Try again tomorrow.
Finished the final (?) paralogue yesterday. I guess there could be one more pop up, but cleared the map for now. Haven't done any other extra skirmishes for 7 or 8 chapters at least. But feels like my core 12 are solid. Also promoted Alear back to level 1 of her advanced class yesterday after hitting 20. That's 2. Another couple are getting close, level 18 or 19 of promoted classes.
Well Ch 21 is wild. I was doing ok, hadn't lost anyone yet, but I could tell it was going to end badly. My team got a bit too spread out and it just didn't feel right. So I pushed Alear forward and sacrificed her, to restart and keep XP. I had played it for probably 8 or 10 turns and leveled up 4 or 5 units, so I didn't want to piss that away. But I also wasn't sure how far I could go back to find a place to adjust my strategy and win.
I haven't tried chapter 21 yet, but after chapter 20 it definitely feels like the point where they expect that you've spent some time getting your house in order -- there was a bit of a jump in both raw levels of the enemies vs chapter 19, but also trickiness of encounter design. I'm definitely going to spend a bit of time finally catching up on at least a few of the paralogues I was skipping while trying to
get back the majority of the stolen rings.
But at the same time, not sure I want to try to clear absolutely everything out right now, because reasons.
Finished the final (?) paralogue yesterday.
Fairly sure that
there will be two more after clearing chapter 22. Also, an additional character that might be worth considering using.
Yeah I knew some characters were joining, spoilers are impossible to miss if you want to look at growths.
So far the one who joined during Ch 21 seems solid. But that would put me at 13 primary units. And the final member at 14. I'm not sure who I can drop at this point as I've got a lot paired with great rings.
I got extremely lucky with bond rings a while back and drew Claude S. If you don't know it gives +1 range to bows if archer has full health. So I've kept that on Alcryst for 10 chapters now and even though I could put 2 good emblem rings that help archers on him, I haven't. Because the extra range makes him godly already. He can kill everything from 3 spots away with killer bow. And if some archer has longbow he can just counter from 4 spots with his longbow. It's so fun
I'm starting to wish you could wear 1 bond ring and 1 emblem ring at the same time. Because there's some really good of both and you can only use 12 units at a time. I'm glad I don't have the DLC or it would be even worse
Yeah, Claude S is basically the one bond ring in the entire set that genuinely competes with emblem rings once you have more emblems than deployment slots.
Sadly, even though I try to roll for it after every battle, I've yet to have any luck. I did keep an Edelgard S early on since that's somewhat useful before you're full up on emblems, but other than that for some reason every time I try all I ever see are more Edelgard S drops or occasionally a Lysithea S.
Oh well.
But yeah, I also had that same thought about being able to use one of each -- while it definitely seems like it would be the sort of thing you'd see unlock towards the end of the game, it would create a lot more interesting choices, and give a more meaningful use for the entire bond ring system in general other than filling in the gaps before you get a ton of emblems (especially for DLC owners).
Claude was a straight drop for me. My other great one is Deidre. 5 health restored per turn. It's so damn good but I'm out of slots. I got her and another with powers by a modified version of that ring farming guide.
Especially since they're not super useful, I didn't bother resetting missions and all that. And you get enough points eventually to keep summoningb bond rings but not really enough to combine multiple A to S rings. So what I do is save and then summon a group 10 between every mission. If no S, oh well. But if I do get an S, I check for the ones with powers.
For instance, you summon Sigurd and get the 3rd one. But that's not one with a power. (No chart handy, I'm making up numbers) Reload save and then summon from a different emblem where the 3rd slot does have an S power like Ike. I've done this twice to get better S rings then I got on first drop. Once I actually got a second Claude S and was like WTF.
Finished Ch 21 at lunch. I got to a point where I had to finish objective or I was going to lose at least 2 units next turn. Failed and watched them die. Rewind and realized that I had used one unit off by themselves to get a hit and extra XP but they were one of the ones that died. So tried to finish objective with a different unit and got a critical in that turn instead! Haha so lucky.
Then shit hits the fan story wise. Trying to focus on work but I really want to go do Ch 22...
Yeah, that's essentially what I'm doing.
No heavy attempts to manipulate it, just do a few rolls after each mission and reset if I don't get anything worthwhile.
Well, finished up the game last night.
(Apologies for brevity here, typing on my phone.)
It never really won me over from a story perspective — it remained a pretty basic Saturday morning cartoon until the very end. But, I still had a good enough time with it thanks to some charming and fun character work. (It still pales in comparison to Three Houses, but it kept me engaged, nonetheless.)
And from a gameplay perspective, it definitely remained great until the end. Granted, by the late teen chapters I had built my team to the point where I had the challenge of hard/casual well managed, but I still had a lot of fun with the final third of the paralogues and story missions. Plenty of interesting gimmick fights as well a straight ahead challenges.
Also, I really enjoyed the late game mechanic that unlocks after chapter 22. Definitely recommend saving a few paralogues for after that point so you have more chances to play with it.
Congrats. I got hooked on another game for President's Day and haven't touched Engage all week. Maybe I can find my way back in tonight. I don't know how many chapters there are but it can't be much after 22.
26 chapters, plus two paralogues that open after chapter 22.
This is the game that made me wish they’d drop all the base stuff and crafting and just make a straightforward game. Focus on the story and tactics.
Yeah I think last thing I did was those 2 new paralogue missions.
A couple nights ago I got my first master seal. I know people here have been saying that you should promote ASAP because you can reset a character’s level to 1 as many times as you’d like. But … do advanced classes level more slowly? Like if I promote Chloe at level 10, will her new level 1 form gain less experience per fight against enemies of the same level?
If they do level more slowly, I think I’ll sit on the seal for a while.
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