Fire Emblem Catch All

It won't affect the story at all, but when you have permanent death enabled, you'll eventually get to a point where you can't continue effectively because you don't have enough units to survive most battles. If you have safety mode on and no one stays dead forever, then don't worry about it. Let people die in battle as often as you need to in order to win.

For what it’s worth, Conquest is probably the hardest fire emblem game that has been translated out of Japanese (Thracia may be harder, but it was only in Japan and also I’ve never played it to compare the two). Conquest’s normal mode is about as hard as Awakening or Birthright’s hard mode, plus those ones give you the option to do a bunch of repeatable side maps grind for more levels where Conquest does not. Very good and creative level design later in the game, but frequently punishing.

So, after having seen endless praise about this game and wanting something to play on my commute, I gave up and bought a switch and FE:3H. Any advice for a complete newb?

100% this. Hard mode in FE3H feels like normal mode in another tactics game.

Look at the master classes (when available), figure out what you want each student to be, and work your way towards that. Many a professor gotten to the middle of the game before realizing they had totally neglected somebody's riding skill or heavy armor skill and had to rush to fix it.

Based on their natural strengths and weaknesses (blue arrows up, red arrows down), you should be able to tell what each student will be best at. Each student should be specializing for the most part, no jack-of-all-trades. If you see someone with three stars next to a skill, work on that one as well, even if it is a weakness for them. They get a significant benefit once you fill up all three stars.

Also, to recruit students outside your house, you need to raise Byleth's stats or skills to a certain level enough to impress them. Talking to them and trying to recruit them will tell you what you need to improve. You can lower the requirements significantly by increasing support levels with them. Buy a bunch of cheap gifts when they become available and give them to the students you want to recruit, invite them along to fight with you for a month, take them to meals, etc. will raise the support levels.

And as you play, if you have any specific questions, feel free to ask.

Awesome. I'm quite excited to give this a play this week.

You act like I didn't know this. I said I've listened to people praising this game already.

But seriously, I actually mean it as gameplay advice. Pick who you want to romance first and let that determine your house. It might even be worthwhile to look up if they even are romanceable, especially if you're playing a character who is queer.

The reason I say this is that recruiting a character from outside your house is a dull, tedious process that's frustratingly opaque. It's a black mark on an otherwise great game. Some characters can't even be recruited if your Byleth (the player character) is the wrong gender or the wrong house, but you'll never know this.

So if you're doing your tour of the houses and some hottie catches your eye but you think you're more sympathetic to the cause of another house... Don't think you can pick the house and then get the hottie. It's annoying if it's even possible.

Hottie first. Trust me.

Grumble, grumble. That's who I wanted my m!Byleth to romance and was very confused when he wasn't at least pan/bi.

It is so good.

And I say this has someone who has entirely neglected heavy armor!

BTW... I am currently playing Fire Emblem conquest....
So far... everything from this SIDE of the story seems evil... hehehe

I chose Golden Deer the first time because I was very charmed by Claude. I was playing as female, so he totally could have been mine. In the end I spurned him for Dorothea.

Black Eagles has a lot going for it, but Golden Deer has Leonie.

Speaking of obviously queer people who inexplicably are not queer.

Alright, me and Fyleth are chumming it up with Edelgard and friends. Will report further after I put in a couple serious hours tonight.

A few hours in, and we are violating all sorts of Geneva Conventions about child soldiers here, not to mention just bulldozing any notions of "Professors shouldn't actively be trying to f*ck their students."

Convoy is the inventory for your army as a whole, as opposed to the inventory for individual fighters. Corrin (your character) has access to the Convoy all the time. I believe that transferring an item from the Convoy will use his/her turn. Other units have access to the Convoy only when they're in a tile adjacent to Corrin.

What's your question about pairing? Like, what are good characters to pair, or how do you do it?