Okay, it’s been a while, but I’m stepping back into this Domain for a hot sec because I have things to say, and this blog still reaches thousands of people a year who are interested in my thoughts on video games. So for the benefit of future generations of gamers, here we are.
I recently finished Fire Emblem after 85 hours (though a couple of those were probably idling). I played it on Classic Mode on Hard Difficulty (and frequently scoffed at the Divine Pulse rewind function, but I later ate humble pie and ended up relying on that mechanic quite a lot in some of the riskier levels). I learned a lot of things along the way that I wish I had known from the outset, and when my brother picked up the game a few days ago I rushed to share my wisdom with him. It ended up being a pretty comprehensive list, but I still wasn’t compelled to share it publicly. Until this morning.
Having finished the main story, I booted up the game again to look at the DLC Side Story, and as I was preparing for the first battle I was having an extra-thorough look through the menus. I discovered in that moment that you can only have three Combat Arts equipped at any one time, and these were usually the first three that your character learned (and therefore most basic/weakest). I rushed back into my final chapter save file and went to the same menu, and then… I just started laughing. I laughed and I laughed so much I scared the cat, and I wiped tears of mirth from my eyes as scrolled through the most powerful Arts in the game that my high level, master-class characters had unlocked hours ago. Arts that would have won me many battles and saved many lives, ridiculously powerful abilities that would have made all the difference (especially in that final stage, which took so many hours to conquer).
I don’t think I’ll have the heart to play the game on New Game+, so here, good reader. May you learn from my mistakes and benefit from my experience.
How To Min/Max the Shit Out of Fire Emblem: Three Houses
1) Don’t worry too much about classes – every House has access to all of the classes pretty early. You can make pretty much anyone a mage or a thief by the time they’re level 10 if you level them carefully, but of course some characters are more inclined towards certain classes than others.
2) Think about what classes you want your units to be well in advance. Got someone who will make an excellent Wyvern Lord by the time they’re level 30? Make sure their goals are set to learn Flying early so that they’ll ace the exam by the time they get there.
3) You can change classes at Level 10, 20, and 30. Unlike previous Fire Emblem games, it’s best to change classes as early as possible to learn new abilities.
4) You can only use a handful of abilities at a time, but you can swap between them. Once you’ve started learning useful abilities, make sure you swap out the useless ones. You can do this by going to the Inventory menu and choosing Abilities. This way you can, for instance, have a Bow Knight who can also steal items from enemies because they once trained as a thief. The more you battle with a particular Class equipped, the more Abilities you unlock until you “master the class” and unlock their super class-based skill, which is usually pretty good. This means that it’s sometimes worth mastering more than one class of the same tier, if there are really good abilities you want a unit to be able to use at will. (I only discovered this before the final chapter of the game T_T)
5) Half the game is spent in the monastery and half on the battlefield. For the monastery, press the R button to fast-travel. (I only found this out about halfway through the game >.<) Quests and quest items will also appear on the map. The latter will be visible as yellow glowing dots, and conversations to increase support levels between Byleth and their students will appear as little chat bubbles.
6) The most important goal in the monastery is to raise your Professor level as quickly as possible. Do everything you can to raise it early so that you have more actions per free day.
7) The only actions I would recommend are Explore and occasionally Battle (if you’re feeling your units are under-levelled, or when there are special events or quests).
8) When exploring, I used to spend all of my Action Points increasing units’ motivations so I could teach them more during lectures. This is good to start with, but as soon as you unlock the Merchants, start buying gifts to increase motivation that way instead. I recommend looking up guides for what gifts will have the biggest effect.
9) Lost Items are also excellent for increasing motivation, so make sure you scour the monastery carefully each time you Explore. Try not to double-up: if a unit already has maxed Motivation, hold onto their Lost Item until the next free day.
10) So what should you use your Action Points on? Either things that will increase support levels between students, or raising Byleth’s own skills through training.
11) Training Byleth’s skills is particularly important because if you want to recruit students from other Houses you’ll need to have certain levels of skills as well as a baseline level of support. If I had to estimate, you might be able to recruit half of the students from the other houses if you focus on nothing other than gifts and tea parties with them (but this will of course limit your ability to build support relationships and increase motivations of your own students). I would find the balance by picking a handful of your favourite students from other houses and working towards recruiting them.
12) Use the Sauna as early as possible every month to maximise benefits for Byleth and any students who really need to increase their levels in particular skills (e.g. Riding, because their current class doesn’t actually give them Riding experience). Don’t be afraid to save-scum: it’s super important that both parties feel “well-rested” and are glowing by the end, and it’s completely random how much the Steam or Stay Longer buttons effect the participants. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and get it in one, other times you might need to replay the sauna 5 times to get the levels to align.
13) If you get a perfect Tea Party, both participants receive +1 to CHA. This isn’t really useful because CHA is for gambits which I rarely use, but I just didn’t find that out until end-game and wanted to mention it.
14) As soon as you’ve unlocked the merchant, stop fishing (unless you really need to raise your Professor level) and save up your bait for special events. In my opinion, the best one is Fistfuls of Fish, because you can max your Professor level super quickly by catching multiple fish with the one bait (giving you bonus xp as well as extra fish).
15) As early as you can afford to, give any excess fish to the cats and dogs around the monastery: they’ll give you smithing ingredients in exchange. Just feed them fish of the same value over and over until they’re full. By the end of the game I had hundreds of four-star fish that I couldn’t offload because all the animals were full all the time.
16) If you catch two Silver Fish, hang onto those: you’ll need them for a quest late-game. Otherwise you can sell fish by opening the menu, going to the Storehouse, and pressing A on anything you want to sell.
17) When fighting Monsters (who take up four spaces on the board), do your best to break all four pieces of their armour in order to get rare ore for smithing rather than killing them right away.
18) Breaking a monster’s armour will also keep them stunned so they cannot counter attack during your turn. You can keep them perpetually stunned if you just keep breaking their armour in the same turn. Just make sure you finish them off before it’s their turn and they recover and start moving and attacking normally.
19) If you have a piece of equipment that you need to Repair, consider Forging it into an upgraded version of itself instead. If it takes 700g and 2 smithing stones to repair, it might be worth spending 1000g and 6 smithing stones to turn it into the next tier of weapon.
20) Unlike previous FE games, there’s no limit to the number of support relationships a unit can have, so there are no disadvantages to having as many as possible. They increase the stats of units when they’re near each other on the battlefield, especially when using Gambits.
21) SWAP OUT YOUR DAMN COMBAT ARTS. Just like with Abilities, you can only have a few equipped, and they’re always the first (and therefore worst) ones in the game. Master classes, learn new Arts and Abilities, equip the best ones.
You’re welcome.
Xin's Weald 