15 Tips For Not Dying In Fire Emblem: Fates

Welcome to the Game Informer School Of Not Getting Wrecked. Both Fire Emblem: Birthright and Fire Emblem: Conquest are out soon and after spending a ridiculous amount of hours playing each of them, we have a bundle of tips  that will help you lead your forces to victory in the war waged between Nohr and Hoshido, no matter what side you choose.

(Editor's Note: This feature was originally published on 2/17, but we are revisiting it due to Fire Emblem Fates' release day.)

Have a wide variety of classes at your disposal: Probably the most important tip on here. Make sure you have a diverse platoon on every map you play. It does you no good to have half of your team made  up of super-skilled archers when you’re going against a battalion of knights covered head to toe in armor that dramatically reduces arrow damage. Have swordmasters, archers, healers, knights to be prepared for every possible situation.

It’s OK to lose people: If you set the game to Classic, permadeath is in play. That means once you lose a unit on the battlefield—with a few exceptions—they’re gone forever. However, the game gives you characters all the time, so it’s not worth panicking about if one guy you never really use gets struck down. That said, there’s no shame in restarting your 3DS if one of your best units or favorite characters gets killed by a critical strike.

Fight alongside each other, make babies: One of the more interesting things you can do in Fire Emblem is have units fight alongside one another in battle, become close, and even fall in love. They do this gradually, with each battle fought together contributing to unlocking another tier in the Support system. Every tier is essentially a cutscene showing the relationship of those two characters. Once you hit the last tier of Support, and assuming the characters are compatible, they’ll get married and have a kid that can become a unit to use in battle. These kid units are often surprisingly powerful, too.

Be chatty: In certain maps you'll come across green units. These are your allies, units that move on their own and attack enemies. Most of these units can be recruited into your army. To do this you need to select your main character (or in some cases a character that's related to the ally in question) and move over to the ally. If you can recruit them, a TALK! notification hangs over their head and you can select Talk from the drop down menu. In most cases, the ally will then join your army.

Figure out your units’ roles: Depending on how you play, you’re going to have a number of units that work best as your primary characters, the ones leading the charge into battle and who tend to be higher-level than the rest of your army. Figure out which units work as good support for the primary ones. If you have a weaker character that can’t really do much on the battlefield by themselves but might make a good husband or wife for one of your primary units, they’re probably the ones you want to stick in the supporting role.

Use resources: In addition to gold, Fates brings a new form of currency to Fire Emblem: resources. You can farm peaches, quartz, radishes, and more and use them to exchange for other upgrade materials, like metals you can use to make your weapons stronger at the blacksmith, or buy goofy accessories for your characters to wear. Most resources are created within the span of a single in-game day but you can also discover them on the battlefield or earn them by betting at the Arena. To maximize how many resources you earn every day, be sure to upgrade the structures that produce them at your castle.

Keep your flyers safe: Flying units tend to be some of the more powerful units in the game…unless they come near archers. It doesn’t matter how vastly overpowered that dragon-riding knight is, all it takes to fell her is a single lucky arrow. So keep your flying units clear of archers, no matter what. Of course the same rules apply for your enemy too, so remember that when you’re trying to figure out where to send your archers.

Mother Castle: One of the new features to Fates is a castle that you can build up over time, constructing shops, recreation areas, and defenses for you to use whenever your castle is attacked. If you’ve played Metal Gear Solid V, it’s essentially Mother Base…but better. A lot better. You unlock and upgrade buildings with dragon points, which are given to you whenever you win a battle. I recommend focusing on shops first so you can buy higher quality weapons and healing rods at the start. Also, spend time with units in your castle through the Private Estate building.

Don't worry about weapon durability: One of the biggest changes that Fates makes is that, unlike Awakening, you don't have to worry about weapon durability. The game doesn't really explain that change (I had bought about 20 iron bows before I realized I hadn't replaced any of them yet) but it's there. The only exception are healing rods, which have  between 5-20 uses depending on the spell, so keep a steady stock of those going so you don't run out of healing spells midway through a battle.

Always have healers: A bit of a no-brainer but worth stating for emphasis: always have multiple healers in your army on each map. Fates makes this easier too by giving you several units who are capable of combat as well as healing right off the bat, like butlers and maids who use throwing knives to damage enemies from afar. These units don’t do that much damage initially but you can upgrade them to turn them into units capable of taking down more fragile units, like archers and flying units, in a single shot. Just make sure not to get too cocky and end up losing one of your healers doing that. Outside of getting one of your heavy hitters killed, that’s about the worst possible loss to suffer in battle since there are a limited number of recruitable healers and it takes a lot of grinding to train a new one to competency if you have to make up for that loss later in the game.

Be sure to grind: You want to level up your units as much as you can. The best way to do this is to grind so be on the lookout for challenges on the world map menu that let you fight against enemies for experience. If there are no challenges currently available, you can choose to seek them out by selecting the “scout” option on the world menu. Note: This tip only applies to Birthright (And Revelations) since Conquest doesn’t let you search for enemies on the world map. The closest thing to grinding in Conquest is that you should do every optional mission (castle invasions, paralouges, challenge missions) you're given.

Keep your friends close, keep your songstresses closer: The songstress, Azura, is a unit whose special ability is to sing, giving a single unit enough confidence that they can have two actions that turn instead of one. This can be an invaluable ability when you need to take down a boss with two hits but only have one turn until he pummels you. Keep Azura close to your heavy hitters and keep her protected. She can fight back against enemies but she’s still pretty fragile, even when leveled up.

Be mindful of your surroundings: During battles, you might notice sparkly tiles littered across the landscape. Those contain goodies, like extra experience or even rare items like resources and powerful weapons, so be sure to move a unit over to them to grab them. It's often a good idea to have a character you don't care that much about on the battlefield as your designated pick-up unit so you can use them to grab those items. That way if you lose them, it's not that big of a deal.

Use seals to become more powerful: Once a unit hits level 10 you can use a Master Seal to upgrade them to the next class (think of it like evolving a Pokemon) and they'll receive some stat boosts and maybe some new abilities depending on the class. While it might be tempting to use the seal immediately, it's probably a better idea to wait until the unit hits their level cap (20) for their initial class so you can maximize their power potential.

Keep multiple saves: So you're one of those folks who wants to play through the game all hardcore-like, accepting all your losses and never restarting or reloading a save to keep your characters alive? Cool. However, be warned: it's easy to work yourself into a place where the game is unwinnable if you lose too many units. Consider keeping multiple save files at the very least so you don't have to go back to the very beginning if the worst happens.

Mess around with the camera: Okay, not so much a tip as a "Rad Thing You Can Do" but during battle, be sure to mess around with the camera options on the lower screen. One of them lets you look through the eyes of your unit as they’re attack an enemy, so that’s pretty cool. Also, if you press the left shoulder button on the 3DS while you’re in your castle, you’ll go from a 2D aerial view to an on the ground 3D view of the place. Neat!

Be sure to check out our reviews of Birthright and Conquest.as well as our little guide on which version to get if you're still trying to decide.