Topic: Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch

How much priority are people putting on crafting bond rings? They seem good, but since you can just re-assign emblem rings for whoever you're taking into battle, it doesn't seem like you need that many. You do want some, that's for sure. The expansion provides 2 Emblem Rings, and the Heroes crossover content provides 3 S-rank rings which I've used from the start. And I have crafted about 20 rings beside that, landing 1 S-rank ring, 2 A-rank rings, a few B's, and the rest C's.

But as the story progresses and you gain more emblem rings, the reliance on Bond Rings diminishes. Since Bond Fragments are almost always better used to level up bonds with Emblems in the arena, I never spend them on crafting rings.

That said, I have pretty much bonded all my units with the Emblems I want them to inherit skills from (gave Edelgard's Lineage to everyone, gave Michaia's Silence Imminity and the skill where healing with a staff also heals the user 50%, to all my healers, and got everyone else bonded with Sigurd for Canter when they eventually reach 1,000 SP).

So maybe it's time to shift focus to crafting bond rings now? I also have this urge to collect them all to fill out the Ring notebook with lore entries for all the characters. Then again, perhaps a better strategy would be to ration the bond fragments 50/50, and use half to increase bonds with Emblems, and the other half to craft bond rings. Because without rationing, they all end up getting blown at the arena.

@Ryu_Niiyama
For sure. Ya it does take me an hour though. But I'm the type of person that takes my time. Even in Engage, I'm at chapter 13 and already have 40 hours in. I talk to everyone and do every little thing possible, and inventory management always takes a chunk of time. I like it though. I like micromanaging.

Not knocking you btw, just providing my own perspective. Enhoy what you enjoy.

I've been lurking on GameFAQS, and it appears that the online relay battles don't actually work as intended. Has this been mentioned in the thread?
Apparently, if you select join a random relay trial, you're unable to find an ongoing session. I've only attempted it once, and it said there weren't any available, but, conversely, I started my own one a few day's ago, and no-one's been able to join it and finish it off for me. I've read that joining via Takeover ID should work fine, so I wonder if anyone would like to continue mine?
The code is 5TGNLRT. It shouldn't be too difficult, as I started it around the time I unlocked the online features.

@edhe
No, they don't. I tried and couldn't get the take over function to work. I did start a new one, but never got a notification anyone finished it.

I'll check out your relay. Idk if I'm strong enough to help beat one of these, but I'll give it a go!

I tried the custom battle thing too where you fight a team on a custom map... I got slaughtered. Absolutely brutalized. Was like yup, let me just revisit this post game 😀

@edhe
Ok, I took over and did ok!

Alear got hit on final enemy phase leaving pretty low health, but I'm actually pleased to report I did better than I expected. Got some lucky misses and even used the Obstruct staff at the end to save Chloe from an archer.

Who's next? We need 3 more takeovers to finish. Come prepared though. It's a tough one. Just an FYI

5TGNLRT

@JaxonH I am doing bond rings because you lose a bunch of the emblem rings for story reasons. (You get more but it’s slow at least where I stopped anyway) That’s part of the reason I restarted. Plus I didn’t have the dlc when I started. (Not getting the heroes bonus. I’m not reinstalling that) I also finally learned how SP works so I pretty much had to start over or I was gonna ragequit this game.

Nah I figured you weren’t knocking me. Yeah i know the monastery and abyss pretty well by now so I don’t mind fast traveling. That shaves the most time but I sorta already have a routine. So aside from snagging missions I am in and out of the monastery and only there when there are good fish or special meals. Since my professor level is maxed even with all the students it isn’t that hard to level support super fast. Especially after I finally figured out you can just dump gifts until they rank up.

Now the meta for this of course looks horrible. Everyone is wondering how the new professor can teleport, why she has a wheelbarrow of gifts for a person, why she buys all the crappy seeds and spends her time eating like 6-8 meals at a time in the dining hall but doesn’t gain a pound. And the audacity of always inviting the Archbishop to tea!

@Ryu_Niiyama
Ya, I reached that point, but because I didn't know ahead of time I hadn't prepared. Thanks to the 3 S-rank bond rings from Heroes though, and 2 DLC Emblems, and 2 you get after, and S-rank ring I pulled by luck, I'm doing OK.

Btw I never knew the secret to gardening stat boosters in TH. I almost completely ignored that feature.

For SP, I made my mind up early I want 3 things. 1) Lineage from Edelgard for 20% EXP boost, 2) Healing skills from Micaiha for my healers, and 3) Canter for every unit, which is the long term goal I'm saving up for. So every time I hit the arena, if I got new units, I get them up to scratch with Lineage and/or healing skills, then Level 5 Sigurd. It takes a while to hit 1,000 SP so nobody has actually gotten Canter yet, but several units are close.

I do have a tendency to switch my Emblems up for each map and not stick with one character (mostly anyways, I do loosely stick with a character when I can, but if I rotate different units in I won't hesitate to swap rings). This has resulted in a lot of different units learning lots of various proficiencies. Though I have no long term class goals aside from default promotions.

Did you play chapter 13? I hear it's pretty tough (but then again, so was 11-12). I think before I proceed, I'm going to hit some skirmishes for some gold and EXP. Just unlocked master seals, physics and all sorts of killer weapons in the shops, and I'd like to indulge. Plus I need to iron out my leveling for the latter half of my group and get them caught up. Some units I think I'm benching though, like Etie, since Alcryst is at equal level but superior stat wise, and I only need 1 archer.

@JaxonH I restarted after beating 13. I just really felt I didn’t like where my unit growth was going. I made Etie a bow archer so she can bring the pain to a wider stage.

Oh yeah the stat boosting farming changed my world. That and I reclass a lot to farm skills (and to fix Catherine’s crap stats). I usually talk to the teacher in abyss to see where they are growing and and adjust with stat boosters. The game is still challenging but sound strategy means nobody dies. Plus it meant more gifts and food for more meals as well. Don’t sleep on gardening. If I could figure out how to get better ores beyond online visits and skirmishes I would essentially have a divine army capable of demolishing cities. Fear the second coming of Sothis for she will judge the world.

Since I am focused on growth I will likely stop chapter 14 (and grind the early chapters) and just farm tempest trials until the rest of the dlc opens up. Since there is no new game plus this will be a one run through (until I replay in a few years) for me.

Holy moly, this game sounds incredible with headphones! It's not just the wake-up animations- this while game has a soundscape beyond anything external speakers can do justice.

I'm hearing so many things I wasn't before. The pitter patter of Alear's running footsteps, creaking doors opening, crickets chirping at night, wind rustling trees, even the instruments of the soundtrack offer a 3D sound bubble...

I don't think I can go back. I really don't.

Granted, the Sennheiser 800S are known as having the largest soundstage of any headphones on the market, so naturally that's helping. But I tried my Hifiman Aryas and it still sounds great. Sure, the Soundstage isn't anywhere near as impressive. With the 800S it's an actual experience

@Ryu_Niiyama
Hey, whatever works for you!

After my Hard Classic Run I'm going back to Three Houses to finish Blue Lions playthrough. I never did the DLC either, but I'd like to finish the Edelgard church route and Golden Eagles first. So much game, I couldn't do it all in one go. And that's fine, it gives me something to come back to every time I get in the mood.

After that, I think I'll finish my Fates Revelations run. And by then, hopefully the Engage DLC will be out, which this time I will actually play right away since I'll be done with the game.

@JaxonH do the dlc first. It’s short and nets you new characters, classes and renown farming (fighting to earn gold/level up, buy cheap seeds, sacrifice to pagan altar for renown… rinse repeat). That now explains your monastery loop. You can unlock most of your earlier run progress by spending renown. Shaves time.

Yeah Fates is next on my list. I want to do a Japanese run of birthright and finish the dlc paralogues. I will likely finish revelations too. I got close and then the switch came out and I think I will restart.

@Ryu_Niiyama
Did you ever play Shadows of Valentia?

That game was quite good. Basic gameplay (probably my least favorite gameplay-wise of the Awakening era games onward) but the story helped carry it. And it's not that the gameplay is bad. Even basic FE gameplay is fun as heck. I just mean comparatively speaking.

I've been playing on hard mode w/ permadeath and the difficulty spike starting on chapter 10 was pretty intense. Then I was pounding my head against a wall trying to beat the Lyn paralogue and had to swallow my pride and do a few skirmishes (which I feel is a bit cheesing). Then I realized paralogues don't disappear when you continue the story and felt like a *****. I'll defeat you one day Lyn...

Anyway the character designs and plot/dialog are honestly embarassing to witness but I enjoy some of the new mechanics like Break. This is the first FE I've played since Awakening, which I was kind of soured on.

This spreadsheet explains support pair up Stat bonuses. It's kind of complex in this game and depends on the unit.

But if you want an idea of the bonuses it's in the Support section, at the bottom

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1qFcABi455ZzLh0Drz...

@moomin
Ya, I just got Lyn's paralog, saw recommended level 19 and noped the heck out! I'll come back in a few chapters.

As for characters/plot, I actually really like the designs, and have been rather enjoying the story if I do say so. Of course, I absolutely adore Awakening as one of my favorite games of all time, so it may just come down to taste.

Lyn's paralogue is particularly nasty because you have to play aggressively to prevent enemy reinforcments from showing up after so many turns (there are six units and each calls up four enemies), and then after all that you still have to face Lyn and her insane quadruple copy ability.

@JaxonH the Lady of the plains does not play. She beat the daylights out of me several times before I finally got a no death run. I like her additional skills though. If she’d fought like that in the story I would have said the fell dragon won this route.

Didn’t really play valentia. I bought it day one but it was too late in the 3DS lifespan and I am sure you have heard me whine about hating the 3DS screen size (granted I have always hated Nintendo handheld screen sizes until switch because of the eye strain they cause). I’m still bitter I never got a capture card with av out. Anyway I played enough to unlock the dlc store and that’s it. I played gaiden when I was a teen so I would rather finish off fates first. Granted I don’t remember a lot of what happened as I spent most of the time looking up words and guides but I saw end credits. I just have to get in the mindset to play 3DS again.

@JaxonH I'm actually playing on Normal which is making this all-the-more frustrating! Honestly it feels like I need to double-check the difficulty sometimes --- I can't imagine what Hard and Maddening are like

The skirmishes being based on your highest character level makes sense as I do have one or two units at level 6 or 7 into their advanced class, whereas most of the units I'm hoping to train are yet to reclass, so there is a bit of a mismatch. But that still strikes me as a design flaw --- if the purpose of skirmishes is to train your units, why would you base their level on the highest-level unit? An average (or at least weighted average of sorts) seems a lot fairer to me. Or maybe just don't level scale at all.

I welcome your suggestions but tbh I want to avoid as much grinding as possible. I think my solution moving forward will be just to avoid the gold corrupted if they're causing me too much trouble...they're an optional means to an end, after all.

Anyone up to chapter 17 yet? This game is becoming progressively difficult for me, and I'm just making it worse for myself. Without giving too much away, you're up against some very strong enemies, including two Wyrms (who can attack from outside retaliation range, have high health, and ignore DEF/RES). I could potentially do significant damage to some of the enemies, but others had such high DEF and RES, that I had no hope of defeating them on their own, never mind all at the same time.
So I called upon Yunaka, and she basically soloed the map after I cleared the way to where they all aggro.
I had to do a bit of finagling by placing Alear next to her so she could scratch a high defence general (and inflict poison, so she could continue to stack the debuff), but she was pretty much safe sitting in a forest tile. She did take some heavy 12% and 20% chance hits, but I prepared for that with some elixirs.
I was a bit lucky, because, when I aggroed the last group, I forgot to give her four extra ones I took out from my convoy, and I couldn't risk any of the bosses being diverted away until I'd thinned the crowd out and debuffed them adequately. She took them all on with a single elixir dose, and an antivenom (I was able to support her by positioning Chloe in a spot where she could cast Physic on her to keep her HP topped up.)
She probably could have taken them all down from there, but I carefully controlled the enemies, and cleared them. The wyrm was a nuisance because, although I was easily able to dodge its attacks in cover, Yunaka wasn't able to retaliate back, but it wasn't as dangerous when I sent my whole army against it.
(Post Chapter 11 spoiler)
I didn't have access to certain emblem rings - particularly Sigurd. He might not have helped too much being equipped on any given character, but I sure would liked to been able to teach some of my units Canter before the ring was taken from me. The Celica and Micaiah rings would probably have been handy too - not just for the ability to teach my units some handy skills, but a global heal and warp Ragnarok would have been handy.

In the end, I beat it after 70+ turns, and with Yunaka at level 27. I say I think I'm making it worse for myself, because I fear now the enemies are going to scale to Yunaka's relative level, and my only option is going to be to rely on her more. I'd hate to have to restart the game, but I also fear that if I set it to Normal, it'll be too easy. I might have to swallow my pride, because if I'm unable to optimise my army soon, it might be beyond me.
Honestly, I'm not even sure being able to beat skirmishes would help - my units are hitting below their level, so skill inheritance seems to be the order of the day.
(Post Chapter 17 spoiler)
Thankfully, upon beating the level, I have regained Sigurd's ring, and the first thing I did was teach some of my units Canter with the healthy pool of SP I had saved up since I had last looked at the menu.

I've honestly been pretty happy with the level of challenge offered by Normal, maybe if you are like a hardcore SRPG fan it'll be too easy, but especially if you have permadeath on, don't expect a walk in the park on normal. I would say after the first couple of missions when you start amassing a stock of Rings, the game can become quite easy and there was a sharp disconnect between the level of challenge offered in the Story versus all the side stuff.

However, I feel like the difficulty ramped up significantly around Chapter 15ish onwards (without it just feeling like a pure spike, I feel like the curve of the difficulty feels fairly natural with where the story is/how events transpire) with the introduction of the Hounds and stuff like Miasma on Maps, and like I say, this is from someone who is playing really sloppy just to get through missions and keep progressing. The AI is absolutely brutal when it comes to punishing mistakes, so I do tend to just sacrifice Units just to get to the objective, as I don't have to worry about losing them forever.

If you are trying to have clean and perfect missions, that difficulty ramp up will be felt even harder.

@Buizel
It genuinely baffles me, as I just played another Gold Corrupted skirmish after Chapter 12, which was a fog of war map inside a cathedral, and I won that one also. Like, ya it was tough, but no more so than main story.

I wanna help, I just don't know what the root of the problem is, since I'm consistently playing skirmishes on Hard Classic without issue (well, again, they're tough, but no more so than Chapter 11-13 was). And, I had a couple characters that were skewed in total levels this last time. Louis had gotten about 3 levels higher than everyone else.

Idk, I'm kinda at a loss. If the people struggling on them are all playing on Normal, I would say it could be a bug, since I'm repeatedly having no issues on Hard. Or, it could be skewed leveling spiking them higher, or it could be they're the same difficulty in Normal or Hard, and ppl playing normal aren't used to that kind of nail-biting difficulty. Or maybe... they're meant to be hard to make ppl earn extra gold. Idk.

At the end of the day, the gold Corrupted skirmishes barely give 2000 gold total anyways and aren't exactly worth it.

I'm gonna go back to this recommendation- the game lets you Retry and keep EXP if you fail. Idk what else to say.

Found this btw