Fire Emblem series

[AzuraAquafina]

Maddening with no NG+ is honestly like CS. I wouldn't say it's hard, just incredibly tedious especially as male Byleth. Just don't be too experimental and make use of more optimal builds and you should be fine.

By the way, who's good to recruit into the Blue Lions? I'm currently courting Lysithea, because I recruited her off the battlefield late in my last go-around and she was absurdly powerful.
And can you still get Flayn if you recruit someone, or is she the "default recruit"?

Ferdinand and Leonie are pretty strong but the former's requirement is pretty tedious to work around since armor isn't that useful for Byleth except for maybe a few abilities. You should definitely look up some paralogues since the rewards can be pretty nice. Lorenz's paralogue comes to mind with his +2 range stick.

Flayn is a default recruit similar to Seteth. So long as you're not doing CF you don't need to worry about their availability since the rest are the same.

I gotta say, Seteth is probably my favorite unit/character in the game. His bases are pretty good for what they are and his backstory doesn't require a cheap tragedy to make me like him.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Flayn is a default recruit similar to Seteth. So long as you're not doing CF you don't need to worry about their availability since the rest are the same.

I did CF the first time around and I was horrified because I almost made Flayn the dancer before I knew what was coming

 

[Alexander Thaut]

By the way, who's good to recruit into the Blue Lions? I'm currently courting Lysithea, because I recruited her off the battlefield late in my last go-around and she was absurdly powerful.
And can you still get Flayn if you recruit someone, or is she the "default recruit"?

You can recruit anyone you need. Lysithea is liked for her massive firepower and the fact that gremory is her perfect class.

Petra/Leonie/Hilda are super solid overall. Fast, good growths, work well overall.

Ignatz is a later game crit machine. Bernadetta is a solid overall unit. Ferdinand/Lorenz are solid all-rounders for any class, with Lorenz being able to do pretty much anything with magic or physical attacks. All healers are viable recruits because warp and etc. are really handy. Raphael is a solid war master type character.

The only questionable cross-house recruit would be Caspar because his bases are average and his growths won't kick in for a while. Plus, you'd need to level up brawling. It's not bad, but he's not going to be too easy to get. However, recruiting everyone is pretty easy with the lost items and shit. You won't get the other lords+hubert, but you're overall fine. All the faculty/church characters are decent too. However, I do hate Cyril's guts with a passion.

Ashe is the BL archer, however, he's kind of middle of the road in terms of growths and not having an offensive ability. If you don't want to use him, Bernadetta/Cyril/Ignatz are fine archers. Felix/Petra/Hilda/Leonie/Byleth make great ones too if you want that.

Shamir's a solid bow user, but be warned her spd is a little low.

Three Houses is all about customizing everything the way you want it. You can get away with almost any reasonable recruitment combo+class combo on your characters. Be warned that there are some common sense rules to this, like don't make Lysithea a bow knight because she's going to suck.

However, Lorenz/Marianne/Annette are all able to go with both magic and physical weapons if you do want.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Ashe is the BL archer, however, he's kind of middle of the road in terms of growths and not having an offensive ability. If you don't want to use him, Bernadetta/Cyril/Ignatz are fine archers.

One of the great joys of the CF route was twanging people with Bernadetta over and over through 40 feet of solid granite But if I only get one cross-house recruit maybe I'll pick someone I haven't already had. Hmmm...

Currently my early-game setup is pretty vanilla:
Byleth: Sword guy (I think this is kind of inevitable seeing as the sword is his thiiiiing)
Dimitri: Horse lancer
Dedue: Armor axe guy
Felix: Sword guy with a sideline in black magic that he can't use yet
Sylvain: Horse multi-weaponer
Annette: Black magic.
Mercedes: All magic but will probably end up getting corralled into a pure healer at some point
Ingrid: Pegasus lancer
Ashe: Bow guy

And no, I don't remember the names of all those poorly-fitting early-game classes
I haven't checked the charm ratings on any of them yet so I don't know who the realistic dancer candidates are. Annette might work.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

One of the great joys of the CF route was twanging people with Bernadetta over and over through 40 feet of solid granite But if I only get one cross-house recruit maybe I'll pick someone I haven't already had. Hmmm...

Currently my early-game setup is pretty vanilla:
Byleth: Sword guy (I think this is kind of inevitable seeing as the sword is his thiiiiing)
Dimitri: Horse lancer
Dedue: Armor axe guy
Felix: Sword guy with a sideline in black magic that he can't use yet
Sylvain: Horse multi-weaponer
Annette: Black magic.
Mercedes: All magic but will probably end up getting corralled into a pure healer at some point
Ingrid: Pegasus lancer
Ashe: Bow guy

And no, I don't remember the names of all those poorly-fitting early-game classes
I haven't checked the charm ratings on any of them yet so I don't know who the realistic dancer candidates are. Annette might work.

I mean you don't just HAVE to get only one cross-house recruit.

You can buff charm up easily. I tend to pick people with stupidly high magic or really good combat. So shit like Dorothea/Petra fills that role often.

 

[Berrakh]

Yo take it slowly. FYI, Bow Knights and Wyverns are probably the best overall classes, with The PEgasus KNights and War Masters being of note. Gremories are a great catch-all for the female mages.

Felix is a great recruit to get and easy as fuck since you can rank swords fast.

Oh yeah I kinda want to just get NG+ into all modes and then make the ultimate NG+ into a maddening mode route.

I am taking it slow. That's what I mean.

 

[The Sauce Boss]

You can recruit anyone you need. Lysithea is liked for her massive firepower and the fact that gremory is her perfect class.

Petra/Leonie/Hilda are super solid overall. Fast, good growths, work well overall.

Ignatz is a later game crit machine. Bernadetta is a solid overall unit. Ferdinand/Lorenz are solid all-rounders for any class, with Lorenz being able to do pretty much anything with magic or physical attacks. All healers are viable recruits because warp and etc. are really handy. Raphael is a solid war master type character.

The only questionable cross-house recruit would be Caspar because his bases are average and his growths won't kick in for a while. Plus, you'd need to level up brawling. It's not bad, but he's not going to be too easy to get. However, recruiting everyone is pretty easy with the lost items and shit. You won't get the other lords+hubert, but you're overall fine. All the faculty/church characters are decent too. However, I do hate Cyril's guts with a passion.

Ashe is the BL archer, however, he's kind of middle of the road in terms of growths and not having an offensive ability. If you don't want to use him, Bernadetta/Cyril/Ignatz are fine archers. Felix/Petra/Hilda/Leonie/Byleth make great ones too if you want that.

Shamir's a solid bow user, but be warned her spd is a little low.

Three Houses is all about customizing everything the way you want it. You can get away with almost any reasonable recruitment combo+class combo on your characters. Be warned that there are some common sense rules to this, like don't make Lysithea a bow knight because she's going to suck.

However, Lorenz/Marianne/Annette are all able to go with both magic and physical weapons if you do want.

IIRC Ashe actually has really good growths for Bow Knight. Not Leonie good, but a close second if you invest with him a little bit.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

IIRC Ashe actually has really good growths for Bow Knight. Not Leonie good, but a close second if you invest with him a little bit.

Leonie's growths aren't as important as her bases, strong personal early (Especially when paired with F.Byleth Sylvain recruitment), and her combat arts. Forced double bow shot is super useful, especially in maddening where doubling is a crap shoot, even if it is melee only and she is female so she gets pegasus knight. Leonie's strength growth is 40% which is kind of eh in this game when you have monsters like Felix, Dimitri, Edelgard sporting 50%+ and have as good or better bases. Even generally above average units like Sylvain and Ferdie have slightly higher strength growths at 45%.

Ashe is imo one of the worst units in 3H, he just doesn't do much of anything useful that makes him stand out, he is just a body you get in BL that'll get replaced by someone else if you recruit. Note that bad in 3H is barely worth talking about unless you're comparing the worst units with the best ones, this game just doesn't have a ton of disparity compared to most FEs where say the early game GBA fighter is pretty much always dogshit while the early GBA Cavaliers are decent to amazing depending on the unit.

Males are also kind of gimped in general in 3H due to no early flight options and Ashe is the fast-ish early archer with none of the unique things like Ignatz's utility and consistent hit rate early or Bernie's meme builds to help him out. I'd make Felix or Dimitri a bow knight in BL before Ashe any day.

 

[The Sauce Boss]

Leonie's growths aren't as important as her bases, strong personal early (Especially when paired with F.Byleth Sylvain recruitment), and her combat arts. Forced double bow shot is super useful, especially in maddening where doubling is a crap shoot, even if it is melee only and she is female so she gets pegasus knight. Leonie's strength growth is 40% which is kind of eh in this game when you have monsters like Felix, Dimitri, Edelgard sporting 50%+ and have as good or better bases. Even generally above average units like Sylvain and Ferdie have slightly higher strength growths at 45%.

Ashe is imo one of the worst units in 3H, he just doesn't do much of anything useful that makes him stand out, he is just a body you get in BL that'll get replaced by someone else if you recruit. Note that bad in 3H is barely worth talking about unless you're comparing the worst units with the best ones, this game just doesn't have a ton of disparity compared to most FEs where say the early game GBA fighter is pretty much always dogshit while the early GBA Cavaliers are decent to amazing depending on the unit.

Males are also kind of gimped in general in 3H due to no early flight options and Ashe is the fast-ish early archer with none of the unique things like Ignatz's utility and consistent hit rate early or Bernie's meme builds to help him out. I'd make Felix or Dimitri a bow knight in BL before Ashe any day.

Maybe it's just me having excellent luck / build with him because in my BL run I built him up to a fuckin' crit machine. I had Bernie, too, but she was my grounded sniper while I had Ashe running around with a Brave Bow, Killer Lance and some crit / mobility boosts.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Maybe it's just me having excellent luck / build with him because in my BL run I built him up to a fuckin' crit machine. I had Bernie, too, but she was my grounded sniper while I had Ashe running around with a Brave Bow, Killer Lance and some crit / mobility boosts.

This is why PEMN ("Personal Experience Means Nothing") is a rule typically when talking about FE, the best way to evaluate units is to look at straight statistics (Average stats at all levels for example) and try to value situational things as best as you can from there. This is why FE autists make entire spreadsheets for this stuff, and some have quite literally tracked stats across every chapter of some games or at least vaguely memorized certain parts to meet speed benchmarks for chapters. This gets really weird with recruits as in maddening mode iirc recruits use enemy growth rates, which yes are a thing, instead of their normal growth rates which is why units like Ingrid can look amazing if you recruit her late because enemy strength growth is so much higher then her normal one.

Bernie's meme is Vengeance spam not sniping (though she can do that if Vengeance is too risky), it lets her straight one round enemies which is super useful when doubling is a crap shoot in maddening mode. Ignatz has a better early game due to his debuffs and hit rate and he crits as well or better as a Sniper/Bow Knight + rally speed comes in super duper clutch in early GD maddening mode. Outside of maddening mode the game is so easy that everyone can look insane if you pick the good classes and get even a little lucky. I made Lorenz seem like a god horse mage, and that guy has some of the most middling of the road growths ever.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Leonie's growths aren't as important as her bases, strong personal early (Especially when paired with F.Byleth Sylvain recruitment), and her combat arts. Forced double bow shot is super useful, especially in maddening where doubling is a crap shoot, even if it is melee only and she is female so she gets pegasus knight. Leonie's strength growth is 40% which is kind of eh in this game when you have monsters like Felix, Dimitri, Edelgard sporting 50%+ and have as good or better bases. Even generally above average units like Sylvain and Ferdie have slightly higher strength growths at 45%.

Ashe is imo one of the worst units in 3H, he just doesn't do much of anything useful that makes him stand out, he is just a body you get in BL that'll get replaced by someone else if you recruit. Note that bad in 3H is barely worth talking about unless you're comparing the worst units with the best ones, this game just doesn't have a ton of disparity compared to most FEs where say the early game GBA fighter is pretty much always dogshit while the early GBA Cavaliers are decent to amazing depending on the unit.

Males are also kind of gimped in general in 3H due to no early flight options and Ashe is the fast-ish early archer with none of the unique things like Ignatz's utility and consistent hit rate early or Bernie's meme builds to help him out. I'd make Felix or Dimitri a bow knight in BL before Ashe any day.

Males have War Master as an eternal meme option for them. Ashe's sole benefit is free lockpicking, which is neat. Lots of people like him for some reason though.

This is why PEMN ("Personal Experience Means Nothing") is a rule typically when talking about FE, the best way to evaluate units is to look at straight statistics (Average stats at all levels for example) and try to value situational things as best as you can from there. This is why FE autists make entire spreadsheets for this stuff, and some have quite literally tracked stats across every chapter of some games or at least vaguely memorized certain parts to meet speed benchmarks for chapters. This gets really weird with recruits as in maddening mode iirc recruits use enemy growth rates, which yes are a thing, instead of their normal growth rates which is why units like Ingrid can look amazing if you recruit her late because enemy strength growth is so much higher then her normal one.

Bernie's meme is Vengeance spam not sniping (though she can do that if Vengeance is too risky), it lets her straight one round enemies which is super useful when doubling is a crap shoot in maddening mode. Ignatz has a better early game due to his debuffs and hit rate and he crits as well or better as a Sniper/Bow Knight + rally speed comes in super duper clutch in early GD maddening mode. Outside of maddening mode the game is so easy that everyone can look insane if you pick the good classes and get even a little lucky. I made Lorenz seem like a god horse mage, and that guy has some of the most middling of the road growths ever.

I haven't heard the term PEMN in a decade.

Ignatz is a hilarious assassin/swordmaster/war master. He crits a ton.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Males have War Master as an eternal meme option for them. Ashe's sole benefit is free lockpicking, which is neat. Lots of people like him for some reason though.



I haven't heard the term PEMN in a decade.

Ignatz is a hilarious assassin/swordmaster/war master. He crits a ton.

War Master/Grappler is a great meme, made Felix one in my very first file and it was funny, but movement is everything in these games outside of the really big dumb monster battles where War Master I feel justifies its existence fine. I prefer Sniper Ignatz, if I use him long term, due to the Sniper combat art to double crit with a killer bow at range instead of needing to melee and possibly risk enemy phasing.

I hang around a decent amount of optimization circles, so I hear PEMN a lot.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

War Master/Grappler is a great meme, made Felix one in my very first file and it was funny, but movement is everything in these games outside of the really big dumb monster battles where War Master I feel justifies its existence fine. I prefer Sniper Ignatz, if I use him long term, due to the Sniper combat art to double crit with a killer bow at range instead of needing to melee and possibly risk enemy phasing.

I hang around a decent amount of optimization circles, so I hear PEMN a lot.

outside of dondon/mekkah and a handful of other old timers, who tf even does optimization?

are you familiar with Chiki?

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

outside of dondon/mekkah and a handful of other old timers, who tf even does optimization?

are you familiar with Chiki?

I keep an ear around those old timers whenever I get into an FE game, 3H is a fairly boring game, but I still pick up on a few things like Bernie not being a terrible unit like I thought she was when the game first came out.

Their is one guy who is making super detailed guides for 3H specifically, he broke down why Vengeance Bernie is so powerful and why Bernie is one of the better units if you use her properly. Chiki doesn't ring a bell to me atm.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

I keep an ear around those old timers whenever I get into an FE game, 3H is a fairly boring game, but I still pick up on a few things like Bernie not being a terrible unit like I thought she was when the game first came out.

Their is one guy who is making super detailed guides for 3H specifically, he broke down why Vengeance Bernie is so powerful and why Bernie is one of the better units if you use her properly. Chiki doesn't ring a bell to me atm.

he was Serenes Forest's lolcow that eventually migrated to the general discord-sphere of Mangs and co. Most well known for claiming to apply to harvard and being accepted, and then starting an FE LTC website from harvard.

it's a weird story tbh.

 

[Kosher Dill]

I mean you don't just HAVE to get only one cross-house recruit.

What, really? For some reason I thought it was limited to one. Well, I'm going to have to start pitching woo much more indiscriminately now

Now I wonder just how many students you could poach in one playthrough, if you started out with a pretty maxed-out professor with lots of skills, and focused all your resources on buying gifts and such rather than anything useful.

Power play: learning all the builds and skill synergies and whatnot.
REAL power play: depopulating the other sides in advance

 

[AzuraAquafina]

I'm not deep into metas but one build that makes me laugh is Ferdinand's dodge tanking. Stacking sword dance and sword avoid alongside the Ochain shield to restore Confidence is pretty amusing to watch. I know you would probably have to lose out on a dancer but I'd give the build a fair shake.

he was Serenes Forest's lolcow that eventually migrated to the general discord-sphere of Mangs and co. Most well known for claiming to apply to harvard and being accepted, and then starting an FE LTC website from harvard.

it's a weird story tbh.

I think I've heard about him being a sperg at conventions or just being a bit of a coomer when it comes to forged weapons.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

What, really? For some reason I thought it was limited to one. Well, I'm going to have to start pitching woo much more indiscriminately now

Now I wonder just how many students you could poach in one playthrough, if you started out with a pretty maxed-out professor with lots of skills, and focused all your resources on buying gifts and such rather than anything useful.

Power play: learning all the builds and skill synergies and whatnot.
REAL power play: depopulating the other sides in advance

I mean I thought it was kinda obvious that you could recruit as many as you wanted, with a handful of exceptions being no cross-house lord recruitments or dedue/hubert. No Hilda/Cyril/Catherine on the Crimson Flower route.

I'm not deep into metas but one build that makes me laugh is Ferdinand's dodge tanking. Stacking sword dance and sword avoid alongside the Ochain shield to restore Confidence is pretty amusing to watch. I know you would probably have to lose out on a dancer but I'd give the build a fair shake.

I think I've heard about him being a sperg at conventions or just being a bit of a coomer when it comes to forged weapons.

honestly Ferdinand is just a solid overall character so a dodgetank dancer build would be pretty decent on non-maddening.

All I know is that Chiki is a notorious sperg. Another sorta unknown FE fanbase sperg is fucking Inui.

https://www.ssbwiki.com/Smasher:Inui

if you look at Mekkah's videos on "FE DEBATES" and memory lane shit, you'll notice Inui's name pop up a ton. It's the same guy. There's not a lot of ways to outright prove it unless you go digging up old fanbase members and maybe they remember.

Extra autism from SMASH, METH, and FIRE EMBLEM.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Dark Seals are a hideous joke, I didn't know they could only be used by men.
What a waste of time it was lining everyone up in a caravan to mag-dump their gambits into Death Knight.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Dark Seals are a hideous joke, I didn't know they could only be used by men.
What a waste of time it was lining everyone up in a caravan to mag-dump their gambits into Death Knight.

it's good for chip damage and whatnot.