Thanks to the efforts of many, the second Global Retweet event was a success! Between the Japanese, North American and Europe accounts, fans managed beat the 50,000 requirement by a fair margin. Look forward to your 5 Orbs in-game!
Already, Nintendo are teasing the next Grand Hero Battle, which offers a chance to recruit Macedon’s ambitious King Michalis. There’s plenty of time to prepare your troops as Michalis spreads his wings from 24th March 2017.
If that wasn’t enough, four more upcoming Grand Hero Battles have also been revealed:
- Early April – Navarre: Scarlet Sword
- Late April – Zephiel: The Liberator
- Early May – Xander: Paragon Knight
- Late May – Lloyd: White Wolf
Additionally, if you’ve seen today’s in-game Notifications or you’ve been following the official Japanese Twitter account, you’ll know that some big changes are coming April. For your convenience, here they are again:
The Fire Emblem Heroes development have been attentively listening to feedback from fans and the April Update promises a lot of gameplay tweaks and changes to further improve the playing experience.
1) Changes to Inherit Skill and Merge Allies
When Skill Inheritance is added on 16th March 2017, merging source allies who have inherited skills will not cause the inherited skills to be transferred to the target.
However, this will be changed in April. For example if a Marth has inherited Sol and this Marth is used as a source ally, the target Marth will inherit Sol as well.
This should hopefully alleviate a lot of stress with planning how to merge allies and also make it much more easier to inherit skills!
2) Hero Merit
Heroes that participate in battles can earn Hero Merit (HM). Once a Hero has accumulate enough HM, it will be possible to earn Hero Feathers. Duplicate Heroes will share HM.
No information has been provided about how many Hero Feathers will be rewarded or how much HM is needed, but more ways to gain Hero Feathers are always a good thing!
3) New Rules for Combat
Bored of routing all day long? Two new battle rules will be added, which should be familiar with series fans.
Defence: Clear the map by defending against enemy attacks for a set number of turns.
Reinforcements: Enemy reinforcements will appear on the map.
It’s going to be interesting to see how these changes will work with Heroes’s smaller scale maps and player teams.
4) Adjustments to Arena Scores and Matchmaking
At the moment, the way players are matched with opponents in the Arena is solely based on the total base stats of their characters. This can be problematic for many reasons.
In the future, matchmaking will based on a combination of the four values below:
- Character levels and rarity (star rating)
- Number of stat bonuses gained by using Merge Allies
- Total base stats after removing the effects from all skills (including weapons)
- Equipped skills
This change should make it easier to match players with fairer opponents. In addition, it will slightly increase the score you can obtain on all difficulty settings.
5) Bonus Hero Descriptions in the Arena
Eventually, it will be possible to check the description of a Bonus Hero by tapping their icon. Useful if you’re unsure who a character is (especially since there are loads).
6) Notification Display Adjustment
When you log into the game, Notifications will be changed so they only display once a day (starting from 7 AM UTC).
7) A New Way to Expand Your Heroes’ Abilities
There are plans to add a new equippable item that slightly expands Hero abilities. Keep an eye out for more details soon!
Future Plans
That’s not all! The development team is currently hard at work creating an exciting new in-game event. All we know is that you cannot revive fallen allies in battle. However no allies will be permanently lost.
The purpose of this event is to recreate the thrill of playing a classic Fire Emblem game, where the threat of permanent death follows you at every step. Furthermore, players can gain battle achievement evaluations that can lead to special rewards.
We’re guessing the event will feature multiple maps and allies who have fallen in the event will be unable to participate anymore. So perhaps like a mini Fire Emblem campaign? In any case, it’s great to see that the developers are hard at work!
