Intelligent Systems was quite smart and didn’t include the actual content for Waves 2~4 of the Fire Emblem Engage Expansion Pass in the currently available data. However, they weren’t quite thorough enough, because various files in the base game and Version 1.1.0 reference unreleased DLC.
This has happened in the past on numerous occasions, such as for Three Houses. I don’t have any experience of the development process, but I imagine DLC is developed in tandem with the main game, so it’s probably incredibly hard to fully separate the base game and DLC.
Of course, there will probably be spoilers, so be mindful if you wish to continue! This includes story spoilers.
Emblems
Currently, two DLC Emblems are available: Edelgard (with Dimitri and Claude) and Tiki.
Furthermore, 5 more DLC Emblems are in development.
ID strings for all the DLC Emblems are contained in the Emblems’ data file:
- Edelgard
- Tiki
- Hector (Blazing Blade)
- Veronica (Heroes)
- Soren (Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn)
- Camilla (Fates)
- Chrom (Awakening)
Hector is a no-brainer, considering his popularity. Likewise, Chrom is in a similar boat. Veronica is very interesting; she’s also a popular character in her own game, getting a scale figure next year and also appeared in the Dragalia Lost collab.
Camillia is, well, y’know, Camilla. Soren is probably the most surprising pick.
Only their names exist; they don’t have any other data in that file. Which makes me wonder why they didn’t simply remove them…
Also, there’s an animation file that includes references to each DLC Emblem too. For the most part, they wield the weapons you’d expect. Eg. Hector with axes, Camilla with axes and magic.
It seems Robin may be a part of Chrom somehow–either as a combined Emblem like Eirika or Edelgard or maybe appearing during certain skills/attacks?
Again, I’m pretty sure these references aren’t needed in the base game and they could’ve been removed.
(Thanks to DeathChaos25 for discovering this.)
On top of that, the effects file includes several references to unreleased weapon/spell effects, which could belong to DLC Emblems (or just be new weapons/spells in general). They are:
- Runesword
- Bolt Axe
- Élivágar, base Veronica’s tome in FE Heroes
- Bolting
- Rexcalibur, maybe Soren’s?
- Lightning
- Robin’s Thoron
- Hliðskjálf, Brave Veronica’s staff in FE Heroes
- Barrier, shares an effect with Divine Paralogue 4.
(Thanks to TipperTheScales for pointing this out.)
Furthermore, if you visit the Ring Chamber in the Somniel, you can find pedestals for 7 DLC Emblems. You can also just about see the symbols for the unreleased Emblems.
Here are the textures for the symbols of the DLC Emblems. Top-left is Tiki and the one below is Edelgard. The rest I am not very good at guessing, but the one to the right of Tiki could be Hector (Armads, the axe of thunder)? The one below that, possibly Chrom with Robin?
Oh, I was hoping that somebody would have a better idea. OnewiththeZodiac on Reddit shared their thoughts on what the symbols represent much better than I could in a thousand years.
Characters
New characters are advertised to appear in the Wave 4 story.
In another accidental slip up, they left in ID strings for unreleased characters in a file that handles the wake up lines in My Room. Oops, did somebody fall asleep while checking this file? Just kidding!
Their names are, loosely translated:
- Elle
- Rafale
- Celestia
- Gregory
- Madeline
The number of characters is consistent with the number of reserved spaces in the dining data (5), but one less than the reserved spaces for support data (6). However, it’s possible they reserved more than necessary.
Except for their names, we don’t know anything about these characters… kind of.
In the version 1.1.0 update data, they left in some audio from Edelgard’s bond conversations with 4 of these characters.
You can check out the audio clips here. Note that Edelgard or Claude do most of the speaking. However, there is one line where Edelgard calls Madeline by name.
Also, there is audio for Celestia‘s lines!
You may notice her name is “Selestia” in the files, but I think that’s just Engrish; I’d be very surprised if she wasn’t Celestia or a different name in the English version.
Update: GRequiem44 on Reddit has an interesting theory. Apparently Celestia’s voice is identical/very similar to Zephia. Given the other clues in Edelgard’s unreleased bond conversations, it’s possible that Celestia, Gregory and Madeline are alternate versions of Zephia, Griss and Marni. Perhaps from another world?
This would allow all of the Four Hounds to be playable, while skirting around the issue of canonicity. During the story, all but Mauvier perish. So it’d be nigh impossible to implement all of the original Four Hounds. However, it’s not a problem if they’re otherworld versions, for example.
Also, I didn’t think about it at the time, but I suspect Elle and Rafale are both children of Sombron. In the animation file, there are two unused “Fell” classes for a male and female character. Also, they follow the naming schemes for dragons where their name ends with RU (ル) in Japanese–this applies for Alear (Lueur/リュール), Lumera (Lumiere/ルミエル), Veyle (ヴェイル) and Sombron (Sombre/ソンブル).
Classes
Wave 4 will also introduce new classes.
As it happens, there weren’t any super obvious clues about new classes in the base game, but Version 1.1.0 changed that. In the character data file, they added Fabrication foes for presumably every DLC map–and two of these foes have classes that don’t exist.
They loosely translate to:
- Enchant (or Enchanter?)
- Mage Cannon
In the same animation file, there are references to “Ect” and “Mcn”, which are likely the Enchant and Mage Cannon classes.
It seems Enchanter is a Dagger and Arts class, while Mage Cannon may be an Armor Tome class.
Update 2: Bizarrely, enemy Enchanters can be found in the Divine Paralogues added in Wave 2. If you mod the game, Enchanter seems to work fine for playable characters, except their map sprite is missing.
Enchanters don’t seem that great at fighting, but they excel at providing unique buffs. They have access to new commands Item Surge and Weapon Surge that can consume an item to provide a buff or confer a buff to all weapons of the same name.
You can check out some footage of the Enchanter class here.
Item Surge buffs:
- Antitoxin – Heals status effects for unit and adjacent allies.
- Meal – Grants “guarantee survival with 1 HP if HP is 2 or more at start of combat (once)” to an adjacent ally.
- Def Tonic – Grants “reflect physical damage taken” to unit and adjacent allies for 1 turn.
- Pure Water – Grants Effective: Corrupted to unit and adjacent allies for 1 turn.
- HP Tonic – Raises max HP relative to level and grants “negate chain-attack damage” to unit and adjacent allies for 1 turn.
- Lck Tonic – Grants “30% chance to ignore damage” to unit and adjacent allies for 1 turn.
- Mag Tonic – Raises Mag relative to level and grants immunity to silence on unit and adjacent allies for 1 turn.
- Res Tonic – Grants “reflect magic damage taken” to unit and adjacent allies for 1 turn.
- Elixir? – Fills unit and adjacent allies’ engage meters by 2.
- Spd Tonic – Raises Spd relative to level and grants immunity to freeze on unit and adjacent allies for 1 turn.
- Str Tonic – Raises Str relative to level and grants “reduce weapon weight by 50%” to unit and adjacent allies for 1 turn.
- Dex Tonic – Raises Dex relative to level and grants immunity to break on unit and adjacent allies for 1 turn.
- Torch – Grants the “Torch” effect to unit and adjacent allies. (Illuminate a 7-space radius. Shrinks one space per turn.)
- Vulnerary – Recovers 15 HP for unit and allies within 2 spaces.
Weapon Surge buffs:
- Bow/Knife/Tome/Arts – Grants Mt+5 to weapons of the same name for the duration of the battle.
- Sword – Grants Avo+20 to weapons of the same name for the duration of the battle.
- Axe – Grants Crit+20 to weapons of the same name for the duration of the battle.
- Lance – Grants Def/Res+5 to weapons of the same name for the duration of the battle.
- (none?) – Grants Hit+20 to weapons of the same name for the duration of the battle.
Meanwhile, Mage Cannon is probably a tank or gunner-like class, since it uses bullet/ammo-based weapons. Below are the (translated) internal names for some of the weapons.
- Ammo Physical
- Ammo Magical
- Ammo Anti-Corrupted
- Ammo Anti-Cavalry
- Ammo Poison
- Ammo Anti-Flier
- Ammo Freeze
- Ammo Physical Strong
- Ammo Magical Strong
- Ammo Ignore Defences
Less important, but kind of cool: there might be a Phantom Wolf enemy class, similar to the Phantom Wyrm class in Tiki’s Divine Paralogue. As in a wolf by itself.
Update: There may be a few more DLC classes, which I was unsure about before.
In-between Enchant, Mage Cannon, Phantom Wyrm, Phantom Wolf and the DLC Emblems, there are animations for another Melusine class? Seems to use the same animations as the existing one and I think it also refers to Zephia’s asset ID.
At first, I thought it wasn’t anything important. But then GRequiem44 on Reddit mentioned that Celestia’s voice sounds identical/similar to Zephia’s. Could this be Celestia’s Melusine class?
In addition, just before Enchant, there are some unknown animations that I didn’t understand at first. But I think they’re also new classes.
One looks like a male-only Axe user, while another is a female-only Lance user. There are also transformed versions that fight with “magic” and “arts”. What’s curious is the abbreviations (Sds)–they are very similar to the ones for Fell Child (Sdp=Shadow Princess) and Fell Monarch (Sdk=Shadow King).
In fact, the transformed versions share animations with Fell Monarch. If I had to guess, these may be classes for Sombron’s other children (Elle and Rafale?). Not sure what the second “s” in “Sds” stands for though (Scion?). Of note, it looks like only the male character (with asset ID 049) can transform, not the female one (099).
Update 2: Nevermind, they can probably both transform; presumably the female character uses the default asset ID, 000.
Chapters
Now that Version 1.1.0 is out, it’s clear that there will be 6 Divine Paralogues in total, including Tiki’s. This could’ve been gleamed from the base game though.
In various files, such as the donation and animal files, there are references to 6 Divine Paralogues and also 6 Fell Xenologues (Wave 4).
Additionally, in Version 1.1.0, music has been assigned to all 6 Divine Paralogues in the chapter file.
- Divine Paralogue 2 uses Lyn’s paralogue theme (Hector?)
- Divine Paralogue 3 uses a new theme (Veronica?)
- Divine Paralogue 4 uses Ike’s paralogue theme (Soren?)
- Divine Paralogue 5 uses Corrin’s paralogue theme (Camilla?)
- Divine Paralogue 6 uses Lucina’s paralogue theme (Chrom?)
This is the same order as in the Emblems’ data file.
Speaking of Emblems, the following Emblems appear as enemy Emblems (synced) in the Fell Xenologues:
- Fell Xenologue 1 Tiki
- Fell Xenologue 2 Hector
- Fell Xenologue 3 Veronica
- Fell Xenologue 4 Soren and Camilla
- Fell Xenologue 5 Chrom, Hector and Veronica
- Fell Xenologue 6 Tiki, Hector, Veronica, Soren, Camilla, Chrom and Edelgard
Lastly, the effects file also includes references to various map gimmicks.
- Divine Paralogue 2 will include poison gas.
- Divine Paralogue 3 has some kind of moving land mass.
- Divine Paralogue 4 has volcano balls.
- Divine Paralogue 5 has water balls.
- Divine Paralogue 6 has some kind of breakable crystal barrier that can repair itself.
- Fell Xenologue 5 has some kind of magic barrier/wall that can be destroyed.
- Fell Xenologue 6 has some kind of vortex that sucks you in, collapsing land and a beam attack.
- There may also be some kind of instant-death area–perhaps the growing vortex?
