2nd February 2018 marks the 1st anniversary of Fire Emblem Heroes. Over the course of the year, the game has been a sizable success, with hundreds of thousands of summoners waging war on the Kingdom of Askr’s behalf.
If you’re out of the loop or haven’t yet experienced Fire Emblem Heroes, it’s never too late to jump (back) in! The game is constantly improving and, not long ago, a new “Book II” story-line was added, where you can obtain Fjorm, an awesome free 5-star hero!
Last year, we shared some beginner tips for Heroes with the promise of additional tips later on. Well, now is the time for us to make good on our word, with a selection of tips for higher level play and increased enjoyment!
1) Don’t Sleep on Buffs!
With enough buffs, you can essentially gain several levels worth of stats!
If you followed our advice from last time, you’ve hopefully gathered the strongest heroes you can and built a squad that’s well balanced for any task, with a good mixture of Red, Blue and Green units–and perhaps a Dancer or Singer for strategic manoeuvres.
Of course, that is just the beginning of building a team. The next step to becoming a famed tactician is to take advantage of the various stat boosts (aka buffs) available to you. At first, buffs can seem a bit uninteresting. However, they can easily make or break battles.
What separates Fire Emblem from many other RPGs like it is that Fire Emblem has a very precise stat system, with relatively small numbers. This means that even small changes to stats can have a large influence on how a battle turns out. Especially the Speed stat, which determines the number of attacks.
There are two main types of buffs to consider.
Persistent buffs will physically modify your hero’s stats in the stat display and make the numbers appear blue (or red if it’s a debuff). They can be triggered with skills like Hone Attack, Rally Defense, etc.
Combat buffs only trigger during battle and do not change the stats in the stat display. Instead, their effects can be observed during the combat forecast. They are triggered with skills like Spur Attack, Spur Speed, etc.
What you also need to know is that all buffs will stack, except for persistent buffs that target the same stat–in this scenario, only the highest persistent buff is applied. For example, you can boost your Speed using one Hone Speed and multiple Spur Speed.
Among experienced players, the most commonly used buffs are ones that target specific movement classes–for example Hone Cavalry. Not only do these provide a bigger buff (+6 versus +4), they also buff two stats instead of one. This is why Cavalry-focused squads and the like are immensely popular.
2) Efficient SP Grinding
Grinding is unavoidable, but you can speed it up!
SP (Skill Points) are essential for learning new skills, which can propel heroes to far greater heights. Normally, SP can be acquired by defeating enemies and leveling up. When going from Level 1 to 40, you’ll usually earn enough SP to learn all–or most of–a hero’s natural skills.
After that, it’s not uncommon to need an extra 1000 SP or so to fully outfit your hero, especially considering inherited skills cost 50% more SP to learn. You earn 3 SP for each enemy slain, so you’ll need to find yourself 300+ enemies, which equates to around 80+ Training Tower battles.
To see this through, you’ll need a lot of stamina–and in the literal sense too… Thankfully, there are a couple of ways to reduce the grind.
Before doing anything, remember that enemies must not be more than 5 Levels lower than yours or else you’ll earn 0 SP.
Chain Challenge: Accessible via Story Maps, here you can play multiple story maps consecutively. What you want to do is repeatedly attempt a Normal mode “3 teams and 10 battles” level (eg. Book I Chapters 1 & 2). Any will do, but the earlier ones are easier. However, the level must be incomplete or you’ll earn less SP.
In addition, you must not complete the level and instead surrender before finishing the 10th battle (so you can preserve its incomplete state). You’ll forfeit the SP gained during the battle you surrender, but you’ll keep all the previous SP. One attempt costs 30 stamina and nets you around 36 foes or 108 SP for clearing the 9th battle.
Tempest Trials: This is basically Chain Challenge, but with up to 7 consecutive battles for 20 stamina, which is actually better value. In addition, bonus units gain double SP and increased stats for easier grinding. Of course, Tempest Trials only happen from time to time, so keep your eyes peeled!
Warriors Special Maps: On rare occasions, there will be a set of 5 Special Maps to promote Fire Emblem Warriors. If you see them, forget everything and run straight to Part 5 (Camilla) and choose Hard (Level 35). You’ll fight waves of very weak reinforcements and always earn SP at the non-reduced rate.
Double SP Weekends: Every Friday and Saturday, SP gain is doubled. If you’re going to grind SP, you should definitely focus on those two days!
Blessings: Heroes that have been conferred Water, Wind, Earth or Fire Blessing (obtained from quests etc.) always earn double SP. Even if you don’t have a corresponding Legendary Hero, you can still use their Blessing to boost SP gain!
SP-Boosting Skills: Some rare heroes have “Valor” skills that double SP gain for a particular weapon. Check your Barracks for these helpful heroes–Gray (Sword), Summer Robin (Lance), Summer Tiki (Axe), Halloween Sakura (Dagger), Winter Tharja (Red Tome), Performing Shigure (Blue Tome), Summer Elise (Green Tome).
3) Daily Arena Assault Made Simple
Four versus one is hardly fair, but when was war ever fair?
The Arena Assault mode is a pretty relentless place, where you’re encouraged to battle up to 7 player-created teams in a row, but you cannot use the same hero in more than one fight. Very frequently, there are quests to clear the first 3 stages of Arena Assault each day.
Even though you’re only asked to complete 3 stages, it’s still a trial and a half, considering the unpredictable nature of the Arena–or perhaps predictable, what with all the Brave Lyns and Reinhardts galloping around… Plus you have to do this each day to get all the rewards.
Fortunately, some clever players found a way to cheese Arena Assault, at least for the purpose of the quests. What you need to do is create a team with a single powerful hero. So perhaps your own Reinhardt or some other all-purpose and/or reliable hero.
Next, enter Arena Assault and select the Beginner category. You’ll be matched against another player who also only has one hero. After winning this battle, pick Beginner again–and this is where the magic happens. Each time you pick Beginner, the opponent only has one hero, but you can field up to four.
Therefore, you can easily blitz through the remaining rounds through sheer numbers alone. Picking Intermediate or Advanced at any stage does not work–only Beginner. Naturally, clearing Arena Assault this way results in a greatly reduced score, so you should play it properly at least once.
4) How to Outlast the Tempest Trials
Let the game play for you to reduce the workload!
Likewise, the Tempest Trials, which occur from time to time, can be a true test of your skills as a tactician. In this mode, you must fight your way through multiple maps in a row, and any heroes that reach 0 HP are out of commission until you finish all of the maps.
Just clearing the Tempest Trials once isn’t good enough–you need to clear it many, many times to improve your score and acquire prizes such as 4-star and 5-star heroes and coveted Sacred Seals, plus Orbs, Hero Feathers, etc. Essentially, it’s a marathon–and marathons can be tough going.
Did you know that you don’t actually have to actively “play” the entire Tempest Trials to achieve the maximum score? Of course, we do recommend playing the Tempest Trials twice each day–to take advantage of the 3x score bonus for the first two attempts of the day.
After that, when there isn’t a score bonus, what you should do instead is setup a reliable squad with a featured 20% or 40% bonus unit, then enter Hard Level 30 (4 teams, 5 battles) or Lunatic Level 35 (4 teams, 5 battles) and Auto-Battle your way to victory.
To make this work, you should adjust the settings so that Combat and Support Animations are disabled, Auto-Battle Text is set to “Auto-Advance”, Continuous Auto is enabled and Map/Auto: No Animation are both set to “On”. This will skip all animations and let Auto-Battle trigger for consecutive maps.
For best results, besides your bonus unit(s) (which gets a big stat boost), you should pick reliable units with solid defensive stats, rather than glass cannons, since the AI is terrible at preserving units. Also remove positioning skills like Draw Back, as well as attacks for your Staff units.
Although your score for Auto-Battling the lower difficulties is slightly less compared to properly playing the higher difficulties, it requires far less effort. Not only that, but it saves you from losing your sanity from repeating the Tempest Trials ad nauseam!
5) Voting Gauntlet: the Easy Way
You might even feel sorry for your opponents…
Finally, the Voting Gauntlets are another type of periodic event. When a gauntlet is active, you’re allowed to battle every 30 minutes in a bid to rally support for your chosen hero. During these battles, you use one hero chosen by yourself and two random heroes–from your friends and other supporters.
Due to the sheer randomness, very often there are times when you’re presented with a squad that is severely disadvantaged against the opposition. For example, you have a squad of all Red heroes, versus a squad of all Blue heroes. When this happens, you’ll likely lose and waste your 30 minute chance.
Again, some clever souls discovered a way for you to manipulate the battles in your favour. Rather than choosing your best hero or even the hero that you’re supporting, what you should do is choose a very low level hero–ideally Level 1. If you have a Level 1 copy of the hero you’re supporting, perfect!
Also, you should make friends with players who are supporting the same hero as you. If you have loads of friends already, you should be fine. When you enter the Voting Gauntlet with your low level hero, you’ll be matched with other heroes that are equally low level.
However, the game doesn’t take into account the heroes that your friends have. So if you have friends with Level 40 heroes or so, you will probably get one of their Level 40 heroes for the battle. With a Level 40 hero, there’s no way for you to lose against your low level opponents!
The only downside is that you might forfeit the 10% bonus multiplier by not using the hero that you’re supporting. However, at the end of the day, this is a pretty small bonus, even when paired with hundreds of flags. Plus if you lose a battle, you risk losing a lot more than this.
In Closing
The road to saving Askr is going to be long and hard, so we hope these tips help you during your strategy meetings. From here on out, there’s little more that we can teach–the rest is on your shoulders. However, if we happen to learn any new tricks, you can be assured that we’ll be back!