Fire Emblem: Three Houses

skerry

Finished my Blue Lions play through last night. Came in at just about 80 hours so definitely took my time with it. Game of the year so far for me for sure and will be doing another play through after a little break.

I was spending way too much time at the start worrying about getting people on the right path to the Master Class's I wanted them for, but the game is actually fairly forgiving in that respect. Found that several team members I had written off at the start became my best units for a finish. Recruited Cyril entirely due to accidental button press and completely ignored him for a good portion of the game but still managed to make him a Wyvern Lord and became one of my most important team members in the latter battles. The adjutant system is handy for keeping units levelled like him levelled until I needed to use him.

I thought some of the teaching aspects of the game became a bit redundant once I got most used team members to S Rank in their chosen skills later in the game, unless there's something I'm missing there. Ended up not knowing what to do with my activity points sometimes. Also didn't have a clue what to spend money on apart from gifts and the odd weapon.

Felix started off as a bit of a pain in the ar$e but became my favourite character in the end, he's beastly as a Mortal Savant.

Not sure whether to start Astral Chain now of Gears 5, way too many good games out the last 2 month's it's very hard to keep up.

super_furry

Jesus that Golden Deer story goes on, doesn't it?

Thought I had it finished with

the battle against Edelgard in the captial. Then I was certain I had it finished with the battle in Shambala and now there's another battle with Nemesis.

The Black Eagle play-through was much quicker and the story wrapped up before it out-stayed it's welcome

Think that'll be it for me once I'm done with Golden Deer. I'll just look up the Blue Lion stuff because I don't have it in me to go through the school stuff for a fifth time.

Think it'll be just over 80 hours for the two play-throughs.

I do have a save for the alternative Black Eagles route, where you side against Edelgard. I I do come back to the game eventually, it'll probably be for that.

Sephiroth_dude

Playing this atm, great little game, I took on what I assume was the first boss last night

the dude wielding the lance changed into a demon

, they gave me fierce trouble, eventually got them though, playing on the lowest difficulty as well. I can see myself doing a perma death run as well.

RobbingBandit

I keep restarting myself do the optional battles as much as you can pick two weapons or abilities to focus on your main character other than sword say bow and heavey armour as that makes recruiting the other house characters easier visit the greenhouse and training ground every week as they give great xp if you do those tasks. I'm gonna start a classic play with the golden deer house Hilda needs to die.

johnf26

https://www.gamestop.ie/Switch/Games/72436/fire-emblem-three-houses-limited-edition

collectors edition only 49.99 for anyone interested

Sephiroth_dude

Paralogue missions are the business!

Sephiroth_dude

Nooooo

Edelgard

how could you !

RobbingBandit

Full of twists you just do not see coming but then once they've happened you apply hindsight to the character development and bam it all fits very engaging game black eagle house definitely my favourite

skerry

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Nooooo

Edelgard

how could you !

Played Blue Lions for my playthrough but fairly sure I know what twist your on about. Must do a Black Eagle play through in the new year. Might have to accidentally let Hubert get killed though cos he's a complete d!ck.


Picked up FE Echoes and Fates: Birthright for my newly acquired 2DS XL so they might have to be tackled first.

goon_magee

Picked this up a few days ago. It's my first Fire Emblem game and I have to say, it's fantastic, utterly engrossing.

I find tactical RPGs to be fairly intimidating in general so usually avoid them like the plague, but this (at least so far) seems to be doing a great job of easing players in. It's a gradual drip feed of information and mechanics, rather than the absolute info dump that other examples in the genre usually unleash within the first hour.

The only thing worrying me so far is that I'm potentially not making the best use of my free time each month. I'm still super early on (just got through the battle with the bandits in Red Canyon). So far my routine has been to explore and boost motivation/professor level on the first free day of the month, battle on the second free day, then seminar on the third free day. No idea if this is efficient or not, conflicting articles online aren't much use neither!

Also slightly unsure as to how best to level students up early on. I've put quite a bit of time in on Edelgard and Ferdinand early on (I picked Black Eagles) so I could have three reliably strong early game frontline troops to take/deal out the brunt of the damage, however I came close to losing a couple in the battle with the Bandits as I had obviously neglected the rest of the class in favour of power levelling those two. Thinking it might be more efficient to keep rotating month to month so as to keep everyone relatively evenly matched?

I'm sure I'll decipher it all at some stage, can't wait to get stuck in again over the weekend!!

skerry

goon_magee wrote: »

Picked this up a few days ago. It's my first Fire Emblem game and I have to say, it's fantastic, utterly engrossing.

I find tactical RPGs to be fairly intimidating in general so usually avoid them like the plague, but this (at least so far) seems to be doing a great job of easing players in. It's a gradual drip feed of information and mechanics, rather than the absolute info dump that other examples in the genre usually unleash within the first hour.

The only thing worrying me so far is that I'm potentially not making the best use of my free time each month. I'm still super early on (just got through the battle with the bandits in Red Canyon). So far my routine has been to explore and boost motivation/professor level on the first free day of the month, battle on the second free day, then seminar on the third free day. No idea if this is efficient or not, conflicting articles online aren't much use neither!

Also slightly unsure as to how best to level students up early on. I've put quite a bit of time in on Edelgard and Ferdinand early on (I picked Black Eagles) so I could have three reliably strong early game frontline troops to take/deal out the brunt of the damage, however I came close to losing a couple in the battle with the Bandits as I had obviously neglected the rest of the class in favour of power levelling those two. Thinking it might be more efficient to keep rotating month to month so as to keep everyone relatively evenly matched?

I'm sure I'll decipher it all at some stage, can't wait to get stuck in again over the weekend!!

Make sure you make use of fishing and the greenhouse during free time to increase your professor level and get more instruction points to lecturing. Group activities like eating with a couple of students and choir are pretty efficient for maxing out motivation. Make sure you pick the meals that are favourites of the companions you are using to increase motivation more.

I think i did similar to yourself in focusing too much on a couple of characters resulting in a weaker team. I had a few team members I thought were useless but turned out to be the MVP's in most battles for a finish once I focused on leveling them.

Giving the right gifts to students will fill their motivation bar 50%, if its just a random gift they don't care for you'll only get 25%.

For a finish I focused on free time at start of month to max out all students, then practice battles which levels them up pretty quick again. In practice battles, if your trying to level a particular character when they don't have the capability to get a kill solo let stronger team members weaken them and then give the kill to the weaker character you want to level so they get the XP.

goon_magee

skerry wrote: »

Make sure you make use of fishing and the greenhouse during free time to increase your professor level and get more instruction points to lecturing. Group activities like eating with a couple of students and choir are pretty efficient for maxing out motivation. Make sure you pick the meals that are favourites of the companions you are using to increase motivation more.

I think i did similar to yourself in focusing too much on a couple of characters resulting in a weaker team. I had a few team members I thought were useless but turned out to be the MVP's in most battles for a finish once I focused on leveling them.

Giving the right gifts to students will fill their motivation bar 50%, if its just a random gift they don't care for you'll only get 25%.

For a finish I focused on free time at start of month to max out all students, then practice battles which levels them up pretty quick again. In practice battles, if your trying to level a particular character when they don't have the capability to get a kill solo let stronger team members weaken them and then give the kill to the weaker character you want to level so they get the XP.

Cheers for the helpful reply, most appreciated!

I'm definitely going to try and spread the levelling out a bit more evenly across the team. With regards motivation, did you eventually end up with enough action points that you could motivate your entire team? Currently Im only exploring one day a month and only have 3 points so I tend to use one to cook a meal, and the other two reserved for eating with students.

I'll need to start focusing more on gifts as it sounds like that's a great way to pick up any slack with motivation.

skerry

goon_magee wrote: »

Cheers for the helpful reply, most appreciated!

I'm definitely going to try and spread the levelling out a bit more evenly across the team. With regards motivation, did you eventually end up with enough action points that you could motivate your entire team? Currently Im only exploring one day a month and only have 3 points so I tend to use one to cook a meal, and the other two reserved for eating with students.

I'll need to start focusing more on gifts as it sounds like that's a great way to pick up any slack with motivation.

It's been a few months but I think you eventually get a quest from a vendor after which said vendor will be available at the monastery to buy gifts from. You can use gifts a lot more then by just buying what you need for any remaining students you need to motivate after you've used up your points. Harder to take advantage of gifts properly before that point. Have a look online and you'll see info on what characters like what gifts.

Found myself having to squeeze in another day motivating students later in the game cos you will have more points for instructing students once your professor level increases.

I didn't really bother with cooking meals cos I think you can only motivate one student at a time that way. Choir practice and eating as a group let's you motivate 2 students at a time for 1 action point so it's more efficient as far as I remember.

It's a super game and definitely GOTY for me this year. I did Blue Lions but must get the Black Eagle route done sometime in the new year.

goon_magee

skerry wrote: »

It's been a few months but I think you eventually get a quest from a vendor after which said vendor will be available at the monastery to buy gifts from. You can use gifts a lot more then by just buying what you need for any remaining students you need to motivate after you've used up your points. Harder to take advantage of gifts properly before that point. Have a look online and you'll see info on what characters like what gifts.

Found myself having to squeeze in another day motivating students later in the game cos you will have more points for instructing students once your professor level increases.

I didn't really bother with cooking meals cos I think you can only motivate one student at a time that way. Choir practice and eating as a group let's you motivate 2 students at a time for 1 action point so it's more efficient as far as I remember.

It's a super game and definitely GOTY for me this year. I did Blue Lions but must get the Black Eagle route done sometime in the new year.

Cheers mate, thats really helpful info.

It's shaping up to be a GotY contender for me as well even at this early stage. Absolutely loving it.

skerry

goon_magee wrote: »

Cheers mate, thats really helpful info.

It's shaping up to be a GotY contender for me as well even at this early stage. Absolutely loving it.

No bother, I was fairly clueless going into it myself but got some sound advice from folks on here and it all comes together then after a few battles. Got some of the previous FE games on 2DS now so gonna see how they compare.

Sephiroth_dude

goon_magee wrote: »

Picked this up a few days ago. It's my first Fire Emblem game and I have to say, it's fantastic, utterly engrossing.

I find tactical RPGs to be fairly intimidating in general so usually avoid them like the plague, but this (at least so far) seems to be doing a great job of easing players in. It's a gradual drip feed of information and mechanics, rather than the absolute info dump that other examples in the genre usually unleash within the first hour.

The only thing worrying me so far is that I'm potentially not making the best use of my free time each month. I'm still super early on (just got through the battle with the bandits in Red Canyon). So far my routine has been to explore and boost motivation/professor level on the first free day of the month, battle on the second free day, then seminar on the third free day. No idea if this is efficient or not, conflicting articles online aren't much use neither!

Also slightly unsure as to how best to level students up early on. I've put quite a bit of time in on Edelgard and Ferdinand early on (I picked Black Eagles) so I could have three reliably strong early game frontline troops to take/deal out the brunt of the damage, however I came close to losing a couple in the battle with the Bandits as I had obviously neglected the rest of the class in favour of power levelling those two. Thinking it might be more efficient to keep rotating month to month so as to keep everyone relatively evenly matched?

I'm sure I'll decipher it all at some stage, can't wait to get stuck in again over the weekend!!

I'm the exact same as you, Just concentrating on doing battles and that's all I do! on ch 15 now, 40 hours played, loving it!

goon_magee

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

I'm the exact same as you, Just concentrating on doing battles and that's all I do! on ch 15 now, 40 hours played, loving it!

Yep, I'm leaning on battles heavily at the moment. I'm playing on Normal difficulty with classic enabled and being able to grind the auxiliary battles has been useful for bringing anyone lagging behind in levels or skills up to speed.

Anyone who has completed it - Does the difficulty on normal spike at any point? I'm finding it quite manageable so far to the point where I am thinking I should have started on hard. I'm on Chapter 6, and have just defeated the first "boss" at the top of the tower, so still relatively early on, but I have not run into any encounters where I felt threatened as of yet. It's nice in a way as it is letting me familiarise myself with the game without getting my ass kicked constantly, but it's almost too leisurely at times.

Cheers!

skerry

goon_magee wrote: »

Yep, I'm leaning on battles heavily at the moment. I'm playing on Normal difficulty with classic enabled and being able to grind the auxiliary battles has been useful for bringing anyone lagging behind in levels or skills up to speed.

Anyone who has completed it - Does the difficulty on normal spike at any point? I'm finding it quite manageable so far to the point where I am thinking I should have started on hard. I'm on Chapter 6, and have just defeated the first "boss" at the top of the tower, so still relatively early on, but I have not run into any encounters where I felt threatened as of yet. It's nice in a way as it is letting me familiarise myself with the game without getting my ass kicked constantly, but it's almost too leisurely at times.

Cheers!

Dont remember it spiking really. That boss battle took a few efforts for me to get right, mainly to get to the boss without expending gambits. The final battle I found tough enough. It's my first FE game but I think it's generally considered one of the tamer ones.

I had trouble at the start just getting used to mechanics etc but once you get used to it and start getting mounted units, decent archers and pegasus knights which give more mobility it's not that challenging

Just started Echoes on the 3DS last night so will see how that compares.

Sephiroth_dude

goon_magee wrote: »

Yep, I'm leaning on battles heavily at the moment. I'm playing on Normal difficulty with classic enabled and being able to grind the auxiliary battles has been useful for bringing anyone lagging behind in levels or skills up to speed.

Anyone who has completed it - Does the difficulty on normal spike at any point? I'm finding it quite manageable so far to the point where I am thinking I should have started on hard. I'm on Chapter 6, and have just defeated the first "boss" at the top of the tower, so still relatively early on, but I have not run into any encounters where I felt threatened as of yet. It's nice in a way as it is letting me familiarise myself with the game without getting my ass kicked constantly, but it's almost too leisurely at times.

Cheers!

It spiked for me in a paralogue mission in chapter 15, no matter what I do I can't get past it .

goon_magee

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

It spiked for me in a paralogue mission in chapter 15, no matter what I do I can't get past it .

Think I hit the paralogue mission being referred to here. Everything was going swimmingly until you get a certain someone close to the objective then boom, map is fully populated again with even tougher enemies spawning in from all sides pretty much.

I don't have a team that is equipped for it at all. I can see how it would be possible with a team heavily favouring magic users, but most of my characters are physical units/bow users with only Dorothea being effective as far as magic is concerned.

Sick of banging my head against a wall so think I will leave it be and move on for now, too eager to wrap up by BE playthrough and get cracking on GD!

fixXxer

I've just been shown how to lecture students. DO I need to do this manually or will auto lecture be enough?

skerry

fixXxer wrote: »

I've just been shown how to lecture students. DO I need to do this manually or will auto lecture be enough?

I always did it manually, it doesn't take that long and you get more control over how they develop. I never did the auto option so not sure how it pans out that way.

The game tells you what areas a particular student will excel at and you'll get more gains from investing in these attributes. But all students have a hidden talent too (I think it generally has 3 stars to the right of it) that you can invest in which you'll see decent growth in once you fill the 3 stars. I think students also generally have a talent they are completely averse to and you will struggle to see gains if you invest in these.

There's also weekly activities you can assign 2 students to such as cleaning the stables for increasing their mounted attribute if you want them to become mounted units, there's a flying one and can't remember the other one.

Sephiroth_dude

65 hours, ch 21, still on first play through, is there any benefit to doing the side quests in explore mode?

goon_magee

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

65 hours, ch 21, still on first play through, is there any benefit to doing the side quests in explore mode?

I've gotten a couple of decent battalions from some late game ones. Also they give a decent amount of renown which is useful for rebuilding the statues at the back right of the monastery that give the different perks as you upgrade them. I found the experience gains and extra divine pulse uses came in useful so done the side quests until I had unlocked the majority of the perks I wanted.

fixXxer

Playing on the bus this morning trying to progress as my stop approaches. When they say

DONT ATTACK THE DEATH KNIGHT

that was actually really good advice and I should have listened :-/

Sephiroth_dude

fixXxer wrote: »

Playing on the bus this morning trying to progress as my stop approaches. When they say

DONT ATTACK THE DEATH KNIGHT

that was actually really good advice and I should have listened :-/

Sorry but that gave me a good laugh, that's early on right?

fixXxer

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

Sorry but that gave me a good laugh, that's early on right?

Yeah pretty early on. I chose Golden Deer. They're a pretty good group, except for

the wierdo who hates me and wants to **** my dad.

Sephiroth_dude

fixXxer wrote: »

Yeah pretty early on. I chose Golden Deer. They're a pretty good group, except for

the wierdo who hates me and wants to **** my dad.

Black eagles for life! :pac:

goon_magee

So I've pretty much coasted my way to chapter 21 on the church route and boom, I've hit a wall I just can't seem to get over.

Three hours last night spent trying different strats, slow approaches, rushing approaches, pulling aggro with my tankier units or those with top notch evasion. Nothing seems to work, even with two dedicated healers and two units who have the heal ability. I will probably get through it eventually, just finding it to be quite a spike after the doddle that chapter 20 was.

Sephiroth_dude

goon_magee wrote: »

So I've pretty much coasted my way to chapter 21 on the church route and boom, I've hit a wall I just can't seem to get over.

Three hours last night spent trying different strats, slow approaches, rushing approaches, pulling aggro with my tankier units or those with top notch evasion. Nothing seems to work, even with two dedicated healers and two units who have the heal ability. I will probably get through it eventually, just finding it to be quite a spike after the doddle that chapter 20 was.

I'm on Ch 21 as well, what difficulty are you on ?