Fire Emblem Echoes

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is played as two armies at once. Alm's marches out of Ram Village and Celica's sets off from the Priory, and most of what our guides list is filed under one path or the other: the recruitment page splits its 34 characters into two parties of 17, the side quests page sorts its 33 requests by act and by path, and the weapons page names Alm's path or Celica's path on 29 of its finds. That makes the most useful question about any pickup, recruit or errand a simple one: which army is standing near it. This guide is organised that way, with the systems both armies share first, then Alm's ground, then Celica's, then the handful of things that move between them.

What both armies do the same way

Whichever lead you are moving, the rules underneath are identical, and our characters, recruitment and class change guide is the place to start because it sorts every system by how much the game does for you: eleven characters join by themselves, twenty-three have to be talked to, kept alive or chosen over a rival, and promotion is announced by the game but has to be carried out at a Mila statue. The class change page beneath it explains the statue, the level reset and the stat floor that lifts a weak stat to the new class's base, and it is the page that introduces the Villager's Fork, the DLC item that turns anyone but the two leads back into a level 1 Villager with their stats intact.

Villagers get a page of their own because they are the units with a decision attached. Our best classes for villagers guide works through Gray, Tobin, Faye, Kliff and Atlas one at a time: the four men have Soldier, Mercenary, Mage, Archer and Cavalier to pick from, Faye alone can become a Pegasus Knight or a Cleric, and the recommendations lean on what each villager grows into, such as Tobin reaching Excalibur at level 6 where Kliff waits until 9, or Atlas taking Archer for Hunter's Volley to cover his speed.

The rest of the shared rulebook is in our forging, skills, supports, promotion and magic guide: one inventory slot per unit, skills that live on weapons and shields and fill a bar while equipped, supports that add Hit, Avoid and critical bonuses within three spaces, spells that cost HP and carry fixed hit rates, fatigue that only bites in dungeons, Sacred Springs whose statues can share uses, and a blacksmith whose displayed price is what it costs to push a weapon all the way to its ceiling. The money for that blacksmith is the subject of our Silver and Gold Marks farming tips, which come down to striking grass, breaking the crates that respawn when you return to a map, finishing requests, opening chests, and selling whatever you do not need.

Commanding Alm

Alm's army starts in Ram Village with Lukas, Gray and Tobin already aboard and Kliff and Faye waiting at the village entrance, and the village also holds the first two side quests, a search for Ram Wine and a bounty on twenty brigands in the Thieves' Shrine. The shrine is where Silque joins, where Alm comes away with Mila's Turnwheel, and where the SPD statue and the HP statue draw on the same pool of uses. From there the path runs through South Fort for Clair, the Deliverance HQ for Clive and Forsyth, a Mila Shrine where Python will talk once Clive is aboard, and Zofia Castle, which our weapons page lists for the Regal Shield and our Memory Prisms page for the Python and Forsyth scene on the balcony.

Act 3 is where Alm's map gets busy. Three requests come from Zofia Castle, and our side quests guide chains them: One Man's Trash sends you after a Lima Armlet held by an Entombed in the Deliverance Hideout, A Royal Requiem only opens once that is done and pays a Royal Shield, and Taken Treasure: Desaix's Vault wants an heirloom shield that is actually sitting in the Desert Stronghold on Celica's side. Forest Village adds three more, among them a kidnapped daughter at the Sylvan Shrine and a merchant who turns out to be held at Nuibaba's Abode rather than where his wife first says. By Chapter 4 the army is passing Rigel Village, Rigel Falls and the Rigel Valley, and that is where most of the shields on our weapons locations page sit: six of its nine shields are named only on his path, and the Fear Shrine alone holds three of them. The last stop before Chapter 5 is the spot from our level up fast guide, an Entombed horde beside the Mila Statue near Rigel Valley that you farm by leaving the map and walking back in.

Commanding Celica

Celica's army begins at the Priory with Mae and Boey and picks up Genny at the door, and her early requests cluster there too: nine Cogs for an Anxious Cleric that cannot be handed in until later, and twenty Revenants at Novis Cemetery for a hermit, which our side quests guide warns is impossible during Acts 3 and 4 because the Revenants stop spawning. Saber is recruited in two steps, the second at the Novis Port Inn, and Valbar, Kamui and Leon join at the Pirate Fort if they live through the fight.

Celica carries the larger share of the errands: our side quests guide files 22 of its 33 under her path against 10 under Alm's, with the whole of Act 2 and ten of the seventeen in Act 3 being hers. Zofia Harbor's two fishing requests form a chain with a third: The Famished Fisherman at the Seabound Shrine has to be done before Ethereal Fishing Line will start, and Ethereal Fishing Line has to be done before A Fishy Request can be turned in. Her recruits are the ones with strings attached as well, since Palla and Catria and the three at the Pirate Fort all have to survive their battles, and Grieth's Citadel is where Sonia and Dean make you pick one. Her weapons are fewer, eight named only on her path against Alm's fourteen, though the Golden Dagger she carries from the start forges into the Zofia. Her levelling spot from our level up fast guide is the Lost Woods halfway through Chapter 4, a left turn from the second monument and a loop back past the Mila Statue with the exit on your right.

What crosses between the two

The line between the two maps is not sealed. Zofia Castle is the clearest case: Alm's army takes a shield from it in Chapter 1 and three requests in Act 3, while Celica's collects The Grand Duke of Dairy there in Act 2, a three-cheese errand worth 300 Renown. Ram Village is the other, because our recruitment guide says Celica can recruit Faye and Kliff there at the end of Chapter 2, and they are the only two characters that works for. Beyond those, a peddler carries items across: Desaix's Vault needs the Rion Shield brought from Celica's Desert Stronghold to Alm, Craving Cute needs a Bear Carving that is the reward for Celica's Chopped!, and The Merchant of Death wants five Steel Lances that mostly arrive from Alm. Chopped! itself is the exception the page points out, since Celica finds her own Splitting Axe and Alm's stays where it is.

The Dracoshield is on both maps, at Zofia Gate for Alm and Duma's Swamp for Celica, and it is one of seven finds the weapons page places on both paths. Two repeatable errands from a Rigel Village blacksmith and scholar, a Dracoshield for four Dragon Scales and an Ambrosia for four Yogurt, Duma Moss and an orange, are filed under Celica's Act 4 on our side quests page, though Rigel Village is otherwise Alm's ground on our recruitment page. Act 5 is where a single page mentions both at once: our weapons page notes that, unlike in Gaiden, Celica's party no longer loses health while Alm explores the Duma Temple tombs, and two of the thirteen Memory Prisms, the Clive and Fernand oath and the Berkut and Rinea dance, are inside that temple.

Act 6, Thabes and the DLC

Act 6 is the one act our side quests guide has a single request for, Faraway Frontiers, an escort from Zofia Harbor to Furia Harbor paying 3 Gold Marks and 500 Renown; the page also notes that a fresh set of requests unlocks after every act except the fifth. The Thabes Labyrinth sits in the same chapter: the weapons page places a Blessed Bow in it on Alm's Chapter 6, and our Memory Prisms locations page puts the Duma and Mila prism on B10 once the boss is down. Three more prisms need DLC maps, two behind the Battle of Zofia Harbor and one behind Fight from the Ruins, and the weapons page names the Temple of Stars and a handful of other temples and trials as second homes for a long list of swords, spears and bows. The Villager's Fork from our class change guide is DLC as well. None of our pages is a walkthrough, and none is about the DLC characters or the story chapters themselves; what they cover is the map, and the map reads best one army at a time.