Fire Emblem Fates

Fates asks you to design one person and then assemble everyone else, and our coverage follows that shape rather than the story. Nothing here walks you through a chapter map. What it does instead is answer the questions the game keeps asking between battles: which two stats to bend before the first fight, which of the names on offer you will actually get, what each of them should turn into, who should stand next to whom, and which units only exist if two of your existing ones get on well enough.

The path you buy decides the scale of all of it. Counting the entries on our recruitment guide, which walks all three casts one name at a time, gives a plain comparison.

Before the first battle: the one unit you design yourself

The named units in our stat tables come with their percentages printed against them. The avatar comes as a questionnaire instead, and those answers feed back into its numbers every time it levels. Our growth rates, stats and modifiers guide is the reference for what those answers do, since it tabulates the eight traits against the ceilings and the level up odds they move, and our boon and bane guide covers the same eight from the other end, with the trait table and three worked picks. The short version: one trait becomes your best base stat and your best odds of growth, another becomes your worst, and each of them also nudges two stats you did not choose.

The third question at creation is a secondary class, and the class guide's advice is to take one the route will not hand you anyway, with Basara named for Conquest and Malig Knight for Birthright; it also nudges you towards a sword class so that Yato is not wasted. Once you are playing, our builds list covers the avatar twice over, and the two entries genuinely disagree: one leans on Magic and Strength for a run into Nohr, with the dragonstones and a Levin sword in place of tomes, while the other puts a male avatar in the Ninja class with Lethality and Astra, a skill set that page rates highly for a unit at level 45 or above. Pick the one that matches the stats you bent, not the one that sounds stronger.

Filling the army: what each path hands over

Most arrivals are simply a chapter number, and the recruitment guide gives them one at a time across all three paths. The ones worth planning for are the exceptions. Your avatar's gender decides whether the maid or the butler walks in during Chapter 2, because the other one is held back until the end of Chapter 15. Thirteen bosses can be talked into changing sides in the chapter where you meet them, spread from Chapter 2 to Chapter 21. Every path also has a pair who turn up in My Castle rather than on a map, each of them waiting on a facility there reaching level three: one becomes available in Chapter 19 or later, the other in Chapter 23 or later. Across the three lists that pair is drawn from four names, Izana, Yukimura, Flora and Fuuga, and the building you have to pay for differs between them, so check the entry under the path you picked rather than assuming a hot spring will do it.

One thing to keep in mind while reading any of our character lists: they were not all written from the same set of names. Some use the forms from the Japanese release, others the English ones, and a handful of class names differ the same way. If somebody is missing from a list, look for the other spelling before assuming the path leaves them out.

Deciding what each unit becomes

The page that takes this on from end to end is the class guide, which describes fifty-nine classes in four groups, four main ones, twenty-four it files under Nohr, twenty-seven under Hoshido and four that sit outside all of that, each with the weapons it can hold and the skills it is known for. It then names a preferred class for thirty-nine characters, seven of whom you can recruit on any path, sixteen it groups under Hoshido and sixteen under Nohr, and it picks out ten classes as the best in the game, among them Kinshi Knight, Falcon Knight, Master Ninja, Sniper, Paladin, Songstress and Witch. Its most broadly useful tip is about patience: a Master Seal will promote a unit from level ten, but waiting until level twenty is what gets you every skill perk the basic class had left to give, on top of the extra movement, tougher armour and wider weapon access that promotion brings anyway.

Getting hold of the seals is the other half. Our seals locations guide prices four kinds, and the useful way to sort them is by how many units each one needs. A Master Seal and a Heart Seal act on the unit in front of you, one promoting it and one moving it sideways at the same level. A Partner Seal needs a second unit at S rank and a Friendship Seal a second unit at A+, which means two of the four are locked behind the support you have been building anyway. The store in My Castle sells all four at 2,000G, and the price is the same at each of its three levels. Outside the store the supply is lopsided: that page lists eight separate places to find a Master Seal, three for a Heart Seal, one for a Partner Seal, and nothing at all for a Friendship Seal.

Reading the numbers before you commit a seal

A class change is a bet on percentages, so it is worth checking them first. The growth rates guide carries the base stats and the ceilings for sixty-two classes each, the growth percentages for sixty-three, and a personal growth line for fifty-two first generation units, with the rule that a unit's real odds are its own figures added to its class figures. Six of the rows in that personal list name units that turn up on none of our other pages, so nothing here tells you where they come from. For the units you are definitely fielding, the builds list gives nineteen builds across fourteen subjects, including two each for Azura, Felicia, Anna, Rinkah and the mage line, and it talks in skills where the class guide talks in weapons and promotions.

Our systems guide sets these five mechanics pages side by side in order of how many units each one reaches, from the single avatar out to the whole roster, with the figures behind each of them.

Standing them next to each other

Support is the resource the most things here depend on, and the one that takes the longest; the page that covers it calls the invitation route a long process in as many words. Our max support guide collects six ways to raise a rank: fight as a pair, chat in the castle once it opens in Chapter 6, hand over an accessory, invite someone over, share a hot bath, and take the conversation offered after a battle. It also explains why grinding it on Challenges and Scout maps works, which comes down to support rising on attacks that deal no damage and award no experience, so nobody gets dragged past the level you wanted.

Two ranks cash out. A+ and S each unlock a seal that borrows a class from the other unit, and an S rank between an eligible pair is what turns a pairing into an extra unit. Our marriage and children guide lists twenty-one children, each with a fixed parent, a paralogue number and a roster of who the other parent can be, which runs from twelve names up to the whole cast depending on the child. The child arrives grown, carrying a class and a skill from each parent and a stat ceiling bonus built from both, and it starts out at C rank support, so the pairing you did once pays into the next generation's pairings too. Same gender S ranks are supported and produce no child, which is worth knowing before you spend a whole route building towards one.

Where to start

If you have not begun, read the boon and bane guide and then the class guide's starting class advice, in that order, because the second one changes what the first is worth. If you are mid route and wondering why a unit feels weak, the growth rates tables will usually tell you inside a minute, and the builds list will tell you what to do about it. If you are late and thinking about a second run, start from the marriage guide and the recruitment lists together, since between them they decide how much of the cast your next path will even contain.