Hello, dear reader, I hope you’re doing well. If you’ve ever played Fire Emblem, and wished Nintendo would finally make a port for at least one game to the app store in this fantastic franchise, you’ll be somewhat pleased by Fire Emblem Heroes. It certainly doesn’t match the old games in terms of story quality or mechanics. The magic and combat systems have been streamlined for faster battles. You can’t dodge attacks. Knowing when to pull your troops back versus initiating fights is key to this game. Fire Emblem Heroes takes the edge off my Fire Emblem craving, and for now, that’s enough. Here’s a list of some tips to help you get started in the game. Note, I’m not being paid to write this article, and it contains my advice and opinions for when you start the game.
- The color system dictates weapon and magic advantage. Forget light beats dark beats anima beats light, now the system is blue beats red beats green beats blue. Magic can be in every color, including the fourth gray, or colorless, option. This means a swordsman is more effective against a green mage. Because swords are red, duh. The colorless heroes have no weakness to any other color. Archers are colorless and will deal increased damage to flying units of any color. Thankfully the game will tell you this during its story. What you’ll have to find out on your own, if you’re not a Fire Emblem fan, is that Pegasus knights generally have high resistance to magic attacks and Wyvern riders are more resistant to physical damage. When in doubt you can select an enemy unit to view its stats. To summarize, lances still beat swords, swords beat axes, and axes beat lances. You can think of magic as being the same color as the weapons. The weapon triangle is intact. It’s just more… colorful now.
- Spend your first orbs on upgrading your castle to double your experience. This will help your heroes level up with the story and help you reach the level 40 cap. It costs a total of 26 orbs to fully upgrade your castle. Just know that advancing the growth (adding stars) of a character will reset their level to 1. Hence, extra XP can be nice.
- If you decide to summon more heroes, have 20 orbs on hand. Ushi Gaming Channel, IGN, JohneAwesome, and Sagemaster15 (some adult language possible on these channels, I don't remember and I'm not responsible for them) on YouTube have been very helpful resources. Basically, when you choose to summon from one of the two available options (Focus: Legendary Heroes or Focus: Deep Devotion) it costs 5 orbs. You can then choose from the 5 available summoning circles what color you want to first summon. The next summon will cost four orbs. If you decide to summon from every circle presented to you, it will cost a total of 20 orbs instead of 25. You don’t have to summon from all 5. The hero costs are 5 orbs for the first summon, then 4, 4, 4, and finally 3 orbs. Discounts do not carry over to the next time you want to summon in case you don’t like the colors you receive. However, if you do not get any five-star heroes, the chances of collecting a five star hero increase by about 0.25%. In the tree you chose (Legendary Heroes or Deep Devotion). This leads you to a decision: continue summoning at a discount even if it’s for units you do not want, or try to summon from a specific color in order to get the rare 5 star hero you desire. Note that there are multiple five-star heroes per color. Especially red. There are lots of sword wielders in fire emblem. If I did the math correctly, you have approximately one five-star hero per every 6 packs you open because the chance to summon it increases based on your success.
- Deep Devotion seems to contain more ‘good’ characters than legendary heroes. This is an opinion based on what I’ve learned from the channels mentioned above. You can get good heroes from each summoning option. Most likely you will receive heroes you don’t want.
- Unwanted heroes can still be useful. You can turn unwanted heroes into feathers, or use them to boost higher starred versions of the same character.
- Combat is different. Initially there are no ranged weapons or magic which allow for melee and ranged combat. Thieves in this game have a shuriken symbol and throw daggers. They cannot attack the unit adjacent to themselves. Mages have the same issue. Some characters can unlock skills which ignore this rule. The 2 units I know who can do this are Hector, a 5 star axe wielder, and Takumi, a 5 star archer. They aren’t common. Make sure when checking enemy units to look at the top right of the screen. This is where they can have skills equipped. Some skills allow units to decrease enemy defenses, boost allies defenses, or deal extra damage after combat. Also check their weapons. Some have nasty abilities like swap with the target. It can get you into serious trouble.
- Make your enemy attack you on your terms. You can use the AI’s programming against it. They will attack any unit if it is presented to them. You can have a very tanky ally take the first hit and draw the enemy into an ambush. Note that units cannot counter attack if their health goes down to 0. This means you may have to allow your enemy to attack first before you can get some of your defense down skills to affect them for your turn. I’ve had several close calls.