Fire Emblem Fates, much like its predecessor, has so many areas that completely break it it's necessary to make a page just to explain why.
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The Royal Siblings
- Takumi is very good to use in the Birthright path. He joins very early with his special Fujin Yumi that is more powerful than anything you get for five or six more chapters. He also joins on a very shuriken-heavy map (which are weak to bows), and the next map after that, all the enemies are fliers, which are more prime targets for his arrows. The only thing stopping him from soloing the game is the fact that he can't attack adjacent enemies without a specialized Bow/Yumi (which often has drawbacks like lower Attack Speed or Avoid), or the DLC skill Point Blank. He also has a great personal skill which grants him +3 Damage dealt and -1 Damage taken and +10 Crit (in a class that already has a Crit bonus) if he's Supporting a same or higher-leveled unit. Takumi is very strong, and is generally agreed within the Serenes Forest forums that he's actually stronger than Mozu when both are promoted into the Sniper class simply because of the unique bow he has access to. The only advantage Mozu has over Takumi is that she has access to other classes via reclassing that have skills that have better synergy together for a Sniper. However, Takumi is still very powerful, and will undoubtedly be one of your best Snipers, if not one of your best units.
- Takumi can also reclass into the DLC-exclusive Ballistician class. One of the skills that ballistician adds essentially lets him act as a mobile ballista turret (albeit with slightly lower range), using his equipped bow for its stats. Although the ballista command can only reduce enemies to one health, he can easily soften up entire groups of enemies for the rest of your army. He can combine this with the Fujin Yumi to make Birthright and Revelation's final bosses obscenely easy to fight, even on Lunatic mode.
- Hinoka has fairly even growths across the board, which means that depending on how the numbers roll, she may end up really powerful or rather weak. However, one can focus on giving her good offensive growths by reclassing her to her Spear Fighter secondary class. Her growths as a Spear Master are good enough to rival Ryoma. Simply by doing this and acquiring the potent skills in the Spear Fighter line, Hinoka becomes a blitzing powerhouse similar to her older brother, but can also help support the team with her personal skill (which grants any ally within two spaces +2 Damage) and debuffing enemies with the Seal Defense and Seal Speed skills that the Spear Master class offers. She can return to being a Falcon Knight or even a Kinshi Knight at any point, as her heightened offensive stats and Lancefaire will help her perform better as those classes, since both classes still use Naginatas as well. She has some great skills available from the classes she has access to from her A+ Support options, from Trample and Savage Blow (A+ with Camilla in the Revelation path), to Quick Draw and Certain Blow (A+ with Setsuna), or with a little more patience, Inspiration and Demoiselle (A+ with Azura). Inspiration is especially helpful since it stacks with her personal, effectively granting any ally within two spaces +4 Damage. Hinoka's versatility as both a supportive unit and an offensive unit makes her a force to be reckoned with.
- To make her even better, one can reclass her into the DLC class Great Lord, from the Before Awakening DLC map, by clearing it without losing anyone. She gets access to the powerful Aether skill (Sol and Luna together), as well as the Dual Striker skill (boosting the damage in Attack Stance, allowing her to be a great partner in Attack Stance), Awakening (+30 Crit, Hit, Avoid, and Dodge at half health), and most importantly, Charm (any ally within two spaces deals +2 Damage). Charm is basically her personal skill, so combined with her actual personal skill, and Inspiration up above, any ally within two spaces should deal +6 Damage just by standing near Hinoka, allowing her to be a great team player.
- In terms of alternative classes via Supports, Camilla probably provides the best in terms of these classes. Wyvern Lord in particular helps maintain her Naginata and gives her a very powerful Strength, Skill, and Defense growth, and on top of her already strong growths in every other area except Magic, you would think she should have been a Wyvern Rider to begin with.
- Ryoma on the other hand, is an absolute monster. He has very high Speed, Skill, a surprisingly large amount of HP and an insane amount of Avoid and Crit. His Raijinto katana allows him to attack at a distance without any drawbacks (as most ranged weapons in this game now have some kind of drawback) and it also boosts his Strength (which was already pretty good to begin with), eliminating the two most common problems with sword using classes. He also has a fantastic personal skill which grants him +2 Damage dealt and -2 Damage taken and +10 Crit (which adds to his class's Crit bonus) if he's Supporting a same or lower-leveled unit. With some minor grinding, he can have such a high damage output that physical tanks like Generals are still easily killed in one round. In Birthright, it can actually be easier to beat the game by pairing yourself to Ryoma in Guard Stance and just letting him kill everything.
- To make him even better, reclass him into the DLC class Vanguard, from the Vanguard Dawn DLC. He will get access to Heavy Blade (+3 Str but -1 Speed, which he has more than enough of), Aether (a powerful skill that does two hits, the first healing HP equal to half the damage dealt, the second halving the enemy's Defense), and more importantly, Strengthtaker. Ryoma gains +2 Str after initiating any combat and killing an enemy, which stacks five times to a total of +10 Str. With all of that Str, you have an unstoppable force of nature on your hands.
- Alternatively, reclass him to Lodestar and have him take advantage of the speed boosts that the class has to offer through Dancing Blade (+3 Speed, but -1 Defense) and Speedtaker, allowing him to be an even speedier dodge tank. Once Speedtaker gets going, few things will be able to hit a Lodestar Ryoma at all.
- Xander. He joins in a mounted class, and has a drawback free 1-2 range weapon in a game where most 1-2 range weapons have been nerfed. He has incredible Strength and a great personal skill that only helps in killing his enemies (+2 Damage dealt and -2 Damage taken against enemies with full HP, will be very often), and he can tank hits with very high Defense and his Sword boosting that even further. His only weaknesses are Beast Killers (as he is a mounted unit, and they're also Lances which beat Swords), Magic (although this is only on the Enemy Phase, Xander often packs enough of a punch to one shot them with no fear), and his average Speed. He is a prime candidate for every Speedwing and Speed Tonic you come across, as well as doing his Fan-Preferred Couple with Charlotte as in Guard Stance, Charlotte gives Xander +8 Strength and +5 Speed. Combine all this and you have one hell of a Game-Breaker in the Nohr Route.
- To make him even better, reclass him into the DLC class Lodestar, from the Before Awakening DLC map by clearing it without losing anyone. He will get access to Dancing Blade (+3 Speed but -1 Defense, which he has more than enough of), Dual Guardsman (which will help him guard against attacks more), and more importantly, Speedtaker. Xander gains +2 Speed after initiating any combat and killing an enemy, which stacks five times to a total of +10 Speed. With all of that Speed, you have an incredibly quick juggernaut who simply cannot be stopped.
- Alternatively, reclass him to Vanguard since you can get the Speedtaker skill via completing parts of the Heirs of Fate DLC. Few things can survive getting hit by a Vanguard Xander, and what does very likely can't kill him.
- Camilla. She joins promoted with amazing base stats and growth rates, and while she is a prepromote, she gains experience at a much faster rate than normal, and is in the amazing Wyvern Rider class line. She also joins in Chapter 10 where her insane offense, speed, and bulk make her absolutely necessary to survive the map. As a Malig Knight she has fantastic Defense and Resistance which makes her perfect for taking on the armies of mages and knights in Nohr. Her personal skill helps her allies kill their enemies faster as she can grant +3 Damage to anyone standing next to her. Her only weakness is her lack of good 1-2 range, as her magic stat won't get high enough to be extremely effective. As such, one option to consider is to reclass her to Wyvern Lord after getting a few levels to get the Savage Blow skill from Malig Knight, which can help her wear down tougher enemies. Or, the player could feed her all of the Spirit Dusts they own and have her use a Bolt Axe to take advantage of the Malig Knight's magic stat. Either way, she is a flying tank and one of the player's best units in Conquest, aside from Corrin and Xander. Her Game-Breaker status has even earned her the nickname "Girl Haar", as she is similar to fellow Wyvern Lord Game-Breaker Haar from Radiant Dawn, who also joined fairly early, is a prepromote and was incredibly useful and powerful all throughout the game. Wyvern Lords might not be as absolutely effective as they were in that game, but they are still pretty damn great, and Camilla is the best example of this.
- Those who want to make her even more ridiculous should reclass her to a Dark Falcon. She may not take advantage of the class as well as other characters, but it will let her acquire Speed +2, Relief, and Galeforce. As soon as she changes back into her more heavy-hitting Wyvern Lord or Malig Knight class, Camilla will be able to wipe out the entire map.
- If there is any doubt about how absurdly beastly Camilla is, look no further than her sky high strength, which is, barring some Charlotte builds, the highest possible in the game, backed by nearly as incredible defenses. Really, the only thing holding her back from being considered on the same tier as Corrin and Xander are that Corrin is highly adaptable with a Mighty Glacier form and a Glass Cannon form, and Xander has a powerful unique weapon with a range of 1-2. And even then, when range doesn't matter, Camilla completely outclasses what is largely considered the biggest gamebreaker in this game in terms of sheer killing potential. No wonder she's a Breakout Character.
Other Characters
- Birthright Azama is astoundingly easy to underestimate. He starts off as a Monk, making him unappealing compared to a trained Sakura or Felicia/Jakob. But if reclassed into an Apothecary, he can truly shine. His base stats as an Apothecary include 15 Strength, 9 Speed, and 14 Defense, and his growth rates are comparable to Ryoma.
- Velouria is one of the most powerful children characters. Before any other parent modifiers, her Strength modifier is +4 and Defense is +3, with her only negative being -1 Skill. Give her say, Camilla, and that Strength is now +5, Defense is +4, and the Skill modifier raises and cancels out the negative modifier. On top of that, she gets access to Camilla's Wyvern Rider class line, meaning she can get Savage Blow, which will stack with Grisly Wound. She will be able to do 40% HP of poison damage thanks to those two skills, that is, if she doesn't outright kill the enemy. Marry her yourself and choose Ninja as your secondary and she can get access to Poison Strike as well, letting her do 60% HP of poison damage. Finally, like her father, she comes with Beastbane, so she will also be a powerful combatant against the fliers in Hinoka's chapter, and the foxes in the Kitsune forest (should you get her before then). Plus Camilla grants her access to Trample, which is basically a Weapon-faire against non-mounted units, so whether the enemies are mounted or not, they're going to be in a world of pain when fighting with her.
- While not as strong as the Avatar in Awakening, the Avatar in this game can be just as good even in just their Nohr Prince(ss) line depending on how the player builds them, and they also must be in every chapter, so it doesn't hurt to have this character in every fight. Most importantly, they have access to the Yato, which evolves and gets more powerful as the game continues, and a Dragonstone, which is magical in this game, so this allows them to attack a low Resistance unit while buffing their defensive stats. They can also utilize nearly every class in the game — their secondary class the player chooses at the start and classes from any A Supports they have — allowing them a wide access of skills available to them.
- Kana can become one of the most powerful and useful characters in the game if you marry your Avatar to one of the second generation kids. Under the right circumstances, Kana can excel in any role and do a better job than their parents even without the need of a legendary weapon. Kana is so great that a good parent pairing in combination with the logbook unit exploit mentioned down below can increase Kana's overall stats to ridiculous levels to the point that he/she can easily solo Lunatic Conquest Endgame without breaking a sweat.
- Ophelia's growth rates, accessible skills and classes, and stat caps make her the strongest unit possible in vanilla Conquest when given the right mother note and spouse note . See her in all her glory here
. - Midori is regarded as one of the best children in the game (and arguably one of the better units in Fates overall) due to her decent class selection, good stat growths, but mostly because of her personal skill, "Lucky Charm", which increases the proc rate of all skills that use the Luck Stat by 20%. Fates has a lot of good skills that use the Luck stat to work, so naturally lots of players abuse Midori's personal skill for the greatest effect.
- First is the "Gold Farmer" build, where players give her Salvage Blow, Profiteer, and sometimes Witch's Brew, and skills like Luck +4/Hoshidan Unity/Replicate to increase the likeliness of the skills proccing. When recruited early on, this combo can net you thousands of gold over the whole game, and it works even in Conquest.
- Second is the infamous "Miracle Midori" build, which focuses around the Miracle skill's effect of preventing a lethal blow as long as the user has at least 2 HP. Many builds have been made around this one skill, abusing Midori's personal skill, with the right setup and builds, can have a 100% Proc rate!
- A Merchant!Midori with Profiteer (aka the skill where she can get Gold Bars in her first seven turns) will be very, very useful in Conquest, where the lack of money to purchase weapons and staves is a constant issue.
- Anna from the DLC "Anna on the Run". Like with Midori, she is a common "gold farmer" unit due to her personal giving about 150 gold whenever it activates (and it'll happen a lot with her high luck stat). She is a solid Bow user when used normally, but her greatest perk is her incredible magic oriented growths and base stats in a game that lacks good offensive casters, especially since she is a Level 10 unit that's available for recruitment as soon as you can use the Dragon's Gate (which is Chapter 7).
- And if you use the free 'Anna's Gift DLC' and use the Witch's Mark on Anna. She becomes a Lv10 Witch with 20 MAG and stats comparable to Leo (save for Defense, Health, and Strength), and Leo is effectively 12 levels higher than she is at base and joins at the midpoint of Conquest. And keep in mind that Leo is one of the Gamebreaker Royal Units mentioned above.
- Oboro is without a doubt one of the single best characters on the Birthright route and one of the best non-Royalty units in the entire game! For starters she's a Jack of All Trades with balanced growths in Strength, Speed, Skill, and Defense with Resistance being the only low stat. Upon promotion to a Spear Master however, her stats all greatly increase while staying evenly paced which allows Oboro to easily become a full blown Lightning Bruiser on par with the Hoshidan Royalty. She can get access to some of the best skills without much reclassing including Rend Heaven, and Quixotic if made a Basara, Seal Defense and Speed by her base class and going Spear Master (which also grants her Lancefaire, which makes her even more ridiculous offensively). She can also become a Apothecary, allowing her to get Replicate and Profiteer. She also has a good range of Support options, such as Takumi in order to get skills like Certain Blow, Hinata for the Samurai class and skills like Astra and Duelist's Blow, and in Revelation, she can support with Beruka for some useful Wyvern Rider skills and Niles for some supportive skills like Lucky Seven. Oh and lest we forget what makes her mandatory on all Birthright maps, Nohr Enmity which gives her +3 damage against all Nohrian enemies, which Birthright is full of.
- Effie and Lightning Bruiser are synonyms. Sporting a brutal 80% strength growth as a Knight (20%+ from Knight, 60% naturally) is already quite good, but unlike most characters, she also has a very high speed growth which cancels out the main weakness of her class while also giving her good defenses.
- The fact that Scarlet is only available in Birthright outside of a couple of chapters in Revelation and can only support with the Avatar is likely to balance out the absolute insanity that her personal skill is capable of creating. If she starts a battle with under 25% of her maximum HP, her critical hit rate goes up by 30%, and since she's a female unit, she can reclass to the DLC-only Great Lord class and stack this with Awakening (see below), giving her an automatic +60% chance to land a critical hit — enough that she'll always crit when attacking with a Great Club and just about always with a Killer weapon (at maxed Skill in most classes, it'll tick just over 100%). Just on a first run, pairing her with an Avatar that grants the Samurai line to give her access to Vantage allows her to be able to survive fairly well even at the low HP that this requires as long as she can crit at 1-2 range; use Einherjar skill acquisition to bring in Vengeance and Gamble, then go to Museum Melee to get her a Peri's Lance (1-2 range, +10 to crit chance), and with max skill in her default class she'll have roughly a 50% chance of proccing Vengeance (adds half of damage taken to damage dealt, and remember that this build requires her to have already taken heavy damage) and a 96% chance of landing a critical (which puts its multiplier into effect after the Vengeance boost), attacking before the enemy can even on the enemy phase, regardless of whether she was attacked by a melee or ranged unit. Alternatively, replace Gamble with Quixotic to boost the Vengeance chance another 15% at the expense of the 10% boost to Crit that Gamble provided; this also has the benefit of adding +30 to hit rate, so when she's not at risk of getting attacked at range, she can easily switch over to the Great Club for those guaranteed crits with multiplier x4 instead of x3.
- Benny is the most Boring, but Practical character in the game, but that doesn't stop him from being the best wall in the game. He starts out regardless of difficulty with really good base stats, to the point where in Revelation he completely eclipses Effie by joining the same chapter as her and having higher values than her in every stat including strength (Effie's best stat and overall focus). He can also be promoted immediately if min maxing isn't an option. His growth rates are amazing by a non-royal's standard, having good strength and skill, absurd defense and HP, and an absurdly high resistance stat of 50%, a res stat many mages don't get in Fates, let alone an armor knight (the class which is the most magically susceptible in the game). His speed is pretty horrendous at 10% growth and single digit speed base but Generals get access to the Wary Fighter skill, making it impossible for him to double (something he literally could never do with out a lot of rallies and the enemies speed nerfed from daggers anyways) but makes it impossible for enemies to double him. As a General alone he will generally cap defense with ease to the point that many enemies on even Lunatic difficulty won't even bother attacking him because they won't damage him and he'll knock their health low enough for a weaker unit to finish them off. Even mages will struggle to bring him down due to having the highest HP growth of the first gen and good resistance. With all factors included Benny can get Renewal to be impossible to stop from even the endgame bosses AND their back up, he can get Countermagic to easily one round mages, Sol from his Fighter line to give him great self sustainability, and Heavy Blade from Vanguard as he won't be using speed ever so its essentially a free buff to his strength. Benny's only real problem is he's really slow from a meta standard, unlike Ryoma who can clear through anything in a single turn Benny will need at least two rounds to effectively deal with someone, as well as a flier to ferry him to the actual fight, but considering how the upside is literally someone most enemies won't even bother attacking due to his unmatched bulk on all fronts its not that bad of a trade off if the player doesn't care about low turn counts.
Weapons
- As mentioned up above, the legendary weapons for the royals are among some of the best. They grant bonuses simply for being in the character's inventories, so they can even be a class that doesn't use the weapon type and still take advantage of the effects.
- Ryoma's Raijinto and Xander's Siegfried are powerful 1-2 range swords with absolutely no drawbacks. In this game, most 1-2 range weapons debilitate the user in some way, by not being able to double attack, lowering Avoid, not being able to use offensive activation skills, or worse, all three. The Raijinto and Siegfried have no such drawback and can be used without fear. On top of that, Raijinto boosts Ryoma's Str by +4 and Siegfried boosts Xander's Def by +4, allowing them to perform even better in battle.
- Takumi's Fujin Yumi lets him ignore any terrain costs. This is especially helpful for the (often hard to see) Waste tiles that slows any non-flier down to a complete halt, and helps him position himself better for attacking.
- Leo's Brynhildr might not be as effective as the other legendary weapons, but it still packs a decent punch and acts like a pseudo Aegis (simply by halving magic attacks at a Skill% chance). For Might comparison, it's an E Rank Tome that has only 2 less Might than the S Rank Tome.
- The Omega Yato in the Revelation path. It is the final form of the Yato, and grants the same stat bonuses that its Birthright and Conquest counterparts give, for a nice +4 Str, Speed, Def, and Res boost. It has very high Might and its final forms ignore 75% of the defensive boost that Dragonskin gives, so it's perfect to slay the Final Boss with.
- Even on the other two routes, the Yato is still very useful. While Revelation does crank it up a lot, the Avatar will get very early access to a decently powerful weapon that only gets better, and still provides some of the stat boosts.
- The Guard Naginata. It's a C Rank Naginata that gives +5 Def and Res, turning any Lance/Naginata user into a bulky unit. This is especially notable in Birthright where most of your units are pretty frail, so a weapon like this can help survivability a lot.
- The Great Club. It gives a massive +55 Crit and its Critical Hits do 4x as much damage rather than 3x. The catch? It has an absurdly low 45 Hit, and most Axe/Club users are pretty inaccurate anyway. Unless of course, you combine it with the Certain Blow skill which adds +40 Hit when you initiate combat. With that and Death Blow, which adds +20 Crit when initiating combat, you have a Critical monster on your hands. Weapon-breaker skills can also be very useful for that purpose, and have the benefit of also working on the Enemy Phase.
- Killer weapons and high Crit weapons in general are a little overpowering since it wasn't enough that they have high Crit rates, but the fact that they do 4x Damage instead of the normal 3x means even the toughest unit can be taken down quickly.
- The Brave Weapons, giving the attacker up to 4 attacks on the same turn can be brutal, especially considering every hit has a separate chance of activating offensive skills. With a Brave weapon, Lethality, Quixotic, and Hoshidan Unity, you get a guaranteed 68% chance of insta-killing the opponent regardless of your skill rate, as long as you hit 4 times. And if the opponent happens to have Quixotic too, the chance gets ramped to 87%, and that without counting whatever your skill is. With a high skill and speed class like Master Ninja or Sniper (basically Asugi and Kiragi), and reaching around 32 skill, you will get a 80% and 92% of Lethality triggering respectively. No wonder they gave all the final bosses Dragonskin.
Skills
- It should be noted that you can buy skills for any unit if you come across another player with the same unit who has the skills you want. In other words, with enough time, money, and patience, any character can essentially get almost any skill, which breaks the game very easily. You no longer reset levels when changing classes, and if you want to increase your level cap to gain more stats or learn more skills, you have to buy the expensive Eternal Seals. However, there is no limitation to how many skills you can buy for a unit from the logbook, aside from the increasing gold costs for each skill. All it costs is a small sum of gold, depending on what skill it is and how many skills you have already bought for the unit. You could say, start off a run where your units don't have too many skills, then go online and get some good skills for a fairly cheap price to help you get through the game more easily.
- To buy a skill, you need to have a unit in the logbook that matches a unit in your current army. They could be from a past save file or a character recruited from another player. It can get expensive, especially if the unit is really strong. However, there are many castles online wherein other players leave a clear path to the throne and set their units on stand by so you can easily seize their throne. When defeated with the "No Limit" handicap condition, you can either recruit one unit for free or learn one of their skills for half the usual price. Either way, the character you picked will be added to your unit logbook for future use.
- Rend Heaven is essentially a combination of Luna and the previous game's Ignis. The attack takes half the enemies' Strength or Magic and adds it to the user's next attack with the skill chance being the user's Skill stat times 1.5. This is as effective as it sounds since it means that fighting high Strength units will give you quite a good damage boost. With units like Takumi or other Snipers, who have high Skill stats already, they can activate it constantly. The only time this skill might not be so effective is if you are using magic, since it would then take half of the enemy's Magic stat, and most enemies are physical units with little to no Magic. Still, the skill is quite reliable and is a good damage booster in general.
- Quixotic, the other skill that Basaras give, is an incredible high risk high reward skill. It grants both the user and the enemy +15% to skill activation and +30% to Hit Rate. The risk is that your enemy can hit you more easily and potentially screw you over with their own skills. But the reward? You have that same ability, so it just becomes a matter of taking them out first. It is additive, too, so that is a straight up +15% boost to say, Aether (which is dependent on Skill%/2) or even Lethality (which is even lower, at Skill%/4). It is especially good on Lethality, since with this and Hoshidan Unity (+10% skill activation rate), that's a +25% chance for instant death to your enemies, on top of whatever the user's Skill%/4 is.
- Hoshidan Unity is also very useful. Giving a free +10% chance of activating any skill ranging from Witch's Brew to Lethality is no joke, but unlike Quixotic, it comes with no such drawback.
- Replicate. This skill lets a unit spawn a copy of themselves that shares a health bar, weapons and stats. The applications of a skill that allows a unit to be in two places at once are insane, you can perform rallies across maps, spread boosting aura skills like Inspiration, have stave users using staves on themselves, having more Guard Stance partners so you don't have less units to command and many more. But the really useful stuff comes from supporting these skills on to the Avatar's brothers since their duplicates also have the same stats and weapons that make them so powerful. The final nail in the coffin is that with the right pairings, it is possible to have at least half your army with this skill, especially in Birthright and Revelation where many characters would have the Ninja or the Apothecary line as a default and/or secondary class.
- And to top it off, there is a glitch that auto-cancels the "half Mag/Str until next attack" if you pair up the Replica with the original unit in Attack Stance, as long as both units attack the opponent, even if either attack misses, or does no damage. That ensures that the incredibly powerful ranged Brave weapons, the melee S rank weapons, the Dragon and Snake Scrolls, and the Ginnungagap tome come with no drawbacks whatsoever.
- The Blow skills, Certain Blownote , Duelist's Blownote , Death Blow note , Darting Blow note , Warding Blownote , and Armored Blownote are all great skills found in various classes on both sides. Each are Boring, but Practical skills that increase a specific basic stat, but do so in a way that are more useful than you would think. Each one has a lot of synergy with other skills such as Certain Blow fixing the minus hit chance on Gamble, fixing the Great Club's poor hit rate, as well as negating the Weapon-Breaker avoid bonus; Death Blow stacks with Gamble and turning your units into crit machines, and Duelist's Blow allowing slower characters to dodge attacks better.
- Life and Death. This skill gives you +10 Damage, but you also take +10 more Damage. This is perfect for Glass Cannon characters and characters who like to keep their distance or have high Avoid and won't be getting hit anyway. With this skill and a few others that give a straight up damage boost (such as Trample, Quick Draw, Aggressor, or a weapon Faire), such a set up can turn a unit into a monster, capable of destroying things in a single hit. And if you pair it with the skill Spendthrift plus the gold bar required to activate, you get +20 damage without the drawback.
- Savage Blow, a skill obtainable from Malig Knights. It reduces the HP of all enemies within a 2-tile radius by 20% after the user initiates combat. It sounds simple but can be insanely useful, considering enemy HP tends to be quite higher compared to most of your units' in this game. Oh, and it can stack with Poison Strike and other similar skills, too. With the right set up and characters, it's possible to have three poison stacking skills that would do 60% HP damage after one attack, cutting through even the beefiest of walls.
- Galeforce returns, and while it is not as strong as it was in Awakening, it can still be very useful, especially on a unit that's strong enough to take on enemies by themselves. The Dark Falcon class that learns this skill is now a DLC class received from the Royal Royale map, and it's now gender neutral so anyone can be this class. The downside is that you can only activate it if you are alone, so no Guard or Attack Stance partners to help you out. However, with the aforementioned damage boosting skills above like Life and Death, as well as Trample, this can be an easy feat.
- Warp, a skill from the Witch DLC class, allows the user to warp next to an ally before performing an action, even if the ally is on the other side of the map. Once the DLC map was opened, spending eleven turns gives the opportunity to get the skillbook for it so anyonenote can learn it, opening up more breaking possibilities.
- Point Blank. This skill lets Bow and Yumi users fight at close range. Takumi has this in a few of his encounters in Conquest, and is one of the reasons why he is so dangerous to fight in that route. Bows and Yumi already have high enough Mt and their "balance" is that they can't attack adjacent foes. Take that away and you have what is possibly the most effective weapon type in the game, all thanks to this one skill. Plus, if you use the Spy's Yumi, which normally has 3 range, Point Blank gives you 1-3 range instead, allowing you to always counterattack. So what's the catch about this skill? It is a DLC skill, received after clearing the final Heirs of Fate map without losing anyone.
- Shelter, when used in conjunction with Azura's singing, is a speedrunner's wet dream. Because of how the pair-up system works, the fact that shelter allows you to take somebody who's already performed an action and put them in the back of a pair rather than the front means that you can have Azura sing, shelter her, have somebody transfer her to themselves and switch, and voila, you can suddenly have Azura sing again. While it's not too abusable (this still requires at least two units in order to allow Azura to sing one more time and then at least three units for each successive one since she'll need to be separated from the one who transferred her before she can be she sheltered again, and she also can only perform the additional song in a range of two spaces around where the first/previous song was performed), one need only watch this video to see how powerful this combination is.
- Awakening, which is received from the DLC-exclusive Great Lord class, grants +30 to Hit rate, Avoid, Critical rate and Critical Evade when a unit's HP is under half. Which also happens to be the triggering mechanism for Vantage (unit attacks first even on enemy phase).
- Nohrian Trust. See how many skills are listed above? Isn't a sad thing you can only use 5 at a time? Well, this skill basically allows you to have 9 skill slots if you keep the correct support partner nearby. There are literally endless possibilities with this skill, like having 7 offensive skills combined with Quixotic and Hoshidan Unity giving you massive chances to trigger them. The only problem of this skill is that it is exclusive to the Avatar and the second gens.
- Draconic Hex. A Nohr Noble skill with an amazing effect: the ability to lower all of the opponent's stats (except HP and movement) by four. While it can be a bit of a drop in the bucket at times, most others? It's an immensely powerful skill that allows whoever triggers it to swoop in and finish the opponent off.
Supports
- As mentioned above, an S support between Xander and Charlotte makes Xander even more helpful than before. Xander gains the Fighter class line, giving him access to Gamble, HP+5, Sol, and several other minor, but still useful, support abilities. Meanwhile Charlotte will get the Cavalier class, allowing her to get Luna, Armored Blow, Aegis, and Defender. The real boon though is Pair Up, as Xander paired up with Charlotte gives Xander +8 Strength and +5 Speed. Making it better, if you add in Defender, not only will Xander get all stats plus one, he'll get +9 Strength, and +6 Speed.
- Similarly, nearly any physical fighter benefits greatly from an S Support with Keaton, as his Pair Up bonuses grant a total of +7 Strength, +4 Speed and +2 Defense while also granting the desirable Fighter class branch discussed above and below. (Additionally, his daughter Velouria has some of the best base growths of the children, so she is one of the few who always ends up useful)
- On a specific note, Keaton and Camilla may as well be the gender-flipped Xander and Charlotte. Not only do they produce an incredibly powerful Velouria (see above), but Keaton will get access to the Wyvern Rider class allowing him to also stack Savage Blow with Grisly Wound and Trample to punish unmounted units, and Camila gets the Fighter class to gain Gamble, HP+5, Sol and Axefaire that she can abuse to great ability.
- In Revelation an A+ Rank support between Xander and Ryoma makes both much, much stronger. Ryoma will get the Cavalier line, giving him some very useful skills listed above. Xander will get the Samurai class line, letting him get Duelist's Blow, Swordfaire, and Astra. Duelist's Blow and Astra are particularly useful on Xander, since his average speed can give him some issues with dodging and doubling, which these two skills patch up nicely. The halved damage from Astra won't even matter much when Xander already has high strength and gets Swordfaire too.
- A similar effect can be achieved by getting the A+ Support between Silas and Ryoma in Birthright. While Silas isn't quite as powerful as Xander, he still benefits greatly from getting the Samurai line. Also, it still allows Ryoma to get all the skills from Cavalier and its promotions.
- While they start off as basic healers, the little sisters can become some of the most durable healers in the game with their A+ support giving Elise access to the Shrine Maiden classes giving her Miracle, Renewal, Tomefaire, and Countermagic and Sakura has access to the Troubadour classes giving her Live to Serve, Resistance Plus, Tomebreaker, and Inspiration.
- An A+ rank between Charlotte and Rinkah in Revelation can make Charlotte very strong while making Rinkah an actually decent unit. Rinkah can get the Fighter-Berserker class, allowing her to get HP+5, arguably the best thing she could use from it, Gamble, and Axefaire, which allows her to be useful. Charlotte, meanwhile, will be able to get Death Blow, which gives Critical Rate +20, Counter, and Lancebreaker. In fact, if set up right, this will allow Charlotte to have upwards of a 95 Percent Crit chance.
- While Mozu's legitimacy as a proper Game-Breaker is widely discussed, she had a distinct advantage compared to other parents with the child mechanic. To clarify, the child mechanic system of the game essentially put more emphasis towards the children and the sum of both parents and children's personal growth rate. As a result, the child unit will be able to turn out just fine regardless of the parent's statistics, and due to the ease of building support, potentially allows you to get the benefit of the Aptitude skill, with none of its intended downside.
- Although somewhat of a downplayed example, an A+ between Silas and Kaze can make both characters very powerful. Kaze can pick up Defender, Aegis, Luna, and Armored Blow, making up for his middling strength and low defense, while Silas can get Poison Strike, Lethality, and Replicate, further expanding his offensive prowess. What makes this practical, however, is that Silas and Kaze join on all three routes, meaning the player can obtain this support regardless of which path they take.
- On that note, getting Xander and Kaze up to A+ on Conquest will still grant Kaze with the aforementioned skills with Silas while Xander can gain access to Poison Strike, Lethality and Replicate, something he can't gain other than marrying a Ninja talent Avatar.
- Similar to their Nohrian counterparts, S supporting Ryoma and Rinkah together can lead to some devastating results. While Rinkah doesn't really get anything that makes her more viable (save for Astra, which lets her net 5 blows at half-strength in one single attack), Ryoma getting the Oni Savage class gives him access to Death Blow which makes his already high crit rate even higher, Salvage Blow which can occasionally net a free weapon for other units or for forging and Lancebreaker which removes his weakness to lances, making him harder to kill. In Guard Stance regardless of what Rinkah promotes into, she gives Ryoma a significant boost in Strength and Defense as well as activating Ryoma's personal skill, making him even stronger and safer to use than he already is.
- While Azura can be a difficult unit to make powerful, as a support unit she's one of the single best mothers in the game. Since she joins in all three routes, she has the second largest S rank support options, ranging from Ryoma and Xander, to Laslow and Subaki. This means Azura can gain a lot of reclassing options that allow her to accumulate skills and stat growths. As a mother however, she has a 60% Strength growth, and an 80% growth for Speed and Skill. Excluding magic parents like Hayato, this makes her one of the single best mothers since any child she has will gain those extremely high growths on top of their fathers. Azura and Laslow? Soleil now has one of the single highest strength growths in the game with more Speed and Skill. Azura and Ryoma? Shiro becomes one of the single most powerful kid characters with his immense speed, skill, and strength. Not only that but thanks to the variety of classes she can get, Azura can pass on good skills to Shigure such as Aegis or Lancefaire!
Avatar Logbook
- Speaking of recruiting units, the simple fact that the players can recruit a unit from another player's castle as an Einherjar is a gamebreaker itself, as a player can easily recruit a maxed out juggernaut into their own army at no cost, and even better they will be added to the logbook for future use as well. And with enough time spent visiting these "Easy Seize" castles, one can field an entire army of Einherjar units and completely crush every challenge the game has to offer in all three routes, even on Lunatic difficulty. Sure, they cannot support anyone, but that's merely a technicality when they still provide Pair-Up bonuses and basic Attack/Guard Stance benefits.
- Compounding on this, once the player clears a save, the game allows to choose up to 5 of the own surviving units to be recorded to the Avatar Logbook, with their current stats and EVERY skill they gained, whether learned or purchased, to be used as an Einherjar. And they can drop the game's difficulty down to Normal/Phoenix and keep beating the game to add or update units in the logbook with ease. This makes it very easy to customize units in other saves. And those on Casual Mode can have a Battle Save right before defeating the final boss, clear the game repeatedly, and register more units. All of this saves money from adding the units into the logbook from the Einherjar Shop, which can get costly.
- And about the ability to buy skills from other players mentioned above? After getting a skill set on a particular character, the player can add them into the Avatar Logbook. Then they can simply buy the skills from their own characters on all other files, saving themselves the trouble of having to hunt down the players they originally got the skills from again.
- And on top of all that, there's an exploit which allows the player to boost an Einherjar's stats without permanently using up any stat boosting items. It does cost a fair chunk of gold, but if you have the money, abuse away.
