Woof, I am finding myself more disoriented by this game than I expected. I am confused and seeing symbols or information that I don't know how to interpret. It's embarrassing.
1. How does class mastery work? In actual battle, I noticed that the experience pane includes a meter for "class mastery." At first, I took this to mean it was time to promote the unit because I wouldn't learn any more skills from it. But this didn't make sense because I was reaching class mastery around levels 4 or 5. What does class mastery mean and how to I use it?
2. It took me two whole lessons to realize that the lecture period was simply distributing experience to units based on their interests. I had no idea what was happening. I assume the side chores like horse tending give experience (and rewards) to things like riding, flying etc? So I should only assign those chores to people who would I want to fulfill those classes? I still don't fully understand how the experience and level up stuff at the end of the lecture period works. You can give target experience to students with high motivation, but then everyone gets experience at the end of the lecture?
3. I do not yet understand how battalions are supposed to work or when to use them. I keep forgetting they're there and who has them. I discovered a replenish option which I didn't remember being explained previously, but perhaps I just missed it in the tool tips.
4. Everybody I want to recruit wants Byleth to have certain stats in skills they prefer, but I didn't understand how to raise stats like Magic when the starting class has no magic. I found out (perhaps too late) that professors will give you experience and consume one of your activity points. Knowing this is an option, I wonder why anybody would instead choose to fish or garden, unless they don't consume activity points?
5. I don't understand where class skills are coming from. Bernadette is a noble, for example. This is her class. But she unlocks skills related to archery, like the counter ability. If skills aren't tied to class, what are they tied to? When should you ever promote?
6. Speaking of promotion, I don't understand how it works. You can use a seal to have somebody take an exam and get certified in a certain class. It will then ask you if you want to change to that class. What is the benefit of certifying a unit in a class but not switching to them? If skill unlocks aren't tied to class, when should you promote your units?
7. I reached the point where there were auxilary battles (paralogues, I assume) that I could choose from. But they have recommended levels (5 and 7) that are much, much higher than my units who are mostly around level 2 and 3. It took me about two hours to clear the first one because only Byleth and Edelgard were Level 7 and everyone else was 4 or below. It felt pretty good to clear a map that way where anybody getting hit more than once was certain death, but I can't help but wonder how I was supposed to have leveled my units. Before taking on the Level 7 map, I decided to spend another week schooling, only for the Level 7 map to become unavailable. I definitely could not have cleared that map with the units I had, but spending time to school them blocks off the option. Does it come back?
I've played a lot of Fire Emblem but FE was traditionally very rigid and easy to follow. I am still trying to make sense of all the new systems. I'm about 99% sure this is all going to click for me in a few more chapters and I'm going to end up restarting from the beginning. I hate feeling like I'm wasting time and resources trying to figure out a game once I actually understand it. I'm definitely enjoying the game but I'm as dumb and blank as Byleth when I play it.
1. Your skill levels teach you all of the random abilities and weapon arts, but class mastery ALSO gets you abilities and weapon arts, and it comes specifically from the classes instead of just 'swords' or 'flying'. It is very slow to level, only happens during combat, and usually has pretty sick bonuses.
2. You've actually got all of this spot on. Targetted instruction uses the motivation up (think of it as an F2P mobile game resource) to force feed experience to whichever skill you want for that student. Then the week goes by and whatever their goals are, gain a huge chunk of xp for everyone. Finally, the group activities are both a way to increase support bonds, and to give people riding/flying/armor.
3. Battalions are basically just equippable special moves. You don't really need them, but some of them have pretty cool utility. They DO have passive stat bonuses though, so even if just for that, pay attention when you're buying/equipping them. Some even reduce stats.
4. Fishing and gardening don't consume points. Only things with a <1> next to them will consume an activity point. You can train Byleth by talking to other teachers and spending points, students are simplers ince you can just change their goal and force them to learn.
5. As above, everything except the ONE class skill comes from your skills and not your classes. You should just promote asap, what I do is I check and see how close we are to class mastery, if it's close I'll do a battle or two, if not fuck it. Most of those skillsf rom lower level classes you won't keep around, because you have to equip your abilities (which THAT took me a while to figure out, if you go to your inventory you'll see ability and weapon arts, which are both limited).
6. You might want to unlock a class but not swap to it, not much else to it that isn't included above. Classes have minimum stat requirements and if you don't meet them you get those stats bumped up to the minimum when you learn it, so it can be an ok way to raise low stats for some characters. (IE someone with no str turns into a knight, they might get bumped to 10 str flat, even if they had 7).
7. You need to just work on levelling your weaker units instead of relying on your carrier units getting kills. This is just common for the genre, most of these games start with you babysitting your casters trying to let them get the last hit on things. The optional missions that you can spam tend to be lower level and good for xp farming if you need, and the ones that use an activity point will be equal or higher to your byleth in my experience. IE: when I go right now, my 'spammable' missions or story missions are like level 30 and my optional 'hey a rare monster is here' missions are like 39.
Is there a max rank supports can reach in part 1? Or does it just stop you from seeing the event if you reach a tier that is only available later?
Your support screen will show a faded 'support chat' icon and let you know you need to advance the story, I'm pretty sure it still tracks points behind the scenes though, and it just becomes available as soon as it can.
