10 Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips

Nintendo has released Fire Emblem heroes to critical success. According to Sensor Tower, the game made an estimated $2.9 million during its first day. There is so much content in this game, that simply getting started can be a daunting task. That is why I decided to bring you ten Fire Emblem Heroes beginner tips that helped me enjoy playing this game. If you aren’t quite ready to play yet, but are curious about it, check out my Fire Emblem Heroes review.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 1: Link a Nintendo Account

By linking your Nintendo account to your Fire Emblem Heroes game you can claim ten free orbs, the game’s currency. That’s half the amount of currency you need in order to summon five heroes! Odds are that you have a Nintendo account already linked to Super Mario Run. If you do there are precious few reasons not to link Fire Emblem Heroes. If you do not have a Nintendo account, seriously consider making one just to get these free ten orbs.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 2: Use Your First Twenty Orbs to Summon Five Heroes

If you do not want to link your Nintendo account, that’s alright. There are still plenty of chances for you to earn orbs. Near the end of the prologue, before you get to Chapter 1, you should have twenty orbs stockpiled. It’s in your best interest to use those first twenty orbs to summon five heroes. Odds are that the heroes you summoned will be better than the ones you have at the beginning. This is your chance to level a few strong heroes early, because the difficulty of the game picks up fairly quickly.

While we are on the topic of summoning, make sure that you always use the full twenty orb summon. Fire Emblem Heroes has an interesting summoning mechanic, where you pay five orbs up front. Afterwards, you summon five colorful glyphs that represent five heroes. You then select the first one you want to unlock due to paying the upfront five orb cost. If you choose to unlock more, the orb cost is reduced. You can opt unlock the second, third and fourth hero for four orbs each. Lastly, you can unlock the fifth and final hero for just three orbs. This brings the total to unlock all five heroes to twenty orbs. Of course there may be heroes you just have no interest in unlocking, and in that case do not use your last few unlocks. In general though, using twenty orbs for summoning is a good idea.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 3: Upgrade Your Castle

When you have a group of heroes you’re happy with, you should spend your orbs to upgrade your castle. Each castle upgrade in Fire Emblem Heroes increases the experience points you gain from all sources by a certain percentage. Experience points are used to level up your heroes and make them stronger. You can use items to gain experience, or gain it the traditional way through combat. The bonus ranges from a 20% increase all the way to 100%. This is instrumental in leveling your characters, particularly the low level heroes. Additionally, it keeps you properly leveled against the enemies.

When you upgrade your castle, the aesthetics change a bit. You do not have the keep the respective aesthetic to reap the experience point bonus. You can purchase the final upgrade, but still have your castle look like the base castle if you so choose. Doing that will still net you the 100% bonus to experience point gains.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 4: Train Several Heroes

In the beginning of the game, you can house up to 200 heroes in your barracks. This is a large amount of heroes and you should not come close to approaching this limit for some time. Do not feel that you need to stick with just four or five heroes. Make sure you are training several heroes so that you have a hero for any situation. Train several colors of heroes, train different weapon types, and train several different unit types as well.

Hand in hand with training many heroes, you need to make sure you know your heroes. Know their pros and cons, their strength and weaknesses. Playing on a map with a lot of forest spaces, consider training flying units to bypass the reduce movement. Conversely, up against an army with several flying units? I hope you have some archers trained up. Having the right hero at the right moment can turn a frustrating situation to an easy-mode win.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 5: Purchase and Equip New Skills

Along the same line as training your heroes, you need to make sure you are paying attention to their skills. As you defeat enemies in combat or level up, you are awarded some Skill Points or SP. In the Allies menu, under learn skills, you can use this SP to purchase and upgrade skills. This is important for keeping your character strong in battle. Additionally, this is how you can acquire new passives and special abilities! Your frail character may have a skill that will passively increase their defense or health. When you get a new hero, it is usually worth it to check out their skill set.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 6: Merge Allies for Extra SP

Throughout the course of the game, you are going to get duplicate heroes. Unless you really want to fill out your barracks, it may not be worth it to house the same hero more than once. Personally I merge duplicate heroes in order to get a quick SP boost. Merging heroes only works with the same two heroes, so keep that in mind. Merging heroes will cause you to lose the hero you are merging.

Pay attention to the hero star levels that you are merging! If you have two heroes of differing star values, that will affect the way merging works. If you enhance the higher star value hero by merging the lower star hero, you will gain some SP for the higher star hero. Doing the opposite, enhancing the lower star by merging an equal or higher star, will give the lower star a stat boost. At first look, it seems like you would want to give the stat boost to the lower hero. But this stat boost is lost when you opt to unlock that heroes potential. If you do get two five star heroes, it is worth it to merge them to get a stat boost.

Generally, I use the merging mechanic to give SP to the higher hero in order to unlock more skills. It does not seem worth it to me to have the stat boost on a low level hero. I can see the reasoning behind increasing the stats of a four or five star hero, but even then I would opt for SP.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 7: Complete the Daily Special Map

Everyday there will be a new special map to complete. This is quite possibly one of the most important of the Fire Emblem Heroes beginner tips. By completing these maps will get you a new hero so long as you don’t lose a hero in the process. This is a great way to start filling out your rooster, one hero at a time. If you complete the normal mode, you are rewarded with a one-star hero. Hard mode gets you a two-star hero. If you find that the daily map gives you a duplicate hero, complete and then merge the hero for some quick SP.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 8: Unlock Your Hero’s Potential ASAP

A very important Fire Emblem Heroes beginner tip is to make sure you are unlocking your hero’s potential as soon as you can. This option becomes available at level 20, and should be taken up immediately if you have the resources. Unlocking potential is how your increase your hero’s star level, and there are very few downsides to doing so. In fact, the only real downside I can think of is that they have to restart at level 1. But since they are a higher star level, it feels like a fair trade-off to me. Also, it appears that higher star level heroes have better stat gains. This needs to be confirmed, but they do seem tougher all around.

In order to unlock hero potential you need to have two specific items, Hero Feathers and Badges. The amount of each item depends on the current star level of your hero. In order to advance from a two-star hero to a three-star hero, you need 200 feathers and 10 normal badges of the corresponding hero color type. To go from three-star to four-star, you need a whopping 2,000 feathers and 20 normal badges! This may seem like a lot, but there are ways of quickly getting the feathers you need.

When you increase the star level of a hero, his level resets to 1 and his stats reset, but he retains all his skills. Additionally, increasing the star level gives the hero access to newer and usually better skills! As you can see, there are limited downsides to unlocking potential as soon as you are able.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 9: Make Sure You Complete the Daily Trainer Tower and Arena Duels

In order to unlock hero potential, you need a substantial amount of items. By competing the daily trainer tower and arena duels, you can maintain a steady supply of both Hero Feathers and Badges. The first time you complete the trainer tower each day will reward you with shards or crystals of different colors. You can use these to quickly level up heroes of the same color. The more important reward is that completing the tower will also give you badges of that same color. You can complete the tower levels as many times as you want, to continue stockpiling badges!

While you are completing the tower, do not forget to also complete your daily arena duels. Each day, you are given three arena tokens. In the arena, you compete against another player’s team of four people. The enemy heroes are AI controlled, and the battles are not too difficult. You can select a normal, intermediate, or hard level team. Once you beat the team, you are awarded points which increase your seasonal rank. At the end of the season, which lasts about a week, you gain a massive amount of Hero Feathers. Just by completing the three duels each day, you could easily get 900 feathers at season’s end.

When you beat an enemy team, make sure you send them a friend request. This way, they may friend you back in return. If a friend’s hero visits your castle, you usually get a five feather reward.

Fire Emblem Heroes Beginner Tips 10: Just Have Fun

This may seem cliche, but remember to just enjoy yourself and have fun. Fire Emblem Heroes is a game, and a very good one at that. These Fire Emblem Heroes beginner tips are just small recommendations to help you on your way. Do not take these as the only way to play the game. If you don’t enjoy the dueling arena, then by all means leave it alone. If you want to see how high your character’s level can grow, then forget about unlocking potential. The most important thing of all is that you are enjoying your time with Fire Emblem Heroes!

I hope these tips were helpful for you. They are certainly things I wish I had known in the beginning. Did you find the tips useful? Did they help you better plan your options? Are there other tips that should be added to this list? Let me know about it in the comments below.