Fire Emblem Heroes Wiki:Beginner's guide

FEH is a free-to-play (F2P) mobile game based on the Fire Emblem series. The game is a tactical turn-based RPG with a gacha system. This guide has been updated for 4.7.0.

For questions, refer to the FAQ. For in-game feature explanations, refer to Basics.

Summoning Heroes (and rerolling)
Heroes (units) are used to complete the content. Heroes are obtained mainly by summoning, but also from events, quests, Heroic Grails and special maps. It is advised to concentrate orbs on banners for heroes that complement teams. A typical f2p player gets about 4.5 every month unless they are very unlucky.

Each banner has a number of advertised "focus units" which are heroes that you have a higher chance of getting compared to another banner without them.

You will obtain some orbs from completing the tutorial and prologue. To collect more before your first summon:
 * 1) Go to the Home Screen and close all the popups.
 * 2) Collect all orbs/bonuses by going to the Present List (owl icon)  and tapping "Redeem All".
 * 3) Go to the Summon Tab, choose a banner and hit "Redeem"
 * - Ignore the two "Free Summon" focuses for now (Arrival of the Brave, Brave Echoes).

Choosing a summoning banner
There are several types of summoning banners
 * Heroes Fest and Legendary/Mythic Banners. These are the safest options to spend orbs on and have boosted rates compared to other banners Heroes Fest banners usually have some of the top tier units in the game currently. Legendary/Mythic Banners can be extremely good or they can be mediocre and usually have one worse unit per Color so it is advised to ask older players which ones are good before rolling
 * New Power banners: Usually feature old and outdated units available at lower rarities with new weapons (which may or may not improve them dramatically)
 * Heroes with ____ banners: These are older units being rerun. Usually there are one or two bad units on these banners available at lower rarities so ask older players before spending orbs on these banners
 * New Heroes Banners: These are brand new units being introduced into the game. Usually they are a good choice for spending orbs although the rate is only 6% and some units may later be available at lower rarities so ask older players for hints on how to tell if their rarity is lowered in the future. After summoning 40 times on these banners, they will give a guaranteed 5* of your choice.
 * Seasonal 'Special Heroes' banners: Each month, this game has banners like Summer, Hallloween banners etc. At the same time as introducing newer banners, older ones are rerun. Older banners may have extremely outdated units. It is advisable to check with other players which ones are better to summon on.
 * Double Special banner: Usually rerun newer seasonals like the legendary banners rerun normal units but don't have improved rates. They have the same rates as 'Special Heroes' only you know exactly what you're going to be getting as there are no other potential 5* other than the ones listed on the banner.
 * Voting Gauntlet/Tempest Trials banners: These accompany the Voting Gauntlet/Tempest trials and are ordered around random themes. There is usually one or two good unit and a bunch of other units ranging from mediocre to good and there are usually one or two old and outdated units available at lower rarities. Be sure to check with older players before spending on these banners.
 * Weekly/Monthly Revival banners: These tend to contain older/outdated units and may have units already available at lower rarities. They may or may not have a 4%/2% rates and are usually targetted at older players as the may contain skills or merges. Some units may be very good, others may be extremely mediocre/bad.

How to summon during a session:
 * 1) Tap on a stone and summon/pull a Hero.
 * 2) The cheapest way to summon is to pull every stone which costs 20 orbs if you haven't spent a summoning ticket or your first free summon and 15 orbs if you have. Pulling every stone is recommended for newer players. Older players may strategically pull stones only corresponding to the heroes that they want, which is called sniping, but it's also more expensive.
 * 3) Perform a free Redeem from the remaining focuses. You may also pull on those banners as well if you would like.

Evaluating your pulls
Heroes have rarity ranging from to  stars. Summons will only give you heroes between and. Failing to pull a increases your chance of pulling a  by a small amount (the amount varies depending on the type of banner) every 5 summons for only that banner. This rate stays for the entirety of the summoning session.

The rarity of the unit affects their stats. have the highest stats. Lower rarity units can be turned into a unit using s.

If you do not get a Hero in the summoning pool and you have some time to spare then rerolling is suggested. Any Hero you pull is going to be more useful than a  to start off with. As a new player, you will have very few Hero Feathers to make lower rarity units and lower rarity heroes are often missing skills that you are forced to use inherit skill on to give them those skills (which irreversibly deletes the donor unit). Re-rolling is not mandatory. However, some people are extremely unlucky and may spend hundreds and hundreds of orbs and fail to obtain a 5* unit, so Rerolling is a recommended read.

Assets and Flaws (also known as IVs)
By enabling Misc. -> Settings -> Asset/Flaw Color Display, Asset/Boon (blue) and Flaw/Bane (Red) for each Hero will be highlighted on heach hero's page. If there is no red or blue this means that the hero is neutral.

When you first summon a hero, it will always have a bane in one stat and an asset in another (unless it is neutral). Players will usually refer to the Asset/Boon with a + and a Flaw/Bane with a - so for example a hero could be -attack +speed.

A hero with the same assets/flaws always end up with the same stats at level 40 no matter the stat growths which are random.

Which Asset and Flaw
The best Asset(+)/Flaws(-) vary between characters. Here are some general guidelines:
 * For offensive units, +SPD and +ATK are generally good. -HP is typically the most sought, but -DEF and -RES aren't too bad either. An -ATK or -SPD are in general the worst
 * On characters with high DEF or RES a +DEF or +RES is good. A +SPD is also useful if the hero has high Speed as it will allow them to attack twice (double) if their speed is 5 greater than the opponent's.

Note: The Flaw may be removed by obtaining a second copy at the same rarity and merging it into the first one, leaving only the Asset of the first copy. This can be very expensive orb-wise so many f2p players may have to live with bad flaws or keep it later for use in Skill Inheritance.

Barracks management
The size of the Barracks that hold all your Heroes starts at 300. If you run out of space, consider turning duplicate  heroes with worse assets/flaws into Combat Manuals, which occupy a separate but infinite inventory. Combat manuals are unable to fight and have no IVs but can be used for skill inheritance and merging which are the main purposes that duplicate units serve in this game. Barracks space can be increased with orbs, but this may not be necessary for years.

Linking to a My Nintendo account
Once you are finished summoning and/or rerolling, link your account to a My Nintendo Account. Linking your account keeps your data safe in case you ever lose your phone, and you can receive free gifts including orbs from linking. You can also get 10 free orbs after completing the process through the My Nintendo rewards. It is advised to spend the remaining MyNintendo rewards points on Feathers (and once those are exhausted, Stamina Potions) as the rest of the resources are extremely easy to gain in game. On Android devices, if the default browser is not Google Chrome, the link process might cancel when opening the browser link and show an 803-3001 error. In that case, setting Chrome as the default browser might fix the issue.

Free Heroes
The following free units are obtainable and/or are highly recommended to obtain.

5* picks for Free Summon: Brave Echoes and Free Summon: A New Future
You may have noticed from the Free Summon: Brave Echoes and Free Summon: New Heroes: A New Future that a few choices are available.

Why Micaiah and Dimitri
These two units are very strong and are highly recommended for beginners.
 * Micaiah: Sporting dual armor and cavalry effectiveness, she is the choice for a number of F2P guide makers.
 * Dimitri: is a unit sporting damage reduction and tanking abilities

There are other reasons that people pick them:
 * 1) Dimitri and Micaiah are used often in gameplay guides for the highest level of difficulty Abyssal (which rewards golden accessories, basically useless if not pretty decorations). Guides are basically solutions to difficult maps.
 * 2) AI enemies in this game are very sensitive. Slight changes in stats can cause them to move in different patterns, so if you follow a guide with a Dimitri and Micaiah that have different stats to your own copies, you may be unable to win. All free units have neutral IVs and thus all have the same stats, so a Dimitri and Micaiah picked as free have exactly the same stats as the ones used in the guide. Therefore, the guide will always work for you.
 * 3) The chance of getting a unit with neutral IVs from a normal summon is very low. Not only would you need to summon Dimitri and Micaiah but you also have about a 1/25 chance of getting one with neutral IVs.

You may hear from other players that beating very difficult maps are very easy. Beware! Even when using extremely easy to use explicitly rolled for 5* gamebreaking "cheese" units from the gacha, in this editor's experience it can still take upwards of ten hours to find a way to solve an abyssal difficulty map.

Heroes' Path
Go to Home (your castle) and tap the shield in the upper-left to view your Heroes' Path progress. This is a series of quests meant to help beginners learn the ropes of FEH. The rewards include five more free Heroes, so it's advised that you check back here often and get these quests done as soon as you can. For now, you should be able to claim 2 orbs and  with what this guide has walked you through so far.

Here are a total list of Heroes' Path units:

Though these quests are fairly straightforward, a word of warning: Heroes' Path will walk you through upgrade methods such as Merging Allies and Using Dragonflowers. Please treat these features with caution (as below).

Common Beginner Mistakes
Here are the most common unfortunate and irreversible mistakes that beginners make:
 * Inheriting a skill to a unit who already has the skill in some other form, for example in their weapon
 * For example, for the skill has a description "Unit can counterattack regardless of foe's range." A unit may have the weapon, for example,  which has the description "Slows Special trigger (cooldown count+1). Unit can counterattack regardless of foe's range. If foe's Range = 2, calculates damage using the lower of foe's Def or Res." In this case, the unit should not inherit  because the weapon already provides it!
 * However some skills, such as those dealing with stats, may stack!
 * Merging/dragon flowering/send home/combat manuals/using inherit skill (in such a way that you give THEIR skill to SOMEONE ELSE thus deleting your free unit) on units received for free, and then later realizing that you need to use that unit in a F2P guide for difficult content.
 * These units include:
 * These units may be included in the future:
 * (the one you receive as a free 5*, any others can be upgraded, including 5* you make yourself of him)
 * As mentioned earlier, all units received for free have neutral IVs, so their availability and stat consistency makes them common candidates for guides. AI is very sensitive to any stat changes so following a guide can fail if the units' stats are changed. If the player no longer owns the unit, it is unlikely they will be able to follow the guide with an alternative unit.
 * Using Inherit Skill, thus deleting a unit when the skill obtained is easily-available on  or  units.
 * Please see this page List of inheritable skills before passing a skill on
 * Please exercise caution when using for skill inheritance!
 * Merging a or  unit into a  unit
 * Doing the above will only give you SP which can easily be farmed!
 * Merging a or  unit and later using  to unlock the unit's potential
 * Any merges will be lost after upgrading the rarity of the unit. It is highly advised to only use to unlock potential on 4* units and then merge the new  with other  units, although this process may be slow.
 * '''send home/turning into combat manuals/using inherit skill (in such a way that you give THEIR skill to SOMEONE ELSE thus deleting your unit) on units that are required to score well in certain modes
 * Legendary Heroes with Ally_Boost_Battle.png are designated units that assist in the scoring in Allegiance Battles
 * The description of their effect is An ability that can only be used under certain circumstances. Pair Up can be accessed from the Interact with Allies menu, and allows this unit to join battle in a group with another ally.
 * Examples of these units include and
 * Mythic Heroes: In particular, careful attention should be paid to Light mythics such as and Astra mythics such as
 * It may be desirable to keep two separate copies of Mythic Heroes rather than merging them together, for optimal score boosting
 * Failing to inherit all levels of the desired skill that the user wants by accident
 * Merging a or  unit and later using  to unlock the unit's potential
 * Any merges will be lost after upgrading the rarity of the unit. It is highly advised to only use to unlock potential on 4* units and then merge the new  with other  units, although this process may be slow.
 * '''send home/turning into combat manuals/using inherit skill (in such a way that you give THEIR skill to SOMEONE ELSE thus deleting your unit) on units that are required to score well in certain modes
 * Legendary Heroes with Ally_Boost_Battle.png are designated units that assist in the scoring in Allegiance Battles
 * The description of their effect is An ability that can only be used under certain circumstances. Pair Up can be accessed from the Interact with Allies menu, and allows this unit to join battle in a group with another ally.
 * Examples of these units include and
 * Mythic Heroes: In particular, careful attention should be paid to Light mythics such as and Astra mythics such as
 * It may be desirable to keep two separate copies of Mythic Heroes rather than merging them together, for optimal score boosting
 * Failing to inherit all levels of the desired skill that the user wants by accident

Building Your First Team
Because of the weapon triangle, a team should have heroes cover at minimum two colors but is suggested to have all three (red, green, blue). A team should also have Heroes with different damage types (one physical and one magical) to be able to hit the lower of an opponent's DEF or RES stat. Weapon types are divided by color and damage type as shown below.

If you did not pull any Hero you like you can have a starting team that looks like this:.

Tactics Drills: Basics
To get a better sense of how the game's combat works, consider doing the Basics line in Tactics Drills (Battle > Story Maps > Tactics Drills > Basics). These are special maps in which you are given pre-determined units and asked to complete the map within a turn limit, so it's somewhat like a puzzle. Each completed drill gives 300 feathers or 1 orb for drills that are multiples of 6. Just do the Basics section for now - the Skill Studies and Grandmaster sections are best saved for when you're more experienced. If you are super lazy, you can just view youtube guides or Gamepedia for written solutions describing how to complete tactics drills.

Completing Main Story Maps / Paralogues
Play through the Main Story maps and Paralogue maps on Normal, then Hard, then Lunatic. This gives orbs and familiarises you with the game. You can change options in the Settings menu during or outside the battle to display/disable combat animations and unit movements. Stamina potions are common and can be received as mynintendo rewards. Light's Blessings are rarer so it better to Give Up and try the stage again than using a Light's Blessing to Continue.

Once you have collected some orbs, you can summon some more Heroes to help you out. You can try out new Heroes and see what suits your playstyle. After playing through of story mode and paralogues on normal you should have around 180+ orbs which can be converted to another 45 or more Heroes.

As you will likely not have too many Heroes to work with to start off, here are things you can do to increase an individual Hero's overall strength:


 * Leveling Up
 * Upgrade your castle to double to permanently double a unit's experience through Home Upgrade Castle Button.png. However, levelling is quite easy in FEH. When your account becomes older and you have access to blessings, it takes one application of every special training map difficulty to fully level up a 5* unit which only takes a few minutes.
 * Heroes level up fastest in Battle > Special Maps > Special Training and selecting the appropriate difficulty.
 * Tip:  After you've levelled up some healers/dancers to level 40 you can use this trick. Assemble a team of 2 level 40 dancers, 1 level 40 healer, and 1 unit to be trained in the level 5 map. Bless the training unit with any blessing and unequip the dancers' and healer's weapons. Double check that the training unit has a weapon equipped and does not have sing/dance equipped. Now hit auto-battle and the dancers will automatically dance/sing your training unit and auto-train them.
 * Summoner Support
 * Pick your strongest/most used or Favorite Hero and summoner support via Allies > Interact with Allies > Summoner Support. The Hero will gain HP+3 and Res+2. They gain more stats as they battle level 35 enemies. Summoner support can be changed at any time.
 * Ally Support
 * Select two Heroes which you frequently use on the same team and ally support them with Allies' > Interact with Allies > Ally Support. Both Heroes will get Res+2 during combat if they are beside each other, and like summoner support gain more stats when they battle Level 35 enemies. Ally support can be changed at any time.
 * Learning Skills
 * Your Heroes can gain new abilities by going to Allies > Ally Growth > Learn Skills > Selecting the appropriate skill and tapping Teach.
 * SP is gained from defeating enemies. It's easy to earn from defeating enemies in Special Training maps even after you reach level 40, so there's no damage in using the Auto-Learn function

Okay I finished Story mode, what all this extra stuff?

 * Login daily:  This may gives orbs and other goodies.
 * Free summons:  From time to time, FEH has new summoning banners and the first summon is always free
 * Tactics Drills - Skill Studies:  (Difficulty: Moderately Easy) These reward orbs for every 6th map, and feathers for all others. Each map focuses on a few specific skills and relies on utilizing the featured skills. Since your units are pre-set, if you get stuck then you can simply look up solutions on this wiki or elsewhere online.
 * Tactics Drills - Grandmaster:  (Difficulty: Difficult) Again, these reward orbs for every 6th map and feathers for all others. Clearing strategies here are much more tight, and it's common to win with your units at near-death. However, like Skill Studies your units are pre-set, so you can look up step-by-step guides if you're stumped.
 * Chain Challenges (Lunatic):  (Difficulty: Slightly difficult) These also reward orbs but require about 1 to 3 teams to clear. The other difficulties are easier but only reward feathers, not orbs. Once you lose a unit, you won't be able to replace the team until your whole team wipes.
 * Squad Assault:  (Difficulty: Difficult) These also reward orbs but require about 5 extremely solid teams or more to clear. You can't lose a single unit on map or else it will be game over. Largely, this mode can be cleared by Color matching (see green units on the map, pick blues etc) but you must watch out for turn limit maps.
 * Blessed Gardens:  (Difficulty: Very Difficult) The maps are no longer getting updated. These maps can be difficult because it is similar to Squad Assault but with higher stats, only units blessed with the specific blessing can get entered (arbitrarily dividing up your usable units) and on top of that there are turn limit maps from time to time. Also, you can't lose a single unit, as in Squad Assault, or it will be game over. One method of clearing these maps and getting the orbs/divine dew/feathers etc. out of them is to wait until you have a really good hero collection and cycle your strongest heroes through all the blessings. However, this is also quite risky as blessings are given to you at a snail's pace so if you run out and still can't complete the map and you are needing to swap the blessings soon to use your strong units in other places (for example, in Aether Raids) you could be a bit screwed! However, elemental blessings currently are not being used for anything except a tiny score boost on arena rewards so this method seems viable.

Coliseum rewards
Allegiance Battles, Arena, and Arena Assault rewards reset every week Tuesday at 7:00 AM UTC.

All arena modes give rewards weekly and players should try and log a decent score on all of them! If you are an f2p player you will get about 80% of the reward without trying hard. Orbwise, that's 4 orbs out of the 5 orbs from arena/allegiance battle rewards that you are getting which is really good! To get the remaining final orb/and to score highly in ranks, you would have to funnel a huge amount of f2p resources into it.

Protip: All arena modes will award higher scores to heroes which are merged so if you are newbie it might be worth thinking about merging up your Favorite hero from the 3* to 4* pool to score better (as in, using 20,000 feathers to make them 5* and then merging more 5* copies of the same unit into it. Why 3* to 4*? Because an average 5* heroes cost 1200-2000 orbs [about 6 months of not spending a single orb] to max merge on average and feathers are way easier to get.).

Protip2: Never ever summon specifically for a bonus unit, unless you are in Arena tier 20 and need to get into Arena tier 21 and the free unit you are using won't score well enough. You can just use the Askr units at 5* on a cheap budget build as a bonus unit otherwise.


 * Arena: (Difficulty: Scales to what heroes you use)
 * What this is: You have to clear five maps in a row and try and win without losing your heroes
 * A newer player will quickly ascend to Tier 17 without much difficulty.
 * At around Tier 18, it is advisable to start thinking about 5* your Askr units as a bonus unit (which increases the score you get) if you don't have one for that week
 * Tip: To score slightly higher at Tier 18+ it is advised that you restart your arena battles if you lose a unit, if your score is slightly too low, try and get your bonus unit to do the kills (but it can't die!).
 * Allegiance Battles: (Difficulty: Depends on how much score you want)
 * What this is: You clear maps, but do so following the color triangle. To score the highest, Red needs to kill green, Blue needs to kill red, Green needs to kill blue, colorless needs to kill colorless
 * In Allegiance battles only only the unit in the last slot can pair up with a friend's Proxy Hero. Legendary Heroes such as and  can also use the set: Pair Up ability in this mode.
 * However, even if you don't have a legendary hero with the Pair Up ability, getting a score of 775 (is quite easy) will get you 4 orbs of out of the 5. Every week you play you get +1 added to your score so that adds up and eventually you will get max rewards so don't worry too much
 * Tip: Allegiance battles use your friend's units and you can only use each friend's hero once a day! It's advisable to start making friends who play actively because that also adds to your score slightly. I suggest checking out Reddit's Fire Emblem Heroes friend threads for more
 * Tip 2: If you kill only one enemy on the first turn and four-five enemies in the second turn it can help prevent you from being overwhelmed by enemies and consequently losing out on perfect color matchups
 * Arena Assault: (Difficulty: Depends how much effort you put in)
 * What Arena Assault is: You basically beat seven maps in a row and try and win without losing your heroes.
 * It can be difficult to fill all the slots if you are a newer player. What some people do to get the base rewards is just do one battle with a level 1 hero and win. Because if you put in a level 1 hero, the game will also give you level 1 heroes... which won't give you an amazing score but will give you a pretty decent set of rewards all the same. Or just do one battle with a full team! Or a few battles!
 * Tip: The longer you play, the more heroes you will collect, which will help you have more heroes on hand with which to defeat your opponents
 * Resonant Battles:
 * What is it: You have only nine attempts to take out every thief on a map without dying when using heroes from matching bonus games on a preset map.
 * Difficulty: Absurdly, insanely difficult to obtain perfect clears the higher your interval. As of Interval 15, each thief can get up to 49 base speed and guardian units have something like 40 def/res and 40 speed. You are also limited to one dancer but unfortunately the dancers for some games are only available at 5* which is how the mode tries to force you to spend orbs. You also need a lot of 5* heroes from every different Fire Emblem game to do well so it is not beginner friendly at all.
 * Tip: This mode does not give you any orbs so don't worry too much if you can't get a perfect score. Do the best that you can
 * Tip2: On youtube/reddit, people have made perfect video solutions so even if you don't have a Harmonized hero that the mode tries to force you to roll, don't be too concerned. Simply search Resonant Battles solutions for that week on youtube to get them or follow people who make them such as Pheonixmaster1
 * Tip3: Ideally, your Resonant Battles team consists of 4 characters from only the bonus titles. It is highly recommended to use a dancer. If you are going to try and solve the maps perfectly yourself, it is recommended to use the preview function on the map before you make an attempt and to plan your movements out before you actually start the map because you only get 9 attempts. Things to keep in mind:
 * Thieves will always try and move towards the escape tiles and they can only move one space at a time so either blocking the thieves from escaping so they waste turns or killing them before they can reach the top is extremely important. As thieves at the top are usually two turns away from escaping, reaching them first without dying to the guardians is the priority
 * Thieves may carry a variety of useful items which will help you reach the top of the map. The most valuable ones are Dancer's Veil (grants an extra move to a unit that has already moved randomly -- now you can rig it to always hit the character you want by moving them first and then using the item immediately) and Infantry Boots (which grants an extra mov to all your unit)
 * as a special will not work as guardians and thieves will add to your special charge if they die. The only way to get off a galeforce as a special is to hit the unit without killing it which requires calculation.
 * Clever use of skills such as, and  may be essential to achieve clears

Complete Quests
Quests have different rewards and some of them will be orbs. Quests may have time limits. Remember to Redeem All' when you have finished your quests.

Orb quests tend to come in a few categories:
 * Defeat Hero X at level 40 using Hero Y at level 40 (Difficulty: Moderately Hard unless cheesed): Unit Y will almost always be one of the Askr Heroes which makes them popular to 5*. It may also be a hero you just got for free at 3* to 4*
 * Tip:  If you are struggling as a newbie, these quests usually aren't linked to a specific map. There are two main methods people use to cheese these quests. Firstly, a less stat inflated or a version of the hero you are trying to defeat which doesn't have its special charged might be findable inside either Story Mode at Lunatic or maybe it will be available inside a Chain Challenge. Secondly, some kind people may leave weaponless versions of Hero Y inside Arena Assault.
 * Clear Map X using a team of Y (Difficulty: Can be easy, can be quite difficult): Usually these teams require four infantry, four armoured, four flier or four cavalry units.
 * Tip:  As a newbie, you will want to try and get a decent team of each although you may also find that you are forced to swap out your Favorite units for other ones if the map requires it. You may see F2P guides on Reddit which will tell you what free units to use and what seals (or no seals) can clear them straight away.

Check Special Maps Often
Check this mode often! There are special maps that are not part of the rotating five maps and can last anywhere from 4 to 14 days and can be easy to miss.

There are 5 rotating maps can be completed at any time meaning there is no rush to beat these maps: Special Training maps are used to level up your Heroes and earn SP. You may also run into Hero Battles maps. In general, at any difficulty, from the easiest to hardest, it is Hero Battle maps, Grand Hero Battle (daily revivals), Grand Hero Battle (reruns/brand new one), Bound Hero Battle and Legendary Hero Battles. Grand Hero Battle maps allow you to obtain heroes that are not summonable. A newbie is recommended to attempt at least Hard Difficulty on each of these and try and beat any quests as those are limited time. Developer Challenges, and Thank You maps are other maps you may encounter.
 * Rival Domains maps use large maps instead of standard maps and provide rewards based on obtaining a certain score.
 * Difficulty: If you leave your brigade blank it will fill it with random Heroes. For the higher difficulties it is advised to seek out friends, especially friends with a 5* +10 merged lead unit as it will enable you to autobattle even the highest difficulty and get the rewards without lifting a finger
 * Rewards reset weekly
 * Hero battles contain Heroes you can pull from normal summoning sessions, but this is a guaranteed method of obtaining them.
 * Difficulty: Extremely easy
 * 2 Grand Hero Battle Revival (GHB) maps cycle every day, allowing you to obtain Heroes that do not appear in a normal summoning session.
 * Difficulty: You can pick your difficulty so they range from Hard to Abyssal. Some maps may contain reinforcements which can turn an easy map into a very difficult one.
 * Bound Hero Battles (BHB)
 * Difficulty: You can pick your difficulty so they range from Hard to Infernal.
 * Legendary Hero Battles (LHB)
 * Difficulty: No matter what difficulty you pick you will be met with tons of reinforcements and losing a single unit will result in a game over, they range from Hard to Abyssal. Abyssal Legendary Hero Battles are one of the most difficult modes this game has to offer.
 * Some of the most memorable enemies include an enemy singer to a hero that can give their allies set: Bonus Doubler . Searching F2P Guide Legendary Hero Battle NAME will yield a lot of guides that will give you solutions to these maps if you struggle to strategise.
 * A general approach to beating these maps (and GHBs, BHBs) without guides once a user's account is older is to use a ranged nuke and three dancers/singers possessing Wings of Mercy. Some popular choices for a ranged nuke include Ophelia (with special spiral), Celica and Nino. Using a Brave Bow approach in such a way that it allows one to strike 4 times is also a popular approach.
 * Other approaches include waiting until one's barracks are appropriately built and/or have units with a lot of 5* +10 merges and to learn AI manipulation (for example, from Mia's AI Manipulation Instructional Academy). The people who create F2P guides may use F2P units with no skill inheritance to win but most users will lack the skills.
 * Limited Hero Battles
 * Difficulty: These are much harder versions of Legendary Hero Battles where you can only use units from specific games. If you don't have decent units for each game that also have decent skill sets, clearing these will be impossible. You likely won't be able to clear these as a newer player, but you can try to do at least hard if you have the units for the games listed.

Participate in Events
Like Special Maps, Events contain special maps that only appear for 6-14 days. These events can involve leaderboards, but rewards are generous even if you put in minimum effort.

Never roll specifically for a bonus unit for any of these modes. Having bonus score in Voting Gauntlets is essentially worthless (and usually there will be one that is a free unit anyway) and Tempest Trials will give you a free bonus unit anyway within a battle or two.


 * Tempest Trials+:
 * What is it: Fight through a series of maps before confronting and defeating a "boss map". This event gives you the most resources in all of FEH so play this mode as much as you can in those 10 days. It also has a PvP aspect where you can earn extra feather rewards by getting a higher score than other players.
 * Difficulty: Moderately Easy
 * Tip: This mode is cheesed largely in two different ways. Firstly, players may Autobattle Hard with four units that are tanky. Please see The Autobattle team under Team building 101 for more information. Secondly, a player may play the highest difficulty twice and autobattle the third battle every day which basically clears most of the Tempest Trials and then autobattle the rest. To avoid having to repeatedly press Autobattle, set it to Continuous Auto


 * Grand Conquests:
 * What is it: Fight over territory in a similar fashion to Rival Domains. This mode has a decent amount of rewards to give.
 * Difficulty: Moderately Easy
 * Tip: Grand Conquest uses a seperate stamina system and it is quite strict -- if you do not get near perfect scores on lunatic 5 you can miss the final orb reward (so if you are autobattling, autobattle lunatic 5 or higher!). On the other hand, if you have a brigade of strong friends, say friends with +10 units as their lead units, you can very easily autobattle the highest difficulty and be done with the mode quite quickly. It is highly recommended that you get friends (and also build up a 3* to 4* pool 5* merged unit as mentioned previously above and set that as your lead unit when sending friend requests as people can be quite fussy about what friend requests they accept) for this purpose, for example, add people's friend codes off reddit or gamefaqs if you don't know anyone in real life.
 * Tip 2: For people looking to get the maximum feathers, try and ration the stamina lances and aim for a good score on each round. Ranking number one on one round and failing to rank well on the subsequent rounds will get you less feathers than getting a decent score on each of them!


 * Voting Gauntlet:
 * What is it: Voting Gauntlet is where you pick 1 of 8 Heroes and garner the highest support in a single elimination tournament. You get put on a map with 3 enemies, the first unit from your current team, a friend's lead unit (if someone chose the same team as you) or otherwise a random ally and a random ally
 * Difficulty: Easy
 * Tip: You need at least 10 friends for this mode to get the maximum score multiplier. It is recommended to get more than that for the other modes. If you are lazy, you can pick a hero that is unpopular, then you will have a lot of loser multipliers. Loser multipliers are much greater than winner multipliers and so it will boost your score a lot more and allow you to rank better in the army without spending your entire life watching what multiplier will come up next (although you may not get victory feathers). As more time passes from the start of the event, the multipliers get greater so it's recommended to max out the flags given to you for that round and ballots on the multiplier on the last day on a loser multiplier and one time before that too...


 * Tap Battle:
 * What is it: A casual rhythm minigame.
 * Difficulty: Absurdly Easy
 * Tip: The rank and difficulty you choose do not affect the reward meaning, if you are lazy, you can just mash through all the maps without even bothering to listen to the music. Under settings you can also increase the speed to get the rewards even faster.


 * Forging Bonds:
 * What is it: You beat all the enemies on an easy map repeatedly until you get all the rewards and read some conversations.
 * Difficulty: Easy
 * Tip: Can be beaten by autobattling the maps on the hardest difficulty with the same team you used for Tempest Trials. Make sure you get at least the four summoning tickets if you can't be bothered to finish it.
 * Røkkr Sieges:
 * What is it: You beat a boss with a lot of HP
 * Difficulty: Easy, Røkkrs have relatively normal stats aside from their HP.
 * Tip: Each round takes about 10 minutes to do. For a person who doesn't really want to put in that much effort, use the same tanky team self healing team you used for Tempest Trials and Forging Bonds and manually attack the Røkkr. You may want to pick tanky units that have a weapon-triangle advantage or effectiveness against the enemy. It is advised to use or skills that inflict set: Guard in the B slot as it will prevent the Røkkr from doing damage with Umbra specials and prevent the Røkkr from swapping spots when this happens.
 * Tip 2: If you want to get the accessories (150,000 score in one battle) or go for a high score, it is very difficult and/or expensive but people largely do it by using units with a Brave effect (as in, it hits twice by default and can hit up to 4 times if its speed is 5 speed faster than the opponent's speed). Commonly units such as  (with refine),  and  (with refine),  in the A slot, in the B slot, anything in the C slot,  and any movement assist. Two dancers (such as ) are also used to make the unit hit even more times and another unit, for example, one with  responsible for defeating the enemies that spawn.
 * Lost Lore:
 * What is it: An idle mode where you send your units out to find lines of lore
 * Difficulty: Easy
 * Tip: It's a very simple mode. Mostly you just send out units corresponding to the Bonus Titles list (these units are marked by a green arrow). Lost Lore can also be used to build up ally support between two units passively without battling maps.
 * Hall of Forms:
 * What is it: A mode where you start off with four preset units at level 1. The first unit that gets a kill on each map can be 'shaped' (given skills/weapons or a merge)
 * Difficulty: Fun but can be difficult if you have bad luck or miss days
 * Tip: It's preferable to try and keep units at roughly the same level but if getting the unit the level will result in losing a map, avoid it! Losing a map means that you miss out on precious skills and merges. Torches are only given from completing floors the first time and once they are exhausted, you only get 3 more stamina a day! (for this reason, it's also preferable to only learn skills/weapons if you can imagine the unit keeping it for the whole run as replacing a skill or weapon means that a potential merge is lost)
 * Tip 2: Movement assists are extremely important and rare compared to the sheer number of rallies and other skills (such as, , ) so securing a movement assist will make this mode significantly less painful. >  >  in that order. After movement assists, the unit's weapon/A skill/B skill/S slot are generally considered the most important skill slots. Ideally, for the unit's Special, you will want a low cooldown special like  or  or  so the map isn't over before you get to use it.
 * Tip 3: You can preview the enemies and the layout by pressing the cross shaped (+) button when you select the map (before beginning it). If you think that you can't defeat the next chamber, you may want to grind your units up on a map that is about the same level as the units you want to level up/acquire skills for. More enemies might also be better as it gives more exp but can also be risky if they are strong! After one chamber has been defeated, all the enemies/layouts for each floor are rerolled so they may be stronger or weaker (and it may be a good idea to preview the next chamber again!)
 * Tip 4: Chambers 21-25 are incredibly insanely difficult and are usually not necessary to beat, because most months we don't get enough codes in total to purchase the final combat manual (worth 100 codes) even if you do everything that rewards codes.
 * Mjolnir Strikes:
 * What is it: Prevent the enemies from the destroying the portals or defeating your units! The unit at the top can't get attacked
 * Difficulty: Easy/Medium
 * Tip: This mode tries to force you to roll for mythic heroes. For each pairup, it takes the maximum arena scoring for the two units but mythics matching the major season basically get 10 extra merges. So basically you can have a unit that scores and a unit that you actually use to clear the maps in each pairup.
 * Tip2: This mode highly favours a 'nuke and two dancers' team archetype at the bottom where you can have two dancers that gives your ultra nuke -- for example . At the top you can have a unit that makes as many moves per turn as possible (for example, units with might have an easier time of it. Units with built in/modified versions of Galeforce will work the most effectively as a top unit, such as  and, however the mode is easy enough that you likely won't struggle even if you don't have them.

Aether Raids
Aether Raids rewards reset every week on Monday at 7:00 AM UTC. What is it: You use your team to invade another player's Aether Keep (their team is controlled by the AI). Difficulty: The hardest thing in the entirety of Fire Emblem Heroes

Every player beginner or veteran should be playing Aether Raids as it provides lots of Heroic Grails needed to summon Heroes from the Use Heroic Grails menu. Aether Raids also rewards you with Aether Stones that can be used to improve structures in your Aether Keep. Aether Raids needs to be played once a day for 5 days to receive the daily rewards.

Surviving Aether Raids
Due to absolutely poor game balance, past the initial few tiers, Aether Raids becomes fairly difficult for a newbie, as early as Tier 15.

This is due to several factors. To address this, it is recommended that resources should be first spent on expanding the offense team slots, offense bonus structure, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and methods of gaining Aether (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿) in order to stand a chance of winning a battle.
 * Fortress upgrades are timegated which means that players who have been playing for a long time may have something like a +16 to every stat advantage against newbies which is why a newbie's Offense fort should always be prioritised in order over the Defense fort
 * older players may also have fully merged +10 units which contribute to an additional +4 to all stat advantage over newbies and tricky positioning
 * There is no limit on dancers/singers on the opponent side. Of particular note is who can add a +6 set: bonus to Atk/Spd/Def/Res on these units and set: Mobility increased.
 * the existence skills such as Bonus Doubler which can double bonuses.
 * traps and structures that lower stats of the raiding team.

It is also recommended that users who wish to reach higher tier Aether Raids tiers summon specifically for a second light Mythic Hero (e.g. ) or to summon specifically for two astra Mythic Heroes (as having a team containing two of the light or astra mythics in their respective seasons maximises score gain).

Make Some friends
This is where you can add friends or check your friend requests. You can view your Friend Code (10-digit ID number) to provide to over players. You can send requests by entering a Friend Code, select a name from the suggestions list, or send a request after playing Arena or Arena Assault.

Gradually power up your teams
The content outside of story mode can be challenging or require specific requirements to complete. As a result, it is important to start thinking about building up different Heroes:


 * Put a strong focus on building and improving your core team.
 * Build about 4 or 5 other teams to rely on:
 * - Preferably each of those teams should focus on one movement type so you have 4 total teams that consist of only units, only  units, only  units, and only  units. (These teams are known as X emblems and are mainly used for quests which reward orbs)
 * Confer Blessings on each of the 3-4 teams
 * - This is so you can enter the Blessed Gardens maps, which provide a healthy amount of orbs, feathers, divine dew, and more blessings.
 * Invest in Sacred Seals
 * The Sacred Seal forge can be accessed by tapping the silver coin on the top-right corner of the home screen. Seals are very flexible because they act as equippable skills. Sacred coins are handed out by playing Arena and/or Arena Assault. Recommended seals include ', ', and  as they provide immediate benefits.

Weapon Refinery
The Weapon Refinery is able to refine specific weapons as the name implies. They require Arena Medals,  Refining Stones, and/or  (differentiating it from Learn Skills) as well as SP.

You will receive plenty of Refining Stones for use. If you have insufficient, you may refine more weapons with Refining Stones to receive the.

Unlocking Potential
Unlock potential increases a Heroes rarity by 1. It requires s. It should be carefully planned (especially when making ), and should only be used for 3 purposes (from most to least important):


 * 1) Using the unit in content for a specific niche/or backup in challenging content such as Arena Assault.
 * 2) Using the unit for skill inheritance on a  exclusive weapon, special, or skill to a hero that requires that skill to perform its role.
 * 3) Merging the  hero as part of a core team (only do this when all unit niches are fulfilled - hence this is the least important)

Promoting (,, and ) is helpful for quests that they are featured in.

A core team is the main team used for Arena and Allegiance Battles, which focusses on scoring. It can also be used for Arena Assault (the first team used is used to determine the strength of opponents faced) but it is important to be capable of defeating stronger opponents that come from using the scoring team. Before promoting a hero to to use their skill, check if the skill can be inherited from a 4★ hero.

The amount of feathers required depends on the rarity of the hero: There are two main sources of feathers:
 * Events: In particular, Tempest Trials+ gives you around 10,000 to 21,000 feathers depending on how you rank among other players. Voting Gauntlet only provides 3,000 to 10,000 feathers but this is still a decent sum.
 * Arena: Every week you can get around 4,000 to 9,000 feathers
 * Arena Assault: This mode gets you around 500 to 5,000 feathers per week

A decent amount of feathers can be collected by going through daily arena matches, weekly Rival Domains, and Blessed Gardens. Other methods to collect feathers (e.g. Grinding Hero Merit, lower difficulty Chain Challenges) is not worth the effort put into it unless you really need are in extreme need of feathers.

All in all, the influx of feathers is about 10,000 feathers to 30,000 feathers weekly. A player hovering around Tier 18 with only one decent team and performs average at events should expect ~17k feathers a week.

Inherit Skill (or Skill Inheritance)
Inherit Skill is an irreversible action that removes a hero from your barracks and gives up to four skills to another hero. If skill has prerequisite skills, those must be inherited as well, and they count towards the inherit limit of 4. Sacrificing units should be done with caution.

Since it may be difficult to determine what skills you should be inheriting and what Heroes you should be foddering, the table below provide a small list of "cheap" but very useful skills applicable to nearly any Hero. They are cheap as the skill can be found on at least two different and  units, and the second tier versions are almost as effective as their third tier versions which is important if you do not want to  them. If you pull any of the following units, unless you feel like using them, treat them as skill inheritance fodder for your other Heroes until you gain a better understanding of how you should be using the system effectively:

Merging
Merging is the irreversible act of combining two of the same Hero into one and provides a small stat boost and a small score boost. If you promote a merged into a  Heroes you lose all of the accumulated stat bonuses and merge levels.

It is recommended that in your first month of playing that you DO NOT merge/send home for feathers/inherit skill/apply dragons flowers/create combat manuals with or using any 5* units you obtain.

Sending Home
Found on the basic allies menu, this feature permanently remove Heroes from your barracks along with any skills they may have for a very small amount of feathers.

It is not advised to send any Heroes home as expanding the barracks, merging, or inheriting their skills to another Hero is often cheaper and doesn't result in you losing the hero completely. Sending home is only advised for Heroes that serve no use to you either for its lack of strength in combat or its lack of useful skills to inherit.

However this is quite difficult to determine as a beginner, so it is suggested to to keep expanding your barracks. Also, IS is slowly giving Heroes unique and refinable weapons turning some once useless Heroes into top-tier threats so don't count any of your Heroes out. If you give good skills to your favorite Hero and give them merges/dragon flowers, they will serve you well!

What should I do with my duplicates? Merge, unlock potential, use for skill inheritance, or send home?
Some stat variations are better than others, so it's advised you keep the best variation for that particular Hero before you decide to do anything with the other duplicate.

Avoid merges unless you have a very strong reason to (it is your main team for Arena). If the Hero has rare skills the duplicates could be used for skill inheritance instead. Merged Heroes do keep all skills from the sacrificed Hero, so if you had previously inherited several skills to a Hero with bad IV's than you may merge that Hero into the one with optimal IV's.

Skill Inheritance is generally what you will use duplicates for, though remember you only have a limited number of duplicates to sacrifice. You may need to promote a duplicate to before inheriting all three tiers of its skill  (e.g.  on ). First check if the third skill tier can be found on a 4★ Hero before you promote, to save on feathers.

Is Free Play viable?
To some extent. A free player can easily gain well over 300 free orbs per month. As a comparison, if you paid $75 for orbs, you would only get 140.

Additionally, because your team is limited to only four characters, you don’t necessarily need a huge roster of super powerful characters to be successful. Moreover, by using color advantages and abusing the easily exploited AI, good strategy can allow a free player to even compete in the PvP Coliseum and Aether Raids.

What Free-to-Players (May) Miss Out On
While this guide should help any players looking to play without spending money, it is still good to know what goals are going to be difficult or impossible to achieve without buying orbs. Here is a list of things you won’t be likely to do.

Arena Rankings
A free-to-play player can easily compete in the Arena to earn feathers. Achieving the highest, however, is much more demanding (and only rewards 1 extra orb a week) but is still possible (unlike achieving the top rank).

Aether Raids Rankings
Given enough time, an average free-to-play player can expect to reach about Tier 19 or 20 in Aether Raids. However, this mode is quite dependent on understanding enemy AI in addition to having built up an excellent team of units. Due to the scoring nature of Aether Raids, to move from Tier 20 to Tier 21 without two mythics it is required to have almost perfect plays (defeating all units within 7 turns as well as having obtained all the pots without having lost a single unit) so it is highly recommended that a free-to-play player run two astra or two light mythics which are unmerged. However, this also brings its own fair share of difficulties as Aether Raids, unlike the Arena, is constantly changing. Introductions of skills or new units can quickly render existing +10 units irrelevant and so Aether Raids is the most expensive mode to do well in, while rewarding 0 orbs.

Non-Focus 5★ Heroes
The chances of finding a specific non-focus hero is incredibly low, so try to only summon for the focussed units advertised on the banners (or save up until your desired hero appears).

Large Hero Collections
With many different new banners being released constantly and about 300 orbs every month for a f2p player, you will not be able to get every 5* hero a month. Thus, orb budgeting becomes quite important once the orbs received from story mode have been obtained. 300 orbs is approximately enough to get between 4 to 6 5* units a month which is quite generous. However, if you are trying to target a specific 5* hero you may find that the orbs will get you plenty of 5* heroes you do not want or which you may already have instead.

F2P players will then generally want to save up and focus on getting very strong units or on getting favourite units and focus on one summoning banner a month rather than putting orbs on every banner and coming up disappointed.

Merging -only Heroes to maximum
For most content, a +1 merged hero is a more efficient use of resources. Summoning 11 copies of a 5* hero (so that you can merge them completely) costs about 1200-2000 orbs on average and the table below lists the approximate costs at the 90th percentile: In general, Red is the most difficult color to summon on, followed by blue, colorless, and green.

It is worth noting that FEH is a gacha game and absolutely nothing is guaranteed. People have spent in the order of 1200 orbs trying to get a copy of a specific hero (only picking that hero's stones) and only obtaining one copy of them.

Another alternative is to feather 3* or 4* units to 5* rarity with feathers and then to merge these to +10, for modes such as high level Arena and Allegiance Battles which require merges for increased scoring.

Arena is also heavily focused on bonus kills so the ideal +10 hero needs to have a high BST and some sort of support ability to be able to feed kills into your bonus unit. Units obtained with Heroic Grails can be reliably obtained and so two potential choices for +10 merged units for arena use are:

Here are the resources necessary to obtain enough merges to grail units:


 * A Tempest Trial hero needs 200k feathers and 2700 Grails.
 * A Recent Grand Hero Battle hero needs 222k feathers and 2200 Grails.
 * A Rerun of a GHB brings the number of grails down to 1750 Grails.

For grails, a Tier 20 Aether Raids player gets 60 Grails a week taking 29 to 45 weeks to reach the required number of grails. Even a top ranking AR player takes 21-33 weeks to complete a +10 grail hero.

Usage
Orbs are primarily used to summon new heroes. The most efficient strategy is to pull only on stones of a focus units color. When any hero is pulled, it is advisable to pull all the other stones as the pity rate for pulling higher rarity heroes returns to zero after pulling a  hero.

It takes on average 140-160 orbs to summon a specific hero shown on a banner. To obtain 11 copies of a specific focus unit requires 1500-1800 orbs on average. Remember that there is no guarantee that any amount of orbs will be enough, as pulling is all based on chance.

Additional uses for orbs include expanding Barracks, upgrading the Castle and replenishing items like Stamina Potions, Dueling Crests, or Light's Blessings. Upgrading Castle requires relatively little orb investment while expediting the grind on hero levels. The expansion of Barracks may become necessary as the player progresses, however careful planning can reduce the need to continuously expand the barracks. It is ill-advised to use orbs in place of Stamina Potions, Dueling Crests, or Light's Blessings as they can be easily replenished.

Heroic Grails
items are a resource that can be exchanged for Heroes that have been rewarded through past Grand Hero Battles and Tempest Trials events.

Usage
Certain limited Heroes can be summoned by spending Heroic Grails. These heroes can be used for: It is recommended that new players exclusively use grails for merging units. Fulfilling specific niches with an unmerged copy can just as easily be done by using 3* to 4* units obtained from summoning and promoting them. Certain grail units may return on maps (those grail units that are originally Grand Hero Battle heroes) so waiting for GHB Revivals can be a method of avoiding grail costs.
 * 1) Merging units with the intention of using them in a team
 * 2) Fulfilling a specific niche
 * 3) Inheriting rare or otherwise hard to obtain skills to other units

As the cost of grail summon rises by 50 every time it is used, using Grails for Skill Inheritance can be a trap. If a player decides at a later time that they wish to merge a unit that they have previously foddered for skills, they may find themselves paying 500 grails for a single copy of the unit rather than the 100 grails they would have paid, had they not foddered the unit off.

Grail Sources
Grails are the second most limited resource after orbs. The game provides a one time gift of 200 grails from visiting the Use Heroic Grails menu the first time it is accessed and 200 grails can be received once from Heroes' Path.

Heroic Grails are mainly obtained by participating in Aether Raids, which can net up to 90 Grails a week (When starting out, 40 Grails should be expected) and Forging Bonds (for 40 grails).

Unlike orb income, grail income is not steady and is not the same for every player. There are many variables that determine how many grails a player will earn, from the level of skill that the player has in predicting AI movements, the percentage of orb resources sunken into Aether Raids teams, whether or not they have two mythic heroes (and whether or not those mythic heroes are also merged on top of two existing on the same team). Careful consideration has to be taken when selecting the hero that a player wishes to grail.

It is recommended to pick and  if the player has no favorites.

Summary Table of Resources
Summary of rewards obtained through persistent content. Summary of rewards obtained through temporary content. Summary of rewards, collection rate and consumption rate.

Building an effective team
Regardless of if you are a Free-to-Player or not, you will want to build an effective core team for completing story missions and competing in the Arena. Note that while you can adjust your team composition to suit the maps in Story Mode, any well balanced team should be able to complete all of the single player content even on Lunatic difficulties. A well balanced team is also helpful in arena, because you don’t have prior knowledge of what unit types your opponent will bring.

Tips on building effective emblem teams are covered in the next section.

Basic team building
A basic team will have one Red, Blue and Green unit (or at least two different colours) to improve matchups. Red beats Green, Green beats Blue, and Blue beats Red, as shown in the lower right hand of the combat map. Colorless units have no weaknesses and are equally powerful against any colour (excluding tomes whose names end in -Raven).

The AI in this game is not very clever and if a unit with a colour it is disadvantaged against is placed inside its range, it will attempt to attack whether or not it results in its defeat.

Magical and physical balance
In addition to color balance, it is also good to have a combination of physical and magical attackers.The primary difference between these types of units is the defensive stat they target. Physical attackers are effective against foes with low DEF ratings, while magical attackers do more damage against units with low RES stats. Having at least one unit of each type will help to break through units that have a single high defensive stat.

Mobility and range balance
In order to focus fire on a single enemy unit it is useful to have a mix of units, units,  units,  units, close attackers, and ranged attackers. Close‐ranged units can attack most opposing ranged heroes without provoking counterattacks, and vice versa. Flying units or cavalry are often able to flank or attack units that would otherwise be inaccessible. So having a variety of character types can really help build a well balanced team.

Build around your best Heroes
The most important tip is simply to focus on building around your best heroes and choose characters that cover their weaknesses. If you already have a powerful Red Sword unit, then you probably don’t need any more red units for your team. If you have a strong tank, then you may want to focus on finding characters that can support a choke-point strategy.

Use strong Heroes
As a rule, you will only fill your party with units. Lower rarity units will have fewer skills and worse stats, although they can be made by unlocking potential, though newer players will have limited feathers so it is best to use either summoned  or  received for free.

Level up Olivia: Blushing Beauty
/ is one of the most powerful Assist skills in the game. Giving a unit two turns can let a hero with color advantage kill two foes, or kill one and move back from a dangerous counterattack, or just move twice and attack. All refreshers can be built in such a way that they defeat the enemies they have a color advantage over, while being able to pass their turns to teammates if there are no enemies left for them to fight; this means they are never dead units on a team.

However, most refreshers are exclusive to. Of the few that are not, the most-readily available refresher is, who is also a free unit. Make it a priority to level her up, using Feathers to Unlock Potential as quickly as possible, while Inheriting solid skills to her (,, or  are the common choices). She is easily worth being the first Hero you move to.

Even if you pull other refreshers, multiple different refreshers are useful when moving onto some of the more challenging content later on, such as Squad Assault or Chain Challenge.

The Danger Area
An essential skill in every Fire Emblem game is to use the Danger Area to identify what enemy units are threatening the player's units. On the combat map, under the Settings menu, there is an option for Show Danger Area. Switch this to on to automatically have every map highlighted. Put your unit inside this pale pink area and they will be attacked immediately! Tap and hold down on an enemy unit to show a darker red area which will show where that particular enemy unit can attack. Tap and hold down on the selected unit again and it will return to pale pink. At harder difficulties, if too many enemies have overlapping ranges and you put your unit there, it could be defeated!

You may want to leave your fragile units like healers and dancers on areas that are not dangerous to avoid them getting defeated!

When not to trust the Danger Area
Be careful also of movement assists. Enemy dancers can cause enemy units to move outside the danger area and attack vulnerable units you aren't expecting them to, while skills such as Armour March may cause enemies to move one step further than the danger area! Always remember to check the skills for Armour March, Wings of Mercy, Guidance, Ground/Flier Orders, Flier Formation, Dance/Sing, Gray Waves, Escape Route and many other unexpected and painful skills that may exist.

Bait and Swarm
Most maps instruct you to defeat every enemy which means that enemies are all spread out. You should use this to your advantage, as you may notice tiles where only one or a few enemies are in range to attack you! You can move a tanky unit onto that square and the enemies will come attack your tanky unit, while your other units are waiting behind the range to ambush them.

Preview the map before launching your team
Before starting a map in story mode, you can hit the cross like button to get a preview of the units on the map, so that you can make a team that is specifically designed to counter it. In other modes such as Arena Assault and Aether Raids and Chain Challenges etc you will have this ability to some extent so make sure you pay careful attention to the biggest threats on the map.

AI Prediction
There are a few essential rules that every Fire Emblem AI follows:
 * Where possible, the AI will seek to kill any of your units that they can do the most damage to so try not to leave your weak unit with low hp in the danger area and hope that the AI will forget about it
 * If the AI cannot kill a unit, they will attack the unit that they can do the most damage to whilst receiving the least damage in return (and remember, physical units will target a unit's defence and magical units will target resistance so some units are not tanky in every stat.)
 * Enemies who both have staves and the ability to attack will prefer to heal instead of attack if there is no combat they can win.
 * Enemy units will still move to attack anyone who enters their range even if they will do no damage (though enemies that hit harder will move first)

A point to keep later in mind when you get more used to the game: Enemy dancers will attack if they can do at least 5 damage and otherwise they will dance an enemy unit. Usually, if you can kill or lure the enemy dancer out before they can dance an enemy, it is preferable on maps such as some of the story maps on harder difficulties or in Aether Raids.

Building an effective emblem team
Emblem teams are largely used in quests for orbs. They may also be deployed in modes such as Arena Assault.. All heroes on an X emblem team belong to one movement type, so a player would need to create a team of all fliers, all infantry, all armour and all cavalry units. Units within these teams are not necessarily static. A player may find it necessary to swap out units in order to defeat a particular map.

All emblem teams except Infantry have powerful C-skill support buffs that are available cheaply at and  and help to stack the stats of each member of the team to extraordinary levels.

These sections provide a brief overview of example ways to build minimal investment emblem teams that are not necessarily the best, but give hints on how to complete maps and quests involving those emblem teams with free exclusive units or  units that can be made by Unlocking Potential on  or.

It is up to the player to determine which heroes can be substituted based on what is obtained from Summoning.

Infantry Emblem
Overview: Infantry Emblem is a very versatile and flexible movement type. Weapons that counter Infantry units are very rare. Of late, many new infantry units have a huge amount of stats and extremely strong skills.

Story mode is rather simple and does not require any teambuilding and thus Legendary Ike and Fjorm will steamroll 95% of the story mode content.

For Lunatic Quests (which are more difficult than story mode), the following team skeleton is suggested: All four slots may be replaced with newly summoned units, where necessary.
 * Support unit eg
 * Spare slot eg healer or another offense dealing unit
 * Support unit eg
 * Spare slot eg healer or another offense dealing unit

Other suggestions for infantry that are easy to pull and can perform very well then consider dragons:
 * and . Dragons have great stats and can inherit, a weapon with built in. DC weapons are not very common, which makes dragons more valuable than most other infantry units.
 * Mage units such as or . For some reason, mage units are amongst the strongest type in the game despite their poor defensive stats (although you must be careful not to let them get hit)
 * With a refined weapon, Lilina has built-in in her weapon (which allows her strong nukes to hit resistant enemies) and  which grants her +6 attack when she attacks another unit. Commonly, Lilina will inherit Death Blow 3 which gives her a +6 attack for a total of +12 attack when attacking.
 * Nino's refined weapon grants her +6 attack to herself and her adjacent allies on even turns as well as adding on any bonuses on herself onto her attack. With any odd wave skill such as, she can have +6 to her attack on every turn which can hit very hard
 * (Costs grails). Unlike other dancers, Young Azura has enough attack to be functional if needed (however the main purpose of dancers is to dance and not to attack)

Cavalry Emblem
Overview: Otherwise known as Horse Emblem, Cavalry is a flexible unit type. Formerly, Cavalry units were the single most dominating unit type in FEH, having 3 spaces was extremely strong and enhanced their attack range. Of late, IS has tried to ensure that newly released Cavalry units have been left behind compared to the other emblems in both skills and stats. This can make some Cavalry quests (for example, cavalry quests on maps with anti-cavalry terrain (cavalry cannot move through mountains, forests, water, pond, lava, walls) and anti-cavalry weapons) harder, but on the other hand, also ensures that units which were previously all-powerful, remain all-powerful today.

The following table lists skills that are important for a cavalry team to inherit and the common heroes that hold it. When you acquire these heroes use Inherit Skill to give your main horse team these buffs. The suggested C-skills is to have 2 heroes with and 2 heroes with  so that every horse on your team can receive +6 in every stat. The following table lists some of the important free Cavalry heroes. Please refer to the Free Heroes section for information on how to obtain them.

For Lunatic Quests, the following team skeleton is suggested:
 * - if you have her, Summoned Cavalry unit if not
 * Summoned Cavalry unit
 * Summoned Cavalry unit
 * Summoned Cavalry unit

Together, Lyn, Veronica and Reinhardt represent a famous (or infamously), reliable (and feared) core team. It is recommended not to replace any of these units with summoned units.

Other suggestions for cavalry that are easy to pull and are popular to build:
 * Ares' weapon can allow him to continuously fire off a 3 turn cooldown special every turn once he has warmed up
 * (as support) on teams that are not Cavalry emblem (as her refined weapon gives her . If she uses both her sacred seal slot and her C slot, she can run triple Tactics buff which can give her teammates +6 to 3 stats)

Flying Emblem
Overview: Flying heroes supports the most diverse types of play-styles, from explosive rush-down tactics to impenetrable airborne fortresses. Newly released flier weapons and skills have gradually been creeping up, but the fliers you receive for free are all of fantastic quality and are quite recent and have not yet felt their age.

The following table lists skills that are important for a flier team to inherit and the common heroes that hold it.

The following table lists some of the important free Flying heroes.

,, and. They cover all three colors, are available at and  rarities, and have strong low investment builds that are effective until stronger fliers are pulled.

For Lunatic Quests, the following team skeleton is suggested: The main goal of this team skeleton is to debuff the opponent into oblivion, which makes them easy pickings for Brave Micaiah who adds all the stats on the debuffed enemy to her own stats or Eir who provides physical damage. However, this team is quite weak to archers which means that it is recommended to use a melee flier in the fourth slot, or to have Reyson in slot 3 and a melee flier in the fourth slot.
 * (requires 20,000 feathers to be )
 * Summoned flier
 * Summoned flier
 * Summoned flier

Other suggestions for fliers that are easy to pull, can perform very well, and are very popular:
 * With her refine she has a Brave Axe+ effect that allows her to attack twice and also to inflict panic
 * With her refine, she has both armoured and cavalry effectiveness on top of easily charged specials
 * With her refine, she has conditional brave effect if she is within two spaces of two flying allies, Atk/Spd/Def/Res+3 and armoured effectiveness which makes her extremely effective in both PVE and popular in PVP (for example in Aether Raids in a defensive Flier Emblem).
 * can move 3 spaces, and heal units within two spaces if he is promoted. These features make him arguably the second best refresher in the game due to movement range.
 * For Reyson, it is suggested to inherit as a special,  or  in his B slot, and any flier buff is useful in his C slot. When using Reyson with the intent of warping using Wings of Mercy, a player must be careful to avoid healing the unit being danced to the degree that Reyson can no longer warp to their side.

Fliers also have class specific Sacred Seals assigned to them that can be created and enhanced: (Recommended on units with a decent defense),  (Not especially useful, although extremely commonly used in modes such as Aether Raids on Defense when every unit is a defensive Flier Emblem),, and.

Of these seals, is the most useful (although outside of flier emblem) as it allows allies within two spaces to warp next to the flier. This is especially useful on flying dancers such as Reyson as the additional warping capacity can make very difficult maps easier to handle if he or another flying dancer can dance the right unit from a location near him to the right location. It can also assist in using fliers to ferry units across terrain.

Armor Emblem
Overview: Free armor units are extremely rare and all their skills are extremely difficult to obtain. FEH constantly releases new armored units with higher and higher stats and stronger skils. For the purposes of not struggling on quests (armored quests tend to be difficult as although Armored units have high base stats and strong weapons and skills) their lack of maneuverability makes them hard to use. It is highly recommended that you pull for a unit specifically with and create a Sacred Seal (Armored Boots) and equip it to the Armor March unit for the purpose of making the maps easier.

The best advice is to preview upcoming banners that feature armored heroes and summoning them: * Hero does not appear on most banners ** Hero only appears as a Reward Unit (cannot be summoned with orbs)

Having at least 2 heroes that have these skills will make short work of the quests you need to complete, as well as making armor teams more enjoyable to use. As for armor buffs, , and can be pulled pretty easily. Most Armor teams favor the buff from Draug.

For better or for worse, there are only 7 armored units that can be obtained for free: Note that s are an extraordinarily valuable resource and so it is not recommended to use them on skills at all or on many copies of the same armored units unless one is looking to sacrifice them on competing in the highest tiers of Aether Raids or Arena. As long as you summon for armored units, they will suffice for armored quests at Lunatic level.

Team building 101
This covers team building outside of the common Emblem Teams.

An overview of team roles

 * Tank: These units tend to have one of two different stat lines and tend to attack on Enemy Phase (the unit is left by player in range and then it attacks in the enemy's turn).
 * High defense and/or resistance stats and low speed: Tanking through sheer defensive stats. If the unit is an armor, it will usually have a fighter skill such as to continue to attack twice despite having low speed or something to avoid getting attacked twice. Examples of units used as these tanks include  and
 * High speed and mediocre defense/resistance stats: Tanking because the unit has higher speed. In FEH, when a unit's speed exceeds another unit's speed by 5, it will attack twice (double). Thus, if a unit has good speed it won't take as much damage as a unit with low speed. Examples of units used as these tanks include and
 * Glass cannon/Nuke: These units tend to have one of two different statlines and tend to attack on Player Phase (the player moves them to attack).
 * Very high attack and very low speed: These units attempt to nuke once and very hard. These units include or
 * High attack and high speed: These units attempt to nuke multiple times and very hard. These units include or
 * Mixed phase units: Units that are not specialised for any particular phase but can be used in both. An example of a unit that can be built this way is
 * Support unit: These refer to a vast variety of different units
 * Healers: These units serve to heal the HP of units. Such units include.
 * Debuffers: These units serve to lower the stats of the opponents. Examples of such units include and
 * Buffers: These units serve to increase the stats of the ally units. Examples of such units include with the support Yato refine and

The Auto-battle Team
FEH provides a facility for the game to automatically play itself although the AI can cause fragile units like refreshers and healers to suicide themselves so the most efficient way to autobattle is through units that are reasonably tanky. Generally for newer players, this team is generally your Armor Emblem team (4x armoured units with Aether or Noontime (or Sol if you don't have either). Older players may have +10 merged non-armoured units with reasonable bulk with those sorts of self-healing skills.

1 Tank and 3 support units
This team archetype involves buffing your tank to absurd levels/debuffing the enemies whilst ensuring your tank is in good health. An example of this team is with the support Yato refine, S supported to the tank (and within in two or one space of the tank), with  also on the team (her skill will ensure that the tank is constantly healed) and a refresher such as  whose skill allows him to both dance and heal up units within two spaces (such as, the tank)

1 Nuke and 3 dancers
This team archetype involves dancing a powerful nuke around the whole map. The nuke is commonly a mage, for example. With her tome refine which gives her +6 attack every even turn and an odd wave skill which gives her +6 stats to fuel her bladetome for bladetome buffs every turn she hits strongly. With (which grants +3 to a bunch of stats and causes the unit to lose health) and  inherited and desperation allows the unit to attack twice before their opponent can attack if the health is low enough, this sets up a perfect low health unit which synergises perfectly with the skill Wings of Mercy. If that skill is on 3 dancers, it means that they can warp to the injured mage's side and the player has a highly maneuverable unit capable of wiping out any threat they come across. As long as they keep their dancers and the nuke safe, they will win.

Mixed Emblem Teams (usually with Tactics)
Mixed Emblem has surged to the forefront with the introduction of highly broken units such as who can turn a single +6 buff (for example, from the Attack Tactic she comes with) into +6 for every stat and give every unit +1 movement.

Units are eligible for Tactics if there is no more than 2 of that movement type on a team. Which means, a maximum of two fliers, two infantry, two armoured units and two cavalry units.

Tactics Teams are also popular. These are C skills and seals (and which are sometimes in the weapon refines of units such as ) and are four units that are eligible to receive tactics. Units who do not want to receive the buff give the buff (for example a unit with low attack may give Attack Tactics) to their team mates. Of course, one of the limitations is that the team members cannot move too far out.

Teams that stack effects
When in doubt, synergise effects! For example, having a team that is full of units that inflict debuffs and benefit from them can sometimes be quite beneficial. For example, this can include units such as, , , , or units with weapons that benefit from it such as 's penalty doubler refine or 's cunning bow.

Beast and Dragon Emblem
As per the usual Emblem teams, Dragon C skill buffs and Beast C skill buffs are interchangeable. However, beware the effectiveness of weapons and in the case of Beasts, running them in Emblem teams is very helpful for getting transformation active without having to distance units from each other.

Team Building: Arena Core
Arena team building usually involves 3 members that always stay the same (the core) and the Bonus unit. Bonus units change every 2-3 weeks although members of the Askr Trio are always in rotation. From tiers 1 until tier 20, you can just fully merge (5*+10) your favorite units and score high enough to alternate between tiers 19 and 20. Between tiers 18 and 19, some merges are required and between tier 17 and 18 no merges are required. (All these tiers mentioned require a level 40, bonus unit).

After learning how scoring works there are three general strategies at high ranking Arena (alternating between Tier 20 and Tier 21) that can be employed: All 3 strategies provide the same amount of score if used properly. Regardless of the strategy used, saving orbs to pull on merges or skills with high SP value (Distant Counter, Rally Up Atk+, Hone Atk 4) is critical. Feathers are mainly used to give bonus units Aether and Galeforce.

Be patient and only fight players in the higher scoring range. As of Version 3.2, the Arena cutoff is ~3794 or around 758 score per round. Each bonus kill provides 3 points, so players can theoretically challenge teams with a 746 score, however it is safer to pick teams closer to 752.

Advanced Team Building: Aether Raids
Aether Raids team building is highly expensive and complicated so caution should be exercised when building units. Units with expensive skill sets can be very good in the hands of talented players and unusable in the hands of players who lack skill.

Units that can be good for this mode one day can be no longer good the very next day. This is due to several factors: Unlike other modes, the teams that you can encounter can be highly unpredictable.
 * FEH may release units that are explicitly designed to defeat commonly used units
 * Specific units may fall in and out of use

Below Tier 20, specialised team building is rather unnecessary, although it may be helpful to keep some of the team archetypes in mind. However, difficult team archetypes may be faced at very low tiers (for example in Tier 16) as some more experienced players who have been playing for a long time may be content staying at the lower levels.

Offense Team Structure
To optimise score, each team has two offense Mythics (as in Light or Astra) which correspond to the season. In Astra season, an Astra Mythic is run with Astra blessed units, in Light season a light Mythic is run with Light Blessed units. The only free Mythic a player receives is a Light Mythic any more need to be summoned.

Whether or not it is required for a player to summon for two Mythics is a matter of great debate as every player has a different skill level.

A suggested format for the 4 person offense team before getting the fifth team slot:
 * Slot 1:  Mythic or Team Slot (if the player has no mythic for that season)
 * Slot 2:  Team Slot
 * Slot 3:  Team Slot
 * Slot 4:  Team Slot

A suggested format of a 5 person team is:
 * Slot 1:  Mythic
 * Slot 2:  Mythic if you have a second one or Team Slot
 * Slot 3:  Team Slot
 * Slot 4:  Team Slot
 * Slot 5:  Bonus Unit (This rotates)

As of the 25th of September, common Offense teams (which fill those Team Slots - as mostly 2 units are used to win maps) include:
 * Omnitank teams: This is the most basic team type - easy to use and easy to lose a match with. It is exactly the same as the 1 Tank and 3 support units archetype described above except in Aether Raids, usually you only have two team slots so it is more like 1 tank (which baits the opposing team) and 1 support unit. The omnitank is able to counterattack at any range and has either or  or has it built into their weapon and is supported by a unit. The tank is also blessed and thus receives whatever the stat bonus is from the mythic, if it exists. An omnitank has to have both great defense and resistance as well as being able to survive with only one support unit
 * Ideally the omnitank wants to survive whatever is super effective against it (for example, Armour effective weapons if the omnitank is an armour) as well as being able to survive a Defense team full of precharged specials and support units that buff those units into oblivion. Although, most tanks cannot survive the onslaught and for those teams we use other counters instead
 * Examples of omnitanks for Aether Raids include and . Although merges are not strictly necessary for the other Aether Raids team (although they always give advantages) any tank will want to be 5*+10 merged and given expensive skill inheritance to assist in their survival especially in higher tiers.
 * The most popular buffer for the omnitank is with the support Yato refine. This is because Corrin's buffs are "invisible" (and are not blue) and so they are only active during combat which means that those buffs cannot be debuffed or panicked and also Corrin only costs 20,000 feathers (and at higher merges he can soak up debuffs in the forms of Chills). Corrin needs to be S supported to the unit of choice.
 * Hit and Run teams: The second most basic team type. The aim of these teams is to snipe any enemy unit with extremely powerful nukes that they are able to (and thus cause the enemy AI to move and chase) and run away safely before they can get hit. These teams can therefore actually use or a combination of dance/sing and  to escape.
 * Examples of Hit and Run units include and
 * Vantage teams: which employ . The description for Vantage, reads If unit's HP ≤ 75% and foe initiates combat, unit can counterattack before foe's first attack.
 * The Vantage unit can hit extremely hard because of their weapon and has or  to retaliate with.
 * Examples of Vantage units include, , and
 * The Vantage unit is backed by a support unit such as a dancer or buffer.
 * Essentially, the point is to lower the Vantage unit's health without them dying and weaken the enemy as much as possible (for example, the player's bolt tower can be used to lower the health of the enemy team). Everyone on the enemy's team then attacks the Vantage unit and because it hits first, everyone on the enemy team dies. Or so you'd hope, but at higher Aether Raids tiers there will be counters for this strategy for example Hardy Bearing (the Sacred Seal) can disable Vantage!
 * Galeforce teams: which employ . Galeforce is a special that allows the user to make a second move if the cooldown has been reached. There may be multiple galeforce units or dancers involved so this method uses a rather large number of teamslots and can be quite difficult to setup. Extremely talented players are able to calculate exactly when the cooldown will trigger and how many units they will be able to wipe out and how to survive before they make a move.
 * Examples of Galeforce units include and
 * The main aim of a Galeforce team is to attack and retreat or to wipe the entirety of the opponent's team (more common)