I have a problem. For the past month I’ve been repeatedly replaying Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest. I just wrapped my fourth playthrough, and I have a lot of thoughts. I don’t know if I’ll end up penning them all, nor can I promise that any potential future Conquest related articles will have any semblance of structure, or cohesion. Regardless, this is my blog, and what is a blog if not a platform to share with the world all of the gibberish inside your noggin.

That said, I think I want to start with a postmortem on my fourth, and final (for now) playthrough of Conquest. There are a few reasons for that, but the primary one is so that I have reference material for when I inevitably decide to run through Conquest again in the future. This was also the only campaign where I got deep into theorycrafting builds, whereas my first 3 runs were used to gauge the relative strengths, and weaknesses of each character that you can recruit. As such, playthrough #4 was the most interesting, and consequently, also the most fun.

I’ll be straight up with all of you reading: this article is incredibly self indulgent. It’s quite literally just for me. It’s almost 7000 words long, and probably won’t make a lot of sense unless you’ve already played through Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest. I’m also not attempting to say anything here – this is quite literally just a digital notebook for my future self to use as reference material.

No hard feelings if you decide to skip this one.

Table of Contents

Anyway, here’s my thoughts on everyone I used across playthrough #4:

A tier list for my fourth playthrough of Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest.

Unceremoniously Dropped Units

I don’t have a whole lot to say about any of the 5 characters in this category owing to how I dropped all of them immediately after they fulfilled their intended purpose. This isn’t helped by how the early game of Conquest kind of forces the player to use the same few units until you’re given more units than you have deployment slots in Chapter 11. Either way, here are the folks whose time on my squad was short lived.

Arthur

I really don’t like Arthur at all. He gives a terrible first impression of axe users thanks to his somewhat shaky hit rates, and his abysmal Luck stat. The low Luck is especially notable because it means he is susceptible to critical hits during the earlier chapters in Conquest, which is a problem that no other character has at this point in the game. I find that this makes Arthur an incredibly frustrating unit to field, outside of leveraging his Pair Up stat bonuses.

Luckily, repeatedly pairing up Arthur with Effie in the early game is a great way to fast track an S rank relationship between the pair of them. This is notable because it unlocks Paralogue 19: Great Heroism. This map gives you access to a Wyvern Rider, Arthur’s son Percy, and the ability to make a ton of extra gold. That’s thanks to Paralogue 19’s unique mechanic: there are Dragon Veins (player activated event tiles) littered throughout the map that cause enemies to flee, and surrender 500 gold a piece whenever they’re caught in the blast radius. This has the potential to easily pay out 5 figures, which is a huge additional cash injection in a campaign where grinding for additional money is impossible. This also helps a lot with purchasing the various class changing items if you’re planning to do a lot of unique builds. As such, I’d always recommend trying to unlock this optional chapter even if you don’t intend to use Percy.

Otherwise, I think Arthur is kind of terrible. I don’t know that I’ll ever actually give him an honest swing, but Paralogue 19 will always make him at least a little useful in any future playthroughs.

Odin

Odin is like Arthur in a lot of ways: he provides a terrible first impression for his weapon type (tomes), and S ranking him with someone unlocks an incredibly useful Paralogue chapter. In this case, Odin is required to unlock Paralogue 20: Ultimate Power, which is the only way to get 2 of the most powerful tomes in the game: Horse Spirit, and Calamity Gate. The former provides a huge +3 stat boost to Speed, Skill, Defence, and Resistance, while the latter reverses Weapon Triangle Advantage (henceforth WTA). If you actually want to have a magical user who doesn’t feel awful to use throughout Conquest then you need both of these tomes. Dark Mages really struggle to make meaningful contributions without WTA against lances.

That said, I paired Odin off with Elise for most of the early game, and dropped him as soon as I unlocked Paralogue 20. He was actually a really good partner for Elise, especially because I class promoted her as soon as she hit level 10. The 2 of them together were able to completely demolish the right hand side of Chapter 10: Unhappy Reunion, which was a welcome surprise.

Unlike Arthur, I’m fairly certain there is a way to actually make Odin into a hilarious broken unit, but that will have to wait for a future playthrough. Possibly something involving the skills Vantage, and Life and Death on Dark Mage wielding Nosferatu.

Jakob

Jakob is normally great, and I’d rank him among one of the best characters in Conquest. However, that’s only true if you use one of your limited early game class changing items on him to move him out of the support focused Butler into a Paladin, or Wyvern Lord. His offensive characteristics far outweigh his support oriented ones, so he feels incredibly misaligned when he’s left to languish in his default class.

Unfortunately for Jakob, my plans did not involve, nor allow him to eat up one of my early class changing items. As a result, he sucked. I used him up until Chapter 12: Bitter Intrigue. That’s specifically because Elise is taken away from you in Chapter 12, and I find that I can never get away with having no healing across the chapter. If I could actually remember where all the 30% heals were hidden then I could probably ditch him after Chapter 10. Maybe I should use a guide to refresh my memory of where everything is hidden before playing Chapter 12 in future playthroughs.

Silas

Normally, I’d rank Silas as being a solid mid-tier unit. He’s great in the early game because Cavalier units have high mobility, damage output, and defensive stats. This continues to be true into the late game, but Silas is usually your only Cav for a couple chapters which gives him some room to shine.

That said, he is completely outclassed by his daughter Sophie. Pairing Corrin, and Silas off for an S rank support can potentially give you a Cavalier unit that is as strong (stronger in my case) as Xander by the start of Chapter 11: Rainbow Sage. Silas absolutely pulled his weight, but after I recruited Sophie there was simply no reason to ever field him again. Sophie had all of Silas’ strengths, but with Corrin’s Speed. Silas is good, but he simply can’t compete with his genetic super soldier of a daughter.

Niles

Niles, like Silas, pulls his weight in the early game, and also offers lockpicking utility until you recruit Kaze. He also did a great job of helping to baby Mozu throughout the earlier chapters in Conquest, which was invaluable even if it wasn’t worth the effort. Honestly, I kind of wish I’d actually used Niles this playthrough because I think his daughter Nina would have been another Sophie-Silas situation. Perhaps that’s something to pursue in a future playthrough, even if Niles is written like a complete dirtbag so his support conversations are almost always uncomfortable to read.

Solid Vanilla Units

Not everyone can afford to be a project unit. That said, there are a number of solid choices throughout Conquest for units that are great with very little investment. These are characters that I’m pretty sure would be absolute monsters if they were invested in even a little, but I simply left them in their default class paths this playthrough with no plans for anything crazy.

Azura

I mean, is there anything to really say here? Azura offers fantastic utility throughout Conquest thanks to her singing ability allowing another unit to act a second time. This gives her a ton of utility, and also means that she can constantly gain experience throughout your campaign without stealing it away from other units. Better yet, singing is an unlimited resource, so it isn’t even like you have to waste your precious gold like you do buying healing staves for your other support bots. Azura can cook regardless of your economic situation.

I do wish Azura got more mobility though. I always end up killing Shura for his boots at the end of Chapter 16: Invasion, so I can give Azura a bump from 5 move to 6. This is right around the time when all of your units are class changing, which allows them to completely outpace Azura unless you give her a movement buff. It’s a shame because I’d rather use Boots on someone else, but Azura is always the best candidate owing to her unique class’ limitations.

That said, I do wonder how Azura would work as a Falcon Knight. Obviously you’re sacrificing singing utility when you change her class, which is a huge loss. However,  I’m genuinely curious if she’d still manage to pull her weight as a more offensively oriented class. Alternatively, there are several chapters in the midgame where you don’t actually need singing, so that might be an ideal time to pick up some additional utility skills outside of the Songstress class.

Xander

I wish Xander was more exciting to talk about, but the qualities that make him great are so immediately obvious that anyone with even a passing understanding of Fire Emblem could pin him for one of the best units in the game. He has a very impressive defensive profile, and hits like a truck. This is thanks to his special legendary weapon being one of the strongest weapons in the game, while also giving him reliable 1-2 range. If that wasn’t enough, all of his default class options are mounted so he also has incredible mobility.

Xander’s one, and only problem is his speed stat. His base speed is passable, but not great. I usually end up spending both of the Speed boosting Speedwing items on him, as well as giving him Speed related Pair Up bonuses. This might sound like a lot of support for 1 unit, but Xander can punch such enormous holes in the enemy’s defensive line that he’s well worth providing the bit of Speed support that he needs.

One extra note specific #4: Xander does a great job of softening, or outright killing most of the late game bosses. Normally I use Corrin to sweep bosses, but I made her a Malig Knight this playthrough, which meant that she couldn’t afford to eat hits from the bosses who held bows. Xander’s defensive profile proved hugely invaluable for this, as he was regularly able to bring bosses down to a range where either Corrin, or Effie could swoop in for the kill afterward.

I don’t think it’d be particularly practical to obtain, but I’d be very interested in seeing how Xander plays with access to the skill Trample, or class changing him to a Wyvern Lord for the entire back-half of Conquest.

Camilla

Camilla was exactly what you’d expect of a Jagen: impressively strong in the early chapters. Providing a strong offensive, and defensive stance bonus while also being able to ferry units all over the place with her massive 8 movement at a time when most of your units have only 5 movement. I think she seems a lot more impressive in those early chapters simply because she’s next to a bunch of units that haven’t been promoted yet, but that’s just how the Jagen archetype works.

The only other thing of note here is that I used Camilla to pass the Wyvern Rider class to 2 different recipients: Corrin, and Velouria. Unfortunately, this allowed both of those aforementioned characters to completely outshine Camilla by the ending chapters of Conquest. However, unlike Silas, Camilla packed enough utility to where I continued to use her throughout the remainder of playthrough #4.

One idea I did have for the future: actually pick up the skill Sword Breaker. I typically tend to undervalue this skill because most of the sword users in later chapters are a complete pushover when you have strong Cavalier units, but I’m curious about the potential usefulness of it in Chapters 23: Possessed, and Chapter 25: Ryoma. Both have some pretty annoying sword users that might make it worthwhile to pick up Sword Breaker.

Kaze

I’m always surprised by how useful Kaze ends up being in Conquest, despite him always playing a key role in my team. He provides some of the best speed support in the game, which is invaluable during the later chapters of Conquest, and he is also the best answer to enemy mages. His stats are completely min-maxed toward filling this role, but that just means he does it better than everyone else. This gives him a ton of usage across the later chapters which have no short  supply of mages, nor enemies that necessitate speed support for your heavy hitters.

Kaze also offers Ninja as his Friendship, and Partner Seal class, which is (almost) totally unique to him. This gives him an additional niche specific to theorycrafting, which further emphasizes his importance as a core member to any vaguely successful Conquest campaign.

Much like Odin, I’m curious about how Kaze would play if he were given some of the skills from his alternative class: Samurai. Kaze isn’t able to OHKO a lot of physically defensive enemy units, so Seal Strength seems like it might make an interesting support option. Alternatively, there might be something with Life and Death, but that feels like a bit too much of a gamble.

This will all be a problem for future me to solve, provided I decide I want to turn Kaze into a project unit.

Unsuccessful Project Units

Now we get into the interesting stuff: these were units that I had a plan for, but said plan didn’t pan out. This was mostly due to unforeseen resource constraints: either I couldn’t get the promotion items I needed, or I didn’t have enough available experience to reasonably finish the build. No one here was a complete flop, but this is evidence that I need to be a little more selective with my heavy investment project units.

Mozu

Oh Mozu. Why are you the way that you are?

Mozu is the definition of a project unit. She joins at level 1 with a skill that increases her stat growth rates by 10%. This means that she has a huge potential payout if you stick with her long term. However, her base stats are garbalingus, so you’re ostensibly gambling anytime you use her since high growth rates don’t always translate into high stats. 

I had to spend so much time babying Mozu in playthrough #4 because she just refused to gain any of the stats that she needed. She was constantly just short of the Speed, or Strength thresholds she needed to be at to double key targets that someone else (usually Niles) could get a clean kill on. I already really dislike how drawn out her recruitment chapter is if you want to get her a few easy levels, but having to constantly babysit her until Chapter 14: Voice of Paradise was just awful.

This was made worse by how Effie completely, and totally outclassed Mozu later in my campaign. I decided to make Effie a Sniper by using a Friendship Seal with Mozu. Unfortunately, Effie was able to output more consistent damage than Mozu with a simple Bronze Bow. The gulf between the 2 of them only increased as Effie’s abilities with a bow continued growing.

As a result of this unfortunate development, I decided to veer off course, and make Mozu a Kinshi Knight. This gave her airborne mobility, and Speed Pair Up bonuses. The 2 of these traits combined gave her a niche in being Effie’s taxi, while very occasionally picking up fringe kills. Kinshi Knight’s access to Air Superiority also let me kick the shit out of Chapter 24: Hinoka since the mechanic for this level is to increase the movement of airborne units. Mozu was able to fly all over the map picking up a ton OHKOs.

In future, I’m not really sure if I’d want to use Mozu again. Her potential is certainly high, but she feels really underwhelming when she doesn’t get some good early game level ups. She does have utility for passing the Archer class via Friendship, and Partner Seals though, so that gives her a niche even if she isn’t used long term.

Final Skills:

AptitudeSkill +2
Quick DrawAir Superiority
Amaterasu

Midori

According to my original plan, Midori was going to be my answer to Ninjas. The Conquest campaign is filled to bursting with these criminals, and features an entire chapter (Chapter 17: Den of Betrayal) that has been dubbed Ninja Hell because of how many Ninjas are present on it. As such, it becomes really important to have a strong answer to Ninjas. Typically you’d want a bow user because they have WTA against Ninja. Additionally, the Bow Knight class gets access to Shurikenbreaker which further enhances your combat bonuses against Ninja. Ergo, get yourself a Bow Knight, and it’ll be smooth sailing.

Midori seemed like the best candidate when I was doing my initial round of drafts. I was planning to S rank support Kaze, and Selena, so Midori would gain access to the Bow Knight class thanks to Selena. This would also give Midori access to the Mercenary skill Good Fortune, which synergizes nicely with her personal skill which boosts the proc of Luck based skills. You throw Sol in there for some additional recovery, and you should have yourself an unkillable monster.

However, I didn’t really have a plan for Soleil, and decided to slot her into the same role. I figured if 1 Bow Knight was good, then 2 would be even better. I was wrong. Soleil completely outclassed Modori to the point where I almost never had to use Midori. Soleil was simply able to hit certain damage thresholds easier, so she got more opportunities to fight, and that only continued to grow the gap between the 2 of them.

As a result of my poor planning, Midori didn’t really work out. She was fine whenever I did use her, but those times were generally few and far between, so she was mostly relegated to being a Pair Up bot. Ironically, this exact scenario is what I figured would happen to Soleil. How the turn tables.

I have no idea what I’d do if I decided to run Midori again, but a good start would be to make sure she actually has a unique role so she doesn’t get completely out-competed by another unit.

Final Skills:

Good FortuneLocktouch
Strong RiposteRally Skill
Shurikenbreaker

Shigure

There was a distinct lack of cheerleaders in my playthrough entirely because of Shigure, and Laslow. I was planning to stack 3 Rally skills on both of them, which would reduce the need for distributing said skills among the rest of my forces.

As it would turn out, trying to stack 3 Rally skills onto a single unit is extremely resource intensive. I’m sure one that is more meticulous than I am could pull it off, but it’s far easier to train, and field several double Rally casters than it is to try, and stack 3 Rally skills onto a single unit.

Also, having your Rally skills more evenly distributed means you can maneuver your forces a little more freely. Just some food for thought.

Anyway, Shigure. My original plan was to have Strength, Skill, and Speed Rally on him. I’d inherit Strength Rally from Laslow, and then get Speed, and Skill through level ups. However, by the time I finally had everything in place for Shigure, I was up to Chapter 25: Ryoma. This is 4 chapters from the end of Conquest. I’m sure I could have gotten the necessary levels to get Shigure both Skill, and Speed Rally, but I decided that was too much of a pain, and just stuck with grabbing Speed Rally.

Rest in peace my dream of having the ultimate father, and son Rallyman combination.

Final Skills:

Rally StrengthDarting Blow
Voice of PeaceCamaraderie
Rally Speed

Elise

Of the different failed units, Elise is the least egregious. She ended up being a fairly standard support bot throughout my playthrough, which is pretty normal. That wasn’t what I was planning however, ergo she’s lumped into this section.

My original plan for Elise was to make her into your standard double Rally support bot. She naturally has access to 2 different Rally skills: Rally Defence, and Rally Resistance. Perfect. I can just use a couple Heart Seals, and easily pick up both of these skills throughout my playthrough without much thought, or resource investment.

Well…no.

To get Rally Defence, you’d need to class change Elise to a Wyvern Lord. This is a class with no support capabilities, and who’s offensive abilities are completely misaligned with Elise’s natural inclination toward Magic. As such, you’d have to painfully drag Elise through 3 levels in a class she isn’t well suited toward, while not having access to your primary source of healing.

I don’t know in what world I thought this would work out, but I’m still attached enough to the idea that I refuse to give up on it. I’m sure I can figure it out, but I’m not sure it’ll be worth the trouble.

On an unrelated note, I did want to mention that I promoted Elise early in this playthrough, and I think I’d do that again. It’s common practice to get a unit to level 20 before you promote them into an advanced class, but doing that for staff locked units is usually a pain. This is because being locked into healing doesn’t give these units the ability to meaningfully contribute every single turn. As such, you either end up having them stand around on some turns, or they’re spamming healing spells needlessly to build up experience points.

By promoting Elise early, I was able to hand her a weapon several chapters ahead of when she would have hit level 20, which let her meaningfully contribute in an offensive capacity during some of Conquest’s earlier chapters. This made a huge difference in her ability to meaningfully contribute, and also made grinding out an S rank support with Odin a lot less painful. As such, I think I will continue to repeat this pattern of promoting early game staff bots in all future playthroughs of other Fire Emblem games.

Successful Project Units

Now we’re up to the characters where my plan actually worked out. What was really interesting is how much faster I was able to play thanks to how well most of these units panned out. Seriously, some of the damage dealing project units were absolutely busted by the ending of Conquest’s campaign.

Keaton

Keaton was fun to use in this playthrough even though I didn’t really want to use him. I needed to Friendship Seal him with Laslow so that Laslow could get access to the skill Strength Rally. That’d mean I’d be dragging Keaton along beyond the midpoint in Conquest, so it made sense to actually invest in him a little. That’d also let me recruit his daughter Velouria later in the campaign, which would likely be a great time to transition Keaton into more of a support role.

To that end, Keaton excelled. While I was actively using him in combat, he was great, and when I needed him to eventually take a back seat he was great there too.

Based on my past experience using Keaton, I decided to immediately class change him into a Fighter. This had the potential to patch up his shaky Speed, and Skill growth rates. His Pair Up bonuses are better in his default class, but his Speed, and Skill end up being so low that he can’t meaningfully contribute to combat in the odd few times where you actually need him to score a hit. Thankfully, this change panned out, and gave Keaton a ton of combat potential through the final several chapters of Conquest.

Final Skills:

Odd ShapedHP +5
SolStrong Riposte
Axebreaker

Laslow

Laslow is a character that I usually rate fairly low in terms of overall viability. He hits hard, but that’s about all he can do. He lacks the speed to reliably double attack, but doesn’t have the bulk to soak hits. This puts him in an awkward position because he can’t really slot himself into either an offensive, or defensive role very well thanks to his wonky stats.

However, Laslow does have a Rally as his personal skill. Thanks to this, I decided to turn him into the ultimate Rallyman. I was going to stack Strength, Skill, and Speed Rally onto him. In combination with his personal skill, this would let Laslow provide stat buffs of +5 Strength, +5 Speed, and +4 Skill to anyone in his Rally radius. That’s a huge offensive buff that allowed me to consistently pick up kills in the later chapters when doubling enemy units becomes a lot harder thanks to their enormous Speed stats.

As it would turn out, Laslow’s silly dancing was a great utility that indeed helped with cleaning up several of Conquest’s later chapters. However, getting 3 Rally skills onto a single unit was a huge pain. This involved a lot of specific Pair Ups in the midgame to ensure that Laslow was building up all the support ranks he needed. That was such a pain that I’m not entirely sure I’d want to do it again. It was funny, but it might be more practical to limit Laslow to being a standard dual Rally bot instead.

One other tidbit: promoting Laslow early was a huge boon. If you’re turning him into a Rally bot, there is no reason for Laslow to actually gain stats. As such, promoting him into a Bow Knight early, so he can pick up Rally Skill faster isn’t a big deal. This also lets him contribute during Chapter 17: Den of Betrayal in a far more meaningful capacity, which is good because that chapter fucking sucks even if you’re prepared for it.

Final Skills:

HP +5Camaraderie
Rally SpeedRally Skill
Rally Strength

Effie

I really like Effie even if she’s not always that great. She starts as an armor unit, which felt really strong on my first playthrough of Conquest, but I’ve since come to realize that the benefits they contribute to the team don’t really outweigh the cost. I know it is a bit of a meme for Fire Emblem fans to say that movement is the only stat that matters, and I kind of understand what they mean now after doing 4 playthroughs of Conquest. A lot of the game’s levels are way easier when you’re able to play more aggressively. Having a higher movement stat helps with that aggressive play, ergo keeping Effie as a heavily armored class that suffers a movement penalty really impedes her ability to meaningfully contribute. Never mind that several enemies in later levels are equipped with weapons that punish the use of heavily armored units.

So where does that leave us? Well we can class change Effie into a Magic based support unit, which she has absolutely no aptitude for, or we can use a Friendship, or Partner Seal to give her access to a tertiary class that she wouldn’t normally have access to. In my case, I decided to go with a Friendship Seal with Mozu so that Effie could become an Archer. I figured this complimented her natural growth rates, and having strong bow users is always a boon in Conquest thanks to the amount of value bows get from WTA.

Archer Effie is outrageous. I don’t think I’ve ever had a character kill so many bosses, and sub-bosses in a single playthrough. Anything Effie decided to attack would turn into a viscus smear on the ground. It was often hilarious how efficiently she managed to kill enemy units.

Final Skills:

Defence +2Skill +2
Quick DrawCertain Blow
Bowfaire

Selena

It is a widely held belief that Chapter 19: Kitsune Lair is the worst chapter in the entirety of the Conquest campaign. You’re thrown onto a map that is covered in evasion boosting forests, and the only enemy you’re made to fight are the high evasion Kitsune. If the problem wasn’t already obvious: this can turn the map into a bit of a slot machine where your success is determined more by chance than actual strategy. Hitting these stupid furries is always a pain, and they’re liable to kill you before you get the chance.

In response, I decided to make Selena the perfect counter to this forsaken chapter. She’s already endowed with naturally high Speed, and Skill which helps to increase her accuracy when attacking. She also has access to Sol, via the Hero class, which gives her around a 25% chance to heal anytime she attacks. This would, theoretically, let me position Selena in a way where the furries would be baited into attacking, and then dying to a counter attack while Selena could passively heal as a line of insurance.

There was just one problem with this plan: Selena can’t access either of the weapons that have WTA against Kitsune. This would help to boost her damage output so she could OHKO all of the Kitsune, and would give her an accuracy buff to ensure that she always had a 100% hit chance against these stupid bastards. Fortunately, earning an S rank support with Kaze, and Partner Sealing Selena into a Master Ninja gave her access to the Hunter’s Knife, which solved the only wrinkle in my perfect plan.

Chapter 19 was furry genocide. I don’t think there was a single chapter in the entire game where such a 1 sided battle took place. This definitely qualifies as a war crime of some kind.

It wasn’t just that chapter though: Selena was fantastic throughout playthrough #4. I’d already rank her among the best units in a standard, or child-less playthrough, so it makes sense that she only gets better when you expand her toolset. I’m curious about her viability as both a Falcon Knight, and Cavalier, but I suppose those ideas will have to wait for a future playthrough.

Final Skills:

Strong RiposteGood Fortune
SolShurikenfaire
Shurikenbreaker

Soleil

I had absolutely no idea what to do with Soleil. I only picked her up because I was in the long haul with Laslow, so I thought it just made sense to recruit, and use his daughter. Without a clear plan for her though, I decided to make her into a second Bow Knight alongside Midori. I didn’t think I’d need 2 Bow Knights (I was correct), but I couldn’t think of anything better to slot her into, and Bow Knights are extremely powerful in Conquest.

Unfortunately, I didn’t need 2 Bow Knights. Fortunately, Soleil was the better of the 2 Bow Knights, so she got the majority of the field time throughout playthrough #4 once I recruited her.

Her parents gifted her an insane base Strength, Speed, and Skill stat, so she was able to deal a lot of damage with a bow. That, in combination with the large volume of bow-weak enemies in Conquest, meant that Soleil regularly went on an absolute tear.

I do wish I’d recruited her earlier, but I didn’t realize how good she was until after I’d scooped her up. I’m curious what other types of builds could be viable on Soleil thanks to her completely lopsided offense. That’ll have to be answered in a future playthrough – preferably one where I recruit her earlier, and let her go around committing even more war crimes than I managed in this playthrough.

Final Skills:

Strong RiposteVoice of Peace
SolCamaraderie
Shurikenbreaker

Velouria

In a childless run of Conquest, I’d rank Camilla as the best unit in the game. She has fantastic base stats, amazing growths, and access to, arguably, the best class in the game: Wyvern Rider. How the heck do you top that? By doubling down on everything that makes Camilla great by earning an S rank with Keaton so you can create a second Camilla with even higher offensive, and defensive stats.

I don’t think it can be understated how much Velouria completely outpaced Camilla once I recruited her. Even with just an upgraded Bronze Axe, Velouria was able to ORKO the majority of enemies I set her against after I class changed her into a Wyvern Rider. This only got even more ridiculous once she was handed a stronger weapon that could actually proc offensive skills.

However, I think the thing I found most entertaining about Velouria is how unkillable she was. Wyvern Riders have naturally high bulk, but I managed to pass down Sol from Keaton to give her an additional chance to heal any time she attacked. In addition, Velouria’s personal skill had a chance to heal her at the start of every turn, and she also restored 40% of her health every other turn thanks to the skill Better Odds. This made her borderline unkillable in a way that Camilla can simply never manage, but it came without sacrificing any of that offensive prowess that makes both Camilla, and to a lesser extent Keaton, so formidable on the battlefield.

Were I to do something similar in the future, I think I’d like to try to get Trample onto Camilla before recruiting Velouria. That might set back her recruitment, but it’d let me class change Velouria into a Wyvern Lord, instead of a Malig Knight. This would lean into her physical defences a lot more, which I think is a better fit overall for Velouria.

Final Skills:

SolOdd Shaped
Savage BlowBetter Odds
Trample

Sophie

The things that make Sophie so amazing are a lot of the same reasons that Xander is amazing. She’s an incredibly bulky Cavalier unit, who can hit like a truck. The main difference is that Sophie doesn’t get Xander’s OP legendary weapon, but in exchange, she doesn’t need any Speed support. I don’t know if I just got lucky, or if having Corrin be Sophie’s mom was responsible for how fast Sophie was, but it meant that she was quite literally the perfect unit. 

I recruited Sophie prior to Chapter 11: Rainbow Sage, which is a super early point in the game to have such a completely broken unit. For context, that’s 5 chapters before Xander joins, and he’s one of the only units that could reasonably compete with Sophie. 

She was a little behind everyone else’s level, so I decided to pass Nobility down from Corrin so that Sophie could enjoy a 20% experience boost. That ensured that she was able to catch up to the rest of my party, and meant that, like Corrin, Sophie would always be rewarded for any action she took throughout the whole of my campaign.

The only downside, if you can call it that,  is that Sophie doesn’t actually have access to a god-tier 1-2 weapon like Xander. She’s so proficient at killing everything with little to no support though, so I don’t really know if that’s much of a consideration against her overall usefulness though.

In future, I think I’d like to experiment with Sophie’s skills a bit more. I really like the default Paladin skills, but something like Strong Riposte, or Sol would have been a nice additional skill to pick up along the way for a tiny investment. Also, if there is a way to turn her into a Wyvern Rider, that’d be worth looking into since Corrin naturally passes dragon weakness to both of her children.

Final Skills:

Elbow RoomShelter
NobilityDefender
Aegis

Corrin

Corrin is so gosh darn flexible that it’s really hard to screw her up. In playthrough #4 I decided to make her my dedicated mage. Generally speaking, I find magical attackers to be fairly underwhelming across Conquest. There’s a couple different mechanical reasons for this, which I might cover in another article, but I decided to give Magic Corrin a shot because Corrin can make anything feel good to use thanks to her sheer flexibility.

To start, I gave Corrin a Magic boon, and Dark Mage as her secondary class. My long term play was to make her a Malig Knight so she wouldn’t be foot locked, but I wanted to build up her Magic, and Tome rank before she actually hit her promotion. Besides, getting an A rank support with Camilla before level 15 wouldn’t prove to be terribly difficult on account of Camilla and Corrin working extremely well together while Corrin was a Dark Mage.

I also took a slight detour into the Cavalier class to grab Elbow Room before hitting Malig Knight. The reason for this is simple: I like skills that add consistent damage. I know it may seem strange to prioritize stable small damage increases, but I like those better than having a second critical hit rate by way of a proc skill that has a <15% activation rate. Consistently doing an additional 10 damage on every attack adds a lot more value over a single map than (maybe) exploding one enemy after you trigger Dragon Fang, or any of the other terrible proc rate skills that deal additional damage. Regardless, Elbow Room is an awesome skill since it almost always provides an additional 3 extra damage to all attacks, or 6 if you can double attack, which is why I wanted it.

So, how was Corrin with all of these damage buffs, and a flying mount? She was an unbelievable force of nature. I know it’s fairly standard to have Corrin sit among your pantheon of excellent units, but she was completely unbelievable in this playthrough. She made a very strong case for magic users not actually being that bad, but I think a large part of that came down to her having Calamity Gate, and Bolt Axe access for the majority of the time she was a Malig Knight. Nothing could escape being completely ripped to pieces by her even if they had a high Resistance. And it isn’t like her Strength wasn’t also high, so I could always use an Iron Axe if I really couldn’t damage something with Magic.

Speaking of the Bolt Axe, that was the one thing that really set Corrin apart. I had no idea how powerful it was because I’ve never had anyone who could really use it that well, but holy cow. 14 might without any upgrades? The Bolt Axe is one of the strongest items in the entire game. That’s insane. And in Corrin’s hands the Bolt Axe became a tool for mass genocide, and several Geneva Code breaking war crimes.

My opinion on magic users was fairly pessimistic prior to this playthrough, but now I’m a believer. Well, I’m a believer that Magic Corrin is broken as shit after watching her tear through so much of Conquest. Odin, Leo, and especially Nyx still belong in the trash bin.

Final Skills:

Malefic AuraHeartseeker
Elbow RoomSavage Blow
Trample

Future Considerations

In lieu of an actual conclusion, I wanted to include a section with some notes about other future build ideas. While writing, and editing this monstrous article, I had a few different ideas for neat things that might be worth pursuing in future. I don’t actually know if any of this is viable, but they were ideas that I thought were neat. A lot of my favourite units from playthrough #4 were vibes based, so there might be something here worth going after.

Archer Niles (& Nina)

You can get the Archer class by way of Mozu, and a Partner Seal. Niles’ base stats are suited toward taking out magical targets despite not having WTA against them. By getting Certain Blow from the Sniper class, that wouldn’t be an issue. This also gives him a higher Skill growth rate which might help to naturally patch the issue up.

Having access to Quick Draw, and Bowfaire are also a nice bonus. Plus, thanks to the Outlaw class, both Niles and Nina will have +1 Movement, so they’ll have Cavalier movement despite being an infantry unit. This feels like it’d be especially useful on a Sniper.

Izana

Just recruit him if you run another Magic project. I don’t know why you didn’t grab him since he comes with Rally Magic, and Luck which would have made Corrin even more demonic than she already was. Just do yourself a favour, and make sure you recruit this guy. He’s a free cheerleader.

Dual Rally Shegurie

As funny as another Triple Rally, or Quad Rally build would be, we’ve already discovered that they’re highly impractical. Alternatively, Shegurie has excellent stats for working as a support bot with Rallying capabilities, and access to the Troubadour class. You could use this to give him Speed, and Resistance Rally while running Voice of Peace, and Inspiration. For the final skill slot, if there is a possibility to inherit a Rally skill from dad, then that’d be ideal. Laslow offers Rally Skill, or Arthur and Keaton can do Rally Strength. There’s probably some more obscure options I’m not thinking of if you use Friendship Seals, but that’s a problem for the future.

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