I've been playing fire emblem three houses for a couples weeks now (still haven't beaten it), and I'm finding it difficult to find one concise guide with accurate tips. So I thought I'd make my own and add to it as I get input from people here who have played it.

FISHING

This is a very important part of the game.
You can fish on your free days if you choose to explore.
You will need bait to fish.
You can get bait from these sparkling blue dust orb looking things that are all over the monestary, or by buying them from the Eastern merchant after you do one of the quest battles early on.


Fishing gives you experience towards your professor level.
Fishing is free in the sense that it doesn't use up any of your free activity time.
Fishing is your way to get lots of gold.


Buy all the bait from the Eastern merchant on each exploring day.
They'll have 40 total pieces of bait costing you 1050 gold.


There are 5 different kinds of bait ranging in rarity from 1-5. The ones with 4 and 5 star rarities bring in rarer yellow fish more often, and also Platinum fish more easily.

The Eastern merchant sells:
10 insect larva (rarity 1),
10 pond snail (rarity 2),
10 earthworm (rarity 3),
5 blowfly (rarity 4),
5 herring bait (rarity 5 )


This bait replenishes in the store at the start of each month. If you explore twice in the same month, you will not be able to purchase more bait during the 2nd visit.

Fish when there's a fistfulls of fish or uncommon fish event going on, such as the fish of mystery event.
You will catch multiple fish from one piece of bait during a fistfulls of fish event. You will also gain much more professor level experience during this event.
You will catch rarer fish more easily during an uncommon fish event.
You can catch Fodlandy once during the "Lots of Large Fish" fishing event in chapter 14.
You can catch Goddess Messenger and Fodlandy during a Fish of Mystery event. Goddess Messenger fish have the rainbow fish icon. Fodlandy has the purple fish icon. I was only able to catch these fish during the fish of mystery event with herring (rarity 5) bait.

When you go fishing, you have 3 guaranteed tries to catch a fish before you lose your bait. You can risk it and go for a 4th attempt. Sometimes there will be a fish you can catch on the 4th try but most times you'll lose your bait. You cannot catch a fish on a 5th try. You are guaranteed to lose your bait if you wait for a 5th fish shadow/color to appear. (All guides I've seen say you only get 3 tries but this is not true).

Fish colors and sizes can be seen at the bottom of the fishing pole.

There are 6 fish colors and sizes (despite every other guide saying there are only 3 or 4):

SMALL BLUE,

BIG BLUE,

RED,

YELLOW,

"RAINBOW" (green, blue, purple, and pink) only available on some special fishing event days when there's a bunch of yellow light shining up from the pond you fish in. Goddess Messenger is the only fish I've been able to get so far from this icon.

PURPLE (only available on certain special event days. So far I have only confirmed that purple fish appear in chapter 14 on the day of The Big One", and in chapter 15 during a "Fish of Mystery" event). The only fish I've caught from the purple fish icon is Fodlandy, but I suspect you can also catch ancient fodlan from the purple fish icon.




The fish go in order of rarity.
Small blue are common fish that give you very little gold.
Big blue are common fish but give you a little more gold.
Red fish are rarer and give you around 20-100 gold per fish.
Yellow fish icons are very rare. They're what you want. Yellow fish icons give you silver fish, gold fish, and Platinum fish. All these fish are available during any fishing outing, not just special fish events.
And then there's the "rainbow" fish and purple fish.


There is an extremely rare "rainbow" fish. I put it in quotes because it's not the colors of a normal rainbow. This fish only appears during special events like the fish of mystery event. I have only been able to catch them with herring bait (rarity 5 bait). Rainbow fish are extremely hard to catch because the circle moves very fast. The fish you can get from rainbow fish is goddess messenger. Potentially ancient fodlan as well but I have not confirmed these.

Then there's a purple fish which is found during a quest in chapter 14 when this guy asks you to catch "The Big One". I used insect larva and got a purple fish on the first bite and only the first bite. The purple fish ended up being Fodlandy, which you trade him to complete the quest (sorry no 2000 gold for you).


You can also get purple fish during the "Fish of Mystery" event in chapter 15. The only fish I've caught when it's purple is Fodlandy. I was only able to catch Fodlandy with herring (rarity 5) bait.



Silver fish sell for 200 gold,
Gold fish sell for 500,
Platinum sell for 1000,
Goddess Messenger sells for 1500,
Ancient Fodlan sells for 2000,
Fodlandy sells for 2000.


During a golden fish event, you can catch a gold fish with any of the 5 different kinds of bait. I personally did this so I know it's possible. I was only able to catch a platinum fish with rarity 3, 4, and 5 bait. 4 and 5 are much easier to get platinum fish with than 3. I was able to catch a platinum fish with rarity 2 bait during the fish of mystery event. I know you can get silver fish with rarity 1 and 2 bait. Not sure about the 3-5 bait.

I have confirmed you can catch platinum fish on any day with bait as low as pond snail (rarity 2 bait).

You can get around 6000 gold from the 40 bait you buy each time from the Eastern merchant. So a profit of 5000 or so.



GARDENING

You should garden every time you explore on a free day.
Gardening gives you professor experience.
Gardening doesn't use any activity points.
Gardening gives you gifts which you can use to boost your classmate's motivation.
Gardening gives you food you can use for meals and sell.
You can get stat boosting items if all of the flower seeds you plant are the same color.


You get better crops if you plant all of the same seed. The higher the seed rarity, the better the crops you'll get as well.

You get a higher yield the more money you pay. So always pay the most you can.

You can buy rarer seeds such as red, blue, white, purple, and green flower seeds from the Southern Merchant.

COMBAT

Assign a battalion to every unit
There is no downside to having a battalion
But the upside can be tremendous, especially against giant/demonic beasts.
Gambit attacks (which are your battalion attacking) are useful to break giant beasts shields.
Gambits can also be useful against stronger does because you don't take counter damage when you use a Gambit


For giant/demonic beasts, you can hit them if you're 3 or more squares away and not take counter damage. So save those thoron, more, and death magic attacks for the beast and to break the shield down if you can't with a Gambit.

Lure opponents to you.
Put your strongest unit on the edge of where your opponents can reach. This will draw them to you and allow for your strong unit to counter attack. Then on the next turn, you can finish the job.


If you have an incredibly tough opponent (like the death knight), who will wipe out most of your units in one hit or round, You can rack up more damage by placing mages and bowmen within striking distance of the enemy, but don't attack with them. Then let your one or 2 very powerful units go in for the attack with the boosted support from those within range.


Use weaker weapons when you use your combats abilities. Most combat attacks cost -3 or -5 to a weapon's durability. You don't want to ruin your best weapons when your weaker ones can get the job done and take the hit on their durability.


Don't be afraid to equip iron weapons on a lot of units even when you also have stronger weapons like steel. Iron weapons often allow your unit to attack twice while steel weapons usually don't, so you can actually often do more overall damage with an iron weapon than a steel one.


You can use your rescue magic spell to sort of act like a warp spell. If the mage with rescue is farther away, they can rescue another even farther away unit toward them. Not quite the same as warping but it is a way to move units an extra amount before the warped unit moves themselves.


Do not assign healing battalions to healers. There is no point to doing this since you can already heal your units.


Always have at least one or two units who have a monster combat art. It'll come in very handy by doing a ton of damage in one hit to giant/demonic beasts.


Critical hits do 3x the normal damage. It is advantageous to have high critical hit ratio items such as a killing edge or killer axe. Even if the accuracy is lower, the critical hit might come into play. Some items like killing edge have a high percentage of landing a normal hit already plus a 40% or so rate to be critical. These are great items to have, especially if you counter foes attacking you.





OTHER

Another way to get some gold is to sell the training weapons you pick up from the purple spots you land on where lots of people online died. The rusted weapons will only give 1 gold but the training weapons usually give around 100 and are basically worthless in combat.

There is a purpose to rest days other than it maxing out everyone's motivation (which you can do on your exploration days anyways). Resting also replenishes your sword of the creator weapon's durability by I believe 5, maybe 10. I need to figure that one but I know its durability can be replenished somewhat.

There is almost no point to doing seminars or resting on your free day. The reason being you can achieve the same things from your exploration days or from battling.

Seminars raise skill focuses for certain characters, but not by much. It also raises motivation by 50 but only for those few that attended the lecture.

As mentioned before, rest days restore everyone's motivation to the max, and also recovers some of the sword of Creator's weapon durability.

You can boost skill focus experience by fighting on the battlefield with different weapons for whatever you're trying to increase. Battles also give your units experience, gold, weapons, and items. It's much more valuable to do battles and get all those extra bonuses than to do a seminar.

Exploring is also super beneficial. You can raise anyone's motivation by giving them gifts that you buy from merchants or that you get from gardening. You can also boost motivation through meals, tea parties, and by returning lost items. Exploring also boosts professor experience which in turn adds more activity points which means more meals you can have with people, more training you can do to boost skill proficiency, etc. You can go fishing when you explore, and get lots of gold from it. You can recruit people. There's a lot you can do. You can forge and repair weapons any time too.

You can only do certifications right before you decide what you want to do on your free day. It's the only thing I can think of that you can't do in multiple places. I recommend pushing X to bring up the menu, then going to inventory, then going to reclass. Try to max out a units experience before doing a certification for another class. You'll get useful bonus abilities when you max out their unit exp. For example, when Byleth maxes out his Commoner class, he gets an HP+5 ability he can equip to gain 5 extra health. You gain unit exp per enemy your unit fights. The later classes like intermediate ones take longer to get the bonuses. Some require 100 unit exp, so 100 enemies fought.



There are many more tips and tricks but I figured I'd start with these and see what you guys have to say.

Reserved for future posts

I think I'll put elements of the game explained here, like the 8 different stats for example.

STATS

Str - increases damage dealt from physical attacks. Not 100% sure if stuff like Levin sword is boosted by Str or Mag. My guess would be Str.

Mag - increases all magic attacks. Light, dark, white, black.

Dex - increases your accuracy and critical hit rates.

Spd - increases evasion, lowers opponents accuracy.

Lck - decreases opponent's critical hit percentage sometimes. Also might have some other effects.

Def - increases your unit's defense. Lowers damage from physical attacks but not magic attacks.

Res - increases your unit's resistance. Lowers damage from magic attacks but not physical attacks.

Cha - increases damage dealt be gambits, a Gambit's critical hit percentage, and a Gambit's accuracy.

Cool thread! Playing this now as well! I always sell the training weapons as well as the iron ones. Usually at least skim the rusty ones to see if theres anything cool but sell most of the junk.

Thanks man! I'm loving this game so far. Lots of new stuff. It's nice to see they can keep coming up with ways to keep the series fresh. I keep iron ones for double hits in battles, and I turn the rusty ones into new weapons since that's cheaper than buying a new iron sword for example.

I just started, only played the prologue so far. I'm sure I'll come back to this thread as I get further.

Man, does the pace pick up ever? I'm 3 hours in and have had only 1 training battle. Talk talk talk talk is all I've been doing.

It does pick up quite a bit not too much further.  Once you start getting battles as quests, that's when it has been really hard for me to decide what to do each week.  There have been two months where I battled every single week and didn't explore at all.  I wouldn't suggest that now, looking back, but if you are jonesing for battles, the opportunity isn't too far ahead of you.  Chapter 6 is when it starts to shake loose.

 

I actually didn't find the pace to be too slow at all. Plenty to do and there are tons of extra paralogue and quest battles a couple chapters in. Oh and rare beast sightings. Tons of battles to be had.

Well that's good to hear, it must just he slow to get going.

Still nowhere near as bad as Pokemon sun and moon lol. Good lord was that the worst opening (and entry) in the series.

Oh, and I highly recommend each month exploring once per month, and then only doing battles for the rest of the month. There's not really an advantage to exploring twice per month. No new items lying around, no replenishing of bait or other items, and no new conversations to be had. Seminars are okay but you can boost focus experience when you explore anyways. Rest is pretty much pointless because all it does is max out everyone's motivation, which you can do on your exploration day by giving everyone gifts, lost items, having tea with them, etc. Battles give you experience, weapons, gold, boost the companionship between units, and they can unlock things like more merchants.

Added a couple more tips and tricks as well as what the 8 different stats effect (see 2nd post).

Anyone know if a Levin sword is effected by Str or Mag? It's a magical sword so it's a gray area. Also, is Str for physical weapons or physical attacks? Levin sword is a physical weapon but a magical sword.

I've played a bit more and I don't get the battalion's. I either forget what they do after I assign them, or if I do choose gambit the attack seems less effective then the normal attack. They leave randomly, or need upkeep even though I never use them. Just don't get it.

I haven't had any luck recruiting characters either. I assume you just need to constantly gift them stuff, invite to tea/meals to get their support up in order for it to work? Since you obviously don't naturally build support with characters outside your house.

The battalions are sort of a watered down version of combining two characters in Fire Emblem Awakening. You get bonuses to your stats and as the battalions gain experience and levels, their stat bonuses increase as well. Later battalions can get extremely powerful! It's a shame though that their stat bonuses aren't clearly indicated during the combat missions. But you can still press X on a character, go to the Battalion screen and press X again to see the stat bonuses of the battalions.

The gambits are really not all that powerful most of the time, unless you have Hubert or Ingrid and a high level in authority, which gives them a nice strength boots. However, the gambits have a few great advantages. Firs of all, gambits can not be countered. So they're safe for whittling down the HP of a very strong enemy. Secondly, they can hit multiple enemies. Thirdly, they have additional abilities such causing an enemy to be unable to move or to move them around etc. And last but not least, they're extremely useful for fighting later enemies in the game as the gambits allow you to effectively destroy those enemies' armor so that they can easily be beaten by your regular units. Just assign a battalion to every character, elvel them up and exchange the battalions once your characters have an higher authority skill.

As for recruiting other characters, your avatar, i.e. Byleth, has to have two of his/her skills on a certain level, i.e. some character mgiht require you to have Riding and Spears on B or whatever, before you can recruit them. These requirements get lowered, the higher your support level with these characters is. And in order to raise that support level, you have to do exactly those things that you have mentioned. You could also invite one of the other characters, to assist you in a battle and by fighting side by side you increase yours upport level as well. Just try to recruit another character and it will say which skills that specific character requires. You can increase those skills by participating with Byleth at a seminar or by getting privately tutored from a teacher, who is good at that specific skill. It's quite complicated and I did not have much luck on my first playthrough since my Byleth was quite underdeveloped.

Ah, yes I was also wondering what the leadership skill did. Thanks

Battalions are very useful if you use them correctly. Most only give you 2 attacks per battle so use them wisely. Equip one to every unit, and replenish them after every battle. They're very cheap to replenish. Enemies cannot counter a Gambit, and if several units are near each other, they get a Gambit attack and accuracy boost when they attack.

I will add on for recruiting that you should get tutoring from professors in skills that byleth doesn't use in battle. So if byleth is your swordsman on the battlefield, don't spend an activity point raising his sword skill by 20 since he can raise his sword skill on the battlefield. Raise it in something you don't use but in something that a recruitable unit wants. Like if Marianna wants Reason, then find a professor who will teach you in that skill and raise that experience by 20+

Added some more fishing info. I'm amazed how much info just isn't out there in other guides. Every guide I read says there are either 3 or 4 different fish shadows, but there are actually 6

How does the class advancing work? I know part of it is the weapon proficiency level, you need a certain minimum. What else impacts the percentage chance of passing?

It's all based on weapon proficiency. I think the percentages deal with how far along you are rank wise for each weapon vs what is a guaranteed pass for that weapon in that class. So let's say you want to be a mage and you need your Reason weapon to be rank C for a guaranteed 100% pass. If your unit is only at rank D for Reason, you might have a 66% chance to pass. If it's E it might be 25% or 0, and the + ranks probably add a little percentage too.

And then when you have multiple weapons that need to be a certain rank, it's the same thing. You might need both weapons to be rank C for a guaranteed 100% pass. If one of your weapons is rank D and one is rank C, you'll probably have a 75% chance to pass.

They don't really explain it all but basically save before you take a test where you don't have a 100% chance of passing. If you don't pass, just turn your game off so you don't waste a seal.

Afaik it's only affected by the weapon proficiency level. You need to reach that minimum in all proficiencies to get 100%. You can still try it earlier though. Just make sure to save beforehand or you might waste an expensive item that's needed for a class upgrade.

In this FE game you can choose your class progression freely. The only thing limiting your characters are their proficiencies. But of course certain characters are more suited towards certain classes. Classes improve your stat growth slightly, so that might be worth considering (although the game doesn't explicitly tell you how the different classes affect stat growth, but there are guides for that).

Don't forget that you can also master a class, which will grant you an additional ability like +5 HP, +2 Strength etc.

On a side note concerning the combat section of this guide: I would advise to use those practice weapons as well. They are most useful once you have upgraded them, which reduces their weight immensely, i.e. to 2. The practice weapons+ are easily the fastest weapons in the game and certain characters are so strong anyway, that they can still cause a lot of damage just with these weak weapons. But since they don't reduce your speed so much you will often be able to attack twice or to receive only one hit.

All good points Gaia!

I highly recommend mastering the Noble class for each character so you can get the +5 hp. It's a very useful bonus to equip, especially early in the game.

I didn't think about that for the training weapons but is it really worth it? Have you done the math of if x2 with a training weapons does more than say a killing edge? I like the "killer" weapons because of the high crit rates, and then the brave weapons are probably better than the training weapons with multiple attacks and a higher attack.

I honestly haven't really used the killer weapons since they are way too heavy and unreliable, imho. I usually prefer a reliable fixed damage over potential very high damage. Moreover, unless you have a really fast character, you might lose the two times attack bonus. But in the long run the killer weapons and the brave weapons are obviously better, although I don't have exact numbers to prove any of this.

I was mostly referring to the practice weapons+ in terms of early to mid-game, where they can be very useful. I compared some of them and for the practice sword gives +2 speed and evasion, but -3 attack compared to an iron sword+. Practice lance+ is +3 speed and -3 attack, practice axe+ gives +3 speed and -2 attack, practice bow+ gives +2 speed and -4 attack and so on. Oh, and I forgot that they give about +10 hit. So in some cases they may potentially be useful to give you that slight edge regarding speed and/or accuracy. And since some characters are insanely strong the lower attack power may not much of a deal.

Apart from that I can also recommend teaching your characters the armor skill up to rank C, because then you will learn the ability -3 weight, which reduces your weight penalty when equipping heavier weapons and shields.

Thanks for the tips....going to focus on fishing a bit more thanks to this.

First time playing any FE game and I must agree with an earlier poster....very slow paced. I am 30 hours in and only on chapter 12. It takes 4+ hours to finish a month.

Hears hoping school/your Professor career ends at some point in the near future

No problem! Yea, fishing is very nice for gold and boosting professor experience, which are both very important in the game.

Ah, so that's what you guys are referring to when you say the game is slow paced. You can skip through a lot of the dialogue, and I'm pretty sure you can also skip right to the battles each month if you really wanted to. I find the exploration days to be fun and a nice way to break up the battles. There have been a couple months where I wish they were shortened by a week but overall, I think they did a good job with the pace.

If I skip the dialouge I'll never know what's going on! lol. I am interested in the story, but it's just a drag some times watching two of these nerds try to be friends. Just start bangin already, and stop with the BS.

Haha true. I find myself skipping a lot of those extra scenes when units build up support with one another. And I'm never going to fully understand all the house relationships with each other so I don't sweat it too much that I don't fully understand the story. Too many names and relationships to keep straight