Fire Emblem: Three Houses Guide - Fishing, Combat, Gardening, Gold

[Makar | 1,946]

Hard to find tips and tricks for combat, fishing, gardening, gold, and more.

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.

[Makar | 1,946]

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.

[B.A. | 1,139]

So this might be old news, but with the rusted weapons you can take them to the forge and have them repaired.  Usually it will be an iron weapon, but it can be steel, silver and brave also.  If you are really lucky it can be a special named weapon, I've found two of those in my playtroughs.  You can check what the weapon will change into by selecting info in your inventory.  

 

Another thing I learned way too late is renown points, you can spend them at the 4 statues in the church on growth boosts.  It makes training up your class faster.  

[Wasbi | 6]

1 hour ago, B.A. said:

So this might be old news, but with the rusted weapons you can take them to the forge and have them repaired.  Usually it will be an iron weapon, but it can be steel, silver and brave also.  If you are really lucky it can be a special named weapon, I've found two of those in my playtroughs.  You can check what the weapon will change into by selecting info in your inventory.  

 

Another thing I learned way too late is renown points, you can spend them at the 4 statues in the church on growth boosts.  It makes training up your class faster.  

The renown points have a significant use aside from the statues. Statues are good to invest into anyway.

[Makar | 1,946]

3 hours ago, B.A. said:

So this might be old news, but with the rusted weapons you can take them to the forge and have them repaired.  Usually it will be an iron weapon, but it can be steel, silver and brave also.  If you are really lucky it can be a special named weapon, I've found two of those in my playtroughs.  You can check what the weapon will change into by selecting info in your inventory.  

 

Another thing I learned way too late is renown points, you can spend them at the 4 statues in the church on growth boosts.  It makes training up your class faster.  

So for the rusted weapons, they're not always random what you get. For example, let's say there's a rusted weapon you can obtain in chapter 12s battle. That rusted weapon will always turn into the same thing. Let's just say it will always turn into and iron sword. Then in chapter 15 if there's a rusted weapon, it'll also be the same thing each time. Maybe a silver bow for example. But you won't know what it'll turn into until you go try to repair it. 

And yes, always use all your renown so that you can boost things faster including exp.

[B.A. | 1,139]

You can check what it will turn into right from your inventory when you pick it up.  My inventory was usually full so I would check it when it would ask me what to send to the convoy.  If it was something decent I would keep it with the character, if it was iron or steel I would send it to the convoy. 

[Makar | 1,946]

4 hours ago, B.A. said:

You can check what it will turn into right from your inventory when you pick it up.  My inventory was usually full so I would check it when it would ask me what to send to the convoy.  If it was something decent I would keep it with the character, if it was iron or steel I would send it to the convoy. 

Why keep a rusted weapon on a character? It's essentially useless until you repair it.

[B.A. | 1,139]

Because I forget about it otherwise and it just sits in my convoy inventory.

[Makar | 1,946]

21 hours ago, B.A. said:

Because I forget about it otherwise and it just sits in my convoy inventory.

I see. You can check your inventory whenever. And when it's on your character, it's taking up a value spot another weapon, shield, or healing item could be. I like to have as many varied weapons as possible to be able to combat any enemy on the field.