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As you play through Fire Emblem Engage, new things get unlocked at the Somniel. These are often side activities that help boost your effectiveness in combat. Sometimes they are even fully-featured modes to add more depth to the game. Every now and then, however, you get a new stall in the Plaza.
The Blacksmith is one of the first stalls you gain access to, and it is one of the most important. Where most shops wheel and deal in new weapons, items, or clothes, the Blacksmith deals in raw materials and enhancement. Remember, not all character can effectively use the best weapons. Instead of weighing them down, why not make their current gear better.
More Fire Emblem Engage content:
Combat Guide | Beginner Tips | Game Balance | Launch Trailer | Expansion Pass
How To Unlock The Blacksmith
The Blacksmith can be unlocked very early on in your Fire Emblem career, and it is unmissable. Simply complete Chapter 5, and you will be met with a cutscene introducing you to this powerful vendor. They will then make their way to the Somniel for your enhancing pleasure.
You can find the Blacksmith around the plaza. She has a unique icon on the map making her very difficult to miss.
Refine
Refining weapons in the main purpose of the Blacksmith. This allows you to take a weapon you like, for example, a Slim Sword, and make it more powerful. Refining weapons takes materials and money, and the cost to upgrade weapons gets exponentially more expensive as you go up the ranks.
Weapons can, as a general rule, be upgraded to Level 5 at max. A maxed out weapon has significantly higher stats than an unupgraded weapon. Refining is an excellent way to make weapons with powerful effects, like Alear’s Liberation, viable throughout the game. However, upgrading any weapon is often worth the cost.
An imporant thing to note is that weapons can also Transform. If we take the Slim Sword example, you can spend resources to Transform into a mysterious new weapon (Iron Sword in this case). Transformation is often cheaper than upgrading a weapon, and Transforming will set your weapon back to level 1. As a result, it’s often wiser to Transform a weapon before upgrading it to preserver your resources. Do be aware some weapon have multiple transformation paths.
Engraving
Where Refine is a way to incrementally increase the power of your equipment, Engraving is a way to drastically boost a weapons stats in exchange for lowering other stats (occasionally). Engraving allows you to use an Emblem to mold your weapons at the cost of Bond Fragments. The cost is incredibly low, and the power increase can be substantial.
Taking an Iron Sword for and Engraving it with the Holy Emblem (Sigurd), you would gain small boosts to your damage, avoid, and lower the weight of your weapon. Alternatively, you could engrave a weapon with Radiance, and drastically increase your weapon’s damage in exchange for drastically increasing its weight, making it harder to use.
Every weapon you use should be Engraved, and how you Engrave a weapon is entirely down to personal preference and the character who is going to wield that weapon. Characters with high BLD can use Radiance to gain huge damage boosts without an real downsides. However, characters with low BLD may be better off sticking with something like Holy.
Exchange
The final service offered by the Blacksmith is Exchange. As you may have noticed, Refining weapons requires a lot of resources. Well, one of the earliest ways to amass resources is by exchanging resource you don’t need, for ones that you do.
Exchange is where you would do this. Simply select a resource you want, then the resource you are willing to trade for it. You will be given an exchange rate. For example, if you wanted Iron, you could exchange 1 Silver and receive 90 Iron. However, if you wanted Silver, you would need to hand over 110 Iron PER Silver.
The Exchange is a powerful tool, but the rates can certainly be eye-watering when you are trying to get your hands on rare materials.
That’s all we have for Fire Emblem Engage for now. Be sure to check out our other guides for more tips and tricks.
