Fire Emblem Engage: The Best Weapons To Engrave And Refine

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• Emblem Engravings And Their Stats

• Best Weapons To Engrave

• Best Weapons To Refine

Fire Emblem Engage has a weapon upgrade and refining system similar to the one from Fire Emblem Echoes. For the price of resources, your Iron weapons can be upgraded into Steel variants, which can then be upgraded into Killer or Silver versions, and so on.

A brand new mechanic in Engage is the Engraving system, which lets you enhance a chosen weapon with one of the current Emblem Rings you have available. These are transferable and provide various stat changes to your equipment, which can either increase or decrease certain aspects of the chosen weapon.

Emblem Engravings And Their Stats

Each Emblem Ring you obtain will add a new Engraving type to the menu at the Smithy. The Smithy will be unlocked automatically at the start of Chapter 6, alongside the Boutique. There are 12 Emblem Rings in total, which means there are 12 Engravings to choose from.

You can Engrave any weapon you want at the cost of Bond Fragments. However, multiple weapons can't have an identical Engraving, which means it will be removed from one if you put it onto another. The stat increases vary between each Engraving, with some lowering your avoidance or one raising the weapon's weight. Here's a breakdown of each Engraving and what it offers.

Spoiler alert: there is a hidden 13th Emblem Ring in Fire Emblem Engage. If you don't want to know about it, don't read the below table.

Best Weapons To Engrave

Try and look for the best compliments when choosing the equipment you want to use. This is by far the best thing about the Engravings since they can balance out the stats of weapons, allowing a more robust arsenal when deciding which one you want to take into battle.

If your heavy units have high enough defence, don't try and drop the weight of the weapons because this will never make the meaningful difference you want it to. Instead, try increasing the weight and upping your damage and hit rate to ensure you deal some damage with a counterattack and, more importantly, hit the enemy.

Liberation And Beginnings Engraving

Alear's sword benefits massively from the Beginning's Engraving because of the positive increases across the board. Alear has excellent stats, and this will be the case as you progress and level up. Using a no-drawback engraving like Beginnings will enhance what's already there to tremendous effect. The crit bonus is a nifty addition, as is the hit rate.

There is an argument to be made here that the Dawn Engraving would suit Alear better since it offers a healthy boost to your Avoid, but it ultimately comes down to personal preference.

Excalibur And Echoes Engraving

The Excalibur spell won't be available to you until later in the game unless you refine an Elwind to create it. Doing so will get you Excalibur early, and you can further enhance its capabilities with Celica's Echoes Emblem.

The Echoes Emblem will drop the damage, but this shouldn't matter too much for your units using it since it's a low-weight tome, meaning you will most likely double the enemy when attacking. Furthermore, the Echoes Engraving gives your weapons 50 dodge points, severely reducing the chances of being hit by a critical strike.

Bolganone And Holy Engraving

The Holy Engraving increases your attack, gives extra avoidance, and drops the weight of your weapon by one. This is excellent for medium-weight weapons, especially magic like Bolganone since you can increase the damage and give you a better chance to hit the enemy twice.

The Holy Engraving works extremely well regardless of the weapon you choose, but we think this would provide the most benefit for a magical weapon.

Silver Dagger And Genealogy Engraving

Not only do daggers have a low weight, but they also inflict the Poison debuff when hitting an enemy. Daggers don't do a whole lot of damage until you get a Silver one, so this is the one you'll want to invest in.

Using an Engraving to up the damage of your favourite Silver Dagger will yield wonderful results. Characters like Merrin would be a force to be reckoned with if she could deal more damage, and that engraving, along with some weapon refinement, would be one way to make her more viable in the late-game battles.

Nova And Binding Engraving

Nova is a magical tome that works like one of the Brave weapons. This means it has the innate ability to let you hit twice when initiating combat. It should be clear that weight, in this weapon's case, means absolutely nothing.

Mages should be behind the front line in almost all situations, and with this engraving, you'll be able to blast enemies twice and escape to safety. Pair your Mage units with the Canter skill, and you'll be unstoppable with this setup so long as you don't get counterattacked.

Caladbolg And Blazing Engraving

Caladbolg is one of the legendary swords in Fire Emblem Engage, and it almost certainly belongs in the hands of Diamant or any S-rank sword wielder you may have access to. This sword is a reward for beating Chapter 21, and while late in the game, it will become a mainstay for your sword users.

Adding the Blazing Engraving will drop its damage, increase its hit and critical rate, and reduce the weight. This balances out the stats excellently, and the minus two to Mt will go unnoticed.

Thoron And Sacred Engraving

The Sacred Engraving reduces your Avoid and Dodge but increases your critical rate. When paired with Thoron, an already powerful spell with a range of three, you should be giddy at the possibilities this combo could do.

Three range is the sweet spot in Fire Emblem, with only the Longbow and other Thunder spells having that range, meaning that Thoron is very rarely able to be countered. Throw in the extra critical hit bonus and you'll have a mage who can decimate foes at a comfortable range.

Brionac And Radiance Engraving

This pairing is all about upping Brionac's damage. Giving this weapon the Radiance Engraving will pump up the weight, which shouldn't be an issue for an armoured General unit since they're always going to get hit twice nines times out of ten.

If your units are slow already, such as Louis or Jade, then they don't have to worry too much about being hit twice unless they don't have the defence to survive it. This engraving will give you one strong unit on the frontlines, able to attack at range and hit back hard.

Silver Lance And Dawn Engraving

This engraving is uniquely catered towards flying units, specifically to Chloe as a Griffin Knight. With one of the best base Avoid stats in the game, Chloe can be hard to hit at the best of times, so you'll want to capitalise on this with the Dawn Engraving.

Having Chloe as an Avoid Tank is a valid strategy, and with the Dawn Engraving, enemies will have a tougher time landing their hits. It's a perfect match for Chloe on all fronts.

If you have the Fire Emblem Heroe's DLC spear, Fensalir, we highly recommend putting the Dawn Engraving on this spear and giving it to Chloe.

Chloe's decent avoidance added with the Dawn Engraving, and the spear's high innate Avoid stat will make them borderline untouchable, even from arrows.

Armourslayer And Awakening Engraving

Outside of Engaging, the Armourslayer is one of the few ways to deal with armoured units. You can use the Hammer, but it has too many drawbacks for our liking. The problem with the Armourslayer sword is that it's too heavy and has an awful hit rate, this is where the Awakening Engraving steps in.

Using this engraving on the Armourslayer will fix almost all of its issues and give you some more Avoidance in the process, which is always helpful in any Fire Emblem.

Brave Axe And Fates Engraving

The Fates Engraving is all about increasing your critical hit rate, which you might already be able to guess why this would be good on a Brave weapon. Brave weapons attack twice by default if you initiate combat, which means you can double an opponent on your turn every time, so long as it's your turn.

Cranking up the critical hit rate for the Brave axe, or any Brave weapon will double your chances to get score a critical hit, which is what we all want when going up against tough enemies.

Silver Greataxe And Academy Engraving

The idea behind this pairing is to capitalise on the Greataxe's already huge weight being increased, which shouldn't make a difference since they can't perform follow-up attacks. The main difference is that the weapon's base 70 hit rate will go up to 100, and the engraving will also increase your crit and avoidance.

Wille Glanz And Fire Engraving

The Wille Glanz is Alear's ultimate weapon, which you don't get until much later in the game. It effectively acts as an upgrade to the Liberation, complete with a range of one-to-two spaces, which is a game changer.

The sword is strong already, and it makes sense that Alear's Emblem Engraving would be the best combination. The Fire Engraving gives a buff to every stat at the cost of minus one damage. This trade-off is a no-brainer and makes Alear extremely difficult to kill.

Best Weapons To Refine

You can refine every weapon in the game up to five times, but each time will cost more materials that are rare to come by unless you're grinding. The results of Refining are immediately noticeable, and you can elevate your damage to dizzying heights if you pour your resources into a select few weapons.

Early in the game, you won't have access to many resources you'll need to refine your gear. This means you'll want to do it somewhat sparingly if possible. You shouldn't bother upgrading your Slim or Iron-type weapons due to them dropping off in the damage department substantially compared to later weapons.

Swords

• Liberation
• Armourslayer
• Wo Dao
• Levin Sword
• Caladbolg
• Wille Glanz

Axes

• Brave Axe
• Silver Axe
• Tomahawk

Spears

• Fensalir
• Silver Lance
• Killer Lance
• Brionac

Daggers

• Silver Dagger
• Cinquedea
• Misericorde

Tomes

• Bolganone
• Thoron
• Excalibur
• Elfire

The idea is to invest more in unique weapons like Liberations, Wo Dao, Killer, and Brave weapons to make the most out of them. There are several legendary S-rank weapons in Engage, which you should also invest in some refinements levels.

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