Information about grinding/min-maxing in Fire Emblem Three Hopes. Can you min-max your stats by save-scumming level up bonuses, and should you?

Can You Min-Max in Fire Emblem Three Hopes?¶

tl;dr: Yes, but the variation due to RNG is pretty much limited to class growth rates and hence are fairly minor until you increase the max stat cap. Don’t worry about what stats you get when you level up on your first playthrough, most of your characters should get near the max stat caps regardless. if you want more details on how this works, read the text below and check out the following pages:

• Max Stats by Character in Fire Emblem Three Hopes
• Stat Growth Rates by Character in Fire Emblem Three Hopes
• Stat Growth Rates by Class in Fire Emblem Three Hopes

There are two types of Fire Emblem players; those who enjoy the thrill of challenging tactical combat where the lives of their characters are one bad decision away from being lost forever, and those who lose sleep at night when one of their units gets a bogus low-roll level, and who will go to great lengths to keep their favorite waifus and husbandos alive. Yours truly falls into the latter category, and for us the thrill of Fire Emblem isn’t narrowly seizing victory with the meager resources provided by a bare-bones playthrough, it’s grinding our characters to nigh omnipotence and crushing everything in our path.

That being the case, we’re here to answer those burning questions: can you min-max in Fire Emblem Three Hopes, how to do it, and should you bother?

How to Grind in Fire Emblem Three Hopes¶

Once you reach Chapter 4 in your chosen route the game opens up considerably. Instead of being forced to engage in linear Main Quest battles, you’ll gain access to the War Map, which each Chapter featuring several regions - usually a handful of Side Quests regions and one Main Quest region. You’ll need to clear Side Quest regions to reach the Main Quest region, and after you clear the Main Quest in a Chapter, you’ll move onto the next Chapter, complete with new Side Quest and Main Quest regions. Side Quest regions are captured the first time you complete the battle in that region, but you can replay these battles as many times as you wish, earning more XP, gold and loot every time you clear it - the only thing you don’t get upon repeat playthroughs are first-clear bonuses and rank bonuses.

Late-game battles feature stronger enemies which drop better loot, and the XP you gain depends on how your levels compares to an enemy’s - beat up on weaklings and you won’t get much out of it, and while changing the Difficulty can modulate the level of enemies, at some point grinding in a Chapter won’t be giving you much in the way of XP. You can still grind for gold, gear, materials, Class XP, Combat Art/Magic XP and Support Ranks, however, and this can grant you power that’s not readily apparent by merely browsing your stats.

Once Chapter 5 starts your options expand even further, as you can visit the Record Keeper and replay Main Quest and Side Quests from past Chapters. Obviously these aren’t great in terms of XP, but you can return with overpowered characters and easily S-Rank quests you may have had trouble with earlier and pick up missed treasure.

So grinding is alive and well in Three Hopes, but can you actually min-max by grinding?

Growth Rates and Max Stats in Fire Emblem Three Hopes¶

Can you min-max in Fire Emblem Three Hopes? Yes… But the usual method of min-maxing - namely save-scumming level ups to fish for better stat growths - yields minor results at best.

When you level up you’ll gain some random (or rather, suspiciously semi-random) stat boosts. These boosts vary depending on the character and their current class, with the former having much more influence than the latter. Lysithea may gain more Strength on average if she levels up as a Warrior, but she’ll gain a lot more Magic as she levels no matter what her class is. Not only do stat growths vary between characters, so do their maximum stat scores, and characters with high growth rates in a stat also tend to have high stat caps in that stat, and vice versa. Dimitri will always end up with a high Strength score and has a high Strength cap, while Petra will always end up with a relatively high Speed score and cap, and a low Resistance score and cap.

The stat boosts you’ll get from leveling up are only semi-random. In the tests we’ve done, characters showed a strong tendency to gain certain stats at certain levels with only minor variation. This variation almost always takes the form of one stat getting a double roll (+200~ HP instead of +100~, or +2 into another stat instead of +1), and while it’s possible to save-scum level ups to get slightly better results, when the average spread of 10 level ups is generally 200~ HP and 3-4 stat points among all other stats - with around half of a character’s stats in a 10 level span showing little to no variation at all, it’s safe to say that even the most ardent min-maxers should probably not fret over save-scumming level up results too much.

The reason save-scumming results are minor is simple: there are two separate growth rates for stats - a character’s innate stat growth, and the growth rate of their current class. This isn’t new to Fire Emblem games - far from it, but what is new is that a character’s innate stat growths aren’t actually rolled in-game, unlike in… pretty much every other modern Fire Emblem game. Instead a character’s growth rates are predetermined, and the results applied over their entire level range. For example, below are Shez’s growth rates and max stats:

Which means by Lv120 she’ll have gained the following boosts to all her stats (note that these numbers do not include her base stats nor any class bonuses, just the flat gain’s she’ll make just for being Shez):

Finally, Shez’s max potential stats are as follows:

As you can see, Shez’s growth rates are awfully close to her max stats, and the implications are clear: when you factor in class growth rates, flat class bonuses and Shez’s base stats, she’ll likely come close to maxing out most of her stats without any intervention. Keep in mind that these are Shez’s soft stat caps - all characters can have their stat caps increased by purchasing the Discover Hidden Potential upgrade at the Tactics Academy.

Stat growth rates and stat caps are some - but by no means not the only - factors that strives to keep characters in their prescribed roles. The Combat Arts, Spells and Abilities a character learns by increasing the Class Ranks vary between characters, and this includes Prowess, Faith and Reasons abilities. A character who gets more stacks of Sword Prowess will have a significant damage advantage over one who gets fewer… not accounting for their Strength and Magic stats and the sword they have equipped, of course.

Given these factors, you should probably just play through the game without fussing over what points you get when you level up. Again, you can, by wasting a great deal of your own time, nudge the numbers a bit in directions you find favorable, but the long-term trends are largely set in stone and owe almost entirely to the character in question.

How to Min-Max Stats in Fire Emblem Three Hopes¶

Just because save-scumming level ups isn’t viable in the short-term doesn’t mean it’s not viable in the long term, however. Nor does it mean there aren’t any options to improve your characters. This is especially true after you’ve increased the stat cap, as most characters will have at least 30-40 more points to gain in their strongest stats, and maybe as many as 70 in the weakest stats.

First, given the Achievements in the game, the maximum level is at least 120. Over that many levels, minor variations can add up, especially with any contributing factors. While fussing over every level isn’t worth your time, once you’ve got scores of levels under your belt and Master classes unlocked, it may be worth Resetting a character’s levels, then paying to level them up again while they’re in your preferred class. Boost them 10 levels at a time, pay attention to which stats actually have any significant variation over that time, and save-scum until you get the best spread. It’s much easier to scum level ups a few times for your favorite characters rather than try to manipulate Bookmark Saves in battle and try to get the best results each level.

Second, while you lose any stats gained by leveling up when you reset your level, any items that permanently boost your stats are yours forever. Stat-boosting items can be gained in various ways, including getting S-Ranks in some Quests and they can be purchased with Renown, to name a few. You’re better off saving these items for late-game so you know which characters you prefer and what stats you want to boost.