Fire Emblem if: more details for the “My Castle” feature

4 June 2015 Lite_Agent Famitsu, Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright & Conquest, Intelligent Systems

This week, Fire Emblem if was featured in Famitsu magazine with new characters revealed and some additional details about the “My Castle” feature. Let’s start with an element not mentionned during the Nintendo Direct or the overview video: that feature changes slightly depending on the version you’ve picked up.

For example, if you’re playing the Hoshido version, your castle is built on bountiful lands; alternatively, if you’re playing the Nohr version, it’s built on desolate lands (this actually mirrors the two countries themselves). Another difference is the kinds of buildings you can build. Of course, the main ones are identical, but there’s also special buildings exclusive to one of the two versions (such as the Light Dragon Statue for Hoshido, and the Dark Dragon Statue for Nohr).

What’s more, each Castle has one type of ore and one type of food as its “local specialty”. Those vary depending on both your version and yourself (each player gets different kinds of ore / food specialties). In total, there’s 12 different types of ore, and 10 types of food.

To get the other specialties, you can:

– visit the castle of other players via StreetPass;
– some players find some of them, occassionally.

In order to upgrade the buildings in your Castle, you need Dragon Vein points. There’s two ways to earn them:

– battle other players via StreetPass;
– complete the regular battles from the story mode (pretty useful for players who don’t get to StreetPass many people where they live).

As mentioned in this post, the various shops are managed by the characters in your army. One thing we didn’t know is that some weapons are cheaper depending on the type of weapon the shop manager is most proficient with.

Next, we get a look at some of the facilities:

– Prison: it’s currently unclear why you can build a prison, which seems to imply you can capture enemies. According to Serenes Forest, this may be related to the mysterious sequence when Hinoka is seen speaking with a generic Hoshidan spellcaster.
– Archives: you can test the compatibility between two characters*, check the profiles of your units, re-watch the animated cutscenes at will, listen to music, view support conversations, and more.
– Canteen/Cafeteria: you can cook food for your army. The unit doing the cooking has an effect on the dishes cooked. In the scans below, the player tries to order a Charred Onigiri from Rinka. It usually gives a Defence + 1 bonus (only during one chapter), but it’s modified due to the “Charred” property.

* This time around, there’s two types of tests: in the first one, you get to know the opinion of two characters about each other (just like in Fire Emblem Awakening); in the second one, you simple get a numerical score. You don’t need to worry about the results though: they have no bearing on the actual game, so you can test to your heart’s content!

Some random details about the My Castle feature (and more): there’s a day/night cycle, and it’s actually possible to name your Castle. One of the weapon vendors in Nohr can sell a Freeze staff. Finally, Nishiki (a Fox Spirit, weak to beast-slaying weapons) does transform in order to attack.

Here’s the latest scans from Famitsu magazine (courtesy of Japanese 3DS):