Fire Emblem Heroes announced a gigantic new update last night via its “Feh Channel,” with a bunch of new content, including characters, story missions and customization options.
The video, which you can watch below, begins with an announcement of a new summoning focus for the “gacha” game. Heroes centers on summoning characters from past Fire Emblem games to fight for you using in-game currency that can be earned or bought with real money. The new characters are Dorcas of The Blazing Blade, Mia from Path of Radiance, and Lute and Joshua from The Sacred Stones.
Next came a bunch of gameplay modifications, mostly buffs to underused characters and weapons. Staff users, long left behind by competitive players, now have new, more powerful weapons and healing abilities. On top of that, generic weapons (and some legendary weapons) can now be refined for bonus effects and/or added damage. The weapon refinery uses new in-game resources, much like the Sacred Seal Forge update a while back. On top of that, some specific underused skills will receive shorter countdowns, so skills like Sol or Glimmer may finally be viable. Finally, to help accommodate all the new heroes, players will now be allowed to have 300 heroes at any given time, improving over the previous barracks limit of 200.
These would already constitute a fairly major update for a mobile game that updates often. But the biggest announcement was saved for last, with the reveal of a new main protagonist, the ice princess Fjorm. The lance-wielder headlines the new story update, Book II, which looks to be a large-scaled conflict between the heroes of Askr fighting Surtr and the fiery villains of Embla. Fjorm is a guaranteed five-star character, available to any player that completes the first new chapter of the story. To make it easier for players to power through the story, story and paralogue maps have been capped at 10 stamina, making it much easier to play several maps in a row.
This is all pretty exciting stuff, and it demonstrates that the Heroes team is listening to its competitive players—nearly every facet of the update is a response to players’ thoughts on the game’s balance. Fire Emblem Heroes began updating early and often, so much so that it has completely changed since it debuted less than a year ago. Some of the best heroes from the game’s opening are almost unusable nowadays, as the game continues to expand and evolve.
Various outlets are reporting that the new chapters are available now, but the chapters will be available in the new update, which has not been implemented quite yet, so far as we know. More likely, the update will begin nearer to the end of November.
The full announcement video, complete with artwork, a new story cutscene and a really annoyingly voiced narrator, can be seen below. You can also head over to the FEHeroes News Twitter account to check out detailed concept art, stat lines and character bios. If this all inspired you to check out Heroes for the first time, you can head over to our beginner guide to getting the most out of your orbs here.