When to Promote in Fire Emblem

So, "when I want a new character model/sprite to look at" isn't an optimal time to promote? I've been doing it all wrong this entire time!

Can't believe some years back mekkah was known for low production quality. How far he's come. This is such a clean video

Two other reasons to promote early and often in Gaiden/Echoes: 1. Your EXP gain is partially based on your level in comparison to your enemy's level, so if you grind too much your EXP gain will diminish (which is also why early game in hard mode can actually be easier than normal mode because you get higher EXP gains). 2. Mercenaries, once they reach Dread Fighter, can loop back to villager and do it all over again. But they can't do it if you wait!

A wizard never promotes earlier nor does he promote late He promotes precisely when he needs to

Whenever I start a new game I always look for the Mekkah. Someone who gives casual friendly tactical advise for those of us with an optimization kink but are also lazy. I don't always find them. Thanks for everything you do Mekkah

Fun fact about FE10 I learned recently: in the japanese version you couldn't promote to tier 3 by leveling up at 20. However, the game gave you 13 Master Crowns instead of 5.

FE7 Raven and Priscilla were the ubits that made me realize that early promoting can be extremely useful and aiming for 20/20 is overkill for some units.

Highly depends on the promotion system for me. In Engage or FE1 there's no reason to NOT promote ASAP, but in the GBA games I tend to train a smaller team and therefore I wait until at least Level 15 unless a unit is falling behind

In the GBA games, Ellen, Serra and Natasha all gain more experience than Saul, Luciua and Moulder upon promoting into bishops because there's a mechanic that gives all female bishops bonus experience in combat.

One rule of thumb that tends to work for me, is to follow the enemy evolution curve. In Awakening for instance, you have points in the game where you start seeing sages and heros a lot as more normal enemies instead of basicly minibosses. And it's usually around this time i start promoting units that either get doubled, need to be able to take hits or simply have nothing of value to contribute. Characters get their only base class skill at 10, so you have no reason to look for skills in later levels, so at least in Awakening, it's purely a numbers or utility question for me, and not a skill gain issue like mastering classes in Three Houses...

Listen to your heart Your Heart: "Promote at Level 20"

Oh god, the video my 9 year old self needed. I was insistent on getting to level 20 on everything before promoting. Oh wait, I still kind of do that. Thanks Mekkah!

That graphic at the end was incredibly helpful! I love in depth content but I also love a cheat sheet with all the info in one spot. Well done!

I think the earliest promotion we should hand out should be for Misery, considering how well edited this video is.

In awakening i like to promote Lissa and Maribel early because it lets them hold a weapon which greatly reduces how much the ai tries to attack them. The way the ai chooses targets is that it will always make the safest attack possible. So since Liss and Marrible can't counter attack the ai will always attack them with every unit that's within range.

Having an idea of the experience formula can help a lot in deciding whether a unit should promote or not, because it can be hard to tell how much of a fall-off in exp your unit will have after promoting -- sometimes it can be drastic (like promoting ASAP in Conquest), and sometimes it can be small or insignificant. For example, for most units in FE6 and FE7 HHM, a player unit's kill exp reaches 0 if that unit is 7 levels higher than the enemy unit killed (only gaining a relatively small amount of chip exp). So if you have an unpromoted unit that's 7 levels higher than most of the enemy units on the map, there's not much reason to hold off on promoting, because they aren't getting any kill exp anyway. Being 7 levels higher than the enemies might seem like a high number, but it can actually happen pretty easily. Enemies in Kinship's Bond (Chapter 22) of FE7 Hector Hard mode are mostly levels 7-8, meaning a level 15 unit probably isn't going to gain much more exp at that level versus if they promote. One other small thing to mention: In FE9, in addition to staff users, mages are another good candidate to early promote with a Master Seal. In their case, it's because they gain staves, which in addition to being useful can also can often result in them gaining more exp than if you left them unpromoted, especially if your turn counts aren't super low. EDIT: Also, one extremely pedantic correction: your math on the number of total level ups units get is slightly off. A level 1 unit that promotes at level 10 and then gets to 20 promoted should have 28 level ups (9 unpromoted, then 19 unpromoted), rather than 29 as you state. Similarly, a 20/20 unit gets 38 level ups, not 39.

This is great info for me that haven't played many of these games still. I would like to add that one very useful and somewhat cheeky use of FE3H promotion system is that a lot of units can very easily pick up armor rank D+ to promote to armor knight if they already have axes or will get them anyways (many do as deathblow is excellent). The class itself is more or less useless but this can get frail units bumped to a base defense of 12. There are a few other places where these tricks can be useful as well, notable is thief for basing speed up to 12 for slow units.

A couple small details to add: In FE4, don't worry about Returning someone to the home castle to promote as soon as they hit level 20, do it when it's convenient because them maps is huge and usually your unit can do what they need to do a little longer and they're still gaining exp. FE8 is a short game, early promotion is better because no one is hitting level 20 promoted anyway unless you're grinding. Slick vid for sure, the new definitive "when to promote" FE guide Edit: When you finally get around to playing Vestaria Saga, you may need to make a promo guide vid because stats gained beyond the early cap are saved and given when you promote...also promo items are hard to get lol

A video I did not think I needed to have but here we are, This is actually eye-opening to promoting, I always had a stubborn rule to myself to only promote at level 20 but you learn something new everyday : D lol Great video dude Also the editor went crazy on this bro

Hi Mekkah, I haven't been watching your playthroughs recently due to lack of time, which makes it hard to keep up with them. I was just thinking how I was missing some of these analysis videos. Thank you very much, I know they take long to make