Choosing a Brave Hero

For new players (and for the purposes of this guide), Brave Ike is the best choice.

There are two very specific reasons why Brave Ike is the best unit for new players.

Legendary Ike and Fjorm are free units, so chosing Ike (or Lyn) goes a long ways in building a solid core team.
Brave Ike has Steady Breath, a highly coveted skill that can be used to complete Legendary Ike's optimal build (or used for other strong units, like Nowi).

Honorable Mention: Lyn

Brave Lyn is the strongest unit of the four brave units, she's the most distinct unit as well. The combination of lower base stats and terrain penalties (especially with the addition of trenches) is a deal breaker for starting out.

TODO: Create a guide that explain the Brave Heroes in depth, including the pros and cons of each one.

Building Balanced Teams

The general idea of a balanced team is 1-2 melee units, 1-2 ranged units, with 1 support unit (healer or dancer). Focus on one red, one green, one blue, and one colorless unit.

Team 1 - Core Team: Legendary Ike, Brave Ike, Fjorm, [Archer]

Team 2 - The Starter/Arena Bonus Team: Alfonse, Anna, Sharena, Virion

Leveling Units

Leveling Team: [Leveling Unit, eventually with +ATK seal], Olivia, Olivia, [Healer, eventually w/ Pain]

Getting New Units

Banners

New players get a special banner during their first week of play called Hero Fest. The banner's focus units are Ike (Brave Heroes), Nephenee, Lyn (Brave Heroes), and Sigurd; all of these units are very strong, so you should plan on spending all of your orbs on this banner while you can.

Hero Fest - Ike (Brave Heroes), Nephenee, Lyn (Brave Heroes), Sigurd

Common Units

Hero Battles

Sophia
Virion*
Hana
Subaki
Donnel*
Lissa*
Gunter
Cecilia*
Felicia*
Wrys*
Olivia*
Stahl

Progressing

The pattern that this guide focuses on is chosing a small subset of core units and leveling them up to level 20, then unlocking their potential (increasing their star by 1 level), and repeat until the unit is 4 stars, then merge 4 star units.

Unlock Potential

20 feathers, 5 badges 200 feathers, 10 badges 2,000 feathers, 20 badges 20,000 feathers, 20 great badges

Merge Units

Explain boons and banes for unlocking potential and unit merges.

Skill Inheritance

Explain how 4 star units can get +weapons, legendary weapons and weapon refinements