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Fire Emblem Engage

How to Upgrade Weapons in Fire Emblem Engage

By
Nathan Garvin

At the start of Chapter 6 you’ll unlock the Smithy, who can henceforth be found in the Plaza of the Somniel. This craftsperson will offer a variety of services, including allowing you to upgrade your weapons and exchange various types of metals. This page will discuss how to upgrade, refine and engrave weapons.

You can expend resources to purchased enhancements for weapons, boosting their stats.

Weapon Upgrades in Fire Emblem Engage

You have two options for upgrading weapons in Fire Emblem Engage, both of which are services offered by the Smithy in Chapter 6 and beyond: Refine or Engrave. Both will be discussed below.

How to Refine Weapons in Fire Emblem Engage

Perhaps the more traditional of the two ways to upgrade weapons, refining weapons adds an enhancement bonus at the expense of iron, steel, silver and/or gold. Some weapons can even be refined into a different weapon entirely! Either way, the process is the same - talk to the Smithy and pick the “Refine” option, then select a weapon you possess and wish to upgrade, then select a refinement option.

Refinement is generally done in enhancement tiers, say, for example, you take an "Iron Lance" iconIron Lance - you can upgrade it to an Iron Lance +1 up to an Iron Lance +5, with greater stat boosts and expenses at each tier:

Weapon Stats Cost
Iron Lance "Iron Lance" iconIron Lance MT 7, HIT 85
Iron Lance "Iron Lance" iconIron Lance +1 MT 7, HIT 85 Iron Ingot Iron x10, 300 G
Iron Lance "Iron Lance" iconIron Lance +2 MT 9, HIT 90 Iron Ingot Iron x40, 600 G
Iron Lance "Iron Lance" iconIron Lance +3 MT 11, HIT 90 Iron Ingot Iron x100, Steel Ingot Steel x5, 1,100 G
Iron Lance "Iron Lance" iconIron Lance +4 MT 11, HIT 95 Iron Ingot Iron x200, Steel Ingot Steel x15, Silver Ingot Silver x1, 1,600 G
Iron Lance "Iron Lance" iconIron Lance +5 MT 13, HIT 95 Iron Ingot Iron x400, Steel Ingot Steel x30, Silver Ingot Silver x1, 3,000 G

As you can see, the stat gains per enhancement are fairly minor, but then again, so are the costs - especially at the lower ranks, and every little bit can help. For a modest (by early-game standards) you can end up giving your entire army some much needed boosts by refining weapons, and as a further positive, resources spent on lower-tier upgrades count towards further upgrades. For example, if you upgrade an Iron "Spear" iconSpear into an Iron Spear +2 you’ll expend 40 Iron and 600 G, which will reduce the upgrade costs of turning that Iron Spear +2 into an Iron Spear +3 by the same amount, so there’s no penalty for slowly climbing the ladder as you acquire resources.

You can engrave a weapon with one of your Emblems, giving it varying stat boosts depending on the Emblem.

How to Engrave Weapons in Fire Emblem Engage

In addition to refining weapons, you can also engrave them. To do this, just select the “Engrave” option while talking to the Smithy, pick your chosen weapon, and choose an Emblem to engrave onto the selected weapon. Different Emblems will give different boosts to weapons. For example, engraving an Iron Lance with "Marth" iconMarth (Beginnings), "Celica" iconCelica ("Echo" iconEchoes) and "Sigurd" iconSigurd (Holy) yield the following results:

Weapon MT HIT CRIT WT AVO DDG
Iron Lance "Iron Lance" iconIron Lance 7 85 0 7 0 0
"Iron Lance" iconIron Lance (Beginnings) 8 95 10 7 5 5
"Iron Lance" iconIron Lance ("Echo" iconEchoes) 6 85 0 6 0 50
"Iron Lance" iconIron Lance (Holy) 8 85 0 6 20 0

As you can see, engraving Emblems grants modest boosts to weapons, although there are some limitations. First, each Emblem can only be applied to one weapon at a time. If you want to apply it to a second weapon, the Emblem’s engrave effect will be removed from the first weapon. Second, each time you engrave a weapon it’ll set you back 100 Bond Fragments, which is fairly trivial, but you may want to be frugal early on.

A weapon can be both refined and engraved at the same time. Also, staves generally cannot be upgraded.

The Smithy will allow you to exchange one type of metal for another, just be wary - there is some loss involved in this process.

How to Exchange Metal at the Smithy

In addition to upgrading weapons, you can also swap metals by talking to the Smithy and picking the “Exchange” option. Once done, pick the metal you want, and you’ll get the option to swap Iron, Steel and Silver for each other. Just be wary, as the exchange rates favor the merchant - it’s not a free process, and if you end up swapping back and forth between metals, you’ll incur losses. The exchange rates are as follows:

Metal Offered Metal Obtained
Iron Ingot Iron x11 Steel Ingot Steel x1
Iron Ingot Iron x110 Silver Ingot Silver x1
Steel Ingot Steel x1 Iron Ingot Iron x9
Steel Ingot Steel x11 Silver Ingot Silver x1
Silver Ingot Silver x1 Iron Ingot Iron x90
Silver Ingot Silver x1 Steel Ingot Steel x9
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Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Nintendo
  • Platforms,
    Switch
  • Genre
    Adventure, Tactical RPG
  • Guide Release
    12 January 2023
  • Last Updated
    7 February 2023
    Version History
  • Guide Author

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Fire Emblem Engage is the latest entry of the legendary Fire Emblem series. This guide for Fire Emblem Engage currently contains the following:

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