Fortune’s Weave Is Way Easier If You Play a Second Route

Act 2 expands the number of characters you can deploy in each mission to 15. It does supply a few of them if you don’t have enough, but these are guest units, and as such, you have no control over their equipment and class. And sure, you can go up against the seemingly endless horde of foes that act throws at you, though having 12 to 15 characters makes managing the pressure much easier.

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo via Polygon

This is where playing a second route after you’ve cleared another one comes in handy. When you complete a route and start a new one, all of your map progress shows up in the new one. You don’t have to explore areas for a second time or try to remember which town stocks which weapons. You can just see it all from the start. At the start of a chapter, it also automatically clears subquests you already completed in that chapter during your first route and gives you the gold, renown, and other items you earned then in one lump sum. (Leda is one exception, as she has to repeat the “Monster in the Night” quest for plot reasons.) That’s a regular influx of several thousand gold and a few hundred renown each chapter, plus you get new subquests to clear for even more rewards.

It doesn’t really matter whose route you do as your second. However, if you want more gold and an easier time recruiting characters, Cai has an edge. In addition to subquests, he has “kindness” quests each chapter that reward you with extra gold and renown.

In other words, recruiting more characters, earlier on, is so much easier in a second (or third, or fourth) route. Having them earlier means you can train them better, too, which is critical. One thing I discovered is that you have a better chance of higher stats the earlier you recruit a character. I recruited Ultand near the end of Dietrich’s route, for example, and she struggled to keep up with Dante, whom I recruited a few chapters previously. She joins Cai automatically, though, and by the time I cleared his route, that version of Ultand had higher stats across the board despite being at the same level.

And the unique way Fortune’s Weave handles its characters meant that the Ultand who showed up in Act 3 was an amalgamation of the Ultands from Dietrich’s and Cai’s route. It mashes stats together so every version of a character you recruit contributes to their final, best version. The more you get and the more you train them, the better they end up. This is good, since Act 3 is gigantic in scope with many, very intense battles. You need all the help you can get.