My Fortune's Weave Route Plan: Cai → Leda → Dietrich → Theodora

My instinct was to pick Cai and follow him all the way through. That is how I play games with multiple protagonists: choose the one I like, stay with him, finish his story, and mean to come back for the others in some future that never arrives.

Fortune's Weave makes that a worse deal than I expected, and it took me a while to work out why.

The progression is built to reward finishing Part I paths. The unique Part I stories are the only place the four protagonists genuinely differ. And every completed route hands me better global tools for the next one, which means the routes get easier in the order I play them. Following Cai straight into Part II skips all of that — and Part II is where the four stories converge anyway. I would be trading the most distinctive content in the game for the least.

So I am treating Part I as four connected campaigns rather than four alternatives, and I finish each one before moving.

Cai → Leda → Dietrich → Theodora

Why I finish a route before switching

The game will happily let me switch protagonists whenever I like, and I can see the appeal — if a route stalls, go somewhere else for a while.

The cost is that I would be carrying four armies, four sets of class plans and four half-remembered story threads at once. I already know which of those I lose first, because losing track of things is the reason this website exists.

There is a mechanical cost too. Switching early means repeating similar exploration across several routes before the carryover systems have had any chance to make them cheaper. Finishing Cai means Leda starts better equipped, and Dietrich better still.

Mostly, though, I want to live with one army long enough to actually understand it. Finish the route. Collect the global benefits. Start the next one with a clear head and better tools.

Cai first, to learn the rulebook

Cai is already my starting protagonist and I am keeping him there, because his early party is a tidy teaching set. He teaches mounted spear combat, Peter teaches dedicated ranged damage, and Tialla teaches support and healing with enough offensive magic to stay useful on quiet turns. Three distinct jobs, no overlap, nothing exotic.

What I want out of this route is not a strong roster. It is knowing what the game is asking me to notice — threat ranges and terrain, Defense against Resistance, weapon effectiveness, the gap between normal EXP and class development, how class requirements gate everything, how Supports and recruitment actually work, and how much exploration is useful before it turns into compulsive tidying.

Those are the things that make every later route cheaper, and none of them are things I can learn by reading faster.

I switch when Cai's Part I is finished. Not after chapter four because another route sounds interesting, and not because I discovered I missed something small. Finish the arc.

Leda second, to broaden it

Leda's party naturally exposes me to more archetypes — Sword, Axe, Brawling, Heavy, wider support utility — and those are only worth investing in once I can tell them apart in practice rather than in a menu.

Her route is also where Dancer-related progression shows up, and action economy is exactly the sort of idea that becomes interesting the moment I stop struggling to remember what every icon means. An extra action is a different kind of power from an extra attack, and I want to meet that distinction when I am equipped to appreciate it.

The point of Leda is not "another protagonist". It is expanding the rulebook.

Dietrich third, to sharpen it

Dietrich is where I want the game to start asking more of me. His route leans combat-heavy and brings systems around extra fights and Combat Art development — which is to say it hands me an infinite grinding opportunity and trusts me not to take it.

Putting him third is what makes that survivable. By then I should genuinely understand the tactical game, and my Boon setup should have removed most of the reason to grind for catch-up in the first place.

Use extra fights to solve a build goal, not because another fight is available.

In practice: if I need a class rank, train it. If somebody is behind, catch them up. If the team is handling the intended battles comfortably, move the story forward and stop looking for excuses.

Theodora fourth, to add Battalions

Theodora goes last because her route adds Authority, Battalions and Gambits — a whole strategic layer — and I would much rather meet that when everything else already feels familiar than while I am still checking what Resistance does.

It works narratively too: she is the final unique Part I history before the shared War structure begins. And by that point the strong anti-grind Boons should be unlocked, which is the difference between her route feeling like a new perspective and feeling like starting a second RPG at level one.

What happens after Part I

I plan to play one Part II War route properly — Theodora's, in this ordering — and then use the skip option the game provides for the other armies. That is a default, not a vow.

I will replay another Part II manually only if I want something specific from it: that protagonist's dialogue variation, more growth on that army, battle practice, a particular build outcome, or simply more of those maps because they are good. What I do not want is to sit through three War arcs because completion anxiety told me to.

Part III I am deliberately not planning. By then I will have used all four armies and I will know who I enjoy, which classes I actually understand, and which weaknesses keep reappearing in how I play. That is a far better moment to make final-team decisions than now, in early Cai, guessing.

And if I decide Cai deserves a real run later

Then I replay Cai. Somewhere in writing this down, that stopped sounding like a failure and started sounding like something to look forward to.

The first run is me learning Fire Emblem through Cai. A later one could be me deliberately building the Cai I want, with the systems already in my head. Which means this run does not have to be definitive — and that is worth more to me than any individual decision inside it.

The plan I want to remember

Cai Part I to learn. Leda Part I to broaden. Dietrich Part I to sharpen the tactical play. Theodora Part I to add Battalions and prepare for War. Then one Part II properly, the others skipped or replayed on purpose rather than out of habit, through to the end of Part III — and anything worth perfecting saved for a replay where perfecting it is the fun part.