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Fire Emblem: Engage admittedly understands that besides every great hero is a very, very good boy. Farming for the materials necessary to refine your weapons and properly supply your army requires your very own second army of canine companions. From iron to steel and steel to silver, our resident good boys and girls are here to save the day.
While canines are not the only way to farm for precious earthen materials, they are certainly the easiest and most lucrative source to gain them from. You can additionally get them as rewards from battles, but who wants to grind when you can simply spend time with nature's most lovable creature?
A Dog's World - Farming Iron, Steel, and Silver
It's a dog's world in Elyos, and that means you'll be needing to get your paws on as many of them as you can find. If you see a dog: adopt it. Bring it back to the Somniel, and you'll be able to put them in the pasture of the Somniel stables. Each time you return from a battle, your good boys and girls will be there with one ingot of a random type: iron, steel, or silver. If you're lucky, this can mean as many as five silver ingots after every battle.
In order to adopt a dog, you don't even need to invest in Donations. This means that there are no monetary requirements or losses incurred by adopting a dog and exploiting this gimmick. All you must do to adopt a dog is:
- Find a battle where the rewards show that a dog can be adopted
- Successfully complete the battle
- Explore the grounds of the battlefield afterward, looking for any orange dots on your mini-map
- If one of those dots is a dog, interact with it and choose to adopt it
Afterward, return to the Somniel and go to the Stables door. There, you can place a dog into one of the five slots on the left window. This shall place the dog out in the pasture. When you return from battles in the future, an ingot of a random type will be sparkling on the ground in front of the dog. Pick it up for a free ingot.
Exchanging For More Ingots
The benefit of the dog-farming method is that the excess of silver ingots can help balance the need for iron ingots in early gameplay. For each silver ingot found, you can exchange it for either nine steel or 90 iron. Although it isn't recommended to keep exchanging your precious silver ingots often, this method makes the exchange far more feasible - especially in Normal/Hard modes.
You can exchange ingots by speaking with the Smithy in the main plaza of the Somniel and selecting "Exchanging." Simply first select the material you want, and then select the material you are willing to trade.
Battle Rewards And Donations - Additional Income
In addition to the dog-farming technique, you may also receive materials as a reward for completing battles. These materials can be found as items you can pick up on the battlefield after completing them.
Story mode missions will always have these materials in large quantities - almost always iron - on the battlefield, and the amount skirmishes have will be directly affected by the donation level of the country the skirmish was completed in. The higher the donation level, the more materials you may gain after a skirmish. However, this also means that you'll need to pay a large amount of gold in order to make this method of farming feasible. As Gold is also a precious resource and necessary for forging weapons as well, you'll need to simultaneously farm for both - making this method of farming inferior and more costly than simply adopting dogs.
For Maddening difficulty players: It is additionally highly discouraged to spend Gold on donations to increase ingot output in maps. Increase each region by one as soon as possible and do not touch it again. This is because skirmishes for Gold will not be readily available to you and Gold shall see better use in forging weapons and buying the necessary staves in the item shop.
Using the dog method as soon as the option to adopt becomes available is key to success in Maddening difficulty, giving you access to high-level gear early on and allowing you to compete with enemies who have, generally, more advanced gear.