Fire Emblem Awakening – Making your Galeforce army

It is generally accepted amongst Fire Emblem fans that Galeforce is one of the most useful skill to ever exist.

When the user defeats an enemy, they are allowed 1 more full action. Galeforce can only activate once per turn.

It is learned by Dark Fliers (at Level 15) in Awakening and Dark Falcons in Fates.

In a turn-based strategy game, the ability to have an extra turn is an incredible gamechanger.  Even when playing on harder difficulty settings like ‘Lunatic’, Galeforce will enable you to make quick work of enemy forces.

Learning Galeforce

NettoSaito: (GameFAQs writer)

To get the Galeforce skill, you are first going to need to turn all of
your female units into the “Pegasus Knight” class.

Now, keep in mind that not all females will be able to become a Pegasus Knight, while some will in fact start out as one.

Master Seals and Second Seals are both necessary items for this endeavor.  While they are rare early on in-game, once you reach Chapter 12 you will be able to buy Master Seals, Chapter 16 for Second Seals.

Master Seals will allow you to promote those who are already Pegasus Knights to the Dark Flier class.  

Applicable female units who are not already Pegasus Knights will need to be re-classed with a Second Seal.  

Level the character up to level 10+ and use a Second Seal on her to reclass her to Pegasus Knight.  Then use a Master Seal to promote to Dark Flier and level her up to level 15.  Galeforce achieved.

Characters that can learn Galeforce:

• Sumia – A Pegasus Knight whom you can promote to Dark Flier
• Cordelia – A Pegasus Knight whom you can promote to Dark Flier
• Lissa – Can be promoted to Dark Flier
• Maribelle – Can be promoted to Dark Flier
• Olivia – Can be promoted to Dark Flier
• Say’ri – Can be promoted to Dark Flier
• Emmeryn – Recruited in Paralogue 20. Can be promoted to Dark Flier
• Aversa – Recruited in Paralogue 22
• (Female) Tactician
• (Female) Morgan
• Cynthia – The daughter of Sumia whom you can promote to Dark Flyer
• Severa – The daughter of Cordelia whom you can promote to Dark Flyer
• Lucina – Can become a Dark Flier if her mother is anyone but Sully.

Passing on Galeforce

The support system is nothing new to the Fire Emblem series.  Characters that fight side by side with each other form bonds and support conversations.  However, Fire Emblem:  Awakening takes this a step further with a marriage option for heterosexual couples.  

After you have completed Chapter 14, every time you marry two characters, a new side quest or ‘paralogue’ will appear on the world map.

In this paralogue, you will encounter the child of the married couple, who has traveled back in time from a post-apocalyptic future in order to help you fight against the game’s antagonist.

What is very important is that these children can inherit a skill from each of their parents.  Specifically, they learn the fifth skill that the parent has equipped.

To elaborate, a unit can equip up to five different skills for use in battle.  The skill in the fifth skill-slot is what will be passed on to the unit’s child.  

It is very important to remember this step as it is easy to forget.  Before you recruit the second generation character, check the parents’ skill lineup and doublecheck that Galeforce is in slot five.

Characters that Galeforce can be passed on to:

• Owain – The son of Lissa
• Brady – The son of Maribelle
• Inigo – The son of Olivia
• (Male) Morgan – The son of (female) Tactician

Arranging marriages

There is no one way to go about pairing up your characters but there are some things to keep in mind in terms of Galeforce optimization.

Tactician

The tactician, referred to as ‘My Unit’ or ‘Avatar’, is a customizable character.  You can choose to make this character either female or male.  Each of these options has benefits.  As explained earlier the female Tactician can re-class to Dark Flier, learn Galeforce, and pass it on.  The male Tactician cannot do this.  However…

NettoSaito:

The thing is,your Avatar’s child can transform into every class that their sex can learn,and this can really help out a few characters. You see, these character’s cannot learn Galeforce, and their kids can’t either; however the Avatar can fix that problem!

A female character that is not able to re-class to a Dark Flier will not be able to learn Galeforce and pass it down to her child.  If she is paired with the male Tactician though, her child will have total class flexibility, meaning the child can be re-classed to Dark Flier and learn Galeforce on their own.

In this way, you gain an additional unit with the Galeforce skill that you would not have had originally.  As a result, some recommended match ups for the male Tactician are:

• (Male) Tactician and Nowi
• (Male) Tactician and Sully
• (Male) Tactician and Tharja

Chrom

Chrom, the other protagonist of the game, also is a bit tricky.  He has fewer potential romantic interests because he canonically gets married rather early in the game so you will have to ‘set him up’ with someone by Chapter 11.

Possible match ups are:

• Chrom and (Female) Tactician
• Chrom and Sumia
• Chrom and Olivia
• Chrom and Maribelle
• Chrom and Sully

If you have chosen the female Tactician, matching her up with Chrom might be the best option because again, the Tactician’s children automatically are granted access to nearly every class in the game which can allow you to make an even more powerful Lucina (Chrom’s daughter).

The other important thing to note is, as NettoSaito describes rather aptly:

You do NOT want to marry Chrom to Sully. If this is the case, Lucina will NOT learn Galeforce, and neither will Kjelle (who is Sully’s daughter). Marrying Chrom to Sully is the worst possible thing you can do in the game.

Aside from all that, who you choose to match up really depends on which characters you like to use the most (and whether the stat bonuses they give their children will match up in complementary ways).

Creating a Galeforce army may not necessarily be the best way to play Fire Emblem: Awakening and of course it’s not for everyone.  It is one way to have fun with the game though, and it definitely has a lot of very satisfying payoff.

For a more comprehensive and in-depth guide to the whole process, there are a good several available online such as NettoSaito‘s GameFAQs Galeforce Party Building Guide.