How to Beat (and Earn) Navarre In Fire Emblem: Heroes Using F2P Units

Fire Emblem Heroes has had events called Grand Hero Battles every few weeks since its release. This week two of the former Grand Hero Battles were brought back — Female Robin and Navarre — to allow players that might have missed these characters to get a second chance at obtaining them. Today I will be talking about the latter, and how to defeat him with F2P Units.

Navarre himself is not an extremely notable unit. He is from the first game, as such there was no support conversation system in place. Moreover, unlike other recent Grand Hero Battle units — Robin and Zephiel — Navarre was neither a primary protagonist or antagonist in his game. Combine these two things together and there isn’t a ton to know about Navarre.

As a unit in Fire Emblem Heroes, he falls into the absurdly fast, but relatively weak and squishy category. His defenses are purely bad, while his HP is acceptable. His speed is one of the higher ones in the game, but his attack leaves plenty to be desired. He has an AoE, but its long cooldown and the fact that it is based on his less than stellar strength are disappointing.

His main highlight would be his passive skills: desperation and threaten speed. If you initiate combat below a certain health threshold then you automatically make your follow up attack instead of waiting for the enemy’s counter attack. His high speed, low defenses, and his Threaten Speed debuff makes it to where this should happen often. Sadly, he just doesn’t have the offensive might to really make this ability shine. And that’s a damned disappointment.

Team Composition

Let’s first look at the battlefield, then we can start discussing some team compositions.

First and foremost, this map is really freaking hard. I have tried many strategies, but only a few work and usually only because I was able to cheese the enemy AI.

This map was designed by a sadist. The dagger users on this map are absolute beasts. The one to the far right has bow breaker, making archers worthless against him.

The one to the left is from hell. He has 38 attack and 39 speed. He has:

• Death blow – which boosts his attack up to 44 when he initiates combat.
• Poison strike 3 – which deals 10 chip damage post-combat.
• Hone attack 3 – which increases the attack of his adjacent allies at the start of the turn.
• A dagger which debuffs your Def and Resistance by 7 after combat.

I think you can tell who your biggest priority is right off the bat.

Word to the wise: if you have Kagero, then absolutely use her! She takes this map from being exceedingly difficult to being a relative cakewalk thanks to her weapon being super effective against infantry units, and her B slot passive skill — dagger breaker — which stops enemy dagger users from double attacking while ensuring that you get double attacks. While I do have Kagero, I wanted to concentrate on units more people have.

My Team Composition

1. Ninian aka The dancer – Used to dance. Not much more to it than that. 
2. Gunter aka The Buffer – Gunter is Cecilia’s buffer and helps kill the healer and one of the dagger users.
3. Cecilia aka The Glass Cannon – I made some small alterations to this unit to make her more combat ready/overpowered. I gave Cecilia a Gronnblade which she inherited from Nino, the only person to use this weapon. This allowed for some insane damage. You see, this weapon adds whatever bonuses the unit has to their damage. Well, Gunter’s Hone Cavalry grants +6 Attack & Speed to adjacent horseback units at the start of the turn. This means Hone Cavalry added 6 attack. The -blade weapons then add another 12 points of damage. This adds up to a whopping 18 point damage bonus for these mages whenever they start the turn standing next to Gunter. (Using Ursula for this map might be marginally easier, but I figured Cecilia is easier to get.)
4. Zephiel aka the tank – You must remove Life & Death from Zephiel for this to work. On this map it is really useful to have someone that can take some blows. That being said, I haven’t found anyone that truly excels at tanking this map. Zephiel works decently, but he is incredibly susceptible to the magic, is a sitting duck (but infantry would be too), and is weak against the hammer user. As far as armored units go, I am not really sure that anyone else could do it better, although Hector would help kill enemies faster thanks to his distant counter. Some of the bulky flying units like Beruka, Cherche, or Michalis can also do decent and have more mobility, but are less bulky and less help offensively.

The great part about this team composition is that it is not super specialized or hard to pull off. Ninian can be replaced by the F2P Olivia. Gunter, Cecilia, and Zephiel are also all F2P. The former two being available through daily quests and the latter being available as a previous Grand Hero Battle unit. While Nino (used for Cecilia’s inheritance) is not F2P, she is a somewhat common draw; I’ve drawn 4 Nino’s.

Alternate Unit Suggestions

I’ve already told you that the best option for this map is Kagero. Other options, however, are units that can kill the incredibly powerful dagger users in one go. Since these dagger users have low Def, good options include most units that have brave weapons. Donnel is an F2P unit that has a brave lance, but I don’t have one at a high level. Fliers with brave weapons really shine since they can move through the numerous forest tiles undeterred. Good options include Hinoka, Cordelia, and Camilla. However, all of these units are relatively rare.

Strategy

The Macro

Prioritize the dagger users. Try not to die repeatedly (with my assistance).

The Micro

The first turn is exceptionally important on this map. You can approach from two directions: the choke point of death or you can go through the trees, which is a slog. There is only one unit that you can actually bait by itself: the rightmost, and less deadly, dagger user. The dancer has to be next to Zephiel to dance for him next turn. You also need to move Gunter and Cecilia further right too, because it subtly affects where the leftmost dagger user will move.

On the first enemy turn, Zephiel will get attacked but will be okay. Have him attack once, then dance for him to attack again. End turn.

Zephiel will get hit by the hammer user. The healer will step back and heal the ax unit. The other units will press the attack.

Ignore the ax unit and move Zephiel left to attack Navarre. Then dance for him and repeat. This will kill Navarre. Now move Gunter up to attack the dagger user then have Cecilia follow suit to finish him off.

Here’s where things get messy. Zephiel will now be below half health, meaning he can get double attacked. Being in range of the healer and hammer user, he should die, but the AI chooses to heal the ax wielder instead of going for the kill. Either way, the ax wielder is dead and you are left with just a healer to fight.

The healer will aggress you, so just wait for it to come out and then use your healthy units to pick up the kill while slowly moving Zephiel out of the way.

Once the healer is dead, you have earned your lackluster Navarre. Yay!

If you have any tips or suggestions as to how to improve my strategy, or if you have some strategies of your own you’d like to share, maybe you even want some help with making your own strategy, just leave a comment.

Seriously, I would be very interested since this mission can be tough as nails.