Fire Emblem Engage Yellow Exclamation Mark | What Does It Mean?

Fire Emblem Engage is home to loads of different mechanics. The battlefield is laden with information, from enemy ranges to specific stats. The game is, thankfully, quite open with tutorials about these battlefield icons. However, it is not open about one thing in particular. The yellow exclamation mark icon in Fire Emblem Engage does not have any tutorial associated with it. So, what is it? And what can you do to play around it, if it is dangerous enough to be an icon on the map?

What Does the Yellow Exclamation Mark Mean?

Fire Emblem Engage What Does the Yellow Exclamation Mark Mean?

The yellow exclamation mark in Fire Emblem Engage represents an enemy who is wielding a high critical hit weapon. Most of the time, this means they have a Killer Weapon, which are weapons with a 25% boosted critical hit rate. However, this icon just means that you are more likely to take a critical hit from that encounter. You can play around these high-crit enemies with high luck allies, high defense/resistance allies, or by being out of range of the enemy.

High crit rates are terrifying in strategy games like Engage. The random chance for an enemy to deal significant damage can throw off your calculations and take an ally out of the fight quickly. So, the exclamation mark exists to warn you of a high-value target.

These enemies can be dealt with easily, since Killer weapons tend to not have great stats outside of critical hit rate. The easiest way to deal with them is to Break them with a fast, hard-hitting unit. However, any strategy that keeps you out-of-reach until you can defeat them is sufficient.

In most cases, without skills, critical hits are largely nullified by a high defensive stat. Critical hits just triple damage, so if they are doing 0 damage to start, they’ll do 0 after the critical hit. Be sure to double-check enemy skills before doing this, however! It wouldn’t do to think you’re safe blocking with a high-defense ally just to have them switch up their attack stat on you.

Jason Toro-McCue has committed his schooling to the study of the connection between game design and narrative. When he's not working on this bond through writing articles or guides, he's playing Dungeons & Dragons, or just playing games themselves and looking at the story there.