I believe you need to clear up to Chapter 13 in the Main Story and then an additional Chapter appears, titled Intermission. Once you clear that the Sacred Forge opens up. It appears on the castle home screen, in the top right.

And yes, cavalry units are ace! I use Xander/Reinhardt/Cecilia plus a dancer to attempt most content, they're a destructive force and three movement is... addictive.

re/ movement i used to think swap > reposition but i ran out of swap fodder and now i use reposition all the time... it's so good, especially when you're moving glass cannons out of range or moving dancers or so on.

and well, ninian won it all -- didn't manage to get revenge for the good chicken, but managed a good 6k feathers thanks to the crazy bonuses, so who's the real winner? p:

also i don't really know who the holy war units are, but deirdre's really pretty o sigurd is cute too, though they both just makes me wish i cared enough to build out my seliph and julia ;>> all these family units... intsys is gearing up for some kind of sad sibling moment with veronica and bruno/zacharias in the next prologue, i suppose? dunno how i feel about that.

e/ also i don't know who arya is, but those stats are killer 👀

I kinda agree with you, I'm team Reposition these days. I used to like Swap more and still use it on my Xander, it's handy for parking him in a tanking spot or giving my dancer an 'extra' movement square. But Reposition is king for flexibility. I always use Draw Back on my mages too, actually, kinda got used to it with Nino and it's useful to have a unit to hide behind.

lol pulled Sigurd on my freebie orb, lady luck has shined down on me for a change! And he's +Spd/-HP which is pretty good, I'm happy with that. I was gonna go for him anyway so it's saved me a few hundred orbs. Gonna ponder on Dierdre because green tomes are oh so handy, but I do have Julia and don't use her... a lot. But she's cool. I'm just spoilt by super speedy units whereas she is a dedicated mage tank.

And yeah, the new units look insane. I'm... curious about the whole thing.

MID_STAGE_HONOR_V0114: Manakete Squad i don't know what this is, but i hope the squad is fae, nowi, young tiki, and ninian as team mom

also i thought arvis was stylish and wanted to know who he was so i googled and read his wiki page and well. Yikes.

for a minute i mixed up draw back and drag back and was like, "y'know, really the only movement skill i don't like using is lunge," haha. that's a good point with draw back though, makes snagging a meat shield a little easier... i haven't played with that skill much 'cause most of my draw back fodder is nino, and i took forever trying to figure out which was The Best Nino to promote p:

nice snag! i'm not super interested in any of the new units so i think i'm going to wait and clean house before i try beyond the free pull. i want to at least finish building my clive and camus before i get distracted by the crazy new units ><;

Hahaha lunge is so dumb but manages to fuck me up every time it's on the enemy because I'm lazy about checking skills. Nice skill if you're struggling for arena wins and well, let's be honest, what else are you gonna do with those spare Berukas.

ugh, i kept screwing up one of the early chain challenges 'cause every time, i'd forget the eldigan had lunge and he'd punt my poor unit into the stupid blue lancer's range to die... my situational awareness is not too great lmao

and uuugh, people are saying the arvis ghb has reinforcements. this just reminds me that the warriors maps are leaving ;x;

You guys is this even real???

SPOILER (click to toggle)

I was technically aiming for Sigurd, but I guess this works too, lol. I don't really know what I want to do with that Abel. Do I keep him for battles or use him for skill inherit?

And Reposition is great. It has saved me so many times. Thank you, random friend who let me use Reposition + customized Camus for Tempest Trial, lol.

Congrats on the super lucky pull!

Reposition is my favorite movement skill but sadly I don't pull a lot of Barsts and Selenas these days XD I have a ton of Sullys though so when I need a movement skill I just go with Draw back for now!

I'm kinda tempted & not tempted to pull on the new banner. I never played the game so I don't know the heroes but they seem to be rather strong. But what if they come with an Halloween banner next? XD I might wait until they show the bonus units for the next TT and try for it if they don't make Julia a bonus unit. I don't really want to bother leveling up a Seliph even if he could be decent with the boost and some cheap SI I guess!

I'm really interested in Ayra though and I can't wait until we can get her. XD That speed! (and that art is so pretty too .)

congrats!! i see that you also pulled your first terrible tiny hand man reinhardt, may he serve you well!

i don't know what a good boon/bane is for abel, but is the new one better than your old abel? (there's no ! so i'm assuming you already have one.) otherwise i'd start figuring out who'd benefit most from swordbreaker o:

haha i'm the same way with my seliphs ;w; i've pulled three and finished leveling one to 40 recently, i just... don't feel like building him lmao. that'll have to change though -- i thought i had julia but i don't (and i didn't get anything good with my free pull) so he's probably my only bonus unit ><;

as for a halloween banner... i'm kinda 'eh' on that. witch units would be super cute, but my birthday is next month so i'm hoping for some kind of cute autumn/harvest festival banner instead ;w;

:p why do I have a feeling you watch Sages with the Rien mention?

Managed to get Arvuis today. x_x Granted I did it on normal but he STILL gave me some trouble even with my team being maxed. My typical team of Hecktor, Rien, Takumi, and Ike didn't cut it due to everything wanting to one shot Rien so tried afew other ideas until I got a team of Shigure, normal Azura, Sonya and Takumi.

Now the long road of getting him from 3* to 5*.....chances are though Navvare or Ursula may be next on the list as is. ( has currently 10K feathers)

I actually managed to clear Infernal all by myself haha, first time ever. Usually I turn to Youtube for inspiration. :') Used Reinhardt, Xander, Cecilia and Axura, as she's now affectionately known. Reinhardt carries Fortify Cavalry, Xander and Cecilia carry Hone Cavalry. Took three attempts to figure out Infernal and work around their movement skills. I do think Reinhardt was pretty useful, personally, but he didn't have to engage on Enemy Phase at all thankfully with some smart positioning.

my regular horse emblem team (fred / lyn / xander / reinhardt) carried me through normal + lunatic but i had to shake things up for infernal. ended up doing baby's first one-turn infernal ghb. fun!

i'm afraid i don't actually get the reference ;w; my joke was about reinhardt's heroes art - his artist drew him with what seems like proportionally small hands, and it's become something of a meme i guess. i just think it's kinda cute, calling my obnoxious killing machine "my tiny hand man" haha

Sagemaster15 also makes jokes lately on Rien's "tiny tiny" hands in the art, hence why I confused it for a reference x_x

I lacked the "recomeded" Axura and probably allways will considering how long it took me to get Shig and me wanting to pull from the Genealogy banner for SOMEONE and hopefuly not get SOMEONE'S daughter a third time >_> - glances at Julia-

Shigure did help quite abit though with him being a blue tome user as well as a dancer, meaning a armor unit reinforcement died fast as it needed to.

Yeah being a TA3 green meant she could tank (not kill, lol, poor thing) the initial Ridersbane lancer once she danced Reinhardt out of there. A plain ol' Azara could probs cover her in Lunatic though.

Hahaha and yeah the tiny hands thing is a bit of a meme in the community. :P I see it everywhere on Reddit.

oh! ah, i only use youtube when i get stuck on certain maps (thank you to the yaycupcake guy! ;w; ) i collect all my memes from reddit instead lmao

Omg I can't believe they put Ayra on a banner with Eldigan pahaha. Pure evil. Apparently it's the first time a new unit has been featured alongside old ones, which is a bit of a bummer, but I'll survive. I don't think I'll pull for her as I really don't want a second Eldigan, mine is warming the bench behind Xander and now Sigurd, too. I did drop on a couple of red orbs this morning and got a Hinata, though, so not all bad.

(also did the dumbest thing and thought that was... Amelia??? on the banner when I first woke up and got a 4* Camilla for my stupidity)

edit: I just realised I forgot about B!Roy but errr I always forget about B!Roy. I have no idea how to build mine up and make the most of him.

edit II: I'm actually seriously considering upgrading Arvis hmmm. My red mage options are lacking (don't have a ~good Tharja, no Celica etc etc) and Valflame and Recover Ring are both really cool, unique options. I have ~50k feathers stockpiled, plus more from upcoming TT, so think I'm gonna go for it.

edit III: okay I've done it and ate a spare Lloyd for his delicious Iceberg

my god, the ayra salt is incredible. i wouldn't have minded an elgidan since i don't have one but my free pull was another lackluster lon'qu p: (when will my +atk/-res lon'qu come home? never, i guess.)

i have to shuffle my arena team around though. i've been having trouble getting out of tier 18, and now that people can whale for ayra i don't want to face merges ><;; oh well, time to build arvis for TT and then funnel all my resources into my ultimate dream - 5*40+10 frederick.

I got booted down from tier 19 to tier 18 last week as opposed to promoting up, as I usually do. Looks like the competition is really fierce. I should totally invest in merges but dunno who would be the best candidate, Nino I guess? She's always handy. I'm using horse emblem this week, though, just for a change of pace.

i usually run fred / xander / rein / bonus unit bc i am impatient and aggressive, but since i also don't (yet) care enough to run an Optimal Arena Team (TM)/start over when i get lose a unit on win 5 or whatever, i hover around 17/18. i'm tired of seeing merged reinhardts + dancers though, so as much as i love my tank, fred's getting the boot this week.

i don't fully understand arena scoring but i guess the most important thing is high value units with lots of merges? since you already use nino a lot (i think? maybe that's someone else?) i would just build around her and see what that gets you, o: personally i know i don't have enough patience for something like this, so i temper my expectations for arena success haha

I think it's the first time they put up a such blatant money grabbing banner! I'm definitely not going to pull for Ayra, I already have 2 Eldigan and having 2 red focus on the same banner is way too scary haha. However she can break my pity rate anytime later! I don't understand why they couldn't just release her with the 3 other heroes on the same banner? I think most people wouldn't have minded Sigurd and Ayra sharing the focus since they're both powerful units! (I think anyway it would have been better than what they did here).

I'm more bummed with the fact that all 40% bonus heroes for the TT are the new heroes though. :c And no Julia. Heck, even no Seliph (not that I care about him but I'd have built one if he were a bonus unit). I'm probably going to train and promote Arvis this weekend so I can use him for the TT. I don't really want to use Eldigan since I already used horse emblem for the last TT and all my good cavalry units have their HM maxed already.