Guide: How to Get Free Orbs in Fire Emblem Heroes

Fire Emblem Heroes is Nintendo’s latest mobile game and the first mobile entry in the long running tactical role playing series. Heroes allows players to summon characters from across the Fire Emblem series and create teams of up to four units. While free to play, the catch is summoning heroes requires a premium currency called Orbs. These Orbs can be very expensive to purchase, costing $1.99 for 3 (~$0.66ea) for the lowest sum or $74.99 for 140 (~$0.54ea) for the highest sum. That’s right, Nintendo went with the controversial Gacha (or gachapon) system for Fire Emblem Heroes and there are already stories of players spending thousands of dollars on the game and still not getting every character!

Fortunately for us free-to-play users, there are plenty of ways to earn Orbs in-game without spending a dime! Below is a list of the best ways to get Orbs in-game ranked roughly in order of difficulty. Remember, even after you complete the main story stages, you can still get free orbs regularly.

Every Single Way to Get Orbs For Free in Fire Emblem Heroes

Log In Every Day

Since the game’s release early February, the app has been giving out a 2-orb-a-day reward simply for logging in! This is the lowest of all low hanging fruit and should never be missed. There’s no mission completion requirement, stamina cost, or other step necessary. Just log in, visit your perched owl and claim your reward!

Link a Nintendo Account for 10 Free Orbs

The game prompts you to create or link a Nintendo account upon launch and there are plenty of good reasons to do so, namely to backup your file incase you change phones or have to temporarily uninstall the app. Nintendo ups to incentive by throwing in a whopping 10 free Orbs for players that link accounts. Once the link is made, go to your fountain and tap the blue icon next to the ‘Quests and Missions’ text to open up your Nintendo points tab. Besides the 10 free orbs, players can earn additional Nintendo points by clearing content in-game. Those points can be used to purchase other goodies such as stamina resets, PvP arena sword resets, and experience shards.

Complete The Main Story Missions

Every story mission cleared for the first time earns you an Orb. That might not sound very impressive but there are 9 Chapters, each with 5 missions for a total of 45 orbs. Better yet, that’s only on the default Normal difficulty. Each mission can then be replayed on Hard and Lunatic mode for a total of 135 free Orbs! Granted, things will start getting challenging half way through hard mode, but its worth the slog.

Complete Other Story Maps

Nintendo and Intelligent Systems are always adding new content to Fire Emblems Heroes, including new story maps. Paralogue 1: Family Bonds, for example includes three missions which each reward an Orb for completion for each difficulty mode. That’s a total of 9 free orbs!

Complete Quests & Missions

Always keep your eyes peeled for new Quests & Missions in your fountain! While many of these reward shards, features, or stamina potions, a few allow players to earn Orbs. My recent favorite are the Sword, Lance, and Axe Mastery missions. Each includes two tasks that award Orbs, for a total of 6. These missions tend to be time sensitive so be sure to make them a priority when they show up. Some can be beyond your current power level, for example the February task ‘KO Lvl 35+ Armor Foes’ rewards a whopping 5 Orbs but may not be doable by new players. Don’t lose hope. There are new tasks available every month so keep checking back.

Complete Special Maps

Some special maps reward new heroes, others come with Orb rewards. These are time sensitive and should be completed as soon as possible. The Launch Celebration special map series currently includes 3 parts with each offering two stages. That’s a total of 6 free Orbs for clearing the lot, with more likely to follow!

Always Wait Until You Have 20 Orbs Before Summoning

This tip doesn’t earn you Orbs, but it will prevent you from wasting them! While players can summon a single Hero with just 5 Orbs, it is highly recommended to wait until you’ve accumulated 20 Orbs before tapping the Summon button. This is because the game offers a discount for multiple summons in one go. The savings add up to 5 orbs. That means the impatient player will only end up with four heroes for his 20 Orbs while the prudent player gets five!

Don’t Expand Your Barracks Right Away

Its important to upgrade your Castle right away to start earning bonus EXP, but the barracks can take a back seat. New players can hold 200 heroes in their barracks which is more than enough. Eventually, you’ll need to expend Orbs to increase your reserve size, but hold off on it for as long as you can.

Don’t Spend Orbs to Get Stamina

It might be tempting to spend some of your hard earned Orbs to keep playing once you’ve exhausted your stamina, but don’t! Orbs are far more difficult to come by than constantly regenerating Stamina points. Besides, the game is quite generous with stamina potions during the early phases. If you’ve already used up your stamina refills, the wise thing to do is take a quick break and wait for your stamina to refill naturally. Take the opportunity to browse MMOs.com for other mobile games to fill the down time. Build a healthy cycle of 5-6 mobile games to ensure you’ll never be hit by downtime.

Fire Emblem Heroes Odds of Getting a 5 Star Summon

• 5 Star Focus: 3%
• 5 Star: 3%
• 4 Star: 36%
• 3 Star: 58%

Getting a 5 star summon in Fire Emblem Heroes may be difficult, but even you've been getting unlucky, know that the game utilizes a pseudo RNG system that actually increases your odds of getting a 5 star summon every time you don't get one. Summoning 5 times without a 5 star summon increases your odds of getting a 5 star by 0.5%, 10 times will increase it by 1%, and so on. So if you somehow got extremely unlucky summoning 120 times in a row without a 5 star, your next summon will 100% be a 5 star summon.

For more news, videos, screenshots, and guides on Fire Emblem Heroes, check out our review page!