One Equippable Item at a Time and Combat Arts
Shadows of Valentia’s equipment system works a little differently from what Fire Emblem fans might now. Units can now only equip one item or weapon at a time, although you won’t have to worry about anything breaking in this game as there’s no degradation. The biggest thing to keep in mind with this new system is that everything counts as that one equippable item, whether it’s food for health recovery or a new weapon. Because of this, you’ll need to carefully plan, and put the best item on each unit to maximize their stats.
A new feature included with weapons comes in the form of Combat Arts, powerful and unique abilities that you can unlock on each weapon. A character needs to use a weapon enough to unlock these Arts, but once they do, they can be used at will. Arts can have a variety of effects like restoring your HP with the damage caused to enemies, or launching a powerful attack that sacrifices your HP to boost attack power. There’s a wide variety of Arts to unlock, so you’ll want to experiment and see what each weapon holds.
