Class Change Items (Master Seal, Second Seal)
Master Seals and Second Seals are crucial items in Fire Emblem Awakening for advancing your units' potential and customizing their growth. The Master Seal is used to promote a unit from their base class to an advanced class. For example, a Tactician can promote to a Grandmaster, or a Fighter can promote to a Warrior. This promotion typically occurs at level 10 and grants a significant boost to stats, along with access to new skills. Advanced classes often have higher base stats and better growth rates, making them more powerful in the long run.
The Second Seal offers a different kind of flexibility. It allows a unit to reset their current class to a lower tier or change to a different class within the same tier. For instance, a level 15 Tactician could use a Second Seal to become a level 1 Tactician again, retaining their learned skills but resetting their stats to the base level for that class. Alternatively, a Fighter could use a Second Seal to change into a Barbarian, allowing for diverse skill acquisition and stat development. This is particularly useful for units that may have had poor stat gains in their initial levels or for players aiming to acquire specific skills from different classes, such as the coveted Galeforce skill.
Units can hold one Master Seal or Second Seal at a time. It's important to consider when to use these seals. For Master Seals, promoting early can lead to higher overall stats by the end of the game, but waiting until level 10 ensures the unit has learned all the skills available in their base class. Second Seals are best used when a unit's stat growth has been disappointing, or when you want to strategically learn skills from a different class line. For example, a character like Chrom might benefit from learning skills from a different class before returning to his Lord class. Be mindful that using a Second Seal resets a unit's level to 1, so ensure they have learned any desired skills from their current class before doing so.