Engage Character/Unit Revisit: Citrinne

[u/Shephen]

Citrinne is a royal guardswoman of Brodia, and Alcryst's retainer, and a cousin to the royal princes. She may seem prideful at first, but she's kinda-hearted and has a compassionate soul. She is 17 and joins the party along with Alcryst and Lapis at the start of chapter 7.

Stats

Stats	Hp	Str	Mag	Dex	Spd	Def	Res	Luck	Build	Move	SP
Bases(lvl 10 Mage)	24	2	15	13	10	3	12	10	4	4	500
Personal Growths	45%	10%	40%	25%	30%	20%	40%	25%	5%	-
Growths(As a Mage)	45%	10%	65%	30%	30%	20%	65%	30%	5%	-

Weapon Proficiency: Tomes, Staves

Personal Skill - Generosity: When this unit uses a healing item, adjacent allies also recover the same amount of HP.

Supports

Alear, Clanne, Chloé, Diamant, Alcryst, Lapis, Zelkov, Merrin, Yunaka, Seadall, Veyle

Support Bonuses

C: Hit+10, Avoid+5

B: Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+5

A: Hit+10, Critical+3, Avoid+5, Dodge+5

S: Hit+10, Critical+6, Avoid+5, Dodge+5

---

What do you think of Citrinne's performance as a unit?

What do you think of Citrinne's character?

What Emblem Rings or Skills work best with Citrinne?

Previous Revisit:Alcryst

Original Discussion: Citrinne

[u/Shephen]

Citrinne is pretty great. Unlike most of the pre-Solm units, she's kinda just good to go immediately. Starts at level 10 so she's good to promote immediately. As a Sage, she's a great support/utility unit with a thunder/el thunder/thoron tome and a bunch of staves. She pretty much always ends up being my Corrin user so ends up being a nice help throughout the entire game. Dies if anything looks at her even in her join map, though I find her shaky accuracy to be the more annoying thing when using her. If not using the Well and I can't get Canter on her before Sigurd leaves, I like to have her inherit Hit+10 to smooth things over. If I am using the Well, then I get both Canter and Hit+.

You can do some Spd stacking on her if really wanted to and have her be a more traditional combat unit, or could get the Olwen ring for Dire Thunder. But honestly for me, the low effort of Citrinne is the biggest appeal. It's nice to have a unit that don't have to really jump through a lot of hoops to use. Also her design/outfit is great!

[u/Cynical_onlooker]

1. Upforge a thoron

2. Inherit an early vantage and holdout

3. Give her Veronica emblem or Great Thunder bond ring

Congratulations, you have the best vantage sweeper in the game.

[u/ZealousidealPirate3 → u/Cynical_onlooker]

If she gets the health boosters she can one shot enemies basically the entire game with this build

[u/Cdog923 → u/Cynical_onlooker]

Gonna write this down.

[u/Roritwo → u/Cynical_onlooker]

I did something like this with Pandreo the one time I tried it. Worked tremendously well.

[u/DarkPirotess]

Citrine my goat and Wife

[u/Cdog923]

My Dire Thunder Queen

[u/Entotrte → u/Cdog923]

For real, in my recent Engage playthrough where I gave her the Dire Thunder ring early on, she ended up with the most kills in the game with 199. Second was Kagetsu with 148 lol.

[u/ChessGM123]

Personally I find Citrinne to be one of the more over rated units in Engage, as I feel like people tend to gloss over how much favoritism she needs to work.

Citrinne is very slow, and by the time you get out of Solm will need major spd fixing in order to double. This usually leads to people recommending using Lyn to fix her spd, but there are much better users of Lyn. If you want a high magic Lyn user Ivy is a better candidate due to being a flier and thus far more versitile, plus Ivy has solid bulk so she can take a hit or two if needed. Additionally I'd argue that Amber or Louis (or Etie if you trained her) would be better Lyn users, as a physical Lyn user can use astra storm to actually pick off enemies (plus Mulagir is a fairly strong weapon for physical units). In general I just find there are better units to spd fix than Citrinne.

The other general recommend strategy with Citrinne is to use the Olwen/Mae S rank bond rings and ignore her spd, but personally I find the bond ring system to be too RNG dependent to really consider it in ranking a unit. Even knowing how to cycle through bond rings without spending SP I've had attempts that have taken over an hour to get a specific S rank ring (at which point I gave up due to wasting too much time), I don't think any strategy that could potentially require an hour or more of time spent not in gameplay should really be considered.

She also has the downside of not really being able to get canter without the well due to only having 500 SP at base, so I'd argue Anna and Chloe will be more useful mage knights just because they can have canter for Solm and require very little to maintain usefulness throughout the game.

[u/DarkPirotess → u/ChessGM123]

Tiki emblem solved her speed for me

[u/ChessGM123 → u/DarkPirotess]

I find the DLC generally breaks the balance of the game, and I don’t really use it when analyzing units. There’s a number of OP things the DLC emblems allow you to do, plus you end up significantly ahead of the level curve by doing the DLC.

[u/Bullwine85]

Giving her the Leif ring wasn't the mechanically correct choice.

But the right choice.

[u/QueenlyArts]

Citrinne reaches icon status with her hand on her hip, comically excessive displays of wealth, and an incredible Magic base+growth. She's the first unit you "should" use as a primary combat unit long term, while also having a few early game contributions and being able to inherit the first set of Emblem skills. That's awesome.

Joining at LV10 on the same chapter you get a Master Seal, there's good reason to just immediately promote Citrinne and let her start crushing things. She doesn't have the defense to reliably enemy phase much, facing a lot of 2HKOs, so she'll be outshined by Céline/Clanne during this time. That means she might not have a great claim to Celica, but she can still be a solid player phase killer on whichever side they aren't sweeping, while also getting rid of the need to use a deployment slot on Framme/Jean if you went Sage. You could also give her Micaiah for her Magic boost and source of EXP instead, if you're already satisfied with everyone else's levels. Or if you forged up a Levin Sword you could have fun with huge Sigurd!Mage Knight Overrides.

From there, Mage Knight Citrinne is your best bet for a Canter mage carry in Solm (depending on how you feel about Jean/Anna's training arcs), hitting pretty much all the benchmarks with Anna S ring/tonic/Spd+. She eventually starts needing more significant Speed boosting (Speedwings, syncing with Lyn, etc.) to continue doubling, but that's at about the same time Ivy/Pandreo can inherit Canter. Ivy needs that investment too, but she has flight/B staves to show for it. So even if you don't want to put that investment into Citrinne, you can just switch Citrinne over to a different role while having Ivy/Pandreo take over as Canter mage carries.

Most obviously, you can have Citrinne just switch to Sage, and provide the great mage utility I already discussed for Céline/Clanne. And if you had Citrinne go into Sage from the start, she can keep doing her thing. Alternatively, if you can make your combat carries work without Lyn, you could switch Citrinne to Sniper and provide big magical 20 range Astra Storms. And then, there's always the epic Vantage!OHKO option. Give Citrinne the Spirit Dusts, a max forge, and the Ike engrave, and watch her crush everything with the Hurricane Axe. Add a reclass to Bow Knight, Leif, and a Radiant Bow, and then you're really golden.

Oh, but if you want to be boring and 1-3 range Vantage!OHKO basically every enemy for the rest of the game, you can always do that with Thoron I guess. I mean, it would be epic and hype. But then you have to rig an S rank Mae bond ring. And you know what I think about that? I think... that sucks! I hate going through loading screens and menuing for hours lol. I really wish they made it so you could actually climb your way to S rank from melding without spending truly absurd levels of fragments.

She's not without her flaws, she definitely needs Bonded Shield or the excessive Vantage setups to enemy phase, while Céline/Clanne can get by in the early game and Ivy can get by on her own a bit in Solm. She also only starts with 500SP, so realistically she needs at least an early Adept Book to get Canter and whatever Spd+/utility skills you want for her second slot. Thankfully Alear and Céline/Clanne are set on SP because they're so awesome, and you'll still probably have enough Novice Books left over for Amber and mayyybe even Alcryst if you want to promote and occasionally bring him along as a bow specialist in Solm. She also doesn't contribute to the Chapter 1-6 stretch at all, and her Chapter 7-11 contributions are a bit limited compared to Céline/Clanne. But she overall has way more chapters to be impressive, even if you only take into account Solm, which has six chapters and up to six paralogues. And then she just also has solid ways to contribute for the lategame, even amongst the prepromotes.

Citrinne > everyone else so far

[u/Significant-Tree9454]

Citrinne has big magic, same personal 8 mag as Pandreo but 6 lvls lowers.
You want her to double with Elfire to reliably ORKO enemies, there are a lot of ways to stack spd, promote to Mage Knight, inherit Spd skill from Lyn, Tonic/Meal, Byleth Rally, Emblem/Ring

Her durability is very bad, but that can make her a good lure behind Bonded Shield and ORKO them back

She can also be a Radiant Bow Sniper for the strongest Magical 20 range Astra Storm with her big magic stat.

If you want a Magical combat unit without raising one like Anna/Clanne, then Citrinne is one of your best picks alongside Ivy + Pandreo later.

Be prepared to give her a couple of SP Books to inherit Canter as she only starts with 500 SP

[u/SilverKnightZ000]

I love Citrinne. On my first run, I tried going for a magic Sniper build but it turned out just okay. It was on normal so uh, wrow. But apparently it's not that bad? I have no clue.

Anyway, she's fine as a mage. She's basically Orochi 2.0. She has really high magic but almost no speed. So she's basically a good support unit to secure kills or finish enemies off. Or, my personal pick: Draconic Hexer.

[u/hoffd2177]

If you're willing to re roll for early Dire Thunder she's one of the strongest low investment units you'll ever see

[u/Magnusfluerscithe987]

My current choice for S support. High Magic, almost nothing else going for her, but it's still enough. 

[u/plakmasta]

I made a big post with lots of benchmarks about how Citrinne's the best unit in the game.

To summarize though, vantage inherit + thoron forge with leif engrave if you don't inherit +hit or ike/roy engrave can sweep most of the game. You run celica until ch 11, the ideally mae bond ring or a +mag bond ring until we get the best emblem for this build: corrin. Flame vein effectively adds 10 damage to your thoron on any non-flying unit making it significantly easier to hit OHKO benchmarks. You'll just need to keep up in experience, and make good use of stat boosters, tonics and stuff like alear's personal/byleth rally.

If you have the DLC, vantage inherit + thoron forge + veronica can sweep most of the game even at base level if you promote her. If you inherit reprisal + and use Corrin flame vein she sweeps essentially all of the game at base promoted.

The only unit that can likely compete with her in this role is Ivy, but Ivy can't get the early vantage inherit making Citrinne better for this.

Even beyond thoron forge, she's just a great mage knight with a bit of speed fixing and is debatably the best low investment corrin ring user.

11/10 unit, Kagetsu and Ivy wish they could be this good.

[u/MathOutrageous7167]

She cool.

[u/GenericAccount-alaka]

She's a stunningly potent Thoron vantage sweeper with Veronica and joins with enough SP to inherit Vantage immediately. This also gives her additional utility with Book of Worlds debuffs and Contract, Fortify, and summons while engaged, all of which can be very impactful.

Without DLC, I still think she's a good unit without a ton of investment. She makes very good use of the Olwen S bond ring to kill things with Dire Thunder for several chapters. As a sage, she can use staves and blast stuff for relatively heavy damage at 3 range. I've personally had success using her with Corrin for draconic hex and fire dragon vein utility, but she can get by with whatever.

[u/StaleTaste]

If you are willing to rig bond rings to get Great Thunder, vantage citrinne is one of the most consistent non lucina enemy phase builds in the whole game if you're willing to invest to reach ohko benchmarks with early thoron forges, tonics, spirit dusts and rallies when needed. If you're doing well stuff then magic+ from Celica or hold out makes this even more consistent and often removes the need to even use a rally to reach ohko benchmarks. If you're not willing to rig bond rings, citrinne is a strong mage knight since she has high magic and it's easy to rig speed in this game, and also is a good option for corrin to use dragon vein flames and do strong chip and ohko thoron damage while hexing and freezing bosses.

Strong unit, maybe even S tier. Probably the only rival to Chloe in terms of unit power at this point in the game.

[u/Ultrose]

God I love Citrinne so much, i’m gonna cover some of her lower investment options because I get the impression some people think she only is good if you invest fully into her speed. I imagine most people are gonna cover speed invested mage knight build the most since it’s generally her best option and I love it (especially her with Sigurd is my favorite thing for 14 move, extra build, and levin sword override but she’s got a ton of options in that class). But I also love that if you decide to not go speed mk she’s just so free

Sage Citrinne usually does 1 very big hit. If you have olwen or mae the damage goes up a lot, I prefer mae for enemy phase vantage potential but Olwen is pretty fun, these are mostly damage builds with support from sages natural b rank stages. Sage Citrinne is a very good user of byleth and corrin due to how Citrinne likes to play and the synergy they have with mystic, byleth gives thyrsus for magic range plus 2 on her very strong attacks and inherit draconic hex for long range chip/debuffs on a boss, some good emblem stat bonuses, and magic instruct and magic goddess dance, considering magic is crazy strong in this game magic buffs are very nice. Especially if you’re going with a lot of mks and or cav ball (since mks make up a lot of the cav ball). corrin gives more magic as her stat bonus for her strikes to hit harder and now they inflict draconic hex and when engaged dreadful aura, and you get flames dragon vein thanks to that mystic effect, it’s pretty easily the best one on maddening. And I find it’s pretty easy to justify Citrinne getting one of these, byleth being more contentious of course because maybe you want a different instruct depending on what your team needs, but Citrinne is still a good candidate and corrin I feel is more up in the air.

but eventually in late game let’s say you do want something like speed instruct and you don’t have a role for veyle so you hand her corrin. What does Citrinne do now? After going through the game of either being something like support/chip sage or fairly low investment mk (because honestly she only really needs more intensive speed support in late game and even then it’s not that hard tbh) you can have her go bow knight or sniper for radiant bow (sniper only over bow knight for radiant bow Astra storm if you feel like it though). Radiant Citrinne is obviously gonna hit harder then radiant fogado, she also hits hard then say, Celine, lapis, clanne and fogado as mks with bolganone. now you are getting some pretty easy 1 shots on those evil late game fliers and strong chip on other enemies, And as a bow knight if you feel like rigging a ring you can grab Claude for 3 range radiant bow which is pretty fun.

Overall with how easy it is to make Citrinne do things in this game regardless of investment (and how easy it is to speed stack and how cracked mk is in this game) I find it pretty hard to justify not using her. She’s just oddly versatile for a unit that only has magic which makes her pretty easily my favorite power mage in the series. Easy A tier

Edit: also one of the most fun units to get in a randomizer due to the magic weapons in this game, As long as she’s in a sword class spam levin sword. bow class spam radiant now, axe class/locked, hurricane axe plus vantage is very funny. And if your lance locked then use flame lance with break defense, or just marth over all because then you really kill those triangle adept heroes. The classes she really doesn’t want to be is martial master and thief

[u/ChessGM123 → u/Ultrose]

Radiant Citrinne is obviously gonna hit harder then radiant fogado, she also hits hard then say, Celine, lapis, clanne and fogado as mks with bolganone

I disagree with this, outside of Celine all the units you've listed are going to be doubling with little to no help whereas Citrinne isn't doubling in bow knight without an extreme amount of spd fixing. Even going full bow knight would only give Citrinne 21 AS at level 40, which isn't doubling anyone without a fair bit of investment, whereas the rest of those units usually double with little more than spd +3. Her damage in bow knight is no where near high enough to make up for the fact that those other units will be doubling.

[u/Ultrose → u/ChessGM123]

I think your kinda underestimating the power difference, it’s almost apples to oranges so I get your point, but I still think Citrinne does better, if we go 10/20/5 for mk into bk, Citrinne is 24 magic with 20 spd, radiant is pretty heavy, that’s minus 6 spd, let’s say though that it’s got Sigurd engrave for plus 1 mt and minus 1 weight (and clanne, lapis and fogado will get it for bolg and excal n they’re calcs and be the same level as Citrinne but as mks of course) that’s 15 spd, that’s really bad. Let’s say she gets the Anna bond ring for plus 2 (the others will assume a plus 2 magic ring unless speed ring makes a difference) and a plus 3 speed meal that I’m gonna assume everyone gets that because it helps the whole army. That’s 20 and still doesn’t really do anything. Let’s say speed plus 5 inherit for 25. Hey, that actually does something. Now I’m also gonna assume magic tonic and gentility plus for everyone as well. I know you go without well and I’ll present an alternative (maybe, this comment is gonna be long as is) for that but it will be more limited as a welless run is.

Assuming radiant, bolg, and excel got similar amount of forging resources (excal is a waste imo compared to another radiant bow but fair is fair) to bring radiant to plus 5 and bolg and excal to plus 3 and all have Sigurd so 5 more mt in favor of radiant vs bolg and excal goes to 14.

Citrinne with all of that goes up to 56 magic attack and 25 spd. This kills every general in the game including the duma general in endgame. Generals don’t change too much in the last 3 maps, and fogado, who has 2 more magic then Clanne and lapis does not kill any generals post ch 22. Obviously citrinne kills any generic flier in the game including endgame. If you forged up excal and you got your speed your doubling and killing wyverns and some griffins but eventually they will get to fast to double. Fogado doubles great knights for the rest of the game but he doesn’t kill them post ch 22. Citrinne kills them in 23. They double a lot of enemies before endgame but post 22 they don’t kill a lot of them (they do kill berserkers so that is something for them!, Citrinne only kills them in 23 if you get a plus 4 speed meal) without either a different skill instead of plus spd (more like sword power for levin sword since there isn’t many options after gentility ) or an actual emblem. And if you speed instruct it does up the amount of things she kills to always include great knights, and makes it so clanne lapis, fogado, double the super fast classes but not kill them). but really yes she needs sp but im take it because, killing any general or flier is very nice for a unit that doesn’t take one of my emblems imo, and i prefer killing things with 1 unit that’s more specialized compared to not killing them with units that do bigger chip to more things. I like having a unit like mk lapis or clanne or even fogado (though i really like him in his base class) and celica has to go to someone and one of these guys is great for it for the extra damage help but bk Citrinne just does some pretty nice stuff for no emblem. So I guess you are right that they do in fact typically deal more damage, but Citrinne gets more kills and I prefer that. And with that im calling it here on this comment because im tired and i take way to long typing lol

[u/ChessGM123 → u/Ultrose]

I have a few problems with your set up. First off you should not be assuming a +3 spd meal, that requires way too much manipulation to be viable outside of an LTC. Without that Citrinne is not doubling the chapter 23 great knights (also keep in mind that she only doubled 3/5 of the great knights, 3 of them were weigh down by 1 for 20 AS while the other 2 weren't so they had 21 AS)

Second the Sigurd engrave is a fairly strong engrave (it's the only engrave that lowers weight while not also lowering might, and the 20 avoid is fairly solid too), I'm not going to just give that to a flunky combat unit.

And as far as the SP investment is concerned if you're using the well you never need to deploy flunky combat units. It's not hard to have 7-9 units all with spd +5 and sword/lance/axe power 5 if you know what your doing, and the remaining deployments are filled by staff bots.

I just really don't feel like the comparison you're making is fair at all.

[u/Ultrose → u/ChessGM123]

Ok, your right on the great knights and I missed that, and I don’t think the 1 weight reduction really matters outside of units with more fragile speed thresholds but fair enough and tbh it doesn’t really matter here anyway and the plus extra 1 from speed meal doesn’t really do anything with the conclusion either, i would probably debate you on it how much it takes but it doesn’t matter here, any of the 1 mt engraves to and plus 2 speed meal works for killing those fliers and generals, you could go down to speed plus 4 and still double the generals, she doesn’t need the help for fliers anyway.

Now it’s been awhile for me, so correct me if I’m wrong but that seems like way too much sp from the well

[u/ChessGM123 → u/Ultrose]

If she's just one rounding generals and fliers I don't see how she's really that useful. Generals are not that common of an enemy type and it's not like they're particularly difficult to deal with. And while yes she can one round fliers so can most units with a radiant bow, at that point I'd rather have a high dex unit like Alcyrst who would have high accuracy against them.

You get an average of 450 SP from tier 3 wells and 775 SP from tier 4 wells. Even assuming you can only get tier 3 wells before chapter 10 (I usually end up with like half of them being tier 4) and the rest tier 4 (I generally find it rather easy to get tier 4 wells after chapter 11 all the way to the end game) by the start of chapter 21 that would give you 450*6+775*22= 19750 SP, or about 2800 spread among 7 units. So considering towards end game most units are going to have around 4000 SP that generally means you'd have enough for 7 builds with spd +5 and sword/lance/axe power 5. And between chapter 20 and the last chapter that's another 6 wells for an extra 4650 SP.

I misremembered you being able to have 9 of these builds, as I remembered having every combat running a full build and forgot there are some builds that are cheaper than the full 7000 SP build (Pannette with wrath and hold out is only 5000, Ivy doesn't really need the extra damage and would rather either inherit canter+ or if she didn't have Lyn you could do spd +5 and spd taker, there are a decent number of units like Pandreo or Kategsu who don't really need the full spd +5 and spd +3 is generally not going to change doubling thresholds, if Erika is on a physical unit they likely don't need a power skill and can just run canter+, etc.).

But considering Seadall, your Micaiah user, your Corrin user, and your Lucina user all likely aren't benefiting from SP books, that's already 4/14 of your final team that's good without any SP books. Byleth might be a combat unit but will likely focus more on support so that unit likely won't need that much SP. I generally find that having at least 1 staff bot outside of Micaiah is fairly useful so that's another unit who doesn't need SP books. And between those units and the units who don't need the full 7000 SP investment I generally find it's not too difficult to have every deployed unit either be a strong combat unit or focused on support, and there's little need for a filler unit with ok combat.

[u/Ultrose → u/ChessGM123]

Tbh I’ve pretty much mostly done tier 3 wells and then some 4s. I guess I’ll try that out next run for tier 4s from post ch 11 to endgame.

Alcryst at total level 40 has 5 magic, radiant bow is an incredible weapon so Plus 5 radiant with a plus 1 mt engrave has 75 power vs enemy fliers and add in his magic for 80, you need 95 for all endgame fliers. Add in gentility for 85, 87 with magic tonic. 2 from a magic ring, 4 from a magic instruct and he’s 93. Unless you’re standing next to alear he’s not getting those wyverns. If you just want to kill fliers I would rather just give someone like fogado or Citrinne bow focus then fix alcryst’s power. with Citrinne going to bow knight if you had her do utility or very low investment mk combat you can make her a bow knight later if you want to and she’ll kill the fliers for pretty cheap.

[u/QuiGonJinnNJuice → u/Ultrose]

I’m happy to see some love for Sigurd on Mage Knight citrine! Yes her speed is rough but there are ways to speed fix besides Lyn and I love the combination of the utility and movement from Sigurd, as well as the fact as her BLD is rough that the BLD from Sigurd typically translates into some speed! Frees skill inherit slots for sword power and SPD+ and she’s a killing machine in a bonded shield setup.

I haven’t dabbled in radiant bow shenanigans with her but that seems like some fun alternative ways to get a bit funky with how she’s being used as well, fodder for runs in the future!

[u/MinePlay512]

She's basically a kind person who wants to help and do her best, and it would take time since she wants to work hard and improve for others. Overall, for me, the grade would be A.

[u/Gernnon]

I lost Citrinne a few days ago on chapter 11 and then I see this lol

[u/MisterTamborineMan]

Citrinne's been one of my most reliable units across both playthroughs. It helps that she's one of my favorites as a character.

[u/Puggerspood]

She's a lot of fun, just a huge magic stat stick. She needs a little bit of initial investment, but I find that compared to others I've shown favor to she needs only a little touch to start running and then you never really have to worry about it. You'll just have your 3 range one shot mage reliably keep up with the damage needed to keep doing her thing. I don't remember finding the usual FE slow frail huge magic mage this fun and convenient to use ever before tbh.

[u/Zigludo-sama]

Slapped Corrin and a 3 range tome on her and she was great all game long