Items

Three Hopes hides its economy behind people. There is no single inventory screen that explains where anything comes from; there is a Supply Master who does not exist until Chapter 5, a shopkeeper whose stock only refreshes between chapters, a Reward Master tucked in the Command Center, and Surveying Spots out on the War Map that run dry and never come back.

So this guide is arranged by who hands you the item and when they open, which is the question you actually have standing in camp with a pile of Smithing Stones. Four currencies run through it: Gold buys Seals and gifts, Smithing Stones buy Materials, Strategy Resources are spent in battle prep, and stat boosters are never bought at all.

What opens, and in which chapter

The row worth reading twice is the Training Instructor. Holding a Master Seal is not the same as being able to use one. You can be in Chapter 10 with every Intermediate class maxed and a Seal in your bag and still be blocked, because the exam that spends it lives behind a facility upgrade. Sort the facility out before you go hunting Seals, not after.

Surveying Spots on the War Map

The only supplier that feeds two different goods. A Spot opens once you have taken its region by winning the side quest battle there, and a few of them want more than that, specifically an S-Rank in a regional battle before they will let you in.

What comes out is Materials in significant quantities, plus Seals at varying prices in Gold. Both have limits worth knowing. A Spot eventually dries up and stops producing Materials for good. Seals are one purchase per Spot, and the only way to buy a second is to finish the chapter you are in, which resets the limit. There is a third channel running alongside this one: battles pay Seals as S-Rank rewards, claimable once each, and you can see which battle pays which Seal by hovering its territory on the War Map before you commit. Details are on our Seals guide and our materials guide.

The Supply Master and the Smithing Stone economy

She turns up in Chapter 5 and our page calls her your sole and best supplier of Materials, which is fair, because everything she does either produces Smithing Stones or spends them.

Two conditions sit on top of that table. High tier Materials do not appear in her shop until you have bought the Expand the Supply Line upgrades, and levelling the Supply Depot itself improves her exchange rate in both directions, so you receive more Stones when selling and pay fewer when buying. Collect Supplies is the quiet winner of the four, because it converts every battle you were going to fight anyway into Materials, and anything you do not want goes straight back to her for Stones.

The Item Shopkeeper in the Marketplace

The simplest supplier in camp and the only one that sells both Seals and gifts, which is why he is worth a stop rather than a glance. He takes Gold, and his limitation is the one people trip over: everything he carries is stocked for the current chapter only, and the shelves refill when you finish that chapter and move to the next. If you want two of something, you are waiting for a chapter boundary, not for money.

The Reward Master in the Command Center

Achievements are a single channel feeding two very different goods. Seals come out of it, and so do fourteen of the eighteen permanent stat boosters. The distinction that matters is the one our stats page draws: achievement rewards are one time and large, battle drops are small and repeatable.

Permanent stat boosts, by stat

Eighteen items, and none of them can be bought. Four drop in battles and fourteen come from achievements, which is why the plus five tier is almost entirely locked behind the Reward Master.

Read down the first column and the pattern is clear: only four stats have a battle drop at all, and they are the four you are most likely to want early. Everything else waits on an achievement. The complete list with sources is on our stat boosting items guide.

Materials, read by facility rather than by name

Our materials page lists more than twenty Materials in Low, Mid and High tiers, which tells you roughly when you will need each one. What it also carries, and what is more useful when you are planning an upgrade, is which facility each Material feeds: All Facilities, Training Grounds, Tactics Academy, Blacksmith, Recreation Quarter, Marketplace, Battalion Guild and Supply Depot.

The naming follows a pattern once you see it, with the same facility taking a low, mid and high version of the same thing, so the Blacksmith wants an Apprentice, then an Artisan, then a Master Smithing Set, and the Recreation Quarter wants Humble, then Basic, then Luxurious Furnishings. Reading the list by facility rather than by tier is how you work out what a specific upgrade is waiting on. One thing our page does not carry is prices, in either Gold or Smithing Stones, so plan by availability rather than by cost.

Strategy Resources, the currency you spend before the fight

Strategy Resources come from capturing the small territories on the War Map, and they are spent on the Strategy screen during battle preparation on things that change the fight before it starts: recruiting enemy units to your side, clearing fog of war, and healing. They are also the currency the Persuade Strategy runs on, which makes them the link between this bucket and your roster.

There is a cost to collecting them that our Strategy Resources page is careful to point out: capturing territories for Resources loses you bonus Renown. So the trade is a real one, and if you are chasing Renown for the shop rather than Resources for recruitment, you will want to take fewer territories, not more.

Gifts, and why they belong in the economy

Gifts are bought with Gold from the same shopkeeper who sells Seals, and they exist to raise Support levels, which is what unlocks Support conversations. To hand one over, open Explore Camp, go to the Unit tab and pick the character you want.

Our gifts guide lists favourite and disliked gifts for thirty one characters across the three houses, twelve Black Eagles, eleven Blue Lions and eight Golden Deer. Disliked gifts are worth checking before you spend, because handing someone the wrong thing is a wasted purchase rather than a neutral one.

A sensible order

Take regions and work their Surveying Spots while they still produce. Get through Chapter 5 and let the Supply Master start converting your junk equipment into Smithing Stones. Put early Materials into the Supply Depot, because the exchange rate improvement pays for itself, and into the Training Instructor, because nothing else lets you spend a Seal. Then take Advanced Seals at Chapter 7 and Master Seals at Chapter 10, by which point the exam is already waiting for you rather than the other way round. Our mechanics guide covers the camp systems those upgrades feed.