Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Character Recruitment Guide: How to Unlock All Characters

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes brings over a lot of the main gameplay loop of Fire Emblem Three Houses. One of these is character recruitment, which is more important now because of the new focus on story compared to the previous Fire Emblem Warriors. After the time skip in each route, when the war begins, you have the ability to recruit and unlock several numerous characters outside of your house.

Unlocking characters in Three Hopes is achieved by 'recruiting' them within the framework of the story - but who you can recruit and when is unique to the route you're playing. All unlockable characters will either show up at the beginning of a chapter, for route specific story reasons, or in the main mission taking place at the end. Mostly through the latter, though.

Because of the nature of what we're covering, this guide will naturally contain spoilers as to the identity of optional recruitable characters for each route in Three Hopes. On this page: 

• How Character Recruitment Works
• How to Recruit every Character in the game
  • Scarlet Blaze
  • Azure Gleam
  • Golden Wildfire
  • Bonus Characters

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Character Recruitment & Unlock Guide

During the War Map section of each chapter, you have two options: Make a beeline to the main mission with the promise of gaining more Renown, or clearing out every single area. If you're looking to recruit more characters, we recommend clearing every area. If you ignore optional missions you can find yourself lacking vital Strategies needed to recruit characters or strategy points to recruit all characters in a mission.

By clearing out every single area on the war map, you should always have enough points to recruit every possible character and choose one or two other strategies to help out in the mission. Basically, there's one clear rule of thumb for all cases of character recruitment in Three Hopes: prioritize persuasion.

You will naturally receive enough renown by playing the game with a completionist mindset, so don't worry. Be thorough - you'll thank us later. There's nothing worse than getting the pieces in place and then not being able to see the target recruitment through.

Beyond that, there's a few key points you need to keep in mind as you work to recruit characters for your house:

• When you start a main mission, the strategies chosen in the first screen will be a deciding factor on if you can recruit characters in the mission. Specifically, we can't emphasize enough that if you don't choose Persuade strategies, you cannot have enemy commanders join your army.
• When the enemy commander joins the battle field do NOT kill them immediately. You need to wait for the initiate strategy pop-up to appear, and hold the right dpad button. Once you've done this, you can go ahead and defeat them. If you defeat them before the strategy is initiated, you will kill the character and they will obviously be lost forever.
• If you find yourself accidentally killing a persuadable character, you can always restart the mission. Restarting a mission also allows you to change up your chosen strategies. Just know, that replaying a mission in the Auxiliary Battles mode will not allow you to recruit a character you missed.

How to Recruit every Character in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

With the instructions above in the front of your mind, it's now time to look at all character recruitment options available in Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes.

Below, we've lined out what you can expect in each route, and how to unlock everyone. Note that while you can only use characters in your immediate army during story missions, if you replay missions you can have access to every character you've ever recruited across all playthroughs.

All charater recruitment takes place before the point at which the Three Hopes story branches into different routes - so by the time you decide which ending you're going for, you'll have had a chance to recruit everyone its possible to. Once recruited, you can take characters on expeditions also ply characters with gifts, which are detailed on our Three Hopes Gift Guide. From here on in, the spoilers get more significant. 

Scarlet Blaze Recruitment Options:

For Scarlet Blaze, character unlock opportunities come in almost every chapter between chapters 4 and 12:

• Chapter 4 - The Battle of Garreg Mach: Persuade Constance and Hapi for 10 strategy points each
• Chapter 5 - The Rescue at Magred: Persuade Ashe for 20 strategy points
• Chapter 6 - The Great Coup of Myrddin: Persuade Balthus, Ignatz, and Lorenz for 10 strategy points each
• Chapter 7 - The Blitz of Riegan: Persuade Raphael, Lysithea, Marianne for 10 strategy points each [Note: You must have Ignatz in the active party to successfully recruit Raphael.]
• Chapter 8 - The Defense of the Silver Maiden: Persuade Mercedes for 20 strategy points. [Note: You must have Jeritza in the active party to use this strategy.]
• Chapter 9 - Intruders in Enbarr: Persuade Shamir for 20 stategy points
• Chapter 10 - Subjugation of the Western Kingdom: Persuade Yuri for 20 strategy points. Also, Byleth and Jeralt (needs to use Resonant Lightning).
• Chapter 12 - The Pacification of Hrym: Persuade Leonie for 30 strategy points. [Note: You must have recruited Byleth and Jeralt. If you haven't, Leonie will refuse to join you.]

Azure Gleam Recruitment Options: 

Dimitri's Azure Gleam gets the fewest character unlock opportunities in Three Hopes, but there's still plenty of people he can recruit:

• Chapter 4 - Deliverance in the Valley of Torment: Persuade Hapi and Petra for 10 strategy points each
• Chapter 5 - Mutiny at Magdred: Persuade Dorothea for 10 strategy points
• Chapter 6 - Assault on Arundel Territory: Persuade Bernadetta for 10 strategy points
• Chapter 9 - Saving of the Silver Maiden: Persuade Shamir and Yuri for 20 strategy points each. Catherine is recruited after the mission has concluded.
• Chapter 10: At the beginning of the chapter, you will have the option to recruit Raphael, Lorenz, Ignatz, and Marianne if you accept Claude’s offer. During the mission (Subduing the Western Church) Persuade Balthus for 20 strategy points
• Chapter 11 - The Blitz of the Western Empire: Persuade Constance and Linhardt for 30 points each.
• Chapter 12 - The Conquest of Hevring: Byleth and Jeralt. 

Golden Wildfire Recruitment Options:

The Golden Wildfire, formerly Deer, can recruit characters throughout most of the early and mid-game, and it's mostly about spending strategy points:

• Chapter 4 - The Defense of the Great Bridge: Persuade Linhardt for 10 strategy points
• Chapter 5 - The Derdriu Gambit: Persuade Balthus for 10 strategy points; Holst will also join automatically as the fourth playable character in this stage
•  Chapter 6 - Besieging the Imperial Army: Persuade Bernadetta for 10 strategy points
• Chapter 7 - The Battle at Gronder Field: Persuade Petra for 10 strategy points
• Chapter 9 - Clash at Ailell: Persuade Hapi and Constance for 20 strategy points each
• Chapter 10 - Ambush on the Federation King: Persuade Yuri for 20 points; the recruitment process for Byleth and Jeralt also happens in this stage.
• Chapter 11 - Invasion of the Northern Kingdom: Persuade Ashe for 30 strategy points
• Chapter 13 - The Pacification of Ordelia: Persuade Dorothea for 30 strategy points; unlike the prior enemy recruitments, you'll have to escort her as a green ally while she's poisoned.

Bonus Unlockable Characters:

In addition to the characters above, there a secret unlockable characters that can be purchased with renown in Shez' tent under the Spend Renown menu. These characters do not have support conversations, and can only be used when replaying missions.

• Rhea - 60 Renown
• Sothis - 60 Renown
• Arval - 60 Renown, must have cleared a playthrough with Byleth and Jeralt recruited
• Gatekeeper - Rewarded for completing at least two of the three main story routes.