Information about unlocking and upgrading the Blacksmith in Fire Emblem Three Hopes.

Unlocking the Blacksmith in Fire Emblem Three Hopes¶

When you reach the Base Camp at the start of Chapter 5 you’ll need to talk to your faction leader, who will task you with exploring the new facilities that have opened up. These include the Blacksmith, and since you’re required to visit all the facilities, you really can’t miss this.

The Blacksmith provides numerous services, including “Forge Weapon”, “Repair Weapon”, “Reforge” and much later on, “Unleash Effects”. In plainspeak these allow you to upgrade a weapon’s Might and Durability, make a broken weapon usable (you’ll obtain broken weapons from chests in some battles and as drops from [Monsters]), increase a weapon’s maximum Might and Durability ranges, and unlock the true power of [Hero Relics], respectively. Suffice to say, the Blacksmith is where you’ll go to make your weapons stronger, and in that role it’s invaluable. For more information on this, check out the How to Get Better Weapons in Three Hopes page.

Upgrading the Blacksmith in Fire Emblem Three Hopes¶

By the time you unlock this facility, you’ll have already unlocked the ability to upgrade facilities. Check out the page How to Expand Facilities in Three Hopes for general information about upgrading facilities.

Expanding the Blacksmith takes two different types of materials, Building Materials and Smithing Sets, each of which comes in three tiers (Basic/Apprentice, Quality/Artisan and Lavish/Master). These materials are progression gated, so you won’t be finding the mid-tier and high-tier variants until you’ve progressed the main questline. When they do become available, you can regularly find them by exploring Surveying Spots and by buying them from the Supply Depot.

Below you’ll find a list of all the upgrades for the Blacksmith:

Improved Smithing¶

Reducing the Gold cost of using the Blacksmith is, at best, a marginal upgrade. Upgrading weapons is expensive, to be fair, and its costs will continue to keep pace with the rewards you get from completing battles due to the increased cost of upgrading higher-tier weapons. Gold might even be a limiting factor at various points. Still, an upgrade to mitigate the costs of something you can gain just by completing any battle is rarely compelling. Alas, you’re forced to purchase “Provide Better Smithing Equipment” before you can get deeper into the Blacksmithing upgrade tree.

Learn Blacksmithing¶

Now this is more like it. Many of the best weapons in the game (not including [Hero Relics]) will start out broken or tattered. Durability in Three Hpes functions more like Magic Points, so you can’t really “break” a weapon. Since the concept of Durability diverges from the norm, so to must the concept of “broken” weapons, and in the case of Three Hopes, a broken weapon is more akin to an unidentified magical item. Once a weapon has been repaired, its stats will be revealed to you and you’ll be able to properly wield it. This process will cost you Gold and resources, but in addition you must expand the Blacksmith so they can repair higher-grade weapons.

By default you can only repair level E weapons, which are the generally the lowest-teir weapons in the game (and [Hero Relics], for some reason). As you advance through the story you’ll start finding higher-level broken weapons, and until you upgrade the Blacksmith, they’re useless to you. You should make upgrading this a priority whenever you find a new, higher-level broken weapon. You probably won’t find any level A weapons until Chapter 10 or Chapter 11, so you don’t need to be in a rush to max it, and Steel weapons (level D) will last you quite a while, especially if you upgrade them significantly.

Improved Forge¶

Similar to the “Learn Blacksmithing” line of upgrades, above, you can only reforge (read: upgrade) weapons of various levels if you’ve purchased these upgrades. As with “Learn Blacksmithing”, your progress in “Improved Forge” should be mirrored by the weapons you have on hand. No sense in burning materials if you don’t have a weapon you care to upgrade. Generally you should make sure you have the relevant “Learn Blacksmithing” upgrade unlocked before you worry about “Improved Forge”. Upgrading weapons gets expensive, and you want to make sure you have a worthy weapon before you bother. This pretty much excludes anything that hasn’t been repaired.

Also note the one-off side upgrade, “Research Crest-Based Smithing Technique”. This allows you to unleash the power of [Hero Relics], which are decent at first, but can become obsolete when compared to highly upgraded (+25~) level D and level C weapons. Once you get some Lavish Building Materials and Master Smithing Sets, you should consider purchasing this upgrade, as it’ll allow you to vastly improve the potency of Hero Relics, which will allow you to reallocate any upgraded, mundane weapons to characters who don’t have Crests.

Forge Hammer¶

When you forge (upgrade) a weapon’s Might, the actual amount of Might gained per upgrade is determined by your progression in this upgrade tree. Suffice to say you’ll want to keep this upgraded to ensure weapons you upgrade are getting the best stats possible. Note that it’s possible to reset weapons, but you’ll have to pay full price to level them back up. That being the case, you may want to avoid leveling up [Hero Relics] until you’ve got this upgrade path maxed out.

Forge Anvil¶

When you forge (upgrade) a weapon’s Durability, the actual amount of Durability gained per upgrade is determined by your progression in this upgrade tree. Suffice to say you’ll want to keep this upgraded to ensure weapons you upgrade are getting the best stats possible. Note that it’s possible to reset weapons, but you’ll have to pay full price to level them back up. That being the case, you may want to avoid leveling up [Hero Relics] until you’ve got this upgrade path maxed out.

Which Blacksmith Upgrades to Unlock First?¶

There’s a lot of good stuff in the Blacksmith upgrade tree, but unfortunately you have to buy one of its weaker upgrades, “Provide Better Smithing Equipment” to get started. It’s a minor nuisance, however, as you can get to much better upgrades shortly thereafter.

Few upgrade trees have quite as much synergy as the Blacksmith upgrade tree does, and what you should get largely depends on what weapons you’ve found and, perhaps more importantly, what weapons you can farm. The best weapons in the game (aside from [Hero Relics]) start out broken and must be repaired before they can be used. This is functionally identical to identifying magical items in other games, as “repairing” a weapon just reveals its stats, modifiers and renders is usable. That being the case the “Learn Blacksmithing” upgrades should always get upgraded first.

After that, things are… tricky. Once repaired, broken weapons still vary significantly in quality thanks to their randomized modifiers, starting upgrades, and upgrade potential. In earlier Chapters, getting a +10 Steel Sword will suffice, but as you approach midgame you’ll probably want to boost your best weapons up to +20 or +30, depending on how many innate upgrades they can have. This is quite expensive, however, so you’ll want to find a Side Quest battle where a [Monster] spawns, which you can farm for broken weapon drops. This will hopefully not only get you a base weapon with good modifiers that is worth upgrading, but the ores and gold you need for these upgrades.

Once you have weapons you want to forge, you’ll need to buy upgrades in the “Improved Forge” upgrade path, otherwise you won’t be able to actually upgrade said weapons. This should suffice for level D and level C weapons, but once you reach around Chapter 10 or Chapter 11 you may start getting high-tier upgrade materials and level B and level A weapons. At this point you’ll be able to buy the “Research Crest-Based Smithing Technique”, an excellent upgrade that’ll allow you to turn your outdated [Hero Relics] into weapons capable of competing with level B and level A weapons. At this point you’re going to want to retire your level D and level C weapons in favor of these new, superior weapons, but instead of wasting money on less-than-ideal Might and Durability upgrades, you’re really going to want both the “Forge Hammer” and “Forge Anvil” upgrade paths maxed… and of course you’ll need “ Learn Blacksmithing“ unlocked to repair these high-tier broken weapons and “Improved Foge” to upgrade them in the first place.

Spending Smithing Stones to buy upgrade materials at the Supply Depot will prove invaluable to ensure the painful period where you’re trying to purchase Blacksmith upgrades so you can make the leap from level D and level C weapons to level B and level A weapons and [Hero Relics] is as short as possible.