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

Unlocking the Training Grounds in Fire Emblem Three Hopes¶

When you reach the Base Camp in Chapter 4 you’ll unlock a variety of facilities, including the Training Grounds. You’ll have to visit each of these facilities at the start of Chapter 4, so you really can’t miss this.

At the Training Grounds you can select several services, including “Train”, “Level Up/Reset”, “Acquire Class” and “Mock Battle”, the first three of which are essential for success in Fire Emblem Three Hopes. These allow you to improve your class level, spend gold to increase your level or reset your level back to 1, gain the ability to switch to new classes, and finally try out these new stats, abilities, and classes in a safe setting. For more information about these services, check out the What are the Training Grounds in Three Hopes? page.

Upgrading the Training Grounds in Fire Emblem Three Hopes¶

After clearing a few Side Quests in Chapter 4, when you return to the Base Camp you’ll be pestered by one of your companions, who will tell you about expanding facilities, directing you to speak to the Facilities Master for more information. Check out the page How to Expand Facilities in Three Hopes for general information about upgrading facilities.

Expanding the Training Grounds takes two different types of materials, Building Materials and Training Gear, each of which comes in three tiers (Basic/Recruit, Quality/Veteran 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 Training Grounds:

Training Dummies¶

Consisting of five upgrades - the first of which is a required upgrade before any other upgrades can be purchased - the Training Dummies tree expands the number of training slots you’ll have available… which is kind of silly, because characters train in pairs, not with dummies. Oh well. The more training slots you have, the better, as it allows you to train more pairs of characters simultaneously, a useful way to level up classes that are otherwise not all that fun to play, and to keep secondary characters somewhat relevant. No matter how many training slots you have, each training session still consumes one Training Point.

Advanced and Master Certifications¶

There are four tiers of classes in Fire Emblem Three Hopes: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Master. To promote to a higher-tier class you need to master prerequisite lower-tier classes (you must master Myrmidon to advance to Thief, you must master Thief to promote to Assassin, etc) and you must expend the correct Seal; promoting to an Intermediate class consumes and Intermediate Seal, upgrading to an Advanced class requires an Advanced Seal, and so on. Finally, once you have the prerequisite class mastered and the correct Seal in hand, you must also have your Training Grounds upgraded sufficiently - you cannot promote to an Advanced class without the “Advanced Class Certification Exam” upgrade unlocked, and you cannot progress to a Master class without the “Master Class Certification Exam” unlocked. These should be priorities to ensure you can keep climbing the class tree.

Training Equipment and Tutor Procurement¶

If you don’t deploy characters regularly, they’ll quickly fall behind your active characters both in terms of class mastery and overall level. Unlocking more training slots and unlocking training weapon upgrades can help back-benchers make some progress as far as class mastery goes, but for leveling you’ll need to pay gold to buy levels. The more you invest in this upgrade path, the cheaper it’ll be. Buying levels is also useful for your primary characters, albeit rather late-game, as it may be worth your while to reset their levels and relevel them as a Master class - the higher growth rates should net them higher stats overall, RNG willing.

Training Weapons¶

Last and least we have a dozen Training [Weapon] upgrades, with two tiers for each of the major weapon types: swords, lances, axes, bows, gauntlets and tomes. These upgrades will increase the gains made when you train classes that use said weapons. Welcome upgrades, but ultimately ones of relatively limited utility - when you have excess materials, by all means buy these upgrades, but these should be your lowest priority.

Which Training Grounds Upgrades to Unlock First?¶

Despite having a lot of useful features, the Training Grounds arguably doesn’t have many terribly essential upgrades - more Training Slots is nice, as are cheaper leveling costs and higher Training bonuses, but you can earn the XP and Gold these yield just by completing another Side Quest battle. Or two. Or ten. Upgrading to Advanced and Master classes, on the other hand, isn’t something you can replicate by grinding, and you’ll probably want to upgrade to these superior classes as soon as possible. You’ll unlock Advanced Seals around Chapter 7 and Master Seals around Chapter 10, at which point you’ll probably want to make buying the “Advanced Class Certification Exam” and Master Class Certification Exam“ a priority, even if it means saving up the materials or buying the upgrades before you actually gain access to said Seals.

Once you’re secured your promotion paths by purchasing the aforementioned upgrades, buying the “Training Dummies” upgrades is a good secondary choice, as it’ll allow you to train more characters and greatly reduce the grinding you have to do to keep them fit for use. How many Training Slots you’ll want does vary by taste and faction (the Azure Gleam route seems to gain access to more units than the others) and if you don’t care to field more than your favored eight units - enough to fill out your deployment slots for Main Quest battles - there’s not much incentive to unlock more Training Dummies.