Fire Emblem: Three Houses might not be the game for you if you’re antisocial. You’ll spend dozens of hours getting to know your students, talking to them constantly and also running regular errands for them. You’ll even start having private tea parties with them eventually, with as much of a romantic charge as you can bring to them. You don’t just kill people in Three Houses—you get to really know people, too, and usually not the people you wind up having to kill. So if you’re stressed out by the thought of interacting with others, you might want to approach this game with caution—although hopefully your anxiety will be lessened by the fact that these aren’t real people at all, but entirely fictional characters that live exclusively inside your Switch.
There’s a goal to all this socializing, of course. As you grow closer to your students, they’ll perform better in battle, and be more motivated to train and study. Three Houses is a constant loop of trying to make people happy so they can be better at killing other people in battle, but both halves of the game are so entrancing that you won’t even think about how grim and reductive that description is.
One of the easiest ways to curry favor with your students is to return items they’ve lost to them. You’ll see shimmering blue lights throughout the monastery as you explore it on your off-days. If you search those lights, you’ll often find random objects that have been seemingly discarded in random locations with little thought or concern. There’ll be a small clue about who they belong to—a reference to a personality trait or a character’s background—and if you return them to the right person, your relationship will improve. It’s a constant and easy way to befriend almost everybody in the monastery.
One catch is that you can only give lost items to a House leader or their retainer if you’re the professor of that class. So if you want to get on Claude’s good side by acting as his personal lost and found, you’ll need to pick Golden Deer. The same applies for his retainer, Hilda, and for the leaders of the Black Eagles (Edelgard and Hubert) and the Blue Lions (Dimitri and Dedue). If you aren’t a member of that House, you can’t help those characters out.
The goal is to actually test how well you know these characters, but there is a bit of a hint system built into the game. Characters routinely move around the monastery month to month. They’ll post up on the same spot within a month, but when the moon changes and the next month begins, they’ll be found elsewhere within the monastery. If you can remember where each character was located the month before you find a new lost item, you won’t have to remember anything about their personalities. That’s because every lost item can be found at the exact location where its owner was standing the month before. So if you talk to, say, Raphael in the dining hall one month, and then find some training equipment in the same spot the next month, you won’t even have to remember that Raphael is the monastery’s resident bodybuilder to know that lost item belongs to him.
Of course there’s an even easier way to find the right owner for every lost item. You can just check out the list below. This is a complete accounting of every lost item in the game. There are three lost items for every major character (that includes every student from every house and the other faculty members at the monastery), and a single one for Jeralt, the mercenary turned captain of the guard that may or may not be your character’s biological father. If you are absolutely stuck on a lost item and don’t feel like cold-calling every character until you find the right match, just check out the list below and find out who you need to go to. And don’t feel bad about cheating: we all need help when it comes to making new friends.
A Treatise on Etiquette: Lorenz
Agricultural Survey: Ferdinand
Animal Bone Dice: Shamir
Animated Bait: Linhardt
Annotated Dictionary: Petra
Antique Clasp: Flayn
Art Book: Ignatz
Artificial Flower: Lorenz
Badge of Graduation: Catherine
Bag of Seeds: Marianne
Bag of Tea Leaves: Ferdinand
Big Spoon: Raphael
Black Iron Spur: Felix
Black Leather Gloves: Dimitri (exclusive to the Blue Lions)
Blue Stone: Ignatz
Board Game Piece: Claude (exclusive to the Golden Deer)
Book of Ghost Stories: Mercedes
Bundle of Dry Hemp: Shamir
Bundle of Herbs: Ashe
Burlap Sack of Rocks: Raphael
Carving Hammer: Gilbert
Centipede Picture: Shamir
Clean Dusting Cloth: Manuela
Confessional Letter: Marianne
Crude Arrowheads: Leonie
Crumpled Love Letter: Sylvain
Curry Comb: Ingrid
Dulled Longsword: Dimitri (Blue Lions)
Dusty Book of Fables: Flayn
Eastern Porcelain: Edelgard (exclusive to the Black Eagles)
Encyclopedia of Sweets: Lysithea
Evil-Repelling Amulet: Ashe
Exotic Feather: Petra
Feather Pillow: Linhardt
Folding Razor: Hubert (exclusive to the Black Eagles)
For more Fire Emblem: Three Hous
Foreign Gold Coin: Alois
Fruit Preserves: Mercedes
Fur Scarf: Leonie
Gardening Shears: Dedue (exclusive to Blue Lions)
Gold Earring: Dedue (Blue Lions)
Grounding Charm: Caspar
Hammer and Chisel: Hanneman
Hand Drawn Map: Leonie
Handmade Hair Clip: Hilda (exclusive to the Golden Deer)
Hedgehog Case: Bernadetta
How to Bake Sweets: Mercedes
How to Be Tidy: Marianne
Hresvelg Treatise: Hubert (Black Eagles)
Introduction to Magic: Alois
Iron Cooking Pot: Dedue (Blue Lions)
Jousting Almanac: Ingrid
Leather Bow Sheath: Claude (Golden Deer)
Lens Cloth: Hanneman
Letter to Rhea: Catherine
Letter to the Goddess: Ignatz
Light Purple Veil: Manuela
Lovely Comb: Dorothea
Maintenance Oil: Ferdinand
Mild Stomach Poison: Claude (Golden Deer)
Moon Knight’s Tale: Ashe
Mysterious Notebook: Alois
Needle and Thread: Bernadetta
New Bottle of Perfume: Lysithea
Noseless Puppet: Gilbert
Noxious Handkerchief: Hubert (Black Eagles)
Old Cleaning Cloth: Cyril
Old Fishing Rod: Seteth
Old Map of Enbarr: Flayn
Pegasus Horseshoes: Ingrid
Portrait of Rhea: Cyril
Princess Doll: Lysithea
School of Sorcery Book: Annette
Silk Handkerchief: Lorenz
Silver Brooch: Dorothea
Silver Necklace: Gilbert
Sketch of a Sigil: Hanneman
Small Tanned Hide: Petra
Snapped Writing Quill: Seteth
Songstress Poster: Dorothea
Spotless Bandage: Hilda (Golden Deer)
Still-Life Picture: Bernadetta
Sword Belt Fragment: Felix
Tattered Overcoat: Caspar
The History of Sreng: Sylvain
The Saints Revealed: Linhardt
Thunderbrand Replica: Caspar
Time-Worn Quill Pen: Edelgard (Black Eagles)
Training Logbook: Dimitri (Blue Lions)
Toothed Dagger: Felix
Unfinished Fable: Seteth
Unfinished Score: Annette
Unused Lipstick: Sylvain
Used Bottle of Perfume: Hilda (Golden Deer)
Wax Diptych: Annette
Weathered Cloak: Catherine
Well-Used Hatchet: Cyril
Wellness Herbs: Manuela
White Glove: Edelgard (Black Eagles)
Wooden Button: Raphael
Wooden Flask: Jeralt
More Three Houses guides:
How to do a soft reset in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
How to recruit students in Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Hang on to those rusted weapons in Fire Emblem: Three Houses