There’s a lot of conflicting information concerning the character Hilda within Fire Emblem: Three Houses. In the early parts of the game, you pick which house you want to teach for. Each house has its own set of students, but you can still recruit students that aren’t from the house you chose to join your class. Theoretically, almost every student is viable to be recruited. The only exceptions seemed to be the student leaders of the respective houses, like Edelgard, and the retainers for the student leaders.
The retainers for the student leaders are Hubert, Dedue, and Hilda. So unless you chose their respective house, you can’t have those three be in your party. Though it made sense for Hubert and Dedue, it was always odd that Hilda was a retainer. She wasn’t as dedicated to schoolwork as the other retainers, and it has been established she is rather lazy.
The game never gave players any recruitment requirements for Hilda, Hubert, or Dedue. Players took this as it means that they couldn’t recruit them out of their house. However, there appears to be some conflicting information concerning Hilda, with several players claiming they were able to recruit her.
Can Hilda Be Recruited
Hilda is the spoiled, rich daughter of a noble. She joins the Golden Deer house and acts like Claude’s retainer. If you didn’t pick the Golden Deer house at the beginning of the game, it appeared that you couldn’t recruit her. While you are capable of recruiting the other students from the Golden Deer, Hilda never shows players her recruitment requirements.
Usually, when trying to recruit a student, the text will appear to reveal which two skill sets the player needs to level up to recruit the student. No text like that ever shows up for Hilda. Not only that, the player won’t be able to give Hilda gifts or lost items, which are vital steps to help level up your support with students that aren’t part of your house. However, you can still level up your support with her in other ways. You can have tea with her, and you can also still select her to do several tasks in the monastery like cooking or eating together.
The consensus among gamers was that Hilda is exclusive to the Golden Deer, just like how Hubert and Dedue are exclusive to the Black Eagles and Blue Lions respectively. There are several players online who claim otherwise.
Twitter user EdragonXX shared an image of Hilda’s recruitment requirements, which are having high grades in Charisma and Axe skills. In normal gameplay, no recruitment text is ever given. Another thing to take notice of the image is that the player avatar Byleth has changed his hair color at that point in the game, though Hilda is still in her pre-timeskip clothing.
There’s also a thread on Reddit, with a user named ChossyBaDossy claiming to have recruited her two weeks before the timeskip. The timeskip happens on March thirty-first (3/31). Chossy writes that they leveled up their support with Hilda as high as they could, getting around a B or A ranked support with her before he could recruit her. Chossy also shared a photo of Hilda being in his team.
Looks like, after a certain point of the game, and depending on your decisions, Hilda becomes recruitable like everyone else. If you want to recruit her you need Cha and Axe. pic.twitter.com/VaD0JtIMkh
— EdragonXX (@edragonxx) July 19, 2019
Other discussions online claim that Hilda is only available very briefly in the early parts of the game, with the RPG Site claiming that she can only be recruited on the third month in the Blue Lions route.
We haven’t tested any of these personally, and we currently haven’t been able to recruit Hilda in the Black Eagles or Blue Lions. She always remained loyal to the Golden Deer. However, if it is possible to recruit Hilda out of the Golden Deer, it may also be possible to recruit Hubert and Dedue. Though honestly, we have a hard time believing Hubert would abandon Edelgard and the Black Eagles since he is very dedicated to her.
We will update you if we discover any more information.
UPDATE
We can now confirm that Hilda can be recruited outside the Golden Deer. If you are playing in the Black Eagle Route, you can recruit her between the time after Edelgard reveals her true goals, and before the timeskip. The month should be March, or Month 3, of the following year. She isn’t recruit-able in secret, the fourth route.
In the Blue Lions route, you can recruit her almost immediately. We noticed around June or Month 6 that we can recruit her, which is only two months after you arrive at the Monastery.
This makes Hilda an outlier compared to other Retainers. Hubert and Dedue remain loyal to their student leaders until the very end, and can never be recruited out of their houses.
