Gifts, Meals & How I Actually Build Support

I ran into a very specific recruitment problem while working on Sofia:

I used up the cheap Tavern gifts and expected Sunday to refill them.

That is not how the stock works.

Tavern stock is a chapter reset, not a weekly reset

The Lowtown Tavern is the cheap source of gifts, but its stock replenishes with a new chapter, not merely because the in-game week rolled over.

That means Sunday can reset my weekly gift-giving opportunity while the merchant is still staring at me with the same empty shelves.

The published walkthrough wording that explicitly states the chapter refill is from another Part I route, so I am keeping the Cai application technically provisional until I see Chapter 6 refill it myself. It is still a much better working rule than repeatedly checking the shop every Sunday.

Where I can get more gifts during the same chapter

If the Tavern is empty, gifts are not gone from the game.

Dagsion Marketplace

The Marketplace is the other obvious Dagsion gift seller. Its gifts tend to be the more expensive option, which makes it useful for a specific recruitment target rather than something I should automatically buy out.

World-map settlements

Some settlement merchants outside Dagsion also sell gifts. When a quest already takes me through a town, checking its merchant is worthwhile because it costs me essentially no extra exploration.

Yellow pickup orbs

The yellow/gold pickups around Dagsion can contain random gifts along with food and materials.

Those pickups refresh by chapter, which matches the city-sweep rule I already use: collect them after a chapter change, then stop repeatedly rechecking the same streets.

Quest rewards

Some quests hand out gifts directly. They are another reason not to treat the gift merchants as the only supply.

Gifts are the key; Meals are the engine

The most useful Support lesson is that I do not need to build an entire Support rank by throwing presents at somebody.

After giving a character a gift, I can invite that character to Meals at the Inn. RPG Site's Support testing recommends Meals as the main ongoing Support tool rather than relying primarily on gifts.

That changes how I value my inventory.

A gift is often worth more as:

the thing that opens the Meal relationship

than as one of ten presents I dump onto the same character.

For Sofia, my current approach is therefore:

1. Make sure I have given her the gift needed to keep the relationship moving.
2. Use the weekly Meal opportunity on her when practical.
3. Give additional gifts when they are convenient or particularly appropriate, not because I am trying to brute-force Support exclusively through inventory.
4. Let Renown catch up naturally through quests and story progress.

Sofia is a long-term Cai-route target: Support 3 + Renown 9. That means buying every gift in Dagda today cannot solve the Renown half anyway.

Weekly reset and shop reset are two different clocks

This distinction is the one I want to remember:

Weekly reset:

• gift-giving opportunity
• Meals
• Arena Training
• Temple work
• Pale Raven
• other weekly Free Time activities

Chapter reset:

• Tavern gift inventory
• Dagsion yellow pickup orbs
• broader chapter-state changes

Once those are separate in my head, the system makes much more sense.

My current rule

For recruitment:

one useful gift → Meals every useful week → extra gifts opportunistically → let quests/story build Renown.

That is cheaper and requires much less city/shop micromanagement than trying to turn gifts into the entire recruitment system.