Sengoku Rance Items: What Each Colour Means and What to Buy

Sengoku Rance items are colour-coded, and the colour is the rule. Red is a tracker you never use, blue is spent the moment you click it, green rewrites one commander, yellow rewrites your whole army but only if somebody is holding it, and purple is the only category that takes territory without you spending an action.

The five-colour code

The community list numbers 90 item slots: 30 red/blue, 45 green, 10 yellow, 5 purple. Green dominating tells you where the design weight sits — personal gear is what you keep re-evaluating.

The red entries matter more than they look: Oni Bone is the shop currency, the red Storage Box tracks the Six Great Treasures objective, and the diary counter is a running total the game never shows as a progress bar.

Reading the source tags on any drop

The reference list's shorthand for origin, not printed in game:

Each dungeon's two-item pool is rolled at game start and cannot be re-rolled — see the dungeons guide.

The one drop rule you can plan around

At the start of any turn whose number ends in 6 — turn 6, 16, 26, 36 — the next army battle you win while attacking an enemy-owned province hands you exactly one Attack, Defense, Intelligence or Speed textbook, each equally likely. Occurrences stack, but only one book is given per won battle. Operation Permits can trigger it, since a permit attack counts as an attack on an enemy province.

A slower counter runs alongside: every army battle won without a post-battle event bumps a tally, and every fourth such win gives one of four affection items — Ri Q. Sen's Teacup (+4), A. Toku Kanou's Hanging Scroll (+3), Master Taiko Drum (+2), Fading Shen Folding Screen (+1). Affection unlocks the level-up menu at 7, which is why the weakest item is often the most valuable; the stats guide covers that menu.

Tier-1 textbooks cap at +6. The Skill Textbook is the exception: it raises a commander's number of moves instead of a stat, and cannot be used on Musketeers, Samurai or Ninja.

Items you can never unequip

The item screen gives no warning before you commit:

The four shop troop items also make the unit's troops worth 0 gold when sold. Commander Defense Squad is the trap: +5000 troops looks like a win until you remember Cost counts every unit against national power.

The Ise shop: Oni Bones and the price ladder

Pluepet sells in Ise for Oni Bone only, and bones come from dungeon floors.

The first entry costs 5 bones; every purchase after that adds 2. The ladder runs 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 and keeps climbing, so the first six entries cost 60 bones at that rate.

Two rules make it worse than it looks:

• Already-owned stock is skipped but still charged. Own Personal Nurse from a dungeon and the shop passes over that line, raising the price by 2 as if you bought it.
• After six purchases or skips, Attack, Defense and Intelligence Textbook 2 are on sale without limit. That is the real milestone. The Rice coupon unlocks the underlined entries, including Battle Miko Squad and Quick, Strange Bug.

Purple Operation Permits only arrive after turn 60

The five purple slots are Operation Permits, one per unit type: Samurai, Ashigaru, Ninja, Tactician, Onmyouji. A start-of-turn event after turn 60 hands you all five, unless you bought them as a Second Game Bonus or run the Monkeyslayer Route.

At the end of every turn each permit holder attacks and automatically takes an enemy territory. The limits that matter:

• A unit needs 1000 or more troops to equip or fire a permit; an exhausted unit cannot fire.
• Five permits means five territories per turn, but the last territory of a province is never attacked.
• Permit holders reclaim your own lost territories first, deterministically.
• Enemy targets are not evenly weighted — higher province IDs get picked more often.
• Each use costs troops; sit permit users at exactly 1000.
• On the True Route, a permit attack into Monster Army territory in Battleship Nagato, Cairo, Morocco or Amazon permanently confiscates every permit. That is the only way to lose them.

What to equip in your first 20 turns

Hold green troop-boosters until you have read your Cost/NP bar. A +5000 troop unit can push cost over national power, and over-cost halves your income.

Rules that quietly waste the item

• Damage reduction does not stack with Ashigaru guard. An Ashigaru with Tsutenkalming Helmet takes the −50 only while its guard is inactive — the item does nothing the turn it looks busiest.
• Terrain buffs are literal. The Dungeon Journal fires only in dungeons, Field Battles Weekly only on fields, Top 100 Castle Sieges only in castles — no Town equivalent.
• Maulrus Tusks and Ryugu Blade Urashimaru are physical only. Neither touches magical damage.
• Tange Dog needs an action fan to refresh. It will not let a commander defend twice at end of turn.
• Mannequin Neko marks its holder exhausted every turn. Removing it needs a character refresh or re-opening the item screen after dungeon assignment.
• Several greens are troop-locked: Mysterious Murasame is Samurai only, Wontonbokiri Ashigaru only, Cao Cao Poison Dagger and Kanzou Mask Ninja only. Check the unit types guide first.

Where the 2006-era guides will not match

Three names changed in the official English release:

These rules come from a reference built on older builds, unverified on the Steam release of October 1, 2026. More renames: the version differences guide.

FAQ

Can I unequip something I equipped by mistake? Not the locked items above. Everything else returns to the item menu, which is why a yellow global item is a real decision.

Why did the shop skip an item without me buying it? You already own it from a dungeon or event. The skip still raises the price by 2.

Is there an inventory cap? The reference list states none. Cost against national power is capped, and a tier-1 textbook stops at +6.

Related guides

• Dungeons: all 19 and how to unlock them
• Stats guide: what level, INT and NP do
• How to get more actions each turn
• New Game Plus and Second Game Bonuses
• Steam version vs the 2006 original