#rf4 act 1 spoilers

[karnakian]

[thunderberryart]

I love them a normal amount.

[feitanswife]

An actual list of good advice for playing RF4 for the first time

KEEP ALL YOUR DEAD GRASS!!!! THOSE UGLY BROWN THINGS ARE WORTH MORE THAN A HUMAN SOUL AND YOU WILL REGRET NOT HAVING THEM LATER! HOARD THOSE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT

Similarly: the moment you have clovers unlocked I’d start growing piles of them, these two plants are basically on the go fertilizers you can use in your extra fields and you’ll need a lot of them. Plus the dead weeds are in all of the fertilizer recipes.

Inversely, repeat after me: I only need one woolly. Trust me, you’ll get between 2 and 5 wool every day from a single wooly and it’s basically pointless aside from like 2 crafting recipes and selling.

TINY SPOILER: the game hands you a Green and a Silver Wolf in the second arc, you don’t need to tame those unless you’re cool with having multiple of them.

Pick a section of your field and dedicate like 8 spots to growing monster feed, and have a monster water it for you. Get ahead early and you’ll never need to worry about it again.

Get a bee. Honey sells for frankly absurd amounts for how easy it is to get. It’s like a free 700 gold every day. Part of me wants to dedicate an entire barn room to bees and just get rich shipping honey.

Similarly: focus on filling your compost bin to absurd amounts cause it’s just a lot easier to wait until your storage fills up and dump your excess grasses into it all at once and forget about it instead of trying to worry about keeping it filled every day

The moment you have access to the Obsidian Mansion area you need to head northwest from that area to find the cedar tree, it will give you a randomized tree seed daily. Start a tree farm the moment you can, aim to have one of each fruit tree at least cause there are requests for them (I usually use the Summer Field since in the first year I have more summer crops than I know what to do with anyway)

MASS. FARM. EARLY. CROPS. The Spring field is the last one you unlock and it takes A While, so farm as many of the spring crops as you can manage early on, especially the flowers. Sure you CAN grow them in other times but tbh it’s just so easy to hoard them and the flowers are so useful for medicinal crafting and when you run out it just sucks.

Human companions are really only great in the early game, they’re fun for plot stuff but tbh it just gets easier to use monsters around the end of act 1

The fishing festival is low key kinda rigged, especially in year 1, don’t get too salty about losing it.

Prep for the harvest festivals cause those are easy enough to win if you pay attention and the payoff is really high.

The Buddy Battle is also kind of rigged??? I’m trying to find out which monsters stand a chance and how high of a level you need to be to win year 1, I’m guessing you’ll need something with magic attacks cause in my first file I sent two physical attackers in and the final battle they couldn’t do any damage.

You’ll occasionally get Levelizers from particularly tough requests or in chests, resist the urge to use them immediately, you get more bang for your buck the longer you wait. Hoard them until you hit a wall and then use them to level up quickly!

Level up all the different weapon types to at least like level 10! It helps with getting better crafting recipes from recipe bread, for one thing. I felt so ridiculous in my first file, wondering why I couldn’t unlock any dual blade recipes to make for Vishnal for when we went adventuring, when it was my lowest weapon skill (cause I kept giving him all the ones I found and thus had no good weapons of my own to use so I never used them)

You’re going to get 5 free baths, make them count cause the baths are 300 gold and early game you are always out of cash.

There’s random free stuff in the baths, the airship, and the second floor of the restaurant if you look in the investigates spots. If you go to Margaret’s house while she’s home and look in the barrel you can get fruits.

Don’t bother trying to be Doug’s friend, he’s a complete brat for the first two arcs and won’t level up beyond 3. This game wants you to suffer.

The Delirium Lava Ruins are GOD AWFUL and I hate them. there’s nothing you can do about it. I have no tips they just genuinely suck. Bring so many potions. Be wary of damage loops from the traps, you can get stuck and just pummeled to death, unable to move. And then Jones will steal your money.

Don’t be afraid to look up area maps on the wiki cause there’s a lot of stuff I’d never have figured out without it. There’s hidden rooms and weird puzzles and places that you need to go during specific weather patterns or on certain days, it’s a mess.

Arthur likes Turnips, Vishnal likes potatoes and anything with curry, Margaret likes fruit, Dylas likes carrots, Doug likes rice, Forte likes cakes, and Amber likes flowers. That’s literally all I can remember as far as gifts go. I woo’d Vishnal by throwing potatoes and manju at him and I’m not sure how it worked either.

[forestofbeginnings]

RF4/RF4S Localization Differences

Though Rune Factory 4 Special is an updated version of Rune Factory 4 with a few additional features, there are also several changes pertaining to the game’s localization. While the differences between the games have been well-documented, I figured it would be helpful to compile the differences strictly pertaining to the game’s English localization, as there are little changes here and there.

I just want to note that while the localization company is the same for both versions (XSeed), there is still a difference of 7 years and the team working on the localization has changed between RF4 and RF4S (for example, Brittany Avery worked on RF4 but has since left XSeed).

Basic Changes:

RF4S now includes Japanese Audio for those who want to hear the Japanese voice actors! This was not in the original RF4. 

Minor changes and updates to the original localization, as documented in XSeed’s Localization Blog. An error or two has slipped through the update, however (you will likely see some errors posted in the near future from what I personally saw during my journey). 

English Voice Acting Changes:

Vishnal is now voiced by Michael Sinterniklaas in Rune Factory 4 Special. In the 3DS version, he was voiced by Vic Mignogna. This is a complete recasting, so all voice acting has been rerecorded by the new Voice Actor.

All other voice actors and voice actresses have been retained. Credits for the English voice cast of the marriage candidates and Ventuswill have been provided under the cut. Since these screenshots are from the Arc 2 credit sequence of RF4, one of these screenshots may include what could be a spoiler. Please use caution when proceeding.

Full Credits for Marriage Candidates and Ventuswill, as taken from the Arc 2 Credit Sequence (these are not included in the Arc 1 credit sequence, since it’s much shorter): 

[selphiahaven]

Rune Factory 4 is my favorite game ever. The only thing I'd change is to have more interactions with Venti before she goes comatose. Like I'm supposed to give my life for her when I'm barely at 2 hearts? Really takes away from the story to me.

LET’S! TALK! ABOUT! VENTI!!

Dude I love this game like 5,000 percent but it does definitely have its flaws. I especially think there’s a l o t of lot potential that was lost with Ven and her relationship with the plot, but let’s focus on the issue you’re addressing: her going comatose without much a relationship with her. I totally agree. Let’s talk about it. LET’S A L L TALK ABOUT IT.

I’ll start with my long-ass opinion, but I wanna hear how y’all think about this. Because anon’s criticism is juicy. I wonder if other people would have ideas on how this could be better handled / if it even could be better handled than it is now.

Spoilers down below, so… Yeah, be warned about that.

I could make the argument that RF4’s plot is inherently flawed in design for the emotional weight that it’s trying to convey. Rune Factory 4 has an interesting dynamic where the “filler” is pushed into town events, where we can learn about all the different characters and their interactions before, after, or even during important scenes of the plot. Hell, you can participate in a festival and then decide to kick Ethelberd’s ass just to pass some time.

For some, this might be a good thing. On the other hand, you can clear through the game pretty quickly if you’re not dedicated to witnessing all the town events and hearing all the dialogue and participating in all the activities. Keep this in mind: the game expects us to believe that Frey/Lest would friggen sacrifice their life so that Leon can escape the Forest of Beginnings at the end of the first arc. This is how deep our relationship with Venti is supposed to go. Venti, however, remains comatose at the end of Obsidian Mansion until that moment. So given that, our relationship with Venti is supposed to be deep enough that we would sacrifice ourselves by the end of Obsidian Mansion; as we cannot converse with her after this point up until Leon is rescued. Frey/Lest refers to Venti personally after they have sacrificed themselves too, so it should be assumed that Frey/Lest did this act primarily for Ven’s sake, not necessarily for any other specific person in Selphia.

This immensely strong relationship doesn’t really seem warranted with such a quick plot in place. Keep this in mind: the first few playthroughs on Youtube finished Obsidian Mansion on the dates of Summer 4, Spring 29, and Spring 15. You COULD try and just mill around or experience the town to avoid the plot, but there are barriers: 1) At first, you’re only allowed one request a day, so you can’t occupy much time with that 2) Town events actually take a long time to trigger; you could wait uneventful day after day and not trigger anything at all. 3) Things like crafting and forging need objects that you can only find in dungeons as you progress the game, so you can’t bide your time trying to level up / get cool new armour/weapons either. At the same time, this game really, really shouldn’t push us to slow down by making some of these “extracurriculars” mandatory (Imagine the frustration if you could only progress the plot via way of “Memories” again and again).

So here’s the difficult question: How do we make Ven interact with the player more, earlier on in the story, without making the plot too long or too boring?

I was super interested in trying to think up with potential ways to fix a problem like this, so they are listed below. They may come with their own set of problems, but hey, it was fun to think about what could have been. These are all just casual suggestions, not meant to be taken seriously at all.

1) Trigger a town event with Venti early on. Like, within the first few days of playing. Remember “Shiny Memories”? Funnily enough, that was one of my first events triggered in my very first playthrough of this game. Seeing Ven save Doug from being a fukkin dork and falling off that roof really made me feel closer to Ven early on in game. It was definitely confusing later on though, when Doug got all pissy about Ven killing his village or something. I couldn’t believe Doug for a second because Ven had already shown kindness to him without need of recognition, so… Maybe making different, very casual, town events that don’t make me doubt the plot would be a plus.

2) Make a sidequest or two. What if Amber’s dungeon wasn’t the first dungeon you could go to? Or, even better, what if there was some kind of dungeon / area / plotpoint in the first arc that hints at what’s to come in the second arc? (Another big complaint of mine about this game is that Ethelberd seems to come right the fuck outta nowhere. But that’s a complaint for another time.) I’m just spitballing here, but having a few dungeons that are “just for fun” or even just to slow down the plot a bit could be a benefit; as long as they aren’t used in excess. Benefits could include rare crafting materials, or strong pets to use in plot battles. This might give players a few more days of interacting with Venven, thus, getting closer to her over time.

3) Swap the “Freeing Guardians” plotline with the “Finding Rune Spheres” plotline. In the first arc, we seem mostly concerned with saving the guardians, and then finding the rune spheres, and then saving Leon and finishing the first arc. What if you searched for the Rune Spheres first (Perhaps with a, hint hint, few more dungeons instead of using the ones the guardians are in?)? Picture this: Frey/Lest finds a sphere, and feels that it’s…very familiar, and very important, for some reason. But…What’s that? The sphere looks as if it’s kind of broken! As if there are other pieces missing… Aha! Maybe if you find the missing pieces, you could remember something! You go a-searchin’, and by exploring new dungeons, you have more time with Ven, and eventually stumble upon Amber by mistake.

4) Be risky with Ven’s relationship to the town. What if Venti resting on her ass and deciding not to be involved with the town’s affairs causes some unrest in Selphia? Not suggesting blatant fighting or anything, but basically like… People wondering why she can’t use her powers to help out people and make her town prosper? Maybe not having everyone like “Omg Ven!!! We love Ven, Ven’s so nice and loooove her 1000%” in the beginning. It’s cute and all like this, but like… What if Doug used her “laziness” to form a basis to his flawed logic? What if Venti was rumoured to have the power to, I don’t know, cure Blossom? Ven knows she totally can’t cure Blossom. If she was more powerful, maybe the runes in the Earth would make Selphia a healthier living space for Blossom?? I don’t know. But like. What if. What if Venti used to do all this shit to help the town, but slowly stopped. What if people think she’s just lazy. What if people don’t think she’s an angel 24/7. I mean, I get it. She’s a god. Before she was revealed to have a “cute side” to her, everyone thought she was this hard-ass or smth. But I mean. You can view your bosses or your teachers or your parents as people to admire, but still have complaints with them. You can love someone and still not understand some of their quirks. Ven could be a mysterious figure early on. Generate some interest about who she is or why she is. Then, when we actually are told “oh ye lol I was getting weaker all this time” it’s not completely out-of-the-blue because we WANTED to know more about her, because so many things already seemed strange about her.

5) Add some drama. Speaking of Blossom, why don’t Venti and Blossom have a tragic relationship? A heartbreaking relationship where only time will tell which one of them lives longer than the other? Make. Venti. Weak. Why CAN’T Venti show signs of weakness even before Amber is released? Picture this: In the beginning scenes, Ven shows off some of her power to Frey/Lest. Could be something fukkin basic; I dunno. Let’s use what’s shown in Shiny Memories as an example: Ven can use the wind to make people float a lil bit. Cool. That’s established. Few days pass, and the event Shiny Memories triggers. Ven DOES NOT help Doug, and he gets hurt. Frey/Lest confronts Ven, and wonders why she didn’t help him?? Ven tries to make up a lie, to show off that she isn’t as weak as she seems. When, in reality, she’s losing power and couldn’t help him at that time. Don’t want Doug getting hurt? What about an event where Frey/Lest just simply asks Ven to use her powers to help them reach a cup or smth from a high shelf. Ven grows weak, starts breathing heavily and struggling to maintain herself just by trying to use that simple magic, even though she claims to you that she’s fine. Here, Frey/Lest makes a promise to help Ven with whatever they are suffering with, but then Ven admits there’s nothing in Selphia that can help them recover. Frey/Lest acknowledges that this means that there must be something outside Selphia’s walls that could help Ven, and THAT’S when they decide to go to Amber’s dungeon.

6) Slightly change some of Ven’s dialogue. Venti has always seemed like a best-friend type of character to Frey/Lest. This would make sense if she was a goddamn marriage candidate (which she isn’t, ugh, I might get over this, one day), but since she isn’t, why not change her dialogue to be more motherly? “Frey/Lest, you’re doing such good work on the farm! I’m so proud of you!” or “Are you sure you’re eating enough? Please, take this.” or even like “I know this is a lot of work for you, please take some days to rest.” These are really cliche lines, but like, I hope you get the point I’m trying to make. A lot of Ven’s dialogue is really playful, which kinda makes sense since Frey/Lest is the only one to see the “real her”. But…at the same time, I can imagine us getting way more protective over someone who actively has been telling us to take care of ourselves over and over again. Ven kinda tells you to take care of yourself, sometimes, but there are times when she seems to be a bit… I dunno. A tsundere type, for lack of a better term? I mean, I think tsunderes are cute and all, Dylas’s dialogue is some of the funniest in game, but it’d be hard to convince someone to sacrifice their life for Dylas and only give them a month to get to know him, you feel? Meanwhile, I would murder ten people for Clorica. That’s not really on topic but it’s definitely a fact.

Who knows. Maybe the developers thought of these options and decided on this route because the other directions this plot could’ve taken had their own issues that couldn’t be solved. It’s fun to think of what could have been though. Highly recommend trying it.

[nervouslywaitingforlife]

Layer 1 Explained

There will be some character spoilers for this layer, this includes the protags mainly, if you know the basics for the protags then you're good.

There will also be an extra fact surrounding rf5 as this iceberg was created before rf5 came out, I will also add some other bits that I forgot to put onto iceberg or new infomation that I found.

One off races:

These are races that appear in only one game, for instance: Half-human Half-monsters, Univir and Mermaids only appear in rf3, vampires only appears in rff, etc.

Rune Factory Oceans:

Rune Factory Oceans or Rune Factory Tides of Destiny (depending on where you live though I will be refering to this game as rfo) has a lot of differences to other rf games, it's the first game to appear on a non nintendo system (ps3), it's the first game where the main character can be chosen to be a girl (not counting aria as kyle is the rf2 protag) and where you can romance a male character. It's also the most mixed rune factory game to come out reception wise, all other rf games get mostly favorable reviews but rfo has a lot of 5/10 from different reviewers.

References to other series:

Theres a few references to different games, anime and other series.

E.g.

In rf4, during the buddy battle event, Clorica's monsters are called Kotaro and Minami, which is a reference to the protagonist of Kamen Raider Black and Kamen Raider Black RX, Kotaro Minami.

Also in the buddy battle event, Vishnal's monsters are called Sebastian and Alfred, which are references to Black Butler for Sebastian and Batman for Alfred.

Rf4 / rf5 item descriptions:

In rf4 some items had funny descriptions and this was carried onto rf5 and increased in the amount of items.

Heres some examples of these descriptions:

Nearly everyone in rf5 is bisexual:

Rf5 is the first rune factory game that allows the player to romance all bachelor and bachelorettes as one gender, so the protag and all of the bachelor and bachelorettes are Bisexual.

Minako Iwasaki:

She is a freelance artist who has done character designs for all of rune factory, she has created designs and official artwork for all rf games including rune factory 5. I would personally recommend looking at her other artwork, they are all really beautiful.

Taming bosses:

Starting in rf4, you can tame some of the bosses you fight. To tame the bosses, you need a particular item, from easy to grind items like the Nine Tailes Fox Bell for the nine tales fox (rf5) to really hard to get items like Turnips Heaven for Terrable (rf4). You cant get certain plot important bosses or just certain bosses. You can find guides for rf4 & rf5 boss taming online.

Rf4 art contest:

In rf4 (the original and special) if you go to Trophy Room B2, you can find an art pallet which will show a ton of submitted fanart for the game. It has a human version of Ventuswill commentating over it and has a lot of characters from the previous games and some rf4 charcters commenting about the artwork shown.

Protagonist past:

Most of the protagonists pasts are generally unknown some have some elements explained like Raguna being related to royalty and Micah used to be part of the royal guard, though not all infomation about them is known like their childhoods, how they acted before the amnesia, where exactly they come from, what is their family like etc.

Later in the iceberg I will discuss 2 of the more mysterious protags so... stay tuned for that.

Cheap hoe:

This one is a reference to the joke with the name of this item, the cheap hoe is one of the earliest peices of equipment you can get in game and well... the name of it has two meanings.

There will be a few joke enteries or ones relating to jokes though most are serious or of they are a light hearted entry.

Feminine male protagonists:

The main characters who are referred to as feminine are Raguna, Micah and Lest.

With Raguna, on valentines day, some male characters will joke about if Raguna was given chocolate (as on valentine's day men give women chocolate).

With Micah, there's are a few examples but one that sticks out is with sakuya where she asks Micah to wear her bell saying that he would look cute in it.

With Lest, some travelers will mistake him as a girl and ask to go on a date with him.

Earthmates:

Earthmates are people (mainly humans) who have a special connection to the earth, they used to have have a lot of powers mainly controlling runes (which are important to the world of Rune Factory).

Most protagonist are earthmates with the only one not being confirmed to be one is Micah (stick a pin in this one, well come back to it at the bottom of the iceberg) as he is Half-Human Half-Monster.

Tamitaya:

Tamitaya is the spell that is put on all tools and weapons, this spell allows defeated monsters to return back to the Forest of Beginnings.

The Saint Coquille / vivajeux family:

The Sainte-Coquille / Vivajeux Family is a well known family that have appeared in every game. They known as the Sainte-Coquille family in the west and the Vivajeux in Japan.

When appearing in game they usually (with acceptions):

× Have a Father, but no mother

× Have a daughter with purple hair

× are Rich

× are good friends with the elves

Though since rf4 this theme has stopped, there has been no daughter though Margaret can be seen as an adopted daughter to Porcoline, whilst Ryker can be seen as a son to Palmo.

(Ryker can be similar to Max from rf2, who is a son)

There will be more mentions of this family in this iceberg (again put a pin in this)

Extra facts:

Native Dragons:

The Native Dragons, also known as the Elder Dragons, are deities in the rf series and are very important in every numbered rune factory game, they are: Terrable, Fiersome, Aquaticus, Ventuswill, Lumenivia, and Umbradea.

There were originally only 4 of these dragons but rune factory 5 included 2 new ones.

Fun fact: in rf1 you can find a book which has infomation about the native dragons, in this book, the original 4 native dragons are actually named even though only Terrable appearance. Ondorus in rf3 also mentions all of the native dragons.

This teir was a lot of well known facts and they will only get more unknown and odd as we go down.

The rune factory iceberg is finally complete, 8 layers, I don't know how many enteries, and a lot of rf facts.

I will (hopefully) he explaining all of the layers, I don't have any way to do it in a video form so I'll just reblog this post a good few times to explain the enteries.

Thank you to the Rund factory Fandom site, it helped a lot as well as @forestofbeginnings I didn't contact them directly but their many posts helped me a lot as well.

If you want to know a explanation for a entry, just ask in the replies, tags, dms or just ask me anonymously.

[thunderberryart]