I was for a good while. I really should get back to it soon, but having picked up Blue Dragon (a friend loaned it to me to play for a bit), I don't know. Still got Phantom Brave as well.

Honestly though, the hankering to play Rune Factory again has hit me. I actually had just started getting the game opened wider to me. I was courting Annette like 100%, but then I found myself courting Melody instead (probably because it's much easier, and she's my favorite character of the bunch).

I never did get good at getting my animals to like me though. Only one that does is my wolf, because I take him to dungeons all the time. I need to get more feed for them all.

You know what? I may cut that game on today. I really, really love it.

Thanks for reminding me of that.

EDIT: I'll have to give it a look, but I think there's a doorway? I might be wrong, its been a good while sinc eI got deep into the Green Ruins (I spent a lot more time on Whale Island and in the Lava Ruins last time I played).

I need to get back into this game. I have both Lara and Cinnamon up close to level 2 in romance, and I'm just beginning Summer of year one (literally, I went to bed on the last day of Spring year one and haven't picked it back up). I didn't get a swim suit for the festival...was I supposed to?

I'm with you, Shadow...err, TriforceBun. I'm struggling with Runeys, but that's because I really don't get it. I've never had an area die or go into prosperity. I just know I have new Runeys born each day. Maybe I'm trying to micro-manage too much...

Dynablade, it's not too tough to feed the animals. Just plant 2 or 3 plots of fodder and sickle it when it gets high (make sure it's fully grown before you cut it or else you'll lose it for good!). It'll revert back to shorter grass, but you can keep harvesting the same plot of fodder indefinitely. You can see the amount of food you have by checking the book in the barn, or one of the Status menus. Make sure you brush the critters too.

I've got a few animal recommendations for early on:

-Ant: They're red and early in Whale Island, but these little fellows will help harvest crops and automatically drop them in the shipping bin, which is handy.
-Wooly: This is a fuzzy, hard-hitting lamb guy that can be seen outside the cave on Whale Island and in a small section of the Green Ruins. As expected, they're the only source of Wool (besides buying it from Erik).
-Blob: I named mine Sorbet. They break rocks on your farm, which is great because it'd otherwise take a level 2 special attack to shatter the big ones, and you can get one of these guys early on.
-Cow: Also outside on Whale Island, these give Milk.
-Chicken: Makes Eggs!
-Hornet: Later in the Green Ruins, provide Honey. Honey's not as handy as Milk, Eggs, and Wool, but it's still nice to have.
-Squirrel: Not the official name but you know the ones I mean. First enemy in the Green Ruins--gathers bamboo and grasses on the farm and puts them in the shipping box. Nice to have, especially if you're good with the Lab.
-Wolf: Also outside on Whale Island, these guys are tough but make for great battlers

One other big hint, USE THE SICKLE'S SPECIAL ATTACK FOR BATTLES. You won't believe the results. This works for all Sickles beyond the Cheap Sickle.

ludist210 said:

I need to get back into this game. I have both Lara and Cinnamon up close to level 2 in romance, and I'm just beginning Summer of year one (literally, I went to bed on the last day of Spring year one and haven't picked it back up). I didn't get a swim suit for the festival...was I supposed to?

I'm with you, Shadow...err, TriforceBun. I'm struggling with Runeys, but that's because I really don't get it. I've never had an area die or go into prosperity. I just know I have new Runeys born each day. Maybe I'm trying to micro-manage too much...

Like the redheads, eh? Heheh. I'm not sure about the festival myself, probably because I screwed it up.

About Runeys...I think I've got a pretty good system down for it, that doesn't really require a huge amount of effort (and still has a good payoff). Here's a fairly brief guide to what's going on.

You've got four types: WATER > ROCK > TREE > GRASS. So Water eats Rock, Rock eats Tree, and Tree eats Grass (while nothing eats Water and Grass eats nothing). When Runeys eat overnight, the eaters grow larger in number while the eatees get smaller (obviously). Add to this the fact that Water ALSO gets a boost from rainy days and naturally, the issue here is with grass. Or rather, the lack of it.

Before I go into how you can keep Grass alive, it's important to remember one safe zone for your Runeys: your Homestead. The Runeys here will not dwindle in number from the food chain--you'll only lose some if you take them out manually with the Harvester. So if all else fails, you can fall back on your Homestead for extra Runeys if some places are dying out.

Now then, Grass. What you need to do is find one of the areas with Grass Prosperity (that's the screen with Erik's farm, or the one where Mist lives) and make what's known in RFF circles as a "Grass factory." Get some of the plentiful Water and move it to an area with Grass Prosperity. Take out all the Rocks and Trees, and all but 10 Grass. So you should end up with 60 Water, 0 Rock, 0 Tree, and 10 Grass. This is your Grass Factory. The next day, you'll find that around 15 of the Waters have disappeared, and you now have around 15 EXTRA Grass (for a total of 25). Using this method, you'll have ample Grass to start making your other areas prosperous.

What's the point of all this? To reach Prosperity for one or more areas. Prosperity is when you have 35+ of EACH Runey in a single area--it'll show up in yellow on the Runey map. For every area that's in Prosperity, your crops--all of them--will grow faster. So if you have a lot of places prosperous, you can really pull in massive numbers on veggies (and on those insanely-long-time-to-grow crops).

Start with your Homestead being prosperous and you're well on your way. Just pull a few Runeys from there to beef up other areas, adding Grass from the Grass Factory when those other areas' Grass gets too low. I haven't been able to get a ton of places prosperous yet, but most sources say it really pays off in the long run.

For more details, check here: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=946789&topic=48823743

That's good to know. So basically, kill off all of the Runeys in a given area for a while (rather, keep them in my backpack) except water and grass, keep adding water and viola? Man...I didn't even think of that! Thanks for the advice, Triforce! I'd WUL you if I could.

Maybe I should pop this in one night this week when the misses is busy...

Damn I want to get this, but I'm broke now(just bought A boy and bis blob, Fear 2 and LOZ:TP for GC).

It sounds like a pretty awesome game.

ludist210 said:

That's good to know. So basically, kill off all of the Runeys in a given area for a while (rather, keep them in my backpack) except water and grass, keep adding water and viola? Man...I didn't even think of that! Thanks for the advice, Triforce! I'd WUL you if I could.

Maybe I should pop this in one night this week when the misses is busy...

That's mostly it, except just remember that this only works on the two areas with Grass Prosperity--that's the area where Erik and Kross live, and the area where Mist lives. For the purposes of a "Grass factory", I'd suggest making Mist's farm the place to go, since with Erik's you have to cross through Kross's house to get to some of the Runeys. So remember that the first day is 60/0/0/10, then it'll be ~45/0/0/25. Suck up the Grass, add some Water and repeat as necessary, and that's the technique for acquiring a good amount of the rarest type of Runey.

Cool. Mist's is right next door, so I'll do that. Plus it's near my Strawberry patch (one of Lara's faves) in the Green Ruins, so it's not like I'm going out of my way to take care of anything.

I don't think I've played -any- console game -ever- for as many hours as RFF has soaked up this year. I've made a lot of progress and I'm doing well with some of the trickier things like Runey propserity but I'm still pretty clueless about useful animal behaviour. Oh sure, I feed and brush them everyday but I mainly have them for milk and eggs or because they looked cute. I finally got a water elephant and I'm working on him watering my crops. Up until now I've been doing all the farming manually (Spring Year 2).

I also don't have much of a handle on who likes what. :p I only just realised Kross digs the warrior medals. Apart from Mist and Melody, I haven't been building any super tight relationships. Mist I have at 10 hearts, 10 friendship. I've been on a couple dates... expanded my house... bought the double bed... fashionned a wedding bouquet... I finally popped the question last week and what do I get? : "I'm not ready!".

Gawsh. It's because my house always smells of cooked fish isn't it?

Ooh, good advice on the animals! I have most of those you mentioned acually, just spend way too much time with my wolf buddy.

* hugs wolf *

It's so awesome in battle! I just wish I could actually level it up as well, it doesn't have the greatest defense and gets trashed by bosses in two hits if I'm not careful...

@Y-Alpha

Mist... ouch. Yeah, you can't get her to marry you until you've beaten the main quest, if I recall correctly.

...yeah, I cheated a while back and was reading the gameFAQ page on this one. What? Don't look at me like that, I couldn't figure out who liked what! (^__^ ')

I've been pouring a ton of time into this. When my file got deleted earlier this year, I was in the middle of Autumn; at this point, I've worked my way back to the middle of Summer.

Onions + Tomatoes = Ketchup is a great recipe for the summer, since you can grow both crops during that time. But steamed pumpkin brings in even more money! Beware of storms, though. I did manage to cheat the game and bypass a storm by saving before going to sleep and then resetting. However, the storm still came the next day, so I reset again, and knocked myself out (by cooking, swinging a weapon, whatever). Sure enough, I woke up in the hospital...but I was able to get out and work that day with all my crops intact!

I've been floating around 5 - 6 areas in prosperity, so I get tomatoes almost every day. However, keeping up with the Runeys is a lot of trouble; I'm not sure if the insane cash flow is worth it or not. For now, though, I'll keep on it and see if it gets a little simpler.

I. f'ing hate. STORMS.

That screwed me over so hard early in the game, because I had nothing to clear my fields with at the time. I had no room to grow anything and pretty much struggled all fall and winter, into the early spring (when I finally figured out "how" to destroy all those tree trunks and rocks and such, lol).

I never could figure out how Runeys work, and just let them be unless I needed to collect them to make runes to open up doors. But! Now I have a resource; if I do pick my file back up, I'll have to pay a visit to this very thread.

By week's end I'll have to give my RFF file a little visit.

I picked this back up yesterday. I forgot how great this game is! I played through the Beach Festival and missed the Watermelon. Ah well.

I wandered into the ruins by Mist's house and am about to start planting some crops there. I haven't spent any time gathering Runeys yet, per TriforceBun's method. One question: if I do eliminate all of the Rock and Tree Runeys, will it affect how my crops grow on my Homestead or in dungeons? I keep some plants there just for their Runes, but if I want to grow some new ones, I might need to wait...

I was playing it a fair amount before Monster Hunter 3 and Super Mario Galaxy 2 released. I'll probably get back to it... eventually.

I feel like these games aren't *quite* for me though, because I never get into all the combining/etc. in games like these. I've pretty much ignored the recipes and such.

If you wiped out all the Rock and Tree Runeys in the entire "world," then you'll have some real problems getting crops to grow (eventually your other Runeys would mostly die out, leaving most of your areas in the red and slowing down growth considerably).

If you mean just taking away the Rock/Tree Runeys in Mist's Farm, then that by itself won't affect growth. The way it works is you'll get faster-growing crops when you have areas in Prosperity (each Runey > 35 in that area), while your crops will grow slower if you have areas that are dying (each Runey < 5 in that area). So as long as you have more than 5 Grass Runeys, even if you have none of anything else in that spot, the area won't get you penalized.

WTF is a Runey?!

@TriforceBun

Good to know. I'll try to knock that out this afternoon when I'm home for lunch. Thanks!

@Zero

Those little floating sprites that appear on every screen in the main world. Talk to the old man in the clock tower...he'll better explain them.

@TriforceBun

Well, maybe I did something wrong. I wiped out all but 60 Water and 10 Grass Runeys in Mist's area, but only one grass Runey grew and no waters died. Maybe it takes more than a day to cycle?

I had no idea those things were actually a part of the gameplay, I thought they were just part of the scenery. This game is complicated!

You don't have to micromanage them if you don't want to, they usually take pretty good care of themselves. But in time, they will start becoming a problem. Usually just takes a day or two (in-game) to get them into a normal routine.

ludist210 said:

@TriforceBun

Well, maybe I did something wrong. I wiped out all but 60 Water and 10 Grass Runeys in Mist's area, but only one grass Runey grew and no waters died. Maybe it takes more than a day to cycle?

D'oh, I think I forgot to mention one other thing: the life cycle only works on certain days per month. On the nights of the first 7 days of each month, you won't lose Runeys--they won't eat each other. Instead, they'll just grow by one or two per day. This is good since you can relax for the first week of each month. Same with the 20th of each month as well (for some reason). All other days (8 through 30, except the 20th) will have the food cycle go through. Sorry about forgetting to mention that.