Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon Part #34

Part 34: Forge Onward

Update 34: Forge Onward

Here’s an update that’s very heavy on the crafting mechanics. If that doesn’t sound interesting to you, you won’t miss much by skipping this one. Donnel does go on his first date at the end, though.

We start off today like many others, with more wood chopping. I still need that shit for monster huts, although there is, thankfully, no second house grind.

I might still have been a little upset.

So the next day Donnel gets back to something I haven’t done in ages, Fishing! Mining is a ridiculously better moneymaker, but we’ll have recipes for fish soon, and you can’t eat rocks. At least not without effort.

Remember back when this was Donnel’s primary income? That sucked.

Anyway, I can just dump them in the fridge for now. Thankfully nothing ever actually “spoils” in this world.

Can’t do much Cooking yet, but there is another thing I want to try.

And to do it, I’ll need to grab some ingredients from Leo.

I bought 10 of these Broadswords. One annoying thing about this is that they don’t stack, so you have to buy them one at a time.

Grabbed about 5-6 shields as well. This was even worse because you have to scroll further down the list, and it resets each time. Still not a huge deal, but minorly annoying enough that I remembered it.

Hot Tip: It’s hard to brush your animals when your pockets are full of swords.

Finally I’ll be able to make use of all this Ore I’ve been keeping.

The lowest level thing on the list for Forging is this Long Sword. So it’s our best bet for actual good EXP for now. This is why I bought all those Broadswords, you can’t craft those.

It’s pretty much that simple.

Here’s Donnel’s Forging EXP after making one successful Long Sword. Higher level recipes do yield better EXP, but have a higher chance of failing.

And here’s level 2. Thankfully, with crafting, it tells you in the menu if you got a level up.

Each level gives you an 8% higher success rate. It was 82 before, we’re up to 90.

Another recipe we can make at around this level is the Iron Shield, so I pumped out a few of those as well.

Of course, this is unavoidable sometimes, but the great thing about every crafting method but Cooking?

Failures DO NOT consume ingredients. You can totally spam items at a 1% success rate recipe if you really wanted to. They also still give you EXP.

Round Shields are a step up from Iron, and since I just made all these iron ones, I can flip them to these for more EXP.

They’re also better than our old shield, so I equipped one.

This is, I believe, the first thing we can make that Leo doesn’t stock right now. The Defender.

Practice makes perfect.

There we go!

So, the Defender’s description is...weird, because as far as I know there’s no way to actually “block” with your shield. I’m not sure if that’s flavor text or a cut mechanic.

But it has a higher Attack than our Wind Sword, the same combo, and added Vitality.

It’s also got a neat trick if you charge it up…

Sword beams.

I ended up selling a lot of these back to Leo, to recoup some of the material costs.

However, this ate through the ore reserves pretty quick, so I had to make a few stops in Toros to grab more Iron/Bronze. A nice trick is that since you’re more likely to get “good” drops like Gems with a charged swing, uncharged taps got me more Iron.

Oh, and, as you may have noticed, Forging does take RP, like pretty much everything else. Donnel might want to not work in front of that giant open flame.

I am making hella swords right now, Edward.

I decided to show the old man up by hopping over to the Pharmacy table. It’s really the same mechanic as Forging, but with different ingredients. I also find it to be pretty useless, since the stuff you can’t just buy from Edward usually requires too much material grinding to be worth it.

Still, this isn’t totally worthless.

Plus, I can just immediately drink it and make another.

All the Crafting schools have different corresponding skills.

I also made this, just for fun, although Medicate pretty much obsoleted it already.

Decoration is, not surprisingly, the same. If anything, this is the easiest at early levels, because of the low material costs. I’ve got like, 50 silver, and this recipe wants 1.

So of course, I made one.

Huh. I wonder.

This does what you’d expect. I still hate most other status effects way more than poison, though, so I’m not putting it on.

Meanwhile, back at the Forge, it’s time to up our shield game.

So, one gripe about this system is that the game does not tell you the stats or properties of the stuff you’re making until you’ve made it. Thus I regretted this, because -6 Strength is not a price I’m willing to pay.

Thankfully a replacement shield is easy enough to make.

But, to be honest, all that fucking around was really for this. The Boss of Misty Bloom is weak to wind, and this upgrade to our Windsword should make it much easier. So let’s do some early prep work. I already have silver, and the iron is easy, but the Wind Crystal...that’s a pain.

It drops off of the flying monsters in Mt. Gigant. But the drop rate is super low. This goes for just about every Monster Drop in the game. I lost count of how many chickens I killed here.

Also apparently they can paralyse you?

Not totally without benefits, though. Level Ups are always nice.

Oh, finally. Donnel’s so excited he flickered out of the shot.

I was terrified this would just be another Bird Wing.

The last Chicken paralysed me again, though, so Donnel must swallow his pride, and this Paragon, because I’m out of RP for spells.

Now, though, the Ritual is prepared.

This might take a while.

Got it eventually. This is a prize.

Look at that. Almost double the Windsword’s attack, and a 4 hit combo instead of just 3.

Also it has the Sword Beams.

The four hit combo swords take out the upswing on the third hit, and just replay the horizontal slashes of the first two hits again.

I’ll store the rest of these raw materials away, so I can forge more later. Not in as much detail on screen, of course, I just sorta wanted to show what the process is like.

Here’s an update on Donnel’s Skills after all that crafting nonsense.

Sadly, Ivan doesn’t have much of interest today. I upgraded both of these to their “Large” versions, though. The Shelf has more space, the Table Set still has no purpose, but it looks nice.

Once again, Godwin has crammed romantic advice in Donnel’s mailbox. Moonlit Eve is another festival.

Wow. That table set is advanced. We even have a carpet now.

So, Moonlit Eve allows you to raise the LP of any Bachelorette by going on a date with her. To accept, however, she has to be above 4 LP. You’ll note that we only have Sharron that high. And...uh...it doesn’t matter anyway, because she’s maxed out.

It’s worth mentioning that nobody else will care if you ask another woman out. Even your wife doesn’t give a damn if you do this with a random woman after you get married.

But of course, there’s only one love in Donnel’s heart. (and only one possible choice)

: But seeing as you asked, I’ll go with you, Donnel. Okay, I’ll be waiting on top of Mt. Clemens.

And she wanders off. But she’s kinda lying. The game doesn’t tell you this (aside from that it is called Moonlit Eve, not Moonlit Morning/Midday), but she’ll only be there for the date after 6:00 PM.