Part 8: Aerial Assault Animes

Update 08: Aerial Assault Animes




NOLAN: Well, now. I was secretly drinking in the bath the other day...


NOLAN: Melody found me out by the smell and she gave me quite a scolding. Hahahaha.


This time on Rune Factory: Frontier, irresponsible drinking!



Before I close this day out, I grab some turnips so I've got something to do with all this RP I've got leftover.



Music: Night Ambience

10:27 PM.

Yeah, that took a bit longer than expected.



To bed we go!




Music: Visions

(You don't get to hear this much, but it's a good track.)


BLUE VOICE: Help... Please help me...


Great, now Mist has inoculated us to her psychic wavelength.



BLUE VOICE: A great power flows into me from somewhere. I don't want this power...


Oh, this doesn't sound like the whale.

Um.



BLUE VOICE: Help... Please help...


I would but I have no idea where you are. Seriously.



Well, great, we've possibly got two people to save now.



Music: Spring

Unfortunately for them and us, farming comes first.

I really want those upgraded tools. They're such a huge quality of life improvement.




In other news, we now have Strawberries.

They only sell for 100 a pop, but they regrow every two days and they're highly giftable, so I can't complain.




ANETTE: Who did you write a letter to today?


Nobody, alas.

We will get letters we can reply to, but there's no way to initiate them as far as I know. If that was the case, I'd be bothering everyone in town.



-----------------------------------------------------
~"I hear you found the Green Ruins" - Kanno~

I hear you have entered the Green Ruins.
That place once was a Norad research
facility, studying how to utilize Runes
more effectively by using Rune Stones.
It may be a good idea to try taking
some Rune Stones down there with you.

-----------------------------------------------------


Sure, sounds like a great plan. Well except for the fact I can't even get those yet, and nobody has even mentioned them before.




ANETTE: That book looks complicated. Being a nurse must be tough.


Missed some mailboxes today, but I got really distracted by watering.




ANETTE: Omph. The entire set isn't going to fit in the mailbox...


Even more books than last time




ANETTE: It's a letter from Camus!♪


Camus was a rival rancher in Kardia, in a really generous sense of the term. He was also into Melody, but that never went anywhere between them evidently.



Since that was the last box I wanted to see the text for, I hit up the Rune Archives.

It's open almost 24/7 so I can head in at 8:00 like this, but Selphy's only usually behind the front desk to sell stuff at the usual 9 to 5 business hours.




SELPHY: Good morning. You seem so lively so early...


I say usually, because she's just sometimes still back here anyways. The pursuit of merchantry is secondary to that of her love for books.



SELPHY: The weather is so nice, but the sun is way too bright...


SELPHY: It sure is spring now. Spring is the season for reading.


I would've thought Winter would be, but I suppose I'll take the bookaholic's word for it.



As it is Spring, we shall read.

-----------------------------------------------------
~Beautiful Letter: Part 2~

"There may come a time when you want to send the receiver of your letters a present."

"In such a case, hand the item to the mailman in person. Do not make the mistake of putting it in your mailbox."

-----------------------------------------------------

Well, that was a short one. We can't even put things in our mailbox!



As a random aside, here's a look at our stats because I regularly forget to look at them, and as result, show them off. It's still really early in the game, so they're not much to look at.

After that, it's time to go talk to everyone in town.




ROSETTA: I'm bored so maybe I should go wander the area.


ROSETTA: Say, Bush. Take me somewhere.


BUSH: What? Me?




ROSETTA: I'm kidding. Why are you getting all serious? There's no way I'd go on a date with you.


Being honest, this dialogue is very out of place for Rosetta and the only explanation I can think of is that Mist is here.

She doesn't have this tsundere bent at any other time from what I know, and it's not really present in her RF1 dialogue (though that's sparse). In fact, she's rather into Bush in that game, and rather forward about it at times.





ROSETTA: Thank you.


ROSETTA: But how did you know what I liked?


I remembered from the first game. (It's strawberries.)




ROSETTA: Don't tell me you like me. ...No way. But thanks anyway.


The answer to that is the thread's choice.



More back alley turnip dues to be paid.




MIST: I need a favor from you, Bush.


BUSH: What is it?


Oh, hey, I thought this game didn't have a request system!




MIST: Please grow turnips.


BUSH: Haha...


We're already doing that



Music: Clock Tower

Well, let's get some more KNOWLEDGE bestowed upon us.




KANNO: This is a nice and quiet place.


KANNO: But it has one flaw! There is no one here to bring me my food!


I, uh, have turnips and strawberries. Want either of those?



BUSH: Just get it yourself...




KANNO: *cough cough*... My chronic disease is... Hm? Did you say something?


KANNO: What was it? Bush kept butting in so I forgot. Oh, right!




KANNO: Since no one is here to make food, I had my granddaughters come!


BUSH: Please don't call your grandchildren over just to make you food...


KANNO: Well, that's that. I think they'll be here soon so you can go greet them.


BUSH: Are they already on their way?




BUSH: Wait, I'm going to get them? You're so pushy...


KANNO: Thanks, Bush.


Such are the prices we pay for knowledge. These grandkids are going to be quite helpful in the coming days, so I wouldn't complain too much, Bush.




YOUNG GIRL: Aaaaaaah...!










*Suddenly, two girls come falling down from the sky!*




*SMASH*




BUSH: Grk, ugh, o-ow...!




YOUNG GIRL: I'm so sorry, are you okay?!



Okay, well you've got right to complain now.

Also, this cutscene is very fast outside of screenshot. It's basically a blur at the beginning.




BUSH: Y-yes, I'm fine.


YOUNG GIRL: That's good to hear.


The voice acting makes it apparent it still hurts. I imagine any anime, child or not, will hurt if thrown at you at high velocity.



Music: By the Ocean

(I still swear this plays more in conversations than it does at the actual ocean.)



YOUNG GIRL: The spirits are mad! They said that the landing failed because we're too heavy. Maybe you got fatter.




QUIET GIRL: ...I didn't. You just got bigger.


YOUNG GIRL: You sure?


BUSH: Um, are you Kanno's granddaughters?


Luckily for us, Bush is on point to change the subject.


YOUNG GIRL: Oh, I'm sorry! I suppose I need to introduce myself.




CANDY: I'm Candy! Kanno's my grandfather!


BUSH: Nice to meet you, Candy. I'm Bush.


CANDY: Nice to meet you, Bush!


CANDY: This is my older sister.





CINNAMON: ... ... ...Cinnamon.


I find it funny that for some earlier introductions they accidentally name the girl ahead of time, but they give Cinnamon the brief name of Candy's Sister.




CINNAMON: ... ... ...Hi.


She usually doesn't use this many ellipsis in daily communication. This isn't a Tori... or Dorothy... type situation... here, at... least....

...



BUSH: N-nice to meet you, Cinnamon.


CANDY: Heehee. My sister is a bit... reserved. But she's really nice!


CANDY: We have to get going to see our grandfather! Bye!



Cinnamon gives us a slow wave goodbye.

Well, we might as well go and chat them up.




CANDY: Do you know about the Spirit Song?


BUSH: Spirit... Song?


CANDY: Yeah. It's a song where you can speak to the Spirits.




CANDY: It seems I have the talent for the Spirit Song so I can cause miracles like Rune Wonders by asking the Spirits.


So, this will definitely be a thing. I won't really be able to make use of it for quite a while, but it's good that it's open.



BUSH: Rune Wonders?


CANDY: Yeah. It can change the weather or speed the growth of plants.


BUSH: Oh, that sounds amazing.


CANDY: Hey! You sound like you don't believe me! Just watch.



Music: Candy's Spirit Song

(la la, lala la, la la, lala la)

You do have to listen to this every time.





CANDY: Okay. You should have more bamboo shoots at your field tomorrow.




Actually, it'll only be like 400g, but still, free money.



CANDY: To cause Rune Wonders, you need Runeys.


CANDY: So if you want to do Rune Wonders, you have to bring me Runeys.


If you're asking yourself how we collect them, well, we'll also be getting that tool soon. Which means it's time I have to start approaching the dreaded mechanic.




CANDY: How may I help you today?



I won't explore all the Rune Wonder options in detail until later, but be rest assured I'll get to it at some point.



Here's the basic list of what we can do though- mostly a large variety of boosting the rate at which we can obtain various natural resources, though some definitely sound exciting. It's like an expanded version of Alicia's fortune telling from RF2, but with complicated pricing that requires damaging the environment.



Asking where runeys can be found gives us this map. We'll end up having to manage the population of these little buggers in order to keep our crops growing right, or we can forget about ever using our main field effectively.

Luckily, the environment already present should be rather stable for a long while.



Runeys will die off and consume each other in a brutal cycle on their own, and each zone naturally produces a certain type of runey... except for our Homestead. No runeys will decay here, but the natural growth of runeys is based on the amount of crops we have grown and unharvested.

There's a sort of easy strategy I'll be trying to employ later that hinges on this aspect. I would just ignore them and move to farming in the dungeons over time, but I feel like it'd be an injustice to not actually try to interact with this system.

Of course, I won't really get around to any of this until another update or three.




CANDY: Hmm hmm! Cooking is so fun!


If you say so, kid.

Before I can leave, I need to ask about Rune Wonders to collect the last piece of the puzzle.




CANDY: Rune wonders are, in short, miracles that are caused by Runeys.


CANDY: If you can bring some Runeys over, I can try to wish for them to cause miracles.


BUSH: Bring Runeys?


CANDY: Here, take this with you.

Got the Harvester!




CANDY: You can gather nearby Runeys by using this "Harvester."


CANDY: The Runeys you gather will be inside your bag. So, just keep them there and talk to me.


CANDY: When you release those Runeys, they'll start wandering around in the area. You can take advantage of this to put Runeys where you want them.


So, yeah, the best way of managing the things are to abduct them and forcefully allocate them strategically.

Anyways, we've got all we need from the rather smart 10 year old, so let's talk to her sister.



Just like Kanno and her younger sister, she's got a rather neat hat. The giant zipper theme is a fashion statement of some kind- on the whole it's a very Rune Factory kind of outfit.



CINNAMON: ...


BUSH: Um...


CINNAMON: ...What?




BUSH: You fell from the sky, right?


BUSH: What was that all about?




CINNAMON: ...Candy can sing the Spirit Melody. She can communicate with the Spirits with her song.


I thought it was the "Spirit Song" though?



CINNAMON: We were running late so Candy asked the Spirits to carry us on their winds.


BUSH: Spirits...? Spirit Melody...?


This stuff's just not sticking in his head very well. Maybe all that passing out on the ground brought our amnesia back. Either that, or that landing gave him a concussion.



CINNAMON: Normal humans can't see the spirits. But they become visible when they group together in large numbers.




CINNAMON: ... You must have seen them somewhere.


Yeah, they're all over the place, photobombing my screenshots.



BUSH: The spirits...? Maybe I did...


CINNAMON: Grouped Spirits that become visible are called Runes or Runeys.


BUSH: Oh... So Runeys are just grouped Spirits... I didn't know that.


But you knew this already. Bush, are you okay?




BUSH: You're really knowledgeable, Cinnamon!


Well that, or it was some sort of way to line up a compliment.




CINNAMON: ...I just know about this a bit more than others.


I guess it worked.



It's worth noting her voice is rather tired and notably monotone all the time as well. I guess like the average college student in the morning. She's less shy, and more existentially empty. Like the average college student.



CINNAMON: ...I'm sleepy everyday.


CINNAMON: There's nothing you'd find interesting here, but make yourself at home.




CINNAMON: ... ... ...


BUSH: Um... um... What sort of hobbies do you have, Cinnamon?


CINNAMON: Celestial observation... and fishing.


Well, that's concise. Now you know what she's about. The majority of the time we talk to her, she'll be chilling out somewhere in town fishing.



So, if you remember the rooms we took a peek at before, it should be obvious this is Cinnamon's given all the fishing poles. Hopefully Bush can get one of his own soon, as fishing isn't too bad in this game.



Candy's room is rather basic by comparison.



Speaking of Candy, if you can't find her, this machine lets us look at the distribution the same way she does, and we can use that memo pad behind us to schedule Rune Wonders. She usually hangs out with Marco and is thus, hard to find, so I may end up using this at some point.

That's about all there is to the clock tower today.




LARA: Bush, please live your life so you don't have use my services here.


I find this is a better sentiment than Nurse Joy from Pokemon telling you to "come back again." Like, do you want my Pokemon to get beat up or something?





GANESHA: Nice! I was just out of this! I love considerate men! Just kidding.


It's been a while since we've seen our favorite elven smith, so I made a stop by with a gift of some iron.

I'd be concerned that she was just out of iron, but then again there's a lot more powerful metals in this world.




"Cinnamon - Magician girl living in the Clock Tower. Does not like talking. Likes fishing."




"Candy - Cinnamon's younger sister. Cannot use magic, but can speak to the Spirits."


I then take a stop to look at the profiles for Cinnamon and Candy. I just don't usually think to actively check these.

The Spirit Song/Melody isn't technically magic, apparently. It's mostly asking magic things to do magic for you from what I can tell, but isn't that using magic indirectly?




"Nolan - A frequent patron of the bathhouse. Loves bathhouses and cats."


Regardless of these questions, here is Nolan. The cat has much in the way of ragdoll physics, but I'm pretty sure it's alive.

Just... really chilled out. I... think.



Kross was on his roof, so no sad songs for the time being.



At this point I figured I'd show off our fancy new harvester. It's a multitool that can not only vaccuum in Runeys, but also collect items from our tamed monsters. No shears or milkers or whatnot eating up your inventory, just this thing.





I grab a decent number while I'm up here. They can survive endlessly in our pockets, so no need to worry about them or anything.

Might destabilize this place a little bit, but that's whatever, it's not really my focus right now.



A few updates back I pointed out the cherries on the trees. With our hammer, we've now got what we need to collect them.




Every time you hit the tree with a hammer, 1 fruit falls. There can be up to 4 on a tree, I think, and some can be rather hidden, so you'll spend a lot of extra RP trying to get every last one of them.



The fruit type changes based on the time of year and there's a cookable jam type for each of them, but what we really care about is that 150g sell price. You get a lot of these things, and they can more than easily pay for your early expenses.




Lake Poli has the big stash of them.



All in total, I got 31 of them, which is a good boost to our already bolstered wallet. I'm aiming to sweep up all the crucial stuff from Lute this weekend so that I can really start in earnest.




Oh, hey. It's Mist.






MIST: I've been having dreams a lot lately.


MIST: The other day, I was talking to a very large, fluffy chick.


MIST: It seems even chicks have a lot of troubles of their own, especially with seniority and whatnot...


This strengthens my theory that she's somehow managed to extract hallucinogens from turnips.

Either that, or this is actually code for something, Mist's Cant for something regarding our performance



Better make sure we're in the clear.




CINNAMON: ...Nice weather.


Also on our property is Cinnamon. She's got two places on our homestead she'll show up at occasionally.




BUSH: Well? Are the fish biting?




CINNAMON: ...Somewhat.


It's probably because you're scaring them away, Bush.



BUSH: Oh.


CINNAMON: ...!


BUSH: What's wrong?




CINNAMON: Do you want to fish, too, Bush?


CINNAMON: I've had this for a long time. If you'd like, you can have it.

You got Cheap Pole!



This is another tool to fill out our collection. In not too long, we'll have all of them at our disposal. Fishing's not bad in this game either- it's a decent way to pick up some money, and cooking only improves it.



BUSH: Thank you.


BUSH: How do you use this fishing pole?




CINNAMON: You have to first equip the fishing pole and stand in front of water, then press the A Button to fish.


CINNAMON: When the fishing gauge is blue or green, press the A Button or pull the rod.


It's pretty similar to the crafting minigame, but this one has a notable difference.



The bar doesn't merely go back and forth. Instead, it bounces around the left side very lightly until a fish bites. Once that happens, it starts surging right, deciding at different points to start heading left. The input has the same kind of delay the crafting has, so you basically have to predict when the fish's pull is going to be strong enough.

This gif was the first attempt, and a fish bit immediately throwing me a bit off guard.




Got it on the next attempt though. As usual, hitting the green will give you a higher quality fish.




CINNAMON: ...Thank you. I like this.


I bestow my first catch to Cinnamon, as shockingly, she likes fish as gifts.

Rune Factory is a strictly pescatarian world, given the whole Retornen thing. Fish are eaten, unless they're a monster that just looks like a fish.

This world is confusing, don't think about it too hard.



It might be hard to see in the gif, but Cinnamon is constantly having to keep herself awake as she fishes. She really doesn't sleep good, evidently.




MELODY: So you're going to the Green Ruins...


MELODY: I don't think there are very good springs there.


It's late enough to stop by the bath, so I do that. The springs there are good for me at least, they're close by.



In an odd twist of expectations, Melody only likes the more common herb colors (Red, Yellow, Orange, and Black) and doesn't have as good a reaction to the more rare ones.




NOLAN: Hello.


NOLAN: The weather is very pleasant. A nice bath after working under the sun the whole day must feel very rewarding.


Nolan's basically always here.



The cherries bring a nice profit- and that's only half of them!




ROSETTA: By the way, I heard that you went exploring on that flying island.


ROSETTA: It's not bad to be a hard worker, but make sure you don't get yourself killed.


I'll be trying not to.



Managing the farm takes me well into the night. This will stop becoming as much of a thing once I can just get even the watering can upgraded.



And to top off the update, here's what Bush is looking like right now. Our level only ever goes up from combat, but increases our four base stats.

STR adds to melee damage via the ATK stat, VIT gives us more HP, INT affects spells via the MAG stat, and AGL gives us more DEF.



Profit wise, the turnips have been our biggest income. The next batch in the ground should serve to cover us for quite some time.



See you next time, where we meet yet another character!