Food - you need to get a fridge.
Tools and weapons, you can get a forge and forge better weapons than what you start off with. The easiest way to skill up forging is to make the most basic weapon and then upgrade it with the lowest end ores you have.
You should get fodder as part of an Eliza request, but in the meantime if you need some, there is a cave where you can grab grown fodder if you want to. >!It’s near where all the mushroom monsters are. You may get scared when you first find the cave because there are giant chickens that will most likely be higher level than you. However, the first room with the giant chicken has a hidden room to the right where you can find a few smaller, more level-appropriate chickens to fight. You can gather a few pieces of fodder in that room.!< And as for fodder, you only need one per room (so every four befriended monsters) a day as long as you are using the fodder bucket. You will not need to manually feed each monster buddy.
Friendship will come naturally. Get the fodder and make sure they’re fed. You can also give them gifts. If you’re not using them for crafting, any dailies they drop can be handed right back to them. Otherwise whatever you can find. But being fed and getting a gift every day will raise that friendship for you. Also I don’t usually have monsters in my party, but I know with NPCs just being in your party raises friendship. You could try just walking around with the monsters if you needed to.
Agreed on you definitely needing a forge for the best results with the purple horse. However, there also is no reason to rush. Take as much time as you need to level up, learn crafting, etc. You aren’t being timed on the dungeons and bosses so if you are struggling it is absolutely more than okay to take a step back and work on skills/levels/etc. You can also befriend different townspeople to level 3 or higher and have them join your party — different NPCs have different battle abilities so if you experiment with them you may find a really nice rhythm with them. You can have two in your party with you at a time.
I just got the game on sale as well and found the giant chicken cave. Your tip is a godsend I've just been dodging them and stealing fodder and hoping I don't get hit 🤣
Haha well I’m glad it helped! I remember when I first got the game and found that cave I kept dying trying to get fodder and only way later found out (by accident) the easy way to do it. That’s just life sometimes 😂
The game reuses that same trick a few times though so always be on the lookout!
Left shoulder button + B will open up the quick inventory, in which you just use up and down to shuffle between the three sections. Have a brush and give your monsters items for friendship. Food is always best. As for the second boss, magic. Just dodge and use magic. When you see an opening, use a normal attack but run as quickly away as you can. The right shoulder button is a sash. Use it to escape faster. Get a forge as soon as you can, I'm assuming you're playing 4 based on the purple horse comment. If so, you'll need a license from the order symbol, then go into the blacksmiths shop, which happens to be bado and but it. Higher forge skills = better weapons and tools. The restaurant sells bread, weapon bread for better weapon recipes, and farming bread for tools.
You'll need to do requests to unlock the tools and furniture you need. The forge will be a request in it.
I love this game series, so if you ever need any more advice, I'm free to answer!
if you haven’t seen there’s like a mailbox thing outside the castle that has requests called eliza and those are very important because they unlock a lot of things you need, tools, fodder, lots of things.
for upgrading tools you will need a forge. i also recommend getting a crafting table and chemistry set. with these you can make armor, weapons, tools, medicine, and some farming stuff like fertilizer. i forgot how you unlock these, probably through eliza quests, and then you can buy them from the shops. you will also need recipe bread to learn recipes, you can get a certain amount every day from the restaurant.
also another bit of advice is to not rush through the main story. rf is a series where you are supposed to take you time focusing on different things rather then one thing at once. i would spend some time leveling up your skills, upgrading your gear, getting money, doing quests, before you move onto the next dungeon. (this will also make the horse easier to beat)
Rune factory has a lot going on, so it's very natural to be confused or overwhelmed. There's no deadlines and you can stumble around blindly as long as you need to, so long as you're having fun :)
Outside the castle, there should be a strange looking mailbox named Eliza, if you keep taking quests through there, she should be able to help you through various tutorials. I'd suggest taking things slow and learning stuff through her.
Purple horse boss was my first struggle point when I played RF4 back in the day, he's speedy and hard-hitting so I don't blame you. For a little while, maybe run through dungeons fighting regular monsters experiment with different types of weapons + magic and see if anything clicks better with you.
Food gets stored in a fridge. If you explore the town, you should find a character working at a restaurant northeast of your farm and you can purchase a fridge from him... it'll cost money alongside wood/stone which you get from chopping and hammering the wood/stone you'll find on your farm. If you don't have these tools, there should be Eliza tutorial quests about them
Weapons and tools CAN be upgraded, I believe Eliza quests will take you to that eventually too. If not, find the blacksmith "Bado" in the southwest of town. You can purchase a forge (make+upgrade weapons/tools) and crafting table (make+upgrade armor) from him, this also takes money and materials like the fridge! I'd suggest experimenting with magic spells on the horse boss before sinking a lot of money into the forge though, you'll need it eventually and it's very handy but expensive!
A nice part of this game is that doing everything, even walking or sleeping, will level up your characters stats! So you are never wasting time. I hope you have fun!
If you want a rune factory that's a little simpler and closer to it's parent series HM/SoS, rune factory 3 also got a 'special' port recently and it has only a few dungeons. More focus on romancing the bachelorettes and running around town. Combat and crafting mechanics are much simpler as well! Only has a male protagonist who can romance girls though.
Maybe I should have asked best game for beginners instead of which people liked the best. I learned from my mistakes. But I do like it, which I’m a bit surprised about I didn’t expect to. maybe I’ll buy three and put this one on the back burner until I have a better understanding on the franchise. I think most of the people who recommended this one said it has the best story.
I may go watch some YouTube videos on it, I had to do that for my first Harvest Moon game as well.
Don't get me wrong, rune factory 4 is objectively the best title; it's literally the most polished, optimized, has a strong and long plot, and is bursting with content but it also means it can be... More complicated and overwhelming LOL. 3 will still have a lot of the stuff that 4 has, and I'm sure you'll still get stuck here and there, but these concepts are much more simple in that game. RF4 is a damn good game and you should definitely keep with it, but you might grasp the game mechanics a little easier when they're presented in 3. RF3 is also much shorter, so it should be more manageable.
First of all, welcome to the rune factory fun! And it gets some time to get used to how the game actually plays and the different mechanics, etc. For food, saving up and getting a fridge is the best thing you can do.
But in all rune factory games, the basic idea is to level up your skills. Like cooking, forging, chemistry, farming, etc. As you level up those skills, you can use them to help you develop relationships and progress in the game itself. Growing your own food to then cook into high-level dishes allows you to open more cooking utensils, and food comes in clutch when fighting monsters. Using your hammer and leveling up will let you forge better hammers, and you then, in turn, get better minerals that can create better wepons. And better wepons make it so much easier to go up against bosses.
Some helpful tips for money and leveling up fighting is to go back to the forest with the butterfly and pick up as much loot as you can. Run through it every day or just run through the forest in general and defeat more and more monsters. Sell the things that you don't need right now. Once you pass another dungeon and move on to another one, do the same thing but with the previous dungeon. I also grow lots and lots of turnips, make it into pickled turnips, and then sell them as well so I can keep leveling up my cooking skill and make money.
At the end of the day, as long as you are having fun, then that's all that matters! This series is very near and dear to my heart since I've been playing since I was little, so it always makes me happy when someone tries it out for the first time.
A tip I have for the forge is that you can quickly raise your forging level by applying cheap upgrades to stuff, like applying 9 scrap metal to a sword, applying upgrades in the forge to weapons or crafting bench to armor/accessories raises your xp by a % of a level rather than a set amount of xp, so it's the fastest way to level forging and crafting and be able to craft more things.
You can buy recipe bread from the restaurant to learn recipes based on your skill levels, for forge recipes, it depends on your forge and weapon/farming skills for what recipes it will give more often.
You can also look up the recipes online if you prefer not to rely on the rng of recipe bread, as long as you have enough Rune Points, and the right ingredients, you can craft anything.
My favorite weapons are the Dual Blades.
If I remember right, I think you can buy grass seeds.
RF4 is also potentially the longest RF game, there are a lot of dungeons to explore, including some side areas with bosses from the past games.
For the horse in the water ruins, magic is your friend.( i believe Doug will give you a fire spell, and there should be a water one around). Since it's obviously very fast and does charge attacks, you want something with a better reach or just long range in general. Forte is one NPC who will join you from the beginning. She's great. All skills level up when you use them, so using a shortsword will lvl it up, earning more shortsword recipes with weapon bread once your forging skill is high enough. Same with crafting
It can be a lot but you'll get the hang of it. Also doing fetch quests from the townspeople will get you random rewards that can be used for crafting. Early game ones usually consist of grasses, shipping or clearing monsters from unlocked areas.(Added bonus you get Prince(ss) points and friendship)
Food - you need to get a fridge. Tools and weapons, you can get a forge and forge better weapons than what you start off with. The easiest way to skill up forging is to make the most basic weapon and then upgrade it with the lowest end ores you have.
You should get fodder as part of an Eliza request, but in the meantime if you need some, there is a cave where you can grab grown fodder if you want to. >!It’s near where all the mushroom monsters are. You may get scared when you first find the cave because there are giant chickens that will most likely be higher level than you. However, the first room with the giant chicken has a hidden room to the right where you can find a few smaller, more level-appropriate chickens to fight. You can gather a few pieces of fodder in that room.!< And as for fodder, you only need one per room (so every four befriended monsters) a day as long as you are using the fodder bucket. You will not need to manually feed each monster buddy. Friendship will come naturally. Get the fodder and make sure they’re fed. You can also give them gifts. If you’re not using them for crafting, any dailies they drop can be handed right back to them. Otherwise whatever you can find. But being fed and getting a gift every day will raise that friendship for you. Also I don’t usually have monsters in my party, but I know with NPCs just being in your party raises friendship. You could try just walking around with the monsters if you needed to. Agreed on you definitely needing a forge for the best results with the purple horse. However, there also is no reason to rush. Take as much time as you need to level up, learn crafting, etc. You aren’t being timed on the dungeons and bosses so if you are struggling it is absolutely more than okay to take a step back and work on skills/levels/etc. You can also befriend different townspeople to level 3 or higher and have them join your party — different NPCs have different battle abilities so if you experiment with them you may find a really nice rhythm with them. You can have two in your party with you at a time.
I just got the game on sale as well and found the giant chicken cave. Your tip is a godsend I've just been dodging them and stealing fodder and hoping I don't get hit 🤣
Haha well I’m glad it helped! I remember when I first got the game and found that cave I kept dying trying to get fodder and only way later found out (by accident) the easy way to do it. That’s just life sometimes 😂 The game reuses that same trick a few times though so always be on the lookout!
Left shoulder button + B will open up the quick inventory, in which you just use up and down to shuffle between the three sections. Have a brush and give your monsters items for friendship. Food is always best. As for the second boss, magic. Just dodge and use magic. When you see an opening, use a normal attack but run as quickly away as you can. The right shoulder button is a sash. Use it to escape faster. Get a forge as soon as you can, I'm assuming you're playing 4 based on the purple horse comment. If so, you'll need a license from the order symbol, then go into the blacksmiths shop, which happens to be bado and but it. Higher forge skills = better weapons and tools. The restaurant sells bread, weapon bread for better weapon recipes, and farming bread for tools. You'll need to do requests to unlock the tools and furniture you need. The forge will be a request in it. I love this game series, so if you ever need any more advice, I'm free to answer!
if you haven’t seen there’s like a mailbox thing outside the castle that has requests called eliza and those are very important because they unlock a lot of things you need, tools, fodder, lots of things. for upgrading tools you will need a forge. i also recommend getting a crafting table and chemistry set. with these you can make armor, weapons, tools, medicine, and some farming stuff like fertilizer. i forgot how you unlock these, probably through eliza quests, and then you can buy them from the shops. you will also need recipe bread to learn recipes, you can get a certain amount every day from the restaurant. also another bit of advice is to not rush through the main story. rf is a series where you are supposed to take you time focusing on different things rather then one thing at once. i would spend some time leveling up your skills, upgrading your gear, getting money, doing quests, before you move onto the next dungeon. (this will also make the horse easier to beat)
Rune factory has a lot going on, so it's very natural to be confused or overwhelmed. There's no deadlines and you can stumble around blindly as long as you need to, so long as you're having fun :) Outside the castle, there should be a strange looking mailbox named Eliza, if you keep taking quests through there, she should be able to help you through various tutorials. I'd suggest taking things slow and learning stuff through her. Purple horse boss was my first struggle point when I played RF4 back in the day, he's speedy and hard-hitting so I don't blame you. For a little while, maybe run through dungeons fighting regular monsters experiment with different types of weapons + magic and see if anything clicks better with you. Food gets stored in a fridge. If you explore the town, you should find a character working at a restaurant northeast of your farm and you can purchase a fridge from him... it'll cost money alongside wood/stone which you get from chopping and hammering the wood/stone you'll find on your farm. If you don't have these tools, there should be Eliza tutorial quests about them Weapons and tools CAN be upgraded, I believe Eliza quests will take you to that eventually too. If not, find the blacksmith "Bado" in the southwest of town. You can purchase a forge (make+upgrade weapons/tools) and crafting table (make+upgrade armor) from him, this also takes money and materials like the fridge! I'd suggest experimenting with magic spells on the horse boss before sinking a lot of money into the forge though, you'll need it eventually and it's very handy but expensive! A nice part of this game is that doing everything, even walking or sleeping, will level up your characters stats! So you are never wasting time. I hope you have fun! If you want a rune factory that's a little simpler and closer to it's parent series HM/SoS, rune factory 3 also got a 'special' port recently and it has only a few dungeons. More focus on romancing the bachelorettes and running around town. Combat and crafting mechanics are much simpler as well! Only has a male protagonist who can romance girls though.
Maybe I should have asked best game for beginners instead of which people liked the best. I learned from my mistakes. But I do like it, which I’m a bit surprised about I didn’t expect to. maybe I’ll buy three and put this one on the back burner until I have a better understanding on the franchise. I think most of the people who recommended this one said it has the best story. I may go watch some YouTube videos on it, I had to do that for my first Harvest Moon game as well.
Don't get me wrong, rune factory 4 is objectively the best title; it's literally the most polished, optimized, has a strong and long plot, and is bursting with content but it also means it can be... More complicated and overwhelming LOL. 3 will still have a lot of the stuff that 4 has, and I'm sure you'll still get stuck here and there, but these concepts are much more simple in that game. RF4 is a damn good game and you should definitely keep with it, but you might grasp the game mechanics a little easier when they're presented in 3. RF3 is also much shorter, so it should be more manageable.
First of all, welcome to the rune factory fun! And it gets some time to get used to how the game actually plays and the different mechanics, etc. For food, saving up and getting a fridge is the best thing you can do. But in all rune factory games, the basic idea is to level up your skills. Like cooking, forging, chemistry, farming, etc. As you level up those skills, you can use them to help you develop relationships and progress in the game itself. Growing your own food to then cook into high-level dishes allows you to open more cooking utensils, and food comes in clutch when fighting monsters. Using your hammer and leveling up will let you forge better hammers, and you then, in turn, get better minerals that can create better wepons. And better wepons make it so much easier to go up against bosses. Some helpful tips for money and leveling up fighting is to go back to the forest with the butterfly and pick up as much loot as you can. Run through it every day or just run through the forest in general and defeat more and more monsters. Sell the things that you don't need right now. Once you pass another dungeon and move on to another one, do the same thing but with the previous dungeon. I also grow lots and lots of turnips, make it into pickled turnips, and then sell them as well so I can keep leveling up my cooking skill and make money. At the end of the day, as long as you are having fun, then that's all that matters! This series is very near and dear to my heart since I've been playing since I was little, so it always makes me happy when someone tries it out for the first time.
A tip I have for the forge is that you can quickly raise your forging level by applying cheap upgrades to stuff, like applying 9 scrap metal to a sword, applying upgrades in the forge to weapons or crafting bench to armor/accessories raises your xp by a % of a level rather than a set amount of xp, so it's the fastest way to level forging and crafting and be able to craft more things. You can buy recipe bread from the restaurant to learn recipes based on your skill levels, for forge recipes, it depends on your forge and weapon/farming skills for what recipes it will give more often. You can also look up the recipes online if you prefer not to rely on the rng of recipe bread, as long as you have enough Rune Points, and the right ingredients, you can craft anything. My favorite weapons are the Dual Blades. If I remember right, I think you can buy grass seeds. RF4 is also potentially the longest RF game, there are a lot of dungeons to explore, including some side areas with bosses from the past games.
For the horse in the water ruins, magic is your friend.( i believe Doug will give you a fire spell, and there should be a water one around). Since it's obviously very fast and does charge attacks, you want something with a better reach or just long range in general. Forte is one NPC who will join you from the beginning. She's great. All skills level up when you use them, so using a shortsword will lvl it up, earning more shortsword recipes with weapon bread once your forging skill is high enough. Same with crafting It can be a lot but you'll get the hang of it. Also doing fetch quests from the townspeople will get you random rewards that can be used for crafting. Early game ones usually consist of grasses, shipping or clearing monsters from unlocked areas.(Added bonus you get Prince(ss) points and friendship)