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Not very fond of Mist. Also, treat your shoulder sunburns already, Mist. Stardew Valley was my first (and only?) farming game, and it is always interesting but odd to see older games to which it is an homage.
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Dec 16, 2021 03:59
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Kacie posted:Not very fond of Mist. Also, treat your shoulder sunburns already, Mist. Mist's characterization in RF1 was pretty much just the odd girl who gave you a farm and kept following you into dungeons. She was generally friendly, but just kinda distant and somewhat oblivious. The people of Kardia would call her strange, but she wasn't really as weird as they made her out to be. The closest thing she had to a gimmick is that she'd walk off, having finished the conversation, then walk back on screen to tell you something she just remembered. In this game, since she's already given us the farm in this game and she no longer shows up for dungeon progress, her job's mostly done until she decides to do something interesting. She mostly just hangs around, being spaced out, throwing tutorial-ish dialogue at us, or very occasionally trying to mooch something off of Bush. One of the things I've never known is if she was meant to be like this and the barebones nature of RF1 didn't really offer a chance to convey it, or if this was just a change made for this game. The idea of her trying to get things out of Bush or generally being like she's high on turnips isn't new, it was vaguely suggested before in RF1, but they really seemed to play it up here, and not to great effect. Compare all the dialogue we've had with Rosetta, Selphy, or Melody versus what we've had with Mist. Maybe it gets better in the later LP levels? Is this the result of a knee jerk reaction to not pushing the canon/boxart girl as hard? I dunno. I don't dislike Mist myself, she sometimes gets a laugh out of me, but I won't deny she's a bit  for me.Then again, I'm at the whim of whatever the Bachelorette Tournament Vote decides. As for the shoulder sunburn shine thing is just something the art style did up until the most recent release. Most characters have it in this game, where visible. Even Bush has it! I've seen and heard a good bit about Stardew, but oddly, I've just never played it. I was still pretty heavily invested in Rune Factory at the time it came out, so maybe that's why. Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 06:06
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I like Mist quite a lot myself, although she wasn't the bachelorette I eventually went with. I think the game does a good job of conveying that she's sort of living in her own world, just slightly off from the one everyone else is in. Whether or not that appeals to you is purely a matter of personal preference.
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Dec 16, 2021 18:47
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Echoing my post in my other LP, I'll be taking a short break to catch up on things. It'll take me about two weeks at the latest. I can say that we make some pretty significant progress in the first week of Summer- Bush is at 80 Cooking skill and the money is starting to really roll in. We're almost exactly where we need to be to get ourselves fully geared up and ready to take on the rest of the game's combat. I won't be gone from the forums entirely, so if you've got any questions or suggestions, I'm here.
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Dec 19, 2021 03:16
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Update 21: The Beach Episode- Much Ado About Melons Summer is finally here! With about 5 hours of sleep, Bush is out the door!  Music: FestivalAlso this is playing! It's not bad, but it overwrites the music for everywhere but dungeons so you'll go slowly insane from hearing it for 30 minutes straight. Sorry, we won't be hearing the new seasonal theme just yet.  Outside, everything is green! Well, a more blue hued green than before. Also, the flowers in front of our house have suddenly become sunflowers.   ----------------------------------------------------- ~"Are you ready for the summer?" - Rosetta~ Summer begins today! Spring crops do not grow in summer, so come by Materia for seeds perfect for the new season! ----------------------------------------------------- Unfortunately it's not open today, and all the Summer flowers take way too long to grow. Most can't even grow in the Homestead field without very high prosperity. Our crops will probably be tomatoes and corn the whole time.  I take care of chores until 9:00 AM, as nothing really starts up until then. As I planted our seeds last night, we've got a 1 day head start of sorts.  Now folks are about!   CANDY: It's finally summer! I'm going to learn to swim this year...   MARCO: Hey! It's all about the beach during summer, don't you think? MARCO: Are you good at swimming? Let's race later!  The actual festival can wait, it's time to bother everyone in town first.   GANESHA: Hi, Bush. Did you go to the opening day of the beach season?  BUSH: Aren't you going, Ganesha?  GANESHA: What? You want to see an old lady like me in a swimsuit? Stop flattering me. The adults will never be seen at the beach, often for this stated reason of apparently being too old for it. I am sure there are folks who are greatly disappointed by this.   TB: Yes... Yes... Right there... Yes, that feels good. BUSH: What are you doing, Uzuki?  UZUKI: Hm? I was merely giving Tsubute a massage on the shoulders. After all is said and done, he has helped me so. TB: How kind... I am very touched, milady.   BUSH: Tsubute, you have shoulders?  TB: Graaaggh! How dare you! You...  UZUKI: Ahahaha! I suppose it is difficult to see where Tsubute's shoulders are. TB: M-milady... I don't know if it's ever explained what Tsubute is exactly. It's likely, but I don't remember. Tiny cricket man has shoulders though, we have learned this fact today if anything else.  BUSH: Eunice...   EUNICE: No! Stop right there! BUSH: Huh?! EUNICE: No! Halt! Eunice does not like swimsuit season.  Here's a flower, I hope it makes your day better    TURNER: It's so hot. I completely understand why people want to go swim at the beach.   RITA: Well, at my age, I just can't go to the beach in a swimsuit. At least it's nice to see you two actually doing something together, even if it is just standing in the plaza staring at the weird singing rock.  Anyways, my main focus for right now is our boy Lute. Time to outfit our expanded kitchen and forge! Our purchases here are the Great Forge, the Great Kitchen, the Great Pot and the Handy Kitchen. This amounts to somewhere around 35,000G, so Lute's going home with quite the payday.  The next purchase we're looking for is the Maestro's Forge, which will take a hefty 28,000g but will finally give us access to as strong as weapons as we can find the materials for. At some point it'd be really nice to expand my storage as well as getting a fridge. Despite nothing ever rotting in this world, I can't stick all this random grass in my usual storage box.  Enough delay- it's time for the beach!   ROSETTA: Good timing, Bush. ROSETTA: We just got a sweet and tasty watermelon in. It's a rare item found only once a year. We should use it for melon pinata. The innovation of growing melons must have not been made yet, as this game doesn't have Pink Melons, yet RF2 does. This is the festival activity for this year, but we'll wait on it until I've chatted up everyone on the beach. and no, I'm not making new portraits for this   LARA: It's so hot every day. Please be mindful of your health. Because it's Summer now, instead of saying the weather is so nice, now everyone will have a decent chance of just complaining about the heat.  LARA: Bush, would like to go swimming together? Bush would like to go swimming, but we can't do that unfortunately. I don't believe you can swim even in the Rune Factory game based around being in the ocean. Swimming animations are too hard I guess.   CINNAMON: In this season, you can see the "Buffamoo Constellation." BUSH: A Buffamoo? How is it different from the Buffalo? CINNAMON: ...I don't know. The Buffamoo Contellation can't be seen unless it is past midnight. Try your best to find it.  CINNAMON: Aren't you going to swim, Bush? Cinnamon's usually just up here in the corner.  ------------------- 1. I will. 2. I won't. ------------------- Unfortunately, parallel universe shenanigans are not necessary here as her reply is always the same:  CINNAMON: ...Oh. Curse you, illusion of choice!    SELPHY: Reading in the shade is the best for hot days like today! SELPHY: The ocean is more vast than land. Did you know that? Geography facts! Selphy hangs out rather far from the ocean, as she's presumably only here to sit on a beach chair and read under an umbrella. I did notice the bracelet on her wrist, though I've no idea if it ever comes up in conversation or if it's relevant to anything at all.   MIST: Today is the opening day of the beach season. I prefer to watch people in swimsuits than wear one myself. Mist has nothing to say about the weather, and happens to be the only one here actually in the water in some way. From the water, she just stares at everyone else, apparently.  There's a whole southern half to the beach, but it's empty. Some of the other bachelorettes stand in this area, if they're here. Worth noting that the characters who show up to this event are seemingly random, as I remember that Melody was here on my first time playing the game, and I've heard of Uzuki being here instead of Cinnamon. With that done, let's get around to smashing that one of a kind watermelon for really no reason other than SUMMER, WOO  ROSETTA: Oh, Bush. We were just about to break the watermelon. Would you like to join in? Sure! ROSETTA: By the way, do you know the rules of melon pinata? What are the rules?  ROSETTA: All you have to do in a melon pinata game is break the watermelon with your hammer. ...Oh, that's pretty easy. I guess it's some sort of mashing minig-  ROSETTA: That alone would be a bit too simple, so for you, Bush, we'll use the blindfold. ROSETTA: When you're blindfolded, the people around you will tell you where the watermelon is... of course, to make things more interesting, I've asked one person here to lie. Ah, well, that's a bit trickier.  ROSETTA: Do your best not to get confused and go off in a weird direction. Oh, and don't hit people. Well, that's it for the rules, are you good? Sure why not, I've done this before.  MELON SMASHING TIME   ROSETTA: Wait... Your clothes will get dirty. Go change into a swimsuit. Bush fights giant monsters, gets beat up, digs around in the dirt a lot, and has recently been spending a lot of time in a volcanic cavern. I don't think we have to worry about his clothes getting dirty. For whatever reason though, we manually have to go and change into our swimwear - also known as Bush in his usual bathhouse wear. This conversation also forces Pony to get sent back to the barn. Looks like no beach fun for our giant   BUSH: I'm gonna have all the fun I can at the beach this summer! Really the most we'll be doing here aside from the occasional conversation is sucking up Runeys and I still hesitate to call that fun. Sorry, Bush. Also, yes, it doesn't remove our accessories. The neck towel at least makes sense, but not the knit hat. Let's start the festival proper this time.  The camera does a slow zoom in on our contestants, and each of the girls does a small little animation. Erik is also here.   ERIK: Let's get started. ERIK: All right, young man! Here, hold this hammer!  ERIK: Well, well, the hammer suits you rather well! This is just a Cheap Hammer. Apparently both Mist and Erik associate Bush with garbage tier farming equipment.   ERIK: The liar will be... *DRUMROLL*  ERIK: Rosetta!  ROSETTA: ...Oh, me? Well, Bush, you better keep your ears open. You may note that this doesn't really match up with what she said earlier about the rules. Something got lost in translation or development here. Also, yes, they do just tell you who is lying. It severely reduces the challenge of this minigame, and kinda just undercuts a lot of fun that could be had here. I'll complain about it later and what they could have did instead once we're done with it.   Music: By the Ocean(Hey, this is finally playing at a time appropriate for the title! Wow!) We get a brief pan down of the area showing the placement of the girls and the melon, then the screen fades to black again. ERIK: Go!  And with that, Bush finds himself in the void. He automatically walks forward at a slow pace and turns rather sluggishly.   MIST: To the left, the left! Periodically, the girls will call out directions. We know Mist isn't lying here, so we adjust our angle a bit to the left.  ROSETTA: A little more to the right! We've already been told that Rosetta is lying, so we basically ignore anything she says here. It's worth noting that all of the direction lines are voice acted, so that's neat.  LARA: Straight! With that, we angle ourselves back to the north and continue on that way. We get a few more instructions from here, but it's pretty easy stuff.  LARA: Swing. Swing now! When we're close, the one of the gals will tell us to take the swing. You pretty much have to mash a bit here as the input window is a bit weird.  *SMACK*  LARA: Oh! We did it! Somehow, we're over here. Luckily, Bush will autotarget the melon when you swing as long as you're next to it. Also it just breaks in half cleanly like we used an axe on it.  ROSETTA: Well, how was it? Was it fun? It was alright. Following this is the conversations for winning the festival. Unfortunately nothing spectacular happens if you fail. ------------------------------------------------------- LOSER UNIVERSE LARA: Oh... Perhaps some other time. --- ROSETTA: Well, how was it? Was it fun? ROSETTA: Unfortunately, the watermelon wasn't smashed with the hammer, but I cut it up, so let's eat. MIST: Too bad, Bush. Maybe next year. ROSETTA: I even told you to not be confused by my lies! LARA: Oh, my... This watermelon tastes just heavenly. BUSH: I'll be sure to smash one open next year. ------------------------------------------------------- No matter the timeline, the melon is eaten. RIP melon. Back to the universe where we win.  MIST: This watermelon is so good! Bush, maybe it's because you did such a good job splitting it open. ROSETTA: Your watermelon splitting was just awesome. You just would not believe any of my lines. LARA: Today's watermelon pinata was so enjoyable thanks to you. BUSH: *chuckle* Well, I'm glad my hard work paid off. Since when do you *chuckle*, Bush? Following this is a set of conversations unique to winning. I believe it happens regardless of who's here, but really all I remember from my first time doing this minigame is that Melody was the liar and Lara wasn't here. I don't know if this always happens between Mist and Rosetta.  ROSETTA: By the way, Bush. Do you put salt on your watermelon? ------------------- 1. I usually don't. 2. I usually do. ------------------- MIST: I'm sure you do, don't you? It's common sense. ------------------- 1. The salt makes it sweeter. 2. I like it the way it is. ------------------- ROSETTA: Of course, I don't, but I do see people do that sometimes.  ------------------- 1. I don't. 2. Salt and watermelon are friends. ------------------- Here's the choice that branches things. WE DO NOT SALT OUR MELONS posted:
MELONS AND SALT ARE FRIENDS, IT'S A BIOLOGICAL FACT posted:
And that's it. As far as I can tell, it doesn't affect LP at all.   Winning the festival itself does provide a decent FP & LP increase across the board. Mist's almost hit 4 LP by this point, with Melody being in third place. Rosetta's in 4th, with the other girls slowly working their way up to and through the 2 LP range. Selphy's still in first of course, thanks to all of Bush's knowledge gaining   We're free to go off and do whatever now. That was our first festival! I feel like this would be a lot more interesting if they didn't tell you who the liar was. Then the liar would gain LP if you consistently believed them. Says a lot more about what you think about them than "how well can you ignore me". You could probably give every character a bit of a tell or something for this, if you wanted to keep it easier. With the festival done, it's time to wrap up the success dialogue and head off to do other stuff today.  MIST: Good job on the melon pinata, Bush. ROSETTA: You split that melon pretty well. LARA: Now that the beach season has started, it sure feels like summer has truly begun. SELPHY: The watermelon was great! Did you eat it, Bush? CINNAMON: Was the first day of the beach season fun? *insert any response here* CINNAMON: ..Oh. And that's it! Lara's got actual dialogue to usher in the rest of the day with.  LARA: A nurse always has to prepare medicinal herbs. LARA: Melody knows a lot about medicinal herbs so I always ask her for advice.  LARA: But I've been talking to Cinnamon about it a lot more recently. LARA: She knows about these herbs that I've never even heard of before. You know, you could always write back to your teacher from Kardia. I'm sure Edward knows his stuff, with hair and a mustache like he's got, you just have to.  Music: FestivalBack to hearing this for the rest of the day!  Also, here's our improved kitchen! A lot of space to move around in, as well as our new mixer and upgraded pot! The frying pan can honestly go a long time without being upgraded as there's not much it makes that I'll want. I specifically upgraded the pot so I could eventually make some HP Absorb food with it- that'll be really good for making progress.    Apple Juice Lv:1 was synthesized. Tomato Juice Lv:1 was synthesized. At our new mixer, I slam a whole apple in there and bam, we've got juice. Do the same for a tomato and we've got more juice. The latter is the gift we've been waiting on for Iris. This is worth triple the amount of LP that random flowers are for her, so she'll be catching up to the other gals rather fast.  CANDY: Wow! I love juice! Thanks! Supposedly Apple juice is her favorite, but I don't know for sure. Regardless, we'll probably toss some excess tomato juice her way and see if we can get her to tell us anything more about the Spirits or Runeys.  At this point, Bush heads back down into Green Ruins on a quest for insect skin. It's a necessary material for our next tier of tools, for some reason.  A bit of farming later with Pony helping out, and I've got a couple pieces of it.  Back to our new forging area! We've got some downright industrial equipment in this room.  And here we are, ready to take our first steps in getting out of the early game for good. Our tin can goes in the forge, alongside silver, copper, and insect skin.  12 levels above our skill to make, we can just barely do it.  Lion Can Lv:1 was synthesized.  Getting this is huge, and you'll see why soon enough.  Next up in clearing progression blocks is a Silver Hammer. Our iron hammer, 2 silver, and another insect skin later...  Silver Hammer Lv:1 was synthesized. This is a pretty big get as well. All those rocks we couldn't destroy? Their days are numbered now.  And now I'll show you why I cluttered up my storage box with so many pieces of scrap iron. Take our fishing pole and pairs of scrap iron, all of steadily increasing level...   Starter Pole Lv:2 was synthesized with expertise! Starter Pole Lv:3 was synthesized with expertise! Repeat this process for a while...  And now it's up to level 6! It also costs 4 less RP per swing, which is neat. If you were looking to make your tools more efficient, this is the way to go. It's best to do this on axes and hammers first as they cost the most, but fishing's not a bad choice either as it saves you more RP when looping fried fish for RP. Just be careful that you are using the right leveled materials because if you stick a level 10 tool in with level 1 scrap, the best you can make is level 2. Doing this is also the best way to grind your forging skill up. You can do this with every tier of tool and it'll add up to a lot. I would have done this to my hammer or my watering can, but the skill cost of this scrap iron method jumps up quite a lot per tier of tool. To grind ideally, pick a tool you don't care about at the highest skill requirement you can manage, and keep slamming level 1 scrap irons into it. It won't increase in level and you can just bring that forging skill up to par. I'd say the best pick for this is the hoe as you'll be using it less and less over the course of the game. After all, once you've tilled a field, the hoe's job is done.  Now to show off why this new watering can is so great. Holding 18 water at once is good, but...   The lion can is now capable of watering full 3x3s in one action, for the cost of 1 water and barely any more RP. This effectively cuts both the RP use and time spent watering by 66%. If this is the last upgrade I get for the can, I'll be fine with it. This is all I need, and it's honestly the one thing that saves early Rune Factory farming. It's a godsend they give you this tier of tools off the start in RF2. RF3's watering while walking and general speed helps to alleviate a lot of this, thankfully.  Took me 30 in-game minutes to water all of this. This took me nearly 2 hours before. What doesn't get any faster is harvesting Hopefully Grant and Gobbs pull their weight when I put them to work. That all done, I head off towards the mountain road, but as we're passing by Kross's place...    BUSH: Huh...?! BUSH: I don't remember this building... Took the words right out of my mouth!  Well, they're not open today, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow, I guess.  This big mansion is settled up on the hill to the right of the area, and will remain there for the rest of the game. I believe there was a bench here that is now gone forever But given that runeys don't really clump up on the hill, it should've been a minor hint that something was going to go there eventually. Anyways, back to rounding up the last bit of conversation for the day.   STELLA: Playing in the ocean is fine, but be careful so that you don't have any accidents. Bush physically can't play in the ocean, so there's no need to worry at all!   KANNO: It certainly is summer now. I get depressed thinking about how hot it'll continue to be. The clock tower is a large brick building so at least you don't have it as bad as you could have it.   LUTE: Really?! I love Chocolate. On my quest to squeeze every last bit of dialogue out of the town, I remember to give Lute the chocolate we bought for him.   KROSS: Heh... KROSS: Sorry. I couldn't stop the guy next door... I never thought I would see the only watermelon left destroyed before my eyes. Fate can be so cruel... RIP melon, sacrificed in vain for an only okay minigame  The only thing more depressing is the fact that the bathhouse isn't open today  It's because Melody is just standing over in this... empty spot next to the clock tower for some reason. I don't know if this spot ever gets used for anything.  MELODY: You have to take a bath whenever you sweat. It's been really hot recently so you have to be careful.  MELODY: Is there anything you don't like to eat, Bush?  MELODY: I hate mayonnaise. Just looking at it sends a shiver down my spine, so don't ever give it to me! I rather like mayonnaise myself, but hey, I don't judge.   DANNY: Beach season? Not interested. Danny's only interests are running a shop with a highly specialized inventory and standing around in various places with a slouch.   ANETTE: Hi, Bush. ANETTE: I hate ho hot it gets all day and night recently... I feel like I'll pass out... Anette's here on break today, with it being a festival. It's one of the rare times you can hear her afternoon greeting. The only thing rarer is her evening greeting, I guess.   ANETTE: I drink milk every morning but I still can't grow taller. I wonder why. Does milk affect height? I don't really know.  And to close out the day, I head down into Green Ruins to try and acquire that White Grass we needed to get for Melody. It's a 1% drop, so I'm not expecting to find-  Oh. Huh. Well, I doubt I'm getting that lucky again, so let's hope the questline ends with this.  Well, while I'm down here, I might as well show off the power of our new Silver Hammer. By using the special attack, we can break through that one section of rocks on the first floor that was blocking a pathway.  Inside is a cluster of rocks and a treasure chest. These rocks have a pretty high chance of dropping silver, so they're not bad to stop by every once in a while. The treasure chest just dropped normal level 1 rice.   Earring Lv:2 was synthesized with expertise! Before heading off to bed, I make some space by crafting some various items. This one's really the only one of relative note. And with that, we end our first festival! If anything, at least there was a lot of dialogue today. Tomorrow, may be more interesting as we'll be meeting our last two bachelorettes, and we also finally get to hear the new seasonal theme! Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Jan 1, 2022 07:03
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Feels odd to be putting out an update about Summer fun when it's New Year's Eve, but this Winter has been unusually warm where I'm at, so sure, whatever. Honestly, I spent that roughly two week period with my nose to the grindstone dealing with other stuff to the point I didn't really have much time to relax. At least it's all out of the way now, even if I definitely didn't get the amount of time to prep updates that I'd planned on. I do think that at least for a while, I may push updates to being just once a week. Not out of burnout or anything, (I'm still rather enjoying coming back to this game,) I'm just looking to give myself more time to work on each update for a little while. I've still got to go back and fix up some of the old updates. My recordings so far run up through the first week of Summer, and we'll be making major progress in the coming days. Also, the last two bachelorettes arrive next update, so look forward to that. Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jan 2, 2022 |
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Jan 1, 2022 07:14
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Yeah, you should pace yourself. I'm enjoying both your LPs, don't want you to not have time for them and your irl stuff and some downtime as well. I'm sad our wolf can't go for a swim. Everyone bitching about the heat doesn't have a fur coat and have to lug a human around.
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Jan 1, 2022 10:10
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Black Robe posted:Yeah, you should pace yourself. I'm enjoying both your LPs, don't want you to not have time for them and your irl stuff and some downtime as well. When I started doing these LPs, I had absolutely nothing else going on. Now I do! Kinda. Regardless, I think I'll be a bit more flexible with myself on putting out updates going forward. If anyone deserves a swim or some time in the hot springs, it's Pony. Between being a good tank in dungeons and eliminating so much travel time, she's the unsung hero here. In other news, I had too much fun and now my recordings are getting rather close to the date I'd roughly designated to be the Bachelorette Voting Tournament Part 1. I'm still figuring out the full specifics on how I wanted to go about it, but we're getting there. I could in theory just not have elimination rounds and continue as is, but I guess I'd like to leave people some reason to still play the game after this LP. (also the fact that some of the girls have barely 2 LP and I've been gifting them for over a month, while ones that have barely been around for two weeks have just left them in the dust) Also, er, here's a sneak peek of something:  I'm still simultaneously very impressed and deeply confused at this. Edit: Small little status update, I'm finally getting around to revising the first 10 or so updates to fall in line with the current format. So far, I've got the first two updates done. This also comes with patching up the music links with ones not bound to a playlist. Next update out on Saturday. Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Jan 4, 2022 |
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Jan 3, 2022 08:06
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Update 22: The Lady and the Trampoli New day for Bush, and our first real day of Summer!  Music: Summer(At last, the Summer seasonal theme! This one is one of my absolute favorites from Frontier. We'll hear it enough to get sick of it, but for now it's a jam. The main part has that distant up and down stringed instrument that reminds me of RF3.)  With this angle, you can see the grand amount of tomatoes we'll be growing soon enough. This wouldn't be possible to regularly manage without the Lion Can,let alone doing it all in just an in-game hour. It's actually going to start lagging the game when they do grow.  ANETTE: You want this White Grass delivered, right? Leave it to me.  Anette's got nothing new to say today, unfortunately, but on other topics, I managed to get a Ruby out of some rocks in Green Ruins. Nothing important about it really, just wanted to note that I found it here. Now off to go check the mail. It's really easy to get wrapped up in early morning farming and end up with Anette already passing your house.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"It has only been a little while..." - Tabatha~ My name is Tabatha, and I am currently residing in the Viviash Mansion in accompaniment to Little Miss Bianca for the summer. Although it is only for the summer, please consider us neighbors. ----------------------------------------------------- Well, there's the names of the last two bachelorettes. If you've played the first Rune Factory, you'll probably recognize them. You might have already recognized them from the intro movie in the first update, but here's the official introduction. I'll come back to that last sentence in the letter later.  Crest Lv:4 was synthesized. Before we go, I decide that Bush ought to make himself look sharp with some various high level monster parts I have sitting around. This replaces our Wappen, being +34 DEF and +24 MAG better than it. So now instead of having a tiny wooly image on our shoulder, we've got an even smaller carving of a Runey. At least, I think it's a Runey. Alright, looking our best, we head on over to the manor.  Music: Kross' ThemeKROSS: Bush... BUSH: Yes? But before we get there, Kross has a small event for us as he works on his roof.  KROSS: I'm sorry, but could you get that nail by your feet? BUSH: Sure. *He then proceeds to turn in place a few times.* BUSH: Um... Where is it? KROSS: Oh? I thought I put it there...  *Then he just jumps off the roof* KROSS: That's strange... Oh, it was in my pocket. Sorry for calling out to you.  Nah, it's cool, man, that jump was pretty sick. Here have another weird mask thing. This event is evidence of us getting Kross's friendship up a decent bit. It's going faster now that I'm actually using the right gifts.  Okay, now to the manor. It has a little fountain in the walled area next to it, but I don't think this spot gets used for anything. We enter to get another cutscene, after a long time of not having one. It'll be our last one for a long while.:  Music: de-Sainte Coquille(Two new tracks in the same update! What is this madness?! I like this theme, although it's short enough to become annoying rather quickly as it constantly plays whenever inside the manor.)   *She gives a small bow*  TABATHA: Welcome.  *At the sound of footsteps, she looks to her left*    BIANCA: Is someone there, Tabatha?  BIANCA: Ah!  ...A brief smile, then it's gone.  And that's all! At least nobody got hurt this time.  VILLA DE ST.CROQUILLE Croquille. croquille Possibly the most egregious typo/translation mishap yet, especially as it shows up in big letters every time you enter here. It's supposed to be "Coquille", a French loanword about shells and shellfish. Anyways, it's a big place, and oddly structurally very similar to most of the de Sainte-Coquille manors in the series. I guess they really just like this building style.   TABATHA: Oh hello, Bush. I am Tabatha, Miss Bianca's maid. TABATHA: Did you move here? BUSH: Well... A lot's happened since before... TABATHA: You haven't changed at all, Bush.  TABATHA: Miss Bianca will only be here during summer but I hope we will get along. TABATHA: Miss Bianca may say some pointed things to you, but please don't let it bother you. So, here's Tabatha! I kinda miss the country-ish accent she had in the first game. She is an elf, but she keeps her ears hidden... somehow. It visually used to make more sense, but now the maid cap sits further back on her head than before and it's kinda odd. Either way, she's generally very pleasant and chill, yet also one of the hardest characters to get gifts for. There is an "easier" way to get LP for her that we'll take a look at later, but just know that almost all of her liked gifts are foods requiring hard to get assortments of fruits, and her favorite is 80 cooking. (It's not the highest requirement though, that goes to Melody and her favored gift of Relax Tea, which requires 95 cooking. It's not actually that hard to make though.)  BUSH: Are you and Bianca the only ones here? TABATHA: Yes. I care for Miss Bianca and manage the mansion myself. BUSH: That sounds like a lot of work... TABATHA: I enjoy it because it is worth doing. TABATHA: It is quite fun to clean a large mansion. Why don't you try it, Bush? BUSH: I-I'm fine... TABATHA: Oh? That's unfortunate. Tabatha is cool with being a maid. The de Sainte-Coquille family has a long history of having elves in housework/management positions. RF3's manor is really the only one without an elven maid. Margaret from RF4 is a maybe...? Also, if there are any Jasper fans out there, he'll be unfortunately absent from the game.  TABATHA: Miss Bianca is not a bad person. She's just a bit... proud.  TABATHA: But she doesn't have may friends because of that... TABATHA: I just hope someone is willing to be her friend... She's also going to spend a decent amount of time telling us that "Bianca's not a bad person, I swear." Well, let's go meet her then.  BIANCA: Oh, Bush... Fancy seeing you here.  BIANCA: I, Bianca de Sainte-Coquille, had this summer home built to spend summers comfortably.  BIANCA: I only came here to cool off so I won't stay for long... BIANCA: But if you find anything interesting, I'll take it off your hands. And here's Bianca, the original blue-haired rich girl in the series, a position only held in the other games by her distant relatives. Seriously, almost all the women in this family have some shade of blue hair. Unfortunately for her, the summer heat here seems to be as bad here as anywhere else. The last line is also a bit misleading, I'll show why in a moment. What isn't misleading is that part about not staying for long. Bianca and Tabatha leave at the end of Summer. I'm not going to hide the fact we'll manage to find a way to keep them here, mostly because it's incredibly easy to have happen without trying. Because while marrying the Gourmet in More Friends of Mineral Town takes over 25 years is funny in concept, in practice it's not that enjoyable.  BIANCA: Oh, good morning. BIANCA: This summer home is a bit small. I wanted the bedroom to be much larger. Maybe I should have extensions built? Bianca will usually be found in various places across her already enormous manor, and it makes her rather annoying to find some days. At least being inside this place doesn't move the clock any, so you're not losing working hours, just real life minutes.  BIANCA: This is my first time to this village but there's really nothing here. Father should have sent me to the city... BIANCA: Do you know of anything interesting to do? Yeah, you really have to have some kind of hobby to live in Trampoli. You can go to church, go get drunk, or go to the library, and that's about it. I dunno, you want to take up monster ...I also just find the mental image of Bianca swinging a sword around to be funny for some reason.   BIANCA: What is this? Is it for me? I suppose I'll take it off your hands. I hand her a Tree Runey because I have too many of the things and also because she doesn't care what you give her. In fact, the only thing that affects her FP and LP positively is just talking to her (...and festivals too, of course). So yeah, you don't even have to bother gifting her anything. She's beyond such materialistic rituals. Well, either that or the fact she's got enough money to buy anything she could ever want already.  Bianca- The young miss of the opulent Viviash household. Seems selfish, but has a tender heart. Her bio and Tabatha's pushing pretty much tells you how her arc is going to go. Her affection gain from conversation is somewhere between double or triple the usual amount, as she already mildly interested in Bush in some sense. Well, that or the game's just compensating for the no gifts thing.  Tabatha- The elven maid under Bianca. Gentle and perfect in all her work. And thus stands our last two bachelorettes. I'm thinking I'll exclude these two from the initial voting for now as they haven't had nearly as much screentime. Iris may or may not get that first round immunity though, as her LP is about to start flying.  With all that out of the way, it's off to explore this massive mansion. Bianca's bedroom is as large as our house used to be!  In fact, the same goes for this... guest bedroom?  There's these little raised sections with chairs and tea tables on both sides, even on the second floor.  Oh, and there's even more to this place when you go through the center door.  Over here on the left a rather large dining room and kitchen combo.  To the right is what I believe is Tabatha's room, it's rathe roomy...  As well as a big storage room.  BIANCA: I heard you went to the Lava Ruins this time. BIANCA: What's so fun about such a hot place? The monsters in Lava Ruins aren't much fun, honestly. One of Bianca's easier to find spots is right here on the edge of her indoor fountain, drinking tea.  BIANCA: It seems that you're saving money, but that's still mere chicken feed. What is this chicken you speak of? I only know of cluckys.  The de Sainte-Coquilles are ungodly rich in a way that should horribly unbalance the economy, and it remains an eternal mystery as to where they even got the money from. They've got so much they personally fund festivals and other philanthropy just to have something to do with all of it. What I'm saying is that it'll be a long time before we'll have earned enough to be considered even marginally wealthy by Bianca's standards.  Speaking of feed, why does this manor have an indoor barn? Even if there was a monster in here, wouldn't you have to march it through the rest of the building to let it outside?  And to end our tour, opposite of the indoor barn is a large collection of wine. It's probably Jasper's and he just sent it here to make more room. I think he just likes collecting the stuff, given the Rollabouti sidequest from RF1. Either that, or he knows how to break the laws of matter and duplicate wine like Bush knows how to. Now that I think about it, it would explain all that money...  No, wait, we've got just a bit more to explore in this place first. Not much of what is spread about the manor can be interacted with, but these paintings can. I'll spare you the screenshots and just list the descriptions of the ones I did look at. BUSH: It's a painting of a mountain trail. It feels good looking at it for some reason. BUSH: A beautiful painting of flowers. The flowers are blooming so gently, it's pleasant to look at. BUSH: It's a beautiful painting of flowers. The flowers are in full bloom. Now we're done. They honestly put an absolute ton of work into the manor, but it barely gets used for much. Props goes to whoever did the modeling and design for this place, I wish we had more reason to explore it.  Music: SummerBack to the Summer theme!   EUNICE: I heard you were a friend of Mist... What exactly is your relation to her? BUSH: Let's see... oh no she's collecting evaluation info for the ringleader   BUSH: I had no water, no food, no memories, no friends, and no home. Yet, she gave me everything... BUSH: And she saved my life...  EUNICE: I see... It seems you've been through a lot. BUSH: Well, I don't remember anything about myself before I met Mist.  BUSH: But I really enjoy my life now.  EUNICE: I guess so! You can always make new memories! BUSH: I guess you're right. Bush and his great reverence for the girl who gave him her breakfast once and her rundown farm continues, but you do you, bud. It'd honestly be a pretty chill life to have.  TB: Did you hear me? Just because there is no one to wake you in the morn, that does not give you the right to slumber on!  UZUKI: I know... BUSH: What happened? TB: Oh, it's you, Bush... I had some business to tend to this morn so I was not at the inn. It caused milady to oversleep.  UZUKI: Oversleep? I only woke a mere 5 minutes later... TB: Graaaggh! That "mere" 5 minutes will be the death of you! Besides... BUSH: There he goes again... Tsubute proves himself to be once again not only crochety, but unrealistically strict. The dialogue between these two does get better later, but Uzuki is really slow to gain LP. Also doesn't help that her favorite item is a level 45 accessory with a complicated recipe.   UZUKI: Ah-ahhhhh!! BUSH: W-what happened?! UZUKI: Something black and quick scuffled by my feet... Ahhhhhh! TB: Milady! Please get a hold of yourself! UZUKI: I-I hate black things that are quick and small! This is the usual "girl hates bugs/mice" thing, but the concept of courage and bravery is somewhat important to her story arc at least. I ain't gonna judge, bugs make me jumpy too.   RITA: A tip? How nice of you. Rita's favorite gift is pretty much any accessory. Apparently those are tips to her. For reference, the only non-favorite accessory is Cheap Bracelets, which are only liked.  GANESHA: There are lots of monsters in the Lava Ruins that are resistant to heat. GANESHA: But they're also weak towards cold so you should adjust your equipment in that way. We'll be working towards some water damage gear soon, but I've found that in practice a lot the current available water weapons are kinda sub-par. There's no water axes, and the lower level water staff is kinda eh. The higher level water staff needs a Magic Crystal, which is going to be a pain to get.  ROSETTA: Thank you for shipping so many things out every day. Thanks to you, business is really good. Oh, just you wait. I'm going to be shipping out more than triple what I've been selling by the end of this week.  Then following that, I skill up in fishing by accidentally hooking Danny. He has nothing to say but that Rosetta is a cheater, unwilling to accept her superior capitalism skills or risk-taking nature.  SELPHY: People say that I'm not really feminine or ladylike. SELPHY: I learned a lot of manners and etiquette of a lady from my tutor when I was little.  SELPHY: But they were all such a pain so I ended up forgetting all of it. Hahahaha.   SELPHY: ... BUSH: Um... SELPHY: ... BUSH: (She's concentrating. I should leave her alone.) Not just concentrating, she's metabolizing the knowledge gained for sustenance.  Oh, hey, the magic book club has expanded!  MELODY: It's better to boil the red plant there!  LARA: Oh really? If you add in the red plant here, you'll make something that can be hazardous to your health. MELODY: That's what makes it good! Homemade stuff should always have some kinda weird side effect to it! LARA: We can't give those to sick patients then... Where Marian mostly just ends up making weird potions, Melody's out to make them.  CINNAMON: ... Then... just add ths herb in.  MELODY: Ah... Now we can get that side effect while still making it an energy drink! ♪ LARA: It smells a bit odd, but it sure looks like it is good for your health. Good job, Cinnamon.  CINNAMON: ...Done. Bush, try it out. BUSH: What? Why me?!  ---------------- 1. Bottoms up! 2. No, thanks... ---------------- It's what you get for listening in on the conversation. But we also get choices! First the refusal option: ----------------------------------------------------- No, thanks...  BUSH: I-I'll pass... It has a strange color and besides, is this even safe? LARA: It should be just fine. MELODY: A drug with no side effects isn't a real drug! ♪  MELODY: Melody! Don't chug it down! *(I don't know who this line is supposed to belong to, but it's definitely not supposed to be Melody.)* BUSH: Melody! Nooooo! BUSH: ... LARA: How... is it?  BUSH: I feel... BUSH: Much better! This drug is really good!  CINNAMON: ...As expected. No problem. BUSH: But it tastes terrible. Yech...  CINNAMON: The taste was not considered. Still has room for improvement. BUSH: Please do so... I'm pretty sure this would be an ethics violation if Trampoli had any sort of medical committee that wasn't just these three girls. Now for the first option. ----------------------------------------------------- Bottoms up!  BUSH: Here I go then... BUSH: ... BUSH: I feel... BUSH: Much better! This drug is really good! CINNAMON: ...As expected. No problem. BUSH: But it tastes terrible. Yech... CINNAMON: The taste was not considered. Still has room for improvement. BUSH: Please do so... ----------------------------------------------------- So it's mostly the same, but as usual in this game the second option has more to it.  MELODY: Lara learns so fast. I think she'll catch up to me soon. MELODY: I'm going to try even harder now!  MELODY: I usde to travel to hot springs around the world. MELODY: Up north, they bathe in hot water and then jump in the snow. It felt so good! That sounds like... an experience. Apparently this is a real thing for saunas in Finland and has some health benefits?  LARA: Having adventures is good and everything, but please be careful. Staying healthy is the greatest blessing. LARA: When you get knocked out by monsters or collapse from overworking, you will be brought into the infirmary. But please try to be careful so that it doesn't have to come to that. Frontier never really explains how you end up in the infirmary, but it's better than dying! Cinnamon has nothing for us today, so it's time to be off to go do other stuff.  Music: Lava Ruins"Other stuff" means it's time for some more Lava Ruins.  I'm mostly farming ants, but here's what happens when you strike the bombs spread about. The explosions will hurt quite a bit, but also destroy these rubble piles.  More insect hides for our new forge. I'm hoping to get a Silver Bracelet to help boost our magic power, but I'm also hunting Killer Ants for the better chance at higher level skins as I've got some higher level silver off those Golems from before.  A little more than three hours of hunting and I've got enough. Despite how long this update has been so far, it's been rather short in-game.  I seem to have gotten level 8 insect hides somehow    Silver Ring Lv:5 was synthesized. With the materials I had at hand, this was the best I could manage. Still, +10 ATK, +36 DEF, and +30 MAG is fantastic. That's a gain of +6, +26, and +20 in the respective categories. Bush is really starting to seriously gear up now. The golems will still put holes clear through him, but he's getting there. The later floors of Lava Ruins will still have to wait though. The damage spike is crazy. I still just need an Oven to make toast though. Toast will be a truly reliable source of HP if Lute would just sell the darn thing at some point. I always have problems buying the oven in the earlier RF games.  I've remembered to start bringing Erik some strawberries. It's just rather annoying that he's out in his field before 12:00 PM because I have to run through 4 loading screens just to talk to him. If he's behind the store counter, it's only 2 screens. The loading screens are still not that fast on emulator, and they add up over time.   NOLAN: The people of this village are all very nice people. NOLAN: They talk to me like I'm one of their own. You're here more often than you're not. You pretty much already live here!  I hope Melody doesn't mind me tearing up the floor as I cast spells to burn HP/RP.  I nab a knife piece on my way to visit Iris. I'll need this to upgrade my sickle.   IRIS: Zzz... Zzz... If you visit the Tower of Rest before 6 PM, Iris will be asleep.   IRIS: Is this for me? Thank you! I love tomato juice! And with this, we finally can gift someone their favorite item. She'll start catching up with the other gals rather fast and start bringing more conversation to the table. Given she doesn't really leave this place, new dialogue from higher FP/LP is really all we get with her.  IRIS: There are plenty of monsters that are stronger than you, Bush. IRIS: Please have caution. This isn't bad advice as the next areas of Whale Island will start to hit like flaming trucks even with our currently boosted DEF.  Before we close out the day, I grab Phanty and head back down into Lava Ruins to hunt some Ignis. The magic staff book we have happens to be the only book for magic staves in the game, meaning we know all the recipes already. With an expanded forge, we can start to make some of the later level ones, but first we need magic powder and crystals.  This spot to the south of the farmfields spawns two Ignis at a time, which makes farming a bit easier.  Ah, finally. I'll nab as much of this as I can before I leave as it is also Kanno's favorite gift.  The danger of these monsters is that they can inflict Seal, as has been done to poor Phanty here, which prevents use of special attacks. Given those are what Bush primarily uses to defeat enemies, we really need to avoid getting hit with it. At least it doesn't block the ability to use the teleport like RF1 did. That was just pure pain.  Bush does eventually get hit with it, but by that time he's already tapped out, so I was already planning on jumping ship. I managed to get 6 magic powder, so it turned out pretty well. I do need to get a hold of some roundoff, the seal cure medicine, when we start doing more adventuring for real.  Before we close out the update, I've got one last weapon I'm looking to make: the Gaea Rod.  It boasts a respectable 70 ATK, 7 more than our Tomahawk, and also the extreme requirements of 40 required Magic skill and use of 40 RP per cast. We're only a little more than half of what it wants right now, but we can still make use of it from time to time. The magic boost it grants us is also lower than the earlier staves, but that's to compensate for the stronger spell.  Bush lets out a large yell and causes a minature earthquake when he uses it. Not only does it deal some decently high earth damage that can hit twice in a deceptively large area of effect, it will apply some serious knockback to enemies. The per hit damage of the bonk is comparable to our axe with decent knockback as well, but the axe's special attack still keeps it way ahead for the moment. Our later axes will easily outmatch it as well. With Bush moving up in the magic world, it's time to call it for the night, and the update. A bit shorter than usual, but the de Sainte-Coquille manor took up a lot on it's own. Next time we should probably be able to fit in two days. Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Jan 8, 2022 17:30
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A Rune Factory game can't be complete until a de-Sainte Coquille is in it. The game seems to be in full swing by now, threat of being crushed by a floating island now distant in mind. Hoping for more events of interesting kinds to come soon.
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Jan 8, 2022 18:04
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Odd Wilson posted:Frontier never really explains how you end up in the infirmary, but it's better than dying! I assume our long-suffering wolf drags us there.
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Jan 8, 2022 23:05
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Update 23: Master Bush's Monster Music: Trampoli Daily LifeMorning, Bush! What were we up to? ...No, but seriously I got carried away and played too far ahead- I don't know what's going on. A lot goes on in the next 12 days. I guess in a way, it makes writing the update more fun?  Pickles Lv:2 were synthesized with expertise! Seems like we're starting the day with pickles then. Gotta work on that income.   Dye Sashimi Lv:4 was synthesized with expertise. Oh, and some sashimi made from trout that had been sitting in the shipping bin overnight, sure.  Music: SummerDidn't have to chase Anette down to Mist's house today! Feels good. You know, while I felt like asking for the mail directly might be annoying, doing it as she's putting it in has to be irritating. Still gives us +1 towards that next level of LP though.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"I would love to meet them." - Tabatha~ I heard that you have many monster friends. Would you be willing to introduce me to them sometime? ----------------------------------------------------- Tabatha really likes monsters, as we'll get to see soon enough. In fact, to marry her in RF1, you had to have 50 tamed monsters in your barn. The options for replies are: "Of course." and "Sorry...". I go with the former, because monsters are cool and Tabatha is cool.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"Thanks♪" - Melody~ Thanks or the White Grass.♪ I'm really really sorry to ask you again, but do you have any Black Grass? This will be the last one, I promise! ----------------------------------------------------- Hey, don't apologize, this is the closest I'm getting to a request chain in this game. Black Grass is gonna be a bit of a problem to get, as it has the same 1% drop rate from Slimes as the white one did. I've also got a feeling I won't be getting as lucky this time. Being Summer, there is another way to obtain it, but honestly farming slimes is preferable to it. We'll run into it eventually, but not for a while.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"Be careful of those summertime colds!" - Lara~ Summer seems to be in full force now. It may be hot, but don't sleep with your windows open at night or without a blanket. It gets cold in the mornings and you'll be sure to catch a cold this way. ----------------------------------------------------- See, where I live it stays hot at night during summer, so I can't relate to this. Anyways, Bush will continue avoiding getting sick, although I can't guarantee we'll make it the whole season without going down at least once.  Anette sadly has no new dialogue for us today, so the only bit of interesting morning stuff I have to show is how these three Blue Grasses spawned in a line. Riveting, I know.  Lots of Runeys out on the Grass Farm, but it doesn't really matter as the 7 Day Rule is in effect. I don't have to pay attention to these floaty goobers for the rest of the week. Oh, hey, it's the girl that we still haven't gotten the name of.   MYSTERY GIRL: Oh, nice to see you again. MYSTERY GIRL: Come to think of it, I haven't asked your name yet. BUSH: My name is Bush.  MYSTERY GIRL: Bush, is it? Nice to meet you. Um... are you going to tell us your name yet?  MYSTERY GIRL: Hello, Bush. I... guess not. She does have a little bit of voice acting though. So that's neat.  BUSH: Are you growing these, Mist? MIST: Yeah. Watching you work on the farm made me want to try it myself... I can't believe it finally happened. Mist finally started growing stuff herself instead of only watching us do it all the time. Well, aside from the wildflowers she's been growing.  BUSH: I've never seen leaves like these before. What are these flowers called? MIST: I wonder... I just found the seeds by chance, so I don't know. MIST: Well, it's more exciting when it'll be a surprise, I guess. BUSH: That's true. I'd be worried that it's not going to grow, but given it's managed a small sprout instead of being withered grass already, it seems like it has survived Norad's extremely volatile growing conditions.  Time to go brush all the monsters in the barn! If you're wondering why I don't try to level up any of the other monsters to help in combat, it is because the rate at which frienship is gained with monsters is based on their level. If I want higher level eggs, milk, and wool, it's best if I leave the rest in the barn.  Tabatha's so good at her job, she ends up with a decent amount of free time. Thus why she's spending her morning outside our barn. You can, uh, go in if you want. Bush doesn't mind.  TABATHA: It's very hot every day. But that doesn't mean you should drink only cold things. TABATHA: How is it? Did you find anything on Whale Island?  TABATHA: Monsters attack humans so they are hated, but they have adorable eyes when you look at them carefully. TABATHA: I think you can communicate with monsters if you deal with them with lots of love. I'm sorry Tabatha, but the Love element isn't present in this game. That's a RF3 and later thing.  TABATHA: You look good today, Bush. I also just wanted to restate that her generic dialogue line is a compliment on Bush's style. I mean, she'll say this to us any day no matter what he's wearing, but it's the thought that counts. Unfortunately, we still lack any suitable gifts for her. Apples are probably her easiest liked gift, but those stopped being sold at the bar when it turned Summer. So, really we don't have anything to give her.  KANNO: The next test is to get an "Emerald." KANNO: Hurry up and get it. I don't really know where to get that at with mining, so uh, it'll be a while. I'll figure it out eventually. When in doubt, I can go magick the giant chicken out of this plane of existence again. It has a chance to drop it.  STELLA: The other day, the "Cornucopia Trees" at the lake bore fruit. It tasted really good. BUSH: Oh, really? That sounds great. STELLA: Anybody in the village is allowed to take some so you should go try it out. But don't take too many. BUSH: Haha... I know. So where are these "Cornucopia Trees"? STELLA: The "Cornucopia Trees" are east of the lake so you have to go by boat. Hit a tree with a hammer and fruit will fall. BUSH: I see. Thank you. I'll go check it out later. STELLA: Yes, you go do that. You might remember the fruit trees from previous updates, but I don't visit them very often. They're alright money, especially in the early game, and as RP food they're not awful, but getting them takes so much time and RP to start with. This season's fruit is Oranges, so I'll end up grabbing some, but I'm not going to make a dedicated effort to collect all of the fruit. It's not like the fruit fully respawns every day anyhow.  SELPHY: Haha... Lara got mad at me again. BUSH: You probably didn't sleep or eat again. Of course she would get mad. SELPHY: Yeah, but people won't die just because they go without food or sleep a little. SELPHY: The other day, I realized that I hadn't slept in 3 days. But after that, I slept through an entire day. BUSH: That's exactly why Lara gets mad at you...  Just to note, going 3 days without sleeping means you've already been experiencing blackouts for over a day, and you're probably hallucinating. Well, if your brain can even process anything that is. Selphy remains amazing and worrying at the same time.   DANNY: Hey, Silver. Thanks, Bush. Danny's favorite gift is silver. I just had some extra so I threw it at him. This doesn't get him to say anything new to us though.   ROSETTA: Mist and I are childhood friends, but Eunice and Tabatha come often so we get along really well. Tabatha's been here for 2 days- how often is she coming by?  ROSETTA: What do you think of my store? I actually like it. ROSETTA: I guess the shelf behind the counter looks a bit cramped. I guess I should place the merchandise a bit further apart. What do you think?  --------------------------------- 1. I think so, too. 2. I like it the way it is. --------------------------------- Multiple choice time! Change it up posted:
The seasonal seeds already aren't on the same shelf as one another, I don't honestly think you can make any more room. ----------------------------------- Don't change it posted:
In a shocking twist of events, the second option doesn't have more dialogue than the first!  EUNICE: Bush! Let me tell you something nice. EUNICE: You should use egg shells when you clean the blender. Looking it up, apparently the idea is that powdered egg shells can help clean the blades. Huh.  BIANCA: It's hot. I feel like I'm inside an oven. You know, the little fur jacket is probably not helping. A lot of people have very little to say today. Alas!  Bianca's LP gain is slow, but Tabatha took a big jump towards reaching LP 1. I originally presumed this was thanks to the number of monsters we had tamed, but it could also be thanks to the letter from this morning. I was confused as to why Lara still hasn't hit LP 2 despite being here longer than Selphy, but then I remembered that she's a nun. That would, uh, probably be part of it. Melody's definitely catching up though.  Speaking of Melody, here's her in a swimsuit without her hat. Her hair is as much of a mess as you'd think it'd be.  Bush fails to give her a gift four times in a row somehow. I wait around for an hour for her to leave the changing room, but she doesn't show and I cut my losses. It's not like I won't see her at the bathhouse later today.  With nothing else really being a pressing matter, I head down to Green Ruins and attempt to get that Black Grass by grinding slimes.  If anything, it's an excuse to level our Magic skill some more so that we can use this Gaea Rod better.  I don't end up finding the grass, and by 2:00 PM, Bush is on the verge of passing out. I head back out to the beach to do... something. Mostly just kill time until I can get into the bathhouse today.  Bianca's at the beach now in her swimsuit. The only bachelorette whose swimsuit we haven't seen yet is Tabatha. Oh, and maybe Anette. I can't remember if we've seen hers.  Oh, and here's Candy. She blends into the environment enough I didn't even notice her while Bush was riding by. I thought her hair was another starfish. In general I'm really bad about finding her and Marco on the best of days. Beach season just makes it even more difficult. Anyways, enough time burnt, off to nab a bath so I can get on with the rest of the day.  MELODY: The bath salts I made the other day turn the bath into a pretty green color. MELODY: But it needs lots of medicinal herbs o make so it's not cost efficient at all. Too bad... I mean, your profit margin is already extremely thin, so I get it.  NOLAN: I hear that the people in the eastern country drink alcohol while they are in the bath.  NOLAN: I was thinking of sneaking some alcohol into the bath myself... My dude, I don't think telling Melody that will get her to not throw you out every time you try it, but go ahead. You're going to set some kind of world record at this rate.  Being freshly restored, Bush heads up to Whale Island to visit Iris, taking a stop along the way to grind more Magic skill and hopefully get some White Grass out of a slime. All I really accomplish in doing this is to collect a lot of Toxin. I don't really have any use for it, so to the shipping bin it goes. I don't know who Rosetta will be selling this deadly poison to, but it's not my problem.   Also, here's Iris before and after gifting a tomato juice. It's worth a little less than 1/3 the bar,(supposedly valued at +9 points), so I'm going to go off on a limb and say each full point of LP takes about 30 points worth of talking and gifts. She's going to start catching up to Selphy and Melody very soon.  IRIS: I drew another picture. Would you like to see it? BUSH: Gladly! BUSH: ...(Is this a... ghost? Wait, this happened last time so I should...) BUSH: That's a very cute Wooly. You're very good.   IRIS: That's... a moon... BUSH: What?! I-it's a beautiful moon. You're very good! BUSH: ...Sorry. Well, with that done, there's not much left to do in the day.  I stop by the bar to stock up on rice...  And go wait out that constellation.  Found Buffamoo Constellation! It takes until almost 1:00 AM the next day, but here it is! This one's linked to Anette, presumably due to the comment on how she drinks milk to grow taller.  Well, not much happened. Time to hit the hay and hope more goes on tomorrow.  Music: VisionsOh, huh. Looks like staying up late is giving us weird dreams again. GREEN VOICE: "Oh-ho! My thanks." GREEN VOICE: "So you can lend a hand now. How remarkable." GREEN VOICE: "This time, I want you to bring that to me."  Well, that was strange. Time to forget about it and go onto another day of trying to gear up to handle this game's extreme power curve! And by gear up, I mean make bank. We just made a bunch to cap off last season, but we're about to make even more. But before that, I have to split this update in half. I went exactly 3125 characters over the limit. Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2022 00:54
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Update 23.5: Master Bush's Monster, Part 2 You got a Moondrop Seed. We're running out of flowers to give to Eunice, so I converted one of the last ones we have to a seed bag. I'll stick 'em on that little bit of field next to the gate that still hasn't opened.  I also make some more tomato juice.  In doing this, Bush hits Cooking skill 60. It's his highest skill by far at this point, mostly just because I've been wrenching every last bit of gold out of everything we can sell. It'll come in handy though as some of the high level dishes are really strong, and it just means we're closer to the point where we can make any of the bachelorettes' favorite foods.  Grant and Gobbs are hopefully going to pull their weight when it comes to harvesting all these tomatoes, otherwise I'll be spending hours doing it when they're finally ready. I stop just in time to catch Anette at the mailbox. I'm getting better at it!  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"I failed." - Mist~ I woke up very early this morning. Do you want to know why? I had a dream that I dove into the ocean and actually fell off my bed. It was already almost dawn, so I decided to stay up and go for a walk. It was actually pretty nice. ----------------------------------------------------- I think I did this once when I was younger. Nowadays I sometimes just wake up like 30-40 minutes earlier than usual for no reason and just feel bad whether or not I go back to sleep. Part of me wants to say that this letter is supposed to be headered with "I fell", but I guess it still kinda works? Still not as good as "I got the turnip." It's hard to beat that one.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"I'll be looking forward to it." - Tabatha~ Thank you very much. I am already excited to be meeting Master Bush's monster. ----------------------------------------------------- Tabatha, you're more formal than Uzuki. I guess that fits. Also, I have 10 monsters, are you going to ask by mail regarding each one? Hell, I was standing in front of you yesterday with Pony and you didn't say a thing. I mean if you are, I don't mind. Now that I'm out of books to read, I pretty much look forward to whatever mail I get every day.  ANETTE: *yawn*  ANETTE: Oh, no. I stayed up too late last night so I feel a bit sleepy. I do that just about every night, but I feel sleepy no matter what- thanks insomnia!  Chopping Axe Lv:2 was synthesized with expertise! I take a short break to work on levelling up our wood axe a bit. This is mostly to grind Forging skill as we'll just be better suited just upgrading to the next tier when we really want to do some wood collection.  Another round of gathers from the monsters today. I'll eventually have something to do with all these eggs and milk. We've got stuff to make with the wool as well, and it's not too far off.  Come to me, dungeon strawberries. You may not play a major role in my income anymore, but you're still a good gift for the, like 5 different people in town. Off to the beach to go fishing!  Sardine(10 cm) Lv:3 was caught. WOW, I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT BEFORE! GOOD JOB! Sardines tend to be one of the most disappointing catches you can make, mostly because you need multiple to even cook them into a dish. They are still perfectly fine as gifts for the two girls who like random fish, though! ...Maybe there's a reason why they're lagging behind in LP.  Oh, hey, Anette's stopped by the beach today. She does this occasionally. I apparently just missed Melody and Lara, who are just leaving.  SELPHY: It's cool by the ocean, but the ocean breeze can be bad for the books. I can't read there! Oh, and Selphy is over here. Seemingly, the girls can have some really random spots on the beach.  SELPHY: Whether to clean or not. That is the question... Doesn't seem like I'll be getting a chance to change my answer on this, so I guess things will just continue to progress. It's hard to find accurate information on these games sometimes, especially the older ones. I'm also a bit disappointed that this line isn't: "To clean or not to clean, that is the question..." I get the feeling that's what they were maybe going for, but they didn't commit to it all the way.  Anette's still in there it seems. She's humming something, and it's rather pretty. A number of the girls have some really good singing voices. At the moment, I wondered if this had something to do with her constellation event, so I knocked on the door. ...Or well, tried to.  Music: Confusion(A different track is supposed to play in the first half of this, but it happens to be a semi-spoiler. Have the track from the second half instead.) BUSH: !! Um, what?  Okay, a fade to blue. That's new.   ANETTE: Hmm hm hmm...♪ ANETTE: ...? ANETTE: Ahhhh!  Bush (Farmer) (Is this a reference to something? It has to be because I have no idea why this is here.)  BUSH: I'm sorry!  ANETTE: I-I'm sorry if I surprised you. ANETTE: And I'm sorry you had to see that. BUSH: It wasn't anything strange, I don't think.  ANETTE: Really? Thanks. ANETTE: ...Wait, you saw it?! BUSH: N-no! I didn't see anything!  Aaaand that happened. I was genuinely just trying to knock on the door, but apparently there's even more  than I thought there was in this game. Seriously, I'm no prude, but just... why? I'm not going out of my way to see these, same deal as the bathhouse. Oh, and doing this also reduces LP, unlike the ones in the bathhouse.  Music: TrampoliANETTE: You know Tabatha? Isn't she so mature, slender, and beautiful? I wish I were like that... Also, yes, the characters don't really get different poses in their swimsuits. We don't get different poses in general until RF3. Anette's pose still kinda works anyways.  Anyways, here have a second strawberry. It doesn't actually do anything LP-wise, but it's the thought that counts.  MIST: How's the exploration of Whale Island been going? Everything all right? Yeah, I'm still waiting on that dang door to open, so it's not like I've really gone much farther.   MIST: Let me tell you some of the most up to date information today. Do you have a notepad ready? Are we... moving up the ranks? Is Bush part of the inner circle of the underground operation now?   MIST: My birthday is on the 1st of autumn. It's very auspicious to be born on the 1st. oh. well ok  MIST: Please grow turnips. Seems like business as usual, I guess.  MELODY: My birthday is on the 11th of spring. I'll be waiting for a present! Everyone's telling us their birthday now, I guess. Also, Melody, we got you a present last time! It's already marked on our calendar that I never look at!  MELODY: They taught me how to use the magic staff, but it's actually really hard. I can't get the hang of it. I mean, Bush just kinda points it in some direction and yells really loudly. Have you tried that?  LARA: I have been keeping in touch with my old friends through mail after I moved here. LARA: It's quite nice to keep in touch with friends that are far away since we can exchange information about each other. I mean, it makes more sense than the mailbox equivalent of passing notes in class that we're doing here, but I should also stop bringing that up because I like the letters.  CINNAMON: Did you find the Buffamoo Constellation? BUSH: The person who found that complex constellation first must have been amazing. It's... not really that complex? I guess compared to the others it is.  CINNAMON: That Buffamoo is the legendary Buffamoo that had a contest of strength with a troll and pulled up the celestial river. BUSH: That must have been an amazing Buffamoo. CINNAMON: Yes, it's an incredible Buffamoo. Okay, that's actually pretty sick. I take back what I said about your constellation, Incredible Buffamoo.  CINNAMON: ...What do you want? More dialogue, but I guess I'm not getting that.  DANNY: It's so hot. DANNY: The weather is so nice. I want to go outside! um dan dan my man The latter is supposed to be a generic line with the former being the daily weather comment, but I guess we can take it as him liking the heat?  DANNY: I'm good at sewing. DANNY: I made these clothes myself. Surprised? DANNY: So if you have any extra "Good Cloth" laying around, share some with me. You can spare some right, Bush? I'm not surprised that the super deep v-neck shirt is custom made. I don't have any quality cloth though, and I won't have any for a while, even when I go searching for it in a few days from now. It's supposed to be like a 15% drop off of ghosts in the Lava ruins. In practice so far it's been 0%.  BUSH: Rosetta... ROSETTA: What is it, Bush? Are you worried about the thing with Danny? ROSETTA: Thanks, but these things will happen as long as we run businesses. Just watch! I won't let this hold me back! Rosetta welcomes the competition- go ahead and put your money on the line, she ain't afraid.  UZUKI: I can care for myself! My training with the naginata is for precisely that! TB: B-but! If anything were to happen where you were to recieve some injury...  TB: I will commit seppuku if anything were to happen to you! UZUKI: Bush, you must convince Tsubute that he cannot protect me from the monsters. UZUKI: Well, I am flattered... I would be doubtful that the tiny cricket samurai man can fight well in combat, but in the land of anime, anything is possible I guess.  TB: Graaagh! *Cicada noises* BUSH: W-what's wrong?! UZUKI: It seems that you have caught me at a terrible time, Bush. *Cicada noises* UZUKI: Right now, I am having an argument with Tsubute. He always becomes overexcited and cannot do anything. BUSH: Huh?! What happened? *Cicada noises* UZUKI: I said that you are too noisy so we cannot even talk! BUSH: What was that?! *Cicada noises* UZUKI: Keep your mouth shut a little, Tsubute! I guess he's a tiny cicada samurai man, then? Well, anyways, we better just move on. No use in continuing this communication disaster.  CANDY: Sometimes, Marco's mom treats me to lunch. It's really good. MARCO: Really? My mom never seems to be able to do housework... CANDY: Well, Sis and Grandpa just can't cook.  MARCO: Candy, you're not really comparing good examples... CANDY: Really?! Everyone's arguing today. It's not like the Runeys here are unbalanced or anything. Actually, wait, they might be. I don't really check the places that aren't my prospering zones.  CANDY: Recently, I grew to like drinking juice while eating apple pie. CANDY: Is there anything you like to eat? That's a lot of sugar, but I guess it fits. Bush, uh, eats anything with high RP values or good buffs. In practice this has been fried fish, but maybe that'll change soon when we get some real utensils.  Tabatha doesn't have anything new right now, alas.  And neither does Bianca. She does get some good lines later, but it'll take some time to get there.  ERIK: Young man! You sure know what to give. I'll take great care of it. It's a strawberry. Like, a normal strawberry. For whatever reason, Erik says different things when gifting him sometimes. I don't really know why.  Some point along the line, we found ourselves a Water Crystal. I believe it dropped off the slimes while I was grinding them for the White Grass, they do have a tendency to drop element crystals. I stick it in our expanded forge alongside some iron and a teardrop to make...  Water Rod Lv:2 was synthesized with expertise! We'll go give this a shot in a minute.  Somewhere along the line I also upgraded to a Steel Sickle, the third tier of its category. It lets me cut full 3x3s at a time, nothing special. If you're desperate for a weapon, it's passable, but you're better off with something real.  Music: Kross' ThemeKROSS: Did you know? There is a rumor of a farmer that destroyed an iron tank of the Zzyzx Empire with only a watering can... KROSS: The farming tools that can create the future defeated the weapons made to kill people. That's wonderful, but...  KROSS: Hmph! KROSS: ...that's only a fairytale. It was very possible in RF1. Seriously, a third tier watering can did insane damage at full charge, even to a water resistant boss. Also, the Empire, I've been dancing around it's name until this moment, but for whatever reason they localized it as... that. You might know it as the Sechs Empire in every other RF game. Also, you okay there, Kross? That "hmph" sounded like it hurt. I dunno, his HP might be low. Bush gets that a lot when farming.  Speaking of getting hurt, Lava Ruins time! Still attempting to get some Magic Crystals both for the better staves and for Cinnamon.  The watering can deals decent damage to the Ignis, which I suppose makes sense. Just using our axe is better, really.  I wasn't kidding earlier when I said the steel sickle could output some serious damage though. This special attack hit twice for almost 200 damage.  Meanwhile, the Water Laser from our new staff hits for... 80. This is against a spirit of materialized fire.  Unlike previous and later entries of the spell, this one doesn't like to hit more than once. Well, at least when we use it. We'll eventually meet some enemies that will do major damage with it.  I still spent a while trying to make it seem good to myself. Eventually I get sealed, and that's pretty much it for this dungeon delve. All of Bush's damage really comes out of the special action, axe included, so he's kinda a sitting duck like this. Not like a Duck as in the ones down here that disco explode. Like, a normal duck.  Miss Lara! Help me, Miss Lara! I don't wanna die!  --------------------------------- I don't feel so good... --------------------------------- LARA: Oh, my! Let me take a look at you. Take a deep breath... Now exhale... LARA: I see... It seems that you are "Sealed." It's all right. I'll treat you right away. This may sting a little. LARA: There, it's all better.  LARA: Please be more careful. The treatment is 100 gold. LARA: Thank you. Please be careful so that you won't have to come here. As is usual for doctors in the series, you can pay a small fee to get your status effects cleared. Edward from RF1 did it for free on festival days, which was pretty nice, but I don't think that carries over to any other games in the series. This doesn't do anything for LP though, and I kinda wish it would. Lara's LP is so slow.  And to follow that, we take our bath for the day to get fully restored.  Since I ended up getting a Fire Crystal off the Ignis down there, I reasoned it wouldn't be a terrible idea to make a Hell Branch, the upgraded fire staff.   It follows the same principle as the other second tier staves, it summons an area of effect spell. Hell Branch is pretty underwhelming damage-wise given the name, but it's more stamina efficient than the Gaea Rod.  Up on Whale Island, I give it a test drive trying to get that White Grass. I still don't find it. Well, off to visit Iris and close out the day!  Music: Whale Island OutsideBut as we approach the door, we get cutscene!  BUSH: ... ...Good evening.   DAPPER MYSTERY MAN: ... Oh, he's rather fancy. Actually, drat, I kinda really like that getup, even with the cloak pinned at the bicep for whatever reason.   BUSH: ... ...Um... Bush is evidently in awe of the dapperness, and can't think of anything to say as the stylish dude just wanders off.  he opened the gate finally WE CAN PROGRESS  Thank you, wordless dapper man!  Iris, we're throwing a party, right now. Tomato juice! Tomato juice for everyone!  BUSH: I passed by a man in front of your house. Do you know him? BUSH: I've never seen him around town before... Oh, er, I got caught up in finally having somewhere else to go other than Lava Ruins that I forgot to question the existence of the dapper man. You're on point today, Bush. Actually, wait, Melody can get up here for whatever reason, so it's probably no big deal.  IRIS: Oh, so you met Gelwein. IRIS: Gelwein is a friend of mine. BUSH: I see. He's not from Trampoli, is he? IRIS: I don't really know where he's from, but he comes by from time to time to chat. IRIS: Gelwein knows so many things, and he tells the most interesting stories. I almost forget the time when I'm talking with him. BUSH: Is that so... He must be a very nice person. I dunno, he didn't seem particularly talkative to me. I guess this means we'll have to find him to see for ourselves.  IRIS: Yes. Very very nice! IRIS: I used to be so lonely, singing to myself all the time, but things have become so much better since I met Gelwein. IRIS: Bush, you come by as well now, so I'm not lonely at all anymore. BUSH: I didn't know you sing, Iris. Would you mind singing for me some time? IRIS: Of course! BUSH: I'll be looking forward to it then. I don't know if they forgot or what, but nobody's expression changes at all during this conversation. A development oversight, maybe?  IRIS: I hear that you're going around Whale Island, Bush. IRIS: Please be careful so that you don't get injured. Well, things aren't going to be any easier further on, so yeah. I'm hoping to not get too hurt.  TO PROGRESS TO ENEMIES THAT HURT AS HARD AS THE ONES I'M TRYING TO AVOID ONWARD, PONY, TO THE FUTURE!  WHALE ISLAND FLANK New area, same music. I don't mind, this one's still a jam. This area's characterized by having three layers, the lower one being this brick wall that we run across. Unfortunately, it's broken away in places, so we have to cross up to the middle and upper tiers to go forward.  Zig-zagging ramps control facilitate us moving between these floors. Unfortunately, there's a lot of poison here, and you can't really run around it easily. Pony's got us covered for this though. The mires themselves only hurt for 1 damage, but the poison deals damage on a percentage basis. She can take it pretty easily though, and all of her debuffs clear between zone transitions unlike ours. add this to the growing list of stuff she does for us  The third and upper most layer is just like the first, some sort of brick pathway that's blocked off at points. The entire area is basically three pathways connected in such a way to make it as tangled as possible. What we really care about is off to the upper left though.  There's nothing suspicious about this big, sparkling rock wall. Nothing at all.  If you give it a special attack slam from a silver hammer or better, it'll destroy it. It does have to be the special attack, the normals just clink off it.  WHALE ISLAND CAVE SURFACE Aaaand, with that we have our first shortcut! This is just a little offshoot section of the first cave room, and saves us quite a bit of time on traveling to Iris. As a treat, there's also multiple farm plots right along the way that make out of season growing not much of a hassle. That's for later though, we've got a new area to see!  Hard to see in the nighttime here is a Black Scorpion. They do the usual scorpion things, poison with their tails, snip at you with pincers. Just a lotta poison in this area.  Here's one of those broken spots in the pathway. This place just kinda forces you to run through the poison or actually bother with neutralizers. I don't think the neutralizers last either, but I haven't bothered to test. I can just run through it and clear it with an antidote if needed.  Down here are these air flying Fish! The monster kind, not the kind we fry. As is usual for their appearance, they're very annoying, but unusually happen to be rather nonthreatening. They attack by shooting a very slow shotgun of bubbles, or trying to tail whip you, so overall, their revenge for their watery brethren is easy to avoid.  There's also a spawner for Golems at the end of the lower path just in case you didn't already have enough of fighting ancient siege weaponry. By St. Poli these things hurt.  It is just the one spawner though, and it only spawns one at at time. It's slower item grinding, but it's a lot safer if you wanted to get metals this way. There's also treasure chests here from which Bush obtains more mysterious boxes of rice. Supposedly you can eventually find higher level rice this way, and dupe them by way of giant chicken deletion, but I have yet to find any.  Also hard to see in the darkness is this Hobgoblin, the meaner cousin of the goblins. They just have blue vests as their only visual difference, but they can now do a multi-hit combo instead of just one swing.  Things get a bit dicey though, and Bush is forced to retreat. It's fine, it's way too late at night for him and for me as well. It's been an eventful update!  Music: GoodnightWith that...See you next time, folks. Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 19:47 on Mar 29, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2022 00:54
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Double update, very nice to see. I wonder what the eponymous whale of Whale Island thinks of the people and monsters strolling around and living on it. It doesn't seem to be complaining so far. Maybe it just appreciates the company?
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Jan 16, 2022 09:48
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I´m not sure whether you´ve mentioned it earlier in the thread but if you don´t woo a bachelorette, will they start meeting with other eligible bachelors in time?
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Jan 16, 2022 15:43
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BraveLittleToaster posted:Double update, very nice to see. I wanted to cover Whale Island Flank at least some now that we've finally unlocked it. The game honestly doesn't really restrict us too hard on progressing through Whale Island after this point, which is at least nice. As for the Whale's opinion of the monsters on it, I believe we'll be getting sort of an idea what it thinks soon enough. It's partly the focus of the next plot point we'll be seeing. Sylphosaurus posted:I´m not sure whether you´ve mentioned it earlier in the thread but if you don´t woo a bachelorette, will they start meeting with other eligible bachelors in time? From all that I know, Bush is the only person who's going to get married. Danny is intended to have a crush on Anette and Erik kinda falls for Mist, but neither of them will actually go anywhere with it. (You'd think it'd be Danny + Rosetta and Erik + Anette, but no.) RF1 was possibly intended to have this feature, as the guys all have sprites and models for wedding outfits, but that went unimplemented in the end. RF2 is the only game that I know of that has rivals actively seeking out the girls, but given the entire first half the game is only that, I guess it makes sense. RF3 has Carlos and his running joke of seeming like he's fallen for a girl for like two dialogue boxes but then turning out to be talking about something else entirely. So the series tends to lean on no actual rivals, but I've heard something about RF5 and rivals so maybe they're playing with the idea again? I don't know, I don't really keep up with news about it.
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Jan 16, 2022 17:30
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Odd Wilson posted:So the series tends to lean on no actual rivals, but I've heard something about RF5 and rivals so maybe they're playing with the idea again? I don't know, I don't really keep up with news about it.
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Jan 16, 2022 22:21
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Sylphosaurus posted:I hope that the developers are at least thinking about going in that direction since it could spice up the gameplay if you actually had to work to get the attention of your sweetheart beyond "agree with her" and "give correct gift every day". Don't forget "engage in the same hobby as them" that applies for some of the girls in this game. We technically don't have to do any of those things though. If we just bother them for small talk every day for like 3 years straight they'll eventually want to marry us. That's how a relationship works, or so I've been informed by video games. On the terms of doing more, RF2 and 3 feature a request system which has you going out and doing things for people you like. In the case of the marriage candidates, they're required, as you usually help them to remedy some personal matter of sorts, or get to know them more than just the random dialogue per day. Tides of Destiny has a similar request system and some of the requests fall on the line of being about the characters themselves, but they're mostly just "go fight a couple of these for me" and main story progression stuff, as far as I can tell. RF4 has a request system, but mostly serves to be a weird way of gating content rather than being a medium for character questlines, being almost entirely random chores with the occasional very brief anecdote included. I'm not against the idea of bringing back rivals, though, I always like to see more interaction between the villagers in these games.
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Jan 17, 2022 02:36
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Update 24: tomato I too wake up in the morning, don a scarf and knit hat in Summer heat, and then proceed to stare at my wall with an oversized axe in hand. Truly Bush is a most relatable man.  It's a rainy Thursday! That means it's time for some guest music!  Rune Factory 3 - SummerHave this recording of RF3's summer theme. Rain sounds that may or may not just be recording static included! it's probably that the rain is built into the soundfont and remains a constantly playing track in most songs so that you could have music and rain without one having to cancel the other out, just using the track volume variable to hide it on normal days, but whatever  We brush our pets for 1 hour each once a day- the defined rules Bush seems to quote if I try to do more brushing. Luckily, time doesn't move indoors so this doesn't consume our entire day.  (it doesn't take one hour even if you do it outside)  Do note how I didn't say the rain would absolve us of our farming duties today. The tomatoes have finally bore fruit, and what a massive harvest and time sink it'll be!  BUSH: Gobbs, I'm counting on you! I go back set Gobbs to help us with harvesting.  BUSH: Maybe I should have Grant harvest crops instead. It's at this point I need to restate that I never really used monster farming in this game before this LP. Apparently, only one monster can be assigned to any job type, which means that having two harvesters is completely redundant. Oh well, woulda coulda shoulda, we'll just let our Ant do the job. Gobbs can go and keep doing goblin things. What are goblin things? I dunno, I'm no goblin.  Mmm... cave strawberries.  Then I remembered that I forgot about Anette. Whoops! I catch up with her at the clock tower at about 7:25 AM.  ANETTE: It's so hot! I just hate it. I love the delivery on this line. Just the perfect, far too relatable level of being completely fed up with the heat. She doesn't end up having anything else of interest to say, so I opt to follow her on the mail route to see if any new dialogue shows up there.  ANETTE: Kanno! You've got mail! ANETTE: ... ANETTE: By the way, I've never seen this clock move at all. Does it even work? nope But first, a brief detour!  CINNAMON: It's fun when the three of us talk about magic... I think. Our resident caffiene deprived college student is out of her room early, I guess due to the rain. She's always at this desk on rainy days. I gave her a fish. I don't know what she does with them, and I don't ask!  The Runeys are growing nicely in the prosperity zones. As a reminder, I'll want to run them to 50/50/50/40+ so that they'll grow to 60/60/60/40+-2 each day. The Water Runeys will mostly serve to run the grass farm, while the others stockpile to eventually make more prosperity regions. Anyways, back to mail at the Ann.net.  ANETTE: Stella. You got mail! ♪ ANETTE: I feel myslf straightening up unconsciously when I come here. It is the church after all.  ANETTE: Melody, you got mail! ♪ ANETTE: It's a letter from Mei! Mei is the first girl in the series from the Eastern "not-Japan" setting. An unaging spy looking to gather information on the movements of the Sechs Empire, she had a holiday all to herself as well as the unique marriage requirement of a level 80 Lover Snapper. It's an incredibly rare fish with a normally impossible level, only obtainable through trading. Despite being over a century old, she's not the oldest bachelorette in the series. She shows up again at random in RF3's Miyako Inn where she's capable of changing your name, if so desired. Yue from RF2 also shows up there and is much more useful.  ANETTE: Here's your mail, Danny. ANETTE: A lot of care seems to have been put in that letter. Is it from your little brother? More hints to the fact that Danny has a large family. Unfortunately, he's too busy having conflicting opinions about the weather and being bad at business to give us the details.  ANETTE: For days with this kind of weather it's... "Milk" time! At some point I ought to test if giving her the food she mentions is worth any more LP.  ANETTE: Wow, thanks! I love milk. Doing this now doesn't net me any more LP as I've already gifted her a strawberry earlier, but she does have a different line for it.   MIST: Mermaids are nice. They get to swim around in the ocean all summer long. I wish I were a mermaid, too... MIST: Oh, but they have to be in the ocean even in winter. How careless of me. This is the first mention of mermaids in the series, and the first and only one arrives in the following game. Mermaids in fact, do not have to be in the ocean during winter; however, life still isn't all fun and games for them in a lot of ways.  TURNER: I feel lonely on days like this because I have no one to exchange cooking info with... TURNER: Don't misunderstand. It's not that I'm sad because I don't get to talk to young girls. yeah okay whatever Also Bush is a level 60 cook who does most of his work through pure experimentation, I'm sure he's got at least something to talk about on this.  UZUKI: We have rain today. It is a blessing from the heavens. The heavens must hate the soundtrack then.  UZUKI: I meet Anette every morning so we often speak to each other. ...But you didn't meet this morning. I was there!  UZUKI: It seems that you are becoming more skilled with the sword. UZUKI: But I am also training each day so it will be a while until you catch up. In a normal scenario, I'd say that she'd win anyways because of the range her naginata affords, but the spear moveset is bad in the land of Norad. Also, Bush uses mostly magic, so, uh...  TSUBUTE: Graaagh! We'll call it a future draw.  EUNICE: I got this desk from my father. He'd been using it for years before I got it. EUNICE: It's old, but it's a very nice desk. I've got some wooden chairs like that.  EUNICE: It feels like there are a lot more bonuses and better service at the bathhouse recently. EUNICE: I wonder if something good happened to Melody. I'd say finally being able to start working towards your life's dream is something good. Also I will not accept the notion that the service could be any better, as that would suggest it was not already perfect to begin with.   ganesha why are you still talking about the green ruins that's super old news  In lieu of the kids having nothing new to say, I'll just note that Candy and Marco are sorta the last time this character archetype pair shows up in this series. Ceci and Nicholas in RF1, Cammy and Roy in RF2, then these two. In RF3, it's just Monica by herself, with no counterpart.  ROSETTA: Oh, by the way, I never liked drinking milk.  ROSETTA: I know I shouldn't be picky about food, but I just can't drink it. I always just disliked the aftertaste, personally.  ROSETTA: When it rains, you don't have to water your fields. You're probably thinking you have it easy, don't you? yeah kinda  ROSETTA: Right now, I'm thinking of ways to increase the store's revenue. ROSETTA: Say, Bush. Tell me if you come up with anything. Sell that snake oil again please more INT is just really good please understand  Shock and awe! I don't have a prepared rice ball for Selphy today! I'll be back in a few minutes.   STELLA: Eunice is good at cooking and cleaning. She certainly is a girl, after all. um ok  STELLA: It must be hard working as both a nurse and a sister, but Lara is doing really well. I don't know if anyone in town really needs medical attention that often. I suppose Selphy is enough of a problem patient though.  LARA: Doing research on herbs while speaking with Cinnamon and Melody... LARA: ...can be much more fun that simply reading medical books alone. Bush, would you like to join? BUSH: No, thanks... Aw, c'mon Bush, you're no fun. This'd be a great side event.  BUSH: You wake up so early every day, Lara. LARA: I suppose so. I have to sweep around the church and also place some flowers so I have to wake early. LARA: I'm still in training so I have to make myself useful to Sister Stella. Does Lara wake earlier than Bush? We may never know.  SELPHY: The other day, I read a book about a magical organism that absorbs Runes. SELPHY: Legends are usually based on fact. SELPHY: But I think this Rune-sucking magical creature is way out there. Same here. There's no way this could ever be relevant.  Nothing new in the manor, so it's off to go do other stuff today.  To start, I opt to put my homestead back into prosperity. It doesn't take many to put it there, and since it never decays. I don't have to manage it.  Up to Whale Island! We've got a new region to explore.  WHALE: "Bush..." But first, it seems the Whale has something to say to us.  BUSH: Hello, Whale. WHALE: "May I ask you for a favor?" BUSH: ...? What is it? WHALE: "Do you know about the ancient castle built on my back? That is the castle of the ones known to be, 'the closest to the Spirits.'"  WHALE: "I have told you that the power of the Runes from the castle gave rise to my consciousness." WHALE: "There is one monster that lives in the water tower of the castle. It said that it wanted to live there because it was comfortable so I let it." WHALE: "But recently, it must have forgotten that it is on my back and has been getting very violent within that area..."  WHALE: "Bush... Would you please go and punish it?" BUSH: All right. WHALE: "Thank you, Bush." Looks like we got a real quest!  Before we do that though, I go to grind that last piece of grass. Also more free Warrior Proofs from the orc that spawns here.  ...Aaaand here it is! I totally didn't use RNG savestates to manipulate this drop after 30 minutes of savestate abuse. That would be crazy- nay, inconcievable!  We also have tomatoes to harvest up here on Whale Island.  Before we head off on adventure, I plant some extra moondrop. We have to keep up our gift supply. We won't have a better gift for Eunice for quite a long time.  Following the zig-zags of the path to the end, we meet the fish firing squad. This singular spawner puts out 4 fish that try to block your way up the staircase forward. They're no match for the blazing speed of Pony. We cross the zone transition... and then...  Ah, a cutscene!   We get a scrolling upwards view of this next area. There's a massive vine/tree thing with a spiral ramp up. There's strange, large yellow fruit at the top of the tree, as well a stone bridge breaking off back to the left far up. That bridge is our next objective.  BUSH: Wow... I've never seen a Rune cluster that big before... There does, in fact, happen to be a massive rune at the top of this tree. Imagine the RP restoration if we touched it! Actually, that might be a bad idea. This thing probably powers the whale's flight.  We are immediately met with new enemies before we can consider ascending the tree.  They hit Pony twice for a total of 320 damage and she's back to the barn. Welcome to Whale Island - Tail Tree!  These are Manticts, and while they're not terribly durable, they hit like a train unlike anything we've seen up to this point. They also just look like giant mantises. Their moveset has two abilities. The first attack sends wide arc of 5 crescent wind projectiles for about 60 - 80 damage each. The second attack is a double claw attack. It's about 150 damage a hit and pretty fast. This all being said, we're out of here. Bush is going to end up in the infirmary if I stay here.  SELPHY: Hey! Buy it before you read it! hey, i'm going to buy one, i just need to figure out which one The store owners having little lines while shopping is something added to this game, and it gets carried on in to every game following this in the series. It's a small detail, but I always like it.  It takes 83 skill to make V8 for some reason. I take a peek at some of the books with savestates, but eventually decide on none of them. Of interest is Gourmet Cooking for 5000g, apparently containing recipes for "exotic light meals". We'll mostly want it at some point for the Relax Tealeaves recipe. It doesn't actually tell you how to prepare the tea though I didn't know it at the time, but she sells the basic set/stuff you missed on Tuesdays.   I decide to go ahead and spend some time by helping to collect some of the ready tomatoes. I doubt Grant will be able to harvest them all anyways. Following that, I make some juice to both grind some Cooking skill and extend the value of our tomatoes.  MELODY: I love "Relax Tea." I drink it while I'm in the bath to relax even more. This is why we'll eventually want the tea.  MIST: When you sing with a loud voice, it feels really good. A non-sequitur from Mist isn't really even a non-sequitur. It's just kinda the standard. Anyways... HARDCORE TOMATO JUICING TIME I do this for a while, listening to F-Zero in the background.  BUSH: Looks like Grant is harvesting crops right now. It doesn't look like that to me! He's just hanging out in the barn. I think it takes a day for it to properly activate or something. I spent a while fiddling with this trying to figure it out.  It takes me two and a half hours to collect the rest of the tomatoes. Here's to hoping Grant gets to work and spares me from most of this soon enough.  Char (23cm) Lv:2 was caught. Also a bit of fishing. Aside from just keeping up on gifts for Uzuki and Cinnamon, cooked fish are really good at letting me keep up my RP.  More tomato juicing later, and we've hit Cooking 65!  It's late enough to stop by the bar, so I stock up on chocolate and other stuff. I buy a bit of garlic and flour for Peperonico, a pot dish with lifesteal on it. I forgot to buy the cooking oil though, so whatever. I'll just get it from Danny's tomorrow. Before we finish this day off, I head on up to Iris.  IRIS: I drew another picture. Would you like to see it? BUSH: Of course!  IRIS: I drew a flower patch this time. What do you think? BUSH: ...(A flower patch...? It looks like a Fluffy exploded...) BUSH: You're very good. I think you've gotten much better, Iris. IRIS: Really?! I'll be sure to draw many more pictures then! Alas, the only one who has gotten better here is Bush. In the art of... uh, "encouragement". I guess Fluffy is supposed to be Wooly.  IRIS: I'm enjoying the flower patch that you grew. I really love flowers. In my defense, tomato flowers and moondrops don't look all that different.  IRIS: Flowers can grow here regardless of the season. IRIS: Because of that, you can mix and the match spring and summer flowers in any way you like. Maybe if I end up endlessly rich/out of things to do, I'll make some flower arrangements.  IRIS: Gelwein is a dear friend of mine. IRIS: Oh... but I think you're just as important to me, Bush. Well, this relationship has certainly progressed faster than the other girls. LP wise, she's only just a little bit behind Uzuki though. Selphy is almost at 5 LP, Mist is a little bit over 4 LP, and Melody just behind. With that, it's time for sleep!  New day! It's not raining, so... Music: Summer...here's the Summer theme!  Seems like Anette's been rushed here early again today. I'll give her a breather while I check the mail first.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"Help out with the survey, okay?" - Melody~ Thank you for your continued patronage at Laga Springs! ♪ I am writing to you today because I have a question for you. How is the temperature of the bath at Laga Springs? Hot? Cold? Perfect? I'll be waiting for your reply!♪ ----------------------------------------------------- The options are "It is hot," "It is cold," and "It is just right." The baths are always perfect. I can never complain about a 10g full restore.  My answer should be obvious.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"It has been quite a while." - Tart~ It's been quite a while... So much time has passed since you've moved. How are you? -----------------------------------------------------  ---------------------------- 1. You got the wrong person. 2. I am doing well. ---------------------------- You might be wondering who Tart is. In fact, even you're played RF1 you might be wondering who this is. Tart is the...correct?... name for Torte, the original ellipsis loving, bookish girl of the series. She was the daughter of the inn owner and kinda just hung out in the library. Tart was her name in Japan, and at some point it became the standard, in part thanks to this game's translation differences to it's prequel. She didn't return for this game because her whole quirk is pretty much handled by Selphy and Cinnamon. We'll still reply positively to her, otherwise she'll never send us mail again. With my supply of books dwindling, I need mail.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"Stars" - $@%&~ Oh, stars in the heavens. I wish to become a snack shop owner, so that I may eat snacks all day! ----------------------------------------------------- If you don't recognize this character... that's because we don't know them. I guess we're getting Mist's weird mail now or something. This is what seeing the Buffamoo Constellation causes.  BUSH: You were being chased around again, Anette? ANETTE: Yeah... It's so annoying. ANETTE: The other mailmen don't get chased. Why only me? ANETTE: I'll be fine... So... Please... Let... met rest... Sure, while that happens, I have corn to harvest.  Corn!  Glorious corn! It'll be regrowing every day from now on I believe, and it's worth 150g. 50g more than strawberries, and at the same regrowth period.  MIST: It's so hot every day. MIST: Oh, right. Even if you give a gift, if it's something they hate, it'll have the reverse effect, so be careful. MIST: By the way, I hate Pickled Turnips. Vinegar is just too sour for me. Mist only appreciates the unmarred turnip; great in its natural beauty. The majestic... turnip.  Cave strawberries and cave cucumbers. Unfortunately, nobody pays extra for these likely impossible inventions of Bush's farmer magic.  TABATHA: Miss Bianca seems to be more cheerful than before. TABATHA: I believe this is all thanks to you, Bush. Tabatha's got probably the fanciest swimsuit somehow. You can also see her ears now! Compare what she looks like normally to this and look at the placement of the ears- you'll never forget it.  And now I set off to make more tomato juice.  I do it until I've drained most of my bars and move on to do some chatting.  BIANCA: The weather is very nice. I surely hope it is like this every day. BIANCA: I hate the heat. That's all we're getting out of her today, alas. She really does have some good dialogue, but it's slow coming.  I stop by to gift Kross and Selphy, but there's no new dialogue.  EUNICE: You know the monster "Wooly"? EUNICE: Their fur is like cotton candy and so fluffy. EUNICE: Oh! I don't mean I want to eat the fur or anything!  GANESHA: I often go drinking with Turner, Stella, and Kanno. GANESHA: I thought I held my liquor well, but I just can't beat Stella. GANESHA: Just between you and me, I hear that Rita can drink us all under the table. She is the bar owner after all. Drinking yourself under the table is one of the few ways to pass the time in Trampoli. ...These people really need to throw more festivals.  DANNY: Hey, Bush. DANNY: Is it fun working in the fields? BUSH: It's hard work but I think it's fun. DANNY: Hm... Maybe I should start a farm or something if I have to go back to my hometown... Farming in this game is relaxing at best, I'd say. It's not really engaging enough to call it "fun", but it is crucial to the game's innate formula. But I don't really think this is the time to drop an essay on game design in farming sims or something. I also lack such an essay, and if I keep writing I'll hit the character  DANNY: Thanks! I buy some turnip seeds as it's extremely more efficient to buy them than make them. I forget to buy cooking oil though.  LARA: Are you all right? If you're not feeling well, it is best to go to sleep. No need to worry, but some cooked fish and/or a bath and Bush will be ready for more progress!  KANNO: Hello, Bush. KANNO: Do you have some time to listen to me? ------------------------ 1. Yes. 2. Not now. ------------------------ Why not? KANNO: Thanks...  KANNO: Cinnamon just loves magic. She helped her parents out with their research many times. KANNO: But everyone became frantic when Cinnamon made her own original magic. She was considered a prodigy. KANNO: That's it for today. I'll continue some other time. Well, we got some backstory info, so that's neat. I'll keep on trying to get his friendship up so we can learn some more. Back to the farm for now it is.  60 glasses of tomato juice and 27 ears of corn go into the shipping bin for a total of 21450g! We'll be rolling in this kind of profit every two days from now on.  Oh, hey, unnamed girl.  MYSTERY GIRL: Hello, Bush. MYSTERY GIRL: This served as temporary housing until the church was built. I can't always use the sleeping bag. BUSH: Oh... so where is it?  MYSTERY GIRL: Oh, Bush. It's right in front of you. BUSH: Huh...? This? *Our view focuses on Mist's house* MYSTERY GIRL: It's only a makeshift place, but this is my home. I will pray here every day while preparing to build the church. MYSTERY GIRL: You should come visit sometimes, Bush. Uh, sure. Apparently she lives in Mist's house then. I'd still say it's more than "makeshift".  MYSTERY GIRL: Where is your home, Bush? BUSH: My home? It's right over there. MYSTERY GIRL: Oh, so you were my neighbor! I had always wondered who was there. I didn't notice at all! I'm trying to figure out how I never saw you in the first few weeks, lady.  MYSTERY GIRL: Please come to visit at any time. Um, sure. I'll do that. Can I have your name yet? ...No?  CINNAMON: The Kingdom of Norad has a lot of magic laboratories, but researching magic that hurts people should never be done. A bit out of the blue, Cinnamon, but I suppose this is in reference to the Sechs Empire. This is kinda their wheelhouse, aside from tanks and other assorted magitek that is.  UZUKI: This is the first time I have touched moving waves. Tey are much stronger than I thought. I already can't remember if we've already seen Uzuki's swimsuit. I'm going to assume we've seen all of them at this point. It's odd not seeing her in the poofy shrine clothing. I suppose this also means that Uzuki isn't from a seaside part of Not-Japan.  While I'm here, I get some various sea fish. It's mostly Needlefish though. They're not very good food and they don't sell well, so they're mostly gift fodder like the sardines.  Blowfish (52cm) Lv:3 was caught. This happens to be quite a good catch though. Blowfish are valuable on their own, but even moreso when cut into sashimi.  MELODY: Say, Bush, aren't you going to try to make potions with herbs? It's fun! Eeeeeeeventually. I'll get a lot of fish together, buy a bunch of herbs, and grind pharmacy to sky high levels at some later point. I'll just turn on some F-Zero and the emulation speed up to 200%.  MELODY: I saw an interesting hot spring in a river once. The water still flowed but you could still take a bath, too. How fast was the river moving though? I'd presume not that fast, but whitewater rapids bathing spots don't sound out of place when you consider this one is supplied by a sentient, flying, whale-shaped island.  Been a long time since I've heard Melody do her humming. It's really nice!  Refreshed from a bath, Bush tries his hand at preparing extremely poisonous blowfish. It's pretty good food, but I care more about it's value.  Fugu Sashimi Lv:3 was synthesized. I also make another one. These are worth almost 1000g each.  Some more tomato juice later, Bush is all the way up to 70 cooking! There is a method for my madness in doing this, I assure you.  Our new total value in the shipping bin for today 27346g, gained from some more tomato juice, some pickles, a lot of monster tears, and some raw fish.  BUSH: Selphy, you're not going to clean up the library?  SELPHY: About that... Hm, what to do... SELPHY: I've never cleaned anything up before and it's just a huge pain. This plot thread will resolve... at some point. But not today!  For now, more ocean fishing...  And time to talk to Iris. IRIS: It seems I'm a night person so I sleep during the day. I apologize if you happen to come by when I'm in bed. IRIS: I get so sleepy when I'm under the sun. I know those sorts of drowsy days.  I head off to the Tail Tree again today, but while I do, here's a quick look at Bush's current stats. Max HP: 212 (Combat stats with the Hell Branch equipped) Atk: 98 Def: 133 Mag: 146 Str: 28 Vit: 29 Int: 32 Agl: 29 -Skills- Weapons: 21 Magic: 27 Farming: 35 Lumber: 30 Hammer: 21 Fish: 18 Cook: 70 Lab: 7 Forging: 22 Crafts 10  Today Bush takes the fight to the Manticts! ...Still, without a higher MAG, the Hell Branch isn't that great.  Our tried and true Earth Wand does us well here.  Through careful application of magic, we get a level up and get fully restored. Really the Earth Wand and the classic Fire Rod are all we need sometimes. I had to send Pony back though, so progress up the tree won't be easy.  This thing is absolutely littered with portals, but of more important note is this steeper ramp. You can't run up it, but you can sure slide down it later.  The same goes for this one. The enemy unable to reach us here is a Beetle. It's main attacks are a flying charge, and a standing stab with the horn on it's head. They hurt quite a bit, but they're pretty slow. They're not the danger here. Say I was to theoretically keep running at this point...  So, you know those giant fruit I mentioned?  They come rolling down and they hurt. A LOT. Bush can survive it at max health, but 186 damage is nothing to laugh at. You have to time your ascent up the tree to avoid these, and hide in the small nooks created by the steep ramps.  Shrimp Sashimi Lv:4 was synthesized with expertise! I instead opt to spend the rest of the night cooking instead. It's a lot safer! that's some tiny sashimi by the way  I end up sticking about 4500g worth of food into the shipping bin.  I make some yarn...  Then Bush heads to sleep! This update was all over the place. Will the coming days be more focused? You'll just have to read the next update! See you then. Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Jan 22, 2022 18:31
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That ended up as quite the training montage, where are the power ballads?
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Jan 22, 2022 19:16
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Black Robe posted:That ended up as quite the training montage, where are the power ballads? Rising up, back in the field Till the earth, chop the branches Made the money, all the gifts done and dealed Just a man and his will to befriend So many times it boils too fast You cook it, finding just failure Don't lose your hope to make dishes of the best You must cook just to not offend It's the fry of the farmer It's the cream of the crop Rising up to the tastes of the master And the well known charmer Stalks his prey with fish-chop And he's gifting us all with the fry of the farmer (it's also because the training montage isn't over yet- we've got to gear up and eat up quite a bit to contend with the difficulty in the areas currently open for progression)
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Jan 22, 2022 20:48
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Odd Wilson posted:Rising up, back in the field ...shut up and take my 
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Jan 22, 2022 20:56
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Black Robe posted:...shut up and take my
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Jan 22, 2022 22:13
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Black Robe posted:...shut up and take my
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Jan 23, 2022 09:56
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Black Robe posted:That ended up as quite the training montage, where are the power ballads? Rising up, back in the field Till the earth, chop the branches Made the money, all the gifts done and dealed Just a man and his will to befriend So many times it boils too fast You cook it, finding just failure Don't lose your hope to make dishes of the best You must cook just to not offend It's the fry of the farmer It's the cream of the crop Rising up to the tastes of the master And the well known charmer Stalks his prey with fish-chop And he's gifting us all with the fry of the farmer And with that... Update 25: HILTMOALTG  Bush resumes his journey to master chefdom! It's the weekend today, and it happens to be raining. Music: Rune Factory 1- SummerIt also means it's time for another guest track! With this, we hearken back to Bush's past.  Well, time for another massive harvest day. Maybe Grant will help out this time?  It's been a long time since I accidentally over cut this strip of grass. I finally got around to sticking some more seeds down to make it look not as bad.  Not like it stops the rest of the field from looking like a mess, but hey every little bit counts.  I clean up some branches and collect the corn personally. Anette didn't come by today, I guess she's got the day off.  We also get some harvests off our monsters today. That's 2 eggs, 2 milk, and 2 wool to go with the rest. I've not really been doing much with any of these, but rest assured I'll have use for them soon enough.  By the time Bush has finished all his farming chores, it's 10:30 AM. I hit up the Clock Tower first, but nobody has anything new to say, despite even the kids being there for once. Off to the St. Poli Church then. Maybe we'll finally learn about who it's named after.   BUSH: Stella, who used to live in the house that Mist is in?  STELLA: That's a strange question. Yeah, what brought that on, Bush?  STELLA: I used to live there. It's been rebuilt numerous times so it was smaller than it is now. STELLA: Come to think of it, your house was here even before I came to this village.  STELLA: There used to be a boy that I became good friends with who lived there. Huh. Well that sure is a thonker right there. Thanks, you've made this day significantly more interesting now!  Lara's over here doing her holiday table cleaning. It is very squeaky.  LARA: Please be sure not to overwork yourself. Hey, Bush has gotten very good about that. It's not like very many benefits to passing out in this game, otherwise I'd be doing it all the time. Well, maybe not, it does lower her LP.  SELPHY: Wow, I'm tired... BUSH: What happened? SELPHY: I was just learning how to clean up from Eunice... but it's so tiring... BUSH: Is cleaning always this tiring?  BUSH: ...Wait... you had to learn how to clean things up? Hey, manual labor uses up a lot of RP until you skill it up a bit. Of all people, you should know this, Bush. SELPHY: Lute asked me to sell him a book the other day. SELPHY: Do you really think my books will sell? I just don't get how merchants think.  BUSH: I think it will. Your books are very popular. SELPHY: Really? It feels nice when people tell me that. You're a nice guy. But, Bush... you haven't even read the book. Speaking of, when do we get to read it? I'm really regretting reading those last couple of books all at once.  We manage to catch Melody upstairs in the bathhouse, so we can finally get her input on the various furniture spread about it.  BUSH: There are decorative plants.... Are these used for creating some new herb? MELODY: I sometimes put those in the bath. It helps your circulation.  BUSH: The room is adorned with flowers. MELODY: They're cute right? I picked them myself.  MELODY: The weather doesn't look very good... MELODY: Lara learns so fast. I think she'll catch up to me soon. I'm going to try even harder now! Some things are a lot easier to do when you've got a bit of friendly competition. It's peculiar how much of a driving force it can be.  BUSH: What a beautiful flower... MELODY: The flowers are different everyday, because I've put them on rotations. I'm not sure how often people are up here to notice this rotation, but neat.  BUSH: There are a lot of books about magic. Melody must study a lot... MELODY: I have all these books, but I can't remember anything from them. relatable  BUSH: Something smells very soothing. There must be herbs inside the stuffed animals. BUSH: ... BUSH: Zzz... Music: Goodnight  MELODY: Good morning, Bush! ♪ BUSH: Huh?! I fell asleep. I just love how they go as far to fade out the screen and play the sleep jingle for this. Melody's also surprisingly chill about Bush passing out on her bed for like, half a minute. What I wouldn't give to have herbs that make me fall asleep this easily. Anyways, onto the most important person of the day:  Lute, mate, whatcha got for me today?!  LUTE: Don't you think Summer is a dangerous season? BUSH: Why is that? LUTE: Because I'm traveling in this heat...  LUTE: In this heat, the monsters will come inside my canteen. BUSH: ... BUSH: Hahaha... really? LUTE: Yeah. Monsters don't like the heat either. I was thinking mostly along the lines of heatstroke, but yeah, the monsters are a problem too.  LUTE: The other day, I was sketching on the small island in the lake and I found this little sprout. LUTE: I was touched to see how even that tiny island is filled with life. LUTE: Bush, weren't you good at caring for plants? Would you please care for it once in a while? Like watering it and stuff. Yeah sure, anything for you dude. (it's also because i've been waiting for this to happen)  Unfortunately, Lute isn't offering the Oven today. I really need that thing to start making more favorite gifts for the girls. Ah, well, we've got 36,000g in pocket right now, I just go ahead and buy the steamer. I never use the steamer for anything in these games, but there it is.  I also nab the Maestro Forge while we're here, at a grand price of 28,000g. This expands our forging ability to work with the full number of materials now, so no piece of equipment is out of reach for Bush.  Danny's store is closed today. Huh.  I find Rosetta up in her room, sitting on her bed.  BUSH: This couch looks like it'd be comfy to sleep on. ROSETTA: You better not fall asleep there. I did once and I got so sick! It's those microorganisms, girl. If you sleep anywhere that's not an officially sanctioned sleeping device, you usually get a cold. There's nothing else in the room to inspect, so I guess we're doing more of the bed thing.  BUSH: Wait, no... I'd probably get smacked...  ROSETTA: Why you... ROSETTA: I'm speechless. Apparently we don't get smacked. Huh.   MIST: You're always outside, so I'm sure you will get very tanned, Bush. Unfortunately, Bush will remain a pasty anime boy his entire life. Not even a farmer's tan for our farming prodigy.  TSUBUTE: Bush! Look at this! BUSH: Are these... clothes? TSUBUTE: This is called a "Jinbaori". In my country, this is considered formal wear for war. TSUBUTE: Milady made this with her very own hands and presented to me! I am the luckiest man in all of the three kingdoms! UZUKI: Tsubute, you are always overreacting. The jinbaori is specifically the sleeveless overcoat that samurai wear. It's that little blue and black thing he's got on. Also, it's just nice to see Tsubute not being an overprotective grouch, just tiny samurai cricket dad.  I gave Eunice the last flower I had left, and all I got was the generic line  However, I do manage to catch Kross inside his house for the first time. Time to get his input on the stuff sitting around in here.  BUSH: It's a blueprint of furniture and tools. I had no idea Kross could make stuff like this. He's so talented... KROSS: Heh... As they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention." No one in this town does carpentry, so I had to learn, that's all. Understandable! Even moreso when nobody notices you exist...   KROSS: Heh... KROSS: If you open that, you won't be able to go back to the way things were. Still want to open it...? That's a very serious statement for your... wardrobe. Eh, I'm not gonna pry.  Kross only responds to the bed inspect with "that's fine." He's such a chill dude.  BUSH: The books are mostly about architecture with some others about war chronicles. KROSS: Bush, you shouldn't pry into people's secrets like that. KROSS: Heh... KROSS: You can't base your actions on curiosity alone. You'll never have enough time to find out everything. drat i really need to take that advice too bad it's probably never gonna stick  BUSH: There's a blueprint of various buildings. BUSH: I wonder what this building is. It almost looks like a castle... Kross responds with the same advice he gave when we looked at the books. It's good advice, I don't mind.  ERIK: Young man! Crops in the field will wither at the end of a season! You must be careful! erik please i know how farming works already, tell me something else is this revenge for not covering your tutorial dialogue  Bianca's sitting at this table today. Yesterday she was at the identical table set on the other side of the manor. I guess this is her Holiday table or something.   BIANCA: I'm bored. Do you know of anything fun to do? I dunno, that's why I'm talking to you.  I reckon I oughta go see that little sprout at Lake Poli that Lute done told me about.  I opt to have Bush water it. Don't worry about the fact that it's already raining.   It grew! Who could've guessed?  BUSH: ...Can I climb it? Sure can, my friend! You might remember from some earlier update where I noted how Whale Island flies above the lake on Holidays.  With this grown, we can now officially visit Whale Island every day of the week. I never got this in my original playthrough, and I don't really know what triggers it exactly. I believe it's a mix of FP with Lute and Iris, plus seeing the "I found a strange seed" from Mist.  Also, since it drops us off beside Iris's tower, it puts it near a lot of the places we'd want to visit anyways.  Of note is also that the Return warp brings us outside and a bit to the right of the tower, and luckily not at the usual entrance. Back home we go! I've gotta burn five hours before Iris even wakes up.  MIST: I don't have much to do when it rains so I came to visit. Was I being a bother? I thought you spent rainy days plugging holes in a leaky ceiling.  Here's our fancy new Maestro forge. It looks very... industrial.  I believe the Bubble Staff is really what we'll be wanting next, despite sporting a massive skill requirement of 60 to use properly, and 45 forging just to make. It's also the only other water staff in the game because new spells are hard, I guess. (water's pretty bad after Lava Ruins anyways) Still, those Magic Crystals elude me, as well as most of the gem types. I'll have to see what I can do about it.  Oh, and here's the steamer I bought. I'll probably never use it, but it's there!  Outside I find that most of my tomatoes are gone! Who could have done this!?  Oh, it's just Grant doing his work. Good job buddy!  He seems to just kinda move forward and harvest 1x2s in puffs of green smoke and not much fanfare. Still, he saved me easily hours in the day, so I'm not gonna complain.  Everything he harvests just warps to the shipping bin which is mostly convenient. If you've got anything you don't want shipped you have to either pick it yourself, or get back before 5:00 PM so Rosetta doesn't take it to be sold. I naturally take all the tomatoes to convert into juice, for both more money and more cooking skill. The recipe I still desire lies outside of my grasp. Had I the right cookbook, I could have made it all the way back at 60 cooking, but Selphy's not selling it and I am nothing if not stubborn. I will just to grind up to 80 then, as you can't attempt a recipe you don't know unless you match the skill level. That means one thing...  *HARDCORE JUICING TIME*  Because the HP and RP won't hold out forever, this also includes *HIGHLY RISKY FISHING*  Raw seafood expertly prepared on the brink of exhaustion powers Bush's efforts to defy the normalization of cookbooks.  Actually, Bush just eats that and use what it gives me to catch more fish. It's 3:00 PM, and he can just go get a bath.  Of course, not before putting a hole in the floor with our hammer. Gotta grind every last little bit of skill.  Grilled Char Lv:6 was synthesized with expertise! That is Char as in the fish. They're basically a sub-branch of salmon. Catching higher level fish does result in drastically better RP restoration from the cooked food though.  This is only worth 127 RP though because char are bad. Who cares about +10 magic, I can easily get better with other recipes. For the majority of this playthrough, Chub have been my mainstay. They don't sell for much, but they've got real good RP restoration. I can even catch them in the Summer as the fish in this game aren't as strictly locked to seasons as the earlier entries.  Now that I have bestowed this wicked useful knowledge unto you, it's time to resume BLENDING  A couple minutes later, and over 80 glasses of tomato juice go into the shipping bin. I have no idea who Rosetta sells all this to. It's at this point I also remember that I have 36 ears of corn I need to do something with.  Corn Flakes Lv:2 was synthesized with expertise! Corn and milk in the frypan lets Bush somehow make this. It's decent HP restoration, pretty good RP restoration, and defends against being sealed, but I want to save my milk for other stuff. So I just start throwing the corn in the pan without the milk to get popcorn.  Popcorn Lv: 2 was synthesized with expertise! Popcorn's not nearly as good as a food as the flakes, but 100 RP out of 500 isn't terrible. It's only worth 30g more than the raw ear though.  They do happen to be jumbo buckets bigger than Bush's head though, so it's pretty funny when he just dives his head in while chewing. I don't know where the bucket actually came from though. Did Bush somehow farmer magick it out of the corn shucks?  And with many more kernels popped, we reach a fateful moment Cooking Skill 80  Once again, Rice and Milk go into a pot...  It's a very small success range, but Bush can't afford to mess this up...!  Oatmeal Lv: 1 was synthesized. I never thought Oatmeal would feel like such an achievement. Also, yes, all this work has been for oatmeal. The title of this update is an acronym for "How I Learned To Make Oatmeal And Love The Grind", not just me rubbing my hand against the keyboard. I should totally do that for an update name though. (why does it take 80 cooking to mush some rice in a pot)  Statistically, it's a bit better healing and a bit worse on RP than cornflakes. The Max HP+40 is maybe worth something, but in general that's not really why I've bothered with this food. This happens to be Tabatha's favorite gift, so that makes two girls we can seriously accelerate the LP gain for. If Lute was selling an oven I'd be rolling various cakes and pies right now, those being predominantly the favorite gifts of most girls, but here we are.  All that popcorn, juice, pickles, day old fish, and random cave strawberries amount to 31,881g as income for the day. We just made back everything we spent today, basically. Guess what we're gonna go do with it?  If you guessed "spend it all at our boy's shop" then you guessed right! the reward is rice oatmeal enjoy  We buy the Chef's Kitchen and the Fridge for 18,000g. The former improves our cutting board, and the latter gives me space to stick all those perishable things Bush carries around endlessly. It'll open up a lot of space in his inventory, that's for sure.  I wasn't able to locate Tabatha, so her gifts will have to wait until tomorrow. It is time to drop by Iris though.  Disappointingly, she doesn't say anything new.  Our new fridge is pretty neat.  It serves as a great plae to show off Bush's weed collection. We're up to 143!  It is now at this point I need to make a revision to the last update. I did in fact buy the Gourmet Cooking book. I thought I just left without it. Of great note is the recipe for Tea Leaves. This takes 1 blue grass, 2 purple grass, 1 red grass, 1 yellow grass, and 1 orange grass and turns them into an item worth their total buying price. It only heals 5 hp too. That's all it does when eaten.  It is, however, a skill 88 recipe with an incredibly cheap material cost, so it'll easily carry us to full mastery of cooking. At 95 cooking, we can finally take these leaves and make them into the fabled Relax Tea, Melody's favorite gift and a strong food item in it's own right.  Flounder (44cm) Lv:4 was caught. Alas, such wanton cookery will have to wait until another day, likely tomorrow. Seeing as how I spent nearly 90 screenshots on one day, I might just have to call this one another short one.  For now, Bush takes a much needed rest after the brutal trials of learning how to make oatmeal. Tomorrow, we start on Summer 8th, a Monday. It being the 8th means I also have to begrudgingly start caring about Runeys again so... yaaaaaaaaay...  Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Jan 29, 2022 16:37
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Cooking food for hungry bachelorettes: the most challenging part of this game. I'm not sure they even eat anything other than what Bush gives them. Godspeed on dealing with the Runeys.
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Jan 29, 2022 17:25
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BraveLittleToaster posted:Cooking food for hungry bachelorettes: the most challenging part of this game. I'm not sure they even eat anything other than what Bush gives them. It really goes to show how the pacing in this game is different from the others. RF1 & RF2 had some pretty tough favorite gifts, but they also had a number of easy ones. Compare this game to RF3, in which the large majority of favorite gifts are not only not that hard to obtain, but also has very accelerated LP gain. I'm also still entirely unconvinced that Melody makes enough money to live with the bathhouse's profits. The Runey management will continue  (although I'll admit, I'm a bit lazy about it)
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Jan 29, 2022 19:00
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Odd Wilson posted:(why does it take 80 cooking to mush some rice in a pot) I dunno, seems reasonable that you'd need to be pretty skilled to somehow transmogrify rice into oats.
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Jan 29, 2022 20:26
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Black Robe posted:I dunno, seems reasonable that you'd need to be pretty skilled to somehow transmogrify rice into oats. I figured that was just normal farmer magic stuff (in the next update, dialogue with Tabatha refers to it as rice porridge, so I think the oatmeal is just a mistranslation)
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Jan 29, 2022 23:36
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Odd Wilson posted:I figured that was just normal farmer magic stuff Yeah, the recipe exists in Tides of Destiny as rice porridge with an 80 cooking skill requirement, which like an earlier poster I am also playing to enjoy a chill RF experience without doing runey management.
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Jan 30, 2022 06:37
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Update 26: How To Spend An Exorbitant Amount Of Money On Grass Have an early update, and not because I accidentally hit "post" instead of "preview"!  A new day today, and it's raining again! Music: Rune Factory 4 - SummerHere's a 30 minute loop of RF4's summer theme as our guest track today. I need to find more watery themes. If you know of any good water or summer themes that'd fit for more days like these, send 'em my way.  Because there's not much for me to harvest this morning, I decide to follow Anette around on her route for the first three houses. We don't really see the dialogue for those too much.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"Thank you ♪" - Melody~ Thanks for sending me a "Black Grass". Bush, you are probably the only one that understands my research. I must thank you for being so helpful all the time. Let's see... Well, I'll think about this one. I may not come up with anything, though ♪ ----------------------------------------------------- I did send that Black grass in last update, but I'll be honest and say I don't know when. Couldn't find it in my recordings. Bush doesn't really understand Melody's research, he's got like 5 skill in the pharmaceutical arts, but he's just nonetheless supportive. This was probably the closest we'll get to a request chain in this game, so, uh, yay?   ----------------------------------------------------- ~"Thank you for your participation ♪" - Melody~ Thank you for participating in the survey ♪ I'll be sure to take your suggestions into considerations for making a better bathhouse, so come aggain, okay ♪ ----------------------------------------------------- Melody was all in on using the quaver as punctuation when she wrote this. I guess it checks out, her name being Melody and all.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"Caught a huge one." - Cinnamon~ I caught a big one. I made a mold of the fish and let it go. Do you think you can catch one bigger than mine? ----------------------------------------------------- Oh, so that's what she does with the fish. um how did you do that with it alive EDIT: It's probably not clay molds either, it's probably this: Karma Guard posted:Oh! I think I might know what Cinnamon means by "I caught a big one. I made a mold of the fish and let it go.". A thanks goes out to Karma Guard and their sudden but inevitably useful trivia.  ANETTE: Erik, you've got mail. ANETTE: The package from Erik is really big. What could it be? ANETTE: I got it! It's vegetables! Is he sending them to his mother? ANETTE: I'm hungry... I'll get Erik to treat me to breakfast later! Mom's gotta have her greens, I guess. This is also your hint to the fact Anette sometimes hangs out in Erik's house.  ANETTE: There's no one here but I hear voices... Is it a monster? This scene is only more depressing when you consider Kross's dialogue about wanting to be a monster.  ANETTE: Bianca! Tabatha! You got mail! ANETTE: So this letter is from Bianca's father. He must be a really nice father. Jasper is the coolest. In part for just being a fun character in a game filled with not a lot of outstanding dialogue, but also because he's Jasper. Also, it plays the manor theme just for this, which is neat.  Following this, Bush goes about manually collecting the corn. I could've let Grant do this but, uh, I don't really know why I did this. As I will later find out, doing this was a good idea!  pet ze animals  TABATHA: Thank you very much. I really love rice porridge. It's good for your health, too. Yeah, I don't know why they didn't call it rice porridge in game, makes more sense than oatmeal, which is supposed to be made with oats. We can really only chalk it down to another translation oddity. People in the thread have informed me that it's called porridge in Tides of Destiny, so I guess they eventually got it right.  BIANCA: The weather is terrible. Do something about it. Unfortunately, any changes that Bush can make to the weather are not immediate. He can change the weather, this is true.   BIANCA: You're always wearing the same clothes... You smell... BUSH: Oh... Really?! But aren't you wearing the same thing all the time, too?  BIANCA: I never wear the same thing twice. I like the design of this outfit so I had hundreds of it made for me. BUSH: Oh... I can easily see how people might find Bianca to be an unbearable snob, but I find it hilarious. This one's also just a really strong opener for poking fun at the fact nobody has different clothing. A lot of her conversations will follow this sort of formula, similar to Iris and her drawings.  BIANCA: Why, thank you. It's a bit meager for a birthday present, but I will still accept it. As far as I know, there's nothing you could give her to elicit more of a reaction. I'm pretty sure you could hand her a piece of platinum or a diamond and she'd say the same. She is halfway to the first LP point at least. That's not bad for what, 6 days?  MIST: Did I mention the rustling around my house?  MIST: It turns out a duck has moved into the lake near my garden. BUSH: Duck...? Aren't Ducks monsters? It's dangerous! MIST: It seems pretty tame so it should be all right. The disco exploding ducks are no joke.  MIST: It waddles around with its short feet and looks so cute. It became even more friendly when I started feeding it. well, uh i guess you done tamed a monster we don't really do it that way until the next installment, but congrats   TURNER: Ganesha is really good at what she does.  TURNER: But she won't even sharpen your kitchen knife if you don't take the materials to her. TURNER: That's why if you have any extra, can you give them to me? Like iron, copper, and silver... Thanks. [Sharpen: Kitchen Knife] 5g, your mats only I don't know if I've transcribed this dialogue before, but if I have, here it is again. Believe it or not, Turner's favorite gift is not food. It happens to be a max skill requirement item, as to what though, I'll leave that for later.  RITA: Bush, do you have any "Wine"? RITA: Don't show me any "Wine" while I'm working. I'll confiscate it. Under what authority? You'll never find my secret supply regardless! Actually this is just to tell you that her favorite gift is wine. Who would've guessed?  I don't have a gift for Eunice today, the flowers should be done growing on Whale Island by this point, but I just wanted to stop and note that her singing is really pretty.  EUNICE: It's raining. I don't really like it because I can't do the laundry. It's also been raining for two days straight, so that can't be great for the laundry. Maybe wind magic could help? Maybe an Earth Crystal?  EUNICE: Dad was being yelled at by Mom again the other day. BUSH: Turner is so whipped. EUNICE: But they still get along really well. I wish I had someone like that. uhhhhhhhh In lieu of addressing the other concerning matter here, I hope you find someone Eunice. just maybe not exactly like your parents though  EUNICE: Speaking of which... EUNICE: I heard you stayed at the church when you first came to the village. BUSH: Well, at the time, I didn't have any money... EUNICE: Oh, really? But I wished you would have stayed at our inn. Just that casual lie there to cover up the fact that cutscene Bush is terrible at navigation. I still question how you ended up at the church, man.  ROSETTA: Recently, I've been selling the leftover stock near closing time for cheap. This actually got really popular. BUSH: Oh, really? Then I'll go right before closing time from now on, too. ROSETTA: What are you talking about? Seeds last really long, so I'm not going to discount those. This is a reference to a thing that's apparently common for stores carrying produce to do in Japan. I don't know if it has a special name or anything, all I know is that it exists. Edit: Raitzeno informs me that these are usually translated as "time limited sales", and that they usually see them for baked goods more than anything else.  DANNY: It's so hot. I hope it'll be autumn soon. Sorry, but we've still got 22 days to go, dude.  DANNY: Hey, Bush. Try giving Erik a turnip next time. DANNY: He's gonna be so happy he'll cry. Nice try, Danny, but you're not going to troll Bush. We've already terrified Erik with a turnip once before.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~Constellation: Buffamoo~ "The Buffamoo is a summer constellation that appears a little after midnight. It may be a good sight to see while taking a walk on a sleepless night." ----------------------------------------------------- The event for this constellation will take a while to resolve, as we'll need to get a few more strange letters before Bush says anything. It's nice to have something to read again though. I've weirdly come to look forward to these, whereas before I was kicking myself when I had to transcribe 5 page long books.  SELPHY: The books can get moldy when it rains so often so I hate it. Ambient humidity and mold is just the worst. I live in a humid region, which aside from being annoying on breathing some days, usually causes some sort of mold problem in the home at least once or twice a year. just the absolute worst  BUSH: Maybe it's the clock's parts? I've never seen it actually working... KANNO: That's broken. Apparently it just cannot be repaired. Um, weren't you brought here to fix it?  KANNO: I wake up here, eat, then do research.... This is the perfect life for me. Well, good for you, I guess?  CINNAMON: You can see the "Elephant Constellation" now. BUSH: "Elephant Constellation" seems to have a lot of syllables. CINNAMON: Elephants are animals that have numerous legends all around the world. CINNAMON: You can see the Elephant Constellation relatively early. Look... I like how Bush's input is just "wow, that's a mouthful". Maybe it was a more insightful thing in the Japanese version? I dunno. The Elephant constellation corresponds to Bianca, and it's a fun little event. It'll take me a while to catch it though, as it's very easy to miss it with Whale Island shenanigans at the end of every day.  CINNAMON: In this season, you can see the "Wooly Constellation." BUSH: That sounds like a very cute constellation. CINNAMON: ...I guess. The Wooly Constellation is a bit weird because it can only be seen late at night if you have a monster with you. It's a very late constellation, but we'll be sure to see it. It corresponds to Tabatha, but also helps us befriend a monster.  The Runey Situation is doing okay for the time being. I'd have to manually track how much I have to skim off the top off of every zone if I mess with it right now. I'm mostly waiting for them to grow to the 50/50/50/?? range, as I just need to skim 9-10 each day from them afterwards.  Of course I still opted to mess with it for some reason. Keeping spreadsheets on index cards, yaaaaaay  Oh, and here the explosive device hanging out in Mist's yard. It mostly paddles around in the little pond. That's all.  grass_management.jpg Enough time passes for Selphy to be working the front desk at the library, so I head back there.  SELPHY: You know... SELPHY: Don't you get annoyed by the gap between what people want you to be and who you really are? SELPHY: You don't... I guess you wouldn't... There's not a choice here, it's just implied Bush answers no. I just imagine Bush just giving a blank stare at Selphy for an awkward amount of time.  I buy the Cont'd: It's Hot!, the intermediate pot recipe book for 2500g. There's some lifedrain dishes I'm looking to make, and I'll need the book if I want to make them at level 2. Without the book, the meters cap out with expert crafts being a nearly frame perfect input that I'd rather not bother with. I also buy Axe Fan Weekly for 8000g, the book containing all the axe recipes. The formatting on the description is broken and only tells us that "This is the only".  I also scoop up Neck Accentuation for 5000g, "an advanced guide to making neck accessories. Why not just say necklaces...?" There's some good stuff in there we'll be able to make. New recipes in hand, we head back to the house.  Peperoncino is some good stuff to make, and the only reason why I bought an upgraded pot to begin with. It's made only from garlic, cooking oil, and flour, all bought materials. It heals for 50, RP restore for 150, gives +40 max HP as well as the very good HP Absorption effect.  The majority of the neckwear is various necklaces, but there's some other interesting things.  Like Critical 7 for instance, which boosts critical chance, and gives +17 ATK, +77 DEF, +77 MAG. That's way away from now though.  We've also got a great many axes now at our disposal. There's some good fire element ones later, but for now we've got two real good ones lined up. First is Alldale, a big ol' golden axe and a series staple. It has a higher level charge attack, an ATK of 80, alongside a new effect of Seal Attack 100%. That means all swings with this weapon are highly likely to seal our enemies, cutting off a lot of their more annoying attacks. It'll be great to have around for pretty much the whole game.  Requiring some more interesting materials, is the Crescent Axe with it's 30% chance to paralyze and built-in HP Absorption. It needs some more unusual materials: a Great Axe, Silver, Glittering Edge, and a Moondrop. We'll have both of these axes in not too long though.  The highest level axe is Executioner with an absolutely terrifying 226 base damage.The nice thing is that all of these later axes like Heat Hawk and Double Edge are made from these early axes. The upgrade tree is mostly this: Normal Axes -> Alldale -> Demon Axe -> Executioner Normal Axes -> Flame Axe -> Heat Hawk Normal Axes -> Tomahawk -> Heat Hawk Normal Axes -> Crescent Axe -> Double Edge.  MIST: That's a wonderful Yarn Ball. Apparently Mist comments on whatever you make with your various maker machines. I suppose she's impressed with the technology as it's not like Bush does anything but stare at the maker while it churns for a moment.  We've got a lot of yarn balls, and the best way to spend those right now is on Knit Scarves, a pretty good piece of equipment at a skill cost of 20. It should help jump our crafts skill by quite a bit. It's also 20 DEF and 15 MAG better than our neck scarf, so it's a long needed upgrade.  I end up making 4 of these. They look rather nice, I'd say, but they don't sell for as much as I'd hoped so this prompts me to go throw one at somebody.  BIANCA: I don't need so many. I gave Bianca one of the scarves to see if it'd have any effect on her LP, and also just to mess around with the dress-up system. Once we get a lot of resources available and a high crafts skill, I'll open up voting once our crafts skill gets high enough to make most of the stuff. It's also probably a better birthday present than the random colored grass I gave her.  It seems like it raised FP at least. I think it kinda works with the rest of her outfit?  BIANCA: I came to get away from the heat but it's not cool here at all! Do something about it! I gave you the scarf. It looks kinda cool! oh wait, you wanted the temperature to be cool whoops  TABATHA: Th-thank you... I guess this is for me? I see... I gave Tabatha the neck towel we've been carrying around, just to get it out of our inventory while I was here. This is absolutely the best/most appropriate response I've gotten for gifting anyone in this game so far.  It kinda works? It's a bit brighter than the rest of her outfit, but that's to be expected with the rendering in this game.  For some reason I felt like blowing more money on crafting books, so here's Head Coordination, "an advanced guide on making accessories for the head. Pretty heady stuff..."  Aside from oddities like the pumpkin mask and turnip head, this is mostly a lot of headbands and animal ears. There's a few hats in here, but no helmets.  There is the supremely high level Tiara, with a +120 MAG on it, and high resistance to all status debuffs. It might even be worth growing an Emery flower for. ...What am I saying? Nothing is worth growing an Emery Flower for.  For the time being, Bush's Fashion Boutique closes and my focus goes back to cutting up tea leaves and making popcorn.  Almost 9000g for a collection of leftover produce and a few fish sashimis? I'll take it!  ERIK: Young man, what do you do on rainy days?  ERIK: I think it's good to take it easy indoors when it rains. As you might've noticed already, usually rainy days are an excuse for me to make progress in dungeons or just go on crafting binges.  LARA: The rain is a blessing from the heavens. It would be bad if it never rained. Bush doesn't know what the heavens are. If he ever attended a sermon he might know, but we're too busy for that.  Lara's suddenly selling moondrops now. Maybe they're used in a medicinal recipe? I'm just here to buy grass. Lots of it. I'd buy even more, but my wanton spending at the library has left us with only 1000g. It's fine, we'll just stock up on more tomorrow.   Tea Leaves Lv:1 were synthesized. Many tea leaves. With enough chopping, we're all the way up to Cooking skill 86.   Following this, I just do some random fishing and orange collection until the bathhouse opens.  MELODY: You have to take a bath whenever you sweat. It's been really hot recently so you have to be careful. It's fine, Bush comes here every day, no matter what happens.  MELODY: I clean the bath every day. I want everyone to enjoy their time here. MELODY: It's my dream to go traveling to hot springs all over the world.  MELODY: There used to be a hot spring where a giant tree stump was used as the tub. That one was really nice. MELODY: But you can't make that tub even if you tried. Yeah, finding that big of a tree isn't going to be easy.   Following the bath, we head on up to Whale Island Flank to try and get some item drops.  Fighting the hobgoblins here can get us some decently high level knife pieces, which we'll be needing for some of our coming weapon forging. These happen to be level 8 out of 10 so I really can't complain.  Eventually it gets late enough for me to head onto Iris. Also my carrots have grown! If you forgot that I planted carrots here, you're entirely forgiven i almost did myself I need them for Selphy's favorite gift, that's all.  Iris has nothing new to say, so I dive back into the Lava Ruins.   All I do while I'm down here is get a few materials, mostly just ending up to be some silver, insect skin, and a fire crystal. The run was mostly for the silver, and you'll see why in a bit.  While it's certainly late enough to trigger a constellation, they do have a minimum requirement of 1 LP with the corresponding girl. Tabatha won't hit that milestone until tomorrow, and Bianca will still take about 8 more days to get that far.  With a Battle Axe, Silver, Warrior Medal, and a Knife Piece (the latter two easily obtained at high levels from hobgoblins), we can make ourselves the Alldale before we go to sleep.  Alldale Lv:4 was synthesized. This was as high as I could get it at the moment. It was held back by the level of the Silver, a matter really only fixable with a better hammer. All the higher level does is reduce the RP cost anyways. I think if it was level 5+ or 10 it might get a damage boost, but I'm not clear on that.  I also go and make a Katusha, it needs Insect Jaw, Insect Hide, Cheap Cloth, and a Magic Powder. It's a little red hairband that claims to raise your critical rate, and happens to be useful for the various animal ears later. I make it at level 5.  It's a minor jump up to our defense and magic stats, but I like how the knit hat looks on Bush so he'll keep that on unless we're in dungeons.  Some extra food goes into the fridge. I'm up to 15 plates of tea leaves, but that will get higher in the coming days. I reserve the middle row of the fridge for sandwich materials. With all that done, Bush heads to bed...  Egads, a tornado!  BUSH: I shouldn't go outside today. Tornadoes are awful, and are just staples of the early farming games. You just lose a day and take variable, but usually bad amount of damage to your fields. Later games in the series let you both run around during these storms, as well as reinforce your crops from the damage. Frontier is not so nice. ...However, I don't play nice either. I save every night before I go to bed for a reason. Goodbye, stormy summer 9th!  TIME PARADOX However, RNG is set at the start of the day in this game. If the next day was going to be a storm day, you can't stop it. ...Or can you? SECOND TIME PARADOX  We go back to the 8th of Summer again and we once again call upon an old friend...  I know there's folks that have been waiting on another of these. You're welcome!  Music: St. Poli ChurchLARA: Did you work until you collapsed again?! LARA: Be sure to go home and rest before you collapse. Sorry, Lara, but this was necessary. She took like -10 LP subpoint from that, it's crazy.  You caught a cold.  Bam. Chew on that, bad mechanic! The developers didn't go out of their way to program a contingency for waking up in the church after passing out, so it guarantees clear weather regardless of what would happen. I've not tried this in RF1, but I've half a mind to wager it might just softlock the game. RF1 is not designed stably.  I get our cold cleared off for just 100g. Sure, we're starting our day at half HP and RP, but we spared our field from the wrath of wind.  Here's a look at the damage our field would have sustained had we accepted the storm. It's not a lot, but it'd still easily be about 3000g out of our daily profit, as well as a flat 20,000 from missing our tomato harvest. Consequently, you might notice the white and black grass spread about. This is the easier way to get it.  STELLA: Anette is always so full of energy. It makes me smile just looking at her. Anette is pretty fun. It's a shame she's not around more. Also, we won't be seeing her today, likely enough. She might stop by the beach or Erik's, but it's unlikely.  Music: SummerKANNO: It's too hot. It hurts these old bones of mine. I know about cold messing with bones, but not heat. Rough, man. I've got arthritis, so I know the pain at least.  Runey regions are filled up, so I'll go mess with those off-screen.  TABATHA: I really like rice porridges. Am I strange for liking it? TABATHA: I think the cooking method of porridge is actually one of the most elaborate. You're not joking. It's 80 skill for some rice mush.  While I'm chatting up Tabatha, Grant passes on by to help with all the harvesting. Good on ya there, lad.  EUNICE: I feel so calm inside when everything is cleaned up. That's nice.  TSUBUTE: Milady! You mustn't blindly recieve gifts from gentlemen! UZUKI: Why is that? It would be rude to rebuff them. TSUBUTE: That is the way for commoners. Milady, you must be more discreet. UZUKI: Very well. Then I shall require your help when Tsubute is not around, Bush. TSUBUTE: M-milady...? UZUKI: I was joking. You are much too serious-minded. Tsubute does not approve of our wanton gifting. However, Uzuki's cool with getting free fish every day regardless.  UZUKI: In this country, there are people with all sorts of colors for their hair and eyes. UZUKI: In my country, everyone had black hair and eyes. Seeing all these things is very new to me. In a shocking twist, Not-Japan is not very anime. The comment about the eyes is inherently wrong though, especially given she's got green eyes herself. Yue from RF2 has blue eyes while RF3's Sakuya and Shino have violet eyes. All black hair, but eyes, no.  ROSETTA: Let me tell you a little secret, Bush. BUSH: What is it? ROSETTA: My birthday is on the 21st of autumn. I'll be waiting for a present. I'll probably forget but give you a gift that day anyways.  ROSETTA: Mist has that weird personality but she's popular with the boys. I can never understand why. She's popular with some folks in the thread too. I do kinda get it though.  ROSETTA: Maybe I should start selling the stuff I cooked at the store? BUSH: Rosetta, are you good at cooking? ROSETTA: What, I don't look it? ROSETTA: I'm actually pretty good at it, you know. ROSETTA: When I was living with Dad, I was the one that did all the cooking. BUSH: Oh, really? Then I hope you'll treat me to some later. It might add some variety to the store. After all, Bush mostly exports fish and tomato juice.  ROSETTA: W-what?! I-It's not free! I-I-It's not cheap either, you know! Bush has money. Of course, he's nearly a master chef, so he can kinda make whatever he wants. Well, that was the light reprise of tsundere Rosetta, I guess.  DANNY: Oh... It's you, Bush... BUSH: What's wrong? You look really down. DANNY: The customers are all gone so I think I should just close shop and go back home... DANNY: I have 5 siblings back in my hometown. I came all the way here to start a business... I just wasn't cut out for it... BUSH: Oh... DANNY: Sorry... Can you leave me alone for a bit? Well RIP Danny's Groceries. Can't say I didn't see it coming. When someone comes along with a better supply than you and you refuse to adapt, that's on you.  SELPHY: Every Tuesday I will have a clearance on the stock! But, it's still not going to be that cheap... Somehow, it took me this long to find this out.  The tuesday store sells all the basic, low-level books alongside two very pricy and niche books for 10,000g: Beach Style!: A book of swimsuit patterns that boys are too embarassed to buy at stores. Happy Toys!: A book with instructions for accessories meant to be presents! Isn't that just awesome! The latter book just contains recipes for the Fan and Ribbon, two generic gifts that I know nothing about. The former book lets you learn all of two recipes for making swimsuits... as gifts for the girls. For now, I just buy the rest of the basic utensil recipes. This means that after all this time, Bush can make level 2 tomato juice on regular instead of needing a near frame perfect input to do it.  Following that, Bush spends a few thousand on grass at Lara's clinic so I can continue to go about making Tea Leaves all while listening to the 1975 radio hit, "How Long" by Ace. Had to mix it up from F-Zero.  MIST: I had a funny dream last night. In it, my roof leaked so much that I had to use my bed as a boat and I sailed on a voyage! Neat. I only have nightmares! You should probably get Kross to fix your roof though.  MIST: Adventures are nice, but don't forget to till your fields. MIST: What you need to do is to till your fields, Bush. Hahaha haha ha no  Many, many tea leaves later and Bush is at Cooking skill 90. He's going all the way, folks. (And also everything I'm doing here is a profit, if a minor one.)  Mackerel (24cm) Lv:1 was caught. While waiting on the bath to open, I went to the beach and caught some fish. I stuck around until I'd burned my bars to the limit before hitting the bath.  That eventually leads into visiting Iris up on the island. Our moondrop are finally ready though!  But I didn't have any tomato juice or tomatoes left on me, so I had to go all the way back home once gathering the ones by the tower. Given that it was already past 5, Grant's harvest got sold already. I go ahead and blow the rest of my RP on cooking since that's what I was going to do when I got back anyways. Our skill is up to 94 now!  IRIS: Bush! Bush! IRIS: Can you model for my next drawing?  ----------------------- 1. Sure. 2. Maybe next time. ----------------------- Oh, wow, a branching dialogue! Running all the way back to make that juice was totally worth it now. ---------------------------- A polite way of saying no posted:
Oh, no... a drawing of Bush from memory. As someone who is terrible with drawing, I know this will likely unleash a cursed horror on the world if we let it happen. So we say yes, instead, naturally. Bush is just predisposed to say yes to everything anyways, for the sake of content. ----------------------------- Draw me like one of your French, uh wait france doesn't exist in- posted:
first person to draw that and post it in the thread gets an oatmeal I think I misjudged Bush, he's not making white lies, he's carefully supporting the world's next top surrealist/avant-garde artist. He's got an eye for talent is what it is.  IRIS: I've never eaten any garlic before, but for some reason, I don't want to try. I dunno girl, it's got lifesteal on it some pretty kickin' stuff if you ask me   Found the Wooly Constellation! Friendship with monster went up! It's near 9:00 so I drop by the observatory to grab this. Of course, Pony is with us as always for this. It's the least I can do, given everything she does for us.  She's level 34 now, higher than us, thanks to the friendship levels. Her FP gain is going to stay real slow just because of how the calculations work in this game.  Thanks to the weird start this morning, I forgot to water the crops, so I had to do that late in the day. It also turns out that Grant still doesn't like us enough to do the entire field himself, leaving one section of corn and two sections of tomatoes unharvested. I can just resolve that by collecting the corn myself on big harvest days. Easy enough.  And with this, Bush hits the hay for the day. Like the saying, not the fodder. I've got enough of that stuff. He's at skill 94 right now, and I should easily get that 95 next time around, finally closing out Bush's great cooking escapade.  Music: GoodnightSee you then! Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Feb 5, 2022 00:06
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Poor Danny, outcompeted by every other merchant in town, even the library. Poor in the monetary sense, that is, it's true he deserves it for being lazy. Is he actually going to end up closing up shop for good? Going back in time and passing out to avoid tornados, that's farmer magic at work.
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Feb 5, 2022 01:32
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BraveLittleToaster posted:Poor Danny, outcompeted by every other merchant in town, even the library. Poor in the monetary sense, that is, it's true he deserves it for being lazy. Is he actually going to end up closing up shop for good? If all you sell is turnip seeds, cooking oil, and cheap jewelry, you got what's comin' to ya If he started selling that INT boosting snake oil, then I'd be spending all my cash at his shop- I'm telling you, it's an under-served market! Sure, it's a market of one person, but that's more than what his current stock appeals to. Actually, well, Ganesha did buy those 10 turnip seeds that one time... As to the fate of his shop, we shall find out next update! Danny in general kinda just feels unfinished to me as a character- his stock is pretty much irrelevant, he's not really competitive bachelor, and he has exactly two expressions.
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Feb 5, 2022 02:03
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Loved the update. The weird unfinished harvest is because monsters work for exactly two hours and knock off work on the dot. They may love Bush, but not enough to do unpaid overtime. On the subject of summery, watery music, I always used to play the Dark Cloud 2 fishing music when fishing in this game. It's very relaxing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3PXbQ9xr0U
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Feb 5, 2022 15:41
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sandorius posted:Loved the update. The weird unfinished harvest is because monsters work for exactly two hours and knock off work on the dot. They may love Bush, but not enough to do unpaid overtime. Yeah, I figure it out next update that if I manually collect the corn, Grant just exactly finishes all the tomatoes. It's always hard to tell exactly how much work the monsters are going to do, but I can't really complain given how much time they save me. I'll add it to the guest music list! The Dark Cloud games are a series I always wanted to check out, but I've never had a PS2 until recently. I know kid me would have been hooked by them.
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Feb 5, 2022 16:42
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Odd Wilson posted:If you know of any good water or summer themes that'd fit for more days like these, send 'em my way. Legend of Mana: Port City Polpota https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfH163Po8GU To The Sea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM4I1dCgmnY Atelier Ayesha: Flower-Scented Forest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wybUZaMofU Alluring Flower ~Summer~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaKoVtQ_2f8 Dance of a Water Drop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd1aHNpboGQ Odd Wilson posted:This is a reference to a thing that's apparently common for stores carrying produce to do in Japan. I don't know if it has a special name or anything, all I know is that it exists. They usually call it something like 'time-limited sales' in translations, but over here the only place I see them regularly is bakeries and grocery stores containing bakeries. When in-house baked goods are on the last day or two before their expiration date, they'll be on a special display/endcap with the price hacked down, because otherwise they'd throw it out in the morning anyway. Odd Wilson posted:BUSH: (Um... is this Clucky with a pumpkin on it's head supposed to be... me?) Best I can give you is a cluckadoodle with an onion, take it or leave it. (It sort of resembles Bush's hairstyle...) 
Raitzeno fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Feb 7, 2022 |
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Feb 7, 2022 23:15
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Oh! I think I might know what Cinnamon means by "I caught a big one. I made a mold of the fish and let it go.". She's making Gyotaku, or fish prints. It was started Back In The Day in Japan to record your big catches. You literally paint ink onto the fish you caught and plap it on washi paper to leave a mark. In real life, though, the fish is usually dead. But maybe she's just that good at fishing she can make a catch-and-release one? 
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Feb 8, 2022 03:51
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Raitzeno posted:
Ah, man, how did I forget to look through Ayesha's soundtrack?! That's my favorite one! Links added to the list! I'm sure we'll be seeing more rainy days before the end of Summer. Raitzeno posted:They usually call it something like 'time-limited sales' in translations, but over here the only place I see them regularly is bakeries and grocery stores containing bakeries. When in-house baked goods are on the last day or two before their expiration date, they'll be on a special display/endcap with the price hacked down, because otherwise they'd throw it out in the morning anyway. Alright, good to know! I knew it was a thing, just not really the specifics of it. As a business practice it makes a lot of sense. I'll go back and add in a little edit with this if you don't mind. Raitzeno posted:Best I can give you is a cluckadoodle with an onion, take it or leave it. (It sort of resembles Bush's hairstyle...) I'm not sure Bush even remembers what a pumpkin looks like, so this is probably more accurate. Congrats, here's your "oatmeal":  Karma Guard posted:Oh! I think I might know what Cinnamon means by "I caught a big one. I made a mold of the fish and let it go.". You're probably right, I think this is what she's up to! I was thinking like clay molds myself, but this makes a lot more sense overall. Maybe she is just that good, I could imagine it's possible with this method, if quite challenging. Mind if I quote this into the update? The next updates will keep following the same weekly schedule, but there's going to be quite a few things going on in the next few updates.. We'll be at the first Bachelorette vote before long though, it'll probably be Update 30.
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Feb 8, 2022 06:49
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Oh sure! Go right ahead. I ran across it randomly and it's nice for the random knowledge I retain instead of important dates to be useful 
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Feb 8, 2022 21:46
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Update 27: Mercantile Mercy New update! New day for Bush (Farmer)! Guess the weather, I dare you.  yeah its raining again i know right Music: Rune Factory 2 - SummerHave some more guest music! This is RF2's oddly sort of chiptune summer track. The only thing more unusual than it is the arrangement present on the soundtrack release, which is barely a minute long and is mostly remixed with actual game sounds. It's something else. Music: Dark Cloud 2 - Peace Of The WorldWe've also got another guest track, as per thread recommendation! This one's pretty good, I'd recommend a listen.  We have over 30 tea leaves in the fridge. Neat.  ANETTE: Ghosts are the prime topic among the girls in the village right now. ANETTE: I always wake up early in the morning so I never get to see the "haunting hour". I feel like I'm missing out or something. This'll be a random conversation topic for a while that just kinda starts up sometime in Summer. I don't remember when the spooky ghost sightings end though. I only played this game up to somewhere around Summer 20th originally, so we'll be hitting that new content soon enough.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~"I have decided to close up my shop." - Danny~ I am sorry to announce that as of today, "Danny's" will be ending operations. Thank you for your patronage so far. ----------------------------------------------------- We all saw it comin'. As far as I know, there's nothing you can do to stop this from happening.  ANETTE: Bianca! Tabatha! You got mail! ANETTE: Whoa!! I can smell Moondrop from inside the mailbox... Moondrop's not really a gift for either of them, so I don't know what this is about.  Because it's considered an important/store based letter, Danny's resignation has somehow teleported to our mailbox ahead of Bush. i bet it was the spooky ghooooosts  Another day, another set of eggs, milk, and wool.   Yeah, Danny's shop is pretty deserted. Let's go give Rosetta her victory cave strawberry, I suppose.  DANNY: Welcome! BUSH: Danny? How did you...? DANNY: Rosetta took me in. DANNY: After that happened, Rosetta came to me and asked me if I wanted to work for her since I was closing shop anyway. DANNY: She even lent me some money to send to my siblings... I'm going to work hard at this store!  ROSETTA: I was short on staff. He would make a good worker so I hired him. ROSETTA: My store is doing pretty well, you know? BUSH: That's nice to hear, Danny. DANNY: Yeah! Hope you'll come to "Materia" more often now! ROSETTA: Danny! Be more polite to the customer! DANNY: Sorry! Well, this turned out nicely. Still, you'd think from all of this that Danny is your pseudo-rival for Rosetta, but no.  Danny being here doesn't really change anything about her store mechanically. We can buy from him or Rosetta and the stock is the same. It just means my only source of cooking oil is the bar. Also they sell pumpkin heads in the store now. I think it's for some festival coming up way later.  DANNY: Why does it have to rain on days like this? DANNY: I feel so depressed. Wow, that good mood didn't last long.  MIST: Bush! Bush! We have huge problem!  MIST: I walked to the square because I couldn't sleep last night. MIST: I saw it slide through the ground without making a sound! That has to be a ghost! You sure it wasn't just a Runey? They do that all the time.  BUSH: Speaking of which, there is a rumor about a gh- UZUKI: Noooooo!! BUSH: W-what's wrong?! UZUKI: D-do not speak of that word! BUSH: What word? You mean gh- UZUKI: I told you not to utter it! BUSH: Okay... One could hazard a guess that Bush might've been thinking the ghost was her brother. This is probably a better reaction than what we'd get for "hey, your brother might be dead".  UZUKI: I went to the lake with Stella the other day. UZUKI: Right when I was about to eat the rice ball I brought, I dropped it. UZUKI: It kept rolling until it went inside a monster hole. What a waste... The only "monster hole" I know of is Lava Ruins. Outside of Mist's duck, we basically never see monsters remotely close to town.  UZUKI: There are things that you can do when it rains. I suppose I will go maintain my naginata. She does still have it with her when she's sitting down, although it's a bit hard to see.  EUNICE: Oh, Bush! BUSH: What's wrong? EUNICE: I went to go get some firewood this morning and I saw something white staring at me! BUSH: Could that be the rumored gh- EUNICE: No! Stop right there! BUSH: Hahahaha... Okay, now Bush is absolutely trolling. What happened to our pure and honest boy? Actually nevermind, I'm down with this side of Bush. Let's go mess with more people. Next up, Coquille Manor! I'm sure Bianca will find this news to be relatively interesting.  BUSH: Hey! You shouldn't have come all the way here! For some reason, the little purple elephant has decided to visit the manor too? You know, the one that randomly took up residence in our barn and sat in a corner doing nothing all this time? Suddenly, it runs off!  BUSH: Wait!  BIANCA: Ack!  BUSH: I'm sorry, Bianca. BIANCA: Is this your monster?  -------------------------------- 1. Yes, it's mine. 2. No, it just followed me here. -------------------------------- In a weird way, neither of these are really a lie? Anyways, time for some alternate timelines! ...Or not, because it doesn't matter what we pick, it's the same result. "Yes, I do own this tiny purple elephant, ma'am."  BIANCA: Hmph. I guess monsters aren't as scary as i thought. BIANCA: Won't you give it to me?  ----------------------------------- 1. Sure. 2. Please don't make me choose... ----------------------------------- Nested dialogue options! Oh no! Fortunately these don't really matter. The second option just gets us this: BUSH: Please don't make me choose... BIANCA: Oh, really? But it doesn't seem to want to move away from here... BIANCA: It seems quite attached to me so maybe you shouldn't force it. BIANCA: Won't you give it to me? ...cycling back to the non-choice at hand. So, we'll just answer yes. It's not like it was doing anything anyways.  BUSH: Sure. Be sure to take good care of it. BIANCA: My thanks. For its name, let's see...  BIANCA: "Francoise." Francoise, starting today, I am your master. And then we fade to black. Fran-swah is how she pronounces it, if you're wondering. This is the key to making Bianca stay after Summer ends. So the literal requirement is "have a barn + make it through Whale Island Cave". Not very hard to do.  BIANCA: There have been a lot of rumors about a ghost recently. BIANCA: I always keep the lights on. The ghosts won't come... The ghosts won't come... Okay, wow, she's genuinely terrified by the ghost thing.  Francoise takes up permanent residence in that barn room that exists in the manor for some reason. Here she continues her usual life of playing through elefun_idle_01.anim and not moving.  BUSH: This must be Tabatha's diary. BUSH: ...Hm. Just the thought of reading this makes me nervous. I was looking for Tabatha and found her diary instead. The game doesn't let you read it, which is fine by me.  And now she's back out in the foyer in her usual spot? This game has some weird interactions with cutscenes overriding the usual placement of characters.  TABATHA: I hear that there is a ghost that appears somewhere in Trampoli. TABATHA: I would like to talk to it once. BUSH: You're not scared, Tabatha? TABATHA: Oh? Why would I be scared? If it's a ghost, I'm sure we can get along just fine. Tabatha has NO FEAR. That and she had a friend back in Kardia that was likely a ghost.  TABATHA: Bush, thank you very much for gifting me with Francoise. You're uh... welcome? She was just in the corner- I honestly forgot she existed.   TABATHA: Oh... There's something on your shoulder, Bush. TABATHA: This is... monster fur, I think. BUSH: You're right. When did it get on me? TABATHA: I hear that monsters rub up against people because they want to become friends. TABATHA: You seem to be good friends with monsters, Bush. I really look up to people like that. Apparently all monsters are like cats. This is our little reward for the Wooly Constellation from last time. Bush's natural farmer magicks as an Earthmate are really the only thing that makes him good with monsters- there's not even a communication skill in this game.  Still, this combined with the daily oatmeal has brought Tabatha up to 2 LP already. Also, Melody has since overtaken Mist in LP, although Selphy is still in the lead.  Most girls are in the 5 range for friendship, with a 6 on a few of them, but the LP is still tending towards the 2 range. The current standings are: SELPHY: 5 FP, 5 LP MELODY: 6 FP, 4.8 LP MIST: 6 FP, 4.6 LP ROSETTA: 6 FP, 4 LP IRIS: 4.8 FP, 3.6 LP ANETTE: 4 FP, 2.9 LP CINNAMON: 5 FP, 2.9 LP EUNICE: 4.8 FP, 2.6 LP UZUKI: 4.9 FP, 2.5 LP LARA: 5 FP, 2.2 LP TABATHA: 1.6 FP, 2 LP BIANCA: about 0.8 for both. I've been pretty on point about giving gifts, so this should really go to show the different scaling on LP gain. Lara would be higher, but defying nature is more important.  BUSH: There are rumors about ghosts recently. CINNAMON: That's superstition. Ghosts don't exist. BUSH: Oh... is that how it is? While it's questionable in RF1, I think RF4 disproves this. Maybe. I haven't played RF4 in years.  CINNAMON: Did you find the Wooly Constellation? BUSH: Yes. It looked really cute. CINNAMON: Oh... A Wooly is a monster that has lived with people for a long time. Because of that, there are a lot of legends about Woolies.  CINNAMON: The most famous is one where a Wooly comes back to thank the person who helped it when it was injured. CINNAMON: We have to take care of the monsters. BUSH: Haha, I guess so. I feel like that's a pretty common occurrence, but what do you want for the series mascot?  CINNAMON: I used to do research at a magic laboratory in a large city. I got called here by Grandpa so I came with Candy. Unfortunately, we have already been told about this in the 29 days you've been here. Like, easily 25 days ago.  KROSS: I really don't like "Curry Powder" and "Flour". KROSS: I can't make that myself so someone might find out. BUSH: Isn't it bad if someone finds out? KROSS: Heh... A man's cooking should be a private matter. I had no idea curry was such serious business.  STELLA: I have everyone lock their doors when it's early morning or at night just in case. STELLA: But if it's someone they trust, they should unlock their doors. Why don't you try knocking on the doors? STELLA: But don't do it when it's too late or you'll just bother them. We probably have the FP/LP to do this with a lot of houses now, I just haven't bothered. They were pretty straightforward about telling you in RF1. Of course, RF1 had a funny oversight with house permissions. It had the Moonlit Eve festival way late in the year, where you have a semi-romantic chat with a girl after the usual 9-6 hours. However, given the way the event worked, you could just come in before 9 and have your candlelit dinner or whatever at 7AM in the morning. Of course, you can credits warp that game by flipping a bunch of turnips and rocks around, so it's not the best programmed thing in the world.  STELLA: Whale Island was here before I came here. It's such a mysterious island no matter how many times I see it. You'd think this place would be a more famous tourist destination, especially if the Whale's been around that long. It's not like there's other flying islands in the world.  While I'm here I drop another few thousands on grass. They're only 20g a piece, so that should give you the idea of the bulk I'm buying in.  BUSH: Recently, there's been some rumor about a ghost. Don't you like that sort of thing, Selphy? SELPHY: I like stories that have ghosts in them... but I hate the real thing!  ----------------------------------------------------- ~Constellation: Elephant~ "The Elephant, a summer constellation, appears a little after sunset. Look up at the sky once it gets completely dark to spot it." ----------------------------------------------------- That description's not much help finding it, I'll be honest. The tricky part is that it comes out at 8:00 PM and needs 1 LP with Bianca. That's really it.  ----------------------------------------------------- ~Constellation: Wooly~ "The Wooly is the most prominent constellation in the summer skies and can be seen just before midnight." ----------------------------------------------------- I wouldn't say it's just before midnight, but I don't know if arguing with a pamphlet is the best use of my time.  I end up buying Stylish Wear, the advanced guide to making accessories all the cool kids are talking about.   This actually just teaches torso recipes, most of which are just capes or brooches. It does have the Cat's Tail, Kross's favorite item. The ultimate items it has are the Black Robe and the Corsage, the latter of which needs far too many long-growing flowers for me to care about. Unfortunately, the Brand Sunglasses aren't an item in this game, and that is the biggest mark against Rune Factory Frontier I can give. It's almost unplayable thanks to that.  I also buy At Your Fingertips, the arm accessory book. This is mostly rings and bracelets. They'll be useful for boosting our spells. Probably the most interesting thing in here is that we can make a Rolex. All of this is out of reach right now. Our crafts skill is rubbish, but we'll work on it. What can we craft?  Tea Leaves Lv:2 was synthesized with expertise! Tea. Lots of it.  A few plates of leaves later and we hit skill 95. This is the minimum skill we need to homebrew our own tea from pure experimentation alone.   Relax Tea Lv:1 was synthesized. Good stuff. This was the last thing I really wanted access to. We'll hit the Cooking skill cap in time as I convert all of our leaves to tea. It restores 175 RP at base level, and provides Status Defense, which gives us high resistance to every status effect in the game. Pretty busted stuff. It's also a 210g profit over what we bought to make it. We can slowly but surely print money through tea now.  Heart Pendant Lv:1 was synthesized. With a pendant, a copper, and a fire crystal, I make one of these. It's some small boosts to fire damage, but it doesn't increase EXP gain like it does in RF3. It's useful as a material for a later accessory though, I think.  Following this, we catch Melody at work cleaning the bath.  MELODY: This is Relax Tea! It's for me?! Thanks! I love you! She's very happy over the tea. She'll start passing Selphy in LP soon with these.  MELODY: Did you hear, Bush? There are ghosts recently. I wonder if ghosts take baths, too. If so, it should visit! Melody has her priorities set.  MELODY: Floating seasonal vegetables in the bath can show a really refined taste, don't ya think? I'm counting on you. BUSH: Wait, I have to bring it? I, uh, I grow tomatoes and corn. I believe both count as fruit, not vegetables, but you can still float them if you want, I guess?  MELODY: My type of guy is someone that can find hot springs with me! MELODY: Do you want to go hot spring hunting with me, Bush? Whoa there, an "I love you" and a dating pitch? Melody, the bachelorette voting hasn't even started yet!  Bush comes back a few hours later to get his daily bath in, and then we're off for adventure!  Boiled Egg Lv:2 was synthesized with expertise! And by "adventure," I mean cooking.  Our fridge is getting pretty full already!  I end up dumping into the shipping bin a bunch of corn I can't be bothered to waste RP on making popcorn out of. Also a leftover battle axe that I'm not going to regret selling at all. Not at all.  Okay, but for real, let's go do some stuff on Whale Island.  WHALE: Bush... BUSH: Mr. Whale...? WHALE: Yes... Bush, hurry... The Rune within me is dissipating at an alarming rate. WHALE: If this continues, I will no longer be able to swim through the skies... BUSH: Okay. I'll be as quick as I can! WHALE: I'm counting on you, Bush... well drat this ain't good  Music: Whale Island OutsideThe sense of urgency doesn't stop me from grinding some warrior medals of goblins though.  It does seem like we should probably make some more progress soon. Let's head back to the Tail Tree.  BUSH: ...!! What in the...!  BUSH: It's so much smaller than when I saw it last time... He's not wrong. The rune at the top of the tree is looking a decent bit smaller now. Of course, this doesn't really matter- there's no real time limit. I'm not sure why the game is trying to push me at the moment (we're still rather outclassed by the enemies), but we can take as long as we want to get things done.    Some brutal combat with Manticts ensues, and Bush narrowly level cannons the nonsense thanks to Pony's assistance. Manticts also seem capable of projecting some kind of barrier, and I'll be honest in saying I don't know what it does. Maybe it reflects projectiles?  Pony gets pretty beat up, so I head back towards Iris and plant some turnips on the way. I'm running out of ones to surrender to Mist's underground root racket.  IRIS: Drinking tomato juice while looking at the full moon can be very nice. You should try it some time. This would normally be our hint that tomato juice is her favorite gift, but I already knew that  After that, I decide to give it a risky run up the tree as it's already so late in the day.  um, whoops You just barely can't make it up to the third safe spot on the spiral with aid of a rideable monster. They will bodyblock the deadly fruit for you though, that's a... it's some kind of silver lining to the fact I just Yoshi'ed our horse.  Bush must now proceed up the tree on his own.  The next safe nook is here, with a gate that spawns two manticts. Caution is necessary here, as it is very easy to slip down the ramp.  It's not like I know that from experience or anything. Hah, that'd be a hoot.  On the upside, our Alldale is really doing a number on these monsters. With pacifist magic, I assure you.  Eventually, Bush reaches the top. Well, the stone bridge out of here, at least. There is a treasure chest at the very top of the tree, but I'm not bothering for what will probably be a centuries old box of rice.  WHALE ISLAND DRAIN If you were digging that overgrown marble and broken pillars aesthetic, well congrats, here's a whole lot more of it! The Drain is largest single screen on the island, (maybe in the entire game,) and was also the farthest I ever got on my original playthrough.  The Drain is no slouch either. It opens almost immediately with a gate that deposits Faeries on your face. You might be thinking these Tinker Bell wannabes are probably pushovers, but there's a reason why they're usually lategame enemies in the series.  Case in point, they shoot large, fast flying projectiles in a shotgun fan, easily doing around 50 HP each.  Those balls of light stop sort of around where you're at and float down slowly instead of just disappearing, creating a brief minefield of active hurtboxes. Also these can just outright stun you and leave you unable to move for a few seconds- usually long enough to eat a full spread of green light orbs to the face. These things hurt a lot is what I'm saying. There's still an enemy we've yet to see in the Lava Ruins that terrifies me above all else.  There's also TERRESTRIAL ACCELERATING TORTOISES, or uh, Tortas. Aside from a meh bite or a water laser, they move slowly until they line up a chance to do a super shell slide at you. It hurts a decent bit, but honestly the worst thing about these is just how resistant to flinching from hits they are. They poise through a lot. They're also one of the only sources of turtle shells, so we may end up farming a few at some point.  The other pathways from here are blocked off, either from the bridges being inexplicably destroyed or being foiled by waist high walls.  There's this lower platform we can walk down to, but not much we can really do here.  Some pipes down there shoot out water lasers as a neat visual effect, I guess. It's not like we can go down-  Huh. So, funny story, the perspective here pretty much makes the ramp down nearly imperceptible. Past me from years ago got stuck here because I never actually realized I could just... walk down.  But it's real late, so I decide to warp on out of here for now. We need to gear up some more first.  I stop by the bar before hitting the hay.  STELLA: If only Selphy would go outside a bit more often... The moment you take your eyes off her... STELLA: It's good to have something you can indulge in. Books are a way of life for Selphy- I'd say they're more than an indulgence.  GANESHA: A drink after a hard day's work is the best. For Bush, sleep is the way he ends the day. It's the only time he's not working!  ...Man, I really have to get that Forge Storage from Lute at some point. The box is just full.  To make some space, I make another Katusha, the little red headband I should be wearing but I forget to equip on the regular. Since it's a required material for the various animal ears, I'll want one eventually anyways.  I then spend the rest of our available HP and RP swinging tools around, and send Bush to sleep. Gonna have to call this one here, likely enough, I don't know what's with some of these single day updates of late. I guess the recordings for these are usually an hour long with some emulation speed-up abuse, so some days are just going to be more content filled than others. Speaking of, there's gonna be some big stuff going down next time! See you all next time in what will probably be another action packed single day update! Maybe one day we'll even have... a three day update 
Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Feb 12, 2022 17:38
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