Sorting out Storage Issues in Rune Factory 4

I am an inveterate packrat in games as well as real life, but it is in the realm of Harvest Moon and Rune Factory that this characteristic actually can be positive, provided always that one can find storage space for everything.

First of all, however, it is important to realise that one must create a perfect balance between shipping and storing items in these games.  In Rune Factory 4, shipping at least one of every item has particularly positive effects, as it will allow the item to appear in local shops or in the menus of merchants such as Raven, the Fish Merchant and the Gem Merchant.  You always should ship the very first 'Material' that you obtain, whether as a War Trophy or otherwise, as it then has the potential to appear in Raven's knapsack where you can purchase it.  Purchase prices for Items are far higher than the price you will obtain when you ship the same item, but that is of little consequence really compared to the ability to lay hands upon the item without going into a dungeon to fight the same Monster again and again in the faint hope that it will be dropped as a War Trophy.

Furthermore, you can obtain valuable Items early in the game but when they are Materials that can be used at the Forge or Crafting Table, you will not be able to use them until your Skills at those activities increase enormously.  When then store an Item you cannot use?

Once you have shipped an Item, you can begin to collect it for your own future use.  Storage space always is a problem for me, but there are ways to mitigate the problem if you know where an Item can be stored.  Most Items are defined rather rigidly in terms of storage.  Crops, Fish and Cooked Dishes can be stored only in your backpack or in the Refrigerator.  Materials, Ores and Gems only can be stored either in your backpack or in the Storage Bin.  There are some Items, however, that can be stored either in the Refrigerator or in the Storage Bin.  These include Herbs/Grasses, Flowers and Ingredients.  Ingredients are those Items like Flour or Chocolate that can be purchased at the General Store as well as some Items crafted at the Medicine Bench that are used in Cooking, such as Sour Drop.

Finally, Seeds and Nutrients can be stored either in a Refrigerator or in the Storage Bin, giving the Player more flexibility with respect to storage.

As in any Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game, options to expand storage space, whether in the form of your Backpack, the Refrigerator or Storage Bin do exist.  In Rune Factory 4, however, expansions depend upon a new option in the form of Prince/Princess Points, abbreviated as pp.  To make expaansions or engage in building projects, go to the Order Board in the throne room where Ventuswill resides.  You then will find all available expansion projects with their prices.  Storage expansions are listed under 'Development'.  It is here that you will find a fundamental difference between Expansion of a Refrigerator and Expansion of a Storage Bin which can make the flexibiity in storage of certain items very important in a practical sense. 

To expand your Refrigerator, you will need Material Stone.  To expand your Storage Bin, however, you will need Lumber.  For example, the cost of expanding your Refrigerator size from 450 to 570 is 1500 pp, 500 Material Stone but to expand your Storage Box from 450 to 570, you will need 1500 pp and 500 Lumber.

I find it easier to collect large quantities of Lumber than Material Stone for one reason alone.  When various types of Rocks drop upon your Fields, you cannot charge your Hammer to smash them all at once without destroying any tilled spaces.  You can charge your Axe, however, to deal with every Branch and other source of Lumber to the maximum without destroying tilled Squares.  It therefore is easier to clear the Fields of wood as well as easier to collect Lumber.

The rare Crystal Seeds in Rune Factory 4

As with the Tree to the west of Obsidian Mansion that delivers Fruit Tree Seeds daily, there is a Tree to the East of Sercerezo Hill that delivers the rare Crystal Seeds on a daily basis.  The colour of Crystal Seeds that you will obtain depends on the Season.  In the Spring, you can find Blue Crystal Seeds.  IN the Summer, you will find Green Crystal Seeds.  In Autumn, Red Crystal Seeds will be obtained and in Winter, you will find White Crystal Seeds.  Take the airship to the point that is named Sercerezo Hill and then go south one screen before walking east to the lower bridge that crosses the gap.  Go east one screen, south one screen, then west through the hidden gap in the pink Sakura Trees to find the screen with the magical Tree.  It is on a screen that overlooks the abyss.

Typhoons and Wettable Powder in Rune Factory 4 and finding upgraded Seeds

Horrible destructive storms still are an aspect of Rune Factory in Rune Factory 4 but there is a new option that allows a Farmer to prepare for them better and protect both Crops and Trees.  This is the new Wettable Powder, a Medicine that can be crafted at the Medicine Bench using Cherry Grass and Charm Blue (Level 30 Skill).  It can be purchased at the Carnation Flower Shop as well.

Every Medicine when applied on a field will cover four small squares or plots.  There are a number of occasions when the actual seeds planted on any four square configuration may matter.  One is for the purpose of protecting the items in that four-square with a Medicine such as Wettable Powder or No Rot.  The other is for the purpose of transforming the size of the items in the four-square area.  If you plant four of the same Crop in a four-square area, you can use Giantizer to transform the four Crops into a single enormous (Giant/Great) Crop.  It does not appear to matter whether or not the seeds are of different levels incidentally.  I have to do further research to see if one seed of a higher level will produce a higher level Giant or if all four need to be of that level to achieve that result.

Some Medicines used will be effective only once per day.   I have not been able to increase speed of growth more than once per day.  You caan use more than one bottle of Wettable Powder in a single day to boost the protection level beyond the 32% protection that it will give.  You can apply another bottle the next day to elevate the level of protection to 63%.  I have not found a way to boost the level beyond that.  It appears that the game does not wish for Farmers to be able to obtain 100% protection for their Crops and Trees.

Another form of protection may be the quality of your soil.  With a fertiliser bin, you can throw Weeds into it daily to raise your soil quality but as in the real world, using the same plots over and over again without allowing them to lie fallow will exhaust the soil and lower quality significantly.  If you place a Withered Grass on the plots that are low in quality and use a hoe on the Withered Grass, the soil quality will be raised for the four-square area.

Other methods of raising soil quality are to grow Corn or Clover and then use your Hoe on them to till them back into the soil instead of harvesting them.  Both are rather valuable Crops so I prefer the Withered Grass option usually, although there are Requests that cannot be completed if you are not willing to till at least one Clover and one ear of Corn.

In Rune Factory 4, whenever you harvest any Crop, a bag of Crop seeds one level higher than the Crop you harvested RANDOMLY may appear.  If you use a Sickle on the Crop instead of harvesting it, a bag of Seed one level higher than the Crop ALWAYS will appear but there will be no Crop to harvest.

Tip:  If you want a specific Seed of a higher level, save your game before you go to the Field.  Harvest the Crop to see if the random bag of upgraded Seeds appears.  If it fails to appear, reload and try again.  I prefer this little cheat to the waste of a good Crop.

Growing Dungeons and Shining Trees, aka Twinkle Trees in Rune Factory 4

I really love Rune Factory 4.  I think that a real effort was made to add new surprising options to the game while retaining all the aspects of Rune Factory that die-hard fans like myself love and expect from any Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game.  While I have been slightly disappointed in some of the recent Harvest Moon games, finding them too arduous in some respects without being more exciting or interesting, Rune Factory does not disappoint.

Some of the new options involve Farming.  One can grow a Dungeon for example, from a special Seed obtained from an extraordinary monster who looks like a cute little Chipsqueek and initially can be found only between the first and fifth days of any Season.  Once you have found him, however, the location of his lair will appear on the map and the airship will 'remember' it and you can visit any day of the season.

Other wonderful new magical Seeds include the Shining Tree or Twinkle Tree and the Sword and Shield Crops.

Requests are a fundamental part of Rune Factory 4 as they have been in all Rune Factory games.  Eliza here is the one to give Requests.  She is a 'person' who once was the Sharance Tree evidently but only Freya can speak to her or recognise her as an individual in the early stages of the game.  You begin with a single Request each day but as you complete Requests, Eliza will allow you to take more.  Freya now is at the point where she can complete up to three Requests each day.

One of Eliza's Requests is to chop down a Shining Tree.  The Shining Tree is named the Twinkle Tree when it is grown in the field.  A random number of strokes with an Axe is required to chop down a Twinkle Tree and only a fully mature Twinkle Tree can be cut.  It broke my heart to chop down a Tree that took so much time to grow!  Luckily I did not save the results the first time because by not doing so, I was able to discover that the number of strokes (and therefore Lumber) as well as the actual Items you obtain when you cut down a Twinkle Tree is RANDOM.  I went through it a number of times to see how different the results could be.  In some cases, all I received was Lumber.  In other cases, I received 1 of the rare Glitta Augite stones.  In other cases, I received 2 Glitta Augite Stones with over 30 Lumber.  I never received more than two, however, so I finally saved with two Glitta Augite Stones and 36 Lumber.  The description of these is:

Glitta Augite: Collectible
  Difficulty: 50
  A strange stone produced by a tree.  Emits strong light.  If used for reinforcing a weapon, extends the range.

The selling value of a Level 5 Glitta Augite is 952G.
At 50 Difficulty, Freya is not strong enough to use it in forging yet, but will do as soon as possible!  She had a bit of luck in the early days of Spring when she found an Invisible Stone and was able to make an Invisiblade with it.  That weapon was far better than anything else she could have made without having unlocked any dungeons apart from Yokmir Forest.

Invisible Stones are a random discovery when using a Hammer on Rocks.  Found first in Yokmir Forest on a number of different screens, Freya was able to find them elsewhere as well later in the game.  Darkness Stones are found in a cave.