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.