Atelier Marie Remake: The Alchemist of Salburg is based on the first-ever Atelier game that saw the light in Japan in 1997. And as it often happened back then, the original never made its way over to the West. Great that we now have the opportunity to experience the game itself after the overhaul. I loved the game, though it is a very different gaming experience than the newer games like Atelier Ryza. You can find my review here.
And you know the saying here on LadiesGamers by now: when we love a game, we try to make a guide! As it’s a very different Atelier game, maybe this guide to get you started is helpful!
Time Ticks Away
If you are used to playing the later Atelier games, this might be a bit of an adjustment at first. Atelier Marie Remake is more like a management game, due to the challenge set to you and the way time progresses. You have five years to be able to make an item that will meet Professor Ingrid’s approval, so there are a lot of things to balance. Finding materials, synthesizing items, making enough money to buy the recipes and creating friendships with others in the game through exploring together. Enough to do, but it all costs time.
And you don’t want to run out of time at the end of the five years! I’ll make a note in the chapters below of how much time is spent on these activities. Although I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, I can tell you that Professor Ingrid’s goal is easily achieved, so don’t stress too much about the time used up.
By the way, good to know that when the date changes while you are in the Atelier, the game is automatically saved.
Gathering and Exploring
Time Spent During Gathering
The Sky Tavern, run by Dio, is the hub of Salburg. Here you can find notifications of important events coming up. And you can pick up quests to earn money and REP (reputation). Be aware that if you pick up a quest and you are unable to fulfil it within the time limit, your REP will decrease.
During your gameplay, new locations to explore will open up. The best way to unlock them is to buy rumours at the Sky Tavern from Dio. The different locations each take a set number of days to get there, and back. Keep this in mind before you venture out.
- Nearby Forest 0 days
- Hebel Lake 2 days
- Elfin Cave 3 days
- Meyer Cave 4 days
- Medea Forest 4 days
- Strudel Falls 6 days
- Mount Wieland 6 days
- Belsenburg 9 days
There’s also Fairy Forest/ 4 days but it’s only to hire fairies.
Erfolg Tower/four days is a dungeon that features pure battle.
While you are in an area gathering much-needed materials, be aware that every time Marie picks a material up, it costs one day. Fortunately, you often get more than one of the items, but still. Time can pass pretty quickly this way. Fighting monsters in the area doesn’t cost time, but she always gets material from the battle, which takes one day again.
E.g. this meant that on my first gathering in the Nearby forest, needing to find 6 nuse, it took 10 days. I didn’t spend time travelling to Nearby Forest, which is good. I couldn’t resist picking up some other things in 10 grabs, so 3 for the nuse ( fortunately they came in pairs) and 7 for various other things. But it does cost one day to return to the atelier. Like I said, ten days.
At first, I was very apprehensive to let the days rack up like this, but after I while I realized I need to synthesize a high-rating item at the end, and for this I’ll need loads of materials. So I just went with the flow.
You can also resort to Simple Gathering. Still, every time you give that order, one day is gone, but you can get several random materials in one go.
Area Specifics
Each area has specific enemies and materials to gather. Don’t expect riches in materials as you have in later Atelier games. The materials on offer don’t vary much, although some have things you can only gather in Spring/Summer or Autumn/Winter.
The monsters you face all seem the same, but there is a variance in colours and, because of that, in strength. Some areas also have a boss to fight. Besting them ticks the box for accomplishment and gives some nice materials, but that’s it.
Erfolg Tower is a dungeon that features pure battle, floor after floor to level up and, sometimes, to get good items the monsters drop. On the top floor, you meet the end boss. The second time to go up the tower, once you defeat him (or her), you find a sort of treasure chest maze. And the time after that, an even stronger boss regenerates.
Synthesizing
Of course, a lot of time goes into synthesizing as well.
Going to your synthesis menu, you can see the recipe details by pressing Y. See the stars, in this case, 4 out of a possible 8. This is the rating of an item. Below on the left is the level Marie is (lv 33) and the recommended level (lv 12). If her level is too low, the synthesis success rate will decrease. Another element that can influence success or failure is the utensils that are advised for making something.
Of course, if you make more of the same, the number of days goes up as it’s always rounded up. Look at the picture above, making the Megacraft. Making one costs 1.6 days. If you don’t want to lose too much time by rounding up and you have the materials to do so, you might want to make 5 items, which will cost 8 days precisely.
Making an item costs MP; in the picture above, making Altena Water costs 6 MP. It has a success rate of 100% as Marie’s level fits; I have the mortar and the filter. Making one cost 1.1 days, rounded up to 2 days.
Marie will get Exp, and MP is consumed while making items. Plus, Fatigue accumulates. Fatigue will reduce again by resting, having the days pass ( and you’ll regain HP and MP as well) or taking certain medications. Note that if Fatigue is high, synthesis has a higher chance of failure. In the picture above making the Megacraft, Marie warns us of this!
Otherwise, there are no special things like placing items in the cauldron or choosing high-quality materials or such like in later games.
Recipes
Recipes come in four different elements, fire, water, wind and dark. They are initially unlocked by buying all the books called References at The Royal Academy of Magic. They don’t come cheap, but you need them to progress.
While exploring, fighting, doing alchemy, fulfilling requests, reading References, gossiping with villagers and picking up rumours at the Sky Tavern, you get a lot of benefits like Experience, Skills and such. But you also get REP (reputation) and KNW (knowledge). If your level of KNW is high enough, you will get a keycard for the library from Professor Ingrid. After that, you can check the bookshelves in the Academy library to read new reference books. They unlock in turn after the level of REP and KNW are high enough. You’ll see an exclamation mark at the library door each time you have enough. This is where you will find the recipe for the Sun Pendant, which Mu asks you for pretty early on.
Ingredients for Recipes
Most of the ingredients needed for synthesis are found in the areas you explore. But there are more ways to get what you need. The Academy sells some stuff, and once a year, there’s a discount of 50% to get things much cheaper. The Tavern’s owner’s daughter Flair opens up a stall from time to time, too, once the story progresses (after you have caught the thief Der Himmel). And after you have unlocked the Fairies, they, too, visit your Atelier with items for sale.
Hiring Fairies
Eventually, you unlock the Fairy Forest and get a bracelet with which you can always visit there and hire a Fairy to work for you. Fairies can be hired to gather materials and synthesize stuff. They are paid depending on their efficiency. Some work at the same speed as Marie, some five times or seven times slower. Needless to say, is that each colour has a different wage too. The blue ones work best, at the same level as Marie, but each costs 340G monthly. Which can get quite costly.
The wage is paid when you hire them and then after every 30 days. Don’t forget, when you hire a fairy, to set it a task. Otherwise, you’ll pay for nothing! You do this in Agenda (L) and go with ZR to Fairies. Click on the fairy you hired and set it a task. Some can only explore, some can also create, so they can synthesize. They can only synthesize what Marie has made at least once.
You can only set the tasks for Fairies in the Atelier and while you are in Salburg. You will be notified if one of them is doing nothing by a red exclamation mark next to your L-button. When they run out of work while you are out exploring, you can’t do anything about it. They’ll just dance the time away!
You can send them home by choosing Return for each Fairy separately, so try to manage this wisely. They are a big help, too, having them make the basics you need in the higher-ranking recipes.
Hiring Help to Explore
Marie can go out exploring alone, but it’s not a smart idea. She has to hire people to go with her. You’ll find the candidates in town. They each have their own special skills and their own wages too. From the start, you can take Shae along and Kreis, who both fight with you for free.
Although this seems like a good plan at first when money is tight, it also means you won’t develop friendships with others. And the level of friendship will trigger events with each of them. Plus, as friendship goes up, the wages you have to pay will go down.
You pay these wages once for every trip; it doesn’t matter how many days the trip is.
Every team member only has one special attack move, aside from Marie, who has two. But they unlock pretty far into the game. These moves cost MP and are strengthened once a character is above level 25. One has the effect of boosting every item she uses in battle. The other will only come into play after equipping the Cosmic staff. This one allows Marie to use her special attack Thunderbolt.
You can set your team’s formation, and it’s a good idea to put Marie (being a mage) in the back. On this third line, magic ATK and physical DEF increase, while physical ATK and magic DEF decrease. The team member that’s on the second line has no change in status. The member in the first line has its physical ATK and magic DEF increased, and magic ATK and physical DEF decreased.
You can, by the way, set the difficulty in battle and choose in the option whether you want to go for Easy, Normal or Hard. After clearing the game, you can also choose Very Hard.
Equipping Items
Under the main menu, accessible by X, you can see Equipment. In there, you can set the items party members can use in battle. You have to set it while still in Salburg as in the gathering areas, you can’t change it anymore. It’s a bit of a pain to remind yourself to equip the items, but the good thing is that characters keep them equipped even if you don’t currently hire them. Plus, it’s not like in later games where only one character can equip a battle item like a bomb. You can share!
This isn’t the same for armour and weapons; of course, they are equipped for one character only. Some can only be used by a select number of characters, like a staff can only be equipped by Marie and Kreis.
If you want to firefighters in your team and you don’t want to hire someone else, choose X for the menu, go to Formation and choose X to fire each of them.
The Agenda and The Story
There are two important buttons which you must check regularly: the L-button for the Agenda and the Story under the X-button.
The Agenda
On Switch, the L-button brings up the agenda. You can check your quests, divided into Normal and Vital. The Vital tab also shows which ones you have completed.
See what your objectives are; these are in the form of ” synthesized items 386/500″. The categories are:
- Explore: how many gathering attempts, number of exploration trips, how many days out
- Combat: how many victories, how many bosses beat etc.
- Items: how many you synthesized, how many different sorts, how many requests fulfilled
- Guide: how many different items are made, how many different monsters battled
- Allies: their friendship levels and the allies’ own level
The last choice is for managing your fairies.
The Story
At first, I thought the story was a sort of recounting of what Marie had done up till now, but it’s much more than that. It does show Events, and those do indeed list what Marie has been up to. You can scroll through them by month.
Pressing X in this screen shows you what annual events there are. If you want to attend, make sure you are in your Atelier when the event occurs or in Salburg. If you are in the middle of synthesis or out exploring, the event will pass you by.
The Event List is a tricky one, or so I feel. These are all the events related to the characters Marie meets of fight with. And they are pretty specific. You can filter them by character, which helps, but some only occur during a certain window of time or on a specific date. And you can’t get that back. For example, I wasn’t in the Atelier on 11/5 in Year 4, so this next action with Shae can’t be completed. And for the Strongest Bonds one you see below, I wasn’t at the Atelier within 30 days of that occurring. After that, Shae disappeared from Salburg, not to be seen anymore. I was really sorry for that, as I love her character! After all, who fights with a duster?
I realized too late that this was something I had to take a look at too. So I can only recommend that if you don’t want to miss anything, you have to make an entire schedule of who, when and where. But I still think you won’t get it all in one play-through.
A Few Last Bits
I think you have everything here for a successful playthrough of the Atelier Marie Remake. By now, you will have surmised that this is a very different game from the more recent Atelier games. It’s more of a management game, and time plays an important factor. As do the events you have to strive for. The people battling with you only have one special move, and they can all equip items that can be shared. The overworld isn’t as big, and the sense of exploration is less. The little storylines with the people in town are nice, though.
A few last bits:
- Press left on D-pad while in the world performs a quick load of the last manual save.
- Professor Ingrid’s mid-term assignments come in by letter and are pinned to the wall above the fireplace.
- The town map shows what items the Academy shop wants and also where adventurers are.
- People might come to your atelier for requests in Alchemy. You’ll get coin, reputation but also friendship.
- The Academy only buys a certain kind of materials, not everything. Keep an eye out for what they are buying. You can also check that by pressing – to get a town overview.
- Eventually, the weapon shop buys Glasen Ore. After selling certain amounts of that, new weapons will be available too, the Glasen weapons.
- Flair sells items to decorate your Atelier with. Use the menu that comes up when you click on your diary. Different decorative items have effects in exploration or battle too.
