Rune Factory 5 Guide and Tips

Finally, the new Rune Factory game arrived on our Switch. A decade after the 3DS game Rune Factory 4, was released in 2012. Sure, we had a special Rune Factory 4 S version in 2019 on our Switch, but that’s not the same as a fully new one. Was it worth the 10-year wait? You can find the answer in our review here.

As usual, when we love a game, we make a guide. As Rune Factory 5 is such a big game, this isn’t a walkthrough, but some guidance and tips to help you in your gameplay. As it’s always difficult to group all this information, this guide has a general section, and chapters for more specific topics. 

General information

There are just so many tidbits of information in this game to share, that it’s hard to group them right. So I highlighted keywords to help you find what you need.

Seed points represent how much people trust in you in numerical form. You can earn them by helping people out around town or by taking care of unruly wanted monsters. Or by shipping items, participating in festivals and chatting with people. Really all kinds of interaction. 

Shipping Bin: Things you put in your shipping bin are your source of income. Every day at 8 am items in the box are picked up and your G grows. Clicking on the Shipping Bin gives you a couple of options, most important one is “Look in the Shipping Bin”. You will see your items in your bag on the left and the shipping on the right. Instead of moving all items with your cursor, you can also press Y (called Stash) sending the entire stack of items to the bin. 

Inspecting my Shipping Bin

Very important “person”: Eliza

At the wooden head with the hat at Seed headquarters, called Eliza, you can change the difficulty of the game to Easy, Normal or Hard. It determines how laid back your experience will be.

Eliza is an important “person” to remember for other things too. Talking to her you can make directives for the town, like organising a festival. And you can also get a license to buy all sorts of equipment. You need Seed Points to buy them, the first ones up are a Forging License and a Crafting License, both for 200P. But points aren’t the only thing you need, you also have to take an exam. No big deal, as when you choose a wrong answer, you just start over again though it will cost you the Points price all over. The questions do feel like you are doing a test on the things that townspeople have told you.

Rune Factory 5 Guide Eliza

Another thing you can do at Eliza is to upgrade your bag, your storage box, your wardrobe, your fridge etc. Costly though at 500P for each.

All kinds of Storage:

You get your chest in one of the first quests. And storage for lumber and material stones and a fertiliser bin in one of the later quests. Putting stuff in there is easy, just choose the option to put all lumber and stones you have in your bag ( or fodder or weeds) in the storage you stand before.
Fertilizer bin: put in all the weeds and dried grass to get fertiliser
Lumber and material stone: even pounding the branches that are lying plentiful around with your hammer gives you one lumber. Tree trunks of course give off much more lumber.
Fodder bin: is already available on the first Dragon you unlock, the Earth Dragon

Rune Factory 5 Guide LadiesGamers
Automatically tossing lumber and material stone in the storage shed

Fortunately, you don’t have to carry lumber and other materials in your bag if you want to give an assignment to buy a kitchen, fridge etc. All materials in your storage facilities are taken into account too. But, to buy crafting tables like this you do need a License, and for this, you visit Eliza at Rigbarth Outpost.

Farming Part of the Game

Your Farming Tools

Equipping your farming tools: the way you equip your farming tools isn’t ideal, press L, and equip the wanted tool by Y. When you’re done with it, you can put it away by pressing left on the D-Pad. I haven’t found any way however to rotate various tools.

Rune Factory 5 Guide LadiesGamers
Press the L-shoulder button to see your farm tools and equip with Y

Tools that you need: Ultimately you will get all the tools you need from quests, but I have found that the sequence is a little off. For example, I was asked to deliver a squid before I got a rod. But it turns out that if you want to spend the money, you can also buy your tools earlier: got myself a rod at the Smithy for 1,500G. Anyway, once you’ve done the Squid quest a lot of quests open up instead of one or two at a time.

Super fast sowing, hoeing and watering: by accident, I found that you can really do your daily farming chores super fast. Standing at the row you want to hoe, just keep B pressed and you’ll slide from square to square super fast in the direction you are pointing. The same goes for watering and sowing.

Farm Dragons

You are an Earthmate, which is why you can make use of the Farm Dragons. Flying dragons have farmland on their back, how convenient is that? Your first one is the Earth Dragon close to the Outpost, the second is the Fire Dragon and so on. The Dragons aren’t seasonal, a missed opportunity I think. So it’s not like the Fire Dragon hosts Summer farming all year around…

Rune Factory 5 Guide Earth Dragon
The first dragon you get, the Earth Dragon

The Dragons love eating Crystals, which will affect the fields on their back. Depending on the type of crystal you can change the following:

  • Terra Crystal: more space for planting crops
  • Ventus Crystal: increases the crop yield
  • Glacies Crystal: make it rain for a while
  • Ignis Crystal: temporarily boost the crops’ growing speed 
  • Gaia Crystal: temporarily boost your soils health and damage resistance

Rune Factory 5 Guide Feeding Farm Dragon Crystals

When you have Crystal shards, five of them can be turned into a full crystal at The Crystalabra.

Monster Barn

On the back of these Farm Dragons, Monster Barns can be built. I had been looking for the darned barn for days already. Finally, finally found it. It’s at the furniture store, Palmo. You get these options:
– I’d like to see your furniture
– I’d like to renovate something.

I had searched the furniture which houses the crafting tables, but there was no “make your own barn table” in there. So I tried the renovate thing and at the bottom, I finally saw Build Monster Barn. Not very clear in my book!

My first Monster Barn on the Earth Dragon

Taming Monsters

You can tame monsters by giving them crops, grasses or dishes that appeal to them. The simplest ones are the chickens (the Cluckadoodle) who you can give green grass to win them over very quickly. As soon as a heart and flowers appear above it, it’s tamed. You can name it and send it to your monster barn. You can not tame a monster that is higher in level than you are.

Taming a chicken or Cluckadoodle

The monsters in the barn need fodder to be in your fodder storage. As soon as there is, they will drop produce for you in the barn. Like an egg by the Cluckadoodle. Try to raise their affection level by brushing them with a brush once a day. Don’t expect a gentle cow waiting to be petted though: try to press B while it runs by you and shows an A above its head, that’s enough.

Rune Factory 5 Guide LadiesGamers
Brusing to level up your monsters friendship can be finicky

Miscellaneous

Harvest Reports tell you whether your harvest during the next seven days will be bountiful or poor. It pays to choose what seeds to sow if possible. You will know when a crop is ready when the yellow arrow-like thing appears above them.

Rune Factory 5 Guide LadiesGamers
Follow the Harvest Reports for maximum profit

Changing the camera in the farming field: Isn’t it annoying how, on a farm field, the camera switches to a top-down view? Makes you queasy when you are running around to get water and such. You can change it in “+” ->Options -> System Settings -> Farm Camera off.

Rune Factory 5 Guide Changing farming camera

Crafting Part of the Game

Crafting is a part that you have to pay attention to in the game. Finding the ingredients yourself out in nature or from monsters dropping them in battle, or harvesting them on your farm. There is always something to cook, forge, craft, make medicine of and more. First though you have to buy a separate crafting table for each at Studio Palmo. And you have to get your license from Eliza to be able to work it.

Rune Factory 5 Guide LadiesGamers
Crafting some medicine on my Chemistry Workbench

Studio Palmo

At Studio Palmo you can buy furniture, a forge, a cooking station and all. You can either have the item shipped to your house, to your dragon or you can carry it out yourself. At first, when I chose “ send it to my house  I kept getting the message that there was already furniture there. Couldn’t figure out what was wrong, until I realised things are always shipped out to rectangular wooden pads. Much like the one next to the request board. Turns out the wardrobe was on such a pad! Moving it to a different location solved it. 

Rune Factory 5 Guide Studio Palmo

Recipe Bread

You can only learn new recipes by eating recipe bread. And there are different kinds of bread for cooking, forging, chemistry, crafting etc. Eating the bread prompts new recipe ideas, but only if your skill level is high enough. If not, you get the remark that you learned nothing. Fortunately, you keep the bread for a later date.

Rune Factory 5 Guide LadiesGamers
Plenty of Recipe Bread at the Sweet Hearth, but you can only buy 2 a day

The bread can be bought at Sweet Hearth, two per day. You can also buy one cooking bread per day at the restaurant Lackadaisy, it is a lot more expensive, however. Still, might be a good idea to stock up on them to level up as quickly as can be.

The Fighting Part of the Game

Equipping a spell: Go to “+” and your Status. Scroll with the D-pad up and down till you reach X or Y. It shows the spells you can equip to those buttons. Select the spell you want and press Y for equip.
If you want to un-equip and there’s nothing else to equip it with, press Y again.

Rune Factory 5 Guide Setting the spells

Fighting together with the Villagers: After you get acquainted with the villagers many of them will offer to accompany you when you go out to explore and help you in fighting. You’ll know when above the text box the text “L R U..Um…”  appears. First, you need to increase your SEED rank by catching wanted monsters and obtaining SEED Crests.

Rune Factory 5 Guide Asking to accompany you

Spell Seal: After you rescue Hina’s mother you are officially a ranger and get yourself a spell seal. Throw it with ZL at a monster to catch it, it is wise to whittle down the monsters HP first.

You can also power up the Spell Seal by holding ZL down, creating a sort of golden cage form. The monster inside becomes an ally for one day. You can use this method too to catch something that is just out of reach.

Rune Factory 5 Guide LadiesGamers
Catching a Shadow Panther with the Spell Seal

Requests, Wanted Monsters

Is it just me or are some of the requests confusing? I had taken a request on the board to catch a wanted monster for the first time, but I couldn’t find what monster Livia wanted me to catch. The info on the Ranger Notes didn’t give me anything. I fought several monsters, but this request didn’t go away until I finally talked to Livia when she was behind her desk. Only then I saw the option “I want to check the wanted monsters list” and there I could choose which one I wanted to hunt!

Rune Factory 5 Guide LadiesGamers
You will see the wanted monster with red swirling around it.

Not just any goblin will do when you have agreed to bring an unruly Goblin in: this one is wreathed in a red veil and is particularly strong. Bring its health down and then catch it by holding the Spell Seal down to drop the golden cage over it.

The wanted poster for this particularly mean-looking Goblin

 

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