For people who've played this any tips?

[Cloudst]

This is my first time playing Rune Factory is there anything I need to know before starting?

[Nexu]

This is an excellent resource I used when I started: https://www.reddit.com/r/runefactory/comments/f9eda3/place_for_all_rune_factory_4_tips/

[nuna]

Clorica and Vishnal throw food at you when your health is low, you can take advantage of this and make them drop a really expensive dish called royal curry that gives you a big boost in funds for early game. (Kiel also throws food but he doesn't throw the curry).

On days there's a typhoon you can fight a boss unique to this weather named Typhoon in Sercerezo Hills. He drops something called a mealy apple. Save before fighting him so you can re do it if he doesn't drop it that time.

Buy a magnifying glass asap so that you can always check the health of your soil, the magnifying glass can also be crafted into your other tools so that you don't need to use the glass specifically to do it.

[Mist of Majora]

There's an area cleverly called the Cluck Cluck Nest (you can use the almighty power of google if you want to know exactly where it is) where giant chickens roam. This area has a decent supply of fodder (animal feed) DAILY which saved me tons of money while keeping my animals fed & happy. Just beware the chickens themselves - early on they will OHKO you, so make sure you take advantage of the save point just before you enter and grab all the fodder you feel comfortable grabbing.

Only other tip I can think of is, like most games like this, try to save/stock up on everything you can. You start out with limited storage, but in general, almost everything has its uses - especially if you come across +8-10's. And on a related note - upgrade all of your storage a bit ASAP for this reason.

Edit: One last one I forgot. Most tameable animals can be tamed by giving them the products they produce (ex - throwing milk to a cow). Just keep in mind that each time you tame an animal, getting a 2nd copy of the SAME animal becomes more difficult, so don't despair if it takes more tries/produce to tame the 2nd one.

[Meganesuki]

Marriage is the hardest thing in this game and extremely luck-based.
Try to clear random marriage events early, even if it is not your favorite guy/girl so that the new event can be randomly generated.

Unlike the previous three games, most farming/forage locations are locked by the story. If you cannot find materials to craft then proceed with the story.

Try to learn how to advanced upgrade your weapon since later on the typical weapon can rarely ditch any substantial damage if not critical. Since it is a bit complicated and the tutorial of this part is non-existence or lack thereof, try to find the guide online saves you a lot of headaches.

These three above are my grip on this RF4 specifically. Other than that, the game is fair.

[Mist of Majora]

Originally posted by Meganesuki:

Marriage is the hardest thing in this game and extremely luck-based.
Try to clear random marriage events early, even if it is not your favorite guy/girl so that the new event can be randomly generated.

Unlike the previous three games, most farming/forage locations are locked by the story. If you cannot find materials to craft then proceed with the story.

Try to learn how to advanced upgrade your weapon since later on the typical weapon can rarely ditch any substantial damage if not critical. Since it is a bit complicated and the tutorial of this part is non-existence or lack thereof, try to find the guide online saves you a lot of headaches.

These three above are my grip on this RF4 specifically. Other than that, the game is fair.

As far as I'm aware, they at least partially remedied your first gripe with the game in the Switch version. For example, marrying Xiao Pai used to be quite the achievement in the 3ds version from what I read, due to all the luck events you had to hope would trigger in order to make it happen. While I don't know the mechanics of the game as well as some veterans on this board, I can state that they made things much easier in this regard.

[Meganesuki]

Originally posted by Mist of Majora:

Originally posted by Meganesuki:

Marriage is the hardest thing in this game and extremely luck-based.
Try to clear random marriage events early, even if it is not your favorite guy/girl so that the new event can be randomly generated.

Unlike the previous three games, most farming/forage locations are locked by the story. If you cannot find materials to craft then proceed with the story.

Try to learn how to advanced upgrade your weapon since later on the typical weapon can rarely ditch any substantial damage if not critical. Since it is a bit complicated and the tutorial of this part is non-existence or lack thereof, try to find the guide online saves you a lot of headaches.

These three above are my grip on this RF4 specifically. Other than that, the game is fair.

As far as I'm aware, they at least partially remedied your first gripe with the game in the Switch version. For example, marrying Xiao Pai used to be quite the achievement in the 3ds version from what I read, due to all the luck events you had to hope would trigger in order to make it happen. While I don't know the mechanics of the game as well as some veterans on this board, I can state that they made things much easier in this regard.

From what I read and my experience with the Switch version, they just make the last marriage event guaranteed to occur if you meet all marriage conditions. However, the pre-requisite events for the last marriage event are still random and luck-based.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/258612-rune-factory-4-special/78456708

[Bitwolf]

Originally posted by Mist of Majora:

Originally posted by Meganesuki:

Marriage is the hardest thing in this game and extremely luck-based.
Try to clear random marriage events early, even if it is not your favorite guy/girl so that the new event can be randomly generated.

Unlike the previous three games, most farming/forage locations are locked by the story. If you cannot find materials to craft then proceed with the story.

Try to learn how to advanced upgrade your weapon since later on the typical weapon can rarely ditch any substantial damage if not critical. Since it is a bit complicated and the tutorial of this part is non-existence or lack thereof, try to find the guide online saves you a lot of headaches.

These three above are my grip on this RF4 specifically. Other than that, the game is fair.

As far as I'm aware, they at least partially remedied your first gripe with the game in the Switch version. For example, marrying Xiao Pai used to be quite the achievement in the 3ds version from what I read, due to all the luck events you had to hope would trigger in order to make it happen. While I don't know the mechanics of the game as well as some veterans on this board, I can state that they made things much easier in this regard.

Doesnt align with me, xaio pai took over 100 tries for me on switch to accept my confession.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by nuna:

Buy a magnifying glass asap so that you can always check the health of your soil, the magnifying glass can also be crafted into your other tools so that you don't need to use the glass specifically to do it.

And then good luck trying to understand any of the info it shows you.
-----------

As was said, you're going to want to store up stuff and ingredients you find.

One tip for boosting your status resistance skills is: Once you gain a lab to brew medicines, collect some weeds, don't use a recipe, and fail cooking them (which yields Object X).
Right before bed, drink an Object X, which inflicts pretty much every status effect on you.
Then go to bed, which will cure you of everything.

This will quickly boost your resistance skills to each of those statuses.
Just make sure you're done for the day, as it will kill your RP, and you likely will be poisoned, so you'll need to hop in bed quick.

[Mist of Majora]

Originally posted by Bitwolf:

Originally posted by Mist of Majora:

As far as I'm aware, they at least partially remedied your first gripe with the game in the Switch version. For example, marrying Xiao Pai used to be quite the achievement in the 3ds version from what I read, due to all the luck events you had to hope would trigger in order to make it happen. While I don't know the mechanics of the game as well as some veterans on this board, I can state that they made things much easier in this regard.

Doesnt align with me, xaio pai took over 100 tries for me on switch to accept my confession.

That's really interesting. Maybe I'm wrong then?

I read somewhere that it was fixed for Switch when I got it on it's last release (no idea where I read that now) and just played blindly romancing her. Granted I kept her as my adventuring companion which may have helped event-wise, but I had 0 issues romancing her. Funny enough, I forgot about romancing until just before the end events of the story and panicked, but once she was high enough, everything came together really fast for marriage. Maybe I was just really lucky then.

[SinForged]

Originally posted by Bitwolf:

Originally posted by Mist of Majora:

As far as I'm aware, they at least partially remedied your first gripe with the game in the Switch version. For example, marrying Xiao Pai used to be quite the achievement in the 3ds version from what I read, due to all the luck events you had to hope would trigger in order to make it happen. While I don't know the mechanics of the game as well as some veterans on this board, I can state that they made things much easier in this regard.

Doesnt align with me, xaio pai took over 100 tries for me on switch to accept my confession.

Doesn't Xaio ask to marry you at the end of her marriage event? If you mean just dating, then I remember hearing it's effected by the npcs lp level and it is more difficult if you are dating another person, though there are conflicting reports on the lp level effecting it. But yes, there is a fair bit of rng for town events and such, though you can use save scumming to make getting certain town events easier if I remember correctly. Oh and npcs will never accept your confession if they are currently part of a town event.

[Headcrabs in A Bucket]

Make sure you make good friends with venti as soon as you can. It becomes very difficult later in the game.

[Cloudst]

Thanks for the all the answers everyone!

[kittykat0510]

I would suggest keeping a list of all the town events you've seen since the game doesn't list them anywhere. This is useful if you're like me and want to try and marry everyone or if you take a break from the game for awhile.
Also take a look at all of Eliza's requests. There are some late game ones that can be pretty challenging if you don't start as soon as possible like shipping a level 10 gold crop, or taming 50 monsters.

[William Shakesman]

At least in the 3DS game the difference between Normal and Hard combat was you being able to almost completely ignore the crafting for the first arc or so vs you needing to actually learn all the little ins and outs of it to make yourself good gear. I don't know if Special rebalanced that though.

[Headcrabs in A Bucket]

Another couple of useful tips:

If you go to an area that has enemies (say, the start with the woolies on the two screens) and go back and forth between screens, you can sometimes get chests. Don't attack them/let them be hit or they break, but these can contain just about anything. Like, you can get really crazy stuff like Relax Tea that sells for a ridiculous amount. Or a decent weapon. Brown = items, silver = weapons/armor if i recall.

Also, some areas have search spots on certain days. An example is a snowman in a certain zone. This snowman, if it's been flagged on the day, will have lets say Ice Cream. You can collect it, leave the screen, come back, check again and it may be there again. This applies to anything in the wild. (maybe anything anywhere? I've only farmed specific spots) The Ice Cream Snowman in particular is super useful because you can get free food to eat/sell/gift.