Elaman route bad ending. (spoilers warning)

[Cardcaptor Sakura]

I played through it to get the bad ending and even gave Miguel the 90k funds. I saw Auguste holding Lutfi's dead body but my ending was still neutral. Can someone tell me which objectives, specifically, I need to fail to get the bad ending? I don't want to replay this route more than I need to.
I never bought or sold Luxite, only to vendors in town for funds for the few luxite you're forced to get. I never even sold any to Lutfi in the earlygame before the sell/purchase missions were even a thing.

[Meowish]

There's 3 things you need to do:
Good Ending:
[1] Agree to Let Inanna handle the Crystal business
[2] Pay Miguel the 90k to get the proves in his hands
[3] Do not make the proves you found public, instead, give it to Samantha
[4] Do all Iggy's request. Iggy's one is kind of not related to the choices that leads to the good ending, but if you didn't get his done you won't get the Vlder tribe support for the Kankan (full) ending.

Bad Ending:
Basically do the opposite for any of the top 3 choices up there will easily end you up in the bad end route.

Neutral Ending:
This one is actually the hardest to get grasp, and i am still not too sure how those choices are counted here. I do managed to get this but can't be too sure on what i did.

[Cardcaptor Sakura]

Originally posted by Meowish:

There's 3 things you need to do:
Good Ending:
[1] Agree to Let Inanna handle the Crystal business
[2] Pay Miguel the 90k to get the proves in his hands
[3] Do not make the proves you found public, instead, give it to Samantha
[4] Do all Iggy's request. Iggy's one is kind of not related to the choices that leads to the good ending, but if you didn't get his done you won't get the Vlder tribe support for the Kankan (full) ending.

Bad Ending:
Basically do the opposite for any of the top 3 choices up there will easily end you up in the bad end route.

Neutral Ending:
This one is actually the hardest to get grasp, and i am still not too sure how those choices are counted here. I do managed to get this but can't be too sure on what i did.

How do I prevent Inanna taking charge of the crystal business?

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Cardcaptor Sakura:

How do I prevent Inanna taking charge of the crystal business?

At Week 34 to Week 39 she will gives you a task to control the price of the market. Just fail any of the three or all 3 of them. (Let them expire)
You will need to get 9 from mine city and sell them to the 3 respective destinations. If you do it right it will trigger a cutscene that says everyone started to sell theirs in hand and that leads to the war stopping. Just fail that for the bad ending. Lufti will die

Miguel one happens at week 44. You can buy the proves off him, then make it public, that will make things goes.. well... complicated from there, you still get a chance to fix it for the good ending though, and the dialog at the ending will change. -- This seemed to trigger the Neutral ending

If you didn't hire Miguel (ignore that task and have it expire), a certain story based battle will not happen. Well... the rest are spoilers i guess... so you better find out yourself. Of course the choice for giving Sam the proves are gone as well.

Iggy one is the same, just ignore and fail those tasks he gave you. Nonowill will mention Iggy misses you and wanted you to visit their mountains at the ending if you do this right. The special item reward from him for completing the quest has unknown uses though... (If you ignore his request, it will make it hard to reach the favor requirement of the Vlder tribes for that good ending, still do-able, but harder)

Also, the history book has 2 uses. Which may leads to getting the Legendary title easier if you do it right. But it doesn't relate to the story endings.
- If you befriend the Darklight, you will get a request from Tranquillo for the book
- Send the book to him for some generous rewards
- After Darklight is no more Tranquillo will be under your supervise, the Pope will then request his "head". Choose to let Tranquillo finish his experiment, after that the option to send him to the Pope will appear
- Send Tranquillo to the Pope for some good rewards, the history book will be returned sometime after that
-- If you choose to fail that request and keep him in the town, Tranquillo will still return the book to you after that
- After you meet Taair in town, the quest to get the dye contract will start
- Send Taair the book and he will reward you with a ring
- Garcia will then appear in town saying the Pope is looking for royalty antiques
- Send the ring to the Pope and you will get the contract
- Give the contract to the dye merchant that appears in the town's tavern
- And that open the dye trade route for you. One that can earns you a lot of money. So it's worth the time doing all those.

P/S: I am playing the Japanese version, so there may be some mistake on names and places from direct translation... (Had to check the English wiki for character list to get their English names)

[Arion]

Huh, when Tranquillo wanted the book I didn't give it to him. He's a bad guy after all, figured it would have bad consequences to let him have it. And I thought for sure someone else, namely Taair will likely want the book too.

Taair shows up and I gave him the book and got the dye contract. Didn't know I could give Tranquillo the book and he'd give it back, wierd. Unexpected for a villain.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Arion:

Taair shows up and I gave him the book and got the dye contract. Didn't know I could give Tranquillo the book and he'd give it back, wierd. Unexpected for a villain.

This is the route where we befriended even the Darklight under the name of trading. Well they mostly wanted bribes... so we are in sort of good terms with them. The Darklight leader actually came for help asking the protagonist to help him disband the Darklight if you play it right... That's how i ended up fighting Tranquillo and imprisoned him, and the Darklight leader is actually fighting by my side at that time as an ally. After that, Tranquillo suggests he can do some experiments/research to make the town better, you can let him do his research and after he's done you get to send his results to Bella (Beryl) for checking. Not sure if it really upgrades the facilities or not though cuz i didn't see any story after that part, probably due to the right choice is to send him to the pope and there's no news from him after that. If you keep him in town, he just went silent after he return the book anyway, so the outcome is the same. That catch there is, you get to do a trade with Tranquillo at early stage for big rewards using the book, which should helps a lot in the Miguel part later if you haven't already have too much money at that point.

[Cardcaptor Sakura]

I guess I'll run through it again and fail everything I can possibly fail. I swear I tried that and still got neutral but maybe it was paying Miguel that did it, despite what the other guide said.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Cardcaptor Sakura:

I guess I'll run through it again and fail everything I can possibly fail. I swear I tried that and still got neutral but maybe it was paying Miguel that did it, despite what the other guide said.

Oh yeah, for the bad ending, there's another requirement, do not gain favor for any other factions... that's probably the reason why you ended up in neutral.

So basically you only need to do 3 things:
[1] Gain no favor from other factions (do as less trades as you can and do not level up their trade posts)
[2] Fail Inanna's crystal trade plan
[3] Do not hire Miguel

Basically if you don't hire Miguel there won't be a lot happening, you will miss a crucial battle where Lufti found the proves of the Knights involved and you got there in time to save his life, so he will die. And you do not have the proves to hand over to Samantha either. So both these choices are auto-made to fail.

Honestly i still couldn't grasp the "requirement" for the 2nd ending... apparently that didn't get into either the "Kankan" カンカン (1st ending) and not able to get the "Evening in the Wilderness" 原野の良き宵 (3rd ending) will place us in the 2nd ending... The way to repeat it is to do everything in the good ending but publish the proves and didn't give it to Samantha will land us in the 2nd ending, but i am not too sure which one is the real requirement.

[Cardcaptor Sakura]

Aaahhh, I did a lot of trades in my attempt and got a number of places to rank 4. Guess I'll just do nothing and see how that goes. Btw I've done both good and neutral endings so no worries for spoilers here.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Cardcaptor Sakura:

Aaahhh, I did a lot of trades in my attempt and got a number of places to rank 4. Guess I'll just do nothing and see how that goes. Btw I've done both good and neutral endings so no worries for spoilers here.

Yes, that's one reason why we need to intentionally ignore Iggy's request for the bad ending. Because we don't want to gain favor...

Miguel one... might not be a must, because we can still fail the add-on requests later, but the easiest is to simply do not hire him, it will auto fail the rest.

Inanna's one is needless to say, a must fail for the bad end.

[Cardcaptor Sakura]

So all I have to do are mandatory battles and the urgent orders since they can't be skipped.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Cardcaptor Sakura:

So all I have to do are mandatory battles and the urgent orders since they can't be skipped.

Yes, and don't worry about the level too, the urgent ones are often under-leveled, and the mandatory ones we have helpers/guests or simply need to get certain condition done. So they are fairly easy to get.. plus, if you find them too hard, you can always bring in your regulars (they get time locked, so be ready for that).

[Cardcaptor Sakura]

Is the "maintain order" battle supposed to happen even when going for the bad ending?

[Cardcaptor Sakura]

Ok I got the bad ending. :D Thank you!

[TigerNightmare]

I guess I'm too good at the game because I got the good ending on my first go. By the way, the point isn't to not trade luxite, the point is to influence its trade to equalize the power in the region so that people aren't starting wars over it. At one point, I needed to prioritize getting luxite because I used all of it to raise my profit and something story critical was expiring and needed like 12 luxite.

I also don't know whether or not it makes a difference, but the point where you're forced to choose to support the Union or the King's Army, because the Union was seemingly supporting Auguste and Gloria wasn't mentioned as an agitator or anything, and Lutfi was opposing Auguste and not being his puppet or pawn, and even reconciling with Dantalion, I chose to support the King's Army.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by Cardcaptor Sakura:

Is the "maintain order" battle supposed to happen even when going for the bad ending?

Yes, it's part of the story that changes with your decisions made before the battle. If i am not wrong, that "I love my country Merchant" will step in at the end of the battle and depending on your previous choices the results may change slightly there but doesn't really effect the story flow imo. More like part of Cocoa's story.

Originally posted by Cardcaptor Sakura:

Ok I got the bad ending. :D Thank you!

Congratz for completing the endings!

Originally posted by TigerNightmare:

I guess I'm too good at the game because I got the good ending on my first go. By the way, the point isn't to not trade luxite, the point is to influence its trade to equalize the power in the region so that people aren't starting wars over it.

OP already got the good ending and neutral ending, but needed the bad ending (which she already got too by now), and it's only by not trading that then we can reach that bad ending.

Originally posted by TigerNightmare:

At one point, I needed to prioritize getting luxite because I used all of it to raise my profit and something story critical was expiring and needed like 12 luxite.

You only need 9 for the story related trade, and the mine city trade route is open wide for you to make orders, it's hard to fail. You have 4 trades available but only need to do 3. And it's required to intentionally failed these to get the bad ending.

Originally posted by TigerNightmare:

I also don't know whether or not it makes a difference, but the point where you're forced to choose to support the Union or the King's Army, because the Union was seemingly supporting Auguste and Gloria wasn't mentioned as an agitator or anything, and Lutfi was opposing Auguste and not being his puppet or pawn, and even reconciling with Dantalion, I chose to support the King's Army.

It doesn't matter which one you choose as they doesn't effect the endings, it does effect the up coming battle though, but that's all about it. Your aim is to stop the war, so there's no "siding" with anyone but rather siding with "everyone" and get them to work the way you wanted them to by controlling the market.

For the story you mentioned there.. well.. you might have missed some crucial information along the way which made them looks weird to you like the way you put it i guess... If you have done the other none merchant endings, you should have insights on what's happening in the background by now... especially if you have done the Papal route.