Strategy Tips

​I expect there are players now who are far more experienced than I with the changes and additions that have been made with games in the Rune Factory series.  No doubt there are guide writers better than I.  My strategy guides and sites for games always have been personal.  I am a writer and I cannot suppress that instinct and indeed have no desire to do so.  When long ago I wrote a guide for one of the Harvest Moon games for Brady Games, a subsidiary of Penguin, my contact told me it was too long with too many little details that really did not matter.   I fought to retain them because at the end of the day, my name would be on the book.  Yes, it is not an earthshaking novel or a poem that will soar to the heavens and reduce readers to tears, but it is my heart invested in this world of the imagination that lessens the distress and pain of fighting against death in more than one form every single day now.  

So if you are interested in the way Guardians of Azuma intersects or mirrors the real Japan and its traditional festivals, this site has a post about that and I will continue to research and add details about that.

On a practical level, however, I have discovered some shortcuts and benefits that one can obtain or find now that I have gone through this fabulous game more than once.

My first instinct in a game always is to see how quickly I can complete everything.  I did that in my second game and my walkthrough reflects that goal a little but now I am making files about the Pure Azuma Quests and little strategies that can give a player a small advantage.

For example, by virtue of increasing the village levels of Spring and Summer significantly in the very first week of Spring I was able to put villagers at the helm of all the shops on the Summer High Street including the Chemist.  When you fight and defeat monsters in that early time frame, I have  found that many of them are the villagers with specialist skills and abilities.  Thus, I had three potential Carpenters, two potential Blacksmiths and two potential Chemists even before I unlocked the Winter Village.  I also was able to set a villager to work at the Aydin Cart on the Summer High Street.

It may not be particularly significant, but I was able to mix medicines and buy Udon to make dishes high in restorative value before Zara ever gave me the tasks and recipes for the Chemist and Udon Cart.

Guardians of Azuma is a multifaceted game and a player has a multitude of diverse goals.  How each person prioritises those goals is really a matter of personal preference.  In a way, they all bring progress to the game and at the end of the day, it would be a mistake to ignore any of them.  On the other hand, there are absolutely no time limits.  I think that my own advice now, after completing the game a few times and marrying a few different eligible partners would be to enjoy yourself.  I have seen posts in various forums by players who complained that they completed the game too quickly.  I have not seen any complaints about completing it too slowly.

In my own life, my first game went very slowly because I had not played the new Rune Factory games or any new RPGs or new combat games for a long time.  Instead, in times when I needed an escape from cancer and other real adversaries,  I enjoyed replaying Rune Factory 4 not on the Switch even, but on my old DS.  It was an old friend who persuaded me to try Guardians of Azuma and I hesitated for a couple of months to accept her offer of that gift.

To make this at all relevant, the point here is that, after starting a second game and going through all the quests at lightning speed in order to marry Kai as soon as possible, I did not erase that first game but returned to it later and completed it.  What is interesting here is that ultimately the timeframe was not THAT different between the two games.

There are many different menus in Guardians of Azuma and for an inexperienced player, that can require some real determination to address each and every one.  In my first game, I never really looked at those soon enough.  I therefore went into battle alone, did not increase my power with the Sacred Treasures as much as I could have done and had no idea what was going on with my Villagers and my increases in Village Levels.  I did make an effort to obtain the best weapons and equipment and experience as many Bonding Events as possible from the very start.  After all, Friendship and Taming Monsters is at the very top always of Rune Factory 101.  It is kind of amazing that I did as well as I did but I could have avoided a lot of frustration if I had learned the ‘ropes’ sooner.

Here is another tip:  Your first move every day, if you are unmarried, should be to go to the Request Board to accept new Ema Quests.  These Requests not only are linked to advances in the Story but a method to gain materials and gold you need.