Typhoons

Covering Innocent Life (PsP/Ps2), Rune Factory 1 (DS), Rune Factory 2 (DS), Rune Factory 3 (DS/Switch), Rune Factory Frontier (Wii), Rune Factory Tides of Destiny (Wii/Ps3), Rune Factory 4 (3DS/Switch/Steam), and Rune Factory 5 (Switch/Steam).
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Kikki
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Post  Posted:

Typhoons are one of the worst/most frustrating/discouraging mechanics of Rune Factory, imo. I think we've had some Q&A on them already, but I'd like a thread dedicated to it for greater visibility.

Here's what I THINK I know about typhoons:
  • They can only happen in Summer and Winter...NEVER in Spring or Fall.
  • Crops can be protected by increasing the HP and the defense stats. The items that do this are wettable powder, which raises defense, and tilling in withered grass, corn or four-leaf clovers, which raises HP to keep the crops from withering by hitting 0HP .
  • Greenifier does not help in typhoons, as it only increases the quality of the soil, which governs how fast the crops in it gain levels, but does not contribute to defense or health.
  • You can also protect crops from typhoons by giving the farm dragon they are on Gaia crystals, which will increase crop HP AND defense. Crystals can be purchased outright without needing to hunt for shards if you have enough money and have renovated the Crystalabra once through Palmo's shop.
Things I'd like to know:
  • How often can they happen? Is there a minimum number of days between them?
  • Is it possible to protect the crops 100% if you max out both defense and health? (I think the answer to this is 'no', that the storm can deposit a rock/etc on top of a crop randomly and completely destroy it.)
  • Will villagers always warn you about an approaching typhoon at least two days in advance?
  • Can you save/reload to avoid one? (Pretty sure you can't avoid your first typhoon of the game, but what about any after that?)
Please correct this information if it is incorrect!
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RowenaSnape
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Post  Posted:

I know that the really BIG main story events can also delay a typhoon. Particularly if its close to a holiday. I believe you also get 2 during summer. It seems that's the consensus from what all that I've seen/read about. What I hate is the time wasting waiting for one to hit. Especially at the beginning when you don't have protections. I also realized you can use withered weeds and hoe them into the crops and it gives them some health.
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Celestrian
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Post  Posted:

Well it's Fall 4 in my game and I still got a typhoon. I have no idea why though. I didn't get the fall 3rd festival or anything
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Anna_Lynn
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Post  Posted:

Yes I am fairly certain that you can get typhoons in any season. I remember it happening all the time in RF4; Summer was definitely the most common season, with Winter having a few snowstorms and even an occasional rare thunderstorms. Spring and Autumn could have typhoons too. They were very rare, BUT they could appear if you didn't witness a natural typhoon in Summer, or a Snowstorm in Winter; the typhoon had a possibility of being pushed back into the following season.

Here's what I think is happening in all of our games. When a new save file is created, the invisible typhoon "counter" is starting at 0%. Each day it most likely increases by...1%? If that's the case, that would mean then by Summer, the value is at around 30%, so each morning you would have a 30% chance of a typhoon, then a 31% chance, then 32%...so on until it occurs, then the percentage drops. Or, a second, more logical method would be if each day gave around 1-2% towards the counter, and once the counter hits 100% in your file, then the typhoon spawns.

Idk if it drops back to 0% considering how some people have mentioned more than one typhoon in Summer, so maybe Summer is just more aggressive with the weather factors...? But, I do think the invisible percentage value holds up with how RF4 had an order on the order symbol to "push back typhoon." You could only order that request a certain number of times before it disappeared. Then the next day if you went to purchase that same order, you could do it once before it disappeared again, only allowing the second option of "summon the typhoon." That's why I truly believe the typhoon system runs on a percentage factor, if each order/directive with the order symbol/Eliza drops the value by 10% or so. If the invisible value is set to say 57%, then ordering "push back typhoon" once drops the value to 47%. A second order would drop it to 37%. Three more orders down to 7%. Once more for a final time to 0%. Since it can't go further past 0% on the counter, the game then locks you out of the "push back typhoon" order, and instead only shows the "summon typhoon" order.

I'm not a game developer by any means...but I believe this is what's happening behind the scenes? It's the only typhoon theory that logically makes sense in my eyes, haha. :lol:
Terdin
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Post  Posted:

In RF2 and 3, it's explicitly stated that storms can happen at any time of year in Norad. Haven't played 1, 4, or 5, but I think that's one thing that wouldn't change, only the frequency of the storms.

In RF2 they can be avoided by having the fortune teller make it sunny, and it's best to avoid even rainy days, since fortune-telling couldn't be done then.

In RF3, the only season that doesn't have storms is the first spring, but once summer starts, there can be crop-damaging storms as often as every day, making farming really disheartening. The weather seemed to be calculated hour by hour in that game. At least the storms didn't force the MC to stay indoors.

There were far fewer storms in Oceans/Tides of Destiny, and they didn't matter nearly as much there.
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Kikki
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Post  Posted:

Okay; when checking things out prior to posting, I ran across sites that explicitly said they'd only happen in Summer and Winter, but perhaps that was an assumption based on or confused with Bokumono, where typhoons really can only happen in Summer and Winter. In my own game, it seems like I'm about to get a storm in one day, which would still be within Spring. We'll see very soon if that happens, of course.

EDIT: Okay, I am apparently going to get a typhoon on Spring 29. (I slept several days in a row just to see when it was going to happen.) I got warned by the villagers 5 days in advance, every single one of them freaked out about a typhoon coming...but perhaps that's because it's the first typhoon of the game?

I assume then that the first typhoon is NOT scripted since I know at least one person reported that their first typhoon of the game came on Summer 2.

Also, I gave my dragon the required Gaia crystals (online it said 8,000, but they cost 50,000, and you need three of them on the Earth dragon. The internet obviously has a lot of incorrect information about RF5 floating around out there.) and it gave every crop a defense ('damage resist', it said) of 6, which was still in effect when the typhoon hit. I don't have enough time to wait and see what happens at the end of the day, right now, since I have to leave soon, but costing THAT much, I hope the Gaia crystals will completely protect my crops.
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LeBurns
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Post  Posted:

Kikki wrote:Also, I gave my dragon the required Gaia crystals (online it said 8,000, but they cost 50,000, and you need three of them on the Earth dragon. The internet obviously has a lot of incorrect information about RF5 floating around out there.) and it gave every crop a defense ('damage resist', it said) of 6, which was still in effect when the typhoon hit. I don't have enough time to wait and see what happens at the end of the day, right now, since I have to leave soon, but costing THAT much, I hope the Gaia crystals will completely protect my crops.
I have been able to collect some of these crystals, but I wish I knew how long the protection lasted. My fear is if I feed them the first day I hear about the typhoon coming that they may wear off by the time the typhoon gets here. Also the crystals I've found are pretty easy to get. Once you know where the shards you want drop just go shard grinding. Sometimes I've come back with 15+ shards, enough to trade in for three crystals. Just bring along some RP restoration as the RP will drop quickly while you're locking on and hitting monsters with your ... whatever it's called. Baked yams are pretty cheap RP fillers.
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Kikki
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Post  Posted:

The crystals can you buy from Heinz (after upgrading the Crystalabra once at Palmo's place) are full crystals, not shards, so you only need to buy three of them...but that still amounts to 150,000! If you're already very rich, or comfortable squeezing Royal Curries out of Elsje in battle, then it's a good option, but otherwise it's unrealistically steep.

I fed my 3 gaia crystals to the earth dragon 4 days in advance of the typhoon, and on the day of, it was still in full effect. (On the first day of feeding, it gave the soil the '6' on 'damage resist'...and it still said the same thing on the day of the typhoon, which I believe was 3 or 4 days later.)
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LeBurns
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Post  Posted:

Kikki wrote:The crystals can you buy from Heinz (after upgrading the Crystalabra once at Palmo's place) are full crystals, not shards, so you only need to buy three of them...but that still amounts to 150,000! If you're already very rich, or comfortable squeezing Royal Curries out of Elsje in battle, then it's a good option, but otherwise it's unrealistically steep.

I fed my 3 gaia crystals to the earth dragon 4 days in advance of the typhoon, and on the day of, it was still in full effect. (On the first day of feeding, it gave the soil the '6' on 'damage resist'...and it still said the same thing on the day of the typhoon, which I believe was 3 or 4 days later.)
Is 6 the cap or can it go higher? I also wonder when it does start to go down if it's slowly, one point at a time, or just drops to 0 when the time runs out (whatever that timeline is). Certainly a lot about these features to figure out it seems. Live and Learn ... or Play and Learn I guess.
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Murasaki
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Post  Posted:

It's autumn for me and got a typhoon notice, then next day was a starfall day. Day after was typhoon but I was busy running around smashing meteors and forgot to protect my crops, except one twinkle tree. Disaster time. At least the apple tree survived.

But meh, there's always more seeds to get.

The next day after that was a Runey day that matured my starfall pumpkins so that was at least a profitable time.

So much stuff to do!
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Kikki
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Post  Posted:

I'm trying to figure out typhoons, but the internal mechanics are not clear to me. Feeding a farm dragon gives ALL crops 6 damage resist. Turns out that's not a lot, because I applied a wettable powder after that, and it added another 32 damage resist. I really think locking all flower sales until so late in the game, story-wise, is ridiculous. I could have gotten my chemistry level up easily enough, but I can't do anything anyway until I get charm blues and cherry grasses. :/

Well, I should have a typhoon tomorrow. Wonder how protected my field really is. To be worth 150,000, it'd have to be invincible!

EDIT: Typhoon done. No crops destroyed in field with damage resist applied. Damage resist has not yet reduced, so the storm itself did not reduce it...I assume then that it reduces with time. Will check to see if reduction is gradual or disappears all at once when the time is up.
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LeBurns
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Post  Posted:

Well I got my typhoon finally. I will say that the plots on the dragon faired a lot better than those on the ground.

The dragon plots mostly have DR 6 from giving the dragon the crystals, though a couple rows had DR 34 which I still have no idea as to why. It did pretty good with only a couple of the DR 6 plots being taken out.

The plots on the ground, almost a complete wipe. I might have three crops left and that's about it. It'll take me a day to just clean up the mess, but if I get another typhoon anytime soon I have to wonder why bother. I may just let the ground plot go wild and collect my stone and wood from there. The dragon plot seems easier to maintain.

I really wish I knew what made those rows of plots on the dragon have such a high DR. I tried pounding some plots and rehoeing them, but that didn't increase the DR, so hoeing isn't the answer. All I did on those plot was raise and harvest seeds for several weeks until I got the seed level up to four (best I could do with the tools I had). At the time I wasn't even checking the DR on the soil.

EDIT: Something just struck me (must be coffee kicking in). I do recall one of the board quests was to apply some wettable powder. I do believe I did that on the dragon to protect the seeds I was making. That's got to be it. Mystery solved, though it didn't bring me any new ways to increase a soils DR.
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Kikki
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Post  Posted:

Yeah, wettable powder is the one way we can protect our crops ourselves.

~

Thinking about it, but you know, I think it's still sort-of true that you can only have typhoons/storms in summer and winter...with a handful of days leeway on either side. So, QUESTION FOR EVERYONE:

Have you had a storm in spring or fall, and if so, which day? I had one in spring, but it was Spring 29...only two days before summer set in. I've heard from a few others and they all seemed to indicate that their storms that happened within the last last or first days of the seasons flanking the stormy seasons.

Can anyone confirm a date outside of that? Such as being in the middle of spring or fall...the 10th or the 20th or so on.
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greensara
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Post  Posted:

I am in autumn right now and just had a typhoon a few game days ago, but I don't remember the date. First half of the month for sure because I was in the middle of autumn the last time I played, in the late teens I believe.(I stopped right after marrying Reinhard because of being busy irl, but I will pick it up again soon I'm sure.) Wettable powder really helped the fruit trees I put it on compared to the ones I did not.
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