Tips (Rune Factory 1)

Early game tips:

 * Use the Hot Springs.
 * When you kill the first monster with your hoe, don't talk to the girl (Mist) yet. Instead, put weeds/stones in your inventory, till out 18-36 crop squares and put all of the twigs together to make the woodcutting less time consuming.
 * Right after you are done with the intro, run to the beach and go to the dock to get your fishing pole. Fish until 11:00. Afterwards, go to edward (doctor) and sell them to him along with the stones and weeds. If you have 1000g, then go to Ivan and buy the fridge. (If you don't have 1000g, then sell enough twigs until you do.)
 * Grow at least 2 fields of moondrop flowers, but don't sell them.
 * Finish Carmite cave as fast as possible (reason on next tip).
 * Save about 4000g after finishing carmite cave. After that, go to the library and buy the medication spell book. This book heals quite a bit of hp for just a little RP and is very useful for working in the fields extra and chopping stumps (very RP consuming). You might ask 'How can I work extra on the fields if I have to loose all of my RP before HP goes down?' That is why you should have grown the moondrop flowers. They are one of the most useful crops in the game for healing RP instead of HP. You only get a tiny bit of RP, but it is enough to use medication 2 or 3 times, and each time you use it, it heals 80 hp. So actually, instead of the supposed tiny bit of rp that is healed, you have your full health bar restored instead.
 * You can get very quick exp early on by using the broadsword (the 1 handed sword), going into carmite cave (assuming you are at the start of the game) and fighting the monsters that have no stats effects and only come out 1 at a time. Just kill them as they come out and they will keep dropping like flies. Be careful though because right after they come out they will attack you if you are in range. So you have to run away a little before moving on to the next victim. My suggestion is to kill the goblin swordsman.
 * Stay up until midnight. You only get the cold (RP depletes faster) if you go to bed after 1:00.
 * When you have 1/4-1/5 of your hp left, go to the dock and go fishing until the hot springs opens or it is almost time to sleep. (You will only need to do this until you get the medication spell book.)
 * Early on, fishing is the best way to make money.
 * When you forge a tool, try to time it so Leo is working on it while festivals and holidays are happening.
 * When you cut fodder, keep track of the fodder in your animal's houses. If you go over the limit of 99 fodder in it, it won't even go in your inventory, so leave the grass alone until there is enough space for more.
 * When your are in carmite or tauros cave, you may not have the time or energy to invest into growing fodder, but you still want farm animals. Well, in this game, animals won't die from lack of food. If you have a few huts, I suggest catching hornets (carmite cave) (their produce stays the same in quality no matter how much they like or hate you) and catching the fire mages (tauros cave) for their ability to water crops.
 * Don't buy fireball from the library when it is available. I personally never found much use for it will take a big chunk of your tiny wallet's money. Once you have money to kill, you can go ahead and buy it although it only takes up space since fire magic books seem to be abundant.

Other Tips:

 * If it wasn't obvious earlier, let me just say that you should use the 1 handed swords at the beginning and possibly for the whole game since they are useful versus any monster (bosses will often need to be killed by using a hit and run strategy, which only the 1 handed sword can do).
 * Don't get your hopes up for marrying Mei. She may seem easy to raise hearts with, but one of the requirements to marry her will require two copies of rune factory. She asks you for a level 80 lover snapper and that is only possible to obtain through trading the fish back and forth with a friend, because each trade will raise the level of fish.
 * Once you do have the money to buy items like water laser, you can actually snipe enemies with it. At times you can leave an enemy's range, but you can still see them. If you can see the machine too, you can constantly attack with magic until the machine is down. I don't recommend this unless an enemy like the hornet is causing you a lot of trouble and you would like to get through without major casualties.
 * In Tauros cave, there is a monster that looks like a water spirit. It ends up being one of the most useful guests in the game for a long time and I recommend using it. He has a ranged water laser attack and will heal you for 250 hp.
 * When you are trying to befriend monsters that come out 2 at a time (like woolies and hornets) it is helpful to only lure 1 to attack you. All you have to do is tap the control pad towards a monster until only it comes to you. They befriend it and repeat.
 * Never save in a cave when you have sealed magic and you are poisoned
 * When you are cooking just to increase cooking level, make popcorn if you have corn. Oddly enough, it only takes 1 or 2 popcorn creations for your cooking level to rise up to 25.