Rune Factory 5 has a robust crafting system — cooked dishes, medicine, armor, and weapons can all be crafted and customized. Out of all of these, the weapon and armor crafting systems are the most intricate, with hundreds of possible crafting materials and dozens of recipes. The game doesn’t go out of its way to explain the intricacies of these mechanics, either.
To Rune Factory 5‘s credit, the in-game descriptions of most items include their effects when used in crafting. However, some of the game’s most valuable items have cryptic descriptions and can leave players guessing as to their potential uses. Sometimes, descriptions even call the item outright useless or do little more than provide some flavor text. This guide will explain what to do with those secretly useful items, including how to use them and where to find them.
Shade Stone Is Great for Improving Weapons
Shade Stone’s in-game description might lead players to expect the item to have an effect on Dark spells, but its true use has far more utility than that. Adding a Shade Stone to a weapon during crafting or applying it as an upgrade decreases elemental resistance in enemies. When wielding a Shade Stone-enhanced weapon in combat, a foe’s defense against elemental attacks is decreased. This is different from ignoring their magic defense, as some foes can actually be healed by offensive spells if they have a high enough elemental resistance. Adding Shade Stones to weapons can save a lot of precious RP and make weapons with specific elemental properties viable against any enemy.
Shade Stones are mined from Shade Stone Ore. This rare ore only appears in one location during the story campaign: Atohl’s End 2F. After completing the main story and unlocking Rigbarth Maze, it can be found in Rigbarth Maze 17F in the dead-end, past a group of High Fairies. Since Atohl’s End 2F and Rigbarth Maze 17F have the same map layout, both locations have been marked in the image above.
White Stone Is Most Valuable in the Late Game
Adding a White Stone to an armor recipe or adding it as an upgrade enhances the abilities of family members in a player’s party. This is similar to the effect of the Dolphin Brooch accessory item. Unfortunately, this means that White Stones won’t truly be helpful until the player is married and has children.
White Stones are dropped by the boss at the end of Everlasting Darkness 4F. This particular boss is immune to the Spell Seal, so the item will only drop once the boss is defeated. There are several ways to increase item drop rates, or the player can utilize the save point on the other side of the door to the boss arena to try again and again until it drops.
Object X Is Dangerous but Useful
This seemingly useless, toxic drink is actually one of the most powerful crafting tools in the entire game. When added to a recipe, Object X reverses the effects of the next two added items, and when used as upgrade material, it reverses the effects of all subsequent upgrades. Used in tandem with items that have negative crafting effects, such as Mealy Apples, Object X can make armor that’s practically invincible against any elemental damage. For example, using Object X with two Oils when crafting an Amethyst Ring, like in the image above, would result in an Amethyst Ring with an additional +60 percent Fire Resistance.
Object X is by far the easiest item in this guide to obtain. It’s created when failing to craft medicine with the Chemistry Set, so just throw in whatever low-value material is taking up inventory space and brew it up. Other items that work well with Object X upgrades can also be made with a Chemistry Set — Sour Drop, Heavy Spice, Sweet Powder, and Mixed Herbs all provide negative elemental resistances in crafting recipes.
Add Scrap Metal+ to the recipe when crafting a weapon and its damage output will be changed to one. While this may not seem useful at first glance, this makes farming Double Steel and Tenfold Steel from Gemsqueeks (which spawn in Cloudheim 2F) much easier. Gemsqueeks will drop one Double Steel or Tenfold Steel every time they are hit, but they have extremely low health and will be killed in one hit from most weapons. Since Double Steel and Tenfold Steel multiply the effect of the previous material used to upgrade an item, they are worth their weight in gold.
Scrap Metal+ isn’t too hard to get a hold of, either: simply fail an armor or weapon crafting recipe. Usually, this results in regular Scrap Metal, but this will occasionally produce Scrap Metal+. To get results quickly, just keep cycling through stacks of Scrap Metal.
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