Monday, December 8, 2008

When your Rucksack/Pocket is Full in Harvest Moon


In a comment, a player asked me why the Seed Maker did not work in Rune Factory 2. I will add this warning to my Rune Factory 2 General Guide but thought it merited a brief post here as well.

In most Harvest Moon games, including Rune Factory 2, you must have empty slots in your Rucksack or Pockets if you wish to perform any activity that yields an item. Whether in Harvest Moon DS/Harvest Moon Cute DS or Rune Factory 2, if you attempt to create Seeds using a Seed Maker, you will be unable to do so if you do not have an empty slot in your Rucksack for the resulting bag of seeds. There is no other special requirement in Rune Factory 2 where any of the Makers are concerned. If your Rucksack is full, you will be unable to use the Seed Maker.

Even the game itself will warn you about this potential problem when you press ‘A’ in front of the Seed Maker. You will obtain a prompt to the effect that:
‘Creates seeds from Crops. It won’t work if you don’t have room in your Backpack.’
Seeds, unlike Cheese or Yarn, are treated as tools rather than items and therefore cannot be held in your hands. You need to clear a slot in your Rucksack for the resulting product whenever you wish to use the Seed Maker.


Remember here that when items can be stacked, you need to be aware of the fact that separating ONE item from the stack to use in a Maker will create a new item that cannot be added to the stack and cannot occupy the slot where the original item lived! If you have 9 Tomatoes in your Rucksack and wish to create one bag of Tomato Seeds, therefore, you need an empty slot for those seeds. Unless you use all 9 of the Tomatoes to create 9 bags of seeds, the resulting product will not be able to occupy the slot that the original item occupied.

There is one situation where, even if your Rucksack has sufficient slots for a new Product, you will be unable to use the Seed Maker. This will occur whenever you attempt to create Seeds after accepting any Request. For the duration of any Request, the Seed Maker will not function!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always have problems with the seed maker, and thinking it's space issue I always check to see if I have room in my bag. I literally count the empty spaces but end up failing numerous times. I've only suceeded a couple of times to actually make seeds.

At first I thought it was only usuable during particular times, after I made sure I had room for seeds.

I am new to the whole HM game play so don't know the common gameplay tricks, with RF1 being my first game of the genre,and I loved it. I love RF2 even more, but I never had problems using the seedmaker in the previous game.

Is it your hand (tool hand) has to be empty as well or just numerous spaces in general?

Freyashawk said...

Even with years of experience with HM games, a packrat like myself never has enough storage space! Rune Factory and RF2 are particularly difficult because of all the War Trophies as well as crops and so on.

No, your Tool Slot does not need to be empty but you do need to have empty item slots in the Rucksack for any Seeds.

There is something else that can be annoying in RF2. You need to have empty hands to take the Ship back to Alvarna. If you are carrying an item because of lack of space in the Rucksack, you'll be forced to toss it!

Happily, there doesn't seem to be any penalty for littering in this game.

Anonymous said...

I still cannot get the seedmaker to work. I've had 15 empty squares in my backpack, I also tried empty tool hand to try as well. It was after 4 pm so maybe time is also important, since the last time I actually managed to get the seedmaker to work was before 3pm. Next time I'll try to get seeds before 3 and since if I'm successful and let you know.

Thanks for your quick response to my last comment.

Anonymous said...

Freya, it's me, Ana, I asked about trading things in RF2, but I wanted to know if it's possible to trade with a friend instead of Wi-Fi. I don't have wi-fi :(

Thank you for your patience!

Ana

Freyashawk said...

Anon, I never had trouble with the Seed maker at all in my own RF2 game, but I never paid attention to the time. I'll test different times in my own game as well and let you know.

Ana, there was no difference in the original Rune Factory between Wi-Fi trading and DS to DS trading. I only performed DS to DS trading in the original myself. Now I do have Wi-Fi but haven't explored that in RF2. It really shouldn't matter though HOW you make the connection as long as there is another player involved (or at least another DS!)

Freyashawk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Freyashawk said...

Anon, I now have information that should explain the problem. Whenever you have accepted any Request, your Seed Maker will not function! This prevents players from misusing Request items that they are honour-bound to deliver to some one! Either abandon the Request or complete it and your Seedmaker will work properly again.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your help, I had one of the kill monster trails that I had to hold off to do until evening in my log, and usually have one of the trails always activated when the request list is rather from everyone else is rather sparse, that defintely explains my trouble.