Harvest Moon Forever: Wootz

Showing posts with label Wootz. Show all posts

Monday, November 17, 2008

Truly a Woman after my own Heart...

With all the interest in the Eligible Girls in Rune Factory 2, I remain devoted to a character one cannot marry: the female Blacksmith Tanya.

As a collector of edged weapons and erstwhile martial artist myself, one of my favourite activities in the original Rune Factory was my ability to forge fabulous weapons.

I am looking forward to the day when I shall be able to obtain a forge of my own in Rune Factory 2. Meanwhile, though, when I visited Tanya one evening, she happened to remark:

Tanya: Shooting stars apparently have ores inside them you can’t find anywhere else.
Thinking about it really gets me excited.

I feel the same, Tanya, in ANY world. Meteorites have been used to forge steel of superior and rather mystical types variously known as 'damascus', 'watered steel' or 'wootz'. Pattern-welded blades actually are created using a different technique from Wootz, but both are termed 'Damascus Steel'.

For a number of centuries, this was a lost art in the Western World, although bladesmiths in the Arab world and in Southeast Asia never entirely lost their ancient knowledge.

It is rather ironic that blades crafted in the West during the so-called 'Dark Ages' were far more complex and superior in quality to anything fashioned for another thousand years or so. It was only recently that Western knifemakers were able to fathom the techniques that created such fabled swords as the sword of Sutton Hoo and indeed to forge copies.

Meteorites are not the only source of the metal used to create Damascus steel or Wootz but they are one of the most ancient. Each meteorite in fact creates its own unique pattern in the blade and weapons and armour containing metal from meteorites have been prized throughout history for their beauty and magical properties.

For Tanya to speak ot the special ore found only in 'shooting stars' delighted me. I wonder if meteorite or a meteorite blade is one of the special items in Rune Factory 2. I would doubt it somehow, but it will be interesting to follow this hint nonetheless to see if it leads anywhere.

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For all Harvest Moon fans and players

As Freyashawk, I have written about 150 guides for games, most of which have been guides for Harvest Moon games. These are published on IGN. IGN has given me the title of 'Mistress of Harvest Moon' and I strive daily to earn the right to maintain that title. Although there is a link page on IGN that lists all the guides published there, they are not organised by game, but rather given in alphabetical order. I therefore created this page in order to provide links to the guides I have created for each Harvest Moon game. If you access the General Guide for any game, links should be included to all other guides for that game in a section at the end. I will try to add links to ALL guides as time permits, but until I do, you always can refer to my user page at IGN for the complete list.

I wrote the Official Strategy Guide for Tree of Tranquility for BradyGames as well.
Harvest Moon Forever!

How to Use my Guides

I write three different basic types of game guides. I usually write a General Guide for every game, which is fairly comprehensive and deals with all aspects of the game. It may or may not be in the form of a Walkthrough, dealing with game aspects as they occur. My Innocent Life General Guide is an example of a General Guide that is organised as a Walkthrough.

After writing a General Comprehensive Guide, I often write a Calendar Guide giving birthday and festival dates, with additional information that may be helpful, such as favourite gifts for each individual. For all Harvest Moon games, I usually write a number of 'mini-guides', such as Events Guides for each year of gameplay, or Recipe Guides that give all recipes one can make. Fishing, Mining, Shipping or Item Value Guides are other mini-guides that can be very useful when playing Harvest Moon. Character Guides give detailed information about every character in any specific game. My Courtship and Marriage Guide is devoted to all aspects of Courtship and Marriage, including schedules of Heart Events, Rival Heart Events and the likes and dislikes of every Eligible Girl and/or Bachelor.

Although this site is devoted to Harvest Moon, I have included links to game guides for other games. I created a separate link section for Animal Crossing Wild World as well, because I wrote more than one guide for that game.

N.B. All my game guides are published by IGN. This webpage has been created simply to allow players to find links to all my guides more easily.

Copyright Infringement Warning

It is really sad to discover that there are individuals who are willing to steal my guides and to attempt to publish them under their names. Fortunately, there are many players who recognise my guides when they see them anywhere on the internet and who are willing to alert me when some one tries to steal my material. I want to thank all those players for their help in these cases.

Some one stole one of my guides and tried to publish it on Gamefaqs under his/her name. The guide has been removed and the poster has been banned. I now have a contact in the Legal Department at CNet. I spend many months sometimes writing a guide. They are available for the private use of any individual without cost, but they are not available for theft!
If you want permission to include a link to one of my guides on your site, please contact me directly.

Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town

You will notice that I wrote far more guides for More Friends of Mineral Town than I did for the original 'Friends of Mineral Town'. At some point, I would like to publish more specific Events Guides for Friends of Mineral Town, but players should be aware of the fact that ALL Calendar Events Guides for MFoMT can be used when playing the original FoMT. The Events are the same in most cases in both games. If, therefore, you are playing FoMT and you wish to know the events that can be experienced in the third year of gameplay, refer to the 'Third Year Calendar Events Guide' for 'More Friends of Mineral Town'.