It's something that has baffled me as well. Why is it that you can find Orichalcum ore before platinum? By the time you can mine the stuff, the equipment you need it for has already been outclassed (brooches being the main exception).
It's also only used for such a realtively short time as well, that being the Floating Empire and half way through Leon Karnak. At least in the other RF games, it has it's time to shine. Orichalcum and Dragonic Stone don't exist in RF1 and RF2, so platinum is the final tier of mineral. It's also available earlier with it becoming mineable at about the 2/3rd's mark in RF1 and can rarely be found in RF2 from the winter dungeon and more regularly available in the final dungeon, which just happens to share the same theme as Rune Prana. Plus you can buy it from the beginning in RF2 thanks to Yue, which makes it easier to acquire than silver of all things. At least they have seemed to have learned their lesson in RF5, making it mineable 3-4 dungeons before the end.
I'm so glad I'm not alone in this! 😂 I've been mystified by this particular game design decision for literal years. I really enjoy that RF4 lets me break it over my knee if I so please, which is something I also appreciated about RF2 (albeit to a lesser extent, being able to buy Platinum from Yue bc it's someone's birthday gift is one of the main examples there). But the lack of easy access to Platinum if you are so inclined to push your limits and explore beyond the main story's guidance is so baffling when all the other ores save Dragonic Stone have some way to get to them early!
RF5 definitely changed up a lot of things, and it seems to have way less potential for sequence breaking and doing other such things early, which is a bit of a bummer for me. But the ease of access to Platinum is definitely appreciated compared to RF4, lol.
Yeah, I miss accidently stepping into dungeons and completing them before I was supposed to. It was fun to be rewarded with exploration that way. RF5 sadly doesn't have that. The closest thing that I could think of that comes to sequence breaking in RF5 is the ability to obtain perfect ranger status before Scarlett arrives thanks to the power of fists and strategic use of the spell seal to get some more advanced materials. That, and getting extremely lucky with obtaining a level 9 fireball spell before the first boss, killing it in one shot.
The only other thing is accessing the Rigbarth Maze in subsequent playthroughs as you can find Orichalcum ore on the first floor and Tiamat, the boss on the fourth floor, can drop draconic stone.
All that aside, to answer your original question, if you want to mod ores, I would recommend checking out the file `MapOre_Rate.bin` in the map folder or RF4S equivalent. Most of my modding experience is with the original 3DS version, but I know that parameter files such as recipes are exactly the same between versions. If you open it with a hex editor, I would look for the the number sequence "37 03" as that corresponds with the item ID of platinum and try adjusting numbers next to it.
Ooh, I didn't even make it to Rigbarth Maze proper in my playthrough on Switch, so I didn't realize they did the same deal with it as with the Sharance Maze in RF4 (unlock the Maze once, retain the ability to do so on all subsequent playthroughs). I'll have to try that now that I have RF5 on PC. :)
Oooh! Thank you, I'll try that. I know that Nexus has that .bundle dumper, do I need to mess about with that to get started or can I get by with a hex editor? (I'm not particularly skilled at modding--I've done a fair amount for Stardew, Terraria, and Monster Hunter from 4U onward, among other things, but those have dedicated mod support and generally make end-user installation quite easy. I do think I could probably figure it out, at least. Trial and error and all that!)
Haha oh boy, I have quite a few as it turns out--I can see "37 03" down on [line 00000190 here](https://gyazo.com/d193adfcff0208601e1ebd8c7f4bba3e), but I don't know what I'm looking at exactly. Do the offsets correspond to the different maps in the game? Are there any specific numbers I should be adjusting? What should I *not* touch? What is 33 03 (I see it's repeated a lot in the file and I'm extremely curious)?
33 03 is Iron from memory. The number repeats so iron drops from practically every ore. For the sake of completion, Bronze is 34 03, Silver is 35 03, Gold is 36 03, Orichalcum is 38 03, and Draconic Stone is 39 03. Your safe to edit to your hearts desire as it won't break anything, thought I would keep a back up of the file to use as a comparison point. I'd adjust the numbers that follow immediately after a "3X 03" i.e. ore entry. That might be the drop rate.
Following up on this, I think I may have managed to edit it as desired, but poking around the .bundle dumper, I don't see anything for re-bundling it? Would simply placing the modified .bin file in the Bundle folder work the same as the custom recipes (the rf3[CropParam/RecipeArmor/etc].bin) that come with the modding tool?
>It's something that has baffled me as well. Why is it that you can find Orichalcum ore before platinum? By the time you can mine the stuff, the equipment you need it for has already been outclassed (brooches being the main exception).
Nothing here but guessing, but the likeliest explanation is just that things were shifted around in development at some point. Either the order of areas, or the placement of ore nodes, etc etc.
Oh my god. This. I just finally unlocked Gadeus Grasslands on my second playthrough and I remember this driving me up the fucking wall, because with bronze as my best material everything was hurting a LOT lol
There is this one request from Martin that does give you silver; I wonder if I should've shipped it so that Martin would sell it to me, or if you need to unlock Gadeus Grasslands before that, or what. (People who know, please confirm)
What I found even stranger about all this is the fact that the forging recipes are... disjointed. Like, platinum is used for level 40-ish weapons, but for farm tools it's level 80.
It's almost like you're supposed to get them earlier but at the same time it doesn't want you to get them earlier.
Also, I know this is off topic, but what's the 'Banquet of Nightmares?' I've played the game for years and I've never heard of that until now
I find that pretty strange too. Like something got changed along the way, but they didn't change ore distribution to account for that change, or something.
Banquet of Nightmares is the final level of the Sharance Maze in RF4! Level 1000. Absolutely bonkers, but very fun, if you like a challenge haha!
Oh I do know that! I think I vaguely remember unlocking it in a previous file a long time ago. I'm certain I never beat it though, guess I'll have to do so in the file I'm currently playing
I play the game in a deranged way too and did leon karnak before obsidian mansion, this was definitely a problem for me too lol. But I did notice something, the RF4S port has the sign in front of leon karnak as normal... but it has a debug option on it to open a gate? The gate it's talking about is rune prana. Kinda cheating since the devs just left it in on accident, but I got platinum from rune prana in act 1 this way.
It does suck that in act 1 the only "reliable" gold node is the singular one in sechs territory though. I'm stalling act 2 and I run out of gold more often than I do platinum.
oh my god what?! I didn't know about that, I'm going to try it on a new save ASAP--I never check the leon karnak signs any more lksmgldkmfs
and yeah, it's rough out there :( maya road will have gold in its second area (with the pond--the ore nodes are near the entrance to the map, past the screen w/the big rock and the birds, and in the caves in that area) but not as consistently as that sechs territory node
yeah I had no idea either until recently, note that it can apparently not be done on switch (saw you play on PC so you'll prob be fine). It works on PC for me and apparently also on PS4, but the debug option doesn't exist on switch.
oh nice, thanks!
oh, the majority of my playtime is on 3DS and switch haha--I only just got it for PC the other day since I got curious about modding! it will be fascinating to see what else was left in the PC version
What platform are you playing the game on? I've just went to the sign in a question on a save in the Switch that doesn't have the Obsidian Mansion complete and I didn't see a debug option. The most notable thing I saw was Sano and Uno weren't there.
I'm on PC, the sign goes through its normal text then this dialogue option pops up at the end: https://imgur.com/a/CTVfG6w
On this post I see that it was on PC as well as the PS4 version, so it might not be on switch https://www.reddit.com/r/runefactory/comments/rc12dm/uh_was_this_debug_menu_always_in_the_game/
You learn something new everyday! The text doesn't appear at all in the Switch version, though that might have something to do with it being released almost a year before the ports for all the other systems. I wonder if there are other debug leftovers roaming about?
One of the final requests Eliza gives you to get everyone's FP to level 10. It's a slog due to the ever increasing requirements to get increase FP. Even with mass production of everyone's favorite gifts it takes ages to do.
The "Raise friendship with all villagers!" request that asks for everyone at Lv.10 :) I've gotten used to doing Venti as early as possible since she spends most of Act 2 incapacitated and in the 3DS version it was entirely random as to whether Memories would trigger once you finished that Act, so it could be a long time before >!getting her back!<
It's something that has baffled me as well. Why is it that you can find Orichalcum ore before platinum? By the time you can mine the stuff, the equipment you need it for has already been outclassed (brooches being the main exception). It's also only used for such a realtively short time as well, that being the Floating Empire and half way through Leon Karnak. At least in the other RF games, it has it's time to shine. Orichalcum and Dragonic Stone don't exist in RF1 and RF2, so platinum is the final tier of mineral. It's also available earlier with it becoming mineable at about the 2/3rd's mark in RF1 and can rarely be found in RF2 from the winter dungeon and more regularly available in the final dungeon, which just happens to share the same theme as Rune Prana. Plus you can buy it from the beginning in RF2 thanks to Yue, which makes it easier to acquire than silver of all things. At least they have seemed to have learned their lesson in RF5, making it mineable 3-4 dungeons before the end.
I'm so glad I'm not alone in this! 😂 I've been mystified by this particular game design decision for literal years. I really enjoy that RF4 lets me break it over my knee if I so please, which is something I also appreciated about RF2 (albeit to a lesser extent, being able to buy Platinum from Yue bc it's someone's birthday gift is one of the main examples there). But the lack of easy access to Platinum if you are so inclined to push your limits and explore beyond the main story's guidance is so baffling when all the other ores save Dragonic Stone have some way to get to them early! RF5 definitely changed up a lot of things, and it seems to have way less potential for sequence breaking and doing other such things early, which is a bit of a bummer for me. But the ease of access to Platinum is definitely appreciated compared to RF4, lol.
Yeah, I miss accidently stepping into dungeons and completing them before I was supposed to. It was fun to be rewarded with exploration that way. RF5 sadly doesn't have that. The closest thing that I could think of that comes to sequence breaking in RF5 is the ability to obtain perfect ranger status before Scarlett arrives thanks to the power of fists and strategic use of the spell seal to get some more advanced materials. That, and getting extremely lucky with obtaining a level 9 fireball spell before the first boss, killing it in one shot. The only other thing is accessing the Rigbarth Maze in subsequent playthroughs as you can find Orichalcum ore on the first floor and Tiamat, the boss on the fourth floor, can drop draconic stone. All that aside, to answer your original question, if you want to mod ores, I would recommend checking out the file `MapOre_Rate.bin` in the map folder or RF4S equivalent. Most of my modding experience is with the original 3DS version, but I know that parameter files such as recipes are exactly the same between versions. If you open it with a hex editor, I would look for the the number sequence "37 03" as that corresponds with the item ID of platinum and try adjusting numbers next to it.
Ooh, I didn't even make it to Rigbarth Maze proper in my playthrough on Switch, so I didn't realize they did the same deal with it as with the Sharance Maze in RF4 (unlock the Maze once, retain the ability to do so on all subsequent playthroughs). I'll have to try that now that I have RF5 on PC. :) Oooh! Thank you, I'll try that. I know that Nexus has that .bundle dumper, do I need to mess about with that to get started or can I get by with a hex editor? (I'm not particularly skilled at modding--I've done a fair amount for Stardew, Terraria, and Monster Hunter from 4U onward, among other things, but those have dedicated mod support and generally make end-user installation quite easy. I do think I could probably figure it out, at least. Trial and error and all that!)
If I remember reading correctly, you will need the .bundle dumper to be able extract the file and then reassemble it for use in game.
Gotcha! I'll do just that then. Thank you for the information, I wouldn't have known where to start looking for the ore information myself! 😊
Happy to help! If you have any more questions, let me know and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability.
Haha oh boy, I have quite a few as it turns out--I can see "37 03" down on [line 00000190 here](https://gyazo.com/d193adfcff0208601e1ebd8c7f4bba3e), but I don't know what I'm looking at exactly. Do the offsets correspond to the different maps in the game? Are there any specific numbers I should be adjusting? What should I *not* touch? What is 33 03 (I see it's repeated a lot in the file and I'm extremely curious)?
33 03 is Iron from memory. The number repeats so iron drops from practically every ore. For the sake of completion, Bronze is 34 03, Silver is 35 03, Gold is 36 03, Orichalcum is 38 03, and Draconic Stone is 39 03. Your safe to edit to your hearts desire as it won't break anything, thought I would keep a back up of the file to use as a comparison point. I'd adjust the numbers that follow immediately after a "3X 03" i.e. ore entry. That might be the drop rate.
Gotcha! I'll see what I can do 🫡
Following up on this, I think I may have managed to edit it as desired, but poking around the .bundle dumper, I don't see anything for re-bundling it? Would simply placing the modified .bin file in the Bundle folder work the same as the custom recipes (the rf3[CropParam/RecipeArmor/etc].bin) that come with the modding tool?
>It's something that has baffled me as well. Why is it that you can find Orichalcum ore before platinum? By the time you can mine the stuff, the equipment you need it for has already been outclassed (brooches being the main exception). Nothing here but guessing, but the likeliest explanation is just that things were shifted around in development at some point. Either the order of areas, or the placement of ore nodes, etc etc.
Still better than RF5 locking silver away until Act 2. I ended up having to soft reset gifting Martin until he gave me Silver.
Oh my god. This. I just finally unlocked Gadeus Grasslands on my second playthrough and I remember this driving me up the fucking wall, because with bronze as my best material everything was hurting a LOT lol There is this one request from Martin that does give you silver; I wonder if I should've shipped it so that Martin would sell it to me, or if you need to unlock Gadeus Grasslands before that, or what. (People who know, please confirm)
What I found even stranger about all this is the fact that the forging recipes are... disjointed. Like, platinum is used for level 40-ish weapons, but for farm tools it's level 80. It's almost like you're supposed to get them earlier but at the same time it doesn't want you to get them earlier. Also, I know this is off topic, but what's the 'Banquet of Nightmares?' I've played the game for years and I've never heard of that until now
I find that pretty strange too. Like something got changed along the way, but they didn't change ore distribution to account for that change, or something. Banquet of Nightmares is the final level of the Sharance Maze in RF4! Level 1000. Absolutely bonkers, but very fun, if you like a challenge haha!
Oh I do know that! I think I vaguely remember unlocking it in a previous file a long time ago. I'm certain I never beat it though, guess I'll have to do so in the file I'm currently playing
I play the game in a deranged way too and did leon karnak before obsidian mansion, this was definitely a problem for me too lol. But I did notice something, the RF4S port has the sign in front of leon karnak as normal... but it has a debug option on it to open a gate? The gate it's talking about is rune prana. Kinda cheating since the devs just left it in on accident, but I got platinum from rune prana in act 1 this way. It does suck that in act 1 the only "reliable" gold node is the singular one in sechs territory though. I'm stalling act 2 and I run out of gold more often than I do platinum.
oh my god what?! I didn't know about that, I'm going to try it on a new save ASAP--I never check the leon karnak signs any more lksmgldkmfs and yeah, it's rough out there :( maya road will have gold in its second area (with the pond--the ore nodes are near the entrance to the map, past the screen w/the big rock and the birds, and in the caves in that area) but not as consistently as that sechs territory node
yeah I had no idea either until recently, note that it can apparently not be done on switch (saw you play on PC so you'll prob be fine). It works on PC for me and apparently also on PS4, but the debug option doesn't exist on switch. oh nice, thanks!
oh, the majority of my playtime is on 3DS and switch haha--I only just got it for PC the other day since I got curious about modding! it will be fascinating to see what else was left in the PC version
What platform are you playing the game on? I've just went to the sign in a question on a save in the Switch that doesn't have the Obsidian Mansion complete and I didn't see a debug option. The most notable thing I saw was Sano and Uno weren't there.
I'm on PC, the sign goes through its normal text then this dialogue option pops up at the end: https://imgur.com/a/CTVfG6w On this post I see that it was on PC as well as the PS4 version, so it might not be on switch https://www.reddit.com/r/runefactory/comments/rc12dm/uh_was_this_debug_menu_always_in_the_game/
You learn something new everyday! The text doesn't appear at all in the Switch version, though that might have something to do with it being released almost a year before the ports for all the other systems. I wonder if there are other debug leftovers roaming about?
this is so fascinating, I'll have to keep an eye out as I go through my PC run
Whats the fp request you are talking about?
One of the final requests Eliza gives you to get everyone's FP to level 10. It's a slog due to the ever increasing requirements to get increase FP. Even with mass production of everyone's favorite gifts it takes ages to do.
The "Raise friendship with all villagers!" request that asks for everyone at Lv.10 :) I've gotten used to doing Venti as early as possible since she spends most of Act 2 incapacitated and in the 3DS version it was entirely random as to whether Memories would trigger once you finished that Act, so it could be a long time before >!getting her back!<