Rune Factory 5: The Best Crops To Grow In Winter

The latest entry to the Rune Factory series recently released to the Nintendo Switch on March 2022. The story follows the protagonist who has woken up in a small town of Rigbarth with their memory lost. A group of peacekeeping rangers, known as SEED, enlists the hero to help protect the town. For the player to keep peace within the town, they must solve several cases throughout the game.

While Rune Factory 5 is an RPG, there is some mechanics that is often seen in the cozy game genre, such as tending to a farm, fishing in nearby rivers, speaking to the townspeople and growing relationships, craft items, and even tame monsters that live beyond the town’s walls. Players can expand their farms by producing multiple crops and selling them to earn money. While Winter is usually the worst time for growing crops, there are some valuable crops that grow during this time.

Where To Grow Crops

Crops can be planted in two main areas. One being in a field behind Rigbarth Outpost, and the others are on any of the Farm Dragons. There is a total of five Farm Dragons that can be unlocked throughout the game. Like similar games such as Stardew Valley, each crop has a different growth time, but they can be sped up using formulas. If players are using Farm Dragons, feeding the creature an Earth Crystal will also speed the time of the crop growth.

Crop Levels

Every new crop begins at level one but can be raised to a level ten. These levels indicate the selling prices, so the higher level of the crop means more money players will get. This also determines the food or medicine level if crafted into one, or if fed to a monster, it could have stronger effects if it’s a higher level.

When purchasing crops and seeds, stores will only stock the highest level that has been shipped so far. So, if players reached a level five crop, stores would only have level five crops. Note that stores will only have the appropriate level of crop or seed, meaning that if a player shipped out a level five crop but only a level three seed, the store would have the associated crop and seed level.

To raise the crops levels, players must get higher seed levels. To do this, players must use a sickle on a fully grown crop. When doing this, players should get a seed that is one level higher than what the crop was. From here, players can either plant it or ship the seed. When shipping in, stores will then stock up on this crop. If planting, players can keep getting higher levels from the crop. If players ship the seed before 8AM, they will be able to buy it within in the same day.

Also note that if players plant crops into higher quality soil, which is a natural process that happens when planting crops, as well as water the crops, there is a possibility that the crops with grow at a higher level than the level it was planted. Because of this, players may be able to skip various levels at once. Soil quality can also be improved if players use Greenifier.

Specialty Crops

There are two special types of crops that players can get in Rune Factory 5. One is giant crops, and the other is Starfall crops. Giant crops are grown when planting four of the same crops into a marked two by two plot of land. Then, sprinkle Giantizer on those crops, and water them daily until they’re full-grown. After an extra day or two, they will merge into a single gigantic crop.

Starfall are a new type of giant crop that can be grown from Starfall Seeds. To get these seeds, players must wait for a random day when it’s Starfall Weather. This is indicated when an icon of a shooting star is in the Weather icon next to the current time of day. During these days, Meteors fall from the sky and land on part of the map. Players can then break these Meteors with a hammer to obtain the materials, including the Starfall Seeds.

Depending on which season these Seeds are planted will determine which crop will grow. These are a high profit crop; however, they do require two by two plot of land and will take ten days to fully grow. With that being said, it's ideal for players to try and get specialty crops because not only do they sell at a great price, they also have higher buffs and effects for the players. They recover more HP, as well as give players extra aid in battles, like boosting strength or defenses.