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During the ‘Black Dragon and Her Rider’ quest inRune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, players will be told to make a difficult decision. They’ll need to choose one of three things to sacrifice, and choose another option entirely. This isn’t an easy choice to make, especially because the extents of each sacrifice aren’t clearly explained in the game. As such, I’ve gone through each decision to determine which is the best one to make from a gameplay and storyline perspective.
Here’s everything you need to know about what sacrifice you should choose inRune Factory: Guardians of Azuma’s’Black Dragon and Her Rider' quest.
This guide contains significant story spoilers forRune Factory: Guardians of Azumathat happen late in the game. As such, if you’ve not yet reached this sacrifice decision, or want to go in blind and suffer whatever consequences may come your way, turn back now.
The Black Dragon and Her Rider Quest Decision in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, Explained
A Tough Choice to Make
After finally helping Kaguya (or Subaru) to see the light, things all go a bit wrong. Clarice and her accomplices show up, and the Gods fight them, while you and your childhood friend escape on the back of Woolby. After it becomes clear that they’re not going to make it, the main character will pull out a sacrifice amulet, which grants the user a wish in exchange for their soul. This gives players their first decision to make:
If players choose ‘Ah…’, they will let their childhood friend die. This won’t impact the story outside of a few lines of dialogue, and them simply not being a romance option or someone you can choose to be in your party. The ‘I hereby offer myself to Nubatama, Ebony One who Soars the Heavens’ option will then cause the black dragon to appear, which requires players to choose one of three things to sacrifice.
If you don’t save your childhood friend, you cannot get the ‘Seal of Approval’ achievement, as it requires you to marry them.
What Should You Sacrifice in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma?
Some Sacrifices Are Less Painful to Make
The Black Dragon will explain that players can choose to sacrifice trust, experience, or wealth to save their childhood friend. However, it doesn’t explain to what extent you’ll sacrifice these things.
By choosing ‘Trust’, players will lose one bond level with every character in the game. For characters with lower bond levels, this won’t take long to regain. However, if players have a high bond level with a character that they’retrying to romance and eventually marry, this can take a long time to regain.
By choosing ‘Experience’, players will lose a significant number of levels. When I was at level 61, I went down to level 37 afterward. Players will likely be around level 60/ 61, depending on how much exploring they’ve done outside the main quest line, so they can expect a similar drop here.
By choosing ‘Wealth,’ players will lose all the money that they currently have. However, their items in their inventory and storage box will be kept, despite how it’s worded in the conversation with the Black Dragon.
As such,wealth is the best sacrifice to make inRune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. At this stage in the game, players canmake a lot of money every dayby placing businesses in each of the four villages, assigning villagers to go fishing, and tending to crops in each village’s development zone every morning. Also, the game advises players to save their game before this quest, so they can always quickly go back, spend money on gear upgrades, seeds, and anything else they want, and then come back and do the quest so they don’t lose as much money.
If sacrificing money isn’t something players want to do, the next best choice is experience. While fighting monsters that are a higher level can be a bit of a grind, they also reward significantly more experience, which causes characters tolevel up incredibly quickly. As such, the 24/25 levels lost from sacrificing experience can be quickly regained by simply putting characters that are still at a high level in the combat party. They can carry the player through fights and let them reap the rewards of the experience. This massively reduces the amount of time it’ll take to get back to the level players were previously at.
Finally, I’d only recommend sacrificing trust in certain circumstances. If players haven’t put much time into leveling up bonds with many characters (or any at all), and haven’tgotten their romance optionat a very high level, then choosing trust can be a viable option. However, due tohow late in the main quest linethis decision comes up, this is unlikely, and so it can be a bit of a grind to get all characters' bond levels back up.
Ultimately, this isn’t as significant a decision as it might seem. All three of the sacrifices can be made back within an hour or so of playtime, two of which will come naturally from fighting monsters and selling produce.
