Many people find the successful development of the fairy village to be
something of a stumbling block in Breath of Fire III, and this guide is
intended to offer some small amount of assistance. This is not meant as a
walkthrough for building the village, but just a set of rules and information
to help you make your own decisions. It contains a brief outline of the jobs
and what they do, as well as explaining some of the mechanics the village
operates on. Any questions, comments, thoughts or requests can be addressed to
solargod@aol.com.
*As this walkthrough does contain information about the game, it is possible
that by reading further you will be exposed to information about the storyline
that you do not yet know. If this bothers you, I humbly suggest that you do
not read FAQs or walkthroughs.
The saga of the fairies begins after you complete the lighthouse quest in
the
town of Raphala. A fairy appears to chastise you for turning on the light, and
then gives you the Fairy Tiara, telling you that you must visit the Fairy
Realm to make up for it. At this point, you are able to use the flower
rings on the World Map as a portal to enter the fairy village. When you
arrive, the
fairies explain that a monster attacks them when the lighthouse is turned on.
After you go down to the beach, an evil dolphin approaches, and attacks your
party after showing his true form. To defeat it easily, use the Lightning,
Eldrich,
and Thorn genes to create a powerful Dragon with Ryu. Use lightning spells
with
Nina, and have Momo attack or use healing magic. Ryu's Dragon form can cast
Myollnir, a powerful lightning spell for 10 mana, and vitalize, a great
healing spell. Use these as necessary, and when you begin running low on mana,
use the free but still effective Thunder Claw. The dolphin should die without
causing you much difficulty. The fairies thank you for your help, but send you
on your way. You will return to the fairy village several years later, after
your journey to Angle Tower with Garr. At that point, the grateful fairies
will ask you to help them manage their town.
Mechanics: Your Fairy village advances with the number of battles that you
fight.
The rate at which it advances is determined by your culture rating. Fairies
reproduce depending on the amount of food you produce. On average, a Fairy
with good hunting skill can feed himself and two other Fairies. You can only
clear one patch of land at a time. After you clear an area, all fairies set to
clear land will have their efforts wasted. You can only clear more land after
a building has been built on the cleared land. You may set each fairy into one
of 5 basic areas. These areas are: hunting for food, clearing land, building
the
mansion, researching, and filling a special job. Each Fairy has a different
level of skill in each of four areas. These skills are represented by
different colored bars, with the length of the bar representing the fairies
skill in that particular area.
The red bar represents the Fairy's strength with hunting and obtaining
food. The higher this bar, the more food this fairy will produce if assigned
to hunt.
The green bar shows the Fairy's strength. Strength is used both for
building
and for clearing land. The longer this bar, the more quickly the fairy will
accomplish those tasks.
The dark blue bar shows a Fairy's skill with running a shop or special job.
The higher this bar, the faster that Fairy will perform merchant related
tasks, like obtaining new inventory.
The light blue bar shows the Fairy's intellect and skill with research.
Fairies with this skill will be able to raise the culture rating of your town
and research new jobs faster than other fairies.
Assigning Fairies: First, enter the assignment screen by talking to the head
fairy who stands directly outside the shack. To assign a fairy to a certain
task, you select that fairy, and move the cursor to the desired location. The
areas for hunting, clearing, and building are to the right of the assignment
screen. To assign a fairy to research or shop keeping, you must first place
them in a room. After that, you can assign them to their job by clicking in
the small box to the upper left of each fairy 'room' in the assignment screen.
Each room must be dedicated to only one occupation, but up to three fairy
practitioners of that occupation may operate in each room. Be careful when
moving a fairy from one room to the other, as this will cause the inventory
and developed abilities of your fairies to reset. At first you can only select
the scholar job, but later other jobs will become available to you.
Fairy Jobs
Scholar: The scholar is the only job available to you at first. After
selecting the scholar job, you are given the option to make the scholar(s)
research either culture or jobs. Researching culture speeds up the rate at
which things happen in your village. Researching jobs will increase the number
of jobs available to you. When you have reached the maximum possible level of
research an either category, the fairies assigned to that category will say
that they can't think of any new jobs (even if they are researching culture),
if you speak to them in town. The maximum culture research level is seven, and
the
maximum job research level is reached when each of the nine jobs listed below
have been discovered.
Merchant: The merchant comes in three varieties; weapons, items, and handyman.
The weapon's merchant will produce battle armaments that you can buy, as will
the items merchant produce items, such as herbs and vitamins. The handyman
will produce such miscellaneous items as the Angling Rod, which he acquires
fairly quickly in his career. Each of these three types of merchant can be
further categorized into one of two flavors; speed and ability. Selecting
speed will cause the merchant to build up inventory faster. Selecting ability
will cause them to acquire better items for resale. All six of the possible
store types will ultimately have eleven inventory items. There are several
items of particular use that can be obtained in this way. The Weapons
merchant, set to ability, will finally sell the Ouroboros, a powerful weapon
for Nina that has eighty power and improves her "Int" statistic by ten. The
Handyman, when set to ability will sell the Angling rod, which is a strong
long distance rod, the holy mantle, which slows the rate of random creature
attack, and the soul gems, which bring you back to life one time each, and can
make you practically invincible. Assigning multiple fairies to the merchant
job will cause the inventory to increase more rapidly.
Inn: An innkeeper will produce a very cheap inn that is useful in that it is
accessible from many places, due to the frequency of the flower rings on the
world map. Assigning a second or third fairy to this room will allow you to
obtain certain statistics about your game play, such as the number of battles
fought, similar to the service provided by the tavern patrons that could be
found in some Townships in Breath of Fire II.
Gift: The gift giver does not rely on mercantile skill, like most jobs do.
Rather, it appears to be based only on battles fought. The longer you leave it
alone, the better the item it gives you. These gifts mostly consist of small
store-bought items like vitamins and panaceas, but, after all, they are free.
By waiting for many, many battles between the times you speak to the gift shop
proprietor, you may be awarded some rare and valuable items. These items
include statistic boosting items, wisdom fruit, shaman rings, and event,
eventually, the powerful Spirit Ring.
Fortune: The fortune teller is of questionable usefulness. She gives you vague
clues about how to progress through the game, by saying things like "What you
seek is to the
East...". I guess you might want to build her up if you have a lot of trouble
figuring
things out. Accuracy depends on intelligence. It is not recommended that you
develop this shop.
Explorer: The explorer goes on expeditions to find items. It is possible for a
fairy on such a mission to be killed. The more dangerous the mission, the
better the item that may be found. The three types of expeditions, in order
from least to most dangerous, are daytrip, nearby, and distant. The more
dangerous jobs also take longer. This job can be useful for getting rid of
fairies who have very weak skills, to open a slot for someone better. Success
depends
on hunting skill. Things you can find include stat raising items, wisdom
fruit, the ivory charm and the spirit ring. You can also find an item called
the Dragon's Tear, which your antique shop will buy for 30,000 zinny. Each
fairy on exploration duty has a chance to find an item.
Antique: Here's another shop that is relatively useless. Nothing is sold here.
The Antique shop is only useful for selling items. This fairy will buy rare
items at a
higher price than most stores. I guess you might want to try this out if you
were really hard up for Zinny. This is the place to sell all those worthless
items that "appear valuable". You can also sell some items that your fairies
find on expedition for a considerable sum.
Casino: This fun little shop is a good way to squander away all your Zinny
once you've purchased everything that you will need. This shop doesn't depend
on any Fairy skill at all. Adding a third fairy will allow you to change the
names of your party members. This shop offers you two gambling games. One
allows you guess whether
each successive card will be higher or lower than the one before it, and one
where you play a game sort of like the old Mastermind guessing game. Winning
the first game nets you Zinny. Since extra cards are sometimes revealed at the
start of the game, it is possible to guess up to 7 or 8 cards at a time
correctly. This will allow for a tremendously greater payoff than would
guessing the cards only one at a time. The most statistically viable way to
make money with this game is to guess as many cards at a time as possible.
Winning the second game gets you some decent
items, depending on how well you place. In case you were wondering, the chance
of winning the second game on your first try is 1 in 504, and as far as I have
seen guarantees you a spirit ring.
Music: This shop is sort of like the sound test codes that old Nintendo games
used to have sometimes. It depends only on time and the development of your
city, as opposed to fairy skill. When you learn a new song, this fairy will
play it,
tell you its title, and let you watch the stereo bars. Not at all useful, but
somewhat interesting. There are forty songs available, the last being "Castle
in the Sky". Adding a second fairy will allow you access to two other songs.
Copy: An awesome shop, although it can be very slow. By giving an item from
your inventory (we're talking just about anything here) to the proprietor of
this shop, you can come back later to receive an exact duplicate of it. This
is a good way to stock up on some of the more elusive items in the game. I
find that it can be very effective to accumulate a large store of Wisdom
Fruits in this way. Ivory Dice can also be duplicated with a decent success
rate by fairies of high intelligence. If the fairy fails, the item may be
turned into a worthless rice ball, adding some element of risk to the process.
If you save *before* you have entered the village and found that the copying
is complete, you may reset the game if results are poor. You may want to have
several copy shops open, with three fairies working in each one to increase
the rate at which you can multiply items.
The Beginning
Here is just a brief guide to building up your village from the
beginning. Put two fairies in hunting, and one in researching culture. This
should allow other fairies to be born quickly. Keep more than 33% of your
fairies hunting until you have built up a sizable population. Other fairies
should be moved to clearing, and when a space is cleared, those same fairies
(since they need the same skills) should be moved to building. It is helpful
to have many fairies involved in these two tasks, even if they are not
appropriately skilled for the task. When you get smart fairies, move them to
researching culture. When you are completely full of culture (level 7), have
them research jobs. As you invent new jobs, go ahead and fill them up with an
appropriately skilled fairy, so you can begin building up
inventory. If you do a good job of placing fairies in their jobs, your town
should eventually flourish and provide you with many useful items.
Corrections & Thanks
* This guide was brought to you courtesy of solargod@aol.com. This is version
1.1 of the Fairy Village Compendium for Capcom's Breath of Fire III.
* You can have seven culture, and twenty fairies. There are ten jobs,
including culture. The music shop fairy can learn 40 songs. The shops can have
up to eleven items in inventory. People ask me these things all the time, so I
am spelling them out here. If most of your fairies die, just put all of them
on hunting.
* Shortly after the original publishing of this guide, I discovered the
ability of the second and third fairies in the inn job. I was also flooded
with email informing me of my lapse, and so am not able to credit all parties
involved. The first person to submit this correction to me was the honorable
Lindsey Williams.
* Another error in this guide centered on the statistical odds of success in
the casino games. The error involved the difference between combination and
permutation, as well as some replacement issues. The sheer number of people
who caught this error has shown me that there is very little room for
inaccuracy in the world of video game guides. Thanks to Alan Johnson for his
statistical expertise in straightening out this matter.
