Rance Quest:Game mechanics

Quest System
This section deals with information on various type of quests in Rance Quest, explanation of the quest screen, and how to undertake and complete quests as well build your reputation (Charisma).



Available quests are listed at the resting base, which (according to the first tab) is dubbed as "Rance's Castle." As the story progresses, more and more quests will be avalaible for Rance to carry on his high jinks. Also, quests, besides certain storyline ones, may be repeated to satisfaction; therefore, players need not fret about missing delicious events or vital items. After choosing a quest, you proceed to the party selection (which is detailed later), and then the quest, for H-ing more women, begins.

For more information on this quest screen, see the In-depth Explanation.



Some quests cannot be brute-forced; they are not so straight-foward. Even Rance does not simply waltz into Mordor. Often times, special events, which appear as on the example, must be done to advance the adventure. Try not to miss events (whether they are battle or recovery events) as they appear on the map. Otherwise, Rance may end up lost in a gloomy cave with—gasp—no attractive girls to knock up. And eventually his party will run out of actions for battle. But note EXP is retained even when a quest has failed.



Moving on—as in Rance 6, and other classic role-playing games, there are random monster-encounters, and special battle events (represented by red spiky icons). However, Rance Quest's battles have time limits—if you cannot defeat all enemies in time, the battle prematurely ends, and you will received less EXP. It is analogous to prematurely ending sex, so try to meet the time limits, and reap the good feelings. (Us Rance fans have our minds forever in the gutter.) A counter is displayed on the lower right corner, and it will decrease per anyone's action (as in Sengoku Rance); battles end when the counter reaches zero. However, it is possible boss battles will either have no time limit, or will result in game over if you fail to win in time. In any case, act wisely in battle.



Next, quests are cleared by defeating bosses, reaching the destination, et cetera. Moreover, clearing a quest will unlock new quests and areas, and will give Charisma Points—explained later. Rance and his mates will then return to the earlier mentioned base. After all, our hero deserves some leisure time for eating, sleeping, and—if you get the drift—stuffing pretty ladies as if they are Thanksgiving Day turkeys.



Of course, not all quests involve kicking ass, and delivering a world of pain to pathetic monsters. Some quests are to know your mates better, which Rance prefers to do in bed when beautiful women are involved—Gahahaha!!! What else do you expect? Everything is a quest in this game. Everything is Rance Quest!!!

In-depth Explanation (Reputation, Difficulty etc.)
A lot of companions will join an adventurer who is famous. If you want to build your harem well and survive tough battles together with them, you should build your reputation and increase your charisma.



How much reputation you'll gain is displayed on the screen where you accept the quest. It's on the lower left corner of the quest list screen, above party members. However, usually the more reputation a quest yields, the higher the difficulty of the quest tends to be. In the above image, "難易度" is difficulty rating of the selected quest. "名声値" is the amount of fame/reputation (which is actually charisma points) the quest will yield.

How gaining charisma helps in party organization is explained in the section explaining the Party Organization System. So it's crucial that you steadily increase your charisma level.

The following type of quests are available in Rance Quest:



This is the navigation/exploration type of quest, where you reach a given point in the map and trigger an event (green star with exclamation mark).



Then the most common type, battle quest, which involves you defeating a specific enemy/enemies (often bosses) to clear the quest.



Escort quest: This involves you escorting a client character to a given destination with only certain specific characters.



Also, events involving joining of new characters, as well as - last but by far the most important one - doing girls in bed, are also quests!

Additionally, many quests have specific conditions such as "no more than 3 characters allowed", "Rance can't be in the party" etc. There will be a huge amount of quests with variety, so aim to beat them all!



To the lower right corner of the map, for each quest there may be two parameters: "戦闘あり" and "MAPあり", they indicate whether the selected quest will involve battles or in-map navigation respectively. For example, a H-event is not expected to have either, while a standard boss-killing quest will very likely have both.

These will help you organize your party according to the requirements of a quest.

Party Organization System
This section explains how to swap party members, limitations on no. of actions of each character as well restrictions on party member swapping and how the player's Charisma level plays a crucial role in it.



Continuing from the previous section, the party may be chosen after selecting a quest. Your initial party may consist of up to five members—three frontliners and two rears. The former should ideally consist of aggressive melee fighters such as Rance and Kenshin. And the rear should (also ideally) consist of ranged/support fighters such as Megadeth, Prima, and Lia. However, defenders, such as Sachiko and Rocky, may guard allies from any position; although they cannot attack from the back row. Take this into account when forming a party, which Rance prefers to be women-only. Yes, Rocky, we are looking at you; take your ass out, and make room for more women—Gahahaha!!! Those not selected become reserve members who may be swapped in later. In this example, Prima, Mahoko, Kenshin, Kou, and Lia are reserves. They will stand prepared to fight in place of a tired or fallen party member. But swapping members has limitations as explained soon.



Then kick some ass in battle—Rance Attack!!! But there is a catch; a skill has limited usage count per quest (since no one has endless stamina). Once a skill is used up, it cannot be used until refilled at the base, which means waiting until the next quest. So plan wisely; perhaps you should save stronger skills for tougher monsters or the boss. Unfortunately, it gets worse. Even basic attacks have limited usage count; they are not exceptions to the previously mentioned rule. (But basic attacks generally have higher usage count.) So it is possible to run out of actions, thus becoming—



—unable to act at all. Such members are sitting ducks, and will need to be swapped for another; they can also be used as meat shields if you are cruel enough. Precisely, expended members will be marked with the text 「行動不可」 as shown above. Members may later be upgraded, probably through events and items, to have more actions.



Anyway, this is when reserved characters come in—to substitute expended members. This screenshot, for instance, shows Mahoko being dragged to replace Megadeth; it is similar to replacing SP expended members in Rance 6.



But wait—note the counter, in the lower right, dropped after Mahoko was swapped in. This counter indicates the number of swaps allowed, which is governed by the Charisma Points gained by completing quests. Finally, your quest may fail if all current members become tired. So it is important to keep an eye on expended members and the swap counter as well as to strategize which character to bring in for another.

Acquiring and Equipping Skills
As mentioned before, in Rance Quest, a character gets a limited no. of uses per skill. This is not for a single battle but for the duration of the entire quest. So you'd need a lot of people to take yourself through the quest without running out of moves.

A character can learn dozens of skills throught the course of the game. An example (Sachiko's) is given below.



Whenever a character levels up, you are able to spend skill points earned on learning new skills in the above window that pops up. However, it may be noted past level 10, there will be additional conditions for acquiring skills. Once a skill is acquired, it must be equipped on one of the available slots to use in a quest.


 * Each character has a limited no. of equippable skill slots (max being 6), and even if you have more usable skills learned than the available skill slots, you can only use the equipped skills as permitted by your skill slots at any given time; the rest will not be used for that quest.


 * Of course, no skill swapping in the middle of a quest.


 * Skills with white background probably don't require equipping and activate immediately upon learning (this is probably the difference between yellow and white passive skills).

By the way, aside from the limit on no. of skills that can be equipped, there's also a limit to the no. of skills you can learn in total, as you can see in the left pane. So you can't learn every single skill. Therefore spend not only your learning points but also your skill slots wisely, if all the skill slots to the left are filled up, that character doesn't get to learn anymore skills at that time even if he/she meets the all requirements and has enough points!

But, don't panic, there are items in-game that allow a character to un-learn his/her skills and free a slot so that you can give him/her a new skill to learn.

There are various kinds of skills:



Aside from offensive and passive skills, there are special skills and other skills (yellow and white ones respectively or vice versa?) for a total of 4 kinds of skills.



"Compulsory Education", huh? If we're to take a hint from Daiteikoku, kids in this game might get extra EXP from battles in this game if they got this skill.



As you can see, not everyone can acquire every skill. A fighter's skillset (left) will have little to no magic attacks while a sorcerer's skillset (right) will mostly consist of magic spells with almost no physical skills. Furthermore, even among characters of the same class, not everyone can acquire the same skills. For example, some fighters might gain a few magic attacks while other will not. Also it's not like you expect anyone other than Rance to learn Rance Attack, do you? Each sorcerer too, likewise, might get to learn special skills of his/her own that others might not learn (some specializing in heavy fire attacks, some super-strong ice attacks etc.).

Therefore organizing, learning/unlearning and equipping your skills is as important as organizing your team for a quest.

Exploring The Levels


Map exploration, as the screenshot shows, is rendered in 3D, as in Toushin Toshi III, with an overhead view. Rance is controlled either by mouse-click, arrow keys, or WASD keys. Furthermore, the view can be zoomed in or out. And the mini-map may be turned either on or off. Maps may be littered with events, so keep an eye out for those special icons. Also, be cautious with any treasure chests on the map; some may be equipped with traps (See this section)... Not that Rance would care, but for the sake of your party, you'd better!

Screenshots of updated version of the game also show level caps of the characters in the party in this screen.

Battle System
Obviously, while exploring the dungeons, you'll often run into battles. In some quests, you might just be into just a battle alone without having to explore any map. The following explains the battle system.



This is the battle screen. Although this features a fight involving individual members (rather than armies as in Sengoku Rance), the turn-based battle system remains the same. At the top is an order of which characters will take action, and acted characters will be re-listed accordingly to their speed. Moreover, characters like Sachiko resemble Footsoldiers in Sengoku Rance. They can take hits intended for others according to the guard percentage, which may be raised through skills. Hopefully, your party includes a medic to heal them as well. Note only members expertised in practices such as archery or witchcraft can generally attack the enemie's back row. And any rules applying to the player, apply to the enemy as well; melee monsters cannot target your rear either. At last, after battle, everyone alive in the party will receive EXP, Gold, et cetera; those with high levels received inflated (reduced) EXP. Incidentally, arrows (seen in a previous screenshot) next to a character's portrait indicate buffs, which are color coded (and marked in kanji) as in Sengoku Rance. Red, blue, purple, and green respectively represent attack, defense, intelligence, and speed.

Getting Items from Completing Quests
In most dungeon crawler RPGs, you just get items by opening chests and once you have it in your pockets, it's yours. Rance Quest is no different, right? Wrong.

In Rance Quest, you can't just take an item and get away with it without doing anything else. You have too beat the quest too. First, let's see how to get the items.



During quests, in-map you'll encounter these treasure chests. Opening them will give you weapons, armor and other equipment. Walk up to the chest and touch it to see what's inside (you'll already know this if you've played the "Test" version of Rance Quest).



We found a... "Spirit of Stomachache". Weird name, but seems it boosts your magic power. These will be in your possession, but can't be used until after the end of the quest. We'll explain why shortly.



Sometimes, you'll obtain "unidentified items". Yup, many dungeon crawlers have it, but this is the first time for a Rance RPG to have unidentified items. It will be marked with "未鑑定" upon obtaining and will have a generic icon of the item type with text of the equipment type (武器,防具 etc.) in the background. Just like in other RPGs, you have to identify it, but you must do so at the end of the quest, in the following screen, or you'll lose 'em!



After successfully clearing the quest, this screen shows up telling you which items and equipment you got. Now here's the deal: See the "鑑定" button next to the unidentified item? It lets you identify the item for an amount of money. The top of the screen shows you the cost to identify the next item; the amount goes up for the next identification if you identify an item from your collected loot (probably for the current quest only and resets after exiting the dungeon). The problem is, to take that item with you, you MUST identify unidentified items right here and right now. If you choose not to, or simply don't have enough money to do so, you'll lose the item for good and can't take it away with you for identifying at a later time.



So, after identifying it, we got a Leather Armor. As you can see, the charge for the next identification has gone up. Thankfully for this quest there aren't any more items to identify, but when you get multiple unidentified items, the cost for identification will go up for each item identified, so it might be difficult to identify them all; you'll need to make a choice and sacrifice some if you don't afford all the identifications.



Sometimes, you can gain rare equipment by identifying items. So enjoy identifying your items... Or be led to heights of despair as many other RPGs make you with this RPG element, more so that this game doesn't let you keep items for identifying items at a later time, so you might end up with mediocre items while losing some valuable gold. Will it be worth reloading and redoing the entire quest until you find a good item that's worth the value of the gold you'll spend identifying them?



If you've played the Test Version of Rance Quest, you'll know, as Prima will tell you, that some chests are rigged with traps. They're colored red (not sure what AliceSoft means by this as the chest in the picture looks the same as a regular chest).

If there are ranger characters in your party (such as Suzume or Kanami), the probability of triggering the trap decreases. If there are enough no. of rangers with sufficient levels, the chance of successfully disarming the trap can reach 100% and you will then be able to open rigged chests with as much ease as you can open safe chests.

By the way, what happens if you fail to disarm the trap?



Of course it gets trigerred, and KABOOM! Your entire party will take damage from the trap.

So good luck disarming traps with your rangers. Bottom line: safe chests are safe.



Also remember what we mentioned earlier? You're going to have to finish the quest properly or this happens. Equipment you looted in the current dungeon will be lost, identified or not.

You won't lose the experience gained in battle though, but this is still going to hurt you a lot especially if you found some useful and rare stuff.