Rance IV:Game mechanics

Time System
New to this Rance game is limited time days. The time system only starts functioning after you have gotten Sill back from the Diner. After waking up each day, you have limited number of steps and battles in dungeons before Sill will recommend Rance to head back for the day. The exact number of steps/battles seems to have slight fluctuations. Battles will cost time even if you run away immediately.

At 7pm, Sill will warn Rance that it's getting late. You can keep going, and at 8pm, you will be forced to head back automatically. Sill will mark the spot you were at and the next morning, you will be asked if you want to continue from that spot before leaving the diner. There does not appear to be a way to mark a spot manually, and you cannot warp back to the dungeon unless you do so. Note that you are only given ONE chance to continue in the dungeon before leaving the diner, if you choose not to, you will have to walk back manually.

This essentially means that to continue in the dungeon, you will need to stay till 8pm to automatically warp out, but doing so will prevent you from doing anything in the town before continuing in the dungeon the next day, such as going to the youth league to get your daily 200 gold.

Item

 * Check - item's description; check here for equipment stats
 * Use
 * Equipment - used only to equip and unequip; to check current equipment's stats, use Status

Status
Mostly self-explanatory. STR affects how hard your "weapon attack" hits. INT affects spell damage for casters.

Think
You can figure out what you should do next to progress with story here.

Call
System god is responsible for all save/load data, settings, and CGs.

Calling Level Goddess Willis allows you to level up given sufficient EXP. Characters heal back to full after gaining a level. Note that at higher levels, Rance gains slightly less EXP from the same monster, so being as low-leveled as possible may be helpful. A character may hold only up to 65535 EXP.

At certain levels, some characters will gain access to new abilities (e.g. Rance Attack, Sill's spells, Kanami's Fire Bowl)

In Rance IV, her apprentice, Mikan, will also appear. Occasionally, Mikan will want to perform the ceremony - if you allow her to, she will always screw it up, causing one of the following effects:
 * Set Rance's current XP to 0 (most likely)
 * Triple Rance's current XP
 * Increase the power of Rance's current weapon by 3

Rest
Spends around an hour to let all party members heal up. No cost associated other than time.

Monster Aggro
All monsters, even bosses, have the same priority for choosing attack targets.
 * The closest person will always be targeted primarily.
 * If more than one people are closest, the enemies prioritize characters in this order:
 * Rance (highest)
 * Sill
 * Merim
 * Rick
 * Leila
 * Julia
 * Kanami
 * Maria
 * Shizuka
 * Athena 2.0

Assault
For Rance to assault a gal monster, she must be at or below 1/10 of her max HP. NO EXCEPTIONS. Note that you will not get xp for assaulting a monster.

Battle Settings
You can now set whichever party members you want to act automatically/manually. If set to act automatically, the character will move after the previous party member on party list moves (the same order as the list of party members in Camp > Status).

There are 2 types of auto in Rance IV. Full auto makes the character follow the same (crappy) prioritization the enemies use in battles. The mages also tend to be pretty suicidal, using their weapon attack when they can. Special auto orders the character to choose an action from a priority list you can edit. For example, you can make Sill prioritize healing over offensive spells or make Merim only use Angel Mirror every turn (by filling the priority list with Angel Mirror). The attack you set in the first slot has the best odds of being used (39%), then the second (30%), third (20%), and finally fourth (11%). Target prioritization for special auto is still the same as full auto.

Stamina

 * If you end a turn without some character moving or acting, the character will automatically rest and gain stamina.
 * When a character does not have enough stamina for weapon attack, you can move and recover stamina by moving and trying to attack. This also works with spells, but the spell that you tried to use will be on cooldown.

Experience

 * All members in the party will gain experience after winning a battle, unless they were knocked out, in which case they will not get any.
 * Experience obtained from monsters slightly decreases based on the party leader's level (this is usually Rance)
 * Experience is not split among party members.
 * Only characters in the currently active party will gain experience.
 * Even if a character has hit their level cap, they will still gain experience and can use them to level up if their level cap is raised.

Magic

 * Note that after selecting a spell to cast, you cannot cancel it. This can be problematic as you need to select a spell to see its range and the mage may end up not being in range to cast the selected spell. The spell will go on cooldown even if you do not cast it successfully.
 * Some spells have a shorter range than others. For example, fire blast has a shorter range than fire arrow.