Rance Quest:Custom Characters

Custom Characters
In Rance Quest, you are able to create your own Custom Characters. To do so, simply buy the "character sheet" item (costs 1000 x number of characters made) and then do quest 129 (which is the process to create the character)

You can have a maximum of 10 custom characters at a time, although you can delete unwanted ones by dragging them to the lower right in the party management screen.

CG
Choose a Face Portrait for your character. If you want, you can create your own by placing a 196x232 BMP/PNG (PNG preferred due to transparency) file in the save data folder under the "Face CG" folder.

Job
Choose your character's job. If you don't care about power level, go ahead and choose anything but assuming you are creating characters so that the game is easier, what classes should you choose?

Recommended
Consider creating additional rangers to Escape battles and Chest Opening/Trap Evasion for dungeon crawling purposes as characters like Suzume are more suitable for fighting.
 * Ranger:There are only 4 rangers in the game total (without Magnum), and only 2 are storyline characters that are forced on you, meaning you will be running very low on Rangers.
 * Guard:Guards are highly likely to be killed so having replacements is good. You can also customize your guards for niche purposes such as giving them Darkness Tolerance or Electric Tolerance for specific battles. Storyline guards tend to have a lot of special skills they want to spend their points on and some of them have inherent disadvantages like Sachiko not being able to remove her shield.
 * Gunner:Bow Gunners can learn Volley, a skill that uses up all attacks but deals huge damage to the entire enemy group (one of the only 3 skills that can target the entire enemy group, and Rance Attack is only for Rance). Training a couple of them are very helpful in taking out red crystals/bosses while saving your more powerful storyline gunners (such as Urza) for bigger threats.
 * Healer: Healer is a very good occupation with multiple builds, such as a backline healer, a front row tank or an exorcist, so creating a healer to cover any of these purposes works out fine.

Not Recommended
Tip: You can make more Shikigami Sorcerers and also learn "Magical Drill" at "Increase Skills (Pay)/Original" which breaks through Haniwa resistance the most with shikigami skills (may be worth a try?)
 * Fighter: While the fighter base class is decent and there's generally not that huge a power leap, you also get A LOT of fighters and there's enough to build them with a wide variety of weapons.
 * Brawler:Same as Fighters, but Brawlers don't even have weapon choices.
 * Sorcerer: For whatever reason, custom Sorcerers are not able to learn the "Knowledge of (Element)" white passive skills that boost elemental spell damage You have to change your Magic Talent to 2 stars at "Change magic attribute" then they will become available. You cannot choose your own elements though and there are only certain combinations of random elements available to customs. You also get a lot of Sorcerers in the story.
 * Civilians:The Civilian class sucks as a base class. Storyline characters get special skills to help them (such as Lia's Leazas Lightning Dragon) but custom civilians get no such advantages. You also get plenty of civilians so there's no real need to create more.

In Magnum, the gal monster skill trees have been improved such that Civilians who already have a heavy point investment in their own skills (such as Arlcoate) may now find it more difficult to max the skill out. A dedicated gal monster user is acceptable (although probably still unoptimal)

Speech
Not much to say here. Enter speech for situations like attack, healing, being damaged etc.

You can enter up to 3 lines of 12 characters each. However, using English characters tend to screw up a lot. If you don't even understand Japanese at all you might as well leave this section alone, really.

In patched versions of the game (including Magnum), it seems like the ability to use English characters have been removed. If you wish to have characters with English names or speech because you can't type Japanese, you will have to do it in the original RQ. You need to change to Japanese (Microsoft IME) and use Fullwidth Alphanumeric to type in the name and the dialogues in English. Version 3.860 mangagamer release supports all english charecters without needing to do anything.

Gender
CHOOSE FEMALE. Only females can be H'd, meaning they can take advantage of the effects of Morurun curse. There is absolutely no advantages to being a male in Rance Quest that I can think of. (Except for not having to have sex with rance....)

In Magnum, Males (and lolis) can now have the effect of the Morurun curse. This requires however doing a special quest that involves raising Kouhime to level 35 first, so females are still able to Morurun faster than males. However, Rizna has a passive skill that raises the attack power of all males and there is a quest that can only be done with an (almost) all-male party so creating a few male characters is probably worthwhile now.

Bonus Skill
You can choose up to 10 bonus white skill for your custom characters. I believe "スキルP+" to be the best pick for just about most characters, but you can pick whatever suits you better (except the last two)

Purchasable Upgrades
You can further upgrade a custom character by doing Quest #106: Dark Alice's Pay2Win Room. Each upgrade obtained costs more than the last, starting at 5,000g for the first, 30,000g for the second, 70,000g for the third, 260,000 for the fourth, and 370,000 for the fifth and final skill. Note that characters which selected the "Weak Constitution" bonus receive much cheaper upgrades(not above values). You may only pick one ability upgrade and up to 5 skill upgrades and all skills can not be re-learned if removed. Custom characters can not see exclusive skills from their own class that they can learn naturally.

Change Magical Element
Sorcerer custom characters have another option to allow the character to switch between Fire-Ice-Light, Ice-Electric-Light, Fire-Light-Darkness, or Onmyou Shikigami magical elements. They also have the option to raise their magic talent to ★★, giving access to higher level magic attacks. Both of these options come at a cost equal to your current upgrade price. Magic Talent ★★ has no effect on the Onmyou Shikigami magic.

Evaluation
Sometimes when changing screens in dungeon, Rance will have an event where he evalutes one of your custom characters. Be very careful about this event.

For Males: There is a particular choice that has an interesting effect Choosing the 2nd choice seems to turn your male character into a female. Apparently it's a joke about your character being a trap.
 * 戦力として役に立つし無害だ
 * なんとなく女にもてそうだ (THIS ONE)
 * 面白そうだから問題ないな

For Females: There is a particular choice that you need to pay attention to!

"この子は…"
 * 抱きたい、いい女だ
 * うーん、まだ少女だし早いな (DON'T CHOOSE THIS)
 * 好みじゃない、問題外だ

Choosing this choice will give your custom female character the Immature skill (same as Kouhime and several other characters.)

This signifies that your character is immature and will have a -20% to all stats and CANNOT be H'd! It will severely crippled most characters for no advantages that anyone can see so BE CAREFUL.

It is not known is there are any other combinations of answers with special effects.