Assignment 1

For the choices, yes the heart would be considered the "romantic" one and you do get rewarded for making those choices eventually. What happens if you choose friendship smileys? Uh, I don't know why don't you tell me? I ship it.

You'll quickly be left to explore town. Go ahead and walk around, trip all the scenes... just keep going till you synth for the first time. Once you've synthed for the first time, you can press start to quickly travel anywhere. This menu will display icons with ! in them to represent events, so check it every so often to make sure you've tripped all the events you can. You can't do too much synthing yet; make your Healing Salve and Craft, slap 'em on Escha or Logy via Adventure Equip, and go out exploring.

Do note that you can use up ALL your items outside town, and you'll get them back when you return to town. So don't be shy about item usage! In fact, I'm going to put this out here right now: Use every single attack and healing item at least once in battle. And keep track of what you've used. This is part of a minor assignment waaaaay later in the game (so you don't have to do this), but you WILL thank me later if you're the super completionist sort.

At the Town Entrance, you can gather Water. At the Apple Orchard, you can gather Apple.

• Areas
  • Twilight Forest
  • Old Highway

And I do seriously suggest checking area sections out; it'll help you gather rare stuff and find documents (you need all 20 for an assignment). For the time being, explore till you fill your basket, then return to Colseit; you can collect more on a second trip. You have plenty of time to waste, trust me. If time is making you anxious... The final year gives you a single goal: beat the final boss. Aside from that, you can finish any assignments you missed. Seriously.

After you finished the major assignment for the term, enjoy Haruka Shimotsuki's singing. Personally, I love the vocal themes in this game. At some point, you'll get an event with Solle that will open up the request system. Requests get you treats (and rank points, actually) you'll eventually be using to pay the Homonculi to duplicate items.

Once you get to Old Highway, the game will introduce Field Events to you. You probably noticed that I listed Field Events in my Twilight Forest section; using certain Events can get you powerful monsters (which you will not find otherwise), rare materials, and so on. Some of these events are used once, then disappear (such as "Check relic"), others change the field itself (e.g. "Check rare materials"). As long as you do not leave to the world map, the field changing events will stay in effect. So you can go from place to place with "Check rare materials" on, and as long as you don't override it, you will gather rare materials at each area you go to. I may mention you need the max level for a particularly rare item; you'll make the item required for that later, so don't worry about those items for now.

Once you've unlocked Field Events, be sure to drop back by Twilight Forest to get Documents, and whatever else you like.

After you've done everything (you WILL have free time), be sure to synth everything you can. In the final 14 days of the term (no sooner!), if you're done with that, go to Marion to make your final report. Those days will carry over into your next assignment.