Our guide on the Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma The Black Dragon and Her Rider quest will go over which choice you should make and what happens for each.
*Spoiler Warning: Do not keep reading if you’re not at this point of the story (you’ll know when you’re there)*
The Black Dragon and Her Rider Choices
The Black Dragon and Her Rider is the quest in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma that takes place after A Heavenly Party and Breaking the Barrier. For all of the quests leading up to this you’ve had the occasional dialogue choice, but it’s only the one during this quest that has any impact on the story.
After breaking the barrier and facing the Black Dragon, you’re faced with a choice. Do you leave your childhood friend to die, or make a pact with the Black Dragon to save her. You’re given two chances not to make the pact, and the game makes it seem like doing so is the wrong option.
However, for most players there’s little reason to not save your childhood friend, as the consequences for doing so are actually very light compared to what happened to both main characters the first time.
Save Kaguya / Save Subaru
When choosing to save your childhood friend, there are three choices you can pick from. All three aren’t particularly punishing, though one is clearly worse than the others. You can decide to sacrifice one of the below:
Trust
This options decreases bond levels by 1 across the board, including any points you had towards the next bond level.
By far the worst option, even if it’s still not too hard to get the lost bond levels back. You’re better off picking either of the other two options, since they’re faster to recover from.
Experience
This causes a somewhat steep decline in Levels. For us, we dropped from Level 61 to 37, a 24 Level decrease. However, this might be dependant on your current level.
Losing some Levels isn’t too bad due to how Experience works in Guardians of Azuma. You gain massively boosted Experience against enemies that are a higher Level than you, while you gain much less from enemies at or slightly below your Level.
Due to this, you can easily make back the Levels lost. You don’t even lose that many stats, since a lot of that is tied to your villages and current equipment.
Wealth
Choosing this option causes you to lose all of your money, regardless of how much or little you have.
Probably the second best option over losing Levels, as money starts coming in quickly as you expand your farmland across each village. You could also load a previous save file then spend your money on things before taking on the quest again, making the losses even less impactful.
Regardless of which choice you make from these three, your childhood friend will be saved. A short time later in-game they’ll be available as a villager, giving you access to their Bonding Quests and romance.
What Happens If You Don’t Save Them
If you pass up on the chance to make a pact with the Black Dragon both times, then your childhood friend will be lost forever. This only really changes some minor dialogue, and naturally there are seemingly no benefits to going this route either.
This would also mean that you have no way of marrying the childhood friend, locking you out of the Seal of Approval / Achievement for doing so.
That’s all for our guide on the The Black Dragon and Her Rider quest in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma. Make sure to check out more of our guides for the game below.
