I posted this long ago in the recruiting research thread and figured it's useful to keep as a separate topic

Geddoe Chapter 2 beginning choices:
-you can leave town before visiting the "fruit man" - so Geddoe can go out alone, but you can also take Ace and/or Aila. It's possible to beat the Mountain Path treasure boss to gain a good number of levels.
-you can visit the "fruit man" alone
-you can visit the "fruit man" with just Aila (grab her from the tavern)
-you can visit the "fruit man" with just Ace (grab him from the tavern) - this has a funny conversation and is completely different from the dialogue when Aila is around.
-you can visit the "fruit man" with both Ace and Aila

After visiting the fruit man, you can avoid Joker and Queen (and Ace if you didn't take him from the tavern) and head out with your current party (Geddoe alone, with Ace, with Aila, or with both Ace and Aila). Northern Cavern unlocks just because you visited the fruit man, and you can exit town.
-If you did not take Aila or Ace to see the fruit man, neither will be available to take afterwards.

As soon as you run into Queen and Joker (and Ace if you didn't take him from the tavern), your party reorganizes to the full 6 main group and you can visit Le Buque.


also, with an incomplete Geddoe-team, you can't trigger the "first visit" event at Budehuc which means you can't initiate recruiting. so this is a slight problem only if you didn't visit Budehuc in Chapter 1.

You can also leave with ace and/or aila before visiting the fruit man. Fighting the rock golem with any combination of these three is incredibly useful as you can easily get all of them into the mid 40's just by battling it two or three times.

Kind of weird that you can't unlock budehuc without the rest of the team.

and of course, once you reach le buque there's a whole slew of different options one can take...