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[Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.2 (Mediafire)]

Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.2 (Mediafire): https://www.mediafire.com/file/24pv7rza3irhan4/Golden_Sun_Rebalance_2012_v1.2.ips/file
The Lost Age Rebalance 2013 v1.2.1 (Mediafire): https://www.mediafire.com/file/atkozyxmp8i9tjr/The_Lost_Age_Rebalance_2013_v1.2.1.ips/file
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The Lost Age Rebalance 2013 v1.2.1 (GSHC) : http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=49

After mulling it over, I decided to go ahead with a sort-of-risky innovation for the TLA patch in particular: You now have access to Teleport for the whole game, allowing for a much-much-needed fast-travel system.

In v1.2.1 of The Lost Age Rebalance 2013: The first time you open up Champa's artifact shop, the all-new "Warp Gem" will now add itself to the artifact list, which is a utility Psynergy item that's just like the Teleport Lapis (except you can sell it back once you get that). This is the only way possible to implement a "fast-travel system" in TLA using the basic editor's functions and the existing mechanics in the game itself, and it cuts away an immense amount of repetitive sailing time from early in the Great Eastern Sea segment all the way up to Mars Lighthouse. You now only need to sail toward a new town once in order to be able to return to it super-easily from then on out, and you can now warp to towns close to your next dungeons to reach those dungeons far more quickly. You can now quickly warp to Yallam to cash in your materials whenever you get them, and you don't need to walk all the way back from secluded places like Tundaria Tower and Taopo Swamp once you're done with them.

(By some stroke of fate, Camelot saw fit to make sure that your ship is always parked within the boundaries of the eastern half of the world map whenever you warp to a town accessible from the Eastern Sea, so you can't actually use early-Teleport to get to the Western Sea before you're supposed to. Even warping to Mikasalla doesn't park your ship on the left side of the rock barriers east and south of it...)

However, since there is no way given by the editor to make Psynergy or items only usable on the overworld map and nowhere else, there's technically nothing stopping you from using Teleport on warp pads before you're really supposed to. Looking closely at each pad in the game, however, it's not like you can really sequence break meaningfully; having early Teleport technically gives you the option to enter Yampi Desert Cave and Islet Cave as soon as you have the Sand psynergy late in the Eastern Sea segment, but you'd need late-game power to profit off the super-tough opposition in there and bypass them for treasures anyway. Warping into Anemos Inner Sanctum is pointless without all the Djinn as always. Early Teleport technically lets you skip a fair swath of the first half of Mars Lighthouse, but since the area you're skipping has a Mercury Djinni, you wouldn't even want to do that anyway. If there are any valuable exploits among the situations listed here, I judged that it's not worth locking off a fully functioning fast-travel system for TLA on their account, since the player's fully at liberty to play without those advantages.

(As a bonus, I also added "cosmetic novelty" utility Psynergy items to the artifacts added when first shopping in Prox so that you can look at the Magnet and Arrow dummy Psynergies without codes.)

[Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.2]

Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.2: http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=45
The Lost Age Rebalance 2013 v1.2: http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=49

Okay, so I've added yet another layer of improvements to my patches in my ongoing efforts to make them the best "generalized replay" patches possible (i.e., patches designed for those who have played the vanilla games many times each and know the ideal orders for getting everything). I can boil them down to four core advancements to the playability of the overall experience:


De-Bloated And De-Rigidified Enemy Arsenals: In the original versions of these patches, I had assigned two turns to every enemy in the game with the idea that this would be the patches' "defining gimmick". Since I always have turbospeed functions on when playtesting, I hadn't appreciated until recently that this sort of made the play experience (at the standard speed of real-world consoles) feel more bogged down than it had to. Meanwhile, I had not known as of the v1.1 release that there was an enemy attack pattern that proceeds sequentially like the one I had been using universally (the one seen on the Manticore boss in GS1 vanilla) but uses a random start point; this is the pattern seen in the Saturos vanilla boss fight at Mercury Lighthouse.

Therefore, the v1.2 versions of my patches implement another fairly thorough balance pass to the generic enemy opposition, this time prioritizing making more of the enemies you face only deal one quality move per turn. I'd say roughly 40% of the opposition will now move once per turn; these are generally the visually smaller enemies you come across, whereas visually larger or moderate-sized enemies are generally the ones to act twice per turn. A similar proportion of the enemies in the game (some being the ones that act twice per turn, some being the ones that act once) now have patterns in which they rigidly alternate between one move and the other, but which move they open up with will be determined randomly. This should make it uncommon to see two of the same enemy in the same battle use the exact same moves in the exact same order every time you battle them.


Gold Passwords No Longer Needed: To expedite the intimidatingly boring password segment before TLA, I've outfitted Isaac's party with the non-rare-drop endgame artifacts from GS1 so that most of the gear that you would have felt the need to input a Gold Password for will be included in the Bronze and Silver Passwords (and in non-passworded games as well, though you certainly don't want that...). The only incentive now to use a Gold Password (like the one I previously provided the screenshots for) would be to have a party loaded with other items like Waters of Life, Lucky Medals, the 25 yet-to-be-eaten stat-boosting items, a few middling but unique artifacts, and lots of wealth.

If you are okay with having a save file in which the stat-boosting items of the first game were eaten by Isaac's party without your input, use the screenshotted Silver Password and you will find a level 34 party with all Djinn, all utility Psynergy items, and all completed events like you would expect, plus Garet having eaten all Apples, Ivan having eaten all Power Breads and Hard Nuts, Mia having eaten all Mints and Cookies, and the four Lucky Peppers spread equally across the Adepts. Regardless, in either the Bronze or Silver passwords, the default gear spread across Isaac's party is no longer full of generic steel equipment and is instead the following:

Isaac: Gaia Blade, Warrior's Helm, Mirrored Shield, Dragon Scales, Ninja Hood
Garet: Wicked Mace, Thunder Crown, War Gloves, Asura's Armor, Cleric's Ring
Ivan: Swift Sword, Lucky Cap, Virtuous Armlet, Storm Gear, Lure Cap
Mia: Crystal Rod, Mythril Circlet, Spirit Armlet, Oracle's Robe, Elven Shirt


Repurposed Item: Sacred Feather: Instead of copying the Avoid Psynergy, this is now a 700-coin consumable that has the same revival functionality as the Water of Life... but it can only be used when out of battle. Because the Revive Psynergy in this patch series costs so much PP on account of its immense in-battle practicality and is not available until well into a given game (and the Water of Life is also rare and costs so many coins normally), a few of these feathers in the inventory now ensures that players can brush off the occasional downing of one of their Adepts without having to retreat from the entire dungeon just to bring them back. Loads of these are also invaluable during the final dungeons in the second game, where enemies can blow away one of your two parties rather easily. The Avoid Psynergy is now included in Mia's Water Seer class series to make up for the less readily available state of the Avoid effect in general, which especially helps in GS1's case.


New Item: Parchment: Deadbeard's all-new plunder, dropping from him personally upon his defeat, is my idea for a "real reward" to make up for the underwhelming Demon Mail he guards. Its only function is to be sold for coins, and it'll only be worth 450 coins — unless it is transferred to The Lost Age, where it will sell for 45,000 coins instead. Going along with my Non-Gold-Password Inventory innovation, this will now be part of the inventory of Isaac's party in a save file that has been enhanced with no more than a Silver Password; this is a way to let Isaac's party add some wealth to Felix's in any scenario.



Silver Password for Level 34:
https://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa275/Appreciator/The%20Lost%20Age%20Password/SilverPasswordForGS.png

[Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.1]

Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.1: http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=45
The Lost Age Rebalance 2013 v1.1: http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=49

Hello, it's been a long time. Ever since I posted those two Rebalance patches for GS and TLA nearly 6 years ago, I had been playing my patches off-and-on and making more adjustments with the standard editor to smooth out any rough edges I'd come across. With the recent spate of attention Golden Sun had been receiving from its expanded cameos in Smash Bros., I felt like releasing the latest forms of those patches as version-1.1 replacements on the site. Since other patches have debuted on the site that use more advanced hardware changes, I've put in effort to make my patches more distinct as "moderate-difficulty but pleasant romps" created purely within the limitations of Atrius' editor.

These are the broad changes I made to each patch:


Normalized Offensive Psynergy Damage: The biggest change since the last versions of the patches has been a thorough rebalance of the offensive area-of-effect Psynergy. They all now use the [30%] [40%] [70%] [100%] [70%] [40%] [30%] damage distribution model of Summons instead of the [40%] [60%] [80%] [100%] [80%] [60%] [40%] model, and their base damage values have all been carefully normalized to take their PP costs, their ranges, and the levels at which they are first learned into account.

As a rule that applies to most Psynergy in the game, a Psynergy's power is equal to 10 times its PP cost. This gets lowered by a multiplier corresponding to how low the level at which it is first learned is; for example, a Psynergy learned at level 1 has this multiplier at .46, a level 11 Psynergy has this multiplier at .56, and a level 40 Psynergy has this multiplier at .85. The rate at which the multiplier increases becomes half as slow from levels 41 through 50, where it finally settles at a .9 multiplier from level 50 onward. The base damage of the Psynergy then undergoes yet another multiplier based on its range; while no extra multiplier happens for 3-range Psynergy, there is another x.9 multiplier for 5-range Psynergy, or x.85 for 7-range Psynergy. (As for single-target non-physical Psynergies like Spire and Dragon Fume, the spell instead adds 10 flat damage and then goes through a x1.2 multiplier.)

The benefits to this system, I feel, are that Psynergy spells being more focused on their targets and less damaging to targets far from the center makes for more meaningful Psynergy targeting considerations for both you and your opponents. The single target taking comparatively more damage than its neighbors makes it more sensible to have your caster Adepts cast wide-area Psynergies upon lone bosses for viable damage. The rigid formula that governs the base damage ratings of all the Psynergies results in the earliest Psynergies in either game being generally less powerful, mid-tier Psynergies being roughly the same amount of impact, and late-game Psynergies being significantly more powerful. (For example, Gaia's 40 power is now 36, Mother Gaia's 100 power is now 105, and Grand Gaia's 200 Power is now 259.)

Regardless, there are no longer any odd discrepancies between a Psynergy's cost and damage output; Magma Storm's 120 Power at high damage distribution is now 216 Power at summon-like damage distribution, and you can always expect your latest Psynergy to give you what you pay for.


Thorough Enemy Balance Pass: Through several more playthroughs of both games, I've carefully and painstakingly adjusted a lot about all of the individual enemies and their formations, taking the new power values for area-of-effect Psynergy into account. Hopefully I've ironed out the vast majority of potentially degenerate situations from the old patches, and I've done a lot of fine-tuning with bosses' arsenals.


Text Revisions: More of the old games' odd turns-of-phrase are replaced with more logical statements (e.g. Alex's dissing of Saturos and Menardi's memory now properly uses the past tense, the dwarf who sees your ship points out its wings instead of stating that it is beached when the player might not necessarily have beached it there, the Kalt Island guy's thoughts about the cannon do not reference the fabricated scenario of the North American localization), and all instances of "Serpent" are capitalized. Meanwhile, there's an entire new opening text crawl for TLA carefully planned out by yours truly, and there's a new set of Kraden rants in Lemuria. ;) I'll post the intro crawl below:

[spoiler]
All matter on the world of
Weyard, be it the land or
even humankind itself, is
composed of four elements:
earth, water, fire, and wind.

Weyard itself -- a planet
taking the form of a flat
plane -- once played host
to a power that is said to
have nearly doomed it.

Tales from an era long past
paint this as the force at
work when the base elements
combine to create reality -
Alchemy, which mankind
once wielded at whim.

The apex of civilization
sired by man's free reign
over the building blocks
of reality as it was, the
strife that followed was
only a matter of fate.

Weyard was almost torn
apart by war. To save the
world from mankind's
aspirations of dominion,
several brave and wise
men did the unthinkable.

They sealed Alchemy
itself out of man's reach.
Locked within the confines
of Mt. Aleph, Alchemy's
absence had removed all
impetus for war.

Knowledge of Alchemy
faded away over the ages
to come, even as a village
named Vale formed itself
at the base of Mt. Aleph in
the Angaran heartland.

These villagers were among
the few who remained on
Weyard who were privy to
Psynergy -- the craft of
manipulating each element
with the power of the mind.

As "Adepts" of the elements,
Vale's residents had fancied
themselves custodians of
the great sanctum inside
Mt. Aleph, knowing not
the truths that lay within.

Three years after tragedy
struck the village, three
young residents -- Isaac,
Garet, and Jenna -- entered
Sol Sanctum as part of
their studies, spurred on
by the scholar, Kraden.

Inside, they discovered
the Elemental Stars, a
set of four all-powerful
jewels that functioned
as keys to breaking the
seal placed on Alchemy!

But they were followed by
a band of thieves led by
Saturos and Menardi, a
duo of driven Fire Adepts
hailing from the distant,
frozen northlands.

Among their number was
Jenna's own brother, Felix,
thought lost in the tragedy
prior. Saturos stole three
of the Stars and took Jenna
and Kraden hostage.

Isaac was charged by the
omniscient guardian of the
seal, a creature known as
the Wise One, to prevent
Saturos from effecting the
dangerous power's return.

Isaac and Garet left Vale
on a quest to stop Saturos
from using the four Stars
to light each of four ancient
towers across Weyard,
the Elemental Lighthouses.

They quickly banded with
new allies: a wayward Wind
Adept named Ivan and
the Water Adept Mia, who
upheld her clan's vow to
guard Mercury Lighthouse.

But in spite of his group's
best efforts, Isaac could not
stop Saturos from lighting
the Mercury Beacon. The
four-strong party promptly
resumed the chase.

Their pursuit took the four
across Angara, and they
eventually crossed south
into Gondowan, wherein
lied Venus Lighthouse.

At the denouement of a
protracted struggle, Isaac
defeated the fire Adepts.
Alas, the Venus Beacon was
also lit, and neither Felix
nor the hostages were
anywhere to be found.

Using a ship loaned to them
by one Lord Babi of Tolbi,
Isaac and his companions
expanded their search for
Felix, Jenna, and Kraden
out into the open seas.

We turn back the clock to
the moment Venus was lit,
where we will see that
Felix and Jenna's side of the
story is not as it appeared
from Isaac's perspective...
[/spoiler]


BTW, this is a password for TLA that makes Isaac's party thoroughly suited to what Felix's party would be with the level curve used in that patch. The party is at level 34, and besides having all of the usual completionist features that you would expect, it includes all 25 stat-boosting items, a bunch of Lucky Medals, and whatever distinct equipment I could fit in the characters' inventories.

[spoiler]
https://oi202.photobucket.com/albums/aa275/Appreciator/The%20Lost%20Age%20Password/The%20Lost%20Age%20Rebalance%202013%20Password%201.png
https://oi202.photobucket.com/albums/aa275/Appreciator/The%20Lost%20Age%20Password/The%20Lost%20Age%20Rebalance%202013%20Password%202.png
https://oi202.photobucket.com/albums/aa275/Appreciator/The%20Lost%20Age%20Password/The%20Lost%20Age%20Rebalance%202013%20Password%203.png
https://oi202.photobucket.com/albums/aa275/Appreciator/The%20Lost%20Age%20Password/The%20Lost%20Age%20Rebalance%202013%20Password%204.png
https://oi202.photobucket.com/albums/aa275/Appreciator/The%20Lost%20Age%20Password/The%20Lost%20Age%20Rebalance%202013%20Password%205.png
https://oi202.photobucket.com/albums/aa275/Appreciator/The%20Lost%20Age%20Password/The%20Lost%20Age%20Rebalance%202013%20Password%206.png
[/spoiler]

[Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.2 (Mediafire)]

Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.2 (Mediafire): https://www.mediafire.com/file/24pv7rza3irhan4/Golden_Sun_Rebalance_2012_v1.2.ips/file
The Lost Age Rebalance 2013 v1.2.1 (Mediafire): https://www.mediafire.com/file/atkozyxmp8i9tjr/The_Lost_Age_Rebalance_2013_v1.2.1.ips/file
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GSHC Download Link (v1.2.1): http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=49
Mediafire Link (v1.0): http://www.mediafire.com/?nll2m8i330891vz
.xlr stat sheet for all enemies (v1.0): http://www.mediafire.com/?n4nn0h214e8brme
Password-enhanced starting save state (v1.0, outdated for modern VBA): http://www.mediafire.com/?9zagz9kg7tyypug

Some aspects of the information within the following post are outdated for the v1.2.1 version of the patch.

Hi again! I'm once again here to post a ROM hack made with this site's ROM editor. Last October, I released my Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 remix patch for Golden Sun 1 (http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=2082.0), and as you'd expect I saw fit to follow that up by posting a TLA patch that follows the previous patch's rebalancing style. Now, I had already posted a very hard TLA patch several years ago (http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=587.0), but I wanted one that felt like it was actually completing a tonally-consistent ROM patch series started with Rebalance 2012, so I started on this several months later. My posting this on the site coincidentally ends up being three days late for the game's 10-year anniversary in North America, but whatever, I guess...

This is my Golden Sun: The Lost Age Rebalance 2013 ROM patch, which carries on my tradition of being a serious approach to enemy rebalance with minimal changes to any of the game's other aspects. My goal is to make this feel as though it is an "official, public" version of the game that fell through a warp from a different dimension where Camelot is a more hardcore company with its games. Even though this was technically made by modifying my years-old TLA patch, it was not a quick or easy process at all - I needed to make two further separate playthroughs to construct this patch, the first to lay out the newly ordered ability lists for all the monsters while toning down some of the degenerately-high stats and rewards I originally gave them, and the second to finalize their values using my linked stat spread sheet as a guide. I did not want this to be any sort of "ultimate hard-mode" - it was supposed to be still doable without any class changes or grinding, and could probably be beaten without getting all the Djinn. The battle difficulty and damage thrown around is certainly enormously increased from Camelot's TLA, but the idea is that this is supposed to feel like a more properly balanced game that the company itself released - maybe it's an alternative Hard Mode, you decide - rather than just some fan piling on stats on the enemies. So, like with Rebalance 2012, a few other things were modified in this patch too.


Rebalanced, tougher gameplay with consistent enemy move orders:

My approach to increasing enemy power and threat level throughout each zone in this series of ROM patches in a consistent-feeling matter is giving almost every enemy in the game two actions per turn, and making most of the enemies in the game cycle through their move lists in sequential order rather than randomly choosing them based on the Random Number Generator (remember, this is achieved by selecting the fifth option in the Attack Pattern dropdown box in the editor, the second "Unknown pattern"). This goes some way toward giving each given type of enemy that appears in battle its own "feel" and brand of threat in relation to the other enemy types in battle, at least compared to the base TLA game, and there is an emphasis on more powerful enemy abilities being cast fewer times and in patterns you can learn and predict. And of course, the enemy abilities themselves are modified and replaced whenever necessary.

Now, last time there were some questions on whether it felt "right" for a hack like mine to have every enemy move multiple times per turn even though none of your party members can move twice in a row. As you'd probably expect, I don't feel this is unjustified, especially considering that these games have a very limited internal structure that do not give much room for a ROM patcher to maneuver around in without glitches. There really isn't any other way to express, for example, that what a certain enemy amounts to during their turn is to deal an area attack and give a Resistance boost to their side. You can only really do that by giving them two actions per turn so that they can use the area attack and a Ward spell in a row. Though I will say that while I was doing my repeated playtesting, I was finding various cases where it did help balance and gameplay-feel to keep some enemies' turns-per-turn at 1, so there ends up being more enemies that deliver one powerful attack per turn than the GS1 patch. (You might also remember that multiple actions per turn ends up making each of these enemies die to Curse and Gasp twice as fast - think of that as a tip ^^;)

Compared to my TLA patch from years ago, enemies have been toned down, especially in the earlier stages, because it was very easy to have a party member faint in the middle of a dungeon when you had no real form of revival beyond going all the way out of the dungeon and into a sanctum. But it'll still become harder than the GS1 patch later on. Also carried over from my old TLA patch are how some of the random enemies like Wild Gorilla and Sea Dragon are more like "random mini-bosses" that act 3 or 4 times per turn and deliver at least as much threat and reward as a normal monster group.

For boss battles, I more-or-less put in whatever gimmicks and different battle approaches I could for whichever bosses don't have multiple command lists and allow the linear-ordered command structure. Each of the roles of Star Magician's colored balls are more strictly defined, Valukar now has 18 PP you may very well want to use Fugue against, and Sentinel encourages Luff/Rime management and rotation, for example. But as for Dullahan, other than higher ATK and a stiffer Agility requirement, I basically had to nerf him by taking away Djinn Storm and Break.


Increased leveling:

Enemy EXP is more consistent and thorough, but is a little less huge than my old TLA patch from years ago. But expect to be at least level 35 by the reunion, and that's if you run away from a third of your battles. (v1.1's EXP rates for TLA are somewhat lower, so level 34 is more likely at this point.)


New items:

Mountain Water: The consumable item I introduced in the GS1 patch is the Khiren Water from Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (which I couldn't name Khiren Water back then due to string compression issues disallowing certain letter-and-case combinations), restoring 20 PP off each use. It can only be dropped off enemies - including each of the battled Djinn - and a fraction of the enemies in the game have chances to drop this instead of what they originally could drop otherwise. This is intended to counteract how in the early stages you can find yourself low on PP deep in a dungeon without any Psynergy Stone anywhere near the area, and using a Psy Crystal is either overkill or just plain unavailable. I tested and verified that if you use a Gold Password from my GS1 patch with Mountain Waters in the party, a Mountain Water will transfer over without any bugs (though strangely it will only carry over one Mountain Water instead of the full stack); therefore, don't worry about password issues anymore. (This password is available as a save-state, BTW)

Mind Ribbon: An all-new Utility Psynergy item that bestows Mind Read to its holder, and is a bonus drop off Dullahan. Why on earth would I put in something like that? It's so that Isaac and Felix can see all the hidden Mind Read text in Prox after the final boss, of course! You can think of this as a particularly special bonus reward for gathering all the Djinn and defeating Dullahan. (Though you wouldn't be able to use it on any other NPC from earlier in the game that may have had mind readable thoughts but could not be read at the time due to Sheba not being in your party. Which might be a shame...)

Additionally, the nine unused items that were apparently planned to be new Lucky Wheels prizes are available as drops from enemies. In particular, Rainbow Ring, Aroma Ring, Casual Shirt, Silver Greave, Herbed Shirt, and Ninja Sandals are what the Mimics and Mad Plants that didn't drop particularly unique items beforehand now drop, while Knight's Greave drops from Puppet Warrior, Soul Ring drops from Raptor, and Divine Camisole drops from Devil Frog. In addition, Tear Stone drops from Merman, Star Dust drops from Sea Dragon, Sylph Feather drops from Harridan, and Dragon Scale drops from Pteranodon.


Shop changes:

I felt that the risk of a party member being downed in an early dungeon without a real reviving effect to fall back on led to really degenerate gameplay when combined with really hard early enemies, so the enemies in the earlier stages of the game are less damaging in comparison to my years-old TLA patch. But I also gave more opportunities to alleviate the issue by making every item shop add a Water of Life to the Artifact menu. (I mostly reverted this in v1.1, however.)


PP-cost changes:

A few specific Psynergies have increased PP costs to better represent their obvious usefulness:
*Wish increased from 9 to 15
*Wish Well increased from 13 to 28
*Pure Wish increased from 20 to 50
*Pure Ply increased from 12 to 16
*Aura increased from 7 to 9
*Healing Aura increased from 11 to 18
*Cool Aura increased from 16 to 33
*Elder Wood and Estre Wood increased from 14 to 30
*Revive increased from 15 to 30 (40 in v1.1)
*Lich and Phoenix increased from 10 to 20 (30 and 25, respectively, in v1.1)
*Quick Strike increased from 12 to 24
*Dragon Fume decreased from 35 to 28 like in Dark Dawn. ^_^

Additionally, for all classes with the Wish and Aura series, the first stages of both these series are now available one class stage earlier. Also, the first stage of Growth is available to the Squire class series, to somewhat mirror Growth being always available to your Venus Adept in Dark Dawn. And admittedly this was more of an arbitrary move, but I preserved the modified weaker values for the earlier-level Psynergy from the GS1 patch. (This last bit has been superseded by v1.1 changes.)


Text changes:

*The descriptions of a lot of the gameplay elements have been clarified, like the Djinn battle effects, which pieces of gear are "common", the exact spells that Usable pieces of gear emulate, and the elements of the unleashes rather than the names. (BTW, if you noticed it from the GS1 patch - I describe any Djinn effect that adds damage as an Attack and any Djinn effect with a damage multiplier as a Strike.)

*Contains the functionality of Atrius' Blacksmith patch - you will now be told the price of the item Sunshine has forged for you instead of being told that all the Sunshine household takes is "cash".

*Ability and item renamings: Blast (Nova) is renamed to Starburst, Swordsman (Venus) is renamed to Crusader, Dark Mage from the Medium Class series is renamed to Dark Shaman, Liquifier is renamed to Liquefier, Fire Puppet is renamed to Fear Puppet, and Black Crystal is renamed to Black Orb.


Finally, besides a few fixed typos, an additional "that" in Agatio's "remarkable foresight" line in Champa, and modified save-your-Clear-Data messages, the following changes have been made to the lore text:

[Spoiler]
*When you are done helping Riki and Tavi out of their predicament, Kraden will now recommend the party returns to its search for a ship and suggest checking in with the mayor of Daila. That way, you won't be anywhere near as likely to skip the important status-quo-establishing scene with Alex in Daila.

*Morgan's dialogue in Madra no longer implies he is only recently hearing about Colosso for the first time.

*No more thought is paid to "Garapas".

*Feizhi no longer refers to Hsu or "Ulmuch" by a name. (There is a very good reason why the translators of The Lost Age couldn't keep his name "Hsu" - the string compression algorithms in the TLA cart literally prevents certain letter combinations like "Hs" from being programmed, unlike in GS1. Naturally I couldn't rename him Hsu either. Granted, one can still question why it was a problem for the translators to allow "Hs" in their strings in the second game like they did with the first, or why they didn't just have Feizhi refer to Hsu with a third-person pronoun...)

*Kraden now asks more logically what are senators instead of what is a senate.

*A sign at Lemuria Spring now tells you that you can actually drink out of the spring.

*When you give the Shaman's Rod to Moapa, the portion of the lecture about Hoabna and Yegelos given by the left Knight NPC no longer contradicts everything else on the matter of who gave the Shaman's Rod to who.

*Felix no longer asks "Why?" out loud.

*All instances of Hamma have been renamed to Hama.

*Discover which of the dwarves now references a modern-day Dark Dawn element!

*Changed the tense and phrasing of Kraden's statement about why the final boss would not have survived even had it won. (The way he worded it in the present tense that people being turned into a dragon and fighting in that form "requires tremendous power" kind of made it sound like he knows from past experience that that's just what happens in cases like this. It's like, how exactly would he know about this in such specific detail? It's almost as though Kraden had mutated live human subjects into fused monstrosities during his past experiments and had observed how the specimens died off after pitting them in battle against other monsters. 0_0;)

*Mia calls the two kids by their names at the end.

*Can you find the newly-clairvoyant thought in post-game Prox? (As well as another thought with an important new capitalization while you're at it...)
[/spoiler]

Provided Password save-state for old VBA:

As a quality-of-life gesture, I even posted a VBA save-state of the Gold Password-input process for everyone not willing to spend the time and tedium putting in their own gold password; just load the save-state with the ROM and you'll just have to enter the last "!" at the end of the Gold Password screen to get data that has been pre-prepared in Golden Sun Rebalance 2012. Like you'd expect of a password, this password features all you'd need for necessary completion's sake, like all Djinn collected, all events and bosses completed, most of the best equipment and items of interest, and all levels between 30-31. This also contains all 25 permanent stat-boosting items findable in GS1 stacked-up and not used yet, 9 lucky medals, and a Mountain Water to verify that the transfer of this item between Rebalance 2012 and Rebalance 2013 mostly works.


NOTICE: There were at least two times during my playtesting when there were starting to be minor glitches in certain spots after long stretches of playing, like certain musical tracks having noise in them and enemies jittering a bit as the battle camera rotates. I don't know if it's because of a combination of my code changes and my turbo-speeding through everything, but if it happens to you, all you need to do is save the game file, reset the ROM, and reload the file to clear anything odd away.

[Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.2 (Mediafire)]

Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.2 (Mediafire): https://www.mediafire.com/file/24pv7rza3irhan4/Golden_Sun_Rebalance_2012_v1.2.ips/file
The Lost Age Rebalance 2013 v1.2.1 (Mediafire): https://www.mediafire.com/file/atkozyxmp8i9tjr/The_Lost_Age_Rebalance_2013_v1.2.1.ips/file
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GSHC Download Link (1.0): http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=45
Mediafire Link (1.0): http://www.mediafire.com/?wqjy7e1nfg4trai
.xlr stat sheet for all enemies (1.0): http://www.mediafire.com/?a3p6c84275o53v5


Hi! You may know me from the Golden Sun Universe wiki, or you may remember me from over two years ago when I submitted a Golden Sun: The Lost Age ROM patch (http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=9) made with this site's ROM editor. Well, I was working off-and-on throughout this year on a similar patch for the first Golden Sun, and I might as well share it now.

This is my Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 ROM patch, which is a serious approach to enemy rebalance with minimal changes to any of the game's other aspects. My goal is to make this feel as though it is an "official, public" version of the game that fell through a warp from a different dimension where Camelot is a more hardcore company with its games. I ultimately went through two separate playthroughs to construct this patch, the first to increase the stats and lay out the newly ordered ability lists for all the monsters, the second to finalize them and tone them down a bit. This is not what I would call an "ultimate hard-mode" - it's still doable without any class changes or grinding, and you can even beat it without getting all the Djinn. You might even find the difficulty quite tame, even though it is much more damaging to your party than the original game. But the idea is that this is supposed to feel like the game that the company itself released - maybe it's Golden Sun's Hard Mode, you decide - rather than just some fan piling on stats on the enemies. To this end, a few other things have been modified too.

Rebalanced, tougher gameplay with consistent enemy move orders:

Like my TLA hack, half of the primary theme of this patch is that enemy power and threat level throughout each of the areas in the game is made consistent and balanced around how almost every enemy in the game takes two actions per turn. But the other half, and my big new feature with this one, is that most of the enemies in the game cycle through their move lists in sequential order rather than randomly choosing them based on the Random Number Generator. This is achieved by selecting the fifth option in the Attack Pattern dropdown box in the editor, the second "Unknown pattern", which to the best of my knowledge is only used in the normal game by the Manticore boss.

With this, I tried a variety of different "feels" for the different enemies and bosses, with an emphasis on more powerful enemy abilities being cast fewer times and in patterns you can learn and predict, and made it so that each different enemy in a given area contributes a somewhat different kind of threat when it is present on the enemy side. Rounding out the opposition the enemies provide are that some abilities are modified while a few specific enemies have an ability replaced or a new ability added to their repitoire. (Deadbeard has a nasty new surprise for you...)

New item: Mountain Water:

A new item has been programmed into the unused item slot 179 that recreates the Khiren Water from Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (I couldn't name it Khiren Water due to string issues). Its consumable effect of replenishing 20 PP is achieved by copying the Use effect of the Adept's Ring, which has been increased from 7 PP.  None of the items in the game are changed otherwise. It can only be dropped off enemies - including each of the battled Djinn - and a large fraction of the enemies in the game have chances to drop this instead of the boring things they could drop otherwise. This is intended to counteract how in the early stages you can find yourself low on PP deep in a dungeon without any Psynergy Stone anywhere near the area, and using a Psy Crystal is overkill. You probably should sell off all the Mountain Waters you have in Lalivero if you're planning to use this file for password data transfer, though, because they don't exist in the second game.

Slightly increased leveling:

Enemy EXP is more consistent and thorough, but not by a huge amount - if a typical playthrough of the game gets you to the end at around level 26-27, this will certainly have you at the end by level 30.

Psynergy changes:

A few specific Psynergies have increased PP costs to better represent their obvious usefulness:
*Wish increased from 9 to 15
*Wish Well increased from 13 to 28
*Pure Wish increased from 20 to 50
*Pure Ply increased from 12 to 16
*Revive increased from 15 to 30
*Quick Strike increased from 12 to 24

Additionally, for all classes with the Wish series, the first stage of Wish is available one class stage earlier. Also, the first stage of Growth is available to the Squire class series, in accordance with Growth being available to your default Venus Adept class in Dark Dawn. And finally, the earliest Psynergies in the game like Ray have been toned down so that they don't thoroughly outpower physical strikes too much.

Text changes:

The descriptions of a lot of the gameplay elements have been clarified, like the Djinn battle effects, which pieces of gear are "common", the exact spells that Usable pieces of gear emulate, and the elements of the unleashes rather than the names. (Wouldn't discovering the names of the unleashes yourself have been more fun anyway? =D). There are also a few renamings here and there: Blast (Nova) is renamed to Starburst, Thunderstorm is renamed to Thunderhead, and Swordsman (Venus) is renamed to Crusader. Finally, a few little changes to the lore text have been made to correspond with what we know nowadays from the future games, such as what the old man in Imil is thinking, but it's mostly the contents of four bookcases throughout the game that have been changed. See if you can find them all!


I'm not really going to be looking out for critiques and feedback from players, and I'm probably only going to glance back here a couple more times, but you can play-and-review if you want. 

Thank you very much for taking the time to playtest and critique my ROM patch. I should notify you of some things, however: while this was a ROM patch that I had spent a lot of time and effort on, it isn't so refined as to deliver perfect challenge on every given area of the game. The overall aim was to make the overall game far less of a bore to the players that know when and where to get all the Djinn and powerful equipment, but it would still be entirely doable by those players that had mastered the original game and would take the time to level up and gather the coins for the gear like the strong stuff down in Mikasalla. It's supposed to allow for a little leeway in possible gear and Djinn the player might miss, since not everyone would know, for example, that Gabomba Catacombs can be completed before the Aqua Hydra boss battle. While many enemies like the one-shots have increased threat level, sure, part of the aim is to present what could have been an "enhanced hard mode" that might just have released to the casual public as part of the official game by Camelot themselves, rather than be an "ultimate hardmode" strictly for emulation users.

Perhaps, though, this current ROM patch could be useable as a baseline to be improved upon and lead up to the most ideal enemy-rebalance-only hack of GS:TLA in the future, and that player-testing feedback would help get to that point... *dreams*


EDIT: BTW, part of the point here *is* that enemies are "just right" when you first enter an area but become easier as you progress through the area and gain levels and gear, and that once you're empowered by that area the next area starts off as just right for that and gets easier once that is gone through, and so on.

Oh, okay - from the page in the Download tab where all the top-rated hacks are, you have to enter the Rom Hacks category lower down, then in the next page, select Golden Sun: The Lost Age. I had gotten confused because I thought the add a download feature would have been on the first page of the Download Tab itself, so thanks. ^_^

[Updated versions:]

Updated versions:
Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 v1.2 (Mediafire): https://www.mediafire.com/file/24pv7rza3irhan4/Golden_Sun_Rebalance_2012_v1.2.ips/file
The Lost Age Rebalance 2013 v1.2.1 (Mediafire): https://www.mediafire.com/file/atkozyxmp8i9tjr/The_Lost_Age_Rebalance_2013_v1.2.1.ips/file
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Golden Sun: The Lost Age - Enemy Rebalancing Hack

(Alternative MediaFire link)



Over the past couple months I created a ROM hack of Golden Sun: The Lost Age using version 0.2 of the GS:TLA ROM Editor written by Atrius. My way of balancing and playtesting the hack was to play through a game of TLA as I was adjusting that ROM, and I kept a chart in a text file of all the statistics of every enemy in the game in order to painstakingly make all the adjustments with so that enemies would be balanced in relation to each other in a given area. I posted this text file here to serve as a guide.

This is purely a hack to increase the battle and reward statistics of every enemy in the game and heighten the challenge level to what would be challenging to a player that knows where and when to collect every Djinni; no other change has been made, such as with items, classes, or ability effects. Compared to some other challenge-boosting hacks on the GSHC that get more creative, this one is very traditional, and aims to show the real value of the familiar battle system and battle options Golden Sun: The Lost Age has always provided its players with.


Here are the features and points of interests of my finished product, which I guess I'll name my Enemy Rebalancing ROM Hack:

Enemies throughout each area as the game goes on scale in threat level and rewards to your party's development much more closely, and end up having much higher statistics in HP, Attack, Agility, and EXP as the game progresses. This would make the game much more "linear" in a certain sense, but the payoff is that like a lot of other contemporary RPGs, you are encouraged to spend a bit of time leveling in a dungeon or an overworld area before moving onto the next area to level there. Leveling should happen at a moderately fast rate due to the heightened and accelerating EXP rates, as well as how, in general, there are at least 2 and at most 3 monsters in every battle, and monsters in the next area always grant noticeably higher experience rates than the ones in the previous area. The drop contents and drop rates of enemies that did not drop notable items to begin with have also been fully revised, and no item ever drops at a rate lower than 1/64.

A main theme of this ROM hack is that just about every enemy in the game acts at least twice per turn, while "one-shot enemies" like Mimic and Mad Plant, as well as enemies/bosses that had 2 turns to begin with, can have up to 3 actions per turn. This gives the enemies of the game much more opportunity to attack and use their abilities and force you to rely on developing your statistics. The ability lists are also altered so that monsters will use their abilities more often.

Your level should be around between 35 and 40 by the time the Reunion takes place. It is highly recommended that you enhance the game with Password data with a GS1 party at around those levels, so that you don't have to spend a large amount of time farming Phoenixes in the upcoming Magma Rock (which give twice as much experience, by the way) to bring the original GS characters up to speed with the TLA party.

Djinn no longer have the ability to run away, and instead serve as "mini-boss" encounters similar to Mimics and Mad Plants.

In some areas, some of the enemy formations have been designed so that while most random battles are against normal monsters that appear in groups of two or three, some monsters are much tougher and only appear alone. These monsters are the visually large random enemies of TLA, and their HP ratings, EXP/Coin ratings, battle statistics, and the amount of turns they take are heightened so that one of these enemies serves about as much threat and reward as three normal enemies taken together. This provides a much needed touch of variety to the encounters of the game, so that you don't have to cast area-of-effect offensive Psynergy to win battles all the time and would need to battle with direct weapon attacks and unleashes. The large monsters adjusted to appear as "random mini-bosses", in order of toughness, are Wild Gorilla, Red Demon, Sea Dragon, Turtle Dragon, Lesser Demon, Aka Manah, Ocean Dragon, Fire Dragon, Druj, and Mad Demon.

Enemy toughness directly corresponds to their levels, and therefore there are pre-planned routes of leveling progression:

*Early Indra -> Kandorean Temple -> Shrine of the Sea God -> Dehkan Plateau -> Later Indra -> Madra Catacombs
*Early Osenia -> Yampi Desert -> Air's Rock -> Briggs boss fight -> Alhafra Cavern
*Lower Gondowan -> Kibombo Mountains -> Gabomba Statue
*After getting Cyclone Chip from Mayor of Madra: Gabomba Catacombs -> Lemurian Ship
*Great Eastern Sea ocean area -> Great Eastern Sea land areas -> Taopo Swamp -> Aqua Rock -> Gaia Rock and Serpent boss battle -> Izumo Ruins -> Islet Cave -> Ankohl Ruins -> Tundaria -> Tundaria Tower -> Avimander boss battle -> Poseidon
*Great Western Sea ocean area -> Great Western Sea land areas -> Treasure Isle Earlier Segment -> Shaman Village Cave -> Jupiter Lighthouse
*Magma Rock -> Northern Reaches sailing area -> Mars Lighthouse
*Treasure Isle -> Yampi Desert Cave -> Islet Cave -> Anemos Inner Sanctum

The nine unused items that are known to have been apparently planned Lucky Wheels prizes have been added to the game as drops from enemies. In particular, Rainbow Ring, Aroma Ring, Casual Shirt, Silver Greave, Herbed Shirt, and Ninja Sandals are what the Mimics and Mad Plants that didn't drop particularly impressive items beforehand now drop, while Knight's Greave drops from Puppet Warrior, Soul Ring drops from Raptor, and Divine Camisole drops from Devil Frog. In addition, Tear Stone drops from Merman, Star Dust drops from Sea Dragon, Sylph Feather drops from Harridan, and Dragon Scale drops from Pteranodon.

The game apparently uses the party's level ratings to influence wild encounter rates and the party's chance to run away from encounters. While all the enemies' statistics have been raised (dramatically at later stages), their levels are unchanged, whereas the party's levels will reach much higher much more quickly. This causes both wild encounter rates to be a little less frequent and for you to be allowed to safely run away from any of the later random battles. Of course, Sacred Feather and Avoid would become more reliable too.

Dullahan, like other bosses, is even more fearsome statistically, but he can no longer use Djinn Storm or Break, opting to use Formina Sage and True Collide more often.

Lastly, a tip: Remember that Nuts are available to buy once the Great Eastern Sea is opened up, Vials are buyable in Loho when the Great Western Sea is accessible, and Mist Potions are available at Prox.

Um, I spent about 20 minutes checking the Downloads tab page in the links bar, but I can't find any "uploads" or "submit" button or option anywhere on the page. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason for that is because the forum does not show that for those who have just registered, though... :/

EDIT: For now, I'll make my topic in the Golden Sun Hacking section and link to where they're uploaded on MediaFire.

Greetings! I would love to think that I'm already known in the GS community because I also post on the Temple of Kraden and edit the Golden Sun wiki. 8D I decided to visit because I had just completed a large enemy rebalancing hack of GS:TLA and felt it warranted being uploaded here officially, and I've had enough time with the version 2.0 ROM editor that now I feel I can make my most constructive suggestions for the editor whenever I feel like. While I doubt I'm actually going to be an active member here beyond that, well you never know. ^_^

I'm gonna want to find out where or if I have the ability to upload into this site's download system, or if I have to rely on my MediaFire account...