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I never felt that much of issue with direction in GS1, the geography of the greater Angara area is like a big hallway, at most when you go to Northeast Angara and you can either go to Kolima or to Imil, otherwise I felt it straight-forward. GS2 is also fairly straight-forward up until you get the ship, afterwards all you know is that you gotta get to Lemuria, but it's not very clear that you need to get the pieces of the trident or that Yepp's song is a cheat sheet for entering the Sea of Time, Gaia and Aqua Rocks feel more like side-quests (which is actually good in its own way), but they are absolutely musts and I would've liked, with all the wordiness that comes with GS games, that the party also mention them as an objective rather than just stumbling on them and being "well lets just see whats in there".

I've updated the concept for Jupiter and added a clearer World Map of the past Weyard

Ahhhhh duh, makes sense, thank you :)

Hi I have a question about something I can't find on the first post. I'm seeing in the class list that the classes use 13 djinn, but in-game I think you can only get about 9 per character, was this increased? Are there new djinn in hidden areas of the map? Wondering how do you get the rest. Thanks :)

Hmm, I guess the lighthouses can be explained by saying that to create the stone of sages, it was necessary to focus/seal the power into the elemental stars. I think that's the key here, the power once flowed freely throughout the world, but was sealed by the actions of man. If the lighthouses themselves were the seal, one could simply destroy them.

That would also fall in line a bit more with the tempering the Wise One did on the Mars star to put a wrench in Alex' plans

The deal with the lighthouses, I think we can agree on two things: 1) that there was alchemy in the world before the lighthouses, as building them (and the puzzles inside them) would've required a great deal of alchemy.

2) I think we can agree on is that the lighthouses were designed with these three functions in mind: to let alchemy flow or seal it, and to create the stone of sages. If they only wanted to seal alchemy, why let it flow again or let it have the means to build the stone (which is what they wanted to desperately prevent)? Or if the purpose was to create the stone, why design it with the function to seal alchemy from the world?

That's a starting point I think we can base ourselves to build our theories. Here's mine: I think the locations where the lighthouses were built on used to be natural wonders where alchemy concentrated and manifested strongly (like the Element Rocks, but stronger) and these natural wonders already functioned like how the lighthouses function in the present day, that is providing alchemy and sustain into the world (so that'd be my way to explain #1 above). So perhaps the lighthouses were built on top of those places.

As for point #2, my theory is that the lighthouses were built to be sort of like water taps, you close it and there's no water, you open it and water comes to you (rather than having to extract it yourself from the water well as they probably used alchemy before), and a third function: Open the tap all the way and water comes in greater quantities with increased pressure (and this nets you the Stone of Sages). Perhaps the designer behind the lighthouses conned each of the clans/nations/whatever that the lighthouses would allow them to prosper even more and secretly put that feature in to make the stone of sages, though the other day I realized Anemos would've caught wind of this and been able to see through the deception by foresight and mind reading if someone approached them with plans to make Jupiter Lighthouse, so they might've been on it, being the one major state that jumped ship and fled when the world fell into disaster.

Personally I think the lore in Dark Dawn was a completely unecessary retcon out of nowhere. It doesn't contradict anything as far as I know, but since it's never mentioned or acknowledged in the earlier games it feels like something they pulled out of their @#$.

Thats what probably bothered me most out of everything, supposedly the excuse was that there are many more towns in the world than the heroes visit we just don't see them because the heroes don't need to, like you never saw Ayuthai in the first game because you were too busy trying to get across the Lamankan Desert, but ugh it just seems like a weak excuse to me, it really is an @#$ pull on camelot's part

I might actually start all over just to play with this overhaul! Not to mention I kinda messed up by patching the game a bit after visiting the first town instead of doing it before I even started a new game, so Piers didn't have Frost when joining and the save state editor can mess up the data when adding items on a patched game it seems (or I did something wrong without noticing?), but yeah after I gave Piers his Frost Jewel and went on to solve the Kibombo statue puzzles I noticed on a random fight I had suddenly the option to bring a party member from the backrow... For some reason Isaac had joined the party! Haha! He sat there in the backrow of the second party by himself and kinda became a heal/useless items mule while I did my best to pretend he wasn't there storywise... Switching him in battle worked fine but if you tried to switch your characters in the Menu it made duplicates of whoever you were trying to bring back to the main party, it was so weird. Also him being in the party triggered some events before he had officially joined, like being challenged by the gladiators before entering the shaman village, also in the shaman village "trial" if I tried to cheat by putting Isaac's equipment, and thus not affecting my main party, once the trial was over you wouldn't get the equipment back.

Anyways, perhaps for the name of this overhaul: Golden Sun: Lost The Age - New Game+ or Golden Sun: New Age :P

Thanks for the feedback guys! I actually found this forum due to the Balance Age mod and I've enjoyed it greatly (atm Isaac and Co. just joined, about to enter Magma Rock), I had taken to replay DD and TLA so it's what sparked my interest in re-imaging the world of GS, bringing back some ideas I had when I was younger along with new ones.

Completely agree with you guys on offering a sense of direction, I'm not even sure how a decade ago I figured out where/how to go after you get the ship and find yourself not being able to enter Lemuria, why it is you need a trident to fight Poseidon or the relation between the children songs in Yallam and the Sea of Time currents, when I started replaying a couple weeks ago I just went by what I vaguely remembered.

So what I would do with the direction, it'd tie directly with the lives the main characters lead as they are eventually involved in the main plot. Something I'd want for the core characters, at least the main two or three (since someone has to speak for the silent protagonist), is to already be young adults who are out in the world due to their profession instead of the "Teenage boy embarks on a mystical quest entrusted to him that has him travelling from point A to point B". This depends largely though on what the protagonists even do, as the only ideas I've had so far are not original and have already been done: One was that they are in a guild that takes jobs but that's what Final Fantasy Tactics Advance games do, or Pirates travelling the world but that's One Piece's plot, perhaps Ancient Weyard had a elitist society that shunned non-adepts and the protagonists are (at first) smugglers who offer relief and aid to non-adepts (I forgot where this is from but I think its been done).

The cool thing about the exploration in TLA is that although you don't know where to go, you do have a purpose which is to gain power necessary to get to Jupiter Lighthouse, so I would have to tie into that to not just give some clear pointers (though not hand-holding like they do in Dark Dawn) on where to go and why, but allow the player to choose their pace, order and means on getting to those places to encourage exploring. Another incentive to explore is for the player to see all the amazing things Alchemy did back then and how each clan used it differently to create awesome cities and many other things. I want to wow the player similar to how I was wow'd when I was climbing the clouds in Dark Dawn (IMO one of the good things in the game).

Anyway. I see you need to have characters. Those are very important. ( it is an RPG after all)
By picking characters from different races and villages on Wayard you could make an interesting party.

The party members would be a bit larger than the classic back-to-back 8 though you won't be able to have with you more than two groups of 4 as with the normal games. For example I had planned on having a Jupiter Beast-man from Garoh and even a Non-Adept from Ankohl who is a genius craftman (Briggs' grandma ancestor) and whose class setup doesn't change with Djinn but instead with the weaponry he develops, like an Alchemy Gun or different types of Golems (perhaps in your own game you could have something similar with a young Obaba or her Master?). The main character would be a jack of all trades who can be built into a mage or warrior depending on what weapons you equip him/her and the djinn class setup he/she gets and you'd be able to decide at the beginning what element you'll want to be either directly or through some intricate "personality" test disguised as gameplay (though it will probably be messy with all the combinations). Plus the existing Adept prototypes: the Holy Knight-like Squire Earth adept and a Venus Dark Mage counterpart, the Fire Soldier and the Flame User, the Jupiter Witch/Sorcerer (and the Garoh Beast-Man would be it's physical attacker counterpart), the Water Cleric and the Mariner/Aqua Knight.  

[EDIT:]

EDIT:
5/5/16 Mars Clan added
5/10/16 Jupiter Clan and slightly more detailed World map added

As stated here: http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?topic=2207.msg45843#msg45843 I think it would be a better idea to make a prequel over a sequel. If pulled off properly it could drive the games further than a sequel (which DD didn't do, and Camelot themselves stated they don't know how to take it further). Summarizing what I said in that post:

    The storyline would make the player focus and enjoy what they are currently doing in the ancient world   as how the story ends is a given (alchemy is sealed)
    You are given a world to explore in which alchemy is exploited to its maximum so it would be ironically futuristic, a mix of sci-fi and magic  
    Most of Dark Dawn is disregarded  

So this is how I would do it, but before a quick disclaimer I don't have the resources to make new graphics/audio for a new game (unless I buy the new RPG Maker and reuse whatever GS art resouces are available but I digress) so this is mostly just a mind exercise if anything, but perhaps some of you have had similar ideas that could expand on mine, or maybe even better that would @#$% on mine. Either way I hope you enjoy this little trip on my train of thought about the World of Golden Sun  

The first iteration of this post I will talk a bit about the condition of the world back then and a few of their civilizations: Mercury and Venus based ones, then will periodically update the thread with the rest: Jupiter, Mars, Lemuria, Ankohl, etc. And then describe how these civilizations interacted with eachother, whichever antagonists and protagonists and antiheroes and whatnot will then interact with this world to further their goals (and the construction of the lighthouses will delve on this).

So getting started! First a quick reminder of how the geography looked back then:


As you can tell the landmasses were all concentrated on one continent, so this is how today's Weyard would look if the continents went all back to where they used to be:
http://i.imgur.com/PVK9Hsu.png (pardon the leet MS Paint skillz)

And this is how it might have looked like if we add the missing land masses (even worse MS paint skillz!):
http://i.imgur.com/n2DOYpC.png


World Setting (tl;dr Each Lighthouse area has its major nation, plus the Lemuria Monarchy and other non-adept major players like the Ankohl) -- In Progress
[spoiler]

The world is at its peak on alchemy advancement, edging on utter exploitation. The Lighthouses are not yet built, but the areas where they stand in the future are natural Alchemy Wells (completely unrelated to the machinery in Ayuthay) rich in psyenergy crystals from which strong psyenergy of its respective element emanates, similar to the effect Air's or Gaia Rock has on its nearby inhabitants, but much stronger. Those who live near these wells not only are born as Adepts from the influence of the psyenergy crystals in the area, but also have their psyenergy powers augmented, so naturally civilizations born and settled around them have thrived the most. Of course that's not to say other civilizations are hicksville, we have Lemuria, and the Ankohl who are mostly non-adepts tinkerers, inventors and skilled crafters who, even those in the clan who are Adepts, prefer science over alchemy, also Izumo and others. These alchemy wells are the sustain and life of the world, something that the ancients even with their all technology and advancement hadn't realized.

Mercury Clan  
In the future the Mercury clan is settled on a small village with no visible ruins or signs of lost civilization aside the lighthouse they guard but, in the lost age they lived on Hermes, a city of snow and ice:
Concept Image of city, protected by walls of large spires of nevermelting ice as tough as rock. Transportation through the city would take place over sliding ice tracks. The principle would be similar to igloos in that the packed snow allows for insulation so you wouldn't freeze your @#$ off inside. The power of mercury allowed them to build such structures.
Real life example, Sorrisniva igloo hotel)

But aside ice architecture (which in the future is all but lost like the city itself after alchemy was shut off) one more thing they tapped the power of mercury that was preserved in the future was the Fountain of Hermes they developed to cure most diseases, it is a city known for the best healers in Weyard. The city would be pretty much ruled by a council formed by its body of healers (from which Mia is descended) and body of ice builders working together. Their folk, predominantly blue-haired, would distinctively wear thick white robes much like Mia and Arcanos/DD Alex does.

Other Mercury based adepts would be found in Lemuria, more on this later.

Earth Clan  
The Earth Clan are not mentioned at all in the games, closest we have is those from Izumo though theirs Adepts come from the influence of Gaia Rock and not the Venus Lighthouse area. Izumo and its people would not be that far to today's compared to the other clans and their future counterparts, though it would be more of a Heian period Japan, very predominantly versed in literature, poetry and music. Present day Izumo only had Uzume as a leader but ancient Izumo was ruled by its imperial court and the aristocracy conformed by the Samurai. Curiously the unleashes of japanese-like weapons are mostly water/wind but it makes the most sense that the samurai were earth adepts due to their proximity to Mt. Mikage. So yes basically if you're a weeb with a strange japan obsession, you will love Ancient Izumo. Concept image, despite not sounding too advanced alchemy wise compared to the other civilizations, they didn't live in houses of mud and sticks either.

As for the Earth Clan itself, the civilization could have been settled on the ruins below what today is Lalivero, but since they have no adepts despite living so close to Venus lighthouse, I will go on ahead and infer that, being Venus, its alchemy well and psycrystals were rooted deep in the ground so it's more likely that the Tunnel Ruins are a small part of the "outer" ring that would have connected also to the Earth Clan's Underground City, so while the Mercury Clan's city melted after Alchemy was sealed, the ancient Earth Clan city and its secrets were buried deep in the earth, never to be found and exploited, like most other civilizations did so. This is how I believe the city would look, underground among the roots of grand trees (which withered and turned to desert after alchemy was shut off), the manipulation of these trees' roots and plants growing around them would be how people would get by within the city.  

Being Earth I would take the Venus Civilization to have excelled in agriculture, mining, masonry and metallurgy (working closely with their neighbors in Ankohl). Primarily a society of growers, builders, creators and crafters. Protectors and preservators. But since Venus psyenergy deals with death as much as it does with life there will also be a darker group of Venus adepts somewhere around.

As for the hints of a civilization in Suhalla Desert, that is the pharaoh statue, I will assume they were more of a religious-oriented clan similar to Kibombo which may or may not have had Adepts but weren't very competitive with the other clans which developed their own element's alchemy to its limits.

Mars Clan  
I was going to do the Jupiter Clan first but there's complications and implications from their ability of foresight and mind reading, plus the fact they jumped ship when alchemy was out of control, actually likely before it even got to that point. So the role I had for them in the story is gonna have to change, though the aforementioned leads me to believe they will play a strong part in the creation of the lighthouses. I'll do Mars which I have better level of detail at the moment.

The Mars Clan will be Prox, though in the present they are a rudimentary village they are still very much a race that instinctively seeks out to be warriors and this will reflect greatly in their lost age. Prox will be an industrialized military nation, awfully similar to the Fire Nation in Avatar and the Charr of Guild Wars 2, it might seem like I am blatantly copying those two, but to me it makes a lot of sense to explore Prox as a culture of warriors and power; their technology and advancement in alchemy ultimately driven by that culture, which leads naturally to a military clan. So because of this their city will not be very pretty like the other 3 clans, it will be practical and austere focused entirely on its industry, with over dozens of furnaces and unwelcoming buildings of iron and rock. Concept image: http://www.andysowards.com/blog/assets/steampunk-city-art.jpeg?b91b38

The Proxians won't be exactly The Villains, but will nonetheless not be a kind entity to our heroes or their neighboring settlements and towns, nothing personal; looking always to further their primal desire for a life of war and glory in the battlefield and much internal strife, they will play a part in the creation of the Stone of Sages but will ultimately end up paying their dues with the near wipe out of their race and the destruction of their homeland which will leave us with the current Prox: A small village who has given up on their pursuits of conquest and repenting in their ways by taking the task of watch over the Mars Lighthouse.

One of our protagonists will be an exiled Proxian Fire Adept whose view in life will contrast much the violent ways of thier homeland but will at times be at odds with his/her philosophy in life and natural heritage as a fighter.  

  Jupiter Clan

The good old Anemos, out of all the clans this is the one we have the most info from and along with Venus Clan, they are not in Weyard in present day (technically, they are on the moon). They had the ability to fly, read minds and predict the future, and had a longstanding rivalry of sorts with the Tribes of Hesperia until one day they disappeared, lifting their city into the sky to where the moon is (some text in the game even suggest they made Luna but I'm retconning this). The presence they have today in the world is them having predicted the reignition of the lighthouses by leaving behind designs for the wings of anemos and then dropping Sheba onto Lalivero 15 years before the series started. 

Anywho, I would visualize Anemos as a floating city, I would've ideally liked to make it a city in the clouds but I need it close enough to the ground and to the Jupiter Lighthouse to receive the influence of the psycrystals in it. Concept images:
http://camilkuo.deviantart.com/art/skycity-401819379
http://i1-games.softpedia-static.com/screenshots/BioShock-Infinite-City-in-the-Sky-Trailer-Gameplay-Trailer_4.jpg

Having the ability of flight I picture two different cities, Contigo at the base and Anemos floating nearby, Contigo was relegated to more of a lower slums kind of thing where gambling is very prominent just as it is in present day and also where the legendary warrior Yegelos is from. The Flying City of Anemos would be where all the discovery and alchemy exploits would be found, this would be the city to pioneer air travel

Their second ability, premonition, leads to a population similar to the one you see in present day Contigo, very softspoken and spiritual, always musing about what brings tomorrow but sometimes forgetting what they have in front of them. Its leaders would be aware of the creation of the Stone of Sages, the end of alchemy and the relighting of the lighthouses, but they would also be aware that there isn't a future in which they stop all this catastrophe. Could it be something making them powerless? Or perhaps because they want it to happen? The Anemos will play a big role in plot of the game.

[/spoiler]

== The below is pending ==

Antagonists (to be updated)
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Protagonists (to be updated)
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

Battle System (tl;dr Blatant copy of Balance Age)
[spoiler]
To be updated
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Psyenergy Expand (to be updated)
[spoiler]

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Puzzles (tl;dr DD puzzles were meh, GS1 had the best puzzles, be more like GS1) - to be updated
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Rant about puzzles
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Honestly, I'd make a prequel instead. A sequel of the games would only drive the game forward by letting us see what the world looks like now that alchemy is available for everyone and not just a few select clans guarding its secrets, but a prequel would do just about the same job but better.

The prequel we already know how it will end, alchemy is sealed after someone tries to get their hands on the Sage of Stones and become God (if you ever watched/read FullMetal Alchemist, this could give you an idea), but the prequel would be more about the journey than the destination, which is one of the strengths of the Lost Age which has amazing world exploration, you could put amazing things in a highly technological world (but with alchemy/GS flavour to it) and build an impressive world if you have the imagination for it.

A sequel only shows you how people are adapting to their new possibilities and what they are doing with it, which in DD case: Some people are furrier and there's a evil empyror on a blimp. You also get a vague glimpse when the purpose of Luna Tower is revealed to Adepts trying to go beyond the four elements to attain God-like powers (which completely undermines the original games' making a huge deal about the Stone of Sages to be honest). But in the prequel you can show this in its splendor (Except I wouldn't put Luna Tower in it.

Thing is though, I think the prequel is a more high risk/high reward thing, if you don't give the player a world impressive enough to explore and a plot that doesn't properly take their attention from the end result (alchemy is sealed, world is saved for now) and put their focus on being unpredictable on how it will get there, then it will be worse than a bad sequel IMO.

Also you mention disregarding Dark Dawn, which actually even in a prequel I would do so. No Ei Jei nonsense, no Light, no Dark. Like I said above, no Luna Tower, perhaps just a nod here and there to it and other DD elements, but nothing that could impact the world. Also Psyenergy Vortexes or a generic evil empyror which diverts from the theme the games have about the villains residing in a gray area.

I'm probably gonna do a topic about it.

I can see the Gunslinger Class acting sort of like those "equip classes" Tamer and Necromancers classes, you access it by equipping an Alchemy Gun, you have "ammo" in the form of specialized psyenergy crystals that have infused into them a certain element or psyenergy skill, like a supernova crystal, and after X uses the crystal disappears or becomes gray/dry until it's once again recharged with psyenergy.

The quality of the gun would determine how strong the spell shot is, you could further specialize the equipment into being more efficient in shooting a certain element, having it's own unleash by imbuing the skill shot with a status effect or damage modifier.

This would allow a non-adept to be competitive in the battlefield.

EDIT: Additionally your Gunslinger could get special parts to upgrade the Alchemy Gun, then once you have the parts the upgrade could take place either at the item store or your gunslinger do it themselves with some option/event, the upgrades could let you expand the amount of psyenergy crystals you can use during battle and customize your spellcasting list.

A looot has been posted on this thread and making a response to everything would probably end up in a bloated post that would derive into rambling but I just want to point a couple things: Dark/Light "elements" and the sealing of Alchemy.

1) I agree with Rolina, Light and Dark aren't elements, Camelot introduced these aspects in weird ways with DD that don't really fit Alchemy and the creation/change of matter within the 4 primordial elements, although I rather like they were trying to explain them in that they were aspects that transcended the four base elements and Adepts in the far past wanted to use them to attain God-like powers (though at the same time, it is the creation of the Stone of Sages in the first series what granted one god-like powers)

Not to mention that DD seems to hint that Luna is associated with Dark but what we know about the moon is that 1) the Anemos folk went on to live in there and that it's exposure to certain Jupiter Adepts (those under the influence of Air's Rock) causes their beast-like powers to manifest.

===

2) And as for Alchemy, Kraden explains it many times, it's the force/powers/energy/mako/whatever that drives the four elements to build matter and psyenergy is the practical way to manipulate it by using alchemy to make a plant grow or make things explode or make water go through its 3 states and so on.

The whole sealing of alchemy doesn't means psyenergy stops in all of the world, what it did was seal the power that would allow one to create the Stone of Sages, this means you shut off the flow of alchemy into this world by sealing the jupiter, venus, mercury and mars beacons (which in the past they may have not existed as beacons or lighthouses, the lighthouse structures seem to function like water taps).

Alchemy as the life-force in this world has little to do with the psyenergy vortexes, the game hints strongly that they come from machines made by the zenith (a machine being started can be heard when those vortexes activate), someone stated somewhere in this thread that it is kind of like the lifestream/mako of FF7 and I agree it is a very close parallel. Materia is solidified Mako like how Psyenergy stones is solidified psyenergy.

Camelot themselves said they have no idea what to do with the story and how to drive it forward. The way the story ended in TLA, a sequel should've delved with the rift that threatend Prox.

The rest of the world was just getting smaller by the continents shrinking and the gaia falls borderlines advancing more and more into the world but there was nothing about why at the north the fabric of reality was being eaten away by this rift of nothingness.

When I first played DD and saw the psyenergy vortex I thought it was going to be related to that and the vortexes were lured into the world by the world being rich in Alchemy but it seems they were created by devices that the Zenith tribe made, so any sequel to DD would be a very bland "we gotta take the big bad evil emperor I mean empyror" of good vs evil, which kills one of the biggest things the GS series where things are not black and white with the villains. So DD not only didn't advance the series fundamentally, it introduces complications into the plot, how the elements work (light and dark now being a thing), the geography, etc.

Honestly, I am of the opinion that the most simple way to approach the mysteries of the Golden Sun series is to disregard Dark Dawn. They introduced many complications, not just in the elements but even in the geography of the game as well.

That dialog in Kalt is the biggest hint we get regarding the current time in the real world, it's basically "Winter is coming!" (or well more like, winter is already here)

When you start the game it is Spring or Summer I'd imagine and by the end of the game it's winter so I would think it takes place in 9ish months at most

Aqua hydra and Poseidon have been the toughest bosses for me so far, even after getting wiped out and grinding a few levels I had a hard time and near wipe-outs

I think there's merit to this theory, after all there must be a reason they are tall structures, if the intention of the lighthouses was to put a bunch of puzzles as a deterrent then they could just take about any form, a labyrinth underground perhaps? Or some type of fortress? (Perhaps from a business point of view Camelot just wanted something different from the usual temple trope that Zelda games started)

But building on what they've given us, I think that the shape they take as large towers (and the large cylindrical space displayed by OP) could be very well interpreted as a hint on the functioning of the lighthouse, and the puzzles to keep it locked are built around the tower-like structure.

But I'd like to propose to see this from another angle. How did lighthouses come to be in the first place? I don't believe the answer is that simple as "well, they came to be to seal alchemy!" because their existence alone has several other implications; their current function is to emanate alchemy into Weyard but was that always the case? Being man-made, they are artificial means by which the world currently gets it's alchemy sustain so the real question here is how was it before. 

One possibility is that the sites where each lighthouse is installed are special areas (like the Elemental Rocks, but much more prominent) where their respective element is concentrated and exposed into the world and the lighthouse works as a water tap placed on this source of elemental energy that can close or open its flow. But they were made in such a way that if you opened the tap on full, it would cause the energy to shoot at Mt. Aleph to create the Stone of Sages which I believe is the original and main purpose of the lighthouses.

So in this case, it could lead to what OP proposes, the the star goes from the aerie all the way to the bottom and the chain reaction causes the element to flow back into the world.