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Speaking of RNG drops, I think unique item drop rates could stand to be increased to the point where you don't need to use the RNG trick to get them. I didn't mind it at first but it started to get annoying when rigging for items that I want a bunch of like Mythril Silver and Orichalcum.

Did Balrog get harder recently? He's been destroying my level 37 team this run. I thought 40 luck on Mia would be enough but he still manages to Djinn Stun --> stun or sleep her surprisingly often. Also he straight up oneshots my squishier adepts with Stun Jip sometimes which is terrifying since I can't rely on having Granite/Shade/Flash up each turn.

Edit: I did manage to win but it was a struggle. I probably had to use revive Psynergy/Djinn at least 10 times and I cast 1-2 Wish Well / Estre Wood each turn. It would have been much easier if I level grinded for Pure Wish so I could get away with only one party heal per turn instead of needing two. I tried the Moloch strategy that I did last time but sometimes he'd just summon Moloch himself without me being able to disrupt him.

Aside from endgame if you learned all your Psynergy, Mages don't even have stronger Psynergy than warriors aside from Piers who has a horrible Psynergy list in all his classes until around level 27. It all depends on what level your adepts are. For instance, Felix with Clay Spire/Tornado hits a lot harder than Jenna with Flare Storm/Briar which makes him the better caster until Jenna learns Volcano/Searing Beam.

I just finished Aqua Rock and I'm still not sure what Piers is supposed to contribute to my team at this point in the game. He learns literally no offense Psynergy better than Froth Spiral until level 23 where he can finally get Hail Prism, though that's only in his base class which is otherwise pretty bad. He's worse at both physical attacks and AoE than Felix until level 23 where he finally learns Hail Prism so he's been relegated to using Mad Blast and Healing Aura in Aqua Rock because he just doesn't have better options. He's tanky but that's about all he has going for him and it doesn't really matter when the other Adepts just go down instead of him because he doesn't do enough damage to kill anything. I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on how to use Piers pre-Hail Prism because I have no idea how to make him useful.

I just finished a playthrough of TBS and you really nailed the difficulty curve in this game. I can't think of anything that was too easy or too hard except maybe Deadbeard and Fusion Dragon being too easy. I managed to beat Deadbeard at level 26 (no Break this time!!) and Fusion Dragon at level 28 for reference, though I think I could have done it at lower levels. Saturos and Menardi are actually harder than Fusion Dragon in my opinion but none of the bosses are pushovers. Hydros Statue was my favorite boss fight and probably the hardest. Attached is a screenshot of my very close victory.

I'm playing TLA now and it feels like I need to level grind while I didn't in TBS. I don't think my behavior for fighting vs running from enemies is different between the games, yet my level 13ish squad is getting destroyed in Gondowan Cliffs. I had similar struggles in Yampi Desert and Air's Rock where if two or three enemies decided to gang up on Sheba or Jenna they'd just go down in a single round of combat. To me it seems the experience gain doesn't scale with the enemy strength as much as in TBS so I end up a little underleveled. Other than that, the game is still solid so far. King Scorpion was a great fight but Briggs and Chestbeaters were a little too easy. Briggs' squad spends too many turns doing nothing so I don't need to worry too much about healing. I've actually been finding Djinn harder than the bosses so I resorted to Poison cheesing against many of them like Blitz, Kindle, and Mud.

A general thing I've noticed is critical boosting items are pretty bad until very late in TLA. There is little reason to stack crit when you won't realistically pass 60% chance anyway, so I tend to favor items with better combat stats and using Ragnarok and similar Psynergy on my warrior adepts. I think a lot of the the earlier crit boosting items could have their crit values improved without being imbalanced since they will still have to compete with strong attack Psynergy and Djinn that are more reliable and deal comparable damage. Warrior adepts don't really care about burning a bit of PP on these attacks since they can be counted on to deal good damage.

Saturos and Menardia (and Fusion Dragon) are all trivial compared to Deadbeard. I usually fight them right after Deadbeard which I do at whatever level Mia learns Break because I dunno how to beat him without Break.

No bosses deserve nerfing. Poseidon is hard but not unreasonable since you have revive Djinn and Shade at that point. If anything, bosses tend to be too easy on average and Poseidon is an exception. He's difficult but absolutely manageable without needing to grind.

Jonin absolutely doesn't need any buffs since it is tied with Chaos Lord for the highest attack stat. They're not supposed to be hybrids, they're supposed to stack crit and attack stuff with Psynergy as a secondary option when AoE or a specific element is needed. They seem like bad hybrids because they are bad hybrids, as that isn't their role. The warrior classes with lower attack stats are better options for hybrid setups.

Acrobat doesn't work as a hybrid because 150% attack mod sucks. Fury has 160% and even that's not enough for it to be a good class on Ivan.

Another issue with item classes is Acrobat is kinda bad. It's just an offense caster but that's not good enough when it has a horrible elemental power distribution from Djinn. To be worthwhile, Acrobat needs to have incredibly strong offense Psynergy in multiple elements (Frost card is good but not enough) since otherwise Necromancer is always going to be the better class. Also item classes' stat mods are bad, they should be probably better than the three-element classes since these classes spread your elemental powers even thinner but they have lower stat totals. It's not as bad for Necromancer since its statline is so minmaxed with a ton of PP and Agility but Acrobat and Dragontamer's stat mods hold them back.

It may be easier just to change the odds of getting each item to all be the same or similar so you won't have to hope for the 1/20 chance to forge Excalibur and such.

Perhaps a fourth item class could help by making it easier to run item classes without someone getting stuck with a lower tier. I have no idea what a new item class should be though.

I'm not sure exactly how to fix these issues but Piers has noticeably worse physical damage, offense Psynergy, and speed than Felix for a long stretch for most of the Eastern Sea making him pretty bad for this stretch of the game in my experience. After that he becomes a bit better since he's the closest thing to a hybrid but I don't think hybrid is a particularly valuable niche to have.

I'm surprised to see Piers performing so well for you. He was easily my worst party member throughout almost all of the eastern sea because he lacked good offense Psynergy (Hail Prism comes too late) and had worse attack than Felix. Late game I didn't feel like I needed a hybrid and no matter what I did he felt worse than the other warriors in physical classes and way worse than the mages in the more hybrid classes. At least he made a solid Dragontamer but that class line is horrible until very late game. What classes have you been running him in the mid game, especially around the eastern sea?

I used to get audio issues with TLA as well but I switched to VBA-ReRecording on Windows 10 which works perfectly.

I agree with VardenSalad that decreasing Lucky Medal drops would be bad. Perhaps additional shop items later in the game could help with the too much money problem.

I liked the eastern sea coin shortage since it made shopping choices more meaningful. It could be worth making rusty forging cheaper though since they have the downside of making you go all the way back to Yallam. You have essentially infinite money after Lemuria which is bad, so you may want to consider heavily reducing the cost (and sell value) of the fountain items.

I'd be curious about your endgame party composition and how it compares to mine once you get there. I haven't found any good compositions to fit Acrobat or Necromancer into which is a shame since they seem really cool.

I agree that a Venus staff is needed, assuming Gaia Rod is on par with Atropos' Rod and similar it will be greatly appreciated on Jenna. I found the Moapa and Karst and Agatio fights to be easier than Avimander, though I think I generally have a lower level party than you (mine was probably around level 26 when fighting Avimander) so that may influence things.

Hi all. I'm a newbie to this site, however, I started playing this hack about a week and a half ago. I've gotten through a majority of this mod without much of a hitch, however now I am stuck at the Star Magician. Sentinel and Balrog were challenges, however, I beat them after some thought and strategy adjustment. But now I am stuck at the Star Magician and cannot think of any solutions other than getting insanely lucky. My party is between lvls 37-41. My original strat was to have 3 people with high luck(28-32) for healing and shade/flash/granite, however I pretty much get killed if anyone other than Felix(my damage dealer with the Jonin class luck=19) gets put to sleep. Can anyone give me some pointers on how to switch up my strategy because I feel like he is beatable at my level but I'm most likely overlooking something.

You should be able to beat the Star Magician at those levels, my party was lower level than your when I beat him. I posted my party setup and strategy pack on page 20 of this thread. You need to have two healers most of the time and you should treat it like a battle of attrition, where as long as you deal more damage than he heals on average you will eventually win. Most rounds I had zero or one adepts damaging the Star Magician at all. Salt and Tonic Djinni are essential in this fight, plus the usual set of defense and PP restoring Djinni. Jonin are amazing here because Shuriken lets you hit two balls and the Star Magicial at the same time.

Cosmos Shield is incredibly powerful on paper, but the issue is the characters who most want a pure defensive item are the characters that can't use it in the first place. I'm more concerned about my healers getting taken down than my warriors so I never use it. If I could I'd absolutely use it on Mia or Jenna in boss battles since there isn't a great option in that slot due to elemental power having a lesser effect on healing psynergy.

[Items]

Based on my experiences during my two playthroughs, I have some suggestions for some item and class changes.

Items

Dragon Skin items suck except the boots. Usually you end up with enough adepts in classes that can use the relevant psynergy which aren't even that important aside from boss battles. I recommend adding elemental resistances or some other stats to make these worth using since the psynergy is not good enough.

Most weapons from early forgeable (not rusty) items aren't very good compared to the armors and even if they are good, they are quickly replaced, like Sylph Rapier vs Lightning Sword or Murakamo.

Golem Core items aside from Titan Gloves are pretty bad for the time you get them. For instance Chronos Mail is worse than Dragon Scales which you get much earlier.

Berserk Circlet should give attack (around 20-30) instead of or in addition to the PP in order to make the Fury and Valkyrie classes actually work as physical attackers. I'll explain more when I talk about those classes.

I changed my mind about the cursed mage items from my previous playthrough. They are good but they aren't good enough to justify the Cleric's Ring when Lachesis' Rule is almost as good for unleash setups. Comparing Dark Robe to Xylion Armor is pretty sad considering Dark Robe just has 5 more of each power in exchange for 5 defense and not being cursed. Sure elemental power isn't that great on warrior adepts compared to mage adepts but really mage adepts don't need more than one or two elemental powers and +25 power +40 resist options exist for each element as well as Iris Robe.

Any hope for a new endgame quality mace or light blade? There is only one endgame quality weapon light blade and two endgame quality maces (Tisiphone Edge, Rising Mace, and Alecto's Mace, and Rising Mace's attack stat is pretty bad for endgame) which severely limits the options for the Fury and Valkyrie classes and warrior adept semicaster builds.

Classes

I mentioned this in my previous post but it'd be awesome if Break would be learned a couple levels earlier. It only really matters for the Deadbeard fight and it's not very fun to level grind just for Break.

I don't really understand how Fury and Valkyrie are supposed to work. They appear to be physical classes but they just don't work as such. Firstly, compared to an Excalibur unleash setup with Riot Gloves, Tisiphone Edge, Rising Mace, and Alecto's Mace lose 28, 28, and 20 attack respectively before scaling (since you need Mythirl Armlet over Riot Gloves) and Excalibur doesn't even give as much attack as Sol Blade, Darksword, or Herculean Axe. Jenna has a decent personal attack stat but Valkyrie's 155% mod is abysmal. I'm not seeing what she brings to the table compared to Holy Knight Piers. Fury is a bit more interesting, since it seems pretty similar to the Inquisitor class but with a bunch of attack and Planetery tacked on. Ivan can only use Tisiphone edge which sucks because he will have no Venus power. Alecto's Mace seems decent on Sheba and Mia but their low personal attack stat combined with the low stats on their items and the weak 160% mod on the class makes them very bad at physical attacks. My recommendation is to reduce the PP modifier and increase the attack modifier of these classes to 175% or so, in addition to adding an attack stat buff to the Berserk Circlet in order to make these classes function as physical attackers. As they are now, their Plume Edge and Planetary psynergies are useless and their better off as a pure caster or a Lachesis' Rule/Atropos' Rod unleasher.