Topics

As you all know, Atrius' Golden Sun Editor allows to change innate psynergies in TLA, like Move, Retreat and such.

What some people probably don't know is how it handles that: it completely rewrites the portion of the code that assigns innate psinergies with a new functions that loads them from somewhere else in the rom. This happens the very first time you hit the Save button on the editor, whether you changed innate psynergies or not.

The bug is in that function: while trying to link back to the original code it skips 1 instruction. This causes the text in the game to load at the slowest speed when you start a new game. It is fixed by changing the bytes at 080ADF26 from E011 to E010.

EDIT:
1) this (extremely minor) bug will be fixed for the next version of Reloaded
2) this function is also what breaks an italian rom. The BL's bytes found inside it are hardcoded but the function the BL targets is in another place in the italian rom. This makes the game freeze in a black screen at boot, before the nintendo screen. I can't believe i finally found the cause for that issue. I think it's been a nightmare for at least 7 years now (can't tell when i started modding anymore) on my italian rom.

Since I'm back working on the mod for a few tweaks, i think this is a good time to pick up again an old idea of mine: swap Chill (randomly encountered in the Southern Gondowan) and Mud (Gabomba Catacombs) to fix the elemental imbalance in the first half of the game, cause you get your fifth mercury djinn while you have still only 2 venus ones, leading to some awkward setups.

Point is, i'm afraid I have to ask once again for your help guys, there are many things I don't know and i got struck pretty badly the last time i tried.

I think there are 3 things i must do in order to swap them:

- Swap the encounters. This might be the easy part cause it's something i already did, both for overworld encounters and dungeon ones.

- Swap the models: after battle for both and the dungeon model for the gabomba djinn. This is the first thing i tried to do and where i got stuck. I managed to replace the models with atrius' editor but the game froze immediately upon interacting with it or after the battle (for the overworld one).

- Swap the flags. There are flags for each djinn, which are assigned the moment you get one. I obviously need to swap the call for those 2 djinn but i have absolutely no clue about this one.

Don't know if i missed anything, I hope i'll add something more later tonight or tomorrow if i discover something interesting.

Hello guys

This is about the minor graphic issue i told earlier today in the chatbox.

As you can see in the first image there are text spillover issues in the character stat box (class line) cause the box isn't symmetrical around the arrow: the first class always fits but the arrow takes a character's space from the second one.

What i want to do: increase the width of the character's box by one character, and while i'm at it, reorganize the other box as well to make the whole thing look even better.

Also, by comparing the "1" and "3" pics you can notice that the djinn icon is not aligned to the box at its right like the psynergy menu one is (as well as the others from ALL other menus).

From a superficial first look I managed to tweak the djinn box (pic 2) but i couldn't find the values for the other box nor the ones for the djinn icon.

The function i studied starts at 0804868C (= Djinn menu), the values i edited to tweak the djinn box are at 080486F4, reduced the first 2 movs by 1 byte and increased the next 2 by one. The pics show my work on the italian version but the addresses here are about the ENG one.

So... does anybody want to investigate this thing with me? :P

As some of you probably already know, in order to remove the Beta from Golden Sun Reloaded's name i need to make the level up not dependent on RNG, since that could be abused, especially with Luck.

Leveling in GS works as follows: you have a "goal stat number" for each 20 levels (0, 19, 39, ..., 99). To determine how much you gain in that stat by leveling up, the game takes the next goal number (example: for a level 14 character it'd be the level 19 stat), subtracts the last goal number from it and divides by 20. then it adds either 0 or 1 from RNG.

What i'm doing is: instead of subtracting last goal number and divide by 20, subtract current base stat and divide by the number of levels remaining to reach the goal level. Since i've also removed the RNG part, you are bound to reach the goal stat set.

Less than 1 hour ago i finished implementing and testing this method for HP and PP in TLA and it worked flawlessly.

But then i realized something: Stat boosting items affect (obviously) the base stat of the character, which means that the stat boost will be absorbed by the new leveling formula as soon as the characters gains a level, effectively making those items useless if until before the very end of the game (when you know you won't level up anymore).

So... does anybody have an idea to make those 2 concepts (leveling not RNG dependent and stat boosting items) coexist?

[Intro]

  Intro  

Taking inspiration from the many great ideas I've read on this forum over the years, I managed to build up my personal collection of tweaks, hacks and changes in order to try to balance out this game. With "balance" i mean addressing all the things that make the game too straightforward (Megiddo and Summon Rush beat any other strategy by a landslide), by lowering the strength of the most effective options AND either increasing the usefulness of the weaker ones or outright replacing them.

Over time - since this mod has been in development for at least 5 years thanks to the continous feedback from its users - it eventually evolved into a full fledged gameplay overhaul that preserves the spirit of the original game while building up on its hidden potential.

The main goal of this mod is to increase the number of options available. This means that while you can play the game like you always did, since many popular classes, abilities and items are all still here mostly untouched (with the sole exception of the "summon rushing" strategy, which has been removed completely), you can also try all the strategies were simply too weak in the original game to be considered viable, cause they have now been improved. Tactics like unleashing with Sheba or Mia, using the item classes, using caster classes to attack and not only to heal or buff, using debuffs, using djinn to attack and revive, and many, many more, along with brand new classes, items, abilities and enemies.

The secondary goal is to increase the difficulty. This mod is aimed at players that are quite knowledgeable with the game mechanics, and tries to be an enjoyable challenge for them. I actually advise against using this mod on the very first playthrough. Moreover, the increase in difficulty is mainly here to encourage smarter plays... to give players an actual reason to try all the different strategies and combat tricks this game can offer. It not intended to be more difficult "just because".

Reloaded is a 100% Gameplay-oriented mod. Nothing story-wise, except for a few translation tweaks, has been altered. It affects both games and the two link up perfectly. It's best enjoyed as a new challenge on subsequent runs, starting back from GS1 and transfering data to TLA.

Documentation

Class doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W9VJcbmV5l6wGSiDO4oM6IV566i7XvVFQs_5WT0ajN8
Class Setup doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1prjK1L0YpeKuadoy5A2liiAWm_m0yZ3oOc-FE5rGQKU
Equipment doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13eCQOiM5YsKmcBZKSlwW4-wExXtn8WZ4U46cL_hmRO8
Psynergy doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qVYsowdD3n_g3kjvdGl8UBryidcRU1rJaEebiDaPrlA
RNG Guide (GameFAQs, for drops): https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/gba/561356-golden-sun-the-lost-age/faqs/25734

Download Links

English Patches: HERE
Italian Patches: HERE

Current Version: v1.82a
Latest Update: 01 Mar 2024
Reason: Minor Angelic Ring Fix in TBS

Mod Content

Classes: New and revamped classes, new djinn progression for item classes, stat bonuses in 5% steps, partial classes removed from TLA, new magic resistance stat tied to classes.

Use the Class Setup Doc linked above to see which class combinations are available among those that involve classes you like.

Felix's and Sheba's starting classes now are different from Isaac's and Ivan's respectively. Inspiration for their classes (both in names and spells) was taken from Rolina's Class Tweaks for TLA.
Jenna and Piers have a completely new set of classes made almost entirely from scratch: Jenna's classes are mostly mage-ish while Piers' are mostly warrior-ish.

Each class line has a Magic Resistance value (WRD in the class doc) that alters damage taken from Base Damage attacks. For example a 95% WRD means that a character in that class will take 5% more damage from Base Damage attacks.

A fourth three-elemental class has been added to EVERYONE, to fill the djinn combination gap left by the other three. So, Venus/Mars characters gain the 5 5 4 class and Jupiter/Mercury characters gain the 5 5 4 class.

Item classes can be go up a tier by adding 3 djinn of a specific new element instead of keeping them balanced (full explanation here). The order for each class is:
Acrobat: Water - Earth - Fire - Wind
Dragontamer: Earth - Wind - Water - Fire
Necromancer: Wind - Fire - Earth - Water

Jenna and Piers' classes needed a total revamp and they needed it badly. Classes in TLA were carbon copies of those in GS, which means that Jenna got the warrior-ish classes from Garet despite being a mage and Piers the mage-ish classes from Mia despite being a warrior.

Base classes were changed for flavor so each pair of characters of one element uses two different aspects of that element.

A magic resistance stat didn't exist in this game. Mages usually have lower HP and Defense than warriors, so they compensate with higher Magic Defense. It was needed for stats balance.

The fourth three-elemental class line was missing for no apparent reason, the new progression for item classes is just a bonus to make them easier to try/use.

Design choices for classes: Setting Jenna and Piers aside, everything you were familiar with in the vanilla game is still here. Names have been changed here and there either to get closer to the japanese ones or to avoid redundancy. Changes to psynergy sets are mostly to balance the power level among them or again, to avoid redundancy. For example, Guru Mia lost Wish because otherwise all her dual classes would've had it.

Warriors have usually access to weaker base damage psynergies than mages, with the exception of monoelemental warriors. Idea it is that even warriors can access strong psynergies by mastering one element instead of going wide, that's why they get it only after the third tier of their class progression (just like vanilla).

Biggest changes are to tri elemental classes, especially due to the 4th one I created from scratch for everyone: each character having now 4 lead me to center each class around a different main element, which can easily be guessed by looking at djinn requirements and psynergy sets. Also each group has a "hybrid" class (warrior going mage or mage going warrior), again each centered around a different element. They are Ninja, Valkyrie, Fury and General.

Characters: Characters' base stats and starting levels rearranged. Piers levels up faster. Stats gained at level up are fixed and unaffected by RNG.

Characters' base stats were rearranged to balance them out and at the same time make differences between them more striking, cause those changes are (for the most part) reflected by the stat multipliers of the base classes. For example: Sheba is now everything that Ivan was: best caster and frailest character. Ivan also gained more attack. Piers improved with more PP and HP at the expense of Felix. Piers is also a better caster than Isaac now. Mia has now second best PP but also second worst ATK.

Characters have more innate HP and gain less from Djinn. Luck grows with levels. Leveling up doesn't depend on RNG anymore.

In TLA, Jenna starts at 4 and Piers levels up faster (while still being the slowest).

Moving some HP from Djinn to characters is to make them more resilient to summoning and putting djinn on standby. End result when they're all set is the same, but as you use djinn you lose less HP than vanilla, cause part of the HP that were granted by djinn is now hardcoded into the characters' stat growth.

Luck growing with levels is part of a full overhaul of the debuff mechanic, which will be explained in its section.

Items & Equipment: Weapon categories system, new items added, tweaked MANY others. Some treasures have been rearranged in TLA. New attribute "Ailments" found on equipment.

Almost every piece of equipment has been tweaked.

The Golden Rule: Each piece of equipment found/bought in the game is stronger than anything (of the same type) you could find at an earlier point in the game and weaker than anything found later. Shops (and some chests) have been changed accordingly.

Weapon categories

• Long Swords: standard weapon
• Light Blades: -Atk, +Agility, +Defense
• Axes: +Atk, -Def
• Maces: -Atk, -5% Unleash Rate, +MaxHP/Power/Ailments
• Staves: --Atk, +5% Unleash Rate, +MaxPP/Power
• Ankhs: --Atk, +5% Unleash Rate, +Power/Luck/Ailments

Ailments boosts the chance to hit enemies with debuffs, negative statuses and anything else that requires a Luck check on the enemy. It directly increases the percentile chance by the amount shown on the item, just like how the Criticals attribute increases the chance to unleash.

Each forgeable material now has a "target level range" and the places where they can be found have been changed accordingly.
Tear stone: ~21. very early eastern sea.
Stardust: ~23. early to mid eastern sea. Taopo, aqua rock and early gaia rock.
Sylph feather: ~25. Mid to late e.sea. Ankhol to Lemuria.
Dragon Skin: ~28. early w.sea. From right after grind till shaman village.
Golem Core: ~30. Contigo till reunion. (new Gaia Staff replaces Gaia Axe)
Sala Tail: ~33. From reunion to Loho.
Mythril silver: ~35. Loho to Prox. (Myhril Blade is now a light sword)
Orichalcon & Dark Matter: After teleport.

In vanilla weapons were different only in name. Graphics aside, there's nothing that makes an Axe different from a Long Sword since they can be equipped by the same characters. Now they have proper categories each with their own quirks and rules.

Ailment (the attribute) is part of the overhaul to the debuff mechanic, explained in detail later.

Every change to treasure, drops and shops (and forging) from vanilla is due to the Golden Rule, so I'm not doing a "reasoning" there.

Unleashes: All attack based unleashes use multipliers. Unleashing mages are now a viable option.

The standard unleash rate is now 30%.

Armageddon's (Megiddo) multiplier is now x2.4, Ceres' Legend and Heaven Vengeance had their added damage part reduced.

Some unleashes had their element changed. Among the most notable ones, Acheron's Grief is now non-elemental and High Vitals changed to Mercury.

Every unleash of non-staff weapons uses a multiplier to increase damage. Staves' unleashes are all base damage type.

Mostly number tweaks for balance reason: nerfs and buffs where needed.
Element changes: IIRC like 80% of Axes unleashes were Fire or Earth for example. They're to spread things out more.

I ditched the "Added damage" formula completely in favor of multipliers (both from EPA and Unleashes) cause the former doesn't scale well. It's bonkers at the beginning cause the relative damage increase is huge but as your regular damage increases the relative bonus becomes lower and lower.

Staves unleashes becoming "base damage" type (= spells) is a great deal. It means that mages can now unleash effectively cause their usually low attack stat is completely ignored.

Psynergy, Healing & Reviving: New psynergies added. Max PP stat increases damage dealt by Base Damage psynergies. Reviving tweaked, group healing costs MUCH more. Healing mechanic tweaked. Power and Resistance cap raised to 255. Last psynergy is learnt at 42.

New psynergies: Tyrfing (Venus equivalent of Quick Strike), Meltdown (Mars equivalent of Quick Strike), Waterspout (Mercury equivalent of Quick Strike), Rolling Fire (Stronger mars Ghost Soldier), Sabre Rain (upgrade to Pierrot's Sabre Dance), Punishment series (Stronger Jupiter Fume), Boon series (from DD), Heal series (Group healing Venus psynergies), Bravery/Courage (Venus Impact/High Impact), Blessing (clone of DD's Weapon Grace), Raise (Mars equivalent of Revive), Remedy (a single target Tonic). Poison and Paralyze are available.

The new base damage formula is Damage = (Base Power + MaxPP/8) * Elemental_Factor * (1+(MaxPP/1024)).
PP cost for base damage psynergies recalculated from scratch with a custom made formula I wrote in order to make Power weight more than range.

Group healing and reviving psynergies cost MUCH more, as well as the strongest single target healing psynergies. Reviving effects now have ALL a 100% success rate BUT Revive, Raise, Lich and Phoenix revive only to 50% HP. Water of Life revives to 25% HP.

The Necromancer's Call Demon/Dullahan are base damage type spells. Call Dullahan is the strongest base damage psynergy in the game. The Pierrot's Card and Juggle series are also stronger. Frost Card is the strongest Mercury base damage psynergy in the game, Bramble Card and Thunder Card have a chance to debuff their targets, Fire Breath is a muti-target EPA like Shuriken.

Drain and Psy Drain are stronger and never miss. Psy Crystal restores 200 PP.

Endgame EPAs except Quick Strike, Tyrfing, Meltdown, Waterspout, Minotaur and Annihilation have a chance to debuff the target or to partially ignore defense.
All EPAs are multiplier based, endgame ones are now closer in power to unleashes.

Elemental Power doesn't affect healing spells as much as before (half of the original bonus/malus).
New formula: HP healed = Base_Power * [((Ele_Power-100)/2 + 100)/100]

Group healing was massively undercosted in vanilla for how good it was (and still is).

The new base damage formula: good old PP Multiplier, the starting point of this mod back in 2015. The game lacks a "magic offense" stat that grows with levels and is higher for magic oriented characters than warriors. Elemental power was not good enough to differentiate. This implied that both mages and warriors were equally proficient at casting and that spells' growth (unlike physical attacks) resembled a step function: the only way to improve it was learning a new one with higher power. A big jump that eventually fades out. Old base damage formula was Damage = Base_Power * Elemental_Factor. Elemental_Factor is unchanged.

Having Max PP to serve as the missing "magic offense" stat addresses all of the above (mages are better than warriors at casting, smoother growth) and even more. Since both equipment for +MaxPP and +PPrecovery exist, characters have to choose: High PP cost of mass healing will move healers towards PP Recovery, losing out on damage, while offensive casters will aim for maxPP as high as possible cause that translates directly into damage.

Healing (reviving djinn) and offense (drain) should never miss, but reviving at 100% health is way too good cause at some point it's just better to have a character die and revive than try healing them.

Endgame EPAs: if they were all about power it meant some would overshadow others, so i added a chance to debuff to the weaker ones. Also part of the Ailment overhaul.

Elemental power in vanilla was literally twice as effective for healing than how it was for offensive spells. It made things harder to balance, cause power boosting equipment is used by casters and healers equally, and even worse for classes who can do both. So i halved it. Plain and simple. Now an elemental power boost grants the same percentile improvement to both offensive and healing spells.

Buffs, Debuffs & Ailments: Debuffs are now useful against bosses. ST Buffs/Debuffs have lower duration. Defense buff/debuff are stronger, Resistance ones are weaker.

Haunt triggering rate is 40%. Characters wrapped in Delusion can't unleash and regular attacks miss more often. Death Curse's countdown starts at 4 instead of 7.

Resistance buffs and debuffs increase and decrease resistance by 15/30 instead of 20/40, and they cap at +-60 instead of +-80.
Defense buffs and debuffs are stronger: buffs go from x1,1875 to x1,75 (in 4 steps as usual).
Similarily, debuffs go from x0,8125 to x0,25.

Stronger (djinn and single target) buffs/debuffs have lower duration (5 turns vs 7) and base infliction rate than weaker buffs/debuffs (usually found on MT psynergies). Ailment infliction rate and ailment recovery chance aren't dependant on elemental level anymore.

Luck equal or higher than 40 grants immunity to stun and sleep (in addition to the usual immunities, which are unchanged).

New formulas:
Ailment/Debuff Infliction chance: [(Caster's_Level/4 - Target's_Luck/2)*3 + Base_chance + Ailment_Bonuses + Vulnerability's_25]*Area_multiplier
Ailment Recovery Chance: Luck - Level/2 - Turns*5 + Base_chance

Debuff              Base Activ. Chance        Base Recovery Chance

Drop attack         90%, 125%, 75%*         10%
Drop defense        90%, 125%, 75%*         5%
Drop resistance     90%, 125%, 75%*         5%
Poison              70%, 45%**              
Venom               65%, 40%**              
Delusion            70%, 50%**              30%
Stun                60%, 40%**              50%
Sleep               45%                     40%
Seal                55%, 100%***            30%
Haunt               60%, 40%**     
Death               20%, 5%**     
Death Curse         60%, 75%**     
HP to 1             30%         
Ignore Defense      85%      
Force target OOB    40%         
Skip a turn         115%, 130%****

*    = Single Target Psynergy (2 tiers), Multi Target Psynergy (1 tier), Damaging abilities (2 tiers)
**   = Non damaging move, Damaging move
***  = Psynergy, Djinn
**** = Djinn, Ulysses

Buffs were imbalanced, with defense being easily the worst. True, attack and defense buffs gave the same percentile increase but everyone's attack stat is usually around twice their defense if not higher. An attack buff and a defense buff will never cancel each other out cause the attack gained is much higher. So now defense buffs are stronger.

Resistance buffs were too good instead, especially when compared to defense buffs so they got lowered. Also remember that ele Res also reduces physical damage taken as long as it's elemental, while defense buffs will never reduce "magical" damage.

Ailment overhaul: Debuffs have various issues in vanilla that make them useless.
- Affliction and recovery rate being tied to elemental level and luck was a big downside. Neither grew with levels.
- They never worked on bosses due to high luck and high elemental levels and there was nothing you could do about it. Debuffs were simply a waste of slots on anyone's psynergy set.
- A mechanic being tied to stuff that doesn't change with levels greatly limits design space. If an enemy overpowers you offensively the usual counter is leveling up some more and tackle it again with better defenses or change strategy or gear. If the same enemy's main strategy was to put you to sleep constantly and then kill you, leveling up wouldn't solve anything. It will take longer cause your defenses are better due to leveling up, but it'll still put you to sleep as easily as before and kill you in the end.

Result: elemental level outright replaced with caster's level and luck grows with levels. Digression: In order to make this viable i had to remove RNG from level growth or people could've manipulated the RNG to always grant luck at level up, which is bonkers. Free immunity for everyone to most statuses due to 40 Luck being very easy to reach.

Ailment stat on equipment expands character's options greatly cause you can now build a dedicated debuffer. Also having weaker EPAs debuffs both avoids redundancy with stronger ones and makes warrior builds less one-dimensional, since they usually gear up for unleashes unlike mages, who get to pick element boosts (which ones), maxPP vs PP recovery, and now even unleashes themselves.

Stronger buff and debuffs last less: because they needed a downside or the multi target weaker ones, that also cost more, would be completely useless. For buffs, think of attack. Most likely scenario is that you have one or two warriors in the current party dedicated to attacking, so why cast an attack buff on everyone when 3/4 of the targets are never gonna use it instead of casting a stronger buff (again, that costs less) on the best available target? So High Impact's role now is to reset the turn counter with a longer duration, decreasing the times you need to recast the buff to keep it up. For enemies and debuffs it's even simpler: 95% of bosses are alone. so MT debuffs are weaker as usual, but have an higher infliction chance and last longer: remember that the recovery chance from a debuff is directly tied to the turns remaining for the debuff to disappear naturally.

I think that stunning or sleeping bosses can only be either OP or irrelevant in this game (no middle ground) so i'm getting rid of them. It's mainly debuffs that got in. Passive damage like Poison, Venom and Haunt also would be way too good and encourage a fully defensive playstyle or force me to waste attack slots on the boss for status healing, so those immunities remain as well.

Djinn & Summons: Summon rushing isn't possible anymore, summons have been rebalanced. Most Djinn have improved, the strongest ones were nerfed. Djinn grant less HP. Chill and Mud's encounters swapped.

Summons' HP% Damage nerfed from 3% per Djinn to 2%~2.5% per Djinn. Ratio starts growing from 5+ Djinn summons onwards.

Summons Base power is 35-70-130-220 for the standard 4, Zagan 60, Megaera 65, Flora 120, Moloch 125, Ulysses 210, Eclipse 300, Haures 310, Coatlicue 400, Dedalus 140+340, Azul 500, Catastrophe 520, Charon 580, Iris 750.

Flora decreases Resistance instead of inflicting Sleep.

Summons that require more than 2 djinn won't appear right at the start of a battle. After the first turn, 3-djinn summons become available; after the second, 4-djinn summons become available and so on, with Iris available after the 6th turn has passed (6 and 7 djinn summons are unlocked in the same turn).

Catastrophe requires 7 djinn to be summoned (5 Ju, 2 Me), Charon 8 (6 Ve, 2 Ju) and Iris 10 (6 Ma, 4 Me).

Mud is now found in the wild south of Naribwe, where Chill used to be. Conversely, Chill is now in Gabomba Catacombs, in Mud's place.

HP gained from Djinn more or less halved (moved to characters as explained above).

Reflux is multi-target. Shade and Flash reduce damage respectively by 50% and 66% instead of 60% and 90%. Vine, Mud, Gasp and Fury deal base damage. Ember restores 10% of PP, Ether 35% and Aroma 12,5%. Balm and Spark revive to 50% HP instead of 60%. Crystal heals 60% of HP.

Summon rushing is what made every boss in the game a joke. A strategy that involves setting all of your djinn in standby before battle (thus ready to be summoned immediately), unleash a barrage of summons at turns 0 and 1 and win the battle on the spot, effectively nullifying the penalty from having djinn on standby and/or recovery, which is worse classes and stats.

By turn-gating the strongest summons I want to make this strategy completely unviable, cause you'll simply not live long enough to see them if the enemy has a few turns to attack your characters with much lower stats and without key psynergies for survival due to having most djinn on standby.

Lacked Res debuff on summons, Flora was the perfect candidate: only low tier summon that inflicted ailments instead of debuffs & -Res is a typical Jupiter effect.

Other changes are just to balance the power levels of summons and djinn. As usual, buffs to what was bad in vanilla (Reflux) and nerfs to what was too good instead (Flash being the greatest offender).

Chill and Mud's locations have been swapped because when Piers joins (which is after Chill and before Mud) you end up with 5 Mercury djinn and 2 Venus djinn. With this change you now end up with 4 Me and 3 Ve which is much more manageable.

Enemies: Stronger in general. New enemies and new enemy abilities added. Full overhaul in TLA, with more enemies per battle on average.

Every enemy has higher stats and those that uses psynergy have maxPP equal to their levelx5 (if it isn't already higher) so they can benefit from the PP Multiplier. For some enemies (especially in TLA), the element they're weak to got changed.

In TLA enemies and enemy groups have been completely revamped from start to end.

For some enemies (especially in TLA), the element they're weak to got changed.

Treasure Isle overworld area now has enemies from the Eastern Sea lands. The Northern Reaches overworld area has a completely new set of enemies.

Enemies use Break less frequently.

Stat wise, the difficulty for both games is more or less vanilla TLA hard mode. Please note that vanilla TLA is MUCH easier than vanilla GS: many enemies were copy pasted from GS into an area in TLA where your characters have a higher level than they had in GS.

Changes to weaknesses: the numbers were unbalanced. Too many enemies weak to Jupiter and Mars and too few weak to Mercury and Venus.

Treasure Isle overworld had enemies from the western seas in vanilla despite being in the eastern sea. I simply dunno why it was like that, it didn't make sense to me to have a single area immediately accessible where enemies are 10 levels stronger than everywhere else.

Northern Reaches had the opposite issue instead: it's accessible only very late into the game but reuses enemies from an earlier portion of the game. So I made new stronger ones and confined them there.

Break's role is to punish those who go overboard with buffing. So it should still be used but not so much that it discourages buffing altogether.

Drops: Notable drops that changed from the original version. Forgeable materials are dropped earlier. Remember to follow the RNG guide doc linked at the top instead of simply reusing move sequences tested for vanilla.

Sea Dragon (Lv 24)       -> Tear Stone         1/64
Mad Plant (Lv 25)        -> Herbed Shirt       1/1
Living Armor (Lv 25)     -> Star Dust          1/64
Cerberus (Lv 26)         -> Virtuous Armlet*   1/64
Harridan (Lv 27)         -> Sylph Feather*     1/64
Minotaur (Lv 27)         -> Vial**             1/32 
Chimera Mage (Lv 27)     -> Crystal Rod*       1/128
Magicore (Lv 28)         -> Mystery Gloves*    1/128

Turtle Dragon (Lv 28)    -> Storm Gear         1/128
Slayer (Lv 29)           -> Lucky Medal        1/64
Wyvern (Lv 31)           -> Dragon Scales      1/128
Blue Dragon (Lv 32)      -> Dragon Skin        1/64
Ghost Soldier (Lv 32)    -> Gloria Helm        1/64
Grand Golem (Lv 32)      -> Golem Core*        1/64
Wise Gryphon (Lv 33)     -> Aeolian Cassock    1/128
Hell Chimera (Lv 33)     -> Knight's Greaves   1/128
Karst                    -> Salamander Tail    1/1

Mini Death (Lv 34)       -> Salamander Tail    1/64
Minos Warrior (Lv 35)    -> Casual Shirt       1/128
Devil Frog (Lv 35)       -> Divine Camisole    1/128
Aka Manah (Lv 35)        -> Ninja Sandals      1/128

Gillman Lord (Lv 36)     -> Caladbolg          1/256
Ocean Dragon (Lv 36)     -> Clotho's Distaff   1/256
Pyrodra (Lv 36)          -> Triton Ward        1/128
Puppet Warrior (Lv 36)   -> Silver Greaves     1/128
Star Magician            -> Iridial Ring       1/1

Nue (Lv 37)              -> Alecto's Mace      1/128
Balrog                   -> Sol Ring           1/1

Bane Wight (Lv 38)       -> Dark Robe          1/256
Estre Baron (Lv 38)      -> Rising Mace        1/256
Sentinel                 -> Luna Ring          1/1

Mad Demon (Lv 40)        -> Ker's Weight       1/256
Aeshma (Lv 40)           -> Lachesis' Rule     1/256
Spirit Army (Lv 40)      -> Selene's Bracelet  1/256
Dullahan                 -> Mind Ribbon        1/1

*TLA Only. Also Earth Golems don't drop Giant Axe anymore in TLA.
**Removed Tartarus Axe cause it's now found in a chest, see Treasures section.

  Treasures & Shops: Items swapped for various reasons and notable shop changes (TLA Only)

Kibombo
  Shop sells Staff of Anubis
  Removed from shop Frost Wand

Western Sea
  Rusty Mace (Hagbone Mace) -> Tear Stone

Champa
  Shop sells Cocktail Dress
  Removed from shop Demonic Staff, Blessed Robe

Izumo
  Shop sells Grievous Mace, Assassin Blade
  Removed from shop Shamshir, Ninja Blade

Apojii Islands
  Removed from shop Dragon Axe

Taopo Swamp
  Tear Stone -> Star Dust

Aqua Rock
  Tear Stone -> Star Dust
 
Ankhol Ruins
  Thanatos Mace -> Tartarus Axe
 
Lemuria
  Rusty Sword (Corsair's Edge) -> Rusty Sword (Pirate's Sabre)
  Star Dust -> Sylph Feather

Eastern Sea
  Rusty Sword (Pirate's Sabre) -> Lucky Medal

Gondowan Settlement
  Star Dust -> Dragon Skin

Shaman Village
  Shop sells Zodiac Wand
  Removed from shop Crystal Rod, Silver Blade, Magical Cassock
  (Crystal Rod can be dropped in TLA)

Atteka Inlet
  Vial -> Golem Core
  Orihalcon -> Mythril (Hammet reward)

Contigo
  Bramble Seed -> Golem Core
  Shops sell Kikuichimonji, Mythril Circlet
  Removed from shops Swift Sword, Righteous Mace, Mirrored Shield, Jeweled Crown
 
Jupiter Lighthouse
  Phaeton Blade -> Sidereal Edge

Loho
  Golem Core -> Mythril
 
Prox
  Dark Matter -> Mythril
  Shop sells Viking Axe
 
Trial Road
  Elixir -> Hagbone Mace

Treasure Isle
  Rusty Axe (Viking Axe) -> Thanatos Mace
  Star Dust -> Dragon Skin
  Firebrand -> Dark Matter
 
Yampi Desert Cave
  Myhtril -> Dark Matter
  Dark Matter -> Firebrand

Anemos Sanctum
  Dragon Skin -> Golem Core (before Teleport)
  Orihalcon -> Phaeton Blade

Tech Tips & FAQ

Tech tips: What to do when experiencing a crash or a freeze

If you encounter freezes, crashes or other technical oddities, please try patching a different clean rom or try a different emulator before reporting.
The emulator I use is VBA-M 1.8.0 SVN1243.
Always include details about the emulator where you experienced the crash or freeze in reports and if the same happens in VBA as well.

Frequently Asked Questions:

TBS = Golden Sun, TLA = Golden Sun: The Lost Age. TBS comes from "The Broken Seal", unofficial translation of the Japanese title of the first Golden Sun game.

Q: How do I apply the patches?
A: LunarIPS is the tool for the english versions. Italian patches come with their own tool instead. English patches must be patched to english roms and Italian ones to italian roms. Always patch only vanilla roms, even if you want to update your Reloaded rom with a newer release. Delete the current rom and patch again the vanilla one.

Q: How do I tell if the rom has been patched?
A: The psynergy Move is Earth instead of Fire.

Q: At which difficulty is you're supposed to do a TLA playthrough to enjoy the mod?
A: Normal. TLA's Hard mode multipliers would be applied ON TOP of the already higher stats. Do that at your own risk, if you're in for the challenge. I haven't tested that.

Q: Do i need to start a new game to play the mod?
A: If you're coming from vanilla, yes. You should start from TBS and move to TLA with data transfer, either password or link. Main reason is that i've changed stat growth for characters, especially the Luck stat, which doesn't grow at all in the vanilla game. Your characters need to level up in Reloaded all the way from Lv1.

Q: I am in the mid of my Reloaded playthrough and the mod got an update. Can I continue on the new version?
A: Unless the notes on a the new release states otherwise, yes, you can always switch to the newest release an continue as if nothing happened. Remember that you must always apply patches to a vanilla rom though.

Q: Does password transfer from TBS work?
A: Almost flawlessly. The only thing that isn't carried over is the amount of Mountain water. It will always transfer only 1 for each character that has it.

Q: Is there a faster method than typing a Gold Password by hand?
A: You bet there is. Download the Golden Sun Passwords tool. It can save your passwords in memory format, which can be imported into any emulator that has a "Memory Viewer/Editor" function. Read the txt that comes with the program for the actual method. Please DO NOT reply to this thread for issues with this method because it has nothing to do with the mod. Make a new thread or reply to an existing one about this specific matter.

Q: Which items should i transfer from TBS to TLA?
A: Setting the obvious Psynergy granting items aside, most endgame gear from TBS is on par with the stuff that the TLA team is wearing at the time they join (unlike vanilla), so definitively bring those. Also, here's a list of items that can't be obtained in TLA unless transferred (unique effects & missable endgame gear bolded):

Arctic Blade
Asura's Armor
Aura Gloves
Bandit's Sword
Blessed Mace
Cell Key
Cleric's Ring (Angel's Ring in Reloaded)
Demon Axe
Demon Mail
Dragon Shield
Elven Rapier
Elven Shirt
Fairy Ring
Feathered Robe
Fur Coat
Gaia Blade
Hermes Water/Empty Bottle
Lucky Cap
Lure Hat
Muramasa
Mystery Blade
Ninja Garb (Black Garb in Reloaded)
Oracle's Robe (Princess Robe in Reloaded)
China/Sanan Dress (Cheongsam in Reloaded)
Spiked Armor
Thunder Crown
Vambrace
Vulcan Axe
Warrior's Helm
Water Jacket
Wicked Mace

I was trying to add new abilities to the merman line to differentiate things a bit, but i noticed that they stand still for most of them and i don't really like that. I want them to use the same animation they use for Hydro Slash and attacking for other abilities as well.

Basically make animation 3 of the merman line sprite a carbon copy of their animation 2, just like how the lizardmen line works.

My random guess (read: hope) is that enemy sprites use a pointer table to reference their animations so the whole thing can be fixed by changing a few bytes

So far i tried looking for sprite data at 08300000, which is too short to hold them all, and at 0802E91C but there's no info about what these number represents.

Long story short... does anybody know where/how enemy sprites and their animations are stored?

Thanks in advance

I just noticed that on the overworld, in the land outside Treasure Isle, the monster groups battled here are the same battled on land in the Western Sea instead of Eastern Sea. Basically, both Treasure Isle and Hesperia/Atteka/etc load the groups from 080EEECC-080EEEEA (groups 4E-4F).
My question is: does anybody know which instruction must be tweaked to change the encounters outside Treasure Isle (to match Western Eastern Sea for example)?

EDIT: fixed

[What you'll need:]

Hi guys. This small tutorial will show how to make new icons using Fox's Icon Compressor (download from here, in the attachment)

What you'll need:
- Visual Boy Advance-M
- Golden Sun Rom
- BACKUP of your Golden Sun Rom
- Hex Editor
- Atrius' Golden Sun: The Lost Age Editor
- Fox's GS Icon Compressor

Preparation
I'll start by making Boon by editing Ply so i'll use Mia in her base class for this tutorial.
Download GS Icon Compressor, open it to view its content and look for gsiconcompressor.exe here: "gsiconcompressor\gsiconcompressor\bin\Release" (there is no need to extract the whole folder cause that file in the only one we need). Extract it somewhere (Desktop?).

Open your Golden Sun Rom in VBA-M. Enter the status screen, select a character by pressing A twice, in order to make the psynergy screen show.  Once you're in the right screen, from the tools menu open the Palette Viewer, the Tile Viewer and the Memory Viewer. From the Tile Viewer, select 0x6010000 under "char base": you should see the psynergy icons split up horizontally somewhere in the small screen in the upper right corner. Click on the first one from Ply and it will show up in the bottom-left screen. Copy the address shown in the Tile Viewer and paste it into the Memory Viewer.

Your screen should look something like this now.

From Ply to Boon
If you understood everything until now, you're more than halfway done, cause now comes the easy part.
HERE you can see that the only difference between Ply and Lord Squirtle's Boon is that the 3 small light blue particles become purple (download the gif and zoom it a lot to check). From the Tile Viewer, we know that light blue corresponds to the digit "7", while purple is "9" (see pic linked above). This means that if you change the three "7"s to "9"s inside the memory viewer, the blue particles will become purple (since those 3 particles are the only light blue pixels of the icon, we don't even have to worry that we change something else by mistake)! Do it and click on the VBA screen to see the change! (here's how it should look). The icon editing is done, but now we need to put the new icon back into the ROM.

Saving the icon
Saving the icon means dump the bytes from the Memory Viewer. Click on "Save". The "Address" is the address from where the dump starts: it has to match the start of the icon, so it's the address of the top-left corner of the icon in the Tile Viewer (the same one we pasted into the memory viewer). "Size" is always 80. Save it in the same folder of gsiconcompressor.exe.

Compressing the icon and putting it back into the ROM
First, make a backup of your dump. The compressor overwrites the input file so, in case something goes wrong, you won't have to start from scratch. Drag the dump into the compressor, and after ~1 second you'll have your compressed icon, ready to be put back into the game.

Now, open both your Golden Sun ROM and the compressed dump with an Hex Editor (I use Hex Workshop). We need some free space where we can put the icon into. Usually there's a lot of it near the end of the ROM. I'll use the space from "00FA0000" onwards. Within the Hex Editor, copy the whole hex part of the icon and paste it at 00FA0000 into the ROM. BE CAREFUL: Do not add nor remove bytes from the ROM. You have to overwrite the bytes! If you make the ROM bigger or smaller here, it won't work anymore! Check its size before and after you've pasted the dump into it! Result

Okay, so now we have our new icon into the ROM, so the only things left is to tell the game to use it. Open your edited ROM with Atrius' Editor. From the abilities screen, click on a random ability and then on its icon. Sadly, there's no free space to add new icons but we can replace an unused one (Magnet, Reflect or Arrow). Let's replace Reflect: count the icons, and you'll see that reflect is the 94th icon of the list (start counting from 0). Remember that number.

Open your Edited Rom with the Hex Editor again and go to the address 00054A14. This is the where the Ability Icon Pointer Table starts. Each sequence of 4 bytes is an address that tells the game where in the rom should look for the icon, stored in little endian (single bytes, each made of 2 digits, are in reverse order), with a 08 in the beginning (you see it at the end of it due to little endian) of the address. But how do we know which address is the one for Reflect? It's simple! Remember that Reflect was the 94th icon? Each address is made of 4 bytes so 94*4=376, which in hex is 178 (Windows' calculator can easily do these conversions). Now, since the table starts at 00054A14 (it's the address of the first ability icon, the red X), if we add 178 to it we'll have the address of the Reflect Icon. Our address is 00054A14+178 = 00054B8C.

We have to overwrite the 4 bytes at 00054B8C with the address of our new icon (remember? 00FA0000), but first we must add a 08 at the beginning, and convert it to little endian. So 00FA0000 -> 08FA0000 -> 0000FA08. Write 0000FA08 at 00054B8C (again, do NOT add nor remove bytes: overwrite them).

Before --- After

Congrats! Now you can open your ROM with the editor and use your new icon for any ability as normal!

For item icons
The process is IDENTICAL, but the item icon pointer table starts at 0004EB58 instead.

PS Tell me if something is wrong, not clear, etc... it's the first tutorial I've ever made :P. As for grammar or syntax blunders, tell me about those with a PM instead of replying here and i'll fix them, so we can keep the thread clean.

[As of January 2017 this mod is discontinued since it became part of Golden Sun Reloaded, which can be found HERE.]

As of January 2017 this mod is discontinued since it became part of Golden Sun Reloaded, which can be found HERE.

The thread is being kept as is only for archive purposes.

Class System & Characters: A lot of new classes, stat bonuses in 5% steps. Full separation implemented in TLA: no more partial classes. Characters' base stats rearranged. Magic Resistance stat implemented. UPDATED
[spoiler=Classes & Characters]
Detailed class chart HERE.
HERE instead, you can find a txt file that lists every perfect class setup (hence, no djinn wasted) that can be created in TLA with this mod.

Felix's and Sheba's starting classes now are different from Isaac's and Ivan's respectively. Inspiration for their classes (both in names and spells) was taken from Rolina's Class Tweaks for TLA.
Jenna and Piers have a completely new set of classes made almost entirely from scratch: Jenna's classes are mostly mage-oriented while Piers' are mostly warrior-oriented.

Implemented 5% steps in stat increases instead of 10%, added a 6th tier to every two-element class and got rid of partial classes in TLA.

Each class line has a Magic Resistance value (WRD in the class doc). It acts as a multiplier and reduces or increases damage taken from Base Damage attacks.

A fourth three-elemental class has been added to EVERYONE, to fill the djinn combination gap left by the other three. So, Venus/Mars characters gain the 5 5 4 class and Jupiter/Mercury characters gain the 5 5 4 class.

Characters' base stats were rearranged to balance them out and at the same time make differences between them more striking, cause those changes are (for the most part) reflected by the stat multipliers of the base classes. For example:
Sheba is now everything that Ivan was: best caster and frailest character. Ivan also gained more attack. Piers improved with more PP and HP at the expense of Felix. Piers is also a better caster than Isaac now. Mia has now second best PP but also second worst ATK.

In TLA, Felix and Sheba start at level 4, Jenna at 3 and Piers at 17. Piers levels up faster (while still being the slowest).
[/spoiler]

Items & Equipment: Added entirely new items and the formerly non-acquirable items; tweaked MANY others.
[spoiler=Items]Almost every piece of equipment has been tweaked.

Former unacquirable items added: Herbed Shirt, Divine Camisole, Casual Shirt, Ninja Sandals, Knight's Greaves, Silver Greaves.

New items: Sol Ring (= Dark Dawn's Lord Sun's Ring), Luna Ring (= Dark Dawn's Lady Moon's Ring), Iridial Ring (increases max PP and restores PP each turn), Wind Ring (Boosts Agility), Caladbolg (mercury-unleashing Long Sword), Ker's Weight (cursed venus-unleashing staff), Herculean Axe (from DD), Alecto's Mace (mars-aligned Mace), Dark Robe (cursed robe), Mind Ribbon and Mountain water (info here).

The Sol, Luna, and Iridal ring replace the non-acquirable Soul Ring, Aroma Ring and Rainbow Ring.
The Wind Ring replaces the Sleep Ring.
The Herculean Axe replaces the Stellar Axe.
The Caladbolg is now the fourth strongest Long Sword after Sol Blade, Darksword and Excalibur. It was added to address the lack of strong Mercury-based unleashes left by the significant nerf the Masamune received.
Alecto's Mace was added to increase endgame weapon variety.
Ker's Weight and Dark Robe were added to complete the set of cursed items. You can now use your cleric's ring to make either a cursed warrior or a cursed mage.

Each piece of equipment found/bought in the game is stronger than anything (of the same type) you could find at an earlier point in the game and weaker than anything found later. Shops have been changed accordingly. In TLA this has been enforced even more: Isaac's team no longer wields utter crap weapon-wise when it joins.

Equipment categories: Weapons

• Long Swords: standard weapon (Sol Blade +180 Atk, Darksword +190 Atk)
• Light Blades: -Atk +Agility (Tisiphone Edge +167 Atk, +15 Agility)
• Axes: + Atk -Def (Herculean Axe +187 Atk, -10 Def)
• Maces: -Atk, -5% Unleash Rate, +MaxHP/Power/Res (Rising Mace +172 Atk, +20 MaxHP, +15 MePower/MeRes)
• Staves: --Atk, +5% Unleash Rate, +MaxPP/Power (Ker's Weight +151 atk, +30 VPower, +18 MaxPP)
• Ankhs: --Atk, +5% Unleash Rate, +Power/Luck (Clotho's Distaff, +139 atk, +25 MePower, +7 Luck)

Other notable changes

• A much needed way to increase Venus power has been added in the form of Titan Gloves (+30) and Muni Robe (+20 Pow/+30 Res).
• Aeolian Cassock is no longer completely overshadowed by Feathered Robe (+25 JPower / +50 JRes, and Feathered robe is only +15 JPower now).
• Berserker Band now increases MaxPP, while the Attack increase went to Alastor's Hood instead. This was done to complement the PP Multiplier implemented. I want offensive casters to favor the Berserker Band in place of the Psychic Circlet.
• Cursed items have greatly improved BUT Cleric's Ring lowers Luck by 10. Great power comes with a price after all. Plus i really like the fact that this way the Paladin and Holy Knight are discouraged from wearing those "dark" items 'cause it would make them even more susceptible to Death. Pretty iconic, isn't it? :p

And many other minor tweaks.[/spoiler]

Unleashes: Chance to trigger reduced, strongest got nerfed, added damage type got buffed. Unleashing mages are now a viable option.
[spoiler=Unleashes]The base unleash rate is now 30%.

Unleash rate can be maxed to 98% only with the following set: Fear Helm (15) + Valkyrie Mail/Stealth Armor (15) + Terra Shield (15) + Ninja Sandals (15) + Sol Ring (8). But the Sol Ring is unique and you'll probably use the Cleric's Ring to counter the curse, so the curse-free max is a 90% unleash rate. The generic set is instead Mythril Helm (12) + Mythril Clothes (12) + Riot Gloves (15) + Ninja Sandals (15) = 84% standard unleash rate.

Armageddon's (Megiddo) multiplier is now x2.6, Ceres' Legend and Heaven Vengeance had their added damage GREATLY nerfed. Added damage type unleashes got buffed (mostly, in some cases a nerf was required instead) to make the added damage be slightly less than half the attack bonus of the weapon.

Some unleashes had their element changed. Among the most notable ones, Acheron's Grief changed to Jupiter and High Vitals to Mercury.

Every unleash of non-staff weapons that can be found only AFTER Jupiter Lighthouse uses a multiplier to increase damage.
Staves' unleashes are ALL base damage type: their power ranges from 45 (Milky Cloud) to 280 (Soul Doom).

Mythril armlet raises the unleash rate by 25%.
[/spoiler]

Psynergy: Added new psynergies. PP cost changed for almost all psynergies. Base damage spells' power is increased by a flat multiplier. Reviving tweaked, group healing heavily nerfed. Power and Resistance cap raised to 255. Resistance buffs and debuffs nerfed. UPDATED
[spoiler=Psynergy]New psynergies: Tyrfing (Venus equivalent of Quick Strike), Meltdown (Mars equivalent of Quick Strike), Veil/Screen (Mercury equivalent of Ward/Resist), Punishment series (Single target Jupiter base damage spells, base power 50, 135 and 240 for each tier), Wave series (Multi target Mercury base damage spells, base power 45, 100 and 190 for each tier. Replaces the Cool series), Boon series (from DD), Raise (Mars equivalent of Revive) and Remedy (a single target Tonic).

PP cost for base damage psynergies recalculated from scratch with a custom made formula I wrote in order to make Power weight more than range.

Buffs and Debuffs cost slightly more, as well as Multiplier-type psynergies.

Resistance buffs and debuffs increase and decrease resistance by 15/30 instead of 20/40, and it caps at +-60 instead of +-80.

Group healing and reviving psynergies cost MUCH more, as well as the strongest single target healing psynergies. Pure Wish, Pure Ply and Nature Boon also had their base power reduced. Reviving effects now have ALL a 100% success rate BUT Revive, Raise, Water of Life, Lich and Phoenix revive only to 50% HP.

The Necromancer's Call Demon/Dullahan are base damage type spells. Call Dullahan is now the strongest base damage psynergy in the game. The Pierrot's Card and Juggle series are also stronger. Frost Card, at 210 base power, is the strongest Mercury base damage psynergy in the game.

Drain and Psy Drain are stronger and never miss.

The new base damage formula is Damage = Old Damage Formula * (1+(MaxPP/1024)). There are a lot of benefits granted by this, namely:

• Base Power spells now can keep up with attack-based damage.
• The damage grows as characters level up.
• Mage-like classes do more damage with those psynergies than Warrior-like classes.
• PP increasing equipment are no longer completely overshadowed by PP regenerating equipment. Offensive casters will now favor PP increases, while healers will opt for PP regeneration.

And many other minor tweaks.[/spoiler]

Debuffs: Infliction rates changed. Haunt, Delusion and Death Curse are stronger.
[spoiler=Debuffs]Base infliction rates:

Drop attack         120%
Drop defense        120%
Drop resistance     120%
Poison              65%
Venom               65%
Delusion            60%
Stun                45%, 150%
Sleep               40%
Seal                55%, 130%
Haunt               60%
Death               20%
Death Curse         55%
HP to 1             35%*
Ignore Defense      50%*
Force target OOB    40%
Ulysses' paralyze   150%

*not affected by Luck

150% Stun is from Azul; 130% Seal is from Luff and Rime.

Haunt triggering rate is now 40%. Characters wrapped in Delusion can't unleash and regular attacks miss 70% of the time instead of 60%. Death Curse's countdown starts at 4 instead of 7.
[/spoiler]

Djinn & Summons: Summon rushing isn't possible anymore, summons have been rebalanced. Most Djinn have improved, the strongest ones were nerfed. UPDATED
[spoiler=Djinn & Summons]Summons' HP% Damage nerfed from 3% per Djinn to 2% per Djinn (Daedalus: 5% the first attack and 10% the missile instead). Moreover it has been further reduced against the strongest bosses (those with HP > 10,000).

Summons Base power is 35-70-130-220 for the standard 4, Zagan 60, Megaera 65, Flora 120, Moloch 125, Ulysses 200, Eclipse 300, Haures 310, Coatlicue 400, Dedalus 120+320, Azul 460, Catastrophe 480, Charon 540, Iris 600.

Summons that require more than 2 djinn won't appear right at the start of a battle. After the first turn, 3-djinn summons become available; after the second, 4-djinn summons become available and so on, with Iris available after the 7th turn has passed.

Catastrophe requires 7 djinn to be summoned (5 Ju, 2 Me), Charon 8 (6 Ve, 2 Ju) and Iris 10 (6 Ma, 4 Me).

Djinn chart. Short summary: Stat increases have been balanced between djinn, overall slightly less HP and slightly more PP and Luck. Djinn that increase more PP increase less HP and vice-versa. ALL damaging Djinn are now multiplier based and are stronger than before (they ALL range from x1.6 to x2.3).

Reflux is now multi-target. Shade and Flash reduce damage respectively by 50% and 66% instead of 60% and 90%. Vine, Mud, Gasp and Fury deal base damage. Ember restores 10% of PP, Ether 35% and Aroma 12,5%. Balm and Spark revive to 50% HP instead of 60%. Crystal heals 60% of HP.
[/spoiler]

Enemies: Stronger in general. New enemies added.
[spoiler=Enemies]
In TBS each enemy has around x1,45 HP, x1,20 Atk, x1,15 Def, x1,20 Agi.
In TLA each enemy has around x1,55 HP, x1,30 Atk, x1,25 Def, x1,30 Agi.
Those values might vary for some enemies, especially in TLA.

Each enemy that uses psynergy has maxPP equal to its levelx5 (if it isn't already higher) so it can benefit from the PP Multiplier. Others, mainly bosses, were tweaked accordingly. Enemies that could potentially run out of PP during a battle were granted PP regeneration to effectively grant them infinite PP (every Djinn in both games, to say the first that come to mind).

For some enemies (especially in TLA), the element they're weak to got changed.

TLA's superbosses are especially more menacing than before.

The monsters have now a higher chance to use their special abilities and some bosses use new skills or stronger version of the skills they already had. Some monsters and bosses and most Djinn have multiple turns.

New enemies:
Brutal Wolf replaces Creeper in the Air's Rock interior.
Nue can be found at Yampi Desert Cave.
Bane Wight can be found at Islet Cave.
Aeshma can be found at Anemos Inner Sanctum.
[/spoiler]

Drops: Notable drops that changed from the original version.
[spoiler=Drops]

Mad Plant (Lv 28)        -> Herbed Shirt       1/1
Chimera Worm (Lv 38)     -> Rising Mace        1/128
Grave Wight (Lv 40)      -> Ninja Sandals      1/128
Sea Hedgehog (Lv 36)     -> Tear Stone         1/64
Gillman Lord (Lv 36)     -> Caladbolg          1/256
Raptor (Lv 35)           -> Casual Shirt       1/64
Blue Dragon (Lv 32)      -> Mist Potion        1/64
Puppet Warrior (Lv 36)   -> Knight's Greaves   1/128
Magicore (Lv 28)         -> Spirit Gloves      1/128*
Grand Chimera (Lv 34)    -> Silver Greaves     1/128
Devil Frog (Lv 35)       -> Divine Camisole    1/128
Nue (Lv 37)              -> Alecto's Mace      1/128
Bane Wight (Lv 38)       -> Dark Robe          1/256
Aeshma (Lv 40)           -> Ker's Weight       1/256

Balrog                   -> Sol Ring           1/1
Sentinel                 -> Luna Ring          1/1
Star Magician            -> Iridial Ring       1/1
Dullahan                 -> Mind Ribbon        1/1

*TLA Only. In GS it still drops the Aura Gloves.
[/spoiler]

 Terms: Fixed some translation mistakes or deliberate (but unjustified) changes from the japanese version.
[spoiler=Terminology]
The document that helped me fix the translation mistakes: http://www.gamefaqs.com/gba/468548-golden-sun/faqs/53706

Classes
See the document liked in the Class System & Characters section

Items

• Psynergy Rod -> Psychic Rod
• China Dress -> Cheongsam
• Ninja Garb -> Black Garb
• Oracle's Robe -> Princess Robe
• Mirrored Shield -> Mirror Shield
• Adept's Helm -> Ceres' Helm
• Ninja Hood -> Black Hood
• Lucky Cap -> Ninja Headband
• Thunder Crown -> Devil's Crown
• Silk Shirt -> Silk Bustier
• Cleric's Ring -> Angel Ring
• Levatine -> Laevateinn
• Cloud Brand -> Murakumo
• Fireman's Pole -> Matoi
• Festival Coat -> Festival Happi
• Phantasmal Mail -> Arcadia Mail
• Terra Shield -> Terror Shield
• Berserker Band -> Berserk Circlet
• Knight's/Silver Greave -> Knight's/Silver Greaves
• Orihalcon -> Orichalcum
• Tomegathericon -> Necronomicon

Unleashes

• Aqua Sock -> Aqua Strike
• Barrage -> Explosion
• Broil -> Fire Attack
• Poison Death -> Deadly Poison
• Murk -> Milky Cloud
• Psy Leech -> Psynergy Leech
• Frost Bite -> Frostbite
• Megiddo -> Armageddon
• Legend -> Ceres' Legend
• Vengeance -> Heaven Vengeance
• Hearthbreak -> Death Call
• Sarcophagus -> Pharaoh's Curse
• Apocalypse -> Final Judgement

Psynergy and Enemy Abilities

• Blast (Nova) -> Starburst
• Fire Puppet -> Fear Puppet
• Death Size -> Death Scythe
• Soothing Star -> Healing Spores
• Thrash -> Ribbit Stomp
• X Blessing -> X Breath (as in Fire Blessing to Fire Breath)
• Storm Breath -> Thunder Breath
• Mad Spatter -> Mud Spatter
• Mortal Blow -> Suicide Sting
• Black Ice -> Black Blizzard
• Formina Sage -> Fulminous Edge
• True Collide -> Dark Contact
• Earnest Ply -> Pure Ply

Enemies

• Mauler, Ravager, Grisly -> Grizzly, Brown Bear, Savage Bear
• Dread hound, Cerebus, Fenrir -> Cerberus, Hell Hound, Fenrir
• Serpent -> Orochi
• Valukar -> Balrog

Locations

• Gondowan Cave -> SE Karagol Cave
• Tunnel Ruins -> Venus Ruins
• Altin Peak -> Altin Mines

Moreover, a few lines of dialogue that were clearly wrong have been fixed.
[/spoiler]


 Download Links:
Patch for Golden Sun: The Broken Seal. http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=70
Patch for Golden Sun: The Lost Age. http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=71

 Patches Used:

• Psy Drain Icon by me
• Bronze icons for bronze equipment by me
• Steam Graphic Fix by me
• Base Damage Multiplier by me
• Advanced Reviving by Lord Squirtle
• Animation 48 - Jupiter Healing 1 by Lord Squirtle
• Curse Duration Modifier: 4 Turns by Lord Squirtle
• Simple Summons by Lord Squirtle
• Simple Success Rates by Lord Squirtle
• Wave Animation by Lord Squirtle
• Parts of The Lost Age Rebalance 2013 by Erik the Appreciator
• Parts of Golden Sun Rebalance 2012 by Erik the Appreciator
• Blacksmith Price Fix by Atrius
• A tweaked Class Separation Patch