Messages

Ohhhh gotcha. I forgot there was more than one of him! You're right it was the one in the catacombs.

Separate question/error maybe? I thought from the drops section the Mad Plant was supposed to always drop the Herbed Shirt. "Mad Plant (Lv 25)        -> Herbed Shirt       1/1" But I just beat it and it only dropped a game ticket. I tried again, even making sure I took it out with a mars Djinn and it still only dropped the ticket.

[Ailment]

Not mechanically; just some items have shifted around. The trick to save right before you talk to Sunshine and keep resetting until you get the desired item still works (or memory viewing if you're into that).

I hate the forging system so much. It's so time consuming trying to get the one thing you want over and over.

Bosses are now more vulnerable to debuffs that reduce their Attack, Defense and Agility and for longer than just 1 or 2 rounds. They are still immune to Poison/Venom (because otherwise these would be brokenly overpowering), and depending on the boss in question it is also easier to apply Seal, Stun, Sleep or Delusion. Different bosses have different debuff weaknesses in other words. Keep in mind that the new stat Ailment increases your chances of applying a debuff. Ailment is mostly found on cursed equipment, but you can find it on other items as well.
Djinn are susceptible to Stun, Seal and Sleep. I can confirm this because this was my go-to way to defeat them on Hard mode where they wreak havoc with their multitarget psynergies. It's just a matter of RNG if you get it to work because the creature does a Luck vs. Ailment check. I cannot say for Poison and Venom because I have not used these at all outside of weapon unleashes.

I'm just not a fan of useless psynergy. The game has a lot of "bloat" psynergy that's just pointless and I was kinda under the impression that the mod was intended to help open up the options to allow for for more strategy but it seems "Heal" and "hit hard" are the only two options, it's just a matter of which character does which.

In my experience bosses would not use Break with only 1 or 2 buffs; instead if everyone in the party was buffed (ie. 4 buffs) then they use it. So you can "fool" the AI by buffing with Guard your 2 most vulnerable characters. This is different than vanilla where I think some enemies/bosses would use Break even if you weren't buffed at all.

Ah I think I understand. To me, buff bloating is like 3 or 4 full party boosts, not ONE full party boost. That's 1 buff not 4 by the way I look at it. So it feels more like I'm being punished for trying to support my party AT ALL.

This is different from my experience. Dual element classes generally make your characters more durable; not significantly compared to mono-element but definitely easier to avoid one-shots when your djinn count is low. Of course the downside is that summoning is harder to pull off properly because you may spend more time in weaker classes, but the lack of Djinn Blast / Djinn Storm in The Broken Seal means that you do not face any serious trouble.
Regarding your attempt to use dual-classes without success, I notice that you mention Ivan and Mia as classes with 5 djinn, and Garet as a class with 9 djinn. I will assume that you mean Garet is Samurai and not Ronin (renamed Shogun in the mod). In other words you empowered Isaac and Garet who are already more durable by design, at the expense of survivability on your more fragile characters. I did the exact opposite and instead used the following: Ivan - Wise, Isaac - Black Knight, Garet - Star Knight, Mia - Thaumaturge. You will notice that everyone is more durable compared to their mono-element class except for Garet. This also gave me 2 healers that alternate healing depending on if one of them needs to do some other supportive action.
Also a great tip: Dull and Blunt are amazing against bosses. I have a screenshot at home where Deadbeard hits Ivan for just 2 points of damage. For reference check this post of mine from last year. I wonder why I never uploaded it.

I think I see what you mean, and yes I miss-remembered the names of the lower levels for Samurai my bad. My problem was even with them as beefy as I could get them, they were still the two getting downed the most (with Mia and Ivan being at the ends they were getting hit the most). I tried to use Dull on FD but it didn't work at all. It did help a bit with Deadbeard. I think GS1 is just always going to be more limited class-wise compared to TLA and that's what I was feeling most.

There is no "wrong" way to play, just less optimal. Of course there are always faster and/or easier ways, but the great thing about the mod is that it allows many strategies and classes to work assuming the party is properly arranged. For example you mention that battles drain you a lot of PP through Wish, which can be resolved by switching to classes with higher passive damage mitigation, or by alternating Granite/Flash as you mention, or by spamming Ember and Psynergy Crystals, or by equipping items with PP-regen, or by using defensive buffs on your characters or by applying debuffs on enemies!

-=EDIT=-
As always, I take so damn long to complete a reply that Caledor has already answered everything  

Caledor is a beast, they answered while I was actually editing my first post! I never expected a reply so quickly it was kinda awesome.  

I think I'm getting a better picture of the choices from that. I think the area around Kimobo is kinda a weird spot anyway in terms of options. Once I get on the boat I might feel like I have a bit more to work with.

Think of them as stat- and class-boosting djinn, not unlike a lot of the offensive ones. In fact, with the exception of Granite/Shade/Flash, Ember/Ether/Aroma, Ground/Petra, Salt/Tonic, Kite, Haze and Eddy, I have not unleashed any of the other djinn

Yeah that still really feels like a waste.

I will mention from experience that Doom Dragon is defeatable on the mod, on Hard mode, at level40, with duo-element classes, without using a single Summon. Key points:
- All 8 characters need to be somewhat equally durable
- The 4 members in the back party should all be able to fulfil a supportive role
- Right after Djinn Blast, switch the character with a character in the back. Once the "main" character has recovered enough djinn, switch them back to the front
- After Djinn Storm, bring the back party to the front 1-by-1 and use Defend on the characters who do not have multitarget healing. Their output will not be worth the incoming damage.
- Your strategy should not be to maximize damage per round to make the battle last fewer turns, but instead to have enough survivability to be back at full HP at the end/start of every round. This means that even your main damage-dealing character should only deal damage if there is no helpful support action they can take.
- If your main healer is about to run out of PP, bring a back-party character in their spot until PP-regen does its thing. With over 40PP/round in end-game gear and Ether/Aroma/Ember, you have virtually infinite PP.
- Do not ignore items. Potions are very powerful 0-PP-cost ST heals. Vials are good alternatives.

I cannot tell about Dullahan as I have yet to defeat him, but it's not Djinn Storm that's the most dangerous move...

Yeah I'm more concerned about Dullahan. My experience with him is he uses Djinn Storm probably once every other turn (Sometimes you get lucky and he does it twice in the same turn or immediately the next turn and uses up his attacks) so you have to do the entire battle without your Djinn. And in doing so, you have no choice but to use the base classes because otherwise you'll just be a mess as you get bounced around between junk class to junk class with no control over it. If that's the case here too then there's no point in trying to strategize with any of the new fun classes like Jenna and Piers' because I don't get to use them anyway. At that point even considering anything that's not the base class is just a liability. That's why with him it's always best to just summon rush him at the beginning of the battle because you ain't touchin' those djinn again for the rest of the fight. Since that's not an option in this mod well... I have worries.

Please note none of my feedback is intended to be unkind. I think Caledor has done some amazing work here, and I don't want to diminish that at all. I just have some concerns from my current perspective and I feel a little disheartened after finding out that the amount of useless djinn and psynergy has increased not decreased.

Hey there! Thank you for the quick response! It's a shame that only a couple hacks are still active on this site but I'm glad yours is one.

Correct, due to the Golden rule of equipment, Orihalcon can only be obtained after teleport.

Ah man what a shame, there were only ever 2 items that Orihalcon could ever go to and I was hoping to have reason/chance to see any of the other Orihalcon equips.

Nope, the mechanics are unchanged.

Darn. Well I guess Save States will make running in and out of Yallam 90 times to get Excalibur a little faster lol. I really wish there was a mod that made that process less tedious, since it's by far the most annoying thing in the entirety of TLA.

Debuffs are specifically stat debuffs. Status afflictions like stun and poison still won't work cause they'd make most battles trivial.

So besides a couple early djinn fights what's the point of the afflictions? I'm not going to waste a turn inflicting an ailment on a random monster I could just be killing instead and if they can't affect bosses they're just taking up space in the psynergy screen. Also that makes the affliction djinn all but useless. Perhaps the ones that aren't functional anymore (i.e. anything that's not Luff since it still seems to be 100% of the time) should have their abilities changed since the afflictions don't affect anything that matters? I was excited for being able to use some of those psynergies like Haunt (since you even buffed it), Sleep, Stun, and Poison especially since you added it. Do you intend for status ailments to only be used against the party? Now it kind of feels like the only available strategy is just "hit as hard as you can over and over until it dies".

This is true. In many cases i moved Break to an enemy ability slot with a lower chance to be picked at any given turn.

I did not experience that, it was an IMMEDIATE punishment. I buff, they break, I buff, they break. It was as, if not more consistent than vanilla. At least in the Saturos & Menardi and Fusion Dragon fights. As I mentioned above the immediate predictability of Break was the main thing that helped me beat Fusion Dragon.

Probably just a hard time adapting to the increased difficulty? Dunno if you ever played Hard mode TLA before but this mod is slightly harder than that for reference. Other than that i really dunno why someone would fall back to base classes after the midgame, mainly because i abandon them around 4-5 djinn per characters in GS1, in TLA even earlier since you start getting Mercury Djinn before getting Piers. And even in GS1 there are some early game boss fights where certain class setups are basically ingrained in me by now... like Defender Isaac against Saturos for Cutting Edge (and switch back to Knight afterwards) or double Ruffian/Savage against Hydro Statue, spamming Planet Diver like madmen, while Ivan buffs resistance and Mia heals.

I dunno, I played Hard Mode many times in vanilla TLA but never really felt like I was trapped into the new playable characters being Wish Well, Granite, Flash, and Isaac haha. Some of the earlier fights I could play around with classes, I certainly did with Saturos and Tret, but after that I was locked in for the majority of the time. I think it was around Hydros statue that I was like, "This is fun and all but I NEED to use the base classes, I literally can't win without them." The base classes are reliable and tend to be the only ones that have reliable healing and damage especially since it is usually a solid choice of use djinn and summons or use unique classes but never both. You want unique classes? Your Djinn are dead to you. You want to summon something? Better be in base class the whole fight or suddenly your only healer has nothing but Astral Blast and a dream.

My other concern that just occurred to me because of that is Djinn Storm later on. One of the main reasons to use nothing but base classes in TLA is the later bosses, especially Dullahan, using Djinn Storm. You added all these fun and exciting new changes but will I get to use them during the final battles or am I going to have to switch back to base classes for those like always?

Hey there! I have a couple of questions on the mechanics of the mods here!  
I finished GS1 and quite enjoyed it for the most part and I'm rolling into GS2 and I'm a ways in and I wanted to run past a couple of things that you mentioned in the details on the first post just to make sure I understand a couple of the changes. I'm kinda wondering if some of the notes there are out of date?

1: With the changes, Orihalcon can no longer be obtained from the Hammit event? Doesn't that mean there's only like 1 or 2 in the game you can find otherwise then?

2: Was there any change to the god-awful forging system itself?

3: You said in the description one goal was that "Debuffs are now useful against bosses" was that idea scrapped? I noticed now that not only are the bosses that were immune before still immune, but bosses that weren't immune to debuffs before ARE now immune as are most regular enemies. It's a shame too because I like some of the ones you added like Ivan's Stun and Felix's Poison. I used Stun up until about Mogall Forest, especially to catch Djinn, but after that pretty much everything was immune to Stun so I stopped using it for the rest of the game (except for the occasional "Stun?   No Stun" just to see if it had changed)  since it was just a waste of a turn and I've tried multiple times to use Poison in TLA and it's never succeeded except for once against a basic enemy so I also stopped using it because it was a turn waster. I wasn't completely sure it wasn't just bad luck until the Storm Lizard that carries you to Crossbone Isle. Back in the day, when I was younger, I had a fairly reliable method for farming it that was basically hit it with the stun/sleep Djinn and Bane to poison it, kill it in like 2 or 3 turns, run back in, repeat. This almost always worked, give or take a couple tries, but I did notice now it was completely immune to sleep, stun, and poison as were other major bosses like Saturos and Menardi, and almost all of them are extremely resistant to the stat debuff psynergies too like Impair.   I've been seeing it in TLA too as even Fog, which almost always worked is now maybe only deluding enemies maybe 1 in 5 times and I think Blitz has only stunned 2 or 3 enemies since I got it and Char hasn't stunned any. Except you, ohhhh all it takes is a monster looking at you the wrong way and your whole party's poisoned, stunned, and asleep.

4: You also mention enemies using Break less often and thank goodness that didn't turn out to be the case. The only way I beat a couple bosses like Fusion Dragon was the fact they would use Break any time I'd get a single buff so I'd just bait them into wasting one of their attacks every turn Breaking me. So kinda a shame, I really wish I could use buffs against bosses, but also kinda a lifesaver? Was that idea scrapped too? As much as it got me through those fights I'd still like to play with buffs some time.

Anyway that's it for my questions.

As far as my thoughts/experience so far: Running through GS1 again with the mod was very fun. It was a "GS1 Hard Mode" for sure. Unfortunately, it didn't really change the experience much besides the added difficulty. Most of the added classes require 8+Djinn so really there wasn't much of them to be seen in GS1. The slight shuffles to the classes were interesting but unfortunately the added difficulty led to me being stuck with everyone in their base classes for most of the game because every time I experimented with classes I was just too weak to function. In the end, I would have had a way easier time beating Fusion Dragon if I'd kept everyone in their base classes. I forced myself to try to do something different so I used Ivan as my healer as a Savant, Isaac as a Ninja, Garet as a Ronin, and Mia as an Ascetic which was one of my old tried and trued combos from the original version. It honestly decreased the "Available options" since I had two characters that were all but dead to me as their only function was spamming Granite and Flash back and forth every turn, Ivan whose ONLY job was to use Wish since it uses up SO much PP with every use so it was Wish or nothing, and then having Isaac just spamming attacks and summons. That was the only way I was able to beat Deadbeard and Fusion Dragon. Even with that Granite/Flash spam, and Ivan dedicated to Wish, the only thing that got me past FD was putting the buff djinn on Isaac. So he'd use Breeze, FD would immediately waste one attack doing Break, he'd use Forge, Break again, basically throttling FD down to 1 attack per turn and then he'd follow it up with a summon since he was the only one dealing damage.

Also with the changes Revival items/psynergy in boss fights, especially end-game boss fights became useless. For example if Isaac went down during either of the last three battles in GS1. If I tried to rez him he'd be at barely any health and I couldn't heal him until next turn because then it would pause the stream of Granite/Flash barely keeping everyone alive, and whoops Outer Space, Isaac's dead again. If Garet or Mia went down that means no wall and whole party goes down next turn, and if Ivan goes down there's no healing for a turn so death ensues. Basically any time a character went down in one of those fights there was simply no coming back from it, reset. It is SUPER irritating to beat a boss that can haunt you, poison you, and deal 130-150 damage 2x per turn WITH Granite/Flash up without a single KO, especially since unless I got poisoned at max health it was basically guaranteed death. Water of Life is such a rare item, having it only res for 25% health makes no sense to me especially with nothing else giving you a full health revive.

I feel like TLA is going to be a bit better with the added Djinn so I can play with the classes and I ABSOLUTELY love the changes to the base classes so far, but as I return to pick up the Tomegathericon before getting the boat the inability to use debuffs or summon rushing is starting to lend me back to some forced patterns and I'm getting a little worried I'm not going to have much of a chance to really play with classes since Djinn - Djinn - Djiinn - Summon - Djinn - Djiinn - Djinn - Djiinn - Summon is starting to become my every single battle tactic since everything else just burns through PP that has to otherwise be dedicated to healing only (Sorry, Sheba and Jenna you have ONE job now and that is IT.) Am I playing the mod incorrectly, or am I missing something?

Thanks a lot guys, I really appreciate the info.
I remember not being able to change the map sprites before but now I totally am by double-clicking and I have no idea why I couldn't before.

You guys have well solved all of the problems I was having. I'll probably post if I have any more issues. Thank you so very much for the links and the tips. I feel so much left in the dark. Sorry that it took me a while to reply, my home no longer has internet so I can only check the forum and facebook and such while on campus. I'll read over the links tonight and see if I can pick up where I left off. Again, thanks so much!

Well hello there forum! I have been gone for a VERY long time. (My last year of college kinda kicked me in the face) I have some questions that I've tried to answer myself through going through previous threads or just screwing around with the editor myself, but I haven't found concrete answers so hopefully I can ask these WITHOUT annoying the pants off of anyone. Some of these are questions I think I had answers to before but I've forgotten over time.
First off: In the page for the downloads it goes up to version 0.4, but I have a folder with .5beta, is this something that I previously mislabeled, still a beta, or something finished? I seem to remember using this one to do my editing but I can't remember for sure and I want to make sure I'm using the right one.
Second: Did we ever figure out how to edit character map sprites or is that still beyond the Editor's capabilities?
Third: With the Class Separation Patch, how exactly does it work? Where do the classes split to so I can edit them individually? (I know I didn't have this one before)
Fourth: When using the items such as the Mysterious Card or Trainer's Whip the needed Djinn across the board are the same number, even though I know they have different requirements, how can I fix this? (I was going to use this as an optional easy way to give Isaac and Ivan unique classes without having to figure out the separation patch) I would like to set it so it just requires different amounts of one djinn or two. (Unless it's been so long that I quite literally forgot how these items worked with the djinn, but though I don't remember it requiring all 4 elements I could be entirely mistaken)
Fifth: So, we have some map editing from what I've seen throughout, but I didn't find a topic dedicated to how the map editing works. Has that been worked out or am I just VERY stupid and completely missed something?
Sixth: Is it possible to load in previously main character sprites as enemy sprites? I seem to remember being unable to do this before for some reason and so rather than having Felix and Jenna as enemies I just chose different Saturos and Menardi palettes for them (Though this might be because I had already altered the Felix and Jenna sprites to put in Karst and Agatio instead.)
Seventh: Somehow, while I was messing with things originally, I edited it so that Karst's character picture popped up instead of Jenna's when she talked. How on earth did I do that? I changed all the character speech and menu portraits for all the main characters. I've been looking all over the editor and I can't figure out for the life of me how I did that. Also, can it be done for npcs and enemy characters?
Last: Does the text viewer work to edit the in-game text? I'd like to change some things in there (without getting too crazy because DAMN that thing is confusing and it would take a loooot of work to heavily edit it) but I wanted to make sure it's safe before I start screwing with anything.

I wish I'd just kept up my editing so that all of my things didn't get mixed up but sadly life got in the way and now I'm almost as clueless as I was when I first started out. I'm not even sure where in the threads to pick up half of the info that I had before. So my sincerest apologies if I'm asking dumb questions. Thanks in advance for the help.
Az

Is that better? My apologies. Anyway, I hope that some of my experiences fighting with the sprites might be useful information to someone else later on.

A couple fun notes: For one, the editor has no undo button so if you screw something up it is ruined FOREVER. Two: there's an issue where if you change a sprite the wrong way or something else it screws up the rom so you can't get past either the black screen before the nintendo logo or past the camelot logo. This just happened and I can't fix it so I have to redo all the sprites I already entered.

(I'm mostly just recording observations for others to read at this point)

Karst has one of the most complex humanoid battle sprites in the entire game. She has several distinct hairs, a fairly complex color scheme and her scythe adds on an extra layer of difficulty to work with. Her scythe has very inconsistent colors, however. At some angles it's all grays, whites, and blacks, and others it has gold and red in some places that only white was at before. The animators actually took time to darken a pixil to give Karst a belly button.

Some characters have different orders to their sprites. For some it's standing sprites - attack sprites - psynergy sprites- taking damage sprites- and downed sprites. Others are random. Karst, Agatio, and Jenna share the exact same order, as do some others. However, the first 5 sprites are all the standing sprites on all battle sprites I've seen.

It is impossible to alter map sprites?

The editor is at least partially aware of the transparency on the sprites that I've been fighting with since the sprites when imported have an outline of transparent pixils around the outside of the sprite. For some reason all other transparent pixils around and inside the sprites are either turned white or black. Swapping the direction a sprite is facing in Paint.NET can actually change whether the transparent pixils are white or black but I have no idea how or why and it seems to be totally random but it remains consistent in each sprite, thankfully.

Agatio's front sprites must be flipped horizontally to match the main characters' like most other monsters. They face right rather than left. Karst's, however, don't for some inexplicable reason and in all cases the back sprites seem to face the same way.

Editing sprites is a MAGNIFICENT way to really realize the poses the characters take when casting psynergy or attacking, poses that usually flash by too quickly in-game.

The average number of sprites for a being that casts psynergy or uses special attacks is 17, not including the main characters' "downed" sprites, which no enemy has. One notable exception are the pirates, which only have 11.

There is no way to copy/paste ANYTHING in the editor as far as I can tell.

Sheba's hair goes very squared when she attacks, it makes me wonder if the notorious unknown blond portrait might have originally been intended for her.

The blasted load times when importing a sprite or filling a large area with transparency or color are VERY tiring.

That's all I've got for now.

Edit: New issue arises! I was doing just fine until I went to the desert. Lo and behold when I fought the scorpian, agatio's sprite randomly transformed into one of felix's swords. I have NO clue why this happened. After completely erasing the sword's sprite data, agatio has this weird habit of going invisible during the menu screen. He'll be standing there just fine then BLIP! invisible. I don't... know why... >< I can't seem to fix it either. After more testing I've discovered that it happens to whichever character is in my third slot. They blip into an item for some unknown reason. I.... think it might have been caused by my walk-through-walls cheat... somehow. I don't know how. But when cheats were disabled it stopped happening. I have no idea what just happened.

Sorry about the polyposting. I got a bit over excited.  

Yup. Exactly 64 x 64.


Update:
FWAHAHAH! I figured it out! The sprites, when imported, have a WHITE background rather than transparent. Even though the background is transparent in all editing programs I used, when it enters the editor the transparent pixils are replaced with solid white. For some reason this completely prevents them from loading properly. One must go in by hand to edit the white pixils back to transparent. I ran a test and it seems to work now so huzzah! Now to begin the arduous process of editing all the sprites so I can have the main characters I want to have! I even intend to edit the script if possible to switch the names! Wish me luck everypony!

Edit: The "everypony" up there was unintentional. Clearly I have been spending WAY too much time watching MLP...

I'm also going to have to work out what to do about their downed sprites since as enemies they have none of their own.

Misery: PNG is to the extend of my knowledge the only acceptable format. The player sheets don't work, they must be individual images from what I've grown to understand.

Kain: I can only think it's programming error since the sprites are the EXACT size, to the pixil. I checked.

Hello again everyone. After a VEEEERY long while I'm back. I've been using the .5 version of the Editor to try to replace Felix and Jenna's sprites with Agatio and Karsts, and if I can succeed at that I want to also use Saturos and Menardi. It's been a pet project of mine for a long time. I understand the compression thing but one thing I thought would work was using the editor, exporting Agatio's battle sprites as pngs, and then re-importing them on the character I want. It STILL just leaves an invisible character. What am I doing wrong? The image is the right size and everything, I checked. Someone haaaalp?

So an issue I've been having with the sprite editor thing. I thought I could use the Agatio sprites for one of the main characters if I exported them as an image and then imported them into the character's, but I still get a completely invisible character. Any idea why this is? I still have my dreams of playing through with Karst and Agatio as my main characters. Is it still a compression issue or am I just doing something wrong?

I see, thank you for explaining it. I'm still not positive if I understand it all but  it does make more sense than it did.

As to the 4 adept thing, I think I'd give each of them custom classes, maintaining their already established powers and giving them new ones as well. Each adept would have his/her own abilities. I don't mind working with just one class especially if I designed it.

Oh I see. Thank you. That's a shame, maybe sometime soon though :)

Also: I'm confused about the class editing. When I look at the class, Squire for example, it says it requires Venus level of 5! Shouldn't that be 0 or 1 since it's a base class? It's all a bit confusing, the numbers say 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13, but I know it requires 0, 2, 4, 6, and 8 djinni to get there. Am I missing something?
Has anyone posted a guide for this part because the guide doesn't mention this.

Hey I looked through the topics and I didn't SEE this but I have a feeling it's probably been asked, and I am sorry if it has been.
I was fiddling with this epic editor and I was wondering, can it be used to basically replace Felix, Jenna, Sheba, and Piers with Karst, Agatio, Saturos, and Menardi? Including battle sprites? I saw the video with the Kraden battle sprite which left me confused. Can you change your characters' battle sprites, and overworld sprites? I can't seem to figure out how to switch sprites around or anything like that. I'm sure I'm just being dense but this program really confuses me so I'm sorry. I was really hoping to run a playthrough with Agatio as the main, Karst replacing Sheba, and from there if Saturos and Menardi's sprites can't be used since they're from the first game I'd work something else out. I hope you can help me.
Thanks.