Messages

Thank you, Caledor!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year everyone!

"Always keep frequent backups" is something we learn... and I didn't do. Due to my own stupidity, I managed to lose my savefiles. So I go back from square 1... but the downloads do not seem to work. Both:

http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=downfile&id=86
http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=downfile&id=87

give me an "404 - Attachment not found" error.

-=EDIT=-
It seems like no download is working at all, not just for Reloaded mod. Looks like moderators needs to fix it.

Hey Leon, I believe that the hard part that you encounter is on your way from Bilibin to Imil, and especially the bears, right? If yes, then there is a non-grindy way to tackle this, but it does require a lot of travelling:
- Go to Kollima first as 3-man party. Clear the dungeon up to the boss while gathering all treasure and djinn. Do not fight Tret.
- Now go to Imil. When encountering the bears, defend with Ivan. You should have reached level 10 or 11 by now.
- Pick up Mia, clear Mercury Lighthouse and defeat Saturos.
- Go back and defeat Tret, and now proceed as normally with the game.
Semantically you could argue that I am hiding the grind in the part where I say to clear Kolima and then backtrack, but in a sense I am avoiding the concept of grinding as repeatedly fighting enemies to gain levels.

As you have probably guessed, the mod kind of assumes that the player is aware of the locations of all (or at least most) treasures and djinn. In order to make it easier for me, I gave Ivan a durable class and prioritized defensive equipment on him until mid-late game, even if at the expense of offense on everyone. Besides, battles taking 1 turn longer is better than resetting after every 2-3 battles  

-=EDIT=-
I just realized that my reply comes too late. But the idea of clearing everything and not leaving treasure behind is really helping in the long run. The other "bottlenecks" I encountered were the Hydro Statue in Altin and the lizard boss in Lamakan desert.
Of course, you should aim to get to Crossbone Isle before Tolbi and clear up to the 3rd basement. The boss of the 4th basement is hard to defeat so early in the game.

[Ailment]

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?

Correct. Orichalcum can be found on 2 chests in the mod and then as a rare drop from Sky Dragons in Anemos Sanctum if I remember correctly.

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

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).

3: Question regarding debuffs (snipped to save space)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 those same 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 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?

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  

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".

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

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.

This is true for both the vanilla version and the modded version. If you want to have an easy time with Summoning and Djinn unleashing, mono-element is the go-to way. Duo- and Tri-element classes exchange the burst of Summoning with higher durability, PP-longevity and more diverse toolkit per character (as in possessing psynergy of 2 or 3 elmenets and so having more characters that can deal extra damage to a specific target).

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?

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...

It's been some time since I last spammed    I just started Mars Lighthouse, but I'd like to provide some feedback. I think some have been discussed and already addressed, but my memory is hazy.

Djinn:
- When Psynergy-sealed, many djinn simply Defend, they do not use their normal Attack. But it's not a "proper" Defend that reduces the damage they receive.
- The Mars Djinni in Magma Rock (was it Fury?), even though not affected by any debuffs/status effects, started Defending a lot after around 8-10 rounds. Is it possible it ran out of PP due to its Psynergy costing more than what it recovers at the end of each round? I'll check if the 4 remaining end-game djinn also behave similarly.

Items with uses:
So far I have found 4 items with restorative effects: Nurse Cap, Faery Vest, Spirit Ring and Unicorn Ring.
- Both Nurse Cap and Faery Vest can be used out of combat, but only from characters that can equip them. This is identical to how these items behave in the unmodded game too.
- The Spirit Ring cannot be used out of combat. This is unlike the unmodded game where it can be used normally.
- The Unicorn Ring also cannot be used out of combat, again unlike the unmodded game. I suppose this is because its effect is party wide in the mod, and it does not have an accompanying Psynergy effect that can be used out of combat.
- Is the chance to break for an on-use item tied to the character's Luck stat? I have not actively tested it, but I think that my 30+ Luck character got over 20 uses of the items, while my Luck 8 character usually has it break after 1 or 2 uses only.

Other notes:
- Moapa also wastes a lot of actions Defending after using his Mist Potion. It doesn't seem to reduce the damage he takes either.
- Agatio is significantly more dangerous than Karst when fought atop Jupiter Lighthouse. If the player defeats Agatio first, they have a noticeably easier time than if they defeat Karst first. I was thinking if maybe Agatio's damage should be lowered a bit and either increasing Karst's damage or giving her 2 actions per round to keep the fight balanced.
- The fight against the Colosso Warriors in Shaman Cave feels undertuned. It lasted only 6 rounds (on Hard Mode!) and there was no need to use even a single heal during its entirety. It could be a fluke though.

regarding star magician adds, this is taken from wiki:
"It is also worth noting that any monster spawned mid-battle (such as the balls Star Magician summons) will retain their original normal-mode stats, and thus will be significantly easier than their Hard Mode counterparts."

are you taking too much damage and need to be more defensive during those turns?  I know for normal it was very easy to kill the adds right away, since i dont need to worry about dying nearly as much.  I was level~50 and had very good gear at that point.

While the balls spawn with their Normal mode stats when summoned, the Reloaded mod has those stats buffed compared to the unmodded game. So they remain somewhat durable.

For hard mode around what level do you predict is needed to beat star magician/dullahan?

I believe Dullahan could be doable around 50. My lvl48-50 group had reached an "equilibrium" where I could maintain tens of rounds without dying despite Djinn Storm, Charon and the like, but that was with focusing heavily on the defensive and barely chopping off Dullahan's HP.
Star Magician on the other hand is harder because you can get up to 5-6 multitarget hostile actions per round against you, which on Hard mode is impossible to survive without Flash. Defeating some Balls can get him with an even worse setup of 2 Guardian Balls + 2 Refresh Balls which practically make the entire group immune to damage. Refresh Balls heal whoever needs to full then Defend, one Guardian Ball casts Guard Aura and the other Defends, which means that even Megiddo deals at best 30 points of damage while Star Magician happily spams Mine Ball, Megacool and Spark Plasma. Failing to kill a Ball in one turn also means that the Refresh Ball will heal it back to full at the beginning of the next, because they are quite fast in the Reloaded mod.

Indeed the mod is designed for Normal difficulty. I have completed it on Hard mode albeit without defeating Star Magician and Dullahan. I believe you will enjoy it on Hard mode since you do claim you'd like it a little more difficult, I can write down my remarks in gameplay differences:

- Defense scales by x1.25, and since enemies in early game have had their Defense buffed more than enemies in late game in the mod, physical attacks are at a disadvantage only till mid-game (until around you defeat Poseidon / Moapa). From there on they pull ahead of single-target Psynergy of mono- and duo-element classes. I have not done any playthrough with tri- or quad-element. Unleashes on their own remain stronger than psynergy but are balanced around the fact that they have 30% chance to occur, so psynergy is on average more powerful. Of course matching enemies' weak element is important.
- As a consequence of the above, psynergy gains tremendous value till that part. So you will be relying on it heavily in order to have combat last 2-4 rounds. For reference, Sheba would deal single-digit damage with no-unleash attack, but over 150 with rank 2 psynergy even at lvl20 against some enemies.
- Again as a consequence of the above, PP becomes heavily limiting, which means that the best course of action (at least best in my experience) is to heavily invest in Herbs and Corns until you get Ether in order to free up all your PP for offense. I estimate that I have used somewhere around 300 herbs and 200 corns till I reached the point where I can maintain my PP levels.
- Consequence of the above is that coin becomes more limiting in early game. In fact I was not able to get all available at-the-time craftable items from Sunshine and the vendors of Eastern Sea due to lack of coin. Which asks you to prioritize the order of your upgrades.
- The main difficulty is not the extra HP from enemies but the extra ATK. Sheba and to a lesser degree Jenna are vulnerable until the reunion. After the reunion, running with Isaac, Garet, Felix and Piers at front-row makes the game significantly easier. Don't be afraid to use Defend.
- Funnily enough, Sentinel is the easiest of the optional bosses. Physicals work well at end-game on Hard mode too. Valukar posed difficulty only and only because he would always manage to get Coatlicue at some point due to 3 actions per round, which is why I am not going to pick up Summon tablets of 4+ djinn until I defeat him for my current playthrough. I didn't manage to defeat either Star Magician or Dullahan with a lvl48-50 group, but Star Magician is definitely harder than Dullahan because of (surprise!) unkillable Guard+Restore Ball combo. I have defeated Valukar, Sentinel and Doom Dragon without summons, but the battles did last quite a while (with Doom Dragon lasting over 40 rounds).
- Due to increased enemy HP, Summons become relatively more useful (like in the unmodded game), but the loss of stats and powerful psynergy is a risk. I prefer fighting everything except bosses with Psynergy, and use only counter-element Summons for bosses.

Shade / Flash and Lull spamming didn't feel necessary, because it means lots of actions wasted to use them, set them etc. which in turn makes battles drag on longer. Using them once to prepare them for Summons then reuse them many turns further during the battle is what I did.

That's all I can think and remember right now. I highly suggest you give it a try, I believe you will find it engaging and satisfying to defeat bosses with your PP bars almost depleted 

Welcome comingsoon. I noticed you mention that the game can be made harder and wanted to ask if you tried the mod on Normal or Hard mode, so that we can compare our gameplay experiences.

Regarding the limited inventory, I was given the suggestion to vendor some items and re-buy them later once I get the full 8-man group, specifically the buff items (Mint, Apples etc.), Psynergy crystals, Water of Life, Game Tickets, Lucky Coins and the 4-element class items if you do not use them. It is a great relief as you can empty up to 12 slots.

Regarding the bear in Tundaria region, it seems overtuned because the party is expected to be ~lvl28 for this part, which also includes equipment upgrades from Gaia Rock, Aqua Rock, items from Sunshine etc. I tried going there immediately after getting Piers's ship in order to acquire the Jupiter djinni, but just 2 battles in I decided it's not worth it yet   The Squirrelfang in the same area also hits like a truck with its Quick Slash.


For Caledor:
I am again playing through the game (I simply can't get enough of this mod!), I'm currently at Eastern Sea (specifically Gaia's Rock) and so far I have the following notes:
- Unleashes from Staves seem to be very powerful compared to unleashes from all other types of weapons. Sheba was dealing 150+ damage with Psychic Rod, which was 30 dmg points higher than unleashes from Felix, and upwards to 240 damage with Asteria's Staff unleash, while both Piers and Felix cannot break 180 yet. I understand that this is balanced by attacks with no unleashes, where she hits for less than 50 while the others hit for almost 100.
- Similarly to comingsoon, I still feel that the Aqua Hydra is overtuned because a combo of Chomp plus any other attack on one of the squishies is a guaranteed death. I tried to lower its Attack with Dull with almost 0 success, then I tried to maintain stage-4 Protect but this was both very PP-intensive and turned out that it does not reduce damage from Raging Flood, so total incoming damage reduction was not as effective as expected. I resorted to Summons and Shade.
- Again similarly to comingsoon, I realized that the Psy Drain from the Faeries in Aqua Rock is EVIL! They can absorb up to 80PP (possibly more?). Granted, this can be "countered" by simply spending a couple more turns using Ether. Considering that I have mentioned that PP is "infinite" due to vast PP-regen options in late game, what if late-game enemies and bosses acquired PP-drain abilities, or had those merged with their existing abilities (for example True Collide absorbing both HP and PP, Restore Balls getting a PP-drain ability instead of Defending, Earth Force from Doom Dragon absorbing PP, maybe even make Venom have the same effectiveness as Poison but add PP-damage as well?)
- During my fight with the Mercury djinni in Aqua Rock, I got his Psynergy sealed and it simply stood there defending 2 times per round till the end of the battle, it did not attack at all. I thought that enemies "fall back" on Attack if they cannot use Psynergy, and I'm fairly sure that other djinni earlier did so.

I think the issue is that you're thinking of a reactive approach without considering a proactive one: boost luck.

That is quite true. In fact I remember that when i defeated Doom Dragon, I was surprised that it failed to score any kill with instant-death attacks.
But at Poseidon, in the late 20s levels, Luck boosts are not that abundant, unless I have missed some specific equipment or class combinations... I'll definitely check this out next time.

It'd be either busted or negligible. So high that you won't need an healer on your team or so low that it wouldn't change your healer's actions. Items are a tight rope to walk because if they're too good they devalue the psynergy kits of classes.

While the "inspiration" came during my failed attempts against Star Magician, it is not a rare occurence for incoming damage to be larger than 1 MT heal + 1 ST heal, but less than 2 MT heals. This is especially true when using a party line-up of lowHP-highHP-highHP-lowHP (for example Ivan-Isaac-Garet-Mia). If not overleveled, the player has to repeat the 1MT + 1ST heal routine almost every turn because without the MT heal one of the lower-hp members will die next round, and without the ST heal the party member that gets pummeled the most will not survive. (At this point I have to point out that I assume that the member that gets hit the most is one of the two in the middle, which is also why the above party lineup is used)

The idea of the heal-over-time effect is to lessen the burden of the off-healer without replacing the role or reducing the work that the main healer has to do. The similarity to Coatlicue is that: whereas Coatlicue allows the main healer to keep the party up with a "cheaper" MT heal for its duration or even not use a heal for a round and perform some other action, a single-target heal-over-time would allow the off-healer to perform other actions in-between.

The values I proposed in my previous message were chosen to match the current Herb and Corn heal values (since these items are already in a great spot), to give a small boost to Nut and Vial (since by the time they are useful for the amount they recover [ie. stop overhealing], healer PP is no longer a limitation), and to give a good boost to Potion and Mist Potion (which are in limited quantities and overshadowed). I think I went overboard with Potion and Mist Potion though.

This might actually lead to something interesting.

My armchair-developer intuition leads me to think that such a change would be most beneficial only and only for Impact/High Impact for battles that currently last 2 rounds where enemies get to strike before they die in the 2nd round. In all other cases of random encounters it is a net loss for the player (wasted PP and action). I cannot make an educated guess on how it would impact (heh, made a pun ) boss fights, but generally I believe it would make them harder because we have learned to maintain maxxed buffs, and such a change would require us to refresh them every round if we want to maintain their max effect, which is not feasible and PP-hungry.

It would make both a massive buff suite and a spell complementary to break (restores all maluses to 0) mandatory. Too powerful.

Fair enough.

Treasure hunting is actually more fun than getting stuff from vendors, as for the replacement you mentioned, it was part or a bigger change that involved other weapons being moved, and it left me with a spot for a treasure and nothing to put in there. So i put coins.

As for balancing coins i mostly gave up to it, the best i can probably do is to set the price of every non-rusty, non-bought artifact to 1 coin, so it doesn't translate into free money once it gets replaced.

Another idea would be to progressievly nerf the coin drops from enemies in mid- and end-game, though for some reason I feel that most of the coins are from directly selling the artifacts found in treasure chests.
Wasn't there an enemy near Magma Rock that dropped only 1 coin (I think "Slayer")? Was that a bug in the unmodded game or my imagination?

On the subject of treasure hunting, the chests at the entrance of Treasure Isle are empty. Are they hard-coded to be empty, or can items be placed there? I understand that lorewise they are supposed to have been looted by Briggs and Co.

Incidentally, and more as curiosity from someone ignorant of the GS romhacking scene than an actual feature request: Do you think it'd be possible to move all of each village's hidden items to a single location, like say, each village's inn? It gets a bit tiring to check every single nook and cranny without it adding enjoyment to the exploration (the joy being in the vilalgers' dialogue), and the kleptomaniac nature of the activity is ludonarratively dissonant enough already.

There are guides that list every hidden item, GameFAQs has some of them.
But you can also try to avoid these treasures, which will add an extra layer of difficulty, even if minor. Besides, the game does not have a "treasure finder" counter.


On topic, and after having completed a 2nd run of TLA on hard (except for Dullahan and Star Magician again, heavy grinding is needed for these 2), I honestly don't have any valuable feedback to give besides that it is an exciting adventure. With the exception of unavoidable "cheap" 1-shot mechanics (like Poseidon's Ocean Fist followed by any attack, Truncheon Fist followed by attack, Condemn etc), the mod is a delight to play. Most of my comments will (again) be armchair developer ones:

- Would it be possible to move instant-death abilities and Ocean's Fist as last actions on a given turn? I do understand that such a change would make fights like Poseidon a whole lot easier.

- Similarly, would it be possible for Condemn to be reworked into a Doom-like spell that Stuns/Sleeps the character and gives only 1 turn to the player to act? This way it would still be a dangerous ability and require another character to restore them immediately on the next turn, but without losing all on-going buffs.

- Restorative items are in a weird spot. Early on, when PP is massively limiting and best reserved for offensive Psynergy, they are a huge boon and party saviours. Especially for hard mode (disclaimer: I know you have said that you have balanced the game for Normal mode), it is better to spam Herbs in and out of combat instead of Cure/Boon. Similarly Corn is a good replacement of Ply. In fact, stocking up on 60+ herbs/corns at towns to get through Yampi Desert, Air's Rock and Gondowan Cliffs up to getting Piers felt almost like cheating. By mid-game however (around 4-Djinn classes, when you start exploring the Eastern Sea), PP is so abundant that they are no longer needed and can be freely vendored. In order to make these items helpful in end-game without overshadowing Psynergy, would it be possible to change their effect from a static one-time immediate heal effect to a recurring healing effect like that of Coatlicue? For example: Herb 50hp/turn for 1 turn, Corn 100hp/turn for 1 turn, Nut 125hp/turn for 2 turns, Vial 150hp/turn for 3 turns, Potion 200hp/turn for 4 turns, Mist Potion 250hp/turn for 3 turns to the whole group.

- The reduced duration of buffs and debuffs helps a lot with giving them a more prominent role instead of being fire-and-forget abilities, but failing to refresh a buff because of reasons (the caster was silenced/dead, or they had to use an emergency heal) leaves a bad taste. At the same time, random encounters are generally so short that it is more beneficial to use Attack/Offensive Psynergy straight away instead of get buffs going.
Is it feasible for buffs (and debuffs) to reduce their effect by 1 rank at the end of every turn instead of reverting completely to 0 after 3 turns? So instead of going +2 -> +2 -> +2 -> 0, it could go +3 -> +2 -> +1 -> 0. This way, their total effect per cast would remain the same, but due to being frontloaded they would become more beneficial in short random encounters. I do understand that this would be a heavy nerf for boss fights where you get 2x High Impacts going though before hitting them with your strongest attacks.

- Random masochist idea tied to the above: What if Break did not revert all buff effect to 0, but instead acted like a -4 modifier on all of them? Or in other words if it acted like a combined Blunt+Debilitate+Enfeeble on steroids?

- Another mechanic that the player can ignore from mid-game onward are Coins. Equipment sold by vendors simply does not hold a candle compared to artifacts found in the wild. The vendor value of the artifacts also helps with the "inflation" of our pockets. Would it be possible for some of the equipment to be moved from treasure chests to vendors, and replace the treasure chests with some coins or restorative items (like you did with the shallow waters near Tundaria Tower in the West Sea)?

- Psynergy crystals (like the one right at the first screen when you enter Air's Rock and the one outside Gabomba statue where you meet Piers) are infinite in the sense that moving out of the screen and back again replenishes them. So the player can use them as free inns mid-dungeon. Could they be removed or turned into a 1-time event? The giant crystals inside the Rocks would of course keep their infinite PP recovery effect, though I could live with them being a 1-time effect only ^^

- Other random masochist ideas: What if PP regeneration when walking was nerfed/removed? This is to counter the use of Avoid/Sacred Feather as another indirect "free" PP restoring ability. I exploited this before fighting that aquatic enemy in Piers's Ship so that I have full PP when starting combat. I do undestand that this could block progress in dungeons that require Psynergy for puzzles if the player runs out of PP.
Random encounters would become more dangerous if enemies had higher Agility than the party when fought at their intended level, since they would always get 1 more attack in.


Looking forward to another Reloaded run!

Keep high powered MT healing, but make you actively think about who needs it most. It's kind of hard to judge how it would impact balance though since that would, as far as I know at least, be a first in the series, but definitely a cool concept!

This was what I was thinking too, I also did some napkin math yesterday on how psynergy should be re-balanced. For the Wish series it would be:
Wish - 3 targets (like Quake) - Main target 125HP, 1st-adjacent characters 100HP. Maximum healing at 325HP which is very close to the current 320HP.
Wish Well - 5 targets (like Earthquake) - Main target 210HP, 1st-adjacent characters 168HP, 2nd-adjacent characters 126HP. Due to a maximum of 4 characters that can be affected, maximum output is 672HP, which is fairly close to current Wish Well's 680HP.
Pure Wish - 7 targets (like Quake Sphere) - Main target 440HP, 1st-adjacent characters 352HP, 2nd-adjacent characters 264HP, 3rd-adjacent character 176HP. Maximum possible output would be when targetting a middle character, at 1408HP which is close to current 1400HP.
All values of course assume 100 Mercury power.

Other idea I had was to have multiple combinations of MT heals. For example the Wish series could retain its current equal healing across the party, Aura series could have 7 targets at all ranks with dropoffs as explained above, and Heal series could have all ranks at 5 targets. Then the main target of Heal would be receiving more HP than the main target of Aura who in turn would receive more HP than Wish. This could add another layer of "how to optimize" by switching your healer for one of the backup healers who has a more appropriate series. For example, if only 3 members are hurt with one having received a harder hit, which isn't a rare occassion, Wish loses value over Aura and Heal with the above design.

Of course I say all the above as an armchair developer.

I agree with a lot of ShiFT's points, but I disagree on MT healing requiring a potency or PP-efficiency nerf, the main reasons being more evident in TLA where HP bars and incoming damage increase more compared to what MT heals can recover. In fact I'd say that the "easiness" experienced is not as much due to the efficiency of MT heals, but because of the 1-action-per character combat itself; it's an issue that prevails in almost every game where players and enemies get fixed actions per turn instead of fluid turns (like Final Fantasy Tactics, Grandia, Final Fantasy X etc). I will try to explain my train of thought below, so please mention any incosistencies and gaps:

a) Enemies are designed to ensure that, when fought at appropriate level and equipment, they cannot kill the entire player party from full HP and good status condition just because. In order to achieve that, they have their AI designed to never use 2 multi-target devastating attacks in a row without the player having been given the option to recover, reduce incoming damage or prevent an enemy action. In fact Caledor spent a lot of time balancing Dullahan, who gets 3 actions per turn, to achieve this and explains it thoroughly in the latest Dullahan patch (side note, I still haven't beaten him. I need to stop slacking)

b) An important factor of playing video games is to have positive visual feedback of your actions. This leads developers to always favor combat where player actions almost always take place as intended. In order to achieve that in turn-based combat, they favor the players by balancing enemies so that the player will usually go first, then the enemy. This means that if a character is inflicted with a negative status effect, the player is given the option in the next turn to alleviate it without having a turn wasted. In the opposite case where enemies go first, it is entirely possible to have a fragile character die before they act, or your melee characters blinded and waste their current, or your casters silenced and waste their current turn etc.

c) Healing is along with damage-dealing one of the most obvious and easy-to-track and easy-to-manage and make sense of visual effect in a combat-based game: You move a HP bar positively, while damage-dealing moves it negatively. So to ensure that point (b) above takes place, the healer has to act before the enemies. If you encounter enemies that outpace your healer, it is most of the time an indication that the player is underleveled, underequipped, or needs to change their strategy (for example change to a faster class that provides healing, or switch a faster character to be the healer etc).

d) There are now 2 cases: the main healer is able to outheal the enemies' damage or you need an off-healer too.

   d1) If your main healer simply outheals the damage, then the only thing that can break the monotony and force the player to use alternatives is to prevent the main healer from being able to heal. This means either kill them directly, silence/sleep/stun/confuse/whatever them, or exhaust their resource. Directly killing is rarely used, and like mentioned in point (a) it is generally avoided. If a boss can kill a character from full HP in one action, then usually it's an indication that the player is underlevelled (just like how I am when Dullahan simply instakills anyone with Fulminous Edge). A negative status effect or exhausting their resources is prefered because it gives player options: Offload healing to some other character until the silence goes off naturally or resources are recovered, or take immediate action to force the removal of the negative status effect or recover resource. This in turn means that the offhealer must be able to outheal the enemies' damage, or at least recover enough until the main healer is back in action.

   d2) If an off-healer is needed at intended levels then enemy design becomes even stricter and predictable, because the enemies cannot simply prevent one or both healers from being able to perform. Doing so would make the game frustrating and unfun. Games that necessitate an off-healer in a small party (1 to 5-6 members) simply have all enemy threats come in the form of direct damage, which makes combat monotonous in the long run.


Having said all the above, I will also consider here Caledor's point that the mod is intended to promote smarter plays and not turn Golden Sun into a hardcore grindfest. This means giving player options either during combat or even before engaging enemies to ensure that if something goes wrong, the player can always have backups. My take is that this is proof that MT healing cannot be nerfed in how much health is restored, at least not if enemy damage is not also nerfed at a similar scale. The end-game boss encounters of TBS and almost every boss in TLA from Poseidon onward already deal enough damage that the main healer is forced to MT heal every turn (side note: on Hard Mode an off-healer is needed on every boss, including the Chestbeaters at the very start).

Pre-post edit: I just also noticed that Caledor also thinks that nerfing Wish will simply limit party setups due to requiring 2 main healers.

I was wondering if it would be possible to redesign how MT healing works, but I do not know if it is possible to be implemented, and also I cannot yet estimate how it would affect player experience. The idea was to change MT healing from affecting the entire group for equal amount of healing to making it share the same pyramid calculation that offensive psynergy does. What I mean is that the player selects a main target who will be receiving the most healing, then the characters on the left and right receive 80% of the main target's healing, then the next characters 60% hp etc., exactly how damage is reduced to 80% for the 1st-adjacent target, 60% for the 2nd-adjacent target etc.

Ah, you have triple-element classes in front party. This may be why Djinn Storm is so devastating, because you spend extra turns at classes with lower multipliers. It may be easier if you switch to duo-element classes for the main group, since they will be slightly more durable while recovering djinn. Of course the downside will be that it will take longer to get to the 3rd stage.
Another advice I can give is to stack pp-recovery items on healers only, since you will be spending 50+ PP per round at least. If your attackers drop low, use Ether / Aroma / Ember.
Third advice is to replace Sol Blade with a Jupiter-unleashing weapon, since Doom Dragon is strong against Armageddon/Megiddo. For this boss fight, Sol Blade gains use if you use it as a stat-stick for "physical" Jupiter psynergy like Quick Strike and Death Leap.

I'm still kind of surprised at the damage numbers you report. Are you playing on Normal or Hard mode?

Also I suppose Gale instakilling bosses is probably unintentional, unless Caledor left it in there for speeding through the game for test purposes 

Indeed Doom Dragon has True Collide / Dark Contact, but it shouldn't be that powerful. It targets 3 members max, deals about 150-200 damage per character hit and sometimes heals for 50% of the damage dealt. At worst case Doom Dragon should take 300HP back by using it.

Regarding the difficulty with Djinn Storm + Cruel Ruin wiping you group, what is your general approach to the fight? How many attackers, healers, wild cards?

What if the Vial in Air's Rock switched places with the Potion in Piers's ship (assuming it can be done) or the Cookie in the wooden box at the cliff outside the ship? It is expected that the player will go to pick up the Air Rock's chest right before entering Piers's ship, so these items are almost one-next-to-the-other from a progress point of view.
At this point in the game, I think noone in my team had reached 350HP, so even with the nerf the Vial was still pretty much a full-heal.

Final feedback on Hard Mode run: Star Magician is the hardest boss in the mod. Over 50 attemps, all failed. Wondering if I needed to grind levels due to Hard Mode, I went for Doom Dragon which I expected to be even harder and see how long I would last. Instead, it died on first attempt with 2 deaths only (both from Condemn). So I went to Dullahan. After just 3 attemps I have manged to survive enough for him to use Djinn Storm 4 times before Game Over. I only need to learn again his action sequence so that I can play around Djinn Storm like in vanilla (btw, it's funny seeing Fulminous Edge deal 1100 damage  , noone survives that at level 46).
But Star Magician simply wipes the floor with me. I love it. Team levels range from 41 (Ivan) to 46 (Felix). The only tactic I haven't tried is to get 4 Guardian balls up and chop SM's HP by 50 every turn until both him and I die of old age 

Notes:
- There may be an issue with action priorities. Both Guardian Ball and Doom Dragon sometimes do not fire off their Guard Aura as an action with priority, but instead normally based on their Agility.
- When Psynergy-sealed, both Refresh Ball and Thunder Ball defend. Thunder Ball is quick enough so that it can defend before any party members act, and therefore it can benefit from the reduced damage. Refresh Ball however is slow and most times acts last, so it is essentially a lost action. Could it be given a regular attack?
- Thunder Balls use both Shine Plasma and Spark Plasma. Intended?
- Doom Dragon uses Mother Gaia instead of Grand Gaia during 1st form. Intended? It normally uses 3rd tier Fire psynergy in 1st form. I remember that one of the latest patches (v177 or v178) corrected the issue with Mother Gaia being used in 3rd form.
- When using Lull during Star Magician battle, the battle music does not entirely stop but instead one instrument continues to play. All other bosses and battle themes correctly stop during Lull's animation. I admit that I haven't checked if this bug is present in vanilla too.
- (The following is exacerbated during Star Magician, but it applies for all boss battles and encounters with 3 strong enemies):
Most turns go like this: 2-3 party members act, fastest enemy acts, 3rd and 4th party member act, slower enemies and/or boss 2nd/3rd actions take place. If party Agility has been buffed (or Moloch has reduced enemy team's), then all 4 party members go first and all enemies go last. A major "headache" is being able to fit a healing action between those last enemy actions in a turn, so as to prevent a party wipe due to the enemy team firing off 3+ AoE attacks in succession. It is not uncommon to have Spark Plasma, Mine Ball, Mine Ball again, Anger Ball kamikaze and Freeze Prism as the final actions of the enemy team. Would it be possible to give some non-important equipment negative Agility (shirts, boots)? Currently I have been using Kite on healers instead of damage dealers so that I can get that extra 5th party action in between enemy actions.

Avoid is less effective if your character level isn't higher than the enemies you're trying to Avoid.

(Or something like that)

Ah, so that the player cannot just zoom through an area if they are attempting a low-level run.

Sentinel down. Again no fancy tactics. Simple Summoning + Healing. It was pure luck that he never mind blasted the same character twice in a row without Shade or Flash. Off to Magician.
[spoiler]I assume that the intended design is to keep Sentinel's Psynergy sealed so that he is forced to only Attack and Mind Blast in order to significantly reduce total damage per round, just like in the unmodded game. On Hard mode this doesn't work because it's 500+ damage per Mind Blast, 600+ on a character with Djinn on standby for Summoning. His high Agility also necessitated the use of Coal / Zephyr with Kite on the healer to be able to Pure Wish twice in between his attacks on rounds where Granite, Shade or Flash was not available.[/spoiler]

I assume that applies to player characters once they reach very high levels, like 80+.
Does it work similarly for HP? If I remember correctly, unmodded game had a hard cap of 1999HP.

(Balrog again used Coatlicue near death)
-=EDIT=-
Balrog dead. Nothing fancy. He just didn't cast Coatlicue when he had the opportunity. Going for Sentinel.

-=EDIT 2=-
I forgot to mention. Avoid does not seem to work in Anemos Sanctum. Encounter rate was normal even after using Avoid. Intentional?

Moving ahead... I'm currently stuck at the optional bosses. Here are some notes:

- Balrog may also be suffering from the similar "I'm out of PP in long combats" syndrome. There is a point where he stops using Supernova and instead spams Stun Jip.
- I am unable to beat him so far only and only because at some point he will manage to get Coatlicue going on him. Over 20 tries so far, and in at least 5 of them, while he was below 30% hp (I know because Coatlicue restored some 9800hp to him instead of "recovered to full"), he did 2 Djinn Stuns and Coatlicue in a row. It will be hard managing the party so that at no point will I have more than a total of 3 Mercury or Jupiter Djinn at the front. I would go as far as propose that Coatlicue should get a hard 999hp per round cap.
    -- Note to self: Next playthough do not pick up any Summon tablets until Balrog is defeated.
- I noticed something weird with the Attack stat. Balrog has high enough that any changes to it (Megaera, Blunt etc.) should be in intervals of 118/119. But Summoning Magaera once buffs him only by around 50, I assume because it reaches the ceiling of 999. But if I use Blunt on him, it doesn't reduce it by 118 as it should, but by only that amount of 50. Further Blunts normally reduce it by 118 (and Eclipse by 237 or so). Does the game allow stats to go over 999, but only visually caps them?

- Star Magician is even harder (and I love this!), but not because of his own abilities. Rather, a combination of Refresh Ball + Guardian Ball basically "nullifies" all damage done and reverts damage done so far. At some point he had 2x Refresh + 2x Guardian Balls. ...Yeah, I was unable to kill any of them.
- Guardian's Ball ability "Harden" seems to have some weird rules. Sometimes is acts as having higher priority, being used before abilities like Ground, Petra, Flash etc., and other times it acts as having normal priority.
- Thunder Balls sometimes use Spark Plasma while other times they use Shine Plasma.

Speaking of broken strategies, I have one.
If you're exploring a dangerous zone (Example: Western/Eastern Sea areas you are supposed to visit at a higher level) you can save and restart after every combat.
That way you always attack first and therefore you can easily escape  

I didn't want to admit it. I have been abusing this trick as well. It works on djinn too, but not on Mimics and bosses. Similarly I have been resetting every time when Sunshine wouldn't give me the item I wanted.

-=EDIT=-
In order to prevent spamming, I am editing this post.
The Bombanders in Anemos Sanctum use Eruption instead of Pyroclasm. I don't know if it's intended or not, since they already use Supernova which is rank 3 Psynergy.
Also the triple enemy encounters are evil >.<

Updating progress... Just killed the Double Dragons, after a few flukes where my main healer (Felix as Protector) would be stunned before firing off Pure Wish.
Smaller dragon using Djinnfest 4 times in 2 rounds made me chuckle.
I am not entirely sure, but Agatio-dragon may be facing the same issue of running out of PP in long fight as Deadbeard did in TBS before the change to 0-cost abilities. The combat lasted over 40 rounds, and in the final 10+ rounds he only used normal Attack, Stun Muscle and Cage, no other ability. Both dragons were normally recoving 4PP/t as in vanilla. I expect that Karst-dragon would face similar issue if she survives long enough in combat.

Strategy
[spoiler]Pretty straightforward. Front team Isaac 39, Felix 40, Piers 39, Garet 38.
Isaac kept himself buffed with Bravery and spammed attack for Armageddon (...wasn't this Megiddo?)
Felix was the healer - alternating between Potent Cure or Pure Wish depending on what was needed
Piers summoner/djinn user: Shade, Eddy
Garet djinn user: Flash, Kite, Breath, Ether, Haze, Lull
Back party would replace Garet near the start of the combat 1-by-1 for "summon rushing" regardless of element. Due to Hardmode, enemies seem to have almost 10k hp (or maybe more?) so even Meteor from Piers was outdamaging Armageddon.
First focused on Karst since she's the more annoying one.[/spoiler]

-=EDIT=-
Again I found something that I was not aware of! In the room with the gauntlet where you have to pound the pillars to reach the exit before the big dragon head is lit and fires you back and off the edge, once the gauntlet has started it is not allowed to save. I attach screenshot.

-=EDIT 2=-
The currently "broken" build of extreme PP/t actually works. In fact it's so plentiful, that after every fight I just alternate between Jenna and Mia (both in back party) and spam 3-4 expensive party heals to heal the front party even if only member needs healing for only 30HP. They never go out of PP.
Similarly, I have made Isaac a "broken" autoattacker. With Warrior's Helm (+8 crit), Aegis Shield (+15 Crit), Valkyrie Mail (+20 Crit) and Hyper Boots (+4 Crit), I get 4 out of 5 autoattacks as Armageddon. Checking the equipment sheet, it seems that max possible is actually 100% without cursed equipment. (Valkyrie Mail, Riot Gloves, Mithril Helm, Casual Shirt, Ninja Sandals, Sol Ring).
Again similarly for ailments, the max seems to be +42% (Demon Mail, Terror Shield, Alastor's Hood, Angel's Ring)

-=EDIT 3=-
I noticed that Apollo's Axe unleash is Mars element, but the orbs that spawn have yellow hue as if it's Venus. I don't know if this is intentional, an oversight, or if it worked like that in vanilla too.