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#71

Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloa...

Last post by leon_95 - 12, October, 2021, 07:00:10 AM

Heya, have played through the mod a couple years ago and started anew now.

I love a lot of the changes, especially to the classes, however I don't really like how it feels like the game basically makes you grind levels, since I always disliked grinding due to it not really adding enjoyment while needlessly padding game time. I also dislike how lethal random encounters can be early on, having been sent back to the last town a couple times already due to a random caught by surprise outright murdering a party member, and the lethality only adds up when they get a second turn. Admittedly, this is a lot less of a problem when you finally have 4 party members. The Saturos fight frustrated me a lot since it took me three attempts to beat him and watching the cutscene every time was a little bit tilting.

Other than the few frustrating parts, I love the new strategies that come from the new class system, even though the new status psynergies feel terrible in my opinion.

#72

Tech, Gaming and Entertainment / Re: A story that goes Beyond (...

Last post by DevAnj - 11, October, 2021, 10:45:18 AM

and yes, the house only has the one bedroom, even though a family lives in it. There aren't even multiple beds

Oops, just caught this and have to correct myself. Yes, this family does have just the one bedroom, but they do have more than one bed.

Though, the bedroom looks more like a hastily converted warehouse room, and I can't figure out whose bed is whose. Like, are the two beds side by side supposed to be for Galahad and his wife? If so, then why does Annie get the "special" bed on top of the carpet? If it's Galahad's bed, then do Annie and her mother sleep by their side? Ah well, the room probably didn't have much thought put into it, after all it's barely relevant for anything past the first.. hour or so of the game.

#73

Tech, Gaming and Entertainment / Re: A story that goes Beyond (...

Last post by DevAnj - 11, October, 2021, 06:40:37 AM

We last left at a rare sight, the overworld at night. We will perhaps see this again only one more time, much much later.

Heartless Wilderness

Also I forgot to link the overworld theme. Honestly it's actually a fairly remarkable piece, weaving a narrative gradually through its progression through various "phases". Too bad you can rarely hear it in its entirety when normally proceeding through the game.

A large reason for this being, well, overworld encounters are now active, and quite frequent. Thankfully, they aren't any harder than the Cave of Spirits, not yet. Anyhow, heading back to Isla Village, we find that everyone is indoors, but not yet asleep. They don't seem to mind us entering their homes either. Time to move on with the plot..

Isla Village

Galahad is pleased with us, and then looks scornfully at Annie. He is joined by her mother, who stops her from retreating into our room(and yes, the house only has the one bedroom, even though a family lives in it. There aren't even multiple beds). They end up chewing her out in the usual parental scolding way.

When suddenly...

The family hears strange noises from outside. Galahad at first dismisses it and sends everyone to bed, only to catch the sound again. He thinks it's someone screaming, which seems extremely odd to me as it sounds more like someone knocking on a door. Anyway, we finally see someone offscreen calling out to the family.

The Kraken

Galahad rushes out, followed by the rest. Turns out this is Annie's formerly unmentioned brother, Percy. He's in a rather poor state, talking with a lot of ellipses and laying on the ground. He says something about Bandore troops attacking Marion Castle. Uh oh.

Naturally, the family is completely shocked about this, and tries to assure themselves that Percy is alright. But Percy, of course, talks like someone about to die. With things looking grim, the family surrounds him to take him inside. But surprise!

Adrenaline

Annie, in a fit of desperation, suddenly begins to glow! She makes Percy glow too. Everyone is shocked at this sudden turn of events. Percy is lifted up into the air for a few moments and then laid down, falling into a fit of sleep. Everyone notices that his wounds have been healed and his expression is peaceful.

Percy Sleeps

As if to heighten the drama, Annie stops shining, and collapses herself. Everyone remaining is too confused to make sense of anything, and decide to pull them in and retire for the night.

The next day, Percy talks about Kevins sending him to deliver a message to Galahad. We don't see this message, but everyone is amazed at Annie's new healing powers. We also get some brilliant lines like these:

Galahad: Rather than saying "had", we should say "has".

Galahad theorizes that the swamp and Spirit Water combined gave Annie a healing force. Eh, it's an acceptable explanation for her magic. Percy and Artur decide to head to Marion Castle even though it's occupied by a hostile army, because apparently Percy has an odd sense of bravado. Artur tags along because he's concerned about his father. Annie, sensibly, is quite worried about this journey. Galahad responds with this:

Listen... Annie.
For a man, there are times when he just has to act.

Galahad is truly a caring and sensible dad.

Annie is of course shocked to hear this, and runs back up to the bedroom.

Percy: Since they know my face, you lead the way, OK?

Umm, I don't think that will help. Artur is noticeably younger than you, and you aren't exactly concealing your face anyway.

Annie, despite sensibly being worried about us heading off into enemy territory, pleads with us to let her join. She says it's because she wants to help us with her newfound healing powers. Somehow I doubt that's going to make the difference against an army. Her dad lets her go anyway, complete with cute fanfare.

And now we're back to the overworld. Let's take a look at both Annie and Percy.

Annie gets a basic Heal spell; it works exactly as you think it does. It can be used basically everywhere so long as she has MP.

Despite being a Knight, Percy is pretty similar statwise to our other characters. He's a slight bit slower and has mildly less defense, but that might be on account of him being two levels behind.

We're actually led into a pretty vast expanse of the overworld, but can't really get anywhere besides Marion. This bridge just leads us to a guard post where we are turned away.

Amusingly, enemies jump gleefully when we retreat from them. It's a cute little detail that is mostly marred by the high frequency of encounters in general. In unrelated news, Annie learned Cure Level 1 from level ups. It's basically Heal but for status effects.

There's a second bridge crossing which is blocked the same way, and a suspiciously big church with a pathway behind it clearly visible. We can't do anything with it yet, but atleast the priest can revive us and save our game. There's also a chest with a Resist Jewel to the right, but I'll talk about it when it becomes relevant.

Anyway, next time we enter Marion! Let's hope we don't die or get captured horribly, somehow. Would be quite a short game if we did.

#74

Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloa...

Last post by Caledor - 02, October, 2021, 07:40:09 PM

Welcome Chaeron, and thanks!

About drops: it's something that pops up from time to time: in most cases the issue is due to human error or can be solved by killing with a different Djinn of that element (aka you're off by 1).

Classes.txt has been fixed and reuploaded: the error was in Holy Knight and General being swapped through the whole file. And yes, i wrote a(n extremely dumb) program that prints that txt.

It simply cycles through all the 43m setups and discards those where it didn't use exactly 18 djinn of each element (also i count monoelemental as requiring 9 djinn instead of 8) or it tried to use item classes more than thrice.

Being this simple, it's easy for me to tweak it into forcing certain characters into specific classes in case i am looking for setups that include those.

#75

Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloa...

Last post by Chaeron - 30, September, 2021, 11:13:42 PM

First off, excellent mod.  I had a blast playing through the original.  Deadbeard actually took a couple of attempts!  GSTLA is great too.  I'm in the end game, and I'm working on min/maxing all my characters.  I've come across a couple of things that I either need help with, or can't quite explain. 

I can't get some of the reworked monster drops to work the same way as usual.  For example, using the RN method to get an Aeshma to die at RN 31, with the correct Djinn, does not net me Lachesis' Rule.  There's a few such drops I can't seem to get using the RN method. 

Mad Demon (Lv 40)        -> Ker's Weight         1/256
Aeshma (Lv 40)              -> Lachesis' Rule       1/256
Pyrodra (Lv 36)              -> Triton Ward          1/128
Aka Manah (Lv 35)          -> Ninja Sandals       1/128
Hell Chimera (Lv 33)       -> Knight's Greaves   1/128


There may be some others, but I haven't tested absolutely all of them.  The interesting thing is, I must have hit the 1/128 for the Ninja Sandals incidentally, because I do have one pair of them, but I cannot force more.  For the Aka Manah specifically, felling it on RN 31 does not make it flash.  I've tried altering the RN at which the Aka Manah dies, similar to what is needed for Wonder Birds (-2 RN from the total prior to monster felling), and then I can make it flash, but again, no drop.  Any info as to what is going on behind the scenes here would be very appreciated. 

Secondly, I was really excited to see in your title post that there was a TXT file with every possible perfect class combination in GSTLA.  I've been looking for such a thing for years!  I imported it into Excel, so I could sort the data, and quantify (stats wise) the ideal team compositions.  Unfortunately, theres a few combinations that I've come across that don't work, and I've only been through a tiny fraction of that whole enormous list.  For instance:

Isaac: Slayer
Garet: Phalanx
Ivan: Sorcerer
Mia: Angel
Felix: Paladin
Jenna: Heretic
Sheba: Fury
Piers: Holy Knight

This is the second set of classes including tri-elementals.  Heretic Jenna requires 5 and 4 .  Holy Knight Piers also requires 5 and 4 .  As a result, the above team comp uses 17 , 18 , 19 , and 18 . 

How did you come up with such an exhaustive list?  Can it be tweaked to ensure each team comp does not go over or under a total of 18 Djinn for each element?  If I had any coding capability, I'd try and write a program to sift through each permutation.  I looked into doing it manually initially.  If I ignore the 18 Djinn per element cap, given 9 possible Djinn combinations per character that result in valid classes, and 8 characters, thats 43 046 721 combinations.  Paring down from those possibilities to only those that meet the 18 Djinn limit was my initial plan, but 43 million combinations is so far beyond what is possible to do by hand. 

Anyone here able to write a program that can produce all the valid class combinations?  If I had that data set, I'd love to work with it to see what kind of class comps would be the most fun/powerful. 

Again, excellent mod. 

#76

Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloa...

Last post by Caledor - 29, September, 2021, 08:04:46 PM

Boss weaknesses: there's a row with 4 numbers under the moveset of an enemy those numbers are the ability effect IDs the boss is "weak" to. Issue is I rearranged some effects so your editor in some cases will display the wrong label for a certain effect ID.

Haunt: you get immunity at 40+ luck

Seal: disables any ability with a PP cost > 0. A lot of enemy only abilities cost 0 MP that's why they are still able to use them while sealed. Also i wouldn't consider a breath attack "psynergy" from a lore perspective.

#77

Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloa...

Last post by PathofChaos - 29, September, 2021, 11:49:32 AM

Here's an example of what I mean about Seal

#78

Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloa...

Last post by PathofChaos - 29, September, 2021, 11:28:14 AM

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.

Is there a list of which bosses have which ailment weaknesses? Its difficult to tell if a boss is weak to an ailment when I have to cast it 4+ times to get it to stick. I've been using save states to test whether a given boss enemy can be afflicted with specific ailments but its tedious and a list would take the guesswork out of it.

Does anyone know if Haunt can afflict bosses? Its a cool psynergy that, in vanilla GS/TLA, never saw use. I'd love to be able to drop it on Poseidon and laugh as his Counter-Attack round brings the pain.

Lastly, why are certain enemies afflicted with Seal still able to use psynergy? I thought the point of Seal was they couldn't use magic anymore but today I sealed a Chimera Mage and it kept on using fire breath regardless. Same with the Salamander boss in Champa... I was so stoked when I finally got Seal to work! And then... then he immediately bombed my team with Star Mine twice in a row. Seal did stop him from using his healing psynergy but he still had full access to the rest of it. Why?  

It works wonders on Djinn and some randos but certain enemies seem to ignore it despite the fun purple sigil hovering over their head.

#79

Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloa...

Last post by PathofChaos - 28, September, 2021, 08:04:33 PM

Do Gameshark or Action Replay codes work with this mod? I only ask because I used the Golden Sun Password Generator to transfer from the previous game and didn't realize you needed top have Event 3 UNchecked on the Misc tab. I'd like to be able to add the Golden Ring to my inventory but I'm worried the cheats will conflict with the mod.

Unless i moved items around and it 100% isn't the case for Golden Ring due to how it's acquired it should be safe.

What's always safe is pick an editor, open the rom, add the item as a guaranteed drop from a random enemy close to you, get it, save, switch back to the regular rom and continue as if nothing happened.

Could you recommend a user-friendly editor for a no-coding experience moron, like me? :-D

Nvm I found it: http://forum.goldensunhacking.net/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=132  thank you!

*5 minutes later*

This editor is AWESOME Now I can see, quantitatively, all the hard work you've done and disambiguate some things I wasn't clear on after reading the main forum post. Implementing the changes you suggested was super easy. Even a dolt like me could do it without any second-guessing.

#80

Project List / Re: [RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloa...

Last post by Caledor - 26, September, 2021, 10:58:01 AM

You should, another Venus and Jupiter djinn would go a long way though. Especially considering they're a wall and a Res boosting djinn respectively