[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

[dive_darkness]

Well, hestia blade for exemple. You get it in lemuria, but as soon as you cross the ocean and get to a town (contigo or Loho), you can buy the Gaia blade, which is way better. The weapon doesn't really sucks in itself, it sucks that it is obsolete after just a few fights across the world map.

The axe is also weaker than the Gaia blade which you can buy 5-6 min after leaving Lemuria (and I bought it in Loho before even entering contigo). This also apply to the rusted weapons. You find the pirate saber in a rusted state in the left ocean (basically a blade for Jenna), I went back all the way to Yallam to take out the rust and... Sold it, because kikuichimonji is already better.

Maybe you can make so these blades become available AFTER you clear Jupiter lighthouse (or even after moapa).

[Caledor]

I just went straight to loho after lemuria and neither the Gaia Blade nor the Kikuichimonji showed up (and it's supposed to be like this), so... dunno about that one. Also, It's fine that the Pirate Saber is weaker than the Kiku, cause you find the former as soon as you enter the W Sea. You're right about the axe(s) though... so i gave a little boost to both the Mighty Axe and the Viking Axe.

[dive_darkness]

I went in that order to:

South-west islet
Atekka settlement
Kalt
Loho
Contigo
Shaman village

So I don't know ><

And for pirate saber, I thought that going back all the way to yallam wasn't worth it and finished exploring the west ocean.

[Rolina]

Yeah, it's weird how weak all the rusted weapons were in TLA compared to when you get them. :/

In vanilla I mean - I haven't reached that point in the mod yet.

[dive_darkness]

Finished Jupiter Lighthouse.

Enemies: the wyvern is the strongest and drop the aeolian cassock, which gives a great boost to Jupiter defense and attack. Get one for Sheba, maybe a second for Ivan.
As the blue dragon doesn't drop the Rising mace anymore, no need to farm them.

Jupiter djinn:

Okay, he's fast and he can hurt a bit. Try to kill him with odyssey and diamond berg, heal with Sheba an Jenna.

Karst and agatio:

Give 6 water djinns to Felix, 6 earth to piers. Sheba and Jenna in their base classes.

First phase: defend through the two turns and pray for no meteor strike.
Jenna joins in: heal with Jenna and defend with the two others.
Sheba joins the fight:

The true fight begins (lol). In fact, there are only 4 attacks that can bother you with a good setup. Meteor strike is clearly overpowered. 500+ damages on Felix and piers.
Rolling flame/supernova hit approximately the same for ~ 200.
Heat kiss lower your attack, so be careful.
Death scyth has a low death proc' rate. If you're underleveled or not optimized for the fight it might be really bad if it procs.

All in all, the fight isn't hard at all. Plume edge spam with Felix, odyssey/djinns with piers, heal with jenna, Sheba uses her attack psynergies.

Seriously, meteor strike is too strong. Make enemies hit harder overall maybe, but lower the power of this attack.


Gear:
Felix: optimized for attack, speed and water power, crown of glory
Piers: earth power all the way, an speed.
Jenna: fire power, speed speed speed, crown of glory
Sheba: pp regen, air power (aeolian cassock, Leda bracelet), crown of glory.

No shaman road duplication, no items used. Lv 30 for everyone.

[Caledor]

Meteor Strike is the same as vanilla, so it deals %HP damage just like a summon, and the value is crazy (35%). I already have plans for all those attacks (Star Mine, Cruel Ruin, etc).

[dive_darkness]

Okay, now that jupiter lighthouse is behind:

Jupiter djinn in shaman road cave: fast and strong. He actually killed Felix and I switched to Isaac in order to continue spamming odyssey, yay.

Three gladiators: easy... Just spam normal attacks, heal if needed. No need to use any psynergy: they inflict at most 150 on one character.

Mercury djinn in shaman cave: see the Jupiter djinn higher. Same strategy. He also hit quite hard, but I managed to beat him without losing a character.

Jupiter djinn in treasure island: hard, not because he nearly killed me 3 times, but he ran away a bit too easily. Seal his psynergy or you'll be in trouble.

Also: meh. I got an Excalibur with the orihalcon Hama gives you, a dark sword with the dark matter from karst/agatio's fight. Got the caladbolg, triton's ward and fire brand in treasure island.
Now I just need to farm for the equipments in magma rock ^^

Just a quick question: what's the salamander tail's drop rate from the pyrohydra ?

Edit:

Mercury djinn in Mars lighthouse: use time with piers, spam psy with others until he dies (normally, he fall in 2-3 turns).

Flame dragons:

Now it gets hard. You can either summon or fight with psy (I chose the latter).
Just use cool aura with Jenna, heal with Sheba if needed, odyssey with Felix and diamond berg with piers until one fall. Then it's easy.

[dive_darkness]

Ok, I have a HUGE problem.

I cannot activate the fight with the last Mars djinn. He is in the room, ok, but I can't talk to him. Tried reloading the rom entirely. Didn't work. I might try another rom later if I can't make it work.

[Caledor]

Salamander Tail: 1/64. It'd be faster if you check by yourself with Atrius' Editor though
Mars Djinn: works fine for me, so... yes i'd try with another ROM

[dive_darkness]

I need to download it then.

Farmed in yampi desert cave, treasure island and time islet.

Balrog's fight:

Felix: sol blade, fear helm, stealth armor, terror shield, running shirt, quick boots, clerics ring. (Could have probably changed to hyper boots)
Jenna: Atropos rod, psychic circlet, Big Bang gloves, iris robe, quick boots, running shirt, wind ring
Sheba: alecto's mace, psychic circlet, Leda bracelet, ardargh robe, quick boots, running shirt, guardian ring
Piers: rising mace, mythril helm, riot gloves, triton's ward, quick boots, running shirt, golden ring

Turns went mostly like this:

Felix let's out a howl! Armageddon / earth summons
Jenna use cool aura!
Sheba use tempest/summons
Piers use summons / attacks or cure stun.

The fight isn't that hard. Just reload if he stun more than 2 characters. If one get stunned, just cure him with piers or wait for it to fade out. Just go on like this and he should fall quite easily.

Beaten on the first try at lv ~50.


Also, what was the point of the caladbolg ? The rising mace is much better. I thought swords were supposed to be a bit stronger than maces. They have the exact same attack stat, except that the mace have boosts to mercury, boost to hp, and it's unleash heals you. And the difference in damages between waterspout and rising mace's unleash is really small.

[Caledor]

Balrog at 50 is clearly overleveled
Caladbolg/Rising Mace: you have a point. I'll make some tweaks, so thanks ;)

[dive_darkness]

Overleveled: in the vanilla game, I always reach drakozor (no optional dungeon cleared) around level 45. So lv ~ 50 was normal for me.

Sentinel:
Same gear as for Balrog, except: Felix now has the hyper boots. Piers has the sol ring.

Now, sentinel is damn easy if you use either rime or luff during the fight an keep the seal up. Just heal with Jenna and use normal attacks with piers and Felix.

Still lv 50 with everyone. Luna ring went to Sheba (because she's so squishy).

[Caledor]

Overleveled: in the vanilla game, I always reach drakozor (no optional dungeon cleared) around level 45. So lv ~ 50 was normal for me.

I think the optimal levels are 40-45 for the first 3 (Order: Balrog, SM, Sentinel) and 55 for Dullahan. And also 45 for doom dragon is very high too... you should be around 35-40 (no higher than 40)

@Seal: another indicator of the fact that the new mod is going to be VERY different... i don't think it will be worth to seal strong bosses with the new formulas for example.

[Rolina]

Target level should be around the level of the strongest monsters in the area.  That's how I did my monster testing, at least.

[Caledor]

That's what happens in 99% of cases... the only exceptions are 3 superbosses (Balrog at 38 is fine), but maybe i should raise a bit the levels for islet cave treasure isle and Anemos... doesn't look like a bad idea... There's no way that anemos will have enemies at L55 though.

By the way Role, I've attached the excel sheet i'm using to rebalance monster stats. Let me know what you think if you're interested.

I started by creating the first table with vanilla GS, then created the second tables with the differences, fixed the first one so that i'd have progressive growth in the second one and applied the stat multipliers in the third one (the one i'm using). Agility contains the expected values of Garet, Isaac and Ivan in base classes.

[dive_darkness]

Btw, forgot to mention this, but why sentinel haven't ever used armuvor during the fight ? I remember this attack being dangerous, but he never used it :/

Imagine, you seal sentinel, he uses armuvor. Armuvor lower your defense (and not the resistance), so each successive hit hurts more than the last one. That way, the longer you seal him, the harder he hit.

Also beaten star magician.

Same gear as for sentinel.

Okay, few things to say:

lower the blind proc rate of star mines or replace it by the blind psy. Seriously. First it always hits all 4 characters, and the blind almost never missed, which makes all unleash builds unusable.

guardian mine should have less hp. It has TWICE the health of the air mine.

Guardian mines should nearly always use guardian aura and appear a bit less often.

Air mines should use pure ply or a wish psynergy. An air mine using a psy to rise resistance when the boss already rose his by 30 is a bit idiotic.

In vanilla, using summons during this fight was already hard enough because he always have a guardian mine with him, but now that he call much more often new mines, it's nearly impossible. I know summons are powerful, but now they are useless.

The only way I found to really hurt the boss is by spamming psynergies until he fall, and by spamming, I mean using 3 characters to spam their strongest 5-targets psy while the 4th one heals if anyone is under 500 hp.

[Caledor]

Btw, forgot to mention this, but why sentinel haven't ever used armuvor during the fight ? I remember this attack being dangerous, but he never used it :/

What did he use while sealed? If he used almost exclusively Mind Crush then it's fine.

lower the blind proc rate of star mines or replace it by the blind psy. Seriously. First it always hits all 4 characters, and the blind almost never missed, which makes all unleash builds unusable.

It's already down to 50% base proc rate for the new mod (-10% compared to current release).

guardian mine should have less hp. It has TWICE the health of the air mine.

Nope. It doesn't attack nor heal so it's perfectly fine for it to be healthy. On the other hand air mine MUST be the squishiest one cause it heals the boss, making it the most dangerous one.

Guardian mines should nearly always use guardian aura.

5/8 for GA, which is the same rate of vanilla. I just replaced 2 out of 3 defense with another defensive psy.

Air mines should use pure ply or a wish psynergy. An air mine using a psy to rise resistance when the boss already rose his by 30 is a bit idiotic.

I like this one. Refresh Ball has only a 1/8 chance to cast Screen but maybe it's even better without it.

In vanilla, using summons during this fight was already hard enough because he always have a guardian mine with him, but now that he call much more often new mines, it's nearly impossible. I know summons are powerful, but now they are useless.

Considering that 3 out of 4 mines are not guardian i can't see how this can be true. BTW, even if you were right on this one, i wouldn't consider an issue a single battle where it's better not to summon.

Anyway, I think the root of all those issues you had with SM lies here:

Same gear as for sentinel

[dive_darkness]

Yeah, almost exclusively mind crush, or normal attacks. But Mind crush lower res. what's the point of him lowering my res if I seal him ? He cannot use psy when sealed. On the other hand, while sealed, he should switch to armuvor, which is makes more sense because it lowers my defense.

On star magician: well... Guardian aura hasn't only a 5/8 chance to happen, because using te exact same base rng and changing just the target of the hit (which doesn't change the battle rng) should make it happen or not. So why make him use the defense psy if I aim for a mine and guardian aura when I aim for the boss ? Why not just making him use guardian aura either way ?

Not summoning isn't a problem for one battle. The problem is (in vanilla): Balrog is antisummon, dullahan can use djinn rage (I always start over the fight when he uses this one), sentinel spams armuvor, so if you're low on hp because I summoned or was going to, I die (even more true now that his psy hits much harder)
And star magician. It's true that only 1/4 ball is guardian. But just remember that he can summon up to 3 each turn. Most turns he will summon at least 2 if he can. So no, 1/4 chance is high. (Btw, only Felix is geared for unleashes. All others are geared for psy spam).

All 4 bosses are anti summons in a way. Dullahan: the only moment when I try to summon against him I the first turn, because he'll just wreck my team anyway if I try, so I better sacrify 4 characters to eat as much of his health as I can. Now I can't.

Star magician: guardian ball

Sentinel: it's the only one where I see when I can use them reliably.

Balrog: he'll summon them against me, so it's not a good idea.

And don't forget that I'm overleveled for them. I had an easy fight against Balrog and sentinel because I ALAWAYS strike first with everyone. That may be not the case at lower levels when you're "supposed" to fight them.

[Caledor]

Yeah, almost exclusively mind crush, or normal attacks. But Mind crush lower res. what's the point of him lowering my res if I seal him ? He cannot use psy when sealed. On the other hand, while sealed, he should switch to armuvor, which is makes more sense because it lowers my defense.

The answer is more simple... you're not supposed to seal him that easily.

On star magician: well... Guardian aura hasn't only a 5/8 chance to happen, because using te exact same base rng and changing just the target of the hit (which doesn't change the battle rng) should make it happen or not. So why make him use the defense psy if I aim for a mine and guardian aura when I aim for the boss ? Why not just making him use guardian aura either way ?

I can't take into account savestates. Consider that akin to cheating.

Not summoning isn't a problem for one battle. [...] All 4 bosses are anti summons in a way.

I completely disagree. I always wrecked Valukars and Balrogs with summons, I summoned against modded and unmodded Sentinel and i plan to do it against modded dullahan. Not to speak about summoning against unmodded dullahan cause that strategy has been a fan favourite since forever.

I had an easy fight against Balrog and sentinel because I ALWAYS strike first with everyone. That may be not the case at lower levels.

While that certainly matters, i'm sure you know that leveling isn't the only thing that raises agility.

[dive_darkness]

Savestates: never used them during a boss fight (only for farming specific items). I used it to test guardian aura. And it seems to work differently than EVERY other psy in game. The point isn't about savestates, it's about how this particular psy works.

Summon spam is the most efficient way to hurt bosses in vanilla, yes.
In your mod, I have to wait. What if I want to summon catastrophe ? I have to wait 6 turns. Daedalus 7 turns. 3 for eclipse, and so on. So yes, I have to survive all these turns. So yes, in my eyes it is much harder than just gearing for pp regen and spamming the almighty odyssey/diamond berg/tempest. It's not a challenge anymore to deal with the bosses with psynergy. The proof is: I've beaten every single boss with single target psynergies, and had no problem to do so.

Agility: whatever...



On another note, why is the Xylion armor so "normal" ? It raises attack and defense. That's all. It used to be on par with the stealth armor. Now, Triton's ward is better for piers because there's a huge mercury boost, valkyrie's mail is better for one of the 3 others because there's the increase criticals, if you use a cursed warrior, stealth armor is waaaaaay better in everything. Erynies tunic has smaller stats than the xylitol armor, but complete them with an increase to criticals. I think that this one could benefit from a small boost.

Same with chronos mail. The golem core is an end-game forging item, and apart from the titan's glove, nothing is good.