[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

[Rolina]

Well, today was a good two hour session.  Took down both the thieves and Tret, and made it to Imil.  With that, Isaac, Garet, and Ivan are all in second tier classes.  We'll be taking on the mercury lighthouse tomorrow~

Let me know if you want me to grind to get Cutting Edge so we have it vs Satty.

[Caledor]

Sadly, it still doesn't work, so i can't watch your streams at all, not just live ones. If you want to let me know your thoughts why don't you use that balanced playthrough thread again?

About Saturos... i think you should play naturally, i always grind to 12 for Cutting Edge cause i got used to it.

However, v1.34 contains changes that will influence saturos' fight a lot (resistance buffs debuffs lowered to 15/30 instead of 20/40, Ward/Resist available 1 tier earlier, so Ivan in his default class will have it against him, plus the Magic Resistance stat). So think about if you want to wait for it.

[Rolina]

Today's stream is done and archived~  Had some comically bad luck with a djinn, but other than that, had a fairly good session.  Also, really, really glad I grinded up to level 12 - dunno how I'd have handled Saturos otherwise.  Tomorrow we'll be taking on the Killer Ape, and possibly reaching the Altin mines.  Also, if the new patch is out by 5pm CDT, we'll be using it~

Also, I'll be doing this regularly, Tuesdays to Fridays, from 5pm to 7pm CDT.  I'll be posting weekly updates some times between Saturday to Monday.

[Caledor]

v1.34 will be up soon (~15 minutes).

[Rolina]

How close we looking?

[Caledor]

The patches are already being upped. I'm finalizing the changelog... i'd say 10 minutes.

[Rolina]

Got it - I'll hold off the stream until then.

[Caledor]

v1.34 is UP. Starting post, class doc and djinn doc will be updated soon updated.

This version adds a "Magic Resistance/Warding" stats to every class. It's a value that doesn't change with tiers and acts as a multiplier to base damage taken. A character with 110% M.Res takes only 90% damage from Base Damage attacks. One with 90% M.Res instead would instead take 110% damage.

About the other changes:

Ceres' Legend is now better than Acheron's Grief (which is stronger) on average. Basically, Excalibur is better at unleashing, Darksword at channelling attack-based psynergies.

The strongest summons are available earlier and deal more damage.

Resistance buffs and debuffs lowered cause they were by far the strongest among the 3 buffs. Moreover, with the new values, it felt safe for me to make Ward and Resist available 1 tier earlier, lowering Breeze's importance in the early game of GS1.

Djinn after level 14 (GS) and 18 (TLA) got higher HP cause after that threshold the damage output increases dramatically thanks to EPAs like Ragnarok in GS and Piers joining in TLA. After 30 they got the third turn cause you have access to endgame weapons and the backup team.

The various enemy tweaks are due to my own playthrough. Nothing big... most are related to the set of abilities like changing a psynergy attack to one slightly stronger or weaker, or to maintain the original power level after the changes to some psynergies this version brings.

The changes in BD to psynergies were done with base classes in mind. I wanted to spread the psynergies in the early and mid game evenly.

[Rolina]

Well, that was a decent run today.  That Fuchin Djinn didn't give me NEAR as much trouble this time around (THANK THE GODS), and I fell into old bad habits in the Mogall Forest, which led to me having to use cheap tactics while trying to recover the PP for the boss.  This was remedied in the next town, though.  Seriously - I need to use more recovery items, I rely too much on spells, and that's bad in this patch since the game isn't a breeze anymore.

Speaking of said boss, the Killer Ape was a fun as I remember.  Good bit of difficulty, though I think Mia's boss-tier control actually made it easier on me by far.  As Cal pointed out, I have stupid good luck on those mage unleashes (though really poor luck on breaking items and djinn being spiteful).

Speaking of bad luck vs djinn, I pulled a stupid on the roaming Mars djinn north of Xian.  Should have buffed resistances, but instead I stood there and took several spells to the face like a dumbass.  Lost Isaac and had to restart due to lack of revival at the time.  Made sure to actually play intelligently on the rematch.

I'll have a week in review up in the next day or so.  Next stream is on tuesday - Will the Hyrdos Statue be as trivial as it was on my first playthrough?  How will I react to everything beyond it, as I am unfamiliar with the patch beyond Altin?  Find out next time, on Witch Plays Golden Sun!

[Caledor]

I'm watching the parts that i missed from yesterday's stream or didn't comment on while you were live so:

About replaceable drops (like mimic in fuchin temple): nice idea, but i don't think i have space left for new icons in TLA. I'm saying TLA cause anything i add to GS must be also in tla due to passwords... so i guess the best i can do is to grab a TLA only item and port it to GS1, cause space for new icons isn't an issue there.

Psynergy tiers: as you probably already know, i never really cared about spreading psynergies evenly for dual classes. The only question i ask myself when giving them offensive psynergies is "how good should this class be at casting?". Most warrior classes are capped at 150 BP for spells and they have other roles, so they usually end up 2 of thorn/ray/froth/starburst and that's it, cause i wouldn't have any space left for other spells if i were to give them 3 or more tiers of offensive psynergies. The Brute is the class that made me answer the question above with "not good at all" so it got 2 low tier psynergies instead. Rule of thumb is that a higher attack multiplier for a warrior classes implies a crappier set of offensive psynergies.
Among casters instead low tier spells are even more rare cause they have access to the strongest ones also.

But like i always said, this is totally intended cause it encourages trying different class setups instead of sticking to one from beginning to end. That's why one of the changes this version brings is a fairer spread of offensive psynergies (especially second tiers) among base classes. Cause if you feel you're lacking power with your current setup and everything else fails, you can always go back to base classes.

About spell placement (the whole discussion about Punishment coming before Gaia in the spell list for Ivan's Oracle class)... i tried following a few rules for them that kinda reflect those of the vanilla game. Basically, ordering depends on main element and role.
About Roles: take Jenna's Justice and Miko classes for example: both have Fume and Aura, but Justice is mainly an offensive caster, so Fume, Flare and Beam first and Aura and Raise follow, while i think of the Miko class as more of a healer so it has Cure, Aura and Revive first and then Fume and Gaia. This isn't true for tri elemental classes. IIRC they all have damage first and healing after.
As for the "main element" thing... take Oracle and Worldwaker for example: both have Whirlwind and Gaia. Oracle's main element is Jupiter so Punishment and Whirlwind come first, and then Gaia follows. Worldwaker instead is mostly focused on Venus and Mercury so Gaia Prism first and Whirlwind after. Hope it makes sense for you.

Also, one of the reasons why you often find yourself having low PP, might be your high usage of djinn and summons. When you consume PP with lower stats and then you re-set the djinn, current PP are determined by the percentage of current PP to max PP. For example, if you cast Ply Well (10 PP) at full PP with 20 Max PP, your current PP become 10. If you then set your djinn and your max PP become 100, your current PP become 50, not 90. Basically, your measly Ply well was more expensive than a Pure Wish.

[Rolina]

Yeah, when you mentioned that Punishment was like Fume, it made a lot of sense to me for it to be where it was.  I try to do exactly the same thing, which is why I had the question about it.

Also, no - my low PP came from constantly using heals outside of battle.  I only use djinn and summons when I start to run low on PP - summons are my fallback measure.  The problem was that I wasn't showing the patch the proper respect and using more consumables.  The issue shouldn't be nearly as big of a problem now that I have a good stock of consumables for out of battle healing.  The other issue was with Ivan and Garet having lower PP than I'd like, and the reason for that is obvious.  Ivan always goes first, so he's always got that PP drain every battle.  As for Garet... he's Garet.  PP isn't something he gets a lot of... which kinda sucks when he's got one of the most useful elements in the game at his disposal.  Still, those two not having as much PP isn't as big a reason to go into PP restoration mode unless, like in the vs Killer Ape section, they're my healers.

[VardenSalad]

Cal, what's the address for your summon filter on TBS and/or how do you have summons/turn done for TBS?

Edit: thanks

[Caledor]

08079E7C. Obviously it's the same as TLA, which also implies that only 3 filters are used: 1-2 djinn summons, 1-3 djinn summons, every summon.

[VardenSalad]

Alright, now I know how to adjust the turn filters for the summons and I know how to do it for both TBS and TLA, but I also know that using VBA memory editor is temporary and I'm pretty sure I need to do hex editing to edit the ROM?

I've grabbed Hex Workshop, but I'm completely lost. Mostly due to lack of documentation on VBA's memory viewer.

[Caledor]

you don't need the hex editor. the first time you asked i also told you how to save an edited rom from the hex viewer: all you need to do is click save write 08000000 as address and as size 01000000 for TLA or 00800000 for TBS. Save your "dump" as a .gba file and you've got an edited rom.

If you still want to use an hex editor, to get the addresses you just need to remove the initial "08". For example 08079E7C in the memory viewer becomes 00079E7C in the hex editor. Also, be careful when using 16-bit mode and 32-bit mode in the memory viewer, cause it flips the bytes. Basically, "07F5" in 16-bit mode or "0568F924" in 32-bit mode in the memory viewer become respectively "F507" and "24F96805" in the hex editor (The memory viewer uses the Little Endian format). If you want a 1:1 match with the hex editor just go back to 8-bit mode after each change.

[Rolina]

Week in review:

Most of this week was spent playing catch up.  Using the latest patch and the updated mechanics and changes on my journey to get back to where I was.  Here's the details:


1 - prologue is just as enjoyable as before, encouraging me to actively use items while the original games were a cakewalk.
2 - I find myself holding onto weapons longer than before.  Particularly with Garet, at least until I got the Elven Shirt.
3 - Obligatory disagreement about how classes and spell distribution are approached, you're heard it before.
4 - Finding out the hard way to use items more.  On-use items are still s***, but consumables are now hella useful.

[VardenSalad]

yeah, the only reason I asked about the hex editor was that I saved my dump file as test.gba, only for it to get saved as test.gba.dmp. After a few more tests of the same thing happening, I figured I'd just go the hex editor route. Now that I know that you just chop the first two digits off, it's pretty much cake to use.

[Caledor]

@Rolina
1- good to hear that
2- i guess that's due to the weapon categories, so that's good news as well. it means the added bonus are relevant
3- nothing can be done about this. we've been telling each other's POV for more than a year now without going anywhere.
4- might be just your bad luck with useable items, lol.

[Rolina]

@2:  Relevant, but I think they should be weighted a bit differently.  More on this when I develop the tools to show of my ideas a bit more.  I'll swing them by you and see what you think of them.
@3:  Yeah, thus why at this point it's just an offhand obligatory comment. :P

[Caledor]

Intresting. I'll be waiting for that then.