[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

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Why bother with a 1-3 use ring that casts Wish Well without considering your EPower, when you can just have a stack of Mist Potions?

Quick point: The spirit ring is actually really broken, but for its *out of battle* effect. It won't break when used outside of battle, so it's essentially free infinite heals. You can see plexa abuse this in GS2 speedruns. I don't know if this is a spirit ring only thing, or if other rings with out of battle effects are the same way, but from a design perspective, I'd rather just stick to passive ring effects and not have to worry about it at all.

[Aile~♥]

I think it's probably a Spirit Ring-only thing (or maybe a Ring-only thing in general), because I've seen other on-use equipment break when used outside of battle.

[Caledor]

Why bother with a 1-3 use ring that casts Wish Well without considering your EPower, when you can just have a stack of Mist Potions?

Quick point: The spirit ring is actually really broken, but for its *out of battle* effect. It won't break when used outside of battle, so it's essentially free infinite heals. You can see plexa abuse this in GS2 speedruns. I don't know if this is a spirit ring only thing, or if other rings with out of battle effects are the same way, but from a design perspective, I'd rather just stick to passive ring effects and not have to worry about it at all.

Wow, I surely missed this. Well, as for v1.20a the Spirit Ring cannot be used outside of battle anymore.

[VardenSalad]

Hello,

I registered an account just for this patch and, while I'm going to report anything strange or seemingly out of place I find during my playthrough of the patch, I just wanted anyone here to let me know if my posts are unwarranted or should be directed to a different place.

With that out of the way, are Adept's Clothes supposed to be simple clothing? I've just finished Mercury Lighthouse and bought 3 sets of Adept's Clothes for Mia, Ivan, and Garet. I see the stats on Adept's Clothes are just Defense +18. Is this intended?

[Caledor]

With that out of the way, are Adept's Clothes supposed to be simple clothing? I've just finished Mercury Lighthouse and bought 3 sets of Adept's Clothes for Mia, Ivan, and Garet. I see the stats on Adept's Clothes are just Defense +18. Is this intended?

Yes. I removed the PP boost because it made the Silk Robe and the Cheongsam buyable at Xian completely worthless. The PP boost was too good to be traded for 1 or 2 points in defense.

[Aile~♥]

An alternative strategy would've been to keep the PP boost, but nerf the Defence so that it's actually slightly worse than the previous town's best clothing/armour/robe.

[Caledor]

An alternative strategy would've been to keep the PP boost, but nerf the Defence so that it's actually slightly worse than the previous town's best clothing/armour/robe.

Yes, but we're talking about Kolima-Imil here, one the biggest gap in game between one shop and the next in the whole game. I don't think I should make something bought after you beat Saturos worse than something you can buy as soon as you get out of the Goma Cave...

[VardenSalad]

An alternative strategy would've been to keep the PP boost, but nerf the Defence so that it's actually slightly worse than the previous town's best clothing/armour/robe.

I don't think I should make something bought after you beat Saturos worse than something you can buy as soon as you get out of the Goma Cave...

But as it currently stands, not having differentiated Adept's Clothes as a unique piece even living up to its name(!), I just had Garet trading Leather Armor (+14), Ivan trading the Fur Coat (+15, +15 :MercuryStar:Resist), and Mia trading the Travel Robe (+9) for Adept's Clothes (+18).

I saw your comment that it made other items worthless, but as I've played through this patch, damn, this game got harder and I thank you for that. Saturos was a total monster, and him using Fireball constantly put me at the edge of failing because he just did so much AoE damage and I had no AoE healing. Like, those 60 HP to everyone was the scariest thing in the game thus far. I think you could afford to buff Adept's Clothes just a bit before Mogall Forest. I think you really need the defense because enemies hurt in this patch. @#$%&*! Gnomes...

I think you're overestimating how the PP boost is compared to defense. I haven't ran the numbers are rigorously as you have, though. So I could be wrong.

[Caledor]

I saw your comment that it made other items worthless, but as I've played through this patch, damn, this game got harder and I thank you for that. Saturos was a total monster, and him using Fireball constantly put me at the edge of failing because he just did so much AoE damage and I had no AoE healing. Like, those 60 HP to everyone was the scariest thing in the game thus far. I think you could afford to buff Adept's Clothes just a bit before Mogall Forest. I think you really need the defense because enemies hurt in this patch. @#$%&*! Gnomes...

I think you're overestimating how the PP boost is compared to defense. I haven't ran the numbers are rigorously as you have, though. So I could be wrong.

Well, for every 2 points in defense, you take 1 less damage from physical attacks. Physical. Defense is completely useless against Base Damage Psynergy, the only thing that matter here are Elemental Power of the caster, E.Resist of the target and (thanks to my patch) MaxPP of the caster. Your saving grace against Saturos is Breeze. Don't know if you're keeping your patch up to date but patch but caster enemies like gnomes have been slightly nerfed with the latest update.
Also, thank you for trying the patch, hope you'll enjoy both the modded game and your stay here.

[VardenSalad]

Thank you.

I'm excited to continue following these patches to try and breathe some new life back into some of my favorite games. I'll try to stay up to date and to continue asking questions.

There doesn't happen to be a patch-to-patch changelog, does there?

[Caledor]

There doesn't happen to be a patch-to-patch changelog, does there?

Yes, there is. Just open the spoiler under "Older Versions". It's not very detailed but you can always ask me foe more info.

[VardenSalad]

Thanks for the info.

I also noticed I didn't mention my route to Mercury Lighthouse. I finished Tret before heading to Imil, so I ended the Saturos fight at level 11. Just felt like you should know.

[Caledor]

Well that's the normal sequence. I usually grind until level 12 before Saturos in order to gain access to Cutting Edge. It helps immensely against him.

[Rolina]

You nerfed the Gnomes?  They OTK'd my party because they were half the level of the gnomes at the time, you know.  A level 5 party shouldn't have easy victories there, especially against a trio of casters like that.

As for the Adept's Clothes thing... I'm gonna have to agree and say you should have buffed the China Dress instead.  Namely because the main feature of the china dress was that it was an on-use item to trigger attack down for a single target, which makes it @#$%-tier (Need I explain why I hate on-use items?).  Better option was to make the China Dress actually useful.  Maybe make it buff resistance, since that's always a bigger threat than physical attacks.

[Caledor]

I don't remember if the gnomes were nerfed themselves. What I did was to check every caster in both games and slightly nerf those that seemed too OP to me. But I'm positive that every enemy that was "nerfed" this way is still stronger than its vanilla counterpart.
About the Cheongsam (or China Dress), its defense has been raised... it's now slightly better than the silk robe. I know you don't like useable items but the Cheongsam is not meant to be an item you carry for too long, but instead something you replace as soon as you find something better by defense, like the psy armor or the silk robe. If I were to make every single item you find in the game wonderful, my choices would be VERY limited and go against the very principle of this mod that was "adding variety". This way instead you buy it for its defense like every single piece of armor, try a bit its effect, then drop it for the jerkin at kalay as always.

[Rolina]

I dunno about you, but a lot of my armor, especially in mid-late game, I carry for effect.  In fact, I'm already doing that - Adept's Clothes are better than the Fur Coat, but Ivan's keeping the Fur Coat on for the resistance.  If the only thing we care about for the China Dress is the defense... then why do we care at all?  It's kinda odd that in the same breath, you talk about adding variety, but then dismiss it as well.  That effect alone really isn't enough to save it in my eyes - maybe in yours, it's worth the 7 pp you'll save for the one use you'll get before it breaks for no good reason, but it seems like a waste for me to have Mia stop healing just to do Garet's job right now.

[VardenSalad]

I was also confused by the numbers on the China Dress, but I decided not to buy it, which kind of seems like OP's point.

Is the China Dress supposed to function as a kind of noob trap? Compared to the Psynergy Armor, which I kept until Tolbi. I think moving the Water Jacket around my party lead to just grabbing two Armored Shells and dropping the Psynergy Armor.

[Rolina]

No idea.  It never saw use in Vanilla, and even buffed I'm not sure how useful it'd be.  I suppose it's impossible to make everything useful, but giving on-use items passive usefulness is something I personally would value.  Even something basic, like resist 10 to Jupiter or to Mars would be fine by me.  I think Caledor and I don't necessarily agree on the usefulness of on-use items, though.

[VardenSalad]

Caledor, can you give me the breakdown for the new 3/4/5 classes? I've just gotten the final Djinn at Crossbone Isle and I'm screwing around with distribution.

And the Punishment spell that the Divine Mage picks up, what're the levels for growth in that spell tree?

[Caledor]

You can see the doc linked in the first post for everything you want to know regarding classes, but if there's something you don't understand about the doc you can always ask me.
About levels, which is basically the only thing you won't find in the doc, they remained pretty much the same and no spells are learned after L54 just like in the original game.
Punishment, Retribution and Scourge are learned around 8, 29 and 54 respectively.