[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

[Aurorain]

What made the star magician easy for me, is because he only uses psynergy, and calling other balls as reinforcements. Sure, he throws a mine now and then, but if you have him alone with nothing but thunder and angry balls, while your resistances are buffed up as high as possible, as well as constantly sealing his psynergy off with a djinn...it got to a point where I barely even had to try anymore. xD

Not to mention, I also had break on hand, rendering the buffs(other than guard aura of course) from his guardian balls pointless, and I killed his refresh balls immediately(at most, pure wish only got used on the enemy side around two times the entire fight) so they couldn't heal him or use break on my party.

The abilities that other superbosses had for example, Sentinel has his psynergy immunity crippling all mage-types on top of also crushing my resistances with his mind crush attack, and Balrog with his never ending djinn stealing and summon usage as well as stunning my characters with his stun jip allowed him to obliterate my party most of the time(flora, and haures were pretty much slow but effective death sentences for half of my party with their status effects, and coatlicue I had to make sure he never got off considering it's a full heal for him).

The star magician, however...he really doesn't have anything special like the other bosses, instead letting his reinforcements handle the fight for him, but if they're all only damaging ones then he's going to be hardly a challenge, considering on top of the resist buffs I mentioned above, you can stack jupiter/mars resistance with armor(like cosmos shield, ardagh robe, flame shield, etc.) and not take much damage from anything they do. Which, amounted to an easy battle, especially since I had just gotten through fighting balrog and sentinel beforehand, so I was prepared well. xD

As for Dullahan, no his AI while sealed causes him to only use element swap, fulminous edge, dark contact, and a regular attack. While sealed, he never used anything aside from those skills at any point in the entire fight. It was the only way I could win against him however because of that, even with my entire party around 50. If either two of my characters I had able to seal with djinns weren't able to do so, then he'd use djinn storm, and use charon on me right after bringing me to an instant defeat.

[VardenSalad]

You know, checking the editor, I believe there's a couple different versions of Dullahan in the enemies list. Is it possible one of those is on the field instead of the planned one?

I have no real knowledge of doing any of the map or field editing, so I'm just guessing.

[Caledor]

@Aurorain. Will try and test SM a lot before releasing again, thanks for all those useful tips.
@Varden: All three dullahans are used, but 2nd and 3rd are used only to determine his moveset. I'll also have to check that sealed dullahan thing personally.

[Rolina]

@New icons: The thing you were saying when you basically went "Screw it, I'm updating it"

[Caledor]

@New icons: The thing you were saying when you basically went "Screw it, I'm updating it"

I can't make new icons so i had to recycle existing ones

[Aile~♥]

You could increase the PP reserves of the Thunder/Anger Balls to increase their damage output? I dunno.

[Caledor]

You could increase the PP reserves of the Thunder/Anger Balls to increase their damage output? I dunno.

of course, that's also an option

[Aurorain]

Maybe along with increasing their maximum PP give the Thunder Balls their last spell tiers? Shouldn't really be any reason why at that point in the game they're using something like Storm Ray or Flash Bolt over Destruct Ray and Blue Bolt anyway, especially considering that the Anger Balls are using Liquifier and Dragon Fume. Giving them Scourge would be pretty nice too I think.

[Caledor]

Maybe along with increasing their maximum PP give the Thunder Balls their last spell tiers? Shouldn't really be any reason why at that point in the game they're using something like Storm Ray or Flash Bolt over Destruct Ray and Blue Bolt anyway, especially considering that the Anger Balls are using Liquifier and Dragon Fume. Giving them Scourge would be pretty nice too I think.

their spells have already been upgraded as of 1.25a. the point is that it's nowhere near enough.

[Sora167]

Hey! Just started playing both of these patches, and I've gotta say I am really enjoying them. The difficulty level when you first start is insane haha. However, I've noticed on the TLA patch, that some things are incorrectly named. For example, Flare is called "Jenna (Now its changed to Felix)", and Herbs are called "Felix! ones d al" and have a description of "Din". Hope you don't mind me pointing them out. If I notice anything else I'll let you know :)

Keep up the good work!

EDIT: Just got a little further into the patch, and all the new things names are completely messed up :(

[Caledor]

Thanks for trying both of them and for your kind words.
Regarding TLA, are you sure you followed the patching procedure correctly (clean english rom, nothing patched after...)?

[Sora167]

Thanks for trying both of them and for your kind words.
Regarding TLA, are you sure you followed the patching procedure correctly (clean english rom, nothing patched after...)?

Well I feel stupid now XD. Forgot I was using the one I had been editing myself haha. Working perfectly fine now ^^

[Sora167]

The damage on bosses/Djinn's from my psynergy is really high. Like I finished off the 3 Chestbeaters with one Whirlwind from Sheba. (It did about 300-400 damage on them). With normal enemies it does about 70-80 damage.

[Caledor]

The damage on bosses/Djinn's from my psynergy is really high. Like I finished off the 3 Chestbeaters with one Whirlwind from Sheba. (It did about 300-400 damage on them). With normal enemies it does about 70-80 damage.

70-80 is still an awful lot. Please try patching an EUROPEAN english rom while i test against the chestbeaters with my rom.

[VardenSalad]

Alright, I beat Dullahan, in a very, very unexpected way. But it's funny enough to tell, so:

Lachesis' Rule has to be bugged out somehow, but checking the editor didn't show me anything. Sheba, with Final Judgement, was doing 7200+ damage to Dullahan. I have absolutely no idea why her damage was so high, but I used Flash and Kite on the first turn, and Haze on the second turn. Sheba did over 22,000 damage by herself. Hilarious.

Until I noticed that Sheba had acquired accidental omnipotence, Dullahan was just destroying me. Independent of party set-up my average first two turns from Dullahan looked like this:

Me: Guardian, Guardian, Resist, Use one of two Djinn to seal Dullahan Psynergy
Dullahan: Break / Dark Contact, Charon / Fulminous Edge, Djinn Storm / Charon (minimum of one party member is dead and every one is sub 400 hp)

- OR -

Me: Guardian, Guardian, Resist, Shade / Flash
Dullahan: Break / Dark Contact, Charon / Fulminous Edge, Djinn Storm / Charon (One party member is always dead, 100% of every time)

The luck on my champs is not that low; I have no idea why Charon consistently kills two members of my party, one virtually every time. Fulminous Edge is doing 650-700 damage independent of the boosts I put down (expect Flash / Shade). Charon is just royally @#$%&*! me over. I might try some weird high Luck party with Lull, but, yeah. I dunno, man.

[Caledor]

this happens when the summon HP% damage table becomes messed up and grants insane boosts to (some) base damage type attacks.
The most likely cause to this is using an american rom to patch the game onto, so trying with an european english rom might solve the issue (the next patch will convert all usa roms into european ones, solving the issue for good).

Charon: death has a 20% base success rate, which is affected by luck, by elemental levels and by distance from the main target. Here's the formula (unless for summons it's somehow different):

[spoiler="Generic formula"]Success rate % = ((((Attacker's_Elemental_Level - Target's_Elemental_Level) - Target's_Luck/2) * 3) + Base_Chance + (vulnerabity's_25)) * Distance_Factor[/spoiler]

In case of Dullahan's charon, he has an elemental level of 17. If the main target (distance_factor = 1) is a character with low luck (~5) and a venus level of 0, the chanche of success is ((17 - 0 + ~5/2)*3 + 20 + (0 or 25)) * 1 = ~65%. If the target was also in the Paladin or Holy Knight class tree (the only classes vulnerable to Death), that number would have been increased by 25 (that's what vulnerabity's_25 is).
Distance_Factor is 1 for the main target, 0.6 for the characters one position away the central target and 0.3 for the character 2 positions away.

Fulminous Edge has a multiplier of 2.8, that coupled with dullahan's 845 attack is bound to hurt. Raising defense or elemental resistance does not affect it that much, BUT... [spoiler]dully has a vulnerability too...[/spoiler]

Long story short, he's not an enemy you can fight without a proper strategy and careful preparation.

[Caledor]

1.25b uploaded

[Aile~♥]

Fulminous Edge has a multiplier of 2.8, that coupled with dullahan's 845 attack is bound to hurt. Raising defense or elemental resistance does not affect it that much, BUT... [spoiler]dully has a vulnerability too...[/spoiler]

Actually, the effect of Defence on a multiplier-type attack should be greater the higher the multiplier is. Reason is, it calculates the damage the attack would deal with a 1.0x multiplier and then multiplies that.

[Caledor]

Fulminous Edge has a multiplier of 2.8, that coupled with dullahan's 845 attack is bound to hurt. Raising defense or elemental resistance does not affect it that much, BUT... [spoiler]dully has a vulnerability too...[/spoiler]

Actually, the effect of Defence on a multiplier-type attack should be greater the higher the multiplier is. Reason is, it calculates the damage the attack would deal with a 1.0x multiplier and then multiplies that.

of course. but what i meant is that is inefficent compared to the *other* trick i tried to suggest in the spoiler.

[Caledor]

HERE's a TLA save file with all characters at level 41, most endgame gear (i think the only two thing i don't have are the new ker's weight and dark robe) and all djinn, at Contigo. No superboss defeated. Uploaded especially for those who wanted to try fighting the new Star Magician, the other superbosses or just to try different builds.
Enjoy!