[RELEASE] Golden Sun: The Balance Age

[Caledor]

@Squirtle: correct. With growing luck now characters aren't too dependant on equipment for luck (you won't have Pure Mage Mia at 43 and a Cursed Samurai at 0 anymore), but if you're not careful you can end up crippled by ailments cause the "elemental shield" is gone. Also: the luck % on classes are A LOT more relevant cause base luck is up to 3x to 4x higher on naked characters, plus luck on characters doesn't grow "enough" to cover the enemies' level so they'll become more and more vulnerable to statuses as the game progresses if the player doesn't increase those values somehow, and there's the whole change to vulnerabilities too. If i end up giving many ailment inflicting moves to enemies the games will be nothing like before.

A little clarification about recovery instead... the " - LV/2" is there to nullify luck gained by level up. Basically, you won't recovery faster at higher levels if you haven't increased luck in other ways.

@Rolina: I have 2 or 3 names in my head but i'll decide at the last minute probably. It will be something simple though, like the current one.

EDIT: Congrats Role, yours was the 1000th reply on this thread! Lol :P

@Dive: I haven't forgotten about your reports even though i haven't replied you. I'll reread them all when i'll start working on enemies and i'm sure they'll be very useful. So thank you ;)

[Radamanthys]

I might actually start all over just to play with this overhaul! Not to mention I kinda messed up by patching the game a bit after visiting the first town instead of doing it before I even started a new game, so Piers didn't have Frost when joining and the save state editor can mess up the data when adding items on a patched game it seems (or I did something wrong without noticing?), but yeah after I gave Piers his Frost Jewel and went on to solve the Kibombo statue puzzles I noticed on a random fight I had suddenly the option to bring a party member from the backrow... For some reason Isaac had joined the party! Haha! He sat there in the backrow of the second party by himself and kinda became a heal/useless items mule while I did my best to pretend he wasn't there storywise... Switching him in battle worked fine but if you tried to switch your characters in the Menu it made duplicates of whoever you were trying to bring back to the main party, it was so weird. Also him being in the party triggered some events before he had officially joined, like being challenged by the gladiators before entering the shaman village, also in the shaman village "trial" if I tried to cheat by putting Isaac's equipment, and thus not affecting my main party, once the trial was over you wouldn't get the equipment back.

Anyways, perhaps for the name of this overhaul: Golden Sun: Lost The Age - New Game+ or Golden Sun: New Age :P

[Misery]

Quick question, since there's growing luck for characters, does that mean you've managed to make stat growths non-random? Because one luck or more per level seems pretty crazy to have as a base value, but any less would mean you could still reset for one every level, or possibly get screwed out of a lot of luck points if you don't.

[dive_darkness]

@Dive: I haven't forgotten about your reports even though i haven't replied you. I'll reread them all when i'll start working on enemies and i'm sure they'll be very useful. So thanks you ;)

No prob.

Before I Forget it, in the mausoleum near daila, in order to get the right part of the trident, you have to cross new rooms you couldn't access before. Is it possible to change the enemies there ? Because, well, they're basically the same as the first enemies in the game, so they're a bit boring to fight.

Edit: okay... Went to apojii (doing a small trip to get all rusted items on the map).
Ghost mages are okay, green zombies (didn't remember the name) are slow, which make them not so dangerous.
Dire wolves hit for 55-60 with normal attacks and they're faster than everyone in my team. Damage reach up to 80 with fatal fang. That's really a lot for normal enemies. They have ~ 250hp if I'm right, which makes them pretty annoying.
Alec gnomes too. Same thing as the wolves, although they're a bit slower.
Both need a full turn of normal attacks to be taken down.

[Caledor]

@Misery: No, they're still random and exploitable, and i don't think i'll ever be able to do something for this. But thanks a lot for reminding me that I should've tested it...

Which i just did: I forced Isaac to level up to 19 against the first enemy in the prologue and i noticed that Hp are ~10 less than the expected value. But i tested it again on a vanilla ROM and obtained the same result (-10) on the original stat so it's fine cause the margin is what i care about.
Luck can vary a bit instead, or actually, it's more like small differences are more relevant due to the lower numbers. Nothing that can't be fixed with Lucky peppers though.

But yes, it's less than 1 Luck per level so the only thing i can say is don't exploit it if you want to enjoy it.

@dive: i fear the enemies are the same cause the whole sea god shrine loads enemy groups from the same addresses... basically i don't think i can do something about it cause my knowledge of rooms is literally zero.

[Rolina]

TBS has a predictable RNG.  That's why you can get a perfect level up run reliably in TBS, but not really in TLA.  As such, TBS is a bad game to test RNG with.

[Misery]

But yes, it's less than 1 Luck per level so the only thing i can say is don't exploit it if you want to enjoy it.

Aww, and here I was hoping you had come up with some fix :p (not really, that would be a bit unrealistic)

It's not that it's exploitable, just that random variation has such a big impact on it compared to other stats. I hate to say this when I can't provide any other suggestions, but there's a number of reasons luck does not work well as a growing stat.

TBS has a predictable RNG.  That's why you can get a perfect level up run reliably in TBS, but not really in TLA.  As such, TBS is a bad game to test RNG with.

It's still predictable, just less friendly to perfect levels. If you do a battle against the same encounter and take exactly the actions, it will always give the same result for stat growths. It's just that it changes with every level instead of every 20 levels, and there's no reliable way to hunt down the specific encounter you want.

[Caledor]

I must admit i'm not very familiar with leveling up and similar things... if there's some sort of documentation about it i can try. Like... how does the game determine level up numbers? How are character stats used in the function? Etc etc

Heck, if i find out that things are THAT bad i can even write my own level up function from scratch. I already thought about how would a perfect (non RNG dependant) level up function look like. Well, translating it into assembly is a different story though.

[Misery]

Oh, umm. You must know about the goal values every 20 levels... the base growth per level is the difference between them, divided by 20, rounded down to the nearest integer. And the chance to gain an additional one stat point is relative to how close the result is to the next integer before rounding, so there's no randomness if the division is even. It's detailed in Terence Fergusson's mechanics guide.

Or if you meant how it works regarding the RNG, I have no idea. Sure wish I knew though.

If you're willing to dig into hacking the level up mechanics, ideally you'd have a function that calculates the stat increases for the current level based on the goal values, meaning it would consistently return the same stat increase for a given level. Having a growing luck stat would not be a problem in that case.

[Caledor]

Thanks, i've read it and i know what to do now.

But first i'll do enemies and then, if nothing else comes up, i'll give it a look. Since it's an exploitable mechanic (with broken results), it'd be really interesting to remove the random part from it.

[Radamanthys]

Hi I have a question about something I can't find on the first post. I'm seeing in the class list that the classes use 13 djinn, but in-game I think you can only get about 9 per character, was this increased? Are there new djinn in hidden areas of the map? Wondering how do you get the rest. Thanks :)

[Seestern]

The Chart is showing the required elemental level to reach the class.
Every character has  by default an elemental Level of 5 in their Element and 0 in the other elements, which you can Check  in the bottom of the character screen. Setting djinns  increase the elemental Levels of their Element by 1 each.
Isaac requires an elemtal Level of 13 to be in the slayer class: (5 as a Venus adept and 8 djinns set.
The chaoslord class requires 7 7   which means  Venusadept need 2   djinns and 7   and marsadept Need 7 and 2   djinns set.
To answer your question: no new djinns.

[Radamanthys]

Ahhhhh duh, makes sense, thank you :)

[dive_darkness]

HUGE PROBLEM FOUND !

In TLA, you added alecto's mace. Well, you should look at the seabirds drop. I fought three in a row, the three dropped it. And it's too frighin' strong for here I am (didn't clear anything since aqua hydra).

Either move it really to the end game, or lower it's power, because right now, my team got three of them without even trying to get one. Which means only Jenna doesn't have one (she cannot equip it anyway).

[Seestern]

Seagulll drop has already been hotfixed in 1:34hf, you are playing a slightly outdated version xD

[dive_darkness]

Oh, didn't see that ><

Well, sorry.

Earth djinn in gabomba catacombs (no Alecto mace): all units at level 20. Weak. Piers unleashed blitz and another damage wind djinn, then Sheba used Thor. Total of four normal attacks, two from Sheba, two from Felix. Easy fight. Jenna use wish every turn.

[Caledor]

Progress report:

Djinn done, vulnerabilities for all enemies done. Next step is a check of every enemy's (non djinn) ability set.
After that the level up thing.

15/05 update: Elemental stats for all enemies reviewed, TBS enemies are done.

[dive_darkness]

Yo, we're back with a few more things done on a brand new patched version ! (No alecto's Mace)

Aqua rock: enemies aren't that dangerous, and the two spots where you can regen your pp makes the whole area easier.
Rukh are probably the most annoying, along with the turtles. Rukh because he's damn fast, and the turtle because water breath and quite a pack of hp.
The water djinn here was pretty easy. Planet diver, enough said...

Next is thundaria tower !!! Yay !
Wheeze is a pain, at lv 24, he'll hit first and a second time after all you turns. And he hit really hard ! (190 with destruct ray on central target). I finally beat him by paralyzing and summoning. Steam helps a bit. Done at lv 24-25.
Reflux: a bit like wheeze, but easier. He hits a bit less, and is a bit slower. Cutting edge with Felix (robber's blade) without any boost hits ~ 200 damage. Just heal with healing aura with Jenna and attack with Sheba. Piers use diamond powder. Not much difficulty. Felix can use wish if needed.

Enemies here are somewhat boring. You might want to use easy fights to replenish your pp with ether and cure hp with other djinns like flower. Most enemies will hit ~ 80 with normal attacks.



Also, on another note, when I try to teleport to the last sanctum when loading the save, the game crash. You might want to look into this.

[Caledor]

Also, on another note, when I try to teleport to the last sanctum when loading the save, the game crash. You might want to look into this.

Doesn't happen to me: it works flawlessly.

Thanks for the usual tips, I just started working on TLA ;)

[dive_darkness]

Ok. Maybe it's my emulator ?

And no problem, as always.