[RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloaded

[comingsoon]

Hello there,

Played through the game for the past week or so and I had a blast with very few exceptions.  Love >99% of the changes that were made which made the game so much more open ended with party options while the classes people stuck to were for the most part untouched or slightly buffed vs vanilla(ninja)

Got through everything except Dullahan so far, unfortunately I didnt realize that importing my GS1 save from forever ago would screw me...over level 40 so RIP luck.  Think i'm going to go for a new save before attempting.... i get very tilted constantly dying to condemn/charon or anything with instant death tied to RNG

GS is easily 1 of my fav series and this version is amazing work, hopefully I can help improve it.
Im sure you spent countless hours working on this so I'll spend maybe ~1 hour writing this up and make an account(which i never do lol)
everything I say is meant to be constructive, so bear that in mind.  A lot of feedback is based on personal experience...although I've played this game a lot I definitely know very little compared to probably most people here so if I post something not correct no offense is intended

Im going to make a list of feedback/thoughts/suggestions, the number just means a different topic nothing else...I have no idea how technically possible some requests are as I have no experience in hacking ROMS.

It's a really long post but eh, figured more details the better

[comingsoon]

1. change descriptions for abilities in-game that can add status effects - especially higher tier EPAs, but for spells too if they have a chance for some status effect.  Perhaps add a line in a sample format for say, Odyssey:

line1:default txt
line2:(damage modifier%, %chance to land debuff, -x turns)

would be great if technically possible...no idea on line/character limit...and I imagine it can be a lot of work but would be a great QOL vs constantly checking spreadsheets

2. assuming no hardcore grinding/abuse, the economy felt good prior to reunion...I bought lots of vendor gear since they were decent upgrades most of the time and early artifacts/gear dont sell for a lot I was constantly broke..felt good.  really liked the consumable changes as well

once late game comes around though the player is once again swimming in gold in normal play...

instead of trying to control the coin flow other than maybe gear$ nerfs, introduce some gold sinks like potions/psy crystals at special vendors that cost a ton..maybe 8-12k a piece(just making this number up)

3. perhaps introduce ranks to certain spells rather than just ST/MT

Good example is hp/psy drain.  I like how much it got buffed but at certain points of game it felt super out of place.  when I was level ~20 at aqua rock, fairy monster would drain more than my entire PP pool in 1 go, leeching 85-95 points.  Since that would require expensive/rare consumables to be used or slowly run back to town/come back i just kept resetting there.

I think it would be cool to have it scale to some stat, have different ranks so its not so insane early on but later on it can scale to very large amounts if player builds around it

Revive would be another caididate for consideration here, maybe 3 ranks at rank 3 it revives with full hp but costs a ton of PP to use.  currently unless your characters are exactly speed tuned the revived character can easily miss the party wide heal/buff then die again and again

maybe do the same thing for buffs/debuffs

Jenna's valkyrie class is a great example ....looks like its the only max ATK buff in the game

This might just be from my experience...later on sometimes its not even worth trying to buff, at least more than 1-2 total buffs because bosses that matter will break you right away.  also with the nerfs to them, you get even less benefit that I found often its a waste of PP/turn.

I also found debuffs very unappealing(ST or MT) since again...anything challenging or worth using debuffs on just fail to land even with +ailment too much and fall off insanely fast I found them not worth using, only exception would be some EPAs where I'm not expecting it to land too often and considered it a bonus.
Debuffs are insanely strong vs djinn/non super bosses but late game they fell off for me hard.  maybe i'm doing something wrong for the above mentioned, idk.

4. gearing is totally awesome, from incremental upgrades to getting to late game.

almost everything end game is at least situationally good or best in slot.  the endgame gear hunt was really fun for me tracking down and getting all the best stuff for my party...
only real complaint i had as a result from this was, running out of inventory space all the time-not sure how this would be, or if it can be changed since inventory size is native to the game

I ran into a hiccup where using certain djinn suggested by guides/wiki messed with RNG, however I did not realize this for quite some time and it was driving me nuts.  One good example was Gel ...guides recommened this and it does work in vanilla, but in the mod the RNs get messed up so when i finally switched djinn the gears dropped.  I know you mentioned some Djinn got changed around..is there a list somewhere, or can you provide a bullet list of changes that would cause certain djinn to mess with RN vs vanilla?

Would it be possible to change Ker's weight to be not cursed or somehow get a second cleric's ring?  I liked Darksword's appraoch with non elemental because you dont need to swap gear depending on fight...however with Ker's weight being cursed you dont get that benefit compared to darksword while cursed
Maybe change nebula wand to earth and kers weight to something else...but thematically that wouldnt fit as golem core forgeables is the earth type

5. Overall game experience was smooth, with a few outliers:

I want to emphazise that the game can be made way wayyyy harder while being possible, but it would not be any fun for most people, so my approach has this in mind.

tundaria region the bear is totally over-tuned.  insane HP, DEF and damage compared to anything else, i killed one just to see how it'd go and i always ran from them.

aqua rock - the ROCs(forgot name, ostrich looking dude) same story as bear but are SUPER fast as well, going before my default sheba sometimes.  these guys are worse offenders than bears, sometimes i reset just from seeing them if i cant run.

aqua hydra boss- probably my least favorite part of the entire mod.  its not that he was too hard to beat, but early game theres not a lot of options at all other than doing a long boring grind.  I believe I was at par level for this guy and the damage from hydra is just insane.
Very often the flood aoe + chomp combo would kill any female character, with full HP and 1-2 buffs.  and this gets spammed....wasnt super hard but just really really annoying and not fun

Late game:

Valkur and sentinel - strat wise pretty similar to vanilla, just harder so not too much to say here
Valkur stunned me at 40 luck, it only happened once ~10 tries or so, what happened there?  I doubled checked at end of fights and am 100% sure I had exactly 40 luck. (sheba, pure mage)

Star magician: my favorite fight by far, the strat is such an overhaul compared to vanilla(leave all thunderballs up and focus down boss, tank n spank)

The wide variety of debuffs, summoning balls that must be dealt with fast, and potential damage output really made me use wide variety of my characters movesets.  only fight where casters kept using the highest tier of offensive psyenergies as needed

If high damage is coming from adds and boss, then MT heal(s) need to come and play more defensive until HP is topped off, while picking off anger ball

It was really cool having to use such wide variety of moves and not having to pray to RNGesus compared to many boss fights, RNG being females dont get targeted 2-3x in a row -> dead

doom dragon:
this is where having my old GS1 file screwed me, anyone from GS1 constantly got stunned/debuffed/KO'd due to bad luck stat and this fight was so much harder than it needed to be.  because this fight was such a nightmare i dont really want to bang my head against the wall on dullahan, will do another playthrough in the near future w/o luck-sacked characters

6: Balance changes:

Really liked the much-needed huge buffs casters got for late game.  Now there's much better reason to use the more-likely to die characters/setups - since in vanilla you can just use warrior classes for healing/support at much lower death rate.

I noticed that in both the mod and vanilla hard-mode, physical damage gets a much bigger penalty vs magic.  Getting even a small boost in defense can result in a large phys. damage reduction.  I think thigns are fine so far but if changes are made in the future increasing defense by a lot penalizes physical users harder than magic, and even more vs summons

[Caledor]

Hi comingsoon, glad you enjoyed the mod and thanks for the feedback!

Going through the points:
1 - Two line descriptions are impossible sadly. Space is extremely tight.
2 - Coin amount has been brought up many times. It's pretty much impossible to solve since you basically run out of things to buy after a certain point in the game while being able to sell stuff you get for free. Most impactful thing i can do is probably drop the price of free artifacts to single digit.
3 - I already added a "rank" to psy drain for very early game enemies, so adding another one to address that issue is easy enough.
For stuff like characters it would be mostly an exception rather than a staple, like there's only one class with the full hp revive. I have to consider it.

currently unless your characters are exactly speed tuned the revived character can easily miss the party wide heal/buff then die again and again

this is exactly what i had intended instead. Turn order is important.

Break is there to punish excessive buffing. If you don't overdo it it's always gonna be a loss for the enemy.

4 - nothing i can do about inventory space, sadly. Djinn and RNG are another issue people keep reporting but honestly i never faced anything of the sort.

Would it be possible to change Ker's weight to be not cursed or somehow get a second cleric's ring?

Nope :P
They can be that broken exactly because you have to choose between warrior and mage getup.

Darksword could easily be non-elemental because I already had the full elemental set of endgame swords, while Ker is the Earth one. It's also the best element for it since most of the classes you'd want Earth power on are Healers so i don't think they should use it regardless. Nebula will suffice.

5 - i'll definitively check the reported enemies. keep in mind though that that's the first open world area. The cause might simply be that you did it in an unfavorable order.

6 - Raising defense has effect only against physical attacks. Raising resistance is twice as impactful for magic as it is for EPAs. On the other hand, improving physical offense is much easier than improving magical offense (in battle, only through summoning)

[comingsoon]

For stuff like characters it would be mostly an exception rather than a staple, like there's only one class with the full hp revive. I have to consider it.

Ahh did not realize it was unique to a class already, I tried out a handful of classes but of course most of them were not given serious time, as I think most single playthroughs would not.  Perhaps a middle ground for some classes to have a 75-80% revive and its way less efficient than default revive, to a point most players would default to the cheaper option unless they 100% have to use the more expensive option.


"Would it be possible to change Ker's weight to be not cursed or somehow get a second cleric's ring?"

Nope :P They can be that broken exactly because you have to choose between warrior and mage getup.

I think my post ran on for too long before and I had the request worded wrong.  What I really wanted to ask is change ker's weight to non cursed but be toned down so its overall same power as the other 3 elemental staffs at highest tier, so earth alone isnt locked behind clerics ring.

Then have another staff be more powerful overall but it's cursed.  It's not a big deal I'm just really OCD(i bet a lot of rpg players are) with wanting optimal gear, with earth mage I gotta run with nebula/gaia staff vs other elements getting a better version.

Asking for another Cleric's ring was a bad idea tbh as that would just give player too much power since you've given cursed equip a nice overhaul

i'll definitively check the reported enemies. keep in mind though that that's the first open world area. The cause might simply be that you did it in an unfavorable order.

I dont belive I did eastern sea in a bad order, maybe it wasnt optimal but main point originally is that those particular monsters I mentioned felt out of place relative to others in the same area, as all others within the same area were fine

[Dark Mits]

Welcome comingsoon. I noticed you mention that the game can be made harder and wanted to ask if you tried the mod on Normal or Hard mode, so that we can compare our gameplay experiences.

Regarding the limited inventory, I was given the suggestion to vendor some items and re-buy them later once I get the full 8-man group, specifically the buff items (Mint, Apples etc.), Psynergy crystals, Water of Life, Game Tickets, Lucky Coins and the 4-element class items if you do not use them. It is a great relief as you can empty up to 12 slots.

Regarding the bear in Tundaria region, it seems overtuned because the party is expected to be ~lvl28 for this part, which also includes equipment upgrades from Gaia Rock, Aqua Rock, items from Sunshine etc. I tried going there immediately after getting Piers's ship in order to acquire the Jupiter djinni, but just 2 battles in I decided it's not worth it yet   The Squirrelfang in the same area also hits like a truck with its Quick Slash.


For Caledor:
I am again playing through the game (I simply can't get enough of this mod!), I'm currently at Eastern Sea (specifically Gaia's Rock) and so far I have the following notes:
- Unleashes from Staves seem to be very powerful compared to unleashes from all other types of weapons. Sheba was dealing 150+ damage with Psychic Rod, which was 30 dmg points higher than unleashes from Felix, and upwards to 240 damage with Asteria's Staff unleash, while both Piers and Felix cannot break 180 yet. I understand that this is balanced by attacks with no unleashes, where she hits for less than 50 while the others hit for almost 100.
- Similarly to comingsoon, I still feel that the Aqua Hydra is overtuned because a combo of Chomp plus any other attack on one of the squishies is a guaranteed death. I tried to lower its Attack with Dull with almost 0 success, then I tried to maintain stage-4 Protect but this was both very PP-intensive and turned out that it does not reduce damage from Raging Flood, so total incoming damage reduction was not as effective as expected. I resorted to Summons and Shade.
- Again similarly to comingsoon, I realized that the Psy Drain from the Faeries in Aqua Rock is EVIL! They can absorb up to 80PP (possibly more?). Granted, this can be "countered" by simply spending a couple more turns using Ether. Considering that I have mentioned that PP is "infinite" due to vast PP-regen options in late game, what if late-game enemies and bosses acquired PP-drain abilities, or had those merged with their existing abilities (for example True Collide absorbing both HP and PP, Restore Balls getting a PP-drain ability instead of Defending, Earth Force from Doom Dragon absorbing PP, maybe even make Venom have the same effectiveness as Poison but add PP-damage as well?)
- During my fight with the Mercury djinni in Aqua Rock, I got his Psynergy sealed and it simply stood there defending 2 times per round till the end of the battle, it did not attack at all. I thought that enemies "fall back" on Attack if they cannot use Psynergy, and I'm fairly sure that other djinni earlier did so.

[comingsoon]

Thanks for the welcomes all,

Glad to see I'm not just crazy for pointing out that specific enemies were out of place relative to others around the same area/level lol

Regarding difficulty, I played mine through on normal modded difficulty since I read on Cal's post that hard is untested

Not sure I'd enjoy hard mod in its current state - I've played through vanilla hard a lot and flat stat increases don't always work out well with how damage scales mid-late game.
My guess for hard mode of mod would be that physical does little to no damage due to:

-increased defense from in-game hard mode
-increased defense base from mod itself
-overall slight to moderate nerfs of physical damage potential vs vanilla
-bosses like sentinel physical would simply be a waste of time since +defense buff is more powerful

I think when dark mits had staff unleashes did more damage than phys. attackers, the reasons above is majority of the cause.  I noticed that early on there were a couple staffs that had particularly hard hitting unleashes compared to others for the time you get them.

My guess would be, the game experience would be devolved into abusing barrier djinns+lull abuse and summon spam being by far the best strat, and in some instances the only strat viable especially for superbosses.  That or excessive amounts of wonder bird slaying

Maybe just my personal opinion but I really dislike how summons damage is calculated - largely based on max HP and does not scale with player power aside from ele power.  It feels very not-RPG'ish because you'll do similar damage whether you are level 1 or 99(assuming all other factors same) late game doing the same summon.

Just thinking out loud here - normal difficulty of mod is tuned very well in 99.9% of cases but I think the flaws of base-game damage calculations and stat limitations really start to show on hard mode mod.

[Dark Mits]

Indeed the mod is designed for Normal difficulty. I have completed it on Hard mode albeit without defeating Star Magician and Dullahan. I believe you will enjoy it on Hard mode since you do claim you'd like it a little more difficult, I can write down my remarks in gameplay differences:

- Defense scales by x1.25, and since enemies in early game have had their Defense buffed more than enemies in late game in the mod, physical attacks are at a disadvantage only till mid-game (until around you defeat Poseidon / Moapa). From there on they pull ahead of single-target Psynergy of mono- and duo-element classes. I have not done any playthrough with tri- or quad-element. Unleashes on their own remain stronger than psynergy but are balanced around the fact that they have 30% chance to occur, so psynergy is on average more powerful. Of course matching enemies' weak element is important.
- As a consequence of the above, psynergy gains tremendous value till that part. So you will be relying on it heavily in order to have combat last 2-4 rounds. For reference, Sheba would deal single-digit damage with no-unleash attack, but over 150 with rank 2 psynergy even at lvl20 against some enemies.
- Again as a consequence of the above, PP becomes heavily limiting, which means that the best course of action (at least best in my experience) is to heavily invest in Herbs and Corns until you get Ether in order to free up all your PP for offense. I estimate that I have used somewhere around 300 herbs and 200 corns till I reached the point where I can maintain my PP levels.
- Consequence of the above is that coin becomes more limiting in early game. In fact I was not able to get all available at-the-time craftable items from Sunshine and the vendors of Eastern Sea due to lack of coin. Which asks you to prioritize the order of your upgrades.
- The main difficulty is not the extra HP from enemies but the extra ATK. Sheba and to a lesser degree Jenna are vulnerable until the reunion. After the reunion, running with Isaac, Garet, Felix and Piers at front-row makes the game significantly easier. Don't be afraid to use Defend.
- Funnily enough, Sentinel is the easiest of the optional bosses. Physicals work well at end-game on Hard mode too. Valukar posed difficulty only and only because he would always manage to get Coatlicue at some point due to 3 actions per round, which is why I am not going to pick up Summon tablets of 4+ djinn until I defeat him for my current playthrough. I didn't manage to defeat either Star Magician or Dullahan with a lvl48-50 group, but Star Magician is definitely harder than Dullahan because of (surprise!) unkillable Guard+Restore Ball combo. I have defeated Valukar, Sentinel and Doom Dragon without summons, but the battles did last quite a while (with Doom Dragon lasting over 40 rounds).
- Due to increased enemy HP, Summons become relatively more useful (like in the unmodded game), but the loss of stats and powerful psynergy is a risk. I prefer fighting everything except bosses with Psynergy, and use only counter-element Summons for bosses.

Shade / Flash and Lull spamming didn't feel necessary, because it means lots of actions wasted to use them, set them etc. which in turn makes battles drag on longer. Using them once to prepare them for Summons then reuse them many turns further during the battle is what I did.

That's all I can think and remember right now. I highly suggest you give it a try, I believe you will find it engaging and satisfying to defeat bosses with your PP bars almost depleted 

[comingsoon]

Thanks for the insights on hard mode, I think i'll do at least 1 more normal run before attempting hard since i've only done it once and want to try a few other setups.

Good to know that summon spamming isnt automatically the best option or the only viable option =)

regarding star magician adds, this is taken from wiki:
"It is also worth noting that any monster spawned mid-battle (such as the balls Star Magician summons) will retain their original normal-mode stats, and thus will be significantly easier than their Hard Mode counterparts."

are you taking too much damage and need to be more defensive during those turns?  I know for normal it was very easy to kill the adds right away, since i dont need to worry about dying nearly as much.  I was level~50 and had very good gear at that point.

For hard mode around what level do you predict is needed to beat star magician/dullahan?

and last question, anyone have a link to step by step instructions or a video on how to exactly import a dmp for VBA on gold passwords?  Ive googled it quite a bit and the only couple posts i've found say "go look it up" ....dont enjoy doing 6 pages of PW each time lol

[Caledor]

and last question, anyone have a link to step by step instructions or a video on how to exactly import a dmp for VBA on gold passwords?  Ive googled it quite a bit and the only couple posts i've found say "go look it up" ....dont enjoy doing 6 pages of PW each time lol

First post, FAQ

[Uphio]

Hello!

Firstly: I'm absolutely loving this mod. First playthrough of reloaded, and about 15 years since I first played the game. You've done a great thing here.

But I've got a problem I can't seem to solve...

Djinn and RNG are another issue people keep reporting but honestly i never faced anything of the sort.

I'm also encountering issues with RNG methods.
I'm trying to obtain Alecto's Mace, which drops from Nue killed with Mercury, in the Yampi Desert Cave.
I've been trying for quite a while now and have had no luck. I've done both 2-enemy and 3-enemy variants, and have tried different psynergy of the same RN values, and also with every damaging Mercury djinn. Hundreds of slightly varied combinations, checking my RN move by move, but it just won't work. I've gotten other items (Riot Gloves from Minos Knights, in the same cave) just fine.

Could you or someone else here try getting it to drop? I just don't know what to do-- I've tried pretty much everything.
I don't know if it helps, but its being run with the mGBA core on RetroArch, the only emulator core that seems to run this mod with 0 bugs.

[comingsoon]

Hey there,

having played through this recently myself, I ran into an a few issues and eventually figured it out after reading up a lot on the RNG guides on gamefaqs/wiki.
hopefully 1 of these tips solves it:

-I ended up using serac because from what i can tell does not mess with RN and has a high multiplier
-sometimes if anyone in frontline has cursed items/clerics ring equipped it can mess with RN methods(applies to vanilla as well)
-are you getting the rainbow kill?  ensure they make the flash and funny sounds - i actually had issue with this due to not having enough elemental power - female characters had too little attack so I forced physical classes to do the finishing, it might be possible that you might need 1-2 more power even if you get the rainbow kill if you are borderline, not sure there

If you still cant get it to work, post a log of exactly what you are doing and people can look further

[Uphio]

-I ended up using serac because from what i can tell does not mess with RN and has a high multiplier

I haven't got Serac yet (going after Valukar/Balrog first), so I'll try this again when I've got him.

-sometimes if anyone in frontline has cursed items/clerics ring equipped it can mess with RN methods(applies to vanilla as well)

Does it have an effect if the character with cursed gear / clerics ring isn't on the field? It's on Garet, off-field.

-are you getting the rainbow kill?  ensure they make the flash and funny sounds - i actually had issue with this due to not having enough elemental power - female characters had too little attack so I forced physical classes to do the finishing, it might be possible that you might need 1-2 more power even if you get the rainbow kill if you are borderline, not sure there

Yeah, getting the rainbow every time. I was getting Riot Gloves by killing Minos Knight with Blitz @ 186 Jupiter power, but am killing Nue @ 149 Mercury power with Piers. Is 149 not enough? Mia has 179 Mercury power but a djinn-kill with her is going to be REALLY tricky since her physical damage is so low. Are any of the mercury Djinn base damage? I guess if Piers' mercury power is too low, I could hope for getting lucky with Serac's instant-kill.

[comingsoon]

You have way more than enough base elemental power, I believe 120-122 is the highest you need (mad demon in anemos).  Generally having 105 or more is enough, or simply seeing the flash kill

I had tri-ele classes, physical get kills so they had pitiful ele power lol

Non physical classes were doing ~100 damage which is why i forced physical classes, which were doing 500+

I'd just come back after serac to see if that solves your issue, and reasons I used this isnt for instant kill, its because it doesnt mess with RN and does a lot more direct damage vs others

go for the simplest solutions first rather than go down the speculation rabbit hole

Far as I know, cursed/clerics ring off-field characters have no bearing on RN

[Dark Mits]

regarding star magician adds, this is taken from wiki:
"It is also worth noting that any monster spawned mid-battle (such as the balls Star Magician summons) will retain their original normal-mode stats, and thus will be significantly easier than their Hard Mode counterparts."

are you taking too much damage and need to be more defensive during those turns?  I know for normal it was very easy to kill the adds right away, since i dont need to worry about dying nearly as much.  I was level~50 and had very good gear at that point.

While the balls spawn with their Normal mode stats when summoned, the Reloaded mod has those stats buffed compared to the unmodded game. So they remain somewhat durable.

For hard mode around what level do you predict is needed to beat star magician/dullahan?

I believe Dullahan could be doable around 50. My lvl48-50 group had reached an "equilibrium" where I could maintain tens of rounds without dying despite Djinn Storm, Charon and the like, but that was with focusing heavily on the defensive and barely chopping off Dullahan's HP.
Star Magician on the other hand is harder because you can get up to 5-6 multitarget hostile actions per round against you, which on Hard mode is impossible to survive without Flash. Defeating some Balls can get him with an even worse setup of 2 Guardian Balls + 2 Refresh Balls which practically make the entire group immune to damage. Refresh Balls heal whoever needs to full then Defend, one Guardian Ball casts Guard Aura and the other Defends, which means that even Megiddo deals at best 30 points of damage while Star Magician happily spams Mine Ball, Megacool and Spark Plasma. Failing to kill a Ball in one turn also means that the Refresh Ball will heal it back to full at the beginning of the next, because they are quite fast in the Reloaded mod.

[Uphio]

I'd just come back after serac to see if that solves your issue, and reasons I used this isnt for instant kill, its because it doesnt mess with RN and does a lot more direct damage vs others

Serac did the trick! Working like a charm now.
So that means, interestingly, Serac is the ONLY Mercury Djinn you can reliably do RNG methods with. The other Mercury djinn must be producing some other RN value-- they definitely aren't 1 or 2. I'm not sure how this happened, but including this note about Serac in the Drops spoiler will be massively helpful for anyone else running into this issue. This took a couple hours out of my day, but luckily I'm on break until Fall semester, so no biggie.

[comingsoon]

Glad to see that did the trick,

I only knew of this because I ran into the same exact problems and was really scratching my head, only difference was on a different monster.  What's weird is that it never worked despite me trying every RN number from -2 to +2 so I suspect something is making the method pretty much not work at all, but yea since I dont really know this sort of stuff on the technical/memory level, no point getting further into it lol

[Uphio]

Interestingly, Serac isn't working for Dark Matter from Wonder Birds..
You wouldn't happen to have a method for that would you? lol

EDIT: Nevermind, got it working.
For Dark Matter from Wonder Bird, my RNG method uses Sheba, Jenna, Mia, Piers (in that turn order) and specifically kills with the mercury djinn Serac. Serac works every time with this method, and I've been at this for too long and am too lazy to test the others. lol

Turn 1: Sheba uses Ward, Jenna uses Aura, Mia uses Wish, Piers defends
Turn 2: Sheba uses Resist, Jenna defends, Mia uses Ice Missile, Piers uses Serac

[kgable10]

I am not sure if this is a bug but it is bothering me so I will post it lol

In GS1, when I give a party member 5 set Djinni that is not of their starting element, the classes follow the progression in this doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W9VJcbmV5l6wGSiDO4oM6IV566i7XvVFQs_5WT0ajN8/edit#gid=514056960

However, when I give them a 6th set Djinni of the same element, they suddenly switch to a completely different line.

With Jupiter Djinni:

Isaac 5 Jup - Spellblade from the Psy Champion line
Isaac 6 Jup - Clairvoyant from the Oracle line

Mia with 5 or 6 Jup follows the Arcanist line as expected.

Garet 5 Jup - Planar Knight from the Sun Champion line
Garet 6 Jup - Zealot from the Inquisitor line

Similar findings with Mercury Djinni:

Isaac 5 Mer - Fearless from the Protector line
Isaac 6 Mer - Healer from the Druid line

Ivan with 5 or 6 Mer follows the Arcanist line as expected.

Garet 5 Mer - Righteous from the Radiant line
Garet 6 Mer - Shugenja from the Guru line

And with Venus Djinni:

Ivan 5 Ven - Clairvoyant from the Oracle line
Ivan 6 Ven - Spellblade from the Psy Champion line

Mia 5 Ven - Healer from the Druid line
Mia 6 Ven - Fearless from the Protector line

Garet with 5 or 6 Ven follows the Chaos Lord line as expected.

Is there just something I am not understanding about the class system here? I don't have 6 Mars Djinni to test with yet but I imagine it will be the same. One of the things I love about this mod is the viability of different class setups and mixing Djinni together but these dramatic class switches when just adding one more of the same type are throwing me off.

[Caledor]

That is the game's default behaviour. It has always been like that, at 6 and 8 djinn, with a specific djinn combination, warrior class lines "leak" on mages and vice-versa. Btw if you want to prevent this from happening, just give that character 1 djinn of their element before the 6th and 8th off-element djinn.

For reference: https://goldensunwiki.net/wiki/Pilgrim_(Mercury)_class_series, look under Mars Adept.

A side effect of the full class separation implemented in TLA (so that Jenna and piers could have unique class lines separated from garet and mia respectively) is that this leaking no longer happens.

[kgable10]

I see, thank you for the explanation! I will do that since the swapped class usually goes against my plans.