[RELEASE] Golden Sun Reloaded

[Caledor]

It's been only 3 days, but it's time for another update.

I got kinda annoyed at the thought that Jenna doesn't get a Mars based staff until Salamander Rod, so I gave her 2, one for each Sea.
Asteria's Staff, which replaces Glower Staff and Cultist's Rod, which replaces Goblin's Rod.
Also, since Mercury based Axes are non-existant, their unleashes went to Captain's Axe (Sargasso) and Deepsea Axe (= Mighty Axe, which gets Ocean's Roar = Flash Force). This also allowed me to fix Captain's Axe unleash, cause the animation was bugged.
Swapped Blessed Ankh and Psynergy Rod unleashes to give Ivan/Sheba an earlier Jupiter boosting staff.
Power and type for all those unleashes is the same of the original weapon (only name, element, animation and side effect change).

TLA's starting levels were reverted to 5 (Jenna levels up to 5 after defeating the Punchy Ant in the cave) cause that level makes a lot of difference in Kandora and early Dekhan.

Also, some lore: some of you might think that it's weird to find a Mars based staff in the Shrine of the Sea God but Asteria is a Greek titan who died (rusty weapon) by flinging herself into the sea. :P

[Salanewt]

I love that bit of lore! You also have a very good point about the lack of Mars staves early on...

Keep up the good work. :P

[Caledor]

I love that bit of lore! You also have a very good point about the lack of Mars staves early on...

Keep up the good work. :P

Usually nobody cares about the element of the unleash midgame. But it's very important that Maces and Staves at least have some kind of reasonable distribution due to the power buff. In GS1 you find ONLY Mercury and Jupter staves, but it's fine, cause those are the main elements of Ivan and Mia. In TLA from early eastern sea to early western sea there are 4 staves and 3 of them are Mercury.


Also, expect an update in the near future. I found out that ability effects 41 and 43 are bugged and they respectively double and triple damage in addition to the effect I wanted them to have. Those 2 effects are used by damaging abilities that Stun or Haunt their target, like Stun Voltage.

EDIT: Lol Fury (the Mars Djinn) is completely broken

EDIT2: This bug was originally discovered 2 months ago by VardenSalad...

[spoiler]

Alright, away from computer now, and I can't find a way to move files via my phone file structure to attach. I'll get a save at Sea of Time Islet cave, one at Gondowan Cliffs without Piers (that's the most recent older save that I have, quite a bit behind current), and the Broken Seal endgame file.

For weapon unleashes that I know have this issue: the Cloud Wand, Staff of Anubis (obviously), and the Robber's Blade. Also, the Djinn Char seems to have the same issue with that spiked damage (Felix pushing 400+ unbuffed randomly) and Wheeze has the animation problem I mentioned earlier.

[/spoiler]

[Salanewt]

Yeah, there really does need to be a better staff distribution in general. :/

Haha, oops! I also used those for the Intellect patch! Just for buffs at least, but that's still not a good sign...

[Rolina]

Ankhs need a huge increase and distribution as well - I still find people how don't know that GS treats it as a separate weapon type.

[Caledor]

Ankhs need a huge increase and distribution as well - I still find people how don't know that GS treats it as a separate weapon type.

It depends. If you want to balance the number of weapons warriors and mages have access to, yes. Otherwise, i don't think so: mages don't need to continuously improve their weapons like warriors do, so it's fine it there are fewer of them.

In my mod Ankhs are weapons that boost ailment offense and defense, something quite marginal in a standard playthrough. 5 of those evenly distributed is ok imo.


Edit: I've fixed all the bugs, even the other bugs Varden reported like the Whorl one and others he probably missed, but i'll wait a bit before releasing a new patch. The reason is that it's gonna include A LOT of changes to the early game and i want to be sure they are final by playing them.

[VardenSalad]

:)

[Caledor]

Release pushed further back cause a sudden burst of ideas filled my ToDo list. Spoiler: it has to do with debuffs and warriors.

:)

Made you wait for those fixes man (and technically i still am :P)

[VardenSalad]

I'll be very, very interested to hear what you plan on doing with the Mercury Djinn pre-Piers

[Caledor]

Well, after that talk with Fox i gave it some thought so i already know what i want to do: what bothers me is that by the time Piers joins you have 2 Venus Djinn, 3 Mars/Jupiter and 5 (FIVE) Mercury, which is completely imbalanced.

So the solution is to swap the overworld Mercury Djinn around Naribwe with the Venus one found in Gabomba Catacombs (the one that requires Cyclone)

[VardenSalad]

Ahh, just one djinn then. Alright.

[Caledor]

Yeah, that is the only thing that imo really needs to be addressed. I know there's this difference with TBS, where you start getting Mercury Djinn only after Mia, but:

1) TLA is supposed to be the "expert mode" of TBS, since you already had the basics taught from the first game
2) Piers joins at 18, 8 levels later than Mia. Enemies in Mars lighthouse are at 35. I really can't deny an entire element for almost half of the game.

[VardenSalad]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I know why they are where they are.

[2dgirlfan]

Anyone have a complete Broken Seal end-game file (or just a password) for this mod? Wanted to try TLA with it, but have no interest in playing Broken Seal again.

[Caledor]

Here it is. It's from the italian version of the game but it's compatible. Includes a final save game and one at Venus Lighthouse in case you want to backtrack for something.

[Caledor]

v1.6 is up! ^{and is quite the big update}

Before everything else, my congratulations to all of you who played TLA till eastern sea before this patch. You all truly deserve it. The point is, with Reloaded i succeeded (finally) in making TLA exactly as hard as TBS, but in TLA you start at a higher level and you literally skip a town, so all shops were lagging behind.

To make it short: a lv 10 enemy in TLA is about as strong as a lv 10 equivalent in TBS, but in TLA it'd be like fighting it with equipment from Vault instead of Bilibin. That's why Emus hit VERY hard, Sheba died to the drop of a hat etc etc. So...

1) I shifted ALL shops "left" by 1 city. Thus, Daila = Vault, Madra = Bilibin (etc etc) with minor exceptions. Items found in chests before the eastern sea were obviously affected by this due to the Golden Rule and have improved. Knight's Greaves boost Ailment chance so they might be useful now instead of being total crap.

2) The debuff and warrior thing: EPA with added damage have 2 issues. They're crazy strong as soon as you obtain them, but their power fades away with time. Solution: ALL multipliers. The only ones that are still added damage type are those that multiply damage from the effect like Excalibur.
For reference, the lowest multiplier for unleashes is 1.5, ragnarok & co are ALL 1.4 (so no more EPAs are better than unleashing until tolbi). Dragon Cloud and death leap are 1.6

2nd stage EPA are 1.7 and have a base 70% chance to debuff the target by 2 stages so they're useful even in the endgame. Odissey, Liquifier and Diamond Berg lower def, Thunder Mine res and Plume Edge atk. Planetary has a flat 50% chance to ignore defense instead. Helm/Skull splitter are a weaker and stronger odissey respectively. Epicenter is a stronger Planetary, Death Plunge is a jupiter Epicenter. Quick Strike & co + Annhilation had their multiplier raised to 2.0. Shuriken raised to x1.2

The Tamer series: Minotaur has a flat x2.2, Ghost Soldier is the same as Death Plunge, Troll is basically Odissey. Manticore allows for a limitless PP supply.

3) Summons had their base power raised cause i noticed that for the 5+ ones the Damage/Djinn ratio wasn't increasing, thus making the strongest literally useless. The downside is that HIS Charon is gonna hurt more now.

4) Stat changes to class: Magic Resistance (WRD) for all wizards has improved, then i used a new formula to rebalance the stat multipliers. The changes are mostly improvements, take a look at the doc, changes are in red

5) The Acrobat has the peculiarity of being the only wizard that can damage and debuff at the same time - like warriors do with the new EPAs - with Thunder Card (-res) and Bramble Card (-def). The debuff is also more reliable at 100% base chance but also weaker: 1 stage instead of 2.

That's it!

_{Oh, and... Varden's long awaited fixes.}

[VardenSalad]

hey, doing like a billion damage with specific djinn or unleashes has a tendency to debalance the game a bit, especially since those were some useful djinn and unleashes that had the issue.

[Caledor]

hey, doing like a billion damage with specific djinn or unleashes has a tendency to debalance the game a bit, especially since those were some useful djinn and unleashes that had the issue.

Can you be more specific?

[VardenSalad]

it was the double/triple damage fixes you implemented. those were really needed. thanks for getting to those; they were quite odd.

[Caledor]

Ah, nevermind then. Somehow i misread damage as changes, so i thought you were worried about the impact all those changes might have had.

BTW as you now know they were related to damaging effects that had a chance to haunt or stun. The effect slots i was using for those abilities were bugged (they are close to the double/triple damage effect and they do the same thing IN ADDITION to any effect you put there), so i just moved those effects into another slot.

As for the whorl animation bug: again it's related to effect slots. Effects from 36 to 40 are kinda bugged and have a chance to mess up effects that use attack animations, which are the ones where the character executes the attack animation before the effect... like Murk, Scorpionfish. They're safe for spell-like animations (like Titan Blade) instead.