My Thoughts on Golden Sun - Reloaded: Discussions and Suggestions

[Caledor]

EDIT: Actually, one more thing.  Is a single Planet Diver SUPPOSED to be an AoE that can do 350+ Damage to someone?  I mean, USUALLY it only hit for about 180-200 to whoever it hit hardest; but OTHER times, it seemed like it would randomly do double what it normally did.  It might be my imagination, but the damage numbers seemed to fluctuate an unusual amount.

Regardless, the Dragon's ability to do two of those in a single round is probably part of the reason my strat took so long.  I had to use a strat that was safe enough to accomodate for that .

You mean Dragon Driver? That skill is basically the same as vanilla barring +10 power, so numbers shouldn't fluctuate that much. If you've recorded a video of the fight i'd love to see it.

[Fionordequester]

Alright, and here's Part 2!  Imil Cave to Saturos!  Note that there are some audio mixing issues in the first 20 seconds, with my voice being WAY too silent.  That gets better after that point.

Note that I did NOT do Tret before doing this part.  In addition, I sold the Water of Life so that I could buy EVERY piece of armor I could from Bilibin, as well as a Broad Sword for Garet.  In addition, I gave the Mint and 20x Herbs to Ivan so he would outspeed Saturos; and also gave 10x Herbs to Mia just in case (wasn't needed, as it turns out).

So, once again, I'll provide the cliff notes version of my thoughts, and the long version!

Short Version: This part of the game is almost perfectly balanced!  The summons are just as useful as they should be; strong enough to kill or almost kill most of the encounters around here while still allowing enemies to do a lot of damage to you.  But I would tweak the Ooze enemies if you're going to have a 4x Ooze encounter.  These guys are far too durable, and split up far too often as they are now.  They don't fit into the difficulty curve of the rest of this area, so I'd highly suggest some nerfs to them.

I would also tweak either Sleet or Poison so that Poison is almost guaranteed to land on Sleet.  The fight only lasts 2-3 turns, so Poison is only worth it if it gets at least two turns worth of use.  Otherwise it's worthless to me.

Long Version: The 4x Ooze encounter...dang.  Those guys take off about a 1/3rd of your HP with every hit, and split up often enough that I'll end up having to kill seven of them before I finally finish things.  By that time, I'll generally lose about 2/3rds of my party, if I even win at all. 

NONE OF THE OTHER ENCOUNTERS ARE THAT HARD!  So for the sake of having a consistent difficulty curve, I would choose one of the following options...

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1) Cut the 4x Ooze encounter down to 3x.

2) Reduce the chances of them duplicating

3) Nerf their starting HP to where I can kill them much more easily
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As for Sleet, that fight only lasts for 3 turns at the most; and the Poison status ailment only does 30 HP worth of damage per turn.  So the only way it's damage would surpass that of Starburst and Spire is if it lands on the very 1st turn; and that does not seem to happen anywhere near often enough to be worth the opportunity cost.  You said you wanted debuffs to be more useful, and that you wanted to have many different sorts of strategies be effective.  Well, I'd say the Sleet fight is another good opportunity to follow through on that  .

For Saturos...I'm not sure if I'd tweak that fight or not.  Saturos has 1700 HP compared to the 1200 HP he used to have; and I'm not sure that's entirely necessary given how badly summons have been nerfed.  I don't know what exact tweaks you made to the damage formulas, but it seems like LVL 2 summons only do around 50% of the damage they used to do (despite the HP% modifier only going down from 3% to 2%...right?), and LVL 3-4 summons do even less than that.  So I'm not sure the HP boost was entirely necessary for Saturos.  I mean...I spent most of the fight doing the exact same sequence of moves, so nothing would've changed for me if Saturos had 1200 HP instead of 1700.

That said, the fight only lasts about 9 minutes as-is; and that's a pretty reasonable length, IMO.  So, you can use your best judgment as to whether or not that deserves tweaking  !

And that's it!  Any other questions any of you have? 

[leaf]

I don't know what cal did, but even if summon HP damage was 1%, those damage numbers shouldn't be possible. 2% of 1700 is 34, and nereid's base damage is 60. At 1% per djinni, it would be doing at minimum 94 base damage, before elemental modifiers. At 2% per djinni, nereid should be hitting 128 base damage, before elemental modifiers. Even if saturos's HP were unchanged, it would still be 108 base damage. Meanwhile, mia, who has >100 mercury power against saturos's 72 mercury resist, only did 93 damage with her first nereid summon. Something is *very* wrong with these numbers.

[Fionordequester]

I don't know what cal did, but even if summon HP damage was 1%, those damage numbers shouldn't be possible. 2% of 1700 is 34, and nereid's base damage is 60. At 1% per djinni, it would be doing at minimum 94 base damage, before elemental modifiers. At 2% per djinni, nereid should be hitting 128 base damage, before elemental modifiers. Even if saturos's HP were unchanged, it would still be 108 base damage. Meanwhile, mia, who has >100 mercury power against saturos's 72 mercury resist, only did 93 damage with her first nereid summon. Something is *very* wrong with these numbers.

...Huh.  That IS weird now that you mention it.  And looking at the changes from the Reloaded thread, the LVL 1-3 summons are supposed to be STRONGER than they used to be, too!  Take a look!

[spoiler=Summons]Summons' HP% Damage nerfed from 3% per Djinn to 2% per Djinn (Daedalus: 5% the first attack and 10% the missile instead).

Summons Base power is 35-70-130-220 for the standard 4, Zagan 60, Megaera 65, Flora 120, Moloch 125, Ulysses 210, Eclipse 310, Haures 320, Coatlicue 400, Dedalus 140+340, Azul 500, Catastrophe 520, Charon 580, Iris 750.

Summons that require more than 2 djinn won't appear right at the start of a battle. After the first turn, 3-djinn summons become available; after the second, 4-djinn summons become available and so on, with Iris available after the 7th turn has passed (6 and 7 djinn summons are unlocked in the same turn).

Catastrophe requires 7 djinn to be summoned (5 Ju, 2 Me), Charon 8 (6 Ve, 2 Ju) and Iris 10 (6 Ma, 4 Me).

HP gained from Djinn more or less halved.

Reflux is multi-target. Shade and Flash reduce damage respectively by 50% and 66% instead of 60% and 90%. Vine, Mud, Gasp and Fury deal base damage. Ember restores 10% of PP, Ether 35% and Aroma 12,5%. Balm and Spark revive to 50% HP instead of 60%. Crystal heals 60% of HP.[/spoiler]

LVL 1 summons used to be 30, LVL 2 used to be 60, LVL 3 used to be 120, and LVL 4 used to be 240.  So the ONLY ones that should be weaker are the LVL 4 ones.

[leaf]

There seems to be something screwy happening with epow in general here.

Mia's Nereid damage with no mercury boosts: 93 damage
Mia's Nereid damage with +30 mercury power: 99 damage
Garet's Nereid damage with no mercury boosts: 78 damage
Garet's Nereid damage with +30 mercury power: 83 damage
Garet's Nereid damage with +60 mercury power: 82 damage (??????)
Garet's Nereid damage with +90 mercury power: 85 damage (??????)

Garet's Venus damage: 32, 38
Mia's Venus damage: 37
Isaac's Venus damage: 38, 40
Ivan's Venus damage: 35

Now, it's entirely possible I missed a "X's mercury power returns to normal" text, since I was watching the video at 2x speed specifically so I could look for summon damage, but something about these numbers feels very off. Garet's Venus damage should not be able to vary that much.

The 30/60/90 buff amounts were all within 3 damage of each other, so maybe epow buffs don't stack like I thought they did, but that still doesn't explain how +30 mercury power is only increasing damage by 6 or 7. At 70 base damage, 30 epow should give a minimum of +10 or +11 damage. Even if we assume that 78 was a high roll for Garet, that would imply that +30 mercury power only increased his damage by 7.

[Fionordequester]

Summon boosts don't stack on top of one another; and from what I remember, it was like that in the vanilla game, too.  Not sure how LVL 3 summon boosts would interact with LVL 4 summon boosts and all that, but, that might answer that question.

[leaf]

Okay, that's what I figured when I saw those numbers. I guess I never noticed since when you're spamming lv4 summons, +100 epow probably caps you out anyway. It still doesn't explain why the damage increase from +0 -> +30 is so small, though, or why Nereid is only doing damage in the 90s from Mia.

[Aile~♥]

ePow in this hack might be /250 instead of /200 in the damage formula since the cap for ePow and eRes was boosted to 250. Not sure that's enough to explain the weird numbers, though.

[Fionordequester]

And here's the Tret Boss Fight to right before Killer Ape!  My commentary is still a little silent compared to the game; but it's at least properly synced now.  So if I can get the game audio and commentary audio balanced out, that should be all the technical issues worked out!  Anywhere, here you go!

Short Version: Once again, almost no complaints here.  Tret is now dangerous enough to be a threat, while still tame enough to ease players in to the difficulty curve.  Plus, he serves as an effective wake-up call to anyone who isn't using Elixirs.  However, I would tweak the Djinn fights so that they can't run away anymore.  They get two actions per round, so their chances of fleeing just becomes that much more obnoxious.  As for the random encounters, they are an appropriate upgrade from what came before them.  Strong enough to be dangerous without Kolima's armor, but still easy enough WITH Kolima's armor. 

However, I am not looking forward to the Killer Ape.  That's a definite low point in this hack, IMO.

Long Version: The boss fights are, in my opinion, the weakest part of this hack; however, even those aren't generally too bad.  Tret, for example, is actually very well designed for where he's at in the game.  His offensive capabilities are decent without being overkill, Djinn summons are still strong enough to take off a good amount of his HP, and Sleep Star is a good wake-up call for anyone who's not using Elixirs.  Plus, he's slow enough to where I'm always able to outspeed him.

I'm not sure Caledor properly play-tested the early game bosses that now get 2 actions per round instead of 1 (Killer Ape and Hydros Statue); but this guy, at least, turned out pretty well.

The random encounters work out similarly well, partially due to a neat trick I learned a long time ago.  By spreading out Djinn of different elements, instead of going mono-elemental on all characters, I can significantly increase the rate at which I recover them.  This, as you can see, is very powerful; and it's one of the reasons why the vanilla games are so broken.

Speaking of Djinn, I don't think it's necessary for them to run away anymore.  Each Djinn after Sleet gets 2 Actions per round instead of the usual 1; so that chance to Run Away becomes all that much more obnoxious.  And besides; the Djinn are now strong enough that they can easily wipe your party if you're not careful with Granite, Zephyrs, and other Djinn.  That makes them challenge enough as is, IMO.

Mogall Forest is a sharp difficulty spike, if you haven't bought all the armor upgrades possible in Kolima.  I don't know why the Dirge's Flying Attack did so little damage to me here, but I remember it doing 75-90 Damage (don't remember the exact amount) to some of my characters back in my first playthrough, when I tried to make do without buying anything at Kolima.  The Skeleton's Undead Sword was also pretty strong, at something like 55 Damage to a single character without upgrades.  

That, and the upcoming Killer Ape fight, are why I was so desperate to get all the armor upgrades at Kolima.  The Killer Ape fight is still absolutely stupid, even WITH those upgrades; but I can at least nullify the random encounters before it.

I also like the fact that the Turtle Boots now give a flat AGL penalty instead of giving a multiplicative one.  I'm undecided about doing the same to the Elven Shirt; but it does change things up a little at least.  

Anyways, everything was all pretty good in this update.  NEXT UPDATE though?  Thaaaat's when things are going to get...not-so-good.  The Killer Ape is a beast all-it's-own; I'm gonna need a WHOLE separate video to do justice to that one!

So then, have a nice night, and God bless you all!

[Caledor]

Short answer cause i'm really busy these days:

Dirge's Flying Attack deals either 0.8 or 1.6 damage.
Djinn that act twice per turn have half the chance to use the "Flee" command so there's no difference in the overall chance to run away.
I'll check the summons damage formula.

[Fionordequester]

Dirge's Flying Attack deals either 0.8 or 1.6 damage.

Aha!  So THAT'S what was up!

Djinn that act twice per turn have half the chance to use the "Flee" command so there's no difference in the overall chance to run away.

I see...would you mind scrapping the chance to run anyways?  I don't think it added anything to this OR the vanilla game.  If I don't have Ground, Mist, Torch and/or Scorch, it adds an unavoidable chance of having to reset.  If I DO have those Djinn, it doesn't matter anyway; because I'll just stun lock it to death before it can even move.  

That's my opinion, anyway.

I'll check the summons damage formula.

Thanks so much!

[Fionordequester]

Alright...here it is.  Judgment day has come.  The main video is the 1st one, the 2nd is a failure reel to showcase how mean Killer Ape can REALLY be, and the 3rd is the rebalanced Killer Ape that I made myself.  Make sure to turn on Captions on the 1st video for a bit of added commentary!

Short Version: This is my least favorite boss fight in the entire game.  It is a luck-based fight where there's nothing you can do if the RNG decides it hates you; and NONE of the other boss fights are like that.  Not even Deadbeard and Fusion Dragon are as OP as this guy is at the point you fight him.  He also lacks structure, fluctuating between doing almost no damage some rounds, to doing an impossibly high amount on others.  But the worst thing is that status ailments are no help at all.  This is a fight that's practically BEGGING for Sleet and the Arctic Blade to do their thing; but those are rendered null and void by the new Luck formula Caledor introduced.  So I would make the following changes...

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1) Nerf Ransack from 1.7x physical damage to 1.6x physical damage

2) Change War Cry back to it's original 45 base Jupiter power, instead of the 70 base Jupiter power it now has)

3) Increase the rate at which Sleet and Arctic Howl inflict the ATK Down status to where they almost never fail

4) Replace Debilitate and Bind with offensive moves so that the nerfs above don't make the fight too easy.  I personally chose to introduce a new version of Sentinal's "Armor Crush" attack (1.3x base damage, and chance of lowering defense by two stages), and a revamped version of "Mud Spatter" (30 base Venus damage, single target, with a chance of cutting Agility in half)
------------------------------------------------

Long Version: I don't believe boss fights should ever come down to luck for any party that's at least close to the expected level; not even in a difficulty mod.  This fight is the only one that violates that ideal; and while I dislike some other boss fights for other reasons (Fusion Dragon and Hydros Statue), even those fights were fair in their difficulty.  This one just plain sucks.

To begin with, Killer Ape had his Attack increased from 156 to 225, and that's in ADDITION to now having two actions per round.  If that weren't enough, his offensive moves were also given catastrophically high increases.  To whit...

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War Cry: 45 Power > 70 Power

Ransack: Base physical damage + 36 points > 1.7x physical damage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As a result, this boss can literally do upwards of 260+ Damage in a single round if he decides to do 2x Ransacks.  And that's WITH base defense; if he lands enough Debilitates, that number goes all the way up to 167+ PER HIT!!  War Cry is no joke either; it now does 90-100 Damage to whoever it hits, in addition to potentially stunning them.  

The only boss I can think of whose offense was THAT absurd compared to where you were at are Poseidon and Dullahan.  However, those fights were far more structured; Dullahan followed a fixed attack pattern, and Poseidon was incapable of ever doing the same move twice in the same round.  Neither one of them could ever do the same move twice in a single round; they had outer limits put on how abusive the RNG could be.

This boss has no such fetters.  Worse yet, this is at a point where Quartz is the only easily available option for reviving characters.  The one gained at Vault is vital for buying the defensive upgrades I needed at Kolima and Bilibin; and the one from Lord McCoy's castle is locked behind one of Golden Sun's infamously long sequence of cutscenes.  I would often try to revive a character, only to stand there helplessly as Killer Ape knocked them back down in the very same round.

Make no mistake; this boss can OHKO even the likes of Garet with Ransack + enough Debilitates.  And even if it couldn't, it has at least three combination of moves that can kill whoever it wants to, no matter what you may try to do.  2x Ransacks, 2x War Cries, and Ransack + War Cry are all more than enough to eviscerate anyone unlucky enough to get hit by both.  And if this hits the person with Quartz on them?  Well, it means the fight is basically over at that point.  The only way you'll win is if the Killer Ape let you stack enough damage on top of it beforehand.  

None of that, however, would be a problem; except for what is perhaps the biggest problem of all...

STATUS AILMENTS DO NOT WORK!!

I cannot emphasize that above point enough.  Caledor has gone on record to say the following two things (slightly abridged for the sake of brevity)...

The goal, as always, is to provide a harder and not too straightforward game, meant to be enjoyed by players that...want to try other things than Megiddo & Summon Rush. [quote slightly abridged]

Debuffs are now useful against bosses. ST Buffs/Debuffs have lower duration.

But my experiences tell a different story.  The Luck formula is structured in a way that renders status ailments null and void on bosses.  Each boss possesses 40+ Luck in Caledor's hack in order to provide them immunity to ailments like Stun, Curse, Haunt, and others.  While that sounds good on paper, it has the side effect of drastically increasing their resistance to those that CAN land on them.  

Killer Ape and Hyrdros Statues are fights that practically BEG the player to use status ailments; however, their Luck is high enough to resist anything you might try 50% of the time.  And even when your ailment DOES succeed in landing, it doesn't matter.  You're lucky if the ailment lasts any longer than 2 rounds; and I can't think of a single time I've ever seen one last longer than 3 rounds.  And while the multi-target debuffs are supposedly longer lasting, their effects are only half of what single-target ailments can do.  

For that reason, I find it far more practical to play the game the same way I've always played it; turtle up when it seems wise to do so, then swing for the fences with my strongest offensive psynergies, unleashes, and summons once I've found the opportunity.  And that's in regards to ALL the boss fights; Killer Ape and Hydros Statue just happen to be the fights where I most desperately WANTED status ailments to work better than they do.

Of course, I won't pretend to know what the exact solution to this problem should be.  Off the top of my head, I'm thinking Caledor might want to...

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1) Lower the "status immunity" threshold to 30 Luck instead of 40 (though that will still make it difficult for status ailments to land)

2) Tweak debuffs so they always last a minimum of 3 Turns (though 4 is preferable in my mind).  That way, they'll at least be worth the opportunity cost I paid in not just chopping off more HP with my offensive psynergies.

3) Drastically increase the rate at which debuffs land (so they at least land often, even if they go away at the drop of a hat)

4) Have 2 and 3 apply to many early game bosses, then only apply 2 OR 3 to mid to endgame bosses
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And as far as this SPECIFIC fight goes, I would again propose the following changes...

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1) Nerf Ransack from 1.7x physical damage to 1.6x physical damage

2) Change War Cry back to it's original 45 base Jupiter power, instead of the 70 base Jupiter power it now has)

3) Increase the rate at which Sleet and Arctic Howl inflict the ATK Down status to where they almost never fail

4) Replace Debilitate and Bind with offensive moves so that the nerfs above don't make the fight too easy.  I personally chose to introduce a new version of Sentinal's "Armor Crush" attack (1.3x base damage, and chance of lowering defense by two stages), and a revamped version of "Mud Spatter" (30 base Venus damage, single target, with a chance of cutting Agility in half)
------------------------------------------------

Anyway, I hope I don't end up hurting Caledor's feelings.  I know from experience how much negative feedback can hurt; so I won't blame him if he's a shaken by this.  Just know that my aim is only to help; Caledor wants feedback, and I'm giving it the best and most thorough way I know how.  I'm not just trying to complain here.

[Caledor]

I answered on Discord, but i'll leave something here too as a reminder:
War Cry got buffed by mistake, it will go down to 40-45. Attack is fine, ransack too. Debuffing with moves that also deal damage was always meant to be pretty difficult. There's room for improvement, but not too much: 5~10% at most.

[leaf]

This is similar to what fio said on discord, but I'd much rather see status/debuff infliction via damaging abilities be consistent, but with a weaker effect (and less damage, if need be). If they can't be relied upon to inflict debuffs, then you're essentially paying a cost (lower damage) and not getting anything back for it. Offensive djinn are probably the most accessible debuffs in the game, but if the rate is @#$%, then it doesn't matter how accessible something is if you only end up using it because "it's a damaging djinni."

[Aile~♥]

Ransack is not fine. Ransack is demonstrably not fine. Or at least, it's not fine in combination with how near-impossible it is to debuff the Killer Ape's Attack stat.

I think debuffing Djinn should either have a weaker debuff, or less damage, or both. In any case, their effects should be more consistent. I will say I think combining the Killer Ape's high attack with its two turns and the existence of War Cry seems like a mistake, because you can lose half your party to Stun and be entirely unable to heal off its high damage output and just lose automatically.

In any case, my opinion is that debuff infliction rates should be high enough to almost always trigger on basic enemies (and to be absolutely guaranteed on enemies with vulnerability), and to land fairly reliably on a boss who has vulnerability to that specific debuff. I think base 100% for single-target debuffs and base 120% for multi-target debuffs seems appropriate. Perhaps reduce these numbers a little bit to make ailment rate-boosting equipment worthwhile.

[Caledor]

Ransack is not fine. Ransack is demonstrably not fine.

Ransack and the attack stat are fine from the editor perspective. That's why i said i need to play the battle myself: to see if another test tells a different story.

I think base 100% for single-target debuffs and base 120% for multi-target debuffs seems appropriate. Perhaps reduce these numbers a little bit to make ailment rate-boosting equipment worthwhile.

Currently the values are: base 70% for djinn (damage with debuff attached in general), base 95% for ST debuff and 125% for MT debuff.

[Aile~♥]

I think base 100% for single-target debuffs and base 120% for multi-target debuffs seems appropriate. Perhaps reduce these numbers a little bit to make ailment rate-boosting equipment worthwhile.

Currently the values are: base 70% for djinn (damage with debuff attached in general), base 95% for ST debuff and 125% for MT debuff.

Those numbers are... actually close to fine, though damage with debuffs (Djinn in particular) should probably have a lower magnitude debuff in exchange for more consistency. Base 100% but with MT debuff magnitude seems appropriate.

[Fionordequester]

I would argue for ailments lasting a longer amount of time as well.  Otherwise, keeping them on is a hassle.

Anyway, I can hand you my save file if you wish!  And if you don't have Bizhawk 2.2, I'll send you THAT as well!

[Caledor]

Those numbers are... actually close to fine, though damage with debuffs (Djinn in particular) should probably have a lower magnitude debuff in exchange for more consistency. Base 100% but with MT debuff magnitude seems appropriate.

Can't remember now why i dismissed that option when i made those changes to debuffs. Maybe turn duration? Strange cause it seems feasible now.

@Fionordequester. Yeah please upload your save, no need to worry about the emulator itself though, i'll probably try to convert the save to VBA first.

[Fionordequester]

Alright!  Then here's a download link from Dropbox...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jq95opj60497k92/Golden%20Sun%20-%20Reloaded.SaveRAM?dl=0

And here's one from Google Drive!

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwGWkhHwJ6SRSWxOZWFKV0k2Ync

Have fun with Killer Ape xD!