[Imaynotbehere4long]

I came across another difficulty spike today: Veltarn. I wouldn't mind its normal attack having a 99% chance to confuse if it weren't for the fact that Avalauncher takes 2000 damage from my max ~3500 HP party, but even that wouldn't be so bad if it didn't have a line range. However, even that wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that there are two Veltarns! Because of that, if they both decide to use Avalauncher, they can kill 2-3 of my 4 full HP party members in one turn, and there's nothing I can do about it (unlike Death Waltz, Avalauncher isn't conveyed), especially since they almost always attack before any of my party members have a chance to do anything.

Sure, I could equip purple resistance, but then they could use Death Laser and kill my party members instantly, so I'd need silver resistance to prevent Death Laser from killing me, but then I'd die from Avalauncher. It's a catch 22. I think weakening Avalauncher by ~300-400 points should be enough.

In fact, it might be a good idea to weaken mass attack spells for all fights that include multiple bosses at once; that seems to be a running problem with this patch.


P.S. I leveled up a bunch and finally got a better weapon for Enrique, but Royal Blade is still ~200 points weaker than Cutlass Fury.

[Maeson]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6ogjl3ybikqeg0u/Skies%20of%20Arcadia%20Legends%20Maeson%201%2C44%20Universal.rar?dl=0

Try this. I increased the Power growth of Enrique (When you level up, he will get a bigger boost, after that everything will go normal). I decreased the power of Avalauncher and a couple of other attacks from other monsters.

[Imaynotbehere4long]

Yeah, that fixes the issue with the boss. Go ahead and release it.

[Maeson]

Glad to hear that. I already updated both the NTSC and PAL patches on the hack's page.

[galneon]

I think I'm ready to get hooked on this to hide from all the Christmas-time stress around me. I've been wanting to find an excuse to replay SoA:L since the game first came out and it looks like the mod is far enough along to warrant it. I don't remember a whole lot about combat from the vanilla game (except lots of encounters and repetition, though I didn't mind) so I don't know if my feedback will be useful compared to those of you who have played the game more recently, but I do prefer hard games and if I think I have anything useful I'll comment on the difficulty arc.

Thanks for your work.

[Maeson]

Well, I hope you have fun then!

(except lots of encounters and repetition, though I didn't mind)

This hack more than just increasing the difficulty up a notch, it also has many other changes.

For example battles flow faster as spells and moves cost far less SP, so you don't waste turns getting SP as much as in the original game, and you can use your abilities more freely.

And for the encounters, you start with an accessory to reduce the chance for random battles (really useful while traveling) and you can get a better one later on.

You also have a stupidly long readme that could probably be it's own instruction booklet...

[galneon]

Cool, I certainly do remember wasting turns to "charge". The reduced encounter item should be useful for preventing over-leveling, especially when searching for the harder to find discoveries (or whatever they're called--it's been a long time ). I tried not to read too much of the readme to avoid refreshing myself on plot elements and characters. The less I remember after all these years, the better.

[Maeson]

Yeah, exactly! Looking for discoveries could become a bit annoying with the encounter rate, but because you take some time to get a White Map (Although in the GC version you can have it much, much sooner than in the DC version) I wanted to have something since the beginning to help.

About the readme, fair enough, I would probably want to "experience" the game again myself too... But it's there just in case.

[galneon]

I'm only in Valua and am really enjoying it but have a few early thoughts. Would you be interested in correcting unambiguous mistranslations? For example, Grouder should be Grouper and Basallish should be Basilisk. I don't think anyone would deny these were the creatures the Japanese developers were actually referring to, so you would hardly be taking creative license by correcting the localization team.

More importantly to your aims, perhaps: I was able to get Lambda Burst not long after Alpha Storm. Since Lambda Burst hits everyone and only costs 1 SP more, I'd really like to still have a reason to use Alpha Storm when I'm in a tactical situation where I can hit several enemies in a line. Unfortunately, that situation just doesn't come because Lambda Burst does more damage. I read the conversation concerning AS/LB vs Pyri so I understand you're trying to balance magic vs special attacks as much as special attacks vs other special attacks, but perhaps AS could be kept relevant by nerfing LB instead of buffing AS?

JRPG battles in general can be monotonous and one of the things that makes them fun for me is trying to end them as efficiently as possible. That would mean hitting a little harder with a perfectly lined up AS when possible rather than just using LB every single fight. I find the former a bit more satisfying.

[Maeson]

I get your idea and it makes sense for the "harder" ability to use to be more powerful. The problem with that is that the very moment you would learn Pyres both skills would become obsolete (As Pyres would do more damage than both), and in general as you learn stronger Pyri spells Aika's fire abilities are less useful. Aika's fire abilities are a bit redundant because for the most part they're so similar to Pyri spells, so it's quite annoying.

Pyri power is 140, Alpha Storm is 220. Pyres power is 260,  Lambda Burst is 300. After this point magic gets the upper hand, with the last Pyri spell being the most powerful (As magic is harder to learn and uses both SP and MP).

If I only lower Lambda Burst to the point where Alpha Storm is stronger, both become outdated once Pyres is learnt. I could make Alpha Storm stronger and Lambda Burst weaker, and change the SP consumption even, but that would give you a quite strong attack too early for my taste (Even if I raised the SP cost to be less spammable) and could be abused ignoring magic and other super moves (Which is my biggest fear).

Maybe I could add something to Alpha Storm that made it useful, like a status effect or something? Or trying to make it a physical super move, but that would require some testing... Although it could be cool to give Aika some physical power, as she has decent Power.

With magic I had that in mind, that's why Pyri magic is the "weakest", while Electri and Wevli are stronger (As you have to work around their areas of effect) and Cristali is the strongest (As it only hits one target), but with the super moves things become a bit harder to manage.

I need to think a bit about before making big changes to end this annoying matter .

About the names, I don't know if I'm able to do that. I'll try, although I personally don't find it very important if for some reason I can't.

Besides that (Sorry for the long response); I'm happy you're enjoying it!

Edit: -This Link has been removed because it's outdated, and introduced a small bug that has been already fixed-

[galneon]

I was going to test all afternoon and give you a more thoughtful reply, but felt it best that I alert you to an issue more quickly from my phone while I'm stuck for who-knows-how-long with a cat in my lap (I hate phone typing ): Lambda Burst does no damage. It mostly misses, but when it hits, it gives enemies a red down arrow which I think denotes lowered attack? Again, no damage regardless of hit or miss. I'll edit this post in a bit when I see if AS works as expected with the elemental influence.

Again, I appreciate your work. 

Edit: Yep, AS works with moonstones. Very cool.

[Maeson]

Damn, it was working! I'll see what's up with it right now.

EDIT:

-This link has been removed because it's outdated-

I had to remove the confusion effect, for some reason once I changed the super move it started doing weird things (For one, giving it the confusion effect for some reason it was taken as the Weaken effect). Today I've learnt that super moves are kinda fickle and limited as far as modifying their effects go...

So now it's a Magical super move with a power of 230, Red Element, no extra effects. Sorry for the inconvenience...

Now that both should work fine (I tested Lambda Burst, please tell me after playing for a while if the power of both moves is good, or should I adjust them a bit more.

Alpha Storm seems to be pretty damn handy for the beginning, and it gives Aika the chance to do a multi-target attack of Purple element, a nice unique perk, even if as you advance magic spells will me much more powerful.

[galneon]

Thanks, that works!

Has the Executioner been play-tested since you buffed him? I read he was weaker than the blob before... I beat the blob at level 10, then executioner one-hit max HP Aika and Vyse with a tackle. I grinded up to 12 and the same exact thing just happened. Tackle hit them each for over 1400. I'm going to have to grind to 13 to have a chance here which I don't think was your intention given the blob wasn't too much work at level 10. You don't have to tweak him if this is intended--this fight will require a ton of pure luck if not level 13+ I think.

Edit: Got him 4th try with only Aika dead at level 12. At 12 it's a guaranteed one hit kill for Aika and leaves Vyse with ~10 if lucky. If you decide to do anything, just weaken Tackle a tiny bit IMO.

[Maeson]

Thanks for the feedback: I decreased Tackle power around 25%, which should be pretty powerful still, but not a 1-hit ko move anymore. When I was told that the Executioner was easy I probably "went a bit too far in a few places"...

I have prepared the RAR file with the most updated NTSC and PAL versions (Basically, the changes in Lambda and Alpha moves, their descriptions and the Executioner's Tackle), while the hack's page gets updated too, here is the link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7s85sy03x4m36le/SOAL%20Maeson%20mod%201-45.rar?dl=0

Now I'll remove the older links in this thread as they're outdated. Have fun!

[Imaynotbehere4long]

I see quite a few things happened in my absence. Anything I'd need to update for?

Anyway, I think that some of the enemies in Soltis (e.g. the Garagor) have waaay too much health; like, boss amounts of HP. At first, I thought the intended solution was just to use Eternum (since it can insta-kill enemies), but then I came across a Guardian in a random encounter (that has to be an addition by you, right?), and they're immune to insta-kill. It's not that the fights are hard; it's just that it's kinda tedious when a yellow Pirate's Wrath only takes away, like, 1/20th of the Guardian's HP (~3300 damage).

By the way, while I was fighting Ramirez, my Wii just outright crashed when he used Drilnos for the upteenth time. It didn't crash all the other times he used Drilnos, I was using the Oct. 2016 build of Nintendon't, and I haven't done anything crazy like patch the NAND or IOS58, so I don't know what might have caused the crash. Do you have any idea? I had almost beaten his first Eliminator, too...

[Maeson]

About the HP, the idea was to make those big final guys last enough so they could be somewhat dangerous, but I can see your point. I'll reduce the HP. About the Guardian, no, I didn't add the Guardian as random encounter, that's from the original game. I could remove him (Or reduce the number of encounters where it appears).

About the crash, it's something I didn't experience in the four-five times I fought that boss fight. The game (original version too) crashed on me using Nintendont a couple of times (one in a cutscene), but I haven't had a single crash since I stopped shrinking the ISO. Although Nintendont can crash once in a blue moon for no apparent reason.

During the creation of this hack, the only fights that had any problem were the poison blob from Valua (I added bats at the beginning, but they crashed the game when trying to load the bats back to the battlefield after using spells/super moves for some reason) and that weird Turtle boss fight bug.

I have a savefile at that point, I'll battle him a few times to see if it crashes on me to see if I reproduce your problem.

EDIT: I've been replaying the boss fight for more than an hour and haven't experienced a single crash. I'll keep fighting some more, just in case.

Please, try again. If it happens to you again I'll change the boss fight (Removing the minions and buffing Ramirez).

EDIT: Almost two hours of stalling and repeating the fight, and nothing... Maybe you had bad luck with Nintendont?

That said, I think I have the need to fine tune a few things after playing it for so long in one sitting.
I'll wait to see if you have the game crashing again and depending on what you say I'll react.

[Imaynotbehere4long]

About the HP, the idea was to make those big final guys last enough so they could be somewhat dangerous, but I can see your point.

Maybe, after you lower their HP, you could increase their attack power or increase the number of enemies that appear with them?

Nintendont can crash once in a blue moon for no apparent reason.

Ah, okay. I wasn't sure what could have caused the crash, which is why I brought it up. I'll try again.


Oh, by the way:

EDIT: Why are Riselem Crystals less expensive than Sacrilege Sacrulen Crystals? Shouldn't it be the other way around since Riselem Crystals will also revive the ally?

You can only use Riselem crystals when someone is unconscious, but you can abuse Sacrulen crystals any time as long as the character is alive. Making them more expensive I try to make them less easy to abuse, at least for some time until you have gold to spare.

Maybe it's a flawed reason, but that was my honest thought. I also thought of making them only heal 5000 (and lowering the price if it was like that), but I never ended up making the change.

For what it's worth, I found myself using Riselm crystals waaaay more than I used Sacrulen crystals (like, 10x as much at least). Maybe your reasoning is still based on the original game's difficulty?

[Maeson]

Maybe, after you lower their HP, you could increase their attack power or increase the number of enemies that appear with them?

As of now I've lowered their HP :Garagor from 24.000 to 14.000, Guardian from 28.000 to 15.000, as I think I went way too far, as they were not that challenging, just long, so thanks to point that to me.

Also, Guardian is susceptible to instant death effect. I also want to say: the Guardian is actually a normal monster that happens to share the model of a boss. When I wrote the  prior post I didn't remember that.

I'll increase their power a tiny bit to compensate.

Ah, okay. I wasn't sure what could have caused the crash, which is why I brought it up. I'll try again.

And thank you for bringing it up. A crash is a biiiig problem and I wouldn't forgive myself of letting such flaw slip through, even If I fought that battle several times and I never got a warning from my friends either (unlike the Tortigar fight, which was a problem caused by Dolphin an could be corrected).

I turned on the Wii for another half an hour fooling around with that boss fight and again, nothing.

Try again and let's hope it was that rare occurrence. If not, as I said, I will change the boss fight. And if everything goes well, please, let me know if I should adjust anything (Like maybe reduce the HP of the Eliminators a bit).

About the Nintendont crashes, for example it happens to me once every x months. The last time was playing Wario World, I was in a level full of mirrors and, while trying to enter a trap-door (to go to a challenge) the game just froze. After resetting it worked fine for the rest of the playthrough.

It's discouraging when that happens (With any game, really), but oh well. It's still a fantastic homebrew for the Wii.

For what it's worth, I found myself using Riselm crystals waaaay more than I used Sacrulen crystals (like, 10x as much at least). Maybe your reasoning is still based on the original game's difficulty?

... You may be absolutely right, that's the price I set at the beginning, thinking on the original game, where Sacrulen crystals were ridiculously cheap (200 pieces of gold). And of course, things changed.

I'll consider changing the prices.

As always, thanks for your feedback. When you comment back with your experience I'll build the next version of the hack with everything up to date.

[Imaynotbehere4long]

I've beaten the game, and I didn't get another crash. It must have been Nintendon't after all. Anyway, I have two more things to point out:

1) When I defeated Ramirez's second Eliminator, the game muted the music as if I had won, but I still hadn't beaten Ramirez and ended up fighting him in silence (aside from the sound effects). I guess the game can't fully comprehend there being three bosses at once?

2) I think I figured out why the original Skies of Arcadia staff made Vyse and co. so powerful: Ramirez 2. Ramirez 1 has an attack called Silver Eclipse that hits all party members and deals about 2500 damage. On the other hand, the most powerful mass-attack Ramirez 2 has is Destruction, which takes a grand total of...only 800 damage each (I know it's not supposed to be a powerful attack, but that's my point: despite its low damage, it's still his strongest mass-attack!). However, Ramirez 2 has this other move called Lunar Nightmare that forces your own party members to use S-Moves against each other, but regarding mass-attacks, this still results in less damage than Destruction, with the most powerful being Lunar Winds at ~700 damage (though I saw that you changed Lambda Burst and Alpha Storm up a bit more, so maybe they would've done more than their 400/300 damage, respectively). I can only guess that, in the original game, I would've been like "whoa, 700 damage to all my party members?? That's nuts!" But now, I think I can safely say that Ramirez 2 is the easiest boss in the game (aside from Muraji, maybe); like, I had a harder time fighting Antonio 1 and Bleigock. Yeah, Ramirez 2 has Silver Binds which can deal ~4000 damage to one character, but this doesn't usually kill said character (unless it's Fina, because of course it kills her), allowing me to keep attacking while having one character use a Sacrulen Crystal (hey, I can finally use them!) to heal.

Plus, Ramirez 2 has a ton of HP and defense, and that combined with the lack of good mass-offense (or even lackeys, like many other bosses had) makes this fight more than a little tedious (he fits right in with the Garagors and Guardians). All of this makes me think that Lunar Nightmare was supposed to be this incredibly devastating move, but now it just highlights how weak the protagonists are.

P.S. Speaking of Soltis monsters with too much HP, did you check the stats of the Dracoslyth? I remember it also appears by itself (and even alongside Galcian), but I always used Eternum on it, so I don't know if it has the same problem as Garagor.

[Maeson]

I've beaten the game, and I didn't get another crash. It must have been Nintendon't after all.

I'm so glad to hear that... Oh man, I do. Thank you for letting me now!

1) When I defeated Ramirez's second Eliminator, the game muted the music as if I had won, but I still hadn't beaten Ramirez and ended up fighting him in silence (aside from the sound effects). I guess the game can't fully comprehend there being three bosses at once?

Sometimes it happens, sometimes don't. I guess it's exactly your idea, the game has already seen two bosses fall, and just mutes itself because it's what is programmed to do.

Long paragrapth

I put this into spoilers because it's quite long:

Spoiler:

In the original game, Ramirez's last fight was also one of the easiest bosses in the game (And one of the easiest final bosses I've fought). He's not much of a challenge at all, unless you fed your characters tons of Power/Will seeds and only those seeds, so when he controls one of your characters you get obliterated, and he lasted very little time.

The only real bad thing he could do if you didn't abuse the stat-up items is overuse Drachma's Hand of fate and Gilder's The Claudia, and even then just the first one guarantees a KO.

Guys like Vigoro where much, much more dangerous than Ramirez 2. In fact I had to reduce Vigoro's original damage a bit because he was a crazy powerhouse compared to everything else, lol. ANY optional boss fight is several times more challenging than him.

I guess the idea of the developers was "He has been kicked in the ass twice, he's weak at this point and just desperate", which I could understand (The ship battle feels like the last fight for me), even if it felt a bit anticlimatic for J-RPG standards "This isn't even my final foooorm!".

Now onto my hack: This fight is a bitch to change. His skills have hardcoded damage, which means that doesn't matter how much you increase their multiplier, they will ignore it. And when he controls your characters he does more damage than in the original game but it's still not that dangerous for the most part.

Curiously enough, Ramirez 2 and Galcian (The two most powerful villains in this game) have this issue, Galcian with Neglora, and Ramirez 2 with everything. I don't know why the developers changed it just for that bossfight, but there's little I can do besides buff his stats, and even that doesn't do much as increasing Power does little to nothing to improve those attacks' damage.

That's why I added Eliminators to de previous fight, to make at least one of them tricky and challenging.

And unlike other bosses, I really can't put an enemy here that could fit. I wanted, but, the only enemies I can put in a boss fights are other bosses or enemies that appear in fixed fights, and I already put Eliminators before (Because in Soltis they made more sense, but here they don't). And putting any monster would make Ramirez 2 look even more like a weakling (Oh hey, that robot does 2xxx damage to me, but this super guy can't even reach 1000!").

It's the only fight where I feel kinda disappointed, as I can't do much to change it.

I will lower his HP and Defense, as even if he lasts he's not going to do much, so it would be better to off him quicker, as Ramirez is pretty much over once you defeat the last Gigas anyways.

P.S. Speaking of Soltis monsters with too much HP, did you check the stats of the Dracoslyth? I remember it also appears by itself (and even alongside Galcian), but I always used Eternum on it, so I don't know if it has the same problem as Garagor.

The thing with Dracoslyth, is that he is a scrapped boss. It was going to have an important fight, and at some point the developers decided to cut it. My idea was to give him a bit of that "boss" status by giving it good stats and being on Galcian's fight (After all, if he can be put on boss fights it's because he was added to the bossses' files at some point).

The others I will change, but with Dracoslyth it was more of a wink to that trivia. And as you said, you can off him with Eternum, (I personally fought him normally during the Galcian fight just for the sake of it).

Thank you so much for your feedback and your patience. I'll go to make the changes we've talked about now.

EDIT:

Here it is, 1.46 (Both NTSC and PAL):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s0vg3awf6tq3vzw/SOAL%20Maeson%20mod%201-46.rar?dl=0

Changes:

Spoiler:

Riselem Crystals had their price increased up to 2000.

Garagor and Guardian have less ridiculous amounts of HP (10.000 points less), Guardian is vulnerable to Instant death like other monsters (Although it has a lower chance, but for Eternum should oppose no problems).

Eliminator had their HP reduced from 30.000 to 25.000, Ramirez from 40.000 to 35.000.
Final Ramirez had it's HP reduced from 50.000 to 28.000, it's defenses were dropped a bit.

I added elemental resistance accessories to some overworld enemies so some can be obtained sooner, or for example, if you couldn't get Ivy Bands before exiting Valua, you would have to wait until the Lands of Ice. This is no longer the case.

Their chances of being dropped also increased.