Lufia-Patches by Artemis

[FlamePurge]

^{Edit - Complete post rewrite.}

This thread is for discussion of Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals Mod Series, created by Artemis and co. There's also a dedicated discussion forum on NGplus.

The English patches are only for a headered NTSC-U ROM with these specifications:

- Lufia II - Rise of the Sinistrals (U) [!].smc
- Size: 2.50 MB (2,621,952 bytes)
- SHA1: 8B2CB09B1A0122027FB3863974D0728E53FE8B69
- MD5: D35FCF90C273D4BC12EED59120954E58
- CRC32: 2FAEBB78
- Apply only to a headered ROM

NTSC-U ROMs have the Natsume logo at startup, not the Nintendo logo. Other ROMs will not work. I cannot provide ROMs or sources to them.

With that said, here's an overview of the big trio: Frue Lufia, Spekkio Lufia, and Kureji Lufia, located in the main archive's "Projects" folder. These are also now on RHDN.

Frue Lufia

Frue Lufia is a mod of Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals that fixes just about every bug in the game. Additionally, it sports a full script update, fixing many of the inconsistencies and errors present in the retail version. Censorship has been removed as well. As a cherry on top, some minor rebalancing is also featured.

For a breakdown of all bug fixes and enhancements, see here. Patches based off Frue Lufia also incorporate these.

(Note: This is a direct upgrade to Relnqshd's Lufia II Fixxxer Deluxe. All of Relnqshd's enhancements and bug fixes are included in Frue Lufia.)

If you dislike the new names for Shriek, Awake, and Trick, there are patches to revert specifically these changes in the main Mod Series archive's Patches folder, linked at the start of the thread.

If anyone is looking for a Frue Lufia that has consistency with vivify93's Lufia I Restored and Lufia III Text Cleanup, please check out Frue Lufia: Trilogy Addendum. The changes mentioned previously are already reverted in this branch.

Spekkio Lufia

Based off of Frue Lufia, Spekkio Lufia is a battle rebalancing mod that aims to supply more of a challenge while lessening problems in the retail release's game design. Not only are bosses rebalanced, but certain regular enemies are too. The Ancient Cave also received some tweaks. Enemies of later floors drop more useful rewards, you can buy Blue Chest items in Gift Mode—which is available from the first time you launch the game—and Iris Treasures appear more frequently.

The important updated bosses are as follows.

1. The Sinistrals in the Fortress of Doom are stronger, more befitting final bosses.

2. The Master can fully heal himself every round. How can you possibly bring him down? There must be some way...

3. The Egg Dragon, who named the patch. He now behaves like Spekkio in Chrono Trigger, his battle script changing based on the highest-leveled party member.

4. La Puella, the beloved pet giant tarantula of the Princess of Parcelyte. She can be fought anytime after defeating Gades in the Ancient Tower. Do you stand a chance against La Puella and her friends?

Check the X_Notable_Changes_X text file for detailed changes. To aid your survival, included are a bestiary, and a list of equipment that have always provided protection against status ailments.

Kureji Lufia

Based off of Frue Lufia, Kureji Lufia is a difficulty mod of legendary proportions. All opponents have been beefed up by a crazy amount, especially the bosses, who now have only one goal: Clinging on their wretched lives. They don't want to just fade out into obscurity and nothingness, and therefore will do everything necessary to stay alive and put their mark on the world. This might be Maxim's toughest journey yet! Will you manage to emerge victorious?

It cannot be stressed enough: it's hard... It's really, really hard—and it sure won't get any easier as you progress! Most bosses have new gimmicks you'll have to deal with in order to even be able to survive against them. In particular, the later bosses have the potential to wipe out your entire party very, very fast. You won't only need a strong party, but also some sound strategies, like wearing the right equipment, and analyzing and completely understanding the enemy attack patterns.

Of course, the Ancient Cave has received some heavy tweaks as well. This is the place where you'll really feel the tremendous new power of regular enemies the most, whereas you will find masses of treasures as elusive as... Green Tea or Ear Picks. So, you better prepare yourself as best you can when blazing your trail down; you will face all the formidable atrocities that dwell deep down at the ineffable abyss beyond all imagination...

It's highly recommended that you check out the text file "survival_tips"!

To aid your survival, included are a bestiary, and a list of equipment that have always provided protection against status ailments.

There are other versions of Kureji Lufia available in the main Mod Series archive's Projects folder, linked at the start of the thread.



Also in the Projects folder, there are two additional patches: The Wrath of Foomy and The New Fierce Battle. These are superboss fights designed by Artemis. They are not included in any of the above mods.

Within the Patches folder, you can find all of the mods made by Relnqshd, Artemis, and Rainponcho. These range from bug fixes to text cleanups, and newly-designed boss fights can be found in here as well. Not every patch has documentation, unfortunately. (However, if there are any modders in the audience, it appears there are some docs on monster AI in Relnqshd's folder.)

There are various German patches as well, which this post won't be covering.

Please enjoy!

[Zynk]

Hi everybody! I'm stealing someone's work today, but believe me when I say it's worth whatever consequences.

Geez, this sounds like a motto of someone around here :/

[FlamePurge]

I'm giving credit where credit is due though, so it's not like I'm "stealing," just sharing without permission.

[Zynk]

LOL just don't mind that 

At least its from someone you knew.

Maybe you would like to add it here before someone steals it from you? JK

[magictrufflez]

Question:  In the Spekkio Lufia Hack, is it just the Egg Dragon and the Final bosses that are more difficult?  Or was there a general difficulty upgrade?

I ask because I would love a difficulty hack that straddles what I understand to be the brutality of the Kureji Lufia patch and the ease of the original (that brutality is part of the reason I never played Kureji Lufia).  I may just try playing through Frue Lufia anyways, as I really wouldn't mind a cleaned up playthrough, but some added overall difficulty would make it....a bit easier for me to motivate myself to do so

[FlamePurge]

LOL just don't mind that 

At least its from someone you knew.

Maybe you would like to add it here before someone steals it from you? JK

I would love to, but I don't know the correct--are they called "hashes?" The CRC-32, MD-5, SHA-1, and all that. I basically don't know what ROM Artemis used as a basis for these.

Funny thing, these were pretty much lost to the aether until the Lufia World Forums went back up last month. They were previously down for almost three years. But apparently, Artemis has been updating the MediaFire link since then, hence why you can see changes as recent as 2015 in the update log.

Question:  In the Spekkio Lufia Hack, is it just the Egg Dragon and the Final bosses that are more difficult?  Or was there a general difficulty upgrade?

I ask because I would love a difficulty hack that straddles what I understand to be the brutality of the Kureji Lufia patch and the ease of the original (that brutality is part of the reason I never played Kureji Lufia).  I may just try playing through Frue Lufia anyways, as I really wouldn't mind a cleaned up playthrough, but some added overall difficulty would make it....a bit easier for me to motivate myself to do so

I have never played Spekkio Lufia, but I've heard it's like Frue Lufia with the "Spekkio Dragon and Seduction Master" and "Sweet La Puella" patches applied.

[KingMike]

I would love to, but I don't know the correct--are they called "hashes?" The CRC-32, MD-5, SHA-1, and all that. I basically don't know what ROM Artemis used as a basis for these.

According to the readme

Important: The US version starts with the Natsume logo.
            (Unlike the English PAL version which starts with the Nintendo logo.)

Important: It has to be a ROM with header.
            (The exact size has to be 2621952 bytes.)

One recommendation by RHDN to check CRCs on Windows is to install HashTab. Then you can right-click on the file and click Properties and get the hashes on the menu.

[Nightcrawler]

According to the readme
One recommendation by RHDN to check CRCs on Windows is to install HashTab. Then you can right-click on the file and click Properties and get the hashes on the menu.

I think the preferred and definitive source for this site should be ROM Hasher. The output can be copied and pasted right to RHDN submission forms meeting all guidelines.

[SunGodPortal]

Back when I owned this game on a cart I remember a glitch that I believe was triggered by something in the equipment menu. I think I removed something or was just switching equip and some of the armor or weapon names became glitched and from what I remember it messed up some of the menus and the damage was permanent (to that save file). Do any of these fixes address this issue (I haven't read through all of the readmes yet, it's a lot of patches)?

For the longest time I've wanted to replay this game with bug fixes (bugs were the reason I didn't finish it in the first place) but didn't want all of the other non-bugfix stuff that was tacked on to the previously available patches to make the game more difficult. It's nice to see these patches uploaded (and separated). Thank you.

[FlamePurge]

One recommendation by RHDN to check CRCs on Windows is to install HashTab. Then you can right-click on the file and click Properties and get the hashes on the menu.

I think the preferred and definitive source for this site should be ROM Hasher. The output can be copied and pasted right to RHDN submission forms meeting all guidelines.

The problem isn't that I don't know how to get the hashes, it's that I don't have the ROM he used for these. Would either of these programs give me the proper hashes if I were to scan the IPSes themselves? I do know of a place I can get a ROM that works for Frue Lufia and probably more of these, but there's also the problem of the patches that require a 3 MB expanded ROM. The way Artemis phrases it in the readme, I don't know if the patches expand the ROM when applied, (I'm sure the project ones do, but I don't know about, say, the Map Fixer patch.) or if you need to expand them yourself before applying.

He edited the topic on Lufia World to account for v2.13, the most recent version as of this post, but never commented in the topic itself. I don't know if he'd respond to a private message.

Back when I owned this game on a cart I remember a glitch that I believe was triggered by something in the equipment menu. I think I removed something or was just switching equip and some of the armor or weapon names became glitched and from what I remember it messed up some of the menus and the damage was permanent (to that save file). Do any of these fixes address this issue (I haven't read through all of the readmes yet, it's a lot of patches)?

I do believe that Relnqshd's Lufia Fixxxer Deluxe (And his Artea Name Fix Patch.) was used in addition to Artemis' bug fixes in pretty much all patches in the Projects folder. The "music menu glitch" is what you're referring to. You'd change the sound settings from Stereo to Mono and back again, and you get to Level 0 and freak the game out. The switching weapons and armor glitch has also been fixed, but that was harmless and cosmetic. I don't think Artemis implies this in any of his readmes, though.

For the longest time I've wanted to replay this game with bug fixes (bugs were the reason I didn't finish it in the first place) but didn't want all of the other non-bugfix stuff that was tacked on to the previously available patches to make the game more difficult. It's nice to see these patches uploaded (and separated). Thank you.

You're welcome, SunGodPortal. But you should really thank Artemis! All I did was some spell-checking.

[KingMike]

I do know of a place I can get a ROM that works for Frue Lufia and probably more of these, but there's also the problem of the patches that require a 3 MB expanded ROM. The way Artemis phrases it in the readme, I don't know if the patches expand the ROM when applied, (I'm sure the project ones do, but I don't know about, say, the Map Fixer patch.) or if you need to expand them yourself before applying.

Usually a deliberately expanded ROM will have the extra space filled with 00 or FF.
2.5MB ROMs that have been expanded to 3 unintentionally (by overdumping) will usually have the last 512KB of the real ROM ($200000-27FFFF) repeated a second time.

[Artemis]

Frue Lufia:
The shining gem of the Lufia-Patches, in my opinion.

Actually I'd say to real shining gem here is Spekkio Lufia. Compared to Frue Lufia it adds some real difficulty whereas it removes some artificial difficulty on the other hand. And whereas there are some really hard battles, there is nothing like the craziness of Kureji Lufia and these battles are totally optional.

About the new battles:
- final bosses are tougher, but far away from too tough/superboss material
- Master in Ancient cave is tougher, but less luck-dependent (see also under fake difficulty)
- at the end of the game there are two super strong optional superbosses to defeat (Egg Dragon and La Puella who really give a challenge - unlike original Egg Dragon who basically just is an ordinary enemy with higher stats)
- there's also another optional Sinistral battle during the course of the game (the first Gades battle remained unchanged)
- the rest of the battles is basically unchanged

About removing some fake difficulty:
- Iris Items have a waaaaay higher drop rate so that you have a fair chance to get them all during one floor 99 trip
- Retry and Gift Mode are available right at the beginning
- in Gift Mode you can buy blue chest items now so that's way less farming time in order to have some good gear available to take on the cave
- Silver and Gold Dragons drop stuff that is actually very useful against the Master - at a fair drop rate
- Red Jellies have another behaviour (sounds insignificant, but hey, in case somewhere lurks some red super jelly, there actually might be a way to learn its behaviour BEFORE battling the big one)

If I ever do the Ancient Cave in the regular game from scratch I'd totally prefer Spekkio over Frue/vanilla because despite the Master being tougher it just is way less depending on stupid RNG luck. Especially if you care about the Iris Treasures.

[magictrufflez]

Thanks Artemis--that gives me a much better idea of what to expect from Spekkio!  It sounds like I'll be using that one for sure (I want to restart my current Lufia 2 game that I've spent WAY too much time grinding the AC early).

[Artemis]

Thinking about it, whereas AC is way easier in Gift Mode as well as with Dekar, I might have done more for the endgame party with Artea. Therefore, I'll give La Puella a better reward. So there's a little update:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/yqzlzpz2cn1bb8j/Lufia-Patches_v2-13.zip

La Puella now drops the most useful jewel in the Lufia 2 world - the Spider Jewel which is incredibly useful regarding agility based strategies against the Master (or the Egg Dragon).
So instead of farming blue chests and completely relying on luck, you can also get it as drop with the highest possible drop rate (which is either >30% or 25% - I guess it caps at 25% despite higher hex values being possible).

However, while beta-testing I realized that I might have downplayed the optional superbosses somewhat as both La Puella and the Egg Dragon really can kick ass. They might not be as crazy as the craziest stuff of Kureji Lufia, but they are not THAT far away. And whereas there's no fight that cannot be won without the Egg Ring, it's the best to go for it with levels lower 50, when the Egg Dragon still is rather tame.

[Grandheart]

I want to play this so bad but, no matter what I try, these patches never seem to work.

No matter where I look on the internet, I can't find a Lufia 2 rom with 2621952 bytes. Can someone provide me a link to a site where I can find the headed rom file?

[Bonesy]

absolutely not but i can suggest to run it through TUSH

[Grandheart]

And what this "TUSH" would be?
January 14, 2016, 09:20:21 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)

And what this "TUSH" would be?

Googled this and used the program. Now its working correctly. Love you soooo much. Gonna play right now!

[FlamePurge]

Sorry for a necro-bump gang, but Rainponcho who has helped me with my Lufia I Text Cleanup mod has released a patch to restore the majority of crosses to Frue Lufia and other patches in this collection using Frue Lufia as a base. http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=45049311665757454795

Please enjoy, and let me know if the link somehow goes dead.

Edit - Updated link to the one contained within Rainponcho's later post here: http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,20324.msg320112.html#msg320112

[Digitsie]

So, just to be sure - install this over an already-patched FRUE-based rom -with- header or no header?

[rainponcho]

Apply Frue patch. Then this current updated one. Keep rom header.
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=07520473366456875163

Artemis might update upstream patches also later.


Crosses added:
Inside church (small town, big city, castle)
Outside church (small town, big city)
Daos room


Notes:
Bell towers don't have crosses added because they physically ripped out 2 tiles and left me (?) no room in vram (?) to add them back. And you'd have to update the nametable for this.

Portravia church doesn't have cross outside because Japan build looked that way too. I think 1 other city church was like this.


I hope that's all of them.


Otherwise thanks to Artemis and vivify93 and et al for their hard (constant) Lufia updates!