praetarius5018

Lufia 2 - Age of the Sinistrals

130 posts in this topic

Major features:

  • added around 70 new spells, including some physical-like techs that even Guy can learn
  • learning new spells gives slight increases to stats
  • modified base stats and growth of characters
  • stat potions can no longer drop from enemies; those drop now fruits for capsule mosnter (CM) evolving
  • added a true final boss fight with "Guard Daos" after Daos
  • major overhaul of AI for final Sinistral fights
  • Retry and Gift Mode are now always available
  • Retry Mode is now Hard Mode, 2x exp/gold gain and enemies are stronger (less grind, more action)
  • rings and rocks are now the same equip type and can occupy either of their two slots, e.g. you can wear 2 rings, 2 rocks or 1 each
  • modified defense influence; starts with 1:1 until def = 50% raw damage then degenerates
  • CM level is now tied to Maxim's exp/level
  • modified CM attacks and AI slightly, e.g. Darbi can now even flee in class 5 and class 4 Flash is more likely to heal when injured
  • class 4 and 5 CM are much less likely to use regular attacks
  • CM can freely switch between all 5(!) classes once unlocked instead of being locked to class 1-4 OR 5
  • (S) Witch Ring now increases MP as advertised
  • 25% of ATP bonuses from equipment get also added to INT
  • 25% of DFP bonuses from equipment get also added to MGR

note: NOT compatible with vanilla savegames!

Edited by praetarius5018

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I don't think I ever saw this mod when it was hosted on ID, only the plethora of patches Artemis made. Is this one any good? 

Well, I'm going to try this one out anyway. Lufia has always been one of my favorite SNES RPG's, but the vanilla version becomes dreadfully easy early on. 

Edited by SharmatOfLove

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Reading through the changelog, it ticks all the right kind of boxes; not played Lufia 2 though, would that be a problem if I gave this mod a shot?

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It should be ok.
The game is pretty "normal" for any kind of gimmicks. No complex skill systems to learn or anything.

The most outlandish "feature" is probably that defend only counts if you get to act before the enemy.
Which becomes even better when the slowest capsule monster is the most likely to use defend in the first place.

Of course, like most games of the era, it doesn't tell you which pieces of armor protect against status effects or elements.
When I played the vanilla version ages ago, I didn't even know that armors could have those effects, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

There's one boss battle in the entire game that you're supposed to lose; but if you win it gives you a unique weapon that is basically endgame power from the midgame.

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Playing the mod just now and encountered a potentially serious problem.

When you save the game in a dungeon and reload that save, the game seems to 'reset' all puzzles and even your last known world map coordinates. This means that if you save in the room before the first boss, die, and reload that save it becomes impossible to get back across the bridge as the switch resets and there doesn't seem to be any way to flip it from that side:

http://imgur.com/a/7nFAg

Worse than that, if you use the Escape item it will warp you to what I'm assuming is coordinates 0,0 on the world map:

http://imgur.com/a/8cdGZ

I'm guessing it's some kind of memory issue; don't have any experience with how the base game is supposed to work though. I was using a U ROM (acquired from CompleteRoms) with the Headered patch.

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It seems like it doesn't save dungeon data at all..
in vanilla that works at least.

Though it wouldn't have surprised me too much if that was a vanilla bug - I mean all you need to do there to summon the apocalypse is press left on the stereo option.

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Niiice, will give this a go at some point. I've never actually played Lufia II since I could never get past the first game due to savage boredom when it became too easy. But I did finally finish it when I made my own hard mode for it. :D So now I'm finally ready for Lufia II and this looks like the best way to do so. Cheers for the top effort, @praetarius5018! Will play through it on Twitch when I run out of my own hard mode projects, if you don't mind. Several months away, in any case.

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I cleared the 3rd area last night (that castle with the crown); feedback from the perspective of a completely blind player:

-) The bats hanging around the bridge switch are very tough to beat early on due to their summon + flee behaviour.

-) MegaQuake hits like a bus and has a rock-bottom IP cost compared to some of the abilities I was using prior, like Double Slash. I found myself leaning on it heavily throughout the castle sewer. Damage can range from 50 (large enemy group) to 120 (single enemy). Was using it via Maxim.

Gameplay-wise, the first area (not tutorial area) was definitely the toughest as formations with 2 enemies were usually too overwhelming to fight initially; I bought a rapier + armour first run, but on 2nd run I went with that passive stat-raising skill which helped a bit. 2nd dungeon turned out great, had a bit of luck with the gauntlet of enemies; ran out of healing items midway but the 2nd last enemy dropped a potion by chance. 3rd area was crippled a bit by Frock + MegaQuake.

Got 5000 gold to spend before I clear out and can't decide whether to spend it or save it for next town s:

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I've not touched any IP moves yet, so that kind of overpoweredness is to be expected/still present like in vanilla.
Bats were always this troll-y. I lowered their stats in V6 now.

The update makes old saves invalid - again.
Transfer should be done via savestate.

If the game detects an "invalid" save it tries to repair it, that takes about a minute in a black screen, so no panic please.
The result always has a Lv1 party though, so overwrite it, don't even bother loading.

v6 update:

  • fixed bug in save mechanism which made dungeons reset upon loading
  • nerfed power of Blaze's special attacks
  • reduced stats and increased gold drop of enemies that appear during the time Maxim is alone in the early game

 

I half expect the saves to still have a hidden bug somewhere; I had to basically rewire 70% of the save file structure and cram 252 bytes of data into a space intended for 230 bytes.

Edited by praetarius5018

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Are you still working on this? While it is in no way game-breaking, I've encountered a persistent bug in whatever version was up here a few days ago. 

Basically, whenever a CM levels up and has a level equal to your highest level party member, the 'exp needed' status wrongly mentions needing up to 67x.xxx.xxx something EXP needed. It disappears when opening the CM's status screen again and doesn't seem to actually effect leveling at all. I think it is a byproduct of whatever method you implented to limit CM leveling to your own highest level, but the problems seem to be purely cosmetic so it's not really a  big deal.

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Maybe a little every now and then.
I still have to modify some IPs and maybe tweak AC a bit.

I mean the AC does give you spells and you get the bonus stats on them but spells are quite rare, especially now that there are 100+ valid spells instead of about 30.
I'm not sure how possible the AC even is in this version unless you already have a good amount of blue chest items.

That bug is indeed a byproduct of the exp/lvl sync.
At least that is better than the infinite level up message loop I had at the beginning with this feature..

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Well, I'm up to just before the second (first serious) fight with Gades now. Been playing on hard mode and it feels pretty balanced so far, whereas in vanilla Lufia random encounters pretty much become completely trivial later on. The added spells + the stat boosts they provide do a good job of keeping things interesting, especially the varations of melee attacks.

Edit: just encountered a rather serious bug that I should probably mention, though I don't know if it was present in the original Lufia 2 as well (a quick google search doesn't give any results).  After getting the ship, whenever you leave it and save at a chapel, the ship will disappear once you load the save MANUALLY. Using savestates is still fine. I don't know where the ship goes too, but while you can warp to other towns you've basically become incapable of travelling by sea, meaning you're stuck.

Again, this is just something I noticed that happens anytime a save is manually loaded. Haven't found a fix for it either, yet.

Second edit: so the ship glitch seems to have fixed itself somehow. Don't know why, but the ship does follow you when you warp to a new town. I'm still 99% sure that at some point I saved in Gruberik (AC island) with the ship being completely going after reloading, necessitating a savestate load. 

I found another bug at dragon mountain (the cave / mountain next to Chaed) that can be both replicated so tested. When fighting the Salamander enemy - winged orange dragonoid thingy) it occasionally seems to get stuck in its attack script. It uses either Firebird or a regular melee attack, but sometimes it doesn't act at all and the ROM seems to hang - most button inputs don't work, but pressing start boots you back to the Natsume title screen. Saves are not affected though, so at worst you'll lose about ten minutes of gameplay.

Edited by SharmatOfLove
Updating post (again)

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I've got to be honest here... did you ever finish balancing the final Sinistral fights? Don't get me wrong, it was great having a Lufia 2 game that offered a fair challenge here and there, but I've been stuck fighting Amon at the sealed tower for days now (Hard Mode btw) and this guy keeps kicking my ass everytime. The second (third) fight with Gades was pretty straightforward, but now you've got constant Mirror on everyone making healing / damage very difficult, confusion that needs to be protected against, Amon getting healed by a LOT of elemenental attacks and having a pretty strong AoE melee as well. Any tips on how to handle it?

Tl;dr: somehow I've gotten spoiled on Critical + Bunny Blade IP shenanigans and can't win a challenging fight anymore.

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ship bug:
not sure if I caused that disappearance, but afaik warp should always put the ship close to you.

Salamander:
I only edited their damage, but I can take a look at it.

Amon:
he gets healed by fire and non-elemental, try to have everyone not use those elements on their weapon; Anti-Flying and similar count as elemental as well.

Spoiler

Fire:
- Fire dagger
- Burn sword
- Red saber
- Sizzle sword
- Spark staff

Water:
- Aqua sword
- Mist rapier
- Aqua whip
- Water spear
- Dragon spear

Light:
- Dual blade
- Gladius
- Silvo rapier
- Silver sword
- Super sword
- Rune rapier
- Blaze sword
- Fry sword
- Holy staff
- Crystal wand
- Silver rod
- Holy whip

Shadow:
- Deadly sword (cursed)
    Description: An ominous-looking sword.
- Deadly sword (uncursed)
    Description: An ominous-looking sword.
- Beserk blade
- Beserk blade
- Gades blade (but Octo-strike is Neutral)
- Deadly rod
- Deadly rod
- Fatal pick
- Fatal pick

Effective against Hard (or "Strong") enemies:
- Frypan
- Mace
- Rod
- Staff
- Long staff
- Morning star
- Pounder rod
- Zirco rod

Effective against Flying enemies
- Flying blow
- Flying ax
- Launcher

Effective against Dragons:
- Lizard blow
(the Dragon blade is Neutral. However, its IP is Effective against Dragons)

Effective against Insects:
- Insect crush

Ice:
- Cold rapier
- Freeze sword
- Snow sword
- Air whip
- Freeze bow

Thunder:
- Boom sword
- Sky sword
- Thunder ax
- Mega ax

Aside from that you should rely on Forcefield IP (+40% defense), Swordsplitter IP (reduces ATP a lot).
The spell Reduce removes Mirror from him; he'll still have his "fake" mirror for when he reflects (fake) Firebird/Thunder off himself onto you.
Resolve should be able to heal you and not be affected by Mirror.
Physical skills should not be affected either.
If you want immunity against confusion, the list is the same as in vanilla:
 

Spoiler

 

helm:
Bunny ears, Jute helmet, Old helmet, Legend helm, Brill helm, Pearl helmet, Safety hat

shield:
Power brace

body:
Ghostclothes, Seethru cape, Seethru silk
the two Seethru items block everything but death I think

 

Amon has ONE move that ignores confusion protection though.

Give the spido jewel IP and fake spell a chance and drop his AGL until you outspeed him, that helps a ton.

Also you CAN'T do what he does and reflect damage spells off yourself to hit him - he cheats :P

 

Did you at least beat that Gades deathless?
If not - there's always the rematch to do that.

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found the stupid typo... instead of modifying their "Sizzle breath" attack power, I changed its type from spell to "crash game please" :/

 

perfectly balanced RNG:

Lufia II_age_of_the_sinistrals023.png

 

Edited by praetarius5018

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Wasn't expecting such a thorough answer- thanks! I'll definitely be trying again later, just need to refresh my knowledge in which weapons / IP attacks count as which element. 

Gades was pretty easy, actually. Only got one death when I did remove his attack / magic buff spell 'Undeath' the first time. 

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Just a small update - the Ancient Cave is still very doable even in Hard Mode, though I suppose RNG will play a big role (like it did before).

I've gotten around to defeating the Master legitimately for the first time ever, and I'm usually a scrub when it comes to bonus bosses. Having two fatal picks to grind to 90+ levels, a myth blade and Gades blade (plus a Dekar blade just for funs) makes for easy battles. With the newly added Exchange spell you can convert HP to IP as well, giving you basically two octo-strikes + HP quartering.

Btw, did you change the Master's HP total? I've though it was around 10K, but I'm pretty certain it's more like 20K+ now.

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Ancient Cave isn't affected by Hard Mode. So neither are enemies stronger nor do you get x2 exp.
This is the same effect as Retry in the original, didn't give you x4 exp there either.

Master's original HP was 9980, now he has 19980.
As I'm reading this is still doable :P

Imo it is brutal enough this way.
~70% more exp than vanilla, more cooperative high rank CMs, more tactical spells.

Also, sorry but the next update will change the AC a bit, making it (at least theoretically) a bit easier.

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It doesn't? I kne about the exp but figured the damage modifiers still applied anyway.

Yeah, it is still doable but I did had RGJesus on my side during the run. I know I'm not downing many double Silver / Gold Dragons the regular way anytime:bitch:

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v7 update:

  • changed logic of buff effects
  • old: half distance between current value and +2x buff rate (e.g. 40% buff on a current 120% state increases by [100%+2x40% - 120%]/2 = 30%)
  • new: buff applies buff rate to the distance between current and 200% (e.g. 40% buff on a current 120% state increases by [200% - 120%]*40% = 32%)
  • changed logic of debuff effects:
  • old: half distance between current value and +2x debuff rate (e.g. 20% debuff on a current 120% state decreases by [100%-2x20% + 120%]/2 = 30%)
  • new: debuff applies debuff rate to the distance between current and 0% (e.g. 20% debuff on a current 120% state decreases by 120%*20% = 24%)
  • debuffs can no longer reduce a stat below 50% of its base value
  • fixed Salamander's Sizzle Breath related game crash
  • reduced chance in Ancient Cave to get consumables from ~37% to ~20%
  • increased chance in Ancient Cave to get spells from ~11% to ~18%
  • increased chance in Ancient Cave to get armors and accessoires from ~17% to ~25%
  • increased chance in Ancient Cave to get blue chests from ~2% to ~5%
  • chance in Ancient Cave to get weapons was kept at ~31%
  • HeroSong and Resolve are no longer affected by mirror state
  • increased HP, MP, AGL of Lexis
  • increased general stat growth of Tia at high levels
  • Ruse armor can now be equipped by everyone, protects against death
  • Mirak plate can now be equipped by everyone, protects against paralysis and confusion
  • increased DFP of Mirak plate from 120 to 160
  • edited descriptions of most items that provide status protection
  • renamed IP "Ice...." to "Ice Valk"
  • IP "Combo attack" damage increased from 2*INT+450 to 2*INT+500
  • IP "Diamond dust" damage increased from STR+700 to 2*STR+350
  • IP "Do-Re-Mi" confusion chance increased from 50% to 100%
  • IP "Flash" damage increased from 2*INT+600 to 3*INT+300; cost increased from 96 (37%) to 164 (65%)
  • IP "Frost" damage increased from 2*INT+140 to 3*INT+360
  • IP "Gloomsplash" damage increased from STR+800 to 2.5*STR+400
  • IP "Gloomy" damage increased from 2*INT+160 to 4*INT+60
  • IP "Groundshock" damage increased from 2*INT+240 to (INT+STR)*1.75
  • IP "Head attack" cost reduced from 164 (65%) to 100 (40%)
  • IP "Incendiary" damage increased from 2*INT+120 to 3*INT+70
  • IP "Iron kick" damage increased from 400 to 700
  • IP "Magic cure" cost reduced from 128 (50%) to 85 (33%)
  • IP "Magic healing" cost reduced from 192 (75%) to 153 (60%)
  • IP "Magma blast" damage increased from 2*INT+400 to 3*INT+100
  • IP "Mega quake" damage increased from 2*INT+140 to 2.5*INT+30; cost increased from 20 (8%) to 50 (20%)
  • IP "Samurai" critical chance increased from 20% to 35%
  • IP "Stardust blow" damage increased from STR+1000 to 2.5*STR+450
  • IP "Tail attack" damage increased from 2*INT+200 to 2.5*INT+100
  • IP "Tidal wave" damage increased from 2*INT+140 to 3*INT+60
  • IP "Twister" damage increased from 2*INT+140 to 3*INT+360
  • IP "Voltage bolt" damage increased from 2*INT+160 to 3*INT+70

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im extremely interested. i may grab this next week and do some balance testing on hard mode for you. (BTW, any chance you can literally change the text from "retry" to "hard" and "gift" to..."Rogue"?

gonna be rolling through fallen and risen star first, atleast fallen star (as im also playing tears to tiara 2 platinum playthrough) and maybe you'll throw more changes while i wait as this seems freshly full of big changes.

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Retry is already renamed to "hard".
I'd like to keep "gift" though; that way people new to Lufia 2 in general have a chance to research on their own what made this game mode is like, what they should expect.

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on a random note i would kill for a lufia returns (game boy color) mod. that game would be absolutely amazing with a truly hard difficulty.

hell i'd even help out. maybe i'll make the offer once im done golden sun and get to testing this and gift mode. i expect gift mode to be interesting.

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What OS do you have?

In case of Win10 - delete the spyware and get a real OS.

Win7:

get LunarIPS, that might already associate .ips files with it.
If so, just double click on the appropriate patch (depending on whether you ROM is headered or not) and then select the ROM in the file select dialog.
If not, double click on LunarIPS then apply patch, select the patch and then the ROM.

Other OSes: sorry, you'll have to look that up with a search engine of your choice.

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