praetarius5018

Seiken Densetsu 3 Sin of Mana - Discussion

971 posts in this topic

Beat new Koren, got a few thoughts about the fight if somebody could confirm:

 
  • His death spells seems to hit for 999 at level 99 even with 1 red demon horn - can it even be reduced to 0 with enough horns?
  • Trick seems to be rush him down in melee - forcing him to dash away seems to drastically increase his cast time
  • Seems to counter spell casts with his own spells - whats the point of having barrier change if you can't even exploit his weakness
  • Seems like a incredible pain to fight without savestates - the room before him is absolutely brutal
Edited by WarpedLichen

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  • Spoiler

     

    • You'd need 7, can't be done. For deathspell purposes he should be 105, -1 level (real and otherwise) per horn.
    • Dunno, for my the AI often stops when I'm in his face and have him literally cornered. The AI is absolutely unable to handle certain angles. This can be seen on heath as well.
    • He doesn't counter. The required "hate" for him is beyond the maximum. Instead he deals more damage the more hate he has stored. Same solution as with DkS - throw some counters at him.
    • Also the barrier change is unchanged, so what worked there in vanilla still works here.

     

     

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Alright so far, this is a fantastic hack, good job on it. I'm playing it on hard, with hawk, riezel and angela (aiming for nightblade. archmage, vanadise) and i just killed the second golems, god darn they were a pain in my ... riezel is pretty tanky but hawk and angela are glass cannons, so i kept getting destroyed in seconds since the ai can't dodge if their life depended on it. so my strategy was solo them with hawk with a life leech ring and a double tech weapon and a whole lot of running around and chocolate. Worked out suprisngly well, ill probably try that against bill and ben too if need be.

again great job, i'm loving it. i hope you release version 1 before I finish so i can get nightblade final weapon

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So how is the counter mechanic supposed to work anyway? The readme suggests that its only the lvl 1 tech? How do I counter enemies who use screen freezers? Is it hitting them while they are in their casting pose?

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"...Lv1 tech hits an enemy shortly after they start their attack or cast a spell..."

hit them in the 3~4s after the spell animation finishes.
hold direction away from the enemy in case the spell sends you flying to get knocked closer to them.

Darkshine Knight is the best enemy to test regular counters against as he takes at least 200 damage extra from it, so it is easily visible when you get it.

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While I'm waiting for 1.0.0 to fight Dragon Emperor, got a few more questions about game mechanics.

Are the increased power while deathless weapons only supposed to work if somebody has never died ever or just death score? It seems pretty much impossible to never die in this game, especially when Zable and Koren are in the mix.

When do the resist increase gear come into place? It seems too situational for what they do. One resist isn't worth worse defenses. I've never fought a boss where I remove weakness or increased magic defense wasn't enough. Am I missing something, especially given how tight money is.

I feel like a lot of the armor and weapons in the second half of the game should be brought up to medium at least to make them worth using. I stuck with a few tried and true sets basically the whole time (medium, pure armor, pure evade, magic + negate weakness). I think undead armor is the poster child of good design because its very useful when you get it because of key status resists with a drawback that gets worse as the game goes on.

Finally, does evade work past 127 on the character sheet? Not sure if I get anything by going over with Max Agi Hawk.

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Deathless weapons are your proof if you succeeded a "no death" playstyle; die once (normal or higher) or hit a trap (tough or higher) and it is gone for this playthrough.
Whats the problem with Zable and Koren specifically?

Evade is hard capped at 127; more AGL will give you the other bonuses still: more accuracy (less misses), bons to Lv1 tech damage, etc.
I think the highest accuracy any enemy has is 38, so you're at the effective evasion cap of 90 anyway (127 - 38 = 89, ok you miss 1%, cast speed up asap!!!).

weapons and armor are meant to be usable most of the entire game, some in general, other with more niche use, and all of course depending on playstyle.
theoretically the wendel weapon and armor should last you the whole game, so money shouldn't be much of a problem.

does it even matter much if an armor is light, light-medium or medium? sure the damage number changes, but on higher difficulty does it change the number of hits you can survive?
if the damage gets reduced from 700 to 500 that looks good but you still die in 2 hits.
That's where the resist gear should come in, resistance cuts damage in half; you have a bit lower defense but now the 700 gets down to let's say 400, oh hey that means you can now take to hits at 801 HP instead of almost getting one shot there.
Or for the OCD people that need everyone to take similar damage; you know some classes have natural resistance to a given element, others don't, so they can even it out that way.

Also don't only look at the pure defense; HP factor, evade, crit resistance also play a huge role on how much it lets you survive.
Bazant Mail (93% HP, heavy p.def) vs Dragon's Mail (103% HP, light def) is almost 100 HP difference at Lv90+. Dragon takes more damage per hit, yes, but it still takes 100 more damage before you hit 0.

I'd actually say, undead armor becomes more useful later; you get a few options to recover HP outside of now harmful healing (moon saber/hp steal weapon/ring, HP regen ring, bishop weapon or plain post battle healing) and status effects become more diverse. of course there's only one boss where it is safe to use at all.
someone made use of it in dragon hole even.

I can take a look at general attack and defense value of weapons and armors, but for that I need a bit more concrete feedback;
why should weapon/armor X be increased one attack/defense stage and how does it make X not strictly better than similar options.
Resistance gear requires knowing what the enemies use for elements, but at least for the godbeasts that's dead obvious (minus one troll).

Admittedly, I've designed myself into a corner there; the medium power wendel stuff was supposed to be the baseline, the stuff to compare to, and then it doesn't have anything special and only medium power.
And there's only so much hitrate/critrate/evade/whatever that I can reduce otherwise...

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Zable and Koren both seem to cast Death spell randomly in their routines and are at too high of a level to negate with a level. Get hit with death spell = no bonus. Not to mention the occasional boulder getting off roulette and the like.

I think you're overestimating HP+ gear. In general by the end game I am close to max HP (700-800+). An average enemy hit does around 120-170, 100 hp is less than one hit. The difference between high def and low is like 50-80 hp per hit.

Early - Mid game - Heal Light casting is too slow, the main criteria in a boss fight is making sure your healing stocks last through an entire fight. Most often the difference between medium and light defense by feel is that a light defense hit takes me down to almost nothing, and I need to blow 3+ round drops to take another hit. Medium defense, I might only need 1 round drop before I die in the next hit. The difference in item and time efficiency is the deciding factor, not how many hits I can take in a vacuum.

The problem with resist gear is that it helps you against one element of damage and increases the damage you take from everything else. Wearing Dark resist gear against Gorza for example is counterproductive, you take maybe 25% less damage from dark spells (due to lower base magic resist), but the trade off is that his physical attacks and ghost road now one shot you. Resist gear is only good against bosses (because regular enemies don't use elements too much, and the ones that do use AI to target your weakness specifically) and only against bosses that don't have non elemental attacks. Admittedly a lot of God Beats are kinda one trick wonders, but there's a quite a few physical attackers in the mix. And it seems like you're probably better off using Remove Weakness or More Magic Defense for those God Beasts anyway.

I didn't like undead armor because end game enemies deal way too much damage to fight comfortably. Even with max defense Duran is taking 100+ damage a hit. Evade stacking feels way better than defense stacking and the lack of evade on the chest piece just makes it not worth it. Knowing that max evade is 90 changes things a lot, though i feel like 1% is wrong because I still got hit a lot at 127 in the Dragon Hole (feels closer to 5% to 10 %?) maybe enemies just attack a ton. It seems like in mid game, wearing undead armor meant that I could just about comfortably tank an entire screen of enemies, get really close to death, but get the free heal after. This is extremely relevant in the snow fields where you can't wear pure physical defense because of mages or in the wind area because enemies inflict status effects like crazy. In the end game, I can't rely on using pure defense to last me through a map with undead armor because I will die before I can even take out one enemy in melee, so I prefer having access to regular healing.

For weapons, I think its quite clear because weapons use the same statline for every character despite being better/worse for each character due to their role. Duran's mp drain weapon is pretty bad for example, because he doesn't use spells very much in any of his classes. That one can probably be bumped to medium-heavy for him because of the relative lack of utility. Hawk can't get any innate healing spells, so his strong Heal Light item should probably be buffed to compensate.

The random chance to inflict poison weapon seems really bad. Random amount of hits it takes to inflict status, you just run away? Even though the AI isn't capable of carrying out that strategy? Same with random chance to inflict silence - there are only a few enemies that I want a random silence on (bees because they buff before the FST and eyes because they don't cast often) - everything I else I want to silence asap or I don't care at all. I feel like those could probably be increased to medium attack but with lower crit chance or something.

Armor wise, I think all of the resist status stuff is too weak, feel like it should be buffed to medium to make it competitive with Wendel armor. I already said my piece about resistance armor. Attack up stuff in general don't feel worth it right now. I wish there were a set of armor that negates enemy elemental resists, a weapon that negates evade, and a weapon that can do knock back consistently.

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Death Spell -> Wishbone

HP/def: I never said that those 100 HP are the be-all-end-all, I just said that you can't ignore those HP. That one was a comparison between an armor that is strictly for physical defense versus an armor that has a non-defensive use, OF COURSE the later will be worse defensively, but it also has some HP more to make it not that bad as you made it out to be.

Evasion: there's a lot of things that outright ignore evasion. techs, criticals, looks-like-a-regular-attack-but-is-actually-a-spell

Duran needs no MP?  - tell that to people that use him as a main healer.

for random status weapon try upping your luck, it gives you up to 40% chance to hit those status ailments.
poison is just a ton of free dps; like dead in 10-15 seconds even if you do nothing to them

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Will admit I didn't that counter at all, I assumed Wishbone was the counter to the death penalty.

Also will admit I don't know enough about the game mechanics to know what is what, just that I get hit by random damage quite a bit.

Cleric Duran is probably possible, but I don't really rely on heal light for combat healing because the cast time is too much of a pain for me to bother.

10-15 seconds is a long time even after the proc. I do some of the proc weapons - petrify and chibiko for example. I think the Pedan gear in general are really cool competitive alternatives to each other. I just feel like there's a big gap where you get extremely situational gear options for a long time.

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Ok, I'll change "death resistance" to "protection against instant death spells" to make it more clear.

Honestly, I've the same problem; half the time it does the same damage, has the same animation but for square reason it counts as something other than a regular attack so evasion is skipped.

Give him some INT (also strengthens his Lv3 tech so no real loss) and/or the Rising Moon Helm. And avoid Rune Earrings.
I'd be honestly surprised if there's any situation - that isn't absurdly unrealistic - for which exists no useful gear at this point.

Care to elaborate what gap you mean?

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That's still 80% of the game where he's not a credible healer because of how slow his cast time is. You're talking end game armor + 3rd class change + sizable int investment before cast time feels good.

The equipment gap I feel starts from the Ghost Ship. You already have your baseline defensive gear and you're starting to get random resist armor of dubious general usefulness. Similarly, you're getting the alt stat weapons for a couple towns. I understand the intent of flat gear progression, but its also kind of lame to get to a new equipment shop and getting no progression.

I feel like resist armor should be removed - you get resist accessories from Cats right around the God Beast fights when they're the most useful.

A set of faster cast time armor/sudden cast accessory should be made available earlier so that 2nd class classes can make better use of their buffs in regular fights.

A lot of it is also due to enemy layout - if enemy layouts could be changed so that you can specialize against an area then the specialized gear becomes a lot better.

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Eh, no, totally not; quick cast helm is available at the cats (~lv55), so more or less exactly in the middle of the game.
Levels are more or less parallel to how far you are in the game; last class change is Lv38 so roughly a third into the game.
Either way that is a far cry from 80%.
If I had proposed a "healer Fenrir Knight" THAT would be 80% into as she needs her final/class specific weapon.

I read it as "there's no gap just items you don't feel useful to you" - that's per se ok.
As long as someone finds a good use for it those aren't a waste in my book.

How about you use the resist armors to have your entire team resist one specific element and then cast a saber of that element on all enemies, thought about that option?
On that front, has anyone even tried to make some use out of Y button shenanigans (cast spell on wrong target group)?
My list of those strategies wants some more entries. Currently stuck at 10 entries.

Another thing you feel lacking already exists -> Sage Stone, buffs cast almost instantly, available same time as you get your 2nd class change.

Enemy layouts have been changed and actually change themselves to a degree, specifically so they are not trivialized with a single item.
I wanted this hack to be more about execution/skill than "just get the right equip/stats and gg".
The general idea was more along the lines of "if in area x the most dangerous thing is petrification throw some petrify resist gear on" and not "wear petrify resist gear, max p.def and then hold A".

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I'm thinking of playing this mod
Which character combo you'd say is the most complete at this point?
Also, it would be nice to see some in-game indication that the patch worked (some text somewhere around the title is fine)

Edited by ngMaxi

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The ingame indication is simple:
you can run in battle and take more than 2 damage from a hit

As for adding a text somewhere - this would be insanely difficult to get working, you know across untranslated version and several different translation patches, etc.
Help on that would be welcome.

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Hello, Praetorius! I've been silently following your project for a few months now. I've played it on normal and hard by myself and normal with a few friends completely unfamiliar with the game.

It's been really fun, and I just wanted to jump in and say you do excellent work.

I think you really succeeded in remaking the game to offer various, meaningful choices, and even beyond that the added depth from running, "strong attacks" and counters and reworking the enemy ai make for a satisfying rpg experience AND action experience that, best of all, has replayability. The removal of grinds helped in that, too. 

That's what I mostly came here to say, and I really feel like I should have sooner.

I want to contribute what I can, too.

The Sage Stone (sudden cast ring) consumes MP when techs are used while equipped (sets MP to 0).  You can see this happening at 23'45'' in the latest video, #"46-48", of that let's play going on of your mod (coincidentally, they're how I found out about your mod!). You can see Lise's equipment at 25'36''. I encountered this bug myself.

I also remember something fishy about one of the Pedan armors, like it was supposed to have a major drawback only the penalty was bugged or something so the armor was too good. I'll try to provide specifics when I have time.

I'm sorry I can't offer more bugs. Maybe that's a good thing,  though! 

I haven't beaten the mod yet, but I keep coming back to it and am happy to start over.  The worst parts are the things you can't address as you've said like FSTs/Spells stopping all action, no in game descriptions of changes, slowdown and battle message spam and limited enemy tells to work with.  The worst offenders are buffs like mind up or power up, had square only made them with like 1/3rd second animations like protect up the screen freezing wouldn't interrupt the game's flow much. Is it possible to just make those play out faster like I do manually with frame skip? xD

It does make me wonder what you'd be capable of with a team behind you and maybe the freedom of your own game. I think you've got a great sense of balancing challenge and fun.  It also makes me think about other games that were so close to being good games that could be made less tedious and more interesting with some modification.  I know very little about modding or programming in general, but damn if Sin of Mana wasn't so impressive and such a good time with my friends for being such an old game that it hasn't inspired me to learn how and see what could be done with a game like Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles or, you know, Legend of Mana.

Anyway, that's a lot of words and bullshit, so I just want to be clear and repeat. Thank you, Praetorius. You've done incredible work.

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Despite ID being gone, the running gag of people getting my name wrong continues, great.

Sage Stone:
I should've seen this coming, "techs" are mechanically the same as spells..
And yes, I've already tried to have Angela cast Fireball as her Lv2 tech; it worked, except it didn't use TP up.

Pedan Armor:
ok, I'll wait for the info; guessing is a bit difficult when there are 4 of those per character..

Animations:
I've not really looked into that, only how to assign them to a spell.
At most I could add a bonus patch that just switches animations off for buffs, so it skips that completely.

Thanks for the feedback!

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Hi. Recently been looking at this rom hack and It's quite interesting! And the bugfixes are especially attractive!!! The only change I'm not such a fan of is Carlie/Charlotte not having Healing Light in her base class and dark classes, as much early Holy Ball is nice it doesn't make much sense for her healing spell to be missing at all since she's a Cleric.

Any chance you might revert her back to having Healing Light in all her classes??? Or have that as an option in a separate patch?? Other than that what you got going with the spell lists is awesome!!!! Gives magic-users more utility without things getting too crazy.  It's so nice for characters besides Riesz/Lise to be able to get Stat Ups/Downs. And I LOOOOOVE that you gave Duran's Paladin class multi target Healing Light along with the other stuff he gets :3

Aside from that only other suggestion I can think of is that it would be nice for Kevin to get speed up as a Warrior Monk

 

Edited by Gamerdude535

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2 hours ago, Gamerdude535 said:

Hi. Recently been looking at this rom hack and It's quite interesting! And the bugfixes are especially attractive!!! The only change I'm not such a fan of is Carlie/Charlotte not having Healing Light in her base class and dark classes, as much early Holy Ball is nice it doesn't make much sense for her healing spell to be missing at all since she's a Cleric.

You're mixing something up. She DOES have a healing spell, just not for HP.
Also, she's a cleric, clerics pray (or bring the world to ruin), healing is for medics.

Any chance you might revert her back to having Healing Light in all her classes???

Yes, the chance is roughly 0.000-1%.

To make it short: no.
Her dark classes are not allowed to ever learn heal light. So her base class can't either - forgetting spells is not a thing in this game.

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How goes the progress to 1.0? A part of me doesn't want to start a new game again with the fear that a new patch will drop in the middle.

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That means I can start a new game without worrying about an abrupt restart then. I got up to the moon godbeast in one of the older patches - maybe this time I'll write down my experiences with all the bosses as I go.

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Started playing a bit ago with Duran , Kevin, and Angela, just got to Maia and find myself with more input to throw out there

Armor affecting HP is a sweet and interesting feature but some of them should probably be looked at. Not sure that Bezant Mail should be giving Duran less HP than Hard leather :P. The defense compensates for it a bit but it feels weird

And in terms of the story Angela not having Holy Ball in her potential spell list as Magician but getting Fireball and later Ice Smash before even meeting the matching elemental spirits doesn't make sense. 

That being said it's a great rom hack and I'm having a lot of fun so far.

Edited by Gamerdude535

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I'm restarting the game after a minute of not dabbling in it. I keep pressing the b button with a full tech bar, but I'm not firing off a tech. I hold it down and I run around just fine though. 

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Hi Praetarius, nice to see this hack still going. ^_^

 

22 minutes ago, velsper said:

I'm restarting the game after a minute of not dabbling in it. I keep pressing the b button with a full tech bar, but I'm not firing off a tech. I hold it down and I run around just fine though. 

 

As a general tip, reading the documentation files is highly recommended for this hack. For example, the Readme file contains the following information:
 

Quote

A: attack, confirm, interact
B: run (even in battle), cancel
X: open ring menu
Y: use techs (in battle), invert ally/enemy targetting for selected spell (hold while selecting the spell before starting target selection)
Y+B: open menu (out of battle)
L/R: hold to control different character
START: open inventory (out of battle), toggle control on/off (player 2&3)
SELECT: switch to different character

 

Another piece of advice I could give, the weapons and armor in the shops are never strictly better than the previous ones. Each of them have their own specific properties. Unfortunately, there is no way to add descriptions about them into the game, especially considering some people play SD3 in Japanese, some in English. That's why, it is recommended to keep the armor_elements_stats.xls file open while playing the game, and take a look at the file when you're making decisions on what to buy or equip for your characters.

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