praetarius5018

Seiken Densetsu 3 Sin of Mana - Discussion

971 posts in this topic

Oh yeah, the good old Genova fight, where the clunky menu system is your worst enemy. I remember being salty about the battle in the ID forums, since it's pretty much a matter of luck whether the game registers you mashing the menu button. :D I wouldn't remove buff/debuff messages completely, as otherwise you have no way of knowing if some spell has (de)buffed you, but I'd like it if the game kept a list of status messages it is going to show you, and if there are over 3 messages in queue, it would simply show the first 3 messages and skip the rest. Alternatively, allow menu accessing during the display of status messages.

 

I fought FMH in the Dark Castle. What a terrible lag! It didn't help that I had to beat him twice, since I was accidentally holding the menu button during the moment when he died, which caused his death animation to skip, and as a result, I was stuck in the room, with no way to leave or even accesss the menu.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Genova

OK I don"t understand how but I retry him and beat him pretty easily I guess it's random sometime with the same strat it just doesn't work at all but this attempts did go pretty well.

And after that we have yet an other boss YEAH screw this I go back all the way to Palo to refill my inventory and sleep at the inn to remove the death penalty and I will try the next boss next time.

Edited by Nesouk

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

I fought FMH in the Dark Castle. What a terrible lag! It didn't help that I had to beat him twice, since I was accidentally holding the menu button during the moment when he died, which caused his death animation to skip, and as a result, I was stuck in the room, with no way to leave or even accesss the menu.

That's interesting. I thought the animation was just for show :S
Do you happen to have a in-game save still before the boss?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I beat

Spoiler

the Black Rabite in the Many Holyland.

That was an intimidating fight, especially whenever he started to cast some spells. :$ Nice to see the enemies casting some spells which I don't think anyone else has cast before, such as

Spoiler

the huge Tidal Wave that floods the entire screen.

 

Edited by Serafie1999AD

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There's supposedly a boss that was planned and either not finished or just dummied out (I found nothing to summon him at least) - either way his spells are there.
And I certainly didn't let those and a dummy spell or two go to waste.
E.g. "100 tentacles" (yes it is called that) went to a certain clown.

I think the only spell I haven't used anywhere is Ancient 3.
As if doomsday 1.0 and 2.0 weren't enough...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What's the difference between Ancient, Ancient 2 and Ancient 3? Do they have different animations, or are they just the same spell with a different base power?

I finally defeated

Spoiler

Archdemon. \o/

That battle felt like it took forever, probably about 40 minutes. It was mostly a battle of Archmage spamming elemental spells, Rogue spamming Silver Dart and Vanadis healing and reapplying buffs, and hoping he would die before I run out of healing items. He didn't seem to take much damage from physical attacks, even after Anti-Magic, Power Up and Cutter Missile. BTW I noticed that when he hit a character with Demon's Scream (reduces HP to 1 and MP to 0), the character started to "bleed out" HP, and if he died, Angel's Grail revived him with only 1 HP. Is there a way to dispel this "bleeding" effect?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
21 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

What's the difference between Ancient, Ancient 2 and Ancient 3? Do they have different animations, or are they just the same spell with a different base power?

2 and 3 were just dummies, they only had a name and spell data that amounted to "do nothing".
So I took 2 and gave it the Ancient animation (since I had nothing better) and stats I thought appropriate for that boss.

 

26 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

He didn't seem to take much damage from physical attacks, even after Anti-Magic, Power Up and Cutter Missile.

I think I made it so one of the final bosses has 0 evade but (comparatively) high defense, one has lowish defense but high evade and the third is inbetween.
I guess this was the former.

I mean he is a few levels higher than the previous boss and his shifting weakness/resistance scheme makes it useless to use sabers, so maybe that's why it felt low?

23 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

BTW I noticed that when he hit a character with Demon's Scream (reduces HP to 1 and MP to 0), the character started to "bleed out" HP, and if he died, Angel's Grail revived him with only 1 HP. Is there a way to dispel this "bleeding" effect?

None, same as for his uber anti magic

Spoiler

exact same effect as Lise with Dragon Lance would have but multi targetted.
Including making you weak to all elements if you have any weakness.

Archdemon was supposedly the hard path in vanilla SD3 so I held almost nothing back on that final boss.

Spoiler

the AI didn't survive summoning black rabites as distractions :(
at least the exploding game had funny colors.

Also if nothing bugged up this time he should have given you a lot of time at the start of the fight.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Gorva

Well it's an A-RPG so of course there has to be at one point or another a boss that isn't really difficult just boring and annoying cause he keeps teleporting and go out of my reach for my physical fighter, so YEAH boring boss.
Also YEAH graphical glitch here Hawk is a Ninja but because of the Curse cutscene before he has his Thief's Color.

Edited by Nesouk

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
42 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

I mean he is a few levels higher than the previous boss and his shifting weakness/resistance scheme makes it useless to use sabers, so maybe that's why it felt low?

None of the characters (Vanadis, Rogue, Archmage) have Sabers anyway, which is what I would consider the party's biggest weakness. If I understood correctly,

Spoiler

the last form (after the music changes) takes damage from Light, Water and Leaf, absorbs Dark, Fire and Lightning, and reflects Earth, so Sabers can have some uses in the battle.

 

Quote

None, same as for his uber anti magic

 

Does his Uber Anti-Magic only remove your buffs, or will it heal his debuffs too? I just assumed it dispels everything, so I went to reapply both buffs and debuffs.

 

Quote

Also if nothing bugged up this time he should have given you a lot of time at the start of the fight.

 

That's right, it took him like a minute or two to do anything, and for a while, I was wondering if the AI script was broken. :D

 

Just out of curiosity, have you beat all the bosses, including the final bosses, on the hardest difficulty, to make sure that they can be beaten?

Edited by Serafie1999AD

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

Does his Uber Anti-Magic only remove your buffs, or will it heal his debuffs too? I just assumed it dispels everything, so I went to reapply both buffs and debuffs.

Only all your stuff.
Though he should have used a big buff afterwards on himself as well.

2 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

That's right, it took him like a minute or two to do anything, and for a while, I was wondering if the AI script was broken. :D

Well, there's a story to that. I know noone cares about it so I'll tell it anyway.
It is possible to defeat vanilla Archdemon completely, both "forms" (well, shared health pool, just a different sets of moves really), so fast he gets 0 attacks in, not even enough time to transform into the phase 2 sprite.

Spoiler

 

Also if it took 1-2 minutes on your site, the timing was indeed perfect :P

So my notes on how to make this boss harder were basically: "...does he even attack? maybe have him attack at all would be a start"

For extra hilarity DragonScholar's files on boss AI ALSO do not listen any AI for that boss.

2 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

Just out of curiosity, have you beat all the bosses, including the final bosses, on the hardest difficulty, to make sure that they can be beaten?

Does it count if I developed only on hard difficulty and had test teams that were more or less normal (or in some cases actually disadvantaged because of huge version difference between their creation and current state of art)?

 

3 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Well it's an A-RPG so of course there has to be at one point or another a boss that isn't really difficult just boring and annoying cause he keeps teleporting and go out of my reach for my physical fighter, so YEAH boring boss.
Also YEAH graphical glitch here Hawk is a Ninja but because of the Curse cutscene before he has his Thief's Color.

Could you please put videos in spoiler tags? I think that'd make it easier on navigation/load times.

Edited by praetarius5018

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 hours ago, Nesouk said:

I put the videos as links that should do.

Thank you.

 

9 hours ago, LittleBigTrouble said:

I think the 2 spells where supposed to go to a planned boss on bucca island , a giant octo-monster , i read that it was planned but scrapped

Well, 3 spells - 100 Tentacles, Tidal Wave and Squid Ink.
And supposedly sprite exists in the game as well.
I'm happy we didn't get the boss there - just imagine doing Genova, Bill/Ben, Gorva, Bucca Island and only THEN finding out you don't have enough black market supplies or certain armor items or whatever.
If you want to get them you have to reload a pre-Genova save in vanilla and do it all over again.

Also story wise there weren't any unaffiliated bosses (either with the 3 factions or monster feeding on the mana stones or the like), so he'd probably take the spot of the water/ice boss and the manastone would have been somewhere around bucca? hmm... maybe that is why Fiegmund looks so fishy and less like an ice boss.

Edited by praetarius5018

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I got some questions that are probably more due to the fact that I am new to this game :

-Is there an efficient  way to make money cause at first I didn't have trouble with money however now the equipment start to get really expensive and ennemy really don't give much and selling item doesn't seem to give any better to plus I have to buy healing item cause honnestly healing item are for now the only viable way to heal in battle (Healing Light is one target only for now and the casttime make it not really usefull when ennemy can basically 2-3 shot any of your character with some of their attack).

-Also is there any ability that allow you to analyse ennemy in game something like the Libra spell in the FF series ?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, Nesouk said:

-Is there an efficient  way to make money cause at first I didn't have trouble with money however now the equipment start to get really expensive and ennemy really don't give much and selling item doesn't seem to give any better to plus I have to buy healing item cause honnestly healing item are for now the only viable way to heal in battle (Healing Light is one target only for now and the casttime make it not really usefull when ennemy can basically 2-3 shot any of your character with some of their attack).

I've never found a decent solution to this. However, note that new weapons and armor aren't automatically better than the previous ones. Keep the armor_elements_stats.xls file open while playing the game to know what the properties of each piece of equipment are, and plan which equipment you're really going to need. Remember, you won't be able to afford everything, so choose carefully. For example, in my last game, I wanted to make Lise (Vanadis) a level 2/3 tech user, Hawk (Rogue) a high-risk crit user and Angela (Archmage) a strong offensive mage. Therefore, I gave Lise equipment that will boost her tech gain and tech strength, I gave Hawk equipment that will increase the frequency and strength of his critical hits, as well as giving him a "thorn" armor (reflects much of the physical damage back at the enemies), and I gave Angela equipment that will boost her magic strength. After I had got all the equipment for these builds, I simply skipped most of the weapon and armor shops after that, unless I really needed something special for a boss fight.

Here's some tips LittleBigTrouble wrote before:

Quote

i play on highest difficulty but im only lvl 55 atm , preparing for my second of the 8 GBs.
Beastman collars on all characters and i usually go to golden road and aoe jutsu everything, i ignore  treasure chest during those sessions thou, the traps are not worth candys and item seeds


For your other question, there is nothing like the Libra spell in SD3. You'll just have to experiment, although some weaknesses are obvious. You can also check the monster_bosses.xls file for the weaknesses and status vulnerabilities of normal monsters. As for bosses, I tend to try different things to see what works, and write notes about their weaknesses, strategies that worked etc.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This was a conscious design desicion.
You're not supposed to buy every weapon/armor - and neither would you have the inventory space for it, unless you like fighting with the storage system which is horrible.

Theoretically there IS a libra like effect - but every translation patch I've tried breaks it.
And on J it is almost too fast to read it anyway, not that it was flawless there to begin with.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So in other word I'm screwed should I have know this right from the beginning I would have put more thoughts into it OH well I guess I just have to do what I can with what I have for now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This is exactly why I posted this before:
 

Quote

As a general tip, reading the documentation files is highly recommended for this hack.

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.

 

EDIT: Looks like it's also said in Praetarius' original post, as the 1st point: "Equipment offers various bonuses instead of a simple attack and defense progression"


Fortunately, there are no bosses in the double dungeon after Gorva, so if you can't deal with the fights in Bucca and Seashore Cave, you can just run from all the fights until you get out of there. After that, you'll have a chance to grind for money to buy some of the newer equipment. I recommend getting at least a Whitelight Ring for Lise and Carlie, as it upgrades most of their spells to multi-target.

Edited by Serafie1999AD

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

And I have follow this tip everytime I reach a new town before buying I was always watching the Armor-Stat and take what was interesting me I just didn't think money would be that much of an issue, and that the prices of equipment would increase so fast that plus the fact that I am new to this game so I surely make mistakes.
That's not the end of the world tough I will manage somehow, I already pass Bucca and Seashore Cave the fights were manageable (except these freaking birds that keep petrify my party member and didn't want to die damn they were annoying) tough I had to use some Demon Statu cause the Death Penalty (honnestly in Hard any member that die at least 2-3 times became useless cause they get killed extremely fast (if not one-shot)) is really annoying here since there is no inn (or at least I didn't found it).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I reloaded my last save with Vanadis, Rogue and Archmage, and I practiced playing on the Tough difficulty. I was able to beat

Spoiler

Black Rabite and Archdemon,

and now I'm thinking of fighting them on Hard difficulty. Before I fight the final boss again, though, I have a few questions about him, and the game mechanics:
1) Do Red Moon Horns do anything against him?
2) Are there any weapons that work well against him? If a weapon uses a different stat for attack, will it still hit against his huge physical defence stat? Or if a weapon uses a different stat for attack, is the same stat also used for tech damage (instead of STR)?
3) Are his weaknesses really weaknesses (150% damage), or are they just neutral elements (100%), while the other elements are either halved (50%) or absorbed? I ask this because I'm wondering whether Archmage's Spirit Cane can have spells do 200% damage against him or not.
4) Does the "remove weaknesses" armor remove ALL elemental weaknesses from the character, not just one of them? If it removes all weaknesses, does that mean the armor also protects you from the

Spoiler

"propagate weakness to all elements" effect of the boss' empowered Anti-Magic?

 

EDIT: I noticed that you can skip

Spoiler

Archdemon's

death animation, which results in the game becoming stuck forever (I guess you can consider it skipping the ending too :D). This also happened with FMH (2nd fight) before. Is it possible that you tweaked the spell skipping patch so that boss death animations can't be skipped, since skipping them seems to freeze the game on several occasions?

Edited by Serafie1999AD

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

1) they work on everything that has enough levels left to drain

2) those weapons only change your atk stat but defense is the same as for regular weapons

3) former boss is neutral with resists, later boss has proper weaknesses

4) yes, all

5) yeah, should probably do that - though it was funny to skip a minute worth of animations in charlie's intro alone

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey, wasn't there something about cutting buff/debuff text in order to reduce lag? Or did I dream that?

Also there's something I've always wondered. Sometimes when a character gets a debuff, some colored lines will appear around it. What's that mean?

Edited by Valenhil

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now