praetarius5018

Seiken Densetsu 3 Sin of Mana - Discussion

971 posts in this topic

How does chance to deny counter attack work? Does it mean when you use a spell or something that they would normally counter, it has a chance that it wont? Or does it just decrease their hate meter when u normal attack it?

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When the hate meter reaches the point where the boss would normally use a counter move, you get a random chance that he will not use his counter move; either way the hate value drops down to 0.

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1 hour ago, praetarius5018 said:

When the hate meter reaches the point where the boss would normally use a counter move, you get a random chance that he will not use his counter move; either way the hate value drops down to 0.

Is it an aura effect that just passively does its thing? Or do you need to hit stuff to proc the effect at the right time. Does it stack if you have more than one such effect in your party?

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Just beat the game. Near the end, my Hawk was being so broken with his shurikens. With maxed out Agi and spirit + faster cast helmet and increased spell lvl armor, he was dishing out like 3 shots that do 500 dmg each in the time it takes for duran to swing once. With walnut spamming, i would throw 6~9 before the boss can even make one move. I had another char that was wearing the hate reducing armor which probably worked into how that was possible. I have to say, this romhack was really good. The boss battles were very unique and varied. I really support your decision not to spoil all the boss mechanics in the text file. Equipment options were great and I could think of lots of different combinations that would be fun to try if i ever decide to play again. The only thing id like to point out is that equipment prices scale way too much compared to gold drops. It seemed like high lvl monsters dont even drop more gold and it just all comes in bulks from bosses. Seemed a bit weird that they cost so much since all equips were basically side grades. The side effect of this was that you have so much gold near the end from god beasts and selling the unneeded seed equipments that you could buy any number of expensive consumables. Thats a stark contrast to the mid game where you had to grind gold just to buy a few pieces and couldnt waste too many consumables. Oh and the default difficulty should probably be set to normal. Its still quite a bit harder than vanilla sd3 while not being so frustrating, especially in the early game.

I didnt realize back then how comically bad the story in this game was lol. Your party including the fairy are utter morons. [spoilers**] Oh lets open the gate to the holy land. Oops, it was a trap. Lets take the sword which supposedly makes you a god. Oops, it was a trap! Lets not use the power of the sword to do anything and give it to the bad guys. Lets kill the god beasts. Oops it was a trap. I mean its probably hard to make a coherent story with 6 possible main chars but they didnt even try lol. The "emotional" scenes fall flat due to their abrupt nature and how little you care about any of these characters. Like when the pink girl serving the dark prince suddenly reveals her motivation before dying (cue sad music), all im thinking is 'why should i care about you or some villain thats mentioned about 2 times throughout the game?'

Umm.. i dont know why Im ranting about the story here though. The game has always been purely about cool class changing and combat which the hack makes way better! Thanks for the nice work.

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The default difficulty being the hardest was a conscious decision.
Basically you are 99% certainly required - thanks to limitations of both the base game and my hacking skills - to interact with the documentation, if only to find out how to open the menu now...
so the default difficulty being the highest is my little test (a.k.a. dick move): did you understand what you read.

If I would set it to a different default, it'd be easy since that is closest to what vanilla would be.

Well, money is a topic of its own;
since you can spent money only once, either on new gear or consumables, those that "know" what they need are clearly at a huge advantage here.
Though the items (or money by selling them) you get from chest is supposed to be counted into that as well, so...
dunno, I'd probably have to make equipment super-cheap across the board and reduce boss gold?
but then you can just buy the perfect gear setup for each boss which is something I don't want either.

The money game falls apart mid game from increasing gold gains (mostly bosses, mid game is a huge boss rush), less need to buy new equipment since 90% of the stuff was already available and the increasing chance that you have someone that knows heal light to cut down on healing expenses.

I see no good solution for this.

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I think the most important thing would be to ensure that the players won't end up soft-locking the game. If you end up in a situation that you're unable to proceed until you spend several hours to grind for gold to restock your healing items, and even after that, if you're not able to proceed until you can afford some the of the newer equipment, that's just weak game design in my eyes. I've never encountered this problem on the Normal difficulty level, since you usually won't use so many healing items during dungeons that you'll have to spend all your money to restock them (also, I never buy Angel's Grails until late-game, and I don't buy equipment that I don't need). However, I'm not sure how badly resource management becomes an issue in early/mid-game on the hardest difficulty.

Edited by Serafie1999AD

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Softlock is "easy" - the ghostship+volcano sequence

resource management on hard is a bit easier and harder;
easier because chest drop rate is higher
easier because a bad streak sends you to the title screen instead of into the reds
harder, well obviously because of how fast the bad streak can happen

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Hi Praetarius,

Returning to this game after several years, I am amazed that someone has put in the effort to follow up on old discussions about how to re-balance and improve this game. Team formation and battle strategy were the aspects of this game that always had the most potential for deeper gameplay, and from everything I've read, it seems that you've put a lot of thought and effort into developing these.

Some quick questions from the class skill lists as I plan my parties for my playthroughs:

1) Grand Divina seems to be completely rethought and the only class of Angela's that does not graduate to Level 2 magic. It looks like you were aiming for a classical Red Mage with her.... But this leaves her one or two spell damage levels behind her other final classes. With these changes, is Grand Divina still an effective choice in the endgame?

2) Carlie's dark classes can no longer heal. I see the reasoning behind this, but in the original game her summons were not nearly powerful or varied enough to make her competitive with Angela in terms of damage. Plus, the stat/effect spells, like Mind Down or Anti-Magic, seem to be much more distributed among the other characters this game, further removing some of the uniqueness of Carlie's dark classes. Does this leave dark Carlie with any real advantage over Angela?

3) Why does Duelist get Leaf Saber? I understand the addition of Anti-Magic, but seeing as how Leaf Saber doesn't damage MP, wouldn't Moon Saber seem a more natural choice for a physical-based fighter?

4) The max stats of your final classes are more leveled (much less variation between stats of any particular class) than in the original game, but based on the level 99 cap, this may not matter too much because they appear to be unattainable. Is the purpose of this to give the player more flexibility in character growth?

Also, just a couple of questions after a five-minute play-test with Duran:

5) I miss a lot. After reviewing the message board, it appears that I can increase my hit rate through using strong attacks instead of quick attacks. My question concerns the AI for my eventual partners. Will they automatically choose strong or quick attacks or a mix of both, and can I set their preference?

6) My quick attack did 3 damage, while my level-one tech did 48, with yellow numbers. Is this yellow-numbered hit the long hidden critical hit? Also, the difference between 3 and 48 is 16 times. Does the difference between these get tighter as the game progresses, or can I always expect to more than ten times as much with a critical hit on a tech? (This will affect how I raise my Agility for sure.)

Thank you for your efforts and I look forward to more discussion!

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1) She is sorta a red mage, yes.

The general idea is that spells have now proper scaling, even Lv1 spells deal damage late game.
The difference is roughly +30% for each full spell level increase (so Lv3 is +60% over Lv1) in exchange for higher MP cost and longer cast time.
GD with max AGL casts her Lv1 spells instantly. Which helps e.g. with random enemies to knock them back and this is godlike when enemies can kill you in about 4 hits.
Meanwhile Rune Master and Magus take their sweet time to cast but then deal "you die damage" especially with Stone Cloud (because petrify on enemies is death).

2) First of she uses PIE instead of INT making her more resilient to spell damage.
Debuffs are typically less spread out compared to buffs, meaning only Lise has a class with all 4 basic buffs while several classes have access to all 4 debuffs; Charlie has one of them.
Angela is more geared towards MT damage, Charlie stands better against bosses (PIE, debuffs, ST elemental spells).

3) Leaf is now a real element, some enemies and bosses are weak to it. Plus he can use it on caster allies to support them for a change.
Also his ultimate weapon runs on MP.

4) The stats are so that you can max 4 out of 6 stats and have the other 2 barely above minimum; or a good mix of stats, depending on preference.
So in a sense, yes, player choice.

5) AI is stuck to strong attacks. In total the allies are too random for my taste so they keep to the attack that is less problematic in that regard.
They already can't really dodge, just standing there waiting to be cut down, so I tried to patch that with a hidden evade bonus for AI.
Plus the game already has quite a "lag" problem, having all allies spam the quickest attacks would just enhance that issue.
And by lag I mean I can with just Hawk and Kevin under my control kill the AI completely if I try hard enough.

Also if you miss a lot, AGL helps a bit and different weapons have different hit bonuses. Later speed up/down helps as well.

The only thing you can really set on the AI is for them to not rush forward to their death at battle start by using the "most distant" AI option.
Probably a favorite for caster heavy parties.
Every other AI setting is just "lemmings"

6) Yellow numbers show either Lv1 tech damage or criticals.
You may have gotten a "counter" hit on your lv1 tech which has also increased damage. Counters are only possible on lv1 techs btw.
But in general the gap between normal attacks and lv1 techs is much more narrow.
About 1:2-5 depending on if you compare to quick or strong attack, if you get the counter, if your weapon has a good lv1 tech bonus damage, etc.
Certain enemies even have extra damage bonuses on counter hits; one boss in particular is meant to be duelled that way.

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Thanks for the quick response!

1, 2, 4, 5, 6) Great, I will see how these play out more when I start playing through the game.

3) Ah, I didn't know about his final weapon. Makes sense. But the Duelist as a support character seems odd to me; this guy should be focused on the "duel", the single-minded one-on-one battle. I get that there's a distinction from the Swordmaster who can cast his sabers on multiple people, though, a limited buff capacity could make sense. Have you considered giving him both Moon and Leaf saber? If you think this is overpowering then you could make them both self-cast; that way he could still add MP for his final weapon, or HP instead if it was more important.

One more general question: Effective team building in the original game was generally done by building groups with only one goal, physical or magical damage, so more balanced groups that could do both at the cost of maxing out one or the other did not work as well. Would you say that your build is similar, or do the requirements at each stage in the game vary enough to require a group with multiple damage focuses? It seems that your increased skill allotment for each of the characters might be designed encourage the latter.

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No, he'd be too similar to swordmaster then - also everyone has an element-less HP leech option with a specific weapon or an accessoire.

The only team building advice I give:
don't try to rely on the black market, the item prices there have gone up quite a bit.

A pure melee team would at least need anti-magic to dispel physical immunity in a couple cases.
Or spent a fortune on spell casting coins or the eyes that cast anti-magic from the black market.

A pure caster team has more problems with enemies that are a little too touchy-feely (like werwolves, ninjas) or just are very resistant to magic;
I'd be surprised if they could even deal notable double digit damage to a certain boss.
Their options would then be weapons that use alternate stats and going for Lv2/3 techs (attack bonus through INT).

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It seems that with all the new weapon options and damage requirements, maybe planning everything completely in advance will prove too difficult and waste some of the discovery.

One last question for today: Are there any skills that you would recommend be absolutely included on every team? If I have time, I'd like to start four groups so I can take every first class upgrade to the second class upgrade and at least have the option to experience each of the final classes. If I have to distribute the first class upgrades so that each party has potential access to, say, Anti-Magic or something by the second class upgrade, it would be good to know ahead of time. I'm thinking that it may be best to do this on normal or tough difficulty to start with so I don't box myself into any corners.

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1) Heal light for the auto-heal after battle, best QoL skill.
2) a way to deal with physical immune, either damage magic or anti-magic
3) for the highest difficulty def up and power down plus their magic counterparts are basically required

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Sounds good, I think I can manage some or most of these conditions for four groups of distinct classes. I did think of one more question though which I'm dying to ask since I won't be able to play this for the next couple of days. I notice that a lot of people on this board indicate that they spend a lot of time running to avoid fights, enabled by the added mechanic of running during battle. Since this should only work for the character you control, how does this work out during gameplay? Are your AI-controlled partners able to catch on and follow you safely, or are they constantly getting slaughtered as they stick behind and try to fight?

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AI was always able to run in battle, it just rarely does so. Mostly to run into danger.
If they are not yet in combat mode (you did not push the attack button) they'll just run to follow behind you.
If you attack even once though they'll run towards enemies.

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So I take it from your previous responses that in general, while the original game may have encouraged a strategy based around offensive buffs (Power/Mind up, Protect/Mind Down), your mod demands defensive buffs (Protect/Mind Up, Power/Mind Down) as survival is much more of a challenge.

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Kind of.
At least on the highest difficulty those buffs are a must.

It may also stem from the fact that damage buffs are kinda nerfed now.
Originally they gave you 33% more damage before defense now it is 25% after.

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Managed to play this for an hour last night; I had a great time! Even on normal difficulty the fights are much more exciting.

Also, I noticed a bug: In Full Metal Hugger's cave some enemies would turn me to Chibikko; when this happened, the screen would glitch with random bitmaps and wouldn't fix itself unless I reloaded my game. Is this a known bug, and is there anything I can do to correct it?

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I repatched it in Windows Vista/7 in case Windows 8 was giving me problems with one of the programs.

I ended up choosing these four teams to give me all of the classes by the first class change:

Quest 1: D/L, A/D, C/D
Quest 2: K/D, H/L, C/L
Quest 3-1: H/D, L/L, A/L
Quest 3-2: L/D, D/D, K/L

I spread out the Heal Lights, Anti-Magics, and Buff/Debuffs as much as possible without reusing classes while giving each team a focus. These will also allow me to test out some different strategies in your mod. I definitely have ideas for most of the second class changes but am leaving them open for now; I may test a few at that point. I just got started this week and am excited to make some progress. Great job on this, it has really made me rethink this game!

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I had a question regarding W/A seeds. Where would you recommend farming them, and what would be the ideal level? I'm currently at the moontower with 4 godbeasts down, and still had no drops. Am I reading the droptable sheet wrong?

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The enemy needs to be level 60+, not necessarily you.

At 0 godbeasts they should've been around 50-52. Goes up by 2-3 each defeated beast...
I don't think the enemies were high enough so far?
Unless you wear multiple Earth Bracelets?

Sorry, I don't know I good farming spot; ideally a room with just 1-2 Lv60 enemies that can be petrified and have W/A seeds in their drop list.

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1 hour ago, praetarius5018 said:

The enemy needs to be level 60+, not necessarily you.

At 0 godbeasts they should've been around 50-52. Goes up by 2-3 each defeated beast...
I don't think the enemies were high enough so far?
Unless you wear multiple Earth Bracelets?

Sorry, I don't know I good farming spot; ideally a room with just 1-2 Lv60 enemies that can be petrified and have W/A seeds in their drop list.

For example, enemies at the moment are without level boosting items around 66. I encounter in this particular area bloody wolves which should have the seed in their table (@60+: rare 5 W/A seed and rare 6 Ghost's Eye). I get chests, and I try to get them to drop the seeds by save/reloading, no luck so far.

Is there something I'm missing regarding drop mechanics? Is it just a bad luck streak?

Should I go somewhere where there are mobs that have the seed as there rare 5 and 6? (like King and Great Rabite).

 

Edited by Mck

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It is down to pure luck, though that may also be a printing error for the bloody wolves - try different monster types.
The luck stat only increases your chance to get rares in the first place.

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