Serafie1999AD

10 hours ago, Soul Knight said:

I genuinely mean no offense (I'm so sorry if I offend you in what I'm about to say), but Sin of Mana is better than your patch in pretty much every single way.

The thing is, not everyone wants harder difficulty, death penalty, BS boss gimmicks that you have to guess out of nowhere (such as Dolan and Mispolm), not to mention Sin of Mana is way more tedious and grindy than the original game, and SoM 2.0 seems to be becoming even more tedious with its TP resource system. So I can totally understand why some people would just want class and ability rebalances without all the weird extra features and extra difficulty.

Hmsong, are you aware that Speed Up does nothing in the vanilla game? Since Evade and Accuracy do nothing in the original game, there's no point ever casting Speed Up. Maybe you could make Speed Up decrease spell casting time, and the other way around for Speed Down?

You fight 3 enemies. Let's say you encounter two Ninja Masters and a Swordmaster. Ninja Master hits you with a double hit, causing you to get stunlocked, and another Ninja Master does the same while you're stunned, and you're down from 900+ HP to 0 HP in less than a second. Not literally one-shotted, but that still happens extremely quickly, at the beginning of the battle, and it's actually very likely to happen while you're trying to get your defensive buffs set up. I've had it happen all the time on the screen south of the golden statues in the last dungeon.

Not to mention it would make the game impossible to beat: the beginning of the battles is the toughest part, and you'll need to set up Protect Up, Power Down and possibly some other buffs/debuffs too, or the enemies will one-shoot your characters. I don't mind the enemy spells being strong, but their physical attacks are way too overpowered in this mod.

7 minutes ago, smileless said:

No wonder the original game never came outside Japan. Such a bug-fest.

That's funny. I've beat the game 12 times now, 9 times with the vanilla game, 3 times with this mod. I've never had crashes with the vanilla game. For this mod, most crashes I've had were due to the casting times bugging out and freezing the game, but they were in older versions, and a lot has happened after that to make the game more stable. Back then, I started to use save states after every battle on this mod just in case the game would crash. Nowadays, it's not really necessary, but I still do it just in case, and out of habit. Maybe it's your cartridge, ROM or emulator?

34 minutes ago, smileless said:

Another weird glitch happened whete the screen "froze" in the lightgazer fight, the boss is moving his eye and two characters are moving their heads back and forth but everything is frozen. Lise was casting buffs then everything went crazy then lol.

Sounds like Haddaway's "What is Love". 😂 By the way, is the Lightgazer less annoying to target with spells after the latest patch?

Thanks for the advice! In normal conditions, I'd take Bishop instead of Sage, but here Sage might be more versatile: Star Lancer already covers buffs and Saint Saber, so Bishop has overlap with her skills, and Star Lancer gets both Saint and Dark Saber, so she can boost Sage's Saint Beam and Dark Force. Bishop becomes a strong fighter when you are able to farm her ultimate weapon, but what about before that?

4 hours ago, rpschamp said:

 Two spell damage elements are much better than one, and I don't think there are any enemies resistant to both Light and Dark, so your Sage should always be able to cast something.

I can think of only one enemy that resists both Light and Dark, namely the Evil Shaman.

2 hours ago, smileless said:

I only ran Sage once but I don't think I used Rainbow Dust more than once or twice and that just for fun, otherwise I kept using the curse upgrade and spammed dark force while Dragonmaster with her empowered antimagic making any monster with a weakness making weak to everything, Death Hand had Dark Saber, Magic Shield.

Bishop was pretty powerful on my run with Lord and Dragonmaster, that was before the current update, that party with the current updste should work even better. Lord uses his level 2/3 tech to open up a counter, Lise and Carlie set with their level 1 techs and when possible equipping fireblaze on bosses. Dragonmaster inflicting poison to mobs and/or debuffs and with the empowered antimagic making use Bishop's lack of elemental spells (only light). And man I hate those Dragon Zombies, Turn Undead took care of them.

I think that was one of the teams I enjoyed playing the most so far. Only difficulty I had was against Dolan because none of them are double hitters but just set to no tech use for all characters for better tech management for that fight. It might take longer but safer.

Rainbow Dust is indeed one of the least useful ultimate spells since usually an enemy resists at least one of the 4 elements, essentially making the spell subpar. It's still useful against some dangerous enemies, such as Mushrooms, Wizards, Kaiser Mimics, Crawlers and Carmillas. I wonder if Rainbow Dust can benefit from the armor that turns every spell into neutral element. Dragon Master's empowered Anti-Magic could be great with Rainbow Dust, but then this team needs some major changes, as Ninja Master and Dragon Master have massive overlap, and it probably isn't worth it to use invert armor on DM, when you could use Star Lancer instead. As for Bishop, Lord and Dragon Master, that's also a very effective combination, especially after Bishop got MT Power Up in the latest update, but it only has single-hitters and no AW, so bosses like

can be really hard to beat. Bishop, Lord and Dragon Master are also heavily reliant on their ultimate weapons, making their best strategies not applicable for roughly 90% of the game.

17 hours ago, rpschamp said:

- Grand Divina, Star Lancer, Ninja Master: Similar to above, but with more debuff range, Analyze to support Star Lancer's Energy Ball, and an exchange of Evil Shaman's raw spell power for Ninja Master's melee capability and versatility. This team is harder to get shared resistance, but it is possible through Saint Saber, Dusk Dress, Utsushimi Cape, and Silver Wolf Garea. The lack of Antimagic should not be a major problem.

I was thinking of something like this, except Light Carlie instead of Grand Divina to get healing and Sabers earlier. In a team of Light Lise, Dark Hawk and Light Carlie, I'm still trying to decide which couples to use. Lise as a Star Lancer seems like the better choice now that Carlie is already taking care of healing.

Bishop vs. Sage:
Bishop's ultimate weapon makes her a strong fighter, Turn Undead also has its uses, and Magic Shield is great if you need to reapply defensive buffs on a single character. On the other hand, Sage gets Leaf Saber for MP restoring, Dark Force for curse effect, and Rainbow Dust against a few enemies who aren't resistant to earth, wind, ice or fire.

Ninja Master ve. Nightblade:
Ninja Master's Analyze should work well with Lise's Energy Ball, and his ultimate weapon is there to make way for Fireblaze + counter, and Lise's Aura Wave lets you have a level 1 tech ready quickly. Nightblade gets Deadly Weapon for lowering bosses' HP, and Black Rain for curse effect.

Which of these do you think would work the best?

After the latest patch, I think this party would be excellent:

Death Hand, Dragon Master, Bishop:

For buffs, you get double Magic Shield, Speed Up, Power Up and Aura Wave, and for debuffs, you get Power Down, Def Down, Mind Down, Speed Down, Lunatic and empowered Anti-Magic. For Sabers, you'll get Diamond, Thunder, Flame, Ice, Saint and Dark, which is useful until you get Lise's ultimate weapon. For attack magic, you have MT Holy Ball, Saint Beam, Turn Undead and Jormungand, which aren't much, but it's still better than nothing, especially after getting Lise's ultimate weapon. You'll also have Heal Light after the 1st class change.

1 hour ago, smileless said:

Yes upon looking at it again, it happened when casting holy ball on an enemy that got turned into a snowman, the game either goes blaxk screen or resets.

The Snowman status is likely the problem. When I was going through the Labyrinth of Ice Walls on my previous playthrough, I started to use save states after every battle after having 5 crashes in the dungeon, all of them after a character was hit by a Snowm status.

3 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

sorta, I forgot to exclude the dummy data of the not-yet-gotten allies from the level calculation there, so they default to 1 until you pick the 2nd partner

Is this possible to fix by averaging only according to your present 1-2 members when you have less than 3 party members? I thought you said that the enemey level is scaled according to your highest level, though, so the missing party members being on level 1 shouldn't affect the enemy level.

I don't think the scaling works as intended in the early game. I loaded up an early save in the Cave of Waterfalls, all the enemies were on level 1 (even though my characters were on level 9), and Full Metal Hugger took me 20 seconds to beat on Hard difficulty.

A question about this new property for Wendel-class weapons: "strong attack can use 5 MP to have regular cooldown". The documentation claims this can be done, but it doesn't explain how it can be done. Do you need to press a certain button during a strong attack, or is the cooldown automatically lowered if you have at least 5 MP to spend?

It's the same order as in-game: Str, Agi, Vit, Int, Spr, Luck.

2 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

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Zable: Watch your HP%.

 

This just shows how buggy the vanilla game is. The reason for the bug is that in the original game, Mind Up reduces the damage you take from spells, and since Heal Light is technically a damage spell, Mind Up also reduces the "damage" inflicted by Heal Light. For the same reason, Mind Down makes you take more "damage" from Heal Light.

2 hours ago, ECLECTRIC said:

Its not about difficulty it's about flow. I get it, though everybody who plays games doesnt do it for the challenge or to get good. Found his older post on insane difficulty it does what I wanted I hope 🤞 

This is one of the reasons why I'm interested in the Sin of Mana mod. I don't seek the thrill or adrenaline rush of tossing my controller, but the mod fixes most of the game's bugs, rebalances much of the vanilla game's completely broken balance, and the modified classes and equipment choices give you plenty of strategic options that weren't present in the original game.

On 11.4.2020 at 10:36 AM, smileless said:

 

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Lord was dealing 999 damage on Fiegmund

 

On which difficulty level are you playing exactly? The damage seems amazingly high.

Your party composition is quite impressive, and it's a very good defensive party. The biggest problems with the group is that it's slow to buff (Magic Shield has to be cast on characters one at a time), there's no double hitter or Aura Wave (so tech-building is slow), there's no Mind Up for boosting attack magic, and AoE attack magic is limited to MT Holy Ball, powered up by Saint Saber. Then again, if an enemy has any weakness, Dragon Master's powered up Anti-Magic makes the target weak to everything, making up for the limited elemental coverage. Other than that, two Heal Lights that are available after the first class change, and you have two tanks, a wide range of elemental Sabers, powered up Anti-Magic, debuffs and Lunatic. The hardest parts are probably against

13 hours ago, smileless said:

 

I know Necromancer can't use healing magic, that's why I said Vanadis will be the healer.

So how are you going to "have Carlie be the main healer till the final class change"? If you make her a Necromancer, she won't be able to heal ever, not even before the class change.

12 hours ago, smileless said:

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One and possibly only way to have an easier time against Dragon Emperor with that party is having Necromancer with the Invert Armor and Whiteline Ring so she multi targets black course and buffs your party in one spell, while having Vanadis with an invert armor to slowly debuff the Dragon Emperor or farm a Shadowzero's Eye to debuff him, so she could have a different armor instead.

 

41 minutes ago, smileless said:

Thinking to try a Duelist party on Duran's path. Necromancer and Vanadis sounds like decent picks for that. Have Carlie be the main healer till the final class change then building Vanadis into the main healer.

Also a possible strategy with Black Course for the Dragon Emperor think could work:

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Use a Pakkun Oil on him and cast speed up on him before casting Black Course? That way only his physical atk/magic power decreases, rest stay the same, and will lower only the party's physical atk/magic power.

 

As a Necromancer, Carlie can never use healing magic.

I tried the Sleep Flower reflecting tactic with reflect armor and the accessory that protects from sleep. Yeah, it works. However, it's still not a very useful tactic, since the enemies wake up when they next take damage, and I think it's better to setup your spell usage and equipment for other purposes. The ironic part is, the enemy dragons used petrifying breath on me, and it turned out to be a much more effective tactic, as the enemies soon got themselves petrified by attacking me.

39 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Sleep Flower is another status spell that should work that Rune Master does not have. It also deals no damage, which should be nice here. There are a few classes with this ability, Grand Divina and Evil Shaman being two of them.

That would at least give Sleep Flower one use. At the moment, I find the spell utterly useless. Sleep doesn't last for long, and it's cancelled the moment the enemies take damage (unless the sleep status expires even sooner than that), and it seems it just increases the enemies' aggro, making them counter with spell/tech when they wake up.

On 9.2.2020 at 11:57 AM, Nesouk said:

-Earth God Beast : Only fight where I buy a Specter's Eye for exploiting is Air weakness, Thunder Saber, Ninja Master doing counter with Thunder Jutsu and his Final Weapon, the Fireblaze canceling is increase on Physical Defense, Duran draw his attention with a Shield (preferably the one that protect him against Silence) tough his Iron Claw is pretty deadly.

It's good to know there's only one boss fight where you really need Anti-Magic. What about Lugar and BR?

I started a new game with Lise, Hawk and Angela. I'm following your earlier advice of farming 5-6 Matango Oils for FMH and Jewel Eater. Lise and Hawk are on level 6 already, and I've only been able to farm 2 Matango Oils so far (I'm currently playing on Hard). I'm kind of considering save state scumming since farming is all about luck anyway. As it's been a few years since I last played the mod, I noticed that the more recent versions have two different standard attacks, light and heavy. Which one do you usually use for single hitters, and which one for double hitters? In Lise's intro battle, I used the heavy attack, and it's also handy for starting battles against sleeping enemies, but otherwise, I preferred to use the light attack, since it has a much shorter cooldown, making you less likely to get stunlocked by enemes. I also noticed that it's more effective to save your level 1 techs until an enemy attacks, so you can boost the damage by countering with a level 1 tech.

EDIT: Lise and Hawk are on level 8, and I still have only 3 Matango Oils. I hate RNG farming.

EDIT 2: After reaching level 9 and obtaining only 3 Matango Oils, I had had enough, so I went to fight Full Metal Lagger. This early game is really terrible in gameplay design, since you have such limited options, and the terrible lag and unresponsive controls during the first boss don't help. Currently, I'm farming Moon Coins from the wolves. Angela got from level 4 to level 8 before I got my first Moon Coin. This is going to take forever. Surely you guys use save state cheesing to save your nerves? It requires no skill to obtain rare drops, only luck.

Alright, SL-Dark Hawk-GD it is then. How should I distribute the stats of the final classes? Grand Divina needs agility (for cast time), vitality, intelligence and spirit (for her healing spells), and her spell bonus damage is determined by luck, but I can only max about 4 stats out of 6. Star Lancer needs strength, vitality, intelligence (for cast time) and spirit, and she needs some agility to hit targets, and increasing luck would increase Marduke's damage and her crit resistance. Dark Hawk requires strength, agility, vitality, spirit and luck, and spell bonus is determined by intelligence.

We were discussing a team of Star Lancer, Ninja Master/Nightblade and Grand Divina before. Do you think the team would be better or worse if you replaced Star Lancer with Dragon Master, who uses inverted armor? DM doesn't get AW or EB, but with her ultimate weapon, she gets the empowered Anti-Magic, so every element turns into a weakness, and with Ninja Master's ultimate weapon, every element can then force enemy into counterable state. Oh, and how hard is it to use the Fireblaze strategy with Hawk when he doesn't have Kongo Rakan (i.e. before farming the weapon, or when using a non-NM class)?