praetarius5018

8 hours ago, hmsong said:

What am I missing?

These are as mentioned price indeces not the prices directly.
Basically like index of an array.
They should refer to the list at D1D3E3-D1D62B.

6 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Thinking big-picture, something that would be incredibly useful to fill out the functions of a team would be an accessory that allowed you to invert the targets of items from players to enemies, or vice versa, just like spells.

Tbh. I didn't do that because I can't figure out what to do with stardust herbs vs specter eyes - apart from that it would probably get my ok as a standard feature even.

If it is clear that noone would use it it is not worth adding obviously.
And boss fights last long enough that even a low 5% should trigger at least during the first quarter of the fight.

So basically debuff on attack?
I think that goes too far, it would remove like a 3rd of the "necessity" spells from the checklist.

Another damage pop up on a base attack is not a good idea, that is kinda an expensive operation.
Especially when you consider that it could trigger twice as often for Hawk or Kevin, just imagine what would happen if both spiked a 40 MP pool at the same time into this gimmick.

This works for Mispolm since it comes from a Lv2/3 tech after the game freeze where the game should have still some breathing room and it can't be spammed for like 10 damage pop ups in half a second.

If you mean with animation and all - I'd rather not even try as that would involve the event system which barely holds together.

We've already weapons that can add status effects on any base attack, other status effects cause bugs, hi there sleep..

Dunno why that needs a spoiler, that is literally the second last point of the list.

I'm not sure what other spell would be equally important to learn. Suggestions?

Items to be removed/replaced:
-weapon with low scaling high base
-one of the 2 remove weakness helms (the other gets both)
-2 resistance armors (the 3rd gets 2 resistances instead)
-all remove weakness accessoires (the +resist will handle both)
-accessoire that gives low p.def and m.def at the same time
-accessoire that gives low bonus to accuracy and evade

But literally ALL items.
This should be the list all of the indeces go to so if you change the price for one "item" there you mess up prices of probably 2-10 more items.

dunno, those 3rd bytes are not bit masks to my understanding. maybe 7e is any promoted?

price index:
Item seed D1ABDF
Mysterious seed D1ABF0
Fly Item seed D1AC01
Magic seed D1AC12
??? seed D1AC23
W/A Seed D1AC34

24 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

By my recollection, each of the God Beast's (re-)designed A.I.s/gimmicks was originally conceived by Praetarius as based one of the Seven Deadly Sins:

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Dolan = Wrath (do you really need to ask why?)

Dangaard = Pride (it takes three forms for him to get serious on the fourth)

Land Umber = Greed (this is a guess; Gemstone Valley, i.e. Jewels/Riches?)

Lightgazer = Sloth (spends most of the time disappearing and reappearing)

Mispolm = Envy (copies/reflects your attacks)

Fiegmund = Gluttony (eats more and more HP the longer you hang around)

Xan Bie = Lust (this is also a guess; Valley of Flames, i.e. Passions/Desires?)

 

eh, close enough

39 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

BUT, in 2.0, I may be able to run Fenrir Knight/Wanderer/Rune Master instead since there should be another after-battle heal option, I can use Fenrir Knight for in-battle heal, and Rune Master gives me accesss to an easy Flame Saber/resist strategy with Valkyrie Mail on Lise. Problem solved :-)

This is only an idea currently but:

That info applied to all shops, as long as don't want to add more options than is already has you can replace all of them.

10 hours ago, rpschamp said:

My main concern is that none of these skills should become too dominant in restricting team formation, to encourage player creativity.

I design down from hard mode (as in I start there and whatever happens in the lower difficulties as a result of that happens)
and tbh in hard mode I expect that the player has those skills as a minimum.
On normal which is like half damage input you can drop all of those skills without problem.

And I must say that hardmode endgame has become "too easy" for what it should be if that makes sense.
I had a Lv90 Kevin with a mere 20 VIT. Without buffs he only took like 200 damage from most mobs that weren't sabered elemental swords.
Not to ignore that he would get missed at least half the time anyway.
That is as good as braindead facetank range.
Not even any specific gear, just the medium armor from the start and 2 gauntlets.

We're talking ~50 damage vs 950 HP if he had def up on self and power down + correct saber on the mobs.
While he could still gain HP steal, passive HP regen, Sage's HP regen aura and big recovery on yellow damage hits.
Player skill has lost any relevance at that point.

9 hours ago, rpschamp said:

By the way, where does the handle Praetarius come from, if you don't mind me asking? It has the ring of a Roman emperor to it.

I hacked randomly on my keyboard, added vowels and dropped some letters until I could pronounce it. There's no deeper meaning.

5 hours ago, hmsong said:

And speaking of the title name, I think "Sins (plural) of Mana" sounds better than "Sin of Mana".  I'm not entirely sure why it sounds better though.  Food for thought.

But there is only ONE slaying of the Mana Goddess.

I can break your hopes here;
item shops are the same list for all regular item shops except the one in the tutorial I think.

Go into a shop and open the buy ring menu, look up the value at 7E2F00 (1 byte).
Double that value and add CFE880.
That is the 2byte pointer in the ROM to the shopping list.

E.g. 7E2F00 holds 0x05 so look at CFE88A, 54 E9, so the shop data is at CFE954

Each item entry has 3 bytes.
1st item id
2nd required char code;
    weapons: 04 - Duran, 08 - Kevin, 10 - Hawk, 20 - Angela, 40 - Charlie, 80 - Lise
    armor: 05 - Duran, 09 - Kevin, 11 - Hawk, 21 - Angela, 41 - Charlie, 81 - Lise
    consumable: FE
3rd required class code: 7F - any, 1A - light only, 64 - dark only

A shop terminates if the item id is 0.
Shops with 0 or 13+ displayed items glitch the game out.

Somehow I get the feeling you focus too much on one mechanic and ignore everything else.

I've here endgame (mana holy land) atk values from 320 (shaman) to 512 (dark lord).

28 VIT, heavy armor - 322 def, could push it a bit more if I wanted

regular 512 - 322 => 190 damage
saberd (563 - 322)/2 => 120 damage, 37% less

the shaman goes from 0 to (352-322)/2 = 15, tickle damage

38 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

If it's possible to distinguish saber effects cast by players on enemies from those cast by enemies or those cast by players on themselves, then this effect should probably be nerfed.

Not it can't, though the 45% is optimistic;
saber give +10% atk before def so it can easily be a 20-40% increase.
With resist that is then 30-40% damage reduction.

Ironically the better your def is the less the saber resist strategy helps in percentage.
If your def was so godly that it eats 90% of the damage you'd gain 0% change:
100-90=10, add resisted saber: (110-90)/2=10

41 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

I also like your idea of reducing the double hitters to one tech point per attack. If you set it so that you gain one tech point as long as any one hit connects, they still have some advantage in terms of tech points, although also some disadvantage because their double attacks take longer to execute. It should balance nicely.

That is how it works. Hawk&Kevin no longer build their tech bar twice as fast but still are more likely to get the TP on strike because they'd have to miss twice to not get the TP.

Not sure which values you are looking for, can you elaborate?

2 hours ago, rpschamp said:

a 45% melee/tech debuff is really too useful an option to consider building a team without, and this will restrict team building options.

45%... yeah, I should nerf this.

2 hours ago, rpschamp said:

What do you think of all this? I like the idea of having some way to achieve easier item usage, either through a class (Capstone?) bonus or a weapon or accessory. You mentioned in an old post that you were struggling to find something to distinguish the Rogue; a –1 TP required per item use bonus would do it.

Here's my problem:
MP is a resource, TP is a resource.
If you can convert one resource into the other with no requirements (item, capstone, ..) there's no point to having 2 resources in the first place.
To an extend this change makes items the "spells" of melee;
you can use MP to cast heal light or def up or fireball or whatever you know.
you can use TP to perform a tech or use item X/Y/Z.

TP on MP regen doesn't work; MP regen is stopped while casting so it would NOT help casters and only buff melee.

I want to set the cost to 4 TP because I see items here as a counterpart to L1 techs
and also because you have a clear indicator then when the tech bar turns from blue to green.

2 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Another idea would be to have this instead as a Capstone bonus for Hawk, which might be nice way to give Hawk some additional healing power without giving him a Heal Light option.

Remember, capstones come late, if we discuss effects that could be seen as the core of a class/character they shouldn't come that late.

9 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Maybe the first class change is a better idea, just to make the game a little more fluid for everyone?

I've some plans to solve that via equipment.

9 hours ago, rpschamp said:

I was actually going to suggest the +1 TP at MP regen ticks. I still think that a spell cast should be worth at least as many tech points as a melee attack. I like the idea of the new Red Moon Horn giving TP with spells cast, only now, there's not too much a spell caster can do with those tech points.

Lv2/3 techs gain extra damage based on INT so at least for Angela they have some synergy, and even without STR investment it should be worth it for caster to keep 4 TP and try to get a counter in to reduce enemy aggro rating.

9 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Well, if you're already getting rid of two spells to make it 10 per character

You misunderstood what I planned there; characters keep their 12 spell lists but get limited to holding a max of 10.
Which 2 fall away will be decided by the player by meeting the stat requirements for the other 10 spells first.

8 hours ago, rpschamp said:

1) What are you thinking for the capstones? Would this be a completely new final class? Would it's bonuses be in terms of stats or abilities? Also, are you thinking one capstone or two for each character (one for each initial Light/Dark path)?

At level 60 the game checks which of the 6 stats is currently the highest (in case of draw choose the topmost one) and then gives a bonus based on that, the lists will be per character, not per class. E.g. for Charlie it could look like this:
STR - Lv2/3 techs inflict "wood coat" effect unless fire saber is active
AGL - enemies spawn with -20 evade
VIT - 50 maxHP, 10 p.def&m.def
INT - light&dark elemental spells deal more damage
PIE - Tinkle Rain recovers 33% HP for target when clearing a status effect
LUK - spells cost 25% MP (capped at 2) less

8 hours ago, rpschamp said:

2) Apart from the standard stat buffs/debuffs, it would be also nice to spread out the basic elemental sabers (earth, wind, ice, fire) a bit

MAYBE, but the thing is that it shouldn't be as universally applicable to perform that strategy.
They are about as spread out as the regular buffs.

Dark saber is only available on Swordmaster, Duelist, Deathhand, Necromancer and Starlancer - 5 classes, 4 characters.
Saint saber via: Paladin, Swordmaster, Bishop and Starlancer - 4 classes, 3 characters.
Elemental saber via: Swordmaster, Duelist, Rune Master, Grand Divina, Bishop and Sage - 6 classes, 3 characters.
Not too much of a difference.

Moon&leaf saber are for HP/MP regen which is useful without gearing specifically for it.

5 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

1) Can you expand on what you intend to do to "invalidate job discussion topic"?

That's just tongue in cheak; changing the spell limit from 12 known to 10 and adding cap stones basically makes most of the info from that topic wrong or at least incomplete.

7 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

2) On a related note, have you considered making the after-battle heal standard at some point (maybe at the Capstone?) instead of requiring Heal Light? This would make many more class combinations competitive.

Capstone would be way too late for that, lv60 is like 3/4 through the game, if you made it this far without Heal Light you can just as well finish without it.

8 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

3) If you plan to make item usage dependent on tech points, you may also want to consider a standard tech point gain for spell casting for those classes that cast more often than swing weapons. (It seems like you've already started towards this in the current update.)

That's one point still open for debate.
Could make MP regen ticks also give +1 TP or something.
Feel free to throw some ideas around.

15 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

4) Hawk could use a Heal Light option (Wanderer?).

There's a hard limit of 12 per character list for potential learnable spells, all Hawks except for Ninjamaster should be at that already.

7 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

I look at the MP/cast-time costs of buffs at the start of a new screen as a kind of maintenance cost for these buffs. It is logically a little weird but gameplay-wise, if you could keep the same buffs from screen to screen, there may never be a team without Light Lise ever considered again.

How about invert armor Necromancer?

Those buffs could come with a upkeep cost (reduced max MP).

I'm actually entertaining the idea to make you start at 50% MP and rework the MP pool to start a bit higher so that the new medium weapon is actually usable for all without dumping 3 levels into INT.

But the 50% case still runs into exploits on screen where you don't start next to mobs, so you can just wait and prebuff...

Either way I kinda have to keep cast time.
If spells would remain as they are but would be instant someone like GD Angela could pump a lot of instant damage (big MP pool with spells that are quite cost effective) which would basically remove the relevance of random fights for spell heavy parties.
And reworking spell damage would escalate into a billion new problems as ofc the formula is shared with enemy spell casting.

And here's the big logic bomb:
if we have regenerating MP and thereby technically infinite of it while out of battle,
why do we enter screens without the all-purpose buffs.

Eh, that isn't much of an argument; even if damage was half the current value enemies could stun lock you into death.
Less likely but they still could.

This will be the final update.

Current plans:

• prepatch english translation
• Lv60 capstone
• inbattle item usage requires 4 TP
• misc. patch to disable pop up messages for (de)buffs and ailments
• change damage colors to make it possible to differentiate between Lv1 techs, counters and (enemy) crits
• only gain once TP per attack instead of per target/hit
• invalidate the entire job discussion topic
• expand on cursed item mechanic
• expand on stat requirement for spell learning and limit known spells to 10, maybe add some spells to classes that have less than 12 spells to add some choices
• replace accessoires that remove a single weakness, their effect gets roled into the add resist accessoire
• finally get rid of the low attack scaling weapon