Lufia 2 - Age of the Sinistrals

Major features:

• added around 70 new spells, including some physical-like techs that even Guy can learn
• learning new spells gives slight increases to stats
• modified base stats and growth of characters
• stat potions can no longer drop from enemies; those drop now fruits for capsule mosnter (CM) evolving
• added a true final boss fight with "Guard Daos" after Daos
• major overhaul of AI for final Sinistral fights
• Retry and Gift Mode are now always available
• Retry Mode is now Hard Mode, 2x exp/gold gain and enemies are stronger (less grind, more action)
• rings and rocks are now the same equip type and can occupy either of their two slots, e.g. you can wear 2 rings, 2 rocks or 1 each
• modified defense influence; starts with 1:1 until def = 50% raw damage then degenerates
• CM level is now tied to Maxim's exp/level
• modified CM attacks and AI slightly, e.g. Darbi can now even flee in class 5 and class 4 Flash is more likely to heal when injured
• class 4 and 5 CM are much less likely to use regular attacks
• CM can freely switch between all 5(!) classes once unlocked instead of being locked to class 1-4 OR 5
• (S) Witch Ring now increases MP as advertised
• 25% of ATP bonuses from equipment get also added to INT
• 25% of DFP bonuses from equipment get also added to MGR

note: NOT compatible with vanilla savegames!

I don't think I ever saw this mod when it was hosted on ID, only the plethora of patches Artemis made. Is this one any good? 

Well, I'm going to try this one out anyway. Lufia has always been one of my favorite SNES RPG's, but the vanilla version becomes dreadfully easy early on. 

Reading through the changelog, it ticks all the right kind of boxes; not played Lufia 2 though, would that be a problem if I gave this mod a shot?

It should be ok.
The game is pretty "normal" for any kind of gimmicks. No complex skill systems to learn or anything.

The most outlandish "feature" is probably that defend only counts if you get to act before the enemy.
Which becomes even better when the slowest capsule monster is the most likely to use defend in the first place.

Of course, like most games of the era, it doesn't tell you which pieces of armor protect against status effects or elements.
When I played the vanilla version ages ago, I didn't even know that armors could have those effects, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

There's one boss battle in the entire game that you're supposed to lose; but if you win it gives you a unique weapon that is basically endgame power from the midgame.

Playing the mod just now and encountered a potentially serious problem.

When you save the game in a dungeon and reload that save, the game seems to 'reset' all puzzles and even your last known world map coordinates. This means that if you save in the room before the first boss, die, and reload that save it becomes impossible to get back across the bridge as the switch resets and there doesn't seem to be any way to flip it from that side:

http://imgur.com/a/7nFAg

Worse than that, if you use the Escape item it will warp you to what I'm assuming is coordinates 0,0 on the world map:

http://imgur.com/a/8cdGZ

I'm guessing it's some kind of memory issue; don't have any experience with how the base game is supposed to work though. I was using a U ROM (acquired from CompleteRoms) with the Headered patch.

It seems like it doesn't save dungeon data at all..
in vanilla that works at least.

Though it wouldn't have surprised me too much if that was a vanilla bug - I mean all you need to do there to summon the apocalypse is press left on the stereo option.

Niiice, will give this a go at some point. I've never actually played Lufia II since I could never get past the first game due to savage boredom when it became too easy. But I did finally finish it when I made my own hard mode for it. So now I'm finally ready for Lufia II and this looks like the best way to do so. Cheers for the top effort, @praetarius5018! Will play through it on Twitch when I run out of my own hard mode projects, if you don't mind. Several months away, in any case.

I cleared the 3rd area last night (that castle with the crown); feedback from the perspective of a completely blind player:

-) The bats hanging around the bridge switch are very tough to beat early on due to their summon + flee behaviour.

-) MegaQuake hits like a bus and has a rock-bottom IP cost compared to some of the abilities I was using prior, like Double Slash. I found myself leaning on it heavily throughout the castle sewer. Damage can range from 50 (large enemy group) to 120 (single enemy). Was using it via Maxim.

Gameplay-wise, the first area (not tutorial area) was definitely the toughest as formations with 2 enemies were usually too overwhelming to fight initially; I bought a rapier + armour first run, but on 2nd run I went with that passive stat-raising skill which helped a bit. 2nd dungeon turned out great, had a bit of luck with the gauntlet of enemies; ran out of healing items midway but the 2nd last enemy dropped a potion by chance. 3rd area was crippled a bit by Frock + MegaQuake.

Got 5000 gold to spend before I clear out and can't decide whether to spend it or save it for next town s:

I've not touched any IP moves yet, so that kind of overpoweredness is to be expected/still present like in vanilla.
Bats were always this troll-y. I lowered their stats in V6 now.

The update makes old saves invalid - again.
Transfer should be done via savestate.

If the game detects an "invalid" save it tries to repair it, that takes about a minute in a black screen, so no panic please.
The result always has a Lv1 party though, so overwrite it, don't even bother loading.

v6 update:

• fixed bug in save mechanism which made dungeons reset upon loading
• nerfed power of Blaze's special attacks
• reduced stats and increased gold drop of enemies that appear during the time Maxim is alone in the early game

I half expect the saves to still have a hidden bug somewhere; I had to basically rewire 70% of the save file structure and cram 252 bytes of data into a space intended for 230 bytes.

Are you still working on this? While it is in no way game-breaking, I've encountered a persistent bug in whatever version was up here a few days ago. 

Basically, whenever a CM levels up and has a level equal to your highest level party member, the 'exp needed' status wrongly mentions needing up to 67x.xxx.xxx something EXP needed. It disappears when opening the CM's status screen again and doesn't seem to actually effect leveling at all. I think it is a byproduct of whatever method you implented to limit CM leveling to your own highest level, but the problems seem to be purely cosmetic so it's not really a  big deal.

Maybe a little every now and then.
I still have to modify some IPs and maybe tweak AC a bit.

I mean the AC does give you spells and you get the bonus stats on them but spells are quite rare, especially now that there are 100+ valid spells instead of about 30.
I'm not sure how possible the AC even is in this version unless you already have a good amount of blue chest items.

That bug is indeed a byproduct of the exp/lvl sync.
At least that is better than the infinite level up message loop I had at the beginning with this feature..

Well, I'm up to just before the second (first serious) fight with Gades now. Been playing on hard mode and it feels pretty balanced so far, whereas in vanilla Lufia random encounters pretty much become completely trivial later on. The added spells + the stat boosts they provide do a good job of keeping things interesting, especially the varations of melee attacks.

Edit: just encountered a rather serious bug that I should probably mention, though I don't know if it was present in the original Lufia 2 as well (a quick google search doesn't give any results).  After getting the ship, whenever you leave it and save at a chapel, the ship will disappear once you load the save MANUALLY. Using savestates is still fine. I don't know where the ship goes too, but while you can warp to other towns you've basically become incapable of travelling by sea, meaning you're stuck.

Again, this is just something I noticed that happens anytime a save is manually loaded. Haven't found a fix for it either, yet.

Second edit: so the ship glitch seems to have fixed itself somehow. Don't know why, but the ship does follow you when you warp to a new town. I'm still 99% sure that at some point I saved in Gruberik (AC island) with the ship being completely going after reloading, necessitating a savestate load. 

I found another bug at dragon mountain (the cave / mountain next to Chaed) that can be both replicated so tested. When fighting the Salamander enemy - winged orange dragonoid thingy) it occasionally seems to get stuck in its attack script. It uses either Firebird or a regular melee attack, but sometimes it doesn't act at all and the ROM seems to hang - most button inputs don't work, but pressing start boots you back to the Natsume title screen. Saves are not affected though, so at worst you'll lose about ten minutes of gameplay.

I've got to be honest here... did you ever finish balancing the final Sinistral fights? Don't get me wrong, it was great having a Lufia 2 game that offered a fair challenge here and there, but I've been stuck fighting Amon at the sealed tower for days now (Hard Mode btw) and this guy keeps kicking my ass everytime. The second (third) fight with Gades was pretty straightforward, but now you've got constant Mirror on everyone making healing / damage very difficult, confusion that needs to be protected against, Amon getting healed by a LOT of elemenental attacks and having a pretty strong AoE melee as well. Any tips on how to handle it?

Tl;dr: somehow I've gotten spoiled on Critical + Bunny Blade IP shenanigans and can't win a challenging fight anymore.

ship bug:
not sure if I caused that disappearance, but afaik warp should always put the ship close to you.

Salamander:
I only edited their damage, but I can take a look at it.

Amon:
he gets healed by fire and non-elemental, try to have everyone not use those elements on their weapon; Anti-Flying and similar count as elemental as well.

Aside from that you should rely on Forcefield IP (+40% defense), Swordsplitter IP (reduces ATP a lot).
The spell Reduce removes Mirror from him; he'll still have his "fake" mirror for when he reflects (fake) Firebird/Thunder off himself onto you.
Resolve should be able to heal you and not be affected by Mirror.
Physical skills should not be affected either.
If you want immunity against confusion, the list is the same as in vanilla:
 

Amon has ONE move that ignores confusion protection though.

Give the spido jewel IP and fake spell a chance and drop his AGL until you outspeed him, that helps a ton.

Also you CAN'T do what he does and reflect damage spells off yourself to hit him - he cheats

Did you at least beat that Gades deathless?
If not - there's always the rematch to do that.

found the stupid typo... instead of modifying their "Sizzle breath" attack power, I changed its type from spell to "crash game please"

perfectly balanced RNG:

Wasn't expecting such a thorough answer- thanks! I'll definitely be trying again later, just need to refresh my knowledge in which weapons / IP attacks count as which element. 

Gades was pretty easy, actually. Only got one death when I did remove his attack / magic buff spell 'Undeath' the first time. 

Just a small update - the Ancient Cave is still very doable even in Hard Mode, though I suppose RNG will play a big role (like it did before).

I've gotten around to defeating the Master legitimately for the first time ever, and I'm usually a scrub when it comes to bonus bosses. Having two fatal picks to grind to 90+ levels, a myth blade and Gades blade (plus a Dekar blade just for funs) makes for easy battles. With the newly added Exchange spell you can convert HP to IP as well, giving you basically two octo-strikes + HP quartering.

Btw, did you change the Master's HP total? I've though it was around 10K, but I'm pretty certain it's more like 20K+ now.

Ancient Cave isn't affected by Hard Mode. So neither are enemies stronger nor do you get x2 exp.
This is the same effect as Retry in the original, didn't give you x4 exp there either.

Master's original HP was 9980, now he has 19980.
As I'm reading this is still doable

Imo it is brutal enough this way.
~70% more exp than vanilla, more cooperative high rank CMs, more tactical spells.

Also, sorry but the next update will change the AC a bit, making it (at least theoretically) a bit easier.

It doesn't? I kne about the exp but figured the damage modifiers still applied anyway.

Yeah, it is still doable but I did had RGJesus on my side during the run. I know I'm not downing many double Silver / Gold Dragons the regular way anytime

v7 update:

• changed logic of buff effects
• old: half distance between current value and +2x buff rate (e.g. 40% buff on a current 120% state increases by [100%+2x40% - 120%]/2 = 30%)
• new: buff applies buff rate to the distance between current and 200% (e.g. 40% buff on a current 120% state increases by [200% - 120%]*40% = 32%)
• changed logic of debuff effects:
• old: half distance between current value and +2x debuff rate (e.g. 20% debuff on a current 120% state decreases by [100%-2x20% + 120%]/2 = 30%)
• new: debuff applies debuff rate to the distance between current and 0% (e.g. 20% debuff on a current 120% state decreases by 120%*20% = 24%)
• debuffs can no longer reduce a stat below 50% of its base value
• fixed Salamander's Sizzle Breath related game crash
• reduced chance in Ancient Cave to get consumables from ~37% to ~20%
• increased chance in Ancient Cave to get spells from ~11% to ~18%
• increased chance in Ancient Cave to get armors and accessoires from ~17% to ~25%
• increased chance in Ancient Cave to get blue chests from ~2% to ~5%
• chance in Ancient Cave to get weapons was kept at ~31%
• HeroSong and Resolve are no longer affected by mirror state
• increased HP, MP, AGL of Lexis
• increased general stat growth of Tia at high levels
• Ruse armor can now be equipped by everyone, protects against death
• Mirak plate can now be equipped by everyone, protects against paralysis and confusion
• increased DFP of Mirak plate from 120 to 160
• edited descriptions of most items that provide status protection
• renamed IP "Ice...." to "Ice Valk"
• IP "Combo attack" damage increased from 2*INT+450 to 2*INT+500
• IP "Diamond dust" damage increased from STR+700 to 2*STR+350
• IP "Do-Re-Mi" confusion chance increased from 50% to 100%
• IP "Flash" damage increased from 2*INT+600 to 3*INT+300; cost increased from 96 (37%) to 164 (65%)
• IP "Frost" damage increased from 2*INT+140 to 3*INT+360
• IP "Gloomsplash" damage increased from STR+800 to 2.5*STR+400
• IP "Gloomy" damage increased from 2*INT+160 to 4*INT+60
• IP "Groundshock" damage increased from 2*INT+240 to (INT+STR)*1.75
• IP "Head attack" cost reduced from 164 (65%) to 100 (40%)
• IP "Incendiary" damage increased from 2*INT+120 to 3*INT+70
• IP "Iron kick" damage increased from 400 to 700
• IP "Magic cure" cost reduced from 128 (50%) to 85 (33%)
• IP "Magic healing" cost reduced from 192 (75%) to 153 (60%)
• IP "Magma blast" damage increased from 2*INT+400 to 3*INT+100
• IP "Mega quake" damage increased from 2*INT+140 to 2.5*INT+30; cost increased from 20 (8%) to 50 (20%)
• IP "Samurai" critical chance increased from 20% to 35%
• IP "Stardust blow" damage increased from STR+1000 to 2.5*STR+450
• IP "Tail attack" damage increased from 2*INT+200 to 2.5*INT+100
• IP "Tidal wave" damage increased from 2*INT+140 to 3*INT+60
• IP "Twister" damage increased from 2*INT+140 to 3*INT+360
• IP "Voltage bolt" damage increased from 2*INT+160 to 3*INT+70

im extremely interested. i may grab this next week and do some balance testing on hard mode for you. (BTW, any chance you can literally change the text from "retry" to "hard" and "gift" to..."Rogue"?

gonna be rolling through fallen and risen star first, atleast fallen star (as im also playing tears to tiara 2 platinum playthrough) and maybe you'll throw more changes while i wait as this seems freshly full of big changes.

Retry is already renamed to "hard".
I'd like to keep "gift" though; that way people new to Lufia 2 in general have a chance to research on their own what made this game mode is like, what they should expect.

on a random note i would kill for a lufia returns (game boy color) mod. that game would be absolutely amazing with a truly hard difficulty.

hell i'd even help out. maybe i'll make the offer once im done golden sun and get to testing this and gift mode. i expect gift mode to be interesting.

Hi I don't know how to patch it can you help me or send me a version patched

What OS do you have?

In case of Win10 - delete the spyware and get a real OS.

Win7:

get LunarIPS, that might already associate .ips files with it.
If so, just double click on the appropriate patch (depending on whether you ROM is headered or not) and then select the ROM in the file select dialog.
If not, double click on LunarIPS then apply patch, select the patch and then the ROM.

Other OSes: sorry, you'll have to look that up with a search engine of your choice.

Interesting hack, thanks

Did you included the glitched shrine fix and area names?

There's a topic in romhacking.net with a lot of fixes of the US version, fixxer deluxe and others

I've based it on one a-lot-in-one bug fix patch, should have been fixxer deluxe, not 100% sure.

For some reason I thought this mod was still being worked on, sorry about that. Would it be fine to DL it and play it to the end? 

Let me check my Lufia 2 to-do list...
NULL

I'd say go for it. Have fun!

Thanks a lot!

There's a random chest in AC that give you the magic BETA, with description TODO description

CM sometimes want always the same item, after fight or sleep want the same but sometimes if you give em the item he doesnt want it

CM usually show values after Maxim level up of FFFFF in hex that return to normal after see capsule monsters in menus and changing to another map and looking it again

btw works fine the level up, its ignorable that values

-intentional, the same spell exists outside AC as well; the whole set of spells it belongs to is part of a joke against the people of that town

-I think that is vanilla behaviour

-doesnt really matter, cm exp/level is tied to maxim; i think what happens there is that you have the exact exp that an untied cm would be 1 level higher - afaik they have a separate table with the required exp to next level that needs ever so slightly less, like 3 exp difference at lv20

ok about the magic, actually I'm in the area of Lexis and ship thing so I didn't know it

After level up in AC sometimes the DFP of some characters appear as 999 but its false, after a battle or go to stairs its show the true value.

BTW ok for now and continue playing. That thing of Caron using warp instead the Karlloon name also same a Vanilla bug,
that was fixed in the spanish version.

About the 200 gold when start, it's easy search with windhex "120" in rom and change it, another dialogues are hex values of 1-2 bytes
harder to modify. That thing of MTE or something, I only got part of the tbl from the spanish version

2 hours ago, gadesx said:

About the 200 gold when start, it's easy search with windhex "120" in rom and change it, another dialogues are hex values of 1-2 bytes

harder to modify. That thing of MTE or something, I only got part of the tbl from the spanish version

Nah, I wanted to keep it this way because I always find it strange if you start at exactly 0 in RPGs.
Hey, that dude is a successful business making quite a fortune - 0 gold.
Legendary warrior - Lv1.
Yeah....

I'm up to the Gordovan tower, but he always wipes me with his wave attack. Is it possible to beat him there? Or am I out of his Gades Blade at that point?

On 5/30/2018 at 0:42 AM, praetarius5018 said:

What OS do you have?

In case of Win10 - delete the spyware and get a real OS.

Shit just got real, you had me lol'ing so hard. So kids, don't do Windows 10. 

4 hours ago, velsper said:

I'm up to the Gordovan tower, but he always wipes me with his wave attack. Is it possible to beat him there? Or am I out of his Gades Blade at that point?

It is possible, though you'll need a lot extra levels and bought spells for stats compared to where you should be/vanilla, especially on hard.

Is the Gades Blade still in the Ancient Cave? I think I just want to go grab it from there instead.

I've not removed any items from the AC, only added the new spells to it.

I got a question about the balance, so far I've only bought abilities that I thought fit each character. Will I need to buy everyone everything they need to beat the game at the end? 

At least not on normal.

Thanks, appreciate it. Rolling around on normal riight now, and that brush with Gades worried me since I was already at level 30 when I ran into him. I'll keep playing leisurely then.

I started Act 2 (3?) with Maxim and Selan as parents, and wanted to ask why the heavy price on resetting the skills? I think it's enough that you have to go and rebuy everything if you want to rebuild your style, personally. Too bad there isn't a way to set up a spell shop to just sell back spells at a vastly reduced level or something.

The price is high because I originally didn't want the skill reset at all - still don't.

When there's three times the number of skills than skill slots? I thought you made that many so you could roll with different set ups. Then I saw the cost for the skill deletion, sure ended my bout of curiosity.  

Speaking of the skills though, I really am liking some of the later ones a lot. The Venom/super poison and toxic bomb combo are fun. Blitz is pretty hilarious too. 

eh, I originally wanted to limit it to 20 skill slots, proved too much hassle, so I left it at 36.

Plus you have 3 guinea pig characters that leave the party permanently, can always dump some skills out of curiosity just on them.

I'll say this, the balance is really good. The later capsule monster evolutions are squishy but provide a lot of needed firepower if you got a bad load out. I appreciate the drop rate changes too.

Even if I had wanted to, there's not really a lot I can do about CM squishiness/defense.
STR can grow by level, AGL can grow by level, defense only has a flat bonus, so any try to give them more def makes them invulnerable early (high flat bonus) or too fast (AGL) or too strong (STR), ... yeah

This was really problematic for the earth CM Sully since he's supposed to by tanky but slow.
At Lv99 his original rank4 had 627 HP, 345 STR, 28 AGL, 316 DFP, 9 MGR
now that is 770 HP, 581 STR, 182 AGL, 431 DFP, 23 MGR.

and you don't want to know how long I had to adjust numbers to get Darbi5's Lv99 stats "right".

I hope the differences between the Rank4 and 5 forms are somewhat notable, too.

Didn't get an alert you had posted back, my bad.

Well, there's a notable increase in power between the last two Ranks for me. They're useful all game, but at that point they make up for bad life choices. Before the elf temple I rerolled the spell list with the cast to see what'd happen and during that span they were helping keep me alive on the seas while I made my money back.

I meant more in the sense that rank4/5 are similar in relative power but have different "roles"; like Flash4 is more a healer while 5 is more a damage dealer, etc.

I think the optional bosses need some more polishing, though.

Looking at the code, the Egg Dragon seems pretty bland and generic compared to the Sinistrals. But he should be the hardest and most thought-out boss battle instead.

Also the Master: So he has 19980 HP, eh? Are there any moves/skills comparable to Fatal Blow to any non-Dekar chars?

And there's no real way to survive even one Stardust Blow of a Gold Dragon I think.

And the skill reset really is way too penalizing. In a mod with its main feature being all these new spells I really want to have fun with it and test the hell out of it. But the way it is now I instead fear to do anything wrong because I don't want to do a mistake. At least considering the endgame party - however, considering 3 of them are in the party against Gordovan Gades every skill for them feels like a chore I'll totally regret later on.

Does it at least reset the Divine Shrine stat boosts, too, so that I can get them again? Because such a permanent penalty just is way too much overkill.

12 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

I meant more in the sense that rank4/5 are similar in relative power but have different "roles"; like Flash4 is more a healer while 5 is more a damage dealer, etc.

Oh yeah, I've noticed that the master rank and rank four capsule monsters have both been useful. I flip them around if I need extra cover fire. Like when I lost Laxus, I swapped to capsule monsters that had attack all moves since Selan was all alone on that front now.

11 hours ago, Artemis said:

Does it at least reset the Divine Shrine stat boosts, too, so that I can get them again? Because such a permanent penalty just is way too much overkill.

Divine Shrine and stat potions get reset too. So don't step onto that panel/drink those potions until you got your final set up. I find the ocean is a great place to grind for money to test out skill sets. Just sic the phoenix on those whales and watch em cry.

I redid the game on hard mode, and made it up to the three towers pre Doom Island. A few thoughts: 

With my capsule monsters, I don't find em to survive long/at all in end game so I'm just rolling with the dark dragon who instantly wipes random fights with Eliminator. The others fell to the wayside compared to his skills. 

Well, you've access to all spell/skill shops before the stat boost event, so if you knew about it being a problem you could have reset just before.

I found different CMs useful for different bosses; dark is least useful against the Sinistrals.
I'd go with rank 4 light as the most useful CM in the final boss rush.

Against randoms - dark or fire, yes, but not really against bosses.
Dark does no damage there, fire dies in a hurry.

Gades

Amon

Erim

Daos

Guard Daos

Fortunately I haven't grabbed the stat ups yet, was just giving some of my thoughts on how the Sinistrals were playing out for me. 

I tried resetting skills in merix and the game crashed + restarted, then gets frozen when trying to boot up a save  save state fixes it but still trying to see if there's any way to get around this as my last save state was a while before the crash, any ideas?

errr that sounds like you had still "old" save data (like pre v6) in there;
did you patch a new version of the mod over an old one?

Nope, was a brand new version of the game. It's all good, I didn't need it, I liked the extra challenge. Just beat the egg dragon! 

The bonus boss is clearly too easy, you didn't even have to revive 2 people with one cast of Valor.

Finally beaten the game, LV99, better equips and without see the strategies,
I used 1 save state because guard daos killed me, he put his AGL so high, make the endless battle depends of luck and if maxim can save the day using the pearl equipment IP.
Maybe it's more easy using any different strategy, I used mainly Bunny sword with selan and arty IP 1/4HP, and trying to survive,
in the vanilla game I never use Miracles and here a lot lol
My valoration it's a good hack, I prefer less dificulty and the enhancements you did, the game's actually requires know everything of everything,
and the difficulty goes "start a bit hard, turn easier using blue chest equipment after Gruberik, you reach the final battle and it's brutal, so there's a part of the game that isn't hard at all"
 

V8

• skill reset now only subtracts stats gained from skills
• doubled monster item drop rate
• edited EggDragon's AI & stats
• fixed HP overflow through healing
• reduced Guard Daos' ATP and INT from 800 to 760
• reduced Master's HP from 19980 to 9980
• fixed Demise targetting themselves after Mirror
• reduced Copper Dragon's HP from 4800 to 4000
• reduced Copper Dragon's Cinder Blast power from 1200 to 1100
• increased Copper Dragon's ATP from 860 to 880
• reduced Silver Dragon's HP from 5600 to 4500
• reduced Silver Dragon's Cinder Blast power from 1400 to 1120
• reduced Silver Dragon's ATP from 904 to 880
• reduced Gold Dragon's HP from 6500 to 5000
• reduced Gold Dragon's ATP from 952 to 880
• increased Gold Dragon's INT from 560 to 640
• reduced Gold Dragon's Stardust power from 1600 to 1140
• changed 2 Lion boss fight into 1 Trick Lion + 1 Fake Lion; each uses their namesake spell and drops same ring if beaten first
• Trick Ring now increases STR by 30 instead of ATP by 10
• Fake Ring now increases AGL by 20 instead of ATP by 10
• Uni Jewel now increases DFP by 30 and HP by 35 instead of ATP by 50
• Uni Jewel has now IP Meltdown instead of Dash
• Unicorn (fish) now has a chance to drop Uni Jewel
• Revive Armor grants +40 maxHP
• Holy Robe grants +20 maxHP
• Muscle ring grants +10 maxHP
• Old Shield grants +30 maxHP
• Tough Glove grants +15 maxHP
• Holy Wings grants +25 maxMP
• Magic Bikini grants +50 maxMP
• Cut-All ATP multiplier reduced from x0.8 to x0.75
• Turmoil ATP multiplier increased from x0.5 to x0.6, MP cost increased from 10 to 14
• Blitz MP cost from 25 to 33
• Darkness ATP multiplier reduced from x2 to x1.25
• Darkhole magic power increased from 1200 to 1350
• Meteor magic power increased from 2x INT to 2.25x INT
• Clarity INT buff increased from 15% to 20%
• Dread now debuffs DFP and MGR by 10% instead of only DFP
• reworked %HP damage IPs to be independant of row, DFP and variance
• reduced Fatal Blow IP from 1/2 HP damage to 1/3
• increased Battlecry IP from 1/6 HP damage to 1/5
• increased Ax attack IP from 1/8 HP damage to 1/6
• increased Devastation IP from 1/8 HP damage to 1/6

Quote

skill reset now only subtracts stats gained from skills

Awesome!

However, I thought of something: How about instead of Merix choose one of the gamblers in the VIP room to be the skill resetter?

That not only gives a decent narrative reason for why it's so expensive, but also give the VIP room itself some more meaning.

Besides, it makes you thinking more about what to choose during the mid-game - which is just exactly what you want, anyway, right?

Quote

reduced Gold Dragon's Stardust power from 1600 to 1140

Did you change Stardust Blow from neutral to light-elemental? If not, you should do so because then there's the Apollo Shield which greatly reduces the damage and makes that attack way less unfair - and actually survivable.

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Uni Jewel has now IP Meltdown instead of Dash

Actually I'm not that fond of this change. Because Dash is also the special attack of the unicorn/narwhal fishes. Like they dash/charge at you and ram their horn right into you. Meltdown just seems too random and artificial.

I think Merix is better since you can buy the Warp spell there, so less chance to get yourself stuck there.
Also it comes shortly after the 1st Gades fight where you may have just loaded all the spells you could find on your party to beat him.

I didn't change the element of Stardust Blow.

Dash at that point wouldn't be too useful, you've access to regular skills that deal comparable damage without using IP you want for more important skills.

I'm fine with everything else, but replacing Dash just feels wrong. How about making Dash more useful instead?

I honestly don't care about the gem itself.
I just needed another item that has access to a ATP debuff IP and saw that the Uni Jewel wasn't obtainable.
So I just added it and slapped the first ATP debuff on it that wasn't Swordsplitter.
That's all there is to it.

The problem is all the stones which are based on specific enemies also have the corresponding IP move which is based on said enemy's special move. Therefore, the Uni Jewel breaking this established pattern just feels wrong.

Another established pattern is that these kind of debuff moves are exclusive to headgear items.

So this feels totally off as it breaks two patterns of how items and IP moves are designed.

So, what about Spido Jewel's Debuff IP?
I can't put that on my head.

Or Fury & Angry Rings with Dread (DFP down)

Btw. having Uni Jewel give Dash IP would currently also break the stone pattern

Dread may be a debuff, but it's also a spell and therefore goes into ring territory. Spiderweb is an odd case, yeah, however all the jewel IP moves are based on an enemy move - including Uni Jewel and Unicorn's Dash. And while Spiderweb is a debuff, it's nevertheless not in the same playground as the regular debuffs like Meltdown. The jewels are a melting pot for all kinds of behaviours effect-wise (including Tarantula's Spiderweb debuff), but with the restriction that there's an corresponding enemy move named the same.

So my suggestion to be consistent with it: Give Uni Jewel the Dash IP move, but with the Meltdown debuff effect instead of its regular effect.

Sounds random and silly? Actually no, because a lot of these stone moves behave very differently from the corresponding enemy move. Just look at Gorgon Rock's Ax Attack which, despite sharing the name, just is a completely different move. Therefore Dash as debuff would be perfectly fine and absolutely in-line with the game's conventions.

Didn't another item also have the Dash IP?

No other item, however, a few other enemies and capsule monsters have it.

Another thing: The timing when the true final boss battle starts seems a bit off. It would work way better if the battle starts later - like when the actual force clash happens. So that the final battle actually IS that clash of energy waves. I'd say the best moment is after Maxim says "Now! Do it now!". That is, if it's feasible to start the battle during these animations.

Some more questions about the standard non-retry modus:

This is more like a rebalance hack instead of a difficulty hack, right?

So how would you say is the difficulty curve? Both in comparison to vanilla as well as in itself? With the latter I mean e. g. how do Tarantula or Gordovan Gades compare to Fire Dragon, Ghost ship or Tank regarding the difficulty?

Also how difficult would you say Egg Dragon is compared to the Sinistrals and especially compared to Guard Daos? (This question goes for both Start and Retry.)

less rebalance, more extra content (skills, final bosses that actually put up a fight)

the difficulty curve should be still like vanilla just a step or 2 higher (I went through every single enemy and increased stats and power of special moves by a certain percentage).
Tarantula and early Gades should still be the top candidates for hardest boss fight before the final.
I'd guess the effect is actually stronger here than in vanilla for Tarantula as it still suffers from a massive case of early game = lack of options (especially no AC)

hard mode increases enemy damage before defense so the effect will just become bigger as the game goes on (same for damage reduction for player)

If I had to order the final bosses by difficulty I'd say:
Egg Dragon > Guard Daos > Amon > Erim > Gades > Daos

Daos isn't really a boss, more like a warm up before the real boss.
I mean I didn't really have anything to work with for him.
Gades, Amon and especially Erim (because of her L3 Iria battle) have a lot of material to work with from Lufia 1-3.
But Daos?
He orders his minions around (who are beaten at this point), has his S.F., casts high tier spells, Dark Reflector/Scary Memory and has a crippling weakness to gambling.
Dunno, if I ever get around to a V9 I'll probably stretch the lore around him a lot to make him more interesting.

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I'll probably stretch the lore around him a lot to make him more interesting

Can you imagine to also alter events in the game? Like adding new scenes.

Not really, at this point I've done most of what I wanted to.

Everytime I patch this there are no spells to learn just blank spaces in the shops with spells that can't be learned and no name that cost no mp. Am I doing something wrong?

This sounds like you used the wrong (un)headered patch - I'm surprised that doesn't outright crash.

The headered version of the ROM should have 2561 KB. unheadered 2560 KB.

Maybe I just have a bad version of Lufia 2 cause the headered patch doesnt work at all.

Do you have the U version?

The USA version? If so yeah I got that.

@Layoneil  This hack only will work correctly if you use snes9x(+)plus version, hope it can help you

Thanks Jack! That's exactly what it was! I had no idea zsnes wouldn't work with it, that's what I usually use.

zsnes in general has accuracy issues;
several instructions are not well implemented, it mostly was build for speed or being able to run at all on the toasters we had around 2000.

I often forget that it was all we had wayback then - I feel old now  

Yeah I still use zsnes most of the time just cause its what I'm used to. But I'm getting a feel for snes9x now. Works pretty good for the most part. Also your hack is pretty damn awesome. Gades kicked my ass, as I was expecting.

praetarius, a friendly request to update the rom hack's description and/or install instructions. I got v8 from romhacking.net and initially loaded it with the snes9x 2005+ core on retroarch and ran into the same issue as Layoneil. Also, while I verified the SHA-1 hash of the input rom as the one specified in the RHDN description, the SHA-1 of the patched rom is not what is in the description, it's 3975c13f1606198ff83893dbe14656dec3f7937d.

After reading this thread I tried the snes9x 2010 core and skills loaded with no problem and the game is playing well so far. Still, I think a heads up in the description would benefit others interested in trying it out. Thanks!

is there even any hack out there that runs on zsnes and is not 100% dependant on its false implementations?

if not I don't see a point to add a note like "requires adhering to common sense like not using super-outdated zsnes"

I was using snes9x 2005 plus, not zsnes, and as jack said above, 

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This hack only will work correctly if you use snes9x(+)plus version

which I guess still doesn't hold true for the 2005 edition. Something like "only tested to work with snes9x 2010 and later versions, other emulator support not guaranteed" would be great. It would've saved me an hour or two at any rate. Just a suggestion.

which is not accurate either
I tried it with higane-accurcy build at one point and afaik some even played it on actual hardware via sd2snes carts.
so now what?
"may not work on emulators unsuited to properly reproduce original snes functionality"
well, noone will get what that means either

"Will not work with ZSNES, SNES9x 2005 or earlier."
would be the most accurate restriction we know of atm

v9

• reworked Daos's AI & stats again
• Unicorn (fish) can now use Meltdown (ATP debuff) to fit with its dropped jewel

Hey Praetarius! Thanks so much for this mod, Lufia 2 is one of my favorite games of all time and I'm so excited to finally find a hard mode for it!

I also wanted to report a goofy bug I found! I'm playing on Hard mode [using Snes9x from the Google Play Store, on Chrome OS] and I'm at the Trick Lions in the Phantom Tree cave. I have a savestate right before that fight, though I'm unsure if that factors in.

Anyway, the bug is this: if I boost Guy's defense more than once with Bravery/Courage spells and/or IPs, he gets infinite HP. Makes the fight trivial so I've been reloading when I see it. If it helps I can give you the equipment everyone has on, etc.

Either way, thanks for the mod! I'll try to figure out how to kill these dumdums without boosting my Def, wish me luck

I'd need something to reproduce this...
can you by chance get your hands on the in-game savefiles (usually .srm) from before the boss?
with exact steps to trigger this bug.

This seems non-trivial to get; I know I spammed a ton of def buffs in the tests vs Daos and the boss after him before the last patch release.

19 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

can you by chance get your hands on the in-game savefiles (usually .srm) from before the boss?

If I were a smarter person, I'd have copied them to send to you, but I was too excited to progress in the game and plowed through. Sorry!

I found another "999" bug in the Ancient Cave, where Maxim and Selan sometimes had 999 Defense in the Equip/Status screen outside of battle, but it changed back to their normal defense if I equipped something else or got hit for the first time in a fight. I'll see if I can reproduce that!

just to make sure - you don't have any cheats or other modfications active there?

these sound like things that should've been found a long time ago, at least it wouldn't be areas of code I've tempered with in a long while...

Correct, just your mod. I've activated cheats for other games on the same emulator, but not Lufia.

ok, so just in case - turn those off please, see if that makes a difference.
some emulators do weird stuff like softpatching ips files to matching rom files, so make sure the .ips files are not in the rom folder.
just to make sure, you patched a U rom of Lufia2, right?

..I'm running out of ideas here

I'm having the same issue with the spell shop:

The ROM I patched was unheadered. Then I redownloaded it, copied it, named one (Headered) & the other (Unheadered), used NSRT to add a header to the (Headered) copy, then applied each patch to it's respective ROM. Both still produced the same problem. For the record, the EMU I'm using is BSNES v110. Also, what's with that spells.xls file? I know it's a MS Excel file but is it needed for the game or just a reference list?

Make sure you're using U rom and not E rom.

26 minutes ago, Animebryan said:

 I know it's a MS Excel file but is it needed for the game or just a reference list?

Just an overview of which spells exist, who can learn what and the exact stats they give upon learning; though the ingame spell description should suffice most of the time.

It's definitely the USA version & it's completely unpatched (no Fixxxer Deluxe patch)

unheadered + patched has CRC32: 0980CFA2?

also make sure you don't leave the ips file in the folder in case of auto patching emulator shenanigans.

That's what the rom looks like just after downloading it without making any changes to it. I keep the patches in their folder while I move the rom into my main rom directory. Still has that same problem. Nothing I do changes it.

That is not what I asked.
I wanted to know what CRC value you get after patching.

It matches the CRC value you mentioned in your post. Just tested it again, same result as last time.

Rom hacking never ceases to amaze...
SNES9x? works
ZSNES? only over my dead body
BSNES? menu messed up
Higan? infinite loop on company logo

Can you try adding this patch on top of the patched unheadered rom?

Nope! I find it strange for it to not work correctly on BSNES considering how it's the most accurate SNES emulator around.

Tried upgrading the emulator?
I found at least BSNES 115.

No difference

Can you try adding this one on top of the patched unheadered rom?

Should I apply it over the v9b fix or should I repatch the basic rom with the unheadered patch then apply v9c fix?

either is ok

YES! It's finally fixed! Thank you.

So the placebo did its job, great.

Found another problem. Skill reset should be called Game Reset, since that's all it does. I think I'll wait until you deal with the whole Skill Overload problem, as paying 1/2 your gold is bullshit & then to rebuy skills that are expensive as hell. I don't know why you didn't just allow the player to erase skills individually or at least expand the skill slots.

4 hours ago, Animebryan said:

I don't know why you didn't just allow the player to erase skills individually or at least expand the skill slots.

My original design idea was 20 skill slots and no reset at all.
So the only change I'd go for is exactly that.

So instead of 'fixing' the problem, you want to make it worse by lowering the number of skills to even less than default?

that has got nothing to do with each other at all;
you go and demand I change the hack even further away from what my vision for it is and I say no to that,
but that doesn't say anything about me working around how BSNES handles mirrored rom sections different (fucking LoRom), the specs I have disagree with the behaviour of BSNES, in older versions it worked, so dunno. not a concern atm, got other stuff that has priority.

Finally tried it out myself, but I'm not too fond of it, however, because the tutorial enemies are way too overpowered.

I did choose START instead of hard, therefore I expected a somewhat smooth and non-lethal experience at the beginning in order to get warm to the next changes.

However, basically every normal enemy almost brings me down to 0 HP - totally impossible if there are 2 of them. And stronger enemies like a spider are flat out impossible to kill for me right now. Also Lizard Man effortlessly can 2HKO me, so there's not really that much I can do. Aside from grinding. I'm level 4 now and honestly, I just don't feel like grinding. Especially not in the very first actual dungeon. I might have bought some of the new spells, which I didn't, but that's the same issue: I need to grind for money. And I don't want to really spend money before I didn't get a decent grasp about what might be good to buy.

The balancing at the beginning just is terrible. The first dungeon should be more like a playground instead of a minefield.

It sounds like you bought no skills at all which affects your stats.

I have 265 gold right now, I bought boomerangs for 100 but otherwise I spend no money. Therefore right now even if I wanted, I could only buy one single skill.

I'm still in the learning phase, that's why the difficulty curve is way too harsh here. I'm still trying to learn which skills I might buy later, because I don't want to spend my scarce money for some useless skill. The stat boosts from these skills should by no means be the make it or break it criteria already in the very first real dungeon.

Besides, how am I supposed to even know that ALL skills affect my stats at this point of the game? Aside from the description of the passive skills, there is no indication, and nothing really indicates that active skills necessarily work the same way.

You should change the tutorial NPC dialogue texts to do the skills proper justice. As the skills are a big deal for gameplay, it should be something which really is unmissable despite players ignoring NPCs all the time. Like changing one of the elcid people on the outside - especially give that NPC are very distingushable sprite, like a siren enemy, so that nobody dares to not speak to that one.

Again, the problem is: At this point of the game I'm still in sniffing mode. That is, I'm still evaluating for myself whether I generally shall try out the mod at all or not. And in that sniffing mode the worse thing you can do is destroying me that badly. Unless it's explicitly supposed to be a hard mod - which START mode definitely is not.

4 hours ago, Artemis said:

Besides, how am I supposed to even know that ALL skills affect my stats at this point of the game?

Lets see... readme? changes overview list? the second sentence of the description of the hack? not enough?

Still, the enemies in the first dungeon are way too powerful damage sponges. Is there really no other solution than grinding for money and buying lots of skills?

Not sure what is happening on your end;
I just tried tutorial cave and the dungeon afterwards, only bought strong; the only enemies that took more than 2 hits were the mushrooms (4) and the butterflies (3) and that went down after 2 level ups.

3 hits isn't really what I'd consider "way too spongy".

3-4 hits definitely is too much, especially considering the case of 2 enemies at once which leads to 6+ hits.

Also you cannot assume that everyone has Strong at that point. The crucial thing here is that the players are still learning the very basics. Okay, players need to learn the importance of healing, but potions are an option too. However, the way it is now, you have to waste way too much potions/resources - way more than you get from battle rewards. The expected learning curve is just way too harsh.

And, of course, there's still the issue of the boss 2-shoting me.

v10

• put Droplet instead of Spark into Elcid spell shop
• reduced prices of skills in first few towns
• reduced HP of mobs in first 2.5 dungeons
• may or may not finally work on all emulators

Praetarius first thank you for your amazing work, im having a great time with your mod... Until i met Amon.... Man thats impossible, everything gives him health, can you help me overcome this? Maybe what should i equip? Im at level 77 and i did read you advices before but its not enough for me, please help me!!! Everything will do... I saw a youtube battle iwth level 99 and it toke almost 50 minutes!!! Hope you can help me!!!! Tha ks again!!!!

in the zip there is a boss_spoiler folder, one of the files is explicitly for Amon.

thank you! another question, i have a big problem because there are some magics needed (or recommended) to beat amon, BUT, i cannot learn anymore? is there a way to forget some spells?

Thanks!

i made and understand how to beat amon.... but Daos..... i dont know what you did man but i saw a video and he was incredible easy, but when i fight him almost everything gives him Health! i read your readme but when counter gets to the number he anyway will recover 9999! is he beatable? man why you did him so hard, i was so damn happy to beat your game..... and now i dont know what to do to beat Daos!! your instructions say what he will do but it does not show how to beat it without he recovering all his HP! Please help me!

he does the big heal a max of 3 times, just keep going.

Finally beat it. Boy, that was tough. I didn't know that Daos only did the max heal 3 times, that helped a lot. Thought I had to do 30,000 damage in one turn lol.

Thanks for the mod, had an absolute blast playing it.

So I came late to this party and so far the hack is very good. I picked normal mode, I'm in elfland right now and just got Artea. I've been abusing Blaze's level 5 form because it's really fast and does huge aoe damage and half the monsters in the game are weak to fire.

I do think I managed to get a bit of a glitch happening. Messing around with the Muscle Ring it's possible to get your current HP higher than your max HP. Sometimes when enemies hit you in that state, your current HP rockets up to 999. I don't know the exact process yet and didn't really test it, I just happened to see it happen. I appreciate you implementing the skill blanker because there are a lot of new toys to play with now and it's fun to mess around with different combinations.  The only thing I wish I had more of was money but sailing around on the boat some more should solve that. Thanks for making this hack!