[Mods] Suikoden II - Rebalanced [hard mod]

[psychedelist]

It's not necessary to grind anything for Double Head, he used to be harder in the previous iterations. Except for Fire on Rikimaru's weapon (or maybe even Fire Lizard + Draining since his HP allows it, i used it even on Hanna). You could use Antitoxin for additional healing in that fight, which would last the party a lot longer. What point in the game are you at? Double-Beat is not removed but exists as a single copy now, same with many other powerful runes, but they all are coming (except Exertion). And that's not counting Guardian Deity, which could give an extra. Double-Beat and Double-Strike are in the same place as they originally were (except for loot). Violence, Killer are mid-game, Spark, Fury are late-game. Until then, did you consider Waking, Warrior, Blue Ribbon/Skunk, Friendship/Kindness (for Unites), Down, Berserk food, Revenge Earth, Wind of Sleep? I'd be reluctant to reduce Prot much further because every boss in my playthroughs had half of damage coming from physical attacks (1 or 2 attackers who are appropriately equipped with the stuff mentioned above), and final boss party was mostly physical. And normal enemies have less Prot than bosses, so physical should be even less problem with them as long as you consider enemy's Tech and use Unites if it's high. But I'll keep in mind the problem you're having. I don't think it's going to get worse in late game, Prot will increase but will be offset by the powerful runes and equipment.

Edit: to make it clear where i'm coming from, i think that an average battle lasting at least 6 turns or more is perfectly fine, i don't know if others would consider it too much or no, but i tried to move away from "press Auto and win" and force the player to use various options available. A bunch of Fire and a Darkness may win faster, but you'll be forced to run away once they run out, and those things are useless against bosses. Physical attacks may have less immediate effect especially in early game, but they're durable. If you're able to rush-win every boss with Lightning on 5 characters, then it's indeed a problem and i'll need to look into it. For Double Head and Abomination (also weak to fire) it's ok because if you opted to grind for that much this early in the game (no trading yet), you deserve an easy victory, however it really isn't essential to win.

[Mulcarn]

Lemme clear Abomination and I'll get back to you with my thoughts. I've restarted twice so far to test things and get a better understanding of the changes made.

[psychedelist]

I want to thank Zero for streaming the mod. I've added "hard mod" to the title to avoid misguiding people who may expect it to be not difficult. I want to comment on the "random damage one-shot kills" issue. Pretty early on, i decided that i want to increase the minimal damage and the random damage the characters can take from 1-4 to like 8-20. Unfortunately, there's one unresolved issue with that. The way it's implemented in the original game, it's just a constant random damage that is added to the main base calculation. It was too difficult to somehow make it scale with the current HP, so i had to deal with it. While increasing the random damage component, i had to find a balance between it being not too high in early game, yet not too insignificant later on. Somehow i settled on the 8-20 range. The only reason of why Hero and Jowy start with 4 level now is to reduce the negative effect of this randomization that could easily lead to one-shot kills otherwise. Unfortunately it still can happen at the start of Sparrow Path in the first few fights until you gain levels needed for comfortable fighting. Ultimately, all this means that this particular aspect with random damage will get better very soon as characters get more HP, as +/- 20 dmg won't have such a dramatic difference.

For Mist Shade, the characters in the stream needed 1 or 2 more levels, this wasn't the streamer's fault, i didn't intend to force the player to grind that early and may have underestimated how many battles i had while hanging around the refreshing lake. I've updated the patch to increase the monsters level a bit in that area, they will give more EXP and bring the characters to the necessary levels faster. Having said that, it's still advised to have armor on all available slots (save for medicine and magic scrolls), some Antitoxin and a decent amount of Medicine supply, use Defend on Hero/Jowy during the male form (they wouldn't be able to do any damage in that form anyway), and use physical/magic according to the current form. If you stole Kobold Pie from Gengen, you could get an easier win with some luck for Boost (50% chance per use). I'll say a secret, if you apply Boost to a unite participant who doesn't have the lowest character ID in a unite (Eilie in Circus, so use it on Bolgan or Rina), they won't suffer the damage after Boost wears out. It was too difficult to fix so i left this little exploit as is, it's also why Boost is nerfed, but it's still very powerful in early game due to it being a constant buff to atk (no scaling). In general, it's a good idea to look at an upcoming boss stats and attack properties in advance, it should help to reduce the amount of trial and error with preparing the party, especially later when there are more configuration options available.

In general, the only "grind" I consider to be normal is spending a lot of time on the party preparation (deciding whom to bring, what to equip on who, what to put to the bag). However, doing some extra fights for levels is unavoidable if you'll want to try out different characters. Even if you stick with the same characters, it'll be needed at least for Luca alone who requires 18 characters. Good news is that there will be Fortune runes (and a Prosperity, kind of) to help with that.

[lurirfa]

Thx bro 4 the mod, but how apply your mod ?

[psychedelist]

The instructions are in the beginning of the main document - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-r6 ... QWnk8/edit
If you mean you don't know what to do with the ppf file, you need to use an app such as this.

[Rizen]

playing this now...
1. earth rune in greenhill is not there as listed
2. hunter rune is not 100% drop... i thought it was.. its like 60%?
3. theres an easyish way of farming gold early.. using the hunter rune and getting ?vase ... as one can be the celadon urn which is 10K...

im a heavy farming to now its been easy for me.. will continue on RizenGT

[psychedelist]

1. Thanks, not sure what went wrong there, it was supposed to replace Resurrection at this point in the game, but apparently there's neither Resurrection nor Earth now, will look into it eventually. Or if for some reason it bothers you, please give me the save file with early game access to Greenhill, then i'll jump into it sooner.
2. I didn't touch anything related to item drop logic. There may be some quirks to it that aren't well known. I thought it's 100% too.
3. Well, that's what Hunter is for. You don't have trading at this point so i think it's fine. It wouldn't be fun having to kill enemies 100 times if you wanted to earn some money, it's nice to have an efficient way.

[Rizen]

dont get me wrong im really enjoying it. im just reporting this back so it can be fixed for the next guy. i think the hunter rune could be selecting empty slots. where an item should be. im also streaming this game like our beloved Z3ro was. if i notice anything more i shall post.

[Rizen]

just noticed the sun badges dont stack when restoring HP. doesnt say they dont in the notes.

[Pyriel]

As I recall, the plain drop logic in this game simply allocates ranges to each of the three slots based on their probabilities, and then takes the first one your roll is less than, or nothing if it's beyond the highest value allocated. If they took the simple route of just letting the top of the combined values be the maximum roll, it shouldn't be possible for the rune to miss. I don't remember looking at the Hunter Rune logic specifically, though. They could have done something silly.

[psychedelist]

just noticed the sun badges dont stack when restoring HP. doesnt say they dont in the notes.

I can add it to the notes but it's this way in the original too, same for any items with special effects that aren't just normal stat bonuses. Two Thunder Amulets won't give double Hit bonus too.

[Rizen]

using unite, with Riou and Nanami in the star dragon sword fight.. crashes the game...

[psychedelist]

Unless it happened more than once in a row, it probably didn't have anything to do with the unite or S.D.Sword specifically, it sounds like a random crash that randomly happens in long and magic-heavy battles, such crashes happened to me a few times while playing the original too. Probably an emulation issue. The mod indirectly contributes to the crash chance by having the battles last much longer than before. It's best to protect yourself with save states before important battles, just for the case of a crash.

From my observations, of all spells, Kindness Drops spell destabilizes the game the most. Ideally, when possible, try to make an in-game save before a boss battle, then reset the game and load the save, then the game will be in a fresh state and less likely to crash, even when using Kindness Drops.

[Rizen]

actually it just happened again fighting the squirrels. it appears to be unuseable now. unsure why... why its a combination of the runes i have on? i have poison on nanami... im live on twitch atm... i need to experiment

[Rizen]

im quite certain its because nanami has the poison rune equipped... btw this glitch,, and idk... it erased my safe file to a previous save... not sure even where to begin with that one... but im going to save state as i save from now on.