[PC][RPG] Legends of an Otherworld

[Proxima]

How to get the item Nepster asked about (BIG spoiler):

Spoiler

The cloaked merchant in Sysona sells Ultra Damage for 6.5 million. An NPC in Nyatta hints that some cloaked merchants lower their price if you have bought from other cloaked merchants. In this case...

Spoiler

...give 250,000 to the merchant in Taedwa (the one who takes your money and runs off laughing) and the Sysona merchant lowers his price to 100,000.

[namida]

Responses to Nepster

Yauwe is now a much more challenging enemy. And nerfing Judgement was a good decision, too.

Lunaris: Is it intended that it only starts using Zanmato around 300.000HP? I thought the plan was to start the "enhanced" mode a lot earlier?

Lunaris' AI basically cycles between 6 steps, with the caveat that he can add in physical attacks (which delay the next move rather than skipping it), and Sinful Guard will be skipped if there's no point in using it.
In the original version, Zanmato would occur either as the 6th step (regardless of HP), or if his HP is below half (this does interrupt the pattern, it's essentially an immediate jump to the 6th step).
The new version works differently - Zanmato has no "occur immediately" trigger. However, its use as the 6th step is skipped if he's above 2/3rds HP.
Either way, the above only applies for the *first* time he uses it - after that, it's used as the 6th step every cycle, no matter what.
Perhaps I should combine these - use it as the 6th step if below 2/3rds HP, and use it immediately (well, on the next turn) if he drops below half HP.

EDIT: No, upon a closer look, current code is that he should always use Zanmato on the first turn he gets after dropping below 2/3rds of his max HP. And I just tested it again to make sure it works correctly. I suspect you may have been dishing out damage so quickly, you got him down from 666,667 (or higher) to 300,000 without him getting a turn?

Xeon: Still an absolutely trivial fight. The attacks to the party barely do any damage, and Ivy's Ghost Breath deals 99.999 damage.

Hm. I might need to make more significant revisions to this battle then. But I also don't want it to be overly hard - I'm not too worried whether Corelock or Xeon is harder, but I do want Lunaris to be the hardest of the three.
Ghost Breath is a very weird attack in terms of how it works. In fact, one of it's most unusual quirks is that Spirit is applied to the damage twice. Seems this isn't enough though for an enemy as powerful as Xeon. I do want it to retain this "amazing damage vs powerful enemies" effect, but being able to do a guaranteed 99999 against any sufficiently powerful enemy is too much. As such, I think the ideal modification here: Make Ghost Breath unable to exceed 9999, even with Ultra Damage equipped. (There is precedent for this to some extent - we have Full-Cure which can exceed 9999 even without Ultra Damage, and most (if not all) items can't exceed even with Ultra Damage. But Ghost Breath is a weird enough attack in general that I wouldn't feel awkward even if it was the only attack in the game with such a trait.)

I might take a more sigificant look at rebalancing the game as a whole once I've finished making all remaining content. Until then, I'm not going to worry too much about these issues - I'll fix bugs, but I think it's more important to get the remaining content finished first before worrying further about the odd case where a battle isn't balanced perfectly, so I can look at the entire picture.

[namida]

Continuing from the last post

I might actually make some minor tweaks to Xeon right away. Nothing too huge, but I might add (most likely for the Light / Dark forms and all later ones, except maybe the final one) the ability for her to use Dispel as a counterattack - including on characters other than the one who attacked her.

The final form is where she becomes really dangerous. I'm guessing you didn't encounter this due to beating her too quickly, but on her 3rd, 6th, etc turns she uses Judgement - and it packs a major wallop when she uses it (around 40,000 damage each to a party with no extra defences against it in place).

I also agree, the more I think about it, that One BP Cost is still too overpowered, so I've changed it to Quarter BP Cost. This cannot be stacked with Half BP Cost; if you equip both, you just get the effect of Quarter BP Cost. Since this contradicts the player's expectation (given that, for example, you can stack HP+100% with HP+25%), I've explicitly pointed this out in Quarter BP Cost's explanation text. This is primarily a problem for Plague and Glory (and maybe to a lesser extent, Solidity and Triumph); I don't see it as much of an issue with Atomic Blast as you can achieve the same effect - slightly stronger, even - with One MP Cost + Disaster. (True, there is the difference that Disaster is reflectable whereas Atomic Blast isn't, but very few enemies actually use Reflect.)

[Proxima]

A couple of bugs relating to the portion of the game I'm currently on in my LLG videos:

Spoiler

Wraith: The game crashes if Harley is possessed and there are two characters with positive statuses for him to Dispel.

Matalithe: After switching to group 4, the choices offered are 1, 2 and 4 instead of 3.

[namida]

I could've sworn I'd fixed the first one. Maybe I made a hotfix for it but forgot to apply the fix to the main working copy or something... (It's bloody annoying that RPG Maker VX Ace stores all the scripts in a proprietary-format file and thus it can't effectively be used with Git or similar, to avoid this kind of issue. RPG Maker MV fixes this issue, though moving to it from VXA is not possible without rewriting all the custom code - and it still has nearly all the downsides of VXA, which is why I'm very strongly leaning towards a custom engine if I ever do a remake.)

Will look into the second tomorrow.

[Proxima]

Two more bugs, one of which is progress-blocking:

Spoiler

When you have the balloon, save over a city and load that save. The balloon sprite is replaced with Tara (although she can still move like the balloon!)

The Lab Key is consumed after one use, making it impossible to fight all the Specimens. (By the way, I saved before realising this bug, so I hope you can find a way to fix it that lets me get the key back so I can continue.)

[Proxima]

Also, this may or may not be a bug. Poison reduced the Dinosore to 0 HP and it didn't die. (Which was really lucky, because I wanted to knock out my other party members to avoid EXP.) I know poison damage can immediately kill, so is this just what happens when it goes down to exactly 0 HP?

[namida]

Enemies that have a final attack, or anything else that happens (beyond just dying) when they're reduced to 0 HP - even if it's solely behind the scenes stuff - sometimes will not die if they're reduced to 0 HP by Poison (or Zombie-Regen) or a move that cannot be counterattacked (for example, because the move itself is a counterattack). Not all such enemies are affected by this, but if a specific enemy is, it will always be. I still need to look into fixing this. I don't recall Dinosore being such a case off the top of my head though, so I might need to take a closer look at it specifically too.

[Nepster]

Some more small bugs

1) In the rolling ball maze (parallel to the calculator puzzle), if one manages to put two balls on the same place, the game does not handle it correctly after rolling away and reaching the next terrain: One rolls on without any ball below the feet.
2) In the Ben fight, it says either "Tara's party was defeated" or "Tara was victorious!". Both times it should be Alicia.
3) When Cameron talks to the party after the Fragment fight, he uses the word "nesecerially".
4) Alicia's Poison Shurikan does never poison the Cult Warriors ouside destroyed Saria. I know, you already checked this once, but I really cannot get Alicia to poison anyone.
5) Not really a bug, but anyway: When Yuki and Sasha appear in the Ice Temple and Alicia turns away, she tramples on some bones of a dead Guardian. While this would be fitting for her a while ago, it doesn't make sense now.

[namida]

Proxima's reports

Matalithe: After switching to group 4, the choices offered are 1, 2 and 4 instead of 3.

This is a purely text error; the option that should say "Group 3" still functions correctly (ie: switches you to group 3). Fixed, anyway.

Wraith: The game crashes if Harley is possessed and there are two characters with positive statuses for him to Dispel.

I don't see any obvious cause for this in the code, so will need to investigate it more closely.

When you have the balloon, save over a city and load that save. The balloon sprite is replaced with Tara (although she can still move like the balloon!)

As this is a purely-graphical error, I'll treat this as low priority, so I probably won't fix it in the next update.

The Lab Key is consumed after one use, making it impossible to fight all the Specimens. (By the way, I saved before realising this bug, so I hope you can find a way to fix it that lets me get the key back so I can continue.)

As mentioned in chat, this one has been fixed for the next update.

Also, this may or may not be a bug. Poison reduced the Dinosore to 0 HP and it didn't die. (Which was really lucky, because I wanted to knock out my other party members to avoid EXP.) I know poison damage can immediately kill, so is this just what happens when it goes down to exactly 0 HP?

Applied some code that should fix this, though still need to test it.

Have made notes of all the untested ones here, as well as Nepster's reports.

[namida]

V025 update is here! This fixes quite a few bugs and has a few rebalancing changes. But most notably, a significant portion (though not yet all) of the sidequest in that strange building near Saria is now accessible. Do note that you need to be progressed pretty far through the storyline before you can start this sidequest, and that it is intended as a postgame sidequest.

Fresh download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zm70tqg5f5z9g77/LoaO_V025_Fresh.zip?dl=1
Upgrade (from V023 or higher only): https://www.dropbox.com/s/aff4uaxtd58g4yu/LoaO_V025_Upgrade.zip?dl=1

If you are on a version older than V023, please get the fresh download. You can still keep using your save files.

[Nepster]

I played the final three bosses again.

As per Proxima's request here my final party and strategy

Corelock:
Alicia: HP+100%, Luck+25%, Auto-Wall, Ultra Damage, Double Hit, Use Special
Ivy: HP+100%, Multiproof, Ultra Damage, Half MP Cost, Quarter BP Cost, Use Black Magic
Harley: HP+100%, Multiproof, Auto-Wall, Auto-Haste, Booster, Use Blue Magic
Amanda: HP+100%, Mag+25%, Agi+25%, Auto-Wall, Damage Resist, One MP Cost

Ivy main task was charging and using Glory on the party. On her free turns she used Judgement. Harley got secondary helping tasks, while Amanda with Disaster and Alicia with physical attacs did damange.

Lunaris:
Alicia: now Auto-Wall replaced by Dispelstrike
Ivy and Amanda: same as above
Vince: HP+100%, Auto-Shield, Multi Resist, Omnidrain

Vince got the task to be posessed all the time, Amanda to heal him with Firia. Alicia did the main damage after using Shattering Bombs to inflict Weaken&Meltdown, while Ivy used Glory, Crippling Strike and later on Judgement.

Xeon:
Same party as for Lunaris, but I switched Harley for Vince on the first turn.

Again everyone got buffed up. Instead of the now nerfed Ghost Breath, I now used G-Force to do 99.999 damage per turn. This reduced the number of counter-attacks to a minimum. I never got to see the promised Judgement from Xeon...
While the Dispel attacks made it slightly more interesting, it was still very easy and repetitive fight.

And finally one more bug from the LLG. See attachment.

[Nepster]

Regarding the new sidequest

I don't see the reason why this sidequest should only be vailable at the very end? Yes, the items given upon completing scans are very nice, but most of them should only be available late in the game anyway due to missing monsters. And having the sidequest early (or even only having the ability to superscan) would be nice, because then one wouldn't need to run around a lot with a totally overlevelled party and fight trivial monters, but could superscan them when one first comes into the corresponding area.

Regarding finding some of the monsters:
For some of the rare monsters I used your game source-code to look up where I can find them, because I never encountered them before. These are:
- Impendeor and Wangbang: They only occur in some caves where one doesn't spend a lot of time, and there only as a rare ecounter. I suggest making them the main encounters in the Wraith cave.
- Tiellia: I encountered this once in the LLG, so I knew where to look. But it still took me 20-30 random fights to get it - and I am only talking about fights after having all the other monsters scanned in this area.
- Creskent: I never encountered this monster while playing regularly. I only guessed where I coud find it, because I couldn't find it in the long grass of the plains anywhere.
- Cult Droid: This only occurs (as a rare encounter) in an area where one normally doesn't stay for long, so doesn't fight any fights. I would never ever have found this, if I hadn't looked it up.
- Clatter and Accursed: I never fought them in regular game-play. But at least one gets the idea fast, that there might be new monsters found in the Metaspe region of the Cult Base...
- Cuboid: I only once got it in the LLG and it took me a very long time to find it again.
- Treevil: Rather rare encounter.
- Cackter: I learned about the Cackter from Proxima. Otherwise I would have no idea at all, where to find it.
If you want to keep them as such rare encounters, please at least add NPC hinting at their location, similar to the Toxic Head.

Finally there are some monsters, that I believed cannot be found at the final stage of the game at all:
- Cutster: This seems to be a monster that occurs only in the very first maps, that can no longer be reached.
- Blade, Venocondaur, Icy Blob: I believe they only occur in the invisible maze in the Metaspe and in destroyed Saria. Neither area can be reached at the end.

And regarding some monsters from this sidequest

INTOXICATOR:
The Erase ability was a very nasty surprise. Fortunately Crippling Strike and Plague worked wonders and made the monsters far less threatening. Again Sludge was a very nasty attack, but fortunately I had a fully buffed up Harley still in the party to remove the debuffs. Darkness wasn't much of a problem, because my damage dealer was Ivy with Judgement.

SUMMONER:
Nice improvement over the Specimens. Slowing it and its tendency to use only about half of its turn to summon other creatures (even when no other is present at the moment) helpes defeating it. One has to be slightly lucky with the summons though. Malcantores are still a major headache even with Judgement, but Zoloms and Steelworks can be defeated very fast now.

MOLLEGART:
Very nasty piece of work. Three party members got Auto-Haste and Auto-Wall and I equipped my now three Ultra-Damages. Alicia got Dispelstrike, too. With this I was able to revive my party members constantly and get some attacks in between. One attack per Mollegart action was pretty much enough, because with Weaken and Meltdown, Disaster, Judgement and Alicia's Double cut all did about 50.000 damage.

ELPHINU:
It was a huge chore to get Weaken and Meltdown on it, especially as I missed the Shockwave item. The Haste together with a MP draining one-shotting attack was very nasty. After getting a few debuffs on, I did at least decent damage...

PS: None of them have steals. And I only got a drop from the Intoxicator. If the others have drops as well, perhaps make it certain that one gets them. There is no incentive to fight them a second time and for grinding purposes they are too hard anyway.

[namida]

Regarding sidequest boss drops

All of them have a drop except Swarm Roach (who instead gives massive EXP and AP), always with a 50% chance of dropping it. I might look into changing this so that they have a 100% chance the first time you defeat them, which drops to 50% on all subsequent battles.

Regarding monster availability

Cutster has been added to the cave on the Caralint-Nyatta road. Every random encounter from the Nyatta-Saria metaspe should occur in the new junction room. If all else fails, talk to the girl outside the arena after beginning the sidequest.

EDIT: Confirmed that all the monsters you listed are possible to encounter in areas accessible during the endgame period.

My initial thought here was that most monsters would be available as soon as the boat is, but with some more thought, this isn't actually true. The Nyatta Island and Western Islands would be doable upon, or soon after, getting the boat - this in turn is enough to also unlock the first Original Creation (as the unlock condition is "unlock two area creations"). Saria Island cannot be completed until the Cult Base is accessible, Eastern Islands cannot be completed until Sysona is accessible. Trinity Palace is an obvious one; the only monster from it that can be encountered before accessing it is Flare Roach (very rarely appears in the Cult Base, and appears fairly often in the Haldwa cave), and they still can't be encountered until after completing the Cult Factory as that's when those two areas become available. Of course, it's probably best that that girl outside the arena doesn't offer her services until the Trinity Palace is accessible; maybe not even until all storyline bosses (excluding Corelock onwards, for obvious reasons) has been defeated.

Final bosses

Again everyone got buffed up. Instead of the now nerfed Ghost Breath, I now used G-Force to do 99.999 damage per turn. This reduced the number of counter-attacks to a minimum. I never got to see the promised Judgement from Xeon...

She should not be vunerable to G-Force. Actually, I noticed I overlooked giving Lunaris this immunity and thus fixed it in the latest update, but of course, I didn't check that Xeon wasn't missing it too...

[namida]

All but one of the remaining bosses for the sidequest are now completed. That aside, there are also two other optional bosses left to finish implementing.