Thanks for retesting. I'm not sure if to tweak the speed bonus or not at this point. I mean, not enemies speed (since changing them would mean retest all battles!) but perhaps lower the bonus the characters gets for Speed? what you think? If you have a savegame of your party just before the final battle and you could send it to me, would be cool



edit: Even if a 6 minutes battle against a single target it's not an easy battle anyway I think! So maybe I should leave the game as it is...

To be perfectly fair, Fost only used two attacks the entire fight: Syphon Life and a normal basic attack. I'd suggest varying his moves and giving 'cheat' moves: Tier 3 skills but with drastically reduced wait time. Give him minions so that the party isn't focusing fire on him. Having only one enemy makes that one enemy vulnerable to focus firing so having a few minions around will spread the love.



Out of curiousity, how does the game calculate when your turn is up? Is it speed divided by the wait of the action and how many times of the result is added together to reach 100 or something like that? Or is it totally different?

Yes I agree that a party vs 1 single character is an unfair battle

The problem is that normally he would use different skills - but because you move fast, you always make him go "overdrive" (his overdrive attack is the Syphon Life indeed). About the speed... ahem, Anima (the coder) can answer you better but I know that beside the character speed, the skill used has a big weight (as you probably know each skill has a Wait value, and the same works for the enemies).

It's max(baseWait - ((speed-100)/waitModifier),minWait)

The waitModifier is globally set to 10, but can be set for each skill individually. The same goes for the minimum wait, it's set to 1 by default.

Ok got your saves FireSeraph, now will try and see what I can do about it. While I don't want to change too much of the game right now, I think I could balance better the Skill attribute. I think because it changes both Speed and Defense, it has too much "power" vs the other ones. So probably lowering slightly the speed bonus might be enough.

Also, did you find all the other boss battles easy, or just Fost's one because he fights alone?

The hardest boss fight I had was with the Lizard King at the end of Chapter 1. He had a full force backing him up, has ways to screw with the party's speed, everyone in his team had area attacks and he hits very hard, something like 50-60 damage when the highest hp in the group was slightly over 200. I'd say that was the best fight in the game imho since it forced me to figure out how to deal with his squad as well as taking down the Lizard King before he pummels Loren and Ramas into the ground. So I'd say use that fight as the template for a challenging fight.



Edit: I don't think changing the way the attributes function will help. Just toss in enemies with the right skills to mess with how a party functions, make Fost a heavy hitter with mighty blow instead of syphon life. Give him a minion that heals, another minion that inflicts status debuffs. Put them in the back row. Have two more minions in the front row that functions as spinning strike warriors. I think that might work better rather than messing with the way the game functions.

Thanks. I wonder though if that fight was hard because happened early in the game, so maybe the problem is on the Skill impact "progression", so that at later level it overpower the players too much?

But yes I agree that the best difficulty is having an opponent with your same skills: hard hitter, healer and a debuffer/AOE damage. I tried building Fost so that he would function like that with the Syphon Life that heals him. Will try and see, since for the story it would be better if he fights against the party alone. I might change some of his skills to work as speed debuffer (Slow effect) maybe that will be enough to balance it.

I tried changing the Syphon Life to cause Slow condition instead of Weakness. It was much harder to beat now. I also tried loading one of my saves at Normal level and it was harder but still managed to beat him. So for now I think will keep that change but don't mess with players' parameters.

I replayed the entire game, using the Skill trick and no training. Party level was around level 13-15. Fost was demolished in six minutes instead of five. Yup, I'd say it's official. The best way to beat the game to pump up your Speed so that you can get more moves than the enemy.



Edit: Forgot to mention. This is still on Hard mode.

I've been playing for a couple of days now on my latest play in hard mode and hit on the same idea of increasing speed as that is what wiped me out in the previous versions on hard. I now have the characters at level 12 and am just starting chapter 3, but it is a lot of grinding. I haven't been using the +2 skills but have been using +1 on everyone and using every speed enhancing necklace and ring available as well as keeping the characters equipped as light as possible. Dora and Karen are awesome together as I've been adding 2 to skill and 1 to strength.



Hopefully the game designers won't screw this up by slowing things down - I played the three chapters at least six times and the complete game once before I figured out the speed idea, others figured it out faster obviously but it would not be apparent to a first time player.



Best Regards

Jim

No I only changed Fost's battle, and that's the only change I'm thinking to do, since he is the final boss! I won't slow down the party members reducing the speed impact.

That is true but you also lose out on 20% of your Stamina/Spell points

I see, didn't realize this. 20% more stamina/spell points is indeed an adequate compensation for -20% or so skill points.

As for whether those extra skills are worth it... Probably not, but Im a skill point hoarder xP

Right...now that we've established Speed and Skill as the go to attributes for the game, it's time for party member evaluation! Here's my two cents on how each member ranks in a fight:



Saren/Elenor (Warrior): A good choice. High hit points, healing skills, relatively fast and ability to equip bows as well as most melee weapons makes this combination more viable than the thief option. 4/5 stars.



Saren/Elenor (Thief): Fastest character in the game hands down. Good for speedy healing and pinging away enemy's hp. Bad points are that thief characters have low durability and poor main skill tree. 3/5 stars



For both warrior and thief Saren/Elenor, be sure to pick up Neutralize I. Extremely useful and together with Myrth, Saren/Elenor will keep the party healthy throughout most of the difficult fights.



Loren: Best single-target damage dealer of the game. She'll be the one that you'll want to stagger the enemies as well as occasionally guarding characters in the backline. Her skills are a little lackluster since they focus on dealing damage with the exception of Rally and Knockdown. No Mercy looks good but has a long delay. Ditto with Wide Slash. 4/5 stars.



Ramas: Good tank thanks to warrior hit points bonus and his resistance skills allows him to shrug off all those annoying status effects. Equip him appropriately and he can even be immune to them. Otherwise his skill tree isn't really too impressive. Give him the Kazinga warhammer and he'll be the second heaviest hitter in the game after Loren. 3/5 stars.



Amukiki: In theory, I can see how he can be useful, Battle-cry debuffing the enemies' defense and Shield Bash paralyses the enemies. Unfortunately, I think Dora and Karen are far better at this job than Amukiki is and so he ends up being relegated to back-up tank. 2/5 stars.



Dora: Ignore all those stereotypes about elves being the best archers. In Loren, Dora is the archer to go to. Area attack, extremely powerful debuffs (paralyse and scare), fast and capable of tearing through the enemy's hp with a good bow. 5/5 stars.



Rei: Decent enough. Has a passive resistance skill (those are always worth maxing out) and his other skills deals good damage and Confuses. Too bad he's got to compete with Dora and Karen in the Thief department. 3/5 stars.



Karen: Also another strong character. She gets Leg Break which slows the enemies, an area attack that weakens the entire front line thus helping your frontline to survive longer. Pair her up with Dora to take out a staggered enemy out of the fight with Leg Break and Pining shot. 5/5 stars. EDIT: Removed Karen's Focus Attack skill since I realised that the skill is intended for the nerf hammer. But everything else still stands.



Draco: Poor, poor Draco. Elemental attacks are slightly weaker than normal attacks and while their debuff effects are quite powerful, they don't really measure to the warrior's and thief's skills as their percentage of happening is low compared to the other skills. 2/5 stars.



Apolimesho: He looks like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings and is just as useful as the old bat is. His paralyse spell is his main saving grace; Regenerate takes to long to recover HP and you want the HP now instead of later. His other spells look interesting if you can get it to the higher Tiers, but are the higher Tiers worth it? 2/5 stars.



Myrth: The best mage in the game, in the sense that she is the only character in the game that has a mass healing effect. Max out her bonus SP skill and take cure ailment to keep the party healthy in major fights. Her damage skills are sort of okay, with the best being Tangle Weed and Hailstorm since they reduce the enemies' speed. Just don't rely on her doing damage. 3/5 stars.



This is based on my gaming experience and may differ for other play styles. Discussions are very much welcomed.

Is the combat in Loren turn-based with a timer? Like in some jRPGs?

Combat is turn-based instantaneous, like Final Fantasy X. When it's a character's turn, you select an action, which has a delay built in. That character's next turn is then calculated based on the character's speed and the action delay.

Personally, I've played mostly in Normal mode while testing. I share many favorite characters like you (Dora and Karen) but I found Apolimesho and Myrth quite powerful both. Apolimesho because he can neutralize enemy casters/shooters with the Paralyze spell in early turns of battle, and Myrth because of the big area of damage and healing spells.

I am wondering if I should make Amukiki more powerful? Like have him give more defense bonus to the frontline (I was thinking as him like a tank but also having very strong defense buffs for himself and the party). I think also Draco Phantom Form is one of the most powerful buff of the game since increases Speed/Defense. Probably because of your style of play, you didn't find it much useful (since you maxed Speed).

Maybe I should also increase the amount of HP the Regenerate skill heals?

Maybe have it heal an amount of say (15*Tier+Magic*0.1)? I don't really know. Anyone else have an input on Regenerate? My own response whenever I see an enemy casting Regenerate on themselves amounts to "Hurray! They've wasted a turn!" >_>



Amukiki turning into a defense buffer for the whole party? Or maybe a passive that gives him a small boost to defense and makes his attacks generate more threat? Tossing out ideas. Loren and Ramas already generate a fair bit of aggro since they do a decent amount of damage so Amukiki needs a way to keep up, imo.



I can honestly see a use for the Paralyse spell but that's about it for Apolimesho. Play styles will necessitate changes in how each character forms the party, hence my call for opinions since there are four characters that I never really use.

Regarding Regenerate:I think it's also because in Hard mode enemies does more damage. While 15hp regen each turn is "OK" in Easy/Normal maybe in Hard mode is a pathetic amount ? I might change it to be 25-50-75hp each turn instead, that should be better. And Amukiki defensive skills should indeed grant more defense buffs and generate more aggro...

25/50/75 per tier does look much, much better. This lets it potentially heal 50% more than Life I/II/III but at the same time, because the healing isn't instantaneous, allows the other side a chance to knock out the character who has the regen buff. I think that's fair enough.

Yeah, Amunkiki definitely needs the competitive edge. I can see that he was meant to be the Stone Wall type character but compared to Loren who is a Lightning Bruiser, Ramas who is a Mighty Glacier with lots of resistance and Saren/Elenor who's the combat medic, it's hard to find a reason to pick Amunkiki.

Thanks, will do those changes in 0.94 update as well

Can't wait for that and to see how the slow effect for Syphon Life will affect combat with Fost now ^_^. Heh...can you believe I'm already waiting for a sequel to this game?