Tear Ring Saga: Hard Mode!

[Galap]

I present Tear Ring Saga: Hard Mode

When I first finished Tear Ring Saga, the impression that I was left with was that this had the structure of what could be one of my favorite games of all time, but the enemies were too weak. The map design was very good, as were the mechanics, but the enemies were often so weak that they may as well have not even been there. This was a bit disappointing because I could see lots of structural difficulty and scenario complexity there that didn’t really end up mattering because of the enemies.

The goal of this project is to increase the difficulty while maintaining a ‘clean’ experience and not affecting the base game too much.

The stats of the enemies have been increased, and in many cases they have better classes, better weapons/items and more skills. This might sound kind of bland, but it makes for a much tighter and more interesting experience than the base game, while still respecting the existing map design and fitting in with it.

The player characters have not been altered at all, with only two exceptions:
Narron doesn’t start with Elite. He learns it at level 8.
Zieg doesn’t have Elite.

The reason of these changes is that the improved stats of the enemies causes them to give more XP.
I was able to balance the game around the new XP curve, and ultimately I think it ends up being a better experience since you can more comfortably train more characters.
The one exception is the characters with Elite that you get early on, Narron and Zieg.
having that skill so early with the increased enemy XP causes them to rabbit out and grow too fast, so I made Narron get the skill on level up instead of having it at base. In the case of Zieg he’s still one of, if not the best unit in the first half of the game, so he just doesn’t need it anyway.

The intention here is different from other difficulty mods such as TRS Kaizo, where the way the game plays is significantly altered and many things are changed to provide a fresh experience for experienced players.

In the case of TRS HM, it’s designed to essentially just address the really weak enemy quality in the base game and make it into the best version of itself.

The intention is for this to be something that a first-time player can play and enjoy without being left with, like I did, the sense that I just played what was essentially a masterpiece game that was held back by the fact that the enemies were too weak. If anyone seeing this hasn’t played TRS yet, I do seriously recommend this version.

There are two versions of this patch. The regular version and the gameplay only version. The reason for this is to get around one of the pet peeves I often have with game mods, where you see what seems like it’s going to be a very nice mod that does a lot of things you want, and then you see that in addition to the main point of the mod, which you like, the developer changed a bunch of random crap because they felt like it, and that’s not really what you want.

There were some things that I wanted to change like that, but I don’t want other people to be put off by it, hence the two versions. The gameplay only version only buffs the enemies as mentioned above.

The main version has some other changes, which I personally like and recommend:
-renamed some characters and items to match the Japanese version more
-changed a couple of small things with the script to match the Japanese version more
-Gray grid patch: You can turn on a set of grid lines in the options. By default, the grid is green. I find this ugly, particularly on non green-dominant indoor maps. I edited it to be dark gray, a more neutral color.

Patching instructions: to a base TRS bin file, first apply the translation patch(https://forums.serenesforest.net/topic/53111-tearring-saga-new-translation-finished-v104/), then the hard mode patch or gameplay only hard mode patch.

Screenshots:

https://imgur.com/a/AKURAJ9

Also, my friend Ghostwheel played through the hack. He was the first person to play it aside from me and the testing was invaluable. It was his first time playing TRS, and he really enjoyed it, especially as a first experience. If anyone is thinking of playing TRS for the first time, I do seriously recommend this version over the base game. You can see Ghost’s playthrough with commentary from me here: (starting at part 1). There are a few changes that were made based on this playthrough, but they are minimal (there was really only one ‘me go to far’ moment that I had to dial back).

Let me know if there are any issues found.

Special thanks:
Ghostwheel: Testing, Playthough vids
April: Help with TRS editor tools
Aethin: Original translation
Unicorngoulash: Help with finding bin file address for gray grid patch

Patch link: 1.74 MB file on MEGA

[Fringus]

oh fuck yeah, grats on the release. always wanted a nice median between base and the harder stuff like TRS Kaizo, so i’m super excited to give this a try!

[EmperorHardin]

What are some of the additions? I’m curious as to how the 1 range sword bosses are buffed?

Also can you link the other one that changed the playable characters?

[darknight97]

I never got to finish tear ring saga, but it’s good to see someone working on a hard mode.

[Galap]

It depends on the particular boss, some of them got extra skills and items such as shields, miracle charms, etc. Some of them that can wield other weapons (such as the many Sergeants) get weapons like pilums.

[Galap]

If by the one that changed player characters you mean TRS Kaizo by April:

Tear Ring Saga Kaizo/Lunatic Mode by April

DISCLAIMER: Because of technological constraints, I don’t know that I would actually call this a kaizo like my other hack SGW kaizo really is. Put simply, I can’t edit enemy placement, so there’s only so much I can do without requiring you to TAS rig or something similar. Think of it more like lunatic/lunatic+ than true kaizo. Also it’s a buggy mess but not in a way that makes the game unplayable, a few things just don’t work as intended. Will fix in future patches. Hello FEU, For those of yo…

[EmperorHardin]

I was thinking of people like the various Duke bosses and Rentzenheimer, also the stationary General bosses?

I imagine the sergeants would be easy to buff as they can wield axes/lances in addition to swords.

[Galap]

I think having some bosses that don’t have 2-range weapons is OK. I didn’t give 2 range to all of them. For Lentzenheimer specifically, it’s particularly not an issue since you have to kill him with Julia or Vega to get the Lukuud anyway.

[EmperorHardin]

That’s fair, the Duke bosses aren’t meant to be tough in the first place.

You aren’t able to add, new skills, is that correct?

[Galap]

I was able to give units skills that they didn’t already have but not create new custom skills if that’s what you mean.

[RNGSOMEONE]

Ok, I finally beat the whole game. It was a wild ride, and for what it’s worth, I actually felt challenged. I’d say the difficulty is comparable to Lunatic mode for mainline FE titles.

Anyways, here’s my feedback:

• Ch35 has a Sniper reinforcement with insufficient WLV to use his Brave Bow
• Ch11 Samson has a very high chance to die before you can ever reach him. Specifically, if the player doesn’t bring a Physic staff with them into this map, Samson will run out of healing before you can reasonably get to him. Assuming that both initial bandits hit him, Samson will need to wait until his HP drops to 11 from 2 Hunter shots before he uses his Healing Fruit. He then needs to use it twice to enemy phase the third bandit once they approach, since Samson must stay put in his starting position to minimize the amount of fire he takes. Unfortunately, due to buffed enemy SKL, everything has crit on him (this was true in vanilla TRS too, but the crit rates were significantly lower), with the Hunter having 6% disp. crit. Samson will not have enough healing if he takes a single crit, and the inflated enemy SKL makes this much more likely to happen.
• Out of all the lategame maps that have received anti-warpskip countermeasures, Ch39 is arguably the one that I would say is insufficiently Sierra-proofed. In theory, the Tumahann bishop in the boss room is there to take a huge chunk out of Sierra so she can’t duel 2-Azoth Zieg on her own. In practice, this bishop prioritizes using Physic on other cultists over attacking if he doesn’t see a kill. All you need to do is leave 2 Dark Soldiers injured each turn and the Tumahann guy completely fails at his objective. Speaking of which, Zieg himself is also a pushover since all he has is a Spear - he just doesn’t pose enough of a threat to Sierra, and should probably be given a Brave Lance so he is more of a threat. Sending Sierra in to the boss room with Nosferatu, the Goddess Shield and a stack of physical shields (but no Magic Shield; enemies will disregard their usual behaviors regarding HP-stealing opponents or Vantage sweepers if they see that there is a shield on the target that they can deplete) allows her to trivialize the map in a matter of turns since she will beat Zieg in the war of attrition (enemy Physic users heal before Zieg moves), the witches in the boss room are neutralized (they won’t teleport elsewhere because they see that they can attack Sierra, but they won’t attack her either because they see that her Nosferatu will undo all of their damage, causing them to all stand still) and the map will be over before the witch reinforcements show up.

I’ll probably post my team later.

[Galap]

Thanks for playing and feedback!

I’ve fixed the master bow guy.

For the Samson chapter, I checked and the enemies near Samson are actually unedited (I believe they are the only unedited enemies in the game). Is the dangerous one the farther axe guy going after him, or is it just that the other enemies are harder to get past in order to get to him? I remember testing this part pretty extensively, and remember it being hard but not really RNG dependent (aside from the low crit, which actually shouldn’t be different at 6% vs 1 % due to TRS’s statistical distortion similar to the 2 rn system in later FE games). I think I designed it so that you have to get to him 1 turn faster than the base game. If the one farther axe guy is a particular issue I could consider tuning the Samson encounter a bit.

Regarding Ch39, I think it’s OK as-is, since there are a lot of ways to take down Zieg, and changing it to make this one harder would make others easier (for example brave lance would make it possible to bait him into using it and then hammer him from range. This isn’t a warp skip but making the warp skip harder in this way would make the non warp-skip strats easier). Like I guess in my mind if your Sierra is strong enough to kill him good on you. If you have to distract the tomaharn guy to make it happen that’s fine. I guess it doesn’t really feel bad that a trained Sierra loaded with shields and a lot of prep to make it work can duke it out with him and win. Seems like an interesting strategy to me, really.

Also I would absolutely love to see your team, and hear any more impressions you have!

[RNGSOMEONE]

In Samson’s case, he needs to be at full health to tank a Hunter and a Bandit, and he runs out of healing if you’re too slow in reaching him. However, he doesn’t double the reinforcement Bandit that goes for him, and takes three hits to kill. If Samson doesn’t crit, he is forced to repeatedly Fruit himself on his own turn twice before the Bandit is weak enough for him to finish off on player phase. By this point, he is out of healing however, due to the extra forced Fruit uses.

[RNGSOMEONE]

Anyways, here’s the team post.

The Run Carries

San

Man, the translation really did her title dirty.

THE run carry. Was given Slayer before setting off for Ch16, and grinded not only to promotion but level cap that very map, capping her offenses and getting enough levels in everything else that mattered. Despite the high Ops quality, once the party simply holed up in the starting position for a while, they all divided themselves down to low HP to the point where San could just OHKO them. While they in theory could one-round her, stacking her support with Frau, Lan’s Mirror and Slayer dropped the chances of this happening to virtually zero. She was sent on Holmes’ route for split 2, where she was mainly used as insurance since Runan’s route had other units to handle the situation. Come split 3 and she was sent to Runan’s route as the main win-condition against Ernst and Julius. She handled Ernst with the Luna Sword, and against Julius, brought him to low HP with Empower + Luna Sword, then was the most reliable finisher with a Brave Lance (robbed then trade-chained to her on the same map) after being danced and after other units burned one of the two miracle charms. In Endgame she was able to just barely reach mountable land on turn 1 and then killed both nearby Sorcerers with the Salia Spear.

Meriel

During Runan split 1, Meriel was one of the only units I had that was doing anything at all in terms of damage, due to the sheer bulkiness of the enemy roster. Thus, she immediately saw use by being able to clean up kills after the other units managed to get a bit of chip damage in. During split 2, she was put in Runan’s party for Aura Rain, and used it to trivialize maps 24, 25 and 26 by deleting about 25% of the enemy roster each time with crits (by stacking supports). She was then given Mug due to her ability to one-shot enemies with Starlight, with which she robbed everything in 26-S. At the end of 26-S she was then purposefully killed off so she could be transferred to Holmes’ part to use Yr skill houses, specifically for Vantage to allow Vantage sweeping with 49 magical attack. As it turns out, many Runan split 3 enemies were designed to have a bit more than 47 magical bulk (the max damage with Sylpheed), but they all happened to die to a 49-ATK Starlight hit, sometimes to exact damage. This allowed Meriel to plow through Maps 34 and 35 and while also robbing all the enemies, allowing Runan to buy a crap ton of Miracle Charms for the endgame maps.

Esther

The carry of earlygame and Runan splits 1 and 2. Was given EXP in Map 2 at great difficulty, before earlypromoting and carrying all the way to the end of Runan split 1. Her STR was screwed for much of this time, but she was just still so much better than everyone else that I ended up having to use her for just about everything in order to get by. By Runan split 3 she has only just slightly fallen off (mostly due to stronger units like San and Meriel being in the party) but she was still more than enough to take on generic enemies and keep them busy. Got benched for the indoors segments due to tight deployment restrictions though.

Alicia

One of Holmes’ better units. She was given Ch14 chest statboosters and a ton of Grace Mummies in order to cap her MAG before Kranion so she could kill Kranion for the funsies. Accost turned out to be really useful lategame as Accost + Meteor deletes Dracozombies from complete safety, and Dire Thunder by itself still reliably onerounds almost anything. Moved to Runan’s party for split 3 to help handle enemies and nuke down tough bosses.

Lee

One of the most important units for earlygame and Runan split 1. Lee is the only unit able to reliably one-round enemies during that segment - Meriel couldn’t one-shot and Esther didn’t hit hard enough after leaving Wellt. Despite his low growths, just giving him a statbooster or two makes him strong enough to stay relevant as a combat unit for way longer than he should have. This is before considering his utility as a staff user - he consistently had the highest healing output out of my staff users, which was crucial as the high enemy damage output meant that oftentimes Enteh alone didn’t cut it.

Holmes

He was all right for the first few maps he was playable in, but then came Map 13. The Harpies were scary enough that I resorted to just having Holmes enemy phase all 48 of them with a Bowgun, resulting in him becoming extremely overleveled for that part of the game (and also making a crit Bowgun in the process). He leveled extremely well and ended up being one of my better units. Come Split 3 though, I ended up giving Holmes essentially a skeleton crew as almost all of my good units went Runan route. He ended up doing surprisingly well for himself slogging through his maps with only like two other good units to back him up.

The Good Units

Will update this post later