Level 9 Weapons Progression Balance

Hack description

This patch adds 10 new weapon orb acquisition events to the game such that you will be able to upgrade all weapons to level 9 after completing the Pure Land before visiting the Mana Fortress.

This resolves a number of frustrating quirks in the original game. For instance, in the original game by the time you reach the Mana Fortress, despite the fact that there are 9 versions of each weapon, there are only enough weapon orbs available to upgrade your weapons to level 8, except for the glove and axe which are even more frustratingly stuck at 7.

In the original game you can farm the missing orbs in the Mana Fortress by defeating various monsters, but because they are rare drops, it takes an eternity to do so. And even if you do so, that still excludes upgrading the sword to level 9 (without exploiting some well-known glitches) because the game was hardcoded to only let you have the fully powered Mana Sword for the final boss fight once it is "activated" by the Mana Magic spell, allowing you to use it at full power for only a frustratingly short amount of time.

To resolve those issues, this hack makes the following changes:

- New glove orb chest in Elinee's Castle. (Monster in a dead-end room converted.)
- New glove orb chest in the Underground City. (There was always supposed to be two additional orb chests that spawned there, but in the original game they were broken.)
- New axe orb chest in Elinee's Castle. (Monster in a dead-end room converted.)
- New axe orb chest in the Underground City. (There was always supposed to be two additional orb chests that spawned there, but in the original game they were broken.)
- New sword orb chest in the Palace of Darkness. (Monster in a dead-end room converted.)
- New spear orb chest in Fire Palace. (1000gp chest converted.)
- New bow orb chest in Fire Palace. (Monster in a dead-end room converted.)
- New boomerang orb chest in Pandora ruins. (Monster in a dead-end room converted.)
- New javelin orb chest in in Pandora ruins. (Monster in a dead-end room converted.)
- The spear orb chest in the Gold Tower is now a whip orb.
- The Thunder Gigas will drop a spear orb instead of a sword orb.
- When the Mana Tree dies, it will give you the 9th sword orb.
- The cost of upgrading weapons is now half of what it is in the original game.
- There are new money chests in the following locations: a 50gp chest in a Pandora ruins dead-end room, three 1000gp chests in Northtown ruins dead-end rooms, and a 1000gp chest in a Grand Palace dead-end room.

To suit more modest tastes, there are also two subvariants to choose from bundled with this hack:

- Level 8 Weapons Progression Balance: Includes only the new axe and glove orb chests in the Underground City plus the new money chests.
- Mana Tree Grants Mana Sword: Includes only the changes that give you the 9th sword orb when the Mana Tree dies and the new money chests.
- Those two subvariants can be combined if desired.

Some important things to note:

- How to combine this with the Variable Width Font hack: 1. Apply VWF, 2. Remove header, 3. Apply this hack, 4. Apply this hack's VWF support hack.
- How to combine this with Relocalized: 1. Apply Relocalized, 2. Apply this hack, 3. Apply this hack's Relocalized support hack.
- To combine this with Remove Empire Castle Gate Permanently, apply this hack first.
- If you want to combine this hack with zhaDe's Gameplay Improvement Hack or Queue's Turbo patcher, you must uncheck the "No Missing Orb" option (if it is available in your build), as this hack supersedes that option in that hack.
- All variants of this hack also bundle "Mana Magic Unequip Fix" by Queue, which fixes the bug causing Spike Knuckle to be sometimes be equipped when Mana Magic fades. Also adjusts the non-spell version of the Mana Sword's stats.

Contributor	Type of contribution	Description
Kethinov	Hacking	Principal author
Queue	Hacking	Mana Magic Unequip Fix

Reviews

I HAVE THE POWAAAAAH!!	zoolgremlin	2019-11-05	Version 1.5
Tested as part of the ongoing Secret of Mana Turbo Project, by Queue (with various resources provided by zhaDe as part of Secret of Mana: New Game Improvement). Latest version used. With this, as with so many other mods submitted to this website, the Creator showcases his deep understanding of the Vanilla ROM. That understanding has allowed him to place additional Treasure Chests in areas long-familiar to a long-time player, that served no real purpose. It also eliminates the useless farming of Weapon Orbs in the endgame. It's important to note that the extra Orbs are not absolutely essential for beating the game, since the final form of Weapons does not improve player power as much as one would think. The real beauty of this mod is the reduction of grinding, along with opening up the game for further mods that could make the final Weapon forms serve an actual purpose. Either that, or the game could be played through casually, and still provide more entertainment to the prospective player. Picking up loot and hurrying through, instead of feeling the need to farm levels and cash. Something that the original game design didn't allow for, which is not so acceptable as it once was. No more glitching the game to get the Mana Sword prematurely, either!

A bit overkiill	hmsong	2019-08-28	Version 1.5
While I liked this patch, I think 10 extra orbs was a bit overkill. Secret of Mana wasn't really a difficult game. It really doesn't need so many orbs (which means extra attack power). The game was missing a Glove orb and an Axe orb (mostly due to it being "unfinished"), so having those 2 orbs was great, and having the final sword orb was awesome (without the glitch exploit). I think 3 orbs that I mentioned is better than 10 orbs.

Like the idea behind this for quick low level runs	Mr X	2019-04-03	Version 1.3
Like the idea of it, didn't know there were supposed to be two more additional axe/glove orbs in the original game. Tho I still wouldn't add that last sword orb, imo it should be only obtainable through mana magic, one reason being when I cast mana magic on a Mana sword, when the magic runs out the boy suddenly acts as if he has the glove weapon equiped. And if you apply the Relocalized hack as well the thunder gigas wont drop a spear orb, it still drops a sword orb and the mana tree wont drop the sword orb.

GuestLog in