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Everlong

Updated the patch download with fixes for today's reported bugs, and corrected a possible mistake I introduced that prevents skills from equipping.

I still need to test the skill swapping bug further with some player save files since I'm unable to reproduce it.

Everlong

author=Missileboater
...


There's definitely something in that room of the Phoenix Cave you mentioned that is causing the menu to behave incorrectly. If you could link or email your save files before and after the bug, that would be helpful. I'm not able to reproduce the bug.

Keen's second skill scroll is now Blink, but was previously Dispel Slash. The visual display is incorrect, but the activation code functions. Easy fix.

Yellow Beret accidentally had Muddle prevention checked. Probably an errand mouse click, since Paralyze is directly adjacent in the list.

The Nemus Aevum chest you refer to must be the Dragonslayer. There is a hidden staircase beneath a tree, just barely partially visible. I don't want players to miss this chest, however, so I'm moving the tree to reveal the steps.

Some versions of Drakeor's Spear Rain did not have Piercing attribute despite the skill description. Hence any Piercing weapons, including Keen's throwing stars, weren't more effective. Likely an oversight from when the skill was changed to no longer require a spear and instead lower physical resistance.

The world map labels for those temples were corrected, but I forgot to also change the map system interface. Thanks for catching that.

Prismatic Eye should ignore and dispel Reflect similar to other dispel skills. This skill was somewhat recently changed to cause dispel, and I forgot to flag the Reflect exemption.

There's no help totem in Pullus Unda I recall, and the dialog doesn't mention having to reveal the map anymore. In the current version it's intended the player starts with the complete map, rather than wasting time searching every nook for missing heroes.

Guardian Dragona's incorrect dialog is probably a copy-paste I forgot to adjust. I suppose she's technically correct if you wrap around the entire world, but that doesn't help players.

You're absolutely right about Sammy feeling less powerful than other heroes in the period between rebirth and obtaining ultimate weapons that give him equal physical attacks. This previously occurred to me, which is why the Gospel and Stingray, weapons you acquire shortly after the airship, were buffed. I've decided to give Sammy a bigger boost, introducing some power creep for his Forgotten Continent weapons. The weapons you buy for him after the airship are also now equal to those of other heroes in ATK power and multipliers, since this is the anticipated moment the average player begins to rebirth heroes.

Drakeor's Kurgalaxes is the equal of Beomaust and Ultima, the most powerful spells in the game at 12500 base damage. He needs high magic to reach the upper tiers of damage. Remember, skills drastically increase in power as your STR and MAG go up. Keen's probably reached his full potential, but Drakeor needs 1800+ MAG to max out Kurgalaxes. It's also a Breath, Dragon, and Summon attack that lowers those resistances and has spell penetration on its final tier. It becomes a godly skill, you'll see.

Everlong

author=Missileboater
Thanks for the heads up on the autosave, might as well turn it on if the slots can't be used otherwise.

Right now, I'm having a problem with finding the Shankha summoning item. Apparently, it is located in the East Tower, but I've been searching there for a while and I still can't find it. Did manage to find the Bloodstone though, so I might be missing it.

==Nevermind, I found it in the Tower of Auctus instead. Apparently the book entry on Meridion is incorrect on the location of the Shankha.==


Thanks for reporting that error. An incorrect hint book is no use at all. The Shankha was moved when the Tower of Auctus became accessible again late in the game. Previously, I did not want players to miss such a crucial item, but those two summoning stones needed to be spaced out.

A new patch incorporating bug fixes for the issues you and other users have reported since the last update is now available. Let me know if any of the corrections fail, or if you discover more issues. I'm particularly interested in the skill swap error, and whether this patch will eliminate it.

Download it here.

Everlong

author=Missileboater
Hey Everyone,

Recently re-discovered this game after quite a long time (about 5 years ago with an early RM2k3 release). I was surprised to see that this game is still being updated so I decided to check it out, and I am amazed at how much has changed. It's still early into the game, but I already see a lot of new stuff and it feels surprisingly fresh.

I did discover some bugs though:
---
1) In Vanguard, a set of gray tiles (such as the ones surrounding the garden fountain) appear over the characters instead of under them.

2)Currently going through the Tower of Propugnaculum, and apparently I got hit with the skill mix bug. Justin suddenly got Prismatic Eye and Banishing Blade (Keen's skills if I remember correctly) as well as Arctica (from the animation, looks like Vixen's Ice summon). Since I recently got the new Lesser Shard accessory, I thought that was the cause of it and fiddled around with it along with the skill shard menu to try to fix it. However, all that did was also give Justin the Psyche ability as well.

I don't know if it's the Lesser Shard specifically, considering I initially equipped it on Meredith and she (along with Glen and Vetu) were unaffected. I do have a save before I started the series of dungeons (before Internus Vorago), so I can reload if things break really bad. It is strange how I do get access to skills from characters I haven't recruited yet, although hilariously does make Justin pretty powerful with his mix.

==Found a few more===

3) When talking to the merchant in the Airship Fleet battle with Glen's party, Sammy's and Keen's dialogue also pop up despite them not being in the party.

4) I was using the autosave feature at the beginning, but recently disabled it since I manually save after every little thing anyway, so I rather have the extra 2 save slots. However, during the first visit to Fhorestian, when I used Slot 14 to save, and the game changed Glen's name to (Autosave 1). This persisted into other saves and also during dialogue. Saving in Slot 15 changes his name to (Autosave 2).
---

I'll report if anything else strange happens. Despite the weirdness that happened, I am enjoying the game a lot. Thank you DJC, for making and maintaining Everlong. And I honestly won't mind paying for the game, for the amount of content, systems, and the interesting fights that happen later on that I can recall.


Glad to hear you're enjoying the current iteration of Everlong, and thanks for the bug reports.

I'm about to leave on vacation for two weeks, but when I return I'll take a close look at the skill swap bug and finish the next patch, including fixes for the other issues you mentioned. The name change bug is from a custom plugin. There's little chance of an update from the author, so I would suggest not using those slots. There is a fix in the current version that should reset the names. I STRONGLY recommend leaving auto save enabled! There are rare engine crash bugs I am unable to address and the auto save feature may save you hours of lost progress.

I also found a way to address matski's concerns about the healing skill cap. Conditions can heal (or damage) using percentages, and this does circumvent the limit. I'm going to make Blessing, Chakra, Celerity, etc. inflict a condition that expires immediately before the next turn. When the condition ends, the target is healed for the specified percentage. Hopefully that will resolve the outstanding issue of having to rely on healing items, rather than skills, when excessive HP totals are reached.

Everlong

author=StarlitStorm
Hello!
First of all, Thank you for this wonderful game with a wonderful story so far, it's so long, I've spent many hours playing this game and it still has no end, just wow! I love the arena-battles with random handicap so much, really exciting and i have never seen something like this in an RPG-Maker Game! Love it!:D

But I have one big problem - The Black Dragon Puzzle.

- I just don't get how to light the torches in the 5-torches-room. There comes some white flash with every new order I try, but no door is opening. I tried making out the 2 torches in the hallway, where the both open the door to the 5-tourches room, or i made out the 2 lights in the first room with the 2 statuettes. But whatever I try, nothing happens.. :/
In which order do I have to light the torches in the 5-torches-room? And then what?
I really don't understand and nothing seems to work...
I hope someone can help me with this... :/


Glad to hear you're enjoying the game!

The Black Dragon Trial definitely has some of the most difficult puzzles in the game. What I think I'll do is add more dragon statues to each room in the first puzzle to help explain (in riddles) what lighting the torches accomplishes. That should hopefully clear up that different combinations, and sometimes dousing torches, is the solution to opening another door.

Everlong

author=matski
I'm not sure exactly what else you could do outside of the issues that occur when you level grind. However, I seriously would consider for each time you unlock another set of 99 levels, you should be able to heal more than once starting after the renew levels (2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, and so forth) but if you do try to experiment with that, cut the magic required down by the same amount of times the spell will be cast in a row. In my opinion, this would solve most of the problems that occur when you level grind and fight a boss that casts something that is % stat based and can't recover. Another solution to this problem is to cast regain because I bet at some point, I will recover 9999!
Another suggestion is to increase items you can carry to 999! You have so much treasure chests in the game that at some point you will get 99 of an item.
Personally, I am not a fan of being able to change boss/battle difficulty anytime during the game. I would suggest removing that feature to change game difficulty until you either unlocked new game+/continue+. I am also not a fan of games in which monsters get stronger as you level up. It did work in FFVIII but there are other RPG maker games in which didn't work well.
The frozen status on my character with soul seal was the condition I was talking about. I was underwater and shocked when it occurred. Speaking of underwater, my game moved a lot slower. A possible reason is that I played a game from a flash drive, not direct from a hard drive (so I can play it on different computers). I am not sure if that what caused it to slow down, or the map in general.
I also would see if you can add more mp3 to the game soundtrack instead of midi's. You could always offer an expansion pack or an option to people if they want to upgrade to mp3 or stick with the midi's.
You could also add an accessory in which the only enemies you encounter in an area are rare ones.
Outside of these suggestions, this is an impressive game! It would be interesting to see if a prequel would be made about the stories of the four legendary hero's. I don't think this game really explained why they didn't seal up the bad guy.


Unfortunately engine limitations prevent more than 99 items, I've not seen a practical hack to address that. Same with healing skills in battle capped at 9999. There's no way to enable multiple castings of particular skills, nor reduce their cost based on that. I don't recall if items like Elixirs work properly in battle, since they are actually percentage based recovery. You're correct that Regen is an excellent healing solution later in the game, especially equipment that inflicts that enchantment. I'm considering a White Wind skill or a double cast item for White Wizards, but I'll have to think about the difficulty of implementing it.

I've made quality of life additions requested by players over the years to empower them to play the game as they wish, and have fun while doing so. That's why Story Mode can be toggled at any time, or difficulty adjusted. If a player wants to preserve challenge, they don't have to touch those options at all. The auto balance mode is specifically for players who want monsters that adjust in difficulty. If a player does not like that, they can remain on default difficulty, or their own custom setting. Auto balance mode also features some power creep. As heroes approach level 200, their STR and MAG grow faster than monster statistics adjust. Similarly, the dual wield penalty is negated over the course of gaining those levels. Most monster skills are fixed damage with minimal STR or MAG influence, so gaining more HP definitely helps against those attacks. Using source items to boost hero statistics is just as important as gaining levels in the end game. Grinding is never necessary with a good strategy in Everlong.

There's a special visual effect when underwater in the ToKM that the rm2k3 engine is terrible at rendering. That's probably the cause of the slow down.

Mp3s do not loop or playback properly in rm2k3, and there are file size restrictions to consider. This particular host would probably not allow a full soundtrack download. We're talking hundreds of MB extra, which is too bad since I did put significant effort into the soundtrack.

The Siren item is the best solution I could implement with regards to selecting rare encounters. Depending what location and room it's used in, you will call one or a number of specific encounters with rare monsters, or foes that drop rare items. There isn't an easy way to otherwise alter the random monster encounters as implemented in the editor.

I have considered a at least the story of a prequel focusing on the four legendary heroes. If I ever do more significant work, it would probably be a better use of time to remake Everlong in a modern engine as a commercial game. There's a number of plot holes or poorly explained story elements because so many character arcs and events were reduced or cut altogether. Welana (one of those four heroes) was in love with Expirius and couldn't bear to kill him. All four heroes were reluctant because he was their former liege and they were technically rebels. Also there was uncertainty if his spirit could even be destroyed so long as the fallen god Entropy was yet to conclude his pact with Expirius. None of that made it into the game, sadly.

If you have the time I'd really appreciate if you could write a review on this website to let other players know what you think of the game. Thanks again for all the feedback you provided, the bug fixes and changes I can make will be in the next update!

Everlong

author=matski
I will argue you have a flaw in your formula. I dare you to level up all of your characters to the maximum and fight enemies that cast overpower. I bet they will do over 60k damage a pop. Fortunately you should be able to hit the enemies 99,999 x 2 by then. You will only be able to heal for 9999. Regardless, I cheated and dropped hp stat to 0.1% and I managed to beat him even though I don't think it did anything to his hp.

I also found a couple more observations:

- Somehow Meredeith inherited other people's skills. I don't know how she got them but it I noticed it after I switched party members.
- Revive will fully restore a characters hp outside of battle even if they are alive.
- I noticed in Dreaming forest battle arena battle music only plays during battle. Victory fanfare plays when you win.
- Keen knows a skill that where the game tries to load it, it will crash and take me to the title screen. I tried removing all of his skills and the game still crashes.
- I have found some bugs in the bonus dungeon.
** One has to deal with the monkey puzzle. I got continuous pop-up about a sound and it kept looping until I forced it closed.
**Another bug had to deal with equipping an item that allows you to breathe underwater and going there, leaving, unequipping it, and entering a different area that doesn't have water but plays the same background music as the water area. The timer appeared and started ticking down. Timer followed me to world map. When I went into an underwater area and left, the timer disappeared. IF you need more clarification let me know.
** One of the monsters that casted a spell that gives random stats "freeze" my character that had "conditions" amulet on.
** The boss gave one of my characters abilities from another character after he casted the spell that causes other characters to join battle. The character that received extra abilities stayed in battle.

I can't figure out how to get into Incultus Regnum Basement. Where do I start or has this been removed in the current version? Outside of all if this, I completed arena and I think I have completed this game (finally). Do you get anything special completing the game at 100%?


The Overpower formula doubles your DEF and subtracts it from the damage total. Let's say Drakeor has end game shield, armor, and helm equipped for a total of 4000 DEF. This would reduce damage by 8000. Now use Barkskin item or Protect enchantment equipment to double that. Use Beherits to purchase more Vitality Source items, use them on Drakeor, each is worth 100 DEF. Ten is another 2000 reduction. Beherits can be farmed from tough monsters like Behemoths and Red Dragons, which can be called in certain rooms using the Siren item. Use Crimson Beherits to add 50% to your DEF, a massive increase.

However, since this is a solo fight, and the Overpower skill is not meant to be a major obstacle in the battle, I'm reducing Kurgalaxes' multiplier. I'm also adding a special modifier if not in Hard Mode. The reduction will be multiplied by the ratio of current Max HP to the normal limit of 10000.

If you set the custom monster HP extremely low, bosses will automatically adjust to a certain minimum so they don't instantly die and require at least one hit. Otherwise, necessary scripts might not execute at the start of the battle. There was an error with the listing for Kurgalaxes true HP, it's not pulled directly from the database due to editor limitations. That may have something to do with why his HP didn't seem reduced.

I've seen the skill mix and invalid skill crash bugs once, but I still don't have any explanation other than an engine processing error or memory corruption. I'll add some code to try and prevent skills outside the database ID limits from being changed, but the engine should already check for this.

Same deal with command abilities swapping between heroes after Khaer Magnus uses Dimensional Vortex. The restoration of commands is hard coded to specific heroes, I didn't even use variables. If you still have your save file with these errors present, I'd like to take a look since these bugs are not reproducible. If they were, every time Skill Shards are refreshed (extremely often) or you fight a battle in ToKM these problems should occur.

Revive is meant to be a full heal in addition to removing the Fallen condition, hence the high cost and lack of any other full heal skill. It only works correctly in battle if the target is Fallen, however, another limitation of the break damage limit hack.

The battle arena music for DF and ToKM was not correct if you switched it in the jukebox due to an oversight on my part. These two areas were added to the arena in a recent version, and I forgot to add new cases for them.

The monkey sound effect was not playing for some reason in the ToKM monkey chase puzzle. I didn't receive an error message, but it was silent. Maybe the file was corrupted or encoded improperly. I tweaked the sampling and bit rate settings, and the new sound file worked for me. I'll include it in the next patch.

The Gills item was added long after the ToKM was first introduced, so I had to add some code, but forgot to make it not execute when not underwater.

If the skill that inflicted Frozen status on your hero with Soul Seal equipped was Epidemic, that's intentional. It bypasses any immunities, spreading conditions from the target to others. Actually it's due to an engine limitation where I couldn't implement the skill practically another way.

Achieving 100% in the statistics viewer is just meant to tell you when you've completed all challenges, and for anyone crazy enough to do timed speed runs. The Incultus Regnum Basement was removed from the game. It didn't serve much purpose and the quest was repurposed to salvaging the Inceptum.

Thanks again for reporting all these bugs. Let me know if I'm interpreting what you meant incorrectly in any cases. Any suggestions for significant issues that need to be addressed within the game?

Everlong

I'm guessing the "could not create stream" error is the result of a memory leak, possibly from a DynRPG plugin. Unfortunately it's impossible to track or recreate consistently, but thankfully the autosave functionality comes to the rescue.

Kalledemos is correct about Kurgalaxes and the Overpower enemy skill. Extra levels will help you survive in general, but some attacks damage based off percentages. If you're unsure how the skill calculates damage, follow Kalledemos' advice and check out the Help and Tactics section in the Options Menu. All special monster attacks you have seen in battle are listed with their damage algorithms. Overpower is based on a percentage of Max HP, but reduced significantly by DEF. You need to equip Drakeor with higher DEF armor, or use an item to boost it during battle. If your DEF is high enough, you'll laugh as Overpower inflicts no damage and you get a free turn. When you face Beomaust and some other bosses, you'll similarly need high DEF or Overpower will devastate your party.

Also it's not possible to have a single skill perform multiple times, like a double heal. Otherwise, I would have integrated this into the game.

Everlong

Thanks for the picture of the Vanguard tileset bug, that makes the error perfectly clear.

If you dispel the positive conditions that Kurgalaxes inflicts upon himself with the Chrysalis skill, then the animation will replay on his next turn to signify the enchantments were restored. As long as Kurgalaxes is in Chrysalis mode, any damage is healed 2x, and Might, Focus, and Protect cannot be removed. After Kurgalaxes takes no action for four turns, Chrysalis ends and he attacks you again. You can then dispel the conditions successfully and deal damage once more.

The soundtrack archive link works for me. It's a regular .zip format, and I'm using the program 7zip to extract.

If you want to preserve some challenge and receive more benefits from combat, choose the automatic monster balance setting in Options after your heroes are reborn. This scales monsters to the average statistics and assumed damage output of your heroes.

Everlong

author=matski
Here are some more observations and some minor bugs I found:

- Is there a way you could increase item storage from 99 to 999? After completing the forbidden continent, I usually have 99 precious stones/opals/etc and unable to unload them unless I am overlooking something. If you can't increase item to 999, you could add another sidequest where you can recruit a character that can hold excess items.
- When your character is in "fury," I noticed that the character's accuracy decreases at least 50 - 100%. Is this intentional? (I think it's a flaw in RPG Maker 2003)
- In chocobo bomb, the 2nd or 3rd chocobo doesn't explode. It just disappears. (Chocobo bomb I find difficult and took me a while to beat)
- Chocobo waterfall, I went through some of the crystal pillars towards the end of the course. I probably wouldn't have been able to beat it if I wasn't able to go through them. (This is also rather difficult)
- Healing in battle max is 9999. When I heal outside of battle, it will heal over 9999.
- Is there a way you can use mp3 instead of midi for some of the game's soundtrack? (I was thinking of changing a couple of the game's tracks for personal preferences, however, I noticed when I play some tracks on a player, it plays 2x fast at normal playing speed)


There isn't a way to increase item storage that I'm aware of. Sell your maximum items to merchants. On the Forgotten Continent this includes vendors at Wolverton, and the mages at Antiquus Fanum.

Hit % for the Fury condition is currently at 75%. This is in addition to your weapon's hit rate, which is not listed in item descriptions due to lack of space. Most weapons have 90-100% hit rates.

Sometimes it appears chocobos aren't exploding, but that's because more than one battle animation cannot play at the same time. Every time a new bomb explodes, any current animation still running quits and is replaced by the new one. Hit box detection only at the moment of the explosion. A good strategy is to run toward bombs to group them in an area until they're about to explode, then retreat away to an empty corner.

Chocobo Waterfall, and a few other mini-games and puzzles, have bad hit box detection. The engine just doesn't do a good job tracking and comparing coordinates fast enough. I put in significant effort trying to proof the Phoenix Cave puzzles, but it's not worth the time attempting to address these engine limitations.

The engine hack that breaks the damage limit of 9,999 HP unfortunately does not apply to healing in battle. I do not know of any workaround for this.

I previously offered a high quality soundtrack with mp3s that were recorded using superior midi soundfonts to those the regular engine uses. Unfortunately this causes loading and looping issues with rm2k3, and the download was burdensome in size. Using midi the full package archive is a reasonable ~67MB. Some tracks play at 2x speed because this halved the file size (and sample quality) back when .wav was employed for more tracks. Here's a link to what used to be the full soundtrack, but a new track or two might be absent:
http://www.nealien.com/Everlong/Files/Everlong_Soundtrack.zip