Secret Of Evermore: Secret of Evermore 25th Anniversary Balance Patch

Secret of Evermore was originally released on October 1, 1995. 25 years have passed since, during which time people have called it on its share of issues, one of which is broken balancing. Focus on its problems, however, while they are significant, is ultimately a gesture of people being glass half-empty, something you just know is the case when I'm pointing out as much, and it shows when Secret of Evermore still has its share of inspirational gameplay.

The 25th Anniversary Balance Patch is designed to highlight this very same inspirational gameplay to the best of its ability while curbing the game's biggest balance issues with the design philosophies in mind. There's even some core changes involved; try out the Axes, for example, because their damage output against defensive brick enemies might just surprise you.

This is only for the non-headered US version (as the ROM Information below would indicate), and compatibility, effective or otherwise, with other patches such as the 2 Player Edition Patch has not been tested. (It's likely the 2 Player Edition works simultaneously without issue, but better safe than sorry.)

Secret of Evermore
25th Anniversary Balance Patch
By Master Knight DH

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. How to Apply
3. Changes
4. Ideas
5. Closing

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1. Introduction
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Happy 25th Anniversary to Secret of Evermore!

(Spoiler warning, although Secret of Evermore is 25 years old, so I doubt anybody will care.)

Over the last year as of Secret of Evermore's 25th Anniversary, I had been doing a Self Imposed Challenge playthrough of Secret of Evermore on YouTube, although I wasn't so sure of what rules to establish early on, just had an idea, only partially involved, of avoiding ingredient purchases to have the game be a survival story. I hadn't touched SoE for so long over the years, but of course I wanted to see how well it would hold up, and to my surprise, it does more than that. What invites the guy who did the trope workshop entry for Savvy Guy Energetic Girl to be glass half-full about a game that has obvious issues including its fair share of glitch-induced Unwinnable By Mistake scenarios? Well, Secret of Evermore has pleasantly surprising enemy design with the Volcano Slopes being the big attraction by subtly encouraging the player to have the boy and his dog follow the Back-To-Back trope, even doubling as an answer to how to incentivize bringing in AI support in a natural manner that isn't the raw unit headcount that Battalion Wars involves. This would be interesting from a game made in 2020, even if that can be due at least partially to game design evolution being questionable, and Secret of Evermore was made in the 90s, only 10 years after the release of Super Mario Bros. to make sure game design philosophies wouldn't have been well-documented, and its misprogramming was far from a unique problem when Final Fantasy 6 has the Sketch Bug that can go as far as to corrupt your game cartridge, something that wouldn't even be possible to mulligan with backup saves.

What happens when you have the personal skill and troop care to show who is boss to a dangerous and enigmatic world like the one that Secret of Evermore generally takes place on? You get buffer tolerance for mazes, which Secret of Evermore is fond of to replicate the feeling of being lost, a reminder that the Boy is an Iron Woobie for putting up with its shenanigans the whole way through the way he does. The buffer tolerance is particularly useful for when you decide to remember fun (imagine that happening with a game) and do things like Body Count Competitions, and suddenly, all these design philosophies make sense, bolstering reasons why I would have been worried in the first place about wearing nostalgia glasses about Secret of Evermore, notably polished if dark graphics, a solid and well used soundtrack, and cases of The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything, and what we see is a solid game in the making that simply had its ambition hampered by time and resources, given that Secret of Evermore was still made in the mid-90s which would make not having solutions such as a Fetch Command (certainly something similar to Battalion Wars 1's Move Command) excusable by hindsight issues, was stuck with 3 MB to work with getting to the point of constricting the development team, and had to meet with deadlines that limited bugtesting.

Heck, I can point out why Carltron works as the villain even with the obvious plot twist that doesn't even work off of the excuse of Evermore's nature, especially because his Neat Freak tendancies contrast the Boy being clearly willing to crawl through the mud to get things done. What, you think just because I would point to my deceased parents' house standing as the symbol of people's sins of apathy when the fact that the maggot-filled toilet had been fixed to my surprise and the community refuses to lift a finger to help, I wouldn't recognize Carltron as hallmark of a Satanic Archetype? Besides, Carltron is kept in the background where he doesn't override the survival story, so the foreshadowing of his identity as the mysterious Big Bad works actually well despite his already being Obviously Evil. It goes to show what innately works about a mid-90s game that would even turn the Guide Dang It, Lost Forever, and The Computer Cheats tropes into proof positive of Tropes Are Tools.

Of course, the balance patch is made to bring up these design philosophies, because what happened is that there are immense imbalances, such that basically all the removed scoring of one review I saw that scored the game 37/50 is attributed to that problem. The Alchemy system being the worst culprit by a country mile, but there are also some issues between the physical weapons as well. I can say that Axes, which I used in my Self Imposed Challenge playthrough, are still playable enough, but their options are still not quite keeping up with the inevitable competition, so I end up coming up with a unique idea to fix as much. And yep, I'm taking different directions from the other balance patch that is around, the one by Ninakoru. That balance patch does have some good ideas of its own, but some others turn me off and I feel miss the point of given game design. My aim is to maintain what works while still mitigating the biggest issues that I can catch.

I can't promise to fix everything, including the ever so heinous Unwinnable By Mistake scenarios, and some bugs I will leave alone intentionally due to points of interest (Toaster Dog's infinite run comes to mind), but I can get to fixing what I can. But if all else fails, it's Bill's fault!

Oh, and for reference, I still advise buying the game if feasible, if only to support it, or at the very least come up with a more creative and hopefully honest way to provide a useful gesture to Secret of Evermore's innovation.

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2. How to Apply
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Both patches are fully functional with a fresh non-headered US ROM of Secret of Evermore. The full patch includes the Hit Roll Change patch making use of the freed up bytes from it. The patch's compatibility with other improvement hacks is untested, although I can expect that an non-headered US ROM version of the Co-Op patch would be safe. ...probably. ...just be wary of incompatability when using additional patches, okay?

Evermore-HitRollChange.ips adds only the ASM of the Hit Roll recalculation--while the math is admittedly clunky, it does provide over 1K bytes of free space.

Evermore-AnniversaryBal.ips is the full patch. Changes are in the section below.

Please report any critical issues you may have with the patch, although the ASM shouldn't be an issue.

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3. Changes
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Gameplay ASM:
-(1.0) Hit Roll value for comparing to RNG Seed now uses calculations instead of the 26x26 table involved - the table has some math pattern behind the values but is just too much of a bother to figure out. The calculations are blunt, but they are simple, and more importantly, this provides space for adding ASM or whatnot. I have this as its own standalone patch--the resulting free space is at $0FBBAB to $0FC02A, which is 1152 bytes worth. (YAY!)
--Slight advantage to Hit - the hit percentage now basically floors at 1/4 of the attacker's Hit stat, so now 99 Evade no longer makes the player basically invincible to physical attacks. Additionally, equal Hit and Evade values will result in 50% plus 1/8 of the attacker's Hit stat being the hit percentage, rather than the old 50%, and this will take top priority in calculations. This gives Hit a slight boost in its effectiveness in general, cutting down on the random Misses. Careful, this can work against your characters too.
--Defender's Evade is effectively reduced by 4 to a minimum of 0 for each Chargeup Level the attacker has at the time of hit - Evade scores in general are still a problem, and in the vanilla game, existent Evade, while it does become less of an issue over time, is still a problem forever. The whole purpose of Evade scores is to prevent stunlock spam, but that's only exploitable with sub-100% attacks. This provides full stamina attacks some leeway, and charged attacks are also less suffocated by failing to hit because the game simply said so. I also wish to point out that the physical intangibility for charged attacks goes away early if a hit is registered, on the very frame it happens too, so this change makes sure that clashes aren't suffocated as badly.
-(1.0, uses 3rd Party ASM from Assasin17) Silver Sheath bug fixed - goes without saying. Don't worry, the player will have the evasion nerfs to work with, so there's a trade-off within everything up to Thraxx. (And the Misses can still happen against the Raptors to call out mispositioning, so that fight's handling is ultimately unchanged.)
-(1.0) ATK and DEF values exceeding 32767 (basically negative numbers when Signed) set to 0 during damage calculations - fixing the saved stats buff bug wouldn't be easy, but this halts its abuses. No longer can negative ATK result in sub-100% attacks dealing 999 every hit, or negative Physical DEF provide effective invincibility against all physical attacks, both because of LSR instructions to make the numbers not care about being signed or not. Now any attempts to exploit underflow will be met with the stats being useless.
-(1.0) Axes now partially ignore Physical DEF, at a rate of Might/64 - the big selling point, this is to provide the Axes with more options and appeal. Make no mistake that Axes in vanilla SoE are still playable, but there's some reliance on the Level 3 Attack's extreme physical intangibility availability for decent usage, making the technical gameplay feel not as rewarding, compared to the Spears and Bazooka having ranged attacks speaking for themselves, and the Swords having faster attacks as well. This change provides Axes much needed leeway with their faster attacks, since the game does use subtraction defense, and to make sure the sense of progression is maintained, the ignored portion is based off of the Axe's Might, so the better Axes will be worth using instead of marginalized by worthless gains. The Level 3 Attack has practically minimal gain from this due to its magnified ATK, but the physical intangibility is more than enough.
-(1.0) Player character range attacks now have 4/5 ATK - When all is said and done, the Spears have been the dominant weapon family choice because they have charged up range attacks that can be used to wear down bosses. Reducing the javelin throws' attack power keeps them from getting out of hand, and this also weakens the Toaster Dog's insane attack power, although still strong enough to maintain the idea that the Boy is having to worry about wading through all the chaos during the final battles. I also changed up the Bazooka ammo types' attack ratings accordingly, only leaving the Cryo-Blast alone because you can still stock up on that. Oh, and yes, enemies don't have their projectiles weakened, so they're not even affected by this. C'est la guerre.
-(1.0) Weapon EXP is doubled and also provides minor leaked EXP for Level 1 weapons within the weapon family - A recent blind playthrough pointed out how having to grind weapons is a bother. Since Charged Attacks are meant to be part of the core gameplay, I can actually agree, though at the same time, I can also mention how the Weapon EXP for each weapon outright is meant to give a minor drawback to using the upgraded versions of the weapons and keep them from being objective upgrades. Doubled Weapon EXP will have the charged attacks be available sooner, and Weapon EXP to each Level 1 weapon in the same weapon family (excluding the active weapon) will also make Level 2 charged attack availability easier as well, albeit still needing to be worked for actively with the second used weapon and to a lesser extent the third. (The 4th one would likely be at 1:98 if you get the other 3 weapons to Level 3 first.) As a note, if you get a weapon to Level 2 by the leaked Weapon EXP, the game won't announce it, and getting available weapons to Level 2 shouldn't be hard now anyway.
-(1.0) Dog Attack EXP is doubled for Dog Attack Level 1 - As mentioned above, charged attacks is a designated part of the game. Although the Dog's attack in each of the first 3 regions uses the same script for all Attack Levels, the charged attacks do provide their physical intangibility that's useful for the Volcano Slopes Raptors, so having that available sooner would improve things by a country mile. Getting from Level 2 to Level 3 still provides the same Attack EXP, by the way.
-(1.0) Chaincasting is reduced to 4 casts at a time - It's debatable how intentional Chaincasting really was, but it's definitely a point of interest involved when playing as the Dog. I have kept Chaincasting for that, though of course, I have reduced the cast capacity to 4 to reduce its capability and also (hopefully) lock out a potential crash from too many spells being loaded at once.
-(1.0, Uses 3rd Party ASM from Assasin17) Particle Bomb/Cryo-Blast no longer have their ammo values fail to decrement - I have to hand it to Assassin17 for saving bytes used on the physical intangibility flag setting without removing it despite not having known what it does, making use of how the LDA, ORA, and STA procedures don't affect the Carry Flag, and having the 3 bytes used on setting the shot attack's pointer back up instead be relocated individually to handle stack pointer business. Oh, and having this make sure that the Particle Bomb/Cryo-Blast actually decrement properly.

Stat changes:
-(1.0) Item healing reduced - item healing is useful but it provides a bit of leeway for mistakes, particularly when Honey gets involved. Petals aren't weakened by that much (only 8 HPs) and Nectar is now a bit more reliant on the Moxa Stick but no more than expected. It's Honey that provides the easy healing, so reducing its effect to 160 HPs means that it isn't effectivley a full heal by the time even Gothica is reached. It will still be powerful, but not the challenge removal that it once was.
-(1.0) Pixie Dust uses Force Field script instead of Regenerate script - Regenerate is a Call Bead spell, and a notorious one to get at that, so having it be redundant with Pixie Dust's existence makes it into a waste. In fact, Pixie Dust replicating a Call Bead spell is a problem in and of itself. However, I couldn't go with another Call Bead spell or a stat buff spell, so that left Force Field, Barrier, or Energize. Obviously, Energize was out, and Barrier could be nerfed, but it still would have a healing effect, so I'm stuck with Force Field. In effect, Pixie Dust used to nullify fatal damage, but now it just nullifies one hit.
-(1.0) Armor values changed around - Overall, the Boy's armor pieces have been buffed to further promote the sense of progression that they're meant to involve. The Dog's Collars, meanwhile, remain almost the same because his Physical DEF is simply so high regardless, particularly with level ups meant to reward keeping him safe and sound.
-(1.0) Nectar, Honey, and Dog Biscuits cost more in general now - this weakens stronger healing item reliance, now that the player can't just stock up on healing items so easily. There wasn't much I could do about Essence, but then again, the 6 item limit of each type would prevent Essence from getting out of hand anyway.
-(1.0) Fire Eyes Village and the Sandpits now sell Wings in place of Pixie Dust - let's face it: Pixie Dust is a confusing mess. Wings, however, effectively works as an Exit spell, and doesn't have locations in Prehistoria where it could be abused. The Volcano Slopes Item Shop trader still sells Pixie Dust for having it in Prehistoria, but the 200 Talon price tag will keep it under control.
-(1.0) Professor Ruffleberg's computer now has the provided Boy equipment sold at about doubled prices - yep. Just to encourage using the second tier armor in Omnitopia.
-(1.0) Bones now sold at 250 Jewels per pack - only affects Barrier and Revive. Goes without saying.
-(1.0) Atlas Amulets now sold by Tinker at 2500 Gold Coins per pack - anybody who thinks I should keep Atlas limited should hold the pitchforks, because if you haven't noticed, this is still 500 Gold Goins per Atlas Amulet, and remember that Gold Coins have the highest per unit value of any currency. This simply provides a playstyle option where a player can go nuts with an ATK boost in a subtraction defense game but it will come at the cost of their economy, and the option isn't even available until after getting past Verminator anyway. Oh, and Tinker no longer sells Acorns because of this, like that's a problem. I also had to modify Ash's price to be lower, but the modification does fit.
-(1.0) Dry Ice now sold at Omnitopia Services Sector at 4000 Gold Coins per pack - vanilla TV Tropes said that Dry Ice isn't readily available from peddlers because of scarcity, but I can tell you from experience that Dry Ice is in fact used when handling online delivery of frozen foods such as breakfast sandwiches, which means it does see commercial use. I may as well have it available to buy in the futuristic setting of Omnitopia, though obviously at a high price to prevent easy Call Bead grinding. (I mean come on. You could still grind Call Beads in most rooms of Ebon Keep too. You never know when you could get 2 Call Beads in a row.)
-(1.0) The following spells now have forced singletargeting: Barrier, Cure, Energize, Reflect, Regrowth, Confound, Regenerate, and Aura - none of these spells have relevant multitarget penalty, so preventing their multitargeting keeps them from exploiting it.
-(1.0) Lightning Storm, Nitro, Storm, and Electra-Bolt now ignore Nitro - one of the Targeting Flags is to allow a spell to target an enemy independent of Stop status, but for whatever reason, this flag is never used. The purpose of this is to give these spells a niche purpose.
-(1.0) Shield now has forced all-targeting - I admit that I'm not fond of the division brand of damage reduction, but Shield is still a Call Bead spell, and one that is ultimately underused, particularly when it isn't obtained before bypassing Verminator. Well hey, it's not Barrier anyway.
-(1.0) Revive HP restoration reduced to 20 x (1+L) - the easier spell level ups would let Revive get to its higher Levels faster, and that would mean easier 500 HP revival if left unchecked. Obviously, I'm doing anything but with a spell built on a clear-cut fantasy premise.
-(1.0) Barrier duration reduced from 45 seconds to 10 seconds, Aura duration reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds - Barrier providing effective invincibility with too little in the way of blind spots made it into an indisputable Game Breaker. The short duration would make Barrier a LOT more skill based on the individual casts it's already made more reliant on here, eliminating its ability to make the other defense buffs redundant. Aura is also a backup Barrier that has even fewer blind spots, though is at least softened by being a Call Bead spell.
-(1.0) Regenerate duration reduced from 2 minutes to 30 seconds - just making the Auto-Revival effect usage more skill-based. In fact, I had checked this out of caution, and I'm still shocked by the INCREDIBLE duration the Auto-Revival status was given, Call Bead spell or not.
-(1.0) Spell EXP increased but Spell Level Multipliers now linear - this is actually to discourage grinding as I will get into. Ultimately, Level 9 now requires only the same number of casts that Level 5 did, but now has the same multiplier. The overfocus on grinding and power inflation is what makes so many alchemy spells so powerful that Flash, which has one of the lowest Might values of any attack spell, found itself seeing popular usage.
-(1.0) Flare and Storm Might Values swapped - Flare had lower Might for some reason despite being a relatively conditional hit.
-(1.0) Plenty of Alchemy Spell Might Values reduced - another contributor to the excessive effectiveness of alchemy spells is excessive Might Values, so lowering these will prevent them from rampaging as easily, with culprits such as Heal and the Gothica attack spells particularly being toned down as much as they are. Defend and Flash are the only spells to get an increase, but both also get other nerfing, see below.
-(1.0) Most Alchemy Spell Ingredient Costs increased - the idea behind this is to encourage resource management, which the game has flashes of with the Alchemy system, but they don't get put to full use due to the low requirements generating a LOT of cost-effectiveness with the spells. The increases are variable, and what I can say is, try out what works for you.
-(1.0) Boy Magic DEF growth changed from 1 to 1.25 - this is to punctuate the Boy being a sort of trap buster by giving him an edge over later boss spells, while also punctuating to protect the Dog, whose survival can draw spell targeting to prevent the single targeting that would make use of the subtraction Magic DEF that the player is given.
-(1.0) Dog Physical DEF growth changed from 6 to 5 - when all is said and done, the Dog's Physical DEF growth is simply too high and causes him to take low damage from attacks even without Collars. However, overnerfing it would be forgetting that he's supposed to be tempo-based and his leveling up is supposed to be the player's reward for his optional safety. 1 less point of growth should be just right: ideally, the Dog shouldn't be a Glass Cannon in terms of simple raw stats, but should be treated as one. It helps that the Dog has his mobility effectively tied to progression similarly to the boy's combat ability.
-(1.0) Toaster Dog stat boosts changed to +100 ATK (from +80) and +200 Physical DEF (from +250) - this is to make the Dog's Omnitopia form more of a rocket tagger while the nerf is still applied regardless. The offense boost would simply soften the player projectile nerfing, but would also still promote progression. The defense nerf is simply to make sure that the Dog's lead over the Boy is marginalized, particularly important when the only enemies left in the game to use alchemy are Metal Magmar and Face.
-(1.0) Axe L2 Attack now has its hits reaches further north - for whatever reason, the Axe L2 Attack couldn't reach Face from the south, although it seems this can be credited to Face's hitbox showing signs of being small. This is to provide an extra option to the Axe so that it doesn't have to get around the barricades where the Boy can be caught by the other Face's Flash sends.
-(1.0) Frame data generally evened out - just a Just Bugs Me change pretty much. Although this does go for making the Bone Crusher and Sword go through their attacks slightly faster.
-(1.0) Bazooka mobility bonuses removed - it doesn't make sense for carrying a heavy weapon to improve mobility. Enough said.
-(1.0) Dog Sniffing now functions as power walking - let's not kid ourselves: the whole Sniff mechanic has some tedium behind it, and one big reason is from the Dog moving so slowly when Sniffing. By making the Sniffing into a power walk instead, this will help reduce tedium, and it has no risk of breaking gameplay, since the AI Dog won't know how to make use of it; instead, the player controlling the Dog simply gets an actual mobility option, allowing Dog control to be more viable, while I won't have to change values that could affect cutscenes in important ways.

Enemy changes:
-(1.0) All Drop Rates other than by Mosquitos increased by 25% - this is supposed to be a survival story, about making use of what you can find to keep your strength up. Improved drop rates reduce the reliance on just buying things at a shop.
-(1.0) Quite a few more enemies now lose 30 Hit VS the AI partner - obviously, this involves luck for the most part, but enemies having the 30 Hit Penalty VS AI Partner flag does encourage letting the AI partner join in the fray, which would help with Dog control viability.
-(1.0) Plenty of stat shifting - goes without saying. It would take a while to go into detail, but if I have this done right, you could see that I'm intending Gameplay And Story Integration.
-(1.0) Maggots and Gore Grubs now have Poison infliction chance - yep, the filth that robbed my parents of their lives has come to do so to the Boy and Dog in the same manner: through slow, painful fatal damage. However, as a mercy, Maggots at least have 40 Hit in addition to being one of the enemies to get the 30 Hit Penalty VS AI Partner trait. Some of the scenarios may be interesting with this....
-(1.0) Thraxx's Acid Rain damage is reduced - let's be blunt: Thraxx is not nice to newbies. He is difficult and complicated enough where he stands, and although some of his design is meant to be newbie friendly to avoid beating the player over the head about figuring to use burst damage as plenty of bosses in the game involve, the Acid Rain casts are still too unforgiving. Reducing the used Might value from 50 to 40 reduces the problems with it being an undodgeable attack in an ACTION RPG, while still maintaining its threat.
-(1.0) Thraxx's Heart bonus damage taken is less random - another mechanic that gets communicated poorly, with only active script checking being able to provide any sort of clarification. This is the mechanic that is meant to give players a way to defeat Thraxx without relying on the burst damage of the Bone Crusher's Level 3 attack. The problem in vanilla version is that it is too random, which caused some confusion on the Wikia about how it worked. Now instead of the RNG multiplier being 1, 2, 9, or 10, it's now 4 to 7, maintaining the average of 5.5 while providing more coherent results. I also set up this change for Coleoptera's Heart both for consistency and to give Corrosion and Slow Burn something to work with against her.
-(1.0) Magic damage values in general are otherwise higher - just to make sure the net result is to handle dog care well. A few bosses are buffed beyond this patchwork, so you would want to be mindful as well.
-(1.0) Verminator's chance of rolling Explosion is reduced, and his chance of rolling Drain or Acid Rain is increased - while I still take issue with Verminator's fight in general, I wouldn't know how to insert coding that would make his fight more dynamic. However, I CAN easily nerf his single biggest bite of beeswax: doublecast Explosion, which if done against the Boy singletarget on both casts WILL kill him from full health at expected stats, and can even do as much through endgame stats. With Explosion reduced from the 5/16 roll to a 3/16 roll, reducing the doublecast Explosion on Boy singletarget chance to 9/4096. That scenario probably can still happen, but the rolls would have to be particularly bad more consistently. Drain and Acid Rain, each having a 5/16 chance now increased to 6/16, aren't as problematic, particularly when even doublecast Acid Rain won't quite kill the Boy from 300 HPs in general.

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4. Potential Improvements
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Keep in mind, of course, that this patch isn't perfect, although then again what is. Still, there are limits to what I can do before a deadline or within the space of a 3 MB ROM. There are some things that are a case of YMMV (the Bazooka 0% on Energize is among them) so I didn't care to touch them, but there are things that I simply couldn't get around to; I can attest that I already haven't even actively tested the balance, although I can be sure there are no added ASM bugs to potentially cause issues. Also of note that I wouldn't want to focus too much on Secret of Evermore, so if anybody would pick up where I left off, that would be welcome, providing you talk it over. (Contact info in Closing section.) Here are my ideas off the top of my head:

-Character text updates with these changes in mind. Alchemy ingredient requirements could be stated incorrectly, and I want to say the woman in Prehistoria who teaches about items would include about Pixie Dust. And yes, I know Explosion will still say "destroys barriers" even though it doesn't and that definitely should be fixed. (I wouldn't fixed "tartget"; that bit of silliness is welcome to see at least.) In general, I'm more focused on the gameplay.
-Sniff locations providing more ingredients, which would have further encouraged looking around. I couldn't get something going because the game never tries to set a higher value at too many sniff locations. I had to focus on more important stuff regardless, but this highlights that yes, I know how the developers were feelling when they were making the game.
-Soft lock fixes. Unfortunately, this goes well into scripts and/or ASM, so I couldn't do a heck of a lot about any of the Unwinnable By Mistake scenarios.
-Revamping the Verminator fight - seriously, the Verminator fight has no excuse for its design. My changes are under what I had to work with, and honestly, if I could have Verminator possible to fight with melee only and then have him actually use the scythe in his concept art, I would.

If I get around to making an update, I will likely add more points as they come to mind. Right now, I'm dealing with a rush job.


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5. Closing
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Credits to anybody besides myself (Master Knight DH) for the lion's share of the patch's handling:
-Square USA for making the game in the first place and all that implies (obligatory copyright Squaresoft, blablabla)
-BlackSliver for creating the SOE Tiles Viewer program, which has an AI script viewer that is useful for finding given aspects
-Assassin17 for making sub-patches that can be found at http://assassin17.brinkster.net/soe_patches.htm
-Ninakoru for their balance patch providing ideas because some of the aspects do ultimately work out
-The Secret of Evermore community for their support and their resource provisions, particularly with the Wikia
-MarioMastar (who isn't in the SoE community) for beying a loyal friend in no shortage of trying times

Contact info:
-Discord: MasterKnightDH#2492
-Secret of Evermore Discord link: https://discord.com/invite/qs3yKRy
-Email: mknight735@yahoo.com

Database match: Secret of Evermore (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (v. 20180813-062835)
File/ROM SHA-1: 79E7738630FFF5699217EF58ECC421BC8FCBCD89
File/ROM CRC32: A5C0045E