Garon's Shop 2.0

After much coding and testing, I am pleased to announce the release of Garon's Shop 2.0! The new Garon's Shop is a complete rewrite that brings PSOv2 much closer to feature parity with the GC version and addresses the progression problems with the old system.

Before going into the new features, here is how the new Photon Point system works:

• Photon Points are now only awarded in Ultimate mode.
  
• The point scale has been rebalanced. You now get 1-12 points per quest, depending on the area and length.
  
• Playing Insane mode doubles the points awarded.
  
• You can now hold up to 1000 points.
  

As before, Garon's Shop is divided into vendors who offer various services. Here's what you can buy:

Arms Shop (Regular weapons)

• You can add 5% to an attribute of your choice with 50 points.
  
• The existing attributes and grind are preserved.
  
• You cannot exceed 30% on any one attribute.
  
• The sum of all attributes cannot exceed 90%.
  
• You can remove an existing attribute with 150 points. Once you remove that attribute, you can start raising a different attribute.
  

For example, if your weapon has 40% Native and 35% Machine, you can only add up to 15% to a third attribute, because 40 + 35 + 15 = 90. If you don't want Machine, you can erase it. At that point you could raise the 15% attribute to 30% and add another attribute up to 20% (40 + 30 + 20 = 90).

Unlike the old shop, the new shop gives you a much stronger incentive to hunt better equipment. A 5/15/20 weapon may not be very good on its own, but it saves you 400 points on the way to getting 30/30/30 compared to a 0% weapon.

Arms Shop (ES/S-Rank weapons)

• You can change the type of an ES weapon for 50 points. For example, if you have a "COOL SABER +50", hiding the type would make the weapon say "COOL +50". You can also reverse the process to make the type visible again, if you so desire. This mechanic replaces the need to use the "NO TYPE" option in Challenge mode to get random weapons with the type hidden.
  
• You can change the name of an ES weapon for 100 points. The new name is limited to 8 letters using A-Z only, just like ES weapons obtained from Challenge mode.
  

Guards Shop

• You can add slots to armour for 50 points each. Unlike the old shop, you only need to pay for the slots you need. If your armour already has 3 slots, you only need to pay for 1 slot.
  
• You can add DFP and EVP to armours and shields. You only need to pay for the difference between the maximum DFP/EVP and the current stats. Each point of DFP/EVP costs 10 Photon Points.
  
• You can combine 3 weaker units to create 1 stronger unit. Elemental units cost 50 points, physical units cost 100 points, and special units cost 200 points. The quest has the list of possible combinations.
  

Note that you will probably not want to upgrade your armour and shield DFP/EVP unless you already have decent stats. I set the price high on purpose so that you still have a reason to hunt better equipment, rather than to just max out the first item you find.

WARNING: PSO PC players must have the Shield Fix Patch in order to upgrade shields! The game will erase the extra DFP if you try to upgrade a shield without the fix! You have been warned!

Tools Shop

• You can buy various items for points, such as grinders and materials.
  
• You can combine 3 Mongrinders into 1 Trigrinder or 3 Digrinders into 2 Trigrinders for 5000 Meseta. (The only purpose of this feature is to help you save bank space.)
  
• You can buy and redeem Garon vouchers.
  

Garon vouchers allow you to store tools for later use. For 10000 Meseta, you can exchange 5 tools for a voucher. You can redeem the voucher later to get your items back whenever you want. You can have up to 20 vouchers for each type of tool, thus storing 100 of each item without needing mules for bank space.

Finally, you now have the option of selling unwanted rares for Photon Points. With a few exceptions, 9, 10, 11, and 12 star rares sell for 1, 2, 3, and 4 points, respectively. Since all units effectively have the same rarity, units sell for 1 point each. You cannot sell "basic" rares that lack unique models, nor can you sell ES weapons. You can visit the scientist in the Principal's office to sell your items, rather than dropping them on the floor or selling them for Meseta.

Of course, it wouldn't be any fun if there weren't a hidden feature, too...

Here are a few more items of note:

• As with the old shop, only carry ONE of the item you want to upgrade. The quest will take the first one it finds in your pack, so if you have more than one, you might upgrade the wrong one. This is particularly important for selling!
  
• The quest must delete your items in order to read their current stats. This means the item you're upgrading isn't in your pack while you're performing the upgrade. If you get disconnected during the upgrade process, the item you're trying to upgrade is PERMANENTLY DELETED. There is no way to avoid this limitation, so I won't be performing restorations if you get disconnected. If your connection seems laggy or unstable, you shouldn't shop until it improves. As always, remember to create local and server-side backups. You have been warned!
  
• I've had to update the legit checker to allow these changes, so hopefully I did everything correctly.
  
• You must delete your existing downloaded quests and redownload them if you want to get Photon Points for playing them. The old quests will continue to award old Photon Points that you can no longer spend.
  
• Special thanks goes out to Ralf and Soly for making this update possible!
  

I plan to add additional features to the shop in the future, but I think this will do for now. Let me know if there are any problems, and enjoy!

Yippy!!

After observing the new shop in action for several weeks, I've made a few changes to refine the balance further:

• The Photon Point payout for most quests has been increased. You now get 8-16 points, rather than 4-12.
  
• V1 items sell for 1 point each.
  
• V2 items sell for 2 points each.
  

Hopefully this change will make playing quests more attractive relative to selling rares, since playing a quest means you give up the opportunity to find rares to sell.

also making discount packages like GC would help

I've made some more tweaks to the new shop system:

• You can now add 20% to a weapon attribute for 150 Photon Points (a 50 point discount).
  
• Slots now cost 25 Photon Points for Ver.1 armour, rather than 50.
  
• The Photon Point payout for many quests has again been increased. You now get 8-24 points, rather than 8-16.
  

Great update! Now is the perfect time to revamp PSO PC after a few years