Board of Slick
Banon's Donkey Farm => Game Modification Station => Topic started by: Deathlike2 on January 21, 2009, 12:42:09 PM
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The title of the hack is to be determined, but frankly that's not important to me... some preliminary hack titles that I came up with are the following:
It's Palom's Fault
One Twin Too Many
Clone Wars (yea yea, it's a spoof of Star Wars)
There are some goals in this hack... I'm serious.
1) Exploit the battle engine features - Despite having a more modern GBA port (which has its own sets of disasterous bugs), the game has a lot of potential to exploit different aspects such as elemental attacks and whatnot. By exploiting more of what is known now, you could say this game could be more advanced than its SNES counterparts (well, maybe).
2) Redo unused stuff - I believe JCE's FF3US hack had the right idea. Revamping a number of equipment and spells that are underused will get the treatment it deserves.
3) Fun - I shouldn't have to explain this.
Some things to expect.. despite the changes:
1) No new treasure/map/dungeons - I'm not putting any effort into that. In fact, I'm not wasting any time on it. All the good stuff will be found through grinding and stealing.
2) Better random encounters - No, I'm not going to reduce/change the monster encounter rates. There will be a number of different monsters, but those happen to be "clones". These guys will always drop something much more useful than what you can buy in the stores. However, these battles will be harder than normal encounters and you do have the option to be a great big chicken and run away. Most of the monsters will remain the same, but their battle scripts will be revamped to something a bit more complex than "just fight". Monsters in general will have a more useful drop list. Besides, bosses will be obviously harder.
3) Wall/Reflect is learned at level 99. Since I'm fully aware that Reflect breaks counter scripts in this game, that is the first to go. Subsequently, there will be spell list changes. There will be no access to the items that cast Reflect/Wall (I may consider changing those items altogether).
4) Text/graphics changes are not a priority. I would love help in that area, but regardless of where the effort will go into making this a more fun game, the focus of this game is the gameplay.. not the text. I will give credit as appropriate, and anyone interested is welcome to make those changes in a separate patch.. but I have absolutely zero interest in modifying that myself. Discussions on what random/intended scripts are welcome... it would amuse me if anything.. but of relative importance are the in-battle messages that will certainly need testing (it has to be written with the battle scripts, so it does matter to an extent).
Story Background: Somewhere in some old library in Mysidia, Palom goofs off as usual and finds some magically sealed book that he's not supposed to open. Well, he manages to open the book anyways, and now Zeromus has the ability to make clones of every character that joins you in the game. Now, Cecil's additional challenge is to keep the peace and kick their asses in addition to whatever he has to do.
Important note: This is not a "hardtype" hack IMO. After writing a document about the game, I personally don't think it would be hard if people used their brains. Above all else, I do not give a damn to idiots who think the original game is hard. For those that understand the game mechanics well enough, this hack will not need massive grinding.. it requires a brain and its ability to "connect the dots". Of course grinding will make things easier, but on the other hand.. I have some creative ideas to make boss battles more interesting and make grinding less important.
Other random things I haven't considered or thought about, please let me know. I will allow beta testing by anyone for feedback (primarily bugs), but a release will only occur as I reach Zeromus... if I get that far into this. I suspect this will take a year, give or take sanity time. However, that's not an ETA or a completion % that is definitive. Asking me when the damned thing is done is not tolerated.
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Ok, this will always be a beta until I've gotten every part done..
v0.10 - initial version
Reworked all monsters up to and including the Mist Dragon (but before the area about Mist-Kaipo).
Mist Dragon is revamped.. enough to make you wish you brought a few more potions.
If there are any issues, bugs, balancing, or otherwise... please let me know.
Oh yes.. this is to be patched against FF2US v1.1 with a header.
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downloading now. wow, do i wish i had more time to play games these days...
:edit:
wow, 3 imps just wiped the floor with kain...
:edit:2
WHY MUST EVERYTHING COUNTER-ATTACK?
it does give the parry command some interesting new use, though...
[spoiler]cecil really isn't doing much of anything during battle, anymore...[/spoiler]
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:edit:2
WHY MUST EVERYTHING COUNTER-ATTACK?
It's hard to spice something up that didn't do anything special in the first place.
[spoiler]cecil really isn't doing much of anything during battle, anymore...[/spoiler]
He's still useful, the issue is only compounded by the fact that Kain does look better initially, but that solves itself quickly anyways.
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:edit:2
WHY MUST EVERYTHING COUNTER-ATTACK?
It's hard to spice something up that didn't do anything special in the first place.
this is true. the imps' new ability makes for some interesting battles very early on.
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:edit:2
WHY MUST EVERYTHING COUNTER-ATTACK?
It's hard to spice something up that didn't do anything special in the first place.
this is true. the imps' new ability makes for some interesting battles very early on.
I will see what I can do to add some nicer counters than a straight out Fight... and these will be significantly more... threatening.
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I like the better and improved Officer-Soldier script.
Some item naming was redone.. tweaked the spell power of a small number of related spells.. but I'm very proud of the new boss code the most.
Eagles and Floateyes also have a different and much more meaningful counter.
:edit:
I will get around to revamping Rydia's fight sequence... but all enemies around Kaipo have been tweaked.
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v .20 goes up to kaipo, then?
i'll start it up from the beginning after work tonight.
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I will have an update that redos Rydia's mini-battle. That shouldn't be a big deal though..
Also, I'll have the Officer-Soldier battle do some different drops to boot.
There's nothing majorly serious about it though...
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ah, awesome. i won't be out of work till around midnight est, so hopefully i can just play that.
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The most notable changes are the revamped spell learning list and the changes to some spells...
I'll have to bring out the hex editor to edit changes in the equipment bonus for part of the next update... up to the Octomammoth.
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I need an answer to this idea..
I was thinking of doing two major things to Octomammoth... other than renaming it to OctoVamp...
The idea is two pronged...
I love the idea that the beast will have the Drain attack property.. in addition, the beast will counter with Drain vs counters. The Drain spell won't be powered up, so the damage will be relatively minimal. The purpose is to keep the battle running longer, if not make the beast more annoying.
However, it may be that I'm going overboard with this drain thing, but the healing has to come from somewhere... it has to be drain or monster healing induced.. and that will be unavoidable for the forseeable future. Does anyone have some creative ideas to spice the battle up, but w/o changing fundamentally the battle itself?
As you can see from the changes so far, a lot of the tweaks are nothing dramatic, but make the battle far more interesting. I'm wondering out loud that these changes are right on, or it needs to be better somehow...
Besides, I'm not going to mention the best part of the OctoVamp changes are going to be...
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well, i like it so far, and i think that adding drain to octovamp is a good idea. it's tough to add something to the early battles(when i'm used to just holding down the a button), but i really think that what you did helped.
on the other hand, is there any way to give the octovamp one of the "monster" remedy(general healing?) abilities, and have it use that? do any of those abilities heal like 1/5-1/2 of enemy hp, or do they all heal a lot(75%-100%)? i think drain is a better idea than this, though, because it also damages the party.
myself, i think all the changes are dead-on so far.
gonna patch .25 and get started now...
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Right behind you Bond. Is Octovamp vulnerable to Lightning or you gonna make all bosses immune to elemental spells?
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wow, that's an interesting direction to take the floating eyes...
:omg: :wtf:
:edit:
is the mist dragon supposed to drop things? i got a summon spell for rydia from it...
hmm... after checking in the editor, it seems that the mist dragon does indeed drop 2 different summons.
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well, i like it so far, and i think that adding drain to octovamp is a good idea. it's tough to add something to the early battles(when i'm used to just holding down the a button), but i really think that what you did helped.
Well, you'll still end up holding the A button for most of the Soldier-Officer battle, but that can't really be helped... (even if Dark Wave was there, I don't see that as an improvement anyways).
on the other hand, is there any way to give the octovamp one of the "monster" remedy(general healing?) abilities, and have it use that? do any of those abilities heal like 1/5-1/2 of enemy hp, or do they all heal a lot(75%-100%)? i think drain is a better idea than this, though, because it also damages the party.
I did write a spell list and algo doc :tongue: I tend to refrain from regular Cure spells because it has to be applied against magic defense (so, you'll never find Cure3 helping a Behemoth out for instance) and the monster healing comes to 3 different versions..
1) Overpowered - Cell monster healing (instant maxHP) or the hidden Zeromus version... same idea. It has some application, but it is best left for bosses late game to have effectively increased HP pools.
2) Fixed, but mediocre constant - Remedy (renamed Recover IIRC).. always 1/10 of the monster's max HP. So, the healing tops out at 6500+.
3) Variable, but current HP dependant - Absorb always heals 1/3 of the monsters's current HP.
So, if you were to apply that to your characters, you would need a current HP of 7500 to heal to the max if you had 9999 MaxHP.. for monsters, they have a higher threshold, so they would need a minimum of 30000 HP currently to start healing at 9999 and decline from there. This has promise, but when you've played ZeromusEG in FF4A, this gets lame to a point.
Remember that #2-3 avoids Magic Defense calcs.. and I'm sure I could use Cure3 or Cure4 (although, I don't know how that code is screwed up in Cure4 in JCE's hack) but that goes through magic defense... something that I'd rather avoid unless I tweak it manually.
Right behind you Bond. Is Octovamp vulnerable to Lightning or you gonna make all bosses immune to elemental spells?
It will be still be vulnerable to Lightning, but from prior experience, that isn't the strongest spell to use against the boss. Spell effectiveness won't be neutered, but there's no sure bet to relying on them since I have a few devious tricks up my sleeve.
wow, that's an interesting direction to take the floating eyes...
The theme of that monster is instant death, but the reality is that the monster has limitations... forcing the issue of death is a nice plus and future possibility.
is the mist dragon supposed to drop things? i got a summon spell for rydia from it...
hmm... after checking in the editor, it seems that the mist dragon does indeed drop 2 different summons.
This is to give more play to the summons, but the only promising summon that should benefit most from the changes is the Imp/Goblin summon.
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monster healing etc etc...
i was just making the suggestion about using monster healing ability for octovamp for the sake of drawing out the battle. i was looking at octomamm's stats and figuring in the 1/10 healing, though, and it doesn't seem like it would be enough to do that anyway. you might as well just add the drain ability.
:edit:
[spoiler]
hang on, quake doesn't end the battle vs. rydia anymore? you have to defeat her? this is pretty damn cool.
also, btw, quake9.5 does no damage to anyone. is that supposed to happen?
[/spoiler]
interesting change to the officer/soldier battle. will more changes be forthcoming for that?
:edit: 2
magic fists? is it the same as chocobo, but without the animation? the damage seems about the same. hmm... and it's free?
err.. i see in the editor that chocobo is still there. do you get it as an item at some point, or does she maybe come back with it?
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monster healing etc etc...
i was just making the suggestion about using monster healing ability for octovamp for the sake of drawing out the battle. i was looking at octomamm's stats and figuring in the 1/10 healing, though, and it doesn't seem like it would be enough to do that anyway. you might as well just add the drain ability.
Healing only makes sense when the monster has nice counter scripts.. which the Octomammoth uses a lot of.. but there are more amusing methods of lengthening the battle that doesn't strictly involve healing.
:edit:
[spoiler]
hang on, quake doesn't end the battle vs. rydia anymore? you have to defeat her? this is pretty damn cool.
also, btw, quake9.5 does no damage to anyone. is that supposed to happen?
[/spoiler]
You can still lose the battle and continue on with the story. It just happens that you have the option to win it (and some other battles to boot).
Quake does work... it's just part of a linked attack. You need to see FF4ET's Red Dragon in action to fully understand what chained attacks can cause in terms of visual errors. You see Rydia "making the attack", which is a side effect of a character-battle and linked Quake-Fight.
interesting change to the officer/soldier battle. will more changes be forthcoming for that?
Absolutely not. The battle itself is just Fight-Fight-Fight.. I just wanted the Officer to take a greater role in the fight primarily because it seemed rather lame. I believe I'll make a slight change to Rydia's battle, but that's a result of making the TinyMage more difficult.
:edit: 2
magic fists? is it the same as chocobo, but without the animation? the damage seems about the same. hmm... and it's free?
It's the Magic Arrow spell.. and it's always been there. I prefer to call it Magic Fists because... that's what they are visually. :tongue:
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It's the Magic Arrow spell.. and it's always been there. I prefer to call it Magic Fists because... that's what they are visually. :tongue:
that's right! i always forget that that exists. since it replaces chocobo in the call menu, will she be getting that at some point, or no? although, it looks like it's a little stronger than chocobo, so it really doesn't matter.
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It's the Magic Arrow spell.. and it's always been there. I prefer to call it Magic Fists because... that's what they are visually. :tongue:
that's right! i always forget that that exists. since it replaces chocobo in the call menu, will she be getting that at some point, or no? although, it looks like it's a little stronger than chocobo, so it really doesn't matter.
Ah crap, that wasn't intended. When I posted up that stuff, that was probably when I started tinkering with the initial spell lists... which have been reverted to the defaults (for my current working build). Event spell driven additions with spell learning lists will be the primary method of inserting new spells.
:edit:
I have considered reworking some of the initial spells, but that's gonna require some thought.
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just beat octomamm, so i think i'm done with this until the next beta. also, have you made any changes to goblin punch yet? it still seems to do almost no damage.
also, is warp meant to be castable as an instant death spell? i know it's been discussed here before, but i was wondering because i could target enemies with it but it didn't seem to do much of anything.
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just beat octomamm, so i think i'm done with this until the next beta. also, have you made any changes to goblin punch yet? it still seems to do almost no damage.
I made zero changes past the desert @ Kaipo...
Goblin Punch was changed, but to properly take advantage of it, you would have to increase Rydia's attack power.
also, is warp meant to be castable as an instant death spell? i know it's been discussed here before, but i was wondering because i could target enemies with it but it didn't seem to do much of anything.
Yes. It does work, but it's intentionally neutered to have the same hit rate as Piggy (10%).
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I made zero changes past the desert @ Kaipo...
yeah, i realized as much like 2 minutes after saying that.
Goblin Punch was changed, but to properly take advantage of it, you would have to increase Rydia's attack power.
Yes. It does work, but it's intentionally neutered to have the same hit rate as Piggy (10%).
both are very good to know, thanks.
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With both editors being totally unreliable for monster editing (the new one forgets to store a monster's elemental+status resistances, the old one fucks all the data up).. I'll need someone to restore most of the monster resistance attributes... I don't plan to change those anyways, but given how the game parses the data and the editor's inability to properly modify (new) or even show the data (old), it's driving me up a wall.
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Ok, there will still need to be some changes made to the magic displayed for weapons and maybe some last minute equipment changes.
At this point, I'm pretty set on the initial and learned spell list, so that should go well... hopefully. I'll be messing with event data stuff for spell learning which will hopefully allow for a new update patch for the spell restoration hack.
I have not fully finished testing this update, but you may find some strange behavior like monsters attacking you with float. This is a placeholder for hex editing AFTER the hack is complete since the newer editor has a tendency to screw up setting up status and elemental resistance behavior.
Known and non-issues:
Spells that are not normally learned have issues with their name in the menus... the spell name is displayed normally when used in battle.
Rydia looks like she's attacking in conjunction with Titan's Quake. This is a symptom of a character battle and a chained attack (Quake+Fight). This is purely cosmetic as far as I can tell... and it does look cool.
Octomammoth has not been changed as of yet.. I have to actually reach him before I make changes to the battle script (it will be easier to test changes made). All the monsters up to him though have been changed IIRC.
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Ok, there have been a bountiful number of changes made.. though I will continue to rebalance the game as necessary.
The bulk of the waterway monsters have been retweaked properly from changes I have made... which is looking much better at the moment.
On the other hand, the OctoVamp has two different modes of attack.. depending on how you attack. I'm proud to say I found out a few minor cool things in the process and am very happy with the changes. Chances are though that this monster will be neutered if I end up needing more space for the battle scripts, but it shouldn't harm this beast as a whole too much.
Some feedback would be appreciated.
BTW, you should really expect more grinding towards how I normally grind.. which tends to be a lot. Surprised? You shouldn't be.
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downloading now. should be fun.
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i take it that you already know about the errors here:
http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/211/finalfantasyiiuv1100000vl4.png
these look like they're on purpose, though: - not that a couple of the white spells icons look wrong. i was moreso talking about the suna and magic fist.
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/7654/finalfantasyiiuv1100001pm0.png
:edit:
err... now i see that magic fist is a white magic spell? so, just the one spell name is wrong?
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i take it that you already know about the errors here:
http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/211/finalfantasyiiuv1100000vl4.png
these look like they're on purpose, though: - not that a couple of the white spells icons look wrong. i was moreso talking about the suna and magic fist.
Intentional... if you've followed some of my recent posts, the names are an issue with the name parsing beyond the Ninja magic. I have no plans to fix the names (I already wrote about the errors in this same thread :tongue:)
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/7654/finalfantasyiiuv1100001pm0.png
:edit:
err... now i see that magic fist is a white magic spell? so, just the one spell name is wrong?
It is meant to be an alternative to Chocobo at a slightly lower cost. Since its spell power sucks for late game, it is appropriately placed. It will still use Wisdom.. pretty much any spell that is not White Magic is Wisdom based... this includes monster spells.
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I wished I could do better with the monsters in the Antlion Cave, but I think the Antlion is an improvement.
Some tweaks were made to the event battles... the fun is in the surprise.
Obligatory screenshots:
Weak against Darkness... so what?
(http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/7458/myff4hack00002to1.th.png) (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00002to1.png)
Attack renaming probably borders on excessive:
(http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/461/myff4hack00003jn2.th.png) (http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00003jn2.png)
Damage adjusting has yet to border on anything insane yet:
(http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/3651/myff4hack00004fg6.th.png) (http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00004fg6.png)
Monster adjustments have reached up to getting Rosa... Mt. Hobs is next.
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in .38, i've just gotten into the watery passage and picked up tellah. would i be missing anything if i just move my state over to .44 and continue?
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It should be fine.. I am not making any new starting changes (although, I'm still iffy to add the Antidote spell to Cecil, but that's nothing in the grand scheme of things).
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I should have something after the Super Bowl...
The number of changes starting on Mt. Hobs to the Fabul battle will be a "fun nightmare". You'll know the meaning of heal fast and heal often.
I do have plans to address the lame "Cecil covers everyone" trick... it's not going to work... and it doesn't involve removing the Cover command.
:edit:
I'll have to test the changes myself...
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In honor of the Super Bowl total score... this should be a whopper of changes (well, not really, but relatively speaking).
I have managed to make the Battle at Fabul... pretty damn long...
Changes have been made up to that point... there's no need to start all over.
I'm very proud of the changes... and they will very likely freak someone out.. or piss them off. Whatever... :tongue:
Some HP fixing was done to the monsters in the Antlion's Cave though...
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I'm very happy with the changes to the monsters on Mt. Ordeals.. and sebsequently the monsters on Mt. Hobs (lots of readjusting going on).
I'd never thought that this would go so well.
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This update speaks for itself. Everything prior to becoming a Paladin has been updated.. and finally worth speaking about.
I will put up an obligatory pic soon.
:edit:
(http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/3958/myff4hack00009qs1.th.png) (http://img158.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00009qs1.png)
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Loving this hack so far.
One bug I've noticed is with the Rydia Chained Attack; if Kain is in the air and Cecil is dead, Cecil will still take minor damage from it (and his dead body will shake when he gets hit, which looks pretty cool)
Also, Rydia's Antdt shows up as 'suna' in the spell list.
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One bug I've noticed is with the Rydia Chained Attack; if Kain is in the air and Cecil is dead, Cecil will still take minor damage from it (and his dead body will shake when he gets hit, which looks pretty cool)
It's not a chained attack from Rydia.. it's actually a chained attack by Titan. It only looks visually that Rydia is attacking, but that's not the actual case because of how character battles are designed. I've said that earlier in this thread.
Additionally, it seems like a symptom of Kain's Jump attack with everyone else being dead... which has been documented as a bug that has existed in all of the SNES/SFC versions of this game.
Also, Rydia's Antdt shows up as 'suna' in the spell list.
I've also already mention that in this thread. The spell list past the Ninja spells are parsed incorrectly, as they were never originally intended for a normal spell list. Please read all the previous "buggy" behavior or non-bugs (which I don't have control over) that I've previously listed in this thread.
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Are any of the 'clones' in the game yet? Been grinding to try and find one to test it out, but haven't succeeded yet. If it's 1/64 in a certain spot, that wouldn't be surprising.
When Antlion does his double attack, he only seems to drain the greater of the attacks, if they're split. Don't know if that's intended behavior.
Octomamm took me about a half hour to kill, btw.
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Are any of the 'clones' in the game yet? Been grinding to try and find one to test it out, but haven't succeeded yet. If it's 1/64 in a certain spot, that wouldn't be surprising.
You'll find them starting at Mysidia... they will appear in rarer formations but will be more common than you think because it's not like the GBA port's screwed up RNG.
When Antlion does his double attack, he only seems to drain the greater of the attacks, if they're split. Don't know if that's intended behavior.
I can't say I wanted it that way, but that's how the engine works (I might miss a few bits of behavior, but more often than not, it's intended). The double hit nearing its death was to show more aggressiveness, and not necessarily to keep the Antlion healthy.
Your observation isn't quite correct. The healing obtained is equal to the value of the second attack.. not the damage of the harder hit.
Octomamm took me about a half hour to kill, btw.
It was a lot of fun making that boss not look like a complete wuss vs Cecil's attacks.
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I did notice that in one of the double attacks he hit Cecil first for 17, then missed Rydia, and still gained 17. So it's not necessarily just the second of the attacks. (Also, if he hits the same character twice, he will drain all the damage.)
Antlion was a LOT easier after grinding. Mombomb only took me two tries as well.
I'm currently grinding before the Fabul fights... that first set of enemies does so much damage ;_; (I assume they have weapon elemental that Cecil's armor is weak to? Cecil was taking about 180 while Yang was still in the 70s)
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I did notice that in one of the double attacks he hit Cecil first for 17, then missed Rydia, and still gained 17. So it's not necessarily just the second of the attacks. (Also, if he hits the same character twice, he will drain all the damage.)
Well, the monster has to actually deal the damage to get the healing... I should've been specific that it assumes that both attacks connect.
A side note to that is if you grind a lot with the Red Dragons late game. Occasionally, you will see both successful hits to the same character results in 1 damage. It is possible by design since the requirement for damage is one successful hit, even if the damage dealt is "effectively 0".
Antlion was a LOT easier after grinding. Mombomb only took me two tries as well.
I always spent time grinding for Edward's sake... because he's actually more useful a fighter than most give him credit for.
I'm currently grinding before the Fabul fights... that first set of enemies does so much damage ;_; (I assume they have weapon elemental that Cecil's armor is weak to? Cecil was taking about 180 while Yang was still in the 70s)
Yes, that's pretty much it. I wanted to grind home the fact that being a DK sucks. There really shouldn't be too much grinding needed for the Fabul fights.. it just requires you previously grinding and getting nice free item drops... or if you are willing to bite the bullet, BUY items... quite a novel concept!
The fights themselves are not as hard if you use Edward correctly... it is just time consuming though.
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I did notice that in one of the double attacks he hit Cecil first for 17, then missed Rydia, and still gained 17. So it's not necessarily just the second of the attacks. (Also, if he hits the same character twice, he will drain all the damage.)
Well, the monster has to actually deal the damage to get the healing... I should've been specific that it assumes that both attacks connect.
A side note to that is if you grind a lot with the Red Dragons late game. Occasionally, you will see both successful hits to the same character results in 1 damage. It is possible by design since the requirement for damage is one successful hit, even if the damage dealt is "effectively 0".
Antlion was a LOT easier after grinding. Mombomb only took me two tries as well.
I always spent time grinding for Edward's sake... because he's actually more useful a fighter than most give him credit for.
I'm currently grinding before the Fabul fights... that first set of enemies does so much damage ;_; (I assume they have weapon elemental that Cecil's armor is weak to? Cecil was taking about 180 while Yang was still in the 70s)
Yes, that's pretty much it. I wanted to grind home the fact that being a DK sucks. There really shouldn't be too much grinding needed for the Fabul fights.. it just requires you previously grinding and getting nice free item drops... or if you are willing to bite the bullet, BUY items... quite a novel concept!
The fights themselves are not as hard if you use Edward correctly... it is just time consuming though.
Honestly wonder if unequipping all of Cecil's armor will make him take less damage... :hmm:
Grinded a lot in Octomamm's lair and Mt. Hobs, didn't get a lot of useful equipment other than Thunder Rod, Silver Rings and a Power Ring. I'll keep trying.
Edward's been garbage for the whole game so far, relegated to potion bitch (along with Rosa). Switching to Bow&Arrow didn't change this for me, and he can't Charm the first group of Fabul enemies. If he can sleep the General, that'd get me somewhere.
Looking forward to the clone in Mysidia continent.
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Honestly wonder if unequipping all of Cecil's armor will make him take less damage... :hmm:
Remember this... DK Cecil has always had a small number of equipment, separate from everyone else.
Grinded a lot in Octomamm's lair and Mt. Hobs, didn't get a lot of useful equipment other than Thunder Rod, Silver Rings and a Power Ring. I'll keep trying.
Kill more "Zombies".
Edward's been garbage for the whole game so far, relegated to potion bitch (along with Rosa). Switching to Bow&Arrow didn't change this for me, and he can't Charm the first group of Fabul enemies. If he can sleep the General, that'd get me somewhere.
Looking forward to the clone in Mysidia continent.
You need to try Sing... that's what you're missing. The status resistance of the General hasn't actually changed from the original.
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I'll correct myself, he 'can' Charm the General, but he's still going to Recover the team. Regardless, I figured out how to get past him. I got about 5 fights in before I ran out of Hipotions, so I'm back to grinding. Yang absolutely mauls Skeletons.
I was 0/4 on Sing, all of them Song of Silence fails, so I had given up on it.
I'll check the Zombies out, Yang should cut them up pretty good. Thanks for the hints.
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[spoiler]There's some serious graphical glitching during the Fabul gauntlet if Mombomb goes large with other bombs still on the screen.[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]There's some serious graphical glitching during the Fabul gauntlet if Mombomb goes large with other bombs still on the screen.[/spoiler]
I'm pretty aware of this.. I've tried to minimize the glitching, but that's because that formation isn't set up ideally. There shouldn't be any glitching if you kill the individual bombs first.
Now that I think about it, I'm now aware what you're trying to abuse... and fixing that. :tongue:
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Making the smaller bombs Charm immune isn't going to change the strategy much at all. They don't Explode and they hit themselves too often to make it terribly effective.
[spoiler]I do have to say Palom (Virus/Burst/Boast) is WAY too easy. Just turboing and spamming A is enough to get through the fight without healing. Porom (X-Magic Cure3/Stone), on the other hand... not so easy.
Is it by design that if you lose one of these clone battles, you're kicked back to the overworld (as opposed to the title screen)? That's what happens when Porom Stones Cecil.[/spoiler]
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Making the smaller bombs Charm immune isn't going to change the strategy much at all. They don't Explode and they hit themselves too often to make it terribly effective.
No... that isn't it.
[spoiler]I do have to say Palom (Virus/Burst/Boast) is WAY too easy. Just turboing and spamming A is enough to get through the fight without healing. Porom (X-Magic Cure3/Stone), on the other hand... not so easy.
Is it by design that if you lose one of these clone battles, you're kicked back to the overworld (as opposed to the title screen)? That's what happens when Porom Stones Cecil.[/spoiler]
The clone battles are intentionally set up that way. You are not penalized for losing or running away (that may change in the future). These battles are designed to be different... not necessarily hard, but if I have something creative, it's certainly going to be more interesting.
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Here's an update... there have been some key changes made in startup data (but mostly Edge, I'll address that when that happens).
Additionally, there are some key changes made..
One key spell had a buff... Drain is now as powerful as the version in FF4ET to make it more useful overall... monsters have been properly readjusted for that reason which will change the kind of impact it has on the characters... which will allow me to make it more useful in future battles.
Assuming you didn't grind too much, Tellah's spell leaning table has changed. Tellah will learn a number of his missing spells starting at level 28 because messing with the event data is very sensitive. Tellah will not learn Scan, Sight, and Dispel on Mt. Ordeals (in favor of Safe, Shell, and Blk. Hole), but will learn them with levels.
The DK and Yang battle have been changed but the Waterway monsters are still under some tweakage.
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EDIT: Yeah, they're that crazy in every group. Ow.
Will 0.66 to 0.69 be a clean save transition at Mt. Ordeals, or should I start over?
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Will 0.66 to 0.69 be a clean save transition at Mt. Ordeals, or should I start over?
You can still use the save.. you are allowed to use cheats to insert/remove spells for that purpose... but if you're not comfortable with that, you can start over.
I'm putting that warning out because restarting a game is extremely painful business so you have your options.
:edit:
Pics!
At least this armor isn't as lame as FF6's:
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/618/myff4hack00010ob4.th.png) (http://img19.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00010ob4.png)
Small theme...
(http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/5210/myff4hack00011wo8.th.png) (http://img26.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00011wo8.png)
Kinda crazy I guess...
(http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/6299/myff4hack00012er6.th.png) (http://img16.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00012er6.png)
Resurrecting a very useful spell...
(http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3860/myff4hack00013cm7.th.png) (http://img13.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00013cm7.png)
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What's the deal with the Cursed Shield then? All I noticed was +5 str -5 everything else. Didn't seem worth it.
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What's the deal with the Cursed Shield then? All I noticed was +5 str -5 everything else. Didn't seem worth it.
Its true usage starts on Mt. Ordeals. The stat adjustments are there intentionally, but if you don't see the benefits, you will find out why soon.
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Its true usage starts on Mt. Ordeals. The stat adjustments are there intentionally, but if you don't see the benefits, you will find out why soon.
Whoops. Probably shouldn't have sold it then. :sad:
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Its true usage starts on Mt. Ordeals. The stat adjustments are there intentionally, but if you don't see the benefits, you will find out why soon.
Whoops. Probably shouldn't have sold it then. :sad:
You can certainly pick up some more from Spirits+Soul monsters and it's not the rarest drop.. but the drop frequency hasn't been increased.
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Possible bug: When Clone Palom Boasts, if Palom's in your party, your Palom gets the Boast animation. If he's not, there's no animation, only the sound effect. I do know that without Palom in the party, the Boast effect does work, I haven't checked without.
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Possible bug: When Clone Palom Boasts, if Palom's in your party, your Palom gets the Boast animation. If he's not, there's no animation, only the sound effect. I do know that without Palom in the party, the Boast effect does work, I haven't checked without.
It's known in its own way. Let's just say character/enemy attacks are incomplete at best, so you will find strange looking behavior, and it's only cosmetic.
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Yeah, just tested it, Clone still gets the magic boost, and not Palom. Just wanted to be sure, anything to help.
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i think i'll give this a quick run through before i break out the whiskey and nethack. :cycle: :cycle:
:edit:
ok, got my .44 save loaded up in .69 and i'm in the desert. here we go! i'm pretty curious to see these clones.
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i see that octovamp is supposed to be weak to darkness and lightning, but they both barely hurt it. in fact nothing really does. cecil will hit for 100 damage 1 turn, then 1 damage the next. at one point, he hit for 196 and then 3. it seems like the only thing that hurts it consistently is chocobo. i dont seem to be hitting hard enough to out-damage it. maybe i need to level more...
i get that it has high (well, super-high) defense, but even magic doesn't seem to help. tella's lit1 does little damage when he can even use it. he's usually curing. cecil is at lv. 18, rydia is at 14, and tella is at his starting level. am i too low?
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i see that octovamp is supposed to be weak to darkness and lightning, but they both barely hurt it. in fact nothing really does. cecil will hit for 100 damage 1 turn, then 1 damage the next. at one point, he hit for 196 and then 3. it seems like the only thing that hurts it consistently is chocobo. i dont seem to be hitting hard enough to out-damage it. maybe i need to level more...
There are ways to increase your damage output. There is one specific item that should have been able to obtain in some frequency that solves that issue for Cecil.
i get that it has high (well, super-high) defense, but even magic doesn't seem to help. tella's lit1 does little damage when he can even use it. he's usually curing. cecil is at lv. 18, rydia is at 14, and tella is at his starting level. am i too low?
For your reference, the monster's magic defense doesn't change until a certain point, but the Lit-1 damage has been the same as the original game, believe it or not. Rydia's min level to face the beast is around 13... 15 is the ideal number for a reason though.
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i saw in the editor that some things drop powerdrinks(i think?). perhaps those are what you're referring to?
i see that it's supposed to cast a slow spell at some point(looks like after tella's messages during battle). is that the "curse spell" effect that happens once it's down to a few tentacles?
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i saw in the editor that some things drop powerdrinks(i think?). perhaps those are what you're referring to?
Yes.
i see that it's supposed to cast a slow spell at some point(looks like after tella's messages during battle). is that the "curse spell" effect that happens once it's down to a few tentacles?
It's the same one Milon Z/Scamaglione uses in FF4. It's a 100% working Slow spell.
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hmmm...
i didn't get any of those power drink drops, and i never bothered to save, i've just been saving state. ah well, i'll find a way. i see tiny mages drop something useful. there has to be some strategy for beating him...
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hmmm...
i didn't get any of those power drink drops, and i never bothered to save, i've just been saving state. ah well, i'll find a way. i see tiny mages drop something useful. there has to be some strategy for beating him...
Here's a small hint. The optimal strategy for beating the monster is technically the same as the original, except this version fights back with a vengence.
Optimal monster drops include that of the Waterhag, Tinymage, and Zombies.
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yeah, i got good stuff from zombies and waterhags already. hoping for some nice new rods and bracelets from tiny mages soon.
i do "get" the strategy behind it. i just can't deal enough damage for some reason. i made sure to turn the speed back to normal from where i usually have it. if it wasn't draining but was still hitting just as hard and fast, this would still be pretty good battle. i'm not suggesting you take it away(because i do like it there), i'm just saying drain really enhances the "vengeance" part of what you just said.
i've never used a forum's spell check before. i wanted to make sure i spelled vengeance right, so i used it, and it's pretty cool!
:edit:
i think a madtoad hit cecil and caused him to float. can it do that? i got into a fight with 4 of them, and after one hit cecil with toad, he hit another which caused it to cast toad on him and change him back, but it also caused "D", which is float. odd...
:edit: 2
hmm... tella casting blink during the battle helps. if only it lasted longer...
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i do "get" the strategy behind it. i just can't deal enough damage for some reason. i made sure to turn the speed back to normal from where i usually have it. if it wasn't draining but was still hitting just as hard and fast, this would still be pretty good battle. i'm not suggesting you take it away(because i do like it there), i'm just saying drain really enhances the "vengeance" part of what you just said.
I may reconsider redoing the battle because of the Drain spell power change, but that is somewhat negated by the magic defense multipliers of both Rydia and Tellah.
:edit:
i think a madtoad hit cecil and caused him to float. can it do that? i got into a fight with 4 of them, and after one hit cecil with toad, he hit another which caused it to cast toad on him and change him back, but it also caused "D", which is float. odd...
I've written a number of posts regarding status inflictions via a status attack.... although being inflicted Float is not a negative thing except under one circumstance.
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oh, no, i know it's not negative. i was just saying it because i had been looking in the editor and didn't see float anywhere under madtoad's scripts. i wasn't sure if it was a glitch or intended. not that it matters either way.
:edit:
well, now i'm at a point where i can survive easily, but i can't quite deal enough damage yet... getting there...
:edit: 2
rydia just got float status from either an alligator or a water bug. not sure which. no problem with it, just mentioning it to make sure it's supposed to happen.
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Float is inflicted as part of the monster's status attack property... not part of the script.
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I haven't played 0.69 version with updated Drain, but if you are underlevelled enough that you have complaints about Blink here you probably aren't doing something right - after a point he pretty much just stops attacking. There is one drop in particular that should make the battle much easier, though I beat him without it.
Deathlike2 REALLY wants you to grind in his hack... in fact I don't think you could even come close to beating Scarmiglione without serious grinding. (I came close to having Tellah hit L28 I grinded so much.)
There are two specific strategies on Mt. Ordeals that if they were tweaked would make the game immediately super frustrating.... fortunately there is SOME room for abuse.
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complaints about blink? what are you talking about? i was saying that blink helped. it would be nice not to have to cast after every 2nd hit, but it helps a ton at my levels. i'd love to see a point where he stops attacking... i haven't seen anything like that. it's probably just my levels. i pretty much stopped fighting things once i could kill everything without too much trouble.
i may hack in a power drink just to see if it helps.
float stuff
ah, i get it now, thanks.
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Deathlike2 REALLY wants you to grind in his hack... in fact I don't think you could even come close to beating Scarmiglione without serious grinding. (I came close to having Tellah hit L28 I grinded so much.)
Most of the levels are to factor in overleveling the twins in potential strategies... although if you grind the twins to 30+ where they start learning Cure3 and level 3 elementals, that's too much overgrinding. The point is to have a reasonable min level of grinding that is normal for me, but allows for thinking outside of the box to beat the next boss. There wasn't much of a need to grind in the original...
There are two specific strategies on Mt. Ordeals that if they were tweaked would make the game immediately super frustrating.... fortunately there is SOME room for abuse.
That's why the options are there....
complaints about blink? what are you talking about? i was saying that blink helped. it would be nice not to have to cast after every 2nd hit, but it helps a ton at my levels. i'd love to see a point where he stops attacking... i haven't seen anything like that. it's probably just my levels. i pretty much stopped fighting things once i could kill everything without too much trouble.
i may hack in a power drink just to see if it helps.
It doesn't stop attacking... it attacks less frequently, which is an improvement over the original. The original monster was uber fast initially, but became pathetically slow on its first change. So, it was written that the monster does get slower, but gradually. However, the monster as a result doesn't become some easy-to-abuse DK whipping target as is self-evident from the original game.
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well, i fought him a few more times without the power drink and got really close, but he always started gaining hp due to my attack variance in terms of hp taken off, so i tried the power drink and just managed to squeak it out. i'll be grinding a bit more from now on.
It doesn't stop attacking... it attacks less frequently, which is an improvement over the original. The original monster was uber fast initially, but became pathetically slow on its first change. So, it was written that the monster does get slower, but gradually. However, the monster as a result doesn't become some easy-to-abuse DK whipping target as is self-evident from the original game.
oh, i know, it should have said "pretty much stops attacking". i did actually notice the change in octo's speed changing differently. the battle was pretty cool, just frustrating every once in awhile when a decent attack from me(cecil) or a weak attack from him would change the tide in my favor, but they just never came. pretty much every time i got to a decisive point in the battle, he would hit me too hard or i would attack pathetically weakly and i'd be fucked. so far, this is a lot of fun, though. i can't wait to see what else you come up with.
:edit:
well, i did quite a bit of leveling. rydia is at lv. 24, cecil is at 25, and ed is at 23. i'm just about to kill the antlion. hopefully that was enough levels through fabul...
:edit: 2
well, that was much easier. :happy: cecil and rydia attacking, ed on healing duty.
btw, the edward fight is fucking cool. :cycle:
wow, white arrows are HANDY on mt. hobs. i usually never hang on to them, but i decided to try something different this time around. certainly glad i did. rosa just hit a skeleton for 1002 damage when aim-ing with one.
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i like the changes to mombomb, the battle is more challenging and fun like that. i managed it on my first try. actually, the grinding is a bit more enjoyable now, too, since the monsters sometimes drop actually useful things!
also, i got a few firetraps from some skeletons, and one of those really helped with making sure i got yang at full hp for the mombomb fight. very cool. :happy:
btw, did you do anything to edward's weapons? he seems to inflict charm/sleep constantly as opposed to on occasion.
hmm, i think i know what the cursed shield does. it quarters race damage along with giving you the absorb property, right?
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:edit:
well, i did quite a bit of leveling. rydia is at lv. 24, cecil is at 25, and ed is at 23. i'm just about to kill the antlion. hopefully that was enough levels through fabul...
Edward finished Fabul below level 20 for me...
btw, the edward fight is fucking cool. :cycle:
I thought it was fun, and yet symbolic. Too bad Sing couldn't be used...
wow, white arrows are HANDY on mt. hobs. i usually never hang on to them, but i decided to try something different this time around. certainly glad i did. rosa just hit a skeleton for 1002 damage when aim-ing with one.
It was always that useful. Most people don't try this on Mt. Ordeals probably because it took space and costs $$$. Making the money for it is nothing...
i like the changes to mombomb, the battle is more challenging and fun like that. i managed it on my first try. actually, the grinding is a bit more enjoyable now, too, since the monsters sometimes drop actually useful things!
I hated FF4's regular drops... It wasn't very thoughtful.
also, i got a few firetraps from some skeletons, and one of those really helped with making sure i got yang at full hp for the mombomb fight. very cool. :happy:
It would've been cheaper with a back row Kick. Then again, with the kind of stuff I changed, Kick is the most affected command... it makes regular battles in FF4 significantly easier... but that would probably fall on deaf ears...
btw, did you do anything to edward's weapons? he seems to inflict charm/sleep constantly as opposed to on occasion.
No. FF2US's version of the weapon is the best of the versions and it was left unchanged. Status inflictions with both weapons are connected to Edward's Agility, so it's very successful by default. It's that people whine about how bad it was didn't understand how great it truly was.... :tongue:
hmm, i think i know what the cursed shield does. it quarters race damage along with giving you the absorb property, right?
It doesn't quarter the damage.. racial protection affects a matching monster by reducing its attack power by 1/2. Unless you have a better idea of improving the protection (w/o turning it to an overpowered Hero's Shield), I'd be willing to listen.
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i like how the shield is now. it'll be a nice piece of equipment later on, i think, when i can take good advantage of the absorb property and the penalty isn't as steep. 5 points now is a lot when stats are around 30 at max, versus at the end of the game when critical stats are near 99.
as for kick, to be honest, i never use it pretty much ever. yang is strong and can hit lots of weaknesses, so i just go with his claws.
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I think you forgot about the shield bonus.... :tongue:
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shield bonus? it's +5 to str and -5 to everything else. i have one on cecil right now, but everyone else is fine without one.
or am i forgetting about something?
ooooh, wait, now i know. you mean the late-game shields and their bonuses to evasion, etc? right?
btw, it's not something i've ever thought about before, but now i am: is edward's harp a back row weapon? i've never stopped to consider it before, cause i never cared, but now that info will be mighty handy.
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shield bonus? it's +5 to str and -5 to everything else. i have one on cecil right now, but everyone else is fine without one.
or am i forgetting about something?
ooooh, wait, now i know. you mean the late-game shields and their bonuses to evasion, etc? right?
No... I meant the shield bonus.. the bonus to the defense multiplier.
btw, it's not something i've ever thought about before, but now i am: is edward's harp a back row weapon? i've never stopped to consider it before, cause i never cared, but now that info will be mighty handy.
Yes in FF2US. No for every other version.
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yeah, that's what i meant by evasion, etc. i couldn't remember what to call it. def multiplier slipped my mind. my bad on that one.
ah well, it was a good idea(to me!) at the time...
btw, the fabul battles are really, really cool. those battles were really unexpected and completely fucking awesome. you definitely made the fabul siege pretty badass.
:edit:
now that fabul is over, i have 2 cursed shields. i dunno who to give the other one to... maybe i'll just hang on to it for cid..
:edit: 2
and thank you for the info about edward. :happy: that was what i thought/was assuming when i went through the fabul siege.
also, i just noticed that porom comes with stone. why is stone a white magic spell? not that i mind at all, i think it's great! i just thought it's odd to have an id spell in the white category. although, rydia has magic fists... and it's nice that porom has some good offense for the time being. she's usually pretty worthless as soon as you get her. although, once she learns cure2, she's much more worthwhile. that and a bow, and she contributes a fair amount. actually, in this case, i can give her a headband(instead of gaea) to get some more damage out of her...
:edit: 3
err... evil twin... hmm... ok. here goes... this ought to be interesting.
ooooohhh... they drop niiiice things. also, though, she didn't really do very much during the battle. evilporom casted mute on actual palom, cure3-ed herself twice, and didn't do much after that. it was kinda disappointing.
actually, i may have spoken too soon. the tiara doesn't seem all that useful...
oh damn, i just ran into an evil pair! they're a really good idea.
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also, i just noticed that porom comes with stone. why is stone a white magic spell? not that i mind at all, i think it's great! i just thought it's odd to have an id spell in the white category. although, rydia has magic fists... and it's nice that porom has some good offense for the time being. she's usually pretty worthless as soon as you get her. although, once she learns cure2, she's much more worthwhile. that and a bow, and she contributes a fair amount. actually, in this case, i can give her a headband(instead of gaea) to get some more damage out of her...
This may have not occured to you, but what significance do you think Stone has?
:edit: 3
err... evil twin... hmm... ok. here goes... this ought to be interesting.
ooooohhh... they drop niiiice things. also, though, he didn't really do very much during the battle. evilpalom casted mute on actual palom, cure3-ed himself twice, and didn't do much after that. it was kinda disappointing.
Admittedly, that wasn't the most inventive script. Ultimately it served as a testing ground. I also think you've got the twin scripts mixed up.
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This may have not occured to you, but what significance do you think Stone has?
it didn't at the time. thanks for the reminder. :)
and, as for the scripts, i had the right gender the first time. i changed it because i thought i didn't. i edited the post thinking i was wrong, but apparently i was right about which twin i saw.
:edit:
one of the evil twins just hit me with virus and it did 30 dmg on average. can you bump their stats up a bit? this would be super cool if they were tougher. burst just hit me for 31. yeah, they definitely need a boost.
also, granted it's more of a girl thing, but why can't palom equip the tiara? it boosts wisdom by 10, so he could use it. unless, of course, that's exactly why he can't use it. between it and the black robe, his wisdom goes up by, what, 15? that's a lot for this part of the game. plus, it gives a nice def. boost. and he does have the wizard helm as an option, too, but then again so does porom.
i think i have the evil twins straightened out now. evil palom has the orange cape, while evil porom has the green cape, right?
you know, i see that rune bracelets are the most common drop, and since these evil twins always drop, i'm just gonna farm 4 or 5 of them and some of the other gear before i move on. no sense in moving on unprepared. :happy: also, while i'm on the subject, i've only ever run into evil palom solo, never evil porom. i've seen them together a few times, but porom never shows up alone. is that just a fluke?
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:edit:
one of the evil twins just hit me with virus and it did 30 dmg on average. can you bump their stats up a bit? this would be super cool if they were tougher. burst just hit me for 31. yeah, they definitely need a boost.
I'll have to rethink it. It was to factor in the slight chance in lower levels and solo Cecil.
also, granted it's more of a girl thing, but why can't palom equip the tiara? it boosts wisdom by 10, so he could use it. unless, of course, that's exactly why he can't use it. between it and the black robe, his wisdom goes up by, what, 15? that's a lot for this part of the game. plus, it gives a nice def. boost. and he does have the wizard helm as an option, too, but then again so does porom.
/me wants to know how a boy wants to start wearing a Tiara...
The Tiara serves a much different purpose. You also have a choice between the Gaea Hat and the Wizard Hat... so don't complain about the benefits. The Wizard Hat is more than just a Will Power booster.
i think i have the evil twins straightened out now. evil palom has the orange cape, while evil porom has the green cape, right?
I never really bothered to notice their capes. Palom has a more reddish hue on the face.
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also, while i'm on the subject, i've only ever run into evil palom solo, never evil porom. i've seen them together a few times, but porom never shows up alone. is that just a fluke?
nevermind, after like 20 encounters porom showed up alone. took awhile, but it finally happened.
also, i'm not complaining, i'm just wondering. right now, my palom has gaea/black/rune, and porom has wizard/wizard/rune.
what are the other wizard helm advantages? i didn't see anything except dmg/4 from undead? is that what you're referring to?
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also, while i'm on the subject, i've only ever run into evil palom solo, never evil porom. i've seen them together a few times, but porom never shows up alone. is that just a fluke?
Fluke. If the monster distribution info is correct, there should be pretty equal probability.
what are the other wizard helm advantages? i didn't see anything except dmg/4 from undead? is that what you're referring to?
It's not damage/4... it is undead monster's attack power/2. It's a significant difference.
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hmm... so the editor has it wrong then? i'm just reciting what i read in zyr's new(er) editor. i'm not insinuating you're wrong, god knows i trust you over the editor, but how much is the difference between the 2? attack power over 2 means the attack still needs to be multiplied out, so it won't necessarily be 1/2 of the normal damage, right? whereas dam/4 is just that?
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hmm... so the editor has it wrong then? i'm just reciting what i read in zyr's new(er) editor. i'm not insinuating you're wrong, god knows i trust you over the editor, but how much is the difference between the 2? attack power over 2 means the attack still needs to be multiplied out, so it won't necessarily be 1/2 of the normal damage, right? whereas dam/4 is just that?
If you don't believe it, here's a simple test. Put a character under Mini/Toad status in the front row vs a monster of a racial type. See how much damage they do... it's technically raw damage (0 defense) * 2 since the monster's attack power is doubled when targeting a character with either status. Then, equip the character with a racial protection piece of equipment. It happens that this consequently decreases the attack power of the monster... to the point that it negates the monster's attack power boost due to the character's Mini/Toad.
A monster that has a potential max of 127 is not as threatening as a monster that has 255 attack power.... even if the multiplier for the monster with the 127 attack power has double the attack multiplier than the monster that has 255 attack power.
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no, i believe it. like, i said, i trust you over the editor. i was just wondering about the difference between the 2. how much it actually is. now i see what you're talking about and you gave me a good example to test. at this point, i'd trust you over any of the editors.
this is me right now, by the way:
(http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/6816/finalfantasyiiuv1100000qy7.th.png) (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=finalfantasyiiuv1100000qy7.png)
i'm on mt. ordeals and (obviously) not yet a paladin.
:edit:
tella just joined at lv. 34! pretty cool.
err... i just ran into a group of 2 souls, 2 zombies, and 2 revenants. a little bit into it, a message came up from an officer to attack. is that on purpose, like the souls are ordering the zombies, et al? cause if it is, that's really fucking cool.
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this is me right now, by the way:
(http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/6816/finalfantasyiiuv1100000qy7.th.png) (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=finalfantasyiiuv1100000qy7.png)
i'm on mt. ordeals and (obviously) not yet a paladin.
:edit:
tella just joined at lv. 34! pretty cool.
I have a level 30 Palom and Porom for testing on Baigan...
err... i just ran into a group of 2 souls, 2 zombies, and 2 revenants. a little bit into it, a message came up from an officer to attack. is that on purpose, like the souls are ordering the zombies, et al? cause if it is, that's really fucking cool.
It's intentional. I'm using existing scripts and it's supposed to be a small joke (the undead repeat the actions of the previous life). It doesn't have much impact though in like 2 formations.
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I have a level 30 Palom and Porom for testing on Baigan...
heh, yeah, i took the grinding to heart. i wasn't planning on going that far, but with the game sped up, you miss things sometimes.
It's intentional. I'm using existing scripts and it's supposed to be a small joke (the undead repeat the actions of the previous life). It doesn't have much impact though in like 2 formations.
this is pretty cool. that never occurred to me. i figured it was there for a reason, but that one never came to mind.
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why can i not kill the ghasts after killing milon? i've tried pretty much every way possible between physical and magic, and i can't seem to hurt them.
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I killed Milon at twins' level 22. Keep in mind that while they have high magic defense, the Ghasts still have the same elemental properties.
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why can i not kill the ghasts after killing milon? i've tried pretty much every way possible between physical and magic, and i can't seem to hurt them.
Keep in mind that while they have high magic defense, the Ghasts still have the same elemental properties.
255 Magic Defense = Magic Immunity
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ah damn, i should've looked in the editor first. every time i would try to hit them with a spell, there wouldn't be a zero, nothing happened. it seemed wrong, because i haven't played through in so long. definitely forgot about that. thanks.
well, that took abut 3 minutes once i realized what i needed to use. thanks.
you know, i pretty much never use bows when i play, but they're certainly turning out to be pretty invaluable here.
i just went back to read the post, and i take it i'm done once i recruit yang? i see the monsters in the waterway are still being worked on. or do you have baigan and the king done too?
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ah damn, i should've looked in the editor first. every time i would try to hit them with a spell, there wouldn't be a zero, nothing happened. it seemed wrong, because i haven't played through in so long. definitely forgot about that. thanks.
The only monster that normally takes advantage of this is Barbariccia/Valvalis.
you know, i pretty much never use bows when i play, but they're certainly turning out to be pretty invaluable here.
The way I've been setting this up... I'm indirectly endorsing that setup, but was aiming more for Quake immunity.
i just went back to read the post, and i take it i'm done once i recruit yang? i see the monsters in the waterway are still being worked on. or do you have baigan and the king done too?
The monsters are a work in progress (my version has it more or less done, but they are radically different than what was last posted). I test my own hack "as I go", so it's imperative for me to test out monster balance first. Bosses get their own special time and treatment. Baigan's currently just perfectly annoying and evil... still beatable though. Cagnazzo/Kainazzo is still being developed though.
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do i actually have to drain yang's 65k hp? the battle doesn't end the normal way, so i take it that i do.
and i'm looking at his attack script, and i don't see it ending, so i guess i do. also, this:
If Casted on by Character
Battle Message $12
Cast <$36>SpdSong ($BD)
doesn't seem to be happening when i hit him with a spell. is that what's supposed to trigger it? i hit him with a spell, he says something, and casts that spell? or is he casting it but there's no animation, so i don't know it's happening?
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do i actually have to drain yang's 65k hp? the battle doesn't end the normal way, so i take it that i do.
You had to do this in FF4 (and not any other version, including FF4A IIRC).
and i'm looking at his attack script, and i don't see it ending, so i guess i do. also, this:
If Casted on by Character
Battle Message $12
Cast <$36>SpdSong ($BD)
doesn't seem to be happening when i hit him with a spell. is that what's supposed to trigger it? i hit him with a spell, he says something, and casts that spell? or is he casting it but there's no animation, so i don't know it's happening?
If you read the Tower of Bab-il docs, reaction scripts rely on the order they go in. Think about which spells can actually be applied here.
No animation does not always mean doesn't work.... particularly for monster spells.
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hmm... so in the original ff4, the battle doesn't stop after cecil hits yang after his second kick? you actually have to drain all his hp? i haven't played through j2e's translation in years, so i don't remember.
i know that no animation doesn't mean it didn't work, thus this: "or is he casting it but there's no animation, so i don't know it's happening?"
i didn't really think about it before, but i started using some utility spells(as opposed to attack/healing spells), and it's really helping. safe seriously trimmed yang's damage down to nothing, and blink helped me build up the safe barrier.
also, i ended up hitting him with slow as an experiment. he used a different battle message, so i take it that i got the right spell to cause him to use the speedsong counter, but he still seems slowed down. maybe it's just me.
i finally got this to a manageable level. it took like 4 or 5 castings of safe and a half dozen uses of blink by tella to get me there, but he finally can barely hurt me. now i can just keep plinking his hp down slowly...
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hmm... so in the original ff4, the battle doesn't stop after cecil hits yang after his second kick? you actually have to drain all his hp? i haven't played through j2e's translation in years, so i don't remember.
No.. it was just the HP was set to 65000.
i know that no animation doesn't mean it didn't work, thus this: "or is he casting it but there's no animation, so i don't know it's happening?"
Think of the weapon-spells.. animation is an optional component.
i didn't really think about it before, but i started using some utility spells(as opposed to attack/healing spells), and it's really helping. safe seriously trimmed yang's damage down to nothing, and blink helped me build up the safe barrier.
also, i ended up hitting him with slow as an experiment. he used a different battle message, so i take it that i got the right spell to cause him to use the speedsong counter, but he still seems slowed down. maybe it's just me.
I'm pretty sure this is not the case...
i finally got this to a manageable level. it took like 4 or 5 castings of safe and a half dozen uses of blink by tella to get me there, but he finally can barely hurt me. now i can just keep plinking his hp down slowly...
Going to straight Safe casting is easier IMO. Eventually the Kick starts being ineffective, and then it's smooth sailing from there.
It's worth pointing out, that you see the entire convo that was intended to be posted, but was originally missing. That wasn't fixed in FF4A IIRC. It was also translated for some reason...
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casting slow isn't supposed to cause him to use different dialogue? maybe it was a fluke then. he only ever said "ouch" that one time in this one battle when i casted slow, though.
i think i see what you're saying about ff4. the battle ended the same way-hitting him after his second kick. the difference was that his hp was 65000.
and, yes, i did notice the difference in the conversation. very cool.
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So multiple castings of Safe work together? Is it the same with Haste and Slow?
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i think haste and slow each only have benefits up to 2 castings apiece.
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casting slow isn't supposed to cause him to use different dialogue? maybe it was a fluke then. he only ever said "ouch" that one time in this one battle when i casted slow, though.
It is supposed to cause him to use that dialogue (although, it's ironic Slow doesn't actually "hurt" him).
The magicial counter script follows the damage counter script.. so that only "non-damaging magic attacks" are the only one that is applied.
i think i see what you're saying about ff4. the battle ended the same way-hitting him after his second kick. the difference was that his hp was 65000.
and, yes, i did notice the difference in the conversation. very cool.
I took a look back at the FF4 stats... I've actually given more than the original (FF4's version is 62000HP).
So multiple castings of Safe work together? Is it the same with Haste and Slow?
It's always been that way for Safe/Shell up to 255 of either stat (but that doesn't bring invincibility though).
Haste and Slow only affect a speed modifier and it is capped. The speed modifier by default is 16. The possible range is between 12 and 32. Having a lower value makes a character/monster attack more frequently and vice versa is true. Haste normally decreases the speed modifier by 3 (in this hack, it is 4). Slow normally increases the speed modifier by 8.
At this point, I'd suggest reading my FF4 Algo FAQ and/or magic FAQ for supplemental info (although, mind you some spells have changed in the hack, but that's besides the point).
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While testing...
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/3904/myff4hack00014mk8.th.png) (http://img19.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00014mk8.png)
I've had more trouble in trying to tweak this than originally imagined. :hmm: :isuck: :blits:
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Easy solution! Just grind until you can survive it. :wink:
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Easy solution! Just grind until you can survive it. :wink:
I'm sure that's an option, but with what I did, grinding away 10 (though, it's more like 3 in my case) more levels than my current group isn't an optimal solution.
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With the number of changes made, I'm happy to report that additional space was made by cleaning up useless battle code primarily from Cagnazzo/Kainazzo.
With that said, I'm disappointed to report that Cagnazzo kicked my ass enough times that it hurts...
I didn't bother putting up pictures of the Baigan battle because that would ruin too much...
Here's a news flash: Cagnazzo doesn't insta-die vs a Lit-3 hit. :childish: :eek: :whoa: :tongue:
:edit:
These changes go up to beating Cagnazzo... I'll have to think about what to do with the Eblan treasure monsters and the monster formations most people never fight...
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Yay! Starting over.
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sounds interesting. i'll check it out again once you get a little farther along. i'm in baron with yang. no need to start over, right?
after spending way more time that was expected on ff2dl2(the title i made for your hack while i was taking notes), i spent a little while playing nethack at work today, and quite frankly i now require mooore.
speaking of an actual title, though, it's too bad you couldn't make a few more character clones and make it something clone-related, like you alluded to in the first post. it'd be neat to fight a cecil clone with rosa there to buff him/heal both of them.
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sounds interesting. i'll check it out again once you get a little farther along. i'm in baron with yang. no need to start over, right?
No need.
after spending way more time that was expected on ff2dl2(the title i made for your hack while i was taking notes), i spent a little while playing nethack at work today, and quite frankly i now require mooore.
This version was to make weenies cry.. including myself. :blush:
speaking of an actual title, though, it's too bad you couldn't make a few more character clones and make it something clone-related, like you alluded to in the first post. it'd be neat to fight a cecil clone with rosa there to buff him/heal both of them.
There are definately plans to make more... it's better when those characters are/will be in your party and you are more likely to see them before they leave for whatever reason (so, Cid and Tellah are pretty much next up).
The Final Party will have.. more interesting opportunities, and will carry the best equipment they could possibly get (at least in my vision), but they will be much more radical and I don't think a "get out of Game Over free card" will be issued then.
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Small preview:
(http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/200/myff4hack00015vu4.th.png) (http://img25.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00015vu4.png)
I should have more pics when once I decide what to do next.
:edit:
I didn't realize how fun this turned out...
(http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2402/myff4hack00016go7.th.png) (http://img526.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00016go7.png)
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I've updated the battle scripts for both eviltwins to address their lameness problems.
Right now, I need to level up Cid little bit (I do mean a little).
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I'm in the middle of redoing the Dark Elf's scripts... in addition to item drop-monster balancing. As soon as I have that settled, there should be a new beta out.
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Ok, everything up to the Magnetic Cave and the Dark Elf boss battles are done.
I found it strange that noone had a comment about the Baigan and Cagnazzo boss battles went...
The new battles can be found at the most unbattled sections of the game... the area around Agart/Eblan Castle.
Yay, found some space to add that in:
(http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/7838/myff4hack00017pv1.th.png) (http://img10.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00017pv1.png)
Simply sadistic:
(http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8691/myff4hack00018op2.th.png) (http://img27.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00018op2.png)
A classic (there is no change, I just love the message):
(http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/891/myff4hack00019ud6.th.png) (http://img23.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00019ud6.png)
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i haven't fought baigan and caignazzo yet. i will next time i play.
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I had started over, I haven't bothered to kill Octomamm again since I'm trolling for a Cure Staff first.
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ok, the whiskey is poured and the file is patched. i think it's time to keep going... :cycle: :cycle:
god damn it. apparently, i closed zsnes without checking to make sure i saved state. i have to kill yang again. i wouldn't mind if it didn't take forever...
:edit:
waaaait! i just noticed that i never bothered to closed the game out when i was done playing before. i still have yang beaten in the older version, i just didn't save and it's still running. i can't begin to describe how happy i am right now. heh, state saved and transferred over to the newer version. here i come baigan!
also, i like how you changed the treasure in one of the chests in the weapon shop in baron.
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also, i like how you changed the treasure in one of the chests in the weapon shop in baron.
I've changed 0 treasure chests. You're probably confusing the treasure drops from the original.
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ah, yeah, that may be it. i know the treasure chest i'm thinking of(the one on the left) had a "wrath of zeus" in it in ff4. i must've not ever checked it in ff2us.
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ah, yeah, that may be it. i know the treasure chest i'm thinking of(the one on the left) had a "wrath of zeus" in it in ff4. i must've not ever checked it in ff2us.
It is convienently a Thunder Claw.
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heh, yeah, i know that now.
:edit:
aquaworm is strong. does that tidal wave move it uses do like 1/2 or 1/4 of it's hp(i guess i could just check your faq, huh?)? it just one-shotted the twins and they have almost 700hp.
in your faq, i see this:
Spell Power: 4 (Max HP Modifier)
but am not sure exactly what that means... 1/4 of the max hp?
wait, you said you didn't change any chests? why did i just get a coral sword in place of the ancient sword? the coral sword shows up in ff4et, not ff2us. that should be the ancient sword.
:edit: 2
i'm about 3 minutes into the battle, and i already fucking hate baigan...
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aquaworm is strong. does that tidal wave move it uses do like 1/2 or 1/4 of it's hp(i guess i could just check your faq, huh?)? it just one-shotted the twins and they have almost 700hp.
It is modified, but it is the same original spell that the monster uses.
in your faq, i see this:
Spell Power: 4 (Max HP Modifier)
but am not sure exactly what that means... 1/4 of the max hp?
1/4 of the Target's MaxHP. That's not the same spell... that's the spell that Leviathan uses.
The AquaWorm monster uses the regular Wave spell (I'm probably going to rename that). That one bases its damage off the caster's current HP, with a modifier. Wave by default is 20 IIRC, but that's pathetic, so I've changed that to 3.
wait, you said you didn't change any chests? why did i just get a coral sword in place of the ancient sword? the coral sword shows up in ff4et, not ff2us. that should be the ancient sword.
Remember that chests are not modified... but it doesn't mean the items themselves are not. See Cursed Shield.
:edit: 2
i'm about 3 minutes into the battle, and i already fucking hate baigan...
Now you know how much fun I had. :cycle:
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Remember that chests are not modified... but it doesn't mean the items themselves are not. See Cursed Shield.
ah, ok. now i get it.
Now you know how much fun I had.
i have no doubt that you had fun designing this one....
:edit:
just for the record, i beat him a little while ago after a few tries and figuring out something he was susceptible to.
umm... i hit caignazzo with quake, and the wrong battle message played(if any was supposed to play at all). yang said "ouch" for no reason.
also, holy shit did "wave" just beat the hell out of me...
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umm... i hit caignazzo with quake, and the wrong battle message played(if any was supposed to play at all). yang said "ouch" for no reason.
It's correct. The "ouch" part was a reuse of code, but it's not entirely out of place. It's a magical attack after all.
also, holy shit did "wave" just beat the hell out of me...
What, you thought the screenshot was a joke? :laugh:
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It's correct. The "ouch" part was a reuse of code, but it's not entirely out of place. It's a magical attack after all.
What, you thought the screenshot was a joke? :laugh:
a. yeah, it was kind of a toss up for me wether you had that there on purpose or not, since i knew it fit, and especially since yang was the only survivor.
b. i was hoping... i knew it was gonna be bad, i just didn't realize how bad. :omghax:
aaaanywho, buying some stuff at silvera(i think that's ff2us's name for it), and off to toria.! :whoa:
and, hey, go figure. edgar both times. just noticed that...
now i'm gonna try and farm some of those fire traps and head over to eblan before toria...
:edit:
ah well, off to troia...
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mmmk, eagerly awaiting the next installment...
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Well, that's going to take some time. Even after the changes, I still have to work at getting out of the Magnetic Cave first.... :tongue:
Lacking space for items is killing me at this point...
:edit:
No comments on the Dark Elf? :tongue:
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Looks like the real fun begins. Now with Fire+Ice equipment becoming available... monsters will be significantly more devastating w/o as much tweaking necessary...
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I've worked my way back to Milon, at a level that would've wiped the floor with him previously... now that Drain's changed, I'm not even close to even killing one of the enemies :(
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Killing the undead requires the same optimal tactic.
When revising Drain, I did test the changes myself to see if it was overpowered... it really isn't. In addition, it allows Drain to be more reusable (I can't say the same for Psych/Osmose), but the spell power had to be retweaked appropriately.
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I got through it, was just a matter of the twins having decent HP. Just upgraded to Paladin, working through that now.
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Wow. I could try grinding a lot to make Baigan easier, but given that the problem is the status effects... hmm. :/
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dark elf? dark elf spent awhile beating the shit out of me. i don't remember exactly how i beat him now, but i know it took some strategizing and was a nice challenge for a change.
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The monster is still easier than you think... but if you didn't listen to what happens after he changes form... it was actually pretty nifty.
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Currently kicking my ass: Kainazzo
Not sure how to deal with him getting into the shell, although getting him to that point is much easier now that Porom's got Cure3.
:edit: Got it, although the method I used kind of seems like cheating (switching it into a different script)
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What's so great about the Diamond Axe? Non-metallic?
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porom had cure 3 when you took on caignazzo? wow, you really did do some grinding...
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porom had cure 3 when you took on caignazzo? wow, you really did do some grinding...
Palom had Ice-3 as well, so instead of the typical half-hour boss fight, it only took about 10 minutes ^_^
The real trouble was that I couldn't competently heal myself before, even with Cecil and Porom on Cure Staff duty - Tellah's usually too busy doing other stuff to be main heal, and his mp is very limited.
Right now I'm knocking around Clone Cid to see if he drops anything good. No luck yet.
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Currently kicking my ass: Kainazzo
Not sure how to deal with him getting into the shell, although getting him to that point is much easier now that Porom's got Cure3.
:edit: Got it, although the method I used kind of seems like cheating (switching it into a different script)
The trick allowed is intentional, since the original script was installed into Milon/Scarmaglione from the beginning. I didn't have to use Cure3 (I feel like I'm running a low level game for my own hack, strangely enough), but the consequences of the trick is usually one death... which is fine compensation.. for now anyways.
What's so great about the Diamond Axe? Non-metallic?
Yes, but it's also one-handed.
porom had cure 3 when you took on caignazzo? wow, you really did do some grinding...
Here's a quick story. There was this one time that I decided to grind with the twins until they had more HP than Cecil. That was fun at the time. My hatred for the DK's HP growth grew since then.
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[spoiler]There is some crazy bug going on in the Tellah/Cid fight, whatever Cid's 'special' move is (my Cid does 'Peep' in the third slot) does some very random effects - so far I've seen Death-all (with no message!), Stone-all (except Tellah, who's immune) and I've seen IcyBlaze, which may or may not be Cid at all. This is likely intended behavior and not a bug at all, but some kind of message or sound effect would be nice, instead of being in the middle of the fight and suddenly without warning having everyone eat dirt.
EDIT: Looks like Weak-all, too. Must be Recall. Mystery solved... painfully.[/spoiler]
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[spoiler]There is some crazy bug going on in the Tellah/Cid fight, whatever Cid's 'special' move is (my Cid does 'Peep' in the third slot) does some very random effects - so far I've seen Death-all (with no message!), Stone-all (except Tellah, who's immune) and I've seen IcyBlaze, which may or may not be Cid at all. This is likely intended behavior and not a bug at all, but some kind of message or sound effect would be nice, instead of being in the middle of the fight and suddenly without warning having everyone eat dirt.
EDIT: Looks like Weak-all, too. Must be Recall. Mystery solved... painfully.[/spoiler]
When you get that far into a battle script, it's too late for you. :tongue:
It's a reworking of another monster's battle script, inserted here to scare you now. Even though there's a good chance that you won't get hit by anything serious from the command itself, having potential instant death via Stone, Weak (with some help), and Death (with a potential status crippling attack in Toad), I like my chances. You're only fortunate I was testing balance and initially led off with that command.
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[spoiler]There is some crazy bug going on in the Tellah/Cid fight, whatever Cid's 'special' move is (my Cid does 'Peep' in the third slot) does some very random effects - so far I've seen Death-all (with no message!), Stone-all (except Tellah, who's immune) and I've seen IcyBlaze, which may or may not be Cid at all. This is likely intended behavior and not a bug at all, but some kind of message or sound effect would be nice, instead of being in the middle of the fight and suddenly without warning having everyone eat dirt.
EDIT: Looks like Weak-all, too. Must be Recall. Mystery solved... painfully.[/spoiler]
When you get that far into a battle script, it's too late for you. :tongue:
It's a reworking of another monster's battle script, inserted here to scare you now. Even though there's a good chance that you won't get hit by anything serious from the command itself, having potential instant death via Stone, Weak (with some help), and Death (with a potential status crippling attack in Toad), I like my chances. You're only fortunate I was testing balance and initially led off with that command.
Leading off with it would just reduce the problem to the percentage when he tries Toad, as he tried Recall-Toad twice against me, once it only hit Yang and the other time it failed entirely.
I've now beaten Dark Elf and am back to try and kill Tellah. I've found a strategy that gets the job done, I just haven't had luck with drops. The drop I have gotten is really neat, but I'm sure I can do better.
:edit: Okay, guess not ;)
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hmm... why have i not run into cid or tella? where are they?
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hmm... why have i not run into cid or tella? where are they?
They are found in the common area that you most likely don't fight in once you have access to the Enterprise.
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I got a kick out of venturing into the Tower of Zot and one-shotting the non-modified enemies there ;)
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yeah, i made it about halfway through the tower of zot before i realized that.
common area... words...
hmm... time to start exploring...
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Heya, I seem to have a problem, Ive patched the IPS to the correct rom (I think anyway) And I am unable to procede further than the opening scene, it freezes on the fight with the Zuu, is this a bug, or do I need to find another version of the rom?
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This patch is for FF2US 1.1 revision of the game with a header. I suggest you use NSRT to verify what version of the game you are using and to add a header if necessary.
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Thank you for your help, I have it working now. I'll let you know how I like it, so far it seems interesting from what everyone has been saying here. Turns out I was patching it to 1.0 instead of 1.1 (It was mislabed, the rom that is.) So after a bit of searching, I found myself a shiny 1.1, and it works like a charm.
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Sorry for no updates.. I took a week or so off on working on this, since it required a little creativity to get me going and I was kinda out of that.
I should have some screenshots by tomorrow, but I am taking some time to rework some of the existing battle scripts.. and will eventually make the Magus Sisters and Valvalis/Barbariccia to become fun battles. Let the sadistic script making continue!
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Some pics...
Finding excuses to add in spells...
(http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/8559/myff4hack00020xk3.th.png) (http://img10.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00020xk3.png)
Upgrade!
(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/1213/myff4hack00021lk0.th.png) (http://img18.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00021lk0.png)
When you have useless options, you can fix them:
(http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/5804/myff4hack00022ez4.th.png) (http://img11.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00022ez4.png)
More space for more mayhem:
(http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/4927/myff4hack00023vg3.th.png) (http://img13.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00023vg3.png)
See what happens when you Charm the monster...
(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/2825/myff4hack00024uc4.th.png) (http://img18.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00024uc4.png)
It's snowing!
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/9661/myff4hack00025vc9.th.png) (http://img19.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00025vc9.png)
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oooooh... can't wait to try it out... :cycle: :cycle:
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I've added back in 2 formations that went missing in the Tower of Zot.
If you hadn't noticed already, some formations have already have more monsters added to them (I forgot when I started doing that, and I don't think I did changed any of them between Baron and the Mist Cave). No monster slot wasted! :laugh: :wink:
Puppets are also not as easy to get EXP from (note that their EXP has not changed though).
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The Magus Sisters now don't suck. No pictures because that would would spoil the fun.
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Ok, there we go. Pretty much everything in the Tower of Zot, including the bosses are not a joke anymore.
Note: I used to hate the place, but then I found it stupidly easy after using my brain. :tongue:
Protip: If you're having trouble with the bosses, formation, treasure hunting, and knowing the properties of the equipment you have obtained are my only helpful hints.
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Holy poison, Batman!
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Nngh. Spent a half hour killing Cindy. Really not motivated to attempt that fight again now.
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I was very tempted to add Boast into the script... that would've been gold.
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The biggest problem I have is damaging them, not surviving attacks so much.
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I'll throw you a bone.
If you draw what you know of the Magus Sisters, what do you know?
Additionally, Cindy's able to absorb virtually every elemental (except one, but even then, you don't have that elemental available).
When Cindy is dead, it takes 4 turns before either sister attempts to revive all of the dead sisters.
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I've tried finding a Yang claw combination that will bug the absorb, but none of them work. Best damage I can deal to her is via Cecil's Silver sword for 200-300. The other sisters are much easier to kill, but if it's a delicate matter of damaging the other sisters enough to finish them in 4 turns, it's really hard to tell. Takes hours of trial and error and damage logging to figure out their max HP.
I've likely missed plenty of drops in the Tower itself. The enemies I have killed haven't dropped anything, and there's several I can't kill at all (Icebeasts, Epeegirls).
One question I'd have is, does Displ change speed back to 16?
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I've tried finding a Yang claw combination that will bug the absorb, but none of them work. Best damage I can deal to her is via Cecil's Silver sword for 200-300. The other sisters are much easier to kill, but if it's a delicate matter of damaging the other sisters enough to finish them in 4 turns, it's really hard to tell. Takes hours of trial and error and damage logging to figure out their max HP.
Just add 15000HP to the default HP that have (I'm too lazy to come up with creative numbers... adding fixed numbers make it easier to recall some changes).
I've likely missed plenty of drops in the Tower itself. The enemies I have killed haven't dropped anything, and there's several I can't kill at all (Icebeasts, Epeegirls).
Not a lot of the drops are new (the best drops are from the Marion and Puppet), and there's quite a bit of drop reuse. Some of the monsters ultimately do require a bit more thought into killing.
One question I'd have is, does Displ change speed back to 16?
No, it does not. Black Hole was originally the intended spell to increase difficulty (resetting speed and Wall/Reflect removal), but that didn't work out. However, Dispel used in a different instance (other than removing Wall/Reflect) intentionally to exploit a particular behavior and as a unintended but the nice result made Sandy a pure White magic user.
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The next version will be 1.00, but that doesn't mean it's finished. It is notable that the Tower of Zot to underground has 4 consecutive bosses, so the next release is pending. A lot of what I've been allowed to do has improved many of the reaction scripts, so you may see lots more reuse of them to say the least...
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i'll be dedicating part of tomorrow to this. can't wait!
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Oops:
(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/122/myff4hack00027.th.png) (http://img7.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00027.png)
What's wrong with this pic? :wink:
(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/9559/myff4hack00028.th.png) (http://img21.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00028.png)
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Just in case it wasn't obvious, this is intentional:
(http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/9250/myff4hack00029.th.png) (http://img408.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00029.png)
This is the only viable opportunity to take advantage of Rydia's Will Power and not have it go to waste.
Additionally, it takes advantage of the stupid error in the event code... plus justify where the mysterious Cure2 came from in her Mist script (shared with the TinyMages).
Both Calbrena and Golbez are now done.. but none of the enemies in the underworld are so bleh :tongue:
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What's wrong with this pic? :wink:
(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/9559/myff4hack00028.th.png) (http://img21.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00028.png)
holy crap. tell me the hold gas + disrupt thing can't still happen, especially since you just said hold gas can't miss... do you really have to rely on kain being up in the air at the right time over and over..?
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holy crap. tell me the hold gas + disrupt thing can't still happen, especially since you just said hold gas can't miss... do you really have to rely on kain being up in the air at the right time over and over..?
No, it's designed to be clever and twisted at the same time. You'll see when you get there. It's actually sadistic. :laugh:
It may make you want to :finger:
Hint: Hold Gas will be used once though, but a little more prior to that (but not as insane/vicious, and not in the same battle).
Kain will have zero say in the matter.
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No feedback or is everyone waiting for the next installment (which might take a while)?
If there's still difficulty issues, I'm willing to drop a few more hints... just not my pants. :tongue:
I'm probably going to tweak a little bit of the currently running Golbez and Calbrena scripts.. but that's primarily cosmetic (well, it's more like a pair of small audio changes).
Potentially, there will be some small tweaks to the opening series of monsters (the Raven+Floateyes) for some random amusement...
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i still haven't played it. i've been busy as all hell. i did, however, download it. not that that makes a difference or anything... :bah: :lame:
maybe if i get some free time at work tomorrow...
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I beat Magus sisters, on to Valvalis. I'm sure I'm missing some key drops in the Tower. Cid is still 100% useless. Cecil's turning out to be pretty worthless in this battle, too.
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Okay. Clearly missing a pretty big piece of the puzzle here.
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I beat Magus sisters, on to Valvalis. I'm sure I'm missing some key drops in the Tower. Cid is still 100% useless. Cecil's turning out to be pretty worthless in this battle, too.
Cid was extraordinarily useful for me for the Magus Sister battle. Mute Arrows are nice this time of the year.
Okay. Clearly missing a pretty big piece of the puzzle here.
There isn't really a trick to it for the most part. Valvalis was redesigned to emphasize defensively to what she should have been... which is to be virtually invincible in her tornado form. Additionally, I've extended her original partial magic immunity (in tornado form) to total magic immunity, which is very appropriate for this battle.
Offensively speaking, I've intentionally selected a particular elemental to take advantage of her spell power (which was generally focused on one semi-avoidable spell at the moment) and to see if you did the treasure hunting. The key to the status attack (not her physical attack) is making sure you bought/kept some of that armor from a while ago... those EvilTwins should've given you that hint. Additionally, those doll drops are a good source of free protection. For countering Slow... Haste counteracts only half of Slow, but costs a little less than half of Slow... so it's still relatively effective (at least keeping your guys close to normal speed)... except that it accelerates Gradual Petrification (Slow obviously slows it down)... It's a fun conundrum.
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Can you buy Mute arrows?
The offense is the problem I have vs Valvalis. Best attacks I have are Kain's Jump (700) Yang's claws (300) and Cecil's sword (80!). Defense is not a real problem since they all survive the hardest hitting attack.
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Can you buy Mute arrows?
There is one free set you can obtain. Buying it is not an option at this point in the game.
The offense is the problem I have vs Valvalis. Best attacks I have are Kain's Jump (700) Yang's claws (300) and Cecil's sword (80!). Defense is not a real problem since they all survive the hardest hitting attack.
Berserk is free offense.
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Berserk is free offense that still puts me a long, long way from making progress in the damage department. Is there a weapon drop in Zot that will help with that? What level were you roughly?
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Berserk is free offense that still puts me a long, long way from making progress in the damage department. Is there a weapon drop in Zot that will help with that? What level were you roughly?
Did you pick up a Catclaw from the Panthers from way back? If not, the Dragon+Charm Claws should be more than enough anyways.
The only useful weapon drop in Zot is the Rune Staff, but that's if you prefer to go into defensive healing.
This was saved after the completion of the Tower of Zot:
(http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/1469/myff4hack00030.th.png) (http://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?image=myff4hack00030.png)
Also, make sure you keep Kain's starting weapon on him. The Drain Spear is not a good substitute due to a low hit rate, and a logical weakness was added to Valvalis to help out the damage intake... it has nothing to do with Fire.
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I didn't pick up a Catclaw, no. Nor did I manage to get any of the hard treasures in Eblan.
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I didn't pick up a Catclaw, no. Nor did I manage to get any of the hard treasures in Eblan.
The monsters in the Eblan treasure chests are still relatively easy (I'll probably end up retweaking them somehow)... they still harbor the same weaknesses as they did before and the weapon of most significance is the Slumber Sword (although, that's not going to really change the difficulty of the Valvalis battle).
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Headed back to Cave Magnes... definitely missed a few good equipment upgrades here.
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Those Giant Gloves are free multiplier and defense upgrades, despite providing no magic defense.
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Yeah, those are the major ones I missed out on.
Also, you know you're behind a version when you kill a boss in 5 minutes...
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Is it even possible to lose the Golbez fight?
:edit: Looks like a really lucky Flare CAN one shot Cecil at my level.
[spoiler]Actually, I'd be impressed if the whole trick was to try and win the fight before you kill 8 dragons, for whatever Golbez drops. This is much less trivial (although it IS possible to get Kain in the air during the initial volley, which would help)
Also for the record, the Warp trick still works. Don't know if you can modify that.[/spoiler]
Looking forward to the next update.
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Is it even possible to lose the Golbez fight?
:edit: Looks like a really lucky Flare CAN one shot Cecil at my level.
It sets the bar.
[spoiler]Actually, I'd be impressed if the whole trick was to try and win the fight before you kill 8 dragons, for whatever Golbez drops. This is much less trivial (although it IS possible to get Kain in the air during the initial volley, which would help)
Also for the record, the Warp trick still works. Don't know if you can modify that.[/spoiler]
I'll have to consider just adding an initial Blink so the Jump is useless (which will ensure a few things).
The Warp trick is fixed in FF4ET... go figure. I'll find something that's worth dropping in the Sealed Cave that isn't available until you complete it.
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What's with the Blink on Shadow anyway, it serves zero purpose
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What's with the Blink on Shadow anyway, it serves zero purpose
It's not perfect, because its Agility is above average. The idea is not allow it to be killable (it does stand a chance to be killed) to prevent the healing.
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Fair enough, I'm sure I only make light of the fight because I've already overlevelled myself. I could see this being a huge headache with Cecil around 1200 HP.
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ok, got zsnes up and running with the newest version of the hack, got my favorite drinking glass out, a nice long winamp playlist ready to go, and i fucking have to go to work now. ah well, hopefully it won't be busy... :bah:
pretty excited to keep going with this... :cycle: :clocke:
:edit:
i'm home, the house is mine for the night, and it's time to playyyyyy!
:edit: 2
i just beat cid. it wasn't easy but wasn't really difficult either. i may be over-levelled though. i'm not sure. i got a nice surprise afterward, a [spoiler]genji shield[/spoiler]. i'm going to hang around and fight him some more. i need to find tella also... i'm gonna stick around and win all the gear i can, though. i have no doubt i'm gonna need it in zot and beyond.
:edit: 3
fuck tella. i'm going into the tower.
now that i'm in here, i'm so, so glad i kept a full set of claws for yang. hitting carapaces and ice lizards for 9999 makes for suuuuch a good feeling.
also, i'm so happy that i managed to figure out a really easy way of beating flame dogs. i love the [spoiler]mysticag sword![/spoiler] :cycle:
i was able to take my time, heal my guys up completely, then refill my mp with the lamia rod.
also, it was nice to find out randomly that the puppet master things are weak to [spoiler]warp[/spoiler]
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There's a good chance the next version will be released on Monday... even if I get the monsters done before I sleep tonight (it's morning, but eh, it's a weekend :tongue: ) I have to rework the boss AI. I have in mind what one the battles will be like... it will remind you of a classic boss in FF6 (no, not :laugh: :wink: ) with a variation. It will be certainly better than that pitiful AI script installed into FF6 :finger: .
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Hey, what's wrong with FF6's AI system?
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Hey, what's wrong with FF6's AI system?
I was referring to the script installed for the monster... not the system itself.
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Must be a pretty crappy monster then. :sleep:
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Must be a pretty crappy monster then. :sleep:
You know how many sucky bosses are in FF6? 90% of them are :lame:
To be fair, the AI script in FF4 was written by monkeys on typewriters, because it's worth scratching your head to see what useless stuff was written.
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Hmmm.... Dr. Lugae = Number 024?
Anything's better than JCE's insane version in FF4 Impossible v1.0. ;_;
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Did I get probed all of a sudden in my sleep? :tongue:
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Curious how you'd get around Virus, although I suppose there are specific counter-scripts possible for magic, as is the case for Rubicant.
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Curious how you'd get around Virus, although I suppose there are specific counter-scripts possible for magic, as is the case for Rubicant.
Virus itself isn't a countered condition.. counters usually dealt by their properties (physical, magical, elemental, summon, command, damage... and a few others).
However, battle scripts can be run on conditions.. like the Spirit series of monsters run a specific script (of doing absolutely nothing) after being hit with ice. IIRC, the Plague monster runs an entirely different script once everyone has Count status. As you know, Virus inflicts HP Leak status on a target... this is exclusively used to make Virus the not-so-goto spell early in the game.
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Really? I find Virus to be useful nearly everywhere. Even the middle Magus Sister gets damaged by it.
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Really? I find Virus to be useful nearly everywhere. Even the middle Magus Sister gets damaged by it.
I meant specifically vs bosses at certain points of the game. If I give free reign for that spell vs Milon, instead of giving some love to the Twin magic, then it would seem unfair. Overleveling is somewhat intentional, but intelligence is more important.
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For the record, pretty sure I did use Virus as my kill spell for Milon Z.
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For the record, pretty sure I did use Virus as my kill spell for Milon Z.
I'm half tempted to rewrite that Weak+Fight script to a tri-Weak (in one turn)+some attack script.
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I seem to recall Twin doing less damage than a Flame Rod attack.
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Twin suffers the same thing as Bio does for multiple targets.
Here's a quick comparison..
Comet: 80 (no split damage penalty)
Flare (I called it Burst): 120
Bio: 128
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Fair enough, I was referring to the second fight though, not the first. For the first I just had Palom and Tellah go nuts with Flame Rod attacks on the first three Ghasts, then kill Milon, then kill the final Ghast.
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Trying to get the battle script (for the first battle) the way I want it to work is becoming somewhat annoying, but fortunately it's not as bad as it sounds.
I'm still trying to rework how it is played out, but on the other hand my original idea was better... oh well. Although, the damage algo is wonky due to targeting selection for some reason...
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I apologize for not having said anything in a while. I've been somewhat busy and lazy... but I had trouble getting back into hacking in a different script for the Dr. Lugae (I mean that I lost interest at some point, for whatever the reason, not that I'm having trouble actually writing that script). Right now, I have to get around testing the changes, and adding a few tweaks to existing scripts (the Weak script will get a tweak in addition to another special boss script).
I've pondered changing the equippablity of certain weapons... for the sake of amusement. I'll have to see how that will work out...
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The equipment idea will be in the a future version.. since I'm still tweaking the Dr. Lugae battle scripts... mainly lowering the difficulty... if you weren't aware the monsters themselves are naturally fast and that's not mixing well with what I hoped they would accomplish.
Spell learning has changed... one to fix an unintended level up learning... and the other to add one more spell to Cecil's list.
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Bleh, now my comp's down, and when it's replaced with working parts, I will release what I have done so far, so maybe someone might be interested in reusing some ideas (maybe not), but the current lack of interest (I was playing classic C&C damnit) made it more difficult to continue on.... if there are any lingering questions, please do tell.
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it's too bad you won't be finishing, but what you did have done was pretty cool. how far will the final release go to? dr. lugae?
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That's a big shame, I've had more fun playing this hack than any FF in a long time.
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So, where can I download your hack at? And how much is finished currently?
Thanks, I look forward to dominating your hack
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The patch is buried in the previous posts as attachments... it may be a hassle to find...
When I get to releasing what I have, it should have Dr. Lugae's battle complete (but not balanced to my liking yet.. as I haven't beaten it) and it should also cover the Super Cannon event (I forget if I changed that battle buglessly), but it should be "the end" for now.
I intended to change Edge's starting magic... I've already changed what he learned when he gets furious (to add cooler spells instead) and Flood and Blitz should *hopefully* be learned just fine (it becomes spells you learn by level instead).
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I had forgotten to take pics of the Dr. Lugae battle, but eh, I'm sure you can take some yourself if you really want.
Yay!
(http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/1221/myff4hack00034.th.png) (http://img35.imageshack.us/i/myff4hack00034.png/)
I've gotten the Super Cannon and Dr. Lugae battle done, but I'm still tweaking stuff in the background since I'm preparing to integrate Edge correctly.
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so... you're going to keep going with this, then?
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I'm hopeful I'd be done by the end of the year, but that might be too much pressure. :tongue:
I was burnt out with ideas before, but I have a semi-fresh look now, so we'll see.
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Well so far I am indeed enjoying myself with this. The changes you made for Remedies being only really chest finds (unless you're willing to dish out 5000 GP for one), and having the rest of the battle items won from encounters was a Great idea!
As it stands I am currently about to (re) fight the OctoVamp, wow did he throw me for a loop. Magic Fists is an interesting experiment, and I think it really helps out Rydia at the start, and against foes that lack an elemental weakness. The training has been rather harsh, I love what you did for the Imps and the nasty counter with Jump on the Larva was top notch! Also I managed to beat the Mist Dragon with only Kain standing and 13 HP remaining, haha! That was a lot of fun. Also I like that you made the enemy Summons a bit more obtainable. As it stands I have both the Imp and Roc Summons (still not sure why you made Imp 13 MP...) but there should be some reason for it, heh. Well, I'll post again once I have more updates on progress.
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Phew, what a boss... I finally beat the OctoVamp, though I'm not sure if it's how it was intended... I fought him originally at Level 15, and he wiped me out, very quickly, this at first was because I didn't know about his endless Thunder combo (which I thought I could use to my advantage, was I sadly mistaken) then I realized that Anything that was done had him counter with an 80-110 Drain, I tried everthing. At first I tried to Berserk Cecil (with those nifty PowerDrink's you were so kind to put on SandHags) and have Tellah and Rydia use the Immensely useful Cure staves to keep everyone at full HP, unfortunately that didn't work, it was basically an endless loop by that point I couldn't make an impasse, I noticed no status ailments worked on him either, so after about 10 or so attempts, I went back and trained till level 18 with great success, except this time, I held to my previous Berserk Cecil, Tellah and Rydia as Healbots, strategy, thankfully Cecil could deal a healthy amount of damage to him, on occasion he would deal upwards to 340 Damage, and then... hit of 70 and have the Drain push us back into the negative... well on Damcyan!
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Well so far I am indeed enjoying myself with this. The changes you made for Remedies being only really chest finds (unless you're willing to dish out 5000 GP for one), and having the rest of the battle items won from encounters was a Great idea!
As it stands I am currently about to (re) fight the OctoVamp, wow did he throw me for a loop. Magic Fists is an interesting experiment, and I think it really helps out Rydia at the start, and against foes that lack an elemental weakness. The training has been rather harsh, I love what you did for the Imps and the nasty counter with Jump on the Larva was top notch! Also I managed to beat the Mist Dragon with only Kain standing and 13 HP remaining, haha! That was a lot of fun. Also I like that you made the enemy Summons a bit more obtainable. As it stands I have both the Imp and Roc Summons (still not sure why you made Imp 13 MP...) but there should be some reason for it, heh. Well, I'll post again once I have more updates on progress.
Heals weren't made 5000GP... it's more like 800 IIRC, but it wouldn't be needed at this stage of the game.
Magic Fists is the same thing used by the Rod, so making it accessible seemed like a good idea. It's a tad better than the level 1 elementals, but still not better than the Chocobo.. so it works fine.
Phew, what a boss... I finally beat the OctoVamp, though I'm not sure if it's how it was intended... I fought him originally at Level 15, and he wiped me out, very quickly, this at first was because I didn't know about his endless Thunder combo (which I thought I could use to my advantage, was I sadly mistaken) then I realized that Anything that was done had him counter with an 80-110 Drain, I tried everthing. At first I tried to Berserk Cecil (with those nifty PowerDrink's you were so kind to put on SandHags) and have Tellah and Rydia use the Immensely useful Cure staves to keep everyone at full HP, unfortunately that didn't work, it was basically an endless loop by that point I couldn't make an impasse, I noticed no status ailments worked on him either, so after about 10 or so attempts, I went back and trained till level 18 with great success, except this time, I held to my previous Berserk Cecil, Tellah and Rydia as Healbots, strategy, thankfully Cecil could deal a healthy amount of damage to him, on occasion he would deal upwards to 340 Damage, and then... hit of 70 and have the Drain push us back into the negative... well on Damcyan!
The idea was to make the squid go faster and defensively stronger... not the other way around (I like easy boss battles, but not to the that extreme). Grinding is involved as the min requirement is that Rydia reaches level 13 or so (Cecil ends up past level 16 if you grind properly), but a lot more ingenuity is involved though.
Drops in general are made easy because all the good stuff were normally useless or not as valuable as it could be. Some drops however were made intentionally harder because of the value it has.
The summon drops are available early (though, I have tweaked what has been dropping since then). They are needed more in some instances, but I think I've given them the "right" MP cost. The Imp summon was reworked, so it's actual value is appreciably lower until you understand how it works. It's the same algo used for the Needle attacks that those monsters use.
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Phew, alright. Well last night I got through the Antlion's den with relatively little trouble, the Antlion was nowhere near as threatening as the OctoVamp, though I have to say I loved the Edward vs. Edward fight! The naming of "Coward" was great! (consideing that it's a back attack so it looks as if the "Coward" is the real Edward.) And it was a bit more psychological in that respect, definitely more powerful in terms of plot, then a random Water Hag. This gets me thinking... maybe a mini Edward dungeon, where he comes to grips? though ideally I would love an event that removed Auto-Hide from him (because That is a very annoying"skill") Hide does have its uses though.
Mt. Hobbs wasn't very difficult, though once again your philosophy of "Dark Knight weak against Dark" shines through here with the Skeletons as they did against the Zombies, it definitely made things interesting and the 20 White Arrows from Damcyan become highly useful there. The Charmer harp is one of my new favorite items, haha! Indespensable at this point, and it's rate of Charm success is astronomically high. So then onto Fabul... I got murdered. I tried a Level 20 Cecil/ Level 15 Yang/ Level 16 Edward, and they were murdered time and time again. So I changed up my strategy a bit, I realized the Fighters were likely resistant against Fire (as they absorbed the Fire Trap) and the damage they were doing was just so much, that I had at first thought they were Dark Elemental, but this is where the Darkness sword truly shines through.
The plan was to put Yang and Cecil in the backrow, and blind each Fighter in turn, thereby reducing their chance to hit more and more, at this point, oddly, I saw that Edward was dealing the most damage (at 70...) so the goal was to keep him alive, and with some luck I managed to take them each out one by one. Then onto MomBomb, aside from wasting a lot of my resources she wasn't too difficult. Then the Antlion... he wrecked my inventory something fierce... I managed to take him, and despaired at another MomBomb by this point my Inventory was basically non-existent, so I failed miserably.
So I trained Yang and Edward up to 20, and went back... this was... probably overkill, it was much easier, and though there were some tough spots, I managed to triumph through them all, even managed to beat Kain! (Extra Headband could come in handy).
So onto Mt. Ordeals!
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(SPOILER ALERT? The information below gives away info on the hack from Mysidia to KluYa's Shrine)
Milon... what else can I say...? Milon... well let's start from where I left off. I love that Porom was given Stone, it gives her some real offensive and crowd control power (even able to wipe out all enemies at once) and the Clones of the Twins was an Awesome feature! I loved that! Defeating them also yielded some great stuff for the mages, a full new set of equipment could be grinded from them. At first the player is nary prepared for the fight, and if they choose to fight the twins with a fresh Palom and Porom they are bound to lose, it's nice that you didn't have it give a gameover, very pleasant touch. I trained them up to roughly 18 then headed up Mt. Ordeals, this is where the Dark Armor weak to Dark really becomes apparent, from normal enemies to the bosses, everything is out to get Cecil and his weakness to them. This is also a Very smart move on your part, to an unprepared player this place is a Deathknell. The place relies 100% on the Twin's abilities to equip Bows and White Arrows.
Every enemy, aside from Lilith are weak to Holy, but nigh immune to magic, making the newly acquired Tellah next to useless (give him a Cure Staff and let him heal) The smart thing to do would have had both twins on Crossbows, but... I didn't use that. Instead I went up the mountain with only Porom on the bow. Not knowing how things were going to go. Well I reached the top mostly by running, but Palom and Porom had both reached Level 20, giving Palom Virus (or maybe it was 21?) without Virus I think that Milon would be even more difficult.
So onto Milon... as mentioned earlier, I grinded the Evil Twins for their Wizard set and Rune Rings to give to Palom/Porom/Tellah, this seemed to help out immensely, now the first form of Milon did give me a lot of trouble as this was my first encounter with the Magic Immune Ghasts, (imagine my surprise when I saw something that Slow Didn't work on) eventually focusing my resources on Palom I managed to defeat Milon, and the Ghasts didn't die with him. I had thought they were invincible, since I had only the Dark Sword and magic, until I recalled that I had the Crossbow and White Arrows, and placing a PowerDrink on Palom he was doing well enough damage to kill one in three turns, so a bit of that and the Milon formation was dead..
Little was I prepared for the montrosity that was Milon Z...
One thing I've learned is that Milon Z's battle script relies 100% on Cecil, or magic being used on him, of course I didn't figure this out until much later... I tried a traditional battle formation at first, Cecil going all out with PowerDrinks, Tellah and Porom on healing, once he started on his Weak chain, I was as good as dead, I must have lost to him at least a dozen times, before I made any significant progress.
I realized that Cecil took significantly more damage when Cursed, and he dealt 1 damage (from his normal PowerDrink 100-300). I set up a network that would keep him healed at all times, 5 Remedies and 3 Crosses... talk about unprepared... after these 8 were gone, and Milon was dealing as much to Cursed Cecil then Cecil was even doing, I quickly started to dry up my inventory of Ethers used to heal him with Esuna on Tellah (Porom didn't know it yet) and I thought I had made good headway, he was no longer countering with Pollen and Weak by this point, everything eventually dried up and Cecil died cursed, so I felt no reason to revive him, then I thought to throw on the White Arrows, and it did significant damage, especially considering the wielder was Cursed.
So I had my strategy, let Cecil die, most of the HP Milon Z restores is because of a cursed Cecil, take away his fountain and watch as he withers and dies. Palom was on the Crossbow and White Arrows, because Porom and Tellah were healbots for the most part. Though one thing that I figured out during my failure of my last attempt was that Blink is much more useful and cost efficient then wasting it on Esuna's. So Porom was nearly always protected from Milon's physical attack dealing Cursed and Poison, throwing on a PowerDrink on Palom had him dealing 300-500 damage a hit to Milon Z, it still took a bit of time (how much HP does he have?!) but he Finally went down. What a fight and what a way required to beat him, I am glad to say I did not go back to grind during any of my failures. Cecil finished his tenure as a Dark Knight at Level 25.
The Dark Knight wasn't... much, really. He was there and he went down after a bit of healing, but given your options, that comes as little surprise (though as a boy, I thought healing the Dark Knight actually sped up the end of the fight, that might be an interesting condition, though perhaps impossible to set).
At this point, I'm going to take a break and try to incorporate your hack changes with my own little remodeling project. It's been a lot of fun!
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The Mt. Hobs+Ordeals increased difficulty was mainly intended to point out how flawed DK Cecil is supposed to be. Between both areas though, the Bombs were the most threatening for the most part... which never made sense to me on many levels.
The most important script reuse though were with the Ghouls... I've always felt the undead should be more swarming (although, it was the beginning of tweaking actual behavior than anything initially).
Milon Z. has 13000 HP... he has two different "modes", but that's something to think about. I think with the healing vs Cecil (as in, just sucking him dry), his effective HP would increase at a min of 50%, but I didn't actually bother with numbers on that.
The Cursed Shield should have been the goto equipment though...
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Oh, he was definitely wearing the Cursed Shield, I didn't know (and still not quite sure, other than increase Strength) what the shield did. I agree as well on that it works a lot better in the narrative to have Cecil face actual difficulty Because of his class. Though on second though... maybe I should have dequiped Cecil there, eh well, over and done with.
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Oh, he was definitely wearing the Cursed Shield, I didn't know (and still not quite sure, other than increase Strength) what the shield did. I agree as well on that it works a lot better in the narrative to have Cecil face actual difficulty Because of his class. Though on second though... maybe I should have dequiped Cecil there, eh well, over and done with.
The point of the shield is to reduce all damage from all racial enemy types. It also provides elemental absorb, but that wouldn't really do you much good unless you wanted it to. For that tradeoff, you lose some stats. STR is increased for balance reasons (and a slight incentive to use it). Unlike all the shields in this game, it provides 0 evasion... so it's intended that Cecil not be able to evade a thing (unless you prefer him naked, in that case, :wink:) although the boss was designed to pretty much break through most evasion stats at the time.
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Alright.. my head hurts, but it's that time to revive this since I have the free time for it.
Does anyone have any notable feedback that I should take into account before I restart this?
A few things in the pipeline:
1) I was planning on changing a number of the starting spells/spell learning/spell learning through events.. specifically those of Rydia, Rosa, Edge, and FuSoYa.
These will be tweaks, but nothing notably significant. However, it should improve spell usefulness selection by far. Some suggestions based on the current spell list would be appreciated..
Rydia will have Ice-2, Lit-2, and Fire2 replaced with more spells replaced in the summons... which would probably include CureAll (the Cure staff's spell). The spells being replaced will be relearned @ level 25 (before Bio).
Rosa will have Exit replaced with Black Hole. Exit is covered by Cecil anyways, and sure it breaks the story spell scheme, but seriously... Cecil should have Exit before then with this hack.
Edge will have his prelearned and acquired spells replaced with... a much more interesting variety. He will still learn his basic ninja spells every 3-4 levels IIRC.
Spell list at the moment will include: HolyBeam, Wave (the "weaker" monster version) or Blizzard (the monster version), and AcidStorm.
FuSoYa will have primarily the same preset spells, except for the following...
Exit will be replaced by Black Hole. Reflect will be kept around (for now) despite Rosa having to learn the damned spell at level 99.
His level 2 elementals will be replaced by Edge's elemental Ninja spells.
His level 1 elementals will be replaced by Edge's new learned spell list that I've mentioned above.
2) I was thinking of putting in a Vampire Claw (changing the Charm/Fairy Claw attributes) or a Blood Knife (replacing the Mute Knife, but not necessarily removing the anti-Mage property). This is to address problems with Edge/Yang for self healing and some coolness. The weapon will have negative stat changes in accordance with the Blood/Drain weaponry that exists in this game. Good/bad idea?
3) Unfortunately, the original reason why this is being held us is because I got lazy in trying to document the codes (in a separate text file) that I reused. Rubicant has a terribly structured/useless series of codes for each player that uses a Fire elemental magic on him.. that's how I got the space to replace the bulk of them. However, the hack has essentially reached the point where I've reached Rubicant.. so that's kinda why I'm stuck there. Redoing Rubicant's attack script will be "fun".
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The title of the hack is to be determined, but frankly that's not important to me... some preliminary hack titles that I came up with are the following:
It's Palom's Fault
One Twin Too Many
Clone Wars (yea yea, it's a spoof of Star Wars)
Twins kill their triplet.
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The name is the last thing I'll work on. :tongue:
Edit: BTW, if anyone has a save before Tellah meeting Edward scenario, that would be greatly appreciated. Since I know a bit more now that I did then, I was planning to redo that scenario a tad (even though I will change none of the script).
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I was looking for some feedback, but I didn't get that. :tongue: :angry:
Here's a quick list of notable spell list changes so far:
Rydia:
Removed Ice2, Fire2, Lit2 when she comes back, all three spells learned @ level 25
Comes back with Cure2, CureAll (very tweaked), HolyBeam (20MB, based off Heat Ray), DarkBlst (based off MomBomb's Explode) and usual summons
Rosa:
Removed Exit and comes back with Basuna (same effect as Unicorn Horn or Silver Staff)
Edge:
Removed starting Flame, and obtained spells Flood and Blitz, spells will be learned (not sure if that will work) at some level past the normal few spells he learns
Starts with Wave (monster version, since Blizzard = Icicles Item), CureAll (it won't be as good as Rydia's due to weak Wisdom), Black Hole, and Digest (to be renamed SmokeCloud)
Will learn Big Bang (same as Zeromus) and EvilFire (heavily tweaked Flamethrower) @ Rubicant event
Note: Both acquire spells will not be usable against bosses.
I am debating whether I should replace those with Whirlwind (Wind elemental) and Acid Storm (what Rubicant uses). Both will also be unusable for bosses.
FuSoYa:
Removed Exit, replaced with Black Hole
Removed level 1 elementals, replaced with Wave, Holy Beam, and Dark Blast
Removed level 2 elementals, replaced with elemental ninja magic
Thoughts?
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Bleh, I guess noone cares :sad:
Anyways, I'm writing a quick todo list for myself when I get a chance to work on the stuff:
Update EvilMask battle code for renewed hatred of the monster.
Make TrapDoor's non-death a motivation to visit optional dungeons.
King+Queen Eblan will heal+hit in the same turn.
Change one of the reaction bits so that the use of the Steal command will invoke retribution.
Rubicant will expose more than just Fire...
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Sounds cool, I've been out of the loop for a while now and don't even remember seeing your last post.
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After a major hiatus, and a hiatus from my online gaming addiction... I've finally produced this:
(http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/983/myff4hack00035.th.png) (http://img130.imageshack.us/i/myff4hack00035.png/)
It exposed a bug, and I have truly yet to make Rubicant a threat... but it is progress.
One key notable change... he will actually be resistant to fire... unlike the original.. but there will be a twist.
Actually... I've yet to redo King+Queen Eblan... that one will definitely have some amusement in monster creation construction.
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Nice stuff, Deathlike!
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:bump:
Belated update...
My delay of this project is mostly trying to come up with good ideas on how I would have to script the Rubicante+Eblan royalty battle. In part laziness is a huge factor... but once Edge's initial spell list came out... I tend to draw blanks and it is sucking major ass trying to recall what spells should go where.
So.. for your sake and mine, I'm going to list planned or already implemented spells in the list per person so I can actually get this going in the future (plus I will won't forget what I changed).
In chronological order of character appearance...
Rydia (young):
Learns "Magic Arrow" (Rod magic) and Poisona in White Magic list
Rosa:
Learns dummied out magic
Porom:
Learns dummied out magic and replace "Sight" with "Stone" (Sight is available in a different form, Stone is used for obvious reasons)
Tellah (Mt. Ordeals):
Pondering replacing Meteor with something like MegaFlare (monster spell)...
Replaced Reflect with Black Hole, also learns Death and somehow manages to learn Safe, Shell, and Dispel (he normally learns nothing and I had some difficulty adding these spells to the event spell addition list, so this is a safer method, he learns Scan, Sight, and Dispel though the learning list)
Replaced Meteor with Big Bang
Cecil (Paladin):
Will learn additional White Magic, including Holy (level 70), Safe, Shell, Berserk (I forget if I had added it), Haste, Cure3, Life1
Rosa:
Remember to replace Exit with HolyBeam (give her an offensive spell that unfortunately doesn't use Will Power)
Rydia (older):
Will replace level 2 elementals with CureAll (same as Cure Staff but powered by Rydia's Wisdom), Burst (same as twin magic, and useful in a different way), and DarkBlast (Mombomb's spell)
Adds Cure2 to Rydia's summon list (instead of the removed White Magic command)
Edge:
Will replace initial spell list with DarkBlast, HolyBeam (to replace Flame), Magic Knife, CureAll, Basuna, Black Hole
Will learn Flame, Flood, Blitz via levels (hopefully, will need to test, all ninja spells) and Rubicant event will add AcidStorm and WhirlWind (I originally thought of Big Bang and EvilFire, but those are too powerful and would require significant rebalancing)...
Will also learn many Black magic spells (assuming JCE's hack didn't involve any tweaks to the learning code), including Quake, Bio, Flare, and level 3 elementals
FuSoYa:
Remove Exit and replace with Black Hole
Remove level 1 elementals and replace with Magic Knife, DarkBlast, HolyBeam
Remove level 2 elementals and replace with Flame, Flood, Blitz (ninja versions)
Replace Venom with CureAll
Add dummied out White Magic spells
I think that's the complete list of changes... so I'll have to get to them ASAP.
:edit:
Swapped a spell for FuSoYa
Verified spells for Cecil
Edited Tellah's list...
Again...
And again....
:edit:
All changes are complete... so it's settled (and you won't have to delete the SRM in future patches since starting spells are set properly...)
:edit:
Arg... I had forgotten something important. Changed ChokeSmoke spell selection to Magic Knife (Dancing Dagger)
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Some reaction stuff that I've already implemented...
1A = If self (enemy) has HP Leak (status)
1B = If self (enemy) has Silence (status)
1C = If self (enemy) has Blind (status)
1D = If all characters has HP Leak (status)
1E = If all characters has Float (status)
I probably could put out a complete list, but these are pretty handy for expanding what I want done. I think the other one not mentioned, but used a lot is a slightly expanded variation of the self secret magic counter spell for one more group (for slightly increased variation). To work around my gibberish, basically, there is some code for an enemy to react to group2's "secret attack", not just group1's "attacks" like the Soldier-Officer battles.
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This is looking really good! I'm definitely looking forward to playing this!
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Edge can learn Black+Ninja Magic (Flame, Flood, and Blitz) via normal levels... so it's nice that it is settled.
:edit:
I have a few ideas given what I know now..
Spell changed in planning:
Add the following spells via learning for Edge - Poison Gas, Evil Fire, Blizzard, Fission (ya, that suicide spell), Speed Song, Medic (heal all), Mind Drain, and one to be named later
Learning Acid Storm and Whirlwind will be by level instead of the Rubicante event
Rubicante event will allow learning of both twin spells (Comet and Burst)
Reduce starting spells to only 3 (Holy Beam, Dark Blast, and Basuna), the other 3 will be learned (Dancing Dagger, CureAll, and Black Hole)
Remove Quake and Bio
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-- 3 (event/initial)
HolyBeam - initial
MagicKnife - Rubicante
SpeedSong - "
-- 11 (early spam spell list)
26 Basuna
27 Pin
28 BlackHole
29 CureAll
31 Blizzard
32 Tornado
33 Smoke
34 Flame
36 Flood
37 Blitz
38 Image
-- 10 (the good stuff)
42 Hug
46 MindDrain
50 Fire3
50 Ice3
50 Lit3
54 EvilFire
58 WhirlWind
62 AcidStorm
66 Needle
70 Flare
This might be my finalization version... to be implemented.
:edit:
Changes made
:edit:
Cecil now learns Life2 instead of Life1
:edit:
Now learns Tornado instead of Darkblast
:edit:
Replaced PoisonGas with EvilFire due to recent info found
:edit:
Due to obvious MP consumption woes that is Edge, swapped CureAll with SpeedSong
:edit:
I totally forgot about Black Hole, so I removed Fission (unless you really like the prospect of a Life2-Fission combo?)
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Some oversight on MP consumption and spell placement made me tweak the spell list a tad more.
Both Eblan royalty and Rubicante have had their battle scripts adjusted, but I have to test to see if these bosses are balanced.
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Removed Fission for Black Hole... totally forgot that Edge needs that spell...
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Tweaked Cecil's spell learning list to learn Hold and Blink.
His learning list looks like this...
* - Cure (initial)
3 - Sight
7 - Peep
11 - Hold
15 - Cure2
19 - Exit
24 - Heal
27 - Blink
30 - Safe
34 - Cure3
38 - Haste
42 - Shell
46 - Berserk
50 - Life2
60 - Holy
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Alright... after a 1+ year hiatus, here's a new release v1.33.
I'm not even going to try to write a list a changes, but I've yet to complete adding a few things for the Tellah vs Edward battle. Hopefully, I've written my final spell learning/starting changes to the list so that you wouldn't have to start from the beginning to get them all (although, you could just hack them in with cheats if that's necessary to be fair). Unfortunately, there's no guarantee of this... so I apologize in advance. This is still a beta after all.
This is playable up to Rubicante scenario (and a little after, but that's unfinished/unbalanced yet).
AFAIK, there aren't many bugs, but if there are some, it's generally cosmetic and shouldn't influence the game.
Remember - This patch is ONLY applicable to a clean (NSRT verified) FF2 v1.1 with a header.
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Small update:
Added small additions to the Tellah vs Edward fight
Also tweaked the monster formations in the Tower of Babil after the "pitfall" event... however no underground airship accessible areas have been tweaked
The stuff to do now list:
Sylph Cave (recommended to goto first because some key equipment is there)
Land of Summoned Monsters (particularly Asura+Leviathan, recommended to get what you will really need for the Sealed Cave)
Sealed Cave (there will be an incentive to kill TrapDoors....)
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I'm retweaking some of the weps as we speak (although, I retweak them pretty much every revision for proper progression context)... the next version will have the Whip (now renamed as the Cold Whip :wink:) that can now be equipped on Porom as an added bonus for that side trip to Mist.
Feedback on whatever (including weapon/armor selection) is appreciated.
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I should have something new by the end of Sunday (my time), but it would make no changes to the Sylph's Cave yet... only the monsters accessible on the Underground Overworld (yay oxymorons!)
Cold Whip gets a buff (to make it somewhat competitive and the Throwing Axe (renamed Hand Axe) is also receiving a major buff to make it semi-viable... anyone think it needs a buff though? I was considering an accuracy/hit rate upgrade and/or plus a Fire elemental bonus....
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This should cover the monsters of the underground overworld... and some more equipment tweaks.
I'm starting to think I will need to give Young Rydia Peep to round out her White Magic list...
:edit:
Guys, you might want to hold off on this... I'll have another patch sometime today to add Peep for Young Rydia (to be learned @ level 6)... right now I'm just working on monster formations for the Sylph's Cave and that's pretty easy... the monster tweaking is the hard part.
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Alright... done.
I'm not sure if I've said this already.. but most of the formations IIRC are not "maximized" until the start of Tower of Zot...
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I should have a new patch out by the end of today... with the Sylph Cave being complete. The most notable change that will be that Bows will get a slight buff (adding Vitality boost to most bows).
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Here's a few other notable changes... the Bard Robe now gives +3 Wis and Will. I have also reworked the Ribbon.. "this holy Ribbon" will give you Holy resistance but there's also a tradeoff by removal of some stat resistance. There's too many stat boosting tweaks I've made... so I guess it's a matter of getting to that point to find out. Also... Yoichi Arrows now do not suck.
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Sorry for the belated update, but I'm still trying to figure out something for Asura or Leviathan to make things interesting...
I don't know how that last update got 87 downloads... I swear the bots are in force! :sad: :tongue:
Right now electrical work is being done and hopefully this week won't interrupt much...
Although, doing some thinking in the library has given me some pause... perhaps I'll create a new thread about it but basically I was thinking I should get around to making an editor for this game. It won't deal with graphics (because that's not really my thing), and it cover the following:
Monster data
Battle scripts
Magic data
Item data
Item drop data
Scripted text (in battle displays)
There are a probably a few things that I have forgotten about while writing this post, but the point is that it's primarily meant to be a zyrothgar editor replacement (for the most part) because his editor has some severe bugs in it that have probably hurt the progress of ongoing hacks. I aim to program it in .NET 2.0 so it will be mono friendly.. but that's about it.
The editor should cover all SNES flavors and maybe other FF4 flavors if given enough data. I've gotten a few docs for FF4A (not enough for battle scripts though) so right now I have no particular interest in doing other ports that I have no data for...
Please feel free to let me know what it should have (as long as it isn't graphics related).
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speaking of "fission" i turned one of the commands, endure i think? into a version of this and gave it to Cid since he doesnt have magic, has high hp, AND it makes more sense since he does that little kamikaze move blowing up the exit to the underground
Very interesting, what your doing with different spells. I turned:
Sight into Blind
Mini into Nova (holy damage, multi targetting)
Dispel into Curse
Weak into Demi
Piggy into Aero (which has been pretty effective on floating creatures lol)
One question tho... do you know how I can find the visual effect for the "ice bomb" aka "blue fang" item?
I want to make Fire4 (Melt), Ice4 (Frost), Bolt4 (Shock) and im using edge's spells for this but Flood will not do of course...
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IIRC, the item data references the spell visual #... I'm not sure how one changes the spell visuals for normal spells, but that is where you would start.
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I played this again recently using the newest version of it but for some reason I can't make it past the OctoMammoth this time around. Some time ago I played an earlier version and made it easily past Kainazzo.
I recall way back when stocking up on Bacchus Wine's from the SandHag's but that just seems to work against me this time. No matter what I do OctoMammoth drains me for about all that I deal to him. Was there any changes made to OctoVamp from about six months ago?
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The major thing that was changed was that I set Drain's base magic power to FF4ET's levels, while reducing the boss's magic stat (which was boosted initially IIRC).
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I'm thinking about trying this out. Please tell me it starts off more fair than this (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1030.msg15898#msg15898) or I'll probably never get anywhere in it. I have no patience for hard mods where the level of strategy is "pound the action button and pray to the RNG gods." I don't think you'd make something like that, but if a single goblin takes more than two turns to kill in the beginning, I'm probably not interested.
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Regular monsters won't murder you unless you're careless and/or not paying attention to detail. Bosses are meant to not suck... and grinding is certainly promoted but if you play on what you know, you shouldn't need to grind "as much".
Although, I guess I could create an easier version of the hack.. that wouldn't be the priority though.
Goblins have 106HP IIRC, so it will take some time to kill, but you will be rewarded. Most monsters will have increased drop rates of 25% to compensate and bosses will drop items at a 100% rate unless they have been set to drop nothing... (I'm not entirely sure what causes that). Items are better and/or re-purposed so that should counter balance the boost in difficulty.
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Alright, taking another crack at this. Leveling up outside of the caves is nearly unbearable, the most Exp. there is to be had is 100 for the three characters and the battles themselves take upwards to a minute due to what nees to be done.
Cecil is currently at 17 and Rydia at 14. Now I've gone back to fighting OctoVamp. Things I've learned...
Only when you first start the fight (and whittle down his arms) will he not counterattack Everything with Drain (but Lit which he counterattacks with several deadly Lits himself than a Drain). Though at that time the only things that can even pretend to damage him are Magic Fists and the Shadow sword (strangely enough) everything else does 1 Damage and ordinarily ends in a bad counterattack.
When you've "whittled him down" is when the fight is basically lost. With Blink on everyone he can't easily get through physical attacks but that doesn't matter when everything you do is met with Drain.
With the Darkness Sword Cecil does 53-100 damage to him, which is drained back up for anywhere from 80-120 damage. So Bacchus Wine is a necessity. When applied Cecil does anywhere from 70-205 damage, (205 being crits and the like) but the drains still seem to make that a largely futile effort.
And why is it exactly that Cecil continues to miss so much against this guy? As far as I'm aware the Darkness Sword's Accuracy is still pretty good and I saw that weird move that OctoMammoth does when you get rid of all of his Tentacles but it doesn't seem to do anything, just to be safe I used Eyedrops and a UniHorn, but to no avail. Why exactly at this point in the battle is OctoVamp this untouchable?
As I said before, I made it much further than this once upon a time and had little qualms with this particular part. Are you certain this fellow is acting as intended? Or am I just missing something so simple?
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Alright, taking another crack at this. Leveling up outside of the caves is nearly unbearable, the most Exp. there is to be had is 100 for the three characters and the battles themselves take upwards to a minute due to what nees to be done.
Tip: Tellah is not worth gaining levels for. Gaining levels for Rydia is worth your time outside. It helps a lot if you grind Cecil solo before getting Rydia (if possible)
Cecil is currently at 17 and Rydia at 14. Now I've gone back to fighting OctoVamp. Things I've learned...
Only when you first start the fight (and whittle down his arms) will he not counterattack Everything with Drain (but Lit which he counterattacks with several deadly Lits himself than a Drain). Though at that time the only things that can even pretend to damage him are Magic Fists and the Shadow sword (strangely enough) everything else does 1 Damage and ordinarily ends in a bad counterattack.
Chocobo is a better solution. It has a stronger magic power base. Rydia needs to be @ level 15... she'll then have a chance to evade Drain (Rydia gets the magic defense multiplier). At some point Chocobo won't be an option, so you are better off trying to get Rydia to straight up heal.
When you've "whittled him down" is when the fight is basically lost. With Blink on everyone he can't easily get through physical attacks but that doesn't matter when everything you do is met with Drain.
With the Darkness Sword Cecil does 53-100 damage to him, which is drained back up for anywhere from 80-120 damage. So Bacchus Wine is a necessity. When applied Cecil does anywhere from 70-205 damage, (205 being crits and the like) but the drains still seem to make that a largely futile effort.
Cecil needs the levels. If his attack multiplier doesn't get where it needs to be (somewhere around level 15 or above), then it's not going to be pretty.
And why is it exactly that Cecil continues to miss so much against this guy? As far as I'm aware the Darkness Sword's Accuracy is still pretty good and I saw that weird move that OctoMammoth does when you get rid of all of his Tentacles but it doesn't seem to do anything, just to be safe I used Eyedrops and a UniHorn, but to no avail. Why exactly at this point in the battle is OctoVamp this untouchable?
Instead of making the monster "get worse" (moving slower), it gets better. The monster gets increasing defensive + agility stats as you change it, minimalizing the damage you are dealing to it. It also gets evasion.. the same stuff used by Cagnazzo (shell mode) + Valvalis (spin mode) in their battle scripts.
As I said before, I made it much further than this once upon a time and had little qualms with this particular part. Are you certain this fellow is acting as intended? Or am I just missing something so simple?
As I've said before... the earlier version has a greater magic multiplier (2) with the default Drain magic power (64). The current version has a weaker magic multiplier (1) with the FF4ET Drain magic power (80). I'm pretty sure that this more current version had been "nerfed" unless there's some other fact that I had not considered. I could nerf the Drain hit rate if that were the issue, but that would be as far as I'd go with that.
:edit: I'd probably need to recall which older version had the older stats... to be sure.
Did you at least pick up some Healing Staffs from the Zombies? That is supposed to make the healing-damage issue bearable. Also, Silver Rings are the common drops from the TinyMages. That will help out in the magic evasion... Also... did you remember to buy the Cloth? There's a tradeoff that's probably worth taking.
:edit:
Here's another thought... the original Octomammoth reacts to change from taking damage.. so you could arguably skip many steps or advance the monster's state by dealing crap for damage. The same concept applies here. The idea is to deal as much damage as you possibly can before he reaches his final state. I get the feeling you may be advancing the monster too quickly.
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Tip: Tellah is not worth gaining levels for. Gaining levels for Rydia is worth your time outside. It helps a lot if you grind Cecil solo before getting Rydia (if possible)
Likely would have been a good idea. Really the SandHag's against Rydia and Cecil should be nothing with the IceRod and Rydia's Ice1. Killing off Tellah would likely be a better option, true.
Chocobo is a better solution. It has a stronger magic power base. Rydia needs to be @ level 15... she'll then have a chance to evade Drain (Rydia gets the magic defense multiplier). At some point Chocobo won't be an option, so you are better off trying to get Rydia to straight up heal.
It does roughly 75-150 Damage, which is admittedly pretty good against this guy. Once he finishes his tentacle loss though it deals 30-80 at most.
Cecil needs the levels. If his attack multiplier doesn't get where it needs to be (somewhere around level 15 or above), then it's not going to be pretty.
Hmm, well he's currently Level 17 but if he tries to strike him early in the fight he will always deal a resounding 1 damage, only when he's at that final form can he deal some to him.
As I've said before... the earlier version has a greater magic multiplier (2) with the default Drain magic power (64). The current version has a weaker magic multiplier (1) with the FF4ET Drain magic power (80). I'm pretty sure that this more current version had been "nerfed" unless there's some other fact that I had not considered. I could nerf the Drain hit rate if that were the issue, but that would be as far as I'd go with that.
:edit: I'd probably need to recall which older version had the older stats... to be sure.
I can't recall what number the older version was. That computer is a bit on the fritz and getting data off of it is quite a chore.
Did you at least pick up some Healing Staffs from the Zombies? That is supposed to make the healing-damage issue bearable. Also, Silver Rings are the common drops from the TinyMages. That will help out in the magic evasion... Also... did you remember to buy the Cloth? There's a tradeoff that's probably worth taking.
Cloths have better Magic Evasion than the Leather? I did not know this. Nor did I manage to procure any Silver Rings from the Tiny Mages, probably just unlucky when it came to that. Though yes, I do have 2 Cure staves and without them I would say outright this battle is impossible, but thanks to them you can easily match him blow for blow, only trouble is at the current time it ends up in an infinite stalemate.
:edit:
Here's another thought... the original Octomammoth reacts to change from taking damage.. so you could arguably skip many steps or advance the monster's state by dealing crap for damage. The same concept applies here. The idea is to deal as much damage as you possibly can before he reaches his final state. I get the feeling you may be advancing the monster too quickly.
That is what I was doing at first, yes. But it is only 12 hits or so before he reaches his final stage, with an ineffective sword and a continual drain on every hit I am lucky to maintain a measure of damage before we reach the end of it. Though taking your advice into effect may lend me some help.
Sorry if it sounded as if I was ranting before, probably was a little steamed. For the life of me I do not recall having any trouble with this guy before and its that which vexes me.
:edit: Sometimes I have to remember that an RPG is sometimes just... an RPG. A Level 19 Cecil and Level 17 Rydia both did remarkably better. Chocobo in the early stages of the fight was dealing upwards to 200 damage and when the end part came a Bacchus Wine on Cecil and he was dealing minimum of 75 and upwards to 305 non critical (strangely enough I didn't get any criticals) It took some time but eventually Cecil's raw power overtook his immense healing and it was over and done with. Phew, that was a trip. Maybe he doesn't need nerfed after all.
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Tip: Tellah is not worth gaining levels for. Gaining levels for Rydia is worth your time outside. It helps a lot if you grind Cecil solo before getting Rydia (if possible)
Likely would have been a good idea. Really the SandHag's against Rydia and Cecil should be nothing with the IceRod and Rydia's Ice1. Killing off Tellah would likely be a better option, true.
Like the original, it served no purpose to gain Tellah's levels... although in this hack, there is an incentive (but, you're better off when he's not actively in the party for a bit).
Chocobo is a better solution. It has a stronger magic power base. Rydia needs to be @ level 15... she'll then have a chance to evade Drain (Rydia gets the magic defense multiplier). At some point Chocobo won't be an option, so you are better off trying to get Rydia to straight up heal.
It does roughly 75-150 Damage, which is admittedly pretty good against this guy. Once he finishes his tentacle loss though it deals 30-80 at most.
Cecil needs the levels. If his attack multiplier doesn't get where it needs to be (somewhere around level 15 or above), then it's not going to be pretty.
Hmm, well he's currently Level 17 but if he tries to strike him early in the fight he will always deal a resounding 1 damage, only when he's at that final form can he deal some to him.
I may have forgotten somewhere that the defensive/magical stats had changed in a CT-like fashion (like those monsters that change from physical<->magical)
Did you at least pick up some Healing Staffs from the Zombies? That is supposed to make the healing-damage issue bearable. Also, Silver Rings are the common drops from the TinyMages. That will help out in the magic evasion... Also... did you remember to buy the Cloth? There's a tradeoff that's probably worth taking.
Cloths have better Magic Evasion than the Leather? I did not know this. Nor did I manage to procure any Silver Rings from the Tiny Mages, probably just unlucky when it came to that. Though yes, I do have 2 Cure staves and without them I would say outright this battle is impossible, but thanks to them you can easily match him blow for blow, only trouble is at the current time it ends up in an infinite stalemate.
Cloths have to same stats for the most part (0 magic defense/magic evasion), but give you +3 Agility. I believe you can forgo 1 magic defense point + 1 magic evasion percentage for this.
:edit:
Here's another thought... the original Octomammoth reacts to change from taking damage.. so you could arguably skip many steps or advance the monster's state by dealing crap for damage. The same concept applies here. The idea is to deal as much damage as you possibly can before he reaches his final state. I get the feeling you may be advancing the monster too quickly.
That is what I was doing at first, yes. But it is only 12 hits or so before he reaches his final stage, with an ineffective sword and a continual drain on every hit I am lucky to maintain a measure of damage before we reach the end of it. Though taking your advice into effect may lend me some help.
Sorry if it sounded as if I was ranting before, probably was a little steamed. For the life of me I do not recall having any trouble with this guy before and its that which vexes me.
:edit: Sometimes I have to remember that an RPG is sometimes just... an RPG. A Level 19 Cecil and Level 17 Rydia both did remarkably better. Chocobo in the early stages of the fight was dealing upwards to 200 damage and when the end part came a Bacchus Wine on Cecil and he was dealing minimum of 75 and upwards to 305 non critical (strangely enough I didn't get any criticals) It took some time but eventually Cecil's raw power overtook his immense healing and it was over and done with. Phew, that was a trip. Maybe he doesn't need nerfed after all.
I forgot what my projected Cecil's level had to be... it was like 16-17 (when you got an attack multiplier increase in addition to a defense multiplier due to being @ level 16). It was probably like level 17 (to match Tellah's starting HP). If there is some frustration about a boss, I suggest you analyze it since the battle script is fixed in a sense. Unlike FF5/FF6 where there is some RNG work at play, nothing like this happens in FF4.
Also, Magic Fists is supposed to bridge the gap between the level 1 elementals and Chocobo so you can pick and choose the spell of choice for your own amusement... (it's the same spell that's used in the Rod, so it should be better when powered by Wisdom).
BTW, the Lightning attack by the boss is designed to tell you that Lightning was pointless vs the original boss. His magic defense originally is so damn high, Tellah barely makes a dent whenever he casts Lit-1... which can be a blessing or penalty...
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I had thought since Magic Fists was in White Magic that it would have been powered by Will? If it's in White Magic and powered by Wisdom... does that mean that Holy's damage in the end is powered by Wisdom and not Will as well? I never thought about that.
And Cloths now have 3 Agility on them? Wish I would have taken notice... I trekked back to Kaipo while grinding didn't see any change to their Magic Evasion and sold them right back. Well with the Hovercraft it'll be easy to pick some up then.
Though as for the original boss Octomamm... I recall Lit doing upwards to 105-150 damage depending on whether Rydia or Tellah cast the spell. Even against this guy at the early goings he dealt 70 or so damage, but was hit with that massive Thunder attack.
All in all, back on track, just about to face the Antlion and see if he's any more difficult than I recall him from my first time through.
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I had thought since Magic Fists was in White Magic that it would have been powered by Will? If it's in White Magic and powered by Wisdom... does that mean that Holy's damage in the end is powered by Wisdom and not Will as well? I never thought about that.
Any magic slotted in the first 24 slots (after the no-spell slot) are considered White Magic (by the spell animation) and depend on Will Power. Everything else is Wisdom based.
And Cloths now have 3 Agility on them? Wish I would have taken notice... I trekked back to Kaipo while grinding didn't see any change to their Magic Evasion and sold them right back. Well with the Hovercraft it'll be easy to pick some up then.
Most poor defensive armor will have boosts whereas the solid stuff usually won't get additional help.
Though as for the original boss Octomamm... I recall Lit doing upwards to 105-150 damage depending on whether Rydia or Tellah cast the spell. Even against this guy at the early goings he dealt 70 or so damage, but was hit with that massive Thunder attack.
I did some math on this once, but here's the quick breakdown.
Octomammoth has 25 magic defense.
Tellah has 16 Wisdom by default, so that means having a magic multiplier of 5 (= 16/4 + 1).
Lit-1 has a spell power of 16. Since the squid has a weakness to lightning, then Lit-1 has an effective spell power of 32.
(32-25) * 5 = 35 (worst case scenario)
(32*1.5 - 25) * 5 = 115 (best case scenario)
(32*1.25 - 25) * 5 = 75 (average case)
Comparing this to Chocobo should be a slam dunk... since the summon has a spell power of 40.
Without doing the math, you can figure out that Tellah is/has/always will be worse than Rydia.
All in all, back on track, just about to face the Antlion and see if he's any more difficult than I recall him from my first time through.
Did you get as far as Fabul the first time around? Man... I have to get around to redoing one monster (for the Land of Summoned Monsters) and thinking one adding another...
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Yep, first time around I made it past Kainazzo. I can't recall why I stopped playing at the time, likely something dealing with college, if I had to guess.
Antlion's Den - Cecil 20/Rydia18/Edward 10
Alright Antlion was rather simple. Edward Dead, Cecil on Heal-bot, and Rydia chucking Chocobo's at every turn. Sharp Claw dealt a healthy chunk of damage, but nothing that the many, many Hi-Potions on hand couldn't cure.
The dungeon however was rather interesting. I Love how useful you have made Edward in this hack and I have noticed this going forward. Charm/Sleep wth a near 100% hit rate on his weapons makes him a perfect support character. Cecil is powerful, but he's no longer invincible, you actually need to watch what you do with him.
As an aside... I thought I read somewhere in this forum that the chance to apply status ailments is purely based on Agility. If such is the case why would the Harps with Edward's game start agility have their Status hit nearly 100% of the time?
Though the Weeper enemies were surprisingly brutal. A nice touch there. Normal hit can cause Toad, Spell cast will result in Piggy and a physical attack will result in Mini. It was a rough time defeating them and as far as I'm aware they don't drop anything spectacular.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, I love the Coward/Edward battle. Played out pretty much exactly as I remember it. If you know the trick to the fight it's quite easy, just a bit long, the award is quite nice as well.
Training Rosa to Level 15 before we ascend Mt. Hobbs. I went in and wasted a good amount of my White arrows not thinking, then decided it would likely be best to grind for another Silver Ring for Rosa. Even got the Thunder Rod at the end of the battle which yielded it. So now I have each of the Elemental Rods. I like that you made them available so early in this hack, it really shows their usefulness and versatility.
Went back onto the mountain and trained Rosa up to 14 currently and snagged the Roc and Bomb summons while I was at it. The Lamia Harp is a Godsend here, if you're not careful against the Cockatrice's and you whittle them down without thinking you may be looking at a gameover. The Bombs and friends are similarly nasty with Fission dealing upwards to 100 damage at times (though I think that's based on how much HP they have remaining) and Explode nearly outright killing a member of the team.
Mt. Hobbs - Cecil 21/Rydia 20/Edward 16/Rosa 15
I had a rather strange glitch happen to me when I accidentally used Hide as Edward, when he came back I could select the blank spot beneath Item. Used a savestate, tried it out, nothing seemed to happen, except Edward's turns seemed to stop coming up in that battle. Reloaded and continued on.
Alright Rosa is at 15 now and I am ready to begin the ascent.
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The dungeon however was rather interesting. I Love how useful you have made Edward in this hack and I have noticed this going forward. Charm/Sleep wth a near 100% hit rate on his weapons makes him a perfect support character. Cecil is powerful, but he's no longer invincible, you actually need to watch what you do with him.
Well, in the original, he was already this good (well, I gave him a little crack). People hate his offensive output when that is not his primary role...
As an aside... I thought I read somewhere in this forum that the chance to apply status ailments is purely based on Agility. If such is the case why would the Harps with Edward's game start agility have their Status hit nearly 100% of the time?
Agility has a major factor for sure... to what extent I don't know. Rydia at level 70+ paralyzes more enemies than when you get her back (at around level 26-35 or so). Although this strange behavior is best represented by the Slumber Sword's sleep magic... which operates differently than most status effect attacks.
Though the Weeper enemies were surprisingly brutal. A nice touch there. Normal hit can cause Toad, Spell cast will result in Piggy and a physical attack will result in Mini. It was a rough time defeating them and as far as I'm aware they don't drop anything spectacular.
I believe they primarily dropped status healing items.
Training Rosa to Level 15 before we ascend Mt. Hobbs. I went in and wasted a good amount of my White arrows not thinking, then decided it would likely be best to grind for another Silver Ring for Rosa. Even got the Thunder Rod at the end of the battle which yielded it. So now I have each of the Elemental Rods. I like that you made them available so early in this hack, it really shows their usefulness and versatility.
Well, the problem was that the Rods themselves are not really versatile initially (I believe JCE's hack dealt something along those lines, but I'm not sure). If the weapons had the same staying power as they did in FF5 or FF6, then they wouldn't need to be tweaked... but they do.
Went back onto the mountain and trained Rosa up to 14 currently and snagged the Roc and Bomb summons while I was at it. The Lamia Harp is a Godsend here, if you're not careful against the Cockatrice's and you whittle them down without thinking you may be looking at a gameover. The Bombs and friends are similarly nasty with Fission dealing upwards to 100 damage at times (though I think that's based on how much HP they have remaining) and Explode nearly outright killing a member of the team.
One thing about the Harps... they are epic in FF2, but not so much in FF4 (FF4ET only increased its hit rate IIRC) because they don't have the back row bit (so, Edward tended to miss his targets off the bat).
The Bombs were meant get your attention... and they kinda did in the original, but it took too long to execute... so I had decided to accelerate this behavior. Fission is definitely based on the caster's HP like Explode (and you only see it used by like the chest monster in the Giant).
I had a rather strange glitch happen to me when I accidentally used Hide as Edward, when he came back I could select the blank spot beneath Item. Used a savestate, tried it out, nothing seemed to happen, except Edward's turns seemed to stop coming up in that battle. Reloaded and continued on.
That bug was in the original game... not a result of the hack. The Show part of the Hide command doesn't quite check the list... since the Medicine command was removed this behavior manifests itself.
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Well the Fabul War has been a doozy. I'm not entirely sure though that it's the right way to go about things however.
I love the concept you put into it, and I'll go by battle to battle basis.
Cecil 23 /Yang 15/ Edward 19
General/Soldiers x3 - If you start in the front row you are dead. They deal around 70-120 damage which they instantly restore (through I'm guessing Blood Swords?) Placing your units in the backrow is a must for this battle. From there it's a matter of tossing a Bacchus Wine on Edward and let him slowly but surely whittle down the enemy forces (his random targeting in that is the only problem one could imagine.)
Mom Bomb 2/3 Bombs/ 2 Grey Bombs - Only at the end of my grinding did I discover that a lot of status effects can pacify Bombs, Toad mainly was the one I had used. Bombs and GreyBombs can be tricky foes and even moreso in a boss setting. This was just a matter of healing through their explosions and preparing for the real fight. When Mombomb emerged it seemed best to put my units back in front, the damage she does is relatively tame (120-130 no healing) and she gives you ample time to heal after each DarkBlast, toss a Bacchus Wine on Cecil and you're good to go.
Antlion - This one tripped me up for a while and I used a lot more resources in this battle than I should have. I didn't recall him being difficult at all with Rydia dishing out the damage, but in the front row Cecil and Yang's meager damage just was not filling the bill. So after minutes of being punished in testing experiments I moved to the back row, recovered, and let Edward do all of the attacking, healing through the Sharp Claws. Eventually using a Bacchus Wine on him to speed up the resolution.
General/3 Soldier 2 - This fight was just annoying. It's the same exact fight you just fought except with a few less resources than you may have had last time. As I've said I really liked this idea, but is it possible to switch in a few more new foes to the mix? Repeats of the same battle in event like settings really don't make for an interesting fight.
MomBomb 3 -
Similar complaints here, except here she went down much faster, not sure why.
General/ 3 Soldier 3 - I had some really weird glitches happen here. To my knowledge Edward can't flee during these Fabul fights, yet after I used a Bacchus Wine on him and accidentally let him die, I could no longer control him, he didn't get any turns anymore. I tried to use a Remedy, a Uni-Horn, move to the front row, move back to the back row, his turn just never came back up, then when he was weakened again he used Hide. His turn did come back up (at least being able to use Show) but that just happened to be the end of the battle.
Kain - Very fast paced, if you're still in the back row you may lose this fight only by attrition, his damage is wildly random from 36-198 for me. Beating him does yield a nifty gift though, it will be very useful when grinding on Mt. Ordeals as Paladin Cecil.
Also I can't seem to figure out the purpose of the Cursed Shield, sure it raises Strength by 5 but it lowers every other stat. Is that its only function? Or does it have a dual function like the Cursed Ring?
And after that... I stupidly raced to the ship without dequipping anyone, not that that especially matters, I suppose. Just would have saved a little money.
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I had not bothered to change the formations that the game uses for the battle, so all I did was simply change the monsters that were in said formation. Remember that there are 3 monster groups, one which is a pair of the same thing (Imp Capt/Weeper/Waterhag)... which wasn't exactly the scary. The challenge is to remember why you needed the girls in the party.
The trick to the General is to put him to sleep.. which was the original goal in the normal game. Charm status does nothing for him as his battle script ignores it.
There are some bugs with Berserk and hide status in FF4A... I'm not surprised if that happened in FF4 in the first place (but it's hard to expose by design).
The Cursed Shield is kind of like the Cursed Ring, but is a lot more useful..
Specs:
+5 STR, -5 AGI, VIT, WIS, WILL
0 defense, magic defense, magic evasion
resists all racial monster types
is a shield (so you can retain the defense multiplier that is based on level)
absorbs elementals (requires elementals to resist, like the ice/fire armor, behaving like the Cursed Ring)
"resists" monsters that can "drain" your HP via physical attacks (drain magic ignores the drain elemental, believe it or not)
can be equipped by everyone except Yang and Edge
It's a lot more useful than the Cursed Ring by design (the Cursed Ring will be tweaked anyways and will not be obsolete).
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Been playing through v1.00 for the past week, when I was trying to figure out why I stopped playing last time... loaded up a save state after Calbrena, went outside, and beat the crap out of unmodified overworld enemies.
Well, I'm back in now, I'll be downloading 1.48 tonight and running with that soon. I'll provide suggestions when I can.
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Just up to Octovamp now. Did Mist Dragon get a bit of a buff? I don't remember him having that much HP (but I wasn't putting Cecil in the backrow before, either)
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Mist Dragon did not get a buff... Cecil's armor however is a little more "cursed" than normal (Darkness elemental is actually in play).
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I had Cecil in the back row, so MD was still just doing 1 damage to him. I was remarking on how many HP it felt like he had. Oh well.
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:bump:
I swear I could've done more by now... but at least now there are outside factors influencing this.
I've had a few revelations.. the most important is that I've gotten counters to Sneak/Steal and Dart/Throw working as far as I can tell. I will most likely release a demo of it in action. I'll probably end up uploading this stuff on Youtube when it is all said and done. A patch will follow, with some updated documentation to Phoenix's work on the data involved (no ETA, it's up to me to actually do it).
There have been more tweaks to equipment and I'm unsure if anyone is willing to answer the following question:
What would it take to balance two katanas, the Long Katana and the Ninja Katana?
Here's some context... the Long Katana can be bought @ the Land of Summoned Monsters and you get a pair of them for free in the Sealed Cave.
Ninja Katana is obtained in the Land of Summoned Monsters.
The Long Katana isn't really that special... usually surpassed by the FullMoon boomerang for versatility (Wind/Air elemental weakness exposure).
Ninja Katana doesn't really compete with any available weapon at the time you obtain it. It is a prime weapon of the duplication trick for that reason.
Long Katana competes with the following weapons: Mute Knife (Mage mashing), FullMoon boomerang (Wind/Air elemental)
Default stats of listed weapons:
Ninja Katana: 48 attack power, 90 acc, throwable, +5 STR
Long Katana: 40 attack power, 90 acc
Mute Knife: 35 attack power, 75 acc, +5 WIS
FullMoon Boomerang: 40 attack power, 85 acc
Proposed stats of listed weapons:
Ninja (Sharp) Katana: 48 attack power, 90 acc, +5 STR, VIT, WILL (maybe WIS instead?)
Long Katana: 40 attack power, 90 acc, throwable, +3 AGI, VIT, WIS, WILL
Mute (Magemash) Knife: 35 attack power, 75 acc, +5 WIS, WILL
FullMoon Boomerang: 40 attack power, 85 acc, +5 AGI
Here's some reasoning behind it:
The Boomerangs are to get an AGI bonus... they are supposed to be nifty when you get them but are not that useful once you get on the moon (the Grenade monster is the only one that comes to mind where it would be useful to have this).
The Magemash Knife got a WILL boost for no particular reason... I dunno.. it would be a more defensive weapon against Mages (it's already a powerhouse against them).
The Ninja Katana is still meant to be a stronger weapon, but the other bonuses are just there for slightly added value. I was considering to boost WIS instead of WILL there but that would increase the chances of duplication, which is undesired.
The Long Katana is a bit more compelling to use I think. It has a key AGI bonus to supplant the FullMoon later on, where the elemental aspect is a lot less useful. This competes somewhat(?) reasonably well with the Ninja Katana with the rest of its bonus stats as it was also to somewhat replace the Magemash Knife. I had originally thought of giving the Long Katana a STR bonus, but that would increase the chances of duplicating the Long Katana (bonuses add up).
Ideally, I want to have both weapons in use on Edge when he gets to the Moon...and have relatively "equal" value. The Ninja Katana is still stronger, but the Long Katana would just be a tad more useful than its original incarnation. It would replace the Fullmoon, but not as much as the Mute Knife. I don't want it to be duplicated as much while equipped (it's a legal option either way, plus it does doubles as a thrown weapon in my hack). I don't really want either weapon to be duplicated because it would be the ultimate best option only at the time... I am thinking of making the Long Katana not throwable though...
Tell me what you think.
Some other changes of note:
Harps can be equipped by other characters such as the Twins, FuSoYa, and older Rydia
Hammers can be equipped by Rosa, as an homage to FF1. Porom doesn't have that opportunity (but she has access to the Cold Whip, so it's not that bad).
I was thinking about allowing the DK's Dark Swords to be equipped by FuSoYa... this does have a realistic chance of happening.
Also, monsters that are summoned will probably get some EXP boost of some sort to reduce the grinding required (in my save, I've accumulated 60 hours and I've only reached the Land of Summoned Monsters).
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I like these changes. Haha! Why is it about this year every time I come crawling back to FFIV, bah. Just can never get enough I suppose.
On Edge's equipment options though... it is a difficult choice. There's only one Ninja Katana so there's not too much worry on what you put on it there. I say for the Ninja Katana you might want to exchange Vitality for Wisdom. In this manner it gives a little bit of a boost to Edge's Ninja skills. (Hence the name of the weapon) So +5 Str, Wis, Will.
Adding the Agility to the Long Katana is an interesting idea and dependent on the person's level will likely change up when and what they equip (going for the +6 Agi to reach that Multiplier, perhaps if +5 Str doesn't push them over the limit.)
Everything else looks ready to go.
I am very glad to hear that the Harps are being allowed to be used in other's hands now. They are some of my favorite weapons in the game. Hammers being used by Rosa is a nice callback and makes me lightly chuckle. No more Lit Arrows for her in the Babil Giant, eh? My only concern is what use will it have? Are you setting it up in some sort of way that you could Potentially have Rosa available in the front row? And will there be a chance to get hammers earlier? (Over Mt. Hobbs)
I am a little bit confused on the Dark Swords being allowed to be used by FuSoYa. What use would they have in his hands? He'll be in the back row and have some fairly poor stats. Then again the Deathbringer has some really nice stat boosts.