Topic: Steal/Sneak Command

[Deathlike2]

This command is purely driven by level.. but does Agility factor in at all?

Has anyone figured out the damage taken on steal failure?

[Deathlike2]

Damage taken by a failed steal seems kind broken in the SNES version of the game. I'd have to play an FF4A playthrough to test this properly...

Level is a major factor. The monster counter seems to be random as that requires Edge to be around the same level as the target. It eventually goes away on higher levels.

Row is irrelevent for the command's execution.

[Lenophis]

All I know is that stealing sucks in FF4, as I've only ever gotten potions, and when I don't get that I fail 99% of the time.

[Deathlike2]

Well, it is kinda lame... because:

1) You don't know what level the enemy is, relative to yours in most cases. Even FF4A's beastiary doesn't even provide that.

2) Those that have no item drops regularly give you potions by default.

3) What you steal is the most common drop...

I'd wish this command was reworked for interest's sake. Randomly steal a different item (if applicable) like if you were doing random drop calculations.. then the command would be really really awesome.

[JCE3000GT]

This command is purely driven by level.. but does Agility factor in at all?

I seem to think the monster's level is a basis for the failure rate.  The Steal/Sneak rate seems to be reduced tremendously the further you progress throughout the game.  I find it almost impossible to steal later in the game as opposed to right when you get him. 

[Deathlike2]

Some additional info on command, FF4A specific though:

Terence:
The coding on what they *want* to happen in FF4A is pretty straightforward:

* If Target's Level is Greater or Equal to Stealer's Level, then the chance is 5/100.

* If Target's Level is Lower than Stealer's Level, then the chance is 4/100 per level greater than the Target up to a maximum of 95/100.

Unfortunately, ...
the random number it picks is a number from 0 to 255, which it then *MODs* to 0 to 99. This gives you a 3/256 chance of every number from 0 to 55, and a 2/256 chance of every number from 56 to 99.

Of course, this assumes that the RNG it's getting these random numbers from is equally distributed and random itself, but I'm not going to delve that far in analysis.

[Deathlike2]

If someone looked into this command's exact behavior, it would be appreciated.

[Deathlike2]

 

I should've integrated some older post about steal...

In the SNES version, if a target always drops an item (100% drop), Edge cannot steal the item and no message appears.

If the GBA version, if a boss target always drops an item (100% drop), Edge cannot steal the item. A message appears here noting failure but doesn't penalize you. The programmer/dev room is where the always drop bit is used for 1 monster, and you can steal that monster's item.

[Deathlike2]

Stealing from an enemy that never drops an item is possible. The item generally is a potion because it is the default item/drop list.

The most notable monster obviously is Zeromus, who never drops an item, but you can always steal a Dark Matter (or Elixir in FF2/FF4ET) from it.

This may be a good method of creating a hack with only "steal only" items.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Yeah, I knew about that already and have made use of it for a few enemies in my hack.

[Deathlike2]

I wonder what the formula is for the damage taken on a failed steal + damage.

[Mikey]

Steal is absolutely garbage. I agree that it'd be better if it didn't only use the most common drop. The failure rate should be something like 1/5 instead of level based as well. Perhaps I'd finally get that damn Glass Mask.

[Deathlike2]

Well... I like Steal for the most part, since you can have unlimited steal.

Anyways..

For FF4A, this is the breakdown:

MaxHP < 4096, damage = 2
4096 <= MaxHP < 8192, damage = 258
MaxHP >= 8192, damage = 514

Will test FF4 next.

 

MaxHP < 4096, damage  = 0 (I've seen 2 or 3 in Eblan's Cave, I'm not sure why that happens)
4096 <= MaxHP < 8192, damage = 256
MaxHP >= 8192, damage = 512

Although, I have programmed the AI to "steal" from itself to dish out damage, so it's more like MaxHP/16 = damage where MaxHP >= 4096 and is rounded down to the nearest power of 2 or something along those lines... it would be nice if someone got around to calculating it.. but at some point I'll try it out myself.

[8-bit Warrior]

 

It doesn't seem like the info provided by Terrance is accurate for FF2us. I have here monsterdata.txt from the Tower of Bab-il docs. It provides the level in two hexadecimal values (one byte). I wasn't sure if it was correct at first, since some of them seem a little high...but I double-checked it with the Final Fantasy Wiki and they all correlate.

Where it gets wonky is enemies with the boss bit set. According to the doc, the first bit is the boss bit, the other seven are for the level. So for example, Sandy (who we know has the boss bit set) has a value of 90 for her level. A straight conversion to decimal gets you 144...seems unlikely. The FFWiki on the other hand lists 16 for her level. On the other hand, if you look at a binary hexadecimal chart and take out the first bit, you end up with 16 after all. Is there any other option than to do it manually like this?

Anyways, to get to the main point, I did some thiefing with a < Level 30 Edge in the Underworld. Up against a Level 36 RocLarva, Edge successfully stole a Potion 5/10 times. That's 10x better than the 5% Terrance predicted. Similarly, against a Level 41 Gloomwing, Edge got an Ether1 on the first shot.

It doesn't seem possible that it's working according to the formula Terrance provided. Unfortunately, this is about where my ability to investigate ends...

[Grimoire LD]

Here is the actual formula (I know I've posted this twice now, but its only for the purposes of keeping things organized)


50 + Level - Target's Steal Prevention = Amount that will be tested against a Random Number (which seems like it can range from 1-255.) - If the value is over 100 it is an automatic success. (which can only happen in levels 60 and up.)  Target's Steal Prevention = Level +10 when a Monster.

The chance you will be damaged in a Failed Steal is if the Target's Steal Prevention is higher than a newly generated Random Number. So while it will happen often at low levels, it seems as you level up it will happen less and less. I can't help but think that's an oversight and it should work the other way around. Granted the formula is pretty awful on its own anyhow and should be changed for an improvement hack.