Topics

226

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Fire and Ice Equipment Resistance...

« on: March 10, 2008, 11:23:50 AM »

If you combine Fire+Ice resistance in the form of Ice Armor+Fire Shield or Fire Armor+Ice Shield, you should be resistant to both elementals. This is half true.

If an physical attack were to contain fire or ice elemental (Yang's claws for instance), you would take 2x damage.

If you follow my rules on elemental physical weakness, this is still true with character equipment. What's worse is that this behavior extends to the Protect Ring, Adamant Armor, Dragoon armor set, Crystal Helmet, and other equipment and combos that protect against Fire+Ice elementals.

That's something to think about if you are planning on using elemental attacks on enemies in a hack.

227

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Running Away During An Uninterruptable Attack

« on: March 09, 2008, 05:57:27 PM »

Who's stupid idea was this? It's doable. The best monster group to test against is the 3 Red Dragons in FF4ET.

They have a special attack sequence on their second turn, by leading off with their Heat Ray attack, followed by a physical hit.

During this sequence, you can skip taking the second hit altogether if you are fortunate.

Although, once in a while, you can see the monster's Heat Ray attack hit nothing right after you successfully run away.

Here's a pic of it in action:



Note: This seems to occur if you drop money...

228

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / If You Like Damage Tiles...

« on: March 09, 2008, 05:42:58 PM »

When you cast Exit while on a damage tile, you plan on taking 2100HP damage.

This means you move/animate the equivalent of 42 damage tiles. That's a lot of insanity to be calculated. 

229

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Enemies That Normally Counterattack... Don't Always...

« on: March 09, 2008, 05:41:00 PM »

It's interesting behavior, but when Fire3 hits a group of 2 Behemoths.. you see both of them counterattack.
When both Behemoths are attacked by a multitargeted summon such as the Mist Dragon, only one of them counter attacks.

Either the script has some sort of overriding counter function.. or it is simply not being handled properly.

Go figure.

230

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Scripted Battle Screws With Spell Multipliers

« on: March 09, 2008, 05:22:34 AM »

I'm not sure if this is actually applicable to FF4A (probably not, but meh).

Anyways, when you do the Golbez-Tellah battle, Tellah should be doing magic damage in multiples of 5, assuming he is unequipped and hasn't had his Wisdom changed (16 Wisdom/4 + 1 = 5x multiplier). For some reason, he doesn't do magic damage in such a manner for that only battle.

Go figure.

231

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / SNES Bug - Caller's Magic Orb Description Missing

« on: March 09, 2008, 04:31:19 AM »

Supposedly, there is a message that is displayed when a Rydia's monster summon item is highlighted.

However, this doesn't seem to occur at all... the editor data would suggest that message be displayed, but it doesn't.

232

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Mage Summon

« on: March 08, 2008, 04:57:23 PM »

This spell is pretty unique.

In addition to using the Protect/Shell sound for the attack, it appropriately uses an attack that hurts and Paralyze the enemy
(assuming the target is not immune). However, unlike its original breathren, it doesn't induce HP leak status.

Unfortunately, this spell is not boss compatible.... WHY??? Damn chicken squid mages...

233

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Cockatrice Summon

« on: March 08, 2008, 04:51:39 PM »

This is a pretty straight forward summon, with some peculiar properties.

Even though this spell is not boss compatible, 1 damage is still dealt, like what Poison does (although, ironically Poison doesn't hurt bosses at all).

The hit rate of this spell is 50%, which is better than Stone/Break's hit rate of 30%, which makes this much more reliable...
but too bad it is only single targeted.

234

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Imp Summon

« on: March 08, 2008, 04:48:59 PM »

One of the few summon spells that many tend to ignore... with good reason.

The summon spell itself is actually decent for a low-Chocobo MP version, but far weaker.

The spell base power is 8, which is half the power of any level 1 basic elemental.

The only interesting pecularity of the spell is that the hit rate of 50% is completely ignored in damage calculations.

Go figure.

235

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Bow+Arrow, Slight Strangeness Explained

« on: March 08, 2008, 02:51:09 PM »

Did you ever wonder why equipping either the Bow or Arrow in either hand  gives you 1 attack power?

The attack power listing of the "fists" is 1. This is never used in any another physical damage algo in the game.

When you equip either the Bow or Arrow, your attack power is increased by 1, which has been documented.
However, it is the empty hand that uses "these fists". It is changable within the game's data...

There is a similar behavior that goes with armor, where "empty armor" sections imply 0 defense, 0 magic defense, and 0 magic evade.
However, evade is 10%. These values can be changed internally...

Ok, back to your regular programming.

236

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Holy/White Spell Effect

« on: March 08, 2008, 12:04:51 PM »

It is worth noting that the spell Holy is perhaps the only spell effect that still has a visual, even if the target was Silenced.

Seeing that I've hacked the game a little to remove the boss bit, it becomes apparent.
It isn't like Flare/Nuke where it fails to be cast and you get no visual at all
(although that spell is one of the other few that has a strange effect of seeing some red flashes in the background, even if it misses its target).

237

Gaming Discussion / Why Do I Bother?

« on: March 08, 2008, 04:37:05 AM »

Why Do I Bother Communicating With People on Gamefaqs? See thread: http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/genmessage.php?board=929937&topic=41775031

Why do I even bother? Man, I probably should stop.

238

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Metallic Oddities

« on: March 08, 2008, 12:41:42 AM »

Right now, I'm at the metallic cave and I almost forgot to do some testing before I killed the Dark Elf. Here's some fun facts.

1) Yes, you can use your metallic weapon... but for one measily pathetic attack.
Then, you immediately become disabled and useless for the rest of the battle.
Whoever wrote that you can use metallic weapons in battle was only half correct.... those douchebags.

2) You cannot use items or item-spells after you swap for a metallic weapon/shield. The item will be used up instead (so be weary of this).

3) Cecil will still auto-cover while under "metallic paralysis". This is the stupidest and strangest thing I've seen happen, but it is what it is.

4) Cecil is still able to cast magic for that turn after swapping for a metallic weapon/shield in battle.

5) It is impossible to get all 4 characters into metallic paralysis during a battle if they were not paralyized at the start of battle.
Yang has no metallic claws, so he's the lone savior.

6) Speed up the game by equipping your metallic equipment prior to talking to the Dark Elf.
This may be important for those of you doing speed runs of the game.

Edit: I haven't tested this on FF4A, but most of these points should apply.

239

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Agility and ATB Speed - Theory of Relativity

« on: March 07, 2008, 11:42:19 PM »

It's no secret that when you fight the monsters around Baron while you are at level 99, those monsters never seem to compete.

However, there is a logical explanation. All enemies have some sort of speed range. The problem is that if there is a mismatch,
the ATB bar totally favors the faster group. It also changes significantly how some things behave.

For instance, if you were to fight the EvilMask (FF2US name) @ a lower level, the Reflect spell it casts seems to last pretty damn long..
to the point when he casts a second Reflect on itself, it is being reflected.

Now, if you were to fight the Evilmask at level 99, while everyone's Agility stat is maxed out as much as possible, you may find that the
Evilmask's Reflect spell that it cast on itself may have already disappeared already and you will watch it proceed to kill itself with its
own magic.

So, if you are hacking the Agility/Speeds of the monster, make sure to note the average Agility of the party that should be engaging that monster.
Having the monster's speed go too high is game changing (though not many enemies exhibit this behavior as far as I can tell)
 as much as speed going to too low (like the Behemoth).

240

Final Fantasy IV Research & Development / Random Lesser Known Facts

« on: March 07, 2008, 11:21:17 PM »

I might as well keep a thread that details random details most people don't know and those that look through the number of threads here may have missed or probably don't want to read (I mean, seriously, I have lots of say). I guess this post can serve as something useful that many don't know this info.

So... let's see:

In the Elementals battle, it is not as known that Rubicante has the Mage attribute.

Yang's Endure/Gird command is powered by Spirit.

Yang's Endure command (FF4 only) can always fail while he's Silenced.

When enemies use beneficial spells on you, they are factored against your magic evade, which is why they don't hit. 

The Screamer (FF2US name) monster has two enemy type/race attributes. This is how I found out that the enemy type multiplier doesn't stack.

Most Spirits are weak vs Holy. The Weeper (FF2US name) monster is the only type that is not weak vs Holy.

Scarmaglione (aka Milon Z in FF2US) is weak vs Holy (and Fire and Aerial attacks)... he absorbs Holy in the Elementals battle.
He's the only undead that absorbs Holy in the game. D. Bone (FF2US Name) is the only undead that isn't weak vs Holy AFAIK.

Aerial elemental is treated like the all the other elementals in the damage algo.
This sucks because I found out that Kain's Blizzard Spear did effectively the same damage than Cecil's Icebrand Sword...
which also means Rosa with her lame Ice arrows look worse than they should.

When a target is weak and absorb the same elemental... it implies the following:

1) When magic is cast on the target, the target is healed. Absorb is prioritized in this instance.

2) When a physical matching elemental attack is made on the target, the target will take damage as if it were weak. Elemental weakness is prioritized in this instance.

The Dark Elf is not the best example, but if you had Holy accessible at that point in time, you would see how it would heal this target, while being massively hurt by the Legend Sword (those types of weapons use the Holy element)

Who's dumb idea was it to have Tellah speak in the Dark Elf's battle? He is the first to die in that tri-elemental sequence of attacks.
The only way to make his speech sound legitimate is to cast Reflect/Wall on Tellah. I don't know why he was even scripted to talk normally.