Topic: Final battle freezes everyone / Grimoire LD plays Unprecedented Crisis

[Grimoire LD]

What? It's possible to win?? That's definitely not the intent. How did you avoid Hold Gas?

Cecil and Kain's Power Gauntlets protect against Hold (and now that I look at it in FF4kster a Lot of other things as well!) Which keeps them from being hit by Hold Gas. I had thought it was intended because Golbez has a normal attack pattern after that and the Shadow Dragon has a counter attack of well... attack. You could also jump at the right time and prevent Kain from being hit with it at all and because of his natural high magical defenses he should fare well enough to get a couple more people up since the weakness of the Shadow Dragon and Golbez is they only have single target attacks past the first part of their script.

[Nephrite]

I don't know if this is really the right place, but I just saw your hack on Romhacking.net and noticed Grimoire was posting his playthrough, so I thought I'd post a few comments:

After you get the Earth Crystal from Troia/Toroia, there's no indication at all you're supposed to go to Eblan. I think it would be good to change the dialogue before you leave to something like "I heard that another of the Fiends was on his way to Eblan! You should head there!" so that it's more clear that's where you're supposed to go.

Beyond that, the only small thing I'd say is I think it's really lame you don't get Float for the dungeons in the underground. If it's your intention to make them more challenge, then that's fine, but I think that it's kind of a lame way to do it.

EDIT: Ciriatto is way too hard. I don't know what levels you're intending him to be fought at, but he's so fast in both forms 1 and 2 that I'm finding it nearly impossible to beat him. Form 1 can be dealt with via Stop, which is fine, but form 2? He gets an immediate HP-1 on you, then almost instantly casts MT Bio and then you die. How are you supposed to handle that? Even if you say "Well go level up more to get better spells," then how do you handle the later part of the fight where he casts HP-1 again and you've still got the Sap from Bio?

Honestly, I applaud your effort in making him a challenge but he's far too difficult in my opinion. I think you need to make him only cast Bio single target like form 1. Then Dark Wave attack is also a little... ..well, that one's not so bad I guess.

If he's intended to be fought in the mid 30s or even early 30s, then the experience in the Feymarch cave needs to go up. I found myself just running from most of the fights there because the monsters were not rewarding enough for the time investment. The Ice Mines were fine in terms of HP:Experience and Bahamut's Lagoon (great name) enemies gave a boat ton of experience but were also quite hard.

EDIT2: I think I came off far too negative with my comments about Ciriatto, so I want you to know that I 100% approve of your boss mechanics so far. All of the fiends have felt thematically appropriate and very fun to fight. I think you've really done a great job so far.

[Pinkpuff]

Thanks for the feedback. These are common complaints.

Eblan: It will be mentioned in the dialogue in a future update.

Float: I might make float learned a little earlier in the next version but not much earlier. If you can float as soon as you encounter damage floor then the damage floor is pointless.

Ciriatto: He's definitely beatable with proper timing and strategy. I might tone him down in the update a little though. We'll see.

Anyway, glad you're enjoying it overall.

[chillyfeez]

Silly suggestion alert.
Take it or leave it, just a thought that popped into my head:
Call the Enterprise "Heart of Gold" instead of "TARDIS."
It still fits the "famous fictional British spaceships" theme, plus then "Red Dwarf" and "Heart of Gold" have colors in their names that match their actual colors.
Not to mention the fact that TARDIS is an acronym whose meaning does not apply...

[Pinkpuff]

It's a different acronym in this. Torque And Rotor Driven Interface System.

[chillyfeez]

OK, fair enough.
Clearly I haven't actually gotten to the point of acquiring it yet.
 

[Lumiere77]

I've beaten both the game 2x(both Dk & Pal) and it's probably one of the best FF hacks I've played. There's only a few things that I had issues with...

Elban - it's been mentioned

Float - It should be learned a little earlier because I doubt most people will break 40 before the tower of babil.

Ciriatto - His 1st form was harder than his second because I forgot to switch Cecil & Edge's equipment. His 2nd form isn't too hard unless Bio comes out immediately after Fallen Angel(I thought Dark Holy was used after Fallen Angel?)

DK post Babil - Is it possible to add another sword for DK after Babil? Maybe a Dark version of the Excalibur(i.e. a Wis +15 sword) inorder to bridge the gap between Blood/Avenger & Deathbringer.

Rosa - She seems a poor choice once Babil is finished. Her magic isn't anything special though she has good synergy with Pal Cecil. Her advantages over fighters is that she can stay in the back though Edge has that option too and her good magic defense. She just doesn't seem "unique" compared to the rest of the party.

I liked how the ending sequence differed depending what party members you had. I'd say more however I don't know how to hide spoilers.

[Pinkpuff]

Rosa has more options in terms of strong elemental and racial physicals. She also gets some awesome time magic later like Comet, Reflect, and even Meteo. I might look at giving her some other minor advantage but she's probably fine as is.

DK can use the Break blade... that's certainly something, but in any case there isn't a lot of room for new weapons and the overworld is the paladin's turn to shine. DK rules the underground.

This thread spoils all. Spoil away, my friend.

[Nephrite]

I think something that would help with Ciriatto is to look at the experience tables for some of the dungeons.

Off the top of my head, this is the average EXP per battle in these dungeons:

Ice Caverns: 2000~
Feymarch: 2000~
Bahamut's Lagoon: 5000~
Tower of Babil: 2500~
Eblana Cave/Giant: 5-6000~


I think toning up the experience in Feymarch by about double what it is now would be very helpful. The Tower of Babil also could use some love in terms of experience, and maybe a slight toning down on the Lagoon and Eblana cave? I'm not an expert on the matter so I can't say for certain.

One other comment I'd make is Rydia's summons seem to be pretty bad in comparison to Palom's Black Magic. It may just be that she's in a bad level range (mid 40s) but Quake seems to do more damage than Titan for less MP and Rydia just got BIRD! which doesn't strike me as that useful unless there are some high HP enemies that can be petrified (which there might be...).



Again, I really do enjoy this hack and appreciate all the time and effort you've put into it. If there's anything I can do to help I'd be happy to do so.

[Lumiere77]

The Elbana Cave is that high mainly to ease level grinding. Here's a figure for you: Paladin Cecil went from Lv 10 to Lv 45 in 2~ hrs fighting Alerts in Elbana Cave.

Am I reading too much into it or did Cecil adopt Rydia in the ending? I hope so because it certainly fits his guilty conscience and the fact that she isn't an adult. Also Edge's skirt chasing is nowhere near as disturbing as in the original. I did find it funny that Cecil is more merciful as a DK than as a Pal and Golbez returning the crystals during the ending was a nice touch. I can see Zeromus looking on in shock as DK Cecil ground him to a pulp after his true form was revealed by Golbez. 

Rosa's Yoichi Bow could use a racial and instead of adding another Dark Sword, how about increasing Chaos's Atk to about 85ish. Also the Crystal Gauntlets incorrectly give Bolt res instead of Dark res. The Black robe has no resistances, was this an oversight? Looking at FF4kster, I noticed that I missed a few armors. Am I right to assume that these are rare drops? My only other issue is that a few of DK & Rosa's spells are either learned too late (Death,Break,Galaxy) or seem to be situational(Drain,Galaxy). DK's Death & Break are learned at 60 & 66 which mean they're most likely learned after Deathbringer is obtained. Drain is completely overclassed by the Blood sword(Maybe make it the Lv3 version on Poison & Bio). Galaxy is basically a MT Stop and comes off as great however at Lv60 there's only a few fights that it's viable for.

I like your idea on RHDN and Grimoire's is pretty interesting as well. Thank you for such a good hack.

[Grimoire LD]

Well I'm glad to see the Rosa decision was fixed.

Rosa: Cecil! Help!

WARNING: Saving the main character's girlfriend will make her immediately join the party!

Cecil: Uh... maybe later Rosa.

OctoSoul was quite a challenging fight (because of this reckless playthrough. No one is optimized for defense) but the Wightslayer deals near 9999 to him with every attack which I assume is part of the reason for its existence.

but it is a frantic race to reach that point. A very well designed boss, one that I imagine would be much tougher with the Dark Knight.

EDIT: Well! No wonder Rosa failed! She attacked the OctoSoul with no weapon or armor equipped!

EDIT 2: Hmm, as far as I can make out there is not Serpent Road exit from Fabul so once you go there, you're stuck. Unless it's hidden quite well (as it is in Mist)

[Pinkpuff]

It should be in the passage in the throne room. Instead of going right to get the treasure, continue down.

The Wightslayer is anti-undead, anti-spirit, and holy elemental, making it pretty amazing at killing evil things. For that specific purpose it can even compete with most of the other holy swords.

I have some cute ideas in mind for OctoSoul's reaction script. Also Rosa took her equipment in there but... "Rosa: and soon there were tentacles everywhere!"

  I reprogrammed OctoSoul's reaction script and I think you're going to love this battle now! When you fight him in the next version, I reccommend doing at least one if not all of the following:
* Use fire magic on him
* Cast a summon spell on him
* Target him with Twin
* Attack him with Yang (not just anyone, Yang specifically)

[Grimoire LD]

I had a feeling Wightslayer was Anti-Spirit, did not know about Anti-Undead, a good way to keep it competitively useful!

Haha, I will have to try those out on the next playthrough then.

Ah yes, has there been any more thought given to a "second" final dungeon to create a "Void" like area to give the chosen party more of a deciding presence? It would also help split out the treasure a little more since they're all pretty crammed together in the Lunar Subterrane and it would give the chosen Cecil a chance to try out their new toys before the game is already over.

[Lumiere77]

Instead of adding a new dungeon, the Lunar Core could be fleshed out into a full dungeon instead of the final march to the Zeromus.  Also as a neat joke, have the OctoSoul drop a plausible piece of Rosa's equipment.

[Pinkpuff]

I like the treasure drop idea Lumiere!

Rune bow
Armlet
Ninja outfit
Black cowl

In some order I'll decide later.

The trouble with creating a new dungeon is map space. It is something I would definitely like to do but it probably won't be ready for this version.