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Messages - Callisto

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@Nsandro: Yes, it is as Nesouk said. You can safely escape the Centra Ruins without having to worry about the Tonberry kill counter, as long as you don't interact with the blue orb on the upper levels (if you do, your party will be trapped inside the ruins until Odin is defeated).

@Nesouk:

Spoiler: show
As for Odin, leveling up more would have helped a little indeed. With Regen (from the Guards in D-District Prison) on HP and levels around 30-35, HP would have been over 3000, which should be enough to survive Odin's Heaven's Wrath attack safely with all characters. It's not thunder elemental for now as the fight would likely become too easy otherwise. The idea behind this was to create a battle in which the Spirit stat is of utmost importance, especially in regards to minimize the chance of the entire party falling victim to the Stop effect (it's not very high to begin with, but sometimes happens if Spirit stats are too low). But it's good to know that you managed to win the battle with just one character immune to Stop and durable enough to survive Heaven's Wrath, although I can imagine it was very close.

Other than that, some more things would have helped. For example, Chimera only has low resistance against Degenerator, and maybe it would have been better to make Quistis one of your attackers instead of Zell, as Quistis can use Acid, which ignores enemy Spirit and is faster than Zell's Duel (total damage is lower than a well-performed Duel, but time matters more in this battle). It's also possible to make Odin Vit 0 using Quistis' Ray-Bomb Limit Break, but getting Power Generators is difficult when attempting Centra Ruins at the first opportunity. It's also a good idea to defeat Tonberry King before Odin, so you can draw Curaga from him which is a great help against Odin because of the good junctions effects on HP and Spirit. The ladder climbing speed in the ruins is indeed low and annoying. I'll look for a way to increase it.

In regards to Tonberry King not using his Junk attack, I've just realized what was going on in your case. He is meant to counter with it after he has taken either physical or magical damage five times, but for some reason, Quistis' and Irvine's Limit Breaks will not add towards this meter, despite actually being physical and magical attacks (that's also why the normal Tonberry never counters their Limit Break with Everyone's Grudge). I'll change the counter condition to a general counter, no matter what Tonberry King was last hit with, as being able to circumvent a major counter by just spamming Limit Breaks is not how it should be.

Anyway, thank you for testing the new version so soon. Just to say it advance, Raijin will still use Hi-Potion+, I forgot to change this to Cura.

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Version 1.1.5 now available

Changes Overview

Enemies
  • All enemy levels are now fixed, not just bosses, to further encourage leveling up and keep perceived difficulty more constant throughout the game.
  • Turn skips have been removed for most enemies, and have been preserved only for enemies that use major counter attacks or are just very fast.
  • Sacred's base chance to inflict Confuse has been reduced to around 50% (and can be further reduced by Vit and Stat Def junctions).
  • Malboro's Bad Breath status infliction rate has been reduced.
  • Hitrate for physical attacks has been generally increased.
  • Certain enemy AoE attacks such as Grendel's Thunder Breath or Granaldo's Poison Gas inflict less damage.
  • Stat changes have been applied to many enemies in general.

Spells, Card Mod and Refinement
  • Meteor base power has been reduced.
  • Base power of Flare, Holy and Ultima has been slightly increased.
  • Regen, Death and Meltdown have been removed from early-game Card Mod.
  • Grendels can still be turned into Catoblepas Cards/Black Holes/Degenerator, but Eject resistance has been increased for some enemies.
  • Ammo refinement is now less generous and relevant items drop in fewer numbers.
  • Some more insanely uneconomic Refine Rates have been spotted and adjusted.

Boss changes

Almost all bosses have been changed in some way. The most notable changes are as follows:
  • Granaldo uses an additional attack when on the battlefield alone.
  • Diablos casts Haste on himself after his HP drop below 50%; counters Draw Cast Demis as well.
  • Iguions use a new move when on the battlefield alone.
  • Edea (1st) uses an AoE up to two times per battle.
  • BGH251F2 in FH has been changed to some kind of durability battle.
  • Odin unleashes a powerful attack every 4 turns.
  • Tonberry King has some changes to his attacks.
  • Fujin & Raijin in Balamb have been generally overhauled.
  • Adel has access to two additional attacks.
  • Krysta is more durable and has changes to its attack pattern.
  • Ultimecia (1st) is more structured, can no longer spam the same move multiple times in a row.

Pigtail Girl sidequest

It has recently become known that Zell receives a spell during one of the events in Balamb Garden's library, depending on the survey answers from one of the previous events. The player can pick Zell's favorite color and food from 3 selections each, so there's a total of 9 different outcomes, and therefore 9 different spells Zell can get. The rewards are a little underwhelming in the base game, so they have been improved in this version of the mod. Credits go to gamefaqs user aladore384 and myst6re for discovering this. The rewards are as follows:

Code: [Select]
Base game
Red Blue Pink
Beef 1x Meteor 1x Scan 1x Demi
Fish 1x Triple 1x Holy 1x Ultima
Hot dogs 1x Shell 1x Full-life 1x Zombie

New
Red Blue Pink
Beef 10x Meteor 100x Scan 50x Demi
Fish 5x Triple 10x Holy 5x Ultima
Hot dogs 10x Renew 10x Full-life 100x Zombie


Other changes
  • At Centra Ruins, the way back will be blocked after examining the blue orb, and if the timer runs out, it's Game Over instead of just being thrown out.
  • At Missile Base, an extra battle can be triggered when visiting it on disc 1.
  • A new sidequest is available in Dollet. Talk to the girl at the beach if she is alone to initiate it.
  • Another sidequest is available in Esthar after the Lunar Cry. Talk to the assistant in Dr. Odine's laboratory to initiate it.
  • Irvine's previously hidden critical hit chances for each of his weapons can now be viewed in Weapons Monthly magazines.
  • The Queen of Cards generally plays stronger cards than before.
  • Some more overpriced items have been spotted and reduced in cost (Draw Scroll, HP-J Scroll etc).
  • The number of Tonberries that need to be killed to make the Tonberry King appear has been reduced from 20 to 8.
  • A few Draw Point contents have been changed.
  • Gilgamesh can be aquired again if there are no Amethysts in inventory when battling Seifer inside Lunatic Pandora.

A list that contains the most important Cards/Items/Spells swaps will soon follow.


@Nsandro: Yes, Hard Mode is compatible with this mod, but keep in mind that enemy physical damage will be 1.5 times higher than intended, and own physical attacks weaker than intended.

@Nesouk: I haven't made any changes to Duel yet, but maybe will soon, depending on how Duel performs for you late-game. I think it's ok if it's stronger than other Limit Breaks in many situations, as in return, it requires more skill to be used efficiently, and using it to full extent is quite time-consuming, and therefore dps is rather low, but we'll see.

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A good thing with me I'm the kind of guy who does like 500 different save files XD, so if you were to release a new version I don't mind going back a bit for giving feedback, when do you the new version will be finish ? if not to long then I might pause my playthrough and continue once you update, would be pointless to give feedback on things you already plan to modify, on other subjects :
Ok, it would certainly help if you could retest certain things (especially Centra Ruins) after the new version is up. It should be finished by the end of this week.

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That could work, for Fire Ammo I would suggest remove the Fuel from shop, this is pointless item to buy otherwise and the fact it's available pretty much anywhere make Fire Ammo really easy to get. On subject of Irvine's Limit break power since you say to have immune boss to Vit 0 Armor Shot is the one that worry me the most, currently on Cerberus I'm doing around 1000-1100 per shots (double if it Crit (it help Irvine has a good Base Luck with 100 Death and Luck+30% he has like a 30% crit rate currently) so with 3 to 6 shots I mention earlier that's 3000-3300 to 12000-13200, very unlikely to reach this tough often I say I get an average of 2 crit when shoting 6 ammos so that's more 8000 to 8800.
Armor Shot damage will max out at around 5500 HP per shot if Irvine's Strength is at 255, so damage will fluctuate between 16,000 and 33,000 HP, (critical hits excluded) depending on Crisis Level. It also has the lowest base critical rate out of all Ammo types, so I don't think it will be overly powerful in the late-game, when bosses have 100,000 HP or more, unless you seriously put some work on Irvine's Luck stat. Armor Shot has actually been nerfed two times in this mod already, but if you think it's still too powerful, don't hesitate to tell. Maybe changing the formula for physical attacks and critical hit calculation / Luck will be inevitable sooner or later, to get more pleasing results overall.

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It certainly is to early to judge if Duel is to strong or not especially considering I'm not using high tier magic yet (I've got some tough), I'must say tough that it's the most fun Limit Break to use, since the easy way of spamming Booya and Punch Rush is out of the way I have to found new combos, so on that aspect you manage to make it more fun, by the is Meteor Strike still a Gravity move ? Or did you make it a physical attack, I haven't test it yet.
Meteor Strike has been changed from a Gravity attack to a physical attack that ignores enemy Vitality, so Duel is not totally worthless against high Vit enemies. Base power is between Mach Kick and Dolphin Blow, and its input should take a little longer than most other moves, so I think it's in an ok spot. But of course it would be interesting what you think after some testing on your own.

What are your character levels at the moment by the way? I wonder if you still have a certain advantage over normal enemies because their levels are rather low. Hexadragons in G-Garden will be around LV 40 fixed in the upcoming version, so if you face only LV 20 ones at the moment due to own levels, that would be quite a difference.

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@Nesouk:

-Ammo Availability: Ok, will do something similar, without making any Ammo type finite, though. Further reducing refine rates for Ammo and item drops should do for now. Some of them are still too generous, especially for Fire Ammo.

-Edea: Yes, removing one of her taunts sounds good. Her new AoE will be one-time only though, as she will have her turn skips removed. Both regular AoE and no turn skips would probably be a bit too much to be honest.

-Duel: Not sure about reducing the other moves besides Punch Rush and Booya yet. It would be good if you had an eye on how Duel performs for you against enemies in the late-game, as most of them (especially bosses) have noticably higher Vitality than enemies like the GIM47A, and are mostly immune to Vit 0. If by then you still feel like Duel is too strong, then some adjustments should be made for sure.

-Aqua Breath: I was very cautious in regards to its damage against Jumbo Cactuar and Ultimecia's third form, so they have had their weakness against Water reduced and defensive stats increased. It will still be strong, but not strong enough to finish these bosses within just a couple of turns (at least not with Water attacks alone).

As for your latest post, I kind of regret not having finished the mod's new version earlier, as almost all the things you mentioned will be changed in one way or another, especially in Centra Ruins. Would have been a good opportunity to get some feedback right away, but well... As for Tonberry, you are right, reducing the kills required to make Tonberry King appear is a good idea, yet somehow it has never crossed my mind. Just noticed that it's actually a quite easy thing to do. Everything else was already on the list, but thanks anyway.

@Nsandro: I can't guarantee anything yet, but it's definitely planned to be compatible with the Remastered version at some point. Will start to look at it thoroughly soon.

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Quote from: Nesouk
Yeah I recheck it was XeroKynos's stream, didn't read the description saying it was v1.1.2, lifting the damage cap sounds good, I'm interest as how much damage Ultima can do end game, I saw in XeroKynos's stream Meteor seems to deal around 18-20k a cast on a target with Vit 0 so I'm wondering how Ultima will compare with damage cap remove, same for GF especially the elemental one when striking a weakness could be good.
Ultima can inflict around 12-13k on a target with Vit 0, but as most late-game bosses are immune to Vit 0, you probably won't see that very often. The average should be 9-10k, which is still a quite an improvement over the original version, in which Ultima does around 7k damage at most. Meteor is currently a little too strong in this mod, and will be put closer to Ultima levels of damage, so that Meteor does a slightly more damage than Ultima on a single enemy, but noticably less when hitting multiple targets. GF benefit from breaking the damage limit greatly. If you know about enemy elemental weaknesses and also their severity, they can be fun to use, if you don't mind the animations too much.

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Well Requiem and Reloaded had one thing in common since Aura was really hard to do, it end up like Magic was the safer option for good damage, while Limit Breaks were the high risk high reward (people underestimate Limit Break in Requiem but with Vit 0 Squall could deal up to around 60k with his Renzo, and Irvine was kind of OP between Dark Ammo for statut effect (even better in Reloaded as they can inflict Vit 0), AP Ammo to not give a damn about the ennemy defense, Fire Ammo for good AoE/Elemental damage and Pulse Ammo who could deal over a 100k in one round thanks to them breaking the damage limit (depending on Crisis Level and Critical Hit)), which I think was what makes Requiem fun, and it allow the Crisis Level mechanic to be really huge factor (while in Vanilla you don't give a strawberries about it because of Aura being so easy to access)
Yes, I noticed Pulse Ammo being extremely powerful in Requiem too. But that's not really surprising at all. I have to say that Irvine's Shot is possibly the most difficult Limit Break to get right balance-wise - not just in terms of raw power (as they scale very well with Strength) and crit chances, but also when it comes to accessibility of Ammo in general. In the original version, all Ammo except Pulse Ammo is very easy to come by, and not that much has changed about that in this mod yet. Do you remember how you got the Flame Ammo for the Oilboyle boss battle? I already reduced the numbers you can refine from Bomb Fragments and the like, but I'm not sure if it's enough to make Ammo feel like a valuable, limited resource.

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[...]modding development in general can be tricky (man how much trouble we had hunting down glitches and oversight like bosses not dying despite being at 0 HP or hitting themselves for some reasons[...]
Yes, I've noticed it all myself already. If you are not careful, you can make enemies counter themselves, or they don't die because a variable hasn't been set correctly, or it's something as simple as forgetting to put a "die" at the end of an enemy's Death tab.. But you are getting used to it after a while. Anyway, your efforts on the Reloaded mod seem to have paid off, as it seems to be in a quite good shape by now. Maybe I'll check it out myself someday, no matter the language.

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I can guarantee gameplay changes were applied from the get go, what happen is that I had RaW W07 Lite but my main RaW was W06 so I thinks that's why music wasn't working, up until now I was playing with RaW W07 lite (so no musics) so the change of gameplay were effectivly applied, I compare with XenoKyros's stream which I heard wasn't install properly in the beginning resulting in magical's damage from ennemies being way lower than you intended, as I was taking a lot more damage for Magical attacks like Ifrit's Lava Burst than him I think I can be assure that the gameplay changes were applied.
Ok, that explains everything. Good to know that all the changes worked correctly from the start.

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Must say I'm quite disappointed with the reward (I don't need Gold Armor and can't refine X-ATM092's card cause you need 10 of them) but at least 50 AP is nice to get.
Well, I know of a few mod testers who liked to use their GF as a shield in battle, so I thought Gold Armor would be a good fit for a sidequest reward. It's also one the items that are absurdly hard to come by in the original game, so I wanted to give a little more opportunities here. But I understand it feels disappointing for anyone who uses GF only rarely or not all. Maybe I'll switch it out, and put the Gold Armor elsewhere, so the victory over X-ATM092 feels more earned.

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-Edea : Probably the biggest let down of Disc 1's ending, the start was great I was genuily afraid of her Maelstrom setting Slow on all my team, but then she doesn't have the speed to back it up, I had all the time necessary to heal Slow with Haste, set Double and Shell on my characters, she is slow and can only attack 1 character at the same time, which makes her easy even in the last phase where she uses aga spell, Shell is mandatory so that she doesn't 1 shot, but if it happen it's pretty easy to recover, as for damage I was relying on Double -ra cast and Renzokuken, I think she need a little buff in speed and some AoE options, as of now she is the easiest fight of Disc 1's ending IMO.
I would really like to give Edea one more AoE besides Maelstrom, but the problem is the limited space for attacks for each enemy. And in the case of the first Edea battle, it's particularly sparse, as all of her lines count as an actual move. But I'll see what I can do to free up a little more space. As for her Speed, yes, she is quite slow, but that's intentional, as she is a Mage/Sorceress, a class who isn't known to be the fastest. I think the bigger problem is her still skipping a turn every now and then (25% at the moment). This will be reduced or even removed completely in the next version though.

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Laguna's third dream has a little fight against 2 Grendels, the can be berserk and slow which make them harmless, and I got lucky by turning them into Card I got 1 Catoblepas Card, which can be refine into a Black Hole to learn Degenerator to Quistis not sure if this intended.
Degenerator has its success rate reduced in this mod and more enemies are immune, but having the chance to get it early disc 2 was not really planned. Good that you noticed. I'll put in on the change list.

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Now for the Prison, I want to say Zell's Duel is still extremely good with No Crit I can still pull of over 6000 damage in 1 turn enough to kill any mobs in 1 turn (I'm quite interst to see how it will turn out late game), Quistis's Water Breath can break the 9999 limit on the Robots as they are weak to Water and she can kill pretty much anything with Degenerator anyway XD, so really the Prison was a walk in the park, this include the Final Fight which Quistis single handedly destroy with Water Breath she can kill the 2 Robots (they barely even got the time to act) in 2 turns then the Galbadian soldier is easily finish off by Squall using Darkside, Squall currently does 2000 damage with Darkside with no Junction to Elemental Attack by the way XD.
Do you remember how you did 6000 damage with Zell's Duel in one turn? Is it still the repeated use of Booya and Punch Rush? If so, then I don't really know how to make it less effective, other than removing the possibility of this combo altogether (their base values are already quite low). As for the lack of difficulty in D-District Prison, I think you had a certain advantage because you keep your levels rather low, as the GIM47Ns won't use their AoE skill on lower levels (all enemy levels will be fixed in the next version though, to keep perceived difficulty more constant throughout the game). In the Prison, it's actually risky to stay at low HP for longer periods of time, as there's also the Aqua Breath attack from Chimeras that can catch you off guard easily. As for Quistis Aqua Breath, yes, it's quite strong, especially in this area, as there are so many enemies weak to Water there. In other areas, it won't be as effective though, so I guess it's fine to leave it as it is.

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Then for the MD Level, has Tri-Faces been remove from here ? I couldn't find any wanted to get some Pains from them
Tri-Faces are still there and common at the lower areas of MD Levels. I would recommend the Oilboyle area, where Blobras and Blood Souls can be encountered as well.

Again, thanks a lot for your detailed reports. Some of it will be considered for the next version of this mod. Granaldo and Diablos are already changed based on some of your ideas. Hoping to get the new version done within the next couple of days (the last week target was a bit too optimistic).

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Quote from: Nesouk
Will see how your approach turns out, for now tough I don't plan using Card Mod ^^"
At the moment, some of the Card Mod results are probably still a little too generous. For example, it's still possible to create Death and Meltdown right after the start of the game. Especially Meltdown is a little problematic, as it is noticably stronger than the -ara spells in this mod, and contrary to other mods, it still inflicts Vit 0 reliably on most non-boss enemies. I guess both spells will be moved to LV 6 Boss cards for the next update, but other than that, I think the results are fine. Of course, moving Card Mod to the end of the game has its advantages, but I think turning cards into items/spells per se was a fun component in the base game, just not very well balanced in regards to results, so I deciced to leave the Ability in the early-game and balance it out.

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Maybe in the stream I watch the player was breaking damage limit with Flare (with Angel Wing) but Quake was stuck at 9999, so I dunno. But that's an interesting feature, I honnestly always thought that GF were like the absolute worst thing to do in battle in FFVIII Modded or Vanilla, not only cause the damage potential is really not great, but the animations just take for ever (by the time their animation end I could have just cast 2 or 3 spells for overall more damage), I don't think this is possible but if there was a way to make their summoning sequence skippable that would be better.
Oh, I see. You were watching v1.1.2 of this mod then, when only the Flare spell had the damage cap removed, so it can do more than 9,999 HP damage under Rinoa's Angel Wing. It was a short-lived experiment though, as I've found a way to generally lift the damage cap shortly after, which I think was important and necessary to make standard physical attacks still relevant in the late-game, to always have a valid option besides Limit Breaks and spells, which often have tedious animations as well (especially Meteor). I would love to make GF summoning sequences skippable as well, but it's sadly not an easy thing to do, as you said.

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Speaking of summon, what are the chance of success to their statut effect ? I was genuily hype when I saw while pausing that Ifrit could set Vit 0, but everytime I summon him it doesn't inflict it and just do mediocre damage.
The base chance for most GFs is 150/256, or ~58%. This gets reduced by a few factors, such as enemy spirit, status resistance and I think also GF Level to some extent. There are exceptions to this rule for some GF though. For example, Alexander will Blind the enemy 100% as long as they are not immune to Blind, and Tonberry's attack always causes Death if the enemy is not immune.

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Yeah spell casting wasn't bad in Vanilla but clearly inferior to Limit Break so they need a buff, this is something that every modder even LandonRay (aka the master at nerfing the hell out of the player XD (HS : I'm trolling him a little but genuily enjoy most of the Requiem Mod, hope he is fine haven't heard of him for quite a long time now)) seems to agree on, for now I say the difficulty is between Vanilla and Requiem (Mexico's Reloaded is more tricky to note cause it keeps the Level scaling even on bosses (altough for bosses it removes the cap every boss can go up to LV100 even Ifrit) so it really depend, tough I think some parts where genuily harder than Requiem).
I'm honnestly not seeking hardcore level for now (I have my deal with Requiem and LV100 version of Reloaded XD) but a more relax experience (not a walk in a park mind you) and above all having fun.
Yes, casting spells in the original was just not fun. And enemy magic damage was even worse than own magic damage, even at identical stats. I know that spells have been buffed even in Hardcore mods such as Requiem and Reloaded - which is absolutely the right thing to do. I played Requiem some years ago, and watched videos for Reloaded. It think Reloaded has many neat ideas, especially in regards to additional challenges and content. Too bad it isn't available in English though.

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I recently beat Granaldo and the Raldos and Diablo, Granaldo and Raldos are a good farming spot for Protect and Shell, once you kill 2 Raldos you effectivly reduce the numbers of attacks by a lot, with Protect they don't hit very hard and so by just healing from time to time it's easy to stock up Protect and Shell but the fact the Raldos attacks and even have an AoE is interesting make the fight more entertaining, so I think this fight is good for what it's suppose to be, I would just buff out Granaldo for when he is alone, he just doesn't do enough damage, I read on this thread he was suppose to gain new ability once alone but I killed him in 2 turns (I had damage him a bit prior to killing the Raldos tough).
Granaldo starts using Dissolving Acid after the Raldos have been defeated. It's an attack normally used only by Malboro and shoves off 37,5% of the target's current HP as physical damage and has a chance to set Vit 0. I guess you just didn't see it because the RNG went in favor of Granaldo's normal physical attack, so I guess a few AI changes and maybe slight buff for his normal attack should do - I don't think that durability is the problem here, as Granaldo actually takes quite some hits, unless you pound him with Aero repeatedly. As for Diablos, yes, your ideas sound reasonable. Especially the Haste counter when at 50% HP, as it would create a lot of tension. About immunity to Gravity attacks, I'm not sure. I'll try making Diablos counter Draw Cast Demis as well first. If that doesn't work, I might go for it.

Other than that, thank you for the feedback in your latest post. Now that you mentioned you were actually on an older version of RaW, I wonder if all mod changes have been active for you from the start. It could be that enemy magic damage didn't do its full potential before, but on the other hand, you said that you got Doubles and that X-ATM's Ray-Bomb did high damage, which is how it should be if everything is installed correctly. Hmm, weird. Anyway, good to hear you got the music issue solved, and also beat the Esthar Cyborgs by slowing them down. The Slow Draw Point at the beginning of the Excavation site has been placed there for exactly that reason.

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Hi Nesouk,

have you checked if the Roses and Wine music files are present under RaW/GLOBAL/Music in your FFVIII parent folder? I can't say for certain what happened, but from your description it sounds like the files aren't actually at their designated location, so I would advise checking this out first.

The Draw Point in Balamb Garden library can only be used once during disc 1, as the Double spell is meant to be a valuable resource in the early-game before it becomes more common from mid disc 2 and onwards.

Card Mod results have been toned down in a way that they merely give you a good start instead of making you invincible for the rest of the game. The overall benefits of Card Mod should not last much longer than early disc 2, at which point you would receive the possible spells from monsters anyway. LV 6 and 7 boss cards still refine into very good items, but their availability has been pushed back to mid disc 2 and early disc 3 respectively (before that, they can only be received as one-time rewards for completing sidequests), but the spells they refine into become available soon through other means as well. So all in all, Card Mod is never really needed and should be seen as a little bonus in this mod, or an alternate method of acquiring spells.

As for the damage limit, it is as Squall93 said - everything can break it as long as it has the potential, mainly to make standard physical attacks and GF more useful in the late-game. 30k damage with Darkside is indeed possible, but not without having the right element junctioned to Elem-Atk, and of course it also depends on enemy Vitality. I guess the stream you watched showed an outdated version of this mod, when this change was not introduced yet.

Other than that, thank you for sharing your imressions in regards to difficulty. They are what I would expect from someone who has played both Requiem and Reloaded mods. The first couple of bosses are indeed quite easy, to maintain a healthy curve, but difficulty should ramp up noticably from Centra Excavation Site and onwards. From that point, getting up-to-date spells becomes important, and monsters should be fought for leveling up instead of running from every encounter.

Casting spells is also way more important than in the base game. The junction effects for many spells have been made rather weak intentionally, so they can be used in battle freely. That's particularly true for basic offensive spells, such as Fira, Blizzara or Thundara - they are rather poor on core stats, and magically oriented characters don't necessarily need them on Elemental Junctions either, as their Strength is low to begin with and their natural Spirit is high enough to reduce enemy elemental damage to reasonable levels. Status-changing attacks are also often the key to winning battles, as well as prioritizing targets, maximizing damage per-turn, or just defensive play before going all in.

If you keep all that in mind, you should never really encounter any major problems in this mod. Even though it will probably reach hardcore mod levels only rarely, I hope it will entertain in some way, and offer an experience different from the original version. Feel free to report back any time.


@miruss89: Not yet, but I will look into it once the new version for this mod is done, which will probably at the end of this week.

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Auto-Potion will trigger whenever a character receives damage when their remaining HP are at 50% or less. It will also trigger when a character is currently still above 50%, but is hit by an attack that puts their HP below 50%. This is how it works in the base game as well, but X-Potion and Elixir were removed from the pool for balancing reasons, so Hi-Potion+ combined with Med Data is the way to go if you would like to use this Ability.

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Hey Squall93,

I re-checked Propagators with only this mod and SeeD Reborn installed, including getting Game Overs and reloading, but couldn't reproduce the issue. So it's probably something else causing this.

As for the high Darkside damage, especially when hitting an elemental weakness, I think 10k per hit is ok on the Propagators (it's around the same as what Rinoa can do with Double -aga spells at this point). Even though they are now immune to Death and Odin, I wanted to leave a few options to get rid of them quickly, since you have to fight so many of them. Most other late-game bosses will have higher Vitality and of course much more HP than the Propagators, so if you fear that Darkside will break your remaining game, it won't, since there's only one Darkside copy in this mod anyway.

Well, I hope the late-game won't disappoint. Feel free to share any further impressions :)

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@Robgatti: Thank you. I hope everything will go well, and there will eventually be mods for the Remastered version.

@nesadi: Are you fighting the Brothers? They can perform two moves in a row (Auto heal + another attack), so it can lead to the assumption that ATB settings are ignored, but it has always been that way. Furthermore, the ATB bar will go on while selecting targets regardless of having it set to Wait, which is also normal (it's on this mod's to-do list though). Some enemies also use counter-attacks, further contributing to the assumption that something might be off. It really isn't though. 

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It seems Field files have changed fundamentally in structure, so Deling Field editor can no longer handle them correctly. Furthermore, the .exe is also no longer present in its previous form, making a quick port to the Remastered version nearly impossible.

I guess we have to wait and see if tools will be updated to be fully compatible with the Remastered version before any of the mods will be playable again. This will probably take a while, so give it at least several more weeks.

112
General Discussion / Re: FFVIII Remastered
« on: 2019-09-05 22:45:20 »
This is how the space scene plays on original hardware:

https://youtu.be/nKXkVWlEqP0?t=1800

The drums kick in right away, while the Remastered version seems to play the whole thing, including prelude. Good find about that other bug.

113
General Discussion / Re: FFVIII Remastered
« on: 2019-09-05 22:19:46 »
Movin' plays for a short time in the space station after the alarm goes off, and right before heading out to space. They messed that part up, sadly.

114
General Discussion / Re: FFVIII Remastered
« on: 2019-09-05 22:11:16 »
Just tested the two screens in Balamb, and music plays normally after a card game there. The sound of seagulls is still there while playing a game though (not sure if it's like that in the original PS1 version). As for Shumi Village, I don't have a save with messed up instruments, sorry.

There are new music issues with the Remaster by the way. For example, the full versions of Ride On and Movin' are being played at the overworld whenever you ride the Ragnarok and in space respectively. Furthermore, there are reports about the soundtrack randomly switching between PS1 music and MIDI... Too bad.

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@calderax: Thank you very much for the feedback.

As for the changes made to the Queen of Cards sidequest, I understand your frustration in regards to trying to get the Kiros card from the usual card player in Deling City. I thought it would be helpful to make the Queen of Cards give more information about requested and newly created cards whenever she is in Dollet, but I guess these hints are still too well hidden, so a documentation that covers moved cards, items and spells will soon follow. The reward for the Zell card is still Hyper Wrists by the way. In the case of the Kiros card, yes, Aegis Amulets are quite a downgrade from Accelerators, but for disc 1, having access to 3 Eva-J Abilities is a little too good, so I guess it's fine to leave card holders as they currently are.

Triple Meteor is still quite strong in the late-game indeed, despite Meteor being among the few spells that weren't actually buffed for the mod. I'll look for a way to balance it out by either lowering its base power, make it land less hits or adjust enemy Spirit stats accordingly.

Against Omega Weapon, it helps to reduce battle speed to the lowest or second-lowest setting, and have Speed stats of at least 60. That way, there should always be enough time to react to Omega Weapon's attacks. Other than that, Auto-Protect is very useful, as he occasionally uses an attack that removes most positive status effects. Furthermore, he isn't immune to Vit 0, but highly resistant, so casting Meltdown probably won't do it - Quistis' Ray Bomb can inflict Vit 0 as well with 100% accuracy, as long as the target isn't immune to it. If you see Omega Weapon using Gravija, that's still the sign for using the Defend command to nullify the damage of the incoming Terra Break attack. As for attacking the enemy, I would recommend having Irvine in your team and use Pulse Ammo whenever possible.


@Quinn: Having the possibility to skip the extra encounter at Centra Ruins was not intended. I had a look at it and apparently unit control wasn't entirely disabled when examining the blue orb, which allowed walking around while the textbox is still being displayed. That will be fixed soon. Good catch, thank you very much.

I rechecked the link to the Krysta fix, and didn't have any problems downloading it. Maybe just give it another go, and report back if the problem persists:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=12-ni3SZGp8h-6R3DXhsew9TbkFUWwRCy


116
The difficulty level of the Ruby Dragon at Trabia Canyon is supposed to be on par with Ultima Weapon, so quite a bit of preparation is needed, especially getting all the end-game spells that become available after returning from space (Holy, Flare, Meteor, Ultima, Full-life etc). Keeping the Zombie status has an advantage for the second phase, which will activate once the Ruby Dragon's HP fall below 50%. Zombie also reduces the damage of the Breath attack, but of course, you'll need to find a way to heal your Zombie characters.

Before going to Lunatic Pandora, make sure to visit Lunatic Pandora Laboratory near Esthar on the overworld, if you haven't already. There is a new little sidequest that will help you get some rare items.

The materials for Lionheart are similar to the original version, but Moonstones are required instead of Dragon Fangs. You can steal these most easily from Toramas that appear everywhere near Esthar after the Lunar Cry. Zell's Ehrgeiz requires 1 Phoenix Spirit (dropped from the Bomb in Fire Cavern), 4 Dragon Skins (dropped from LV40+ Anacondaurs that always appear on the mountains surrounding Dollet), 2 Inferno Fangs that can be stolen from Ruby Dragons.

Nothing has changed about Ultimecia's last words yet.

Not sure about porting the mod to the Remaster yet. We need more info on the new file structure first. But I'm positive there will be a way.

117
Adel actually hasn't been changed all that much. You should be able to survive long enough with good Spirit stats, as she mostly casts spells. She even casts Meteor less frequently than in the base game (as it was always used so often by enemies in the late-game). The main difference is that it's way more difficult to keep Rinoa alive, so have an eye on her HP and the damage she takes from Adel's Drains, and also try to steal her item if you have the time - it's something else than usual.

Odin no longer appears randomly in this mod, and is instead summoned by using the Amethysts he gave to you after defeating him. Whenever you run out of these items, you can revisit his chamber to receive a few more. Using this item, you can also skip most of the new battles inside Fire Cavern, to approach the boss more easily. As for Odin showing up for the Seifer battle, it's deactivated at the moment, so there's no possibility of getting Gilgamesh, but this will be changed in the next version coming soon.

Anyway, thanks for reporting back and letting me know how the second Edea battle went, also to calderax.

@Percival: Thank you for the comment. I like the idea of adding more extra encounters as well. At least one new battle consisting of 3 unique Adamantoises will be added soon. Interesting work on your Succession Mod by the way. I hope that someday I'll have the time to check this one out, as well as Martial Law.

118
Level 60 is not required to defeat Edea, 35-40 should be enough. It helps to have a few Mega Potions to recover more quickly from Maelstrom, which is always her first attack, and also some Full-lifes from previous one-time Draw Points. As for junctions, try to have at least Regen on HP, Pain on Strength or Magic, and Meltdown on Vitality or Spirit. If you can't find Pain, check out the Tri-Faces that appear in G-Garden Hall.

Other advice:

- Seifer is weak to the Poison element, so if you double cast Bio and junction Bio to the Elem-Atk of your physical attackers, defeating him shouldn't take too long (if you don't have Bio, draw it from Tri-Faces).

- Before finishing Seifer off, it is advisable to prematurely cast all protective spells you would like to benefit from against Edea (most importantly Double and Shell).

- Use the Treatment Ability from Siren and Leviathan to heal status effects and HP at the same time.

- Blocking the Slow effect from Maelstrom requires 100% protection against Slow, which can be achieved by junctioning 100 Slows and Reflects in Status Defense.

- Ebon Wave is Water elemental, so having Water junctioned to Elemental Defense helps mitigating its damage, while Ice magic helps against Blizzaga.


119
That skill is supposed to be just Krysta's normal physical attack. When creating some new enemy attacks, I got a few of them mixed up, and forgot to update Krysta's moveset. Sorry.

Use this to replace your battle files under lang-en, it will fix the issue:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=12-ni3SZGp8h-6R3DXhsew9TbkFUWwRCy

120
@Murasame: Dragon Skins are still dropped from high-leveled (LV40+ for most enemies in this mod) Anacondaurs that can always be encountered on the mountains surrounding Dollet, where the Communication Tower is located. Blue Dragons have them too, in larger quantities, but they usually appear only rarely at their designated locations (Trabia Snow Forests, Island Closest to Hell, Steam Room in Deep Sea Research Center), so I would recommend going for the Anacondaurs.

Well, I hope the rest of the game will provide a decent challenge, thank you for the kind words.

@Rainku: Yes, Diablos hasn't been made all that hard on purpose, to ensure the third HP-J Ability can be accessed without much hassle. If Selphie manages to Draw Cast a few Demis on him, it will make things considerably easier, and it helps to not heal HP and status effects immediately, to have access to Limit Breaks. But I guess you already figured that out.

Also good to hear you've managed to defeat the Brothers. The next few upcoming battles shouldn't be as tough, but if you look for a challenge similar to the Brothers, there is a new extra boss battle in Dollet. It should be very hard with the limited Junction possibilities on Disc 1, but will likely be very doable on Disc 2 and onwards. Anyway, hope you're having fun; feel free to report back with any impressions you have.

121
@Divatox: You mean the HP shown when using Scan on an enemy, right? I had a look at it, and it seems the HP will always appear in question marks whenever enemy HP exceed 99,999. I have tried to remove that limit, but the maximum number of digits that can be displayed are 5, so any HP higher than 99,999 won't display correctly as they have their first digit cut off. Example: If an enemy has 120,000 HP, it shows 20,000 HP when using Scan. Unfortunately, I don't know how to make it show more than 5 digits, but others might know, so I would advise asking on the Scripting and Reverse Engineering board.

@gunner_1207: Glad it was useful, thank you.
 
@Rainku: Before attempting the Brothers, make sure to have HP-J available for everyone, and junction at least Zombie to HP, which can be drawn from Blood Souls near Galbadia Garden or Tomb of the Unknown King. The spell can also be refined from Zombie Powders that were dropped by Gerogero.

As for Vitality, junction Protect (can be drawn from Armadodo inside the Tomb) or Esuna (can be drawn from Vysage that appears outside the Tomb in night-time areas) for the characters that have access to Vit-J, to reduce the damage of their physical attacks and also the chance of getting confused.

In battle, start with casting Double, Protect and Float on your party (in that order), cut Haste (as otherwise positive status effects will wear off too fast) and after stabilizing, go for Sacred first by casting Float on him and start attacking with Aero, Bio or Demi. If you have the Diablos card, and are willing to mod it, you can also use Gravity Bombs on them to great effect. After Sacred has been defeated, no more Mad Cow Special attacks will be used, but if Minotaur is alone, he will use Mower more often than before, so make sure to always have Protect up.

122
Reflect instead of Esuna would have given you 100% immunity, but I agree that Bad Breath's status infliction rate is too high on anything lower than 100%, which is mainly due to Malboro's very high Magic stat on Level 100. Sorry for the inconvenience, it will be lowered soon so 80-90% should work as well. There' also a Ribbon you can win as a sidequest reward at Lunatic Pandora Laboratory by the way.

Quinn212, glad you got the issue solved. Have fun, and feel free to share any impressions you have.

123
@Dark_Ansem: There is a byte for each spell that contains the number of hits, and it's set to 1 for every spell other than Meteor (10). Changing that byte to anything greater than 1 just doesn't have any effect in battle, unfortunately. Might be related to spell animation data, which is not easy to get access to, but this is just a wild guess.

@Divatox: Draw amounts aren't always 100 in this mod, but implementing this feature should be no problem. Do you have Roses and Wine W07 installed? If so, then download this text file and put it under Steam/steamapps/common/FINAL FANTASY VIII/RaW/GLOBAL/Hext, and see how it goes (remember to set each Draw Resist value to 0 using Doomtrain tool, as with this setting, Draws can still fail if Magic stats are too low).

124
Yes, I've tried increasing the number of hits for several spell besides Meteor - it didn't work, though.

But even without that change, spells and GF can be quite useful even as single-hit, as there is no 9,999 HP damage limit in this mod. Holy, for example, can inflict more than 9,999 HP easily on enemies that are weak to it (like Tri-Face, or Griever) and Bahamut can do up to ~35,000 HP on any enemy, depending on Bahamut's level and Abilities learned.

125
Small update to v1.1.4:
  • Gerogero's Magic stat has been reduced; inflicts ~200 HP less damage with its "Brrawghh!" and Poison Mist attacks.
  • Sacred's chance to inflict Confuse on-hit has been reduced.
  • The Elite Soldier from the Prison boss fight has slightly lower Speed, and reduced protection against the Poison status.
  • Diablos now has HP-J already learned by default.
  • Slight changes to normal enemy stats, especially Speed, have been made.
  • The description for Quistis' Blue Mage spells are now more detailed in her status menu screen and in battle.

Thanks to Kael for bringing up the first 3 points. I especially agree in the case of Gerogero's general damage output, which was a little too high if the party has nothing better than Cure on HP (which is perfectly normal at this point). As for the other two bosses, the changes probably don't change all that much, but in combination with up-to-date spells and prioritizing targets, it should go well.


@ Divatox: I have sent you a PM and listed some enemies that should be safe to edit using the Ifrit tool, as they mostly appear alone (exceptions in brackets), without the need of manual hex editing, which can be complicated indeed if you have never hex-edited something before. In case you missed this list, here it is again:

Spoiler: show
- Behemoth (can appear together with an Imp in Esthar City)
- Chimera (can appear alongside Fastitocalon-F in Ultimecia's Castle)
- Ruby Dragon (with the exception of a Forest encounter on the Centra continent with an additional Blitz, and one at Deep Sea Research Center where the pillar is)
- Elnoyle
- Slapper
- Hexadragon (with the exception of one encounter in Ultimecia's Castle)
- Malboro
- Tri-Face
- Cactuar (with the exception of two encounters in Ultimecia's Castle)
- Tonberry

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