Version 1.1.3 now out.
Changes OverviewBalance changes- Speed Junction effects have been further reduced.
- Irvine's weapons have received an innate critical hit bonus.
- Natural Speed growth has been increased for Selphie and Irvine.
- Natural Magic growth for Selphie, Quistis, Rinoa and Edea has been increased.
- Rinoa's Wishing Star base power has been reduced.
- Quistis' Homing Laser base power has been reduced and no longer ignores enemy Spirit, 254/255 chance to cause Sleep.
- Quistis' Acid now ignores enemy Spirit instead.
- Quistis' Ultra Waves has a chance to inflict Blind and Berserk on all enemies.
- Quistis' Shockwave Pulsar inflicts less damage on Crisis Levels 1-3, but can still do 60,000 HP damage on Crisis Level 4.
- The End now inflicts 100% Doom on all enemies, rather than instant Death.
- Base power for Tornado, Quake, Holy and Flare spells has been slightly increased.
- Carbuncle casts Regen on the party in addition to Reflect.
- Enc-None is still learned by Eden, but no longer requires 200 AP and is learned by default.
- Leviathan's level requirement for learning the second Treatment Ability has been increased to 42.
- Tool-RF and Supt Mag-RF have had their respective GFs swapped, to allow earlier access to support magic Refinement.
- Triple can no longer be created by using High Mag-RF. Breaks can now be turned into Quakes instead.
- A few one-time Triple Draw Points have been placed at various late-game locations.
- Aura can no longer be drawn from Ultima Weapon and has been moved to Omega Weapon.
Enemies- Many late-game enemies have received a major stat overhaul and more tweaks to their AI.
- Turn skip probability has been reduced for almost all enemies. Some late-game bosses no longer skip their turns at all.
- Speed stats of Elastoid and Esthar Cyborg have been slightly reduced.
- Reflect Beam, Resonance and Psycho Blast enemy attacks inflict slightly less damage.
- Seifer's resistance against Drain has been increased.
- Base Soldier and Base Leader drop more AP.
- Encounters with T-Rexaurs on Balamb can no longer begin with a back attack to avoid unnecessary Game Overs.
- Mesmerizes now appear in one of the scripted battles during the Norg scenario, which can be important for a certain weapon upgrade.
- Bombs now appear in some of the random enemy encounters on the Galbadia continent for similar reasons.
- Cockatrices now appear in the Laguna flashback in Winhill, alongside Bite Bugs and Caterchipillars.
- The encounter rate for the Oilboyle screen at MD-Levels has been reduced.
- Random enemy encounters have been disabled in all cells of D-District Prison.
Chocobo WorldMore items have been entirely removed from Chocobo World:
- Three Stars
- Status Guard
- Elem Guard
- Megalixir
- Shaman Stone
- Aura Stone
- Fury Fragment
- Moon Stone
- Inferno Fang
- Laser Cannon
- Pulse Ammo
Some of the good items that are still available include: Healing Ring (=100 Curagas), Phoenix Pinion (=100 Firagas), Energy Crystal, Power Generator, Stat Up items.
Ultimate WeaponsThe base power of each Ultimate Weapon has been increased. This value works independently from the bonus they add to each character's Strength stat, so a standard physical attack performed with an Ultimate Weapon will always inflict more damage than all the lower tier weapons, even if the character is already at 255 Strength. Note that the increased power from those weapons will affect standard physcial attacks only. Limit Breaks power is excluded from this change and relies solely on a character's Strength stat, as usual.
Universal damage limit removalThe 9999 HP damage limit has been removed for all attacks and the new limit is 60,000 HP, mainly to increase the incentive to use standard physical attacks and GF more often in the late-game. This change includes Gravity based attacks as well, so they are now extremely useful on enemies that have high HP, such as Malboro, Snow Lion or Iron Giants. To prevent Gravity attacks from becoming too powerful overall, it was necessary to make a few more enemies immune to them, or give certain bosses that are vulnerable to it a massive HP boost to compensate for the change.
This, alongside stronger Ultimate Weapons, should also solve the issue in regards to standard physical attacks becoming rather useless in the late-game, as it is now possible to get excellent value out of Darkside, especially in combination with critical hits and abuse of elemental weaknesses. In order to keep the total physical damage output in check, the Darkside Ability is now learned by only one GF, and many late-enemies and bosses have had their stats increased, as stated before. Some more Limit Breaks had to be reduced in power too, as they would do absurd damage with the cap removed, such as Blasting Zone, and most of Zell's Duel finishers.
I'm not sure if I succeeded in balancing out every late-game enemy around this new feature properly, as I haven't really had the time to do so yet. If you find something really off, like doing more than 30,000 HP damage on a certain enemy by using only a single physical attack, please report it here.
Angel WingThe Angel Wing damage multiplier has been increased from 3 to 4, so using this Limit Break always has an advantage over just casting Triple spells. Furthermore, spell determination no longer depends on what spells Rinoa currently has in her inventory. Instead, the spells she uses are now randomly selected from a set table that consists of only higher tier spells, with different probabilities for each spell.
Summoning OdinOdin summon mechanics have been changed in a way that he no longer interrupts battles randomly, and is now summoned by using an item instead, to avoid his often unwanted occurrences once and for all. After defeating Odin at Centra Ruins, the player receives 10 units of this new summon item, and 3 more each time Odin's chamber is visited again after all of these items are used up. There is no other way of getting this item, so the maximum amount the player can carry at the same time will always be limited.
The idea behind this change is adding another resource management element to the game, and of course also to make getting Odin more worthwhile. Gilgamesh is not available in this version of mod for now, as I haven't found a way to get these items out of the item menu properly right before the Seifer battle at the end of disc 3. He might return in a later version though.
Important: This change as a whole can cause quirks on game saves in which Odin has already been unlocked. If you wish to use this version of the mod on an older save that has Odin unlocked, I would recommend using the
Hyne tool, go to G-Forces, select the Griever icon and untick Odin from there. Otherwise, Odin will still appear randomly at the beginning of a battle.
Other changes and bugfixes- Draw amounts in battle have been further increased, so even low Mag characters can draw basic spells relatively fast.
- Some more new battle items that replace Death/Holy/Flare/Meteor/Ultima Stones have been added.
- Get a healing item from Raine at the end of the Winhill flashback, depending on how many enemies have been defeated on Laguna's patrol.
- A new sidequest is now available at Fire Cavern after the Lunar Cry event. Zell will mention it inside Ragnarok after Squall returns from space.
- CC-Spade can now abolish all card rules for all areas on disc 4.
- A save opportunity has been added between the Missile Base and Norg scenario events on disc 2.
- A Junk Shop can now be accessed through CC-Joker inside D-District prison and Balamb Garden Training Center.
- The FH shop can now be accessed through the old man at FH Seaside Station as well.
- Status effects for GF can now be checked in battles when pressing start while having the cursor on the respective GF.
- Stat Bonus Abilities have been removed from Cactuar for good.
- Gil value for SeeD Rank 16 has been corrected.
- Talking to an NPC inside Timber Train no longer shows a broken text box.
- A mistakenly placed Card rule reset option has been removed from the vendor in FH inn.
- Some enemy attacks have been renamed. For example, all "Breath" attacks now have their own, unique name.
- Step Mine uses another animation, as the previous one didn't display correctly when hitting 4 enemies.
Thanks again for all the feedback lately - not only through users on these forums, but also through XeroKynos, who was streaming this mod a while back, which was very helpful in spotting certain late-game imbalances directly. Also huge thanks to Sega Chief, whose Ifrit tool enemy AI fix came in handy, and JWP who came up with an Angel Wing Patch that was necessary to put my ideas into practice. I hope it's a decent, less broken alternative compared to endless Meteor spam
@Yuey: I don't think a damage boosting spell in Aura's place is all that necessary anymore, now that the general damage cap has been lifted. I was also thinking about another Water elemental spell, as this particular element is still underrepresented in this mod, due to possible animations being sparse and/or broken when used by own party (the Grand Mantis one, for example). I'll keep your idea in mind though.
@Ai: Roses and Wine W07 is necessary to make a lot of this mod's changes work (everything that comes from the text file), such as drawing more than 9 spell units per Draw in battle, or proper magic damage calculation. I hope Yuey's link will help you getting it.
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