[FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v2.0.99994)

[Sega Chief]

Yeah the flevel patch should fix it.

[Webbhead08]

Can confirm my Gil plus is giving Tifa 172 to 227 str without to with it equipped. 143 to 189 with Cid and 114 to 151 with Cloud when they equip the materia.

Also, added cut doesn't seem to trigger with E. Skill materia. Not sure if this is known or not.

[Maverick4031]

so i am wondering if maybe it would be better if i just start over entirely with the game and mod install? i get the feeling that something was amiss in the way i applied the 1.4 mod which probably caused some of my issues. it was the remake version of ff7 (not the old version or the steam version). to be honest i think i might need a little clarification on the proper installation method, such as what "stand-alone installer" is referring to? cuz last time for 1.4 i grabbed the main download you had, and then later ended up applying the patches after that....but it seemed like maybe that was the wrong thing to do. i do plan on finishing my 1.4 playthru first however.

on a side note....what is this "second wind" ability for cloud i keep hearing about? i thought he had some weird "memesis" thing in 1.4 or some other ability that randomly copied another ability? i never saw either activate personally. now that i think about it i don't recall red 13's ability ever doing much, though most fights never lasted a long time. how long was his "stat boost" ability supposed to take to build up?

[MoCheese]

Ok, couple of bugs to report than a comment/questions:

- In the Reno & Rude fight in Gongaga, you can Paralyze and hit Reno with Stop. That should prevent him from taking any actions, however if you then Poison him or Rude, he will still auto cast "Turk Esuna" even though he's stopped or Paralyzed.

- In the Lich GT fight, you can get a pre-empitive Strike. That alone may or may not be a bug, but for sure what definitely is a bug, is that if you do get a pre-empitive strike and start taking actions, you can move the camera from where it normally starts. The camera will than lock in place. I couldn't see any of my characters when this happened and it didn't seem to be able to be fixed afterwords.

And for the opinion/questions:

Now you know I'm normally the one hesitant to call for a nerf on anything, but I MIGHT be calling for one on Lich. So as a general we're weaker at this point in the mod compared to 1.4. Not a ton but there have been some materia moved. To compensate Lich has less health, and that's great. Where I'm a little iffy on the fight is the fact that he can recover so much health so fast. So he absorbs Poison and is Poisoned but that can be remedied with an Antidote. He seems to have a periodic heal that I have no idea how to get rid of, if you even can? But where I think it may be a little too much is the "Blood Sword" attack. It Paralyze's, which is fine, but it also fully leeches too. Lich can hit pretty damn hard. He was doing 800+ on front rows, and 400+ on back rows for me, and he uses it twice in a row. At best there that's 800 - 850 leeched between the two attacks and at worst, over 1500 - 1600 leeched between the two attacks. For a boss that only has 8800 health, for him at best to heal 10% of his health by attacking the player seems like a bit much, especially when you tack on that auto recovery he has. It makes the fight, which you already have to go into defensively minded because of all the status effects bouncing around, feel artificially long. So I guess I'm wondering, am I missing a mechanic with this fight? Is there a way to stop that auto recovery? Stop the Blood Sword leech? Am I totally missing something with this fight? If I'm not, I'd ask for a little tuning down of the health recovery.

Anyone else can share there thoughts too on this, cause I'd like to hear em.

[Webbhead08]

At Maverick: Cloud's Second Wind is a once per battle ability which triggers after roughly 50 actions, I think this includes the enemies as well as all party member actions. Second Wind will completely refill Cloud's HP and MP, essentially a free elixir.

Red's +50 Str / + 50 Mag builds up plus 1 stat per turn or tick, so it can take a while for him to reach max but it is certainly noticeable in longer fights.

[Webbhead08]

Question:

My Cid has 212 Strength without Str stat boosting gear equipped at the moment with 2 or 3 rank ups left. His attack stat caps at 255 on paper which is easy enough to hit with the right weapon or an accessory already. My question is, is there any point in further bolstering his Strength stat for damage output purposes? Or will those added Str points not carry past the 255 / paper cap? I think my Tifa is in a similar situation so my question applies for her as well.

Thanks - 

Edit: Cid had the Gigas armlet for +30 str and the Gil plus materia equipped so hitting that cap will NOT be as easy as I thought, haha. He's back down to 125 str unequipped. I thought something was up. Still curious though, if anyone can answer the above question about the 255 / paper cap. Thanks.

[Maverick4031]

@webhead: just in case i somehow lack understanding on that....does it mean red's turns only or the whole team? and what do you mean by "tick"? sorry if i seem woefully ignorant on things lol, im not well versed on all the nitty-gritty details as of yet. cuz it sorta sounds like if i can force red into haste and run 50 turns down on him, that he would reach his max much faster. either way i go i almost never notice the boost when using him. then again, i didn't use him ALOT....and most fights dont last 50 turns after you start running up the rank system.

[Webbhead08]

A 'tick' is an enemy turn or action, or a party member turn or action. So anytime anybody 'does something'. If two enemies attack, then 3 party members attack, that's 5 ticks or 5 actions.

I am not certain but I believe Cloud's Second Wind triggers around 50 ticks, so enemy and friendly actions included in the count.

For Red, I am not sure if it's all ticks, friendly ticks, or his own actions - I am guessing it's Red's own turns but I am not positive.

I put an enemy to sleep in the battle square, and had Cloud defend over and over again until his Second Wind triggered for me in one stance. The battle square seems to count all of the battles as 'one battle' for Cloud though as I later realized his Second Wind was triggering in the fourth and fifth-ish rounds for me without intentionally using up lots of turns.

This makes me curious if Red will keep his increasing buffs with each progressive round in the battle square without resetting the counter (since Cloud's doesn't seem to), in which case sleeping an enemy in the first round and having Red defend over and over to buff him for the rest of the rounds might be an interesting strategy...

[Maverick4031]

hmm ok thanks lol. guess i'll have to test it out. i know for a while my most melee dmg-heavy characters were tifa and red, tifa for more obvious reasons (powersoul, DS, berzerk). red just seems like another one that is popular to throw out as a berzerker to me, though i guess he can be an all rounder or mage too.

by the way....not thrilled with my choice of making cloud completely all-rounder. he just seems complete garbage almost now lol. he can sorta fill in on magic use.....not so much on physical dmg......not a terribly good tank but can sort of fill the role at earlier-game.....about all he does well is support i guess. possibly my absolute best characters seem to be barett and aerith, possibly followed by mayb tifa and either cid or red. hard to know what to do with some of the characters lol.

[Webbhead08]

Well their end game gears and later limit breaks can really alter things. My Cloud is more Str based, so he's an all arounder with a physical damage edge. Can load him out with Mag+ gear and materia and he's fine as a mage too. Tifa and Cid for phys damage for me, Red and Aeris for Magic, Cait and Barret as tanks. Yuffie going kind of all arounder but will really only use her for end-game morph where necessary. Oh and Vincent magic based too for me.

[Maverick4031]

barret is practically unkillable once you set him up right lol he's like by far the best guy in there if you want to never die lol. i ended up letting my other party members die and went solo against nemesis i think it was.....simply because barret is a god-level tank. everybody else would die immediately compared to him. i hope 1.5 didn't ruin that for me lol. but basically i had him running grav+elem on def, enemy skill using ? for its gravity based dmg, which auto heals exactly how much dmg he's taken and bypasses touph ring's restore/half clause. then of course boosted his vit and spr as much as i could, had him using hades/added effect for a time on def....which now that i have a certain materia i can just toss resist on him.....i think i tended to give him the best gender-neutral armor stat-wise.

basically what ends up happening is nearly nothing in the game can do nearly enough damage to put him in any danger UNLESS its a specific kind of attack that does set dmg.....and there's not many of those around. at this point i have him running contain added effect on his ult weapon....so that's fun lol. oh yeah even the final materia cave boss couldn't do enough damage to be any serious problem for barret. everybody else however....lol

[Maverick4031]

pretty sure the only thing that i ever had to seriously worry about even with him is the goldberry fight in the materia cave. and that's simply because goldberry hax lol.

[Maverick4031]

in other news.....i still haven't found w-magic in v1.4.    where is the doggone thing? lol

[Sega Chief]

Can confirm my Gil plus is giving Tifa 172 to 227 str without to with it equipped. 143 to 189 with Cid and 114 to 151 with Cloud when they equip the materia.

Also, added cut doesn't seem to trigger with E. Skill materia. Not sure if this is known or not.

E.Skill doesn't trigger with any Support Materia, as far as I know.

so i am wondering if maybe it would be better if i just start over entirely with the game and mod install? i get the feeling that something was amiss in the way i applied the 1.4 mod which probably caused some of my issues. it was the remake version of ff7 (not the old version or the steam version). to be honest i think i might need a little clarification on the proper installation method, such as what "stand-alone installer" is referring to? cuz last time for 1.4 i grabbed the main download you had, and then later ended up applying the patches after that....but it seemed like maybe that was the wrong thing to do. i do plan on finishing my 1.4 playthru first however.

on a side note....what is this "second wind" ability for cloud i keep hearing about? i thought he had some weird "memesis" thing in 1.4 or some other ability that randomly copied another ability? i never saw either activate personally. now that i think about it i don't recall red 13's ability ever doing much, though most fights never lasted a long time. how long was his "stat boost" ability supposed to take to build up?

Sounds correct; the hotfixes go right over the NT install.

A 'tick' is an enemy turn or action, or a party member turn or action. So anytime anybody 'does something'. If two enemies attack, then 3 party members attack, that's 5 ticks or 5 actions.

I am not certain but I believe Cloud's Second Wind triggers around 50 ticks, so enemy and friendly actions included in the count.

For Red, I am not sure if it's all ticks, friendly ticks, or his own actions - I am guessing it's Red's own turns but I am not positive.

I put an enemy to sleep in the battle square, and had Cloud defend over and over again until his Second Wind triggered for me in one stance. The battle square seems to count all of the battles as 'one battle' for Cloud though as I later realized his Second Wind was triggering in the fourth and fifth-ish rounds for me without intentionally using up lots of turns.

This makes me curious if Red will keep his increasing buffs with each progressive round in the battle square without resetting the counter (since Cloud's doesn't seem to), in which case sleeping an enemy in the first round and having Red defend over and over to buff him for the rest of the rounds might be an interesting strategy...

That's quite interesting, I would have thought those vars get reset between encounters; Red would probably be great for Battle Square in that case.

in other news.....i still haven't found w-magic in v1.4.    where is the doggone thing? lol

I think all 3 W-Materia are obtained from Extra Battle in 1.5, but in 1.4 I think W-Magic was obtained from the North Crater; on the Left-Up path, the screen with the sparkling core, check these two spots:

It should be in one of those, I think I moved W-Magic back to this screen at the end of 1.4.

***

Some news, I identified some lines of code by complete chance in places like Icicle Inn that automatically add Aeris back to the party. It's likely been some kind of failsafe from way back in an older version where the exact opposite problem was happening and Aeris wasn't making it past Disc 1.

Just goes to show; you should always keep your code in easy to find places and document it or future-you is going to suffer for it s:

[ManInBlack]

I'm noticing that the text file about where to find items doesn't seem to match the spreadsheet for a few things.
The text says Iron Man/Iron Giant should drop a Heaven's Cloud, Excel says he should drop Ragnarok, when I killed one without stealing he dropped nothing (not sure if it's RNG?).
Text says Armored Golem should drop Pile Banger and have Max Ray steal-able, text says both should be Pile Banger, it seems to be dropping Max Rays (I'll try stealing next).
Master Tonberry did not drop a Starlight Phone for me (but if it's RNG it's probably fine); ditto Christopher with Oritsuru.

I'm generally trying to collect items for crafting now so I'll let you know if anything else seems off.

EDIT: Just as I was about to give up hope, my fifth or sixth Master Tonberry dropped a Starlight Phone. So it does seem to be RNG, if potentially a rather harsh one.

[Bowser9]

Now you know I'm normally the one hesitant to call for a nerf on anything, but I MIGHT be calling for one on Lich.

He was doing 800+ on front rows, and 400+ on back rows for me, and he uses it twice in a row. At best there that's 800 - 850 leeched between the two attacks and at worst, over 1500 - 1600 leeched between the two attacks.
Is there a way to stop that auto recovery? Stop the Blood Sword leech? Am I totally missing something with this fight? If I'm not, I'd ask for a little tuning down of the health recovery.

Anyone else can share there thoughts too on this, cause I'd like to hear em.

Spoiler: show

 It depends on the build. My Cloud took Rank Ups for Dex/Luck and had Hardedge for the defensive bonus. He was on the front row in order to abuse a Mystic Knight materia build, had 2x Cover (30% each; total 60%) materia w/ Counter Attack and Magic Counter, and was benefiting from Barrier. The Luck combined with high defenses meant he was forcing a "Miss" or the attack dealt around 430 damage. He had a Jem Ring in order to be immune to paralysis (normally not possible to know about going in, but I had fought it back in 1.4). Counterattack return damage outpaced the healing, and Magic Counter would activate even on non-physical attacks. Understandably, I had no issue.

I suppose that you can also mitigate more damage/healing with Luck/Vit+ items. Protect Vest isn't available due to an issue with Heligunner at Shinra HQ (don't think I spelled that right), but Heavy Ring or anything else granting Vit+ goes a long way in mitigating physical damage alongside Barrier and/or Sadness. If you use Defend with anyone who's not attacking, that also increases the chance of mitigating the potential healing it can receive on its turn, though at the cost of relegating a party member to emergency response.

by the way....not thrilled with my choice of making cloud completely all-rounder. he just seems complete garbage almost now lol. he can sorta fill in on magic use.....not so much on physical dmg......not a terribly good tank but can sort of fill the role at earlier-game.....about all he does well is support i guess. possibly my absolute best characters seem to be barett and aerith, possibly followed by mayb tifa and either cid or red. hard to know what to do with some of the characters lol.

Spoiler: show

 He can still go Mystic Knight as a full all-rounder. This materia load-out focuses him on one element and chains together Cover, Counter Attack, Element (Weapon), Added Cut, Magic Counter, and Command Counter Mug/Deathblow. However, it will require 3, possibly 4 of the same elemental attack materia to optimize. You also need some decent linked slots. Since Tifa doesn't require any sort of set-up beyond Death Sentence, Added Cut, and Mug, assuming you have Powersoul, this allows you to optimize damage in a way that doesn't sacrifice a good tank and doesn't require Cloud to do anything strenuous in particular. As far as damage output per Boss turn goes, his optimal load-out can hit for little over half of a tri-Reflect magic barrage, but with the flexibility of being able to take other actions on his turn. Obviously, the damage goes down if the enemy has few physical attacks to its AI and/or one of its defenses is really high.

[Maverick4031]

so....when i do finally upgrade to 1.5, should install the main mod AND follow it up with the patches?

[Maverick4031]

one more thing lol.

is there a reason i can't use all 9 characters for the bizzarro sephiroth battle? it keeps forcing me to drop one of them.

[Robo Jesus]

so....when i do finally upgrade to 1.5, should install the main mod AND follow it up with the patches?

Yes.

[ManInBlack]

one more thing lol.

is there a reason i can't use all 9 characters for the bizzarro sephiroth battle? it keeps forcing me to drop one of them.

I believe it was mentioned at some point that the game would crash if he tried to force it to accept 9 characters in the fight and he hadn't found a way around it.

[ulurujamman]

Yeah the flevel patch should fix it.

It did, thanks - didn't realise that Mk2 still needed the patches. Is it intentional that the first 'level up' requires 200 SP in Arrange? I think it was 100 previously.

[Robo Jesus]

It did, thanks - didn't realise that Mk2 still needed the patches. Is it intentional that the first 'level up' requires 200 SP in Arrange? I think it was 100 previously.

It's likely a response to the fact that it's easy to farm SP if you know what you're doing, and some Disc 1 players were getting some of their characters Rank Ups maxed out. And I'm pretty sure one of the players commented on that being the case in "Normal", but I admit I may be mistaken on that.

Anyways, upping the limit needed to 200 points cut down on players getting too many Rank Ups so early in the game. :shrugs:

[ulurujamman]

Ah, spoke too soon - the Ziegfried fight is still broken for me post patch I'm afraid 

[Ethario]

What is the reason the XP values from lvl 21 to 22 are so weird, suddenly you have 13k xp and you need 13k xp to level up, afterwards its normalizes again to 4-5k.

I Thought my save file was srsly corrupted but after checking some stats on old files it seems that there really is such a massive spike.

[Thraxis]

What is the reason the XP values from lvl 21 to 22 are so weird, suddenly you have 13k xp and you need 13k xp to level up, afterwards its normalizes again to 4-5k.

I Thought my save file was srsly corrupted but after checking some stats on old files it seems that there really is such a massive spike.

If I'm remembering correctly, was a way to let chars "Catch up" in levels.  So every 10 levels you have a plateau of xp. So for an easy example Cloud early game on a normal play through is going to out level everyone. More so if you want/are forced to swap chars for boss fights or certain stretches of time. This plateau causes cloud to not really get any more than 3-4 levels ahead at any time of your reserves.

I'm sure there's a more specific reason that someone can quote but it's too early for me to dig it up.