Author Topic: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v2.0.99994)  (Read 4837854 times)

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8525 on: 2019-09-08 08:55:36 »
Wait
Spoiler: show
how do I farm Oversoul Shards if the Goblin doesn't drop them or morph them anymore? Do I have to fight every NT extra boss to get 9 shards, now?

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8526 on: 2019-09-08 09:16:20 »
Spoiler: show
Not sure if this was intentional, but the intel officer in your airship in disc 3 doesn't mention the Shinra Mansion for the flashback fight for cloud. Also, the Where Is The Thing note in the forum's download package says that an event triggers in the Nibelheim Reactor, but doesn't state what conditions are required. Would greatly appreciate it if someone would update all of the accompanying footnotes such as this one and the item drop spreadsheet, and possibly make a weapon descriptions note that explains what buffs things grant when it isn't displayed in-game, such as Relic Ring, Cursed Ring, Flayer, Powersoul, Utlimate Weapons that have scaling effects and their formulas, etc. I think players would be extremely relieved to have these things.

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8527 on: 2019-09-08 15:22:23 »
Is there a list of all the bosses that can successfully be morphed? I wouldn't want to know what they turn into, but just if it's possible.

It's pretty difficult (and occasionally frustrating) to morph the bosses, especially with the increased difficulty. Kind of has made me dread boss fights because I'll put in so much effort, maybe even accidentally kill them because of a surprise crit or counter attack and have to redo it, just to find out they don't even turn into anything.

Would be cool if Sense could say whether an enemy was morph-able, but I get that probably isn't an option.

You don't have to morph the bosses, they don't carry anything missable.


Hi everyone.

I just finished my first playtrought of the vanilla mode and wanted to share some observations , that maybe could be considered for future versions of the vanilla patch.

1. Osmose materia seems to be gliched, found it outside aerith's house, appears as a magic materia without name, skills or stats, and does nothing when equipped, maybe it  should fixed be removed.

2. Several differente materias are recived already mastered, I guess this could be a leftover from when those were rewards for events or fights that don't appear in the vanilla version, I suggest returning them to normal.

3. I experience the frezee every time I tried to enter the arena in the battle square of the gold saucer, even after applying the september update patch.  :(

4. the first time I arrived at the shinra mansion in Nifleheim I could not enter, the red arrow showed the door as an entrance point, but Cloud just could not enter, I used Black Chocobo to edit myself inside the mansion and followed the game normaly, still could no enter the mansion again after leaving.

5. The boss battle in the norther crater was change to some weird mosnsters that when killed gave me a massive EXP boost (around 17 levels up, from 50  to 67) after the battle the game continued normally.

6. After defeating  Sephyroth the ending video, wont load, instead only a screen with every character and a robot (Sega Chief's avatar I guess) will appear, congratulating you for beating the mod, I guees this message is intentional, but I also presume it is suppose to appear after the normal ending, or maybe after defeating the extra bosses in the hard version of the mod.

And finally I would like to do a little suggestion regarding Aerith, I think it would fit better with the history if she died like normal, and then rejoined the group when Cloud and Tifa fall into the lifestream when the Town of Mideel collapses, I think it would make sense that Aerith being a Cetra could guide Tifa inside the lifestream so she could enter Cloud's mind and help him sort his real memories, (as in the original history is never explained how Tifa could witstand the sensory overload of the lifestream and enter Cloud's mind, instead of just going insane with Mako poisoning the same way Cloud did), also there is precedent in the story of Sephyroth being impaled / fatally injured, and then reviving after falling into pure lifestream, also it could be optional, after Aerith helps Tifa and Cloud inside the lifestream, the player must choose if Aerith should come back, or if she has already done enought and should rest in peace, that way we have the option of  having her back without dimishing her sacrifice too much, I mean is a little humorous to watch Cloud cry in despair at the dead of his friend, and just a second later casually throw her a phoenix down and said well that should be good enough :P , makes it look a little too much like a parody.

Anyway thanks Sega Chief for this awesome mod that make me pick up one of my old favorites and play it from beggining to end, I love replaying old games, but abstained from ff7 because I hated to lost Aerith and have no way to have her back, and this mod fixed that particular grievance of mine, so thanks a lot. :)

Thanks for the feedback + bugs; I cobbled that version together fairly fast so there's likely still issues in there. I'll clean up the ones you mentioned (actually, I think I forgot to remove the the mythril mines fight with the turks as well). I thought the clean import for the battle square field would do the trick but apparently not; I'll need to see what I can do with that to salvage the flevel.


In the files downloaded, and if you aren't using the version in 7th heaven, you can find an excel with all that information. Pretty usefull.

---------------

A question,
Spoiler: show
 I just killed the chocobo from Kalm and the old man gave me the 3 fakes materias. It gave me again the long range materia and the Desert Rose and Earth Harp. The reward here depend what materia I touch to trigger the battle? In that case, what are the others rewards?

And I guess I finished all extra content. Pretty fun them all. Only Sephi left.

I don't have enough words to praise this mod. In many cases it made the history more comfortable to read and follow the events. And battles were so much fun. Thanks to do this.


It should be the same regardless of which Materia you interact with first, they all fire the same script so no worries there. Glad you enjoyed the mod, bud and good luck with the final battles.


Potential improvement feedback on the mod. I realize there is 'arrange mode' so some balance thoughts here are maybe being too stringent.

Spoiler: show
Here's the most important ones first:

- In the special 'dark cave' at the end you can go out the top door and end up exiting out of ancient forest on the world map and being trapped!

- I've noticed loading up lots of counter attack, cmd counter+deathblow, added effect+hades is causing a soft lock when hades succeeds sometimes. Dunno if that is the mod or just a FF7 glitch. :(

- I kept getting soft locks with multi-target enemies using w-magic + quadra magic + ultima, maybe just a FF7 bug.

- I kept getting soft locks on multi-target enemies with command counter + 4x cuts linked, again maybe just a FF7 bug.

The rest:

- A lot of documentation says LV5 suicide which is now renamed quarry fuse, could be confusing

- Alpha & Magnitude8 are still listed as enemy skills, chronocure is missing

- Chronocure could be explained a little better that its based off gametime (I think?)

- Seems like this mod tried hard to make MP valuable since ether is 1500 and you get osmose as a primary way of MP by syphoning from enemies. One trick I realized was once I get Cait Sith, I can use osmose on him as his MP regenerates and get two strong MP pools.

- Since Fort Condor battles are emphasized and it says like 'you need at least 3000 gil', it would help to clarify that you don't actually give funds to the dude at the lookout shack. I never understood that.

- It would be nice if Fort Condor mentioned upfront there was nothing unique to lose, I grinded thru all those as I wasn't sure if anything good was there.

- Where is the thing list - "MP Plus: Ziegfried Encounter OR Temple of the Ancients" < Could be more descriptive to say where Ziegfried is found.

- Before temple of the ancients after cait sith betrayal theres a fort condor alert but the quickwarp guy isn't there

- If you could get a 'quit to main menu' feature in the game that would be amazing instead of quitting/relaunching the game or trying to suicide.

- You tried super hard to fix the storyline disaster that was Cait Sith's sacrifice XD Thanks

- Chocobuckle could probably use some elaboration on the document too, it just said "feed greens" which didn't work. I researched: it has to be 3 mimett greens first then do L5 (quarry mine) and that did it for me.

- I feel like Midgar zolom could maybe be stronger, I found I could break the game wide open after temple by grinding thru Zolom quickly with 300 AP + double AP equipment + using gil plus after Temple of The Ancients.

- The special fight in the temple was great. Also I was surprised demons gate was much easier than I anticipated, maybe I am just a good preparer...

- A condor fight right at disc 2 swap but before the big battle isn't announced by the special messenger popup, I know b/c I went to Fort Condor anyway, or maybe I pre-empted a notice

- The sunken gelnika engine room has a yellow orb showing that you can't pick up (?) I thought this is because its double cut pickup which was moved... should put something there if the yellow orb can't be removed. Another joke like the W-Item bit? :)

- I found myself digging up infinite copies of Bahamut Zero from bone village disc 3, maybe because I went from v1.4 to v1.5 after Midgar though.

- Maybe I missed the note, but couldn't figure out how to change party leader for sidequests without doing a lot of searching for answers out of game. The New Threat NPC guy should say something about that like the README.

- On crater right path, the spiral going down shows a treasure chest on the next screen until you get there and it turns into a save point, kinda confusing.

- In Cid quest the Tiny Bronco backyard shows a rocket in background. Unavoidable I'm sure. Maybe a bit of funny dialogue explaining that.

- Dragon force enemy skill caption says "trade defence" >> "trade defense"

- For some reason Cid's hyper jump just showed him standing still with animations coming out, tried equipping different weapons. This was crater at endgame I was grinding out limits so I just wanted to see it.

- Somehow I broke Cid's big brawl at some point. I think when I gave him slash all. Ever since, I just see him running around the enemy and no damage numbers come out, although it does damage. It image skips enemies dying and shows fight won too.

- When I do the Yuffie partyjoin fight, near the end she says something like 'I'll have to use THIS' and the ground turns into a massive hole, but I never saw anything else. I felt maybe the animation broke. Not quite sure what that is.

- At the ultimate weapon smith it says you don't have the items needed if something required equipped, should note that maybe?

- If you could somehow make Golden Saucer prize redemption include batches like 5x 10x etc. for the smaller items it would be nice. Something like ethers, x-potions, turbo ethers, elixers, or rarer utility items like sun curtain would be nice.

- Maybe best for a separate mod, but someone should really tone down that Ultima sound effect with something else

- Nemesis can be frogged!

- Emerald / Ruby / Endgame was crazy easy with Yuffie's final weapon and Cid piling on counter attacks & cover with his final weapon.

- Kalm traveler says hes giving you a gold chocobo and its actually gray, could maybe add some funny dialogue explaining that. I checked the farm and it was gold as promised in the text.

- Oh, lastly, I realized in the 'dark cave' re-run that I DID miss the sense materia early game lol. Gahhh!

...and in the immortal words of the Highwind conference room guy: "Thank you for a job well done!" *salute*

p.s. Long live the immortal X-ATM Scorpion XD


BTW here is an updated list of Enemy Skills to utilize:
Code: [Select]
Frog Song Quarry Fuse
Magic Hammer White Wind
Big Guard Mustard Bomb
Dragon Force Death Force
Antipode Laser
Matra Magic Bad Breath
Beta Aqualung
Trine Magic Breath
???? Goblin Punch
Chocobuckle Deathcharge
Death Sentence Chronocure
Shadow Flare Pandora's Box

I think quad ultima breaks if an absorb hp/mp is also being used on multi-part enemies; it's an engine thing unfortunately. No idea how you got 4x-cut to work with command counter, that's not ordinarily possible. Added effect thing is potentially related to 60fps mod or something else, not sure; it was to do with Frog status. Big Brawl I think is busted on PC as well depending on the version.

The documentation, both in and out of the mod, is out of date/missing info in places. That's completely on me for not staying on top of it.

I'll keep a note of the stuff you've found + suggestions; thank you for a job well done o7


Thanks! Yes, I realized that I just had loaded the wrong save and my immunities did work against the breath/pollen attacks.

I am now on disc 3 and wanted to know: Are any of the items that are required to craft ultimate weapons able to be missed and therefore lock you out of acquiring them? Or are all of them farmable in northern crater / quest drops?

No, nothing should be missable. All the weapons you need are acquired from Crater enemies, either by drop, steal, or morph. There should be some info on that here: https://pastebin.com/SiJkKDVa

Wait
Spoiler: show
how do I farm Oversoul Shards if the Goblin doesn't drop them or morph them anymore? Do I have to fight every NT extra boss to get 9 shards, now?


I think you can get them from Battle Square's BP shop as well. Yoshiyuki is held by Soldier M class in the t-junction where you find the alarm/elevator down to junon underwater reactor.

Spoiler: show
Not sure if this was intentional, but the intel officer in your airship in disc 3 doesn't mention the Shinra Mansion for the flashback fight for cloud. Also, the Where Is The Thing note in the forum's download package says that an event triggers in the Nibelheim Reactor, but doesn't state what conditions are required. Would greatly appreciate it if someone would update all of the accompanying footnotes such as this one and the item drop spreadsheet, and possibly make a weapon descriptions note that explains what buffs things grant when it isn't displayed in-game, such as Relic Ring, Cursed Ring, Flayer, Powersoul, Utlimate Weapons that have scaling effects and their formulas, etc. I think players would be extremely relieved to have these things.


Yeah you're right. I'll need to focus on updating all the text and documentation next to get it finally done, it's been left far too long.


saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8528 on: 2019-09-09 03:28:06 »
also wanted to ask about that one room when you're on the way to the junon reactor that has a dog blocking the way. is this just permanently blocked? I thought I recalled it becoming accessible in vanilla afterwards.

I found one oversoul shard after fighting yuffi's lv. 4 limit boss on disc 2, then got another one from completing a Junon league. I think you are correct that they are for sale at the battle square, but I've yet to go double check to confirm

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8529 on: 2019-09-09 03:30:04 »
not sure if it's posted anywhere in the game, but after talking to the tiny bronco engineer then going to wall market as he alludes, no event triggers. im guessing I may need cid as my leader, which I understand you get access to once you get to the bottom of north crater, but nothing in-game states this outside of just saying that you need cid.

lakecityransom

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8530 on: 2019-09-09 03:49:38 »
I think quad ultima breaks if an absorb hp/mp is also being used on multi-part enemies; it's an engine thing unfortunately. No idea how you got 4x-cut to work with command counter, that's not ordinarily possible. Added effect thing is potentially related to 60fps mod or something else, not sure; it was to do with Frog status. Big Brawl I think is busted on PC as well depending on the version.

The documentation, both in and out of the mod, is out of date/missing info in places. That's completely on me for not staying on top of it.

I'll keep a note of the stuff you've found + suggestions; thank you for a job well done o7

Oops, I think you're absolutely right about the softlocks. Late game I was like, "I never use these HP/MP absorbs dangit". I don't think I ever got 4x cut properly working, I just probably didn't realize it was additional counter attacks going off before the freeze. It would probably be a good idea to put this in a 'common known issues' ingame so people don't blame you for it. Also a good idea in FAQ to mention that running as admin might need untick/retick on exes or 7thHeaven to get around run error popups (I'm on Win 10). That is highly unusual, but glad I figured it out. It almost stopped me from playing.

Interesting about big brawl not working, I thought it was at one point for sure. Hmm, wasn't paying close enough attention. About the documentation: I understand its hard to expend energy constantly documenting an ever-changing product, no worries just trying to help. I think your mod got some good coverage on Twitch and there is probably a whole new wave of people playing it. Echoing what the other guy said, there are quite a few other non-descriptive things that could use elaboration in equipment/items such as the deadlier curse ring, hero drink 2, Mako Bomb, Yellow Wave, etc. The other guy said something very important I forgot to note: Cloud's mission isn't in the info menu.

Something else: Junon league really gave me the wrong impression. When I first get to Junon and try it I got wiped by 1 massive punch by the Jessie robot and decided its endgame material. Then I came back endgame and found my way stomping thru almost the entire thing without paying attention. I saw one streamer who did the same thing.

o7

lakecityransom

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8531 on: 2019-09-09 03:55:07 »
also wanted to ask about that one room when you're on the way to the junon reactor that has a dog blocking the way. is this just permanently blocked? I thought I recalled it becoming accessible in vanilla afterwards.

I found one oversoul shard after fighting yuffi's lv. 4 limit boss on disc 2, then got another one from completing a Junon league. I think you are correct that they are for sale at the battle square, but I've yet to go double check to confirm

Hey I can answer these, if you fail the submarine mission and have to get torpedoed back to the town under Junon, the 'dog door' opens so you can steal the red submarine instead. The oversoul shards are definitely at Battle Square prize redemption in Disc 3.

That also reminds me that while stealing the gray submarine, its very easy to miss the chest for Leviathan Scales which is one of the only forever missable items and completely kills Yuffie's quest. Maybe that should have a fallback? Is it possible to add to bone village or something?
« Last Edit: 2019-09-09 03:59:58 by lakecityransom »

demos1085

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8532 on: 2019-09-09 04:23:38 »
Hi, I have a small question, sorry if it turns to be a dumb one, but I don´t really know much about game moding.

Is it possible to patch only the retraslation and small history changes (Yuffie and Vincent´s automatic recruit, Aerith surviving Sephyroth´s attack) without changing the battles, materia and item locations? I ask this because I really liked the original game, except for Aerith´s pemanent death, and I love the new traslation and the little extra lines you gave Aerith after her survival, they are really in character for her, so a game with only these changes will be my ideal version of the game.

Also I presume that with less changes  there will be less probability of the game crashing frezzing? I´m just guessing, excuse me if this is actually wrong.

Of course this is just my personal opinion and I don´t mean in any way to critice the people that enjoy the more challeging combat and the extra bosses, as I understand that is a big part of this mod, I just wanted to express my opinion and ask if it would be possible to change the game the way I described.

As always thanks for your hard work, and for stay involved with the community and answer these little feedback posts.

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8533 on: 2019-09-09 08:39:37 »
not sure if it's posted anywhere in the game, but after talking to the tiny bronco engineer then going to wall market as he alludes, no event triggers. im guessing I may need cid as my leader, which I understand you get access to once you get to the bottom of north crater, but nothing in-game states this outside of just saying that you need cid.

Cid has to be leader, yeah. I'll sort out the dialogue to make this explicit, or build in a party leader swap when going to his and Tifa's quest start.


Hey I can answer these, if you fail the submarine mission and have to get torpedoed back to the town under Junon, the 'dog door' opens so you can steal the red submarine instead. The oversoul shards are definitely at Battle Square prize redemption in Disc 3.

That also reminds me that while stealing the gray submarine, its very easy to miss the chest for Leviathan Scales which is one of the only forever missable items and completely kills Yuffie's quest. Maybe that should have a fallback? Is it possible to add to bone village or something?

The Levi scales I think have been added to Gelnika as of the latest patch so if they're missed in Underwater Reactor they can be picked up there.


Hi, I have a small question, sorry if it turns to be a dumb one, but I don´t really know much about game moding.

Is it possible to patch only the retraslation and small history changes (Yuffie and Vincent´s automatic recruit, Aerith surviving Sephyroth´s attack) without changing the battles, materia and item locations? I ask this because I really liked the original game, except for Aerith´s pemanent death, and I love the new traslation and the little extra lines you gave Aerith after her survival, they are really in character for her, so a game with only these changes will be my ideal version of the game.

Also I presume that with less changes  there will be less probability of the game crashing frezzing? I´m just guessing, excuse me if this is actually wrong.

Of course this is just my personal opinion and I don´t mean in any way to critice the people that enjoy the more challeging combat and the extra bosses, as I understand that is a big part of this mod, I just wanted to express my opinion and ask if it would be possible to change the game the way I described.

As always thanks for your hard work, and for stay involved with the community and answer these little feedback posts.

On the front page of this thread is a derivative version of this mod called Vanilla Combat; it's the NT script changes (mostly) but with regular enemies + kernel. One caveat is that it currently has some problems in it; the battle square field is corrupt and some encounter triggers for NT bosses were missed which has unintended enemies loading for them. I'm going to give it a once over to try and fix it.

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8534 on: 2019-09-10 01:19:52 »
Have a small snag - the item list doesn't seem to say that I can farm Crystal Glove for Tifa's ultimate weapon off a unit in the underwater reactor, but I don't see it anywhere else? Thought crystal weapons were for sale in mideel but can't find the weapon shop guy anymore, just his wife lamenting his death. Is there another enemy not listed in the excel sheet that drops or morphs crystal glove?

kmrblue1027

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8535 on: 2019-09-10 01:56:52 »
Have a small snag - the item list doesn't seem to say that I can farm Crystal Glove for Tifa's ultimate weapon off a unit in the underwater reactor, but I don't see it anywhere else? Thought crystal weapons were for sale in mideel but can't find the weapon shop guy anymore, just his wife lamenting his death. Is there another enemy not listed in the excel sheet that drops or morphs crystal glove?

The Highwind Salesman has all the Crystal Equipment.


I'm doing my second run-through now and a couple thing I've noticed so far by mid-disk 2.

Are Aerith's limits harder to earn then the base game? I've been back and forth using her and Cait Sith as my primary spellcaster so she's been in the party a long time and still on level 1 limits. I feel like I should have enough kills but I could just be overestimating her total.
Cait Sith's mana gift weapon is really nice but it targets enemies by default unlike Aerith's staffs. Is this intended behavior for a support weapon?
I really appropriate the better scaling on Physical attacks, feels good to get value out of Tifa now, last time only really Cid and his 200+ luck seemed useful by midgame. Summon changes help make builds stronger too.
The dragon encounters in Mt. Nibel kicked my ass, do they auto-crit or something? And if so does Dispel work? I just started running via teleport half way through since I just couldn't beat them.

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8536 on: 2019-09-11 03:45:47 »
to the question above, yes you can dispel the dragon's rampage spell that gives it berserk and auto-crit. you can also just kill it if youre aggressive enough before it starts going off with it's Dragon berserk spell

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8537 on: 2019-09-11 03:47:52 »
Had a strange thing happen where Ruby Weapon was just missing in my game entirely, but after defeating Zack and doing Tifa's mission, he suddenly was back in his normal spot in the corel desert. Does something specific trigger it's presence? If so, might want to add text to notify the player. Might also hint to the player at some point in-game that the items for ultimate weapons can be farmed in the northern cave.

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8538 on: 2019-09-11 04:33:19 »
Is Shout the same thing as Hidden? Was noticing there is Shout damage but nothing in-game seems to protect against it or be weak to it?

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8539 on: 2019-09-11 05:31:43 »
just encountered some sort of soft lock where once you beat the dragon in cid's quest you get stuck loading to the next screen when you exit.

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8540 on: 2019-09-11 08:23:44 »
Had a strange thing happen where Ruby Weapon was just missing in my game entirely, but after defeating Zack and doing Tifa's mission, he suddenly was back in his normal spot in the corel desert. Does something specific trigger it's presence? If so, might want to add text to notify the player. Might also hint to the player at some point in-game that the items for ultimate weapons can be farmed in the northern cave.

It's based on battles, like the cooldown on chocobo breeding + unlock 2nd part of Vincent's sidequest; the unlock condition is Ultimate Weapon but it doesn't show up right away, not until some battles done and world map reloaded.

Is Shout the same thing as Hidden? Was noticing there is Shout damage but nothing in-game seems to protect against it or be weak to it?
It's a separate element from Hidden; it's primarily used in NT for breath attacks or sound-based attacks. Cait Sith's weapons use them (arguably they should use Hit, but I opted for Shout due to the megaphone). You can block it using Elemental + Bahamut summons.

just encountered some sort of soft lock where once you beat the dragon in cid's quest you get stuck loading to the next screen when you exit.

First time I've heard of that happening. Do you mean leaving the screen or directly after the battle is over?

magictrufflez

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8541 on: 2019-09-11 11:46:38 »
Hi Sega Chief!

Really enjoying all the tweaks since the last time I played through New Threat--the changes that made physical attackers more useful are especially welcome!

But I mostly wanted to pop in and mention a few minor issues I've run into (I'm currently just past Rocket Town and about to do Wutai on "Disc 1"):

--There are a few tex boxes with bad line breaks. A couple stuck out to me in the very beginning (but of course I forgot which ones by now because I was dumb and didn't write them down), but the big one now is our stat-up guy. His line about making a deal splits "deal" between 2 lines and it looks bad. Outside those 2 instances, no bad line breaks elsewhere that I've seen though!

--Mideel enemies on Disc 1: I notice that the griffin has its XP zeroed out when using Odin, but none of the other enemies do. I seem to remember you wanting to zero out all enemy XP when they're OHKO by Odin, so I wanted to point this out in case you might've overlooked this!

--In preemptive attacks, for some reason I still do double damage on my first physical attack on any enemy even if they turned around already. Again, not sure if this is intended!

--Finally, this only happened once in a Mythril Mines fight, but was super weird. I was carefully trying to morph one of the guys with the ball and chain, and all my actions kept happening without on-screen animations (healing, attacking, stealing, etc). Nothing went wrong, I morphed the enemy, and everything went back to normal afterward, but it was really odd and I didn't know what was going on.

Sega Chief

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8542 on: 2019-09-11 15:17:03 »
Hi Sega Chief!

Really enjoying all the tweaks since the last time I played through New Threat--the changes that made physical attackers more useful are especially welcome!

But I mostly wanted to pop in and mention a few minor issues I've run into (I'm currently just past Rocket Town and about to do Wutai on "Disc 1"):

--There are a few tex boxes with bad line breaks. A couple stuck out to me in the very beginning (but of course I forgot which ones by now because I was dumb and didn't write them down), but the big one now is our stat-up guy. His line about making a deal splits "deal" between 2 lines and it looks bad. Outside those 2 instances, no bad line breaks elsewhere that I've seen though!

--Mideel enemies on Disc 1: I notice that the griffin has its XP zeroed out when using Odin, but none of the other enemies do. I seem to remember you wanting to zero out all enemy XP when they're OHKO by Odin, so I wanted to point this out in case you might've overlooked this!

--In preemptive attacks, for some reason I still do double damage on my first physical attack on any enemy even if they turned around already. Again, not sure if this is intended!

--Finally, this only happened once in a Mythril Mines fight, but was super weird. I was carefully trying to morph one of the guys with the ball and chain, and all my actions kept happening without on-screen animations (healing, attacking, stealing, etc). Nothing went wrong, I morphed the enemy, and everything went back to normal afterward, but it was really odd and I didn't know what was going on.

Wonder how that happened, I'll fix the line/text box.

Mideel world map enemies are a bit of a mess for EXP; I implemented a 0exp hack there because it was possible to fight enemies there early, but then messed that up, so removed it, but only partially. I'll just remove it next time.

Pre-emptive, that's aN oversight/bug with the game engine. Enemies retain the 'back attack' flag or whatever it is (same with party) until struck.

Maybe the Mythril Mines enemy has that sound-wave based attack that causes same issue that Vincent's Mug animation (for certain weapon types) causes. It was a yellow-looking attack.


saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8543 on: 2019-09-12 09:55:41 »
Thanks about the Shout info. Was mostly wondering if any Materia was Hidden element so I could add it to physical attacks against the weapons.

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8544 on: 2019-09-12 09:58:23 »
The soft lock was interesting, and had something to do with the area outside of the area the event is in. It happened when trying to enter the outer reactor area where there is a save point. Also notably it took a super long time to save my game at that save point. Might just be some choppy event sorting on the game's part. What happened exactly was that I beat the dragon, left, and it got stuck in some sort of loop where the bgm was looping on a black screen. Quit to desktop and re-opened my game and the zone had finally loaded then, though.

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8545 on: 2019-09-12 10:12:23 »
more elaboration on tifa balance:
Spoiler: show
I'm not really sure if this is intentional, but now that it is late game I am basically just annihilating every enemy and boss with Tifa. And, for the brief period that Tifa wasn't on my team during Mideel, I was annihilating enemies with Vincent + Masamune + x4cut (fort condor battles are incredibly easy if you just are as aggressive as possible, so this weapon is not hard to acquire at all). I know I've already stated this, but once I acquired the powersoul from the reskinned demon gate, the game has been completely broken wide open, with Tifa just punching enemies for anywhere between 2000-9999 with x4cut, counter command + mime, etc. then just having my other two party members keep everyone buffed and alive. I will say it has been very fun, but the challenge aspect of the game where in early game before this, many battles were very hard attrition wars where one mistake could kill my party, and now all of that is just out the window. Even enemies like the (weaker than vanilla?) ruby & emerald weapon were basically a cakewalk. The only sort of "nerf" to this strat is that x4cut assigns targets at random, so some of the bosses that try to chesse you with having sequential invulnerable parts like the Cait Tank are slightly more difficult. If x4cut wasn't random, I'd probably have finished the hack by now. Basically now that I have Premium Heart, the only difference is I no longer need to use Cursed Ring

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8546 on: 2019-09-12 10:38:15 »
Also wanted to say that once I switched to Arrange mode at the Corel entrance to Gold Saucer, I toggled the Randomizer on and have been using it ever since. I liked the mechanic a lot, but the whole aesthetic of it is a bit wonky. I would maybe give it a different name instead of "Mister Smile" and clean up the text box display for the randomizer. Basically I just always took the +10 or +15 buff if it rolled one, and always took Luck if it rolled over 5. My whole team having quality stats with mid-to-high Luck has payed off pretty often in fights. I guess this didn't polarize my characters identities as the hack intended as much as it is supposed to, but I was able to shore up any low stats with all the crazy buffs on equipment and materia.

Another thing is I didn't really think that the troll jokes on relevant item locations added to the game's quality. I mean, yes it's kind of funny to find the Sense Materia, or to get regular junk (A Heavy Ring and that Spear both seemed really out of place and random, as they are both fairly common items that don't hold much relevance) for the Mythril. I would suggest just giving the player something cool & interesting, maybe even objects alluding to the vanilla item. I don't really want to ever play a hack and feel trolled or ripped off for going to investigate something that's normally worth doing in vanilla. This also goes for the Curator challenge boss in Shinra Mansion. Defeated it and was aggressively informed I'm not getting strawberries? Could easily just give the player a Key Item that's just a badge of honor that serves no purpose outside of 100% completion. I guess opening that chest counts as part of the completionist route? I can't say cause I'm not a completionist or a speedrunner.

I think it might also be relevant to remind the player, maybe in various shopkeeper dialogue, that selling high AP materia like Sense and getting a new one is very relevant to staying on curve with being able to pick up items and equips. I would even go a step further to discourage the player from selling their armor and weapons and take this route instead, as the stat buffs of each weapon continues to be relevant as the game progresses, despite their attack power being outclassed. Have not touched the Throw materia this game, but that's also another corner case for not selling your weapons to pay for ether, hi potion, and tent.

Stuff like the AP grinding weapons and the Precious Watch are kind of so late in the game that they are only relevant if you just somehow failed to grind your materia for the whole game. These are fine I guess, but as an experienced player I was making sure to grind AP from the very beginning on each materia.

Speaking of AP grinding, I wanted to point out this thing from Vanilla that carried over to NT and has been on my mind forever; Vincent and Cid are the only two characters with a Double AP weapon that has a combo slot. Everybody else has singleton slots, as do all the armor. Is there any way to switch around the slots on any given weapon, maybe give each character a double AP weapon with a combo slot? I say this as it is very relevant to level up some of your support materia, and kind of pigeonholes the player into using Cid and/or Vincent during that period of disc 1 while you're still maturing your materia.

edit: Also, terribly sorry if this is an unpopular opinion,
Spoiler: show
but I just hated the Dark Cave sidequest. Everything about it felt like I was just being subjected to the remnants of a separate, discarded hack (maybe the original frameworks of NT?), none of it was relevant to the story or made any sense, none of the events were explained or even speculated upon by the characters outside of them all saying "hmm... something weird sure is happening!"(this was particularly painful to go through, as there easily could have been more elaborate dialogue, such as the during the Amalgam fight, literally anyone could have said something about how jesse/biggs/wedge were being used in the cutscene. Also the Amalgam was a really weird fight where Barrett's Drill Arm made it no longer difficult), and basically the only point of it seemed like showing off some unused reskinned enemy models (speaking of, that weird reskinned rainbow thing in ancient forest is just hideous...). But all in all I just did not enjoy any aspect of this, and felt like the item drops added in, two key items and the mystile, were just thrown in arbitrarily to make you not feel like you just wasted a bunch of time running around midgar. When this event was explained as a sidequest, I was really not expecting that it would just be a weird recycling of the start of the game, but rather a unique sidequest with it's own events.
« Last Edit: 2019-09-12 10:54:27 by saw2th »

Alan

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8547 on: 2019-09-12 22:22:46 »
Well, I've the same opinion about the powersoul too...

Btw, I'm at the end of the game, but I did not find the way to change my party leader lol

saw2th

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8548 on: 2019-09-12 23:31:49 »
Well, I've the same opinion about the powersoul too...

Btw, I'm at the end of the game, but I did not find the way to change my party leader lol

Right before you descend into the final area of North Crater, where the team regroups, you'll get a phone call where someone from the highwind somehow has phone reception and calls you to say that there are now sidequests and stuff. At this point, it isn't mentioned, but there is a guy in the meeting room of the Highwind that now appears and lets you change your party leader. Keep in mind that this only lets you switch to Cid or Tifa, and the game thinks that cloud is "dead" if you do that, so if you did not put him in your party when reforming at the highwind, he can't be selected to switch out using the PHS; you have to move him using the guy in the highwind. This also extends further where if you do put Cloud in a party with Tifa or Cid, Cloud and the party leader both can't be moved from the party.

Another weird thing about this is that you get the phone call where the sprite in middle of the pilot deck in the highwind says they now have info on the "new threats" but that sprite is already there as soon as you regain Cloud from Mideel.

Spoiler: show
Also, there seems to be some sort of rumor that the endgame sidequests can be accessed only after the point in Disc 3, but that's not true. I was able to complete Yuffi and Vincent's lv. 4 limit quest during disc 2. The Yuffi mirror battle was pretty disgusting, and I was able to get through it by confusing the mobs so that they would kill themselves, triggering the Ruby Weapon ringout effect on themselves. I have noticed that recent versions of the hack have had failsafe script added to some battles such as Zack, to prevent the player from cheesing the opponent with something like poison when it was previously possible. I'm not a huge fan of these hotfix approaches to battles in order to make them seem harder, or battles that try to cheese the player by slapping you with statuses when you aren't expecting it, such as the Gilgamesh fight


Weird request but, would it be possible to just make chocobo breeding less random? Honestly chocobo breeding in this hack was entirely moot and unnecessary, as the Guidebook now gives a gold chocobo, so you basically can get a gold chocobo literally right after chocobo breeding is even available. Not sure if any items in the chocobo races are actually relevant at all - maybe Final Attack? The only item I got from the races was a Cat's Bell, which I won before I had my own chocobos.

Speaking of, I still have yet to find the Final Attack materia, but I'm guessing it's in an unexplored zone of the crater or something.

wrt last post, I would say that Tifa breaking the game wide open could be mitigated by just making the curse ring available later in the game instead of at Godo. Not sure why anyone would even use the Relic Ring. Honestly items that don't tell you what they actually do beyond buffing a stat are a big turn off.
« Last Edit: 2019-09-12 23:38:03 by saw2th »

Alan

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Re: [FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v1.5)
« Reply #8549 on: 2019-09-13 06:29:07 »
Ah thanks bro. I did not descended the crater at all and went back to the highwind and found the guy which tells you about the sidequest...