[FF8PC-Steam] Ragnarok Rebalancing Mod (v1.2.3 & v1.1b)

[Callisto]

@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).

[Divatox]

The code worked 
Thanks you very much Callisto

[Quinn212]

Hello, this Mod looks amazing. RaW worked perfectly and the lang-en files also worked. However I'm having trouble finding out the places to put Ragnarok_Mod.txt. I've put the text file in the RaW folder and also in the FFVIII folder with no luck. The draw point in the Library still has Esuna in it. This is my first time modding so im lost and embarrassed to be asking for help.  I'm using the steam version if it matters.

Edit: Nevermind, The Global and Hext folders are in the RaW file. I Should have looked more closely to what I was doing.

[Murasame]

Any tips for Marlboros? I try to junction Berserk, Confuse, Esuna and Sleep to my ST DEF which gives me 90% resistance but his bad breath still seems to stick all of the ailments regardless. Quistis with initiative and degenerator is unreliable. I’m really only trying to get the tentacles for doomtrain but with his low encounter rate and bad breath it’s making for a bit of frustration.  His encounter rate seems higher on ICTH compared to Grandidi forest but I don’t know if it’s confirmation bias.

Edit: I forgot about the amethysts! I got a back attack on one of them just now and used one of those and got a delicious 8 tentacles!

[Callisto]

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.

[Divatox]

Callisto do you think is possible create a HEX file (. TXT) to show the full HP from the enemies? and not

[gunner_1207]

@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).

Callisto you my man are a legend, i have been trying for ages to write a draw formula with absolutely zero succes. i have used yours THANK YOU.

[Rainku]

Hey Callisto!

Love this mod, it's really made the game a whole lot better. The vanilla game was extremely unbalanced and broken. This mod has done some serious fixing to those issues! It's so cool! Everything is useful now! I love it!

Just a quick question if I may. I'm kinda stuck at the moment with the brothers GF fight. I use double, protect, float and haste mainly to avoid their mad cow special and to prevent them from healing.. but as soon as protect wears off and they get attacks in and kill someone, I find it becomes almost impossible to get back into the fight. As soon as I start healing, I pretty much just get stuck into healing everyone until I die. Of course it would be easier if I can kill one of them ASAP, but I just seem to be stuck on what to do at the moment.

Any guide or tips on how to beat them?

[Callisto]

@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.

[Rainku]

@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.

I think my main problem was Haste taking my Protect away too fast. I got him in the end by making sure everyone was Curing each other until stabilized before I did Demi or Aero attacks on Sacred. It was just the moment float and protect wore off and my party wasn't fully healed yet at the moment, causing the brothers to do insane amounts of damage before I even had a turn. But junctioning Zombie and more Protects helped. Thanks for the advice!

On another note, I got Diablos a little later than what I was suppose to in this mod I think.. Since he was surprisingly easy to fight.. It would've benefited me having his abilities earlier on. Loving this mod so far! I also love what you did with the side quests and the rewards etc.. Feels a lot more worthwhile how you have to earn everything.. Also cool how I was able to gain access to the items needed for upgrading everyone's weapons early on. Thanks again for the mod, it's really cool so far. Feels like the game was meant to be played this way.

 

[Murasame]

Can you confirm where I can find dragon skins in this mod? I have everyone except Zell’s weapon fully upgraded. Dunno if I was getting unlucky with the Anacondaurs or if it’s been switched around.

As for my thoughts so far. I am approaching the end of disc 3 now and I just beat Mobile type 8 and, although I admittedly took him on with two of my lesser powerful characters (Selphie and Quistis; both of which had still been keeping up with current party levels), I thoroughly enjoyed fighting it.  It’s been so long since I actually felt so involved in the boss fights in this game that it took me back so many years when I was a kid and used to work so hard to beat these battles. I have to thank you because this mod has honestly rekindled my love for this game and let me experience it as if it was new I am genuinely worried and preparing myself for Ultimecia, a feeling that I’m sure the original game hoped to instil upon its players,

[Callisto]

@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.

[Murasame]

Thank you for the dragon skin advice! I guess I had not had them at a high enough level before.

Regarding Krysta, its Auto Defense skill seems to soft lock the game? I was left unable to do anything. No damage value or visible effect to my characters.

[Callisto]

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

[calderax]

Hey man,

so far i really like the changes you made (although a documentation of the changes in the card game you made would be great... i robbed the black galbadia guy of a hundred cards or so before i realized that MAYBE he doesnt have it). but now i am at the second edea fight and... i am really frustrated and at the edge of just throwing the towel, so i apologize if i strike too harsh of a tone. i dont think that this fight is balanced, but maybe i am missing something (also very possible).

my first gripe is seifer in the edea fight. the 30something k life he has... why? its a watered down version of the first fight, you already beat him, yet we have to chew through his HP again before we can tackle the real challange. it feels unnecessary and gets old really quick.

then edea... i have no idea how shes possible without a large amount of pure luck. i bring her to around 10k hp pretty consistently but then it goes downhill EVERY goddamn time. maelstrom, maelstrom, ebon wave. quick succession, no possibility for me to recover. maybe it would be possible if the slow effect wasnt there, but it penetrates my 70% resistance without exception. i'm around 4.7k hp on my highest and 3.2k hp on my lowest char. i think i dont do enough damage... like only 700 to 1000 physical with irvine and squall. but i have no idea how to push that.

do you have any ideas on how i could proceed? what am i doing wrong? i could train my chars to lvl 60, but that can hardly be what youre trying to achieve with the mod, or is it?

[Quinn212]

2nd Edea fight is brutal. Even at full health with everyone near 4k after a mealstorm I still end up in yellow health and then its a quick game over. Any advice on that fight?

[Callisto]

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.

[Percival]

Callisto!

  I don't want to gush, but let me take a moment to compliment you on this mod. I recently finished my second time playing through Ragnarok, and I love just about everything you've done. Rebalance is a perfect word to describe it.
  It is far more challenging, but is never overwhelming. There were times when the difficulty took me by surprise (like those damned Esthar cyborgs in the Laguna dream) but no challenge ever felt cheap.
  I'm particularly impressed with how well you nerfed the card modding. You didn't make the cards worthless, but eliminated all the classic shortcuts to becoming OP.
  I also really appreciated all of the extra scripted battles. I only wish the game presented good opportunities for even more...
 
 I was just beginning to make plans for a similar type of mod, but you've done such a great job, I don't feel the need to try reinventing the wheel. I'm truly impressed with all the hard work.

[calderax]

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

ohhh, that could actually help a lot! stupid i didnt think of that, thanks!! i only protected against ice. see, i knew i was doing something wrong

EDIT: so yeah, junctioned water into my ele defence and kicked her ass first try. with that little change the fight was challenging, but never unfair. unlikely to be beaten first try, but third or fourth. just the right amount!

[Quinn212]

Yep, junctioned Slow into status def and water into elemental and I beat her. It was a bit of a challenge because of the cvontant healing and rebuffs but I had a lot of fun. Having a lot of fun and cant wait to get the Ragnarok and do all the side quests!

I did realize while in Galbadia Garden I forgot to get Leviathan from Norg and that really bummed me out since I'm missing a Status Defense junction on Rinoa

[Quinn212]

It's Side questing time before Lunatic Pandora! I already picked up Cactuar and now I'm working on Tonberry. I did try out Fire Cavern and got ganked pretty hard by the 2nd set of enemies so i'm looking forward to doing that a little later.

Having tons of fun, but I'm admittedly a little worried about going against Adel since she's pretty rough in Vanilla FF8. Also did you make it so Odin never appears? I got him before going to Trabia and he's never appeared. I imagine you might have done this so he wont show up for the Seifer battle.

[Callisto]

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.

[Quinn212]

The bomb boss was interesting to say the least, I did have to go back in this thread to find out how to beat him and i'm glad I did, no way I would have thought to go passive on him, I was thinking it was some sort of endurance fight and I had to wait until protect/shell wore off.

Right now I'm in the mountain area near Trabia (the one you first visited as Laguna) Trying to kill the Ruby Dragon. It still does Dragon Breath even with a KO'd party member. I made it so Squall and Zell have a high tolerance against the Pain status Ailments, made Rinoa immune against Zombie and stuck Revive and Treatment on her. I do pretty well until it eventually throws out Ultima or Dragon Breath and wipes us.

Gonna see what's in store for me at the location Bahamut is in, then off to Lunatic Pandora unless i'm forgetting anything?

Also where Would I find the items for Squall's Lionheart and Zell's Ultimate weapon?

And last question reguarding Ultimecia. Do you still have to exhaust all of her dialouge before she'll actually die? Because in FF8 vanilla you could take her health down to 0 Thanks to Lionheart and AP shot, but she wouldn't die until she was done talking, or is this not an issue because of the increased difficulty?

Having A LOT of fun, do you plan on making this mod work on the PC version of the remaster? I'm planning on getting it and waiting for the background textures to get fixed by modders and if Ragnarok could also be applied I would be in Heaven.

[Callisto]

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.

[calderax]

Hey man,

so i finished the game a few days ago (i didnt know about fire cave, lunatic pandora lab etc. so i cant give feedback on that. sounds like it could've shaved off quite a big junk of farming time though   ) and want to give some feedback.

i really liked the overwhelming majority of the changes you made to the game. you made it more challenging and therefor, at least for me, more fun. I was never a fan of FF8 (i really despise the characters and the story) but you gave it a breath of new life and made me sink about 60 hours into your mod. so all in all very well done. a bit more in detail:

• i REALLY like the additional save points you introduced before challenging fights. especially after a long time since the last save point.
• removing the cap on draw is the single best change you did. made the game so much better.
• your spell progression and availability felt really good. the way you gated tier 1, 2 and 3 spells is nicely done. i was stoked when i got my first -ga spells and extatic when i got the first endgame spells like flare or meteor (peed my pants a little when i drew 60 ultima from ultima weapon in one draw lol)
• thank you for getting rid of the horrible limit abuse! or at least for making it risky/costly to pull off in boss fights
• odines shop for tier 2 spells feels very well executed
• most enemies seem fairly balanced
• fixed enemy levels kinda forces you to train up your characters. nice!
• im sure theres more but i cant remember. if i didnt mention it in my negative comments i propably liked it

that being said, there are a few things that i either didnt like or that (in my mind) need serious balancing.

• i didnt like the changes to the card queens quest you made. not because they made it inconvenient or anything, but because there is no official documentation about it and people (like me) might follow the card game guide, therefor wasting a lot of time doing the first steps of the quest wrong. also the swap of the zell card to later. i strongly feel these changes are unncessary. you neutered the card rewards anyways, so i dont see the point in delaying the aquisition as well.
• magic is wildly overpowered. by the end squall was my hardest hitting character with 255 strength. normal hits with him did around 7 to 11k damage depending on ele weakness, sometimes a bit more. i perma used darkside with him amping up the damage by a lot to sometimes 20 22k per hit. the most ideal scenario was a vit 0 t-rexaur with blizzaga junctioned and a darkside hit. that one hit the damage cap of 60k 2 or 3 times. ... in come selphie and rinoa with triple and meteor blasting fools away with consistent 60 to 90k PER ROUND. seriously, the second i had access to those spells i dumped zells useless ass for selphie and first tried every single encounter for the rest of the game. ultima weapon? died in minutes. ultimecias minions? attacked maybe 2 or 3 times. ultimecia herself? wasnt even close. now, it should be noted the i farmed up 2 more auto-hastes and auto-protes which helped immensly but the critique stands. magic is way too powerful.
• i didnt kill omega weapon because it seemed way too overpowered. i only did like 4 or 5 tries though so it wasnt really testing. it ended the same everytime though with vengence and megido flame back to back with no time to recover in between, even triple hasted. maybe i was doing it wrong, maybe not. i wasnt in the modd to test the fight further though.
• i dont know if you changed that already, but the krysta auto-attack sof lock was in the version i was playing. you prob. fixed that already

i want to say all in all the mod improves the game SO much. thank you for all your hard work, i enjoyed playing it. the single best thing you could do is draft a proper documentation of the changes you made.

calderax
well, thanks again!
calderax