-) I want to scrap Dark Cave and replace it with something else. I had been looking at a 'floor-based' dungeon that goes through lots of fields with punishing encounters and a boss/change of theme every five floors or so; make it more of a battle-based thing like that Ehrgeiz dungeon game or the FF Advance post-story dungeons.
Please no, they're so annoying.
-) I'm not too sure about ultimate weapon crafting; I think people probably find it more of an annoyance as the requirements are going into the Crater and farming for drops/steals/morphs from the enemies inside. What I'd like to try and do is get them put behind something that's a bit more actively engaging for the player. I think that crafting thing would be better suited to a sister ray version where the number of possible weapons + items is increased, meaning that weapon variants/upgrades could be produced.
I don't mind how I get them but if it's annoying they damn well better be OP lol.
-) I forgot that I put in the barrier thing until I was shown it recently by Uprisen and Caleb, I can't really remember the rationale for doing it either; it was one of those careless throwaway changes. I've kind of put myself in a corner with it as well because a few people are speedrunning the mod now and this change is used for a majority of the fights to make them more feasible at low level. I'll probably give Uprisen and others a prototype so they can see if it's possible to do within a reasonable timeframe without it, and if it is then I can give it the heave-ho.
Wait, what's this about Added Effect Barrier?
Reading your post makes me wanna play the earlier versions too to see how it evolved.