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

[IvoryValor]

What version of Windows is it? Might be that the patcher program is either too old, or that there's some kind of security issue at play. I'll arrange an alternative either way.

I'm running Windows 10, and I tried compatibility for 7 and 8. Also, Thank you.

[Tavarcio]

Hey SC, I was wondering, does Aerith gets revived in the mod? Since apparantely you don't get Great Gospel the normal way, maybe you get it down the line? for that she would have to be alive which feels like heresy to me lol

[Bowser9]

@Tavarcio
Nah, you'll discover the truth soon. No refunds.

[aquecoucou]

Wow, I really had a bad freeze during the

Spoiler: show

Master materia fight

One of my character was counter attacking and the gaming literally froze. No music, no fps, rain not falling anymore, kill signals not working (ctrl+q / alt+f4). I'll give it another try tomorrow, I have no idea if the game just messed up or if it's because of the fight. Never happened during my 160 hours on steam (vanilla or NT).

[magictrufflez]

SC--I think this might be some kind of graphical glitch, but the Griffons in the Cosmo Canyon area move REALLY slow.  Their graphics move even slower in battle than most slowed monsters, and there is a significant lag in any battle they're in when they act.  It also doesn't seem like they're actually slowed, because they seem to take a normal amount of turns.

Other monsters sharing the same template don't seem to be graphically slowing down like this, so I assume it's something specific to this monster?

EDIT:  Also, the major plot change at the end of disc 1 was pretty bad.  I understand why you did it SC, and I even applaud your super obscure reference to that related internet rumor, but I really, really hope you overhaul that portion of things.

[Bowser9]

Yeah, I had to haste Griffon if it ever took to the air.

[NeoDraconis]

Also, the major plot change at the end of disc 1 was pretty bad.  I understand why you did it SC, and I even applaud your super obscure reference to that related internet rumor, but I really, really hope you overhaul that portion of things.

Are you referring to the Aeris bit? I believe its eventually going to be optional whether she survives or not. To be honest I doubt I will ever return to Vanilla once New Threat is complete, specifically because of the fact of that choice.

[Sega Chief]

I'm running Windows 10, and I tried compatibility for 7 and 8. Also, Thank you.

Okay, I've got a temporary solution in mind that I'll PM to you later tonight when I've got the next update done; it'll take time to find a solution but I think there are people who have tested the NT installer on Windows 10 and got it to work so there must be a way. That or I'll look for a new patcher that's a bit more modern.

One of my character was counter attacking and the gaming literally froze. No music, no fps, rain not falling anymore, kill signals not working (ctrl+q / alt+f4). I'll give it another try tomorrow, I have no idea if the game just messed up or if it's because of the fight. Never happened during my 160 hours on steam (vanilla or NT).

Sounds different to the usual ones, did you lose focus on the game window at all/click away? That can sometimes cause the game to freeze. I'll check over the enemies to see if there's anything amiss. Maybe something there disagrees with counter-attacking? I'll test it and see.

SC--I think this might be some kind of graphical glitch, but the Griffons in the Cosmo Canyon area move REALLY slow.  Their graphics move even slower in battle than most slowed monsters, and there is a significant lag in any battle they're in when they act.  It also doesn't seem like they're actually slowed, because they seem to take a normal amount of turns.

Other monsters sharing the same template don't seem to be graphically slowing down like this, so I assume it's something specific to this monster?

EDIT:  Also, the major plot change at the end of disc 1 was pretty bad.  I understand why you did it SC, and I even applaud your super obscure reference to that related internet rumor, but I really, really hope you overhaul that portion of things.

Griffons had a change before 1.4 released to do with a modelling error of some kind that I grabbed from someone (Kald or DLPB, something to do with the tail feathers) and then I changed the texture thingies on them to fix a transparency issue. I didn't notice anything wrong with the enemy during the test run, but it might be that I made this change afterwards and missed it. I'll encounter the enemy in any case and see what's up.

Regarding 'that', it wasn't really done at the time for plot reasons. When I was first making NT, I got to that point of the game and started thinking about whether it would be worthwhile to try and have a 9th character be available with those unique healing-based limits. What it essentially boils down to is that I didn't have any feedback/input at the time (the mod hadn't been released), I thought it would be interesting to have that 9th character there + a challenge to help me get better at field scripting (I could do very little of it at the time), and I guess there was a pinch of mischief there as well if we're being honest. It wasn't in the release notes or feature list when I put the mod out, I figured it'd be a nice surprise.

When feedback came in, some were happy about it, some weren't. What I hadn't thought of at the time was that people would be playing the game for the story and only have the mod there to add an edge for the battle side of things. I'd been doing challenge runs of the game beforehand, like Low Level and things like that, so the story wasn't really in my mind that much anymore. But now's the time to implement something that'll suit everyone; after I've refurbished the dark cave sidequest and got Arrange Mode finished, that'll be most of the major scriptwork done so I can start bumping some scripts about and make this an optional feature instead of a mandatory one.

Although watching NT streams where chat is saying things like 'lol why doesn't he just use a phoenix down' and then seeing their reaction when he actually does use one is always gold

[aquecoucou]

Sounds different to the usual ones, did you lose focus on the game window at all/click away? That can sometimes cause the game to freeze. I'll check over the enemies to see if there's anything amiss. Maybe something there disagrees with counter-attacking? I'll test it and see.

Froze again at the second turn while buffing my team. I highly suspect the rain is the problem, as before the main freeze locking the game, there are 2-3 small freezes where rain doesn't fall but music is still ongoing. Usually if I lose focus, alt/tab, click away I don't have any problem, when I have one, the game simply close with a message, nothing similar. (I didn't lose focus during the fight) but it will only happen when a fight/scene is loading, nothing to do with the current problem ^^.

Also noticed something weird that I didn't see yesterday : Once Carmine Weapon is defeated, as soon as you go back to Kalm traveller (and without talking to him), there will be a materia on the ground (purple), labelled as "W-summon". Checking my materias, it's a underwater one with some AP on it.

Edit: The materia has 0 AP, the one with AP on it is the one I used during the fight (it gained AP as you forgot to set it to "Master" as someone mentioned before. I'll post screenshots in a spoiler to not waste a lot of space on the forum page.

Spoiler: show

[deha0002]

That's really disappointing that it broke; might be the adds not being cleaned up properly or maybe an attack that wasn't set. I could set up a secret backdoor so you can get the KOTR Materia rather than fight it again? I'll get it fixed ASAP in any case.

Nah its fine, you don't need to do that, i'll just wait for Arrange + .Exe and start fresh when it arrives.
Have fun bug fixing and whatnot =)!

[Skirmish]

I wonder if there's a way to avoid the status preventing the use of restorative. I'm not at this point yet, but so far the only idea I have is that you could try a "Sneak attack" = "Heal" to cast resist on your party. It might not work if the AI is the same as the Curator (Curator will hit first, you will use sneak attack, curator will do his second attack before anyone can play a turn). The other solution would be to shield your team but it would be again useless if they have non-elemental, non-physical damage.

Just defeated the bastard things and there is a way to stop them from making your characters absorb Restorative...mostly.

When you begin the fight, only party members that are alive will be afflicted with Chef's Curse. Start the fight with 2 party members dead and you can then Revive them normally and heal them normally aswell, as for the Party Member that starts the fight alive they will only be reviveable via Phoenix, best give that to one of your other party members so they can Revive them if need be. As for your party member that absorbs Restorative, giving them the Relic Ring is a great idea as it prevents them from being afflicted with Dual-Drain.

As for dealing damage, Summon + Quadra Magic will help deal significant damage and allow you more casts (Quadra Magic charges exist seperately from the 1 standard Summon Charge per battle).

Vincent with Alexander (Reasonable Damage for Animation Time) + Quadra Magic along with Magic boosting gear (Outsider, Escort Guard/Crystal Bangle, Earring/Circlet) will allow for significant damage, I've been doing a No-Rank Up playthrough of the game and Vincent was hitting around 3400-3600 * 4 per cast. The Downside is that all of the Goldberries will then Counter-Attack and probably kill someone, but if you started the fight with him dead you can Revive him via normal methods. If you're not worried about Animation Times, consider using Bahamut ZERO + Quadra Magic for very high damage per turn. Goldberries have 52000 HP and high Magic Defence so using Summons to ignore that Magic Defence works very well.

Now the remaining issue is Golden Knife, it inflicts Slow-Numb and bypasses Status immunities, when the target becomes Petrified I'm not entirely sure it's curable either. It may require Dispel then Soft to work (I don't think I had Resist on my characters).

[GrieverVIII]

Shit man there's a huge difficulty spike when you return to Midgar ouch.

[Skirmish]

There's a UI issue with the Mime Materia. When viewing the effects it says:

Dexterity + 02
Luck - 02
MaxMP + 96%

The Dexterity and Luck work as normal but the MP increase isn't there. My guess is that the MP increase isn't supposed to be listed but functions properly (Doesn't give the boost). When viewing the Mime materia the Mime option is greyed out yet when in battle it's available and functions as intended.

[Skirmish]

After getting rid of the Bastardberries for the Mime Materia, now moving onto Kaktuar...

Each turn you attack him he seems to get bigger until he uses Cactageddon which is essentially a Game Over in much the same way as Lethe Breath (Abyss) and Reactor Meltdown (Snuffles Mk II). You can prevent Abyss from using Lethe Breath but is there also a way to stop the use of Cactageddon and Reactor Meltdown or is it just a DPS race to kill them before they eject your entire party?

Kaktuar's main annoyance is Speedstroke which deals damage based off the ingame clock, as I like to take my time this attack will pretty much kill any party member outright. As far as I know there's no way to avoid this (without restarting the game and playing through it faster). Spirit Needlles drains your MP but I think it also reduces your Max MP during the fight. Not too sure but that's very nasty if it does.

I'm guessing I am missing something with the Kaktuar fight, I'm hoping it isn't just a DPS test.

-----

Sega Chief there's also something you will want to look into, check your messages. It's quite important.

[aquecoucou]

After getting rid of the Bastardberries for the Mime Materia, now moving onto Kaktuar...

Each turn you attack him he seems to get bigger until he uses Cactageddon which is essentially a Game Over in much the same way as Lethe Breath (Abyss) and Reactor Meltdown (Snuffles Mk II). You can prevent Abyss from using Lethe Breath but is there also a way to stop the use of Cactageddon and Reactor Meltdown or is it just a DPS race to kill them before they eject your entire party?

Kaktuar's main annoyance is Speedstroke which deals damage based off the ingame clock, as I like to take my time this attack will pretty much kill any party member outright. As far as I know there's no way to avoid this (without restarting the game and playing through it faster). Spirit Needlles drains your MP but I think it also reduces your Max MP during the fight. Not too sure but that's very nasty if it does.

There is a way for both fights. One is more trickier. Concerning Snuffles, you need to slow him and after the next action of one of your character, he will uses "Reactor Cooldown" removing the timer and the slow debuff.
Kaktuar is just a "no magic fight". He will only grow when you use magic. Physically DPS him and you'll be fine (you can add Elemental = Leviathan for extra damage since he is weak to water).

[Sega Chief]

Froze again at the second turn while buffing my team. I highly suspect the rain is the problem, as before the main freeze locking the game, there are 2-3 small freezes where rain doesn't fall but music is still ongoing. Usually if I lose focus, alt/tab, click away I don't have any problem, when I have one, the game simply close with a message, nothing similar. (I didn't lose focus during the fight) but it will only happen when a fight/scene is loading, nothing to do with the current problem ^^.

Also noticed something weird that I didn't see yesterday : Once Carmine Weapon is defeated, as soon as you go back to Kalm traveller (and without talking to him), there will be a materia on the ground (purple), labelled as "W-summon". Checking my materias, it's a underwater one with some AP on it.

Edit: The materia has 0 AP, the one with AP on it is the one I used during the fight (it gained AP as you forgot to set it to "Master" as someone mentioned before. I'll post screenshots in a spoiler to not waste a lot of space on the forum page.

I've not seen that Materia appear before. There's not supposed to be anything dropped there at all, much less W-Summon of all things so not sure why there's text there for it. I actually have no memory of doing it at all, though it couldn't have been anyone else :I I'll sweep it away.

Nah its fine, you don't need to do that, i'll just wait for Arrange + .Exe and start fresh when it arrives.
Have fun bug fixing and whatnot =)!

Okay doke; I'll try not to keep you waiting too long.

Just defeated the bastard things and there is a way to stop them from making your characters absorb Restorative...mostly.

When you begin the fight, only party members that are alive will be afflicted with Chef's Curse. Start the fight with 2 party members dead and you can then Revive them normally and heal them normally aswell, as for the Party Member that starts the fight alive they will only be reviveable via Phoenix, best give that to one of your other party members so they can Revive them if need be. As for your party member that absorbs Restorative, giving them the Relic Ring is a great idea as it prevents them from being afflicted with Dual-Drain.

As for dealing damage, Summon + Quadra Magic will help deal significant damage and allow you more casts (Quadra Magic charges exist seperately from the 1 standard Summon Charge per battle).

Vincent with Alexander (Reasonable Damage for Animation Time) + Quadra Magic along with Magic boosting gear (Outsider, Escort Guard/Crystal Bangle, Earring/Circlet) will allow for significant damage, I've been doing a No-Rank Up playthrough of the game and Vincent was hitting around 3400-3600 * 4 per cast. The Downside is that all of the Goldberries will then Counter-Attack and probably kill someone, but if you started the fight with him dead you can Revive him via normal methods. If you're not worried about Animation Times, consider using Bahamut ZERO + Quadra Magic for very high damage per turn. Goldberries have 52000 HP and high Magic Defence so using Summons to ignore that Magic Defence works very well.

Now the remaining issue is Golden Knife, it inflicts Slow-Numb and bypasses Status immunities, when the target becomes Petrified I'm not entirely sure it's curable either. It may require Dispel then Soft to work (I don't think I had Resist on my characters).

So dead characters can't have flags attached to them; I better remember that. As for attacks that ignore a status immunity, if you are immune to it then it's the same behaviour as Sadness/Fury when wearing a Ribbon/Peace Ring and you give yourself the status in the menu; it 'sticks' to the character and can't be removed easily. So the trick to getting past the Slow-Numb there is to not be immune to petrify or slow-numb.

There's a UI issue with the Mime Materia. When viewing the effects it says:

Dexterity + 02
Luck - 02
MaxMP + 96%

The Dexterity and Luck work as normal but the MP increase isn't there. My guess is that the MP increase isn't supposed to be listed but functions properly (Doesn't give the boost). When viewing the Mime materia the Mime option is greyed out yet when in battle it's available and functions as intended.

I remember seeing that, but forgot to look into it. The greyed out name is due to it being 1-Star, but it fortunately functions as intended. As for the incorrect equip-effect though, I'm not sure why that's happened. Hopefully it's just a case of changing the equip effect, otherwise I'll bump it up to being a mastered 2-Star again if it's something to do with that.

[Skirmish]

There is a way for both fights. One is more trickier. Concerning Snuffles, you need to slow him and after the next action of one of your character, he will uses "Reactor Cooldown" removing the timer and the slow debuff.
Kaktuar is just a "no magic fight". He will only grow when you use magic. Physically DPS him and you'll be fine (you can add Elemental = Leviathan for extra damage since he is weak to water).

Kaktuar seems to evade almost all of my Physical attacks, even with 255% Acc weapons like God's Hand. I'm guessing he has a collosally high Luck stat or something. I imagine DPsing with Physicals only will take a while given the number of Misses that'll happen.

[IvoryValor]

Okay, I've got a temporary solution in mind that I'll PM to you later tonight when I've got the next update done; it'll take time to find a solution but I think there are people who have tested the NT installer on Windows 10 and got it to work so there must be a way. That or I'll look for a new patcher that's a bit more modern.

Thank you so much... sorry I didn't reply sooner, I was at a friend's house. ^_^;

[Sega Chief]

Kaktuar seems to evade almost all of my Physical attacks, even with 255% Acc weapons like God's Hand. I'm guessing he has a collosally high Luck stat or something. I imagine DPsing with Physicals only will take a while given the number of Misses that'll happen.

It'll be 177 or something in that region. But Lucky Hit overrides Lucky Dodge, so a character with high Luck as opposed to high Accuracy should fare better.

[Skirmish]

Kaktuar is just a "no magic fight". He will only grow when you use magic. Physically DPS him and you'll be fine (you can add Elemental = Leviathan for extra damage since he is weak to water).

Eventually got him down with the aid of Tifa's Godhand, Leviathan + Elemental, Lucky Pill (Cut down on battle time), 4x Cut, Counter Attacks and alot of Patience in what was a very hit or miss strategy (Can't believe how many misses I had with a 255% Acc Weapon, especially galling when getting a Perfect Limit Break (Yeah! x7 and about 2 of them hit). I wanted to try and use Master Fist instead but it just didn't have the Accuracy.

AI seemed to change this time around, Kaktuar didn't use Speedstroke at all and instead opted for something called Succulent Ray and always on Tifa, never any other target. Once I got Resist on Tifa I was good to go as long as I kept her alive, for some reason Manipulate + Added Effect in Armour doesn't give the Status Resistance.

I also found out that Curse Ring halves Restorative and Prevents Regen, will have to watch out for that in future.

3/4 Materia Caves down and I've heard that the boss in the Round Island cave is currently soft-locking. I think i'll leave him alone for now. At least this last boss properly gave the Key Item he's supposed to drop (Love Buster isn't dropping Micro Engine, X-ATM Scorpion isn't dropping X-ATM Core, Tseng isn't dropping Pulse Ammo).

[Skirmish]

It'll be 177 or something in that region. But Lucky Hit overrides Lucky Dodge, so a character with high Luck as opposed to high Accuracy should fare better.

So in future playthroughs I guess Cid with Flayer + Platinum Bangle + Amulet then. Wow that's 248 Luck with no Rank-Ups, will need to do further field testing.

[Skirmish]

Yo Sega Chief, got a couple of questions for research purposes, not all are related to eachother:

- How much HP does Netzechariah have?
- You said Dual-Drain wears off for enemies with abnormally large HP pools, it wouldn't happen to be > 262,144 would it and could you test it?
- Do you have an ETA for the next flevel hotfix and the Dark Cave sidequest?
- Is it possible to make it more obvious when a target is affected by Dual-Drain (Maybe make it glow like with Berserk, Poison, Manipulate, Peerless but have it purple or something)?

[Sega Chief]

Yo Sega Chief, got a couple of questions for research purposes, not all are related to eachother:

- How much HP does Netzechariah have?
- You said Dual-Drain wears off for enemies with abnormally large HP pools, it wouldn't happen to be > 262,144 would it and could you test it?
- Do you have an ETA for the next flevel hotfix and the Dark Cave sidequest?
- Is it possible to make it more obvious when a target is affected by Dual-Drain (Maybe make it glow like with Berserk, Poison, Manipulate, Peerless but have it purple or something)?

I never found out what the specific number was, but that seems to be the in the general ballpark for it.

I'm working on the patch just now, hoping to have it uploaded before tomorrow morning. Dark Cave is taking a little longer due to bugfixing the other issues that are appearing but I'm getting there.

There was a discussion about this for Shield and it looks possible to set a status to have it's own colour, but I don't have the know-how to do it; it's an .EXE change.

Edit: I think that's everything. Going to check the last couple of pages again for any remaining issues.

Edit 2: Uploading patched files at the mo (I'll get that alternate solution to you once they're up, IvoryValor). The changes are:
X) Ending Behaviour changed:
   No Hero Medal = Normal Final Seph Fight, Ending FMV + Credits
   Hero Medal = Special Final Seph Fight, NT Ending Card
   [Secret] = [Secret] (overrides other two endings)
X) Large mechanical thing removed from Church :I
X) Icicles can be hit with Gravity again
X) Changed Gaea Dragon's Morph
X) Crash on Materia fight? Temporarily changed Battle Background while
   I figure this one out
X) Brawler Cup text
X) Netz softlock at end & reduced possible bombs from 3 to 2.
X) Mime has wrong info on equip effect; tried setting it to drop as a normal 2-star Materia.
X) Pre-emptive now working, not a duplicate of Chocobo Lure.
X) Fixed merged text (compression issue) of Enemy Lure & Enemy Away
X) Party reform after leagues (attempted)
X) Planet drop (no issue found?)
X) W-Summon (actually Underwater Materia) drops from Kalm traveller; added deactivation to it's main script
X) Hungry MP issue/wrong ability
X) Magnade AI; reverted to default
X) Griffon slow anim issue
X) W-Magic Drop (mastered it)
X) Teleport NPC Crater, Checked it again: Seems fine
X) L4 Death allemagne; - changed to L?? Death & L?? Flare
X) Final Attack, Bahamut Zero, Phoenix; drop as mastered

Might be more that I made over the last two nights as well.

Edit 3: Main is up, getting the hotfixes together now.

[Bowser9]

There's the issue I mentioned of the Fort Condor runner not working, save Junon's runner. He just tells you to bring 4000gil to hire troops.

[aquecoucou]

Patched using the main installer since hotfixes aren't out yet. Tested again the fight, scene has changed (black) but I still crash, so the rain wasn't the problem it seems :\

I would like to know if I'm the only one who experience this (mainly asking who are at disc 3, have beaten Carmine Weapon and can do this fight)