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

[Tom]

There seems to be an issue with the Forgotten Capital area at the end of disc 1.  After you sleep and it turns to night time when you try to enter the giant seashell then continue the game soft locks, the screen goes black while changing fields and the music is still playing in the background but the new field never loads.

[Loseless]

What's a guy with a green shirt doing at the entrance of Fort Condor? The bastard won't even talk to me.

Also, the prize for the first battle is the Echo comb, although in the menu it's called Howl Comb.

[Sega Chief]

Hey Chief, just a dumb question: if the birds need to be down to 1/32 of their HP, and L4 Suicide is now L5 Suicide, does this mean we have to randomly hit every bird until we, by chance, leave it at critical to get it to cast Chocobuckle?? The only chocobos I know to be at a level multiple of 5 are near Wutai.

I changed every Chocobo to have a level which is multiple of 5 so any of them will do. Hopefully.

There seems to be an issue with the Forgotten Capital area at the end of disc 1.  After you sleep and it turns to night time when you try to enter the giant seashell then continue the game soft locks, the screen goes black while changing fields and the music is still playing in the background but the new field never loads.

I'll have a look at it. Sounds like there's a logic loop somewhere that prevents the screen from displaying properly.

What's a guy with a green shirt doing at the entrance of Fort Condor? The bastard won't even talk to me.

Also, the prize for the first battle is the Echo comb, although in the menu it's called Howl Comb.

That NPC was supposed to be invisible until I finished a feature that would make it so you don't need to back-track to Fort Condor for the mini-game (an NPC in a town would teleport you there, and that green-shirt guy would teleport you back). As for the text, that's an old mistake I keep forgetting to change. Howl Comb used to be called Echo Comb but the effect was changed from Silence to Berserk.

Edit: The field screen in Forgotten City may be a serious problem. No changes appear to have been made to it recently but it's suddenly non-operational. I'll be trying a few things to get it working again.

Edit2: Got the field working, but it's visually corrupted. Good thing I keep back-ups :I

[Loseless]

I read somewhere in the thread that you intended to change the chocobo's levels to multiples of 5, but I sensed one near the farm and it was still at 16, hence my question.

And another thing: could you stop other party members from leveling up? I've been dreaming about something like that for a decade and half.

[Sega Chief]

I read somewhere in the thread that you intended to change the chocobo's levels to multiples of 5, but I sensed one near the farm and it was still at 16, hence my question.

And another thing: could you stop other party members from leveling up? I've been dreaming about something like that for a decade and half.

I just checked the scene; what I've done is, I've made every chocobo around the ranch area a multiple of 5 (with one in Junon); I thought I'd done that with every single one but it seems not.

As for party EXP, you mean the passive EXP they get? That's likely a .exe thing but you never know, might be something that could be dummied out or reduced to 0 in some way.

Edit: Fixed the issue with the broken field screen, but I'm a little worried about the actual integrity of the file now if something like this could happen. I'd recommend saving often, just in case any other screens have given up the ghost.

[Zara9]

hey sega chief

is there anyway you could put kyte as the end of disk 1 boss insted of jenvoa life

because that would be fun to fight kyte at the end of disk 1

[Sega Chief]

Absolutely not.

Edit: Another flevel patch is uploading. Sorry for these being so close together, it tends to be like this so soon after a major update. But in addition to the broken field screen, I took the opportunity to repair a few other issues:

-) Fixed Venus Gospel item requirements
-) Changed text from Echo Comb to Howl Comb
-) Made the mute green-shirt NPC in Fort Condor invisible (for now)

[Loseless]

Thanks for the info. The passive exp thing is kind of annoying for me. I usually like to steal weapons and armor, as well as learning limit breaks with everyone. If people level up at the same pace, it kind of steals the fun away from it. Otherwise, I end up being over-leveled.

It's one of those things that could be optional.

[Sega Chief]

It's the way the game was programmed, not an NT thing (low level runs usually have to plan around it). The only time it doesn't give passive EXP is if the party member in question is 'unavailable' (Aeris is a good example, Cloud & Tifa also don't gain passive EXP while they're in Mideel). Problem is, you can't swap Materia, etc. when characters are unavailable which would make things a tad clunky. I'll ask around about it.

Flevel patch is up: https://mega.co.nz/#!S80n3JaZ!_s0qOI02C9o9Fhw5CgmHfslu3XN7EHMudXXnYfdbNEQ

[Owlteria]

Holy sh**, I love this mod. I beat the Brass Dragon in the Ancient Temple and wow...best fight so far So much fun with the pet scorpion! And now I'm stuck at double Devil's Gate, omg...I can't thank you enough for this mod, Sega Chief.

[Rufus]

New threat mod v 1.3 April 2015 review

I have just completed your New Threat mod, on the whole I enjoyed it, I have suggestions for improvements which are in quick note form so you can read them easier and quicker.

The notes are in the game’s play order, it’s just me commenting on things I felt needed improvements, keep in mind it's still better than the original games difficulty, that's for sure, except for the last 3rd of the game, but that is mentioned below.

I will be referring to the original boss names most of the time, I realise you renamed many or all of them but I didn't take note of the names at that time, and I also prefer the original names and I don’t see why you would change them as their visual design remains the same, and their names relate to their visual design, not their gameplay.

Each improvement section will have a title; if you can reply about those sections by referencing that title that would be very helpful.

Also I do not like Final Fantasy VII’s magic levelling system and only equip magic when needed, So I will be noting at what points I upgrade my magic for boss battles via a save file editor, this is to help you decide at what points to give that level of magic to gamers if you decide to go through with the request that natepley made on page 42 of this forum thread, I really hope you do that as I hate the magic levelling system in this game, I would also request to lock AP gain and remove useless materia such as life1¸ and make other materia like life2 something cool and hard to find, which is better than equipping say life1 forever until it becomes useful with life2.

I completed the game in mid april 2015, via 7th heaven’s loader, you have stated that it may be 1.2 that I am using, however when I started the game I got a text from barret asking if I want normal or field battle music which implies I’m on V1.3.

Anyway on to the suggestions for improvements:


Skip Aerith mothers flashback:

I suggest an option to skip Aerith's Adopted mothers explanation on how she found her, since it is similar to the other short 4 minute flashbacks such as cloud/tifa promise, and cids rocket flight attempt, it can be scripted out like this, but unlike those flashbacks I think adding some summary text would be useful so the original script flows better.

Elmyra "...Not her real mother. Oh... it must have been 15 years ago..."
"...during the war. My husband was sent to the front. Some far away place called Wutai."

Aerith’s Origin scene…(choose one of two options)
Original cutscene (4 minutes)
Condensed form
Option 2 selected:
"One day, I went to the station because I got a letter saying he was coming home on leave, but instead I saw a heavily wounded woman with a small child, she told me to take care of her, I did and we were happy for many years, the turks came asking for aerith, they claimed she was an ancient and that she would help the shinra find the promise land, Aerith denied it and since then we tried to avoid the turks as much as we could. "

Game continues as normal:

Cloud "It's amazing how she's avoided the Shinra for all these years..."

please feel free to rewrite what I said above, it’s mostly a placeholder text as an example of what could be said, rather than a straight skip, which ironically works okay for cloud/tifa promise and cid rocket flight attempt because the game itself sums it up after both those cases.

I would also advise that the flowers blooming in the church music plays instead of aerith’s theme when you enter the house, and only if the gamer chooses the original scene does the music get replaced with aerith’s theme, overall I think that theme works better at the more pivotal point later in the game anyway.


Air Buster boss fight: Sleep Duration

i felt that sleep lasted too long, I would reduce it by 15%, for reference sleep was not an issue from this point onward as you had sleep curative items and no boss used it anyway, so if you modify this it won’t affect the rest of the game.

New Save point under corneo’s place:

the new save in sewers under Corneo's place is a welcome change, but the save is placed out of the way of a party member you would usually talk to before reaching that save point, once you speak to that party member it starts the boss fight, it would be best if you had to save your game, then once you have, when you speak to that person it begins the boss fight, otherwise most people would speak to the party member first before the save,  your mod might already do this, as I did save before speaking to that party member, but if it doesn’t I would look into it.

Armour issue – Iron Bangle:

The first shop I went into had super powerful armour that increased my defence from 12 to 50, it was called iron bangle, and after it took a very long time before I saw any other armour/weapon improvements in any shops, don’t know if that’s how you designed it, but usually after visiting new towns they have better weapons and armour, in your mod this didn’t seem to be the case for quite a while.

Shinra HQ Merchant request:

in shinra HQ, when Aerith is your party leader, just before the elevator you may have added a woman that allows you to save, I don’t see the point in this as the game prompted you to save just 1 minute before, but anyway that person should be a shop keep instead, or better yet both, when I was there I had no phoenix downs and only 5 potions, so I had to use save editor to give me 40 of each so I could survive the next 3 bosses which happen all in a row with no shop keepers in between these boss fights, simply put the game screwed me over, also FF6 was pretty bad for this so don’t feel so bad about it.

Rufus and Dark Nation Boss Fight:

it's too easy, when using bio on Rufus it deals 100 per round, then it’s a case of doing nothing for 18 rounds, instant win, I suggest no bio weakness for rufus, no fire weakness for his dog, and lower both their HP's by 1/3rd , playing it this way gives a big challenge, as you protect/heal yourself, rely on limit brakes and focus all attacks on Rufus only, this was the way I killed this boss without using fire/bio!

OR the battle needs reworked in another way, it just seems cheap to wait for 'light nation' to run out of magic which totally changes the balance of the battle, and it also seems silly watching him waste MP on useless attacks, assuming it is changed so that he can always heal, maybe he can heal half as much as he does currently, and at the same rate, he still has weakness to fire and Rufus can have his bio weakness, and you can kill light nation first with fire.

Rollerball Boss Fight Conflict with model replacer:

In 7th Heaven I replaced his model with bloodshots model, however this may have conflicted with your mod, as now the camera is way off and I can't even see the boss, see the picture below

http://i.imgur.com/0NcAwJO.jpg

I would request that you use or at least allow bloodshots model, it looks way better than the original, I realise you may not want to use it due to its colour but if you could allow the option that would be great.

Also this may not have been an issue with bloodshots replacement, I didn’t have the time to test my system with his models disabled to see if everything worked, so it’s just a guess at this point.

Allow boss model replacers

In general I would like you to allow boss model replacers like diamond, guard scorpion & rollerball to be made working with your mod, air buster was also done as well but it does not appear to be in 7th heaven currently, I realise you may have re coloured them, and you have artistic leeway, but I well that the hard work made by the model replacer artist is so great I’d much rather see that.

Skipping the Nibelheim flashback cutscenes:

For this scene, given its importance to the story, I would prefer it be summed up in a few lines of dialogue when choosing to skip the cutscenes, this would be a significant improvement, it would also flow much better with the script that happens after the flashback.

here is an example of what could be said:

 "After the war it was SOLDIER's duty to put down any resistance against the Shinra."
"...........that was 5 years ago."
"I was 16........"

- Nibelheim
1.   original Nibelheim flashback scene (45 minutes long)
2   '...i don’t feel like the long version' - 2 paragraph roundup.

Option 2 selected;
"Sephiroth and I went to my hometown to take care of the malfuctioning reactor & dispose of any creatures that were produced as a result of that malfunctioning'

'Tifa was our guide, we made it to the reactor and saw that monsters were being produced, the name JENOVA was on the main chamber of the room, Sephiroth said his mother’s name was JENOVA, we then retired back to town.'

'Sephiroth began reading up on JENOVA research in Nibelheim’s Shinra mansion, in Gasts note it was said that 'an organism found in a 2000 year old geological stratum was called Jenova, it was confirmed to be an ancient, the JENOVA project was then approved and mako production began'

'After spending many days in the Shinra mansion, Sephiroth began to act strangely, he said “Long ago, disaster struck this planet, The Planet was saved by sacrificing the Cetra. An Ancient named Jenova was found 2000 years ago, The Jenova Project was founded with the goal to produce people with the powers of the Ancients, Professor Gast, leader of the Jenova Project , produced me from that project.

he then burned down the village, made his way to the reactor, I went after him, I engaged him in battle and...

{Script continues as normal}

....and that's the end of my story.


Something like that would be so great, it would be very much appreciated, as usual the above is merely placeholder sample text, it can be rewritten to sound better.

Merchant addition to Myrith Mine

A merchant should be added at the very start of myrith mine, after the midgar zolom section, but before the turks fight, the situation is that you dismount the Chocobo, then save on the map, but have no way to recover yourself or stock up on items, if you try to backtrack to kalm for an inn or shopkeeper, you will fight the midgar zolom and he will warp you at the cave entrance, so you really are stuck here and could potentially have a broken save file, this is a new issue created due to the new boss fight added.

alternatively you could change the midgar zolom script so that when you backtrack from myrith mines the zolom warps you to the start of the marsh instead, to me this make much more sense, and I think it's something you should do anyway even if this issue was not present, but since it is present I highly suggest this be done.


Added boss fight: turks in myrith mines:
I don't think the turks music fits well in a battle scene, that’s just how I feel.

I understand that rude likes Tifa, and so when he has a chance so harm her he instead goes '.....' when tifa is the only party member left, but I Think the fact that he ignores her about 30 times then strikes once is misleading to the gamer as they will likely think he will never strike her until he does and it’s too late, maybe that can be reworked so the player doesn’t abuse that, or misreads that like he will never hit her, something like him damaging her with a lot less damage than usual, or something cooler.

Once Elena is defeated the battle becomes way too easy, it shifts the power too much, instead make it so he changes tactics when Elena decides not to fight, I believe his last red cure makes him go berserk? if so then that’s good, maybe he could cast haste at the same time? so with that the gamer will think 'oh now it will be an easy fight now that I defeated Elena, ...oh he’s doing another red cure...oh wait its berserking him...and now haste...oooh better pay attention now'.

As far as defeating him first, I’m not sure what she should do, but it should be something to keep the difficulty up, I never did it that way so I don’t know what would happen.

Item/weapon shop in under junon incorrect text:
at the town in under junon the item shop guys says 'if you want a weapon you better buy it', then it goes to the item shop selection, when pressing the menu button it claims I am in a weapon store, so there is inconsistency there.

Dirty bomb addition:

Can only assume dirty bomb is your doing? I just thought I’d Remind you I hate FF7’s magic system anyway, and would prefer to use items to inflict poison, or even slow an enemy rather than use materia, but anyway in the game you equip bio so you can inflict poison, the downside to that is that it takes away your strength/H and it takes up ATB time to cast in battle, whereas items do not, this is as designed, from now on I discarded bio materia and use this dirty bomb in its place.

Also for some reason this dirty bomb almost never appears again in item shops, it should always appear in items shops from now on, it doesn’t prove anything to have to backtrack in order to stock up on more of them.

Overall I would like to not have to have bio, demi, and slow as magic but as items instead, towards the end of this article I will offer my advice on what magic should be there and not there, should you decide to do some magic controlling in your mod.

Tifa limit Break targeting: bottomswell boss

when using Tifa’s limit break, one of the auto targets is one of those ‘aquapolo ‘ balls  the boss puts on you, not the best as it’s immune to physical attacks, I realise Tifa’s targeting is as designed, but I think changing it may be a good idea, you would have to think it over as a possible thing to do.

This becomes a far bigger issue that relates directly to your mod on the brass dragon boss, as she starts targeting your guest fighters, but it’s mentioned here in a slightly different context.

Bottomswell Boss illuya wave warning

I would like a better and longer clue as to when he will do illuya wave, if a special animation can’t be done, something like a simple battle message stating ‘preparing..’ can be shown, then 4 seconds later in ATB time he does the illuya wave move, currently I see no clue when he will do it.

Rework or skip the CPR mini-game
Reworking the CPR mini game with Priscilla would be nice, making it like Tidus’s limit break could be one starting point to making it decent, but skipping it all together would also be very acceptable and overall better than the original game.

For skipping it, it can be easily scripted as

"Just take a deep breath, hold it in. Then breathe into her."
 "Hurry up and do it!"

Screen darkens
(Cloud gives Priscilla mouth to mouth resuscitation.)

{Script continues as normal}

Priscilla "Uh... ugh..."
"Hey hey! Priscilla, are you alright?"

Materia shop in under junon:

in under junon I would like to have a materia shop, after finding out Bottomswell weakness was bolt I only had one bolt materia and gave myself bolt via a save editor, a materia shop would also help me confirm that barrier is a non-common materia at this point, which It was.

Note that this point may be invalid, there may be a materia shop here after all, I can’t check easily now.

Hi potions appearing too early in under junon:

in under junon the shopkeeper sells Hi-potions, this is a far too early point in the game to be selling them, this is implied further by the fact that the next shops do not sell hi potions(the ship merchant, north corel etc.) they don't go on sale again until Nibelheim, which seems the perfect time to introduce them.

Jenova birth weakness to holy:

If the party cannot obtain holy magic, is there any point to it being shown as a weakness when sensing, or I take it this is more for story than it is battle, if so maybe this weakness should be removed anyway.

Chocobo boss in Mt. Corel

When fighting him it kept petrifying me, but I had no items or bracelets to fix that at that current point in the game, in fact you only get the cures for petrify in North Corel JUST after that boss, meaning you have to backtrack again to fight it

Also the game doesn’t let you backtrack and try to fight the boss fight, it’s a one-time only opportunity, I would also prefer all boss fights to be forced and scaled to the level of the party at that time.

My solution for both of these is to provide petrify curative items in under Junon, if you offered remedy at an earlier point in the game that would solve it, I have a separate request for that further down in this article. And you can script the boss fight to be forced quite simply by A party member saying a single line of text, something like ‘hey, what’s that over there’ then the game taking control of cloud and moving up.

barrets flashback skipping cutscene:

sadly skipping this scene provides issues with the script that happens after the cutscene, given that the cutscene only lasts 90 seconds I’m thinking the best way would be to not give the gamer the option to skip the cutscene, both cids rocket flight attempt and cloud/tifas promise are longer at 4 minutes, but even when skipping it works in the game quite well given what cloud and Shera say afterwards.

I think the point of skipping these cutscenes is to make the game go a bit smoother as you said, however in this case the cutscene only being 90 seconds, coupled with the mismatched dialogue afterword’s, it may be best to leave it in.

Cait Sith bribe:

Making Cait Sith giving you 100GP to convince cloud to join with him is a good idea, may I suggest more text be added so that it makes it more believable, the original script of the game was really bad for this.

Dyne boss fight:

He was way too easy, just casting bio then defending and basic curing, he needs reworked.

yuffie banish all spell
I tried to get Yuffie at this point, she cast some spell which ejected me out of the battle, is that spell something to do with my party level not being powerful enough like what midgar zolom does, overall I don’t really like that spell as it took me out of the fight, and I have to circle round the forest until I can find her again.

But I know you are planning on forcing Yuffie at some point, which is something I 100% agree with, turning her into a more challenging boss fight as well would be very smart, I have provided my own ideas for that at the very bottom of this artical.

reno and rude at gogondo 1st opportunity

I found this battle way too hard at this point, I did complete it later when I got the tiny bronco, but I would have preferred the battle to be specked out as if it had to be done there and then as a forced battle, the original game was pretty bad for this boss fight as you could do it at various points in the game when you have different party levels.

Stinger’s weakness to Molotov grenades:

the 'stinger' mini boss in the Cave of the Gi within Cosmo Canyon is far too weak to those molotov grenades, it almost seemed like a cheat, like how you could killed undead boss's with phoenix down (I'm looking at you FF6 & .

For a this boss I would suggest raising it’s magic defense so that  molotov grenades deals half the damage it currently does, it dealt 700 for me each time, you will likely have to look into other things to rebalance the fight, but it would be hard to balance the fight for parties with and for parties without those grenades, to fix that providing those grenades after the previously forced boss encounter would be a smart move.

Materia/Power Soul Keeper boss:

Can you make this boss fight a forced boss fight like the original game was?

Assuming you fight the boss at this point in the game, which I would recommend:
The boss needs 20% less HP and a greater time between power soul charge and blast, with these two things done this would be one of the best boss fights in the Final Fantasy series, keep in mind by that point I didn't have haste and only had one party member with barrier materia, so that is standard playthrough,.

Overall i couldn't kill him at that point in the game, but that is only due to his HP and the time between the power blast move.

I noticed in rocket town you got haste and barrier materia becomes common, but then again that means only 1 Materia has mbarrier as that’s level 2, but that is the issue with FF7's magic system.

I later found out it was in Gogondo that you got haste, so if you rebalance the turk fight there, and it becomes forced, and I get haste there, then maybe this boss fight may be more doable, but I'd still like lower HP.

For this boss fight I used save editor to give myself 2x barrier level 2 magic, I think I may have over specked myself in that regard, but that is what I needed to survive this boss fight to almost defeat him.

Palmer boss fight:

after looking at a video playthrough I found out that using debarrier got rid of his force field, I totally didn't get that, I don't know if there is a more intuitive way to tell the player to do that, as it's not really a standard shield as it has very odd properties such as draining poison and summons, but maybe this is something you can look into maybe?

Gogondo turks Boss Fight Retry:

heading back to the gold saucer I decided to give the Turks in Gogondo another go, I would advise NOT being able to target the 'incapacitated' member as that may confuse some gamers, and they may try to cure that party member somehow, when using all with barrier it doesn’t target that member, so you really shouldn't be able to target items on that person, basically it’s the same thing as what ruby weapon does with banishing someone, it just looks different visually, while what the Turks does looks cool, gamers tend to think if it looks different it must be different to a banish, and thus must be curable, but it is in fact identical, if you made it something that lasted, say, 30 rounds then it would actually be different, and kind of cool new move in the world of final fantasy.

However this boss fights is specked out for 2 party members, and I’m happy with that.

Anyway I defeated them easily now, it’s too hard the first chance you get to fight them, but then it’s a bit too easy the second chance you get to fight them,

As mentioned previously I would advise having it forced, and on the first chance, then rebalancing it accordingly, but keep the same strategy, this would also allow access to haste at an earlier and better point in the game.

Extra boss fight – titan:

in Gogondo when you 'reach' for the titan Materia it would be good to have a boss fight, I was half expecting it after the chocobo boss fight for the treasure in mt. corel in conjunction with the ‘will you reach for it yet/no’ prompt.

I was thinking maybe fighting Titan himself, this would be similar to other Final Fantasy’s, maybe he can say 'you have to prove your worth if you wish me to join you', the only issue with that is that it isn’t really consistent with the rest of the Final Fantasy VII world, but in either case I thought I’d throw out that idea in case you wanted to add another boss fight in there.

Skip date option:

it would be nice to have the option to skip the gold saucer date, you can choose between the two options when asked for a date.

Person:
‘are you ready?’

Cloud:
'yeah we have the time' (original) – 6 minutes
'okay, but make it a short one' (skip cutscenes)

And if you select the second one as soon as you jump into the station area you see Cait Sith, and the game takes it from there.

Brass Dragon Boss battle:

I decided to give myself bolt2 via a save file editor at this point, I think the boss was specked out for me to have level 2 magic at this point, I was level 21 as well.

if barrier has 'all' to it and I target my guest it also gives it to the dragon boss, same for summons & even tifas limit brake (yes she will attack my guest!), I don't think this is correct.

During the battle it would be cool if Cloud said something more meaningful about ATM's guest appearance, something like 'hey, looks like Shinra left something to help us out', that would explain its presence as when it turned up I had no idea why it was there until I thought about it for a bit.

If I give my guest an elixir, does it fully recover its MP? because if so that may change the balance of the boss fight quite a bit, I did notice that x-potions worked as well, but I don't see that as being too much of an issue, if the elixir’s do recover it's MP, you would have to double check that's how you designed it to play out, or if you think it makes it too easy, because I really liked the idea of it losing its MP and then becoming weaker during the last 3rd of the battle, then it was up to me to finish him with bolt2, as up until this point i was concentrating on keeping my guest alive, If you don't want to allow elixers or ethers on him I’m not sure how you would do it, but I would prefer it to not be doable.

Maybe you could come up with a news spell just for this boss, called reflact, and it ‘bounces’ items from party members onto the opposite target, so it’s basically like reflect but for items, it’s the only way I can see ethers and elixir’s not being used on the guest in this fight.

Demon’s gates boss battle – FAR TOO HARD:

I had major problems with this boss fight, it was FAR too difficult, and he needs seriously rebalanced.

I actually grinded for a full hour fighting encounters in this area, in doing so from 21 to 31, to give myself a better chance with him, there was absolutely no way to go beyond 31 with the EXP I was getting from these encounters.

I gave myself 3xCure2’s via a save file editor which I felt was fair as that is what you would naturally have at this point if you equip 3 cures on everyone from the start, what wasn’t natural is I also gave myself 3x mastered alls for this boss fight, even with that I still couldn’t defeat him.

I gave everyone a star pendant so I don't get that silence problem that the boss gives me, the game naturally had that accessory anyway

The furthest I got was Killing one of the demon gates,  i died on the remaining one, it must have been about a 30 minute battle, bolt2 dealt 500 damage, clouds limit break does 300, a general physical attack is about 80, this may be due to back row, I can’t remember.

when one is left, it seems to have some sort of haste and high defence, i doubt I could dispel his haste like state, I never tried, but overall it was a good idea to put that in.

oddly enough when only one demons gate is left you need to hit him once with physical attack before magic deals any damage to him, seems a bit strange.

overall this boss is mega broke in terms of difficulty, and needs reworked significantly, reducing his level by 10 may solve it.

Side attack targeting for offensive magic

in the demons gate fight in new threat mod I find it annoying that offensive magic targeting goes between the enemies and includes my party, I’d rather it didn't let me choose to cast fire onto my party, it’s just because I am trying to deal equal damage to both enemy targets, you could make it so that my party acts like it is on the far right of the screen, and the boss on my right is in the middle.

Although this is an issue in the original game, the problem doesn’t really show itself because no boss fight has any side attacks, so I am keeping this point here.

Jenova DECAY Boss in forgotten city:

I used a save file editor to give 3 members quake 2 at this point.

I found this boss a bit too easy, not sure what you could do to buff it up, I guess his attacks are percentage based for the most part, there are rings for petrify and you have haste so it’s easy to deal with this boss, maybe you can think on something else that could add more difficulty to this.

[Rufus]

Remove ‘Insert Disc 2’ Message

I would advise getting rid of the 'insert disc 2' message along with the save prompt, but if you want to keep the save prompt you can.

No good weapons for Aerith:

The weapons store’s from now on have new weapons with higher stats and a high amount of magic slots for everyone except Aerith, I think that would need fixed to rebalance things out, otherwise your worse off with her than any other party member.

If you can't add new weapons simply upgrading her exiting weapons to have more slots and be more powerful may be a decent enough option.

Turks Boss Fight Icicle Town

This boss battle is FAR too easy, probably the easiest battle out in the whole game, it needs majorly re-balanced.

I understand there is some special move that Elena does that makes it so she drains a lot of things, but I think there should be a way to tell visually that she is infected with it, kind of like how you know someone is in berserk status.

Gaea's Cliff Crystal Fights x4:

overall these forced encounters are terrible, it’s the same thing 4x over, I was hoping you would fix the original game with some smart ideas, consider this an opportunity to make the game a lot better, I would advise to completely change these fights somehow, each one should have some sort of twist from the previous one (and not just more bats), that is what most gamers would expect, but alas the original was quite bad in that regard.

Also when the game offers to drop down to the next room after each fight, that should not be offered until you have defeated the last crystal and opened the chest on the way back.

Note: I gave myself fire2x3 for inside Gaea's Cliff via save file editor.

Schizo boss fight:

blue beams are 'magic', red beams are ‘physical attack' ,according to the protect/shell defence graphics, not sure if that's right or makes sense, maybe you could change the red beam animation to a real melee attack animation.

Overall I’d say he was tad too easy, but that may be in part that I gave myself mastered alls to try and defeat demons gate, and with those alls so i can barriers and cure all party members.

At this point I’m still at level 31, have been since that dragon brass boss.

Sephiroth/Jenova battle whirlwind maze:

I gave myself demi level 2 via save file editor, seemed reasonable, I don't know if you want to spec it out so that gamers can have that at this point in time, since it makes the Sephiroth part of this battle a little too easy, I would say allowing demi 1 is more suitable for this boss, he was made too easy with demi 2.

For reference I’m level 32 now.

what does relic ring do?

Escaping junon text add to know where to go:

Make it so that Cait Sith starts running forward then right to the airport, and the original text is shown while he is running, and you run after him.

If you can’t do that, then just change the text so the gamer knows where to go.

Cait Sith "OK, OK time for Plan B. Let's head right to the airport!"   original 'Let's run to the airport!" '

Extra boss fight Tifa vs. Scarlet.

a 1 on 1 boss fight between scarlet and Tifa when Tifa escapes Junon could be added, it could even have a bit of a twist as they could both not have any materia and can 'slap' each other and use items only, if you can't easily add a slap animation standard punches would do fine.

Game tells you where to go next - mideel:

At this point there should be some text explaining to go to mideel, the game doesn't tell you.

Mideel stocks Remedies - finally:
in mideel we finally have access to remedy's, I think by the time you are in shinra HQ Remedies should be the norm, and don't bother selling the other curative items that just cure 1 abnormal status, there was no status issue I couldn't cure except for sleep at the very start with air buster.

new airship merchant field model change:

the black cape merchant on the airship has a wield model which I don’t think blends in well with his surroundings, maybe you could change him to look like something that would be there naturally.

Physical Attacks as good as magic

for the first time during this play through attacks aren’t useless anymore, they deal as much as magic, I don’t know  if that is as designed, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

Huge Materia north Corel timer:

I ran out of time trying to defeat the scorpion, I think the timer was too short, I would add on 5 minutes.

50,000 gil worthless rock

I bought the worthless rock from the kid for 50,000 gil in North corel, I swear I don’t see anything new in my inventory such as the ultimate Materia, I may be mistaken though.

[Rufus]

Fort Condor Skip RTS mini game:

An option to skip the RTS mini game and get to the boss fight right away would be nice, it could be scripted something like;

Guy: 'would you like us to command the units or yourselves'

Cloud: 'we'll command the troops, and any trouble we'll take the entrance’ (original game).
Cloud: 'you take care of the troops; we'll defend the main entrance’ (skip RTS mini-game) 

Ultimate Weapon animation in field

I would prefer the animation be cut short by about 2 seconds, as it seems silly him blocking the cameras view for two seconds, it can cut to the battle just when the weapon is half way diving into the party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctnn9TR4GW0

If you could make it that the encounter starts at 5:41 and not 5:43 that would be great.

Cloud Subconscious Restoration scene roundup:

I would like just a few short sentences to round up the important parts of what happened.

Two options can be provided to the gamer, they can read as follows:
clouds subconscious restoring scene:
- original scene (40 minutes)
- Skip cutscenes, paragraph summary.

Option 2 selected:

Cloud can think to himself:
while our minds were joined in the lifestream, Tifa and I figured out that I was there in nibelheim but was disguised under a SOLDIER's mask so she didn't know my identity.

Zack, a new friend I made from gogondo town, was there as well, he was the First class SOLDIER I aspired to be like, I was ashamed I was a mere SOLDIER grunt so I kept my mask on in front of Tifa.

as for the battle between me and sephiroth, Zack fought him well but was ultimately defeated by sephiroth, I managed to catch sephiroth off guard, wound him, and throw him into the lifestream to his death.

Zack and I along with all the other survivors were experimented on by Hojo, he injected Sephiroth's genetic material and infused them with Mako, turning us into Sephiroth Clones, luckily Tifa managed to escape unharmed.

Carry Armor boss

I gave myself bolt3 via save editor for this boss, don’t know if he is specked out for party members to have level 3 magic at this point.

I gave 2 party members protect ring, I’m guessing some boss beforehand dropped them, they gave protect/shell automatically, seems this boss always gets rid of them with some move, but with the ring they keep its status always I believe.

I just killed him and no more, but could only muster it with 2x protect rings (only way to have protect/shell), and bolt 3 for 3 party members, and also I have mastered alls with cure2 from the overly difficult demon gate’s boss.

I’m level 34; encounters in the area don’t give me enough EXP to level up anyway.

Skip submarine mini game:

An option to skip the submarine mini game would be nice, it’s pretty awful gameplay wise, it can be completed in under 10 seconds if you know what to do, but if you lose the ship within the first 30 seconds it’s a horrible mini game to complete from that point on, so with those points in mind it really is a worthless mini game, very unlike the motorbike and snowboarding mini game, it seems the submarine one is quite poorly implemented, and the option to skip would be much appreciated.

Sunken Shinra ship

Went into the Sunken shinra ship at this time, turks were there, died immediately, overall I think this should be re-balanced out so they could be defeated at this time, mainly since this fight is not available once you have cleared the return to midgar story section.

Also the items that are available in this place are less powerful than the ones in the original game, so it makes sense that you could defeat the turkes here at this point, and better handle the encounters as well, it would also be nice if the game gave a clue as to this location as something that could be done at the moment, with that being said I don’t see how you can force this fight on the gamer, and there is no punishment for ignoring it, as you can freely access that room at a later date without having to do the turks fight.

So these is quite a lot to think about there, I am of the opinion that all boss fights should be forced and specked out for a party and magic level of the time that it is forced, however due to the location of this boss it’s hard to do so, I welcome your input.

Remove easy encounter after tseng in rocket town boss fight:

After defeating tseng at rocket town, the next encounter shouldn’t be there, it’s really boring/easy, suggest to remove it, as it’s anticlimactic, this is part of the original game.

Better sword for cloud

I was surprised to find the merchant on the highwind at this point had a new better sword for cloud and only cloud, was this something new that you added?

Instantly force weapon battle:

Standing on the world map waiting on weapon walking slowly to Midgar is boring,  it would be best if the battle was forced instantly, on the airship they could say something like 'okay let's land and fight', then it cuts to the fight, I’m not sure at what point the last save point was offered in the game, but if it was too far from this point, which I doubt, but if that is the case the game can offer a save/menu customization and a re-confirmation to ‘land and fight now?’

I gave each party member quake3 and cure3 via save editor; I managed to defeat him at level 35.

Limit level bug
I’m still limit level 1 for each party member, I this a bug or is there is something I’m missing?

HUGE bug: bugenhagen just before the return to midgar
when visiting Bugenhagen at my character gets stuck and messed up, I have to choose ‘go back down’ from a hidden 4th option to continue the game, I don’t know if this is your mod or not but I will mention it here first and if you can’t replicate it I’ll post it elsewhere.

[Rufus]

Turks boss fight in the return to midgar
This battle gives too much confusion and berserk to party members, at this point in the game I do not have any rings to protect me from that, casting reflect doesn’t seem to reflect the confusion spell than happens on my party.

I decided to use a save editor to give 2 members ribbons, i think for this boss fight 2 members should have confusion protection at least, that should even things out, using ribbons means that haste and protect/shell is disallowed on me so I’m worse off than I would be with Peace rings which would protect me from confuse and berserk, and allow haste and protect/shell.

I defeated the boss with those ring additions, I would say that it was too easy now, I think the game should allow 2 members to not be confused and 1 members not be berserked via rings, but you would have to make your own rings for that, if you give 2 members ribbons or peace rings that over powers you a bit, and 1 member won’t be enough.

Add merchant before proud clod

There should be a merchant before prod cloud, because gamers won’t stock up on hi-potions thinking that cure is better, but prod cloud gives permanent/incurable reflect to the party, almost making the battle unwinnable if you chose to enter Midgar with little to no potions.

Heading south in the return to Midgar

The original game allowed you to run south down multiple samey corridors in order to find the W-item Materia, since you have removed this special Materia from this location I would advise you to stop the player from going down this route as it serves no purpose, something like a simple stop and cloud saying ‘that’s not the way to go’ would be fine.


Prod cloud Boss Battle

At level 36
Gave everyone magic +20 rings
Used quake 3, I dealt 1500 damage per magic cast.
Used haste, regen, protect & shell at the start.

when he does that Materia move which permanently gives your party members reflect.
use curative items only.

Using this strategy, its HP is still too high and should be reduced by 20%, then the boss fight is perfect.


Hojo Boss Fight

This fight has a similar issue to the turks boss fight, but with some confusion protection it should be doable, providing you gave the rings to help out on the turks fight this fight will be fine.

on his 3rd form there seems to be a bug, he does a move and the game says it deals 4 damage to a party member, but he gets 800 heal points from it, then you look at how much damage has been done to the party member and it is indeed 800.

Jenova.SYNTHESIS Boss Fight

Far too hard, the game would need to provide everyone with peace rings due to this confusion/bersek thing, and with using haste I might be able to put down some moves at the start.

I decided to buff everyone up from 40 to 60 via save editor! So I’m majorly cheating here.

i think i overpowered myself, but the boss still has way too much HP, you need to reduce HP by 30%, the battle shouldn’t be taking this long, you shouldn’t' have 30+ minute battles.

To summarise:
If you reduce the main jenovas HP by 30%,
make sure all party members have peace rings,
make sure all jenovas can be slowed

that would at least be a good start

Bizzaro.Sephiroth

I’m not even going to bother with this boss, the only way I defeated him was with ultima and MP turbo and a hacked/over levelled party, this boss needs major reworking.

Safer.Sephiroth

I think this boss may not be that bad, but I couldn’t really test it with different party levels as it happens right after bizzaro Sephiroth.

[Rufus]

'new threats' boss fights.

Overall there needs to be some explanation in the text that you need to bring a relevant party member along with you to these locations, I got stuck in forgotten city just not understanding why nothing new was there.

I tried cosmo canyons, got killed pretty quick, far too hard. I’m level 38.
tried nibelheim, couldn't figure out what to do, I suggest making more clear instructions.
Tried Midgar, needed a key and the game didn’t explain where to go, I suggest adding some text to him to say to go to bone village along with some other tips which may be required.
Tried north Corel, spoke to everyone there, i don’t see a new package for barret? I think better insturctions are required.
Went to gold sauces, dio said something about waiting for something to then join an expedition, but nothing seemed to happen.
kalm: ah I take it I have to defeat those weapons, well if it’s nothing new boss wise I would like to know beforehand.
temple of ancients: yeah that looks cool but far too powerful.


at that point i stopped trying the new threats bosses, i think they are cool, just wish they were more scaled to the natural level i am in the game, which is around 40.

Later on I hacked a save file to bump my levels from 40 to 65 and I went to defeat a few of the new threat bosses

forgotten city:

I would advise reducing the boss’s HP by 30% as the battle was simply too long, but with a party level of 60, it’s a decent but overly long match, allow 2 members to have confusion protection as well, it seems rings are the only way to protect from the confusion anyway, they seem incurable with items.

bug: once I kill red XIII's new threat, if i leave the room, then come back to it replays the story as if it is the first time I have came into the room, then the game crashes.



Okay and that is the end of my suggestions for improvements on this mod in game play order, the next few points apply to the game as a whole.

yuffie as mandatory member idea

when you’re searching for a Chocobo to pass the Midgar zolom, when you enter a battle with the chocobo you can have yuffie there, and you have to defeat her and keep the chocobo occupied. and maybe that’s the only way to get the chocobo?

this would give a real challenge/twist to getting the chocobo along with a boss fight as such, which would appear to be better than simply going into a standard encounter with a chocobo in it.

I would also advise to scrap the whole losing yuffie while trying to recruit her thing.

Preserving original boss names

I would like the option to preserve the original boss names, I prefer the original names and I don’t see why you would change them as their visual design remains the same, and their names relate to their visual design, not their gameplay.

An example is rollerball sounds better than 'rubicante gt', I realise you have artistic leeway in this, but did you have something against the original names?

I don’t know how ‘beacause’ would affect this, as they may have changed some boss names, if so I would prefer beacuses translation.


General advice on the magic system rebalance – remove ‘all’ Materia

This is for the case that you do natepley’s suggestion on changing the magic system of Final Fantasy VII, I would like to add to that that you remove ‘all’ materia and instead give certain magic the ability to have multiple targets or not, this is similar to final fantasy dimensions.

So in this case the only magic that can have single target only is
haste, life1, life2, slow, spot, reflect , esuna & berserk.
if you feel that cure is too powerful with multiple targets then I would suggest to make cure itself less powerful and keep it multiple targets, you can reduce the time that protect/shell last or how strong it is if you feel it’s overpowering to have it target all party members, regen can be single target only depending on how powerful you feel it is.

Adding new magic
'dispel' which combines debarrier and Despell, this makes the game more modern.
'blink' as a new spell from FF dimensions,
‘nullblaze’ etc., which can have similar properties as final fantasy dimensions

[Sega Chief]

So much feedback 

Alright, let's work through this. You are definitely on 1.2 though, the music option has been present for a while now and some of the bugs/problems I've noticed in this feedback relate to that version. I think in future though it might be easier on the thread to compile it all into a Notepad.

-) Elmyra's Flashback Skip
There is actually a skip for this already in the current NT build. It was designed to blend into the dialogue, unlike older skips.

-) Sleep Adjustment
I think it'll take an .exe modification to do that, and I try to avoid those if I can in order to keep the mod compatible with others.

-) Sewer Save Point
Sometimes I miss possible problems like that because I've been working with the game quite a lot. I think that was my first ever additional save point, but it has a small harmless problem in that reloading from that save plays the jump down/falling into sewers segment again. I'll see what I can do.

-) Iron Bangle
Up until the current NT build, defensive stats are quite poor in making a huge difference to your set-up. Iron Bangle's defence seems high, but in practice it won't reduce damage a whole lot; the reason it was buffed so high here was to make it a viable 'defence' option over the Materia slots given by Bronze and the STR/MAG stat gains given by Titan and Mythril.

-) 69th Floor NPC
That NPC was added because the current save point takes place before you equip your party to deal with the imminent boss. I also wanted the player to be able to fight some battles and gather items, so she has a Inn function as well to restore HP/MP. It was just a convenience thing, just in case.

-) Rufus & Dark Nation
This fight was changed for 1.3, but it's still quite genteel. The reason for this is because Cloud fights it solo, and there's no way to get more items + EXP if Cloud isn't strong enough. I basically wanted to avoid people getting stuck here, seeing as it's sandwiched between Gunners + Motorball.

-) Model Compatibility
I actually want NT to be as compatible as possible, so it's disappointing to see that happen. Not sure why the camera would be off, I didn't make any changes/adjustments to Motorball's position or the camera data (same with the other bosses, for the most part).

-) Nibelheim Flashback Skip
Yeah, this was a very early skip that doesn't integrate into the scene at all. I'm going to look at a way to make it blend in a lot more.

-) Mythril Mines Merchant
Could do, I actually wanted to bring in a pseudo-revival for the travelling merchant that was allegedly cut from the game (it was something to do with the 'letter for daughter' sidequest, and started in Gongaga I believe). Could have him pop up here as the first instance.

-) Mythril Mines Turks
Could add AI when the other gets KO'd, I suppose.

-) Under Junon Store
That guy actually never sold weapons to begin with; he sold Grenades I think, but his inventory was terrible so I replaced it with one that was selling Echo Screens for the upcoming boss fight. I'll change the name of the store + dialogue though. As for Materia, could maybe add somebody else to this store to sell that.

-) Dirty Bombs
These replace the Eye Drop item, the effect for which was moved to Echo Screen (renamed to Echo Drop). I changed it to an attack item because Eye Drops were far removed from the other status healing items in the index, positioned instead next to some attack items so I turned it into a 100% Poison-dealing item and fixed that particular problem with poison-status RNG at the same time. And as PotatoHandle says, it's always a good time to get dirty.

-) Tifa's Slots: Targeting
It's one of those things I'm not sure I can fix, I'm afraid; Tifa's Slots select a random valid target and have no actual targeting interface like other attacks do (the waterpolo thing is a problem in vanilla/default too). I did seriously consider removing certain fights that make use of guest fighters for that reason, but then I figured what the hell.

-) Illuya Wave
I might be able to add a warning of some kind, I'll see what I can do.

-) CPR Skip
In the latest build, this minigame was set up so that one breath, regardless of how long it was held for, will resolve it. Because it's a waste of goddamn time.

-) Jenova Birth's Holy Weakness
One thing I did was 'future-proof' enemies against changes made later, so I made sure elemental weaknesses/resistances were consistent regardless of which part of the game they appeared in. I then consider what the player has in their arsenal and spec for that on top of it, to make sure there's weaknesses to make use of. While there's no Holy attack at this point, there might be one added at a later date so I'm covered.

-) Mamatolis' Petrify
There's an item store in Costa Del Sol. When talking to the proprietor, he specifically tells you to buy Softs, which are the town's specialty (this is the game advising you to carry Softs to deal with the impending Soft-Numb & Petrify statuses). Not something I added either, this has been in default game too. Enemies up on North Corel, like Cokatolis, also carry Soft for steals.

-) Barret's Flashback Skip
I wasn't aware of an issue here if choosing to skip the dialogue. I'd better investigate.

-) Cait Sith GP
That's a very good idea, that would let players tackle some of the Gold Saucer stuff without spending gil/time beforehand; I usually skip Saucer's minigames on the first visit due to that.

-) Dyne Boss
Yeah, a lot of people have said he's too easy. I was a bit too cagey with the 1v1 fights.

-) Mystery Ninja Fight
Originally, Yuffie would cause a crash if she successfully escaped from the battle (opening the menu afterwards or getting into a battle triggers it). The new remove from battle thing is a 'fix' for that, ending the battle safely (the fight is trickier, which makes her escaping a dangerous possibility). Hopefully we won't need this once that event is done.

-) Gongaga Turks
This fight is getting a bad reputation for being very tricky, but heavy on RNG due to the Wire attack used at the beginning. In the latest build, it was made more predictable (Wire goes for highest HP party member) and Berserk/Confuse was removed from their attacks.

-) Stingers
I'm fine with them being a push-over, or for items like Molotovs being effective against them; so long as some use is coming from those items. Never liked Stingers.

-) Powersoul Keeper
This guy is slightly ahead on the curve as he's carrying the Powersoul weapon; a very effective weapon for Tifa that can decimate a lot of enemies. The weapon has since been nerfed slightly for the latest build though, so maybe Keeper could be placed closer on the actual progression curve. I don't think I'll make him mandatory though.

-) Palmer
Forcefield is basically the Shield status, the name of this 'attack' and the others coming from FF6 Lore/Blue Magic spells. I basically set up Palmer to be a joke fight, but still with a bit of an edge of danger (Blowfish for instance). I could maybe change Forcefield so that it only gives Wall instead.

-) Possible Titan Boss
I'm not sure, Titan is quite close to the other summons and there's already a boss fight just before it with the Turks.

-) Skip Date
Could do, but I've already got a clusterfuck of code in the Saucer so I might not be able to do it safely. I'll look into it though. Could be as simple as a dialog option as to whether or not Cloud answers the door when the date knocks.

-) Brass Dragon Fight
There's no issue with restoring X-ATM's MP; I don't think he uses any, but I might be wrong. In any case, maybe an extra line of dialogue could help there.

-) Demon Gate
Lv.21 is very low for that point of the game, most people are hitting that at around Junon. Are you running from every random encounter, or are you fighting now and then? It might be something to do with low EXP yield in the 1.2 build. In any case, most people tend to go through Gate without mentioning it or saying it was easier than they expected. I'll review vids of 1.2 playthroughs to see what he's like.

-) Targeting
It is quite bad in FF7, I prefer more modern games that follow a list of available targets; FF7 is based on where the camera and actors are, which can make it cumbersome to find the right target. I'm not sure there's anything I can do about it though, outside of optimising enemy placements, camera, etc.

-) Jenova Life
This boss was a nightmare in it's hey-day, but suffered from two crippling problems. 1) The unique feature in this fight is 'blind' for the player and will likely catch them out the first time, and 2) She was sitting at the other side of a lengthy event + FMV. Not fun to sit through for repeat attempts. Jenova was nerfed down to using %-based formulas and status ailments as a result; she's quite easy now, but the fight still retains some uniqueness.

-) Remove Disc 2 Message
I developed this mod using the 1998 version 9which asks for Discs, despite not actually needing them on a full install aside for verification), but I clean forgot that these messages would still be there for Steam, 7H, etc. I'll edit the message to something more appropriate as a catch-all.

-) Aeris' Weapons
She's a tricky one, because she has less weapons overall like you mentioned and most of these are tied to 'tiers' bought from stores. I tried to compensate by having Jenova WAR drop her renovated end-game weapon Fairy Tale going into the latter half of the game to try and have her keep up at Costa/Mideel weapon tiers, and I renovated Wizard Staff to be a MAG-boosting end-game weapon though that's harder to find. Boosting existing weapons could work, but with the danger of making other magic users obsolete.

-) Icicle Inn Turks fight
This depends on a lot of things, so I'd say the difficulty here is relative. The effect being given to her and the soldiers is Shield, which will last a long time on slower speeds with Wait ATB but will wear off almost immediately on higher speeds with Active ATB. It also depends if the player brings in Destruct/Holy Torch or some kind of non-elemental damage-dealing/status magic. It's more of a mid-boss than an actual one and it gives some people trouble, while others breeze through it.

-) Icicle Fights
You know, you're right. The Icicle fights were never too hot; maybe something interesting can be done there. I've had an idea just now for it, so that'll be changed up for v1.4.

-) Schizo
They actually used to have different attack animations, but due to glitches that could occur with them I swapped over to 'safe' ones instead. I could change them up again.

-) Seph/Jenova War
I didn't want the first part of it to drag on too long, which is why he has relatively low HP + no gravity immunities; originally, he had a fair bit of HP and the fight as a whole could drag out as a result, as War's AI was already quite heavy with multiple attacks + the supporting allies' attacks. The Relic Ring was specced as an alternative Curse Ring; it boosts stats and provides some immunities to certain elements + statuses, but at the cost of absorbing the Restorative element and some other penalties.

-) Cait Sith Airport
I can change the script and add that dialogue, sure.

-) Tifa vs. Scarlet
I think someone requested that before. If I can make a Scarlet battle model then I guess so. Maybe I could steal appropriate Kalderasha's field model...

-) Where to go next? > Game Script
I left 99% of the game's text and overall story-flow unaltered, but the game has proven over the years that it has fundamental problems (not just the localisation, but the way it was laid out too). At the moment, I'm taking a slightly bolder step in making small tweaks and enhancements to the way the story plays out and the dialogue. There are several key moments in the game where it does a very poor job of directing the player so I'll look into (subtly) improving these instances.

-) Making Remedies available/the norm earlier
I'm not sure, one thing I tried to do was make the regular status-healing items more competitive with Remedy by having them heal the entire party of the status (and have them double-up on certain statuses rather than just the one, like Echo Drops covering Silence + Darkness), rather than being single-target like the Remedy. Also, if Remedy isn't available until later then I can make use of it as a valuable item for drops/chests for the earlier parts of the game. I'll look into status healing balance though; the way I've got it set up at present could likely be improved.

-) Airship Merchant's field model
Could change it, but I kinda like it. I had a black cape dude selling items in the Whirlwind Maze to prevent a possible long-winded back-track to the shop in Icicle Inn, so I moved him onto the Highwind after that as it's onboard merchant.

-) Phys Attacks vs. Magic Attacks
The relationship between these two is a goddamn nightmare. Magic scales early, but physical attacks (at higher levels) leave spells completely in the dust for the vanilla game. I always felt spells should have an edge though due to their longer animation + MP cost, but I also want to keep physical attacks viable. Tough to juggle.

-) Corel Train
This is a very tough segment to balance for time due to it being 'blind' the first time. The timer is long enough, but likely only if the player has a rough idea of which elements to bring in with them. What I could do is have some new dialogue that mentions something about the security detail on the train, which would act as a heavy clue as to which elements will work best (Lightning & Water in this case, due to all but one of the enemies being mechanical).

-) North Corel: 50,000gil Rock
I think I moved Comet to this town, replacing Ultima (which is now called Planet Materia in the latest patch and is won from Extra Battle in Battle Square). I'll check the scrip to see that Comet is actually given, although there is a high chance that I've gotten up to mischief and actually made it a useless rock that he sells :I

-) Fort Condor skip
That would be for the Huge Materia? Could do that, but no promises.

-) Ult Weapon = Camera-Hog
I know what you mean just by description; there's a moment when he blocks the entire camera and I think he turns around (though it's tricky to see with him being so close). I'll look into it, depends how the script is laid out.

-) Cutscene Skip: Mideel
I was thinking about that recently, that the old cutscene skips are maybe a bit too abrupt. The newer ones are integrated better into the scene, like the Midgar Train monitor and the Promise scenes. I'll definitely look into re-doing these so they mesh better.

-) Carry Armor
This guy was a sight to behold back in the day, but he's been progressively adjusted to try and account for the RNG of having a character being grabbed. It should be doable with tier 2 spells,

-) Submarine Mini-game
I could skip it, but it'd be a bit awkward as it determines whether or not you sink the red sub + get the Huge Materia. Dan has been working on fixing this minigame but if you ask me it's always going to be pretty bad.

-) Gelnika
No, you're right about the imbalance here. Originally, the Gelnika is quite tough but has some great gear sitting around as a result. However, in NT a lot of this equipment was moved elsewhere so it has a fairly normal progression as far as item acquisition goes but the enemy strength is still sitting on the same 'spike' as the original Gelnika, so they're disproportionately tough as a result (same with the boss). I'll revisit the place and see what I can do.

-) Last Rocket Battle
Yeah, the solo Grunt enemy. I'll see what I can do about removing/replacing it.

-) Highwind Merchant: Sword
He stocks Mideel equipment, should have weapons for every character (except Aeris). Unless he had something else on him? I'll double-check.

-) Fight Diamond Sooner
Risky, this is a world map event which might not conclude correctly if his fight is triggered from the Highwind instead. That being said, I think his script is actually triggered from a field screen (which I can edit/copy) but I'd need to be careful of any operations happening on the world map when running into him as these can't be viewed as easily.

-) Limit Levels
I set the kill requirements a little higher; I set them lower again, but it seems they're maybe still too high?

-) Bugenhagen's Observatory
I'm guessing this is something to do with me messing around with the text boxes on this screen (it's likely misaligned). I'll investigate this and get it corrected; do your characters have custom names, and if so are they longer than the default ones? That's a potential source of trouble I found out about recently.

-) Turks: Berserk/Confu
A theme of the 'red turks' that's carried over since the very early builds (before the mod was even called NT), was that they use Berserk-inflicting attacks. However, things have changed a lot since then so there's been a problem with players not being able to protect themselves from aggressive use of these statuses (Peace Rings are tricky to find in current NT builds). One thing to remember though is that Added Effect + Mystify Materia will protect against both statuses, if accessories aren't an option.

-) Proud Clod merchant
That's a good idea; the only shop is awkward to get to (up in Shinra HQ). I'll maybe add a vendor beside the save point that goes into the train tunnels and have him relocate to the next save point once Clod is defeated.

-) Goin' South for W-Item
But if I block that off, how will people get the shiny Sense materia I left down there for them :I

-) Hojo
I'll have a look for that attack; I'm guessing it's Absorb, the Drain HP/MP flag is a tad buggy (I think). If that's not the attack, then I'll root around until I find it.

-) Jenova Synthesis, Bizarro, & Safer
These bosses are actually the hardest in the entire mod, and were designed to be tackling parties that had completed a lot of the other content added for Disc 3 (so a Lv.60 party isn't actually far off what I specced it against). But with an artificially leveled team, there's a good chance you'll be missing quite a few things like Equipment & Materia. The stat trees are also different in NT, but these aren't read by the save editor so you might have been fighting with 'default' stat characters (until they level up in-game that is, then it corrects).

It's not recommended to go for these bosses right after reaching Disc 3; Jenova Synthesis was supposed to act as a 'gateway' to the last two battles, which is why the two additional enemies were added behind it to test the player party's ability to juggle with dealing damage, handling status ailments, and keep themselves healed. This is because Bizarro, being a three-party fight, requires a lot of preparation and equipment to match properly. That being said, I'll ask some of the other long-time NT players about these fights and get some specific feedback from them. Bizarro can be a big time-sink if even one of the three parties aren't on par.

-) Boss Names
I've nothing against the original boss names, they were only renamed to accompany the change to their attacks, AI, look, etc. It's something that's carried over from the original focus of the mod, which was remixing boss fights. I didn't give them new names because I thought the old names were bad or anything.

-) End-Game bosses (NT)
There's two long-standing problems with NT's end-game content. 1) It can be unclear where to go or what to do, and 2) The fights aren't scaled for coming straight onto Disc 3 and looking for them, they were scaled for Lv.50-60 parties that have gathered a modest arsenal of the end-game equipment and Materia (from Extra Battle, the Crater, etc). Problem with that is, players don't know what's been scaled for when and they're naturally going to go for new content because it's, well, new. I didn't take these into consideration at the time, which is why I want to revamp the way end-game works in NT. That'll take time, though. If you're playing 1.2, then I suspect these problems (particularly leveling up) will be quite difficult.

-) Yuffie Recruitment
A good suggestion, but the problem is we're on the world map and we need to prevent this encounter from appearing twice. I can't produce script for the world map as there's no dedicated editor at present. For the time being, I need to go with making an actual event on the field.

-) All Materia/Spell-Specific targeting
I could implement something like this, actually. I'll maybe run a prototype of it and see how it goes.

-) Adding New Spells
As of 1.3 (main installer, not in 7H yet) there have been some new spells added but they're mostly attack spells. Combining Debarrier and Dispel into one spell is definitely an option, but I quite like having a cheap spell that removes all protective magic (in 1.3, it also removes Shield and Peerless in addition to Barrier/MBarrier) instead of Dispel which costs a bit more. It'll be on the cards though. As for Blink, I think that would require some somersaults in character AI to get a new 'status' working but could be done. NulBlaze, etc. might be a bit trickier, but same thing; could be done with some AI; spells like that could kill Fire Rings, etc. though.

Whew.

[Doully]

Yeah I'm of the opinion that tackling anything in the crater at level 40 is insanity with NT.

I'll throw in my 2p on the fights at the centre of the planet. Bearing in mind I had a tough first attempt with all three of these but going in a second time with experience (and more importantly, levelled materia - done easily in the swamp room in the crater with triple AP weapons) proved a lot less taxing. Characters were level 70 (exp plus made this a doddle), escort guards/minerva bands/ribbons and ultimate weapons for two of my main three barring Cid. I actually don't think these were necessary but I do still think getting materia mastered was vital. I guess that isn't ideal for folk against the use of magic but oh well.

Jenova Synthesis, Bizarro, & Safer:

Jenova Synthesis: Ribbons made the two adds a lot less effective. Those without ribbons, resist > all would work just as fine. Strong materia such as planet/contain and physical attacks worked well. Chuck a reflect on Jenova if you don't want her healing and stick with physical attacks. I noticed one of the adds could be confused as well.

Bizarro: Hardest out of the bunch but more so a mechanic issue than anything. A lot of people (simply used to smashing him in vanilla with KoTR or Ominslash) don't know that cores need to be destroyed by each party. Make sure each party has a member that can cast cure-all. Planet materia works best here. Multi-hitting, strong damage. An hour tops in the swamp room needed to get enough planets among three parties imo. Quadra magic, w-magic, mp turbo etc. will help but not necessary.

Safer: No issues if you can beat the previous two. Dispel is your friend.

I personally really enjoyed the toughness of these battles. FF as a series is pretty guilty of delivering weak final bosses and I was definitely taken down a few pegs having assumed that if I could beat Ruby, Emerald and the arena bosses that the crater would be peasy.

[Sega Chief]

That's what I was aiming for; if the last few story bosses are scaled below everything else then it can make the finale of the game anti-climactic. Bizarro was also a great opportunity to make a uniquely tough fight using his vanilla mechanics that often go unused either due to high player damage pushing through the torso or some other factor creating a 1-2 party fight instead. Glad you enjoyed them.

[Tom]

There seems to be a random issue with battles in NT, randomly and rarely the game simply crashes after a battle (and even more rare before)
Here's what a crash looks like:
 

[cicadian]

yikes, what OS are you running

[Sega Chief]

Not really sure what's going on there, I've not had any reports of random crashing outside of actual problems in the fight (say, an attack not being set properly). Steam had an issue now and then with alt-tabbing out, but that was a problem with FF7 in general.

[Rufus]

-) Elmyra's (Aerith adopted mothers) Flashback Skip:

Oh okay I will look forward to seeing it (or not as the case may be!), did you manage to keep flowers blooming in the church playing providing I skip the cutscene?

-) Air Buster boss fight: Sleep Duration

Okay it’s not a big deal, I manged to defeat him anyway, I thought maybe you extended the time as it seemed way too long to me, If I recall correctly air buster put cloud to sleep and it must have lasted for half the battle, if it happens next time I will note the time for the records.

-) New Save point under corneo’s place:

Yeah you’d need to check to see if it does do that, you could have a save prompt message instead, or just don’t allow the boss fight until you save the game.

-) Armour issue – Iron Bangle:

Ah okay, I was just surprised to go to many new towns and never upgrade armor, that was my only concern, and that maybe it was a mistake on your part, but if it’s the way it was meant to be then that’s okay

-) Shinra HQ Merchant request - 69th Floor NPC:

Yes I see the convenience in that, so if you die you can load a save without having to re-organise your party, but could you add shopkeep ability to the NPC as I said I had no phoenix downs and potions back then which meant I could never win the next few boss fights.

-) Rufus and Dark Nation Boss Fight:

I can understand the idea that cloud can’t go back and level himself if he’s too low for this fight, that is a good point, I will try out a newer revision to see if things are maybe a little tougher anyway.


-) Rollerball Boss Fight Conflict with model replacer:

As I said I can’t confirm if it is that or not, it may be some other conflict, I should be able to try that out on the next play through though, I will simply choose not to replace that model.

-) Allow boss model replaces

But does your mod allow for compatibility, if I choose guard scorpion to be replaced will it actually replace you ATM in all the places it’s meant to, same goes for rollerball etc, because on my playthrough I didn’t see the new guard scorpion as your new model is different, diamond weapon also wasn’t replaced.

-) Nibelheim Flashback Skip:

Okay good, I look forward to seeing something like that been added, even if the text isn’t perfect.

-) Mythril Mines Merchant

It was more to solve the issue of a broken save file, I consider is a small issue anyway, FF6 used to screw you over all the time, another way to solve it is for you to not be allowed to save your game on the world map in that tiny area between the marsh and the mine entrance, or even better just when you dismount your chocobo there you cut straight to that killed zolom cutscene, but if you did that the mine entrance would have to be blocked as soon as you entered, which makes no sense

[Rufus]

-) Added boss fight: turks in myrith mines:

Yeah that would make a big difference, and if your happy with the music and rude ignoring tifas that’s fine to, it is your mod after all and you can’t change every little detail if you prefer another option.

-) Item/weapon shop in under junon incorrect text:

Yeah that small change would keep everything in line with what it’s meant to be.

-) Dirty bomb addition:

Okay just thought you should be aware that bio magic is now kind of useless due to this item, I’m not complaining, if anything maybe you should get rid of bio materia then?

-) Tifa limit Break targeting: bottomswell boss

I wouldn’t remove the guest fighters just because tifa will harm them with her limit break, but due to that this is something you may have to look into deeper, or think of some clever work around, maybe something like if the guest fighter takes damage from tifa it will only received 0 damage, so in that case the attack will still occur, but just not harm it.

-) Bottomswell Boss illuya wave warning

That would be good, it was the only issue I had with the fight.

-) Rework or skip the CPR mini-game

Thank Christ, have no idea what square were thinking when this mini game was made.

-) Materia shop in under junon:

Okay cool.

-) Hi potions appearing too early in under junon:

You didn’t mention anything about dirty bombs not appearing in shops again from that point on, can you not sell them as common items after this point, or is it exclusive to under junon for some reason

[Rufus]

-) Jenova birth weakness to holy:

Okay so your thinking on adding a holy attack in later, gotcha.

-) Chocobo boss in Mt. Corel

Ah off course, I usually see costa del sol as a resort type town and forget that it stocks items.

-) barrets flashback skipping cutscene:

Okay cool, I’d forget the skip anyway, its only 90 seconds!

-) Cait Sith bribe:

Huh, no I said what you added was a good idea, did you not add cait sith giving your party 100GP to join them? That is what my game had added in, maybe it was the mini games – wonder square mod?

-) Dyne boss fight:

Cool, so you will make it more difficult in later revisions?

-) yuffie banish all spell/Mystery Ninja Fight

Ah I see, when you say event, are you referring to the forced yuffie encounter that will happen instead, if so I really look forward to that.

-) reno and rude at gogondo 1st opportunity

Ah with this I may be able to defeat them at the 1st opportunity then.

-) Stinger’s weakness to Molotov grenades:

off course, it’s your mod afterall, but if you don’t like them maybe you could replace them with another mini boss battle that you actually like instead of leaving the original there as a push over mini boss fight.

-) Materia/Power Soul Keeper boss:

Okay I’ll try to beat him while I’m there on next playthrough, I don’t understand the concept behind an optional boss given that you can visit the same boss with different levels if it’s optional, but it's your mod so...

-) Palmer boss fight:

No, having the shield is cool, I just didn’t even know it existed, later on we hope to put debarrier and despell together as ‘dispell’, which is what final fantasy did after VII anyway, and in this case it makes it an even easier choice to cast that so best to leave as is.

-) Gogondo turks Boss Fight Retry:

As mentioned previously I will be trying to defeat them on first try in newer builds.

-) Extra boss fight – titan:

Yeah was just an idea.

-) Skip date option:

Well he’d still need to answer the door, as he has to leave the room and find cid, and wont the game be expecting him to be with someone, however you structure it I’m sure it will be good.

[Rufus]

-) Brass Dragon Boss battle:

About 2/3rd way through the battle he stops using his special attacks, an in game battle message pops up saying so, I kind of liked the idea of him not being able to fully defeat brass dragon, an extra dialogue box explaning why he’s there would be cool.

-) Demon’s gates boss battle – FAR TOO HARD:

Well as I said I grinded for 1 hour to level 31, and at level 31 I died at the boss fight after fighting him for half an hour, which is way too long for a boss fight anyway, so something is majorly up, I also had no chance of getting to level 32+ as the EXP requirements from 31 to 32 were huge, but going from 30 to 31 wasn’t soo bad.

As mentioned before there may have been an issue with the magic vs. physical attack attributes, I was dealing only 100 on melee attacks and 500 on magic attacks, something like that may also be the cause of the difficulty.

-) Side attack targeting for offensive magic

Yeah maybe you would have to do some hack to make it work, maybe even put both the demons gate targeting in the left side of the screen, even though visually they are on both sides, although it may not look nice when targeting it’s better than trying to deal equal damage to each boss by alternating attacks between the two, and I think that is the best strategy to beat this boss, if something doesn’t get done about this I will likely not bother trying to defeat him that way and just kill one demons gate first, just because alternating attacks is so frustrating.

-) Jenova DECAY Boss in forgotten city:

What do you mean by blind, is that like darkness, whatever it is is there not some curative item you should have for it by then, as far as the boss fight coming before long cutscene, that is a huge problem with all boses in FF7, I have a fix request for that which I will share at the end of this post, if you implement that it will make this a non-issue, also as it is rollerball has the worst case for dyeing and repeating content as you need to go through the whole motorbike mini game again, I will be suggesting to make a save promt after the bike mini game but before the roller ball boss in a later post.

With these things in mind I still think adding maybe a slow or stop attack here and there would bring more challenge to the boss.

-) Remove ‘Insert Disc 2’ Message

That would be great, and yeah FF8 on steam is the same as well, but I don’t think it prompts you to insert a disc, I think for FF8 changing ‘disc 2’ to ‘chapter 2’ would fare much better, as I recall the game would say things like ‘end of disc 1’ and it would say ‘disc 2’ on the save files, anyway if your looking into FF8 that might be a cool thing to add as well, if you can’t remove the prompts for final fantasy VII then changing ‘disc’ to ‘chapter’ might be a decent solution, it at least sounds better.

-) No good weapons for Aerith:

Ah I see I Didn’t pay attention to that drop, I simply looked at the stores and it said they had no new weapons and aerith was stuck using 4 slots, if I attempted to equip her I would have seen I could have used that weapon which has a decent amount of slots for that part of the game, what about armour though, is there any reason why she can’t just use the same type of armour that another party member can use, maybe she can, I don’t know I can’t load up my FF7 installation at the moment.

Slots will matter less if you implement that auto all on most magic feature, bringing final fantasy VII more in line with final fantasy dimensions.

-) Turks Boss Fight Icicle Town

Hmm…I didn’t really bring anything special along, I just waited for her shield to wear off and she was an easy defeat once that happened, I think she and her comrades were all weak to poison so once I threw a dirty bomb it was a case of waiting to win.

-) Gaea's Cliff Crystal Fights x4:

Okay I look forward to playing through the newer revision with this section being reworked.

-) Schizo boss fight:

Ah okay as long as you are aware that one of the animations doesn’t match up with what’s been done.

-) Sephiroth/Jenova battle whirlwind maze:

Yes I think it was good, but for Sephiroth I wouldn’t want anyone to have demi2 yet, as long as that can’t be done everything would be good.

-) what does relic ring do?

Lol could you be more specific, what stats does it boost, what immunities, I did notice that healing actually harmed the wearer, but I didn’t try items, when I equipped it I kind of forgot about it and I wondered why curing was dealing damage to that party member, I thought maybe somehow the zombie status crept into your mod!

-) Escaping junon text add to know where to go/ Cait Sith Airport

That would be great, seriously almost every player would go the wrong way at that point.

-) Extra boss fight Tifa vs. Scarlet.

Yeah if you were thinking on adding a new boss that would fit into the script there would be the likely place.

-) Game tells you where to go next – mideel/Where to go next? > Game Script

Okay thanks, this happens about 4 times in this game, when you first get the tiny bronco, I’m pretty sure the game doesn’t tell you at all to go to the gold saucer, maybe someone in Wutai might tell you, but I’m not sure, most people end up going to Wutai as the next logical step in the game world, however that is far from the truth, some text pointing the gamer in the right direction would be nice.

The second time is the explanation of the temple of the ancients location, its completely not explained that you are supposed to navigate through the small rivers of the west continent in order to be able to reach that, I was thinking an explanation on the world map which would also show the gamer how the camera button shows a bird’s eye view of the area as that view is the best way to navigate through that section.

The third time is when returning to Midgar at the end of ‘chapter 2’,  I believe the game doesn’t tell you to head north and fight the turks, if you head south you end up going down 10+ empty repetitive corridors with nothing useful at the end.

The Fourth time is the one I mentioned before.