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

[Bojankety]

Ah hello, the forum is a bit old so it has some security stuff to protect it against bots. I think new members can't send DMs until they've made X amount of posts in the threads or something. When you unlock DMs by posting, feel free to send one.

Ah, got it. thank you for letting me know. i just wanted to share some of the spreadsheets i created for NT 2.0 and wanted to know if you wanted to put them into your documentations file for everybody.

I also have been documenting some slight imbalances throughout my multiple playthroughs that i wanted to bring to your attention also whenever you get the chance. or whenever i get to the point where the forum will allow me to send DMs. LOL.

most of the things ive been researching have all been done on the Type A playthrough but im sure everything is mostly the same for Type B so i didnt really bother with testing on there.

[Bojankety]

Hello Sega Chief!!!!!!!!!

I want to preface that i LOVE this mod very much as i have been playing it non stop for months but i wanted to take this opportunity to share with you some things i have noticed while playing and wanted to get your feedback on some things when you have the time to review. i enjoy this mod so much that i even made my own personal excel spreadsheets for it. Im not Kidding -_-
All of the things listed below are things i have tested and confirmed MANY times throughout my playthroughs of your GOD like mod during these past few months. Literally!!!!!!!!

Bronze Bangle
 - Only capable of acquiring a maximum of 8 in a single playthrough. Your Mod documentation mentions that all characters start with this equipped initially but Cait Sith and Vincent definitely do not

Relic Ring
 - Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith are the only characters that receive only max stats in either vitality OR Spirit, but NOT both like the remaining 6 characters. They only get +255 for 1 stat and then -1 to the other one for some reason

Risk Ring
 - States in game that it blocks buffs which is true, but also blocks Slow and Stop when viewing character status menu. Haste makes sense because thats obviously a buff, but Slow and Stop are debuffs right? Is this intended? please confirm

Solar Armlet
 - Only capable of acquiring a maximum of 2 in a single playthrough if the player doesn't farm them in the battle square before they receive the tiny bronco and cannot be acquired from enemies. is this intended, please confirm?

Voltaic Armlet
 - same as the Solar Armlet listed above but not as much of a pain in the butt since you can farm them from Stilva in Gaea's Cliff before clearing the Whirlwing Maze, but i figured i would mention it here anyways incase you had thoughts on this one

Tifa's innate ability triggers even when using the timer expires on the Curse ring specifically... i feel like instant death moves is ok to use up her Grit innate ability but since the community notoriously knows about the Powersoul and Curse Ring combo, i feel like the death sentence effect should still allow tifa to die regardless if her Grit hasn't been used yet. Especially since you receive pretty substantial stat gains from having it equipped anyways. let me know your thoughts on this

I noticed some MP Costs for some spells might need to be looked at. One specific example that stood out to me the most is Full Cure. it only cost 45 MP and has the added benefit of high magic scaling and reviving KO party members which is insanely strong, especially on Aerith with her high magic stats, but when compared to Life2, which costs 100 MP and takes a long time to unlock Life2 because of the AP needed, then why would i invest in Revive materia when Full Cure is not that expensive... thats just one example, let me know your thoughts on this one

X-Attack Materia is already MASTERED once acquired but has a sell value of 105,000 gil compared to the other mastered materia you get in the mod which is all standard at 30,000. is this intended, please confirm?

White Wind Enemy Skill
 - your documentation still states that it heals for 50% of what the casters current HP is, but thats definitely not the case. it still heals for the exact 100% amount of what the characters current HP is

Goblin Song Enemy Skill
 - your documentation states that it revives KO'd allies but it does not do that, is this intended? please confirm

Virus Enemy Skill
 - your documentation states it inflicts Dual but thats not true. it inflicts only poison but also does an insane amount of damage. i think it would be better if it inflicted BOTH Poison and Dual, you can keep the damage too. let me know your thoughts on this one.

HP and MP draining effects when it comes to healing characters...
 - MP draining effects like Osmose restores i believe 25% of what was drained from the enemy while HP draining effects are 12.5%. why not have both of them be the same at 25%. an example of it being underwhelming (to me anyway) is the deathblow and HP absorb combo with Tifa very early in the game. The HP restoring effects is SO tiny and makes HP absorb not really worth using at all until MUCH MUCH later in the game, but even then the number is still quite small since you set it at 12.5%

Gil not rewarded on HARD mode
 - I play your mod on hard mod most of the time and while i love the challenge, it definitely makes the Gil Plus materia literally useless. you should make the Hard mode version only give out 25% of what the normal gil amount would be when playing normal mode. maybe even less than that if you prefer. at least that would give the cactuar farming method in the corel desert some life again since you get 10,000 gil each time on normal. AND it would incentivize me to keep Yuffie in my parties more often since she passively gives double gil during battles. what are your thoughts on this because having to farm MANY items early on with steal is quite a time investment when the sell prices of early game items are quite small.


one last thing i was looking into was the overall base stats of each character to help make them feel more unique, which in turn opens up the gameplay to more build crafting potential
an example is that cloud has 4 completely balanced stats, some characters have 3, and some even just have 2, and sometimes some characters have the same favored stats as someone else.
one example is cait sith and cid, the both literally have strength and luck as their favored stats at base. i feel like characters should only have 2 main stats that they excel at and nothing more

I came up with an idea of what i feel that the character favored stats could be... this is just an idea so i would like to know your thoughts
Cloud - Strength and Spirit (literally opposite of Aerith, resistant to magic, with high physical damage output)
Barret - Vitality and Spirit (full on main tank character, hence the high defenses but very low dexterity and luck to mitigate atb speed and critical hits)
Tifa - Strength and Dexterity (straight up physical damage dealer with high dexterity to compliment her speedy martial arts skills)
Aerith - Magic and Spirit (main magic dealer and literally opposite of Cloud, resistant to magic, with high magic damage output)
Yuffie - Dexterity and Luck (should be classified as the fastest character in the game due to her character as literally being a speedy thief and high luck for critical hits and lucky dodges)
Red XIII - Magic and Dexterity (full on red mage since he has the enemy skill materia for magic casting and high dexterity due to him literally being a dog so he should have highest evasion maybe?)
Cait Sith - Vitality and Luck (second tank of the game since its literally a stuffed moogle toy, and high luck since its character is a fortune teller)
Vincent - Vitality and Magic (i was torn with this one as i was trying not to copy another character but since Vincent is mainly a magic user and since he starts each battle with Wall active, thats what i chose. let me know your thoughts on Vincent specifically because he was tough for me to decide on stats
Cid - Strength and Luck (never really been characterized as a magic user so it made sense for him to be a third damage dealer with high luck stats for critical hits)

i posted this a few months ago but your were gone during that time. here is my original post in case you wanted a head start as to what i was researching at the time. i have done much more since then of course. sorry for all the messages.

[Kitaka]

(Sorry for late replies)

Innates are unfortunately handled through Character AI in the Kernel.bin, the tool for which does not have a ready copy-paste function (unlike the scene.bin editor for enemies, which uses the same AI editor but with extra features like that). Changing them will be a case of copying all the values into notepad, deleting them, then manually readding the desired innate one value at a time.

Weapon models can be changed more easily but requires tools like Luksy's ULGP or similar; unpacking the battle.lgp and then renaming some files should do the trick. In this case, you want to make a copy of the file called SACK (this is Sephiroth's Masamune) and rename it to RTCK (cloud's buster sword). The files that go from RTCK to RTCZ are all of Cloud's weapons and can also be replaced in this way, just bear in mind that RTCZ, the Ultima Weapon, applies some hard-coded shading effects to represent its HP property; changing the damage formula in the Kernel.bin will not disable this shading filter.

For materia placements, you use the Makou Reactor tool; there are some steps. The first is to set a group for the materia, this is to store scripts and set a model + anim to. The 2nd is to set the scripts so that the materia model is placed on coordinates on the map, and handles the interact event of picking it up and acquiring it. You can generally copy a Materia's 'group' and paste it onto another field provided there are less than 16 model groups on it already, then update the values like Group Id, add a model, placement coordinates etc. as needed.

Thank you for the detailed answers, much appreciated!

[wdx]

Risk Ring
 - States in game that it blocks buffs which is true, but also blocks Slow and Stop when viewing character status menu. Haste makes sense because thats obviously a buff, but Slow and Stop are debuffs right? Is this intended? please confirm

most likely as time magic, prob a choice of all or none.  slow can be considered as a buff too as it will make likes of positive status effects last twice as long

Tifa's innate ability triggers even when using the timer expires on the Curse ring specifically... i feel like instant death moves is ok to use up her Grit innate ability but since the community notoriously knows about the Powersoul and Curse Ring combo, i feel like the death sentence effect should still allow tifa to die regardless if her Grit hasn't been used yet. Especially since you receive pretty substantial stat gains from having it equipped anyways. let me know your thoughts on this

death sentence effect still kills. just that the hp isn't reduced to 1 when grit activates will be whatever hp she had prior

Goblin Song Enemy Skill
 - your documentation states that it revives KO'd allies but it does not do that, is this intended? please confirm

this was intentional as far as aware, it used do that, however was deemed too op, it also raised enemies which were zombified

Spoiler: show

 which was great for kotr cave boss

depends on
documental is slightly outdated.

Gil not rewarded on HARD mode
 - I play your mod on hard mod most of the time and while i love the challenge, it definitely makes the Gil Plus materia literally useless. you should make the Hard mode version only give out 25% of what the normal gil amount would be when playing normal mode. maybe even less than that if you prefer. at least that would give the cactuar farming method in the corel desert some life again since you get 10,000 gil each time on normal. AND it would incentivize me to keep Yuffie in my parties more often since she passively gives double gil during battles. what are your thoughts on this because having to farm MANY items early on with steal is quite a time investment when the sell prices of early game items are quite small.

segachief had mentioned something like a redo of hardmode called struggle mode in qhimms new threat discord channel.   gil is very easy to come by at all area's is my own thoughts on it gil never really being an issue, from very early game there is a 4 move possible to get 4K gill wholeeaters morph into vampire fangs which sell 900gil and have a steal worth a little bit as well.  if do fort condor and sell the items win there is no need farm gil at all.   no idea why think she gets double gil during battles doesnt here, she has 2 innates, one is charging throw (defend after charged to use) the other innate she has is if in front row she uses mug.
think there was a mention of v2.1.x on discord that was a wee while ago, might be worth waiting before replay for update
segachief has a hard time of trying to balance between all the modes/types inclusive of wether someone plays with or without exp. alongside the new choice in 7th heaven relaxed mode... there is bound to be some gametypes more suited than others for balance purposes.

[Bojankety]

Thank you for your insight. I'll have to join the Discord Server and participate in the conversations there as well. I didn't know that had one tbh.

Risk Ring... Makes sense there because I remember the Slow status effect making buffs like barriers last longer. But is it possible to make it to where slow doesn't do that? Or is that a difficult thing to implement?

Tifa... I still feel that instant death effects should still kill off Tifa even if she still has her Grit available. Because currently this kinda defeats the purpose of equipping any armor of accessories that protect against them since Tifa can always naturally negate it once per battle. Everything else in the game is fine, but personally I just feel that instant death effects should bypass grit.

Gil... I had a feeling that hard mode was a bit tough to balance. During my multiple playthroughs, I've noticed that you don't need to farm for gil at all because right in the very beginning of the game, if cloud gets picked by Don Corneo in Wall Market, you get awarded a Cats Bell, which sells for 50,000 gil. Another instance being when you recruit Yuffie right after the Nibelheim flashback. She has a Sneak Glove by default. That sells for 100,000 gil. And the next instance is morphing Jenova Birth into a Stardust. That also sells for 50,000. So you EASILY have the option of making a butt load of gil even before finishing Disc 1. That's plenty of gil to work with during that time in the playthrough since not a lot of items in shops are that expensive yet.

One other thing I wanted to mention that kinda links with gil farming is the W-Item materia. Because of the stardust item I mentioned earlier, you can get W-Item pretty much right at the beginning of disc 2 and completely eliminate the need for gil farming for the rest of the game. Reason being is because you can morph the razor weeds outside of Wutai into Sylkis Greens right after the events in rocket town. Then, once you loot the chest in Gaia's Cliff for the stardust, just do the W-item glitch and make over 4mil gil each time. So with that being said, is it possible to move the W-item material to somewhere like a post game location instead of right when you get to the great glacier? This could help with balancing the zero gil situation on hard mode by tweaking some of the things you mentioned earlier. Possibly??? What are your thoughts on this?

[Skykitsune]

Little bug report, tried searching to see if it was already reported, but no luck so far.

The 1/35 soldier in Nibelheim can be duped by just leaving and re-entering the room.

I'm on Path B, 2.099994, with Barret and Aeris if that changes anything. You can immediately go to the mines for the reward, too.

[Kitaka]

Weapon models can be changed more easily but requires tools like Luksy's ULGP or similar; unpacking the battle.lgp and then renaming some files should do the trick. In this case, you want to make a copy of the file called SACK (this is Sephiroth's Masamune) and rename it to RTCK (cloud's buster sword). The files that go from RTCK to RTCZ are all of Cloud's weapons and can also be replaced in this way, just bear in mind that RTCZ, the Ultima Weapon, applies some hard-coded shading effects to represent its HP property; changing the damage formula in the Kernel.bin will not disable this shading filter.

Sorry to bother you again, but regarding the model change, I've got a few further questions (managed to replace the Murasame model with the Masamune).
I'm currently using a sort of "submod" for New Threat 2.0, which features a bunch of kernel edits, and I'd like the battle.lgp file to be foldered in there. Though it doesn't seem to work without some tinkering I'm unaware of.
I've tried adding the file via 2 folder structures. First I've tried battle/battle.lgp, second I've tried data/battle/battle.lgp. Since these two didn't work, I've made a backup of the vanilla file and added my modified file into the game folder.
I assume I would need to edit the mod.xml file somehow, to have the submod's file overwrite the vanilla one.

Also, I wonder if it's possible to add another playable character that you could recruit. I though of trying to have one of the Sephiroth clones join the roster (which would functionally pretty much just be Sephiroth) at about the end of the second disc, with custom level curve, stats, etc... I know there are a few mods (such as NT) that let you have Jesse as temporary party character (probably via some hacky solution, which ofc wouldn't apply for my use case, since Sephiroth has a field model, full-fledged in-battle model with all necessary animations, etc).

Sorry again for asking all of this basic stuff, I've just hit a dead end with the search function on this forum. There might be some sort of comprehensive tutorials for modding the game, but for the life of me, I can't find much.

[wdx]

One other thing I wanted to mention that kinda links with gil farming is the W-Item materia. Because of the stardust item I mentioned earlier, you can get W-Item pretty much right at the beginning of disc 2 and completely eliminate the need for gil farming for the rest of the game. Reason being is because you can morph the razor weeds outside of Wutai into Sylkis Greens right after the events in rocket town. Then, once you loot the chest in Gaia's Cliff for the stardust, just do the W-item glitch and make over 4mil gil each time. So with that being said, is it possible to move the W-item material to somewhere like a post game location instead of right when you get to the great glacier? This could help with balancing the zero gil situation on hard mode by tweaking some of the things you mentioned earlier. Possibly??? What are your thoughts on this?

can morph the kyuvilduns mnt nibelheim instead of the razer weeds as alternative option for the stylkis greens.
I've managed a couple of playthroughs on typeB, Hard, noExP enabled without having to resort to witem duplication methods.  around 2 years ago i streamed a playthrough and had asked to remove the witem glitch, segachief at that point of time prefered players to be able to freely experiment with items.  There is a fix for witem glitch available. pretty sure petfriendlyamy  (the person whom released the awesome scarlet utility) had fixed the glitch for one of her mods.  to be fair the

Spoiler: show

silver chocobo

wouldnt normally see if going the 'regular route', its a really nice reward for exploration imo. When doing noExP run, witem is very useful due to the very little hp of characters exception caitsith (who i equip witem on) due to his huge hp pool. rest of other chars can get one shotted a lot so if they attack anyone bar cait result is usually death, witem pheonixdown's occassionally needed, loads more times pheonixdown+hipot,  otherwise need many more menu's for min/maxxing.  I'd hate to see witem moved to late game, i wouldn't mind in the slightest if the glitch was fixed