Insane Difficulty: Updates! (Version 2.00) - Insane Difficulty

Unlike my last few updates, this is a major rehaul. It is intended to make the game more interesting as a whole by providing more options to the players. Because some "fun" can happen if you use old saves past ch 1 or if you utilized the expanded roster (which I had to remove to be compatible with these changes), a fresh start from the beginning is recommended.

1. Quality of life change #1 - Guests are now controllable. Who out there actually liked watching Algus attempt to shoot Bombs with a 15% chance of hitting? Or Delita directly attacking a Goblin and getting Meatbone Slashed twice in the face? Not you, you say? While stupid guest AI helps emphasize to new players that AI doesn't check reaction abilities, and more importantly, doesn't think; now you have no one to blame but yourself if you fail a battle. This change stretches to random battles, so now it's easier to recruit a new unit because you can move it to safety and it's not triggering something's Speed Save for a 15 damage Throw Stone...

2. Quality of life change #2 - Weapon formulas are now listed in weapon tooltips. Because these weren't immediately apparent to everyone, and I've changed several. Most are PA*WP. A tooltips of a more complex formula looks like this:


3. Balance change #1 - Monsters and bosses all have +1 move from previous versions. This is to bring them more in line with human movement options.

4. Balance change #2 - Human C-Ev is now 5% for every class, except Mime which can't equip anything. Monsters and bosses now have significantly buffed evade (between 20-50% for most classes), with more magically defensive and innate reflect monsters at lower evade for the most part. Bosses which are an upgraded version of a regular monster (like Holy Tiamats and Beholders) have the evade of the other monsters of the class, while other bosses get something that seems appropriate. Higher evade in general brings more importance to abilities/innates like Concentrate, unevadable attacks, status effects; and to positioning.

5. Balance change #3 - Improved equipment options. All humans can now equip, regardless of class: Dagger, Shield, Bag, Ribbon, all Accessories. The addition of the shield to all classes is partly to make up for the evasion hit humans received, and partly to bring a more significant tradeoff to the use of offensive abilities/equipment. In addition to this, several additional item options, which are now in tooltips of the class like this:


4. Balance change #4 - The best movement abilities (Move +2, Teleport, Flee) were moved deeper into the job tree (to Samurai, Summoner, Bard/Dancer respectively). Several abilities that are decent, but not as good as these (such as Fly, Ignore Height, Move MP UP) were moved sooner in the job tree. This is to encourage use of other stuff earlier in the game.

5. The change you've all been waiting for - upgraded monsters! The third tier of most monster types has been revamped to provide a monster with an actual skillset. Boco is the first one of these available, then Mustadio, the rest are in ch 3 and 4. Recruit locations have been swapped a bit to make up for this change. Details in a later post.

6. Malak is now a Tiamat instead of Hyudra, due to the upgraded monster change. Rafa and Malak now both have the Elemental command, in addition to their upgraded stuff.

Guide to Upgraded monsters (minor spoilers below):

Chocobo - The Chocobo's upgrade remains primarily a speedy support class, with a side of offense. It can buff, revive, heal, remedy; and has instant single target magic in Meteorite along with physicals Missile and Tail Swing.

First available - Boco (ch 2). Recruit - Germinas South

Goblin - Goblin's upgrade is primarily a glass cannon, with a side of status. Skillset combines several Monk and Engineer/Dragoon skills, along with the previous classes' exclusives. And yes, it can double punch now!

First available - Mustadio (ch 2). Recruit - Zeklaus East

Bomb - Bomb's upgrade is a bulky offensive fire/time mage, with the signature Self Destruct. It has a slow nuke spell in Merton, impressive single target damage with Triple Flame, and a fast Spark. Support spells from the Time Mage set (haste 2/slow 2, stop, float, reflect, quick).

Recruit - Bervenia Volcano North

Panther - Panther's upgrade is a mostly offensive status unit. It remains the only reliable Blood Suck user. It also gains Protect 2, Dispel, and Spell Absorb; in addition to several negative statuses.

Recruit - Doguola East

Squid - The Squid's upgrade is another offensive status unit, similar to the Panther only with a different grouping of status and Shell 2. It keeps its signature Toad 2, along with regular Squid stuff like Aqua Rake.

First available - Delita (as guest only). Recruit - Finath East

Skeleton - The Skeleton is a bulky undead unit, with several status effects, support options, and summon spells. It now takes 1/2 damage from most elemental attacks (still absorb Dark/weak Holy like most undead though), aiding its survival.

Recruit - Yuguo East

Ghost - The Ghost upgrade has a large skillset with several extremely situational moves. It is now the only unit capable of breaking all stats in addition to items. It can also reliably set Cursed and Sleep, and has several offensive damage spells and a physical drain move.

First available - Orlandu (ch 4). Recruit - Poeskas South

Plague - The Plague upgrade is primarily a support set, with the ability to heal large amounts of MP with its Mana Battery, and several positive status effects. It also has the rare combination of Esuna and Prayer, and can break MA/Brave.

Recruit - Grog Hill West

Bird - The Bird upgrade has most of the moves from the Steal and Talk Skill sets, in addition to standard Bird stuff like Wish and Pillow Fight. Because of its new moves, it can now use the Hamedo/Berserk combination effectively with Insult. Also provides a monster option for stealing gear in the battles where this is relevant.

Recruit - Grog Hill East

Flan - The Flan upgrade is primarily a support unit. It can break PA/MA, revive, buff, heal status and HP, dispel, and interrupt. Due to its natural immunities and MP Switch, it can be difficult to kill.

Recruit - Finath West

Tree - Another slow support unit, the Tree is a physical tank with revival, healing, and buffs. It has an offensive move in Mimic Titan, and due to its lack of MP is effectively immune to Difference/Ignite.

Recruit - Zirekile East

Bull - An offensive unit, capable of MP breaking, ranged equipment breaking, PA/Brave breaking, and doing large amounts of damage with Quake and its physical moves.

Recruit - Doguola West

Morbol - A tank, capable of setting every bad status with Bad Bracelet, and doing large amounts of damage with Meteor. It can also buff allies with Lick and Good Bracelet.

Recruit - Dolbodar West

Behemoth - An offensive magic caster, gets several elemental spells, the multi-hitting Space Storage, and defense ignoring Ulmaguest. It gets a few support options in Regen 2, and can set both Faith and Innocent.

Recruit - Poeskas North

Dragon - The Holy dragon is a potent anti-undead unit, with the ability to cast Holy and several healing spells.

First Available - Rafa (ch 3 guest/ch 4 join) Recruit - Doguola West

Tiamat - A mostly offensive unit with the potent Mbarrier and Mana Battery for support. Note that Mana Battery is significantly weaker on Tiamat than Plague due to the MA difference. Is capable of doing impressive single target damage, and has instant 3 direction attacks.

First available - Malak (ch 4), Recruit - Germinas North

Apanda and Byblos - Fast, mostly offensive with some support options. Apanda gets the Dance set and Byblos gets the Sing set, in addition to their other sets.

Recruit - Dolbodar East

Emmy, on 03 October 2015 - 09:25 PM, said:

Oooooooooh!

Can't wait to try it! At Kletian on this run so going to finish the last few fights up then start a new run.

Things are a lot easier with controllable guests. Getting Mustadio to disable a unit when I need him to makes an enormous difference.

The net difficulty of the game as a whole went down a bit because of these changes. However, since they're fun/interesting changes, that's why I did them. Don't get me wrong - most people will find some of the battles quite challenging, particularly late into the game.

Really looking forward to playing this, thanks for all your hard work on it Emmy!

**Version 2.01**

1. Lowered cost of items dramatically. Why? Flavor wise it suits the game. Monsters don't use items, so who are they going to sell them to? While the basement shop is a largely illegitimate operation selling broken/stolen goods, the regular stores are barely staying afloat and can use whatever gil they get. Balance reasons, though, is because the old prices were based off of vanilla's, which largely didn't make any sense. Cheaper items leads to more experimentation. And better quality of life, since you're not grinding just to get a new armor for 19 more hp.

2. Fixed a couple tooltips here and there that were wrong. A few things still had older tooltips descriptions, that are no longer relevant.

3. Improved animations on a few moves (Sorcery, Wings).

4. Battle rebalances! Now, while the game nets a bit easier than previous versions, there were a few weird difficulty spikes early game due to the effect of having more of these upgraded units around. This new version aimed to fix that. Some battles needed a slight nerf anyway. Note that none of these battles were impossible, however it doesn't quite fit the game to see something that's a 6.5-7 on my scale in between 3's and 4's... Possible spoilers:

Ch 1:



Ch 2:



Ch 3:



More changes like these will be made in later versions.

**Version 2.02**

1. Mimic Daravon should be working again (was casting Shell, now casts Sleep as normal).

2. Throw rehaul! Since the game froze in some circumstances when throw was used, and it was already a kinda mediocre skill to begin with, a new skill is in its place now. Vanilla's throw formula is speed * wp, and with speed being a constant in this game, this meant that throw did the same damage regardless of your level. Throw was most useful for unconventional uses (throwing butterknife at sleeping/charmed/confused units you can't reach with remedy, or throwing elemental balls at dragons and chocobos to give a minor amount of healing and trigger their reaction abilities). New Throw skills retain these tactical uses, while being more useful in more situations due to their new properties:

Throw Coin: Damage = PA, most physical triggers, unevadable. This retains the use of throwing weak items (Butterknife), while being more useful since it's unevadable. Does not actually cost gil to use.

Smoke Bomb: Adds Transparent/Defending, more of a flavor thing requested by one of my players.

Throw (element): All these abilities are both magical and physical, and have several properties of both/neither. Unevadable, ignores defense (damage reduction/protect/shell), but triggers most reaction abilities (Countergrasp, Flood, CM). Some fun facts: Boosted by elemental +, but not by atk/matk up. Ignores Golem. Unevadable, but blade grasp stops it. These abilities retain the uses they had before (triggering reaction abilities + elementally healing), while being much more useful because the player can buff their damage.

3. Battle changes:

Ch 3/4:

**Version 2.03**

1. Elemental absorption has been changed a bit. Every monster type with the exception of the Flan group now absorbs an element. Every monster type with the exception of the elemental bones absorb only 1 element. Each element now also has 2 monster types, not including elemental dragons or the Steel Giant.

2. Throw skills given to the Demon group. Cure 1 and Life 2 given to Plague. A few other changes like this might be made in a later version, just need to decide on what...

3. Battle edits:

Ch 3:



Ch 4:

**Version 2.04**

1. Eventing change #1 - Events in Mandalia Plains, Araguay Woods, and Zaland Fort City have been changed to make it more obvious which option the battle has been designed/balanced around. There is no permanent brave/faith modification in the game at all (this change has been made very early in development), so there's no tangible benefit towards saving a guest unit that'll probably die in 1-3 hits. The brave penalty from Araguay has also been removed, to further reduce confusion. I know this isn't the most graceful solution, but it'll do for now.

Araguay looks something like this now: (possible spoilers)



2. Eventing change #2 - Balk 1 no longer poisons all units (including ones immune to poison) at the start of the map. It's not like this battle is lacking in difficulty ( ), but the main reason for this change is it's not exactly intuitive to the player to be unable to block this effect with units that are normally immune.

3. New enemy Creeper added to random battles, and somewhere else...

4. A few moveset changes here and there. Holy Dragon receives Odin, Explosive receives Nanoflare, a few other things like this.

5. Some minor changes to CT and accuracy on a few moves.

6. Battle changes ch 4 (spoilers):



7. Not really a change to the game, but the patch is now bundled with a faq. This faq is a work in process. Faq updated through ch 2 enemies so far. Anyone who has any ideas what else they'd like to see in the faq, please mention it. I've been skirting around the text limit in the game, so this helps in case I need to delete something else to make room for more thorough tooltips.

**Version 2.05**

1. Blood Suck fix - Blood Suck no longer has pathetic (~8%) accuracy, now has a more reasonable 110 base (~55% accuracy with 2 neutral targets at 70 fa). A character inflicted with Blood Suck no longer does unblockable fractional damage, now attempts to inflict Blood Suck on the nearest target with a higher faith based accuracy (200 base, ~98% accuracy with 2 neutral/70 fa targets).

2. Subtle bugfix - AI should now properly consider some physical attacks that it wasn't considering as often before.

3. More interesting physical moves - Bomb group now has Grease Bomb in place of Missile (Range 3, AOE 1, proc Oil). Nanoflare replaces old Grease Bomb on Firework. Bird group now has Focus Punch (Range 1, CT 2, power +4), which basically works as a slightly faster Charge +4. Bull group Shake Off now absorbs HP. Ghost Throw Spirit now procs Darkness.

4. Cure 3 replaced with Rejuvenate - a PA based heal with a much better formula = (PA+5)*PA, but is now a tad slower and with a slightly higher MP cost. Spirit of Life is also PA based now = (PA+2)*PA. These heals are unreflectable, and operate in many ways similar to physical attacks. Reverses on undead, boosted by Attack Up/Martial Arts, halved on units with Protect (ignores Damage Reduction though), boosted on units who are charging/frog, etc. These moves are notably better for most of the monsters that use them with a couple exceptions, and notably better on a human with a PA loadout, but a bit worse on pure mage/tank setups on humans.

5. Some multipliers on human classes changed a bit. Priest is now a hybrid pa/ma class (100 multiplier in both). Extreme differences (such as the old Wizard with 25 PAM) reduced a bit. This allows for more interesting setups.

6. Flavor text notably trimmed in a few areas. This is because I hit the text limit in a previous version.

7. Eventing at Bethla Sluice changed a hair. Ramza is no longer required to pull the levers, any unit can now. As an alternate victory condition, you can also defeat one of the boss units there. Note that the events look slightly derpy (weird camera angle) if you use a condition that didn't exist in vanilla.

8. Battle changes:

Ch 4:



9. More added to FAQ - a note on formulas used in the game.

**Version 2.06**

1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL! Today marks the 1 year anniversary of my first playable demo, so time for a big update!

1. New moves - Plenty of redundant moves have been uprooted for something more interesting. This includes new status effect setting moves, AOE physicals, more hybrid pa/ma attacks, etc. Check the tooltips on each attack as usual, since some attacks (especially the hybrids) have weird flags. New moves have been given to several monsters and bosses as usual. There's too many here to list individually. And yeah, since I hate naming things, several of them are named after Pokemon and D+D moves.

2. Since I have plenty of new moves, several upper tier playable monsters have been upgraded into something better. Revenant no longer has the break skills, for example, now has more offensive damage moves.

3. Fan request! 100% more moogles! Moogle sprite red and yellow colors replace the Monarch class's sprite, while the other 4 colors are used for the other rare Moogle.



4. New enemy classes, Phane and Nymph, added to random battles and somewhere else...

5. You can now tooltips ??? enemies. Thanks Xifanie! The HP/MP/CT totals are still ???'d out, because the option to remove this will only display the last 3 digits of something's HP, which could be potentially misleading. (For example, a boss with 9345 hp would display as 345; so I kept the ???'s here) For an example of how this looks in game (possible spoilers):



6. Battle conditionals changed at Rooftop, Limberry Gate, Elmdor battles to "defeat all enemies." Rooftop/Gate are still easy for the mod, but no longer pathetic. Elmdor is now pretty hard.. ^_^ Since now you not only have to defeat Elmdor, but also his cohorts and what they turn into..

7. Learn on hit list added to FAQ.

8. JP gains significantly improved for humans. Gain JP up innate for all human classes.

**Edit** 2.06a is the fix for any issues that might arise with the unhide-??? feature and multiboss battles. Screenshot series (spoilers):

**Version 2.07**

1. Power on Stone Edge and a couple other moves reduced a hair.

2. Since they're currently not used anywhere in the mod, but still can appear as battle spoils, descriptions on the old Shuriken/Ball items have been changed to something silly.

3. Oil should be working again now!

4. Battle changes (ch 4):



5. Bug that caused Bethla Sluice to win itself has been fixed. Now requires Ramza to pull the switches if you're doing that, however beating a boss will still trigger the win.

6. More physically painful puns, like this one:



7. A note for the technically challenged added to FAQ. (tl;dr - Don't update over previous patches or other mods. Saves are not compatible between vanilla, 1.3, or any other mod and this one!)

**Version 2.08**

1. Crappy consumables (Soft, Eyedrop, etc) revamped to better ones. Here's a list:

XXX - Cancel Faith, Innocent
Rubber Hammer - Cancel Protect, Shell, Reflect
Poison Ivy - Add Poison
Plague Skull - Add Mist
Soap - Cancel Oil

2. New optional battles! Colliery, Nelveska, Zarghidas completed. Minor spoilers about these added to Faq.

3. Sprites in random battles for Lucavi and a couple other boss classes changed for consistency. Lucavi all now use palette swaps of the same thing, and the other bosses that used these changed to something else.

4. Battle changes (ch 4):



5. Low end (ch 1) daggers' power reduced a hair.

Ooh! Will definitely update as soon as I start Ch. 4.

**Version 2.08a**

1. Worker 8 now has Draw Out instead of Item. This fixes a bug where the game sometimes soft locks if he uses item at a weird angle or invalid target.

2. Any weirdness surrounding Draw Out should now be gone.

3. Several animations improved so monsters should now cast Yin Yang magic without the same animation errors as before.

4. Gaf now has item at Araguay.

**Version 2.09**

1. Human Mustadio is now a Dragoon. He is guaranteed now to be a hair less pathetic than he was in previous versions. This is both to free up a class slot, and to improve him.

2. Equipment has been changed. Several items that you get in the beginning of the game have been improved to hold relevance later in the game. This also helps the player, gaining status protection earlier than in previous versions.

3. Level cap = 75 for players, 99 for enemy. I did this for several reasons:

a. In deep dungeon, enemies are frequently equipped with items. The player can no longer overlevel to where the effects of these items no longer apply.

b. The damage to hp ratio is highest at lv 1 and lv >80 (due to hp growth being linear and most formulas being quadratic). At very high levels, ohko's are far more frequent than in the rest of the game.

c. It's actually a safeguard for a certain late game boss. Not going to spoil why here, but let's just say it's much more manageable if your lv <75.

4. 2nd squad is no longer mandatory. This is for you challenge runners out there. If you hate yourself enough to attempt Balk 2 with only 3 units, you don't need to separate them in 2 groups anymore.

5. Faq updated with notes on Deep Dungeon and difficulty in relationship with the scope of the mod.

6. Battle changes:

Ch 4:



Deep Dungeon:

**Version 2.09a**

This version only affects the Deep Dungeon.

1. Spike traps completely removed from DD. Whoops.

2. The Move Find that was still a Feather Mantle is no longer a Feather mantle. Whoops.

3. New battles!

Nogias 1:

Undead Super Moogle - Reward for this battle is a Ribbon.

Nogias 2:

Tonberry variety pack/mob - Reward for this battle is a Kaiser Plate.

Nogias 3:

Uber Impure King - Reward for this battle is a King's Spear. You can even steal a 2nd one from him if you wish.

Mlapan 1:

Explosive variety pack - Reward for this battle is a Blaze Gun.

Horror 1:

The Inquisition (Impure King/Holy Tiamat) - Reward for this battle is a Zorlin Shape.

**Version 2.10**

Last update of the year 2015!

1. Several buggy ASM have been fixed, one that did something super illegal has been eliminated entirely. There's still one ASM with errors, but enough has been fixed to make this mod now playable on psx emulator in addition to epsxe. For those who have been having emulation problems, try this version and let me know how it goes. Thank you insaeno and the people of FFH. For the more technically inclined, a description of the problem can be found here: http://ffhacktics.co...p?topic=11191.0

2. Equipment supports have been removed. All humans can now equip all items. In light of this change, a few minor stat tweaks were made to all classes. The reasons for this change are as follows:

a. The asm that reorganized the supports to something that made sense for the mod did something illegal.

b. Encourages mixing and matching classes and equipment for their innate abilities. The mod already opened more equipment per class than did vanilla. This has a net effect of making some battles a hair easier due to giving the player more viable options.

c. Opens up some support slots for when I get better with asm.

3. New DD battle - Valkries 1 - "Ghosts of Christmas Past" Reward for this battle is a Plague with Steal secondary, and whatever you can move find/steal off the enemy squad. Good luck!

4. Random battles are about 1/2 way done with this change. Randoms 2-4 are more likely to produce more interesting enemies. Harder enemies will drop ch 4 equipment. Notable randoms will be updated here later.