Insane Difficulty: I (kind of) Give Up: Ultros 1 - Insane Difficulty

OK, is Ultros really supposed to be this hard? He hits my party fast, he hits it hard, and I don't seem to have any time to recover in the slightest, let alone do meaningful damage in return.

He seriously gets in 2 attacks for almost every 1 action by my characters, more if they're actions have a longer buildup (like Miracle), the seize/let go nonsense is incredibly random (sometimes he'll only hold them for 1 round, sometimes 5 regardless of the damage I do to him), he loves to use flood and heal for ~350 HP often, and I can't prevent pig status on more than 1 person because I only have 1 white cape. I've tried every strategy I can think of, including vanishing key party members, dispelling Ultros, and just going straight at him (including busting a fire rod on him for ~3k damage), but nothing seems to buy me enough time...

Please tell me there's a really easy way to get past this? Or that I triggered some kind of AI bug? Because this seems like I need to be WAY more powerful to get past, but I'm already probably over-leveled (party is at ~13/14).

So are you also playing on the Casual difficulty ?

If so, I also had a time with him...I had to reply that battle a few times with save states.

Though once a had a few ways to cure the "PIG" status it was not so bad.

You really have to take your time with the battle...he will counter after most attacks so you have to space them out.

* doing 3 attacks back to back will always give you a game over *

Unsure if I grinded up to level 25 ~ 30 at that point in the game, but most of the beginning bosses are really tough.

That, or I am missing a lot of hidden equipment/relics ^_^"

I feel like at those levels, things would be doable (just based on my HP alone), but everything thus far has been very manageable without obscene amounts of power-leveling.

I think I've gotten most everything so far, so I should have a full arsenal of tactics to choose from, but I'm not sure the "go it slow" strategy helps. I'm playing on the regular difficulty, which I knew would be difficult, but even when I had to space out my attacks more, Ultros was still spamming like no one's business, with no obvious way to stop him. I actually never thought the counters themselves were that bad really, it's all the nonsense that's going on in between that's really frustrating.

magictrufflez, on 30 August 2016 - 04:13 AM, said:

Almost 100% sure that he counters attacks with something when you attack, if you attack relentlessly in the worst of the cases you risk to make him act twice of the times(4 attack -> 4 counter attacks + 4 turns).... a barrage of 5-8 attacks is definitely a suicide.
The priority is staying alive, then it comes beating ultros.
If a character does few damage to Ultros, then it's better to not make him attack, or even act(even defense is a strategy), leave him in back row and make him support allies using Pizzas or stuff.
You said you have a Fire rod? if Aurora can equip it, then it's better give it to her and trying to attack, hoping the procs triggers
(if i'm not wrong if you do that in front row it doubles the damage both of the attack and the procs)

OK, I literally went as slow as possible (only allowing Aurora to attack with her flame rod and hoping to god it procs), but it was still a ridiculously close call. The only reason I won was because Ultros ran out of MP and ended up wasting turns trying to heal himself--I was literally out of healing items by the end, and actually had to break the fire rod on him to finish the fight anyways.

Outside of the Fire Rod, which is technically missable once you get on the raft, the only other way I can see winning that fight is with Astral's thunder rod procs and a metric ton of potions. And that's only if he doesn't get "seized" by Ultros for a long period of time (or the whole party doesn't get confused after a "discard" by rock barrage, also a bit of overkill IMO)--hell, I was lucky Aurora didn't get "seized", otherwise I'd have been back to square 1.

Honestly, this was probably the first fight in this hack I kind of call BS on. I watched Tenkarider's video of him fighting Ultros in an earlier version, and it was nowhere near as hectic as this seemed to be, although it still looked difficult. Regardless, it did not seem like it relied totally on RNG luck with procs and enemy targeting to win like it felt for my fight.

/endrant

magictrufflez, on 30 August 2016 - 06:48 AM, said:

Well, at least you won! now decide carefully which scenario to do first.

PS. watching my video it didn't sound that terrible that fight, does Astral still know Miracle command?
But yeah, Seize as new move is kinda dangerous there(don't remove it in future releases, Gi Nattak!!)

Tenkarider, on 30 August 2016 - 11:25 AM, said:

Really, if you tinker with the AI a little, this fight could be 100% more manageable while still being difficult and not feel cheap. Something like putting a damage trigger on 'discard' (like ~500ish) or at least not allowing the automatic rock throw follow-up to target the party (or even getting rid of that altogether, TBH). If that's even possible of course.

I just really don't think I should have only barely been able to beat Ultros with a good-leveled party and a full array of tactics available to me through sheer luck, that's all. And NOW I promise to stop beefing about the fight.

I'm keeping a save at the scenario choice point, but planning on the traditional Ronan-Cloud-Everyone Else route and see what happens

@magictrufflez

Glad to hear you were able to overcome this boss !!

I recall the end of cave and cave-bridge fight to be just as difficult.

But if you are still under level 30 and beat ultros...you should be able to grind it out ^_^"

Just try to grind a little money for items in the next scenarios'

Do whatever you want but don't choose Aurora scenario if you really ran out of healing items, because there is no shop, and you potentially put yourself in danger in that case

Yeah, I'm actually at a giving up point now. I made it to the Raider fight in Ronan's scenario, and I think I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that this hack is not for me.

When most of my party is getting hit with stop on a regular basis, I don't have any way to remove it, and it lasts forever, I think I'm going to say Uncle rather than just watch as my characters are continually slaughtered yet again. I love you all, and the obvious amount of work that went into this hack, but IMO some of this balancing is a bit on the cheap end, and it's super frustrating.

Maybe I'll give it another shot in the future, but I think I need to stop now for my blood pressure's sake.

magictrufflez, on 30 August 2016 - 07:34 PM, said:

Oh, i see... who was Raider, anyway?
PS. stop actually ends after a long time, the way to remove it is dispel... if i'm not wrong there was an equip who taught the spell early in the game, another good idea was keeping as much Dispel Rods(it was another name) as possible in the inventory and break them in battle(AoE dispel) in case of emergency

Raider (maybe Maurader?) was the last fight in the imperial camp--he came with 2 grunts that would respawn after a short amount of time once killed.

I had 1 diffusal rod, and had taught Terra Dispel long ago specifically to prep for enemies using stop, but no one in Ronan's scenario (at least up until that point) could equip it. Of course, by this point I had zero access to additional rods, and no access to additional stuff outside the orphanage. I'm not going to lie, I kind of have a problem with effectively forcing a strategy that requires you to stock up earlier on expensive rods to counter stop-spams you likely aren't aware are coming. The stop nonsense has hosed me in every one of my ~10 Raider tries, and I've tried every strategy I can think of with the characters I have (primarily with ninja scrolls).

I really do hope Gi takes a look at some of the AI stuff, because I really did feel that Ultros and the more stop-spammy bosses in areas where I can't do much additional resource farming feel a bit cheap. Really, I find the regular fights to be very well balanced and the hacked in changes to be pretty great too, which does make me a bit disappointed to at least take a break.

What difficulty are you on?

I remember there was an helm and an armor and one of those 2 taught vanish, the other dispel and they were found early in the game.

Never farmed Diffusal Rods early in the game, actually i kept them to cast on enemies, i never had the need of using them to heal myself from stop

@magictrufflez

I understand friend...on Casual, to beat most bosses, I usually have to power grind to get past the bosses in this hack.

In order to get past the boss you have mentioned, I had to grind the party to around 40 ~ 50.

More or less make it impossible for the boss to drain your HP.

It is unfortunate that these beginning of the game bosses feel like end game bosses...but it appears that is what the hack is.

Maybe with the upcoming 1.6.1 patch will balance the Casual difficulty a bit.

In all honesty I can't imagine how it'd take level 50 for anything until maybe at the Floating Continent, maybe... and for the easier/casual mode which shouldn't be too far from the range of the original game, well in terms of the monster stats at least, I'm a bit shocked to hear that. I'm not trying to talk down to anyone at all who has trouble getting through this hack without much leveling and/or pain & suffering, but things aren't that difficult imo. I mean it can be in terms of the bosses being much more busy and unforgiving or even cheap, but having nice character set-ups and implementing some strategy outside of the normal cookie-cutter spamming of skills and maybe dying a couple times and coming back with better knowledge of the patterns should do it. These RotDS characters are fairly stronger than their original counterparts, and the items/relics are better to help with these bosses. Characters level faster as well to cut down on the grinding time if need be and the tediousness of that.

There will always be the players that seem to have little troubles with this hack, and then others that are the polar opposite and might just be used to owning FF6 so hard that anything else seems outrageous lol, that's just the way it is. But yeah the Casual difficulty was supposed to greatly aide with this and encourage fun and easy progress instead of much challenge or need to grind - feedback is definitely important still, if you guys feel something is too much even still for casual I'd love to hear what exactly and this goes for all the difficulties. Like if something feels especially too cheap. I understand about Ultros being a bit much there, but again I must say that personally I didn't experience having that hard of a time with that battle, and the others that I played multiple times when testing. So I don't want to nerf just for the sake of it when there could be a way to avoid or defend or get past/survive something in its script - but your points are valid, magictrufflez, and I do respect your opinions and feedback guys.

Getting an update ready still, the issue with the status menus for easy and hard reading wrong is the last thing to go and hopefully Madsiur can get it workin' right this weekend.

break, on 31 August 2016 - 02:25 PM, said:

According to my previous run, ROTDS doesn't sound that type of hack, one day i should verify it with my own eyes.

Gi Nattak, on 31 August 2016 - 11:36 PM, said:

Time to download the hack before it happens

lol before I go and nerf everything again?

Oh, and I was just thinking... I bet using the atb patch increases the difficulty a lot compared to not using it, as having the characters charge their bars while the monster does its attack is much kinder to the player indeed. And I'm pretty sure magictrufflez had it applied. That's what I bet it is, I'd definitely recommend playing on Casual with it applied. I've yet to play it with the atb patch applied but I can imagine this being pretty treacherous at times due to the bosses being so busy.

Gi Nattak, on 01 September 2016 - 12:00 AM, said:

Yes