Insane Difficulty: Final Fantasy IV: The Darkness Within Version 1.07a Now Available! - Insane Difficulty

Version 1.07a has been released! This version includes the long-awaited accessory revamp, further AI changes, spell changes, and more! Please check the Readme for installation instructions.

Click here to download version 1.07a.

Saves from versions prior to 1.07 WILL NOT be compatible with 1.07a. Please start a new game before beginning on this patch version.

Changes for 1.07 are in the Spoiler tags below.



Below are the 1.07a changes:

Just a couple quick fixes to some dialogue/naming issues.

Changes for 1.07a are in the Spoiler tags below.

Modified the original post for the release of version 1.03.

didnt notice a bug report thread so i thought i'd mention it here just so it can be seen, feel free to relocate the coment if needed:

when running through some early game dungeons, commands seem to lock to item on mainly cecil or even give him commands he normally wouldnt have even in vanilla like call/summon (who woulda guessed that cecil was secretly training to become a summoner? XD) other than that nothing major bug wise but the story itself is definitely top-notch

Huh, that's an odd one. Have you tried repatching or ensuring your rom is the correct version?

Unfortunately, I'm traveling this week and do not have access to the mod or my tools, so I won't get to check this and try to reproduce until next week.

Glad you're enjoying the story though.

The same thing happened to me during the Cave to the Eidolons. In addition to Cecil gaining 2 instances of Call, mid battle both Palom and Porom traded their bow and arrows for 2 Holy Claws each. This lead to their melee attacks dealing ~300 damage when Cecil and Cid are both dealing ~60. I thought I grabbed a nonheadered rom, but I'll have to double check to see if that was the issue when I have some time. I took some screenshots for a laugh.

This is about the weirdest bug I think I've had pop up yet. Really bothering me that I can't look into it for another week or so. I wonder if the 1.03 patch didn't create correctly. Definitely retry patching, and if you can get the rom mentioned in the readme to be sure it's clean.

Edit: Also be sure that it's a 1.1 rom as well. For stuff to over/underflow like that is highly irregular.

Edit 2: As long as you load from a hard save it'll be fine.

Aria seems to persist through death for Edward.

I activated it, then a trap door ate him. I was still getting the healing ticks while he was face down. Porom revived him, then his command window came up right after I got another 50 HP tick. The battle ended before I could check if inputting another command canceled it or not.

Edit: I've also noticed that enemies who counter physical attacks tend to not counter a Focus'd attack from Yang.

Synchysi, on 26 December 2015 - 08:27 PM, said:

I think Aria persisting through death is a limitation of the battle system. I would have to dig deep into the hex for that, and I'm not sure I have the experience to make that possible. I'm not sure what it would do to other statuses as well, especially Poison. It will basically continue until the end of the battle. It can only end if you recast it and Edward finishes the channeling of it.

A lot of enemies counter the Fight command, but not others, some counter magical damage, and very few counter all damage. I saw it as a bit of a feature since most secondary physical damage commands (Focus, Jump) take longer to execute and end up being less DPS than just Fighting.

Rynzer, on 27 December 2015 - 06:44 AM, said:

Fair enough, and it's ultimately not that big of a deal. I only bring it up because the Readme implies it'll fall off once he dies.

Rynzer, on 27 December 2015 - 06:44 AM, said:

For me it was less about DPS and more about surviving. I forget what I was fighting, but it countered all physical attacks with a fairly powerful attack, nearly one-shotting my back row characters. Running with one reliable healer for most of the game makes it difficult to keep up with that kind of constant influx of damage, so getting the most out of each individual hit became the priority for me. The boss not countering Focus was just a bonus, but it did make that fight (and a couple of others, I believe) easier.

Due to this, Cecil rarely attacks bosses that counter physicals simply because the damage trade-off isn't worth it. He doesn't hit hard enough (before Excalibur, anyway) to warrant triggering a counter.

Those more mostly just observations, though. I just finished the Giant of Babel, and I've been thoroughly enjoying the mod. Some of the randoms have been pretty brutal (the gator/croc combo is rough with two double-attacking enemies that hit hard, and the four bat formation when it's just Cecil and Edge is just about a game over if you don't run), but overall I feel it's been pretty balanced and fair.

My biggest complaint is the lack of ways to deal with stun. It took me about seven tries to take out Titan - not because I couldn't generally handle him, but because it was over if he managed to stun Rosa. Rydia has the only other multi-target heal, and it's unreliable at best (Cecil doesn't count), so at that point I couldn't keep up with his damage output.

I finish today, so here are my thoughts:
- The story changes were pretty astounding (especially the ending:I'm still in shock, so good job there)

- Battles were insane: counters everywhere, status crippling my team and make me run for some battles (those endgame enemies are at the same level as Atma sometimes) really put me on the game (I ended up playing non-stop three days)

- Maybe you want to check those riddles with those fortune tellers at the moon: I had to check FIVE TIMES all cities and dungeons to find everything

- different playstyles among your party is really apreciated (Kain especially: he's now my personal berserker )

One question: Can I lp this? I'm already doing the final update of my BNW one and I'm bored

I greatly appreciate the feedback!

Several fights in the game are more about control and learning the fight rhythm than flat out dumping damage into the bosses. I believe I know which fight you're referring to and it's one of those kinds of fights.

Cecil is one of the characters I can't figure out what I want to do with. I considered giving him Cure 3 and maybe some other White magic, but I go back and forth on it. To do any real damage though he does need to either hit a weakness, have the Zeus gauntlet, or both. He does somewhat decent damage with the Avenger as well.

Gators/Crocs act faster than their speed stat is set to for some reason. I think I scaled them back several speed points behind other enemies in the area, but yea, they can still be a bit rough. Pretty sure all bats are weak to fire, so Edge's Flame should clean them up.

Rosa and Cecil can both heal Stun with Waken. Remedies will also take care of it should you have any around in a pinch. Titan is optional though, so he's intentionally more difficult than anything in the area where he's found.

ronlyn, on 27 December 2015 - 08:18 PM, said:

Oh wow, I finish replying to one post and get another. Thanks for the feedback!

I'm really glad you liked the story. I wanted to present something that was different, but still decidedly FFIV.

Surprisingly, I actually want to go back to the enemies at some point to make them a bit more diverse, but happy to hear it drew you in.

The riddles were intentionally cryptic, but if you explore towns you should be able to find all the extra stuff.

Playstyles for certain characters were one of the things I really enjoyed adding to the game and would like to refine them in future updates.

You can absolutely do an LP of this! If you do, please feel free to make a topic.

Rynzer, on 27 December 2015 - 08:25 PM, said:

Well that would have helped. I rarely look at Cecil's magic list unless I want to scan something, because his heals aren't worth much. >_> It also probably didn't help that I fought Titan right after taking out the Dark Elf, so my resources were already a bit depleted.

And yeah, I can see how Cecil is in a weird place. He's the one I kept a lot of weapons around for to deal with weaknesses, but for the most part he's just been kind of dead weight in boss fights. I tend to have him cover Rydia then defend or toss items if the boss counters the Fight command.

Also, I had Tiamat hit herself with Flare. It looks like she may not cast Wall if it's already present on the battlefield somewhere.

Edit: The Dragoon spear makes a sound effect like Bolt 3 when you attack normally with it. Is that intentional?

Edit 2: Just finished it. I really like what you did with the story - retelling it but not deviating from the original overarching narrative. The gameplay itself felt well-balanced, though I ended up just running from 95% of the encounters in the final dungeon. I'm usually the type that fights every battle, but they were a real drain on my resources (I say that having not used a single ether or elixir >_>) and just didn't feel worth fighting. Also the monsters that have Charm attached to their regular attacks (Mind, I think?) are a bit much.

I'll certainly be on the lookout for any future versions.

I'd like it if Cecil's cover was powered up some more, but not sure if that's even possible. Like if it boosted his defense so he could tank better. Or it covers even more attacks, dunno. He feels leaning towards not really being good at anything up until he gets his last sword. Master of none instead of a jack of all trades. If he became more defendy, that might help.

I got some suggestions:

- Maybe one of his early equipment post mount ordeals (Diamond Equipment is the last one obtained via shops) can gave him good magic (+5 per item maybe) and decent defense , but with the penalty of reduce his str and vit.

- Another option is give HUGE buffs to said Diamond equipment and gave you as result a permanent tank for the team with sucky physicals.

- Rosa/Rydia would need early equipment (or being able to use some of Edge's options) to do decent damage (especially Rydia and her sluggish ass......I blame FuSoYa!)

- This is out of context but: Can you remake Zeromus? Compare to all the shit I had to get thought the dungeon, he was disappointing (5 min at max to deal with him..... Lvl 64 is too high?)

The editor I use has some kind of bug where you can't effectively change moon enemy scripts (they appear as different attacks with no real rhyme or reason). I need to see if the new version of the editor will allow for changing them. For some reason Tiamat doesn't always recast Wall when it wears off.

Because of the above-mentioned moon enemy script issue I can't really make changes to Zeromus without figuring his script out. I do want to change his stats at the very least to make the fight a bit more difficult. I may also add some additional HP to the final dungeon minibosses via the same method Zeromus uses if I can figure out how.

As for running from final dungeon enemies, they are worth a LOT of experience and also can drop some really nice consumables. There's also a cap of 65535 on EXP from a single enemy, which a lot of enemies hit 60k in that dungeon.

The bolt sound effect is normal for the Dragoon spear. It used to be a rare drop only in vanilla, so many players never saw it. The sound is a bit out of place though.

As far as Cecil goes, I may boost his weapon power on stuff pre-Excalibur and look into some more supporting white magic to give him. Most of his Paladin specific gear does boost Willpower already.

Edit: I accidentally hit the -rep button on Velsper's post (damn you tablet screen), so if a couple people could +rep him I would appreciate it since I can't seem to reverse it.

Rynzer, on 28 December 2015 - 09:09 PM, said:

Well, if it makes a difference, it's not that it's wearing off - it's that she never puts it up, then tries to bounce Flare off herself anyway. I fought that battle a couple of times, and every time I Wall'd someone to bounce MegaFlare, she wouldn't cast it on herself at all.

Synchysi, on 29 December 2015 - 01:02 AM, said:

Hrm, I'll have to take a look at how the conditional for Wall is set up for the vanilla CPU fight. It uses a similar condition for its script.

just beat the game myself as well with the party in the low to mid 60s and i must say it was quite the challenge to face, not necessarily the final boss itself, but the last couple floors on the way there......

i never went after the different secret treasures nor did i grab the bahamut summon but the final boss imo wasnt mandating bahamut anyways, just set up sap via virus (a.k.a bio) have rydia spam flare kain use luck then spam jump as often as possible and rosa i kept on medic duty mainly for big bang but also in case meteor would nuke my team down (luckily he only used meteor once successfully and it only hit edge for around 450 damage)

on a side note tho i am curious as to where bahamut was relocated to, the entrance to the final dungeon getting a location swap to bahamut's chambers was an unexpected touch but i liked it.....

also idk if it was mentioned or not but the dragoon spear uses bolt 3/edge's lightning ninjutsu sound, not sure if that was intentional but i personally like it

LongSword25, on 05 January 2016 - 08:40 PM, said:

Sounds like you enjoyed it. I'm glad!

Spoilery stuff discussed in spoiler tags.


The sound effect for the Dragoon spear was present in vanilla for the same weapon. However, the vanilla Dragoon spear was a rare drop from red or blue dragons (don't recall at the moment), so many people never obtained it. Interesting that you like it as someone else stated that they felt it was out of place.