Insane Difficulty: Some Comments - Insane Difficulty

Hey, first off I want to say, thanks for the hard type mod. It's been a lot of fun and really breathed a lot of life into my latest Chrono Trigger playthrough. I haven't beat the mod yet, currently working through the Black Omen with a party of Magus / Marle / Ayla. I'm much too lazy to write a full play through write up, but there was some comments I wanted to make.

Marle - I used Marle all game. Not because she's my favorite character, but because Haste is really damn good. Early on she's a little fragile, but her massive MDef helps makes up for that; I found the most dangerous attacks in this mod to be primarily magical. Once you can unlock magic seals, you can turn Marle into a impenetrable wall of Haste and Life 2. Safe Helm / Aeon Gown / Gold Earring is the set up is used before I could get my hands on enough HP and a Prism Dress. I stopped subbing in the occasional elemental mail and am using Valkerye / Safe Helm / Prism Dress / Amulet full time. The Valkerye buff is really nice, it makes Marle's physical attack pretty useful in tough normal encounters. It also makes me even happier I gave Marle all my speed tabs.

Physical Attacks - So far, I've found physicals to be generally subpar. There are a few instances I found them to be pretty good though. Beserker Ayla is really good for normal encounters throughout the game (and a few bosses). Oddly enough, Magus and a dead ally or two can wreak havoc with DoomSickle attacks; I'm finding this to be quite useful on my way through the Black Omen. Counterattacks from Rage and Frenzy Band don't cause counters (that includes Def increases and stuff like that), which make them very good against certain bosses and enemies. And as stated above, Valkerye is pretty nice. I'm sure Rainbow + Prism Specs/Berserker Crono is pretty strong, but I wouldn't know for sure; Crono got benched when Magus came around.

Magus - Magus has been great. Once I got Magus and learned Dark Bomb, it became the primary source of damage for my party. His Gloom gear from Ozzie's Fort has been beefed up quite a bit. Status Immunity, Auto-Shell and huge shadow resistance make Magus very beefy himself. I've been switching between Prism Specs for Dark Bomb damage and Frenzy Band for 3x damage counterattacks with two dead allies. The damage output of DoomSickle and Frenzy Band has been extremely impressive.
I haven't gotten Dark Matter yet, but I'm hoping it will do some good damage.

Retinite - I'm not sure if this was intended, but you can kill his Core by healing it. A strong enough Dark Bomb (mine healed for around 2500 with Prism Specs) will kill it. You can do it with two weaker Dark Bombs + Haste as well. Despite this, I actually found Retinite to be the hardest boss out of the side quests (I also even did him last). This is probably because you can't block his most powerful attacks with elemental mails. I ended up using Marle / Magus / Dead Robo to beat him. Magus had Frenzy Band on and counterattacked him to death while Marle healed. It might have gone a bit quicker with Marle dead as well, but I wasn't confident Magus could survive if Haste went out.

Anyway, Black Omen is definitely proving to be a bigger leap in difficulty than I expected. Guess I'll be stuck grabbing some levels so I can max out stamina on Marle/Magus and MDef on Ayla.
Very fun mod overall, kudos and thanks for the effort.

Marle does seem to be a popular pick. I used her against Magus in my play, but after that I didn't really use her much. Which physical attacks have you used? Single techs in general are pretty weak compared to multitechs, but there are definitely some powerful physical skills in the mix. Do you just mean normal attacks? If so, then yeah, that's not surprising. I didn't really make any attempt to make normal attacks competitive with skills.

That Retinite tidbit isn't surprising... I'll have to fix it by reducing the HP on the core. Its HP overflows the max value and goes negative because lolz SNES. The core does die pretty fast on its own, though.

Magus has the best Single Techs, and a couple killer Triple Techs, but completely lacks Dual Techs, so his usefulness definitely depends on party and playstyle. But he certainly shouldn't disappoint. Crono is somewhat similar. He has great Single Techs as well, though not quite as good (unless he's all hopped up on magic tabs) and great Dual Techs, but, ironically, isn't a part of the most powerful Triples.

Glad you're enjoying the mod! Black Omen is definitely the roughest part.

Wow I just read the thing about Magus and kinda regret killing him for my first playthrough. Never liked him as a kid but even then I always kept him in the party,

There really isn't much point to killing Magus in this hack or in vanilla, other than for that sweet, sweet satisfaction.

Dude, you're right about retinite. He's the hardest sideboss quest. I've tried many different ways of taking him down. But i just can't.

I'm probably just a baddy. Tried your party and build, tried the youtube build, but man, I just can't survive. I'm thinking if I can't beat him, i dont stand a chance in Black omen.

to beat retintite make sure to use two black mails and a black vest. you also need to not use marle, the trick is in how he reprogrammed, (or maybe original ai) to work. when one person is left alive your screwed, so what you do is take either frog and robo, or frog and MAYBE marle, but marle would have a hard time being stronger then your third.

your third needs to be a weak member, and thus use the black vest, the ai will focus this weak member and attempt to kill them. for me i made this ayla, as i wanted to charm the boss's speed tab. both frog and robo have AOE healing, and frog has water spells. the most important part here is that your two core members, are better in HP, DEF, and MDF then your third member. for frog i believe i used a gold stud to raise his above ayla.

if robo is AOE healing every turn, frog can either use water 2, or AOE heal as well if needed. having these two members specifically is useful for a revive combo, that you can't use with marle. naturally while reviving a unit, that means your not getting healed yourself making you open to die, so you revive with one member and AOE heal with the other, if you bring marle, she cannot be the AOE healer if its required, and things will spiral downhill cause the boss will counter by either a big AOE, or killing one of your marle/second member, this puts you at a HUGE disadvantage, as your absorb shadow user is dead, and normally this would be a healer type as well, so your double screwed.

by keeping ayle as the weak target, the boss will always not target your core important members, further by using AOE heal after a revive, besides healing your core 2 members, you keep your third member a weak possibly killable target. this way, the boss wont target core members, if you repeat this, the boss will NEVER target your two core members, frog and robo, as there will always be a better weaker target. the best part is unless you get in a really wierd bas situation, the only way ayla will be full HP, or whoever your third is, is when everyone is full HP cause AOE heals heal equally, where as if marle fully heals ayla, your the boss might change focus to your actually important members

if surviving is all you can do, it just so happens frog/robo are damn good at physical damage, so put a rage or frenzy band on them! having 50/80% counter rates, just play to live and you will win via counters. your third members only job would be to use mid ethers. for this reason i made third ayla for the charm, as whoever is third id dead / turnless most the time anyway

I will say this. Dino tail, and frog squash are awesome. They saved my ass. Still took about 5 tries. Thanks for the party suggest though. I finally beat him.