Insane Difficulty: RotDS v1.6 is out and about - Insane Difficulty

Version 1.6 is out
(check download page)

Changes include:

- implemented a difficulty selection feature upon new game or new game + each difficulty effects monster stats, character HP & MP growth, seperate experience curves, and monster AI alterations. (thanks and credit to Madsiur)
- re-balanced many monsters as a result of this new difficulty selection.
- alphabetized the Spirit (Rage) menu. (thanks to assassin for the original code)
- replaced the FF7 Boss Theme with a much better version by Jackimus. (thanks and credit to Jackimus)
- fixed a pricing bug with the White Cape.
- fixed an issue with guest characters showing up over Otis sprite in the event of going to Zuriel's Tower.
- fixed a possible boss skip issue in Kefka's Tower, from the original game.
- fixed a bug with True Knight Relic function neglecting the characters that act as monsters. (thanks to a patch by assassin)
- fixed a small NPC issue with the hermit looking to the right for a split second when he should just face down.
- fixed a bad palette for palette 6 characters on the Dream Shrine map (Sealed Gate).
- fixed an NPC who did not do her automated walking script after an event in Jericho (flower girl).
- fixed an issue of Reaper becoming Mr. Grimm in the Dream Shrine Train battle by removing Mr. Grimm from it.
- MP costing weapons now scale based on character level. (thanks and credit to Synchysi)
- nerfed Ronan's Wolf Wind and Ice Blast spells - Ice Blast no longer ignores split damage but is a bit stronger, Wolf Wind damage nerfed a bit.
- replaced a couple songs, and touched up a few.
- raised Havoc skill hit % a bit.
- corrected a couple Spirit (Rage) descriptions.
- changed Catastrophe's regular animation to resemble most of the removed custom Break spell.
- Arc's Talisman relic now protects against Condemned status, & 50% damage reduction from Holy element.
- Holy Amulet now blocks holy element, but weak to poison element.
- Specter dance spell inflicts Condemned status now as well.
- Monster spell Primal Rage inflicts Berserk now instead of Slow.
- re-worked monster palettes, now there are no duplicate/shared monster palettes at all.
- Cloud can now equip heavy armor.
- added nine new monsters: Assassin, Polong, Kelpie, Biter, Mugger, Elder Dragon, Ice Demon, Dark Crystal, Ghostbiker.
- changed a couple treasures inside the Magitek Factory.
- changed a few monster names.
- changed the name of Magi Ring to Oracle Ring.

And please be sure to take a look in the 'extra' folder that is included in the hack package, especially the character artwork & info pages done by James White, for they are incredible and awesome! The rest of the instruction manual that's in the works will be done at a later time.

There was a possible bug reported with FuSoYa's spell list going crazy with the spell % right around the Floating Continent, but I was unable to replicate it after much testing, so I'm just going to release this and should it become a thing I'll get back on that. Please enjoy this awesome update and especially the difficulty selection! Thanks be to James White, Madsiur, and Jackimus for helping out & putting in work for this update! And also Synchysi for sharing some code dealing with the MP costing weapons.

Please keep me/us posted how it goes, I did a bunch of testing but this was a pretty large update.

Thanks.

Nice, with the easier difficulty option, I should be able to complete this game now ^_^"

After reading up on all of the changes, I am very excited to play through this game again !!

*Starts out on Insane difficulty, gets to Fireweaver, accidentally attacks shell because asshole retreated into its shell before an attack went off*

Question on the difficulty--which one is intended to be the "original" difficulty setting?

Looking forward to firing this up later this week!

I don't remember the precise names, but the middle option when the chance presents itself is the one that's intended to be around the previous version or two in terms of difficulty, maybe a tiny pinch easier than those two versions.

Sorry to be a bit needy, but after unpacking the patches, some additional questions:

--Has the compatibility of the additional patches all been tested with the regular game? I'm looking specifically at nATB, esper restrictions (BNW has spoiled me), original item names, and the alternate font patches

--Also, as far as the alternate font patch goes, is that the original font or something different? (Or is it actually the GBA font I've seen in all the videos?)

Just want to make sure of everything before I accidentally bork my game!

I briefly tested the ATB patch (made by Think0028), and it seems to play nicely with this mod. It was the base patch he made a while back, which seems to work fine considering it was intended for BNW. I'd bet it is fine to use, and many thanks to him for creating it.

The alternate font patch is not the original, sadly, it is something I created myself and is kinda hard to read lol, but it is smaller than even the GBA font which allows for the edited text to plat nicely as intended.

magictrufflez, on 23 August 2016 - 06:37 AM, said:

This would be the 'Standard', or middle option. I thought about naming them normally as is Easy, Normal, and Hard, but decided at the end to through some pizzazz on them =D

EDIT: saw Anima answered this one >_< been a long day lol.

Do you think you could speed up the automated battle in the extended intro?
The fight between Tifa and Kefka feels like it drags on for too long, maybe make it to where Tifa doesn't use cure and the lower-left reaper doesn't do that one status move that always misses. (It uses the Discord animation, I just forgot what the name was.)

Hello there, currently playing on Casual/Easy, sort of ran into a wall in the form of the Gilgamesh boss battle.

Half way through the battle he powers up by casting Shell, Protect, and starts killing my party one by one.

I am unable to revive and/or heal my party fast enough to survive this encounter.

What level should I be at before fighting him ?

Rather what can I do to defeat this boss ?

if you bought a Diffusal Rod and Aurora had Dispel, you could use that to get rid of the shell and protect. If you're in the front row, then that could be why. IIRC, he's only supposed to throw one thing and then go back to his normal AI. Unless the difficulty setting screwed up some AIs (which is probably could have done) Other than that, if you're playing on Casual, he shouldn't really be that difficult.

@Lolwayup

Thanks for the help !!

I grinded the party up to level 20 to learn Dispel, moved everyone to the back row, guarded when my hp was not full, and I kept casting poison attacks when he was not doing jump attacks.

After using save state a few times, I was able to force him to use the flee command and continue across the bridge.

Also had a similar issues with Cloud and Tifa versus the cave robot, but after grinding both to level 25 I was able to survive the poison/blind spells.

Currently starting out on the third split, but with the "Combo" command I should be okay.

So, I patched the game with the hack, esper restrictions, nATB, the alt-font (which is great btw), and the item name changes, and played around a bit with an old save and a new one up to about the first boss. Looks like everything meshed OK on both the front and the back end, but I will definitely pop in and let people know if any issues pop up during the course of play!

One thing I will say is a bit rough up front is that fight in the long intro--there really should be some sort of instakill attack that automatically triggers if the fight goes for more than a few rounds (or at least stop Tifa from healing herself). Otherwise it becomes ridiculously long....

Unless, of course, the computer is SUPPOSED to win against itself. In which case I'm already off on the wrong foot.

magictrufflez, on 24 August 2016 - 05:24 PM, said:

I'll definitely consider shortening or insta-ending that auto-battle some more, sometimes it does go faster than others, it's pretty inconsistent.
Sorry for not answering your other questions regarding those patches, yeah they should all work together nicely, I patched them all and tested it once that way and no issues arose, so hopefully it's okay!

And thanks for the comment about the alternate font, it was my first and only attempt at a custom font so it's nice to hear this

Gi Nattak, on 24 August 2016 - 07:26 PM, said:

Am i the only one who enoyed the start fight with auto-tifa and the fact she could resist for a good amount of time against an ambush from 3 powerful enemies?

Just finished the first trip to Durandal Castle---the only issue I've seen so far ahs been a display hiccup on Cloud's limit screen in the menu. I went Skills--Limit, and there's this random line of text on the line right under the line where "Limit" is written.

Also, the moogle in the Beginners house either has unfinished text or is meant to be a joke I don't get (the text is basically all code, like you left a placeholder but forgot to come back to it). Not sure if it was intended, but I'm mentioning it anyways!

Yet another question though: are the dreaded Schroedingers chests (ie leave them alone, and they have better stuff later in the game) around still? If so, how much treasure should I avoid picking up---the same chests as in vanilla or all the WoB/WoR shared ones?

I'm enjoying things so far, although the liberal use of "stop" effects by enemies is kind of grinding my gears a bit.

magictrufflez, on 25 August 2016 - 10:36 AM, said:

Yeah, that moogle is supposed to be Madsuir and it's a joke because Madsuir is a coder and is one of the coders for ROTDS.

Going to quote on of the users at the main RotDS site:

"I've noticed so far that characters are getting levels way sooner than their status/experience indicates, such as Aurora leveling with 1000+ experience to go, but then leveling while getting 50 exp. Is this part of the intended exp curve for casual or is this a bug?"


And yes, there is a bug with the status screen that was brought to my attention today, where it only accurately reads the Medium difficulty. Luckily Madsiur spotted this and already sent a fix for that to me so I will have it fixed up this weekend.

@ Magictrufflez - I'll take a look into that, if you're using the alternate font patch I'd bet that's the cause of it somehow. Will take a look though asap, thanks. And yes the chests are still like that, it is kinda dumb but I left it in. There's a treasure chest document in the 'info' folder that comes with the hack package, it will show the name of the maps and shared treasure chests bits so that's a way to check, but it's kinda tedious. Off the top of my head, the Narshe and South Figaro cave and South Figaro itself have these chests. Pretty sure that's it actually.

EDIT: Actually it doesn't seem to be the alt. font patch, I'm not seeing it though. Can you post up a screen of this issue please? Or was it like a one-time thing?

Gi Nattak, on 25 August 2016 - 04:20 PM, said:

There's also a new one in Doma castle... can you figure out which one?

The Schroedinger's chests from vanilla are still present. Specifically Narshe caves, South Figaro caves, and outdoor areas of South Figaro town.

There's a pair of new items right outside of the beginner's (now programmers') house. Leave the items in the barrels until the WoR for better loot.

These are the ones I'm aware of. I have no knowledge of any in Doma Castle myself so now I'm curious...