Insane Difficulty: Brave New World 1.8.4 is now available! - Insane Difficulty

Solar Flare Kamehameha?

Another last-minute decision was to flag the Dragoon Seal with the "proc rate up" flag, which only affects swords (since rods have them inherent), as well as bump up the power of the WoB spears. This will have a few effects.

One, the Fire Lance will be the ideal choice of damage for a dragoon Edgar looking to hit a weakness. However, a Flametongue will eventually out-damage it on a magic build once the Nirvana Band and magic-boosting equipment become available. It becomes an interesting source of damage for a magic build, actually.

Two, Icebrand jumping ends up just on this side of viable against Atma Weapon, so no more of this "Ice Spear" shit.

Dragoon just gets better and better. My guess is that, at this point, the only time when Dragoon is weak is when BioBlaster is overpowered early game, and against Number 024. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to trying out Dragoon Edgar's new midgame.

I'll note that Icebrand Jumping was actually pretty good even beforehand, despite my misgivings. So it should definetly work well against Atma now.

So, how would you feel about the Radiant Gown increasing the proc rate of brushes instead of boosting MP?

I'd detest it. I'd rather Relm not get 50% procs for Safe, Shell, or Haste. She's all ready an extremely powerful mid-WoR bloomer, one of two dominant damage dealers throughout the late-/end-game (other being Shadow), a superb healer & Reriser, and has surprising mg.def for a frail character. She's supposed to be "Little Ms. Overkill, but with MP problems," not "I Can Do Everything Better Than Everyone Else" juggernaut.

I strongly recommend you stick to the original design plan. Keep Radiant Gown as an MP booster. The problem is not the Radiant Gown. The problem is Osmose. If the Radiant Gown isn't good enough, please nerf Osmose and/or raise the MP cost of Relm's magics to make the Gown more desirable.

Dissenting opinion, it's a powerful but risky option for Relm that encourages using a single-target heal in the lategame, when Relm is able to use a full party Cure 3/RegenX for better results. If you want to pass up on Dragon Hide's superior defenses (10/10 evades are arguably better than 0/20, and it's superior otherwise) lategame then I'd consider it a risk vs reward piece of gear that's only making Relm's brush proc rate better. Considering she can already set a party-wide Shell and how great the Punisher is in general, letting brushes get gear to make them more reliable buff-setters seems fine.

Osmose is it's own beast, and really ought not be in the same discussion as brushes. At best they're both ways she mitigates the need for MP to do her job, but from my experience Relm is rarely scraping the bottom of her MP pool when put on healing duty, and Osmose is only seeing play if I'm using her as a DPS character.

Relm's brushes are the worst way to set those buffs in a world that has Shield, HasteX, Zoneseek, X-Shell, and just straight up casting the single target spells. Cure3 is a better heal. The only reason I've found to actually swing the brushes is for the rare times you want a ST heal and figure "Well, may as well try getting the proc" and you don't already have another caster of the buff in the party for some reason.

Well, in response to Funnyman I've crunched over some numbers with Osmose and talked it over with the guys in Discord and we concluded that the best thing to do with it was cut the power in half (10 -> 5). This gives Relm self-sustainability, but she does spend more turns replenishing her stores.

The more interesting effect it has is on Strago. At present, he prefers Osmose against bosses since it has a higher hitrate. With its power cut in half, he'll likely gravitate towards Raid since its lower effective hitrate of 75% (due to stamina blocking) is made up for by the fact that it is substantially stronger than Osmose (although X-Osmose may still be preferable).

I can get behind halving the power of Osmose. (Always did use Raid with Strago, I haves no idear wat this X-Osmose you speak of is).

Proc+ Gown is a heckuva popular idea though. Still not a fan, but with Osmose nerfed, I'm in less of a position to naysay. That, and even with halved Osmose, pure Zoneseek + Crystal Orb (MP+25%) is still a hefty chunk of MP for dps Relm. Would personally like to playtest a halved Osmose before committing to a Gown change, but I'll back off for now if that's what the community wants.

All right, well my work here is done. Everything is taken care of, changelog in the previous post is updated, and I've shipped it all off to Synchysi.

These pants are coming *off*.

BTB, on 15 April 2017 - 11:30 AM, said:

Ran some back-of-the-hand calculations with the new Storm Blade Dragoon vs. Flash for a mag Edgar. Was checking to see if a Jumped Break with a 50% random cast chance was enough damage for Storm Blade Dragoon to significantly outdamage Flash, barring any enemy weakness or resistance.

Answer is, no, it isn't enough. It's enough for Storm Blade Dragoon to equal Flash, but it won't outdamage Flash. (Let alone outdamage Flash by enough to be worth taking Dragon Helm & Dragoon Seal over other helmets or relics). "50% random spellcast" mag Dragoon is a new source of Fire, Ice, & Bolt damage, but it won't raise mag Edgar's general dps.

hey everyone i'm back. just started playing 1.8.4. i found a possible bug. if shadow is blind and uses a smoke bomb he can miss.

Hey everyone, I just beat the game (1.4.7) so I'm starting 1.8.4 as well!

seraph9888, on 26 April 2017 - 09:08 PM, said:

That's intentional.

Time/SpaceMage, on 26 April 2017 - 09:58 PM, said:

1.4.7? Damn, that's awhile back.

Hopefully 1.8.5 will be out soon.

So, I'm back after a long period of inactivity, just started a new run for the heck of it in version 1.8.4 as well. Considering the upcoming 1.8.5 update, I figured I'd note this little thing as well.

When you examine one of the paintings in Owzer's mansion in the WoB (the one with the flowers IIRC), it mentions giving you 'piece of mind' instead of 'peace'. Is that a typo or some kind of reference I'm not getting?

Anyhow, 1.8.4 seems very nice up until now (just finished IMF). Haven't noticed that much different from my last playthrough yet, aside from the equip bonuses espers now give.

https://en.wikipedia...i/Piece_of_Mind

BTB, on 26 April 2017 - 10:40 PM, said:

Admittedly I posted that from bed; turns out it was 1.6.1. Still, yeah I've been playing it for awhile. Feels great to finally beat one of my favorite games ever
In hindsight that last boss fight was a total slog, so thanks for improving that. I can't wait to try out the new features and new RNG.

EDIT: Some comments about 1.8.
-You know that kid in South Figaro who says "that house belongs to our wealthiest citizen"? I always thought that sounded out of place coming from a kid.
-Thanks much for having Sabin and Banon start in the back row.
-Really appreciating the minor text edits.
-Random tapir explanation was interesting.

Yo guys, had a question about the latest version.

I played BNW in 2013 I think, enjoyed it a lot. Despite it not explicitly being a difficulty mod, for all the changes and new mechanics to even be relevant, it of course needs to be difficult enough that you actually have to USE them instead of mashing the B button through battles. On that front, I found the version i played a few years ago mostly satisfying until it got way too easy towards the end.

BUT! I'm trying 1.8.4 now, and it seems to be vastly easier than I remember, to the point of trivializing any need to use the modified mechanics that BNW was created for. I'm just mashing through battles, and it wasn't like that before. So I'm wondering, did I patch my ROM incorrectly or was it deliberately made way way easier?

I followed the instructions and it appears to be working as intended - Whelk does the Wave Cannon, the dialogue is fine, etc. It just feels incredibly wrong in terms of balance. Is there a surefire way to check if this is working correctly? For example, should Vargas and Ultros be pushovers that go down in only a few turns? Is there an enemy I can test with, like how strong it should be, how much damage it should take/deal? Thanks amigos

PS: I have never grinded in an RPG in my life

It's gotten easier in some respects and harder in others. Really the big thing is that once you're familiar with the mod, it gets a lot easier to breeze through, particularly in the early sections where it's mostly tutorial.

How far into the game are you, and what strategies are you using? Some bosses crumple very easily once you've found a good solution to the fight. Some fights are still jerks even on related runs, like Dadaluma.