Insane Difficulty: Fun hack, much more challenging than the original - Insane Difficulty

It looks like your attacks do half the damage now so fights are longer and there is a real threat of dying now, which I dont recall was really existent in the vanilla game, where you could pretty much mash buttons and breeze through every fight. Or so I recall, havent played the original game in a long time.

Since every battle is threatening, (if youre not really overleveled) It makes the game much more fun in my opinion. You have to be a bit more careful deciding which enemies to attack and with whom, so you can finish off enemies in a more efficient way through counting numbers and damage inflicted. For example an enemy has 80 hp and Chrono does 30 damage per turn so you can predict that you'll kill the enemy by turn 3.

Normally in the vanilla game you can figure out how much damage you'd do with an attack by the simple formula ( Atk x 2). But in this hack since you do half damage its become easier estimate the damage the damage you'd do. It's basically just..

damage = Atk Stat + RV (random variance, seems to be 1/3 of power stat).

The real damage formula in the original was:

Damage = Atk x 4 x ( 1- PD/255) + RV
With PD being Physical Defense and most enemies had a physical defense of 127.

Damage = Atk x 4 x ( 1- 127/255) + RV =
Damage = Atk x 2 + RV

In this rom hack, Lavos Awakening since that multiplier of 2 is no longer there I'm positive the average enemy defense has been changed to 191. So the multiplier becomes 1. And there fore, damage = Atk + RV

Since we can easily predict the damage we do battles become a game of adding numbers, strategy, and keeping track of turn order. I believe this is what makes the game most fun for me.

I'm having fun with this hack, and I hope you guys do too. I seriously recommend this rom hack to anyone who found the vanilla game too easy, or would like to replay chrono trigger with a much more added challenge. It should be worth your while.

Yeah, the main reason attacks do half damage is to ensure that hitting 9999 isn't possible, I find damage caps to be silly form a balance perspective. As is, max damage is right around 7.8k with a certain triple tech (unless hitting an enemy with irregularly low Def).

I believe all the formula stuff you posted is correct, and I'm glad you're enjoying it! Sorry I didn't respond to this sooner, I'm bad about checking stuff regularly.

At some point, I'd like to come back to this hack and remove the option to grind away the challenge, but at least the end game has inescapable challenge!

the version I'd played had a glitch with dbl tap, if you equipped magus with the shadow armor he'd hit 9999 twice regardless of anything, this made the hack really easy for the segments with magus. Also made acquiring the rainbow for Crono a breese.

Version of this hack or another hack? There's no item called Shadow Armor.

Double Tap appears in Flames of Eternity, a completely different hack. Don't remember there being a Shadow Armor there; the Shadow absorbing armor is called ShadeShawl.

Thanks, Marisa is always so helpful~

Meh wrong hack then. How many of them are there?

It felt cheap using that glitch in that game, but I just could'nt help myself.

Of Chrono Trigger? Probably quite a few, since there are tools available for it.