FF13 Challenger mod

[Tedrainbow 0]

Unzip the files and place in a directory of your choice (leave the embedded ff13tool.zip as a zip file).  There are a number of batch files (.bat) that begin with "Mod_", these are the actual mod files to run.  All the others are supporting files.  The first mod file you run will cause a couple of one-time events to occur.

1) The Steam Final Fantasy XIII game directory will be located on your hard drive.  The mod will first check the default Steam location and if the game directory is not found there, it will begin a relatively crude method of searching all the hard drives to locate it.  This may take several minutes depending on how many and size of your hard drives.  Once the game directory is found, it will store the path in a local .txt file so it will not have to search for it again on subsequent mod installs.

2) A local copy of a couple of the FF XIII game files will be made and these file will be unpacked in order to retrieve the original .wdb files.  A copy of the .wdb files will be kept in a subdirectory (wdb_files) and these will be used for this and future mods.  These "original" wdb files can also be used to restore your game to the default state.  All unneeded local files will then be deleted.  During this process you will need about 2-3 gig of free space on your hard drive, although final amount used will only be about 10 meg once the temporary files are removed.

The selected mod will now be installed.  During the install process, an uninstall file will be created allowing you to back out the each mod individually at any time.  While these mods all play nice together, should you get a mod in the future that changes some of the same values as these, you will need to uninstall in the opposite order that you installed if you wish to keep mod integrety.  Alternately, the install files give you the option to just revert back to the original game file, effectively stomping on any mod that made a change to the file.  One other item to note.  If there is already an uninstall file present (you've already installed this mod once), installing it a 2nd (or multiple) times will overwrite this file effectively preventing you from cleanly uninstalling.  If you wish to install for a second (or third) time, make sure you uninstall first before you re-install.  Uninstalling multiple times without reinstalling is fine.

These mods are based on the information provided in the FF XIII Modding Resource.  Hopefully I can expand this selection with additional ones in the future.

As always, you should make a copy of your game file before installing any mods.  I should mention that while I have done some amount of testing on these mods, it was not exhaustive, so if there are any issues, please let me know so I can correct them.

 

Brief description of the mods:

Tier 3 Weapon Level Increase (Mod_Tier3Weapon125.bat) - Tier 3 weapons can now be increased in level to 111 (base game 100).  This makes them somewhat more powerful, although the experience cost is not cheap as the higher levels follows the normal experience progression.

Improved Catalog Drop Rates (Mod_CatalogDropRate.bat) - The drop rate increase for equiping the Collector's and Connoisseur's catalogs have been increased.  The collector's catalog now doubles the common drop rate (from +25%) and the connoisseur's catalog increases the rare drop rate to +20%.  For reference, trapozohedrans will still be difficult to acquire from 'toises as the drop rate for a 5 star battle will only increases from 5.5% to 6.5%.  Platinum ingots a little better at a 20% drop rate.

Adamantite: (Mod_Adamantite.bat) This mod changes the rare drop for an Adamantortoise from a Trapezohedran to Adamantite and increases the rate to 5% to compensate for the lower value drop.  This mod was created as there is no place within the game to acquire adamantite other than purchasing it from a shop.

Strike Chain: (Mod_StrikeChain.bat) - This mod reduces the alternating animation between magic and -strike abilities by reducing the chain increment by a slight amount (30% down to 9.7%) so that the AI doesn't by default choose the -strike abilities if there is a better (magic) option.  The AI will still use these abilities when there is a good reason such as when an enemy has an elemental weakness.  There is a second option for this mod to reduce the chain increment to 8.8% to stop the alternating -strike even for enemies with a single weakness.  At this point, the lower chain increment really doesn't matter as the AI will not select this ability anyway.  This mod has no effect on chain bonuses as the AI will still alternate attacks, just without using the -strike abilities.

Hard Mode:

The hard mode option is a series of mods designed to make the Final Fantasy XIII combat more challenging.  Each individual mod changes one aspect of the game and they can be installed or uninstalled independently of one another, even during a single play-through.  Some mods may have multiple options to customize the difficulty.

 Faster ATB: This mod increases the ATB regeneration rate for most (all?) enemies.  This enables the enemies to attack faster causing more damage as well as the increased ability for spell casting or interrupting character actions.  This should affect all aspects of combat throughout the game but should impact combats with multiple enemies more than a single enemy and potentially encourage more use of slow or slowga.  There are two options for this mod, a +10% rate and a +25% rate.  Note that enemies do not attack 10% or 25% faster, this only increases the ATB recharge rate.  Animation time for the attack is not included so the actual rate increase will be variable, but less.  The +50% rate increase should be similar to a constant Haste on the enemies, although a real Haste may also have an increased animation speed as well.

Chain 800: This mod limits the chain gauge to a maximum of 800% from 999.99%.  This will reduce the maximum amount of damage the characters can deal in a single attack, potentially by 28%.  It also changes the increase in the chain gauge when an enemy is staggered reducing it from 100% to 60%.  This mod will affect Bosses, enemies with higher HP or lower chain resistance more than others.  This may also encourage the use of the Sabetuer role, particularly the abilities deprotect and deshell or the Synergist role with the abilities haste, faith and bravery.  Enemies that originally stagger at values above 600% have been modified to stagger 550% with an increase in chain resistance to compensate for the lower stagger value.

Enemy HP: This mod increases the HP of enemies, mainly those with low HP).  There are two flavors to this mod.
      Option 1: Enemies with low HP get roughly a 35% increase (very low, <500, may get even more), while enemies close to 100,000 HP will have virtually no increase.
      Option 2: Increases the percentage increase from 5% to 35% for low HP enemies.  Enemies at 100,000 HP will see a 15% increase, decreasing to 5% at 1,000,000.  All enemies above 1,000,000 get a constant 5% increase.
  The intent of this mod is to make the "mobs" of weak enemies more of a challenge, but will also impact enemies that improve their attacks as their HP is reduced, as it gives them additional time.  For Option 2, it also has the potential to eliminate some of the common "kill" methods that require enemies to be defeated in a single stagger, as the increased HP will make that more difficult.  This will affect the early and mid part of the game (chapters 1-10) more than Gran Pulse, Eden and Orphan's Cradle where many of the enemies have HP nearing or exceeding 100,000.  Typically if you have a strategy to defeat an enemy, having more HP will not make the battle harder, just longer with a lower chance for a 5 star rating unless the enemies meet one of the criteria above.

Higher Stats: This mod increases the Strength and/or Magic of the enemies.  Enemies that clearly favor one stat over the other will get a higher increase to the favored stat and no increase to the other while enemies that are fairly well balanced will see a lesser increase to both stats.  There are two options to this mod.
    Option 1: Favored stat gets a 10% increase, balanced stats see a 7% increase.
    Option 2: Favored stat gets a 20% increase, balanced stats get a 14% increase.
  The intent of this mod is to enable all enemies to hit harder, causing more damage, or use spells to greater effect hopefully promoting paradigms other than Commando (Attacker) or Ravager (Blaster).  This should affect all aspects of the game, weak as well as strong enemies.  However, for very strong enemies, it might make them impossible if they can one-shot the party.  If this is the case, please provide feedback and I can adjust the values for individual enemies.

Stagger 12: This mod reduces the stagger time maximum by 12% from the original 25 seconds.  This will limit the amount of damage that can be caused while the enemy is staggered as well as the amount of time that can be spent maximizing the chain gauge before paradigms such as Cerberus are initiated.

 

Download the zip in it is fun ^-^

http://www.mediafire.com/file/s06d1cod16u7iov/GameplayChallengers.rar/file

 

[Hapanpappa 5]

Color me intrigued. Wasn't even aware of a modding scene for ff13. However I've no grasp at all on how much those hard mode options might affect the difficulty&gameplay, having only completed the vanilla game once years ago. Can you recommend a reasonable hard mode package to choose for someone who wants a good challenge that requires you to think outside the box, but without it devolving into such a mindless grind that forces you to use the same 1-2 effective strategies over and over? I'd appreciate even an estimation of which ones likely go overboard&into the realm of tedium and which ones make it reasonably harder. Although I have completed almost all the difficulty mods available for FF games and can't stand the easiness of vanillas anymore, so the bar's pretty high.