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zedorfed66

Shadow Hearts: Covenant NTSC - Godslayer v6.50

114 posts in this topic

Hello NGPlus community,

I am happy to say I have finally finished working on my Hardtype for Shadow Hearts: Covenant. This one is called "Godslayer". It took me over a year to polish and now I'd like to share it with all of you.

There's been lots of changes to different things in the game. To know more details you can read the messages on this thread or leave a question. I'll be more than happy to answer them.

 

Here's the list of changes between the original game and v6.50:

- Enemies' HP, Str, Int & Agl stats increased.

- Random encounter enemies often give more Exp, Cash & Soul.

- Lots of items and equipment that can't be bought again or are sellable for 10 Cash are now unsellable.

- "Spikes" accessory unbuyable.

- "Asmodeus Crest" costs 500,000 Cash instead of 100,000.

 

I hope you will enjoy this mod. This mod is for the NTSC version of the game. I'm not sure if it works in PAL version (probably not). Use PPF-O-Matic to patch your original disc images with the zip's PPF files. Also make sure to make backups of the original images.

 

Here's the download link for the mod. This is the most complete version of the mod. Check out my description of what was changed for this in my newest message on this thread.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/soqsig1kanesg8b/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v6.50.zip

 

 

_______________________________________________________________________________

Here are the previous versions if you wanna try them out:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/xmj09aekjzlrg4m/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v6.05.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/81ku3njybp6z9ej/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v6.0.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/wrchwh6n8z8g0m9/shc_ntsc_godslayer_5.0.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/474p08uwbmbmvcm/shc_ntsc_godslayer_4.1.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ss331qh92q7r430/shc_ntsc_godslayer_4_0.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/12wxjhbqy8t10nv/shc_ntsc_godslayer_3_33.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/87efruu9nv3dsws/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v3.0.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/b5pydcf299wxydi/shc_ntsc_godslayer_2.55.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/a114iy67r7fc7ea/shc_ntsc_godslayer_2.5.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3zikj6pu0b2pp8h/shc_ntsc_godslayer_2.1.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/166nky22t170yrh/shc_ntsc_godslayer_2.0.7z

https://www.mediafire.com/file/3rok98jrzuxwasl/SHC_NTSC_GODSLAYER_v1.0.7z

Edited by zedorfed66
updated files

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Hey! Thank you so much for doing this! I love the Shadow Hearts series and was hoping some kind of hard mode mod would come out for Covenant. Excuse my ignorance as I'm new to emulating and mods, but the NTSC version is the NA version, right? Because when I ran the modded NA version nothing seemed to be different in Apoina Tower. All the enemies had the same stats and damage.

Edit: Oh, ok... It's working now for whatever reason. Revenant just kicked Karen's ass in the air for 10 damage instead of 4. Yikes, haha. Gonna be streaming this at twitch.tv/shaggysir!

Double edit: I just finished grinding for Castor and Pollux. Got everyone up to level 9. I swear I'm going to make a compilation of Gepetto getting one-shot. Poor guy can't catch a break.

Edited by SirShaggy

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Thank you very much SirShaggy for giving my mod a shot. I hope you have fun time with it. The bosses can get tough later on and if you need any help let me know. Also if you have any criticism or anything else regarding it I would like to hear too.

Edit: Also I'm a bit worried that nothing happened when you applied the patch the first time. Did you happen to patch using the patch for wrong disc first? Even if the patcher says everything went well it might've patched the wrong disc's data into disc 1. This might change how the game behaves. If this is what happened I recommend deleting the isos you patched and repatching the original iso images of the game again, just in case. This doesn't mean you have to start over the game. You can continue from your last save point with no changes.

Edited by zedorfed66

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SirShaggy and the rest of you guys who have been giving this mod a go: I'm terribly sorry about the first half bosses having million turns. I apologize to all of you for the frustration. I'll be working on the version of the mod where the bosses have fewer turns but I can give no deadline to anything. I got lots of stuff going on in my life so only time will tell when I'll be finished with the new version. But I will be making it at some point.

-zedorfed66

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Hey Zed! I've been having a really fun time going back through the game with your hard-mod! It's been a really interesting change so far. Some criticism though...

First, the enemy Ekimmu in the Paris underground section has too much AGI and INT for the damage it can put out with Hail Beak. It usually goes first and Hail Beak hits for 90% of everyone's health at that point (100% if you're Gepetto... RIP). If you're surprised and it uses Hail Beak on everyone as they're grouped up, it's pretty much game over. I had to grind quite a bit before Blanca would have his turn ahead of it, but up until that point I had to run away after almost every fight and heal. Honestly, I would lower both its INT and AGI by a fair amount.

Second, as you stated, the bosses have a lot of turns. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the way that they get them consecutively a lot of the time does feel a little cheap. Especially for...

Lenny. Holy crap, Lenny is a friggin brute. He gets 5 turns in a row and all he does is use his physical attack. I know that it's a hard mod, but this boss is terribly designed in general. All it is is face-tanking and healing his damage, so when you beef up his damage and turns the only strategy this early on in the game is to be able to face-tank more and pray. There are no good buffs or specials to use, so all I can do is grind and hope he targets the right people. And this becomes a bigger problem when there is no dungeon before Lenny. You go right from Rhonda Mines to him, and I don't think the experience in the Rhonda Mines is scaled correctly for the hard mod because I normally get about 100 exp per encounter, which was the norm in the previous dungeon, the Wine Cellar.

Lastly, just a suggestion... Tankier enemies would be cool. Having different enemies act as "tanks" that you have to combo or specifically use physical/magical attacks to get down, rather than just giving them more agility/damage would be a cool way to spice things up. They did this with certain enemies like Otheon by giving them more HP than normal enemies, but there are very few enemies in the game that are resistant to physical or magical damage based on their VIT and POW stats. Having enemies be tankier in general also allows for more strategy, as it adds variety to the enemy types in battles and allows for more combos. Of course, the other offensive stats might need to be adjusted for certain "tankier" enemies but it helps lean away from the "who one-shots who first" strategy that a lot of the random battles boil down to, and that's not a problem with your mod so much as the game in general. Just something that would be nice to see.

So pretty much, Ekimmu OP, Lenny OP, and balancing different enemies around taking damage instead of delivering it would be cool. Aside from that, it's been a lot of fun and I want to thank you again for putting so much work in to create this mod! I'm gonna grind for Lenny now, haha. Merry Christmas!

P.S. There's a Shadow Hearts discord that was recently started up and the owner would love to find out how you change around enemy stats. He's been doing a lot of work on his own looking through game files and trying to translate the Director's Cut. Here's the link if you're interested. :) https://discord.gg/ez2VK2

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Hey,

Thank you very much for constructive criticism. I guess we can all learn from eachother. This is the first time someone has criticised this mod and it is much appreciated. Before I address the rest I would like to give you hints how to make the game easier for yourself based on what I saw in your stream videos. You didn't buy the best defence accessories, which in itself is pretty much a must otherwise you will get one-shotted randomly. Also elements are crucial factors. If you have a character with fire element and he/she is hit with water enemy he takes more damage than normal. You might want to have a team of earth element when fighting Lenny since he is earth element. All of your party members should have crest magic that can hit multiple enemies so you can thin out enemies faster.

The Paris underground tunnel is hard I admit. It is recommended that your party is level 5 when fighting Arachne, the boss before entering Paris. When you are lvl5 the underground tunnel isn't that hard as long as you heal your party to full health before entering battles. When watching your video I noticed you didn't heal your party members to completely full health (it takes 2 cure spells instead of 1). It is imperative that you do since even 1 hp matters in low levels. You are right, Ekimmu has the highest agility in that dungeon and hits hardest, especially characters with water element. It would've helped if you had earth dress for gepetto as your first dress choice since the Rat enemy is earth element and there is no wind element to counter earth dress. But this is something you couldn't have known. I had to learn the game almost completely again as I went on with the modding. However the Ekimmu enemy is equal with Yuri on lvl8, which also is the lowest level to take the boss. Also you will not get 1-shot on lvl8 as long as you have the best defense accessory equipped and Cornelia doesn't have that damned fire dress on :DDD

Lenny is pretty much equal to the Rhonda Mine's boss in strength. You can survive Lenny by having Sorm as Yuri's fusion, have Joachim on your party (since he is earth element) and have earth dress on Gepetto (yes i'm sorry you couldn't have known). When you have those 3 the boss becomes more than manageable at lvl14. I admit having bosses with 5 turns in row is stupid. I guess I just wanted to make the bosses hard no matter what. I am working on a new version of the mod to address this. I made the wine cellar enemies hand a bit more exp, cash & soul so grinding wouldn't become as dull (there are some other dungeons where I have done the same). Also I just noticed the 'Barghest' enemy in Rhonda mines has a bit too low agility (21 instead of 23), I will be fixing that too in my update of this mod.

I am terribly sorry to all of you for having to go through the early bosses. I make these mods so they would be challenging yes, but also to be enjoyable. I worked on this mod for a year so I thought it would be complete but as it is I will be looking into it more. Thank you SirShaggy for understanding :DDD and merry christmas to you too.

-zedorfed66

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Not a problem! Happy to do so. To be honest, I was expecting to be incredibly tight on cash but now that I'm thinking about it, I've got plenty from the grinding so I should be upgrading as much as possible. Question: Have elemental properties always been on basic attacks? I used to think so when I was first played but somebody told me it's only when you use an elemental "edge" ability. I know it's definitely the case in the mod. Yeah, I figured I'd need Joachim and Yuri to tank as many hits as possible after seeing my first attempt fail miserably. Once one of the others go down I can't get them back up before Lenny gets his turns in.

I'm overly cautious and stupidly frugal with using healing items in games, which is my downfall in the early game when I'm not sure if I'll have enough money (even though I know deep down that I'll be fine). Honestly I was thinking about Castor (and Grail Gazer) when I got Fire Dancer. Didn't even think about the Ekimmus, and I'm not used to having to strategize defensively in Shadow Hearts haha. Yeah, it wasn't a problem once I got the levels in to kill it before it could Hail Beak, but it kind of lead to a situation where I had to grind if I wanted to properly get through the dungeon (or in my case make a dash to the end before grinding, and use save states if I got surprised like a filthy pleb). Fire dress = worst first choice haha. I actually had to switch him back to the default dress. Never done that before.

He's quite a bit stronger, simply because he sometimes gets 5 turns instead of Grimlock's usual 4 (5 if you count the occasional Gale) and his attacks generally do about 20% more damage on your already squishiest people. Using Joachim and Sorm and praying that they soak up hits or the damage is evenly spread is the main strategy, but the biggest problem with this boss is just the fact that he gets 5 turns as soon as the battle starts. If he kills someone within these 5 opening turns, the fight is basically over. You can't expect to heal through his damage and find time to get in hits if you're down a member. I just did a test fight after grinding and buying better accessories to see if I could kill him and I barely could, and only because he didn't kill someone on the opening turns or focus Karen/Gepetto down for whatever reason. Also, at the very end my berserk Karen was nice enough to throw a pure leaf onto Yuri (who was about to go berserk himself) and the hard hit from Yuri's combo killed him with the the extra 1 damage from hitting a wall... Yeah, haha. Granted, I'll be the first to say that I'm not playing the best and am being a "no coral accessories and all technical ring" elitist, but it is quite a difficulty/RNG spike going from Grimlock straight to Lenny. Gonna start the stream back up later today and see if I can kill him again and make some progress.

It's all good! It's mostly the design of this boss being bad in the first place, coupled with the fact that it's early on and there aren't many options in terms of abilities. Things should get much better when the game starts adding in more party members, special abilities, and buffs. Again, I really appreciate all the work you put into this. You've given me an excuse to go back, relive my childhood, and replay one of my favorite games of all time. So thanks!

Edited by SirShaggy

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Nope this mod does nothing to the mechanics of the game. And thanks, I hope you will like the changes. You are not completely off base with Cornelia's dresses since the first 4 dresses to get are earth, light, fire and water. I also recommend doing the wolf bouts since they give blanca very useful abilities. "Aurora" is no longer op ability with this mod, it becomes your best friend later on.

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Wow... So I was right all those years ago. I thought I noticed a difference. The update for the Lenny fight really does help. It cuts down on the randomness when you only have to take two turns into account. The fights after Lenny/Andre have been much more strategic and interesting, especially Grail Gazer! Arc Cure and manipulating turn order has spiced up the boss fights and made them more manageable, but they're still very challenging. I'm guessing that Blanca will pretty much be necessary in the later content given how powerful Aurora is. I just started up the solo St. Marguerite section with him. This part of the game always scares me...

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I'm glad it's become better. Yep Blanca is pretty much the late game beast with Yuri. St. Marguerite can be a bit tough and you might need to get some extra levels before the boss. As for Blanca's section you might need to be sneaky and avoid the fights. If you do everything right there will only be 1 random fight (when you search one of the rooms for key, can't find it and a guard comes in). But that is manageable fight since there is only 1 enemy to fight. 

Now that you are getting closer to going to Petrograd I would like to give you a small summary of important stuff. I would not like you to fuck things up just cause you didn't know.

Believe or not there are some cheap save points coming up where you can't reach shops and you are forced to do a boss battle. The first one is in the glass palace, second one in the battleship when you change continents and 3rd one (the cheapest) when there is a save point on the foreigner's graveyard with no escape from the boss. There might be more, so I highly recommend starting using several saves as you go. 

2nd, if you only can use some of those pedometer steps to get Pure Extracts. There are some bosses coming up that may take your characters' sp to to high negative that you can't cure with a single Pure Root. This can happen for the first time in Terada boss in the battleship Mikasa if Yuri doesn't have Stand on some character and he/she is hit with Rapid Fire (30 consequent hits = -30 sp). If you have plenty of steps before leaving for Russia it wouldn't hurt getting some Mana Extracts in the mix as well. The Extracts are just a precaution since you can't leave Japan right away when you get there.

Clear all possible wolf bouts before fighting Night Queen. Do this before the game locks you in Russia just before the boss. If you did everything right you should get the 'Comeback' ability after beating the zombie dog in the gallery of the dead. There are some missable ones, one that is often missed is in Domremy after talking with one of the villagers. This becomes available at some point before going to the gallery of the dead (i'm sorry I can't remember when). The other one is the alien dog in Petrograd (which only shows up if you have passed enough bouts).

As for Yuri's high fusion fights, you are able to have 3 Soul Drops before changing continents. It's important to get them all. The fusion monsters now vary in strength and some can't be beaten very early. When you reach the shop in Idar Flamme and are able to buy Root items (be sure to get 99 of them since this is the only place where you can get them before leaving Europe) you are set for taking on Earth, Light and Dark high fusions. You can only beat those 3 for the time being. 4th one will be Water fusion, 5th Fire and the last one Wind can be beaten before the Queen's Garden (later in the game).

Filling the solomon key pages is a big help in getting new abilities to the crests so if there are some pages that aren't missing any crests I recommend placing them. And last but not least you will need to have 'Spikes' equipped for everyone starting from Petrograd. Otherwise even the normal enemies will maul you harder than you can ever imagine :P

Uhh, what else? I really hope I didn't forget to mention anything too important. Nope, I think that's about it. I will keep testing the later bosses and updating the mod as I see fit.

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Good to know! I think my final setup will be Yuri, Karin, Lucia, and Blanca then. The difficulty spike can definitely be felt, but the last couple areas were very easy in terms of random encounters so I'm all for it. I got thrashed by the boss so now I'm grinding up some (thanks for the generous experience btw haha). I kind of like how the mod actually forces you to stealth in the Blanca section.

Damn, thank you for this! I would have probably gotten myself stuck and needed to reload way back. I'm going to be staying on top of sidequests as much as possible, and cash in on those Pure Roots like you suggest. Hopefully, I won't make things too difficult for myself. Might keep going tonight if I can clear St. Marguerite. Looking forward to seeing how the difficulty affects the latter half of the game!

Edited by SirShaggy

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Hey no probs! My final party was Yuri Karin Blanca and Joachim but I'm sure it can be done with multiple combinations. I used Joachim since he has 999 HP on default on lvl99. And i just updated the mod so I recommend you d/l it right away. I made changes to later bosses and tweaked Andre and Janus. Also Godhand does a bit lower damage. But not that much it would make it an easy encounter.

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Joachim is probably the better choice honestly since he's a better physical attacker than Karin and he can take hits like a pro, but I just enjoy Lucia and her later oils. I'm actually boosting up Karin's physical damage with seals to make her into my secondary fighter with Yuri. Not optimal, but it's more fun for me. I'll do that! I actually beat Godhand with ease due to some very lucky Slow debuffs from Yuri.

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Yep you did well on Godhand. Joachim's weakness is that he can change to bat uncontrollably and that he has the lowest intelligence (funny). Karin is good all around but lacks the edge in everything. She's simply the middle road. I have barely ever used Lucia's Oils but I'm sure they will help you out in at least some points. From now on you will need to keep casting Yuri's earth fusion's Stand ability to nullify the sp damage from enemy attacks. This is more important early on and in bosses where they can hit you multiple times. The Terada boss fight in Japan's first dungeon can be a nightmare if you don't keep Stand on at all times (you will probably require few Pure Extracts here). You will not be needing Spikes in any wolf bout fights but you can if you think you can use it to your advantage. You will be required to use at least Arc Gale buff in the upcoming boss fights. Otherwise the bosses simply leave you behind. Also you should reserve enough Soul so you can level your upcoming lvl3 fusions to at least lvl5 (I think they learn the important Arc abilities at lvl5). And your lvl3 Fusion's level will be the same as your lvl2 one so you will not lose any Soul by powering your lvl2 fusions before acquiring the lvl3 one.

Edited by zedorfed66

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True, I had to wait for Joachim to get out of bat form when I was grinding so he would be able to survive a hit. Karin is quite a beast right now since I gave her +6 strength/luck from seeds, even though Joachim could have used them too but... Ya know... Aesthetics. Also I just realized that Lucia's oils don't scale with stats and the only one worth using would be the one for guaranteed crits so... Crap. Well I guess I wasted those seeds on her, haha. Ah well. Stand + Spikes is amazing, I never used spikes in the original game so I had no clue they could be so broken. I was wondering why my level 2's weren't learning anymore abilities... Totally forgot they were attached to the level 3 fusions. Thanks for the tips!

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Lol. In Russia the game beats you :DDD. Actually you can beat this mod without applying any seals so you're not fucked or anything. And yeah that Night Queen boss can be a bit of a step up since from that moment on you are expected to use the Arc buffs.

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That's good to know! The seals definitely make a difference though, especially on Karin who is taking over physical attacking for Yuri. The Mother Filarias and Asmodeus were just as intense, if not more! Making my way towards Astaroth, and then onto Disc 2!

Edited by SirShaggy

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I hope you like the mod so far. Personally I'm not happy with some of the bosses and I'm planning to release a new update at some point. Like I wasn't happy with the early bosses having too many turns. I'm really unprofessional with this. Here I was thinking I was finished with the mod until I see someone else play it and I see all the mishaps. Oh well. I'm really greatful for you playing it though. I'll make the final boss extra hard for you :DDD

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I've been having a lot of fun. It got a lot better once I got out of the early game, but again, that's a problem with the early game's lack of variety and strategy rather than the mod itself. Hey, I'm more than happy to help! I did my own "hard" playthrough of From the New World where I never upgraded armor, used arc buffs, or bought the "coral" items and found that it was a lot more challenging and fun. I love Shadow Hearts, but the combat like most RPG's is easy and formulaic once you know what you're doing which really takes away from the fun. Challenges like this are a dream come true. Haha, looking forward to it!

Edited by SirShaggy

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Hey, I updated the mod, be sure to get the newest version asap (v2.5)! I made some very good changes to many of the bosses, added more intelligence to them since they seemed to lack that and put some of the bosses agility down a bit.

I'm glad you are having fun btw. I've been watching your playthrough. You're a great guy and I wouldn't want you to get fucked the way you need to start the game over. Make more saves so you can continue from them if the game locks you to endless game over. The game is really good but the designers thought the game was so easy it wouldn't hurt if you had to fight a boss unprepared. Make sure you create save on the battleship just in case you are not high enough level for Tsukiyomi. Basically you should be if you had evenly leveled party but if you need to change party for Tsukiyomi and some of them are way lower level he might fuck you over big time.

I give you my best to your efforts with the mod.

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Aw, thank you man! I'm glad you could make it to the stream yesterday! I should be ok as far as saving myself into a dead end now. I'll probably keep going with it tonight.

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Hey it's fine :) I'm glad to be of help. I made a mini-update on this mod. This could be the final update, who knows. I upped the final boss' agility and I'm now happy with it. I also increased the exp, cash and soul rewards for the Koshoki enemies at the Nihonbashi park. I don't see anything else that should be patched but I'll do so if I encounter something that I want to change in the future.

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