praetarius5018

Final Fantasy V: Void Divergence - Discussion

339 posts in this topic

Been loving this, approaching the end of it now.

I can't help but have a few questions, though:

1. Are ninja's throws any more powerful than the base games? I feel like having a cooldown has made them weaker otherwise.

2. How EXACTLY does sineshot work? I don't really understand it fully by its description.

3. Assassin seems a bit lackluster because of all the time you need to set up an attack compared to other classes, are there any plans to change that or are there better uses for the class i'm not seeing, like combinations and the like?

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10 hours ago, TauzentBlitz said:

Thought I'd give this mod another shot... Right now I'm sitting outside the wind temple trying to figure out who should get what classes. I didn't see any mention of what the green squares mean in the classes file - what are they?

just a leftover from how I distributed the jobs, you can ignore that

10 hours ago, TauzentBlitz said:

Also, this is probably nit-picky but the blue (purple?) guy in the beginner house still claims that passives equipped are replaced with certain actives in battle even though passives are equipped separately now

I knew I forgot something... thx

7 hours ago, booman77 said:

1. Are ninja's throws any more powerful than the base games? I feel like having a cooldown has made them weaker otherwise.

weaker actually; you can throw your legendary or other one of a kind weapons all you want without losing them.

7 hours ago, booman77 said:

2. How EXACTLY does sineshot work? I don't really understand it fully by its description.

Underlying you still have an atb system here; you need X amount of atb ticks (based on AGL, weight, haste/slow,...) until your next action can get selected.
At 0 (+x times 1024) ATB ticks since battle starts SineShot has 85 power.
At 256 (+x times 1024) ATB ticks since battle starts SineShot has 145 power.
At 512 (+x times 1024) ATB ticks since battle starts SineShot has 85 power again.
At 768 (+x times 1024) ATB ticks since battle starts SineShot has 25 power.
And ofc the fractions inbetween roughly like a sine curve.
A player unit needs about 100 ATB per turn at 30 AGL and 30% weight.

7 hours ago, booman77 said:

3. Assassin seems a bit lackluster because of all the time you need to set up an attack compared to other classes, are there any plans to change that or are there better uses for the class i'm not seeing, like combinations and the like?

Aside from being the strongest attack - especially considering mp costs - and the protection gained from using !hide it has nothing else going for it currently.
Also why I may add more options to the skill the fundamental mechanic will remain the same.

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Hey started playing this yesterday up to the water tower having a good time had a heck of a time with siren and the poison she kept using but fun.  That brings up my first point the Pure spell does not seem to cure any status effect i have gotten so far it didn't cure poison for instance, sleep, paralysis those are basically all the stat's i think i have come across so far but i haven't seen it cure anything yet.

 

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pure cures HP leak and status damage not status effects directly.
status damage is what you take when it status spell or skill hits but does not yet inflict a status effect - it makes follow up status attacks more likely to succeed.

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So i can only use items to cure status effects until i get the heal spell way later. Ouch! lol that makes that Siren fight even rougher with her casting poison all the time.  

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well, you can defend, equip relics with poison element resistance, put fire element icons on the field, etc. to lower poison status chance and then cast pure before too much status damage piles up and the chance gets up to 100% anyway.

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v1.500

  • added field combos, e.g. field with 2 fire + 2 light adds 4 sun icons
  • field combos require the world balance to sufficiently shattered (2 crystals destroyed)
  • reworked !mix to a 8 skill menu
  • reworked !red to 8 unique skills around combining fight, white and black spells
  • replaced !drink with !imbue, a skill menu for Mystic Knight
  • turned !rose from low level white/black spells to its own 8 spells
  • changed some abilities learned by jobs accordingly
  • cover can now also catch certain single target damage spells
  • status effect randomness threshold is increased unless a special moon icon is on the field, 25% with, 80% without
  • void field icons now reduce effective def by 5 each
  • added workaround to status resistance stacking exploit
  • replaced "Row" (left in battle command selection) with "Brv." (!Brave)
  • replaced !Brave ability that was available by default with !Skill, 8 skill menu to get better through the early game
  • changed most damage amplifier effects - incl. weakness, exluding field - to stack additive instead of multiplicative
  • changed most damage reduction effects to incur diminishing returns past 25% total reduction
  • increased rare item drop chance by x2.5 (1/16 -> 5/32)
  • battle auto-reset can be cancelled by holding B
  • battle auto-reset is not available in expert mode
  • Valor/WideShld and Mystic/VoidElem apply now only once per battle but cover all elements and absorb instead of reduce damage
  • increased scaling of monster %maxHP damage skills
  • reduced scaling of barehanded m.atk
  • increased unlock requirements for !Drag-On skills (highest from 1984 to 4032)
  • non-boss encounters now give half ABP relative to exp gain
  • if exp gain is turned off, ABP gain is now also removed
  • adjusted ABP requirements per job level
  • increased max possible ABP gain per encounter from 200 to 250
  • increased STR and MAG growth of monster again; less than previous reduction
  • increased heal power of !Mantra from 30 to 55
  • increased heal power of !Esemte/Recover from 52 to 90
  • increased heal power of !Yin/Vivify from 70 to 93
  • changed targetting of !Esemte/Recover from one/all to one
  • changed !Recover from full status heal to 40 power cure with blind/poison cure
  • changed formula for healing spells
  • fixed outdated tutorial dialog noting about automatic replacing passive skills with active skills inbattle
  • song buffs can at most give +50% to STR/MAG/AGL for damage calculation purposes
  • decreased limit of black/temper and item/powerdrink from +50 to +30 attack; both grant +10 each use
  • increased HP and damage of Sol Canon
  • increased boss monster start-up delay from 30 to 50
  • increased non-boss monster start-up delay from [10..70] to [10..90]
  • potion heal soft caps at 25% user's maxHP, hi-potion at 50%
  • !x-item hp heal reduced to 2/3
  • !x-item can no longer be used with bombs, web, elixirs or feathers
  • !item and !x-item can now use drinks as well
  • giant drink now adds 200~1000 maxHP (based on stack size), can not stack with +50% maxHP buffs
  • speed drink now adds +5 AGL to a max of +15 (shared with songs)
  • might drink replaces protect drink and adds +5 STR&MAG to a max of +15 (shared with songs)
  • replaced turtle shells with panacea, cures status damage and MP sickness
  • replaced dragon fangs with wing, inflicts float
  • replaced dark matter with decoy, creates 1x image
  • replaced !SwdSlap with !DethBlw, 2x damage but subject to cooldown
  • !x-fight, !x-magic and !twincut are now subject to cooldown
  • !x-magic now is a free action that makes the next spell in the current turn act as a free action (=cast ANY 2 spells in one turn, no own restricted spell selection)
  • !x-magic's free action can not be carried over to a future turn
  • increased damage and accuracy of !x-fight and !twincut
  • active !abilities that are subject to cooldown mechanics now show "cooldown" instead of "active" in the ability menu
  • first !ability no longer adds to stats
  • added softcap to base stats at 50
  • reduced HP per job with "HP up" bonus from 50 to 20+total job levels, capped at 50
  • fixed bug that made drain spells heal double the intended amount against targets that survive the spell
  • increased CQC from 20% to 27%
  • increased Y-Magic from 25% to 30%
  • Y-Magic now does not work on the free action spell cast by X-Magic's effect instead of the complete turn
  • increased global cooldown recovery a bit
  • increased item cooldown for softs from 8~1 to 255~7
  • reduced mightamp/rod element boost from 50% to 30% (physical 30% to 20%)
  • increased power of Wind Slash from 90 to 115
  • increased power of Black/Bio from 106 to 120, cost from 18 to 23
  • increased power of Black/Psych from 30 to 70
  • increased cost of Arcane/ChainBolt from 10 to 16
  • increased cost of Bushido/Cleave from 10 to 15
  • increased cost of Bushido/TeraBreak from 17 to 27
  • increased power of Yin/Siphon from 28 to 63
  • reduced power of Zombie Breath from 20 to 12
  • increased power of Icestorm from 99 to 110
  • increased power of Electric Shock from 118 to 132
  • increased power of Mustard Bomb from 90 to 115
  • increased MP drain from psych-like spells from 1/32 to 1/16
  • fixed some issues in the calculation of psych damage
  • on multi element attacks field attacks that oppose one element but boost another ignore the opposing part
  • bosses get 50% damage reduction from armor/shell instead of 25%
  • bosses get +25 power on ground type spells (quake, flood)
  • def piercing spells when used by monster ignore 15/16 def instead of 1/2
  • old status additionally reduces damage output by 20%
  • blind status additionally reduces physical damage output by 20%
  • fork tower (physical) reduces mag. accuracy to 0 and magic power to 25%
  • bomb damage can now be absorbed as fire damage
  • changed formulas for !released monster
  • relic with "catch up" effect increases damage of released monster slightly
  • buffed attack power of Galura, reduced speed a bit
  • nerfed stats of Gilgamesh (dungeon, solo Galuf)
  • fixed some sprite errors on tinker Bartz and tinker Galuf
  • renamed Blue/???? to Minus Strike and made it display in top box when used
  • Tinker/Overload now ignores endure
  • level down spells like Blue/DarkSpark are now subject to status damage, treated as "old"
  • defense down spells like Blue/Guard-Off are now subject to status damage, treated as "berserk"
  • increased base accuracy of Blue/DarkSpark from 66% to 80%
  • changed wounded status from poison to water
  • changed mute status from holy to wind
  • changed mini status from water to poison
  • changed confuse status from wind to holy
  • replaced !aero with !bless, next received cure spell gets +50% power, +2 def until used
  • Bard learns !Bless instead of !Drink
  • Berserker learns !Flirt instead of !Drink
  • Chemist learns !Bless instead of !Drink
  • Magus learns !Sleep instead of !Aero
  • MysticKnight learns !Imbue instead of !Aim
  • Tinker learns !BuildUp instead of !Drink
  • WhiteMage learns !Bless instead of !Aero

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I cannot start a new game for a couple weeks, but those look like very substantial changes, I really want to give them a shot, specially the field combos.

Edited by Magpie
Unnecessary question

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This seems pretty interesting. FF 5 was always one of my favorite ones. Should I go in blind or check everything that changed? Also are there plans to not just let the game be "grind 2 win" instead of having actual challenge?

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Depends on what difficulty you want to play; on difficulty 4 (default) you should be fine just going in blind, on difficulty 1 you should have a plan.

Who says you can grind to win? The total of job levels is capped at 30.

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3 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

Depends on what difficulty you want to play; on difficulty 4 (default) you should be fine just going in blind, on difficulty 1 you should have a plan.

Who says you can grind to win? The total of job levels is capped at 30.

Does it mean you can essentially get fucked if you level too much of the wrong jobs? Can you reset them somehow?

And the grind I'm talking about is more related to the character level instead. JRPGs in general tend to be a battle of numbers, so leveling up, and increasing your HP, attack, defence, etc as a consequence tends to be the main way to get stronger. Job level, on the other hand, are more of a "sidegrade", since it offers more tools to beat the game (mostly skills or passives), instead of just raising your numbers.

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Since you have only a few ability slots to use at a time it is kinda hard to screw yourself over, plus you get a few abilities just for being in a certain job; and if you want to play a caster and then spent all 30 levels on melee jobs that is entirely on yourself, really.

Character levels do very little here; a bit HP,MP and damage multiplier, all three you also gain from jobs.
And the effect of level on those falls off hard around 30.
The final boss iis meant to be fought around 35.

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On 08/11/2019 at 6:58 AM, praetarius5018 said:

Since you have only a few ability slots to use at a time it is kinda hard to screw yourself over, plus you get a few abilities just for being in a certain job; and if you want to play a caster and then spent all 30 levels on melee jobs that is entirely on yourself, really.

Character levels do very little here; a bit HP,MP and damage multiplier, all three you also gain from jobs.
And the effect of level on those falls off hard around 30.
The final boss iis meant to be fought around 35.

The limit to ability slots is actually a good reason not to limit job levels, since it means that grinding all jobs to the max isn't a huge power boon, it just grants more options.

I'm just not a fan of the idea of being able to screw yourself permanently because of things that you can't foresee. A beginner going in blind isn't going to know what every class does, nor which sort of abilities he'll need to beat the game. I'm a fan of the original FF5 because on the occasions where you had difficulties on a certain boss because of your character classes, you could always level another class which had skills more suitable to the occasion. 

I wanted to try to beat the hack in its highest difficulty level, however it might actually be impossible if I don't level the correct classes.

Edited by Achelexus

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You couldn't be more wrong about that.
+3 stats per job level do not sound much but they add up fast, and I certainly do not want any braindead 99/99/99/99 characters running around.
Seriously, stats matter, a lot.

You always have the option of still switching a job which gives you that job's main abilities so you can't lock yourself out of those.

6 hours ago, Achelexus said:

I wanted to try to beat the hack in its highest difficulty level, however it might actually be impossible if I don't level the correct classes.

Hard is supposed to be hard. You don't need an exact setup but planning ahead helps.
Dunno why everyone just jumps ahead to the highest difficulty on their first run, 4 is supposed to be the vanilla-esqe normal grade.

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Changes look quite substantial. Are the .xls files updated with the new data? The classes.xls seems out of date, but I might be wrong.

I'm excited to start playing this again :) 

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Hi. Great romhack. I've been going in mostly blind on difficulty 1 and expert mode, occasionally checking the spreadsheets to make sure I'm not messing up really badly. My only complaint- why does the HP barrier make it so that it takes at least 4 actions to kill an enemy with 1/1 life bars? This makes fights *extremely* annoying to complete- see this video. Read description for more info, but to get right to it, if you are going to include an HP barrier, that is perfectly fine- but the endure is not. For an enemy with 1/1 life bars (or 2 total, one for the 0/1 and one for 1/1), it should be taking 2 attacks to kill it, assuming you sweep out all the HP with each hit, NOT 4. I had extreme trouble with Exdeath (15/15 LP) for this exact reason, as it would take 32 ACTIONS MINIMUM, not counting any bleed/poison effects I might've had on him to clear 1hp problems, and a fight that goes on that long will rarely ever end in your favor on Expert Difficulty 1 (yeah my video wasn't on expert rules but it was for easy demonstration purposes of frustration). This mechanic is seriously close to ruining my fun with this romhack. 

I apologize for rambling, but this is a serious flaw.

Edited by burneracc

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On 11/11/2019 at 5:55 PM, praetarius5018 said:

what makes you think it is out of date?
to me it looks like it has the current data

For example:

On 10/26/2019 at 4:11 PM, praetarius5018 said:

WhiteMage learns !Bless instead of !Aero

while in the spreadsheet it's still !Aero. Geomancer also does not learn CQC-Magic as his first ability. There were more abilities that did not follow the spreadsheet, but unfortunately I did not note them down. I noticed this in my playthrough of the previous version.

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1 hour ago, praetarius5018 said:

this endure property is only present on difficulty 1 and for a specific few enemies on regular difficulties.

You can't really argue that it's fair or fun at all though- sure, it's the hardest difficulty, but that's no excuse for straight up bad mechanics. Especially when you have to deal with them for the additional content that comes from 99+ void shards

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I saw the whole thing and I don't think the problem is the barrier. Your team was constantly getting wipe out because several status effect keep landing on them, maybe you should use some protection against Sleep/Old/Paralysis? 

Or just change the difficulty to 2 since there's nothing wrong with that? I mean, the main reason why I would choose 1 is for bosses but for random encounters? Nah

Edited by ronlyn

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I personally like the idea of the equipment system here in theory, but managing resistances with it is kind of hell; personally I wish that there was either more information on resistances in the equip screen or just that the majority of relics were void-type with a few special exceptions. I have a hard time remembering what's weak to what in the first place.

I'd also like to see some of the enemy AI de-randomized in places; with row switching requiring a command it was quite difficult if world 2 exdeath pushed my melee guys to the backrow, because dealing LP damage wanted my attacker to be in the front. Since he could also use vacuum wave, I developed a habit of restarting if my guys WEREN'T moved from the backrow to the front. Still, developing a strategy for him was fun anyway! I really like this mod otherwise !!

Edited by Ninners

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I only got past the karnak castle escape in my 1.130 on normal difficulty, so take this with a grain of salt, but..

Faris wound up being far too much of a hassle to use properly with the build I gave her. Since she's listed as STR/AGL on the class sheet I figured a heavy hitting physical attacker with dual-wield and X-Fight or TwinCut would be a good place to start, but she ended up dealing quite a bit less damage than Bartz and Lenna (I had intended Bartz to be an offensive caster and Lenna heals/buffs, but Lenna needed black mage's mass cast passive for multi-target buffs and bartz had cure from x-magic anyway so they ended up rather similar) due to the ease of targeting weaknesses with magic compared to constantly switching 2 weapons out, and with both crusader and time mage being unusable by Faris she couldn't learn pierce to help deal with this problem.

Or maybe I just need to stop trying to grab EVERYTHING in karnak escape. Seems like only a party of optimized heavy hitters can manage that cleanly which is probably complete overkill for the rest of the game.

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I don't think you really need an optimized team to get everything in time; do you have encounters turned off?

The stats listed at the top are just a minor hint, they are worth maybe 2-3 points at base not much by midgame, really.

Technically magic would have weapon switching as well once you get your hands on some elemental boosting rods.

Also 1.130 is ancient at this point.
An update might help with the differences between Faris and the rest a bit.

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