Sega Chief

FF7 - MonoMod by Gjoerulv (Screenshot LP)

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Gjoerulv, author of the Hardcore mod for FF7 (http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=6818.0), put out a new project called the MonoMod; a challenge-restriction mod where your character stats are fixed to 1 and only have a small amount of HP/MP (270 and 90 max base respectively). However, you also get access to almost all of the game's unique equipment and materia from the start and making the best use of these is the key to survival. The MonoMod is available as an option in Gjoerulv's Hardcore mod installer so download that from the above link if you want to give it a try yourself.

This screenshot LP is broken up into segments separated by area and/or boss, starting off in the 1st Reactor.

***

Reactor No.1

So starting off, we have a Lv.1 Cloud with 1 in every stat and only 10 HP/MP. Fortunately, we've also got near enough every piece of armour and accessory to make use of in keeping him alive for the first battle.

ff7 31-08-2018 00-57-46-309.png

And as becomes apparent really really fast, this equipment and your approach to fights needs to be on the ball to avoid disaster.

ff7 31-08-2018 00-59-09-389.png

With a level-up, Cloud's HP jumped up more than double to 22 which afforded a lot more breathing space. But while having a Ziedrich + Protect Ring reduced damage he was taking to 1, it left Barret with less effective defensive options to take and even in the back row he was taking some serious heat from the enemies further down the Reactor.

ff7 31-08-2018 01-06-25-183.png

A nasty surprise was waiting when we reached Guard Scorpion. Despite using Defend on his Search Scope target to mitigate his follow-up attack, the damage being dealt was still uncomfortably high. Cloud has a Ziedrich and Protect Ring on as well, which is reducing damage even further:

ff7 31-08-2018 01-12-55-758.png

It's manageable due to the pause in his attacks to telegraph his next target (and the long pause during tail raised) but it doesn't bode well for the later enemies and bosses who are far less easier to predict. I also noticed that despite having high damage output from Barret thanks to the equipment bonuses, the fight still took longer overall as Bolt had much less MP to make use of. After 3 cycles, the boss went down:

ff7 31-08-2018 01-15-15-547.png

So all in all, things went well but these enemies were among the weakest in the game and with the boss hitting decent damage through a Ziedrich and the Defend command it doesn't bode too well for the future. The next area has more dangerous enemies like the hard-hitting Rocket Launchers and the area boss, Air Buster, counters all attacks made against him. It's going to be rough, but we'll see how the Materia changes things once that gets unlocked in Sector 7...

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8 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Wow that's look interesting, a little insane but interesting, I'm going to follow this.

 

The fights so far have been a lot faster but more dangerous; I can kill the enemies/bosses quicker but they can wipe out the party quickly too.

***

Reactor No.5

Upon reaching Sector 7 and concluding the scenes there, the Materia menu is unlocked and with it a nice surprise. Almost every Materia (bar summons) is available right away, including a mastered Enemy Skill Materia:

ff7 31-08-2018 02-32-31-654.png

There's a lot of options available here, but not all of them will be viable until later in the game when we get our base MP a little higher. At the moment I can push MP up to around the 60 mark using HP<>MP Swap and HP/MP Plus but it's still not enough to cast the stronger spells (at least, not more than once). The Plus Materia themselves have been set to always give +50% to the stat instead of 10% as well, but given how low base stats currently are they're not as useful unless specifically built around. For physicals, we've got 2x-Cut, Slash-All, Deathblow, and Added Cut for more firepower.

Reactor No.5 proved as dangerous as expected, with large enemy groups and hard-hitting randoms like the rocket launcher providing some close shaves. Fortunately, rockets are quite inaccurate and will miss often if you have high evasion armour equipped and you have plenty of options for attacking multiple opponents at the same time for faster clears against proto-machine guns & special combatants:

ff7 31-08-2018 03-01-49-648.pngff7 31-08-2018 03-07-29-223.png

Air Buster was a fight I was worried about due to the power of his Big Bomber attacks and the 100% counter-attack rate, which will likely wipe you out without taking due care. But as you know, this boss has a huge weakness to back attacks (in base game, 2 limit breaks to the back will kill him) and with the boosted attack power available from our equipment like Warrior Bangle and Champion Belt, the fight was over in a flash:

ff7 31-08-2018 03-11-38-316.pngff7 31-08-2018 03-11-43-472.png

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Wall Market

Aeris was recruited and I began to realise that the traditional character roles (where you'd expect Barret to be tanky, and Aeris to be strong with magic) no longer apply in this mod. Everyone's sitting on the same base stats, with the variation coming from their Limits. That means it's just as viable to have Aeris be a physical attacker over, say, Cid. This'll be handy to keep in mind when weapons start becoming more freely available as Aeris can get hold of the Umbrella weapon fairly early on.

Didn't hang around in Wall Market long, which of course resulted in Cloud being discarded as sloppy seconds for Corneo's men. Our boy got stabbed in the dick a bit-

ff7 31-08-2018 03-31-44-334.png

-but, as ever, finished on top.

ff7 31-08-2018 03-31-59-566.png

Then it was time to deal with Aps; I opted to go with a magic-oriented offence to get a look at how dangerous Sewer Tsunami was:

ff7 31-08-2018 03-40-29-727.png

It's likely that, without mitigation, the back-attack version of this move would outright kill some party members even with their top-end armour. But we had plenty of firepower to finish the fight quickly, using Aps' weakness to the fire element, Quadra-Magic, and W-Magic for some toasty man-alligator-bull steaks.

ff7 31-08-2018 03-40-50-925.pngff7 31-08-2018 03-41-27-420.png

Manigatorbull? Bulligatorman? Allibulladude? I don't know the correct term.

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Sector 7 Pillar

The Sewers + Train Graveyard give access to some items that can be farmed, such as Ethers, but I figured it'd be a bad idea to stick around with our low HP/MP and bombed through ASAP. And naturally, because I wasn't looking for him, Eligor showed up:

ff7 31-08-2018 03-46-05-830.png

Reno poses a bit of a threat because of his Pyramids, as the remaining characters can be taken down by Electro-rod (Paralysis) and don't have a lot of HP to tank his physical attacks.

ff7 31-08-2018 03-50-35-24.png

For the fight, I decided to experiment with Fury Ring + Slash-All on Barret, so that both Reno and the Pyramids could be attacked at the same time. It didn't work out too well (Barret was first target for the initial Pyramid) and damage wasn't too outstanding:

ff7 31-08-2018 03-51-14-785.png

But still better than Cloud's damage using Limit Breaks; if you don't build for attacking then it can be tricky to get any decent damage output going, so it might be the case that I have to pick between defence and offence for future fights.

ff7 31-08-2018 03-51-25-746.png

But for now, it'll do; Reno doesn't have a lot of HP and he bugs out before long:

ff7 31-08-2018 03-51-28-633.png

Time for Shinra HQ!

 

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Dealing 1400 damage with those stats is pretty hilarious.  If you're going to be picking between defense and offense, I'm guessing that you can also split the difference and devote a character to each?

I'd imagine that this will begin to look more and more like a "normal" Level 1 challenge as you approach the endgame.  Are there any restrictions on damage dealing items?  They seem like they'd be incredibly powerful in this run.

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3 minutes ago, Lockirby2 said:

Dealing 1400 damage with those stats is pretty hilarious.  If you're going to be picking between defense and offense, I'm guessing that you can also split the difference and devote a character to each?

I'd imagine that this will begin to look more and more like a "normal" Level 1 challenge as you approach the endgame.  Are there any restrictions on damage dealing items?  They seem like they'd be incredibly powerful in this run.

Nothing else was changed in the mod, so damage-dealing items will likely still be as effective as they are in vanilla challenge-runs (Right Arms against Dyne, for instance). I think once HP and MP normalise a bit to what they'd ordinarily be at Lv.1 (a bit higher actually) things will start to get a bit more stable. I'll also be able to pick up additional copies of the end-game equipment when I reach them, which will make it easier to protect the entire party.

***

Taking on Shinra HQ, I found the Mighty Grunts to be a bit feisty and needed Barrier to help edge through easier. I also ran into a nasty pincer encounter on the 61st floor when I got a bit impatient and tried to run past. The skater grunt was also quite evasive and tougher to hit at Lv.1.

ff7 31-08-2018 04-04-51-155.png

After all the busy work on each floor, we reach the boss on F68. And because we started with all the magic Materia at the start of the game, we're able to take advantage of some status weaknesses that wouldn't be available under normal conditions:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-22-31-831.png

After a couple of casts of Sleepel, we're able to dispose of the boss and his pals without too much trouble using magic attacks, which gave me plenty of time to rue the missed opportunity of saving Vinyl for Vincent's name.

ff7 31-08-2018 04-23-47-105.png

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Shinra HQ Escape: Gunners

So we've got a boss rush of sorts to deal with in getting out of here, which is a bit dangerous as Armour can't be swapped between characters so I need to be careful about putting the best stuff on the Gunners team as this'll lock it off from use by Cloud in his 1v1 with Rufus. These two also need to be done back-to-back with no save, so any mistakes with Rufus will be costly.

I loaded Aeris up with magic, have Red XIII long range materia, and put Cover on Barret for some extra defence. I avoided using armour like Ziedrich here as I suspect Cloud will need it more.

The first boss, Hundred Gunner, doesn't hit too hard but has some multi-target attacks that can cause some issues:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-33-44-425.png

But boosted magic makes short work of him, namely Quadra-W-Magic Bolt boosted by a Fourth Bracelet and Circlet:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-34-07-335.png

Next up is Heli-Gunner, who acts as soon as he appears. He's roughly the same, with damaging single-target attacks and multi-target:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-34-18-467.png

But he's not going to last long against these Bolts:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-34-50-249.pngff7 31-08-2018 04-35-07-269.png

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A Man and his Dog

Probably the most dangerous fight so far, Cloud is fighting solo here and as I neglected to equip lightning protection (it completely slipped my mind that Bolt Armlet and Bolt Ring were available) it meant that Dark Nation posed a very real threat here; if I'd gone with anything other than Ziedrich as well then this would have probably been a one-hit KO:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-36-56-441.png

And because I'd went with Ziedrich, it meant Cloud only had two materia slots to work with from his weapon (I'd also forgotten to get a Hardedge, have I really slipped so far?) so I went with Poison and Barrier, planning to heal up using the humble potion:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-37-09-492.png

I'd also burned my Limit on paralysing Rufus as well, instead of just one-shotting the dog with it. I rectified that with a Grenade:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-37-21-62.png

 Okay, several grenades:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-37-41-88.png

I'd attempted Bio but it failed to proc the status, and with Grenades dealing more damage I decided to just go with that and pop up another Cross Slash toward the end for the win:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-37-54-988.pngff7 31-08-2018 04-37-57-154.png

All in all, I'd made the fight a lot harder on myself by accident. Any kind of Bolt protection would have squared this right up, or maybe a reflect ring to bounce it back. There's a lot of new possibilities that open up with having so much gear available from the get-go.

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On 10/09/2018 at 11:51 PM, Lockirby2 said:

I totally forgot Dark Nation had Bolt.  It's not like he gets the chance to use it all that often.

Yeah, I didn't think about it either until it hit me like a train. But you're right, he has so little HP he'll usually only get one ability off (usually a barrier) unless you focus Rufus.

***

Motorball

The roughest fight so far; he's got lots of dangerous attacks, half of them multi-hit, and your performance in the bike minigame can leave characters vulnerable to a KO at the start. He opens up with a ramming attack, and then goes straight into powerful single-target physicals.

ff7 31-08-2018 04-44-51-253.png

I had Cloud on Cover using the best armour which I think helped to save Barret here (I'd forgotten to reverse rows, so Barret was in the front by accident):

ff7 31-08-2018 04-45-00-806.png

But unlike the Rufus fight and Bolt, I definitely knew that I'd need Fire protection for this fight to cover against twin-burner and the (probably) deadly Rolling Fire:

ff7 31-08-2018 04-45-47-956.png

Fire Armlet, Fire Ring, and a Tetra Elemental accessory gave complete coverage and judging by the absorbed damage of the weaker twin-burner I'd have probably needed to go full ham with mitigation to survive Rolling Fire without the equipment.

ff7 31-08-2018 04-46-27-703.png

And after a bit of back and forth, some close shaves with Arm Sword, and a few cheeky Limit Breaks, Midgar was successfully escaped.

ff7 31-08-2018 04-47-11-599.png

 

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