SirNewtonFig

You give up reliably better damage for defense (back row damage, ignoring melee counters) and fish for throw procs to make up the difference. They don't exist to be anyone's best option (the notion of "best" options is something BNW aspires to avoid in principle), merely to provide an alternate playstyle. I haven't made all that much use of them either, as my playstyle tends toward the more conventional options, but I've resolved to give them a shot on my next playthrough. A Vigor Terra build, Morphed/Berserked and chucking dual Wing Edges at dragons and other flying things with a few babysitters to keep her upright could be fun.

Both of Umaro's special relics unlock abilities that he is otherwise unable to to. Try using him with and without each one to see what changes. I believe Image makes it 100% likely that a physical attack that is capable of missing will miss. After avoiding such an attack, there is a chance the buff will wear off. There is no interaction with magic evasion. Having the Image status will disable a character's Cover ability if they have it, so that you cannot set up invincible cover/counter tanks.

SP? Like for buying spells? Did you maybe just spend it all at the end of the WoB? If you slap an Esper on him and go fight things, does he accumulate more?

I figured the Mog actor would have already been considered initialized by the intro sequence; but I can only guess as I've never skipped him in the WoB before (my brain won't let me deliberately skip Water Rondo, that empty space in his dance menu would haunt me). Though even in it were to work as you're thinking, the difference of a few levels is trivially easy to make up just by popping him in a party and taking him through some dungeons as you go about your business. Drag him to the Ancient Castle and he'll be at party average in no time.

Most character levels get re-adjusted to (I think) 20ish after the FC (Celes, Sabin, and Edgar start a little lower). Whether you recruit Mog in the WoB or not will have no impact on this (unless you recruit him and power level him like a madman to 21+, in which case he'll keep that level instead). In short, if you don't care about Water Rondo (though it's pretty decent), then it won't matter much either way. You'll just have some catching up to do on ELs if you wait.

Blitzes are pretty balanced against other options for most of the game. The fact that you have Fire Dance during Sabin's scenario suggests you are ahead of the level curve by a fair bit, so that may be skewing your impression of the balance a bit. It usually comes online when others are getting access to things like Bolt 2, etc. Nothing was changed about their ease of input, though there are some Blitzes with different input commands than vanilla. And yes, all the Skill/Item/Esper/Spell descriptions were hand-tweaked by BTB. Basically every bit of text you see was tweaked to some extent.

You'll probably get no argument around these parts when you say that the characterizations and story in FF6 leave a bit to be desired. The worst part of it all is that they cobbled together a massive ensemble of 11+ characters, all with their own tragic backstories, and then made half the game let you use whichever party you wanted, making it borderline impossible to explore their personalities in sufficient depth. Something more FFIV-style would have done the cast more service, with characters weaving in and out of the story as huge, developmental events occur (like chunks of the WoB do). BNW doesn't really try to be a content mod though, so outside of some in-place script refinements to give characters more distinct personalities (see: Setzer's WoR recruitment scene for a common favourite), you won't see much expansion on characterizations or story, or any other new side-content you brought up such as quests, dungeons, treasure locations, or bosses (except for one late-WoR boss, who isn't so much "new" as "undummied and given teeth").

Have you had the pleasure of taking the Mutsunokami for a whirl yet? (Edit: I see you mentioned Wind God Cyan, but I think the general philosophy of this post still remains relevant.) Cyan's Bushido has two main offensive settings: grind a solo target to a pulp (Dispatch, Dragon, Tempest, Mindblow vs undead), or crowd control (Flurry, Eclipse). His AoE options tend to be better for their rider effects (Muddle, Dark) than their damage (though Eclipse used to be more like a poor man's Shock prior to 2.0). The buffing of the wind blades (Kazekiri, Mutsu) in 2.0 help fill this AoE damage gap for Cyan better than Eclipse ever did. Sure, it's mitigated by wind immunity (which itself seems a little less prevalent now also), but I feel like Cyan's aptitude for single-target punishment justifies some constraints on his multi-target output. We can't have everyone covering all the bases, or we could just be playing vanilla instead Also, additional AoE healing sources to validate the use of auto-reflect include Terra, Relm, Setzer, Sabin, Gogo, Gau, and Mog. These will depend on build (RegenX wants good stamina and MP pool, Go Fish wants Magic, Mantra wants stamina and HP pool), or luck (Gau, Mog rolling the desired ability), but there's enough options on this list that there's bound to be more than just Strago in your squad to keep an auto-reflected character on their feet.

You'd think, right? This was more or less my approach to Kaiser (except I'd end each burst of elements with one that I was resistant to rather than leading with it), and is probably exactly why your first few attempts didn't succeed, and why you felt like it wasn't clear if the mechanic was working for you. I felt the same way. In 2.0.1 there's an update to the NPC hint about Kaiser's gimmick that makes the necessary pacing of this battle a bit clearer:

Yeah, it sounds like it would do a wholesale revert to the Woolsey script, but from what I understand, its purpose is to do exactly what you're looking for.

Well, have I got a deal for you!

You are. Press on past the tutorial if you want to experience that. The dumbing down of the intro sequence is not reflective of the game at large. You don't have the tools at your disposal at this point in the game for Whelk to be a meaningful battle, and the space required to provide those tools is better allocated elsewhere. Yeah, you might not have a fun time then. A few over-the-top Relm or Setzer lines, gags (like the one you noted here), and pop-culture references aside, the script isn't that bad, and doesn't track all that far from the spirit of the original. The original Woolsey script is, frankly, nothing special; and if you can accept that there's room for improvement and press on with an open mind, maybe you'll be okay. If not, your loss, I guess – I think everything else the mod has to offer would very nearly excuse the rest of the script being plagiarized verbatim from some 13-year-old's FF6 fanfic, frankly.

Just when I thought I *was* doing everything in the game! Is this missable, or could I fire up my last save and still find this if I scour the world long enough?

I am uncertain what boss this is referring to. Is this some hush-hush Mystery Egg kind of stuff, or something a fairly thorough player has probably encountered as a matter of course? Love the new Defend/Cover interaction, btw.

Kain did a BNW LLG run a little while back, and Mishrak seems pretty into speedrunning it. Folks talk about other run ideas (no spending money and no Espers have both come up recently, IIRC) on the Discord from time to time, maybe ask around on there.

The assumption was a specific gear set, haste applied, and frame-perfect spamming of the Fight command, I believe. Given that he had him geared out with the Rogue Cloak for the hypothetical exercise, I expect the wind procs were factored into the analysis as some form of average, such as "expect 25% of Mutsu hits to instead deal <expected calculated Aero damage>".

With Morph, +Mag equipment, Ragnarok, and weakness sniping, she can still do roflstomp levels of magic damage without having to stack Maduin levels, freeing up more room for +HP and +MP alongside +Stam, so I can see the argument. I've built her both ways recently, and enjoy both. But if you wanna sit back and let Ultima rip on repeat, then stack Maduin with a side of Carbunkl and a dash of Unicorn, support with Image/Rerise/Battery/Chakra/Ethers, and have at 'er. One thing I haven't especially enjoyed with Terra is her Vigor build options. More babysitting than I have the taste for, I think.

With the Mutsu Aero procs based on Stamina now, there's dual synergy with Phantom while fighting, but only to an extent. Nowea ran the numbers over on discord the other day, and I think something like 10 Phantom/15 Fenrir was the peak for DPS. EDIT: actually, just noticed this note just after the summary... "It's worth noting that it's like... a 7% difference in damage between Shadow's 'best' and 'worst' EL spread". So you basically can't go wrong.

I can't speak to this specific issue, but I know Palidor has been rather problematic for me for most of my time playing BNW over the years. Characters ending up in the wrong locations (especially if summoned by Setzer on a triple Bar), being attacked while offscreen and reappearing before landing (possibly being killed and then still landing their attack), etc. The Intangir Z switch already causes awkward character positions, so I wouldn't be shocked to see this interaction go bananas.

Nah, she was just one-handing it along with a still-cursed Hero Shield (this thing isn't going to uncurse itself, after all).

Just fought the Triad tonight, and maybe I just had a lucky run, but Myria was a cakewalk. Party was Edgar, Mog, Celes and Relm. I more or less just Regen'd and Hasted everyone, applied spot heals as necessary, and chucked a Holy Water whenever someone hit 0. Phantom Celes DPS'd with Excalibur (though I'm curious if Illumina might have had more bite with enough Holy procs over time), Siren Edgar ran mostly support, with the odd Flash here and there, Relm Flared and reapplied RegenX as needed, and Maduin Mog grooved on whatever he was feeling (mostly Forest Suite). Burned through about 6 or 7 Holy Waters, I think? There's a good bit of healing/support/DPS redundancy across this group, so that helped. I'd rather toss Holy Waters than guard against Zombie in this fight. You get to keep some of your buffs this way (Haste for sure; not sure about Safe or Shell). I thiiiink the ATB gauge also doesn't reset when Zombie is removed, so you can really keep the pace going if you can keep on top of it. Isis was another cakewalk with Sabin/Terra/Setzer/Strago (team Kaiser). Strago spammed Refract and Reflect, with some Black Omen during downtime, Setzer Blackjacked and spot healed, Terra spammed Break (I forgot to buy Ultima for her before I walked into the fight because I'm a dummy), along with spot heals and Reflect support, and Sabin mostly recharged everyone's batteries (and spent about half the fight Charmed). Reflect kept Berserk (and other nasties) at bay, so Love Token was a non-issue. Charm was a mild nuisance, but Terra just took down anyone if they got too uppity (lesson: do not bring Fixed Dice into this fight). It was a bit slow going with Break as a primary DPS source, but at no point did I feel threatened. Asura took me a couple of tries though. The party here ended up being Cyan, Shadow, Locke and Gau — a slight miscalculation on my part. Gau was the only one with Ice immunity, and magic defense in this group isn't exceptional. There was usually one person face down on any given round, and I had a wipe the first time when Absolute 0 caught me without any Reraise applied, slaying everyone but a Raged Gau (who quickly fell to something else after that). I was also getting woefully low on MP recovery items by this point, and Reraise spam from Shadow isn't exactly MP-thrifty. In the end, it was probably Conjurer Gau's insistence on repeatedly Reraising Locke that saved the day. For reference, everyone's level was sitting around 29-30, so about on target for the area.

Dino forest, probably. Bring ice. And stop grinding by level 30.

Unfortunately, full Stam Sabin with Cover is gonna end up dead fast. Even with Terrato levels for bulk, I'd guess he doesn't have the defense to stay alive very long if he's the focus of attack.

If you want Locke to be a tanky healer and not a glass cannon, give him a healthy dose of Phoenix/Kirin levels with a Hero Ring or Phoenix equip, and he should have enough HP to survive most situations (at least speaking from the experience of 1.9 and before, though I assume this still mostly holds).

I think there's the point. "Her's" is an incorrect form of "hers".