Valenhil

3 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

That's honestly something I wanted to do - specifically for dark Lise; but it isn't possible with how shops work.
They are limited to 12 items at once; if the game loads 13+ slots it'll glitch around a lot.
Any item can only have one condition.
So "have Duran and/or Lise in the party" is not possible to set.

If you have any idea how I should set shops up for that, we may talk.

I guess you could do away with the status resistance shields, since those are already covered by other accessories, and make half the shields for Lise, and Half for Duran?

3 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

I disagree, if only on the grounds that it is consistent with the enemies techs (B/B are ninjamaster and use shadowdive just like NM-Hawk, nightblades use split image slice like NB-Hawk)
and in vanilla it works so that ninjamaster has his MT option in spells and nightblade his in the Lv3 tech while the other stuff is single target.

I did say "Thematically speaking", as in how you don't expect a Pyromancer to start throwing Ice spells. A Nightblade is a class halfway between the Rogue and Mage points of the Warrior-Rogue-Mage triangle that's characterized by using shadow magic or illusions related to the cover of darkness, their shadow, or the target's shadow to attack, which is exactly what Shadow Dive is. Since I don't think either class is too dependent on having a ST or AoE tech, I'd say they could be switched around for that thematic consistency.

3 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

and how would I do that?
the big problem is how much more buffable physical is compared to spells.
power up + def down is the same as mind up + m.def down
but did you include sabers? only +10% for magic but +10% for physical and another potential +50% for weakness hits that didn't exist before
energy ball?
aura wave?

also magic deals more high number but rarely occuring damage
while physical is low to medium damage but all the time.
how do you compare that?
or is that just the same problem as with Duran's recovery? purely psychological

I'm comparing to angela's spells that were not hitting a weakness. Also, physical attacks can miss. I was playing a Duran completely ignoring physical stats and in full Defense gear, so I didn't mind being a meatshield just walling the enemies away from the team, but since the Dragon Master was fully equiped for physical offense, I guess he's not wrong to expect to have a larger impact on the fight, but frankly speaking, he could be equipped the same as me and fights would still go the same way: the spells were accounting for too much of the damage. While it's alright for a tanky build, I don't think a physical powerhouse should be feeling they're just buying time for a spellcast.

Even accouting for the fact that Duran naturally does more damage than Lise, I think physical attack gear(of all types) could stand to have more of an impact to widen that gap.

But accouting for Nesouk's feedback, I can assume crit builds just take a while to start showing results.

Sorry, I posted that in a hurry before I forgot about it and didn't put much substance into it so it came through as a bit of a non-sequitur. I was traveling but I'm home now.

Anyway, Praetarius, I know you're not working on this anymore, but I'd been using my break to play this with friends so I'll just relay what we found so far and you'll at least have the feedback. Team is Lord, Rune Master, Dragonmaster. We're up to the first go at the Holyland, so the halfway point. We will continue this when possible.

• Duran's shield aggro mechanic has huuuuuge strategic value and completely changed some fights, like Bill&Ben. I'd recommend also giving Lise access to them so the effect is less exclusive.
• Dragonmaster player felt severely underwhelmed with a crit build even rushing points into luck and switched to tech gear. Maybe ties into the next point if it's a case where it performs better at the end of the game.
• A lot of gear available in the first part seem to only be useful for the latter half, like the elemental and status resistances (The only status resistance that sees use is Petrify because of Gorva, really). Maybe switch them with some crucial build gear that is only available in the second half, like cast time reduction and crit bonuses
• Speaking of Gorva, while not too hard per se, that fight does take an abnormal amount of time even with Angela casting. Melee only teams should be even worse, given its high evasion. I recommend giving it very low physical defense to properly reward hitting it when it's within range.
• One mentioned Nightblade and Ninja Master's techs seem switched around, thematically speaking. Think I also said that once.
• Angela player has been accounting for most of the team's damage even if not hitting a weakness, Lise player was frustrated that despite equipping for physical damage, fights were defined almost entirely by the spell going off. I believe physical attacks could stand to be brought at least a little closer.
• Bill&Ben round 2 died without splitting up

12 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

I'm not working on this anymore.

Just a little thing I've noticed on my last playthrough, the spell upgrade: Sudden ring doesn't seem to be reducing cast time at all, but it does still 0 your MP.

While the area of effect of lament of dead is attractive, I find Fearful Impact just too reliable to pass up, so I tipically use only the latter.

There's not much to actually using them, though. Let the enemy come to you (this seems to be the part that confuses you, it's rarely a good idea to send all your units towards the enemy every turn, use your tanks to set up a choke), get some TP, keep hitting the tanky enemy units with fearful impact. Leave archers and mages to units that can actually reach them.

Evade blocks buffs skills like Speedstar and even items for some reason. It's always been like that.

Only gripe I had with Terror Knight is that it wasn't tanky enough. It feels just right now, and fear is a really good effect.

Ranger only has Shadow walk and First Aid. Don't get me wrong, Shadow walk is awesome and a bit ridiculous on a class that also has double attack, but the class feels really empty aside from that.

But not every character gets that increase. Denam's wielding a 2h katana and gets nothing from every earring but the 2H katana one, which has only a very small increase which seems to be only from the skill ranks, and a generic dragoon with a sword and fusil gets nothing for the fusil from a sword earring.

Can you go through the endgame gear changes a bit?

Since sidegrades are only available for shop pieces, are they still competitive with the elemental pieces? And only the robes have an augment level? Doesn't that make the elemental armor kind of pointless?

And for the accessories, I'm confused at how earrings are increasing the attack of people who aren't wielding the correct weapon type.

Light Lord doesn't feel as good now, which I think it's a good thing compared to Divine and Dark being so much better in the original. Might switch to Fire Lord.

The White Knight duo is overbearingly powerful in undead fights. Considering what the Palace is, might be better to rein it in a little bit. Maybe make the quickening from fervor end immediately, so all it does is make their next turn come faster.

I also had the idea of adding that same small quicken effect to all war dances (only to the user), which now have mostly good effects (harvest still sucks), but could use one more small push. If using them also allowed the next turn to come faster, they'd be in a pretty good spot, and I feel that blends in well with the Swordmaster's image.

Yes, it's intended.

Anyway Raics, my crafting chances just fixed themselves back to 100% from 90-96% somehow. And as mentioned, it was not just visual, I did fail a couple times. I've been going through some of the sidegrades, and doesn't the cloth armor sidegrade completely eclipse regular light armor?

I'm wondering, how were draconic damage spells calculated again? Sherri nearly always does less damage with Terra than with Cragfall II, but Denam does three to five times more with Aura than with Spiritsurge.

I WANT THE BROKEN CAPS LOCK NAMING BACK

Yeah, my first time messing that up. I applied the latest updated one day, played another, and forgot I had auto-load latest savestate turned on.

How much does this mess up? I'm already past Barnicia and not super into starting over again, but if I had to, better now than later.

The crafting chance failure is back, is that intended?

Oh, and I've only going straight for the leader in Galgastan missions for the CF, and am yet to evac anyone. But this is the same as my last playthrough, there's 2 spots where the level difference gets really bad: end of chapter 3, I usually go to Xeod Moors with baldur weaponry for quick clears to catch up, but it happens again right at the end of the game, last play I just pushed through and had 4 units lose a heart to the final boss for it, because it's easy to bully Uram in the first chapter 4 fight for exp with the WORLD.

Didn't get the scene to continue the Cressida questline. So I can't evacuate Oelias? There's no way I can finish that before she dies.

Did you...remove Oz and Ozma's pissy fit ranged attack? Young man, you put that back this instant.

Seriously though, I just reached chapter 4 in the new playthrough, and I think it's time to do something about the exp curve. The player shouldn't have to grind levels while going through the story the first time (not to mention the classes you get way late), the way it is right now you reach the hanging gardens at level 17-18 and enemies are way higher. Even the shop equipment is two tiers ahead, at times. The first Damasc pieces showed up and my highest level is still 14.

Keeping it this slow also exacerbates the gaps in weapon availability. Your 2H bow options is stuck at the level 7 Longbow for 2 whole chapters.

What you're saying is about poison in the player's hands, though. The real problem is how the AI uses it. Enemies would work better if they simply didn't have access to poison. It's doing them almost exclusively harm.

Is there a save editor for this game? Ended up losing my save and all I still had to do was the palace and CODA. Don't really want to have to reach the endgame again, as the game is still very...very slow at the start.

EDIT: Actually, nevermind, I just saw the huge overhaul that 0.89 and 0.90 were and I should probably go through the progression again.

Every file I think may be something good is either a .cm, .efb, .ebp, and I don't know what any of those extensions are, but there's a bunch of interesting .bins alongside the license boards, like ability_data and license_data and more importantly, waza_data, which I'm pretty sure it's Technicks.

Seems there's a file just for treasures. I'd like to at some point finish what they started with IZJS.

Back in the original FFXII, treasures were mostly pointless, so in IZJS they changed chests so there's a lot of good equipment in the zones. However, they're still mostly equipment available in a previous shop (except if you do the Mosphoran sequence break), and they still require a lot of mindless walking back and forth due to the chance of spawn, chance of gil, and chance of item. I'd like to change all equipment treasure chests to be one-time only, always have only a piece of equipment of the next shop you're about to visit, and say, 80% chance to spawn. That way the player is rewarded for fully exploring every new zone.

Technicks should be changed almost entirely, use them to give license boards some unique tools. But aside from that I'd only really change the Time Battlemage and the Machinist a little bit.

Just a heads-up, accessible here. I've been waiting for modding opportunities for this game since forever, and it seems a handy browser tool has already been developed. Might take a shot at overhauling it myself, depending on how much we end up being able to change.

War dances are still really bad, though.

I think what it does is the original target takes the hit with its defense stat, then the knight takes the hit with his own defense, and both resulting damages are halved.

16 hours ago, raics said:

When monsters gain elemental attunement via their resonance skills it wouldn't do anything in vanilla because it requires a weapon to provide bonus damage, those assault tokens just act as a weapon.

Beasts seem fine to me, their role is to take a lot of damage and then spam their special moves as they aren't burning all of their TP away anymore. At low levels they have high starting stats and at high levels they start outscaling equipment, which keeps them viable.

Wait, wait. If you use an Instill, the element is applied to the weapon? So even if you're not using a weapon of that element, you can use an instill to make full use of the augment skill?

1 hour ago, pfanne said:

I have been playing a version of the game that does not include your patches with some friends. We just beat the first god beast.  And now I discovered your amazing patches.

But I don't we dont want to replay the whole game from the start. My idea is to solo rush through to the first god beast with the wuss difficulty patch and then switch to a more demanding difficulty patch to continue with my friends.

Am I likely to encounter any problems with the safe files or other issues if I switch the difficulty mid playthrough?

No, the difficulties are just an additional modifier applied after everything. You can switch between them at your leisure.