Reiker

Yeah to be fair I probably don't use X-Zone / Instant-death attacks enough. I'd suggest Stray, but then that'd break the rule of having no more than 2 characters having access to the same Esper.

A) Give Mog access to Odin? He already has access to Doom and the other Poison spells, so the spells make sense for him, so does the +2 Stamina boost. B) Man I'm kinda impartial to the name Mirage Vest. I don't think it's that confusing that it has different equip restrictions from other vest items. Plus, Mirage Vest is kind of a staple item that's used across several games in the series. If it has to be changed, maybe just call it "Mirage"? Kinda like the "Minerva." Or Mirage Suit. I think people would be more confused about why an iconic FF item had its name changed slightly than over the whole vest thing tbh.

I'm curious why it wasn't possible to keep the original script. All I can think of is for space reasons, but I would think that the BNW script is actually larger than the original. I could be wrong there I guess. Also I don't get the second part of what you're saying. Why would people complain about the untouched vanilla translation in a mod? That doesn't make any sense to me. You've gotta admit at least that this is a very unpopular opinion. FFVI isn't exactly an obscure game with few fans. A lot of people love the game, and they love the script and the characters, which is what leads them to seek out a mod like BNW in the first place. For such a large cast of main characters I think Woolsey actually did a pretty good job of making everyone unique. I think you're missing the point with some of this stuff, like Cyan's Old English. It's just used to show that Cyan is a bit of an outsider, he comes from a place with an ancient culture. It's not literally meant to be Old English (which would be unreadable anyways). Neither of those comments were "blanket complaints." They addressed exactly what they didn't like about the script. Sadly I just see this as an inability to accept criticism. There's an excuse no matter what the criticism is. Either they're a complainer, or "they're just looking for something to be upset about," or their complaints are useless... for some unexplained reason? The script/character changes just don't make much sense for the game. I don't understand why Sabin is some weird hillbilly/redneck stereotype. Edgar does all kinds of very clever stuff in the game, he's a genius mechanic, but then BNW has all of these scenes where the joke is that he's a complete moron. Setzer is an older dude who's traveled the world but has the dialogue of an edgy teenager. This isn't just the opinion of some professional whiner, the script really does come off as bad amateur fanfiction.

X-Dark: It seemed like significantly more damage than Black Omen vs. a single target. I'll have to check out exact numbers when I get home. Same with speed, I never really noticed a big speed difference. Lore takes a long time to charge so I don't think it's as significant as you say, but I'll test it. Now, your whole point about Zoneseek vs. X-Shell... I think you've got it completely backwards. Sure, you save 1 turn with Zoneseek vs. X-Shell initially, but with how often characters die and get dispelled, you quickly regain those turns when you can cast 2 Shells per turn vs. 1. As far as damage output, I'm just not sure why I don't have the same experience you do. And I don't even use the Crystal Orb with Strago, I've gotta fill one of his relic slots with Sprint Shoes since admittedly one of the main weaknesses of this group is no access to Haste outside of lucky Ross Brush procs.

I gave some objective criticisms of the script back when this board was Insane Difficulty and the response I received was kinda nasty, which is why I avoid going in depth on it here, but I did feel a need to respond to Xujhan's insinuation that anyone who has concerns with the script changes is just some clueless complainer. Okay yes, of course whether you like it or not is subjective. But if 7 out of every 10 people dislike it, then it's objectively a bad change. There's a lot of opinions out there of Woolsey's work with FFVI, but in my experience it's primarily favorable. This was mostly evident when Final Fantasy 6 Advance came out in 2007 and there was a lot of outcry when the new translation changed classic lines, such as "son of a submariner" to "son of a sandworm." It also introduced a lot of out of place joke lines that referenced current events like "Weapons of Magitech Destruction." BNW goes a lot further into the realm of fanfiction than that. Woolsey's effort wasn't perfect, but after playing so many retranslations and fan translations of this game I have a lot of appreciation for his work. Now, the 7 out of 10 thing was a made up figure for an example, and it's impossible to tell how many people like the script changes vs. the ones who don't like it. Once you travel outside of this forum however, the #1 complaints against BNW is definitely the script changes. You can look at the most recent discussion of the mod on Reddit for an example: Anyways, this is all kinda moot now that BTB has said he's willing to release a vanilla script version of the mod once someone does... whatever one has to do to make that happen. I do feel a little bad complaining about the script without making any sort of effort to help the reversion, but to be honest I have absolutely no idea how to even start doing something like that. As I've said before, the script is the main thing holding me back from recommending this mod as the definitive version of FFVI so I'm looking forward to a vanilla version of the mod, if that ever happens.

I love BNW. The script changes are still bad. "People are just looking for something to be upset about" is such a cop-out. Not even close. Not even close. Anyways, I watched the guy from the podcast stream BNW a bit. He was the kind of guy who completely ignores everything the game tries to teach you, doesn't understand or appreciate the strategy elements the mod tries to introduce, and then just complains about everything because they can't steamroll the game by holding the A button. It was difficult to watch. I went back to see if he finished it, but I guess he deleted all of his BNW videos for some reason.

This is what I was afraid of. If this is the case, definitely nix the 50% chance to evade penalty. Because as it is now, having cover can actually cause you to take more cumulative damage to your party. I was really excited for this whole cover/counterattack change but the more I learn about it and think about it I dislike it more and more. I don't see the point of nerfing evade for cover anyways and considering it can actually be a detriment outside of your control... meh. Yeah I agree that Mogoon is the best build, unfortunately it's also Edgar's best build and you're limited to 1 Dragon Helm per game unless you want to give up the Dragon Hide which I highly advise against. I've always wished they'd add a second Dragon Helm somewhere. Because of this, and the fact that you only get to use 12 out of your 14 available characters, I tend to bench Mog and Umaro. About Chakra... I think Stamina Sabin is highly underrated. The Terra / Sabin / Strago / Relm group is nuts. Sabin has Golem for early defenses and Suplex for slow, but 99% of the time he'll just be spamming Chakra. I usually just go overkill and toss the full 50 Stamina into him to pump about 70 MP per round, which is more than enough to sustain whatever you want to do with magic. Vigor is unnecessary and he has enough HP naturally that I never feel the need for Terrato, but maybe that'll change with cover. You've got Shield and Shell support, Rerise, and everyone has a form of party healing so you can keep up with all the surprise Quasars and such at late-game. For offense, well, you've got it all... level 3 spells, Ultima, Bahamut, Flare, Meteor, Black Omen, X-Magic Dark... which btw is like 8-12k to a single target at end game and for some reason people keep saying Strago can't fill a damage role?? My last 1.8.6 run finished Kefka with that party at an average level of 33.75... which I don't know if that's considered high or low for BNW but I hear level 37 recommended for vanilla FF6 a lot. Considering that BNW is considerably more difficult I think that's pretty decent.

I haven't really timed it but there's a fight with Movers in the forest next to WoR Jidoor worth 15,000 gp. They're not ID immune so you can use Shoat or something to clear them all, but they're pretty lethal so its not really something you can just kinda jump into at the beginning of the WoR. It's also the rare encounter, the common is against 4 Leap Frogs which aren't worth as much gp and take forever to fight because they Jump. It's not too bad but it's still kinda annoying and grindy and I wish that all EL resets were just a flat 25k since I don't like forcing players to do boring grinding sessions just to experiment with different character setups. Yes you can find all of the FC encounters on the WoR map, they're scattered around those tiny featureless islands. So don't worry about bringing Gau to the FC if you don't want to.

It's almost like you didn't read the part where I said that I concluded that Omega Weapon wasn't worth it on Celes, mostly because Shock is so good already. So my question is now, is the first Evade check ignored in lieu of cover? For example, let's say an enemy chooses to attack Gau and RNGed aligned to allow him to Evade this attack. But Shadow also passed his cover check, will he now jump in front of Gau and take the damage that would have been avoided anyways? Like I said before, I only mentioned Edgar/Mog because spears have innate Cover and the discussion was about whether you should be able to cover from the back row or not. If you're going to require characters to be in the front row to cover, then the innate cover on spears is pretty pointless. I never really know what to do with Mog anyways besides give him a vacation on the airship. Chakra. It does a lot more than Carbunkl if you're not running out of HP/MP.

I didn't mention Counter much because I feel like there's some anti-synergy between Cover and Counter, for the same reasons I listed for the back row stuff. High stamina builds usually aren't good physical attackers, with the exception of Kirin Locke w/ Omega Weapon I guess, or possibly Phantom Shadow. The first time I built Shock Celes I gave her the Omega Weapon, but found I'd rarely choose Fight when Shock did nearly the same amount of damage and hit everything. The extra counters are nice, but it's inconsistent and usually kinda irrelevant so in my second playthrough I decided the Omega Weapon was more useful as a Mirage Vest and I just gave her some stat-increasing weapon. Does an extra 10-20 Vigor really result in just an extra 500 damage at end game? I don't know the formulas so I'm not sure but in my experience I feel like Vigor has a more significant impact than that. I definitely want to experiment with this stuff though so it looks like I'm going to be doing Kirin Locke and Phantom Celes in my 1.9 playthrough to see how they compare to the builds I normally do. I don't know what changes were made to swords outside of "Reworked & rebalanced swords to offer more (and better) choices for vigor-built characters" so I can't really comment on that. Maduin is a newb trap? You need Carbunkl ELs? I don't know man, I've never had to boost Terra's MP. She gets the Gem Box. Ultima's only 50 MP; everything else is significantly less. Terra has like, the least troubles with MP out of anyone. Cover halves evasion? Is that a Vanilla thing, or a BNW thing? If it's new with this patch, then I definitely don't like it. It limits what you can do with Cover for no real reason, and honestly doesn't make any sense. You're literally blocking an attack on someone else, how would that hurt your chance to block?

Oh yeah, by Tumbleweed I meant Mesosaur. Had them mixed up.

I don't see Cover alone being good enough to make Unicorn Edgar a thing. It's basically a nice little bonus that makes Stamina builds more relevant, but it's A) unreliable and B) does nothing against magic attacks which are most of the time the main threat you face in BNW. You are not going to build entirely around something that insignificant, especially with how powerful the alternative is (Dragoon Edgar). I haven't been insane enough to build Unicorn Edgar so maybe it's some secret OP but like, what does he even do... wait around to defibrilate people? I mentioned the Dragoon builds because spears will have innate Cover. They'll be taking some Cover hits. But not something you build towards. Edgar and Mog are not primary Cover candidates. I mentioned Shock Celes because that's the ideal build to utilize Cover with. Yeah it comes late-game but... that's where the hard bosses are and it's the only viable time to do a Stamina build. You can build with Phantom and have access to Shock for the entire WoR, and just spam out MP Free mini-Ultimas for half the game, and EL reset to Crusader to get a Speed boost once you can take out White Dragon. Definitely a viable way to utilize Celes, if not the best way. If you wanna whack things with Illumina (which actually comes later than Phantom-Shock and not that earlier than Crusader-Shock) why not just go Ramuh/Siren and forget about Cover completely? "Kirin Cyan can survive the front row" kinda misses the point I'm making. Cover isn't so OP as to require the guy to take front row damage for no reason. Unicorn Terra - See Unicorn Edgar. Are you really going to do a tank build on Terra just so she can Cover some occasional physical hits when the alternative is Ultima spam? Kirin Locke I honestly didn't really think of, I usually just pump his Vigor and trade Omega Weapon for a Mirage Vest. What kind of damage does Valiance do without the Vigor ELs? I might try out this build for 1.9. This is also kinda late-game though and will require an EL-reset. Dunno how Gau is a terrible choice for Cover. Dude has a legitimate Stray build and can get kinda tanky with the right equipment. I don't know what I'm missing here. And man, a 2k HP tank? What luxury, I think the highest max HP I've seen in BNW is like 1800, maybe. What level are you finishing the game at normally? This isn't a dig or anything... let me load up my 1.8.6 save at Kefka to see what I'm at... Terra at 1725 and Sabin at 1720. Everyone else is between 1152 (Gogo) and 1680 (Shadow).

It's definitely viable. You'll crap your pants when you see how much damage Tentacle (and Sharpnel) does. I did a pure Stamina Gau my last 1.8.6 run.

I recommend just don't run unless you know the fight is unwinnable and you're trying to avoid a game over. Even in that case casting the Warp spell or using a Warp Whistle is a better option. I feel like for the most part this mod is well balanced difficulty-wise if you don't run from fights and don't spend any extra time grinding. If you want easy-mode Gau, put all of his ELs into Stamina and prioritize gear that raises his defense/evade and Stamina. A Stat Stick + Zephyr Cape, for example (Red Cap in WoR). In the WoB pick between Conjuror when you need Reraise + Sap, and Cephalid when you want DPS. Cephalid has auto-shell and the Tentacle attack will be one of your most powerful attacks if you're stacking Stamina. I believe the 1/3 chance Rage inflicts Slow too. That's a huge toolbox in just 2 Rages: Reraise, Sap, Slow, Massive Damage. In the WoR you switch between Tumbleweed* for group healing and Mantodea for damage. Towards the end game I transition Gau from a primary damage dealer to a primary healer since other characters begin to catch up and surpass Gau on damage and you need more big group heals to survive everything spamming stuff like Quasar. Pick up Antlion (Doom/Stop) when you first get Gau in Sabin's scenario and use that until you get Cephalid and bam, you have an extremely powerful character and all you need is 5 rages for the entire game. He'll always be a little squishy but still more survivable than characters like Strago/Relm, especially if you prioritize his Defense/Evade. Always have him in the back row. Edit: Corrected auto-safe to auto-shell (Cephalid) * I meant Mesosaur is your main healing Rage in WoR. Tumbleweed heals for less but cures status.

The problem with forcing you to be in the front row to cover, is that just about every Cover-based build in the game benefits from being in the back row. There's no reason to put Cyan in the front row when Dragon/Eclipse are back row abilities. Dragoons want to be in the back row. Shock Celes wants to be in the back row. Chakra Sabin wants to be in the back row. Mantodea/Tumbleweed Gau wants to be in the back row. The only character it really makes sense for is Umaro. Maybe Shadow. Honestly, I don't see the Cover change to be ground breaking enough to warrant making it less powerful. I obviously haven't played 1.9 to try it out yet, but I just don't see it being that big of a deal in the late-game. Physical attacks are rarely a concern when you have stuff like Fenrir, Golem, and Shield. Even if you implemented a way to cover magic-based attacks, it'd probably still do nothing vs. the real threats which are party-wide attacks like Quasar and S. Cross.

Vigor impacts all physical attacks. Stamina only boosts very specific abilities that you have to specifically build your characters towards, ie. Dragon/Eclipse, Chakra/Mantra, Cephalid/Mantodea, etc. If anything I'd like to see Stamina have a more significant effect on damage mitigation to make it a more definitive tank stat, as opposed to how it's primarily used to boost offensive abilities. Really hoping the Cover change in 1.9 makes Stamina-built characters feel more like the party's tank. I'm looking forward to it, since 99% of single player RPGs don't do the tank character role very well and you're just left praying that your glass cannons don't get one-shotted all the time. Speed might make more sense but the problem is that the characters you want to fill this role (like Cyan and Umaro) have terrible Speed and no way to boost it. The speedy characters are generally the ones you want to be protecting, not doing the protecting.

Possible 1.8.6 bug: When you attack with the Switchblade and it procs Steal, you can attack again immediately as if you used the Steal skill w/ Locke.

I've been thinking of streaming a 1.9 run on Twitch when it came out officially, but maybe I could get my hands on a copy of a 1.9 beta and test some of this stuff? I've been really looking forward to doing a Cyan-heavy 1.9 run anyways, since I'm already interested in just how powerful he'll be. There's also the issue of... let's say you really want to focus on how strong Cyan is at certain parts of the game. You end up including him whenever you have the choice, so he soaks up all those extra levels/ELs. That can be like a 10+ level and EL gap between Cyan and your rarely used characters just by the time you get to the FC.

Where's this? There's little BNW content on Youtube, nothing for 1.9 that I can see, and I rarely ever see anyone playing BNW on Twitch.

A couple fights where I thought I should have been able to Leap with Gau but wasn't able to: 2 Jinn + Antares battle (Cave to the Sealed Gate). I was able to get the Jinn rage by Leaping in the Jinn + Zombone battle, however. Ninja scripted fight (Cave to the Sealed Gate). I can kinda understand this one since it's not a random battle, but I thought I was being smart by getting the Ninja rage before the Floating Continent. Feels like it should be a neat little bonus for taking Gau here, and it's not that long before you can get the rage naturally, anyways.

Not sure where to post this, didn't want to crap up the character specific threads. On the Sabin thread you have Mantra listed as level 15 and Aura Bolt as level 20. In my current 1.8.6 playthrough I received Aura Bolt at 15. I'm not sure if this is a bug with the game, or you just messed up on the character guide.

Yeah, I guess my point was that Umaro isn't nearly powerful enough to somehow become overpowered with inherent cover + the Rage Belt. I'll experiment with him a bit in 1.9 but I'd like to see him become an actual viable choice, since even in the final dungeon some characters have to sit behind on the airship (and Umaro is usually the #1 contender for bench warmer). The cover changes seemed like a brilliant way to do this (single player RPGs always fail when trying to designate a "tank class" character) but if you have to sacrifice a powerful item on an already iffy character...

Is there any other piece of Umaro-equip that could maybe get the Cover Allies ability tacked on to it? I've always liked Umaro as a character, but I've never really utilized him as a party member in this game for obvious reasons. I'd love to try to go the Big Dumb Bodyguard route in my 1.9 playthrough, but I still don't think it's going to be worth it due to having to sacrifice a relic slot for the Knight Cape. The problem is that Umaro is just so one-dimensional he has to be quite powerful to even begin to compete against all the other playable characters for one of those 12 party slots.

I think it might make sense to give the Muffler the Cover Allies ability now, no? Also, I played a couple patches ago and ran into a problem where I wanted to test out different builds but the respec was prohibitively expensive. I kinda felt locked out of the mod's features without heavy grinding, unless there's an encounter somewhere that rewards a ton of money and no experience that I couldn't find. Ignore this if the cost has been changed in the past couple of updates. Super unlikely wishlist item: A version of this mod that keeps the original Woolsey translation intact (except for things like changing Gau's rage explanation) so I can finally recommend this mod as the definitive version of the game. (Not looking for a debate on this, I know it's been done to death, and I know it's a lot of work to bring back the old translation, I just really wish the option was there so I could recommend this romhack to people who haven't played through FFVI before)