rpschamp

Duran and Angela have both changed a lot in this mod, especially with the changed counter dynamics. They were also considered poor teammates in the original, but work very well together in this mod. With this in mind, it's worth considering taking Duran as a lead to highlight the player counters, and Angela as a recruit to highlight the changed enemy response to her spells (and also Duran's level 2/3 techs). Rune Master might be a good class for Angela to show off her fancy multi-target level 3 spells, and any class for Duran, as long as you plan to use his techs. Also, Durangela's quest would be nice since the later bosses force you to use the counter mechanic.

I might just bite the bulette (!) and stock up on scales for bosses. It might be well worth it for the avalanche of critical hits this team could dish out. But I just remembered that Sword Master's Energy Ball is stuck on self-cast, so Lord might be a better option anyways. However you slice it, the sausage party is going to be pretty one-dimensional. At least Hawk can cast some damage spells.

I should have assumed you would have already tried this. But actually, a casting cancel might be useful as an optional patch, if only for the character that you control. I would assign it to the select button so it's not likely you would accidentally trigger it. Partners' spells could be cancellable with L/R, but this would not be as useful. I'm thinking of those times when you accidentally choose the wrong spell or when you start casting but then Bill & Ben start kicking the shit out of your teammates and they need an instant chocolate to avoid dying. My coding experience does not extend to hex editing, which I assume is your primary tool, so I don't think I could be much help at the moment.

Star Lancer's extra spells would certainly be wasted (and Archmage already gets Aura Wave), but Marduke is so good, she's worth considering, and her armor slot would be freed. Still, shield-bearing counter commander seems to be the natural role for Fenrir Knight, and all her spells here (except Mind Up) would be unique. The only other character who would enhance her role would be Ninja Master with his final weapon; subbing out either of the casters for him would lead to interesting teams as well that would play differently but are certainly worth trying out (with the guaranteed counter recovery, you may even be able to forgo Heal Light and run with a Rune Master, though Grand Divina, Bishop, and Sage seem like more natural choices). I'd like to see a sausage party with Sword Master and Ninja Master focused on critical hits to take full advantage of the former's final weapon. God Hand or Warrior Monk would be the third pick, but I don't play Kevin often so I'll leave that to a specialist to decide.

After some play-testing and thought, I've decided to start a game with a femmes fatales crew of Fenrir Knight, Archmage, and Sage. I took an earlier crew with these characters (but different classes) up to the God Beasts and was amazed at how well they performed, especially against the multi-melee bosses Bill & Ben and Machine Golems. A shield bearer can do a lot to distract, leaving the two casters to bomb away. The hardest battle up to the God Beasts was probably Jewel Eater, and this was mainly because I forgot to account for Carlie's weakness to earth (incidentally, this was the first time I used a Matango Oil in many many games). Archmage and Sage compliment each other well: they can both cast level 2 holy and dark, and Sage can power up the Archmage's other elements and the attacker with her sabers. Archmage gets the two most important stat-downs for a magic team, Power Down and Mind Down, so all that is needed are the stat-ups and a way to distract melee mobs. While Dragon Master may sound like a good idea with empowered Anti-Magic to boost the casters, Archmage already gets normal Anti-Magic, and the casters have enough elemental variety that at least one of them can almost always find a weakness without it. Fenrir Knight looks like a great alternative, providing an alternate source of HP and MP recovery that doesn't require casting, especially important if you're playing solo and want to keep your main character free to control your other characters! (N.B. Praetarius: the ability to control your second and third characters with L and R while casting would be a great gameplay update for solo players!) Lise's light classes would be interesting choices for this team as well and wouldn't require invert armor to achieve the stat-ups, but they don't seem to add as much value as Fenrir Knight with her final weapon (Star Lancer would be a strong contender if Marduke could be insta-cast). This team has two heavy bombers and a shield-bearer to keep them safe, three forms of healing including Sage's final weapon (and not counting items), all the sabers except holy and dark, Anti-Magic, Life Booster, and all the important stat-ups and stat-downs. Vive les femmes!

I'm working on a no-death playthrough and hope to test the deathless weapons. A couple questions about what actually counts as death in this case: 1) Are there any status alterations that count as death (the documentation indicates as much for petrify)? 2) Are there any deaths that do not count as death (deaths recovered by statues or inns, instant deaths, death by trap)? Enjoying the eff out of your remake. Thanks as always!

Just a follow-up on this. In recent games I've been able to consistently beat Gorva before he reaches Black Rain and Death Spell, even under-levelled. The most important thing is to use a strong caster equipped for magic attack constantly casting her most damaging spell at the moment she recovers from her previous spell. This is not that hard to manage as Gorva wastes a lot of time between attacks, so your other (primary) character should be able to handle all of the recovery. It helps if they can throw in a powerful attack or two during her casting when convenient. But there may also be ways to encourage Gorva to waste time. On my recent playthrough, it seemed that when he appeared close to the ship in range for a melee attack, if I attacked him as soon as he appeared, he sometimes disappeared again before moving or taking any action and reappeared somewhere else, causing him to waste more time before advancing his cycle. Is this part of his mechanic, or did I just get lucky?

This discussion about invert armor came up at a convenient time. I'm currently planning a party around Dragon Master with Angela and Carlie to take advantage of the empowered Anti-Magic, and I was thinking to use the invert armor to cover my spread of necessary buffs and debuffs. Strangely, I think a good Angela class here would be Archmage. Her final weapon gives her 200% on weaknesses, which with Dragon Master should almost always apply, and she provides both Mind Down and Power Down. With Dragon Master inverted, that should cover the whole spread of necessary buffs and debuffs for a magic team, leaving Carlie the option to go with the mighty Sage, a class that not only also takes good advantage of empowered Anti-Magic, but brings healing, sabers, and a bunch of support skills that work well for a magic team.

I usually just silence Dangaard; I suppose some would consider this unethical, but he's the only boss with four phases which itself could be considered an ethical breach, so I make the exception. Plus I like to get at him early loaded up with Beastman Collars for that massive gold gain, so I can get at the Cats equipment before I face the other God Beasts. Def Up is definitely more important than Anti-Magic under most circumstances. But aside from Anti-Magic, Evil Shaman also has some nice crowd control spells that might be worth giving up the Speed Down and Protect Down, the two stat debuffs that this team needs the least.

The un-unequippable aspect previously steered me away. I normally use the Byzel armors to remove weaknesses, but it would be nice to do this with a single accessory slot. Plus these simplify purchase and equip decisions for people who want to spend more of their time fighting and less planning. Two concerns: 1) Is it possible to add an elemental resistance while wearing these, or does the Protect Ring override resist armors and accessories? 2) Are there any bugs enabled by wearing these? Are they only with specific items? I read in another post that it's possible for a weapon to copy the Protect Ring un-unequippable quality, and I'd like to avoid these if possible. Thanks!

I think you are right, that Def Up is really important. Even on normal difficulty, some of the high damage fights like Bill and Ben would be difficult without it, especially if you are running Beastman Collars. Evil Shaman could work for that last team too if you want to go for Anti-Magic.

These are good ideas, but I would combine them and run Dragon Master, Magus, and Bishop. Then you get five sabers, all the stat downs and the three most important stat ups, all the level 2 attack spells, and two good melee fighters once Bishop gets her final weapon. Now that Lise gets shields to draw the fight away from the casters, this group becomes more manageable. Another interesting option here would be to change up the final classes and go Dragon Master, Rune Master, and Sage. This would give you Life Booster instead of Def Up, passive heal instead of another attacker, Leaf Saber instead of Saint Saber, and more magic firepower with multi-target Saint Beam and Dark Force as well as status-inflicting multi-target Level 3 spells. You would have some redundancy on the elemental sabers, but there are so many other options here (and no redundancy on Lunatic) that it almost doesn't matter, plus Sage would not be dependent on Whitelight Ring. Stock up on Def Up seeds if you really need the boost; this should not be a problem money-wise once you hit mid-game. I really can't think of another magic-based team that would kill it harder than this. Thanks for the suggestions, I've been looking to run a girl power team; I may give it a shot and let you know how it goes.

For this detail, armors that deny counter attack should be useful. Playing a few games up through the God Beasts with Grand Divina, the only boss where this became a problem was Bill and Ben, especially since I had to use high physical defense armor to survive their Level 2 tech counters. In this case, cast with caution and only when sufficiently healed. This is only really a problem the first time you meet Bill and Ben as the second time their counters are not as powerful relative to your hit points, plus your defensive options should be improved.

"rps"champ not "rpg", from rock-paper-scissors haha (does anyone remember Xenogears?) I agree on Light Lise, especially Star Lancer with Marduke; she was a close second for me. It's tough to get even just Protect Up and Mind Up together without her. I want to give Dark Lise a chance but haven't thought of any really interesting groups to go for yet. My favorite team so far has been Nightblade, Star Lancer, and Grand Divina; incredibly versatile with both magical and physical damage once you hit the second class change, with the defensive buffs to cover your butt when you need them.

I'm totally with you; I've been playing this mod obsessively since I found it almost a year ago. In this version, my favorite character and class are Angela and Grand Divina. Angela because she rains holy hell (and is much more usable because of the revised counter mechanic) and has good variety in her final classes in terms of magic damage type and even sabre, stat, and recovery/support spells. Grand Divina because 1) she gets the six major elements for multi-target damage and spell upgrades, 2) she keeps these as Level 1 spells which have the best damage/MP efficiency, are the fastest (she can cast multiple damage spells in the same time her other classes can cast one), and have my favorite animations, 3) she can cast these as sabres (with her final weapon, though she can't cast them on the enemy), 4) she gets Heal Light and Tinkle Rain (multi-target with a Whitelight Ring, but still confer their major benefits as single-target if you want to preserve the accessory slot), 5) she gets the highest net INT/SPI scores for powerful magic and healing, 6) she has the best sub-screen pose, and 7) with her silver hair, she looks kind of like Danaerys Targaryen (for GOT fans; I name her Dany).

Just a follow-up on this, I'm finding the best time to use these is towards the end of the game once you no longer need multiple Beastman Collars to collect gold for new equipment. Freeing up the armor slot and solving all weaknesses in one accessory slot is solid.

All the documentation including mechanics comes with the patch. The weapon/armor/accessory, spell/item, and enemy attribute descriptions are in the xls files in the root folder.

Indeed; this game keeps you on your toes. General question on what counts as a death: I've had instances where a character gets reduced to 0/1 HP, flickering between the two values, but I manage to exit the screen before they fall over. In some cases on entering the new screen I can see that their maximum HP hasn't decreased, i.e. a death penalty hasn't been applied. Would this count as a death (in terms of deathless weapons), or would the death counter only increase if a death penalty was applied? Is this flickering between 0 and 1 HP something that has to resolve itself prior to death? I guess I'm asking if there is no death penalty, is there no death?

As I recall, Gorva cast Black Rain on me twice during the match. Neither was followed by Death Spell. The second Black Rain may have come just at the end so he may have not completed the second AI cycle, but he at least completed the first.

Well, if you're certain that there is no way to skip that part of his loop, then perhaps the battle did go faster in terms of the number of spells he had a chance to cast. Equipping the matk armor to buff my Holy Ball instead of the anti-weakness armor might have made the difference; the battle may have just seemed longer because I was constantly using recovery items as a result.

Just a heads up, on one of my previous games, Hawk's Black Hood morphed into a Garravilla; I opened the equip menu to equip the Black Hood some time after I had bought it, but I had two Garravillas in my headgear collection instead. I'm guessing there's some byte math reason for this. Is there an easy way to prevent this from happening (apart from not buying the Black Hood)?

I'm sure; I'm pretty OCD about my items, especially when purchasing and equipping, and I'm sure that I went through all of the areas up through late Palo with only one Garravilla (same d-pad moves to equip pdef and mdef headgear for each of my characters). I then purchased a Black Hood but didn't try to equip it until after the Bucca adventure. I would not have had a chance to purchase a second Garravilla as I never returned to any of the shops that sold it for any reason. I wonder if it has something to do with the two hoods sharing the same sprite map. I am starting a new group with Hawk and will pay close attention at each point in the game to see if and when I can reproduce the bug myself.

Just an update here; on my current run, I managed to avoid Gorva casting Death Spell on me. The fight was definitely not any faster than my previous runs, so it had nothing to do with speed. I always thought that Death Spell was his desperation (1/4 HP?) move, but perhaps not. The major difference this time was that I forgot to equip anti-weakness armor before fighting him. I noticed that he was casting a lot more Evil Gates than in previous fights, hitting my weaknesses (dark Duran, light Angela). This leads me to believe that his AI may be able to sense my weakness, like the magician-class characters apparently can, leading him to prefer to hit me with spells that attack my weakness, decreasing his likelihood of casting Death Spell. Does any of this make sense?

I'm thinking of starting a two-tank team with Duran and Lise both using shields, to spread the aggro between them. This should distribute the damage more evenly and keep the third member, a caster, even more protected. Let me know if there is anything about aggro mechanics that would disrupt this strategy.

Well, despite my previous objections, I'll now be starting a new Lise-led group to take advantage of the shields. Any description of the randomizer program? (I can't find any files in the zip that I can open with my text editor.) Also, has anyone been brave enough to run a team without Heal Light? It seems like Moon Saber/Dragon Ring and items may be enough, but I haven't made it as far as the final areas so I'm not entirely sure. Also, some final weapons that run on low HP would benefit from avoiding the post-battle heal.