Nowea

Your 3 defenses against Meteor are HP, Stamina, and M. Evade. If you aren't using an HP booster that does a lot to help. Notably, these 3 defenses are useful against basically everything Kefka casts

If you're struggling with Gargoyle rage because of Runic and flight it's probably time to change up your strat with him. If you're using him for healing Rocky will still heal (at half power vs Sun Bath but will cure statuses) and his secondary isn't a dead (or runiced) turn.

Lastly, as far as HP goes he has about as much as Guardian

Overall just rethink your strat a bit, maybe swap gear out to help nullify some of Kefka's elements or bulk up in general.

On 10/7/2021 at 9:53 AM, R-el said:

I assumed this was the situation. In fact, adding this kind of feature would run counter to the spirit of the bnw project. I am delighted to know that it is possible to use bnw as a basis for future projects. I will try to ask NHT where to start and how to move. Thanks!

That is so far out of my capabilities it's not even funny.

The readme covers this info fairly well, but almost all of the special abilities include different options for different stats. Sabin has Vig based, Mag based, and Stam based Blitzes. Edgar has Vig and Mag tools, etc etc.

The only ones that only look at one stat are Steal (Speed makes steal better) and Lore (all are either Magic or don't look at any of the 4 stats directly)

10 hours ago, Vaylen said:

Rods

 

Is the backrow penalty on Rods a necessity? Most Rod users have a really tough time in the frontrow and the reward for the risk of putting them in the front is not exactly game-changing. This relegates rods, for the most part, to stat sticks with gimmicks that aren't worth considering.
If you want to seriously use rods for damage, you'd probably build a Cover/Counter set-up, which requires frontrow. Rod-jumping can be done from the backrow with no drawbacks anyway.

In short, I don't see a problem with Rods dealing full damage from the backrow, it'd only make their gimmick a bit more appealing to use.

Orochi

I don't really see the point of this weapon. It lacks something unique going for it. Strong vs Flying is nice and has some use, but I think Mutsunokami and Avenger outperform this weapon most of the time. Feel free to correct me on this one, though. Overall, I guess it's just kind of a unremarkable weapon.

Force Gear(Armor and Shield)

I feel you get too many pieces of Force Gear(I think it's 4?). Force Gear is pretty specialized and has a few restrictions(as well as competitors) that do not make it all that appealing to most characters, in my opinion. I'd remove one piece of Force Gear, replacing it with something else.

Just to cover the 3 I see with easy counterpoints.

Without the back row penalty rods are better than casting the spell, thanks to MP Crit. In addition, rods doing full damage from back row would make rod jumping strictly worse than rod swinging. As is, jumping is better defensively due to not needing the front row.

"Strong vs Flying" weapons all have the "Randomly throws" effect, which has a 50% chance to do 100% more damage (or 200% more vs flying) so its bpow is effectively closer to 300 (400 vs flying) on average. This means it'll perform as well as Avenger on average vs weakness (vs holy and vs flying respectively). Mutsu is its own formula that I don't really feel like looking at too much, but I'd blindly wager that Orochi outperforms it vs flying enemies if you don't go out of your way to get a +Mag damage booster on Shadow.

You do get 4 Force Gear, however I'd disagree with it being specialized and not appealing. Of the characters that can use Force Gear, Cyan doesn't have a strong magic build. Cyan likes Force Armor as it's basically his only source of elemental mitigation, so against Fire/Ice/Bolt it's a viable piece of armor for him. Terra and Celes are better served by Minerva usually, yes. But Minerva's also a late game piece of gear. I'm also looking at 2.0 documentation though and don't remember if 1 force gear was swapped to something else for 2.1 or not.

Simply put, adding new playable characters is not part of Brave New World's scope. There's enough fun going on balancing and fine tuning the 14 characters that are already there.

First thing I'd try is turning off the "no sprite limit" option. I didn't experiment extremely long with BSNES but IIRC that's where issues came up that I noticed.

Other options in the PPU section may help as well.

13 hours ago, beechteeth said:

How soon do you think the bug fix will be available, BTB? I'm really enjoying 2.0 so far after beating 1.9 some time ago, but I fear going too far without being able to use my current save with an updated version of the game.

No ETA, it's just a "Done when it's done" one. As far as save compatibility goes, this isn't going to be a major patch and your old saves will remain usable unless you consider "Cyan has 1 more vigor than he should" to be gamebreaking.

52 minutes ago, Reiker said:

I'm pretty sure I've explained this a few times already in this thread. Because there aren't many better options and every Celes build should utilize her support toolkit heavily. The whole point of reducing MP costs is to reduce the number of turns you have to spend restoring MP instead of dealing damage. So if you're able to get in an extra 1-2 Fight commands in a Boss fight w/ the Soul Box vs. the Crystal Orb, then the Soul Box was actually the more offensive option.

If you use a shield and that lets Celes not die so you can get an extra 1-2 fight commands from her on a boss, then using a Crystal Shield is actually a more offensive option

55 minutes ago, Reiker said:

I know what the other relics do. I'm just saying that they don't do as much as the Soul Box, for the reasons I've outlined a few times already. I would rarely Bserk Celes, so yeah the Cover is a pretty big deal. It's a terrible option for Celes. And like I mentioned before, you generally don't even have enough Hero Rings for the characters that actually want Hero Rings in the first place.

Using a relic slot for "Maybe I won't run out of MP while my character should be spending every turn doing something very MP efficient" is a terrible option for Celes. If you're utilizing Vigor Celes for her biggest strength she shouldn't be OOMing, and no 1-2 turns used (by any character) to top her if it's needed does not erase the the extra damage gained from using a good relic that actually contributes to damage or survivability directly.

57 minutes ago, Reiker said:

Yes, there's all kinds of builds that specialize in restoring MP. But no one in their right mind is going to stick Mag-Edgar or Stam-Sabin in a group with Vigor Celes just to cover her MP costs. That's ridiculous. You put those characters with mages who are spamming Ultima and Meteor, not Vigor Celes. That build should be self sufficient, and it's exactly why Soul Box is decent with it.

Why is it that putting Mag Edgar or Stam Sabin in a party with Vig Celes means they're "just" covering her MP costs? It's entirely plausible that the other 2 characters in the party are MP chuggers. Edgar and Sabin have notable support toolkits that can be fully utilized. Celes is already good for MP anyway, hell you could make use of her varied toolkit by popping runic a couple times and she's suddenly fine on MP AND is contributing to the party's survival at the same time.

1 hour ago, Reiker said:

And I'm not even gonna touch the whole "anything is viable you don't need Illumina or Soul Box" because yeah obviously you could beat the game with nothing but starting gear if you wanted to, this is a pretty irrelevant point to make.

The context of the OP was "Do I need to build Terra and Celes differently because of the sword and relic choices?" Me saying that the relic and sword choices are not build defining and the girls can shine without Apoc/Illumina and without Soul/Gem box is in fact the crux of the conversation.

3 hours ago, Reiker said:

What is a "more defensive" gearing option than what I just listed above? Why are you prioritizing defense on an offensive character to begin with? I guess you're just typing a bunch of nonsense now.

Why are you prioritizing MP cost reduction on an offensive character to begin with?

The topic creator was talking about how important the items are for those builds. It's perfectly viable to run a vig or mag Terra or Celes without the swords or the relics. 

Crystal Orb increases proc damage by 25% straight, this is going to be a more noticable boost than the +7 mag from soul box. In addition, the 25% MP boost helps with sustain.

Hero Ring gives +7 Vig and +7 Mag, a significant boost. It also gives +HP% and +MP% giving her survivability (so she can keep swinging) and sustain. If you want to go this route and want to go all in on Celes offense, you can bserk her and suddenly she won't cover anymore

Stat Stick: 100% worth the stats. 

There's a ton of other sources of Rerise (Setzer, Shadow, Relm, even Gau if you wanted to stretch it) and MP regen (a speedier character tossing a tincture or ether like 3 times in a fight isn't even a noticable loss, or Sabin/Edgar) where the MP reduction relic is made redundant unless the character is constantly tossing higher cost magic around. If you're spending half your turns casting Rerise and support spells you're losing out on Celes' damage anyway so you may as well build Siren or something for an actual support build.

Characters shirting forward and backward weirdly and Palidor bugs are known issues. This is the first I've heard of it happening with the Intangir swap so I imagine it was fun.

Crystal Orb, Hero Ring, another Stat Stick for a few examples for Vigor Celes that 'is' running Illumina. I was more disagreeing with the apparent importance being pushed on having the items. Notice that 2 of these relics also increase her MP pool while increasing her damage output via +7 to direct damage stats (and +5 speed on Stat Stick) or +25% magic damage. Alternatively, yes a relevant status protection relic can have a huge impact.

If you're needing Vigor Celes to stop attacking so often that she runs herself OOM casting things like Rerise, you may need to consider more defensive gearing or some party adjustments.

Hard disagree on the above. Gem/Soul Box are really only worth it on caster builds that don't stack +MP ELs. They're not worth the relic slot for half MP on MP Crits.

In addition, a vigor Terra or Celes can function very well without their respective swords. Zantetsuken + Wing Edge is pretty beefy damage, as is 2-handing Excalibur (when you're not hitting the damage cap there).

Their super cool swords are basically the best option they have as a caster stat stick as well. A better way to decide between the 2 weapons is that if one of them is using a Stam build (and therefore probably wants Atma Weapon) get the sword for the other character. So both weapons and relics are really nice but all the builds for both characters can function very well without them.

Rod jumping in general is less damage than rod fighting. If you have the MP for MP crits then being in the front row swinging the rod is a higher damage multiplier than jump. It's basically just a more 'defensive' form of rod fighting (jump delay and back row)

On 4/24/2020 at 5:08 AM, vin said:

The first time i went through, the team (with Umaro...) facing Kaiser had no magic to deal with his mechanic. I had to warp out, rejig the team and fight through the dungeon again which breaks the flow.

Thinking you have to backtrack is perfectly understandable, Magimaster and Kaizer's gimmicks can be handled by any party comp (assuming one has all their abilities unlocked).

Hell, Umaro was used in the fastest and smoothest Kaiser kill I've seen.

Phantom Train enemies (like Lich) are in the big forest south of phantom forest/west of the veldt.

HP boosting is the "boring but effective" route for pretty much any character that has access to it. If you have high HP and immunity to the statuses any given boss does you can usually KO it. No HP ELs are needed to clear the game (or levels even as LLG has proven)

Outside of that, it depends on the character, build, and preference.

7 hours ago, KBGaming&&Music said:

Is Cactuar a missable encounter? (it's not a Rage but it does provide a Lore skill)

And, I haven't completed the game to WoR stage yet, but I have about half of the possible Rages already; how many Rages can I get from WoB alone? (just need a number here) I've done a lot of area scouring with the Blackjack; hopefully I haven't missed anything. Definitely enjoying the game thus far, especially the dialogue fixes, though I will admit that some of it actually felt out of place (but that's outside the scope of the topic).

Cactaur is not missable and no lores are missable.

You can have 35 rages before Floating Continent + 4 from the continent itself (note that FC enemies aren't missable as they are in the WoR)

4 hours ago, SirNewtonFig said:

Phantom Celes DPS'd with Excalibur (though I'm curious if Illumina might have had more bite with enough Holy procs over time)

If you are 2-handing it and not hitting the damage cap (and make sure you have MP for crits) Excalibur is usually* more damage than Illumina unless the enemy is high defense or Holy weak.

*Gear, levels, and other conditions may apply, see store for details

Most of the dragons' drops are items you have access to more than 1 of, so not super easily.

I recommend just warping out and checking while keeping a save in the tower to backtrack to.

The dragon countdown is not counting Kaiser. As far as dragon locations:

1 in Narshe Fields (where the first Kefka battle is)
1 in Mt. Zozo
1 in Ancient Castle
1 in Opera House
1 in Fanatic's Tower
1 in Phoenix Cave
2 in Kefka's Tower

Activity > Unread Content will show all threads that have new posts.

On the hope page, the "topics" section links to the 5 most recently posted to threads

Possibly? A vanilla code that simply sets the threat counter to 0 or acts like you have the aforementioned equipment flag would likely work.

Finding/making a code that does that is beyond my scope of knowledge though.

BNW doesn't have an encounter removing relic. The encounter rate should be slightly fewer than vanilla. That being said, vanilla's random encounters being complete breezes makes BNW's feel more frequent.

Without cheating or editing the ROM you can't reduce the encounter rate. There is a "fewer encounters" equipment flag that is still functional, but I'll leave editing gear to have it to your own efforts as BNW doesn't work fully with FF3usME without extra work.

4 hours ago, Ultipoop said:

I'm playing through 2.0...and once again I can't find Io. The character builder says he's in the WoB. The rage guide says he's on the cliffs of Narshe in the WoR, but I have fought soooo many battles over there by the Blue Dragon and I've yet to see him. Am I just unlucky?

They are a WoR rage, no longer up in the snowy fields apparently. Look around in the caves around Mog's room. (If where you are fighting ends up with a formation with 6 fuzzy enemies, it's not the right cave)

Alternatively, you might have encountered it in Cyan's Dream (the part that used to be a MagiTek section) to enable them on the veldt

Yeah, Stinger is a super nice Scimitar-Class weapon for the very early game. It drops in usefulness after Zozo usually due to the lack of bpow and weak proc but a sap proc and insta-kill is useful.

Technically he has a 2/3 chance of using Fire any round he doesn't use sleep until he gets under 1024 HP