Magpie

I cannot start a new game for a couple weeks, but those look like very substantial changes, I really want to give them a shot, specially the field combos.

Bombs, like other consumables, scale on the amount of them you have in your inventory, maybe you had too few of them to get the full effect? I usually stack on them early on to have some sort of "insurance" for the first world if I'm rushing through, although I avoid abusing it too much to not ruin my fun. I consider it valid for grinding quickly though. IIRC 99 bombs do something like 2000? damage, enough to eliminate or seriously cripple anything that isn't a boss in the first world. And Tinker is one of my favorite classes actually. I usually put Galuf to have a main Tinker class and it's great. Stat spread is not quite the best, but I rarely suffer much from it (for some reason the Cannon boss turrets decimate poor him in one shot every time and I'm not entirely sure why, they do seemingly percent damage to everyone else! I'm not entirely sure if it's the gear he usually has around that point giving enough of an elemental bonus to make the percent damage lethal...oh well, I always go there assuming Galuf is not gonna be too useful and let the others do the heavy lifting, no big deal IMO). I also do a thing of usually making Lenna the magic specialist and removing her item slot so she can do more magicking, and have Galuf swap his item gauge with her after using something potent (I also give him the mix skill because why not. I like item-themed specialists). Since she's not using it at all it makes for a good sink for using heavy-duty items early on, but of course it's only valid once unless you forfeit items for everyone else, which I personally don't like doing. Cuts tactical options too much. Anyway, HeroBot is pretty useful and that HP loss makes it a great opening move. Turret is indeed a bit deceptive, you have to keep the elements in mind for it to have maximum effect. This version of FF5 seems to make equipment and elemental builds a lot more rewarding.

I can't wait for more updates. I keep checking this every day (I'd post more but then it'd be a monologue here) Being able to equip passives separately is definitely interesting. I guess there were too many good ones to try to detriment of commands. Also, looks like there are more menu descriptions than normal? Vanilla FF5 had a terribly sparse interface so having more text in there is always great.

Oh, I get it. That's a good enough explanation. Also that's interesting. I completely ignored monks so it'd be interesting to give them a shot with new goodies. I'm still playing the game, even if I have little free time lately. Can't wait to see the final form of this project, seems it's gonna be worth giving it another run.

I didn't run into it but I'm a lot further than that by now.

I finally managed after an absurd amount of attempts with difficulty 1, full poison field and poison weakness. That was kind of weird, but it's finally done, I can finally continue with a clear conscience, haha.

About DoomClaw, been testing a little more but even stripped of all gear it still doesn't want to land on my characters. I'll (patiently) wait until next version if it's an actual thing, kinda bugs me to not have it learned by this point.

Oh I see. Well, that's the spirit then! Hah, I guess they were in awe of your naval skills. And yeah, gotcha, I was thinking of the whole world map. Well it's no big deal anyway. Oh you are right on that. I usually don't try those strategies so I kinda forget they are a thing, my bad. I see, well it sure is worth a shot then. And yeah getting the best gear from a superboss when there's nothing else left to provide a challenge is a surprisingly common RPG trope, sadly. Anyway here's the save: https://my.mixtape.moe/hcrisj.srm I believe the one near Casa Exdeath is the first slot.

Hmm I think I got a good way to set up poison with my party that I got just now, I'll try it out! Strange. Although this was during the Cannon fight and Galuf, specifically Galuf, was acting kind of strange. He was getting one-shotted by the missiles while everyone else was getting obvious "final fantasy gravity" damage. That save I sent earlier was just before fighting the cannon so you should be able to get there from it, if you want to give it a check. Pretty sure it was 32K too, since it was the first (and only time so far) I've seen a number higher than 9999 (from XXXX). I think what I did was use one elixir, Swap the gauge with Lenna, and later on used another and tried to Overload. It's like his damage was getting doubled, I assume? Strangely that only seemed to be the case in that fight. That....actually makes a lot of sense. And yeah back row and !Def makes them surprisingly durable, and since you are encouraged to !Def to replenish some MP, it kind of works out nicely. Huh, those are kind of interesting. Pity the engine is limited in that specific way. Kinda have to wonder how GigaNova would react with the few void spells you can get. Ah I see. I think 4x is perfectly fine, you got places to go and turboing your emulator gives you speed of light (and that includes super-fast input reading). Although are you supposed to run with boats and stuff? Because running seems to have no effect on vehicles right now. I'd say the poison bushes or Lenna getting poisoned are indeed kinda redundant. Poison on the field is a bit of a relic of the past where it was actually the most lethal status to obtain at a game's start, nowadays it's just limited to battle, which might just be the best solution. I'd opt for just healing all status after battle, because even wounded can be easily fixed once you have your first phoenix down, which kinda makes it redundant to revive. The time limit in Karnak was very tight, I had to retry a few times to get all the items, and ended up having only like 3 seconds to spare. A randomizer would be fun and would break the monotony of the linear route. Something like the recent free enterprise thing would be great but I can see how much work that'd be. I didn't try NG+ yet. I'm interested but also internally groaning at having to do the part without the wind crystal again. I kinda wish one could just start there every time with the first batch of classes already unlocked and the most important/missable loot. This time it was fun because I was playing with completely new and fun mechanics, but the next time it's gonna be a pain. That's kind of my major issue with rpgs, I guess that's why I love the concept of ancient cave so much, lets you replay things but you don't have to wait 2 hours to unlock <some feature or game mechanic that's locked by the plot>. But I digress, I'm interested in giving those a shot. Yeah stuff like old, poison and other effects seem to work, got berserked by that one blue magic earlier in this version and pretty sure i got poisoned earlier today. I got a save nearby if you need, kept going a bit further on another slot, will go back if it's a fixable thing.

Thank you for your time. Interesting, I see myself steamrolling most random encounters but dying a few times against the bosses until I kinda figure out a valid strategy. I see your point though, I guess I can just proceed as now, grinding and getting their resources and disabling them when I'm ready to hit the bosses. Hm I get your logic. I'm at the second world right now and I think it's pretty fun to set the field up for a full blast of <elemental summon>. Sylph I never see myself using, it's been reliably doing like 200 damage (thus almost no healing), same with Remora, as I think the Tinker's paralyzing is more efficient overall. But the elemental blasting at full power feels pretty satisfying to do and I generally feel it works better than the CC version of it (where you could only summon at 3/3 field charge and it wasn't really better than just physical attacks. Sadly that's a bit of a concern I have about CC in general, it totally misuses its tactical options by making physical beat up everything just fine). Oooh I see. So when it doesn't have an effect it's because that's just how much the bar can represent? Which makes me wonder, does the cooldown increase per use? I found myself using two X-elixirs on the Cannon and when I tried to overload poor Galuf just popped out of existence with 32K self-inflicted damage, which totally clashes with the 1500 or so I normally get when just using one (also meaning what I said earlier was totally wrong, so...yeah). I see about the bomb as well. Well, I guess they are nice to have at 99 stack, it sure does help with grinding stuff like bombs (the enemy) before leaving world 1. Interesting, so !Esemte actually has synergy with !SpellSwd? I'll give it another shot then, would fit well with the current thingy I got going on with Bartz and save a slot for Galuf. (I kinda like the utility for !Esemte so had him do stuff like SizeUp and such. I like debuffs, heh). Your reasoning isn't bad, either, yeah it's better to have a bunch of element+secondary effect than just elements for sure. I also like how some spells are essentially free, but doesn't quite give you full elemental coverage, so you aren't quite prepared for all situations if you aren't caring for MP. Kinda reminds me of the "Etrian Odyssey design logic" (from some interview: give your party options, but not all the options so you kinda feel like you are missing something for the ideal setup.) but it's nice for the caster classes to have at least one attack option if you aren't replenishing your power, which helps not needing to carry a !Fight all the time. To be fair, I like what you did with both the black and white magic options. More elements is great, and I think it's way better to have just one spell of each type that scales as you go than a variety of redundant spell levels for the same element. And having some elemental variety in white magic can help making a challenge run where you can't get !Black on your white mage have them do something that isn't just Holy or healing and twiddle their thumbs otherwise. It also makes red mages a bit more interesting, since you can choose to Smite a single target or multitarget Bolt for when it's multiple. I got to try out the Arcanist recently and I actually really like the options, got Lenna doing that full-time and it can be tricky but worth it. Makes me kinda wonder what was left in the cutting room floor, heh. Stuff like GrimWail or ChainBolt and SineShot are totally up my alley. That's strange, I totally thought some skills would be biased to give one or another command, like magic-related ones gave you !Item first while physical ones gave you !Fight first...at least that seems to work reliably, like stuff like Bulwark or Pierce conveniently giving me !Fight while stuff like Recycle or TurboMP giving me !Item. Huh, I wonder if I had other ones set up and didn't notice. Also I see, I decided to give !Blue to Bartz and noticed his damage with Snowstorm wasn't great but was a lot higher than I expected from his build and gear. I guess those are the compromises that come with having to build over the existing base. On the other hand if it's gonna get better over time, it's not so bad because even mostly fighters will be able to get something from it. Gotta try how it goes with a herodrink or something. Well, all in all, and despite the manual's claims to have no balance, I think the changes are generally well thought out and very fun. I'm having as much fun as with something like a legit Etrian Odyssey game. I'm usually pretty open to romhacks but wow. I really like your style and can't wait to see the full class set. ------- Oh, talking blue magic, I've been trying to learn DoomClaw from the "Torrents" (heh, cheap romanizations) because I missed my usual learn spot earlier in the game due to time constraints, but they never seem to be able to hit with it and have been trying for a few hours...with turbo. It's because it's a bad choice of enemy for it or is something wrong with it? Should I go for Gilgamesh instead and stop bothering? I normally have it at this point in the vanilla version so I don't know if I'm wasting my time with these. EDIT: I've been trying controlling the RockMinds but while DoomClaw seems to work when using against enemies, it's never hitting anyone in my party, so I think something is wrong with it. I tried even stripping of all gear in case something was giving me resistance or something, but nothing seems to work.

...wow that was fast. I can confirm it's fixed, thank you! As well as the summon thing (although I didn't think it was a bug, at least with the ones I have it looked kinda intentional like channeling the power of the summon or something).

Of course, here: https://my.mixtape.moe/vhkxdv.srm

Sorry to double post but after a bit of grinding I found myself in this situation: For some reason and suddenly, Bartz's health keeps dropping to 0 after every fight, so he dies every second fight (since you can't raise his health unless using a tent). Tried reloading, tents/inns but it keeps happening even if I change jobs. Not sure what triggered it but ouch. This is in 0.780.

Oh! That does make sense. Cabins seem kinda redundant with the current design unless I'm missing some extra effect, so they could be a candidate for replacement. I think the main thing is that while bosses are interesting and fun, regular encounters aren't any more exciting than in the base game. Since health regenerates to a degree, it has two interesting effects, one positive and one negative: the positive being that grinding is super convenient, the negative being that once you have gotten some levels and skills, you might as well reduce encounters and just go fight the boss because enemies aren't really draining your resources in any significant way, nor are particularly exciting. The most interesting fight were the Gigases because they hit like trucks at that point so it required me to actually brain to get the stuff in time. As for the jobs, it's hard to tell because I'm still kind of focusing in my favorites and leveling them up at this point, but I've noticed: !Brave -> It's great to borrow a turn now, but it's usually one of the first skill slots to go because it's more preferable to !Def and potentially get more than one extra turn eventually. It also kinda burns when the enemy gets to act between your !Brave-d turns (Byblos was a particular repeat offender). Mages -> They feel more practical and manageable than in the regular game, so far Lenna with !Red, !Time and !X-Magic is doing very good damage and utility but not really overwhelmingly so, so I'd say so far so good. On the other hand I made Lenna be the "omnimancer" so gotta prioritize, thus I'm kinda nerfing myself there. Summoner -> I find the summons are a bit on the cheap side, although they aren't doing all that much damage either unless the field is primed, so I guess it's okay? At least at this point of the game (just about to fight the Cannon) and having Faris as the summoner it seems fair in damage terms and I like stuff that makes use of the field. Although I feel shiva/ramuh/ifrit should all cost like 25MP or even up to 50MP either way. Tinker -> I just love this class, and since I tinkered with it the most I can give the most in-depth analysis. No...pun intended, by the way. I just love classes that do things with items in general so I'm biased, but it's really interesting and makes heavy item usage (since every consumable item is pretty much a new skill for the team) a viable strategy. The item-related commands are great, although I feel that Load has like no noticeable effect at times. Like I was having Galuf doing like 3 consecutive casts of Load on himself and the the item bar seemed to remain the same. ...unless that's some quirk of the underlying ATB. I don't use Shock very much but I know I should. HeRoBot is just great. The hit itself is meh but the HP Leak is so useful and seems to have a good rate. Guardian I'm finding myself not using very often, and I keep forgetting what WingBoot does. (Doesn't help FFV was terrible at conveying information during battle). !X-Item doesn't feel overly powerful, since attack items aren't affected, and healing is good but you can't seem to be able to mass-revive with Phoenix Downs, and stuff like elixirs have a reasonably high recharge time...so feels fair. Overload is ridiculous (but I love it), poor Galuf like imploded at one point and I'm wary of it at the moment, but at the same time when I am far enough in the game it feels like that amount of health is going to be borderline negligible. I honestly wouldn't mind if !X-Item an elixir + Overload results in like 9000 damage. (On the other hand it'd be hilarious to abuse Overload in that one fight with Galuf, maybe with !Throw) The leveling method for !Tinker is kind of wacky though, because you only have a bomb for a few hours of game, then you become able to buy them so you can max them out in no time. Making bombs for more elements would be a solution but are already dealing with the uint8 item limit so...yeah. And also it'd kinda run over !Throw's territory as well. Making bombs more expensive would make it just a grind, like it'd be to limit them to steal-able items or enemy drops. It's hard to suggest something better, but then again !Tinker isn't terribly overpowered at this point of the game, so maybe it's fine? Crusader -> I didn't play much with this one yet, but !Esemte is...a mixed bag. At low levels or damaged it only gives you Cruzfire and maybe Recover, but Cruzfire is...terrible. The damage is pretty low and it refuses to target more than 1-2 enemies, and doesn't even carry !SpellSwd elements. Execute seems like just a regular attack unless it has some instakill ability that I never managed to trigger. The fire-based recover I kinda love as a concept. Having healings in more elements is useful for managing field effects, so it's nice to have. As for the other !Esemte skills they sound like great utility in general and I like Shield Bash as a general concept as well. I have to see how the damage scales with the later. Tamer -> I just wanted to go grab !Control but then I saw Mastery and I'm intrigued, still leveling it up but it can make it a viable job if you can potentially spam your pokemon. I'll get back to you on this one. Mystic -> It's a bit of a pain to figure out which passives will give you a !Fight to use !SpellSwd with, but the added elements and effects make it worth having a !Fight for sure. Damage is pretty excellent but it's not like one-shotting bosses or anything, at this point in the game it feels strong but not terribly so, at least. Huge improvement, personally. !Blue -> I mean it's blue magic it's ok if it's a bit on the crazy side. Although the modified spells are actually kind of interesting, Exploder not killing you is kind of exploitable but at the same time you need to plan it up well to not die anyway, specially since the ATB quirk can let enemies act during extra turns, so it's balanced in an odd sort of way, specially with the big cooldown on phoenix downs and that it's kinda inevitable someone will lack !Item at some point. It's still pretty risky even if potent. Snowstorm doesn't hit super hard but it's nice to have that extra elemental variety and possibility of blinding. Crusher I just got so I didn't try it properly yet, but sounds potentially useful. The nerf to White Wind I didn't get to experience yet, but sounds reasonable. And having Aqua Rake actually be water-elemental is just nice. Having less stuff be immediately breakable with Lv.5 Death is also good, imo. Bosses and "LP": I would have done the same, honestly. So yeah the classes themselves seem well-thought and none of those I tried, at least up to this point, feels like an instawin button, the infinite consumables sound like a boon but it's a huge handicap in battle (and I like it a lot), field effects are good, most things feel generally under control. But the random encounters are kinda meat roadblocks that rarely do anything interesting or threatening. And then you reach a boss and you gotta actually use your brain which has been on standby for most of the dungeons and scenes, so it goes from 0 to 100.

I signed up just to say that your work on this is impressive. The field effects are a lot more interesting than in the inspiration (just changing it from 3 slots w/3 chars to 5 w/4 chars makes it a lot less unforgiving), the added elemental variety makes caster jobs a lot more versatile, and so far the boss battles have been pretty fun and a decent challenge. Also I love how I can disable XP gain so I can just grind for ABP or items/blue magic without becoming overleveled. Having the consumable items have a cooldown and effects that vary on amount is a pretty bold idea on paper but works nicely in practice. If I could suggest something, some sort of item-based substitute to !Scan would be wonderful, even if it consumes a turn like any other item. At a certain point it's kind of a waste of a slot and at times it's a bother to go check the element chart externally when enemies have element combos, so it'd be a decent compromise for being lazy or not playing on a PC. Kinda like Etrian V that gives you the option to use a turn in exchange for not using your union gauge on scans. Some sort of ancient cave would elevate this to masterpiece tier, but don't take me too seriously, I think every story-based or linear/semi-linear game with good combat can benefit from one. I understand if you think it's like the worst suggestion ever, though, those things aren't easy to implement at all, even if there's already one for FF5 in particular, I don't think it'd be compatible at all after so many changes. Still pretty great stuff. If it's already this good at an early version without too much balance and missing some jobs, when it's more complete it's gonna be ridiculously good. Good job, really.