praetarius5018

If you want to just make a difficulty patch based on "numbers", FF5SNES has the aptly named "FFV editor" for that which can edit stats of items, spells, jobs (base stats and learned abilities), shops, monster and their formations, HP/MP curve. The GBA port has some editors too, though afaik not that extensive. If you want to go further than just those numbers, only THEN do you have to get dirty with the code.

Hello Lurker with similar interests! Lately I've been following the development of a FF5 mod, though god knows what'll come of it. I'd guess PC would be the hardest to mod as we've nothing on that one (plus I find the art way worse than the original) I'd say the SNES one is the easiest to mod with the GBA port behind. The former has a huge collection of info here plus their wiki. They also have a bit info on the GBA game, but not nearly as much. Plus I find SNES asm way easier, but that is just personal opinion.

Every class is setup like the vanilla mime: class ability + 3 abilities of player choice !Fight, !Observe and !Item are always available to be equipped but not forced. And yes you can screw yourself over by choosing e.g. 4 mages with 3x !Item and not even knowing any attack spells, so no way to win, which is a scenario I tolerate as you really have to try. !Gaia should be ok as it is, maybe some number changes. It mostly does what it should; if you take it you know it will hurt the enemies in some way; a lot of aoe damage (similar power to !summon), slow, blind, poison, confusion, HP-to-1 effects, even direct death is under the possible effects. It is kinda like !Dance, you use it, don't know what exactly will happen, only that it will hurt the enemy in some way. It more or less works when you look for a way to kill stuff. !Animal has a mixed bag, it can deal status effects, deal damage, heal, cure status. So sorta like FF6 !Slots without a way for the player to influence it and without a insta-win jackpot. You take it and have absolutely no idea what will happen; do you get the single target attack? does it heal the party no matter if HP is full? It is unreliable in that sense. If you need healing, you usually need it now and not maybe now, maybe in 5 turns. That way it fills no niche. It has no high power reward like dance, it doesn't even have a reliable "direction" (keep party alive longer vs kill enemy faster), it is just there...? What can be done with !Animal? One way would be to give it a fixed 3 pet list based on level in Ranger/Bard/Beastmaster (all three teach this skill) and the character that uses is (i.e. Bartz doesn't get the high tier healing one, Lenna refuses the Skunk). Each use you would rotate through this list, so pet A -> pet B -> pet C -> pet A -> ... And the starting point for each battle would not be fixed "pet A" but based on, let's say VIT, specifically VIT mod 3; that stat wants some more love too. Example: Butz has Ranger 1 so he gets his lowest list of: Squirrel, Squirrel, Mysidian Rabbit (changed from do nothing to minor party heal) He has 24 VIT (or any other values cleanly dividable by 3), so his first and 2nd !Animal will be the squirrel, only every thrid will be the healing rabbit. Lenna in the same situation might get: Mysidian Rabbit -> Squirrel -> Nightingale What does that achieve? We can know what we get, so it has become a reliable tactic. It is not a "every turn full heal" spam fest. Since it is based on VIT, the player has some agency in manipulating it. Find a good value and start the fight with the pet of your choice. The "bad" pets will no longer drag the power of the skill down after you've achieved a few levels in the relevant classes.

Both have the same two problems: 1) very limited elements, Animal has only earth/ground type attacks (earth being the actual element and ground meaning it is helpless against float status, i.e. all birds) and a fraction move 2) what spell you get is purely random, in case of !Animal it subjectively even gets worse with higher level. !Gaia is edited to choose its 4 spells per area evenly, 25% chance each - in vanilla that was based on level, good luck getting level 60 in the noob cave to have a chance at the best effect for that. the spells are based on the area you are in, so you can get a super powerful tidal wave on the sea - which helps little if that area is obviously flooded with water resistant types. I think that problem can be "solved" by making those spells very strong under the assumption that you'll 90% of the time have those resisted? Fire2 has 110 power, split for multitarget, double on weakness; so a typical gaia move could have 150 power with multitarget no split damage? or more dynamic 120+5x Geomancer level? no idea. !Animal is a different beast of a problem. you unlock new better spells but the obsolete old ones still clutter the list the result is chosen from. so at level < 10 you only good the mysidian rabbit that now functions as a cure1 at level 50 when that is not so good anymore you still have a good chance to get that rabbit when you'd rather get the cure3 tier unicorn. the list includes party wide healing, earth/ground single target attacks, a percentage attack, status effects (poison, paralyze, blind). the list isn't bad but again random. with gaia you're at least 90% sure it will hurt the enemy, here... thx for the heal on fully healed party?

Available classes can still be changed. How much lower would you go? I had already trouble deciding on 6 classes to ban for each character. Certain things just don't work when you remove too much, imo. The game kind of requires that everyone can deal physical damage (guaranteed with !Fight and no gear restriction) and has at least access to one form of magic damage; and that's where trouble starts. It's hard to count !Gaia and !Animal as they are almost exclusively one element, the later has it even worse with all the damage ones being also ground type (i.e. useless to flying). Some support abilities would also be nice and so on. I don't know where the 15 originally came from. I just needed a number for a start. A loss of 30% is already a lot for me, I want some player choice in this and not a preset path. And we need enough jobs per character after the first crystal obviously. I mean I could have made all wind crystal jobs available for all and only restrict the rest and end up with 12 jobs each or something. Disclaimer: the following values are for my dev version, not what I have posted above, differences will happen. For me the amount of classes counts less than to block "critical" abilities. A "rapid fire" setup requires: 1) Ninja for dual wield (2x 13/16 attack) or the "inferior" 2handed (1x 125% attack) from Knight or Berserker 2) Ranger for X-Fight (rapid fire, 4 hits at half power) or the inferior TwinCut (2 hits at normal attack power but doubled defense, mostly meant for axes as they ignore huge chunks of defense) from Berserker or try to be cute with Knight's Stomp (1 hit against halved defense) 3) Magic Knight for spellblade (only for swords and knives) or Thief for Crit Up (axes, katana, bows) or Monk for Brawl (unarmed) lances go with (S-)Jump instead, the rest are defensive backrow weapon types 4) Dragoon or Time Mage for Pierce (passive, not innate, bypass immunities; kinda required if you want to stick to your weapon of choice for spellblade) E.g. Lenna currently has no access to any of 1), Faris has no spellblade and Galuf has to take the slightly worse choice on 2). Originally I wanted to hard cap class levels at 20 total, so even though all 4 could entertain a form of a rapid fire build at that level, all would have to be a different flavor. Or a bit more than flavor, those restrictions indirectly affect which elemental damage you can throw around (e.g. Sword = fire, bad without rapid fire)

Eh, no, totally not; quick cast helm is available at the cats (~lv55), so more or less exactly in the middle of the game. Levels are more or less parallel to how far you are in the game; last class change is Lv38 so roughly a third into the game. Either way that is a far cry from 80%. If I had proposed a "healer Fenrir Knight" THAT would be 80% into as she needs her final/class specific weapon. I read it as "there's no gap just items you don't feel useful to you" - that's per se ok. As long as someone finds a good use for it those aren't a waste in my book. How about you use the resist armors to have your entire team resist one specific element and then cast a saber of that element on all enemies, thought about that option? On that front, has anyone even tried to make some use out of Y button shenanigans (cast spell on wrong target group)? My list of those strategies wants some more entries. Currently stuck at 10 entries. Another thing you feel lacking already exists -> Sage Stone, buffs cast almost instantly, available same time as you get your 2nd class change. Enemy layouts have been changed and actually change themselves to a degree, specifically so they are not trivialized with a single item. I wanted this hack to be more about execution/skill than "just get the right equip/stats and gg". The general idea was more along the lines of "if in area x the most dangerous thing is petrification throw some petrify resist gear on" and not "wear petrify resist gear, max p.def and then hold A".

Ok, I'll change "death resistance" to "protection against instant death spells" to make it more clear. Honestly, I've the same problem; half the time it does the same damage, has the same animation but for square reason it counts as something other than a regular attack so evasion is skipped. Give him some INT (also strengthens his Lv3 tech so no real loss) and/or the Rising Moon Helm. And avoid Rune Earrings. I'd be honestly surprised if there's any situation - that isn't absurdly unrealistic - for which exists no useful gear at this point. Care to elaborate what gap you mean?

Death Spell -> Wishbone HP/def: I never said that those 100 HP are the be-all-end-all, I just said that you can't ignore those HP. That one was a comparison between an armor that is strictly for physical defense versus an armor that has a non-defensive use, OF COURSE the later will be worse defensively, but it also has some HP more to make it not that bad as you made it out to be. Evasion: there's a lot of things that outright ignore evasion. techs, criticals, looks-like-a-regular-attack-but-is-actually-a-spell Duran needs no MP? - tell that to people that use him as a main healer. for random status weapon try upping your luck, it gives you up to 40% chance to hit those status ailments. poison is just a ton of free dps; like dead in 10-15 seconds even if you do nothing to them

Deathless weapons are your proof if you succeeded a "no death" playstyle; die once (normal or higher) or hit a trap (tough or higher) and it is gone for this playthrough. Whats the problem with Zable and Koren specifically? Evade is hard capped at 127; more AGL will give you the other bonuses still: more accuracy (less misses), bons to Lv1 tech damage, etc. I think the highest accuracy any enemy has is 38, so you're at the effective evasion cap of 90 anyway (127 - 38 = 89, ok you miss 1%, cast speed up asap!!!). weapons and armor are meant to be usable most of the entire game, some in general, other with more niche use, and all of course depending on playstyle. theoretically the wendel weapon and armor should last you the whole game, so money shouldn't be much of a problem. does it even matter much if an armor is light, light-medium or medium? sure the damage number changes, but on higher difficulty does it change the number of hits you can survive? if the damage gets reduced from 700 to 500 that looks good but you still die in 2 hits. That's where the resist gear should come in, resistance cuts damage in half; you have a bit lower defense but now the 700 gets down to let's say 400, oh hey that means you can now take to hits at 801 HP instead of almost getting one shot there. Or for the OCD people that need everyone to take similar damage; you know some classes have natural resistance to a given element, others don't, so they can even it out that way. Also don't only look at the pure defense; HP factor, evade, crit resistance also play a huge role on how much it lets you survive. Bazant Mail (93% HP, heavy p.def) vs Dragon's Mail (103% HP, light def) is almost 100 HP difference at Lv90+. Dragon takes more damage per hit, yes, but it still takes 100 more damage before you hit 0. I'd actually say, undead armor becomes more useful later; you get a few options to recover HP outside of now harmful healing (moon saber/hp steal weapon/ring, HP regen ring, bishop weapon or plain post battle healing) and status effects become more diverse. of course there's only one boss where it is safe to use at all. someone made use of it in dragon hole even. I can take a look at general attack and defense value of weapons and armors, but for that I need a bit more concrete feedback; why should weapon/armor X be increased one attack/defense stage and how does it make X not strictly better than similar options. Resistance gear requires knowing what the enemies use for elements, but at least for the godbeasts that's dead obvious (minus one troll). Admittedly, I've designed myself into a corner there; the medium power wendel stuff was supposed to be the baseline, the stuff to compare to, and then it doesn't have anything special and only medium power. And there's only so much hitrate/critrate/evade/whatever that I can reduce otherwise...

"...Lv1 tech hits an enemy shortly after they start their attack or cast a spell..." hit them in the 3~4s after the spell animation finishes. hold direction away from the enemy in case the spell sends you flying to get knocked closer to them. Darkshine Knight is the best enemy to test regular counters against as he takes at least 200 damage extra from it, so it is easily visible when you get it.

Only the cryptic nonsense in the monster_bosses.xls where even I half the time don't know wtf I meant... What special conditions do you mean exactly? Or could you give me an explicit example of what you'd like to have here?

In so many words: both. Every monster HAS to be labelled with 1-3 element icons because that is what my function reads: the monster name (and those icons are part of it). Whether you know which monster name belongs to which sprite/target is another story sometimes... Every character has a minimum ability knowledge of !Fight, !Item and !Observe. The later tells HP and weaknesses but costs a turn. And you have to equip and use it of course. I'll maybe change it so that !Observe and its big brother give you a free turn afterwards.

proof of concept No idea how far mostly unchanged enemy stats will let you get. Btw. if an enemy doesn't have any symbol in front of his name, he'll have unchanged resistances/weaknesses from vanilla. Otherwise it overwrites those values. How you know !item is on cooldown: The evils of math:

2) I don't know of any new summons there, Leviathan is definitly in SNES version. X-Fight, dual wield and Spellblade are currently crying in a corner from the nerf hammers; X-Fight no longer ignores def or evasion. Dual wield takes a 3/16 penalty to attack power. 2handed took a dive from x2 damage to +25% attack power. Spellblade is no more x2/3/4 with def=0 imba nonsense: tier1 just doubles damage, keeps def intact. Tier2 increases attack slightly and 0s def. Tier3 is somewhere inbetween. Apart from that, I HAVE to add a few items. Otherwise certain elements are just criminally underrepresented over long game stretches. You still can switch on the fly and be somewhat competent at it. Even at the bare minimum you have about 28~30 in a relevant STR/MAG stat. Add a bit gear with stat bonuses and you should be able to hit 40 without too much trouble. A specialist will be stronger, yes, I estimate about a 60~70 stat without min-max and overgrinding. (my math is based around the assumption that a player can finish with moderate levels of 30 char and 20ish class) Since STR/MAG is a linear factor in the damage formula he'll be 50~75% stronger. A bit much, sure, but those missing 20~30 points must be somewhere else; AGL? VIT? Nothing that hurts to have more. Maybe STR, but I planned to make that reduce weight a bit which means slightly faster ATB. MAG gives more max MP which can at least be useful if you plan to store a lot of turns at once for a big attack rush. Or just ask a bard to sing, that can increase strength and magic to 99. Does it even matter? The damage potential is absurdly high. Not in the damage cap sense but orders of magnitudes beyond that. At one point a thought experiment ended at 240k theoretical damage, not even sure how. 4) Not sure I know any of those games. At the end of the day "relics" are just equipment, hopefully with more "not just defense" variants.

1) it's not like the quick spell, it just makes you need 0 atb ticks to your next turn instead of whatever you have to wait based on haste/slow and agility. so if you use jump you still have the start-up delay, then the air time before the hit and only then makes it a difference; if you have 100 MP, those are used and you can act again right now if not, wait. there'll also be some "physical" spells to use the MP, not many just 2 sets of 8 "spells" (3 shared because the spell list is just that full already). 2) I don't like the advance version, dunno it just doesn't "click" with me, sound is weird and also: I have 0 idea about GBA assembly but a bit for SNES asm, call it a home advantage more content (classes, items) means more problems and redundancy; with the other class edits I already have trouble filling the base 21 classes with 7 non-trash abilities, adding another 4 classes... please no the snes game has a ton of more documentation this is my current class setup. each character got a "main" stat and a "secondary" (top), each class as well (left). If the primary match they get them (green), otherwise it is only a "priority" class but not must have. I mostly focused on preventing the broken combos that lead to the likes of Dual-Wield, X-Fight, Spellblade. The obvious problem being that little child Krile will replace the hardy Galuf but there are worse things in fiction than the little girl being the main tank. Currently every class can equip all items, has one fixed ability and minor stat adjustments; otherwise the player has 3 slots they can fill as they want. 3) I have no idea how I should treat mix and drink. Item has one cooldown per character, not per item. I just don't have much RAM. If you use a potion you can't use !item for 2~3 turns but the other characters still can, if you use a elixir you better not need an item any time soon from that character. I think !drink can just use a shared cooldown with !item and !mix gets to burn in hell has no cooldown but still uses items up. Or !mix gets dropped completely, that'd work too. MP doesn't change after battle since it gets reset on battle start anyway. Otherwise you could in use a tent for full MP heal and then start a boss battle with 10 turns on all 4 characters, yeah, no. For HP I went with 1/8 maxHP + 8 * (VIT - 22) 4) relics is just the same as armors, helms and relics were in vanilla. Some give just defense or stats, other cut MP cost in half, give status immunity, etc. Items with unique effects survive longer than just stat sticks. 5) keep in mind that !item is optional, so you can just be stuck with ineffective damage on a character. availability and weapon types are other problems; swords can be two handed, knives can't, so if you have to abandon the sword, you have to use a shield when you didn't want (or have) one or waste more class levels to learn dual wield parallel to two handed. jump builds will really hate trading a lance for a sword. also armors affect your elemental coverage in good and bad way. with a fire armor on, you take less damage from fire but more damage from water attacks. and you can't change armors in battle (or I missed the totally obvious thing for 15 years), only a shield for that purpose. 6) difficulty slider: lazy numeric increase/decrease for now message speed was doing nothing so there it has a use now 7) encounter rate slider: want to grind? set it to 1 want to run to the boss almost unhindered? set it to 6 (sacrificed not/barely working message and battle speed for that) I can maybe release a proof of concept this weekend, no promises.

Nah, he's more of that; the AI is just hopeless around obstacles. Stats are even more OP than before. He's build around a proper duel including waiting for an opening and using it, Dark Souls style.

v0.925 changed AI and stats of Darkshine Knight changed AI and stats of Koren Lord's final weapon "Sigmund" now strengthens Lv2/3 based on the target's attack power and puts the target into the counterable state Duelist's final weapon "Deathbringer" now increases Lv2/3 damage based on proximity to the target(s) Grand Divina's final weapon "Ganvantein" now grants saber effects when casting elemental spells on allies Archmage's final weapon "Spirit Cane" now allows spells to hit weaknesses for 200% damage instead of 150% added a variable bonus to counter attack power based on the target enemy, e.g. knights and crawler take a lot more bonus damage than mages increased attack strength of Bulette and Gold Bulette added magic damage to a couple status inflicting specials of regular enemies changed Grell's Funky Dance from "energy ball" to self heal changed Kerberos' and Firedrake's fire breath from inflicting dummy state to poison increased Harpy's Talon drain from 10% maxHP to 20% increased Carmilla Queen's Bloody Dance from 12.5% maxHP to 33% reduced Slime Prince's red glowing attack from 50% HP damage to 25% fixed a bug in counterattack timing fixed a bug that gave some enemies 0% chance to hit with status ailments in trap rooms one more boss, just one more boss till 1.0

Did you use the normal difficulty patch in 0.87 but not with 0.9?

Yes, and please mark it as spoiler, ty.

I already tried to have a look at the controls to enable L/R/select switching off a character that is casting. the results were... weird. and headache inducing. So, probably not. Sorry. 999 damage is a reaction to something he did and you didn't do. Try to look closer what happens before the 1st and 2nd spiral moon. And then think of an "answer" to it. It shouldn't be spoiled too much if I say that any party composition can deliver that "answer".

*sigh* I get this idea so often... the answer remains the same, no because: the game is already dieing when spells are used; just go 10h without save/load, just with savestates, the game will hard crash every other spell cast. I once read an article that this also happened on console. this would make it 10 times worse horribly unbalanced: if it works like in SOM1, target being completely frozen and everyone else can still act/attack, well, easy mode would be understatement of the year; also boring.

It'll be a surprise to myself, too. I've currently no idea what to do with any of the missing class weapons. Or rather, no idea that I can code (RAM likes to be a limitation), is useful and not OP at the same time.

I got FE:fates working on it, if that helps.