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dotchan posted:Yeah, I can find songs in chests, but 1) I'd forgotten about those songs by the time I grabbed Bard and 2) I was hitting hard enough that I could solve most random battles I wasn't actively running from in 1 or 2 turns. If nothing else, !Sing can take the attrition out of random encounters, between the at-will Stop and Charm and the full-party Regen. I mean, winning fights in 1 or 2 turns still means you're taking 1 or 2 turns worth of attacks. Plus there're a few bosses it can trivialize; for example, if you ever run into Omega you'll definitely want to pull out Romeo's Ballad despite the short duration. ...I'm still amazed at how much I underestimated Bards before my Entertainer challenge run.
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Mar 7, 2020 05:20
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We interrupt our regularly scheduled runthrough of the Ancient Cave hack to bring you another Ancient Cave, this time built on top of a mod that was briefly shown off in the Omnizerker Megathread, a mod that changes a whole bunch of things, including the GBA-only classes. Fortunately there's no double-modding involved, just download one UPS file here and apply the patch using your favorite patch-applying program on a Final Fantasy V Advance (U) rom.  (However, it is still recommended that you read the changelog for the mod. There's a whole bunch of information in there that I wish I knew ahead of time.)  This one starts a "new" game with Bartz parked in front of the entrance of the GBA bonus dungeon. Unfortunately, this means we can't ever rename him (or anybody else), but that's not a small loss all considered.  Should we go back into the sub, however, Zezat is there, thinking we're here to infiltrate the Barrier Tower. Don't talk to him, lest you cause a time paradox and be trapped in the sub until you restart.  The entrance to the cave lies down the path and then in the middle door once we reach this antechamber; to the left is a save point that doesn't really save you much walking should you TPK and have to start over (and trying to go beyond that gets you super-flattened by end-game level enemies); you can still quicksave in the dungeon proper, but since loading quicksaves destroys it, it's much more like a rogue-like pause button than the save scumming you can do with emulator shenanigans.  Like the SNES Ancient Cave, this mod loads floors randomly (though I think the GBA mod has a narrower pool for the starting room and chest, because I've seen this particular room of Exdeath's Meat Fort several times, and each time I've always pulled Odin out of the first chest that I checked).  Unlike the SNES Ancient Cave, this mod doesn't have a timer, pulls all of the floors from the game as they are in Vanilla, plus a bit of logic to determine which doorway counts as the "entrance" (which only determines where your character shows up on the map; if a doorway or staircase can be used in vanilla, it can be used in the Cave to go to the next floor, so move carefully), and lists each room as its location from the vanilla game. This makes keeping track of how many rooms I've traversed much harder. The game "balances" the lack of timer by setting the encounter table farther ahead (on Floor 1, I was already running into post-Ship Graveyard enemies) and, as far as I can tell, advancing it faster than Vanilla plot progression, as well as having an increased encounter rate (at least that was my impression - I don't think I was ever able to cross except for the tiniest of rooms without at least one random encounter.)  As soon as the party enters the cave proper, their inventories are stripped down to a Broadsword and Leather Armor each, 8 potions, and 4 Phoenix Downs. And while all of them remain Freelancer until they are changed out of it, all other Jobs are removed except "Explorer". This is, as far as I can tell, is an Ancient Cave-only Job that replaces Freelancer and is functionally identical to it, being able to equip anything and everything and having no statistical changes. The AP requirement there is even fake, as all that you earn upon learning it is a dummy skill literally named "Dummy Skill" (and it doesn't show up on the Skills list) and then you've "mastered" the Job.  ...well, there is one thing that makes Explorer stand out as a Job--since it's using the Cannoneer sprite set and Galuf has no Cannoneer sprites, when he is in Explorer all that's left of him is his shadow. Spooky!   Among many of the quality of life improvements the FFVA Ancient Cave carries over from the other hack is that Potions heal 100 HP, Hi-Potions heal 800 HP, and Ethers heal 100 MP. In exchange, Chemists have been hit hard with the nerf bat, but that doesn't mean much when Chemists can Drink and Mix their way into becoming lesser gods, so seeing that as my first real Job in the Cave made me pretty pumped about my prospects.  Playing this Cave has caused me to gain new appreciation into how much modding went into the SNES version--in addition to the timer and floor numbers, the modders also sprinkled in new chests all over the place (some of which are already opened or contain nothing, but still).  The SNES modders even added rooms unique to the GBA bonus dungeon (no wonder I didn't recognize it when it came up in rotation on the SNES Cave, I've never played the GBA version before and I've only skimmed a couple of Let's Plays).  The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:The Chain Whip always !Rapidfires. Whip it good! The mod the Ancient Cave builds off of really likes Rapidfire as a skill; keep reading to see what I mean.  I pick up Blue Mage on Floor 5. I have Galuf switch into it just so he's no longer invisible, but until I have Blue Magic I can learn and better equipment to support Blue Mages everybody else stays as they are.   Floor 8 features a new room, Flying Ronka Ruins 3F, and two chests that can be reached which in this case one yields Knight. I ran into this room several times during this run, but the other times I came in through some of the other stairwells. I believe the Cave determines which entrance is used depending on the direction of travel when you pass through a doorway. The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:Knights get !White 3 on their tree. Their new tree is: I guesss that reflavors Knights as Paladins without changing the class name, but I'm not sure if that means the skill of the same name is removed from White Mage's skillset or there's intentional overlap between Jobs (which is...not a design decision I agree with, but whatever  )  Floor 9 features a new room, the Island Shrine tablet chamber, but there's never a boss encounter here. I also pick up "Hero". The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:New job: The Hero. Obtained at the Wind Shrine with the other Wind jobs. They can use any physical weapons except for swords and katanas. They equip most heavy armour and shields. Heroes have the following abilities: It's basically a purposefully overpowered Job that acts as an incentive/reward for playing the mod. They even made custom sprites for everyone. Bartz is Batman, Lenna is Poison Ivy, Galuf is Wolverine, and Faris is Wonder Woman. Not sure what Krile's Hero sprite is--that will have to wait until I actually play this Mod, if I ever get around to it.   Floor 10 (and every 10 or so floors) is a store that either sells items, equipment or magic (I'm not sure about how the prices compare to vanilla, though) and the choice of shop either cycles based on some pattern or is loaded in at random. Once you enter the room, the way back out is blocked by a difficult fight; in the case of this first shop, it was a fight from the Big Bridge (which I didn't start running into as a regular encounter until starting around Floor 32), and I haven't playtested this mod thoroughly enough to know anything about what encounters to expect.  Floor 11 (a stony path that curves to the left and splits downward to a chest or upwards to a doorway) looks like either the Undersea Trench or another part of the GBA bonus dungeon.  Floor 12 features a new room, one of the caves in Hiryuu Valley. The path has two exits, but head upward to nab two chests "hidden" in a side path visible even without Thieves in the party. In this visit, I nabbed Time Mage, but since the only spell I could cast at this point was Demi (Gravity), I wasn't interested.  Floor 13 features a new room, one of the outdoors areas of Hiryuu Valley, complete with item hidden in a skeleton.  Floor 14 happened to load Meat Fort 4F, a room that shows up in the SNES cave but has the switch replaced with a hidden passage. Here the switch is retained as is.  Floor 15 features a new room, Meat Fort 3F.  Floor 16 features a new room, Ronka Ruins 2F.  Floor 17 features a new room; it looks like it's from the Ancient Library but I don't quite recognize the layout.  Floor 21 (or maybe 20? I double checked the footage and it's a bit confusing because I ended up in the same room twice in a row) is a Magic Shop whose exit is guarded by Rocket Launchers. Fortunately the shop had Meteor in an affordable price range, so I threw rocks at the problem until it went away and didn't have to deal with any of its tricks.  One of the chests in Floor 22 gives me Freelancer. If I had the patience, I probably would have started to master Jobs in earnest.   Floor 23 gives me Dancer. The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:Dragoons and Dancers have increased magic scores, to 24 and 29 respectively, to highlight their hybrid skill selection. Dancers also have 34 agility, making them one of the speedier jobs. Equip Ribbons will now pass the Dancer's Agility and Magic score, and Lance passes the Dragoon's Magic score.  (but only after I've at least gotten some Superarmor to put on my party, Dancers are still very much a bit fragile to put on the front lines otherwise) Floor 25 gives me Black Mage. I don't have any high damage magic to cast so I will pass on grinding AP for it until I do or I get a better team composition to carry an effectively dead unit.  Floor 26 features a new room, not-yet-transformed Exdeath Castle 2F.   The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:Several abilities that make a melee attack (Sword Dance, !Mug) may !Rapidfire 25% of the time. This is caused by the !Focus change, but I'm leaving it in for now.   I thought the Hero no selling this Breath Attack like a boss was a hidden function of Hero not noted in Changelog, but then one of the devs of the mod came in and let me know that it was probably the effect of some equipment I had been wearing at the time. Never mind!  Floor 28 gives me Red Mage. The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:Red Mages get !Dualcast instead of !Red 3 as their default once they learn !Red 3 (i.e. at level 3.) Well, this makes Red Mage definitely not useless, but I still don't like burning MP in random battles if I can help it.  Floor 29 gives me Bard, but I still wasn't too interested in trying it out. Maybe some other run.  Floor 30 is an equipment shop guarded by  Liquid Flame . Fortunately, I don't think LF's stats were changed from vanilla, because I was able to finish the fight with one cast of Meteor. And the fight nets me a Brave Blade. Well, I've already run from several fights, so I'm probably heading towards Chicken Knife Supremacy-- The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:Brave Blade's attack rating is updated from (150 - #escapes) to (#kills/4), capped at 200. Kills are only counted if you successfully win the fight.  That would have been nice to find out while I was running the dungeon and not when I was writing up the after action report.  Floor 32 gives me Samurai.  Floor 35 gives me Dragoon. The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:Dragoons now innately have the Doublehanded skill and all the spears can be Doublehanded. I think there might be visual glitches in the status screen that doesn't highlight this properly? That'd be nice if I had any good spears to equip.  Floor 36 features a new room, transformed Exdeath's castle 2F.  Floor 40 is an Item Shop guarded by Purobolos. I rolled badly on the Meteor lottery, so I had to slowly run these bastards out of MP. Fortunately most of the time they were too busy casting Arise on each other to self-destruct on anybody except Faris once.  Floor 42 features a new room, Istory Falls B2.  Curiosities of the Cave or emulator: for whatever reason, when I visited Moore's Forest a second (and third) time, triggering the way on had Bartz somehow produce a double to do the job for him.  Floor 45 gives me Geomancer. The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:o Geomancers have the highest magic score, at 68 magic, along with !Gaia passing this stat. Huh. Well I guess I'll try out Geomancer the next time I play either the Cave or the mod proper.  The Karnak treasure room showed up in the GBA Cave as well, but there's still no timer and, as far as I could tell, did not have a secret passage to the other side (and I rubbed myself against pretty much every inch of the dividing wall). At least one of the chests I could open had Ninja in it.  Floor 48 gives me Beastmaster. The mod has made whips better in general, as well as adding some additional effects to whips, but at this point I was having too much fun dancing to bother with other jobs until everybody had learned Dance.  Floor 49 (maybe; I'm not rewatching this thing to make sure I'm keeping an accurate count ) had an Item Store guarded by Gargoyles, which I solved in one turn.  Floor 52 gives me White Mage and Mystic Knight. Red Mage is good enough I don't need to switch to White Mage for healing, and I'm still too busy dancing to start working on Mystic Knight.  Floor 56 gives me Monk. The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:* Monks get !Time 3 on their tree. Their new tree is: I wonder how good this makes Monk for the Vanilla endgame...  Floor 57 gives me Berserker. Well, I mean, having the power of rage is always nice for at least grinding... The FFVA Mod Changelog posted:* Berserkers, due to the fact that they only attack, now have their other ability slots freed up like Mimes. You can equip up to 3 additional abilities on them (although most of them won't be useful! :P)   Floor 59 is an Equipment Store guarded by Exdeath Whatever. What's the worst that can happen?  Oh. Right. That.   An embarrassing loss, for sure, but dying in this cave felt much less soul-crushing (or maybe I've finally started to embrace I kept running into each for. I am especially eager to revisit this Cave to see all of those changes to the vanilla experience I haven't actually tested yet to see how viable they are alone or in combination. Though the beginning of the game is a bit more luck dependent, once you survive a few chest pulls you're definitely in for a much leisurely adventure. Definitely worth trying out as a sort of "beginner's first roguelike" for people not generally into roguelikes or something for those wanting novelty, and for those of you who want a challenge, well, you can always just run from all of the encounters except for the Shop fights...Next update will probably not happen on Thursday. No LP Curse (yet), but real life has gotten in the way. That means there's still time to vote for names. dotchan fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Mar 13, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 01:07
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Red Mages getting White/Black4 is probably enough for them to be busted even without the magic boost? Bio, Blink, and Shell are pretty strong Not sure they need Time 3 on top of that.
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Mar 10, 2020 01:27
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Bellmaker posted:Red Mages getting White/Black4 is probably enough for them to be busted even without the magic boost? Bio, Blink, and Shell are pretty strong Most of the changes in this hack, at least on paper, seem pretty dang busted. Not sure Ethers needed the boost, but then I am generally rather stingy with magic, and of course there's the whole Rapid Fire Shenanigans...
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Mar 10, 2020 01:36
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dotchan posted:Most of the changes in this hack, at least on paper, seem pretty dang busted. Not sure Ethers needed the boost, but then I am generally rather stingy with magic, and of course there's the whole Rapid Fire Shenanigans... I've played the base "balance" patch before. I like it, although I think it goes too far in some cases. Most of the buffs are to classes that, traditionally, you don't actually sit in in vanilla. Red Mage, for example, gets a lot of buffs, but in vanilla you don't typically actually use Red Mage once you have Dualcast unlocked - you give !Dualcast to another class because you're better off that way - a RDM with !Dualcast only gets to doublecast White/Black up to level 3, whereas a BLM/WHM with !Dualcast gets that and more. I'm not sure that getting a bump to level 4 spells was necessary given that, as it makes !Dualcast itself an acceptable good option to throw on almost anyone. Likewise, Ranger getting !Rapidfire to overwrite !Aim makes sense to me, as once you have !Rapidfire you never want to actually use Ranger, instead putting !Rapidfire on something else (the classic example being Mystic Knight). This is offset in part by one of the weird changes... A lot of things trigger !Rapidfire, some unintentionally, caused by whatever changes were implemented to make !Focus sometimes use !Rapidfire - this means that Sword Dance and !Mug will _also_ !Rapidfire sometimes. Pretty much means that if you have a Berserker and give them commands, they aren't completely useless. Hilariously, in an earlier version, this would frequently target your own party when this happened, which meant Berserkers were also incredibly dangerous to use at all times. Good times.
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Mar 11, 2020 00:23
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One thing I'm not sure you're aware of is that you don't have to start the Advance Ancient Cave with Freelancers; you can change jobs before entering the cave and doing that will change what items/spells you have at the start of the Ancient Cave. The main reason for that (as well as starting everyone at level 5 instead of level 1) is that a 4 freelancer party is pretty boring until you actually find some jobs or interesting items, so it adds some variety to the early game. In terms of floor generation, I picked every floor that had chests and was "compatible" with the hacking I did to allow random floors, which turns out not to be too many (and a lot of options are just small rooms with 1 chest) so there is an unfortunately small pool of options for now. There are a lot of reasons why I'd have to reject a floor; it can have no encounters, or it has a door/transition that doesn't play well with the coding like the teleporters in the crystal Void area, or there are events that don't work like in the Pyramid. The long term goal is either to fix this, or insert new maps, possibly importing from the other Advance Final Fantasy games if I can figure that out. Adding more chests like the SNES version would also be nice to help regulate the amount of loot. The Explorer/Cannonneer is indeed a replacement for the Freelancer, although it has some important herfs; the main one is that they don't have the two skill slots that a Freelancer has. They also don't get mastery bonuses from mastered jobs, or access to Dancer equipment (so that having a Dancer/Freelancer is the only way to use the Ribbon). The job only exists so that non-Freelancer starts have an option if their only useful loot is equipment they can't use. The shop prices are generally inflated (plain early game items tend to drop in the price) in order to balance the battle rewards against money/item using jobs, specifically Samurai, Ninja and Chemist since otherwise you could convert the money you earn into a lot of damage/utility. quote:Also something else not noted in the Changelog - Heroes are outright immune to certain attacks (in this case, no selling a Breath Wing like a boss). Olesh posted:I've played the base "balance" patch before. I like it, although I think it goes too far in some cases. The main motivation for the "Balance" patch was to make FF5 more enjoyable for a Four Job Fiesta setting, so all the jobs are changed around the assumption that they're enjoyable to play without too much cross-pollination, since it's possible to roll multiples in FJF and there are a lot of combos that don't have interesting interactions (e.g. Thief/Monk.) That's why, for example, Knights and Monks get some magic skills that overlap with other jobs and why nerfs are very sparse. The Hero job was also designed under the assumption that it would be used in a FJF setting (it's unlocked at the first crystal so you can use it for the main game) and despite how powerful it sounds on paper they aren't that great on their own; I've tried doing a 4 Hero run and it has some roadblocks. The patch also doesn't technically have any official name at the moment, the Balance name was coined by FJF players so I used that so that people had a name to refer to. quote:A lot of things trigger !Rapidfire, some unintentionally, caused by whatever changes were implemented to make !Focus sometimes use !Rapidfire - this means that Sword Dance and !Mug will _also_ !Rapidfire sometimes. Pretty much means that if you have a Berserker and give them commands, they aren't completely useless. Hilariously, in an earlier version, this would frequently target your own party when this happened, which meant Berserkers were also incredibly dangerous to use at all times.
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Mar 12, 2020 00:36
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Can Of Worms posted:The main motivation for the "Balance" patch was to make FF5 more enjoyable for a Four Job Fiesta setting, so all the jobs are changed around the assumption that they're enjoyable to play without too much cross-pollination, since it's possible to roll multiples in FJF and there are a lot of combos that don't have interesting interactions (e.g. Thief/Monk.) That's why, for example, Knights and Monks get some magic skills that overlap with other jobs and why nerfs are very sparse. The Hero job was also designed under the assumption that it would be used in a FJF setting (it's unlocked at the first crystal so you can use it for the main game) and despite how powerful it sounds on paper they aren't that great on their own; I've tried doing a 4 Hero run and it has some roadblocks. It succeeds in that vein for me. I can (and have) done the Fiesta without it, but I used it for the last two fiestas and found it made having "bad" classes far less of a pain in the rear end and made the whole thing more enjoyable. And while my previous comment about the Sword Dance/!Rapidfire bug may have sounded acerbic, I actually liked it. I laughed my rear end off every time it happened, it was great. I honestly enjoyed it. If it didn't kill me, it was gonna do 39996 damage to the enemy so it was basically sort of like a version of Roulette that bypassed Heavy. I've never actually used the Hero class in the Fiesta but the class itself didn't seem all that strong unless there was something I'm missing. Atomic Ray on demand probably lets you waltz through the early game, but that's generally not where the stumbling blocks are.
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Mar 12, 2020 05:22
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Did an offline recording of the SNES cave to Floor 55, will mulligan my way to floor 66 for scouting purposes before starting over, stream live here.
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Mar 13, 2020 20:45
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Starting another stream, hopefully things will go better than they did yesterday.
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Mar 14, 2020 18:26
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Meteo sure doesn't seem like a nice thing to encounter all of a sudden. Total party wipes never are, I guess! That 18th run did not look fun either. You got destroyed there so early. Also did you seriously get to the 19th run? That's insane. Though even more insane are the random names that even use illegal characters that won't show outside of level ups/ability gets. God bless 19, [heart]y, 0[clothes][clothes] and Eア[helmet]Y; all taken before their time by a swarm of angry chimeras.
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Mar 14, 2020 23:36
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Blaze Dragon posted:Also did you seriously get to the 19th run? I was sciencing the possibility of an all mulligan run and not only did I waste a bunch of deaths failing the Liquid Flame fight, I eventually got walled hard in the 55-66 range because of a lack of good equipment, abilities, levels, or all of the above. The names after that run were an estimate, and by that last one of the night I was too brain-blasted to come up with anything. Speaking of which, since I am sitting on a bunch of runs where I die, a lot and there's not much else new content to show off, vote for what you guys want to see: 1) a detailed chronicle of my failures in the same vein as previous updates, 2) just the corpse count and highlights of interest, or 3) move on to the next mod (and continue running the Cave in the meantime until I can make it to new content)?
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Mar 15, 2020 15:27
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Option 2 seems like the best choice there. No reason to show everything if most of it is uninteresting but there are a few things worth showing. That said, if you want to move on, option 3 would be good too.
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Mar 15, 2020 15:39
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voting option 2, unless you're feeling burnt out on this in which case option 3!
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Mar 15, 2020 16:39
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Yeah, highlights and death count would probably be best all around, assuming lack of burnout. If nothing happens, then there's nothing to write about, which means there's nothing for us to read, which means you might as well just skip it.
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Mar 15, 2020 20:15
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The votes have come in for Death Montage (Plus Highlights), and there'll be plenty of deaths to montage! Confident about my chances, I named a new party and got ready to tackle the Cave, this time deciding that I might as well do some scouting and see how far I can get, even if I have to mulligan my way through some bullshit deaths. I've put Bartz (named Goon6 in this run) in the back row because I gave his sword to Krile ne Goo6; until we get some Jobs (and everyone gains levels equally), she will always go first.  I drop a savestate on Floor 22. I am quite underleveled (Cave-wise) for Liquid Flame, but I was curious as to see just how overtuned the fight actually was. It's only Floor 22, how hard can an optional monster-in-a-box fight be?  Well, that didn't work. Maybe a different party layout?  I can get rid of the Iron Claws fast enough, so in theory I only have LF's BS to deal with (I think you get a couple of free turns, then LF casts a Fire 2 on random party member, self-heals with Fire 3, unleashes Flame on the whole party, and pokes a random party member with Finger; I haven't played through enough times to check if this is a set pattern or if LF randomly cycles among these four actions) but do I have a party with the kind of damage to out-race LF right now?  ...nope.avi  This is why the count ended up so high in my later runs - if allowed infinite mulligans, my stubbornness kicks in and I don't give up when I'm clearly outmatched.   Ran into Tyrano (vulnerable to Missle)/2 Bone Dragons and 2 each of Bomb/Grenade/Purobolos (the last of the possible boss encounters) on Floor 44 this time, the latter of which wiped me twice because of unlucky Exploder timing.  At least it was "just" 2 Purobolos.   At last I made it to Floor 55, and the main reason why I gave myself infinite mulligans: to see if Gil Turtle can still spawn even after I'd run the floor out of encounters. Answer: yes. And also: ouch.  Darn. I was hoping to be clever and get a bunch of free gil to either buy things or throw at tough encounters. I guess that is not happening unless I super save scum.     In trying to make it to Floor 66, I eat 3 deaths on Floors 59, 63, 56, and 59 respectively. I was starting to regret my decision to skip the grind. At this point I can only fight once or twice without burning more time than I'd be comfortable with and that's not giving me enough EXP to catch up on being underleveled, and all the mulligans in the world were not going to help.  Though this run ended up not showcasing much new content, it did teach me that I have to be more flexible when it comes to the meta-stragegy of whether to grind and when, and in skipping out on EXP I am also very starved for the AP I need to gain abilities unless I'm willing to use a cheat code to unlock all skills. Here is a quick overview of what Jobs I got and what party decisions I made (up to Floor 55):
 Since the last run died an hour into the stream, I decided to keep going. Not having kept a close count of deaths, I just guestimated accordingly (and I turned out to have hit the mark exactly!).  Even though I was only getting every other floor's worth of stuff, I was doing better than expected, until I ran into Library enemies and forgot to check my level.  I took this as a sign that I should call it a night and come back to the Cave grind after I'd gotten some rest.
 A new day meant a new stream, with new party members to name (and because I forgot to change the flag, this ended up being another every-other-floor run).  Something I should have paid attention to the last time I ran through these floors is that TinyMages and CronoCons (i.e. Dim Masters) are, as it turns out, Fork Tower Magic Side enemies, meaning they have very unpleasant reactions to being hit by physical attacks.  Since I generally make it a policy to hoard MP, I basically don't use caster classes except as healers and very occasional emergency DPS, so I got super-flattened.
 This time I made sure to toggle all the flags properly.  ...I didn't need to have bothered, since it turns out monster-in-a-box encounters can spawn as early as Floor Freaking 1, and the party was on 1 HP because of lava and laziness. (As if to warn me, the Cave even gave me White Mage and Time Mage out of the first two chests.)  Such is the Ancient Cave. Some days you get endgame items out of your first chest, some days you wipe on a single digit floor because rng hates you.  For the last run of the night I didn't bother renaming anybody except Bartz, leaving everyone else on their default names, all of which are just some combination of kana and in-game symbols.    When Prototype popped out of a monster-in-a-box fight, I decided it was not worth trying to fight it and abandoned whatever I would have gotten out of that chest.  This run I learned: monster-in-a-box encounters can be bosses, if the rng lines up. I thug through Turtles without a problem...  ...but I could not win the Chimeras damage race nor run away before I'd get Aqua Raked to death.  I'm not mad, just disappointed.
Updates will continue to be every other week until real life stuff clears up, but at least I'll have plenty of runs to report back about, including at least one more run of the GBA Cave.
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Mar 19, 2020 21:11
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I posted it above in spoilers, but for the people that may be confused why dotchan said that in-game symbols are used on the last party's names even though they aren't there: they do exist, but they aren't shown in the in-battle menu. They appear for levels/job levels however. The full names are: 19, [heart]y, 0[clothes][clothes] and Eア[helmet]Y.
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Mar 20, 2020 01:14
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Next time I'll leave Bartz's name as default to see what it is, until then, enjoy this GIF:
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Mar 20, 2020 03:18
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Updating early because of how this run ended, but unless something similar happens in future runs I am still on a (more or less) biweekly update schedule. As promised, Bartz was left in his Ancient Cave default name (A♪i in the menu, バ♪i in post-battle results screens), but everybody else was renamed to reflect the continuing corpse counter.  And a combination of more patient game play and good pulls meant I finally made it to Floor 66 in one try, and had the resources to deal with the boss...  Omniscient AND Minotaur. I didn't test it, but it's safe to say Omniscient definitely still has his gimmick of resetting if you try to use anything that's not classified as magic. Fortunately, I happened to be sitting on a pile of Elixirs for the very purpose of getting past this hurdle, so I threw All the Spells at them both (and found out that Minotaur absorbs Water elemental magic, but fortunately I'd put enough damage into him that he was still felled soon after) until they died.  Winnning this battle nets you Meteo, definitely worth having if you have a Time Mage (and it's very rare that you don't at this point).  Starting around Floor 68 or so, you start seeing Undersea Trench enemies. If you have Bard and Requiem, this is an execellent opportunity for speed leveling.   As far as I can tell, Floor 77 features just about every non-Fork tower optional dungeon boss; this time around, I ran into Jura-Avis and Azulmagia/Mindflare/Mindflare, the latter of which stunlocked me with Time Slip and caused me a TPK.  This was a wipe I probably could have avoided if I prepared properly ahead of time, and I did drop a save state so I could give myself at least one mulligan; might as well go right back in and shuffle my party around with the above encounter list in mind.  The second runthrough of Floor 77 had 2 Archeoavis encounters and a Kuza Beast escorted by 2 Bandercurls.  This was another entirely avoidable death - I should have chucked some more Phoenix Downs at my party so there would be a cushion against Roulette, but I played way too risky.  That's what mulligans are for, I guess.   Back in Floor 77 again, I ran into two new bosses: Wendigo (tedious but not a problem) and Twintania (whose opening Tidal Wave took me off guard but I couldn't have prepared against anyway because I only had 1 Coral Ring so far).  Kind of sucks that all I could do was eat a death (or maybe try to run away, but I lost the party member with the guaranteed escape skill in that initial volley so IDK if I could have fled the conventional way even with "Always Run" turned on), but such is the Ancient Cave.   Floor 88, in addition to having Void encounters (that also give EXP), features the hardest optional bosses in the game and endgame level equipment. The upper left chest is the Chicken Knife, guarded by Omega, Prototype, and Mechhead; the bottom chest is a Ragnarock guarded by Shinryuu and a Crystal Dragon. I probably could have taken the Omega fight using three Bards and Krile as a dual-wielding Magic Knight, but only having one Coral Ring means I'd get super-owned by Shinryuu; I ended up skipping both.  ...I really should have just run from this encounter but I was packing just enough DPS to tempt fate.  My punishment for being complacent was to get Meteored in the face when down to my last unit.   Finally, Floor 99. I set up the party for what I hope is the final battle: Fern21 is a Magic Knight with Dance (otherwise I'd be wiffing with regular attacks), Bartz is a Knight with Doublehand, Rin21 is a Bard with Animals (in retrospect, she should have packed Blue Magic), and Krill21 is a Dancer with Swords-Dance boosting equipment and Dual Wield.  Phase 1 is pathetically weak, so this is the time you use to set up your party with buffs, because as soon as Alt Roit falls...  You face a super-buffed, super-fast Zeromus who can use Neo Exdeath's full aresnal of attacks and still has NED's fake targets, making Rapid Fire not very useful. Or, if you have Mix, you can throw Baccus' Wine on Alt Roit and skip the phase shift.  Beating this boss is just a matter of singing myself All the Numbers and not accidentally mis-clicking to end Phase 1 too early, so this is not a slog I am going to inflict on you guys. On top of this, the way out of the Cave is still blocked by one more fight I am way too weak to handle--Omega and Shinryuu.  I don't know how much of my struggle is just me being impatient versus the Cave suffering from the sort of stat inflation endemic to fanhacks, but either way I'm pretty much done torturing myself with this hack.
Next update: GBA Cave Shenanigans. dotchan fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Apr 9, 2020 |
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Mar 28, 2020 04:02
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Huh, I didn't expect a non-FFV boss here. That sure is...random.
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Mar 28, 2020 04:32
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Live on twitch to run some GBA Cave.
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Mar 28, 2020 23:20
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 Since it's possible to enter the GBA cave with pre-set jobs and I'm super indecisive, I selected four of them at random. (And I also got to see what sprite Krile uses for her Superhero job--she's Dr. Doom.)  And finally, the first room is not that one room in Exdeath Castle Meat Fort, so where you start is probably somewhat tied to initial Job selection.  I somewhat mentioned it in passing while playing the SNES Cave, but both it and the GBA cave feature either somewhat randomized enemy drops or a raised rare enemy drop rate: in this instance, I pick up a Flame Bow and 3 Goliath Tonics from a 3 Skeleton/1 Mindflayer fight.  Floor 8 features a new tileset, one from the bonus dungeon. Of all the floors I've run into so far in the GBA dungeon, this one has the most chests.  It wasn't until I reached the Floor 11 shop (which sold magic) that I realized White Mage comes pre-packaged with Cure, making them actually useful to bring as an initial Job. As before, it was guarded by the same enemies.  However, I don't remember if the post-fight drops are always guaranteed to be the same, but I will take that endgame sword and spear, thanks. (Whoops, I thought I screencapped this before I deleted the video to save hard disk space.) Floor 23, a weapons shop, was guarded by 2 Flamethrowers this time. So much for my theory that each boss floor always had the same bosses, or had the same general "tier" of bosses.  Floor 34, an item shop, was guarded by Ifrit.  Floor 44, a weapons shop, was guarded by Soul Cannon (who to my surprise/dismay was immune to water elemental spells, as I was hoping to solve the problem with Leviathan).  Floor 54, a magic shop, was guarded by Grand Mummy (a Pyramid encounter).  Floor 65, an item shop, was guarded by Exdeath. Fortunately, I'd picked up Flare a few floors earlier, so that gave me more things to throw at Exdeath.  Floor 75, a weapons shop, was guarded by Melusine.  Starting from Floor 78, I was running into enemies with broken palettes, and I was not in the mood to science what they were (they turned out to be Sunken Walse Tower enemies) so I just ran every time I saw these things.  I was not expecting Floor 86 to be guarded by, of all people, Forza and Magissa.  I was also not expecting Forza to hit like a truck.   Well, that's going to take some brainstorming about how I can get past something of this caliber... Since the GBA doesn't number the floors for me, I had to keep a manual count and then double check in post - so instead of posting a list like I've been doing, I have put what Jobs I picked up and what Job-changing decisions I made into a Google doc.  At some point I may try to assemble some sort of "dream team" to go down the cave, but for now, I'm content with choosing randomly (and avoiding repeats).  The Floor 11 shop fight took me by slight surprise, as I was expecting to see 3 Lil' Chariots again. I also got a different after-battle reward, but it wasn't anything to write home about so I skipped screencapping it.  The Floor 22 shop fight was Flamethrower.  The Floor 32 shop fight was Liquid Flame again, but the Floor 42 shop fight was Titan, who got super-flattened by a 'Zerked Galuf in Monk.   The next three shop fights were also repeats (Gargoyles, then ExDeath), but after that I started getting some fights that played the boss music and I didn't recognize these encounters.  The Floor 85 shop finally saw a different encounter than any of my previous runs, namely, Halicarnassus, complete with the gimmick of turning everybody into frogs on turn 1. Good thing I'd been buying, picking up, and stealing Maiden's Kisses so I was sitting on a pile of them.  While trying to grind, everybody kept getting turned to stone so many times I ran out of Softs, I didn't have a White Mage to cast Esuna, and the equivalent Chemist Mix wasn't working. This put me down a party member going forward.   But even if I had all four party members, I probably would not have lasted that much longer as it felt like I was getting at almost double turned by Necrophobe and his Barriers.  This kind of sucks, too, because I vaguely remember having at least two Reflect Rings to my name. dotchan fucked around with this message at 14:10 on May 15, 2020 |
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Apr 9, 2020 02:45
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Getting petrified ended up being worse than just getting killed, huh? That's sad but it also shows how important items are even if they feel pointless until they're needed.
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Apr 9, 2020 04:04
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Live on twitch and will be using mulligans for scouting purposes.
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Apr 11, 2020 20:25
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So, funny thing about the mix that cures petrification. Turns out it's not designed to target petrified characters so it's impossible to actually use it to cure them. 
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Apr 14, 2020 10:07
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Can Of Worms posted:So, funny thing about the mix that cures petrification. Turns out it's not designed to target petrified characters so it's impossible to actually use it to cure them. Well, that's good to know for future runs. By the way, how deep does this Cave go? Because I've been using mulligans to scout ahead and the dungeon just keeps going past NED, but 25 floors in and I have yet to see another shop.
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Apr 14, 2020 12:36
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NED is the current endpoint for this version, I haven't added a credits transition or postgame stuff yet.
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Apr 15, 2020 11:34
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Real life distractions are over, so I can focus on what's really important: playing video games!   Having pretty much seen every class the mod has to offer, I decided to forgo the dice and construct a party to go down the cave.  My choice of Thief confirmed that it has innate Haste and not as an effect of anything they're eqiupping. While this is a nice QOL improvement, I kind of wish there was some way to make Steal 100% successful and/or some way to guarantee a rare steal.  I think this is the first time I've seen a Floor 11 shop fight that didn't have Lil' Chariots in them whatsoever, but it's still from about the same general place in the plot Lil' Chariots would be spawning.  The Floor 21 shop fight was a new encounter: 2 Flame Throwers.  The Floor 42 shop fight was a new encounter: Manticore.  I was not expecting to run into enemies that hit harder than any party member had maximum HP so early in the Cave.  Nor did I think I would lose the damage race, and I was saving my mulligan shenanigans for further down the dungeon. Whoops.  Trying again with a fresh party, this time making sure I started leaving save states before each shop fight starting from Floor 33.  Bard starts the cave with Mighty March (the regen song) and Alluring Air (the confuse song) and the starting harp replicates the effect of !Animals (including Nightingale, once Faris is past level 10). However, since I didn't pick up any other songs until much further down the cave (and Bard was also not available on anyone else for a good chunk of my spelunk) Faris ended up being my only singer.  The Floor 11 shop fight was Garula. With Dancer as one of my starting jobs and having come equipped with a Lamia's Tiara to improve the chances of Swords Dance, he lasted only as long as Galuf stopped shimmying.  The Floor 22 shop was a single Gigas encounter from the Karnak castle escape sequence, meaning that the jaunty shop tune played over my battle (not that said battle lasted very long, but it was still funny to experience).  The Floor 55 shop fight was a new encounter: Dragon Pod.  The Floor 75 shop fight was a new encounter: Triton/Nereid/Phobos, and on my first try I kept loving up distributing damage properly and ate a bunch of counterspells I didn't need to.  On my successful fight, I switched Bartz into a Blue Mage for Might Guard and Lenna into a Red Mage to track HP so I could finish them off properly, but even then the occasional stray Rapid Fire meant one of the three would drop before I was ready.  Necrophobia still causes me to eat a death, but on the second try, the RNG works in my favor. As it turns out there's no Gilgamesh to rescue the party, so I had to chop through all of Necrophobia's hit points myself.  Once you hit Floor 100 (by the mod's reckoning--I counted at least 105 distinct rooms, though some of the rooms may be considered to be a singular "floor" by some mysterious means I haven't grokked yet ), you run into the (current) final boss battle of the GBA Cave, Tree Exdeath (and his final form Neo Exdeath). I got flattened by NED twice, both times due to triggering his enraged phase thanks to not properly tracking how much damage I was doing.  The lesson having been learned, I set up my tree felling party for maximum survivability: Bartz is a Summoner with Lance so he can keep himself topped off with MP, Lenna a Dancer with Superspeed (I only had two Hermes Sandles to my name and those went on Bartz and Galuf), Galuf a Blue Mage with Mix, and Faris a Knight with Sing. If it would have occurred to me to try the Kiss of Blessing mix to skip the NED phase, I would have done so, but I wanted to beat the Cave legit--well, as legit as someone with functionally infinite retries can be, anyway. (And good thing I didn't, because that was one of the bugs that got fixed in the GBA port.) While Faris gave everybod regen with Mighty March and then started singing what I assume to be a rocking metal song to boost levels, Galuf fed the party All of the Resistances and used the leftover Dragon Fangs to make max out Bartz's level (I checked this by using Lance and stopped feeding him Dragon Powers once his numbers stopped going up). Then Bartz dropped his Wonder Rod to punch Faris out of level-boosting song and she then switched to the speed-boosting one and the rest of the party started chopping through TED's hit points.  NED tried his best to kill my party, but I was both prepared and lucky--none of the elemental magic could touch me, Grand Cross never caused a TPK, and this time I kept an actual spreadsheet (which I put on my layout as I decided to stream the final battle, but I forgot to turn Octopus Buddy Cam on until later into stream) to avoid NED going into rage mode. Whenever I needed to heal or reapply buffs, Galuf was on hand to provide, and if anybody other than Bartz died, I would have him cast Phoenix, dealing ~4200 damage to all of NEDs parts and bringing back the fallen party member to full HP (and if Bartz ate the dirt, I just had Galuf mix a Resurrection). Thanks to the extra levels, I had so much DPS that I left Faris to sing longer than she probably needed to, but eventually she joined in on the NED hacking fun.  There were even enough Dragon Fangs left to stuff Lenna full of Dragon Powers until she was hitting the damage cap, and she finished off two of NEDs parts at once when her Swordsdance proc'd Rapid Fire. The other two parts fell soon afterward.  A multiple mulligan victory is still a victory for the purposes of this LP, but I definitely enjoyed this version of Ancient Cave enough to want to revisit it on a casual basis.  The Cave technically keeps going after NED, but it's more of a victory lap than anything else; while you can still encounter enemies, earn AP, EXP, and GIL, as well as open chests, no more shops will spawn. So until/unless the mod updates, Bartz clone number 32 and company are technically stuck in Cave limbo until I wipe or get bored.  And on that cheerful note, that's as much of the GBA cave you'll see unless I put it into my non-LP stream rotation (whenever I get around to doing non-LP streams again  ). Next up, since I don't want to do two randomizers in a row, is Void Divergence.
dotchan fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 02:11
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Regardless of mulligans, congratulations of beating one of the hacks!
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Apr 16, 2020 02:59
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Blaze Dragon posted:Regardless of mulligans, congratulations of beating one of the hacks! Thanks. I definitely want to beat the GBA Cave for real, but for now, other mods are waiting to be showcased. Speaking of which, I forgot to ask you guys about what I should name our lead character. You have the following choices: 1) Good old standard Bartz or Butz 2) SA Standard Goon or Dongs 3) Comical Third Option For any of the above, you can also vote whether or not to continue tracking the number of parties (with the number going up in future playthroughs as I get TPKs). dotchan fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Apr 16, 2020 |
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Apr 16, 2020 04:31
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What names we could suggest would probably be influenced by any plans you may or may not have for him. For example, a Bard could be named Mozart, while you could name one who's tagging along with a Gilgamesh clone Enkidu. (Yes, I have done both of these. Yes, I'm the guy responsible for the Gilgaluf run.)
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Apr 16, 2020 06:47
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Glad you enjoyed the Advance Ancient Cave! This playthrough got me to do a bit more progress with it, I started working on getting floor titles displaying as well as music related stuff, like having a specific track play for each floor set.
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Apr 16, 2020 23:45
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Can Of Worms posted:Glad you enjoyed the Advance Ancient Cave! This playthrough got me to do a bit more progress with it, I started working on getting floor titles displaying as well as music related stuff, like having a specific track play for each floor set. Cool! Let me know when you're done so I can send another party to
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Apr 17, 2020 00:15
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Live on twitch until about 7:00 to play through as much as Void Divergence as possible.
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Apr 17, 2020 21:18
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Being mostly a FFT fan, I know next to nothing about the FFV modding community, both in terms of how active it is and what tools they have to do their thing, so I'm very thankful that SGR recommended that I try out Void Divergence because though I was aware that it existed before I started this thread, I'd forgotten about the specifics. Because I am impatient and don't want to get hung up on the grind, I've turned the game to its easiest setting and lowest encounter rate (only cranking up if I feel like I need to push myself to the next level and/or mastery level).  The beginning of the game isn't all that remarkable, since you can just keep selecting Fight like in vanilla and totally ignore the icons now on the user interface. (However, each enemy now has particular innate elemental strengths and weaknesses.)  So I didn't do anything I wouldn't have otherwise in vanilla except rename all of the characters by switching them into lead member and holding L and R while I bring up the menu. I couldn't settle on a theme other than "remember [insert game here]?" so unless you guys want something else, I will be exploring Void Divergence with Tiz, Sarah, Claire, and T.G. (and eventually Aloser).  I wasn't planning on saying anything about the plot since it wasn't changed at all, but as far as I can tell this is a different translation than either the fan translation I'm more familiar with or the GBA script.    The game gives everybody more HP; in exchange, WingRaptor (1566 HP, weak against earth/cold) will hit harder and harder as its special moves (Breathwing, Storm, Claw) all cause the Wind element to build strength on the field.  The Item menu is also on a cooldown so your characters can't spend every turn sandbagging; in exchange, everybody automatically heals some amount of HP I haven't bothered to check after the end of each battle.  Now Void Divergence really starts to distinguish itself. Eventually (the mod is supposedly still in progress) every character will have a set of jobs that suits their personality (for whatever reason, the Mod decided that Faris would disdain Blue and Black Magic, Bartz can't be Monk or Thief, Lenna eschews Knight and Thief, and Galuf is without White Mage), but for now the custom Jobs don't seem very functional. : :  Each Job (which is free to equip any combination of weapons, shields, armor, or accessories) also has its usual primary ability put in place of the Fight slot, leaving all three subsequent slots open to mess with as you wish. Since my physical fighters are going to need to toggle weapons constantly to match enemy weaknesses and I haven't learned any abilities, that means everybody except the Blue Mage (who has switched Item out for Scan) is rocking Fight, Brave (restores a bunch of MP, the character immediately takes another two turns in a row as if they had Quick, and after that they are much slower to take the next turn), and Item.  At maximum encounters, not only is the rate increased, but each encounter has more enemies in it. Minimum encounters looks fairly vanilla in terms of enemy formations but it makes for much faster traveling between regions.  One level's worth of quick grinding later, I'm ready to throw myself at Karlobos (1146 HP, weak against poison/thunder), expecting to get pasted a million times due to Tail Screw shenanigans, but the extra HP and the lowered difficulty setting means I breeze right on by him, which suits me just fine.  It's in Ship Graveyard that I experience another feature of the mod for the first time: everybody, including caster classes, start at 10 MP (20 in Tiz's case probably because he's a White Mage).     Siren (2070 HP, weak against earth/flame) was given some more toys to play with (and kept her gimmick of switching in and out of Undeath), but otherwise she, too, didn't present much of a problem.  Since I have not played any of the Bravely Default games that the mod cites as an inspiration, for me each battle is a bit more like tabletop DnD, where with each encounter I'm rummaging through my bag of holding to find the most effective weapon for the task at hand.  Not sure if it's an adjustment of the mod or just me being in the wrong equipment, but Poison ticks are much more dangerous now. (Hopefully this means Regen is also amazing.)  By the time I reach Magissa (1067 HP, weak against wind/holy) and Forza (1556 HP, weak against poison), the elemental weakness system makes for a much quicker fight (but again, I am on the lowest difficulty level).  And at lowest encounter rate and with a much beefier layer of HP, I can sneak in and out Walse basement much easier (though it still took me two tries because I forgot to put a quick escape ability on my party the first time around, found myself unable to runaway from the Jackanape, and didn't want to sit around waiting to die). Since I'll be getting another set of jobs after beating Walse Tower, I will leave the playthrough paused here until the next update. Wind Crystal Jobs overview: Monk Usable by: Lenna, Galuf, Faris Stats (this is from the mod-provided reference; I have no idea if this is a straight improvement compared to "Commoner", this game's equivalent of Freelancer, or what the stats turn into if you change into that Job at level 1): 25 STR/26 AGI/28 VIT/21 Mag Level bonus: VIT, VIT, HP - not yet implemented (see below for details) Innate: Brawl Default ability: !Kick (Water elemental by default, but takes on the element of equipped weapon) Abilities: Brawl, !Kick, Counter, !Mantra (i.e. !Chakra), HP + 30%; Monks can also equip !Teach (I haven't used this yet, but the description is "teach ally to counter", so I'm guessing it allows everybody to use counterattacks without having to put Counter on everybody) Dot-chan's Impressions: It remains to be seen how useful Monk will be in the later parts of the game, but I have high hopes.  The Job leveling system now works more like Final Fantasy Tactics--all Jobs level at the same rate, each level gained gives boots to particular stats (though, according to the mod, not all of this has been completely implemented for all classes yet), and at certain set points I haven't paid attention to, the character learns the next ability they haven't picked up yet. Since certain characters are locked out of particular classes, this will make each character even more distinct other than their very slight innate advantages and disadvantages. This also immediately makes all Jobs better since each Job's level bonus ties into what stat it's using to calculate skill effectiveness and damage formulas, so I don't know how much of an improvement this will make Monk in the long run, but so far just being able to switch weapons and take advantage of the mod's elemental rock-pappers-scissors system means !Kick is now pretty great for blasting through regular encounters. White Mage Usable by: Bartz, Lenna, Faris Stats: 20/26/22/29 - not yet implemented Level bonus: AGL, MAG, MAG Innate: N/A Default ability: !White Abilities: !White, Heal Boost, !Recover, Mass Cast; White Mages can also equip !Aero (which, well, does what it says on the tin) without having learned either !Blue or picked up !Aero as a Blue Magic and Turbo MP, which when equipped gives an additional 10% starting MP. Dot-chan's Impressions: I still don't want to put White Mages on the front row if I can help it, but being able to hit things for more than a light tickle is really nice.  White has also gained a 0MP Holy elemental spell called "Dia"; not sure how much damage it does normally since I threw it at Undead Siren, but having Dia gives White Mages something to do other than sit there and twiddle their thumbs if they are done buffing/healing and I don't want to have them move to the front row and hit things with weapons. Blue Mage Usable by: Bartz, Lenna, Galuf Stats: 23/22/26/26 Level bonus: VIT, MAG, HP Innate: Learning Default ability: !Blue Abilities: Learning, !Blue, Bulwark, Lich, !Control; Blue Mages can also equip !Steal. Dot-chan's Impressions: It's Blue Mage, which will be as broken as it ever has been as soon as I take the time to pick up those spells. Thief Usable by: Galuf, Faris Stats: 24/28/25/23 Level bonus: AGL, VIT, HP Innate: Caution, Passages Default ability: !Steal Abilities: Caution, !Steal, !Smoke, !Mug, Politics (no idea what this does); Thieves also get Crit Up as an equippable ability. Dot-chan's Impressions: With Dash available on default, this frees up a slot, but for now, Thief's main utility is still in Steal. Knight Usable by: Bartz, Galuf, Faris Stats: 25/23/27/22 Level bonus: STR, VIT, HP Default ability: !Stomp (does damage and attracts enemy attention; I'm not sure if that's only the enemy attacked by !Stomp or if all enemies will now target the character using it) Innate: Cover Abilities: Cover, !Stomp, !Guard, Bulwark (no idea what this does yet), Two-Handed; as a Knight, always has !Mantra available even if the character hasn't learned it from Monk Dot-chan's Impressions: I haven't used this class much, but it does feel like !Stomp makes Knight that much more useful as a tank, especially since it's harder to set up the vanilla strategy of having three characters in critical HP and having the Knight covering for them while shrugging off damage via !Guard. Black Mage Usable by: Bartz, Lenna, Galuf Stats: 21/24/23/30 Level bonus: MAG, MAG, MP - not yet implemented Default ability: !Black Innate: Two-Handed Abilities: !Sleep, !Black, !Osmose, !Fury (no idea what this is yet, maybe the Berserk spell?), Area Cast; Black Mages can also equip Two-handed. Dot-chan's Impressions: With elemental weaknesses in the mix, Black Mages are now even more glass cannon-y than ever, though being able to equip anything mitigates that somewhat. Still, with MP restores costing action economy to build up, it's not a job I plan on using any time soon. Crusader Usable by: Bartz, Galuf Stats: 29/25/28/18 Level bonus: STR, STR, HP Default ability: N/A Innate: N/A Abilities: N/A Dot-chan's Impressions: According to the mod info, this class's growths are not yet implemented and I have no idea if they're planning to give them any skills, so after trying it out a bit I gave up on using it. Tinker Usable by: Lenna, Galuf, Faris Stats: 29/20/26/22 Default ability: N/A Innate: N/A Abilities: N/A Dot-chan's Impressions: Same issue here. dotchan fucked around with this message at 00:53 on Apr 22, 2020 |
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Apr 20, 2020 16:15
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Huh, interesting mod. It seems it wants to change quite a bit, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes. That said, limited MP at the beginning of the fight...I hated it in FFTA2 and I doubt I'd enjoy it here.
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Apr 20, 2020 16:44
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Blaze Dragon posted:Huh, interesting mod. It seems it wants to change quite a bit, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes. That said, limited MP at the beginning of the fight...I hated it in FFTA2 and I doubt I'd enjoy it here. It definitely makes casters less attractive to use in the early game.
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Apr 20, 2020 17:37
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dotchan posted:It definitely makes casters less attractive to use in the early game. I can't imagine it'll be better late-game when you want more MP, unless Blood Price or similar exists. And even there, it's not quite as good without some of the dumber and best FFTA2 Viera strategies (sure, I'll happily use a summon on myself and a bunch of enemies of an element I absorb so I actually heal more HP than I lose and make my casting effectively costless, why not? Doublecast too!)
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Apr 21, 2020 02:11
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I've actually heard of this one! It sounds really ambitious, but in my experience ambitious and ball-bustingly difficult tend to go hand-in-hand. But it's still early so I won't pass judgement.
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Apr 21, 2020 02:21
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Live on twitch for more Void Divergence.
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Apr 21, 2020 17:03
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 A correction about the leveling system - every time a character levels up in a Job, the amount of AP it takes to gain another level goes up for all Jobs, and you get a maximum of 30 Job levels. I don't feel much of a need to min-max, but I will definitely have to pay attention to what levels I'm getting so I don't lock myself out of Job utilities I'd like to be able to use. Void Divergence classes.xls posted:* each STR/VIT/MAG/AGL up gives +1 to that stat  I wanted to give Shiva (2375 HP, weak against earth/flame) a shot before I climbed Walse Tower, and she proved to be no obstacle, especially since Black Mage gets to cast Fire for free (good thing, too, because the MP you get from using Brave doesn't persist between turns).  Against Garula (1728 HP), I tested Stomp, and while that does make the Knight a higher priority target, it doesn't spare the others from taking a hit, so it was a good thing that I packed a whip that proc'd paralysis quite a few times. (I also didn't notice that I'd resized my captions while streaming a different game so there was a little bit of overlap with the game until I got to Karnak. Oops!)  Now that I had Berserker available, I immediately wanted to see what the mod did with it except...TwinCut (Berserker's default ability, which is supposed to attack two targets at random) is literally broken--not in that it trivializes the game, but that it randomly causes the game to softlock (or at least the game becomes more or less unplayable whenever this graphical glitch happens--it put Stop on my entire party once, zombied my entire party twice, and at least once, the screen just went completely blank).  "Infuriating" is an understatement. I refuse to think of this as a feature. Until whatever is wrong gets fixed, Berserker is intolerably annoying on the overworld and completely unusable in dungeons. Which is a shame, because Berserker is actually controllable now and it would have been nice to see what TwinCut actually does outside of borking everything.  Meanwhile, Time Mage has two additional spells - "Bleed", a fire elemental spell that probably causes Sap, and "", a spell that defaults to allies and does...something?  While trying to figure out what the hell was wrong with Berserker (because I really, really wanted Berserker to work) I took the opportunity to try the hardest difficulty, and as it turns out it just inflates enemy stats. (Instead of one-shotting Wild Dogs when using their elemental weakness, I was only doing 1/2 damage instead.) I don't care for this sort of "hard mode", so I set the difficulty back down to the lowest.  Bulwark gives 10% Max HP and 10 VIT...which might be useful against something that hits really hard, I guess, but ehh?  At Karnak, White Mage gets another attacking spell, the lightning elemental Smite.    Liquid Flame (5262 HP, weak against water/wind/thunder in human form, water/ice/earth in tornado form, thunder/poison in hand form) favored the human form for whatever reason, so I was able to focus him down fairly quick.  In Burning Karnak I grabbed my second Elf Cape, the Ribbon, and Esuna (forgetting that Man Gauche was also worth getting); between Karnak and the Ancient Library I tried out the Fire jobs, but they didn't feel that much different from vanilla (other than the obvious DPS boost due to being able to use all weapons and take advantage of elemental weaknesses).  (!Mantra, being Holy elemental, probably needs both compatible equipment and field elementals to be worth it, so I'm not going to bother.)  Ifrit (4573 HP, weak against water/wind) wasn't too much of a problem thanks to all of the extra levels I got while grinding for money to buy Karnak's stache of weapons and equipment.  While traversing through the Library, Galuf mastered Thief and learned Politics (double items, probably from enemies that can drop items). Nice utility, but it's staying on the bench until I have to grind for drops.  Byblos (6333 HP, weak against holy/flame)--despite his bigger pile of hit points--was also not an issue, even though he hits harder than anything I've run into so far, has Comet as part of his bag of tricks, and as far as I could tell I could no longer freeze him up by throwing Ifrit at him (however, he still went through the reaction script upon his death).  At just over two and a half hours into the stream, I'd collected two Crystals' worth of Jobs and grabbed the Steamship, so I figured that was a fairly good stopping point. Water Crystal Jobs overview: Berserker Usable by: Bartz, Galuf, Faris Stats: 30/22/28/20 Level bonus: STR, STR, VIT - not implemented Innate: Two-Handed Default ability: !TwinCut Abilities: !Fury, !TwinCut, Endure, Berserk, Two Handed; Berserkers can also equip !Drink Dot-chan's Impressions: I was so looking forward to play with Berserker. Alas.  Time Mage Usable by: Bartz, Lenna, Faris Stats: 22/27/21/27 Level bonus: STR, VIT, MAG Innate: N/A Default ability: !Time Abilities: Steady MP (some small amount of MP regen per turn), !Time, Brawl, Pierce, First Strike; Time Mages can also equip !Smoke and First Strike Dot-chan's Impressions: I've got enough action economy, so I don't mind leaving Time Mage on the bench for now. Summoner Usable by: Lenna, Galuf Stats: 20/20/27/29 Level bonus: VIT, MAG, MP Level bonus: STR, VIT, MAG Innate: N/A Default ability: !Summon Abilities: MP + 30%, !Summon, !Gaia, Magic Amp, !Call; Summoners can also equip !Animals and Y-Magic ("Stronger single cast"; I haven't bothered to test how much of a boost this is but I had it on while I had a Summoner in the party) Dot-chan's Impressions: So far, Summoner has been nerfed hardest by the MP mechanic, as they eventually need to spend every other turn using Brave or Defend just to be able to cast. With elemental field effect complicating things on top of that, I have no idea if I'll use Summoner again. Red Mage Usable by: Bartz, Lenna, Faris Stats: 26/25/21/26 Level Bonus: STR, MAG, MP Level bonus: STR, VIT, MAG Innate: N/A Default ability: !Red Abilities: !Flirt, !Red, MP + 30%, Revenge, !X-Magic; Red Mages can also equip !Flirt without having learned it on level up and Steady MP. Dot-chan's Impressions: Red Mages are definitely buffed compared to vanilla, but I'm not sure how it compares in the mod to the other classes. Either way, I definitely need to remember to leave room for at least one person to learn X-Magic. Lord Usable by: Bartz, Lenna Stats: 27/23/26/24 Level Bonus: STR, HP, MP Default ability: !Brave Abilities: N/A Dot-chan's Impressions: So far I've been using this class as a substitute Freelancer, but I probably should gain levels in Jobs that give me skills before I come back into it. Dark Knight Usable by: Bartz, Faris, Galuf Stats: 26/24/30/20 Level Bonus: Not yet implemented Default ability: N/A Abilities: N/A Dot-chan's Impressions: Bench. Fire Crystal Jobs (1) overview: Ninja Usable by: Bartz, Faris, Galuf Stats: 23/29/25/23 Level Bonus: STR, AGL, AGL - not implemented Innate: Dual Wield Default ability: Throw Abilties: !Smoke, !Throw, !Image, First Strike, Dual-Wield; Ninjas can also equip !Hide Dot-chan's Impressions: Ninjas can definitely hit like a truck...if I can keep them equipped with and using the right elemental weapons. Tamer Usable by: Bartz, Faris, Galuf Stats: 27/23/28/22 Level Bonus: STR, VIT, HP Innate: N/A Default ability: !Catch Abilities: !Calm, !Catch, Mastery, !Control, !Animals; Tamers can also equip HP 30% Dot-chan's Impressions: In vanilla I pretty much only used Tamers for !Control to trivialize certain encounters and to learn Blue Magic, so maybe this time around I can learn the secrets of throwing Geomancer Usable by: Bartz, Lenna, Galuf Stats: 22/22/29/27 Level Bonus - VIT, VIT, MAG - not implemented Innate: Pharmacology, Step Guard, Pitfalls Default ability: !Gaia Abilities: !Gaia, !GilToss, Y-Magic, Pharmacology; Geomancers can also equip !Gil Toss and Pharmacology Dot-chan's Impressions: !Gaia's usefulness is still dependent on the RNG, plus each area favors certain elements, so I'm probably only going to use them to ignore pits and damage floors. Vampire Usable by: Faris, Galuf Stats: 27/25/27/26 Level Bonus: STR, AGL, Mag Innate: Undead status Default ability: N/A Abilities: N/A Dot-chan's Impressions: I would chance using this as the Freelancer equivalent for Faris and Galuf but I'd probably keep forgetting they are undead and accidentally damage them a billion times. Sage Usable by: Bartz, Lenna Stats: 20/23/25/28 Level Bonus: AGL, MAG, MP Innate: Undead status Default ability: N/A Abilities: N/A Dot-chan's Impressions: I will probably never use this Job. dotchan fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Apr 22, 2020 |
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Apr 22, 2020 04:36
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