Messages

1

Game Design and Modifications / Re: TF7 - The Final Fantasy 7 Rebalancing Mod

« on: March 03, 2017, 01:34:04 AM »

Cosmo Canyon: I'd totally take another HP Plus materia, but man, I am broke. We'll take Yuffie as our third into the Gi Cave, because she's performing well for me and I like her.

I'm starting to get Lv2 magic about now. Figured an ice-elemental physical Yuffie plus Red's new weapon would be pretty effective against most of the enemies in the cave, and I don't appear to have been wrong. The cut weakness on Sneaky Steps helps compensate for their pile of HP. I am using mage Cloud with the Force Stealer over the physical option. Yuffie is the first person to learn Lv2 limits! Red gets Destruct=Added Effect because he's the one with slots for it.

Gi Nattak kills me the first time because my setup is terrible for the encounter. That's an interesting element for him to null. Second attempt I make short work of him (Yuffie was set back to L1 limits because Landscaper is worthless in this fight). He's pretty fragile, I think.

Mansion/Lost Number: Cait/Yuffie. One wipe. Dice and Gravity are the stars of the show here, as was Elemental resist and accessory setup to reduce/negate the magic form's spells.

Uh, Dorky Faces scare the crap out of me with the MT confusion. I think that it's a relatively low chance of confuse, but MT confuse is still possibly super bad. The guillotine guy is funny. I only ran into the mirror enemies once and found myself massively confused by the fact that my own party had reflect, do their attacks set that status or something? The Black M-phone is a great weapon against them, by the way, not that they're all that hard to deal with in the first place.

I am slightly disappointed in the Black M-phone; I noticed it had 255% accuracy and tried a Deathblow setup with it. That actually did OK damage, but I was informed that the damage is still set by STR and not MAG. MAG is a hell of a lot easier to boost, so what I was hoping for was to load Cait down with other materia and smack stuff really hard with a magical physical. It's not -bad- but I wasn't overjoyed.

I have not tried the Green M-phone yet because while the premise is extremely interesting I don't think I can boost STR enough to be happy with it. If you could switch weapons mid-fight I'd be pulling it out for random Gravity-weak or otherwise high-HP enemies.

The White M-phone, though, is fantastic. The fixed 320 damage turns him into a long-ranged attacker with a huge HP pool, and I was pleasantly suprised by how many 640 damage crits he was putting out (Laggy: "Freaking RIP @ Cait's physical"), plus Dice is still reasonably good row-ignoring ITD damage, so...yeah, Cait is actually rocking face through this section of the game.

ArchBrian: Richard got me to use Cait Sith
ArchBrian: Somebody give that man a medal
Laggy: Man there wasn't anything wrong with Cait Sith >.>
ArchBrian: There is everything wrong with Cait Sith. I don't even care if he is usable/OK in the base game, there is just everything wrong with Cait Sith.
Laggy: Haters gonna hate

Mountain: Cait/Yuffie continues. As an interesting aside, Cloud still doesn't have L2 limits because he has spent most of the game either on MT healer duty or -opening- fights with Matra Magic to soften up groups rather than actually getting any kills, and his L1 limits are generally unimpressive. I had him front-rowed to take advantage of some Cut-weak enemy in the Cave of Gi, but upon grabbing the Rune Blade the guy earns a first-class trip to the back row. (Also, I actually have two sets of linked slots for him now, so I can set both Restore=All and some attack magic=All; maybe he'll catch up on kills soon).

LAY FLAT

The dragon is fun, acquired a couple gold armlets. Clearly he is supposed to be a pain to actually kill because he is immune to Gravity (I didn't try mini, now that I think about it). I actually really enjoy randoms that make using status effects and gravity-type attacks worthwhile, so having some tough enemies that reward finding ways to disable them instead of straight HP-based brawling is a whole lot of fun for me.

Materia Keeper: Started with Cait/Yuffie. Think it was three wipes. Ejecting a PC is mean, yo. For some reason I was confused and thought you'd disabled Barrier=All, but no, it's Time=All that doesn't work anymore. I actually switched to the TURK PARTY of Cait/Vincent because the HYDRA's 255% accuracy made him a better physical user (with Deathblow) than Yuffie and I wound up using a fun Reflect-based strategy to do a bunch of free damage. My successful attempt ended with Cloud ejected, Cait dead, and Vincent in Galian Beast form delivering the final blow with Beast Flare, which was suitably epic. Really challenging fight, really satisfying win.

Back-row Galian Beast Vincent's physical doing like 350 damage and Beast Flare doing 1100 at this point seems like a ton of damage, I'm impressed enough by that and the fact that for this stretch of the game he has a good Deathblow weapon that I'm going to keep him around for a bit.

2

Game Design and Modifications / Re: TF7 - The Final Fantasy 7 Rebalancing Mod

« on: February 28, 2017, 12:28:13 AM »

Corel Mountain: Yuffie/Red. I have very little to say about this area. The cache of p-downs feels amazingly valuable now. There are a lot of largeish groups of fairly weak enemies (groups of 5 are not uncommon). Physical Yuffie with STR Plus is performing great for me at the moment. My first Bomb blew up on me, but the second one I neutralized with Sleep and stole its arm.

Desert Prison: Barrett/Cait, for the desert, because why not. Cait is super weird and I'm not entirely clear on what I'm supposed to do with him at this point, although I hear he has some gimmick weapons.

Dyne himself: What the fuck?

The progression of thoughts went something like: Oh, so that's how that works. Okay, let's try front-loading some damage for breathing room, I'll slap him with a Right Arm as soon as the fight starts. Okay, this isn't so bad, and ...whaaaaat? Well, okay, I'm dead now, let's try...

After about three deaths I made a save state because running back from the save point is really rather annoying and was consuming a lot of time. I still died a couple times after that, but mostly blame my own carelessness. Once I figured out the trigger for his overkill attack (or at least I think I did) I solved that problem by getting him down to about ~150 HP and then finishing him off with a Right Arm, which deals about ~160 damage. I had originally planned to get him down to ~100 HP before slapping on Reflect with my sole consumable source of that spell, but he wound up murdering me before I managed to put Reflect up, so...anyway, the Right Arm method was easier.

I inquired about the intended strategy for beating this guy and was like "oh." So okay, he's a puzzle boss, which is fine by me. However, since there's a bit of a walk from the save point to the fight, I didn't want to waste turns trying random stuff that might not work OR do any damage, so while I considered trying status effects, I felt like the chance that I'd be setting myself up for a wipe by equipping a useless materia was too high. My first plan to deal with Dyne after I knew what was going on was actually to Mindblow him until he didn't have enough MP to cast Radiance, but I abandoned that plan when I realized Mindblow only did about 18 MP damage and he has 150 MP. I actually think that if you want him to be a puzzle boss of that nature you should give him exactly 90 MP so that a single use of Mindblow shuts it off. I don't think MP damage should be the only solution to the puzzle, but I think that once you think to try that it should be easy to execute as opposed to needing to wait out attacks until you can Mindblow him 4+ times.

Also, this seems like it might be a bug. Albeit a hilarious bug.

http://imgur.com/a/GOfTo

3

Game Design and Modifications / Re: TF7 - The Final Fantasy 7 Rebalancing Mod

« on: February 22, 2017, 11:50:40 PM »

Kalm: Plot.

My party right now is Aeris/Red. I figure abusing the OP temp PC is a reasonable thing to do and Lunatic High is bonkers. The big thing that's pushing me to use Aeris is the free MT healing due to being limited to one Restore. I would actually probably use her even if she had half as many materia slots (she has 6 at this point with Striking Staff + Titan Bangle). I briefly switched in Barrett because I stole a set of Atomic Scissors; his physical offensive output with them is impressive, but no materia slots is a really, really hard sell on him because all he brings to the party is that hard-hitting fight command.

Nobody needs any new equipment, but I pick up Mystify, Seal, and Heal as well as some more p-downs. Get Matra Magic (which feels fairly costed at 15 MP, by the way). Didn't save enough money for Choco Lure, so I backtracked to Kalm, doing a loop so that I could use the inn for healing KO'd party members instead of costly p-downs.

Birb Fort: Revive being buyable here is neat.

Is there any way to raise Yuffie's appearance rate? It only took me about 15 minutes to find her, but I think I got kind of lucky. I slot her in in place of Aeris because I'm biased towards long-range PCs, they have the same number of materia slots, and Yuffie also gets an MT healing limit. (I don't actually -like- Aeris that much as a character, honestly.)

Gyarados: I wiped to him with 26 HP left. Second go wasn't so bad, I did get lucky with Big Wave missing Cloud. His gimmick is funny. Having Sacred Fire for this was really nice.

That's not how CPR works.

Steal-as-Well is great! It turns Sense into a second Steal materia with a much longer animation!

Boat: Party is Yuffie/Red. I don't actually have Yuffie's MT heal limit yet. Both of them have their weapon upgrades from Junon (I don't have the Magic Comb). I see that the Wind Slash is kind of a sidegrade and decide it isn't going to help me win this fight.

Stop is nasty. Second wipe I set Ice=Elemental on Yuffie's armor and of course she doesn't get hit with Freeze once; instead, she spams it on Red (five times!). Got it on the third try, with Red actually playing medic for most of the fight while whittling her down with Yuffie's physicals and Cloud spamming Sacred Fire. Yuffie has STR Plus and the Hyper Wrist; Greased Lightning hits for ~340 damage. Hilariously, Yuffie learns Clear Tranquil after the fight. Keeping people topped off to avoid being killed by Freeze was the key here.

I get Tifa's next weapon upgrade in Costa Del Sol, consider slotting her in, decide I don't need two physical characters (I want to keep Yuffie), and therefore don't.

4

Game Design and Modifications / Re: TF7 - The Final Fantasy 7 Rebalancing Mod

« on: February 15, 2017, 12:46:06 AM »

Going to take brief notes on stuff. I wasn't originally going to do so. Everything up to about Wall Market is from memory because I wasn't at that time.

Reactor: Ran from a fight because of berserk. Did not attack while the tail's up because I know Laggy was involved in boss design. Five minutes was just right, tense.

Copypasta Reactor: I thought I was going to wipe to air buster, but didn't. Ended with Cloud dead.

Sewer Surfin': One wipe. Two people died to Final Attack: Comet 2. I only had two phoenix downs. FML. Managed to limp through this section anyhow, mostly ran from fights, raised one person, and then my two surviving PCs got to go to...

Train Graveyard: I ran into the rarest possible encounters multiple times, according to Laggy, and got my ass handed to me. I managed to steal the guard stick and ran from the rest of the fights because I had two dead PCs.

Sector 7 "Pizza" Support: Five wipes to Reno. I spent all my money before this section. First Reno attempt is a hilarious mess in which I spend all my time breaking pyramids and accomplishing nothing. It is convenient that you can steal softs from the enemies here! I actually needed some advice from Laggy to get past the boss, I wasn't making good use of setup mechanics and was not handling pyramids well. I think I ultimately would've figured it out, but it would've taken several more attempts.

Shinra Building: Stealth is  for chumps. If making Barrett seem like the most useful character at this phase of the game was a design goal, you nailed it. WARNING BOARD OMG. Elevator guards were surprisingly durable. I think there's a limit to how hard Hojo's Science Project can be considering the length of the scene you have to rewatch if you lose. One wipe, which was mostly a scouting run that allowed me to figure out the fight (I blew several turns using Sense); once I knew what was going on it wasn't bad.

Spent way too much time to steal two carbon bangles and a hardedge. Soldier: 3rd class dudes totally deserve the respect they get in the fluff now, holy crap.

Elevator boss: First attempt was foiled by Barrett and Red basically dying simultaneously right at the phase transition. Going into phase two with two dead people is unworkable. Second attempt was fine, although I do think phase one is a bit grindy. That thing has a lot of HP.

President Junior: This was a fun fight and there are clearly multiple ways to win it.

Highway Machine: Straightforward. Another fight that can't actually be that hard because having to replay the prior sequence is annoying. I'm pretty sure you can still lose if you aren't taking it seriously.

So far everything is engaging (you cannot autobattle your way through stuff, which is a low bar to clear, but we are comparing it to vanilla FF7). Bosses have been entertaining. Earlygame Cloud's physical is total garbage, which might be intended, but even if so...wow. Upon reflection, I cannot stress how glad I was that I took the time to steal his weapon upgrade in the Shinra building, although I'm sure the Rufus fight could've been handled completely with magic; motor ball just would've taken longer without lightning elemental hardedge physicals.

Earlygame Tifa hits like a wet noodle. Earlygame Barrett is kind of a monster. I don't think I've ever been so glad to have him in my party.

5

Discussion / Re: DLCon 8: California

« on: March 26, 2013, 07:48:06 PM »

Laggy has enlisted me to be his galley slave this year, with the promise that I will get to spend 5 hours in a car with Grefter or something.

How can I refuse?

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Discussion / Re: DLCon 7: Florida

« on: March 12, 2012, 07:19:41 AM »

Due to planned insane roadtrip (where we will probably crash in Kentucky and be eaten by wild dogs), Alex, Laggy and I will be out on the Universal Studios trip, if I'm not mistaken. But all three of us will be there!

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Discussion / Re: DLCon 7: Florida

« on: February 20, 2012, 06:22:56 AM »

I am planning to be there! And am tentatively in for the Universal Studios trip.

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Discussion / Re: DL Con 5: LET'S PLAY SOME GORRAM GAMES!!!

« on: August 05, 2010, 09:24:04 AM »

So who actually has Pokémon D/P/P and plans to bring it and a DS for potential battles?

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Discussion / Re: DL Con 5: LET'S PLAY SOME GORRAM GAMES!!!

« on: July 30, 2010, 09:22:19 PM »

I don't know how many tabletop roleplayers we have floating around the DL, but Laggy seemed to think there'd be interest in playing some sort of short con-style one-shot D&D adventure, probably 3.5e. If so, I'd like to know at least a bit in advance so I can prepare some sort of adventure notes and have an idea of just how many people would want to do that sort of thing. Obviously if any of them are people who are also staying at Laggy's then there's a bit more time to get through an adventure if one sitting doesn't cut it. So as not to clutter this thread, interested parties should probably contact me directly, I'm usually lurking in #rpgdl these days or I'm on AIM as Archmage144.

I can also bring a copy of Betrayal at the House (with all pieces intact) and have some self-constructed Yomi decks.

10

Discussion / Re: DLC5 Travel Topic

« on: July 21, 2010, 12:32:21 AM »

Tue, Aug 10, 2010
Depart: 04:40 pm, Indianapolis, IN (IND)
Arrive: 07:41 pm, San Francisco, CA (SFO)
Midwest Airlines, Flight 619

Fri, Aug 20, 2010
Depart: 11:45 pm, San Francisco, CA (SFO)
Midwest Airlines, Flight 964

Laggy is handling my local transportation in accordance with all State and Federal laws (as far as I know).

11

Discussion / Re: DLC 5 Main Topic

« on: June 23, 2010, 08:50:24 PM »

So, despite living on the fringes of the DL, I have plans to attend DLCon this year, partly because I've always wanted to visit San Francisco and partly because of my undying love for Laggy-chan. I will be staying at his place, for the official record.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (Final Release - Download here!)

« on: June 09, 2010, 09:57:02 PM »

This argument is totally borked. We're talking about a difference of 1-2 stat points over like 90 levels. Who cares? If the concern is that growth differences are going to bias people who don't understand how minor their impact is unnecessarily, then just flatten growths across the board and make the only differences between classes their mults and abilities.

If you don't want people to avoid certain jobs because it will screw up their character's ability to be a magic user FOREVER or whatever, just get rid of the potential for that to even occur.

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Tournaments / Re: Ice Cream Tournament: With Bonus Match, Round 2

« on: December 14, 2009, 08:02:39 PM »

Mint Chocolate Chip vs Cookie Dough
Strawberry vs Peach
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup vs Vanilla
Peppermint vs Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

Butter Pecan vs Rocky Road
Pistachio vs Moose Tracks
Rum and Raisin vs Coffee
Chocolate vs Cookies and Cream

BONUS MATCH
Cup vs Cone

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Tournaments / Re: Ice Cream Tournament: In the name of Dairy, ROUND 1

« on: December 10, 2009, 05:02:34 AM »

Butter Pecan vs Mint Chocolate Chip
Strawberry vs Pistachio
Cookie Dough vs Rocky Road
Moose Tracks vs Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup
Rum and Raisin vs Peach
Chocolate vs Vanilla
Peppermint vs Coffee
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough vs Cookies and Cream

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: November 14, 2009, 05:25:34 AM »

Haste/Slow2 are better than Haste/Slow. Just like Bolt2 is better than Bolt.

St. Ajora is in his heaven, and all's right with the world.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: October 22, 2009, 12:51:32 PM »

I used MDU for a short period of time because there wasn't a better ability learned on the character, but at no point did I set it for an extended time as a major part of my strategy. It's a solid ability, but it isn't game-changing and is only going to matter at all in a few fights.

Also, if you think 300 JP for Attack Up is too cheap, and some people think 600 is too much, split the difference at 400?

17

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: October 11, 2009, 11:00:08 PM »

LFT has changed considerably since my last playthrough, and, for lack of anything better to do, and because I've never actually seriously done one, I'm going to attempt an SCC. After brief discussion with Laggy, I've decided to go with archer. Archer has gotten some interesting changes in LFT, and I'd like to see how things pan out with an all-archer team--starting from the standard SCC checkpoint of Dorter.

So!

I decide that Ramza--who shall be named Apollo--is obviously a Sagittarius (look this up if you don't understand why), so he is given the birth date of December 1st.

After the intro fights, it's time to recruit some soldiers. I need a team of bad enough dudes to rescue the Marquis, and nothing less will do. Apollo's fellow cadets are stripped and booted in order to recruit:

William: Male Taurus, Br 67, Fa 40
Robin: Male Pisces, Br 68, Fa 53
Legolas: Male Aries, Br 70, Fa 44
Arash: Male Taurus, Br 70, Fa 50

Algus is an annoying twit, but he does live through Mandalia despite my not really caring whether he survives or not.

Okay, so, we move through the opening battles, get to Igros, buy everyone bows, fight a random for a bit of pocket money, and now we have five bow-equipped archers, Delita, and Algus. Team Archer DOMINATES Sweegy; there's just no other way to describe it. The enemy just can't handle the focused-fire.

Dorter:

Wait, he says...does Wiegraf look like a waiter?

The challenge has officially begun. Delita and Algus don't have any special setup; they're in squire mode with basic equipment and basic skills like throw stone. Both have item secondary. I don't expect it to matter. All of my characters have long bows, feather hats, and leather clothes.

Need to abuse archer Ignore Height for all it's worth, so we head for the high ground. Once we get up there, the enemy archer flees, and Charge+3, Charge+4, and Charge+6 arrows rain on the enemy. Algus and Delita get nuked with fire, and Algus goes down after a crossbow bolt finishes him off. Predictably, the enemy knight takes some time to drop.

Since everyone has a Charge ability,
I'm going to save JP for Speed Save. I assume that will be a very helpful and important ability.

Algus proves he learned to interrogate people at Gitmo; I get into a random with...two black goblins? That's it? Anyway, I buy a few sets of Battle Boots and make Delita a thief; he'll actually be a better tank that way than he will as any other job, especially since I don't actually have knight armor, and he'll do more damage, too. Plus, he can Steal Heart any female enemies.

Sand Rat Cellar:

I run one archer up to the top of the building and spread out around the perimeter; the monk and archer go down from quick charges. Ignore Height breaks early game battles in hilarious ways. I get Apollo, Robin, and Arash up on the building's frame and they're basically untouchable. Killing the last knight takes a while because his evade is pretty good, but he can't attack me, so what does it matter?

Apollo, William, and Robin learn Speed Save. We head back to Igros. Everybody gets leather vests and I have enough cash to buy Apollo a red hood.

Thieves' Fort:

After 2 resets, two things dawn on me. One: Battle Boots won't help much in this fight, since there's little room to kite. Two: Concentration might just be necessary to deal with the thieves and their evasiveness.

Attempt 3:

Apollo: Speed Save/Concentrate. Long Bow, Red Hood, Leather Vest, Battle Boots.
William and Robin: Same, except Small Mantle.
Legolas: Same, minus Speed Save.

Delita is a fully-equipped knight; Algus is a thief. Both have mantles.

This was a breeze with Concentrate. Being able to actually hit Miluda's support (and Miluda) made it possible to win handily. Delita made a fantastic tank. The enemy would've ripped me apart if I'd tried to ignore them and go for Miluda, since she took 5 or 6 hits to kill.

Lenalia:

Delita's still got the same setup, as does everyone else.

Blitzing Miluda became necessary partway through the fight, just because I was sustaining too much damage. A knight broke Delita's armor, which was annoying. Delita actually used Wish to raise Apollo at one point. No special setup required, honestly.

Delita has an identity crisis, we all wonder why Miluda had to die in the first place, and life goes on. We return to Igros to do some shopping and replace Delita's armor. I purchase two Night Killers and Bronze Shields; Apollo and William are going to be crossbowmen, since the Night Killers have a higher WP and having a couple "front line" archers with shields can't be a bad idea. The other three will stick to longbows for now. Apollo gets the leather mantle since it has the PA +1 bonus now.

Fovoham/Windmill Shed:

1 reset

Blitz tactics won't work. I'm not sure why I attempted them in the first place. Wiegraf is durable and his support has pretty solid offense. Second round goes better; I knock down one of the monks and my good compat night killer-using archer plugs Wiegraf twice with charge+6 for 50 damage each hit.

Robin learns Charge+20 after the fight, on Laggy's suggestion. Woo! I switch back to longbows for the Zeakden fight since I'll be able to abuse Ignore Height and snipe.

Zeakden:

You all know how this is going to go down. Ignore Height plus bows is just SILLY on this map. And WOW, the xbow knight can return fire! That's kind of amusing. Also, I can't hit anything with Charge+20. No surprise there, but...just an FYI. Even early-game, Charge+20 isn't going to hit stuff, unless you target it when it has 0 CT.

After some roof-sniping in which we are in no danger whatsoever, Zeakden explodes and blasts us off into Ch2.

18

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: October 04, 2009, 11:08:29 PM »

Wait, what?  Black Magic is currently the skillset that is very MP efficient--that's one of its niches....

I don't think I ever seriously had a problem with running out of MP during my playthrough (which has been a while, and a lot of changes have been made, but I don't think any of them would've changed this). I don't actually think this is a significant advantage at all.

19

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: April 25, 2009, 01:33:28 AM »

A couple battles later we have the materia blade. I hate Deep Dungeon, so we're not going. Instead, I think it's time to head to Murond and wrap this up. I want to do something silly. Laggy becomes a bard. Gotta try out this crazy harp charge thing for myself.

So, here's what we've got:

Hakaril: Mediator/Guts/Speed Save/MA Up/Move +1
Blaze Gun/Thief Hat/Black Robe/Sprint Shoes

Zane: Time Mage/White Magic/Damage Split/Short Charge/Move +1
Wizard Staff/Golden Hairpin/Light Robe/Sprint Shoes

K-Variable: Geomancer/Draw Out/MP Switch/MA UP/Move-MP Up
Rune Blade/Aegis Shield/Flash Hat/Brigandine/Chantage

Laggy: Bard/Charge/Blade Grasp/Magic Def UP/Ignore Height
Bloody Strings/Thief Hat/Brigandine/Genji Gauntlet

Ashley: Summoner/White Magic/Damage Split/Short Charge/Move MP-Up
Wizard Rod/Flash Hat/Black Robe/Chantage

Back-up/secondary characters--I haven't trained them as heavily as I could, but they might participate in a few endgame fights for fun:

Reis: Dragoner/White Magic/Counter Tackle/Martial Arts/Move +1
Barette/Chantage

Beowulf and Cloud are both usable but not that awesome objectively since they don't really have secondary skills trained and Cloud only knows Cross-Slash and Finish Touch. Last time I played I think I killed Vormav with Cherry Blossom, but I don't think I'll duplicate that particular bit of insanity this run.

Total coincidence: It is January 1st in game. New Year's Day party at Murond Death City! OK, I realized nobody was using the Genji equipment except the glove. For maximum silliness, I alter Laggy's setup:

Laggy: Bard/Charge/Blade Grasp/Equip Armor/Move +1
Bloody Strings/Genji Helmet/Genji Armor/Genji Gauntlet

He now has 362 MP, more than anyone else in my main army, and is equipped with a drain weapon! Victory! For symmetry's sake, I switch K-Variable over to dancer. With the mighty GENJIBARD ready to go, we head for Murond.

Murond Gate:

Hak replies to the priest's whining by shooting his geomancer friend. A mediator sentences Laggy to death and her partner reads terrible poetry to Ashley, but damage split mitigates some of the pain. K-Variable begins the nameless dance...Laggy kills the hell out of some mediator with Charge+2, OHKO. Zane charges meteor (why not) and Ashley readies Bahamut; the two of them are going to wipe the roof clean if this works out. The enemy throws a bunch of cure spells that they've been charging. Hak shoots a summoner, aborting Salamander.

Bahamut shows up (amusingly, nobody dies from that). Zane drops a meteor on the church, almost killing a priest. Nameless dance goes off; one geo is slept and a mediator is silenced (oh man). Laggy kills the other mediator with Charge+3. Hak shoots a geo and she's down. Let's drop another space rock on the church. That'll show em'. Meteor kills another geo. One priest left...nameless dance frogs him. Laggy's life expires due to death sentence. Hak shoots the frog priest for 729 damage (all right!) and that takes care of the peanut gallery.

Murond Entry Hall:

Ramza should quit trusting people. Seriously.

Shoot Vormav immediately. Rofel has 100% evade. Oh. K uses kiyomori. Laggy blade grasps Vormav; Shellbust Stab breaks Hak's black robe. Haste2 for the party. Charge Bahamut, shoot Vormav. Kletian charges flare; he and Vormav eat Bahamut...oops, counter magic. Zane and Ashley die. K-Variable uses muramasa. Flare fizzles. Shoot Vormav. GG.

I replace Hak's robe with a spare and we delve deeper.

Murond Temple:

Ah, the Zalbag fight. Hak shoots his brother for 250 and he A Saves. Zalbag sucks Hakaril's blood. Yay! Laggy and Hak take a giga flare. Let's hit everything with Bahamut. Hmm. Zalbag guards slow. Hurricane misses both Laggy and Ashley. Life song restores a few HP and dark holy kills vampire Hakaril. Bahamut drops Zalbag to critical, but he's still alive. K-Variable finishes him off with kiku.

I buy a few more katana and spare sets of robes before we head to Orbonne.

Orbonne Book Storage 4th Floor:

Laggy and K-variable start a song and dance (nameless dance, cheer song). Zane Haste2s. Ashley charges Bahamut to hit the approaching monks. Archer shoots Hak; Hak OHKOs the archer with his gun. Bahamut badly wounds the enemy monks and a lancer. Nameless dance inflicts some not very useful status (poison, one slow, silences a lancer). Monk throws a shuriken at Hak; he speed saves. Cheer song goes off; we all get a little faster. K-Variable finishes off a monk with muramasa. Zane Cure4s; Hak shoots at a distant lancer, but he blade grasps. Kiku kills a monk and badly wounds two lancers; Leviathan finishes one of the lancers off.

Cheer song! More moving and shooting! Dead lancers!

Zane learns teleport after the battle.

Book Storage 5th Floor:

Rofel and his mage army cannot stand before the might of our entertainment troupe! Hakaril Screams. I'll let Rofel's troops approach me and take them out when they come into range. A critical rug attack nearly kills an oracle; Laggy harps her to death afterward. Rofel casts..quick...on a priest. 'kay. And the priest...jumps. Huh. Haste2 time! Shooting the approaching second oracle OHKOs her. Laggy blade graps the priest who tries to land on him. Rofel casts quick again. He clearly likes seeing those priests jump.

Man, Rofel has insane defense. Laggy can only hit him for 52 with the basic attack command. By casting reflect on Laggy I can counter an incoming Demi2. Shoot Rofel. Priest lands on Ash; she's dead. Shellbust stab breaks Laggy's Genji armor. NOOOOO! Oh well. (Before anyone says "Maintenance!!!" he's using equip armor, durh). Demi2 hurts a bit. Rug to priest action occurs. Hak shoots Rofel. Laggy continues to abuse charging harp attacks. Shoot Rofel again and it's game.

Huh. Never noticed the translation quirk there; Rofel's spell chant ends with "Dejeon," which...in every other FF game is translated to "Warp" seeing as how the proper romanization is something more like "Dezone." Uh. Nevermind.

Murond Death City:

I deploy Reis for this battle just for the entertainment value; K-Variable stays at the base.

Shoot a time mage. She hi-potions herself. Laggy harps her to death. Reis punches a ninja to death. Zane Haste2s. Maybe I'll invite the samurai with the chirijiraden. Maybe I won't bother. Shoot Kletian. Dark Holy on Laggy, oh no! Laggy barely survives! Charge+2 wounds Kletian and heals Laggy. OK, now Laggy's dead--samurai hits him with muramasa. A ninja evades both of Reis' punches. Shoot Kletian again. Reraise on Laggy fails 'cause he's dead. A ninja attacks Ashley; he takes some of his own damage back. Bizen Boat deals damage to Ashley's MP; she'll retaliate by charging Leviathan. A time mage's Demi2 fizzles. Kletian throws Quick at a samurai--that'll save him from Leviathan, at least. Bizen Boat wipes out the rest of Ashley's MP!

Shoot Kletian again; he's critical, but critical quick doesn't trigger (whew). Zane raises Laggy, then a ninja throws a slasher and kills Zane. YES!!! Reis tries Holy Bracelet and it actually kills Kletian! XD

Murond Balk Fight:

Reis is getting deployed here, too. You can guess why. Ashley will stay behind.

Balk zaps Zane. Hak shoots Balk. The chemist with the glacier gun shoots Hakaril in return. Ashley kikus Balk (and a hyudra). Reis tames the hyudra. Yay! I made a friend! Cheer song, go! Zane heals everyone who's taken a spell gun hit. Triple Thunder kills my tame hydra. Balk hits K-Variable with arm aim.

I kinda want to invite Balk's chemist. Probably too much trouble; I don't need his gun that badly anyway. A hydra's triple flame doesn't do jack; Reis suggests he switch sides and he complies. Cheer song goes off and we all get a little quicker. I shoot Balk's chemist and kill him; if he countered Hak it would kill me, so I'll wait until Zane's Cure4 goes off. Which is immediately afterward. Balk arm aims his former pet hydra and flees. Triple thunder wastes Hakaril. Triple thunder kills Zane. Damn. I invite the tiamat. No way to raise Hakaril or kill Balk quickly enough--I'm actually gonna have to reset!

...or NOT. The tiamat triple thunders, hits Balk three times, and kills him. HAH! I only have one space left in my army, so I keep the tiamat.

Airship Graveyard/Hashmalum

At Laggy's request, I'm going to use my standard generics for this battle and the Altima fight.

Oh no, it's Hashmalum, the Regulator! He's gonna regulate me! Hashy has pegged Hak with meteor, so spreading out is in order. Shoot for 227, he damage splits. Laggy readies Charge+4; draw out kiyomori. Zane will try Demi2; Ashley readies Leviathan. Charge +4 for 468; Laggy barely survives the damage split counter. Meteor finishes both Laggy and Hakaril off. Demi2 misses (annoying). Leviathan is OK, though. Murasame draw out should help us survive a meteor. Or only K-Variable will live. Thanks, MP switch! Priority one: Raise Zane. That's immediate. Melt kills him and Ashley. Kiku...meteor will kill me horribly now. All right! MP Switch! Ashley raises Hakaril. Another kiku. Hak shoots for 370 (Fire 2 procs)...damage split kills him. Melt wipes my living characters.

Let's abandon K-Variable's silly dancer thing; she's going geo. Laggy can stay a bard, though. And no more equip armor silliness since he doesn't have the Genji body anymore--let's go with magic defense UP.

Round 2: Again, Hakaril is going to get meteored, so I move him away and shoot. K-Variable hits with muramasa and Zane hastes. Can't reraise Hak in time, so let's target raise at his panel. Hak dies. Ashley raises him. Laggy is singing the cheer song, so let's keep him the hell away. Shoot...oops, Fire2 again, dead Hak after damage split. Kiku. Zane teles and readies Raise2; this time I'll move Ashley up next to Hashy so he's hit with his own meteor. No way to get a summon off; rod hit! Cheer song, yay! Meteor kills Ash, but Hashy eats ~360 damage. Laggy's going to keep singing for now. Hak is raised. Hashmalum apparently doesn't like Laggy's singing, so he petrifies him with seal. Shoot Hashy again. Muramasa kills the Regulator and the housing market collapses.

I get a Ragnarok. Really? Was that a treasure from this fight before?

No setup changes.

Altima:

Ajora summons some angry demons and shows his/her true form. Demon support could get annoying. Hak shoots one for 258. Laggy wounds another with the power of music. Alma throws up MBarrier; Altima is charging Ultima. K-Variable rushes in; muramasa kills a demon. Ultima kills Alma, but she has reraise; Hak speed saves. Haste2 time. Ash charges Bahamut. An demon kills Hak with hurricane. Ulmaguest kills Laggy; Zane barely survives another attack and damage splits, but Ash is dead. Alma MBarriers again...and here comes Ultima. Only K-Variable is alive, so she kikus. Ashley reraises. Need to raise Hakaril! The ultima demons are not going to let that happen.

Draw out muramasa kills all the ultima demons. Ashley raises Hakaril! Hakaril Wishes Laggy hadn't died; Alma reraises and recasts MBarrier. Altima tries...Space Storage? o_O That doesn't do anything to me. Laggy is alive! Muramasa! Man, Altima still has MP. Hak shoots and runs. Laggy uses Charge+4; Alma raises Zane with Wish! Let's use Fairy to heal. NOW.

HAH! Altima is out of MP--Laggy hits her for 312 with Charge+4. Alma MBarriers Zane, but Altima deathspells. Fairy goes off and heals Zane, Ash, and Alma. Haste2, damnit! Shoot Altima again; Laggy readies Charge+4 again; Kiku; Alma MBarrier's Laggy (sweet)...that's it for the first phase.

Altima is...immune to all damage? What? This must be a temporary status; by the time Laggy's next turn rolls around all my hit rates aren't 0%. Shoot! Kiku! Space Storage Back kinda wastes Zane. Alma MBarriers K-Variable. Charge+4! Shoot again! Zane readies Holy. Ashley charges Lich. Laggy Charge+4s. Hak shoots--hmm, I've depleted Altima's MP. Alma helpfully MBarriers Zane; holy goes off, followed by muramasa and Charge+4. Lich hits--643 damage, way to go--and Altima physicals Zane to death. Shoot! Charge Lich...kiku kills Altima. K-Variable is the MVP!

Comments: The first phase of the Altima fight really feels like a solid FF final boss fight now. I barely escaped resetting; if K-Variable hadn't been able to kill the clustered demons and Ash get raise out we would've died. The second half is still not a big deal, even without speed break; haste alone is enough to keep you getting many turns to every one Altima has, and even if you didn't bring someone with haste, Alma is crazy with MBarrier. The invulnerability for the first few rounds scared the crap out of me, though. Might just be an AI thing, but she didn't really cast any spells on me except Space Storage Back and her physical isn't that scary.

All in all, good job! I'm very happy with this mod and would be quite willing to play through it again at some point; I think it feels overall improved from vanilla FFT in general. Maybe soon I'll check out DD...

20

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: April 24, 2009, 05:35:05 PM »

Ubersquire's thing was always about the uberskillset as much as the uberequips, it seems to me, and he still gets, well, both, really (and Squires still don't have the heavy armour option, nor shields, correct?). Cheer-up and Yell are less unique, obviously, but Wish is much better and Scream is still awesome.

I made a similar comment to Laggy the other day; my Ramza is a mediator right now for flavor reasons, but he's had White Magic secondary for a long time mostly for Raise. I could change his secondary to Guts and lose almost nothing now that Wish offers revival--and I would gain Scream and Yell, even though Scream is only semi-useful for a magic gun-wielding Ramza (the speed is good, of course, and since Yell doesn't self-target anymore Scream essentially replaces it for that purpose). I don't have Ultima, but I don't really need it since...well, magic gun. That and I missed my opportunities to learn it at Riovanes, though I suspect there might be somewhere else I can pick it up.

But yeah. Guts was always a great skillset. I would argue that it's even better now with its revival skill--MP free but limited range isn't a terrible trade-off (see Revive, except that Wish actually has vert tolerance).

21

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: April 23, 2009, 04:21:31 AM »

Bards are pretty crazy. I have Bard Ramza with Concentrate and Charge and he took out Wiegraf in one hit. Then, having Haste from a Nameless Song against Wieggy, he double turns at the start of the Velius portion of the fight and deals 936(!) damage to Velius before anyone else gets a turn. Good lord. I think the WP on harps needs to be tuned down. Without Charge the damage numbers are through the roof. Combined with Charge it's just obscene.

Bards are super-fragile, though. Ultimate glass cannon class. And harps have a very strict range. I tried the bard thing for a little while and while they're fast and do a lot of damage they flat out can't take a hit. There are ways around that, of course, but with HP and MP mods of 50 and a PA mod of 30 they aren't exactly very good carriers or anything (except maybe for charge; jump isn't that spectacular thanks to very low PA).

Maybe I need to experiment with them more, but so far they don't suit me too well on the grounds that they're not durable enough (I suppose something like blade grasp might fix that, but). Even a ninja can take more hits, and they have the CEv to potentially dodge a few even without a mantle or reaction.

22

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: April 23, 2009, 02:01:06 AM »

Laggy assures me Nelveska will hand my ass to me. He's probably right. Let's try it anyway! I'm not going to bother with move-finding the broken equips on the pillars.

Nelveska:

I have guest apandas? What the hell? The birds move first. An apanda dies; so does Ashley, but she'll reraise. I brought Worker 8 into this fight to tank, and he luckily evades a bird attack. The treants up on the pillars are cute. W7 punches K-Variable for over 700 damage. Awesome!

W7 having over 900 HP and being totally magic immune, this is going to be tricky. Let's dispatch dragon Reis along with Worker 8 and give Ashley item secondary to heal him. So.

Bird OHKOs an apanda; bird petrifies Reis (damn); bird kills Ashley like whoa. Hakaril successfully invites a cockatoris (29%)! That'll help a lot. Or not. W7 kills it. K-Variable kikus W7 for 240. Summons are all unsurprisingly too slow; too bad Ashley doesn't have soft unlocked. I charge Bahamut to bait enemies into attacking her. Friendly fire from the treants does over 500 damage, dropping W7 to critical status! W8 hits W7 with Dispose. W7 reraises with 1 HP and some monsters do stuff; K-Variable gets a turn and the battle is over.

Dragoner Reis GET! <3 <3 <3

It's time for some JP whoring. Zane and Ash become calculators (I dunno, it just seems like a good idea). Zane will sing while Ashley yells. Hopefully Hakaril, Laggy, and Reis can handle the enemies! Let's go to Bed Desert for this.

OK, now Ashley and Zane have more or less full math skill (damage split is what I really wanted). I'll level Reis more later, probably after I get Cloud (I want to have a "secondary" party of special characters just for fun).

Time to go to Igros. Just to update things, here's my current setup; it's changed a million times, but here's where we're at now:

Hakaril: Mediator/White Magic/Speed Save/MA UP/Move +1
Blaze Gun/Thief Hat/Black Robe/Sprint Shoes

Zane: Time Mage/White Magic/Damage Split/Short Charge/Move +1
Wizard Staff/Thief Hat/Light Robe/Sprint Shoes

K-Variable: Geomancer/Draw Out/Blade Grasp/Attack UP/Move +1
Rune Blade/Aegis Shield/Flash Hat/Brigandine/Chantage

Laggy: Geomancer/Jump/Abandon/Attack UP/Move +1
Slasher/Thief Hat/Earth Clothes/Genji Gauntlet

Ashley: Summoner/Math Skill/Damage Split/Short Charge/Move MP-Up
Wizard Rod/Flash Hat/Light Robe/Chantage

Igros:

Conditions for winning: Defeat Dycedarg's non-existent elder brother!

Easy. Dycedarg goes down after a couple gunshots and a blast of geomancy. Nothing to report. Then Adremelk shows up!

Zane charges Demi2; Laggy hits with geomancy (84) and Hakaril shoots (227). Ashley tries Slow; no good, it's guarded. K-Variable also hits with geomancy (75). Demi2 hits for 363, so Zane starts charging another one. Hak shoots for 227. Adremelk uses Darkness; now everybody is charmed, blind, and poisoned. All right!

Laggy and Hak join forces to kill Ashley for their new friend Adremelk. Exp5Esuna clears up some of Hak's status effects. Oh, zombie is part of the package, too! Zane kills Hak with Cure2. Can't raise zombies...no good. But K-Variable reraises and hits Adremelk for 240 with kiku. Ashley uses Height5Bolt for 81.

Night Sword for 999 damage!? SHIT! Demi2 misses. >_< Death kills Ashley; another Kiku from the reraised K does 240. Ash reraises...Bahamut summon! 314...he's still alive!? Death kills Ashley again...and Hakaril zombie reraises after Zane hits with Demi for 184. K-Variable reraises, kikus for 240...still alive! Laggy crystallizes. GG. That whole "healing self for 999" thing kinda screwed me.

OK, so. The rules for this fight are apparently:

1. Allow zombie (night sword healing for 999 is very bad).
2. Null charm (or else my characters inevitably kill each other very fast). The only piece of equipment that nulls charm without also nullifying zombie is an N-Kai armlet.
 
I need gil for N-Kai armlets, so...random battle time! Couple randoms give me a chance to train Reis and Beowulf a bit just for the hell of it. Also, I get Laggy Vert Jump8 (finally). Everyone gets geared up with armlets and we're good.

Laggy jumped before I killed Dycedarg (even though I knew I wouldn't be able to land on him, his CT was 90)...so he landed on Adremelk. 345 damage. XD

K-Variable moves in, kiku (240), Hak shoots (340). Ashley uses Level3Reraise to grant herself, Laggy, Hak, and K-Variable a second chance at life. Laggy jumps, Demi2 does 352. Aw, shit. Since someone's in range, Adremelk opts for night sword over darkness, but K-Variable's MP Switch keeps her alive. Hmm. He does it again. This is...interesting. Let's...get away from him. Yeah.

I decide to try zombifying my whole team to halt night sword. I get stuck in a really weird stalemate where Hak can't do anything except raise Zane so he doesn't crystallize, but the CTs won't line up in my favor; Adramelk always acts immediately after Zane gets raised, he heals himself for 999, and the battle goes on forever. Reset.

OK, let's try a break strategy. Ninja Laggy and K-Variable are going to speed and power break Adremelk into submission. Ash uses Reraise on everyone, Dycedarg is dispatched, and it's time to lay into the goat-man. Laggy has ignore height and K-Variable has fly, so they get into position quickly. Six speed breaks seems sufficient. Wonder how many times I have to power break him to get night sword to stop doing 999? Oh, K-Variable doesn't have power break, only speed. So...eight speed breaks.

Seven power breaks later I figure I might as well start killing him. I never get to find out how effective the power breaks were. Oh well.

We go to rescue Cloud! This battle is no big deal. Then I discover that I don't have enough JP to teach anyone Move-Find Item (!?) so we need to hit a random for that.

Wow, I die in a random. Cockatoris are hardcore.

23

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: April 21, 2009, 05:43:10 AM »

Sorry, I forgot to go North 

Bethla South:

After the Colliery fight...this is not even worth describing. Hakaril shoots things, Zane uses Haste2, Ashley busts out Leviathan. Laggy is now a samurai two-handing a murasame awith Attack UP for support while wearing a bracer; he OHKOs the enemy thief with a mighty 384 damage slash and then runs over to drop an enemy samurai by hitting for 448. After three rounds, everyone is dead except a couple samurai. I completely control the battle with Slow2 and Mimic Daravon so the crystal harvest can begin.

Hakaril decides to talk to himself for a little while, mostly Glabadosian apologetics, and his faith goes up a bit. Ashley gets a full complement of mediator abilities from a crystal and chests cough up largely uninteresting items. Laggy gets murasame and walk on water (oh boy!) as well as heal (odd) and meatbone slash (yay!).

Bethla Sluice:

Laggy hits a charging wizard for 512 damage; Ashley kills another wizard with Leviathan and Hakaril puts an enemy knight to sleep with Mimic Daravon. K-Variable charges forward and uses muramasa; the enemy knights hit hard (capable of 2HKOing Hakaril) but I hit harder (and faster).

K-Variable learns gilgame heart from a crystal (WOOO) and we flood the valley. Orlandu-wan Kenobi joins the party and brings a shiny new Excalibur with him. And flash hats, hurray! A brief detour to Goug is necessary to pick up Worker 8. After a few more equipment purchases (kikus, rune blade) we're off to Germinas Peak.

Germinas Peak:

The ninja runs down the peak and hurls a rune blade at Hakaril; Hak responds by shooting him with a Fire3 spell from his blaze gun, dropping him instantly. This sets the tone for the entire battle; Laggy and K-Variable mow down the enemies with little resistance.

Poeskas Lake:

Oh no, undead people! The ghosts go down quickly enough with MP Switch keeping them alive a little longer than normal. The oracle clearly wants us to join his army of the dead and zombifies Laggy

Limberry Gate:

Hakaril opens the fight by OHKOing an apanda and Laggy ends it by dropping a space rock on Celia. Fun!

Limberry:

Oh, what the hell, I've gotta steal Elmdor's stuff.

K-Variable goes ninja/steal/attack up while Laggy
 is going to take the thief/battle skill/martial arts route. Hak and Zane get 108 gems. Plan: Neutralize the assassins, then speed break Elmdor into submission and gank his gear.
 

Elmdor 'ports forward into the thick of our party and uses kotetsu; half of us get a speed up thanks to that lovely reaction ability. Hakaril shoots Lede. Laggy and Ashley get death sentence (so what); Ash casts reraise on Laggy and Zane Haste2s. Celia and Lede seem to be favoring Ultima for some reason. Laggy punches Celia, but she's not quite down yet, so Hak shoots her and K-Variable finishes off her true form. Hak shoots Lede and K finishes her, too; one demon left before Elmdor takes center stage. Laggy double speed-breaks him and he loses 2 speed. The other ultima demon goes down quickly. Time to toy with Elmdor.

Muramasa sadly kills Zane and Laggy both. Hak and Ashley play medic and pick them back up. Elmdor has teleported across the map, but thankfully he comes back to play. Another speed break brings him down to 6. Everyone is on their feet and healed (thanks to Ashley casting Fairy). We slow Elmdor. Hak's going to need to bring down his Br if this is ever going to work. One threaten gets the ball rolling and Laggy steals Elmdor's shield. A second threaten brings Elmdor's Br down to a much more manageable 30. K gets his weapon, then his armor. Laggy ganks the helmet. Finally, K-Variable yoinks the Genji Gauntlet. Naked Elmdor goes down quickly.

Zalera:

Meliadoul runs in just in time to see Elmdor transform into a horrible beast. Zalera approaches the party and throws out Confuse2...which hits everybody except Ashley.

OH WHAT THE HELL MELIADOUL

She decides to Shellbust Stab K-Variable's genji armor to unconfuse her. ;_; RESET

Round 2, Zalera repeats his Confu2 performance; only Hakaril escapes unscathed.

MELIADOUL YOU STUPID BITCH *RESET*

Zalera uses Nightmare instead of Confuse 2 this time. Maybe Meliadoul will STILL ATTACK MY PARTY OUT OF BLOODLUST WHO KNOWS!? No, she runs to the corner for no good reason (her weapon skills are basically useless this fight except AGAINST ME, GO FIGURE).

K-Variable has death sentence, so she charges in to unleash muramasa. The skeletons tickle me a bit. Ash throws Leviathan; Zalera speed saves, then he eats a Demi2 for over 300 damage. Nightmare disables Hak, Ash, and Laggy. Kiku does another 128 to Zalera (who keeps speed saving...hrm). Esuna wakes up the sleepers.

Flare2 kills Zane; Hak gets hit with Nightmare...man, Zalera is getting progressively faster and he's still not dead. Laggy hits him with muramasa...nope, still going. Another shot from Hakaril? Nope, still going. Finally! A kiku draw out from K-Variable ends Zalera's reign of terror.

Fun fight design, what with the progressively-faster Zalera and whatnot. Zane was dead at the end and I decided to blitz him rather than play conservatively (he was still at 2 on the timer). Highly entertaining. Meliadoul get! And she brought a Defender!

Before going to Nelveska Temple, I need to train Rafa a bit so I can use her to move-find items. And I need gil. So I turn Zane and Ashley into calculators and send them along with Laggy on props, running back and forth between Zarghidas. Many props later, Ash and Zane are level 6 calculators with ~1400 JP each. Hurray! (I don't set math skill on anybody at the moment, I just kinda wanted to have it.)

We head to Germinas Peak to hit a random; I dispatch a silly party. Orlandu, Rafa, Beowulf, Hak, and Ashley (as a healer). The whole point of this, of course, is to gain some JP for the special characters; Orlandu I don't care much about, but Beowulf is fun and Rafa has some value to me. Having three special characters means spillover JP, yay!

Or not. Screw Rafa. Laggy talks me out of whoring Nelveska's OP equipment, so I don't need to mess with her. Next up: Nelveska Temple!

24

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: April 21, 2009, 01:21:18 AM »

I am going to have to do something different. Priority: Deal with vampire bard. No holy water, so I just need to kill him outright. Golem will protect me from the rain of bullets. The enemy bard might be an issue if he starts cheer song or something.

So. Haste2, Kiyomori, Golem. Nobody moves. K-Variable blade grasps a stone gun shot. Hakaril raises her brave with praise. Gina the squire plays medic; the mediators are up and about and one of the knights is awake. The enemy bard is singing the nameless song. Zane hits himself with reraise; Strago the vamp bard runs to the other side of the map.

...HEAL FIXES BLOOD SUCK!? Oh, right. We begin to approach the enemy. Golem totally saves Hakaril's ass. An enemy samurai runs down the hill and OHKOs him. Laggy gets sniped with arm aim. Ashley's Leviathan kills a bard and weakens both mediators. This round ultimately doesn't work out so well either. Hrm.

OK. We buff and start moving up the hill. Laggy uses Yell to get K-Variable that extra speed point to act before Strago; Strago blood sucks a confused mediator (due to muramasa) and Laggy kills him. One down. Hakaril then kills the mediator by dead-firing his blaze gun. Two down. Refresh Golem to keep me safe from bullets. K-Variable blade-grasps an enemy samurai's attack, nameless song goes off, and Zane hits Hak with reraise. Mimic Daravon puts the samurai to sleep before a mediator OKHOs Hakaril with her stone gun. Draw outs are exchanged and the squire puts the hurt on Ashley with her handbag. Zane casts Reraise on himself. Shiva finishes off that samurai. Ashley is shot and dies; Laggy eats a 300 damage harp attack (and dies), but then he reraises and kills the female mediator.

Nope. Another loss.

After a long hiatus, let's try this again.

Win! Mediator/Time Mage/Summoner/Geomancer/Knight team, very conservative play with a lot of raises. Threatened the squire to lower her Br a bit, but that wound up not being a factor since basically all the damage to her came from draw out and elemental. Oh, and battle skill was useful; Laggy broke a mediator's stone gun during the fight to prevent her from OHKOing Hakaril every round.

Colliery battle three:

Well this is interesting. Geomancers with Holy and Dark magic? Laggy the multi-perfumed mime? mc the zodiac boss calculator? And Excal, who is going to rip me a new one with his knighty-ness?

Unsurprisingly, I lose this one first round. OK, round two. Laggy is going back to ninja for speed twinking. Mime Laggy runs up and punches Ashley, triggering speed save. Ciato is going to try to drop slow 2 on half my units; gotta stop that, so Hakaril tells a boring story and puts her to sleep. K-Variable uses kiyomori on herself, Hak, and Zane to boost our defenses; Zane follows with Haste2. Excal starts charging confusion song and Hakaril goes crazy; he tries to hit Zane with negotiate, but it fails. Shiva damages Excal and Ciato; damage split reflects some of that back to Ashley. Ciato and Excal eat a muramasa; Zane smacks Hakaril to snap him out of confusion (and triggers speed save, woo). Mime Laggy throws an X-potion to Ciato and my Laggy yells at K-Variable. Hakaril shoots Ciato (almost got her) and Excal flees; Ultima, cast by Elfboy, drops Ashley and wounds K-Variable. K finishes Ciato with Elemental.

Zane hastes Ninja Laggy and he throws a dagger at K to snap her out of Excal-induced confusion. Mime Laggy draws my ire by phoenix downing Ciato. Ashley reraises, but Elfboy giga-flares her (bah). mc attempts to smack K-Variable with her purse, but she blade grasps. Zane slows Excal.

Gah. Several rounds later somehow Reflect fails on Hakaril (95%) and Excal confuses him, preventing Hak from raising Laggy. Reset.

Another attempt is ruined by zombie (!?) when it prevents me from raising Laggy and he crystallizes.

New strategy: SING! Laggy and Zane are going to perform a beautiful duet. WTF. ZOMBIE. Ultimately lose this one, too.

Win! The 2x cheer song bit did the trick, but the battle dragged on forever due to enemy reraise, Mime Laggy healing, and other various factors--including m.c. throwing out doubt faith and preventing Hakaril from doing any damage for several rounds.

Colliery battle 4:

I'm not ashamed to say it: Mimic Daravon won this fight for me. I put four of the five enemies to sleep near the beginning of the fight while Reis soloed one of the dancers and the archaic demon, allowing me to slowly chip away at the lancer army. Many, many castings of esuna were required to undo petrify from Finish Touch. Thankfully, the enemy with Starry Heaven only used Galaxy Stop once, and I easily undid most of the damage with esuna.

I really think this battle was way easier than the previous ones if only because the enemies weren't reviving themselves constantly.

Cripes, Hakaril gained 10 levels getting through the Colliery. Off to Bethla!

25

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (complete and available for download!)

« on: April 13, 2009, 06:20:33 AM »

Riovanes Roof

Watching Barinten get hurled off the castle by Lede kills me every time.

Rafa uses Seal to petrify Ashley. Rafa...GUARDS...an attack. Muramasa isn't enough to kill her; Hakaril summons Odin. Celia seals K-Variable. Lede kills Hakaril. Laggy punches the daylights out of Celia and the three retreat. Win!

Nevermind that everyone at Riovanes was just massacred; they have a store! And Hakaril has new ass-cheek armor!

Hmm. Random encounter. A dragon? Interesting. And four red minotaurs. Anyway.

Dougula Pass:

Currently, the team is:

Hakaril: Summoner/White Magic
Zane: Priest/Time Magic
Ashley: Time Mage/Summon Magic
Laggy: Knight/Punch Art/Abandon/Two-Swords
K-Variable: Lancer/Steal/Blade Grasp

That's funny, I don't remember there being a samurai in this battle. I'm sure there wasn't one. He runs forward and uses wave fist on Ashley. Laggy introduces him to 2x ice sword. I buff, and Odin rips through the enemy lines. Laggy finishes off the wounded priest with wave fist. After that, it's basically just mop-up. These guys are just a speed-bump.

Bervenia:

Man, what's up with everyone in this game wanting to kill me for things I didn't do?

Strategy: Buff up and let the enemy come to me. Or maybe not. Archers are annoying and some summoner is going to hurt me. With...Bahamut. What. That takes out Hakaril and Zane. With a start like that, I might as well reset.

OK, Bahamut is going to hurt. So. First buff this time is Shell2. Hopefully that'll take the edge off any summon. Thanks to ignore height, Laggy is able to get up on the roof and abort a summoner's casting. Salamander, it would seem. Hakaril and K-Variable are still gonna eat one. It is fortunately non-fatal--and Hakaril learns salamander, blue-magic style!

Aaaand an archer finishes Hak off. Oh well. Ow. Enemy ninja with equip sword hurts. Shellbust stab breaks Laggy's armor. K-Variable gets the other summoner; Zane Raise2s Hakaril...the ninja throws a morning star at him for 176. OW! Meliadoul breaks Laggy's helmet and kills him. Hakaril wastes the ninja with Odin.

...I should've been paying attention. You can't steal Meliadoul's crap because she has Maintenance. Damnit! Why didn't I just kill her? >_> She blasts Hakaril, breaks his armor, and kills him. Uh...let's try this again.

I have to blitz her; I hit Meliadoul with Odin once, and Laggy does the rest of the damage. Golem saves my ass, preventing the archers from getting in any hits.

Finath River:

It's a chocobo rebellion! 2 reds, 4 yellows. Oh. I forgot. Laggy is wearing a circlet. So he's asleep.

Hakaril goes down before he ever gets a turn. Zane raises him immediately. K-Variable jumps and Hakaril charges Odin. Ashley uses Ramuh. Odin + Jump kills a red, Ramuh kills a yellow. Zane uses Haste2. Couple turns later, Hak uses Ramuh. Second red's down. Left: Two yellows.

Laggy really does snooze the entire fight because I'm too lazy to wake him. Overall, though, not too hard. I got lucky with the chocobo draw; it could've been much harder.

Zeltennia:

Silly Zalmo. Huh, I don't remember samurai in this battle. Must be an LFT touch. Zalmo has a positively stupid amount of MP. o_O Oh hell. He has MP Switch!? And Br100 Fa100!?!? Fantastic! I am unclear as to why the samurai are wielding axes, but...anyway, I can't just nuke Zalmo outright with summons, he has move-MP up and is going to be a huge pain.

An oracle silences Zane. Oh, damn. I don't think I can fix that.

...berserk, hasted Laggy wakes up (damnit, I need to change his equipment), Ignore Height jumps all the way up to where Zalmo is, and stabs him. XD

Hakaril prepares to nuke a samurai through the building with Odin; maybe he can get some of her friends, too. He does, damaging a couple oracles. One oracle tries to zombify him; the other uses dispel on Laggy and he loses haste and protect. Laggy has actually pinned down Zalmo; I'm not sure if he can move from his location. A samurai heals her allies with murasame; they just barely survive a second Odin as a result.

Zalmo gets lightning stabbed by Delita; damnit, watch the friendly fire! Well, he has no more MP now. An oracle turns both Hakaril and Ashley undead. Laggy keeps wailing away on Zalmo and we charge more summons. Out of MP and unable to move, Zalmo tries to smack Laggy. Not gonna happen. Zalmo eats a Ramuh, a jump, and a Leviathan. Finally, the heresy examiner is dead. Dude had as much effective HP as a Zodiac boss!

Bed Desert:

Aw, Balk shoots fire now. The enemy mediators spend the first turn...praising each other. Okay? Stigma magic fixes some of the poisoned people. Haste2, Shell2, Golem...that should shut down the enemy offense. Well, sorta. Salamander still finishes Hakaril off. Golem saves Ashley, though. Well, she died from poison next turn she got, and then Zane raised her, then Balk shot her and she died again...well. Laggy gets put to sleep.

Odin kills the everloving crap out of a summoner. K-Variable charms an archer for fun. A mediator casts fire on the archer to snap him out of it, but the archer has already queued up charge+5, and he shoots his buddy. Aww.

Finally, Odin gets to taste some blood. Hakaril's spell badly wounds four enemies! Balk makes GREAT use of his turn to potion an ally. Hakaril dies to an arrow, K-Variable lands on a mediator and kills him, Zane raises Hakaril...mimic Daravon puts Ash to sleep, aborting her charging spell...man, those mediators are annoying.

I haven't had a good opportunity to wake up Laggy. That's kind of annoying. K-Variable lands on the mediator. Balk and the two archers are left. Balk uses Leg Aim on sleeping Laggy (...) and Hak wakes Ash with a rod smack. K-Variable lands on an archer. Man, she's getting all the kills this time. Finally, Zane has a chance to use esuna on Laggy and K-Variable to fix their various problems. Haste2 happens. Laggy uses Chakra to restore some of Zane's MP. An enemy summoner crystallizes; Ashley steals Balk's gun on the first try. I'm not thinking I'll be able to get any of those enemy crystals before Balk can...oddly, he doesn't grab any of them. Instead, he tries to punch K-Variable in the leg, misses, and flees. Huh?

Balk, having stupidly run toward the allied archer, gets his friend killed by Ramuh's AoE. Laggy double speed breaks Balk. Ashley learns Ifrit, Titan, Salamander, and Fly from a crystal. Hakaril inherits a mediator crystal--invitation, persuade, threaten, insult, and mimic Daravon! Zane sadly only gets blind and blind rage. Laggy breaks Balk again; he still has 7 speed! He had 11 before!? Mages smack him with staves for fun. Laggy learns charge+2, +4, and +10 from an archer crystal.

Stole Balk's helmet. Don't care as much about the armor. Laggy lets Balk have it and the battle ends.

Cid gets arrested. Funny how he could've killed everyone in the room with zero effort if he'd decided to resist. Zane masters the priest job; time mage is clearly next. Ashley learns short charge and goes back to being a summoning oracle (with fly, because it's funny); K-Variable learns level jump 8, so she's going back to samurai with jump as her sub-ability. Laggy learns a few more breaks. After Hakaril's acquisition of the mediator crystal, the guy has nearly a full set of abilities. Given Ramza's canonical role in the story and his insistence that everyone should just put down their swords and talk, I think it would be highly awesome for him to abandon the summoner's life for that of the mediator; he picks up Balk's gun and flash hat. I can't decide on a secondary for him; Guts is appropriate, but his MA is actually still really good. Also, short charge is kind of a stupid support now, but he doesn't have enough geomancer JP for Attack UP. I decide to keep his secondary as white magic so he can back-up raise and leave short charge in place for now.

We decide to detour; instead of heading to Bethla, Laggy informs Hakaril that he'd really like to pay a visit to Goug Machine City.

Random encounter on the way. I dispatch: Mediator, samurai, knight, oracle, and time mage.

Oh. My. RNG. Here is what I am fighting: Dragon, blue dragon, hydra, hyudra, behemoth, dark behemoth, king behemoth, and red dragon. And a yellow chocobo, just because. I have a guest black choco and a guest king behemoth (!?). Man. This is crazy.

I'm gonna have to recruit some of these bitches. Uh, or maybe I'll die horribly. We'll see.

The enemies kill my behemoth guest. Hak casts Pro2 to start the battle (all of the enemies outspeed me) and Zane uses Haste2. Triple Flame OHKOs Ashley. This is starting well. It doesn't end well, either. I take a few monsters down with me, but their damage output is just too high for my poor mages. GG, monsters!

After a few randoms, we reach Goug. After several more, we finally start the sidequest.

Colliery Underground:

Oh man, it's a Ko clone army! ...with a lot of chantages! I was gonna steal the chantages, but Laggy convinced me not to. D:

Rocks fall, everyone dies. Uh. Gonna have to try this again.

Hakaril opens with Shell2. Survive! No, not so much. Die again after a mess of rocks and other things. The Ko army outspeeds me (they're all speed 9) and their offense is actually pretty respectable what with slow, haste, meteor, and demi.

The team makes some adjustments; I'm twinking hard for speed and going to try using disabling abilities that don't kill outright (stop, don't act, etc). Petrify would be awesome, but I don't know it and don't want to take the time to learn it. If I lose again, I might.

Laggy stops a Ko with negotiate. Hakaril sleeps a Ko with mimic Daravon. K-Variable steals the sleeping Ko's chantage (score!). A Ko charges meteor targeting Zane. Another meteor charges. Third meteor. Ashley uses Foxbird, lowering a Ko's Br by 40. Zane's stop misses; this costs him his life, but the meteor also takes out a Ko. Hakaril barely survives a meteor; K-Variable does not. De-chantaged Ko goes down after Hakaril shoots her. Laggy somehow misses a Ko with Negotiate despite an 80% hit rate. K-Variable stands up--she has reraise thanks to her angel ring! A single Ko hastes herself. Ashley hits a Ko with Foxbird again--her Br is now 0...but she doesn't chickenify because this battle is rigged against me in every way possible. All right!

I raise Zane, then K-Variable. If I can raise Laggy and Ashley I can win by outlasting the Ko army; they'll run out of MP eventually. Ashley is up. And Laggy crystallizes. Nope. Retry again.

Laggy tells me he's pretty sure they're immune to petrify. Gonna have to do this the hard way.

Laggy stops a Ko. Hakaril stops a Ko. K-Variable nicks a chantage. Meteor locks onto Zane. Zane misses with Stop. Paralyze ALSO misses. Zane dies. K-variable dies. Hakaril is near death. The third meteor kills both Ashley and its caster. Hakaril will raise Ashley. Laggy stops a Ko. K-Variable reraises and kills the chantage-less Ko.

Ashley paralyzes a Ko to cancel her meteor. Laggy restops the Ko he stopped before; K fails to steal her chantage. Hakaril raises Zane. Zane prepares Haste; Hakaril stops a Ko, stopping a Meteor. Laggy fails a negotiate attempt; K steals another chantage. A Ko kills Laggy with meteor.

Nope, a few rounds later a mass-destopping results in the death of my everything.

Three tries later, I finally manage to pin down the enemies with stop and sleep long enough to chip them away one by one. I get three chantages out of the deal!

Battle Two:

Two sleeping angry samurai. Two mediators with stone guns. A squire with a bag (97 Br, 03 Fa). Wait, a level 99 squire with a bag, 97 Br, and blade grasp. And a zombie bard. Huh. This could be tricky.

WHAT? There's...a vampire bard with blood suck...and a bag...bag that causes blood suck...uh. The bard sings the nameless song and the squire runs around playing medic.

The vamp bard blood sucks Hakaril....who blood sucks Ashley...who blood sucks Laggy...Golem saves K-Variable's life. Well, I have no way to cure blood suck. The enemies, of course, are immune to it. No way to win this one this round! Reset time. With that, I decide to turn in for the night.