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1

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: November 18, 2013, 08:11:22 PM »

If I have any skill, it's only because I study under a very demanding teacher. I appreciate the compliments regardless, thanks very much.

Good question about Goug. I did lose on my first attempt. This was because I was greedy and made Akintude a Thief. I wanted that move+2 NOW, never mind that he would run around not doing anything useful on a map like this. My second lineup was more sensible and the result was the battle above.

Grefter, I didn't think your advice came across as douchey at all. It was direct, maybe, but I never got the idea that you were being a jerk about it.

It's Saving Agrias time! We've got a split party map which should be favorable to our mime. Two knights are on the left side so I'll need some special measures to deal with them cleanly. Some status removal will also help ward off the oracles. What I brought:







The biggest change is that I removed white magic for this battle. It looked to me like Hatse and disables would be needed more urgently than healing. My plan was to have Item, Punch Art and Basic Skill deal with any problems that got sent my way.

Geronimo!



Agrias starts the battle with something really helpful, putting the enemy in on the defensive. That's doubly useful considering it's an escort mission.



Thanks to Penelope I can put buffs on both sides of the river at the same time. As usual, Haste is my best friend when I need to defend someone.



Penelope is my best source of offense on this side of the map so it might help to give her better protection than I did last time. Considering that she's only facing a white mage and an oracle right now, I don't foresee any severe problems.



Good compat, Magic Attack UP, rain, and a fresh Thunder Rod make Ramza more lethal than ever.



Penelope unfortunately doesn't have nearly as many factors in her favor. Gear and passives are starting to outstrip her monstrous base stats, though she still makes up for it in other ways.



It's not quite an instant kill but it's a kill in one action. That's good enough for me. In fact it's probably better in the long run than an instant kill, considering that Doom is a lot harder to remove than Dead.

P.S. I should quit Skype while I'm playing this game.



In response, the Doomed knight takes advantage of the fact that MA is not a huge factor in status attacks. I can't easily wake him up at the moment but that's okay, he's already pretty much contributed all he needed to.



This would be not all that impressive for Ramza is his target didn't have Magic Defense UP. Being a knight he does have that defense, but Agrias weakened him enough that this is a kill shot. With him down and the other one a dead man (not) walking, all I need to do now is finish off the flimsier targets.



Penelope finishes off her side at the same time. Akintude was fairly helpful with his own attacks but they aren't as shiny so they're not pictured here.



That white mage doing her white mage stuff. I managed to set up something in preparation though.



My plans didn't quite work out. The revival was perfectly timed so that their oracle could silence me before my Doubt Faith went off. Good for them. Agrias is having none of that, putting the Oracle back down soon afterwards.



Drain Life follows the second revival. They are quite tenacious in their attempts to survive, but I'm used to dealing with this kind of thing. My entire party had closed in and there's not much they can do anymore.



My final move is pretty clumsy but I'm not going to complain about the results.



Hi Agrias. I don't know if I'm ever going to use you in battle but sure, you can come along.

2

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: November 17, 2013, 02:56:49 PM »

Grafter, you're right. I could have used a couple of my screen shots for a very quick summary. Live and learn.

Goug City! This one gave me some trouble at first, mostly because I wanted to run around with a thief instead of something well-suited for the fight.

A quick look at the enemy says:

Two enemy archers, one of them has a strong crossbow. I should bring Arrow Guard for Ramza. The rest should be durable enough to survive an arrow or two.

This is a rain map. I should bring a Thunder Rod and favor Bolt spells.

Their thieves are fairly fragile and have to get close to do anything. I might be able to make them overextend and put them down fast.

One of the archers has a poison bow that may be worth stealing. However my thief has worst compat with that archer so never mind.

Enemy summoners again, and in a good position to get a spell or two on me. Magic Defense Up should help.







There are going to be a lot of screenshots for this one. This is going to clutter up the thread a lot but I guess that's what happens with a screenshot playthrough.



It looks like this thief realized that Battle Skill and Steal do exactly the same thing from the perspective of the AI. Break is just much, much easier to hit. And there goes a key part of Ramza’s damage.



Mustadio, down in one. Sometimes he goes for a fist snipe before the KO, but I didn’t get anything so useful this time.



Akintude desperately needs move+2. For the time being he’s on reraise duty, which will be important once the summoners get in spell range.



Fortunately Magic Attack UP alone is enough to deliver a one-shot on this thief. Penelope gets a mimic on one of the summoners but doesn’t kill because of bad compat.



With two summons on the way, reraise on the squishier targets seems like a good precaution. Penelope gets a move between the two summons so I figure she should be able to escape the AOE. Ramza doesn’t get a move so he gets reraise priority.



Oh. It turns out that the second Shiva was targeted directly on Penelope. Well played. At least moving out of the way saved her teammates some damage.



Return Fire! Or lightning, whichever. I just barely get a one-shot on the fresh summoner. As a side benefit, his charging draws arrow fire which is handily deflected by Arrow Guard.



Charging another summon? Too bad, my Bolt casts faster.



Akintude and Norris finally get a chance to take the offensive. One archer down, only a couple of physical-based enemies to go.



After a Life spell I decide to do what I should have done earlier. Penelope has been a primary target for the enemy for most of the battle.



And not a second too soon. Quick attack gets past the mime’s formidable c-evade.



I decide to pull a little cleverness of my own. Ramza is charging Cheer Up to trigger right after Pamela’s turn, so she’ll be able to empty-poke twice. Norris also moves soon to provide a little insurance.



Unfortunately the thief mantle-blocks both follow-up attacks. 82% is sadly not 100%, and Penelope gets knifed again soon afterwards.



Pamela is forced to take down the thief manually. Penelope doesn’t get much experience for this battle, which is a rare thing.



A worst-compat punch finishes the fight.



In retrospect there are several things I could have done to make the fight easier. With distance and terrain problems between me and the enemy, melee is not very effective. Giving Norris Equip Bow and a crossbow would have helped. Magic Defense UP and Counter Magic on Ramza might have also done a lot of damage to their summoners. Keeping Penelope away from my other party members is a good thing in general. This is all okay, learning things that I can apply to later maps is one of the things I enjoy most about the game.

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General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: November 12, 2013, 02:15:10 AM »

I'd like to apologize. I tried taking screenshots of the swamp fight, but I looked it over and it just didn't feel interesting at all. I was essentially a random encounter in the middle of the story. Mimicked cure 3 was all I needed. I did draw an Uribo but Mustadio killed it in two quick shots. That thing had almost no health.

I'm hoping I can make the Goug Fight look better, at least.

4

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: November 10, 2013, 04:41:27 PM »

It's time to fight some hired goons. With two summoners and two geomancers, magic damage is going to be a pretty big concern. More from the summoners than the geomancers, but you never know what might happen. I am less worried about enemy lancers than I would be if they were knights; knights might not hit quite as hard, but they are much more difficult to kill.






With my new wizard robe, I decided to go all-out offense with Ramza. Haste was more important with the previous battle because I had a lot of ground to cover, but this next fight has open ground and enemies close at the start. Hopefully I can get a quick kill or two with his build.

Akintude now has Basic Skill in case their Geomancers get a lucky proc or two, and Reinforce might come in handy if there's a nasty spell incoming. Magic Defense UP should help him weather geomancy and enemy summons.

Pamela is pretty much unchanged. She will stick to the normal plan of healing if needed, inflicting status otherwise.

Penelope walked into battle with us of her own accord. Even if we wanted to tell her no, I think that would be unwise.



Mustadio moves forward with the kind of recklessness that only a Guest can muster. I'd prefer a Disable attempt over some weak damage, but I guess it can't be helped.



Geomancy. It's ranged, never misses, can hit multiple enemies, has a chance to proc status, and has no MP or item cost to use. It's still pretty horrible though. Actions are valuable, and I want more from an action than something like this.



Ramza is not impressed by your connection with nature. Good compat might have something to do with this damage, but I'm still happy with the results.



The lancer next to that unfortunate Geomancer survived just long enough to take a super-height spear attack.



Oh boy. Charging a summon. The target is Penelope, so it might not be a bad idea considering how squishy she is. I had some things charging beforehand though, and Penelope gets to move just in time. So...





Stand not in front of Penelope. The gaze of a mime is the gaze of death.

Not pictured: it takes a couple of turns, but Mustadio guns down the other summoner before she gets close enough to cast anything. I take back what I said about him.



The pictures make it look like the enemy isn't fighting back, but this isn't true. The lancers have tried to use melee on Penelope a couple of times, which I've fixed with a couple of self-targeted Cure spells. This jump is a one-shot kill, which might be a problem if the lancer wasn't the only enemy left on the map. At it is, I have prepared something for when he lands.



I was kinda hoping the first cast wouldn't be enough to kill so I could show Penelope mimicking it for a stylish end to the battle. Caster Ramza OP.  I'm afraid I didn't capture the Mission Complete screen so you'll have to take my word for it that I won.

While I'm playing through this mod I'm taking some notes on what I think of it, my likes and dislikes and so forth. My final opinion will be reserved for after I finish everything though, I don't want to provide criticism until after I have the full picture.

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General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: November 10, 2013, 01:14:16 AM »

Putting Charge on someone with Jump seems kinda redundant to me. Both of them give increased damage in return for a delay, except Jump makes you invulnerable instead of extra-vulnerable. I might use Charge in the future, but not on a Lancer.

6

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: November 09, 2013, 10:58:35 PM »

Warning! This battle has a lot of screenshots. I was hoping this forum had some kind of spoiler function so I could put the screenshots in there and make this post easier to scroll past, but I guess not. You've been warned!

Sorry for taking so long to update this thread. Real Life issues kept me busy for a while.

Taking a look at the Save Mustadio battle:

With the wall and the plateau in front of me, it’s pretty obvious that some extra Jump will help a lot.

Some of the enemies have wizard robes. I want to steal at least one of them.

Enemy builds are starting to make more sense, sometimes. I need to be careful and look at what each enemy has before I start moving. Checking compat wouldn’t hurt either.

Mustadio’s starting gun is less powerful than I remembered it. Oh well.

Between story fights I went through one careful random encounter to earn some more JP for those that need it.



Ramza is well on his way to Short Charge. I don't need it yet, right now if I'm going that route Magic Attack UP would be better. Once I get more MP to work with though, Short Charge will make summons much easier to use.



It feels a little strange to put Concentrate on a lancer, seeing at his signature attack already ignores evade. Steal needs all the help it can get though, so what can I say?



Norris is going to mainly be a healer if the battle gets tough. He has the tools for it: health recovery, revival, and status removal. If things are going well he can go offensive, of course. The MP recovery and tankiness are nice bonuses.



With the Knights and melee-happy Oracles around, I want to make sure that Pamela has good evasion. Although she mostly uses white magic, I might need some of her status magic to deal with those Knights.

Right now Penelope is asleep and everyone is too scared of her to wake her up. We'll fight this one without any Mimicry.



Doesn't everyone love escort missions? This one is especially "fun" because the survival target starts out between me and the enemy. And right in front of some Wizards too.



I know Shell was slowed down to make Shell 2 more viable, but that makes this kind of a tough situation. I guess we'll have to tough it out and hope that Mustadio has bad compat with the wizards or something.



Boom. Sparkly!



Welp, that's that. Bad mission design, if you ask me. I don't know if there's anything Laggy can do about this, but it's kinda frustrating.



My second attempt. This time Mustadio moves away so only one wizard is in range of him. He also decides to take advantage of some good compat and make himself useful, so thanks for that.



I'm gonna see if this will help me kill knights more easily. Even if I don't end up using a heal spell on him, at least the enemy can't heal him either.



If you're wondering what Ramza does for most of his turns, just look at this a couple more times.



This surprised me when I saw it on the AT list. I was certain that they were going to throw a damage spell; I've even seen Fire4 aimed at him a couple of times. That doesn't mean I'm complaining, of course.



A knight with Item and Throw item. This is the kind of tanky support that I would expect from a competent enemy. Most of the other builds on this map aren't so good, but it's nice to see some effort. X-potion is a full heal for most of these enemies so I have to fully KO them between his turns.



This seems like a good place to start. I don't want any surprises on this wizard's next turn.



Oh, you were going to throw out a Summon, were you? Pamela says NO.



That's one mission accomplished right there. -2 magic attack also makes Mustadio a bit safer.



I was hoping that Agrias might finish off this knight after the Cure 3 spell hit him but no such luck.



Oh. OH. Um. So they do that trick too. This could be a problem if their zombie knight decides to start throwing X-potions at my zombie knight.



Ramza uses an opportunity to KO an Oracle who was weakened by a gun shot.



Okay then. No X-potion bombs. Mustadio is a lot more useful in this fight than I expected him to be. I'd rather have 5 of my own party members of course, but in this playthrough my guests have done pretty well for themselves. As for norris, he can remove Undead with Stigma Magic next turn.



The rest is just cleanup, really.



Haste is probably what won the battle here, with honorable mention for Mustadio. There was a lot for me to do very fast to stop Mustadio from dying, and Haste helped me get in and put down key enemies.

As always, feedback is welcome.

7

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: November 01, 2013, 06:55:36 PM »

Coming up: battle versus five knights. That's, um. I wasn't looking forward to this.









Gafgarion has his advanced armor, a longsword because it hurts less than his punches, and no accessory. I plan to see if I can steal an extra piece of armor or two.

Norris isn't part of my team because he's mostly built for direct damage and this isn't a good battle for that. Penelope is needed for double Frog and perhaps double steal.



Delita really should have brought Maintenance for this fight. He's almost a non-factor due to enemy Defense UP. I say almost because he managed to inflict Undead a couple of times.



Maintenance might have been useful for me too. I felt Concentrate was more necessary for thefts and I don't regret that decision. Still, this hurts. On the plus side, Penelope doesn't use gear so she's not in any danger from this sort of thing.



This probably doesn't happen often in Vanilla. Before going down he hurt Gaf enough to chase him away, which was pretty annoying for me. I did manage to steal Gaf's armor though.





It's ok, Frog has only about a 50% chance of working. Landing one is good enough.



Learning something new every day. Cure versus a zombied target bypasses damage reduction. Gotta remember this next time I fight a bunch of knights. Which will probably be pretty soon because knights are all over the damn place in this game.



Frog isn't the only useful status, of course. Oracles: the anti-knight. I should have her learn Zombie sometime soon.



Good. Goooood.



So. 22 damage from bolt 3, huh. I checked the signs and they are worst compat, so my hitting power isn't quite as bad as I thought. Penelope follows it up soon after with a better cast.



Although the battle didn't go quite how I wanted, it's still good enough. I kinda forgot just how many battles require me to deal with guests. So far we've got all of Chapter 1, and we're looking at most of chapter 2 and a big chunk of chapter 3 as well. If I could only give one piece of criticism for the game, it would be: STOP MAKING GUESTS TAKE UP A DAMN PARTY SLOT!

Ahem. Other than that, it's pretty fun.

8

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: November 01, 2013, 12:04:05 AM »

This turned out to be more than just a quick break and I apologize. Things have been pretty busy for me lately.

The Boco batlle is next. Being full of monsters, including tier 3 monsters, my choice for party setup is easy.









Poach until I can poach no more.

My first targets are the standard goblins. I don’t want my thieves to get confused.



Gafgarion getting confused is also kind of a problem. I have to smack him with a weak hit from Ramza to wake him up. He's hidden behind one of the trees that makes me hate taking screenshots on forest maps.



Agrias continually uses Fire to finish off one goblin after another before I can poach it. I think she's mocking me.



My approach isn't a complete failure though. I manage to poach the Gobbledegacks so I should have a couple of spare Blood Swords on the way in Chapter 3.



There isn't much to say about this battle, truth be told. Monsters have been altered to be more useful, but the heart of the game still lies with battles versus human opponents.

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General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 28, 2013, 03:41:16 PM »

The second Dorter battle is a lot less annoying than the first due to the overpowered guests I'm bringing with me. Penelope seems to have overheated due to repeated use in chapter 1 so I'm going to leave her on the sidelines for a while.



The fight has barely started but I like this crossbow already. I should give credit to Laggy for this; in Vanilla crossbows were entirely useless.



Slow2 here. This could have been much worse, but Agrias was the only one in the area of effect. Not that I could have known; on his turn the camera was angled so that the buildings were in the way and I couldn’t see what was going on at all.



I really wanted to try out Jump with my new lancer, but sometimes you just gotta go with what’s practical.

As befits a thief, Ramza is backstabbed to death. I had the bad fortune of being about 1 tick away from enemy turns turn so Ramza couldn’t really cast anything. All I could have him do was put a couple of Yells on Akintude.



Agrias disapproves of your conduct, good sir.



Gafgarion disapproves of your, uh, being alive, good sir.



Newly-revived Ramza turns out to be good arrow bait.



Oh hey. I've been curious about the changes to things like Haste2 and Slow2, so this is a nice find. I should probably wait until I have a better MP reserve though.



I think that works out to more than 700 per head. Who’s paying me, anyway?

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General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 27, 2013, 11:27:57 PM »

I think Grefter might be confusing move-find with Poach, which IIRC has been consolidated into one kind of item rather than common-rare in LFT.

The reaction abilities that ignore Brave are Weapon Guard and Abandon. That's it. Having lots of evade is nice, I'll admit. However, a lot of the nastier enemies in this game have 100% hit moves as their core skillset. Maybe I'll try using Rafa to dig up some gear at some point. It's enough trouble to arrange that I won't really bother unless there's something not sold in stores at all though.

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General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 27, 2013, 12:15:36 AM »

I took a quick look at move-find item and it still uses the reverse-Brave formula. I'm probably just going to skip it for most of the game. Poaching is another matter though, we're going to see plenty of that once it becomes available.

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General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 26, 2013, 11:02:05 PM »

Yep, I plan to switch my thief back to archer for the next battle. He needs Concentrate before I can rely on him to steal evasion gear. As for when the crossbow I stole becomes available in shops, I'm not really sure. I haven't played through this mod before.

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General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 26, 2013, 04:10:50 PM »

I've been looking forward to Fort Zeakden. Everyone loves stabbing some Algus.

Taking a quick look at the battle: Algus is tougher now, I approve of that. Most importantly he has a crossbow a lot more powerful than what I have. I also notice he doesn't have maintenance. I WANT THAT BOWGUN.

So. I go into a random battle and start a secret training session. I'll need everyone to be in top form because after Zeakden I'll need to take on Dorter 2 with no chance to buy gear or fight any more randoms. So here's what I've got at the end of training:











My strategy for For Zeakden: I will need to get rid of the entire enemy team except for Argath. Then I will probably need several tries to steal that crossbow; Norris is the only one on my team with thief skills and he has worst compat with Algus. Penelope merely has bad compat.

Because the battle is going to last a while, I will need to make my team as survivable as possible. I stacked every kind of evasion I could find. Hopefully arrow guard on my spellcasters will keep them fairly safe from Algus, and it should be helpful in Dorter2 as well. Delita is a knight so he should be able to take a few hits as well. He learned Shield Break and Armor Break, just in case he manages to get close to Argath.



Step 1: Reinforce on everyone. I'm having my thief do this because of his speed, and it's risky to toss him into battle right at the start.



Delita stops a wizard from casting something pretty nasty right at the start. No useless guests allowed on my team, no sir. This made Penelope take a swing at Norris, but with his monstrous front evade plus Defend it was no big deal.





A very lucky Frog double cast. I kinda wish this didn't happen because it gives the impression I won only because of luck. I hope you'll take my word for it that I'm certain I could survive long enough to deal with a couple of missed Frog attempts.



With the two nearest knights removed from the fights, I take down wizard number two pretty fast. Argath and Delita seem content to fight each other, which is fine by me. Delita even managed to break Argath's shield, which should make stealing a bit easier.



I was going to have Ramza aim at the knight along with Penelope for a double chance of Frog. Just in time I remembered that I might just remove the status I had added. That would be pretty embarassing.



One (1) crossbow added to my inventory. Hooray! I was initially worried that Charged punches might still hurt but I looked at the guy's Brave and never mind.



It takes a bit of time because of innate defenses and Autopotion, but since Argath can't fight back I finish the battle with no problems.



Delita picks Argath's pockets and then teabags him as shown in this picture.

That wraps up chapter 1! I'm going to take a quick break from updating because I have an exam to work on this weekend, but I will pick up at Chapter 2 on Monday. I hope you're all enjoying this playthrough so far.

14

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 25, 2013, 04:23:07 PM »

A couple of things I noticed when taking a look at the Wiegraf fight:

The White Knight class now has innate Maintenance, in addition to the expected Defense UPs.

Wiegraf likes to move forward right at the start. And if I remember correctly, he gives up at around 25% health.

Mimes are fearsome assassins.

With these things in mind, I threw defense aside in my planning.
I will have to hit very hard, especially because Penelope has bad compat with Wiegraf. Pamela has good compat with him though, so at least that will work in my favor.

My character setups themselves are mostly unchanged except for this:



She began the game knowing Fire2. That should be good enough.



The damage from Crush Punch doesn’t matter. If Akintude was killed by the instant death proc I would have less room for lucky evades, but winning would still be possible.













Yeah you'd BETTER recognize, Wiegraf.

15

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 24, 2013, 02:48:45 PM »

For Miluda's last stand, I decide to change things up a bit.



Ramza is roughly the same. He has light armor instead of a robe because his spells don't cost much and I want to keep him alive. I've taken advantage of the changed JP costs to teach him Frog. Now we finally have a tool that can quickly deal with enemy knights.



Akintude needs him some knight skills so I switched him over.



Norris already has some important break skills so I made him an archer to let him do that at range. I gave him a bow gun for a few reasons. First off I'll be fighting uphill. This reduces the range of longbows but not crossbows. Second he'll need all the evasion he can get. Third, the weapon power doesn't really matter because he'll mostly be breaking gear anyway.



Pamela is pretty much unchanged. Because of my late change to classes other than Squire, she only has the most basic white magic available.



Penelope seems to be stable so far. It's tough to tell where mimicry ends and her own will begins. I've seen her mimic the movements of bugs while completely ignoring people nearby. When I asked her how she was doing, she just repeated the question back to me.

My full team of 5 is allowed into the battle at last.





After this I’m not going to put up a twin screenshot every time Penelope does something. Unless I think it’s particularly stylish or significant of course. This is a pretty basic though helpful double cast.



Although a mime can heal the enemy if you don’t cast carefully, double healing is also useful. This one centered on the caster works out pretty well. Mimes tend to have more powerful healing than white mages, too.



Delita deals with the last enemy Wizard. The knight behind him has been trying to heal her allies with potions. I prefer that over her walking up and breaking my gear. Towards the back, Ramza charges a Frog spell one panel ahead of him.



Frog's long charge time works in my favor. This enemy knight moved forward, then Penelope had a turn right before Frog finished casting. Sir knight with Item doesn’t know Maiden’s Kiss, so they have no way of restoring her. This might as well be instant death.



With most of the serious opposition gone and the item knight in a slap fight with knight Delita, it’s time to work on Miluda. My first step is to get rid of some of that pesky evasion. I kinda wish I had Steal Accessory to remove the mantle, but it’s a bit late to fix that.



The Time Mage casts Stop before getting killed, but the revamped Heal fixes it without a problem. It used to be that nothing could remove Stop, so this is a welcome addition. Norris probably would have been killed by Miluda without all that evasion I put on him; he dodged two strikes in a row from her.



Not much left to go. I wish I could steal all of this nifty gear instead of just breaking it. It’s nothing that can’t be bought later though.



A double fire finishes the battle. Akintude was also caught in the fire spell when Penelope mimicked it but, y'know, acceptable collateral damage.



Overall I am definitely fighting differently than I would in Vanilla. The new resilience of knights means that status and gear removal are more important, which is a change I appreciate. 1.3 also solves this problem by giving enemies more and better ways to recover, making the permanent stat loss of gear breaks more significant. Maybe this also happens later on in LFT, I guess I'll have to find out.

16

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 23, 2013, 05:49:06 PM »

I'm trying to be very careful about where I aim my mime. If/when I do get a mime backfire, I will surely show it to everyone.

My setup is roughly the same, but doe to Penelope's experience gains I'm keeping her power in reserve for now. Akintude will take her place.



This fight starts off very well, with an enemy thief overextending just to hit some shmuck I’ve never seen before.



Very nice. One of the white mages hangs back and does something useful for her team. In fact she plays good support through the entire battle. I should give her a medal when the battle is over.



Someone just ate a weapon break. My knight doesn’t need a mantle, I said. Enemies don’t target tanky units, I said. Serves me right.



Two can play at that game though. Norris is so manly he can break armor bare-handed without even being a monk. Actually this did more effective damage than a sword attack would, and it can’t be recovered by healing.



The battle’s been going pretty slow. The white mage with a silk robe has been using its mp boost to fuel lots of Cure 3 spells. This is where I discovered cure 3 has a bigger AoE now. Miluda also broke Norris’s helmet, meaning this battle will probably not be too profitable for me.



Fortunately this is an assassination mission, not an all-enemies mission.



They are not paying me nearly enough for this.

The next battle is the first in the main story to allow 5 characters. Which means that we are going to re-deploy The Secret Weapon. See you then!

17

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 22, 2013, 05:47:26 PM »

Thanks for the feedback. I'll include full screenshots of my team setups from now on. Speaking of which...

After a quick random encounter to even out the levels a bit, it’s job-change time for my team. They’ve learned most of the abilities I’m aiming for, and sadly mass-crossbows will only go so far. I’ve got Ramza as a wizard, Akintude the awesomely-named archer, knightly Norris, Pamela as priest, and…Penelope the masked secret weapon.











Yep, Laggy Fantasy Tactics has Mime as an easily available class. I’ve wanted to try one out for a long time but in vanilla the requirements are kind of absurd. Just looking at how the mime works makes it sound like having one on your team gives you an entirely new way of looking at the game.

Looking at the upcoming battle I see three enemy knights. This worries me a great deal because they are now incredibly tough. I'd like to disable them rather than taking them on in a brawl but I don't have the tools for that yet.



The mime goes before anyone else and already I’m thinking differently. Where will my spellcasters be able to move, and where is the enemy likely to walk first? Do I want to position Penelope primarily for healing, offensive spells, or melee? Given that the enemy is mostly melee, I think keeping her a reasonable distance from the enemy would be a good start.





A monk unwisely walks out alone. Things like this are very easy to do with a mime, the tricky part will be when all of the other enemies walk out and things get messy.





Argath didn’t last very long, but I had to pick one guest to support. Delita is a childhood friend while Argath thinks folks who aren’t nobles are animals to be slaughtered at will, so there you go. This positioning worked pretty well. With proper aim Penelope can attack with both magic and physical mimics. Healing is kinda tricky though, I should have moved Pamela further back so that she could heal the front line and the mimic heal would go so far back it wouldn’t connect with any enemies.



This kill happened completely by accident. Delita used a charged bow attack on someone inside the fort and this here knight got an arrow in the back. Even with the nerfs, standing in front of a mime is very dangerous.



Things aren’t looking so great. Even with the hitting power I’ve got, the knights were able to walk past and KO the only people who could recover my party before I could bring them down. Knights are real juggernauts in this mod. On top of this, the remaining enemy is an archer hiding in the back of the fort. My solution: have Norris execute a charged swing into empty air.





It’s no fun without some tension, right?

I really enjoy having a mime in my party. It adds a new dimension to the game. It helps that mimes are really powerful, of course. Because they act so many times and tend to score a lot of kills, they tend to gain experience really fast. Penelope was a level below everyone at the start of the fight and by the end had more experience than anyone else on my team. I like to keep my team more or less even on experience, so I'll have to use her carefully to avoid letting things get out of hand.

Thanks for reading everyone. I'll be back tomorrow with Thieves Fort.

18

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 21, 2013, 04:31:00 PM »

Dorter! For new player, this is a battle that tells you that some strategy might be needed to win. More directly, it says that you can’t succeed just by bringing a bunch of squires into every fight. What I say in response is CROSSBOWS.

(links only to avoid flooding the post with stat screens)

http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a638/regdren1/Bowofcross1_zps5040b60c.png
http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a638/regdren1/Bowofcross2_zps14a9aa71.png
http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a638/regdren1/Bowofcross3_zpse220f70e.png
http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a638/regdren1/Bowofcross4_zps8ae93748.png
http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a638/regdren1/Bowofcross6_zpsb2e4d161.png
http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a638/regdren1/Bowofcross7_zps02d575c8.png
http://i1287.photobucket.com/albums/a638/regdren1/Bowofcross5_zps86683c37.png

Nothing can beat a team of squires with crossbows. Ramza wasn’t paying attention in Squire school so he never learned to pull a trigger. As punishment, in this battle he will yell until his lungs collapse. Delita wasn’t paying attention either so I had to cheat a little and make him an archer. Algus equips it with no problem though. He’s always ready to shoot people.

My strategy is to steadily move my people up to the high ground. RARCOMMONERS and Delita will draw the initial attacks while I get into position to shoot them down, one at a time.



Overall I like the new translation better, but there are some things I miss.





Hey you up there! You might have a bow, but is it a CROSSbow? I didn’t think so!



This was Fire2. I’m not too scared of the wizards on this map. They’re male, have lowish faith, and cast fire spells while it’s raining.



That clears out the top of the building. The one on the ground is the archer who forgot to bring his bow. The other one got reduced to critical and ran away, so he's not really a problem anymore.



That's about it for the wizards. The trick is to avoid standing on the edge of the high ground. Instead, hand back a bit so the enemy moves further forward. Then you can advance and have lots of people shoot at one enemy to get kills quickly.



That was the knight’s shield. I don’t want his life to be saved by dumb luck.



I’ve gotta remember that this isn’t 1.3, crystals are not that reliable for learning abilities. In other news, the knight has charged in finally. I would have had a tougher time if he had climbed up to meet us as soon as he could rather than wasting his time with Throw Stone. As it is, he’s surrounded and goes down without dealing too much damage. After that I just need to chase down an archer who was hiding in a corner.



The first 20 levels or so are the most important for building up characters. Going up to level 4 as squires is not what most people would consider optimal, I bet...oh well. Dorter slums is finished. This just about gets my party the JP that's needed, so next time I'll be able to diversify my party a bit. See you then!

19

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 20, 2013, 04:48:38 PM »

Coming up is the game's official introduction of monsters. In vanilla the message is clear: "These enemies are here to build up your XP and JP." One of the stated goals of LFT is to fix this.



The opposition. Reraise on bombs, huh. Looks like a good reason to bring Secret Hunt, or maybe some kind of dispel skill. Right now I’ll just have to leave the bombs for last.



A black goblin moves forward to show off the new Turn Punch/Spin fist…only to get sworded by that guy. We have recovery skills but they don’t, except Spark which hardly counts. I don’t expect that advantage to last forever though.



Healing Argath doesn’t feel quite right, but it’s what separates us from the monsters after all. Except Chocobos. And walking trees. And maybe a few others.



No matter how I angle the camera, a tree gets in the way. Stupid forest. Also, The enemy rushes in. A couple of them manage to get themselves surrounded without me having to do anything. So, thanks?

My guests decide it’s a good idea to defuse Bombs by hitting them. One of them gets back up with Reraise and



...uses Spark. This might be a problem with adding the new monster skills. An explosion would have been devastating to my party, but the Bomb just wanted to heal itself. 18+3 isn’t enough though, one more sword hit finishes it off.

Edit: my apologies for this screencap, I made a mistake with the copy/paste.



The rest is easy. Ramza finishes the fight with a heroic backstab.

Overall this wasn't much more than a bump on the road. I noticed that with the new Shield Break effects of flails they effectively attack twice. This does help make their damage a little more dependable. Maybe later on I'll try equipping a ninja with flails to see if I get quad strikes. That could be fun.

20

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 19, 2013, 05:16:16 PM »

Welcome back. Now that I have a Formation menu I can take a look at the new squire skill list.



I guess everyone is going to be a squire for a little while. Ramza’s list is a bit weaker than the others but I will still want Yell and Heal at minimum. Why no Accumulate? Because I’m going to make him a spellcaster, that’s why.

Everyone else could use Heal. My warriors will want Accumulate and Reinforce while my spellcasters get Replenish, no question about it. Reraise is an amazing buff, and MP restoration is pretty tricky to do in most cases. I appreciate the effort to make Basic skill something that isn’t ignored for the entire game.



Mission Starto! I chose to save this guy mostly so he won’t have anything to throw back at me at Zeakden. The last thing I want to do is give him a legitimate arguing point.



The beginning shows exceptional luck as Argath gets through the first enemy moves essentially unharmed. I’ve had games where he was Counter Tackled and died before I even get a turn.



I line up towards the right for two reasons: it allows me to assist Argh more easily, and it puts some distance between me and the panther. Now that it has Steal Heart and can move next to any enemy squire for Cat Kick, that thing is by far the most dangerous enemy on this map.



Of course, the problem with Algus being unharmed is that he stays near the enemy and gets surrounded. The good news is that these squires just put themselves in killing distance of my own characters.



I approve of this. The more kills Delita gets, the longer he’ll be useful on the team.



I was going to get the reset button ready when Argath walked up to the Panther, but then I remembered that it has Catch instead of Counter now. His attack opened up an opportunity to score a quick kill. Unfortunately one of my own people took a crossbow bolt before I could heal her, putting a time limit on the rest of the battle.



At least, that’s what I thought until I remembered that Wish revives people now. Delita was shivved but I can’t bring myself to care.



A few more hits bring an end to the fight.

Igros Castle brings some interesting changes. Lots of things are available earlier than normal. I didn’t expect Power Wrist and Magic Ring to be available so early. I also like the availability of the longbow to set Archers apart, now that Squires can use crossbows. That flail looks interesting to try while the stakes are low. Maybe adding Charge +2 will reduce the risk a little. Also: phoenix down is at 1000 gil each. Granted, it's instant, 100% success revival with the only limit being your cash reserve. I guess I can understand why it was nerfed a little.

No one has all the skills they need to move out of Squire yet, so I'm bringing essentially the same team into the woods. We'll see how that turns out in the next installment of this playthrough.

21

General Chat / Re: Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 18, 2013, 11:42:14 PM »

The introduction battle was a bit too quick and automated for my taste so I'm gonna tell you about the first battle that I got to control.



I appreciate not having to sift through low brave/faith values early on. I prefer high faith over low because it makes buffing and reviving allies easier. My hitting power will be a bit low in this battle but good luck killing anyone on my team.



I check the enemy setups and don’t see any crossbows, so it’s safe to send everyone along the left side of the river. The plan is to kill the “wee moppets” squire quickly, then the chemist is likely to rush forward and their team’s only healing will soon be gone before the squires on the other side of the river can do anything.



Delita, I don’t think the academy taught you to run away like that after taking a small scrape. Looks like I’ve got to make one of my Chemists throw him some liquid courage.



They’re crossing the river faster than I expected. I’ve got enough supplies to take plenty of hits though.



With the chemist down in two quick shots, the rest is really just cleanup.



Kind of a messy cleanup though. It might not be a good idea to drink the water for a little while.



This fight is not much different from vanilla, but that's mostly because there hasn't been time for any changes to show up yet. Next time I'm going to take a look at some of the new skills and take on the Rescue Argath fight. Later!

22

General Chat / Laggy Fantasy Tactics: playthrough with screenshots

« on: October 18, 2013, 11:32:03 PM »

Hey all. I bought Final Fantasy tactics when it came out and have enjoyed it off and on since then. I had two main playthroughs: one where I broke the game the usual ways, which is to say Blade Grasp, Calculator, and later Orlandu. The second time I went with Ramza and four generics and used things like Martial Arts Ninja and Two Hands with knight swords instead. Better, but it still felt kinda meh towards the end.

Recently I found out about the mod scene and two mods really stood out. One is the 1.3 Insane Difficulty mod, which I like a great deal but can be a bit of a headache at times. the other is Laggy Fantasy Tactics, a more relaxing version which is what I will cover here. I'll try to keep it entertaining and running smoothly, hopefully you all enjoy it.

Onward into the strangely unfamiliar world of LFT!

In the very first battle, Ramza learned nothing except Wish for his active abilities. I was a bit unlucky in that regard.





Not that Ramza needs to do much of anything.



Ooh, that’s a player-type build there. Has Laggy been teaching you a few tricks?



Agrias saves the day with a double hit, killing one archer and landing Stop on the other. Ramza’s face is in the mud because the knight and a charge +5 put him down. Luckily they didn’t target anyone important. The battle didn't last long after that.

I’ve heard of this fight referred to as the Tutorial battle but I’m not sure what it’s supposed to teach There’s pretty much nothing the player can do, so one can’t really try things out.

To move on with the story, we must TRAVEL BACK IN TIME. Fasten your seatbelts as we achieve the impossible and journey back to last-year-land!

23

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

« on: October 17, 2013, 04:39:41 PM »

Thanks very much. I'm not going to start it right away; gonna save up some material ahead of time so I can keep things going steady, just in case. Probably the first few posts will have a lot of talk about what my plans are, and the updates will be more focused on the battles as the LP progresses.

Edit: the thread is underway!

http://www.rpgdl.com/forums/index.php/topic,6400.0.html

Any feedback is welcome.

24

Game Design and Modifications / Re: LFT: An FFT mod (The final release is a lie. Download here!)

« on: October 17, 2013, 03:41:02 PM »

Hey, I just started this mod. It looks like it has some interesting things that I'd like to play around with. I also play 1.3, this seems more like a casual thing to relax with. I might be inclined to make a screenshot LP of this, is there a good place on these forums to do that?