[FF7PC-98/Steam] gjoerulv's "Hardcore" mod (v1.0.7.2)

[Armorvil]

No problem about the new bosses  :wink:
I'd love to play your patch on the PSX

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

A quick question, where is the data for limit breaks? Kernel.bin1 has a few of them, but not all of them.

I noticed this after looking for the attack data for Fury Brand, which apparently has an element 0x8000 not present in any other attacks. I wondered whether it had anything to do with the unique effect of this limit break, but after putting it into the spell "cure" it seems that it does not, this is caused by the 19th byte.

 

[gjoerulv]

Actually I don't know. I thought all where in that file too but I was wrong. And the element you tested is the "Hidden" element. To make something restorative, the target must absorb the element. The restorative element is absorb able by default.

 

[Tyler_Wu]

ive tried out some of the early to mid game again.

-materia keeper seems perfect now with his newly buffed trine, 

- godo seems perfect too now however i should mention, yuffie was level 35 when i did it. not sure if you would consider that overleveled or not. she also had biaga because i did the quest right before going to the crater and snowfields and such.  i waited until then because yuffie was really weak when i first got the tiny bronco as she wasnt part of my main party and didnt have any good limit breaks.

-right before i was about to enter mt nibel i turned around and went after the midgar zolom to attain beta enemy skill.  it was very hard but eventually i pulled it off, seems good to me.

- luck plus materia is still screwy.   when its mastered it sells for 1million 50 thousand gil.  and it masters at about 9500 ap for me at least.  it was at like 9380 ap total or something like that then i got into a battle in the wutai area,  after the battle it was mastered.

- kujata summon guardian bosses are still a bit too hard i think,  i think if levant was just a tiny bit weaker then everything would be cool (when hes left alone he is pretty hard).  his two sidekicks seem fine to me.

- deathblow materia,   i think you should take a look at it,  in my opinion it takes very little ap to master AND when it is mastered it sells for way too much gil.

 

[gjoerulv]

Luck materia works fine for me. Do you have the latest kernel?

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Tyler_Wu]

yea i replaced the scene and kernel with your updated files from sept 21.


sometime today tho ill go on my other comp and double check for you tho,  make sure it actually is the updated kernel.

 

[moraelyn]

I finally got to the end of disc 1, here's my opinion on the rest of the bosses so far.

In the Wutai quests, Rapps (at level 32) was ok, his Aero3 (Aeroga?) was a one-shot-kill attack but it wasn't such a big deal, I think he's fine.
I tried the pagoda immediately after, and couldn't get past Chekhov, because there was no way I could keep myself alive and outdamage her Absorb, so I leveled to 34-35 and got Regen. After that, all the rest of the bosses (even Godo) were ok.

The Red Dragon was kinda harder than the Demon Gate (at level 38-39), but neither of these bosses was particularly hard. I think you should buff Demon Gate's HP a little. After slowing him and keeping Regen on myself I barely had to cast any cure spells (I kept everyone in the back row of course).

The bosses guarding the Kjata summon were a pain (at level 41-42). It took me about 5 tries to figure out an effective strategy, and another 5 to manage to execute it without them destroying me with Thundaga/Blizzaga... Then I finally realized there was no way in hell I could beat Levant when he was alone. So I just left one of his goons alive and blasted Levant with spells till he was almost dead, then finished them off both with Limit Breaks.
The main idea was to use Odin's Gunge Lance and Magic Hammer to drain all of their MP, while keeping the party alive with Regen (or White Wind if they used Reflect on me), and dispelling at every turn so they'd waste one of theirs to recast the buffs.

Jenova-Life (at level 43) was WAY easier than the Kjata bosses. I basically just used Esuna or White Wind to dispel sleep and Regen to help keep the party alive, while DeSpelling her Reflect and draining her mana with Magic Hammer. After a while she had no mana to use any attacks, so I just hacked away till she was dead.

Moral of the story: Magic Hammer is too strong. It seems to be the solution for a lot of otherwise very difficult boss battles. Make it absorb 75 or even 50 MP instead of 100.
Also, I find myself not using Mighty Guard because of the high mana cost. You probably should revert it back to its original cost, but keep the single targeting. As it stands, I'd rather use Haste-All and Barrier-All.

EDIT: I also think you should increase gil gained, even just from bosses. I actually had to farm for gil to buy equipment/materia, which kinda defeats the concept of not overleveling.

 

[Tyler_Wu]

yea the kujata bosses were definitely harder than jenova life,  i actually  just went and killed jenova life first because the kjata bosses were giving me a lot of trouble.    that 3500 ap was a big help.

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

A quick question, where is the data for limit breaks? Kernel.bin1 has a few of them, but not all of them.

Update: I found limit break attack data in ff7.exe, and managed to edit it without the game blowing up.

 

[gjoerulv]

@moraelyn: Thanks. Actually you found the exact strategy I planned out when making these. Draining 'em of mana, and Dispelling 'em. Nice work. But I was more thinking like using Odin once, and then just keeping them attacking while Healing and dispelling. But if you get time to use magic hammer it helps. Also absorbing fire/ice/bolt helps. Levant counters either magic or physical or everything with fire (I don't remember clearly). So Have the one absorbing fire attack it. Also it helps to farm light curtains and lunar curtains of the Foulander in wutai, though it's rare drops. In the wutai area it should by pretty easy to farm gil too.

But debuffing magic hammer. Perhaps I could, but as I see it it's smarter to give bosses more MP. I could degrade it's accuracy though.

I might reduce the MP cost of Mighty Guard a bit. The reason I brought it that high was because of the cheapness with it (Wall 54MP - MG 80MP). Wall is cheaper than barrier and mbarrier and costs a lot more MP as well (16/24MP - 54MP). But MG has a handicap. You can't link it with support materia. Thats the reason I think I'll reduce the MP cost, to lets say 70?

What I'll do in the next update is making demon gate harder and the Kujata boss a bit easier. That's for sure. But I have no time now.

 

[Armorvil]

A quick question, where is the data for limit breaks? Kernel.bin1 has a few of them, but not all of them.

Update: I found limit break attack data in ff7.exe, and managed to edit it without the game blowing up.

Quick question : do you know what the equivalent to ff7.exe be, in the Playstation iso ? I tried looking for this data in the SCUS_941.63, but to no avail.

 

[ADIDAS]

hmm I don't think the Kujata boss is that hard . my strategy is just kill Levant first . his only weakness is hidden element , I give Vicent all the magic buff as possible and yeah I was able to kill him with Bahamut in one hit  :-D , without Levant , the other two are useless if you cast reflect on your self , then take your time to steal and wait for him out of mana  :-D , they both have power up item so I guess Levant has too  .And I don't remember my LV at that time .

 

[Kudistos Megistos]

@Armorvil

I found attack data for limit breaks in MENU\LIMTMENU.MNU on one of my PSX discs.

 

[Armorvil]

@Armorvil

I found attack data for limit breaks in MENU\LIMTMENU.MNU on one of my PSX discs.

Ooohhh, thank you very much my friend ! You're a genius :-D

As a side note, the SCENE.BIN and KERNEL.BIN you provide are way too big to fit in a PSX iso, gjoerulv. I think I can free some space by deleting the spells and materia descriptions in the kernel.bin10 and kernel.bin15 to make the kernel usable, but do you know of any way to free some space in the scene file ? Is there some kind of data one can freely delete without wrecking havoc ?

 

[moraelyn]

hmm I don't think the Kujata boss is that hard . my strategy is just kill Levant first . his only weakness is hidden element , I give Vicent all the magic buff as possible and yeah I was able to kill him with Bahamut in one hit  :-D , without Levant , the other two are useless if you cast reflect on your self , then take your time to steal and wait for him out of mana  :-D , they both have power up item so I guess Levant has too  .And I don't remember my LV at that time .

I didn't try using Bahamut on them, although it seems logical. As it stands, Sense reads "Weak against ." so that probably means the hidden element. Anyways, if you just make these guys weak against their opposite element they will be perfectly fine IMO.

But debuffing magic hammer. Perhaps I could, but as I see it it's smarter to give bosses more MP. I could degrade it's accuracy though.

That's a good solution for Magic Hammer, I like both options. Just don't make it annoyingly inaccurate.

I might reduce the MP cost of Mighty Guard a bit. The reason I brought it that high was because of the cheapness with it (Wall 54MP - MG 80MP). Wall is cheaper than barrier and mbarrier and costs a lot more MP as well (16/24MP - 54MP). But MG has a handicap. You can't link it with support materia. Thats the reason I think I'll reduce the MP cost, to lets say 70?

Thing is you can get the same effect for 68(?) MP for all 3 characters with Wall-All and Haste-All, in 2 turns while it takes 3 turns and 240 MP (as it stands) to get the same effect from Mighty Guard. The only upside is that it takes less Materia slots (1 instead of 4) but that's just in case you only use 1 Enemy Skill, and even so, it's not such a big deal. So you can just reduce the cost to 68 MP and make it situational, like when you need to recast the buffs on someone who has died, or when a character is fighting alone etc. That way, no spell is really better than the other, and all of them have their uses.

 

[ARMs]

E Skill has the advatage of being almost every green materia +support  in 1.  Do you actually think ppl aren't gonna use E Skill because of the extra cost?   Those extra space you save with E. Skill means extra space for more counter attacks, more HP pluses, and more materia combos.  As it stands yes E. Skill is still very much better then most materias out there.

 

[Tyler_Wu]

gjoerulvs  can you tell me whats up with those triangular prism monsters right before jenova death in the whirlwind maze?   they like have some conversation in some language that i dont know. but anyways  my team gets killed whenever i attack them, like insta death... except it kills them even if they are immune to death.  and everything does zero dmg to them with the exception of limit breaks and phys attacks,  it says they are weak to holy but alexander does zero dmg.

im just wondering how to beat them because it doesnt seem possible altho i havent tried death sentence or pertrifying them yet.,  and do they give you an item or a decent amount of exp or ap when defeated?

i also wanted to know where i can find the angel whisper enemy skill. my strategy guide says they (the humanish looking women) are in the crater but it seems like you moved or removed them because i cant find them anywhere in the crater or whirlwind maze.

 

[gjoerulv]

I might reduce the MP cost of Mighty Guard a bit. The reason I brought it that high was because of the cheapness with it (Wall 54MP - MG 80MP). Wall is cheaper than barrier and mbarrier and costs a lot more MP as well (16/24MP - 54MP). But MG has a handicap. You can't link it with support materia. Thats the reason I think I'll reduce the MP cost, to lets say 70?

Thing is you can get the same effect for 68(?) MP for all 3 characters with Wall-All and Haste-All, in 2 turns while it takes 3 turns and 240 MP (as it stands) to get the same effect from Mighty Guard. The only upside is that it takes less Materia slots (1 instead of 4) but that's just in case you only use 1 Enemy Skill, and even so, it's not such a big deal. So you can just reduce the cost to 68 MP and make it situational, like when you need to recast the buffs on someone who has died, or when a character is fighting alone etc. That way, no spell is really better than the other, and all of them have their uses.

(1st of all I correct myself. Wall costs 58 MP)

If you want it this way then the reason I altered it is kinda wasted. I did it to avoid an easy all-haste +  all-wall effect. It has to be used in another way then what you're used to. The main reason people used it was the all-wall effect. The haste certainly is a huge bonus and makes the move too cheap imo. What I wanted was more strategic thinking. That's why I altered the ribbon the way I did too. If you ask me; haste+barrier+mbarrier on all in 1 move should cost over 200 MP 'cause of it's cheapness.

And though you can get the same effect with 76 MP, it doesn't come without a sacrifice. 2 turns + 4 slots. Or with 58 MP, 3 turns and 6 slots. Mighty G uses 240 MP, 3 turns and 1 slot.  As I see it the only handicap Mighty Guard has is that it can't be linked (cause you get the all effect by linking. If you could link it, it would be 240MP, 1 turn and 2 slots). That's why I say it shouldn't be used to create this effect. It works better as a single buffer, and should be used as one.

gjoerulvs  can you tell me whats up with those triangular prism monsters right before jenova death in the whirlwind maze?   they like have some conversation in some language that i dont know. but anyways  my team gets killed whenever i attack them, like insta death... except it kills them even if they are immune to death.  and everything does zero dmg to them with the exception of limit breaks and phys attacks,  it says they are weak to holy but alexander does zero dmg.

im just wondering how to beat them because it doesnt seem possible altho i havent tried death sentence or pertrifying them yet.,  and do they give you an item or a decent amount of exp or ap when defeated?

i also wanted to know where i can find the angel whisper enemy skill. my strategy guide says they (the humanish looking women) are in the crater but it seems like you moved or removed them because i cant find them anywhere in the crater or whirlwind maze.

Those creatures is actually quite hard. Immune to Magic, and HIGH defence. The ? ? ? ES is prob your best bet. They have 1000 HP and immune to every status. They drop X-Potions, Turbo Ethers, Elixirs and Phoenix Downs. They never attack you. But if a party member makes a move, immediately after they kill a random character with full HP or completely heal a character with not full HP.

Angel Whisper is acquired from Pollensalta in the Northern Cave close to the end of the game. SPOILER: you can also manipulate one of the Phoenix Materia guardians to get it. /SPOILER.

EDIT: The language is Latin. It's whats spoken in the One Winged Angel theme.

 

[Tyler_Wu]

thanks for the info gjoerulvs,  sorry for my incompetence i shouldve been able to figure out that ???? enemy skill strategy on my own.  anyways main reason i posted just now is because i wanted to add in my opinion on might guard.   i think it should stay at 80mp.  like you said it has really great affects AND it only costs one materia slot.

 

[moraelyn]

E Skill has the advatage of being almost every green materia +support  in 1.  Do you actually think ppl aren't gonna use E Skill because of the extra cost?   Those extra space you save with E. Skill means extra space for more counter attacks, more HP pluses, and more materia combos.  As it stands yes E. Skill is still very much better then most materias out there.

That's not what I said. I'm using 3 E. Skill Materias myself, one for each character. I was commenting on Mighty Guard only.

And though you can get the same effect with 76 MP, it doesn't come without a sacrifice. 2 turns + 4 slots. Or with 58 MP, 3 turns and 6 slots. Mighty G uses 240 MP, 3 turns and 1 slot.  As I see it the only handicap Mighty Guard has is that it can't be linked (cause you get the all effect by linking. If you could link it, it would be 240MP, 1 turn and 2 slots). That's why I say it shouldn't be used to create this effect. It works better as a single buffer, and should be used as one.

Well my bad, I thought the cost for Wall was 54 MP and the cost for Haste was 14, so I messed up the calculations.

Anyway, I might have spoken too soon about Mighty Guard. Fact is you can get it soon enough, when your max MP doesn't exceed 200-220. At the time, using it drains almost half of your MP pool, that's why I found Haste-All and Barrier-All to be more cost effective, and that's the reason I (almost) didn't use it at all. Later in the game though, it's not that big a MP drain, plus Magic Hammer helps with the cost. Leave it as is, I'll play with it a bit and let you know what I think.