[FF7PC-98/Steam] New Threat Mod (v2.0.999992)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sega Chief
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Regarding the Shinra Building:

Regarding the new boss (whose tail I loved): I had to make 23 steal attempts, with a character thats level 16, to successfully steal the item from the level 12 Grunt. Its kind of absurd how low the success rate of steal was in this case. Another thing was how useless magic was in the battle. A Bolt dealt 86 damage. A regular attack 49. A Ice or Fire dealt 57... Even if the thing is not weak to Fire or Ice it should have dealt more than that. Otherwise it was like I said before and magic becomes rather useless. Its good when the monsters are weak to it, but otherwise its better off to whack it in the head with a blunt object, and characters like Aeris and Caith Sith, who are more magic oriented, become less useful.

Another thing that puzzled me was that Cloud is level 20 and I didn't grind at all. I always though it was too easy to level up in the original game, but here its even faster. I don't know if this is intentional and if you wanted players to level up faster, but I fear that at this rate, I might hit 50 or 60 before the end of the disc.

Can you address these two questions for me please, Sega Chief?
 
Thanks Chief - As it happens I reached the crater bottom and unlocked the extra missions, One thing to note though whilst I was at the battle square I spoke to the other guy practicing his kicks and all of a sudden I had unlocked all the available battles (apart from the question marked one) and received all these spells (Ultima, Command Counter etc.) Was that meant to happen??
 
That was part of a fix for the old temporary variables that the Extra Battle monsters used (the variables that determined if a monster was unlocked or if Materia was due to be dropped 'reset' themselves when leaving the screen, making some fights inaccessible; these were replaced with new permanent variables).

Basically, the NPC unlocks all the Extra Battle monsters and the Materia rewards drop again. It's technically only for players who ran into the above problem (she should mention this in her dialogue) but anyone can use it; wasn't ideal, but it was the quickest way to solve the problem because some of the E. Battle items couldn't be obtained legitimately again once they're spent. It's going to be gone from the next version of the flevel.
 
Hey Chief, could you give me some clarifications on the two issues I raised above please? I lvl 30 at Gongaga and I feel like I'm 10 levels above what I normally would.
 
To Loseless; I missed that above post, I'll answer it now (I actually got you mixed up with Lappers and was wondering how you reached Disc 3 so quickly).

Regarding the new boss (whose tail I loved): I had to make 23 steal attempts, with a character thats level 16, to successfully steal the item from the level 12 Grunt. Its kind of absurd how low the success rate of steal was in this case.
Click to expand...
I'm reviewing steal rates for the update, some were too low for what they actually give. I was trying to counter higher levels from raised EXP but the number was set too low. I'm also running late with that update because I'm trying to implement a new feature relating to character stat development.

Regarding the Shinra Building:

Another thing was how useless magic was in the battle. A Bolt dealt 86 damage. A regular attack 49. A Ice or Fire dealt 57... Even if the thing is not weak to Fire or Ice it should have dealt more than that. Otherwise it was like I said before and magic becomes rather useless. Its good when the monsters are weak to it, but otherwise its better off to whack it in the head with a blunt object, and characters like Aeris and Caith Sith, who are more magic oriented, become less useful.
Click to expand...
Was this damage against Guard Scorpion? His magic defence is quite high and I kept it consistent with his original MDef when he's first fought in Reactor 1, also Barret and Tifa have fairly low magic stats and are more physical-attack orientated. Motorball and Heli-Gunner should take more damage from spells, especially if Four Slots is being used. An Earring also drops during the Shinra Tower segment which helps with setting up a caster, at the expense of status protection. With enemies that have sturdy MDef, combining Elemental with Magic materia in the weapon can bolster physical attacks along with a Power Wrist.

Another thing that puzzled me was that Cloud is level 20 and I didn't grind at all. I always though it was too easy to level up in the original game, but here its even faster. I don't know if this is intentional and if you wanted players to level up faster, but I fear that at this rate, I might hit 50 or 60 before the end of the disc.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's the raised EXP from fights. For bosses it was 4x which turned out to be too much, so that's going down to roughly 2x instead while random encounters is going down to 1.5x (with adjustments made in certain cases). The idea behind it was to speed the game up but if it's going down because players are feeling worried that they're getting ahead of the curve.
 
Thanks for the reply.

Actually, from what I've tested so far (I'm at Cosmo Cannon), only lvl1 spells are rather weak. Lvl 2 spells are overpowered. At level 33, a regular attack deals 250 to 300 dmg, while a spell can hit for 1000. While this makes sense, having spells cost so few MP makes it possible to spam 18 lvl 2 spells. I understand how difficult must be to balance attacks/magic, but right now, lvl 2 spells are way more powerful than they should be, considering their cost. If this was the case that spells were expensive, it would make perfect sense. But being so powerful while cheap, it kind of breaks the mechanics, as I haven't fought a single boss fight since Jenova that even let me use 1/4 of the MP. Maybe the bosses have low HP?

As for the levels, they are indeed to high, I must say. I must confess I don't see the point in making the characters level out faster. The original game could be breezed through with a level 50 party, and I usually level disc 1 at those levels, because I end up leveling too much trying to get AP. I would suggest lowering the exp earned, while maintaining the AP.

Regarding the AP required to level the green materia, mine hit lvl 2 after Corel. Thats late, specially considering that I had double growth equipment on since Costa Del Sol. I reckon 4500 or 5000 AP to lvl 2 would be enough, assuming you expect materia to hit lvl 2 around the same point as they do in vanilla.

On another level, summons are just not worth using. Against a single target, Ifrit dealt 1134 and Fire 2 1296. Against several enemies Ifrit dealt 530 and Fire 2 420. Considering that Fire 2 costs 15MP and Ifrit 34, its pretty safe to say that Ifrit its just not worth the extra materia slot. And the same could be said about all the other summons until Titan. Their base attack power is just too low. Mostly because they can only be used once. They should be like heavy artillery and not less useful than a limit break or a lvl 2 spell.


PS: and you were right, the fight was against the Scorpion. But even against regular enemies, spells did only twice the regular attack worth of damage. After Kalm spells are barely effective, and before Junon they deal almost as much as an attack.
 
Regarding the Shinra Building:

Regarding the new boss (whose tail I loved): I had to make 23 steal attempts, with a character thats level 16, to successfully steal the item from the level 12 Grunt. Its kind of absurd how low the success rate of steal was in this case. Another thing was how useless magic was in the battle. A Bolt dealt 86 damage. A regular attack 49. A Ice or Fire dealt 57... Even if the thing is not weak to Fire or Ice it should have dealt more than that. Otherwise it was like I said before and magic becomes rather useless. Its good when the monsters are weak to it, but otherwise its better off to whack it in the head with a blunt object, and characters like Aeris and Caith Sith, who are more magic oriented, become less useful.
Click to expand...
Yeah I do agree the steal rates are pretty bad. Crazy bad if you're doing a low level or no exp run. But I think magic becomes really important once your past Midgar, especially when they reach their next tiers. I'm doing a no exp run, and Cloud, combined with earring and four slots, can do 700-900 damage with fire 2 :-). You'll notice that magic will be amped and  useful when they level.
I've been using magic pretty much the entire game, and started relying a little bit more on physical attacks when I started getting late game weapons,ultimate weapons, etc.
Some good combos I like: Mp Turbo + Earth (3rd tier can do 6k-9999), and Comet + MP Turbo (capable of doing 10k+ ). I also use regen and time, every boss battle. Just depends on your play style: if you want to focus more on melee, you'll have to rely strength+ equipment to decent damage.  Another thing about magic, spells like sleep, mini, confuse, etc have 100% chance to hit.

About summoning.. don't have a solid opinion on it because I haven't been using it. I think I'll start using it more with my no exp run because they are capable of doing negative status effects. Down side is they can only be used once per battle.
 
Yeah I do agree the steal rates are pretty bad. Crazy bad if you're doing a low level or no exp run. But I think magic becomes really important once your past Midgar, especially when they reach their next tiers. I'm doing a no exp run, and Cloud, combined with earring and four slots, can do 700-900 damage with fire 2 :-). You'll notice that magic will be amped and  useful when they level.
I've been using magic pretty much the entire game, and started relying a little bit more on physical attacks when I started getting late game weapons,ultimate weapons, etc.
Some good combos I like: Mp Turbo + Earth (3rd tier can do 6k-9999), and Comet + MP Turbo (capable of doing 10k+ ). I also use regen and time, every boss battle. Just depends on your play style: if you want to focus more on melee, you'll have to rely strength+ equipment to decent damage.  Another thing about magic, spells like sleep, mini, confuse, etc have 100% chance to hit.

About summoning.. don't have a solid opinion on it because I haven't been using it. I think I'll start using it more with my no exp run because they are capable of doing negative status effects. Down side is they can only be used once per battle.
Click to expand...
I do agreed with you. My concern is mainly with level 1 spells. Level 2 may even be overpowered, considering their cost.
 
I'll consider either raising MP cost or reducing power again for Tier 2. However, I tested Tier 1 spells in the Midgar area and outside Junon. These were the numbers I got from a Lv.20 team:

Against Kalm Fang (weak to Fire/Ice)
Aeris (Four Slots + Earring, +40 Mag): Fire = 550 (Kill)
Cloud (no boosts): Fire = 400 (Kill)

Physical attacks: roughly 100 damage, 200 if +Elemental used.

Against Nerosuferoth (weak to Ice)
Aeris (Four Slots + Earring, +40Mag): Ice = 550 (kill)
Cloud (Mythril Sabre + Mythril Armlet, +15Mag): Ice = 400 (kill)

So they're hitting roughly 2x over physical hits (when elemental weaknesses aren't taken into consideration), landing one-hit kills on regular enemies (larger enemies like Zemzellet take several hits). That seems fine to me, they're doing their job by killing enemies quickly when their weakness is exploited while falling short of sweeping out the entire group if paired with All.

But Summons are definitely too weak if they're dealing spread damage instead of flat damage to all, even with the status chance (which isn't a factor if the enemy is being killed quickly). I'll take Titan as an example and maybe set their power to an equivalent level, his was the only base power out of the initial summons to exceed Tier 2. The trouble is finding the right level for power and MP. If they're too strong, they'll blitz bosses when all used together (I saw someone doing that in the old version) and if the MP cost is too high then it'll perhaps not be used at all (or be circumvented by Ether consumption). There's the one-use limit but that's refreshed battle-to-battle. I'll try a few things, but it feels like the solution would require something special to make them stand out without making them too OP.

But I think I'll need to do another playthrough soon to help me do the numbers; my own first-hand experience of the mod is likely becoming out of date by this point.
 
As for bosses, my last experience with Gi Nattack proved very interesting. Ifrit and Ramuh barely did 800 each, used by Cloud and RedXIII at level 34. Even if they had hit 2000 each, plus 2000 from Shiva, it would have only taken 50% of its HP. And for them to take that much would require a HUGE power boost.

But you can boost the bosses HP counting on summons. For instance, if you know that Bahamut will hit for 3000 at level 45 (the level I estimate I'll be when I get it), its just a matter of adding 3000 plus to every boss. Same for Odin and Leviathan (the three strongest summons from disc 1, except Kjata, since it can barely be used before the end of the disc).

If you're considering doing a test playthrough, there's something that puzzles me: why do we start the game at level 6? In FF7 we gain levels like there's no tomorrow. I'm at Shinra's Mansion right now and every tree fights I'm leveling up. Its insane. I'll leave disc 1 at 50 without even training. If things keep going like this I'll have to start running from battles, as I'm getting over-leveled and the bosses are getting easier.

Since this mod has higher HP, MP and stats, why not make the exp lesser than in vanilla? I can imagine beating the first disc at level 30. But that could require HP Plus...


Anyway, what Enemy Skills can be found on the first disc? So far I've found:

Matra Magic, L4 Suicide, Flame Thrower, White Wind, Death Sentence, Frog Song, ????
I'm also counting on getting Death Force, Magic Hammer and Roulette.

Did I forget one?

And is Midgar Zolom worth fighting, or is just a challenge?

Have the prizes at the end of Fort Condor's battles been altered? If so, what are they now? And why not a fight at the end of each Fort Condor's battle?


The Scorpion boss before Dyne is at level 24... L 4 Suicide makes short work of it. And even without it its too easy. Perhaps some steroids are in order?
 
It's a bit of a conundrum. I think I'd want them to be strong enough to take out enemy groups, but not too strong to sweep a boss immediately. But raising a boss' HP to account for summons isn't a good idea, it should be an option to use Summons but not a necessity; more HP means much longer fights for players who don't use Summons. Same thing goes with Lv.3-4 Limit Breaks; if you boost HP to account for, say, Meteorain then the player is left with a mountain of additional HP to cut down if they don't use Meteorain.

Not sure what the confusion is over starting at Lv.6, that's how it was in the original game. The old version of the mod started at Lv.1 (copying the Hardcore mod) but I put it back to Lv.6. Doesn't make a huge difference, except that it's not required to grind in the 1st Reactor (the starting items were extended as well for this). And I've said a few times before now that I was reducing EXP given in encounters for that exact reason; the player is progressing too fast and finding themselves too strong (I suppose it's marginally better than the other way around, but only marginally).

I think that's all of the main ones; you can pick up Trine on the Da Chao in Wutai. I don't remember Roulette being available until the Crater unless I gave the Gambler enemy in the Rocket Area that skill too. Zolom is a bit of a loose thread now; I think I'll buff him up now that you mention it. I'll have him immediately eject the party if they're under a certain level, but after Lv.50 or so he can be fought as an optional boss and drops potentially missable items, maybe? Yeah, I think I'll do that.

I almost forgot all about the Fort Condor prizes. Yeah, they were changed but I can't be sure if I finished changing them properly. I better double-check. And there should be a battle with either Sgt/Cpt/Cmd Grand Horn if the enemies reach the hut during the Fort Condor minigame; is this not triggering?

That Scorp boss can be slightly tough if he manages to raise his tail (his defences increase significantly). As far as L4 Suicide goes, I decided not to take it too much into account when speccing things (levels are mostly unchanged) so if you find something that works, go with it.
 
You think it's worth doing the fort battles? I remembering most items being potions and either. Curse ring, and The comb was nice!
 
Hmm. I might try to make the Fort Battles (slightly) more interesting. But not too interesting.

Nice profile picture.
 
Actually, there's a Zemzlet alike thing in Mt. Nibel that uses Trine. Just got killed by it a while ago. The thing cast two of those things and Cure 2 couldn't handle it. And I think that the 8 Eyes in the Temple of the Ancients uses Roulette.

Anyway, what I really wanted to ask you is if there was a way to easily make enemies give much less experience or characters level slower. Maybe you could make a separate version, if its not too much trouble, for those who feel that they're leveling too much. Right now, the mod's challenge has died. The enemies don't even pose a treat anymore. Being at level 44 just after getting Cid pretty much nulls the increase in difficulty.

Also, is there any news on Lambda? I really wanted to get Odin :P


Oh, and regarding the fort battles, if you do change the items, please tell us to what, since I only fight for the useful ones. I'm afraid I don't quite have the time to track back the fight all of them. And if you upped the enemies it wouldn't be a bad idea... Or putting a special boss at the last fight, even after the enemies were defeated (with the Imperial Guard dropped, of course).
 
Last edited:
I'd love to see someone make a guide to this mod - especially covering all the locations of the enemy skills and materia.  I have yet to find Morph materia, currently working my way through the extra side quests - just got killed by the machine board in wall market, my current team are:

Cloud lvl 88
Cid lvl 89
Aeris lvl 88
 
Actually, there's a Zemzlet alike thing in Mt. Nibel that uses Trine. Just got killed by it a while ago. The thing cast two of those things and Cure 2 couldn't handle it. And I think that the 8 Eyes in the Temple of the Ancients uses Roulette.

Anyway, what I really wanted to ask you is if there was a way to easily make enemies give much less experience or characters level slower. Maybe you could make a separate version, if its not too much trouble, for those who feel that they're leveling too much. Right now, the mod's challenge has died. The enemies don't even pose a treat anymore. Being at level 44 just after getting Cid pretty much nulls the increase in difficulty.

Also, is there any news on Lambda? I really wanted to get Odin :P

Oh, and regarding the fort battles, if you do change the items, please tell us to what, since I only fight for the useful ones. I'm afraid I don't quite have the time to track back the fight all of them. And if you upped the enemies it wouldn't be a bad idea... Or putting a special boss at the last fight, even after the enemies were defeated (with the Imperial Guard dropped, of course).
Click to expand...
That thing still has Trine? I remember changing that back to Thunderbolt, maybe I made a mistake or forgot. Lambda was changed in the scene.bin hotfix but the main installer wasn't updated with it yet; that'll be rolled out later tonight hopefully if I can get all these changes implemented in time. And the items in Fort Condor were generally just disposable items, but I'll check them out and see what's there.

I'd love to see someone make a guide to this mod - especially covering all the locations of the enemy skills and materia.  I have yet to find Morph materia, currently working my way through the extra side quests - just got killed by the machine board in wall market, my current team are:

Cloud lvl 88
Cid lvl 89
Aeris lvl 88
Click to expand...
When things have settled down a bit, I'll put together a quick guide that players can quickly refer to if they want to find something. In the current version, Morph (should) be dropped by the Kalm Traveler but in the update that's going out Morph will be freely available again from another location.
 
I thought I'd ask, but would there be any way to perhaps impliment new weapons or armour into the game (if of course you could add a new dungeon to the mod) - would certainly stretch the game further.  If at all possible that is.
 
Thanks, I'll go beat it now.

And Fort Condor still drops the Magic Comb as the first prize and the Peace(?) Ring as the third prize. The others I don't remember in which order. X-Potion and Megaelixir amongst them. I was just trying to get the Superball, but that must have been moved too.

Oh, and I can help you with the guide, Chief. I already wrote a published FF7 guide, amongst guides for other RPGs. I also like to write :P Unless you have enough spare time and really want to do it.

Btw, what happend to the Great Gospel?
 
More amour and weapons is properly not doable. I guess there are 15 possible weapons for each character and the rest is also very limited. New dungeons are impossible at the moment.
 
A guide sounds pretty cool!!!

You can get Great Gospel and other final limit breaks by doing character sidequests you unlock once reaching north crater :-)!

If you need some help with sidequest locations, boss fights, or boss names for optional fights I have uploaded a complete play through here.  :)

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFFJy7ETmAkt-HX1loJ2SlUt_ILfisXLC

Currently doing a no exp challenge that are part of the playlist, so any tips/advice/guides are helpful. I also post my strategies on these no exp videos too, feel free to use them if someone is making a thorough guide.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top