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

[MrMadakey]

Bosses having too much defense is a bit of a problem since it incentivizes using Defense-Ignoring methods so much. Spamming Comet just completely trivializes the silver chocobo because it can't miss for Pandora's Box which, in turn, with Mighty Guard, allows us to completely trivialize Emerald and Ruby. Then just to take it further there's a magic built Barret taking over Cloud's ability to just Mime = Counter Catastrophe every boss to death while you go and make a sandwich.

This right here is pretty much what I'm trying to touch on, while a lot of the early game is pretty difficult while at the same time being rewarding, the post game feels kind of a wash with how easy it can be with some of the character setups you can get going. It kind of didn't incentivise myself to try anything different because Barret was making everything look incredibly easy, mechanics were pretty much ignored because Barret didn't care.

I would like to mention while my previous statement about w-item basically trivialising everything and then complaining that the post game was not very hard.. I didn't actually need w-item, I've played the mod before and didn't even know where w-item was and I did just fine back then too. I've seen streamers completely miss w-item and do just fine themselves. There were even times where my party were so strong that I never even got chance to use gospel sparks or any other op item that was in my repertoire..

 

[wdx]

the post game feels kind of a wash with how easy it can be with some of the character setups you can get going.

a no experience hard mode  typeb without using sp upgrades makes end game stuff not as trivial      maybe try that as an option if decide to play through again.

 
w-item basically trivialising everything.

agree witem is OP makes somethings go much quicker thou, and allows more or less free experimentation of items.  alongside huge timesaving rather than grinding for a couple of items...  (on no exp runs)

 

[MrMadakey]

a no experience hard mode  typeb without using sp upgrades makes end game stuff not as trivial      maybe try that as an option if decide to play through again.
agree witem is OP makes somethings go much quicker thou, and allows more or less free experimentation of items.  alongside huge timesaving rather than grinding for a couple of items...  (on no exp runs)

I'm by no means saying the entire mod is easy because of this though I would like to mention, I just think it's placed a little too early. I think it should maybe be after say midgar Revisit or just before or maybe in one of the materia caves for example. It does feel a little strong at this point and not having it in a previous playthrough made for believe it or not more experimentation rather than rinse and repeating the same: w-item Gospel Sparks > Pummel with Barret and mime till dead..

While W-item may promote item experimentation for some, the only thing it promoted for me was to abuse what worked.. I'm not speaking for everybody here but there are a hell of a lot more players who will do the only thing that works rather than what could "potentially" work.

 

[Sega Chief]

But in the original, doesn't it not use those attacks if they don't hit, so turns aren't wasted? Here they are.

Oh right; I think I can sort that out.

Just finished 2.0 (All bosses/Limit breaks/Weapons except the secret boss) and wanted to give some feedback

I originally couldn't find the 1/35 soldiers but i found them all so modifying my message here for feedback instead.

First of all, W-Item is a bit easy to obtain. I understand why it's where it's at but at the same time, I don't think it's actually even needed. It kind of trivialised almost everything. When you're able to duplicate Megalixirs as well as Stardust or Gospel sparks, it makes the entire game a little trivial including the post game bosses such as the weapons.

In terms of character balance, Tifa is a lot more balanced now which is fantastic, however it feels like Barret might've taken the new position of over powered.

Once I was able to reach the Drill Arm and basically ignore all defense, it pretty much ignored all mechanics that are supposed to be in the game, not much reason to dispel anything or worry about anything, that combined with unlimited Megalixirs and Gospel Sparks.. Well you can see where I am going with this.

Also to touch on the ignore defense mechanic, Jenova's Deaths incremental defense/damage, now, as we know Jenova is susceptible to Petrify, however when the AI is petrified it usually makes it so the incremental mechanic doesn't increase, this is where Barret being a little over powered comes in, with the ignore defense mechanic, it completely ignores the incremental damage even while the AI is petrified.

I'm not exactly sure how you would go about this but maybe a good idea would be to change ignore defense to increase damage depending on how much str Barret has? Which could then increase incrementally through the fight whenever he gets attacked in the front row? I literally have no idea on how you would be able to balance it (If you would like to balance it that is) but I would like to mention that Barret does feel like he ignores any mechanics in the game entirely.

I do think there is only one particular boss that I should mention feels a little much.. Air buster in Mt Nibelheim, while I found a way to get past him a lot easier, it felt a little over kill with the amount of time it takes to do attacks.

Love what you did with Wu-Tai, feel like it flows much better and it's nice that there's some post game in disc 3.

I miss the X-ATM memes. He was fun.

I've some balance stuff done for the upcoming patch (reduced enemy defence for Disc 2/3, adjusted spell power, that sort of thing); one of the changes was to drop the ignore defence flag from all weapons and set them up differently instead. I'm not sure what's meant with Jenova Death being petrified though, the petrified flag for allowed statuses aren't on there for that boss and I thought that when enemies are petrified they're counted as KO'd in any case.

Will tweak the type B air buster on mt. nibel.

The W-Item glitch I've been thinking about a lot recently. I've got the address where the item increase occurs (not checked into what to do there yet), and in the past I've just went with a 'use the glitch if you want' approach but the response to that is usually people feel like they have to use it because it's there and so accessible to use. I could maybe add it as a toggle to the IRO or something.

 

[Saberfrost]

Oh right; I think I can sort that out.

I've some balance stuff done for the upcoming patch (reduced enemy defence for Disc 2/3, adjusted spell power, that sort of thing); one of the changes was to drop the ignore defence flag from all weapons and set them up differently instead. I'm not sure what's meant with Jenova Death being petrified though, the petrified flag for allowed statuses aren't on there for that boss and I thought that when enemies are petrified they're counted as KO'd in any case.

Will tweak the type B air buster on mt. nibel.

The W-Item glitch I've been thinking about a lot recently. I've got the address where the item increase occurs (not checked into what to do there yet), and in the past I've just went with a 'use the glitch if you want' approach but the response to that is usually people feel like they have to use it because it's there and so accessible to use. I could maybe add it as a toggle to the IRO or something.

Toggle would likely be prudent seeing as people either love the glitch or hate it, both sides having good reasons as to why. I personally just like the glitch so I don't need to *FARM* out some items. Not every materia setup has Magic or Enemy Skills in it to solve status-related problems which would be where items come in. My current files Tifa here is a good example since I basically don't let her ever touch magic. If her turn comes up and I need -- for example -- a dispel the W-Item glitch helps me not need to farm the appropriate item the hard way to achieve this. But there's always Gospel Sparks and Mega Elixir spam being grossly overpowered too. Maybe consider doing something with them like you did with the Hero Drink.

Jenova Death I wasn't aware could even be petrified either. I just got to her, noticed her defense was ridiculously high and her mechanic to getting around it wasn't worth the trouble, so Comet spam with the stack of Ethers I had at the time to enable it.

As for the weapon defense-ignoring thing... Since you're going to be reducing defenses, just make Barrets Drill arm similar to Cloud's Ragnarok making him a crit-machine. His Chainsaw is supposed to be for that, I'm aware, so you could change it to be similar to Vincent's Buntline and make it have a chance to instant-KO instead. Maybe move defense ignoring to the ultimate weapons, if you want to keep the mechanic but also making it clear they are THE best weapons. I'm just spit balling ideas though, take them as you will.

 

[MrMadakey]

Sorry I got my first response wrong, I meant paralyzed not petrified.. My complete mistake.

Also I love the idea of being able to just toggle it. Give the people the best of both worlds. People like to play the way they like to play and I certainly don't wanna take this away from anybody with my personal beliefs, but if I can somehow turn it off for me personally I think that would completely change the dynamic of the way the whole second half of the game would play!

Thanks for listening to my feedback though.

 

[frampton1337]

I'm coming back to this mod after a couple years from my last run and noticed that after getting through the cave where you ran into the NPC to start leveling custom stats I didn't run into them this time. Has the custom stat thing bee removed? I really like being able to bump stats on characters to make weird builds.

Edit: NVM, i just hadnt gotten far enough in the game yet.

 

[rsmuckles]

I have a bug report and a question

Bug report: In Costa Del Sol, Aeris is hanging out on the beach

Spoiler

after she is killed by Sephiroth in the City of the Ancients.  I did not resurrect her, modify her to be alive, etc. She is no longer in my party, and she should be dead as dead can be

talking about Meteor. 

Question: Did the sale of a mastered 'All' Materia get nerfed from 1.4MM to 100k?   Just checking that this is an NT "feature"

Thanks!

 

[Thacobell]

Season's greetings all. I registered an account here to mention that the download for New Threat 1.5 vanilla combat is broken (missing?). When I visit the link, the download site says there's no fileto download. If you're wondering why I don't just use 7th heaven loader, well I'm on Linux. And I just can't get it to work, even with tutorials.

 

[Sega Chief]

Toggle would likely be prudent seeing as people either love the glitch or hate it, both sides having good reasons as to why. I personally just like the glitch so I don't need to *FARM* out some items. Not every materia setup has Magic or Enemy Skills in it to solve status-related problems which would be where items come in. My current files Tifa here is a good example since I basically don't let her ever touch magic. If her turn comes up and I need -- for example -- a dispel the W-Item glitch helps me not need to farm the appropriate item the hard way to achieve this. But there's always Gospel Sparks and Mega Elixir spam being grossly overpowered too. Maybe consider doing something with them like you did with the Hero Drink.

Jenova Death I wasn't aware could even be petrified either. I just got to her, noticed her defense was ridiculously high and her mechanic to getting around it wasn't worth the trouble, so Comet spam with the stack of Ethers I had at the time to enable it.

As for the weapon defense-ignoring thing... Since you're going to be reducing defenses, just make Barrets Drill arm similar to Cloud's Ragnarok making him a crit-machine. His Chainsaw is supposed to be for that, I'm aware, so you could change it to be similar to Vincent's Buntline and make it have a chance to instant-KO instead. Maybe move defense ignoring to the ultimate weapons, if you want to keep the mechanic but also making it clear they are THE best weapons. I'm just spit balling ideas though, take them as you will.

I'll make the defence reduction on each hit for Jenova Death (and Safer who also has it) a bit more per hit; think it's -5 currently. I'll set an ability to be used at the start that indicates how it works as well.

Sorry I got my first response wrong, I meant paralyzed not petrified.. My complete mistake.

Also I love the idea of being able to just toggle it. Give the people the best of both worlds. People like to play the way they like to play and I certainly don't wanna take this away from anybody with my personal beliefs, but if I can somehow turn it off for me personally I think that would completely change the dynamic of the way the whole second half of the game would play!

Thanks for listening to my feedback though.

Ah right, paralysis. I think if she has that status then the defences won't reduce as AI scripts won't run during it.

Will go for a toggle then on the W-Item glitch.

I have a bug report and a question

Bug report: In Costa Del Sol, Aeris is hanging out on the beach

Spoiler

after she is killed by Sephiroth in the City of the Ancients.  I did not resurrect her, modify her to be alive, etc. She is no longer in my party, and she should be dead as dead can be

talking about Meteor. 

Question: Did the sale of a mastered 'All' Materia get nerfed from 1.4MM to 100k?   Just checking that this is an NT "feature"

Thanks!

Probably a mistake with the placement flags as I set it up for characters to appear in towns, will sort that out in the upcoming patch. As for sell rates, I adjusted a bunch of them including All Materia.

Season's greetings all. I registered an account here to mention that the download for New Threat 1.5 vanilla combat is broken (missing?). When I visit the link, the download site says there's no fileto download. If you're wondering why I don't just use 7th heaven loader, well I'm on Linux. And I just can't get it to work, even with tutorials.

I've refreshed the links for the installer + IRO.


***
Update for NT 1.5; the North Crater had scripting issues and was prone to soft-locking. I've replaced 3 fields with 2.0 ones (specifically the field screens where split up and meet up happen).

 

[Saberfrost]

I'll make the defence reduction on each hit for Jenova Death (and Safer who also has it) a bit more per hit; think it's -5 currently. I'll set an ability to be used at the start that indicates how it works as well.

Ah, I just defeated him and was wondering why he was taking almost no damage. I just immediately resorted to Pandora's Box + Reflect because of it to nuke him down.

Defeated the angry marble too. So all that leaves on that file is the secret super boss, if I feel like figuring out where it is. Couldn't get Cait Siths ultimate weapon due to a bug locking the game when making the jump into the destroyed temples pit. Didn't get Master Magic (out of laziness, though) either, but it's wasn't a necessity nor was I going for 100% as I was missing a couple E.skills (also too lazy to go acquire) and some other things.

The marble just got erased from W-Summon KOTR. It felt kind of cheesy. But him randomly Doomsdaying was what made it worth it since capped magic defense and 6000+ HP minimum is required to tank it outright and I did not want to spend a couple hours exp grinding to get that without HP UP.

Summons feel good though. Their damage being based on level kept them from being grossly OP. Them ignoring defense ensured they were always a good option (barring elemental damage shenanigans) to have for damage too.

 

[Xela20]

Hi Sega Chief, hope you had a good Xmas and will have a Happy New Year.

During the winterval I've played both NT1.5 (arrange type) and NT2 (hard mode with EXP).

I loved 1.4 when I played it pre-pandemic and thanks again for keeping these update. The more I play these mods the more I am grateful for content providers such as yourself.

So Feedback;

1.5 - the Brawler league wouldn't end, I fought 12 fights and it didn't give me a prize - I left the league and abandoned the quest. That's all for issues I found - I love this mod, I hate (love) the lift fight with the three gunners, I love that W-Item is an endgame reward for a really hard boss fight, I loved the additional Diamond Fight for the Pootion those are great rewards for really really hard tasks. Other users are correct about W-item and Stardust/Peerless, they can trivialise things but (BUT) after more than 100 run-throughs on Vanilla, FF7 becomes a "Choose your own adventure" - I can choose not to use W-Item, Peerless, Stardust or Pootion if I want my run to be more of a challenge.

2 - I think my only gripe is that after I was spoiled by 1.5s endgame, 2's endgame is less developed. W-Item is very easy to collect. Hard mode was like playing the game while I was being lightly (and pleasurably) choked - I'm glad you stunted the Gil Gain for Master-All, 100k was more than enough to get me over the line but I couldn't access the freedom of resources until I'd gone to the Hatchery in the crater.

Finally - Ozma was a great fight even if the AI isn't the same. It frustrated me so hard. Where do I use the ?.?.?.? item? I can see I can use it in the Crater, I try it on every screen, even the one with the inert save points but it doesn't do anything. Is this a feature for an update?

Once again, thanks for everything.

 

[BiOMEGA]

Where do I use the ?.?.?.? item?

It's used to summon a special boss if you solve certain riddles.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT do not read if you want to solve this yourself

Spoiler

The riddles are given by the Silver Chocobo in the Glacier, and involve giving certain items to certain enemies all throughout the game - including some enemies in areas you cannot go back to, so you may need to start a new game or use a cheat editor. If you give the correct items to the correct 4 enemies, you can use the ???? item at the Northern Crater in the room with the save-point looking ?s and it will teleport you to the secret boss.

=====EVEN MORE SPOILERS=====


The enemies/items are:
Mute Mask to Death Claw (at Corel Prison)
Black Veil to Gi Specter (at Cave of the Gi)
Dazers to Dorky Face (Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim; need to cast Resist on them or given them a Vaccine first, if they get paralyzed from the Dazers it won't work)
Hero Drink to Wind Wing (Whirlwind Maze in the North Crater, after failing one of the wind puzzles)

If you've done it correctly you'll see some dialogue from the monster.

 

[Xela20]

Biomega,

Thanks for the help, got a message for all 4 but only 3 of 4 points are active.
I'm worried that the GI Spectre didnt count because I had to wind back the game progress to undo the GI Cave level up from doing Red's end quest.
I might have missed the Wind Wing though due to a save mess up, so ill try that again first but otherwise I'm stuck

-edit it was the wind wing.

I got teleported.

-edit 2. Done, after the fight black screen lock. Had to tab out... unknown exception error.

 

[BiOMEGA]

-edit 2. Done, after the fight black screen lock. Had to tab out... unknown exception error.

Oh yeah, that's always happened to me, too.

It's never bothered me because after that there's nothing to do anymore anyway... but yeah that should probably be addressed XD

 

[broons]

Hi Sega Chief,

Any plans to do a Vanilla Combat version of 2.0? I love all the big gameplay changes, and have done multiple runs over the years. But it would be nice to enjoy the the QOL, dialogue, restored content, etc., when I play the game normally (I especially like what you did with party members being visible around towns). I can use the 1.5 Vanilla, but you've made come good non-combat changes since then.

 

[levantine]

Hello, loving ff7 and new threat and i'm discovering the 2.0, is there a big difference between standard and hard mode?
I like challenge, but not the point that you earn no gil and get more exp in hard mode, is the standard mode have some challenge or it is quite easy and I should go to hard mode for having epic fight? thx for the answer.

 

[BiOMEGA]

Hello, loving ff7 and new threat and i'm discovering the 2.0, is there a big difference between standard and hard mode?
I like challenge, but not the point that you earn no gil and get more exp in hard mode, is the standard mode have some challenge or it is quite easy and I should go to hard mode for having epic fight? thx for the answer.

It's not as hard as some other hardcore mods in FF7 (like e.g. gjoerulv's hardcore mod), most of the difficulty comes from not getting any gil. But that's mostly a factor in the early game - later on when you can see the usual high-value stuff, you have more gil than you know what to do with, same as always.

The encounters are fun, but not punishingly hard by any stretch. I'm not sure how much more "epic" the hardmode fights are compared to regular (if at all), but how hard they are depends on your experience and familiarity with the game. If you know the game inside and out it won't be much of a challenge; but if you're fairly new to FF7 then there's a fight or two that might definitely test you.

 

[levantine]

thx for the answer.
I'm pretty familiar with ff7 (done many party with new threat 1.5)
I finally decided to play with the hard mod, because I want strong ennemies lol.
Haven't gils on the other hand is a few frustrated early, I feel forced to steal a lot to compensate that (but I don't morph, I hate this mechanic in ff7...)

 

[levantine]

I'm looking for the doc that list all change on limit breaks and last weapons, does anyone got this?