[FF8PC-Steam] Ragnarok Rebalancing Mod (v1.2.3 & v1.1b)

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They are meant to be obtainable right away and provide important tools for stabilization themselves: Protect and Double. So start the battle by casting these on every character. As for the Mad Cow Special attack, you have to find a way to reduce or negate its damage. It is earth-elemental and used by Sacred every ~10th turn as long as Minotaur is alive. So you can kind of predict when it lands. If you feel like they are generelly too fast, lowering battle speed might help.

I hope this helps. Report back if necessary.
 
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Smaller update already out today:


  • Many early-game spells are now easier to draw to make the first couple of hours less of a chore
  • AP requirements for basic Junction abilties reduced from 50 to 30 AP

Click here for quick update (replace your main.fs files from lang-en).
 
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hey

i have another idea for your mod, on the end of disc 2 in the garden where you get the keycodes, how about you put bosses there insted to get the keycodes to unlock the doors in the garden at the end of disc 2, what do you think about that idea
 
The fight on top of the desert prison is very overtuned against you. Turn 1 meltdown for 900-1300 damage depending if its the char with spr-v or not. Then the robots can either take half of your hp with missle or ray bomb everyone for 1k-1.2k and apply vit0 to the whole party. If you try to set up defensivly wiht double + barrier + shell you almost always will lose a character. If they dont split their damage evenly then its insta loss. This entire fight feels more like RNG than skill. If you manage to set up or survive the inital onlaught then the captain in the back cast curaga for 3.5k heal and he will spam that. Either all of the numbers need to be reduced or their speed has to be slower or the captain needs to not have aura curaga and shell all at the same time.

Edit: Beat the fight with a perfect set of circumstances. Got protect off on Rinoa before enemy took action, captain used aura instead of meltdown first, squall displled and rinoa queued up quez. meltdown on quez and no other attacks to it. Zell gets hit with micro missle x2 to be put into crisis, spam dolphin blow to finish 1 robot off. Squall heals zell. quez goes off. Queue up brothers on zell to take a hit, heal zell to full. queue quez. robot hits brothers killing it, captain shoots squall. quez goes of a second time wihtout getting hit, second robot dies. attack captain till dead.

So for me to win that fight the enemy didnt use ray bomb, or aura more than once. They also didnt hit the GF that was at 70 hp nor did they use curaga or land any critical hits. Like I said in the initial part of the post this fight relies way to heavily on RNG. I had an attempt where i got hit with meltown followed by ray bomb x 2 before my first action went off.
 
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Thanks for your input. This is one of the battles where defeating the enemies in the right order is key - otherwise you succumb in the chaos very easily. The following strat has been very reliable in my test runs and should keep the RNG factor to a minimum:


You have to focus your attacks on the Elite Solider and kill him off quickly to avoid any more Ray-Bombs and Auras on the GIM52As. Start the battle with Slow on the Elite Soldier by either casting Slow or having it junctioned to ST-Atk, then build up your defenses. Then hit him with Double Bio until he dies (his HP aren't very high). If you got hit by a Ray-Bomb and are under Vit0, don't waste time with curing the status (but have Protect and Shell up), just kill that soldier as soon as possible. You basically won the battle if you manage to do so, as the GIM52As alone aren't much of a threat.


As for the Meltdown and Double Ray-Bomb opener, the chances for this to happen are very low. But I'll see what I can do to avoid this further.
 
So I watched that part from your latest stream and noticed a few things:

- Your GF distribution was not optimal. Brothers should be paired with Quezacotl because of their junction abilities. Quezacotl, Carbuncle and Diablos on separate characters so Mag-J is available for all characters. You can have two Spr-Junctions at this point (from Shiva and Brothers).

- You could have used the 5 Mega-Potions you found in the prison for countering Ray-Bomb.

- Your approach with beating the robots first is legit too of course, but relying on GF is too slow. Quistis could have learned Aqua Breath with the Water Crystals from the Chimeras and used this against the robots for tremendous damage.
 
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Please do not misunderstand what I was trying to convey. I am enjoying the mod, alot. But I would only consider myself slightly above the average player in terms of the mechanics of FF8 in particular. I am playing with no card refine for magic or upgrading weapons that I do not have the magazine for. Essentially I am trying to beat the game with what the "average" player would consider without cheesing an easy way to power up or being forced to farm. Its a good practice when testing and providing feedback to see ALL possible methods to defeat a boss, even if it is not the optimal way to beat it as a majority of players would not consider switching to bio to double cast burst the back row enemy while going for 100% optimal gf loadout. It is a fine balance of being beatable at a suboptimal level while still being challenging with an optimized strat. And after seeing you provide multiple different strategies I understand more your logic behind the fight. I do think it could be toned down by 5-10% and still maintain that balance of challenge. Even if you leave it as is I will come back to it eventually and play through the entire mod using a different strategy.
 
Nah, I'm totally fine with your feedback and take it as an opportunity to make improvements to the mod. Besides that, it is very interesting to get impressions from someone a bit further into the game already.

One of my goals for the mod was including boss battles that call for strategic approaches as well - battles where character stats and junctions are only secondary. And the prison boss battle is certainly one of them. I was thinking about this particular one for a really long time and wondered how far I can go here. Getting a Game Over on the first try should be totally normal and that's why the save point the floor below is now visible. But multiple fails isn't exactly what was planned either, so yeah - toning down the battle by 5-10% seems reasonable.

So for the next update, expect some smaller changes to this battle. I'm also thinking about buffing Siren by adding in Slow to her attack, which would be really useful for this battle. I know that getting a cast off can be difficult, but that's why there's things like Silver Mails, GF compatibility items, Protect and so on. Just use all that stuff that was next to useless in vanilla - that's what the mod has been made for too.
 
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v1.0.5 released

Changes to the Prison boss: Ray-Bomb and Meltdown damage is slightly reduced and GIM52As generally do less damage under Aura. I would have liked to make it so that Ray-Bomb is never used the first couple of turns, but setting it that way breaks other GIM52A encounters using current tools, so that has to do for now. You can also get an extra Mega-Potion from one on the Moombas now, if that helps.

Other changes:

  • Siren now inflicts Slow in addition to Silence, 100% hit rate unless enemy isn't immune to the respective status
  • The Return Damage ability has been improved - 1/2 instead of 1/4 of the damage are now returned to the enemy
  • Ifrit's AI has been altered, he also uses a new attack
  • Some enemy Draw lists have been updated
  • AP requirements for Elemental/Status-J abilities have been reduced
  • Some enemy item drops have been altered which helps getting a few characters' second weapons earlier
  • A few more Draw Resist values from spells have been reduced
 
Just cleared NORG. The balance definitely shifted down from the prison, nothing could 1 shot me except for an enemy with the explosion attack in the garden. the tank boss and NORG were both very fun fights and balanced to perfection for the way I fought them. So that may mean they are a bit under tuned for people who use the full power of the refining and weapon system.
 
Question...can you still farm for Rosetta Stone's from the guy in the D-District Prison on the 11th floor? Or has it been changed so you can't receive it that early in-game anymore?
 
Uprisen, it's good hear that the next couple of bosses felt just right to you. It's ok if they are a little easier for players who make full use of refining, weapons and so on. I am satisfied as long as they can't be rendered brokenly easy with cheap tricks, like simply one-shotting them with a Renzokuken. As for the Explosion attack from Death Claw, it was actually an oversight by me to leave it that strong. The attack itself is rarely used, but I see it's not fair to get a sudden Game Over because of this. Will be fixed soon.

Derek, the Rosetta Stones can still be won in the prison, but you can no longer manipulate the RNG to get one guaranteed as you need Enc-None for that which can't be learned at this point of the game. I would maybe just wait a bit and keep on playing, as there is now an easier way to get an early Rosetta Stone:


You can get one from the Cafeteria Lady's son in FH if all prerequisites have been met
 
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Derek, the Rosetta Stones can still be won in the prison, but you can no longer manipulate the RNG to get one guaranteed as you need Enc-None for that which can't be learned at this point of the game. I would maybe just wait a bit and keep on playing, as there is now an easier way to get an early Rosetta Stone:
Click to expand...
Oh excellent! Okay, Cause I saved just right before the Prison boss fight and I thought I lost my chance in getting one, good to know! Also, I was a bit more prepared and tried the prison boss fight before applying the latest patch, it's an easily manageable fight as long as you have the proper magic and junctions. :P
 
Someone informed me about the game softlocking when entering two rooms in Galbadia Garden on disc 2. I am sorry for anyone who lost game progress because of this.

Click here for Hotfix. This also reduces the power of the Explosion attack from Death Claw.
 
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Having a slight issue with the Queen of Cards questline. Once sent to Dollet she tells us the new cards she wants to win from us, but after losing the card to her she does not give a hint as to where the new card has appeared. She repeats the dialogue "With this card my father can make a new card"
 
As far as I know, the Card Queen only tells about a new card's location if you lose a specific rare card to her outside of Dollet, and doing the quest in order. If she then moves to Dollet and when being asked about her father, she will give a vague hint about where the new card is, and tells about the next card she wants. That's not optimal, but it has always been that way, so it's not a bug of the mod.

For the mod, a few alterations have been made to this quest:


Instead of the Minimog card, you need to lose the Quezacotl card to the Card Queen. This creates the Kiros card, which can then be found at Winhill Inn. Second, instead of the Sacred Card, the Card Queen now requests the Pandemona card. This will create the Irvine card, which can still be won from Flo in Fisherman's Horizon. The rest of the quest remains the same as in vanilla.


I'll try to make it so that the Card Queen gives the hints at appropriate times. Thanks for the heads-up.
 
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v.1.0.6 out

  • Some Queen of Cards text in Dollet is now rewritten, which helps keeping track of where new cards appear
  • Fixes rooms in Galbadia Garden
  • Adjustments to few enemy attacks

Quicker update here (replace your main and field files in lang-en).
 
Some more boss

Seifer in galbadia garden: Mostly a good fight. His flare was hitting for about 3000 through shell and his big physical was hitting for around 2.8k through protect. Its managable as long as you get triple off and can have 1 character focused on healing, but if he double attacks any target or if you have less than 3k hp on anyone then it gets rough.

Siefer before edea. pretty good balance here, he cant really kill you if you pay attention, and draw casting haste pretty much seals the deal for you.

Edea: This one is frustrating because she can spam maelstrom and reflects herself or spams pain or Death. You cant protect vs every status she throws out so if she manages to get the 10% stop off then it becomes a game of catch up. I only beat her because after mega phoenix quistis got a Might Guard limit that gave aura and I was able to blow her away with Duel and Renzo. I dont think any of the numbers need to be changed in these fights, but maybe reduce their action speed just a tiny amount to give a bit of breathing room.

Abadon was pretty fun and relatively easy if you have the right stat-j. Just set up double/triple and spam fireaga/ifrit/alexander and maintain. Only scary part was when he used quake 4 times in a row. woulda died if i didnt have double curaga
 
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The fight in the ester flashback just isnt fun or fair. Guard in the back insta casted death. revived ward, got hit right away, full life, boomerang sword into degenerator. shotgun crit, punch crit. The fight just isn't fair and you dont have any ability to setup if they go hard on turn 1.  I have 100 death stat-j and the death attack still got the kill. Theres also no natural save point between Abadon and the flashback so if you didnt run back you have to redo the boss and all the cut scenes again. Im positive its a fairly easy fight if they dont RNG you from the gate. But their potential to do so is really high.
 
Seifer uses Flare and additional Demon Slices only when low on HP, so you have to stabilize during the first phase in order to manage this onslaught. This is best done by having Fire magic junctioned to Elemental-Defense against his Firaga, and having Protect up against his physical attacks. Even then, the second phase (which is initiated by Seifer saying "Is that all you got? I can't be beaten!") can be rough, so you better rush him down quickly.

As for Edea, I have to recheck the conditions of her using Maelstrom. I actually wanted her to use it during the first couple of turns only.

The battles in Lunatic Pandora Laboratory are mostly about killing the enemies in the right order. That's particularly important in the encounter that has the Elastoid in it. Make sure to save your game at the Laboratory entrance. Other than that, I'd highly recommend using negative status effects on the enemies there. Gesper is vulnerable to pretty much everything, and the Cyborg can be easily slowed down.
 
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