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

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On the other side of things meteor is very powerful and since you added it to the draw point outside shumi village its easy to stock up on them. Id recommend either changing that draw point to something a bit less powerful, or increasing the price to get to it by a lot.
 
Hm, I would rather keep Meteor and increase the price. How about 20.000 Gil instead of 5.000? This seems much at first, but in this game, there's not so many things you can do with lots gil anyway. Increasing the price for this Draw Point would help a little with that issue. Good idea.

As for the missing save point between Abadon and the Lunatic Pandora Laboratory, I'm currently thinking about a solution. Placing a visible save point in a screen that normally doesn't have one, is unfortunately not an easy thing to do. Might have to look for a way to add a scripted save possibility instead.
 
I just got past Adel and the "sorceress" chain fight. Not a fan of either of them. It feels like you werent sure how to balance these fights out so you just started giving every enemy meteor. (fujin, behemoth, adel, and 2nd phase sorc all use it in this area). Maybe fights like that would feel better with more elemental attacks and less non-elemental. Aga spells, tornado quake water etc. The other big issue in the adel fight is Rinoa, she only has 10k hp and adel draws from her every turn for 4.6k (2.3k after you shell her, which is required). I would rather see adel draw 5000 flat and increase rinoas hp to 20k. with 10k i had quistis perma triple curaga, squall was on buff duty, and zell sat at low hp and spammed duel. Removing meteor and adding AGA spells along with increasing Rinoas hp would make the fight feel better while not actually making it that much easier.

The "Sorceress" chain fight on the other hand felt like triple ultima was the only way. The second type that spawn cast double and death. even with stat-d death they wiped my team in 1 turn. Im always opposed to instadeath status moves in any game. Its an RPG, i should not be forced to have stat-def death for the entire game just to avoid getting insta killed by bosses. The final phase of that fight i believe needs to be tweaked to be more difficult. 1 triple cast meteor was all it took to beat it.

So the real issue im feeling right now is that i feel that the mod has forced me into a corner where only triple casting meteor or ultima and spamming limits is worth anything. The rest of the game I felt the freedom that I expect from an RPG, but now that im at the tail end I just dont see many ways to get through without LB cheese or triple cast.

The Ultima Weapon fight was fantastic though. It was a very tight fight where I had to do everything perfect and 1 mistake would be a game over. It was fun, fast, and unless he spammed meteor ( so many enemies use meteor) I could maintain throughout the fight.

I am concerned with Ultimecia castle though, if its similar to the last 2 bosses then I dont expect that I will enjoy it very much, but I am hoping that it was just those 2 bosses that felt... for lack of a better term... lazy. Before I continue to it though im maxing the rest of my characters levels using the stat bonus abilities and gathering the ultimate weapons (which would have made the previous bosses quite a bit easier but ultimate weapons should be reserved for the final dungeon imo).

90% of this mod has been just wonderful and its had me streaming 14-20 hours every day while playing it so im really hoping the final dungeon regains the feel of the middle of the game.

lastly where is zells card? I havent been able to find anyone with it and Im fairly sure ive played everyone.
 
It feels like you werent sure how to balance these fights out so you just started giving every enemy meteor. (fujin, behemoth, adel, and 2nd phase sorc all use it in this area).
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The increased Meteor frequency in the late-game is nothing that was added for the mod. All the enemies you mentioned cast it in vanilla as well. I even tried to make the spell less prominent by removing it from Ruby Dragon, which now casts Tornado instead of Meteor. Looks like it was not enough - so I might remove it from some more enemies.

Fujin casts Meteor only once for the entire duration of the battle by the way. And only one of the 2nd phase Sorceresses can use it. They all have different moves, with only a few being able to cast Death. You can counter it with Reflect if you don't want to rely on Status-Defense. When going for protection from Status-Defense, make sure to junction Life, Holy or Full-life in addition to Death for 90-100% protection.

Casting Triple Meteor or Ultima and Limit Breaks should not be the only reliable way to inflict high damage in the end-game. Other spells, like Flare and Holy also do good damage (if the enemy's spirit stat isn't too high). As for standard weapon attacks, they are still worthwhile, depending on Strength and Elem-Atk junctions (Adel, for example, is weak to wind). Other than that, you might want to check out Darkside. It is weaker than in vanilla, but still very strong in the hands of Squall, who makes its damage multiplier x3.5 instead of x2 using the R1 attack.

The first couple of bosses in the castle should be easy, as it would be unfair to make everyone incredibly strong with the majority of seals still being active. Trauma and Red Giant require more of a strategic approach to win, while the rest should be doable with appropriate stats and junctions.


You get it along with the magazine for completing the Zell love sidequest, which can be done anytime from disc 3 start until the point of no return in Lunatic Pandora, even if you didn't see all the library scenes.
 
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v1.0.7 released

Changes:

- Enables menu save right before the Gesper/E-Soldier/Cyborg battle in Lunatic Pandora laboratory
- Meteor Draw point at Shumi Village entrance swapped with Quake, price increased to 10.000 Gil per Draw (it will be the first easy way to get some Quakes)
- Behemoth now counters with Assault Horn instead of Meteor, has a chance of casting Meteor as final attack instead of Flare, casts Flare occasionally
- Adel casts Meteor less frequently, has her Spirit stat reduced, heals less so Rinoa can survive 3 Drains unshelled
- Torama no longer casts Meteor
- Only one Sorceress Type B can cast Death now
- Raijin (1st) has increased Blind resistance
- Edea (2nd) uses Maelstrom only once at the beginning of battle
- Chocobo Basics Forest has additional treasure
- Getting back to the Ragnarok on disc 4 is now rewarded with some items (talk to Xu)
- Card Mod: The number of Jumbo Cactuar cards required for making 1 Jet Engine is reduced from 10 to 5
 
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Ill be doing Ultimecias castle on Saturday so ill post final thoughts at that point. But bravo on your fast and appropriate response to my feedback. Identify the issues I had, gave me alternatives and explained your reasoning behind, then found a middle ground to meet. A lot of mod makers will either only do what the public wants, or only does what they want and there is no discussion or compromise. I'm looking forward to see how great this mod will be after all of the small things are perfected.
 
Just a quick note on Gargantua: If you lose to him or escape from battle once he has awakened, and then return for another attempt, the game will crash when Gargantua is about to reappear. This glitch seems inherent with the PC/Steam version (maybe even PS1, haven't checked yet) and can be temporarily fixed by doing a hard reset. You probably won't lose to this boss when going in high leveled with a lot of stat bonuses gained (as you said) and take care of negative status effects, but better to mention it in advance, just in case. Hoping to find a fix for this soon.

About the recent changes to the mod, I'm totally fine with them. You pointed out some important things, especially Meteor being overused towards the end of disc 3. It was already annoying in vanilla due to its length, and the fact that it inflicts more damage now makes things only worse. So a reduction of Meteor usage seems fair enough - also spell variety-wise. If you have any more suggestions for improvement, don't hold back. I actually still have a lot of things in mind for this mod, and player feedback is always welcome, of course.
 
Just finished. The final area was easy, but only because I had auto haste + protect on everyone and triple casted meteor.
here is my boss order and any thoughts i have on them.

Sphinx -> magic
Tripoint -> resurrection
Trauma -> limit break
   Simple fight unless he uses Mega Pulse cannon in a short span, for me he used it, then punched then used again next turn. It deals 7500ish non protectable damage, if you arent over 9200 hp then a pulse cannon + punch will kill you every time.
red giant -> item
Krysta -> GF
   Too low HP. 1 triple cast meteor with 255 magic won the fight. Its damage was nice though, 1.8k counter through protect and 6.5k with ultima no shell.
Gargantua -> Draw
   The only acceptable use of the L5 death spell Kappa. Rebirth flame saved me in this fight.
cateboplas-> save
Tiamat -> ability

In general I would recommend increasing their HP by atleast 1.5x. I triple meteor spammed and they were all over before they really began.

Ultimicia. I would recommend removing greivers elemental weaknesses. Triple cast water on selphie and squall for 8-10k per cast and rinoa in angel wing with only Meteor to use made easy work of the entire fight.

I think that the triple spell should be removed entirely and replaced with something else as it trivialized the entire ending.

Overall id give the mod an FF8/10. Just a few more tweaks here and there, but the power of triple is really the only major thing left that i had issue with.
 
Alright, so I'll add the following to the to-do list:

- Reduce the impact of Haste status on ATB bar. I already feared that Auto-Haste might break the late-game to be honest.

- Reduce the Angel Wing damage multiplier to 3, or making it so that Rinoa's casts aren't limited to what she has in inventory.

- Removing Triple.. Not sure about it. Getting the spell is already more difficult than in vanilla (can't draw it from Cerberus or Odin). I guess I would prefer making it even harder to get, similarly to Aura, instead of removing it altogether.

- General adjustments to castle bosses, like giving Krysta some more HP. I think it's ok to let the final bosses have elemental weaknesses, as they have tons of HP. Auto-Haste and Meteor-spam is the bigger problem here I believe.


Trauma's Mega Pulse Cannon is rough and will likely lead to death, that's true, but that was intended and can be avoided by not killing both of the Dromas. The optimal strategy for this fight is: Killing off one Droma, outdamage Trauma's Auto-Heal until he begins draining HP from the remaining Droma (which means his HP is at 0), killing off the second Droma and then quickly give Trauma the rest before Mega Pulse Cannon gets off.

Anyway, congratulations and thank you for playing the mod until the end. Your feedback has been really helpful to make improvements for sure.
 
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Alright, so I'll add the following to the to-do list:

- Reduce the Haste speed multiplier from x2 to x1.5, also to be more in line with other entries in the series (like IX). I already feared that Auto-Haste might break the late-game to be honest.

- Reduce the Angel Wing damage multiplier to 3, or making it so that Rinoa's casts aren't limited to what she has in inventory.

- Removing Triple.. Not sure about it. Getting the spell is already more difficult than in vanilla (can't draw it from Cerberus or Odin). I guess I would prefer making it even harder to get, similarly to Aura, instead of removing it altogether.

- General adjustments to castle bosses, like giving Krysta some more HP. I think it's ok to let the final bosses have elemental weaknesses, as they have tons of HP. Auto-Haste and Meteor-spam is the bigger problem here I believe.


Trauma's Mega Pulse Cannon is rough and will likely lead to death, that's true, but that was intended and can be avoided by not killing both of the Dromas. The optimal strategy for this fight is: Killing off one Droma, outdamage Trauma's Auto-Heal until he begins draining HP from the remaining Droma (which means his HP is at 0), killing off the second Droma and then quickly give Trauma the rest before Mega Pulse Cannon gets off.

Anyway, congratulations and thank you for playing the mod until the end. Your feedback has been really helpful to make improvements for sure.
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Is there any way to possibly nerf triple by only allowing it to be used once in battle, and then break?  This way you keep it for special healing or uber damage moments
 
I guess it would be possible, but probably not without major edits to the exe and time investment. At the moment, I'm experimenting with different SpeedMod values for Haste and Slow status, and this is already takes quite some time. Interesting idea though.
 
First of all, thank you Callisto for this incredible mod I've been waiting for!

I have the next problem with the Queen of Cards quest:

After lost Quetzal's card in Balamb, she moves to Dollet. If I ask about her father, she says that he has created the Kiros card and it's somewhere in Winhill.
I've played several times with the woman of the inn-hotel (since you said the card is there), however she never uses Kiros card against me. The other man in the inn doesn't play cards. I don't know what to do.
 
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I've been itching to replay FF8 lately, and your mod was the perfect excuse to replay it again.
Just beat Gerogero and done some sidequests in Dollet.
Overall the hardest battle so far was random encounter with red galbadian soldier + 2 blue ones :)
Bosses hit hard, but then they have a lot of downtime between turns, I usually can act twice between their next action, so unless they KO someone it's pretty easy to heal back up and continue your offense.
Granaldo was a total pushover with his weakness to sleep. And Quistis even advises you to junction that to Status attack right before this fight! Easy access to Protect and Shell spells.
Gerogero and Diablos were nice fights in which things spiced up a bit, but I do have a question regarding Diablos AI

Does he not counter Demi with Stop on third party member, if the two are already Stopped, or I just got lucky? With this pattern and the lack of physical attacks he has trouble beating your party and is actually not that threatening.

Regarding Gerogero, I think more status ailments would make this fight more interesting. He berserked me once, but that's it. Blindness is not a problem because (for now, at least) magic outdamages physical attacks, and silence and slow are minor inconvenience which can be treated right away with Esuna you can draw from him. Maybe change his Esuna for something else? With him casting silence on someone it was basically him skipping turn.
I read that difficulty spike is coming soon in Centra Excavation Site, looking forward to it!
 
fab_lorenzi, the woman behind the counter in Winhill inn is one of the card players who are very stingy with playing rare cards. Last time I played her, it took me 8-9 games until she finally used the Kiros card. There's probably a variable that controls a card player's willingness to play rare cards. I would change it for this player, as she also plays so damn well. Have to investigate that. For now, I can only advise to keep trying.

goodmorninpluto, thank you for your impressions. Diablos counters Demi no matter the circumstances. The only condition is that you have to cast Demi from own stock - he won't do it when using Draw Cast. He can beat your party with his physical attack and the Pain spell that does Poison damage now, which you can't protect very well against when attempting the battle right away. Maybe you just got lucky and he used Gravija most of the time. Anyway, the Diablos battle rather serves the purpose of a Limit Break showcase than a real challenge, and the statuses from Pain only help with that. I wanted him to be beatable right away on purpose, so the player can get a third HP and Mag-J soon, which is important especially for the Centra Excavation site.

As for Gerogero, Esuna in his Draw list was kept for safety reasons, i.e. if the player boarded the train in the worst situation possible (barely any spells, no Phoenix Downs left etc), as you can't do anything to improve your characters' stats or buy items once inside. Maybe I would remove it if I managed to add in a shop there. As for Gerogero's attacks, I'm doing adjustments to bosses at the moment anyway, so expect some changes to Gerogero too.
 
fab_lorenzi, the woman behind the counter in Winhill inn is one of the card players who are very stingy with playing rare cards. Last time I played her, it took me 8-9 games until she finally used the Kiros card. There's probably a variable that controls a card player's willingness to play rare cards. I would change it for this player, as she also plays so damn well. Have to investigate that. For now, I can only advise to keep trying.
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This time it only took me three games, so thank you for your advise to keep trying. I will continue the next Queen of Card's quests (never played Triple Triad in Vanilla so this mod is the perfect excuse for me to have all cards).
 
So there is indeed a variable that controls a player's willingness to use rare cards. The holders of Doomtrain, Laguna, Quezacotl, Zell (vanilla) and Quistis (classroom players) cards have the lowest values, so these and the new Kiros card holder will be upped for v1.0.8 coming soon.
 
v1.0.8 released

Changes:

  • Several bosses have their AI changed or use new attacks:

    - Ifrit
    - Gerogero
    - Oilboyles
    - Norg
    - Edea (2nd)
    - Propagator (red)
    - Propagator (purple)
    - Krysta
    - Ultima Weapon
    - Final bosses

  • Two new smaller sidequests are now available:

    - Receive a random item after each stay at Galbadia Hotel in Deling City with equal probabilities
    - Get one or two items from Selphie during the SeeD party, depending on when you joined the Garden Festival Committee

  • A mini-boss has been added to the Winhill flashback to spice that part up a bit
  • A new and unique Shop is now available in Deling City
  • Some problematic card players use rare cards more often (Doomtrain, Laguna etc)
  • Seifer and Edea now have some spells by default as well
  • The Angel Wing damage multiplier has been reduced from 5 to 3
  • The impact of the Speed stat on the ATB bar has been slightly reduced
  • Weapon Hit rates have been increased
  • Price lists have been overhauled, many items sell better now
  • Gerogero's appearance and Gargantua chamber have been decensored
  • The reward for getting back to the Ragnarok on disc 4 has been improved
  • General Caraway no longer "magically" loses the Ifrit card the moment he gets it
 
Just updated to latest version and I am having the game stop functioning when I encounter Marlboro after Bad Breath is cast.

I never encountered one before the update so I don't know if it's related.
 
Hm, I have just fought a Malboro at the Island Closest to Heaven and couldn't reproduce the issue. Where did you fight one? It could be encounter-related.
 
Finally had some time to continue with your mod, finished disk 1 and Laguna sequence.
Battle with Esthar cyborgs was indeed tense, it came down to last character alive and deciding whether to do Limit Break or heal. Luckily, Limit Break did enough damage.
Your Deling city modifications came just in time for me to see them. I loved them! Spent like 20,000 gil right there at the hotel. Besides many useful items there, on one occasion I also received Magical Lamp.
The shop with different uprade components is a nice addition. May I suggest adding another one like this in late game for later weapons?
Also while traveling around the city I found old woman (near the sewer gates) talking about rare cards in this world. It striked me as odd when she talks about such topics but has absolutely lame deck and somehow wins all the good cards from the old man nearby, as he tells you. May I suggest adding some sidequest to this scene? I just find it so lovely.
Battle with Brothers was awesome. Got 4 game overs on them figuring out the strategy. Double + Haste, Protect and Shell seems like a must from now on.
Seifer was Seifer. Not much can be done with 1v1 battle under turn-based system. Return Damage is good here.
Edea fight ended pretty much instantly. After Carbuncle she Dispelled everyone, casted Thudaga on Squall and ended the fight while I was still setting up everyone's defenses. Apparently this is how it works in vanilla and you can't actually lose it?
The added battle at Winhill caught me off guard and got me another game over. It's nice that you can save right before it and adjust your strategy.

Can you say in the spoiler or PM what items Selphie gives to you for joining her committee? As these changes came when I was further in the game, I hope I didn't miss something important :(
 
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