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

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It's Side questing time before Lunatic Pandora! I already picked up Cactuar and now I'm working on Tonberry. I did try out Fire Cavern and got ganked pretty hard by the 2nd set of enemies so i'm looking forward to doing that a little later.

Having tons of fun, but I'm admittedly a little worried about going against Adel since she's pretty rough in Vanilla FF8. Also did you make it so Odin never appears? I got him before going to Trabia and he's never appeared. I imagine you might have done this so he wont show up for the Seifer battle.
 
Adel actually hasn't been changed all that much. You should be able to survive long enough with good Spirit stats, as she mostly casts spells. She even casts Meteor less frequently than in the base game (as it was always used so often by enemies in the late-game). The main difference is that it's way more difficult to keep Rinoa alive, so have an eye on her HP and the damage she takes from Adel's Drains, and also try to steal her item if you have the time - it's something else than usual.

Odin no longer appears randomly in this mod, and is instead summoned by using the Amethysts he gave to you after defeating him. Whenever you run out of these items, you can revisit his chamber to receive a few more. Using this item, you can also skip most of the new battles inside Fire Cavern, to approach the boss more easily. As for Odin showing up for the Seifer battle, it's deactivated at the moment, so there's no possibility of getting Gilgamesh, but this will be changed in the next version coming soon.

Anyway, thanks for reporting back and letting me know how the second Edea battle went, also to calderax.

@Percival: Thank you for the comment. I like the idea of adding more extra encounters as well. At least one new battle consisting of 3 unique Adamantoises will be added soon. Interesting work on your Succession Mod by the way. I hope that someday I'll have the time to check this one out, as well as Martial Law.
 
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The bomb boss was interesting to say the least, I did have to go back in this thread to find out how to beat him and i'm glad I did, no way I would have thought to go passive on him, I was thinking it was some sort of endurance fight and I had to wait until protect/shell wore off.

Right now I'm in the mountain area near Trabia (the one you first visited as Laguna) Trying to kill the Ruby Dragon. It still does Dragon Breath even with a KO'd party member. I made it so Squall and Zell have a high tolerance against the Pain status Ailments, made Rinoa immune against Zombie and stuck Revive and Treatment on her. I do pretty well until it eventually throws out Ultima or Dragon Breath and wipes us.

Gonna see what's in store for me at the location Bahamut is in, then off to Lunatic Pandora unless i'm forgetting anything?

Also where Would I find the items for Squall's Lionheart and Zell's Ultimate weapon?

And last question reguarding Ultimecia. Do you still have to exhaust all of her dialouge before she'll actually die? Because in FF8 vanilla you could take her health down to 0 Thanks to Lionheart and AP shot, but she wouldn't die until she was done talking, or is this not an issue because of the increased difficulty?

Having A LOT of fun, do you plan on making this mod work on the PC version of the remaster? I'm planning on getting it and waiting for the background textures to get fixed by modders and if Ragnarok could also be applied I would be in Heaven.
 
The difficulty level of the Ruby Dragon at Trabia Canyon is supposed to be on par with Ultima Weapon, so quite a bit of preparation is needed, especially getting all the end-game spells that become available after returning from space (Holy, Flare, Meteor, Ultima, Full-life etc). Keeping the Zombie status has an advantage for the second phase, which will activate once the Ruby Dragon's HP fall below 50%. Zombie also reduces the damage of the Breath attack, but of course, you'll need to find a way to heal your Zombie characters.

Before going to Lunatic Pandora, make sure to visit Lunatic Pandora Laboratory near Esthar on the overworld, if you haven't already. There is a new little sidequest that will help you get some rare items.

The materials for Lionheart are similar to the original version, but Moonstones are required instead of Dragon Fangs. You can steal these most easily from Toramas that appear everywhere near Esthar after the Lunar Cry. Zell's Ehrgeiz requires 1 Phoenix Spirit (dropped from the Bomb in Fire Cavern), 4 Dragon Skins (dropped from LV40+ Anacondaurs that always appear on the mountains surrounding Dollet), 2 Inferno Fangs that can be stolen from Ruby Dragons.

Nothing has changed about Ultimecia's last words yet.

Not sure about porting the mod to the Remaster yet. We need more info on the new file structure first. But I'm positive there will be a way.
 
Hey man,

so i finished the game a few days ago (i didnt know about fire cave, lunatic pandora lab etc. so i cant give feedback on that. sounds like it could've shaved off quite a big junk of farming time though   :D) and want to give some feedback.

i really liked the overwhelming majority of the changes you made to the game. you made it more challenging and therefor, at least for me, more fun. I was never a fan of FF8 (i really despise the characters and the story) but you gave it a breath of new life and made me sink about 60 hours into your mod. so all in all very well done. a bit more in detail:

• i REALLY like the additional save points you introduced before challenging fights. especially after a long time since the last save point.
• removing the cap on draw is the single best change you did. made the game so much better.
• your spell progression and availability felt really good. the way you gated tier 1, 2 and 3 spells is nicely done. i was stoked when i got my first -ga spells and extatic when i got the first endgame spells like flare or meteor (peed my pants a little when i drew 60 ultima from ultima weapon in one draw lol)
• thank you for getting rid of the horrible limit abuse! or at least for making it risky/costly to pull off in boss fights
• odines shop for tier 2 spells feels very well executed
• most enemies seem fairly balanced
• fixed enemy levels kinda forces you to train up your characters. nice!
• im sure theres more but i cant remember. if i didnt mention it in my negative comments i propably liked it

that being said, there are a few things that i either didnt like or that (in my mind) need serious balancing.

• i didnt like the changes to the card queens quest you made. not because they made it inconvenient or anything, but because there is no official documentation about it and people (like me) might follow the card game guide, therefor wasting a lot of time doing the first steps of the quest wrong. also the swap of the zell card to later. i strongly feel these changes are unncessary. you neutered the card rewards anyways, so i dont see the point in delaying the aquisition as well.
• magic is wildly overpowered. by the end squall was my hardest hitting character with 255 strength. normal hits with him did around 7 to 11k damage depending on ele weakness, sometimes a bit more. i perma used darkside with him amping up the damage by a lot to sometimes 20 22k per hit. the most ideal scenario was a vit 0 t-rexaur with blizzaga junctioned and a darkside hit. that one hit the damage cap of 60k 2 or 3 times. ... in come selphie and rinoa with triple and meteor blasting fools away with consistent 60 to 90k PER ROUND. seriously, the second i had access to those spells i dumped zells useless ass for selphie and first tried every single encounter for the rest of the game. ultima weapon? died in minutes. ultimecias minions? attacked maybe 2 or 3 times. ultimecia herself? wasnt even close. now, it should be noted the i farmed up 2 more auto-hastes and auto-protes which helped immensly but the critique stands. magic is way too powerful.
• i didnt kill omega weapon because it seemed way too overpowered. i only did like 4 or 5 tries though so it wasnt really testing. it ended the same everytime though with vengence and megido flame back to back with no time to recover in between, even triple hasted. maybe i was doing it wrong, maybe not. i wasnt in the modd to test the fight further though.
• i dont know if you changed that already, but the krysta auto-attack sof lock was in the version i was playing. you prob. fixed that already

i want to say all in all the mod improves the game SO much. thank you for all your hard work, i enjoyed playing it. the single best thing you could do is draft a proper documentation of the changes you made.

calderax
well, thanks again!
calderax
 
Just got to Ultemecias castle when I remembered something that I wanted to let you know. When going to Get Odin and you've just pressed the blue orb thing that activate the stairs that lead up to where Odin is.  There is a forced battle against 2 Chimeras. This fight can be skipped if you activate the stairs then run to the ladder and get on it before squall says "Monsters?" If you do that then go back to the world map and save after skipping that encounter you get like 16 minutes to easily get Odin.

Not sure if you knew of that exploit or not but I wanted to let you know.
 
Fighting Krysta in Ultamecias castle and it hits me with "Autodefense" and soft locks the game. I saw that you posted a link with a fix for this bug but the link has expired.
 
@calderax: Thank you very much for the feedback.

As for the changes made to the Queen of Cards sidequest, I understand your frustration in regards to trying to get the Kiros card from the usual card player in Deling City. I thought it would be helpful to make the Queen of Cards give more information about requested and newly created cards whenever she is in Dollet, but I guess these hints are still too well hidden, so a documentation that covers moved cards, items and spells will soon follow. The reward for the Zell card is still Hyper Wrists by the way. In the case of the Kiros card, yes, Aegis Amulets are quite a downgrade from Accelerators, but for disc 1, having access to 3 Eva-J Abilities is a little too good, so I guess it's fine to leave card holders as they currently are.

Triple Meteor is still quite strong in the late-game indeed, despite Meteor being among the few spells that weren't actually buffed for the mod. I'll look for a way to balance it out by either lowering its base power, make it land less hits or adjust enemy Spirit stats accordingly.

Against Omega Weapon, it helps to reduce battle speed to the lowest or second-lowest setting, and have Speed stats of at least 60. That way, there should always be enough time to react to Omega Weapon's attacks. Other than that, Auto-Protect is very useful, as he occasionally uses an attack that removes most positive status effects. Furthermore, he isn't immune to Vit 0, but highly resistant, so casting Meltdown probably won't do it - Quistis' Ray Bomb can inflict Vit 0 as well with 100% accuracy, as long as the target isn't immune to it. If you see Omega Weapon using Gravija, that's still the sign for using the Defend command to nullify the damage of the incoming Terra Break attack. As for attacking the enemy, I would recommend having Irvine in your team and use Pulse Ammo whenever possible.


@Quinn: Having the possibility to skip the extra encounter at Centra Ruins was not intended. I had a look at it and apparently unit control wasn't entirely disabled when examining the blue orb, which allowed walking around while the textbox is still being displayed. That will be fixed soon. Good catch, thank you very much.

I rechecked the link to the Krysta fix, and didn't have any problems downloading it. Maybe just give it another go, and report back if the problem persists:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=12-ni3SZGp8h-6R3DXhsew9TbkFUWwRCy
 
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Hey @Callisto any idea if or maybe when this could be applied to the remaster?
 
It seems Field files have changed fundamentally in structure, so Deling Field editor can no longer handle them correctly. Furthermore, the .exe is also no longer present in its previous form, making a quick port to the Remastered version nearly impossible.

I guess we have to wait and see if tools will be updated to be fully compatible with the Remastered version before any of the mods will be playable again. This will probably take a while, so give it at least several more weeks.
 
No worries, I was just curious.

Only reason I prefer the remaster sadly is how easy the controller configuration is, no need for mods or button image mods and what not.

Good luck to you and whomever else is working on the remaster!
 
Is it just me or does the game no longer respect ATB on wait anymore after installing this mod?
 
@Robgatti: Thank you. I hope everything will go well, and there will eventually be mods for the Remastered version.

@nesadi: Are you fighting the Brothers? They can perform two moves in a row (Auto heal + another attack), so it can lead to the assumption that ATB settings are ignored, but it has always been that way. Furthermore, the ATB bar will go on while selecting targets regardless of having it set to Wait, which is also normal (it's on this mod's to-do list though). Some enemies also use counter-attacks, further contributing to the assumption that something might be off. It really isn't though.
 
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Hi, Callisto really love what you've done with this mod. I'll probably never go back to vanilla after this play through. I don't know if this is from the mod or not but the game has crashed on me multiple times, i'm on the Ragnarok after saving Rinoa. The game crashes randomly during the propagator fights.  squall will go to attack the enemy and the game will freeze up and I have to alt f4 to close the game. it only seems to happen AFTER  i load a save from death. I'm on windows 10 and running all the mods from the lunatic pandora's installer. Again this mod is amazing I love that you don't have to avoid fighting until end game to make leveling feel worthwhile, and the draw cap being removed should've been in the base game. Keep up the great work i'll post again if i'm able to get past this current segment.
 
Hi, Callisto really love what you've done with this mod. I'll probably never go back to vanilla after this play through. I don't know if this is from the mod or not but the game has crashed on me multiple times, i'm on the Ragnarok after saving Rinoa. The game crashes randomly during the propagator fights.  squall will go to attack the enemy and the game will freeze up and I have to alt f4 to close the game. it only seems to happen AFTER  i load a save from death. I'm on windows 10 and running all the mods from the lunatic pandora's installer. Again this mod is amazing I love that you don't have to avoid fighting until end game to make leveling feel worthwhile, and the draw cap being removed should've been in the base game. Keep up the great work i'll post again if i'm able to get past this current segment.   
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I was able to beat them and get past it, definitely only happened when i reloaded after a death tho. I was able to save in between each pair and was fine, loved what you did with those fights you actually have to pay attention to their weaknesses. Also is squall supposed to be doing over 10k dmg with darkside and having the enemy elemental weakness on his weapon? Squall is in his mid 60's levels wise. Im excited to fight bahamut. :)
 
Hey Squall93,

I re-checked Propagators with only this mod and SeeD Reborn installed, including getting Game Overs and reloading, but couldn't reproduce the issue. So it's probably something else causing this.

As for the high Darkside damage, especially when hitting an elemental weakness, I think 10k per hit is ok on the Propagators (it's around the same as what Rinoa can do with Double -aga spells at this point). Even though they are now immune to Death and Odin, I wanted to leave a few options to get rid of them quickly, since you have to fight so many of them. Most other late-game bosses will have higher Vitality and of course much more HP than the Propagators, so if you fear that Darkside will break your remaining game, it won't, since there's only one Darkside copy in this mod anyway.

Well, I hope the late-game won't disappoint. Feel free to share any further impressions :)
 
Hey Squall93,

I re-checked Propagators with only this mod and SeeD Reborn installed, including getting Game Overs and reloading, but couldn't reproduce the issue. So it's probably something else causing this.

As for the high Darkside damage, especially when hitting an elemental weakness, I think 10k per hit is ok on the Propagators (it's around the same as what Rinoa can do with Double -aga spells at this point). Even though they are now immune to Death and Odin, I wanted to leave a few options to get rid of them quickly, since you have to fight so many of them. Most other late-game bosses will have higher Vitality and of course much more HP than the Propagators, so if you fear that Darkside will break your remaining game, it won't, since there's only one Darkside copy in this mod anyway.

Well, I hope the late-game won't disappoint. Feel free to share any further impressions :)
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It's been quite good so far, I am getting similar  crashes when im fighting jumbo cacutar, My game just might be messed up on my end. It  might also  have something to do with darkside that's when it seems to crash most of the time.  I'm not sure though. I didn't die all that often in the early game. I might test dying in the early game then reloading and using darkside and see what happens.
 
Posting again sorry, How does auto potion work again? I have it on zell along with auto shell, and Med data. Is there something i'm doing wrong? my lowest level potion is hi-potion+ I never used this ability in the original so i have no experience with it.  Does the character in question have to be in critical hp for it to trigger after they've been hit?
 
Auto-Potion will trigger whenever a character receives damage when their remaining HP are at 50% or less. It will also trigger when a character is currently still above 50%, but is hit by an attack that puts their HP below 50%. This is how it works in the base game as well, but X-Potion and Elixir were removed from the pool for balancing reasons, so Hi-Potion+ combined with Med Data is the way to go if you would like to use this Ability.
 
Auto-Potion will trigger whenever a character receives damage when their remaining HP are at 50% or less. It will also trigger when a character is currently still above 50%, but is hit by an attack that puts their HP below 50%. This is how it works in the base game as well, but X-Potion and Elixir were removed from the pool for balancing reasons, so Hi-Potion+ combined with Med Data is the way to go if you would like to use this Ability.
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Yeah i figured it out, I'm enjoying the balance of the late game so far. bahamut was challenging but he wasn't stupid hard. I got lucky and was able to squeeze out two renzokukens before he killed me.
 
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