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

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Loving the mod so far. Most of my experience with this game is through the vanilla version back in the day. I'm trying the Lionheart version and I just finished the Prison slog. Most of my characters are in the low 20s with Bio, Demi, Berserk, Regen, Drain, etc. Someone even has a full stack of Death because I was able to card some of those Thrust-whatever flying enemies into Abadon cards of all things! Rinoa is killin' it with her 120 Magic stat.

Only two fights have given me difficulty so far: Diabolos and the mechs/elite guards at the prison. I decided to switch to easy mode for both of these, as I don't really have the time or patience to grind or try to develop the perfect strategy with the perfect RNG. I wanted Diabolos before Deling City (when esunas become readily available) so I could get a head start on grinding its abilities. Both fights were obviously a pushover on easy mode.

I was stupidly using max speed up until Deling City. It could be why Diabolos gave me so much trouble on Lionheart mode. Once I turned it down to normal speed, the game because a lot more manageable.

The only fight I really hate so far is that prison boss. It's just plain unfair, man, especially after that slog of a dungeon. I must've tried it 6 times. I even tried using status ailments but nothing would land (combat RNG in traditional RPGs is a huge pet peeve of mine, silly Squaresoft). Plus FF8's targeting and clunky buff management are enough to make me lose interest in extreme difficulty. I saw Ayoyo's strat, but I didn't have Quistis available, nor did I want to spend time grinding Cover. I really feel that fight needs to be nerfed or relegated to an optional boss. At the very least there should only be one Elite Guard. Sure, it can still toss Aura Stones and Meltdowns, but I shouldn't have to restart just because the enemy got lucky with their first turn. I'm really curious if anyone else was able to beat that fight aside from that one player.

Aside from those two fights, the balancing has been absolutely spot on. The magic progression is great as well - you just might want to take a look at that Abadon card situation, as I feel Death is a bit too strong for the end of Disk 1. Not game-breaking in any way, but yeah.

My only major pet peeve with the overall balancing is that physical attacks feel a little weak, even with elemental attack junctions. My go-to party is absolutely going to be squall and 2 of the girls. Squall's physical attacks are passable because he gets the trigger damage and 255 percent hit, but Zell and Irvine leave much to be desired. I think Elemental Attack should be enhanced a bit - perhaps tier-1 spells grant a 60 percent elemental buff, tier 2 80 percent, and tier 3 100 percent.

I really like the pseudo-exploit at the Galbadian Hotel. It feels like cheating to spam the souvenirs, but in reality, it's not THAT broken. I was able to farm about a half dozen Mega Potions there (as well as a few extra goodies that I decided not to sell). I used two of those Mega Potions on the Edea fight (to answer her two Malestroms) and one on the missile base fight.

I've never modded something before, so I'm not sure if these can be done, but here are some QoL suggestions:

A really nice QoL change would be to have the moombas lower the barriers on all floors after rescuing Squall. I'd also recommend moving the last save point in the Prison to the next screen - it kinda sucks having to walk through two screens of encounters to replay the boss.

I think it would be cool to make the Adamantoise enemies vulnerable to Zombie so that you can counter their White Wind.

I feel that Water should be available at the end of Disk 1 - perhaps in the Sewers somewhere. By the time I had easy access to Water (e.g. the Chimaera enemies in the prison). it wasn't even worth using as a junction spell.

 I agree that Doubles should remain hard to find through the first third of the game. No complaints here. I only found a couple draw points, though I was able to mod a Grendel item to get a few more.

I'm a little hit and miss on some of the GF commands so far. The aoe damage/healing moves feel a bit too weak and should probably be stat-based. Ifrit's damage reflect ability is amazing and I used that a lot.

More later :)
 
Everything from the missile base to the mobile garden post-Fujin/Raijin feels perfect. Zero issues to speak of. This was by far the best stretch of the game so far (minus my desire to skip cutscenes, but meh). Oilboyle could probably use a slight buff, but every other fight was amazing. The Ironclad fight felt great, and the Fujin and Raijin fight might be my favorite of the whole disk so far.

I made it up to the ruins with Tonberry King, but for some reason, I didn't think I'd get a game over if I let the timer expire in the dungeon itself. I thought the player was merely punted outside. It's been a while... Needless to say, I wasn't very happy losing 30+ minutes of my life. Oh well. When I lose a lot of time I tend to let things sit for a while, so I'll probably revisit the mod in a few weeks.

The Centra ruins segment just reeks of questionable 1990s video game design, but that's not your fault. (Rant: that's one of the things that prevents FF8 from being the best game in the series - everything is either too hidden or feels too much like a chore to discover. That's why people never understood the plot, and that's why people became dependent on strategy guides. If the game was a bit more open about its lore and sidequests and had balancing on par with this mod, it would be the greatest Final Fantasy). At least you lowered the Tonberry requirement. Honestly, I think it should be even lover (like 3 or 4, since most of your players will be FF8 veterans anyway).

Tonberry King itself has far too much HP, making the fight feel like a tedious time sink. IMO, boss fights should last a few turns longer than the reapplication of protect and/or shell - this gives players the challenge of buff reapplication without wasting their time. In the case of Tonberry King, I had to reapply my buffs TWICE - I was dual casting water with all 3 party members when I wasn't healing or using Esuna after Junk. The damage seems fine, but I think he needs a solid 30k reduction in HP. It felt 3 or 4 turns too long.
 
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Hi. Just come to say one ability is extremely overpowered: that who hit everyone the damage equal as how much you walked. (sorry i just forgot the ability name!)
that alone is more powerful than any attack and any magic and hit everyone, no magic or attack hit everyone until disc 3.
and i haven't walked more in the game than the necessary to make the main quest and some sidequests.
i was hitting almost 2000hp on everyone each time on the prison. that is a bit too much, i think. how can i change the damage formula of this on the tools?
 
I finished disk 2. The balancing at the end was absolutely superb - especially the Seifer/Edea fight in particular. I do think that Seifer could've been a bit harder in his solo fight, but my main party of Squall/Selphie/Rinoa was overpowered at that phase (lv 60/47/43 with Curaga HP junctions) so they had enough HP to survive Flare without Shell. Being overpowered for that fight felt like a reward, not a design oversight.

The Seifer/Edea fight was pretty brutal in the beginning, so I had to use the Remedy+ from the dungeon to cleanse the initial slows and burst Seifer down with twincasted Flares and autocrits from Squall (one of the dragons in the lobby dropped one of those items that refined into 20 flares). Edea's mug was fantastic: a net 20 percent increase to Rinoa (and temporarily Edea's) magic brings her close to 200 overall at this stage in the game (I'll swap her junctions with Selphie when she gets in danger of capping out at 255). My main healing strategy is tossing Mega Potions with Squall with Med Data (since he has the lowest magic stat and thus deals the lowest overall damage at the moment). I've been burning most of my salary on tents to refine into Mega Potions (though I did farm some Mesmerizes to get their blades as well).

I do have a pet peeve with the status defense junctions. In my humble opinion, junctioning 100 Death to status defense should provide 100 percent immunity to Death. You can just have Death deal like 1-2k damage when it's resisted or something - that way you're not COMPLETELY cheesing it. The game's buff system is clunky enough, so having to revive people even though you made the right preparations just feels cheap to me. Also, Edea's Maelstrom slowed me 100 percent of the time even with Slow junctioned to Status Defense - I was not a happy panda and felt like I was being messed with in that fight. Still, the fight was a really nice micromanagement check - it wasn't a raw HP check like Ironclad, but it required very careful turns to maneuver. Unfortunately, the fight kind of lost its challenge once Seifer died, and her HP was surprisingly low given my toolkit at that phase. Bumping her to 50k HP with an ice cleave immediately following a third Maelstrom at the 1/3 health mark would probably make that fight feel perfect and require the player to quickly heal or rely on ice defense elemental junction (I went into that fight with Blizzaga and Firaga on my elemental defenses, with Thundaga being used as a stat junction). I don't think this is a bad thing, though, as the opening phase of the fight is insane enough. Seifer's low HP felt perfect given the challenge.

The Ruby Dragon fight was okay, and I'm glad I had all 3 party members because that fight WAS an HP check. Ruby Breath can only be juked with Protect, I believe, and once again, junctioning 100 Death to status defense seemed to fail me all too often with the Forbiddens. Meh.

Everything started going to crap for me when I got to the Salt Lake. I don't know if enemies are starting to level up with me, but the jump in difficulty is extreme. I'm fighting lefties and righties that are casting Meteor and slapping me for 2500 damage. I swapped in Zell and Irvine to try and get them some levels, but the enemies were still brutal. Each fight has become a slog. Abadon was a piece of cake, though - I used one triple and had Edea, with her 198 magic stat, hit it with about 10 or 12 Curagas while Squall healed and Selphie supported/mugged/drew my third and final stack of Quake/did damage. 80k HP felt spot on. Damage felt spot on because it was fast - one of the first fights where I really felt the need to use haste. But it's way easier than the quad lefty/righty encounter, that's for sure.

And that's where I am at the moment. I'm a little worried about what's in store for me, not gonna lie. I really hate the fact that you're stuck with Squall in the main party - gotta love FF8's design decisions, heh. Disk 3 is loaded with them. Laguna flashbacks that remove your complex GF setups, having to find the White SeeD Ship and then get PERMISSION to speak to them, wonky story events like the party exploring an entire continent on foot while Squall crosses an intercontinental bridge...the game really goes off the rails here in spectacular fashion, falling from the best game in the series down to 4th or 5th (IMO of course).

Honestly, I'm actually kind of surprised that I already have full stacks of Quake. I figured those would become available at Esthar, not before. I don't have full stacks of Tornado yet, though. I was only able to draw 100 from the Ruby Dragon. Overall, though, the spell progression feels right. I anticipate being able to get more Tornadoes/Holy during the Esthar arc and then being able to get Flare either at Lunatic Pandora or the Research dungeon. I predict that Ultima, Full-Life, and Aura won't become readily available until Disk 4.

Edit: I ended my run in the final Laguna flashback due to all the rough RNG I was getting. Death/Stop spam despite status junctions, one-shot crits...yeah. Ran out of time, too, but maybe I'll finish it at some point. Great job on the whole (the whole run felt spot-on except for the prison fight, IMO, and that last Laguna sequence).
 
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First thank you so much for the mod:
Did you add damage break over 9999 or if not do you plan to add this?

I think that this could add more depth into some characters and strategy for the Lionheart mod. :)
 
Everything started going to crap for me when I got to the Salt Lake. I don't know if enemies are starting to level up with me, but the jump in difficulty is extreme. I'm fighting lefties and righties that are casting Meteor and slapping me for 2500 damage. I swapped in Zell and Irvine to try and get them some levels, but the enemies were still brutal. Each fight has become a slog. Abadon was a piece of cake, though - I used one triple and had Edea, with her 198 magic stat, hit it with about 10 or 12 Curagas while Squall healed and Selphie supported/mugged/drew my third and final stack of Quake/did damage. 80k HP felt spot on. Damage felt spot on because it was fast - one of the first fights where I really felt the need to use haste. But it's way easier than the quad lefty/righty encounter, that's for sure.

Edit: I ended my run in the final Laguna flashback due to all the rough RNG I was getting. Death/Stop spam despite status junctions, one-shot crits...yeah. Ran out of time, too, but maybe I'll finish it at some point. Great job on the whole (the whole run felt spot-on except for the prison fight, IMO, and that last Laguna sequence).
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You hit on something I'm running into. Several of the random mobs seem overly powerful for their purpose in the game. For instance, in the sewers at the end of Disc 1, the Creeps were massive hassle to deal with given their resistances, quick ATB, and a heart attack that hits for 1,500. I just auto-escaped any battle that had them. Similar situation with the 2nd Laguna section when he goes to the Lunatic Pandora. The Esthar Soldiers and Gespers would 1-shot my guys if I was back-attacked at the start.

I don't mind increased difficulty over the original (one of the reasons I wanted to try the mod). But, it seems several of these enemies are just difficult for the sake of being difficult. Having a group of enemies get 2 or 3 full ATB cycles waiting for a GF to come out is honestly just annoying. Most of the time so far, my GF's are nearly guaranteed to be killed if there's 4 enemies on the field given the sheer number enemy attacks that are going to go off. If there's only 2 party members, it feels like a waste to even try to summon GF's as they're basically canon fodder against large groups.
 
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Hello,

this is a really great and challenging mod. But somehow the draw cap during battles isn't working for me...I've installed RaW and put the "Ragnarok_mod.txt" in "FINAL FANTASY VIII\RaW\GLOBAL\Hext"

It's the only file in that Hext directory.
Is there something I did wrong with the hext file?
 
Hello,

this is a really great and challenging mod. But somehow the draw cap during battles isn't working for me...I've installed RaW and put the "Ragnarok_mod.txt" in "FINAL FANTASY VIII\RaW\GLOBAL\Hext"

It's the only file in that Hext directory.
Is there something I did wrong with the hext file?
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This might be a silly question but are you actively hitting the draw cap or just not seeing big draw numbers? I ask because if it's early game, your characters may not have a high enough Magic stat to draw the big numbers.
 
This might be a silly question but are you actively hitting the draw cap or just not seeing big draw numbers? I ask because if it's early game, your characters may not have a high enough Magic stat to draw the big numbers.
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Ahhhh....after I was writing my answer to your question I got some thoughts about "Was RaW corectly installed?" and I installed it to a temp-folder. And viola I saw that 2 dll files were missing (bass.dll, ddraw.dll).

I reinstalled the game that often with all mods, that I completely forgot to install RaW clean (not only copying the RaW folder with the music inside).
Thanks for your answer, it helped me to find the solution  :)
 
Hello Callisto,

I am very grateful and happy for the development on this mod which i am enjoying, so i'll provide some feedback.

The following aspects are vital to FIX the Broken Vanilla Final Fantasy 8:


  • Fixed Levels - Great job!
  • Revised Magic Gained From Abilities - Great job!
  • Character Changes (to differientiate each other) - Great Job!
  • Boring Drawing / Magic Use Anxiety - Improved with the draw limit removal, but it doesn't fix the issue

I feel a little anxious about using magic when it decreases my junction stats and i believe that we all agree this is a massive issue with FF8.

I would like to strongly suggest you take Sega Chief's approach to NT8 to magic junctioning, in which a single spell would give maximum stat boost possible.

This frees up the user anxiety of using spells and opens new possibilities in combat. This would be the final piece to fix FF8 for good.

I do realise that it would envolve changing the availability of spells in the game, and you'd probably have to retest the balance. (just so that a couple of Double or Triple Spell wouldn't make character's stats overpowered).

One just needs to remove the drawing/magic use anxiety, and you have yourself here a fully functional and balanced FF8 game. It might not have some extra cutscenes or content, but it at least did what no one else could do: Fix Final Fantasy 8.

My sincere thank you for developing this mod.
 
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Ok, not sure what I did wrong.  But I'm getting an error on first run after trying to install.
"
DEMASTER ENGINE LOADED!
Reading config file demaster.ini
IMAGE_BASE at: 59F20000; OPENGL at: 0
Applying DIRECT_IO
DEMASTER::ApplyUvPatch::The addresses are wrong! We found no ADD byte ptr[esi+8] at given rel call
Applying texture patches...
Applying BATTLE_CHARA patch
Applying FIELD_ENTITY patch
BATTLE_HOOK- STARTING PATCHING
Applying battle field patch
ApplyBattleFieldPatch():ds_free is at: 5B58B2A8 and ds_teximg is at: 5B58B4A0Applying FIELD_BACKGROUND PATCH
Applying WORLD_TEXTURES PATCH
"
 
How can i change the limit's CL? which tool i must use? (i want to make limit appear when hp is higher than usual, changing from 10% of max hp to 15% of max hp, for example)
 
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Hi there just dropping by to say, my issue with Rose and Wine not playing the music seems resolve so I can replay this mod again know 1.3 is on the way but in the meanwhile I'll continue my playthrough of the Lionheart mod on video :


Play like shit against Biggs and Wedge and Elvoret using a Limit Break on Biggs before Wedge come was a mistake, wasn't expecting his Punch attack to hit for 400, otherwise a fun fight, got a little Lucky with Selphie's Limit Break toward the end getting that Flare.
 
The Mod is epic till about end of Disc 3, even with lvl 100 on all characters and all end game magic junctioned bosses such as Bahamut, Mobile 8 and Adel are extremely hard. They can kill with 1 hit, ultima by Adel kills the whole team with 9999hp.
 
Hey Callisto and forum. So I'm having a big issue with the EFIGS file on the remastered version of ffviii. I installed the Demaster folder fine about 3 weeks ago, and the changes were made to the game (spells in inventory in the beginning, double draw point, etc.) So I played through the game, not really thinking anything of why enemy magic attacks were hardly doing any damage to my characters. Lo and behold, later in the game I hit for 9999 capped damage and I finally realized I did something wrong, I forgot to install the EFIGS file. So I went back, patched the regular EFIGS.dll file with the EFIGS.ips file in the mod using the link, replaced the original file with the modded file and changed the name back to "EFIGS.dll". The game runs perfectly fine until I get into a battle. The characters ready their weapons, and then the game crashes with a message saying "an unknown exception has occurred." I can toss the backed up original EFIGS.dll file back in and the game runs normally, but without break damage limit, magic damage balanced and no draw cap. I'm wondering if anyone has a solution to this issue or can tell me what I did wrong, because I want the end part of the game to be as difficult as possible.
 
Hey Callisto and forum. So I'm having a big issue with the EFIGS file on the remastered version of ffviii. I installed the Demaster folder fine about 3 weeks ago, and the changes were made to the game (spells in inventory in the beginning, double draw point, etc.) So I played through the game, not really thinking anything of why enemy magic attacks were hardly doing any damage to my characters. Lo and behold, later in the game I hit for 9999 capped damage and I finally realized I did something wrong, I forgot to install the EFIGS file. So I went back, patched the regular EFIGS.dll file with the EFIGS.ips file in the mod using the link, replaced the original file with the modded file and changed the name back to "EFIGS.dll". The game runs perfectly fine until I get into a battle. The characters ready their weapons, and then the game crashes with a message saying "an unknown exception has occurred." I can toss the backed up original EFIGS.dll file back in and the game runs normally, but without break damage limit, magic damage balanced and no draw cap. I'm wondering if anyone has a solution to this issue or can tell me what I did wrong, because I want the end part of the game to be as difficult as possible.
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Having the same issue.

Tried both the regular and zzzDeArchive install methods. Did you manage to solve it?
 
[Spoiler warning]

I just finished Omega Weapon/ Ultimecia and damn isn't this mod the best way to re-live this masterpiece. Overall, Ragnarok surely solved a tons of existing problems with FF8 gameplay, giving a much smoother and more enjoyable experience. However, there was quite a few new issues that took place instead (please note that I'm using FF8R Lionheart mode as a benchmark, and I'm aware that it is behind on releases so some points might be overlapped and redundant). Below are my detailed reviews of each character and some problems I encountered with the mod (Lionheart mode), also a few tips for people who have not been able to best the X-atm092 in Lunatic Pandora:

- MAG users feel much more appreciated with cap removal. Selphie's LB wheels in particular feels more useful in early-mid game with less useless spells appearing (getting Flare during Elvoret fight or Ultra Cure during Edea is a god send ). With the updated status resistance though, she doesn't really do much in late game, even for farming (most of the time Rapture is a miss, and Triple Renew/ Heroes is often time more reliable than scrolling to find Fortification). In my entire playtime  I got Catastrophe maybe 2 times? And both were against regular mobs. This is why I dropped her at the end of disc 3, since the random nature of her skill is no longer rewarding enough to bring into big fights. If I ever used her, its for support duty (spamming Mega pots with x2 healing) so I'm kinda feeling a wasted potential here (maybe up the number of casts to x4-x5 and having her break dmg limit like Angelwing? Or give her the Fight/ Flight wheels with one cater to supporting and one for fighting).

- Rinoa: All the talk about her being op with Angelwing in the regular version/ previous patch suddenly became irrelevant in Lionheart mode. Every Angelo move is so underwhelming, well, except for her awakening heal, which is less reliable than Quistis' Whitewind anyway. Mages in general go back to spamming triple Meteor (with exception to Quistis and her nearly 40k hit Shockwave Pulsar at the highest crisis level), which is not what I desire personally. Changing Rinoa Angelwing spell stocks into random spells is an awesome idea, but honestly what ever good is Zombie/ Sleep during the Weapon fights? Those useless status spells unfortunately are occurring way too much for my taste, and serve as several turns wasted. Rinoa's strength multiplier (if you go the natural way she got about 130-150 str with junction at the end?) is kinda negligible, even for her final move, "Wishing star", which again, should have its strength enormously complemented by its random nature (Selphie you here?). Her awakening heal could use some additional effect too (curing Doom could be an option since it was removed from Remedy+).

- Quistis: The best mage of the 3. Damage? You have it. Support? You have it. She's just too good to pass on in hard mode, with White Wind heals through Shell, Ray-bomb inflicting Vit-0, homing missiles inflicting Sleep, micro missiles often hitting for 20k and the insane Shockwave Pulsar move. I have no complaints about her since she served her exact purpose with Blue magic, especially with increased status resistance making her not as op as it sounds.

- Onto the physical attackers: While the mod solved the problem with the game's Magic usage, physical attacks became kinda bland and feels very underpowered compared to their Mage counter-part (at least during early-mid-early late game). 2 things stand out, Darkside and Irvine. Irvine benefited immensely from the cap removal allowing him to hit for 70-80k per LB at Omega with decent luck stat and imo is the best of the 3. Darkside is an interesting option to both deal a huge amount of damage and getting to crisis level faster. For me however, I don't like having my attacker to use darkside all the time throughout the game, nor do I want uncontrollable characters with Mad Rush/ Berserk. I think a couple of spells in older FF titles could solve this problem (Drawing - casting Double Hit, Triple Hit, or some Monk's abilities with high crit rate for Zell) but it might be too much work.

- Squall: Lionheart no longer feels like an insta-kill move even at 255 str, which makes sense. His whole kit feels pretty balanced with other finisher doing cap-breaking damage.

- Zell: The over-nerfed char in my book. All of his finisher, at max strength does so little, with the reduced time to input combo makes him irrelevant throughout the WHOLE game for me. The only time I brought him into party was for completionism sake. He and Irvine alone beat Ultimecia's final form no problem, but most of the damage comes from Irvine and his Final Heaven hits for at most 14-15k. Imo with that much work to put into spamming button his finishers could use a boost. Take Squall for example, when he hits 40-50K for absolutely no work at all. I understand that in the mod previous versions/ base game, Zell is too strong for anyone's taste, but right now with his punch rush hitting for 1-2k, its really not worth using Duel, as even using GF is much better and safer in late game if you have high compatibility.

- GFs: Greatest change of all time that I ever dreamt of. Dmg cap breaking and much more useful ability like Return Damage. I appreciate that you took time to shuffle through and reassign their abilities, which make progression much more enjoyable. Having Bahamut hitting for nearly 40K is hella satisfying. Some others, like Cactuar, still needs a complete rework as hitting for 8k at level 100 is not good at all, maybe when he appears he can cast haste on all member, like Cerberus with Double-Triple. Tonberry is in the same department, unless I missed some of his mechanics?

- Bosses: Diabolos fight in particular is more punishing (as he should have been) and feels much more rewarding for overcoming the challenge (his counter Stop/ Pain move when you draw the precious Demi). I love that you can no longer miss a GF by forgetting to bring Draw, and can actually choose to live dangerously by not drawing for a deserving reward. I beat Ultima and only then found out that by not drawing Eden, he has Auto-Shell and Auto-Protect, which is a pain. Bosses in general feel much more like a threat compared to Vanilla, with additional bonus hidden bosses are much of a puzzle (e.g: Fire Caverns fights/boss), albeit with generic/re-used design.

- There are two bosses that I don't like: X-ATM (hidden boss version at Lunatic Pandora) and Omega weapon. Their pattern is easy to spot, with Omega's moves getting more complicated at the end (instantly move 2 times/ Shockwave Pulsar when near death, Terra often after Gravija). However, Omega kinda forces you to use Hero/Hero Wars/ Aura stones with Megido Flames CAN kill my chars at max health. I don't know what is the formula for this move but its kinda annoying that it can hit that hard and ignore defense, most of the time pushes me to use 2 Full-lifes only to be caught up by Terra break. I also have a feeling that Terra break, for a planned move every few turns, is kinda overtuned? I know that Zombie can mitigate the damage along with protect, but the timing is still REALLY tight for my chars at 80-90 Spd. I love that he's now a true Super Boss but a few rooms to breath wouldn't hurt (maybe lower the occurrence of Dispelga for this purpose? as it can eat through Invincible status. That or making Megido Flame the usual 9998 HP hit like the base game did). The infamous X-ATM, which in the document stated that you can only fight him the first time you entered Lunatic Pandora, suffered the same problem with an over tuned SPR stat, making your spell hits basically for nothing. There are 2 ways I used to fight this Mecha Spider, the turtle way with 1 member (with damage return for its 30K single target move) + edea on support duty + 1 phys atker spamming Atk/Darkside over and over again until it dies. OR using the friendship to summon Moomba (I dont know if its intended since the boss is supposed to be immune to gravity attacks, but I guess the item bypass this description with the effect of setting enemies HP to 1) dealing 20k each. The moomba method can also be used with other Gravity-immune bosses but I'm not a fan of spamming it. I tried to complete all the fights without Return damage or Moomba, only in this case of X-ATM since its not hard but time consuming. Not even Omega gave me this much trouble for a missable boss, so I think you should make him available to fight even at disc 4.

Some final words: While it still has some issues, this mod is exactly what I'm looking for to wind up playing FF8 the sixth time. For this, I'm incredibly grateful of the work you put in Callisto, and I wish you and your family the best in the upcoming year 2022. Maybe when everything settled down we can go back to building this mod to perfection, but in the mean time, if you ever come back to Qhimm to take a look at Ragnarok, just remember you have a big fan right here. Stay well my dude!


P/s: For other people who are having errors installing/running the mod, try downloading the older depot of FF8R (before the patch), you can find it on Qhimm discord server. The newest patch messed with both Demastered and the mod itself. While Demastered has been fixed/updated by Maki, you gotta wait for Callisto to get the mod files up-to-date, which might not be anytime soon.
 
How did you manage to pass End of Disc 3, fights with Mobile 8, Bahamut and Adel.
Any suggestions or techniques?
 
How did you manage to pass End of Disc 3, fights with Mobile 8, Bahamut and Adel.
Any suggestions or techniques?
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Hey there,

The 3 bosses you mentioned use strong MT spell (Ultima, Megaflare, Megido Flame), so the best you can do (aside from levelling) is probably slot in chars with higher SPR stats like Selphie, Quistis and Rinoa and decent health (7-8k upwards). Also, you can have Squall/Irvine (Zell has a pitiful SPR stat) - I prefer Irvine since he's fast - on idling support role. Basically give that one member that's not fighting Defend command, Med-data and keep spamming Mega Potions for 3k party-wide heal each (Defend when you feel appropriate, or to find the perfect opportunity to let the other member dies and full-life them). If you're short on gil or the mega potion stock, just apply Triple on that member and spam 3 Curagas and reapply buffs/ regen in case boss uses Dispel like Adel. Put Auto-haste on Selphie and Auto-Shell on Quistis, along with SPR 20 (30)% + HP 20 (30)%, VIT if you die too often even with Protect on (should not be the case if you are in the level range of 70-80). I'll list a few things to pay attention to for these bosses:

- Adel: She absorbs Rinoa's health ignoring Reflect and later applys Reflectga on her and Rinoa. Dispel immediately and Triple Curaga/ Regen on Rinoa (even Renew if possible). She spams high dmg MT spell at the end so maybe have your cursor remembered at Magic - Triple - Flare for your mages to race against her. Heal Rinoa every 3-4 turns and keep everyone on regen all the time.

- Bahamut: Straightforward fight, iirc there's one scripted Megaflare when he's near death, so always keep your party at a healthy level, along with defensive buffs of course. Spam Meteors or Flares to your taste.

- Mobile Type 8: The trickier one. I believe that he'll not do his Megido move during the "Support off" phase (Or On? either way its a rather predictable move), so I guess the problem is you are trying to Mug the stat ups from his drones? Or having too low health to endure that SPR ignore move. Firstly, junction all chars' ST-Def with Sleep AND Reflect, which pushes it to 100% immunity. The counter move will put your chars to sleep and mess with your plan if you are not doing this. Without ST-Defs, just be ready to throw out Remedy/Remedy+ when needed. They are also vulnerable to VIT-0, so if you have a chance, triple cast Meltdown or have Quistis use Ray Bomb. If you have too low health to survive Megido, check back again if your full-life stock is at 100 (farmable by Tool-RF Regen ring from Coeurl), and junction it to HP. If you cant do any of the above, you can utilize the Defend-idling strat to revive the others or be at Phoenix's mercy/ Random Masamune from Gilgamesh. Triple spam Meteor/ Flare with mages or junction Thunder to your Phys atker and spam Darkside.

For all of these fights make sure you junctioned elemental defenses to the teeth (maybe except for Mobile type 8) since the first 2 have the tendency to use a wide variety of elemental MT magic, like Quake/ Tornado. If you feel like it, Reflect/Auto-Reflect your chars and rely on Items for healing. That way you dont need to worry about their Flares. Also, since you had access to the Ragnarok, I assume you took advantage of the Renew (the new Aura) spells? They are readily available after Lunar Cry event using Tool-RF from mugging Behemoths (where you get the Solomon Ring) for Barriers (occasionally Thamasa Soul - which is a nice source for Triple) or refining Fury Fragments from Grendels (farmable in stack of 3 on Island closest to Hell). That spell is a game-changer (and almost crucial to beating Superboss) as it took a lot of time off casting, and the Triple only adds more benefits on top of it. The only spell you would be missing at that time is Ultima, which is not really necessary to beat these 3.

Edit: I forgot to mention that Auto-Potion is also highly valuable on squishy chars like Selphie, especially since her limit break falls off late game and most of the time you have to resort to spamming Meteors. Depending on your needs, you could sell all other potions and leave the one you desired, for my playthrough Auto Hi-Potion is sufficient, 1K HP, not too little not too much. You could rack up on X-Potion or Hi-Potion + if you'd like for this purpose. Hope this helped!
 
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Hey Callisto and forum. So I'm having a big issue with the EFIGS file on the remastered version of ffviii. I installed the Demaster folder fine about 3 weeks ago, and the changes were made to the game (spells in inventory in the beginning, double draw point, etc.) So I played through the game, not really thinking anything of why enemy magic attacks were hardly doing any damage to my characters. Lo and behold, later in the game I hit for 9999 capped damage and I finally realized I did something wrong, I forgot to install the EFIGS file. So I went back, patched the regular EFIGS.dll file with the EFIGS.ips file in the mod using the link, replaced the original file with the modded file and changed the name back to "EFIGS.dll". The game runs perfectly fine until I get into a battle. The characters ready their weapons, and then the game crashes with a message saying "an unknown exception has occurred." I can toss the backed up original EFIGS.dll file back in and the game runs normally, but without break damage limit, magic damage balanced and no draw cap. I'm wondering if anyone has a solution to this issue or can tell me what I did wrong, because I want the end part of the game to be as difficult as possible.
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Hey, I have this error too, can anyone help?
 
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