gjoerulv's hardcore mod guides? FF VII

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Congrats! Good feeling, isn't it?

What you've got left is Jenova Synthesis, Bizarro, and Safer. There's a new save point between Jenova and Bizarro so no worries about having to beat all three in one sitting; just Bizarro and Safer need to be killed consecutively. Only thing I'll spoil is that Jenova has that Dual-Drain 'arena effect' that the purple cave plant boss had so be wary about going into that fight with Active ATB on a high speed setting.

It's up to you what Bizarro fight you go for (one party, two party, or three party) but to get the one party fight you need to let Jenova have more than 13 turns and to get the three party fight you have to trigger her countdown in less than 13 turns and not let the Countdown run out (assuming the AI is the same). Using KOTR also adds HP to Bizarro and Safer so that's another thing to consider.

And take a vaccine with you. That's all I'll say.
 
http://www.twitch.tv/iceboundphoenix/c/4537847

This is my attempt at fighting Hojo with this hardcore mod. I feel like my levels are appropriate for the area. I am very salty about mystile in the video lol so I b*tch about the armor quite a bit. I feel that ribbon most certainly has its place but I sure do hate mystile. I am curious what to do really I have I believe everything at my disposal to beat Hojo and have seen all the strats used but I can't seem to replicate any of it. Is there a way to set up the person using cover in this fight to deal more than 5k damage at the least with my setup? I tired using the missing score bonus that it gets but I am not sure if that really did much.

http://www.twitch.tv/iceboundphoenix/c/4544234
I finally actually beat the guy like holy shit!! I honestly didn't follow the videos you posted sega chief it just didn't really work for me at all. I seemed to just get rick rolled every time but I went on a limb here with yuffie. I noticed she was dealing far more damage than any of my characters at this point in the game. I went with a full purple slot with w-item just in case. Yuffie saved my arse still dumbfounded that worked.
 
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Wish I'd had Command Counter.

I think first off, having your counter-attack tank equipped with a Mystile is a bad idea. If Combo misses I'm fairly sure there's no counter-attack made, and you want to be hitting him at least once per hit. Replace it with the Imperial Guard; it has 0MEvasion and the tank can't afford to miss healing. If the damage is too high, then consider the Ziedrich. The tank will also be dealing with Paralysis and Dual Drain so they have to be protected, as Paralysis will prevent them from doing their job and Dual Drain needs to be kept off them for high HP.

So here's what to do; set Cloud up like this:
Ragnarok (it has a great Vit/Spr bonus)
Imperial Guard
Ribbon

And give him this:
All the Counter Attack
Command Counter + Steal (but only if it has Mug; otherwise, use the unreliable Deathblow)
Long Range, Cover, HP Plus, etc.
If Imperial Guard: Added Effect + Destruct OR Time (Recommend Time; he needs to be active to Cover in case Stop gets through).

He'll be hitting for 1500-2000 damage for each time he gets smacked with Combo (the fourth hit of Combo can't be covered unfortunately) so that's a reliable 6000 damage + whatever the low level counters add on. The tank should Defend for the entire fight, as this reduces physical damage by 50% and stacks with all other forms of damage reduction like Sadness (it can be used during Combo to make the subsequent hits deal less too). It also has them on stand-by to use items in an emergency. You could add on Magic Counter with Comet (or healing) but slots will be too tight if you're using the Ziedrich.

So you're dealing more damage than Absorb (provided you don't attack physically and I'd recommend against it unless it's Meteorain). That means you can turtle him. Basically, you devote every turn to healing damage or statuses. It's slow, but it'll do the job as Lifeform's arsenal of attacks are fairly limited. The only problem left is MP, Stop, and Death Sentence.

You've figured it out, but Magic Breath is king for MP restoration. But if memory serves, Reflect bounces it away. I think items have to take the hit here (but watch out as Elixirs can and will be Covered by your tank unless used on him or by him) but you could maybe try applying Resist either through the spell or the Vaccine (if you have a lot of them) and then re-applying it when Absorb hits someone. That would take care of Stop and Death Sentence, and let you keep using Magic Breath for MP. If the tank doesn't require MP then that can cut down on the cost of Vaccines/Resist.

But yeah, turtle him. Only damage from counter attacks, use every turn for healing. The tank should use Defend and then sit with a turn ready to use an item if something goes wrong. Resist can prevent Stop (and Death I think), but if worst comes to worst then consider using Active ATB on full speed. It makes Death Sentence worse, but it makes Stop (and Paralysis) much less dangerous as it'll wear off after 2-3 turns (I think, depends what attacks he uses).

Dunno if you've seen this, but it's basically this strategy but don't use Comet2 at the end (made things faster but riskier):

Sorry if I've missed an important mechanic or forgot something like the way Resist or Ribbons work, it's been a while since I fought the guy.
 
I appreciate this lengthy response :) I did manage to beat him though with just turtling down the whole way through and letting yuffie lay way him to pieces. I actually watched your videos to get a good feel for the fights in this mod and did look up some general knowledge of the changes implemented by this mod as well. I had all the info there in front of me I just could not translate that into a victory for myself. I usually ran into the issues of not having the right protection on the right people but I managed to pull it out of my ass near the end. I updated my last post with the victory try I love you Yuffie!!! But again sega thank you for responding and picking my my strategy out I had quite a bit of flaws now that I look back at it.
 

It's fairly similar to what Sega was mentioning. The one biggest tip I have for this Hardcore mod is to best equip your gear for immunity/absorb/defense first, then build your offense around it. Sometimes this means you will have to equip odd pieces of armor with less materia slots or links, and accessories that don't provide any offense. If you don't do this, you'll often get caught in cycles using items and White Wind and eventually even fall behind with them, and at that point, your offense won't get any turns. I personally think this mod spams too many status effects, but the positive thing is that I came up with some very creative ways for offense that I normally wouldn't use in the vanilla game.
 
I am at the northren crater now to grind some ap and just man are the mobs there practically boss fights or what? I like the strat you used and one thing worth mentioning is that I should of used the hp break option because in this mod I get one hit koed way too damn much. I can have my tank in the back with sadness starting off with barrier/mbarrier and still die and this is before I can choose to defend. The mod has a very unforgiving nature that is for sure. Took me awhile to pull off the fight with hojo and yeah even grinding in northern crater I got have to pretty much wear the best armor and not skimp on that area for better ap gain or else. I got the weapon fights, seph, one materia cave boss, hades summon boss, and jenova don't think I missed anything. There is also the battle arena as well thats going to be fun..... heh. Also something else to not I seem to be really lacking in the physical damage department the whole way through this mod I must of did something wrong......
 
Congrats on the Hojo fight. Except there's worse to come, unfortunately.

Movers are king for AP now, they give something like 8000 each so 21000 for a group, tripled to 63000 (or something close to that). Problem is staying alive to farm them, it's risky to fight in that area especially with the Allemagne pincer formation. If you run into that and they attack physically then you'll easily lose two party members. Having Exit equipped/Smoke Bombs can help but it'll be very risky all the same.

Here's something you could try; it'd make AP farming not only safer but much, much faster:
Get two Sneak Attack Materia (preferably mastered) and have Vincent in your party. Have him equip Sneak Attack + Mug; now when a battle starts, he has an 80% chance to use Mug and the next battle animation will be skipped due to a bug caused by Vincent's Mug attack. This is where your second Sneak Attack Materia comes in. Attach your strongest summon, Bahamut ZERO or KOTR, to it. Due to the Vincent Mug glitch the lengthy animation for these spells will be skipped but the damage will be calculated as normal. For MP, Tents if the save point is on that path or Magic Breath should do the trick. For some extra speed, grab Enemy Lure and Pre-emptive from the Saucer.

By the by, for the final battles and Omega I'd recommend paying the Gelnika a visit and getting your Luck and Speed stats up to around 100+. That way you can boost them up to 250 using Luck and Speed Plus if needed. It takes up Materia slots, but the evasion, accuracy, and crits that these two stats offer make it well worth it. It'll also make fighting general monsters much smoother. There's a few methods for it, but I'd recommend putting Ice+Elemental in Yuffie's Conformer and making use of Demi2 and W-Magic (if you don't mind the counter attacks); the reason for Ice is that the Basilisk enemy added to the Poodler and Bad Rap formation is a pain in the ass that halves Gravity damage; but he's weak to Ice so the extra attack from Ice + Elemental should (hopefully) kill him. As far as statuses go, you can Confuse the Basilisk and Stop the Bad Rap/Poodlers. You could also use the Vincent Mug glitch with Sneak Attack again to skip the Demi2/3 castings.

The Battle Arena's special battle can be a pain. You want to keep your character's set-up as simple as possible with the option to apply healing/Barriers from Enemy Skill, Magic, and Items (so if either Materia or items get locked you can still protect yourself); counter-attacks all the way (maybe use Mega-All for the regular battle so that counter-attacks can sweep the enemy formations). The trick is the handicap reels; it's best to practice manipulating them to get the result you want, avoiding the 1/2 HP results; if you get too many of those you'll have trouble fighting Proud Clod at the end.

By the way, if you're going to stick with 9999 damage/HP limits then you need to be aware that Bizarro and Safer will be very tough fights. I'd recommend getting everything together first before fighting them; it'll be nothing but a headache otherwise.
 
Yeah the Hp limits make this game even further more hardcore than I could of ever imagined. The tips for ap farming I thank you very much this will definitely speed things up. Good thing I use the save anywhere mod for this hardcore mod which I just started using. I reinstalled just to get that mod option it makes things so much easier in terms of not just randomly dying and relying on a fixed save point. I did not know that about vincent at all that is going to be friggin sweet. Guess I will bump red out of my party for a bit and get vincent in there for that lovely glitch. Before I decided to progress the story to the invasion of midgar I was at the sunken gelinka and holy crap are the mobs there a pain to deal with. I tried fighting the hades summon boss but yeah he was a little too much for me to handle so I forwent even trying and got everything else and booked it out of there. I remember being source items I could acquire there so its good that those are still there for me to get. Are there any other source items I can farm from monsters or are those stats the only ones I can artificially improve? I am afraid to hear that about good ol sephy sounds like I am in a world of hurt. I really want to get more added effect materia so I can try and get away from ribbon as much as possible.
 
The Gelnika monsters all still give the sources they originally gave (Unknown 1, 2, and 3 as well as Serpent all drop the remaining types of Sources). Problem is, they're even tougher and you're only getting one each time. The other enemies that used to drop Sources from Morph, like the Heavy Tank, were changed so I think it has to be from the Gelnika now.
 
Then I will be embarking on a bloody voyage where no person has gone to where I shall grind my arse off for the sake of lawls btw you put anyone to shame that say this mod is hard when I see you have a guide with lvl 1 fights I can only just stare in astonishment.
 
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I'm sitting with the Highwind but took a break to finish an update to a mod I'm making. For the lv.1 challenge, I'm predicting that my team of ne'erdowells will meet their end at Bizarro in that run at the very latest. Otherwise it'll be one of the other bosses like Carry Armor that does me in; depends what Materia and equipment I can get my hands on.
 
Congrats  :)

I can finally share my strategy now, which I find pretty legit:
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You know I tried that, Omnislash and waited to Mime it but I had to heal after the first one because he hits hard after receiving much damage.

How did you get him to hit you for 0? Was it the high Spirit?

Congrats! Good feeling, isn't it?

What you've got left is Jenova Synthesis, Bizarro, and Safer. There's a new save point between Jenova and Bizarro so no worries about having to beat all three in one sitting; just Bizarro and Safer need to be killed consecutively. Only thing I'll spoil is that Jenova has that Dual-Drain 'arena effect' that the purple cave plant boss had so be wary about going into that fight with Active ATB on a high speed setting.

It's up to you what Bizarro fight you go for (one party, two party, or three party) but to get the one party fight you need to let Jenova have more than 13 turns and to get the three party fight you have to trigger her countdown in less than 13 turns and not let the Countdown run out (assuming the AI is the same). Using KOTR also adds HP to Bizarro and Safer so that's another thing to consider.


And take a vaccine with you. That's all I'll say.
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Thanks Sega Chief, I just got to Bizzarro and he heals pretty quickly, haven't had time to take him down but I will :P

P.S your mod looks great, hopefully we can use the graphical mods on it yes yes? :D
 
Cheers, bud. The mod should be compatible, I've seen someone playing it with high res battle backgrounds and some menu enhancements. As far as that goes, I'd only be wary of installing mods that affect battle models. If the installer for those mods overwrite the entire battle.lgp, instead of just replacing individual models, then the NT Mod will lose the extra monster models it needs to function.

I'm working on making a 7H version but I've been told by Alyza that getting the 7H Wrapper to read the scene.bin is problematic. At the very least I can get the .lgp files in 7H format to make it easier to swap in custom battle models.
 
I tried yesterday but I couldn't beat Bizarro.

I kill all his parts no problem but even when I had Highwind and Omnislash before hitting him with hard shots with the Missing Score he still was alive.

Too bad most random shots get in the yellow spot where he cannot be damaged, he uses the Bizarro energy so often.

KOTR won't work of course, I wonder...he doesn't kill me but I cannot down him yet :(
 
Not sure I understand, but I think it sounds like you've killed the parts (Left + Right Magics) but the core is still invincible? In any case, that Core has gotta go unless you get lucky with damage distribution. Is it a one-party fight? Killing the Left and Right should make the Core vulnerable to damage, letting you disable his Enegy healing. If it's two/three-party then you need to swap teams and kill the parts there too.
 
I'm working on making a 7H version but I've been told by Alyza that getting the 7H Wrapper to read the scene.bin is problematic. At the very least I can get the .lgp files in 7H format to make it easier to swap in custom battle models.
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Latest version fixes the problems with scene.bin so it should work for any files now (hopefully...)
 
Yeah, I saw that on the 7H thread; it'd be a huge step forward. If the scene.bin can be swapped out in-game it means there's no limit to how many enemy formations can be made and used; things like NewGame+ become easier to make and 'merging' battle-based mods becomes possible. Thanks for working on this tool for us.
 
Not sure I understand, but I think it sounds like you've killed the parts (Left + Right Magics) but the core is still invincible? In any case, that Core has gotta go unless you get lucky with damage distribution. Is it a one-party fight? Killing the Left and Right should make the Core vulnerable to damage, letting you disable his Enegy healing. If it's two/three-party then you need to swap teams and kill the parts there too.
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Ahhh thanks for the info Sega Chief, I was trying to kill him with just one party and whenever the option of changing to the others I refused  :-P
 
I finally decided to tackle the last remaining bosses of this game, which is Jenova, Bizarro and Safer.

Thanks to SegaChief for giving me the tip of knowing that you gotta let Jenova have a certain amount of turns before blasting it since you would rather have only one fight than many IMO.

I got to Safer and besides the Missingscore being heavy loaded, nothing else gave him damage except KOTR, I blasted him with all I could till I missed my last KOTR because he drained me of all MP. After that no physical attacks do anything to him and I could have swore I almost had him, I used Tornado on hi which gave him Recovery....genius.
 
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