Brave New World 1.8.6 is now available!

Download Brave New World Here

(New to Brave New World? Want to know what it's all about? Check out the Readme here or our list of Frequently Asked Questions.)

I don't normally do big update announcements like this for minor releases, but the community-driven nature of this update cycle has let to version 1.8 being a lot more spread out than we're used to, and 1.8.5 had a number of very significant bugs that needed patching. I want to thank everyone for their patience in dealing with the deluge of hotfix patches for the last few months while we got everything sorted out for a proper release, and I'd like to give an extra-special thanks to Seibaby for providing several new hacks for this update and earning his "Gold" BNW donor status.

So, what's in the box for 1.8.6? Aside from the bugfixes, the major highlight is several new hacks concerning speed and/or theft. One of the biggest complaints we've had since the implementation of Think's nATB system was the significantly increased difficulty in escaping from fights. A rewriting of the ATB initialization code now allows your characters' speed to contribute much more significantly to getting first strike in battle, and a side effect of this makes running from unwanted fights much easier on average. Conversely, nATB also pushed speed to being a DPS god stat by removing the soft cap on its effectiveness, necessitating a rewrite of the speed code itself to lessen its effect at high levels and bring the slower characters a bit more up to par. Theft is addressed by allowing the speed of the "treasure hunter" to increase the odds of getting a rare steal rather than the old flat 1/8 chance as well as allowing successful theft attempts to qualify as a free action and thus give the "treasure hunter" a free turn immediately afterward.

The other major hack to make it in allows Gau to Leap anywhere he finds enemies that he can rage, thus making it far less annoying to hunt down that one last rage that just won't fucking show up on the Veldt. While this does allow Gau early access to a few key rages at certain points of the game, it's largely a QoL change that will hopefully win over a few more fans to his camp.

Finally, the addition of X-Fight to Shadow's Kagenui in the previous version proved... much more effective than I was counting on, in part by finally bringing to light the fact that the X-Fight damage penalty never stacked with the dual-wield damage penalty like it was supposed to. This turned Shadow into a one-man wrecking crew (even moreso than usual), at least for the players who were aware of the hotfix to fix the incorrect stats on the Kagenui, which otherwise had a whopping battle power of zero.

As always, I'll close with a reminder to everyone that Brave New World is now available as a reproduction cartridge courtesy of our good friends at Retro Circuits. Feel free to contact them with questions about their products or even just to chat; they're great folks and I'm glad to have the pleasure of dealing with them.

What's new in 1.8.6:

(Oh, and if liking things on Facebook is your bag, baby, then by all means go nuts.) 

Yea, new version is out!

*prays for zero gamebreaking bugs*

Finished an early Ancient Castle with vig Terra, vig Edgar, spd Relm, and stam Cyan.

************

Been banking vig Terra's ELs so that I can grab Phoenix for HP instead of Unicorn. I got away with it quite cleanly in the WoB, even when I Morphed vs Atma. Now? I can't Morph - everytime I Morph, I get a Game Over. Otherwise, with early Wing Edge x2, she ain't terrible. Not particularly great either. Damage is mostly "passable," but not exemplary. Also lacks her top-tier healing. Shines for Floating bosses, though not as much so as if she had some actual HP.

Biggest problem is that Wing Edge x2 is what Mishrak would call a "veteran" strat - kinda requires that you know which dungeons to raid for the early Wing Edges. Except the benefits from doing so aren't that great, unless you just absolutely have to have Morph vig Terra blow up the Wind Dragon when you first go through Mt. Zozo.

iow, early-WoR vig Te/Ce still kinda struggling here.

************

Otherwise, not much to say. stam Cyan did his thing, vig Edgar did his thing, spd Relm still blew stuff up. If I hadn't had so many Tinctures from Fanatics' Tower EL Grindings, I would've worried about Relm's MP - I definitely felt that Osmose nerf against Water Dragon. Oh, and Partisan wasn't too bad for Water Dragon - not great, but I guess it did its job of "Outdamage Chainsaw for early-WoR boss fights." Got unlucky on double jumps though.

************

Time to grab the last two characters. And stam Strago is along for the ride for both places. Gonna see how well he tanks that Meteo from Tiamat.

And I would go grab Merton for Ice 3 + Merton strats on Tiamat, but nooOOOooo, Tiamat just has to null Wind, doesn't he? - _ - There goes one neat use for Merton. Guess I'll wait 'til later to really try out Merton. Useless on Tiamat & Fire Dragon, and I doubt I'll need "Heal & Attack on the same turn" for the random encounters I'll fight.

Whelp, finished Cave on the Veldt.

************

I think Eye Goo Rage is bugged. Manticore is susceptible to Sleep, but everytime Gau used Eye Goo's "Slumber", it missed.

************

Only other real thing to talk about is stam Strago.

At this point in the game, the difference in magical damage that he takes is negligible. mag Strago would've taken ~60 more damage from Meteo, the strongest attack in the cave. Meanwhile, mag Strago's X-Ice2 would've done ~800 more damage against Tiamat's first form. ~800 ain't the end of the world, but it's at least a somewhat meaningful difference, unlike the difference between 360 and 420 damage. (I calculated all the stuff out). Otherwise, stam Strago was mostly just taking 230 damage from Manticore's Magnitude instead of 260, or taking 20 from sap instead of 40.

So, at this point in the game, the only benefit to stam Strago is "dodging status." Too bad he decided to NOT dodge X-Zone from Bonelord. - _ - To be fair, there's very little status in this cave. I'll need to bring him to a place where status dodging is more useful. (Not sure how useful that is compared to just grabbing a Ribbon and having extra magic power). I doubt this build is really going to matter much until the endgame though.

Finished Phoenix Cave, Cyan's Soul, White Dragon, and Brown Dragon. Probably should go finish Magimaster before Narshe & Ebot's Rock.

Ice Dragon: O, hai gaiz! I heard you liek Step Mine! Imma hit ur support chara with it! K? :3

Whelp, Orthanc of Isengard Fanatics' Tower & Ebot's Rock done. Now alls that's left is Barad-dûr in Mordor Kefka's Tower. Everyone's at level 25 - 27. Only reason I'm going to grind up at this point is to get the lvl.30 natural moves (RegenX, Bolt 3, Air Blade). Otherwise, I'd be a stubborn mule and just pound my way through Kefka's Tower underleveled.

Playthrough & KT Plans

Low Difficulty of the mid-WoR

Seeing as you're an experienced player, finding the game easy is no surprise.  Sounds like you need to try lower levels or some other constraint to give you a bit more of a challenge.  

I'm most of the way thru (a very slow play of) the WoR at level 15/5 (no WoR esper EL's yet) and equipment limited (1 for purchases, 2 for steals); I've not yet entered Fanatics Tower to get excess tinctures nor have I recruited Gau.  Pretty tough, Atma Weapon was no joke with only 1 each of Amulet and Spirit Ring. Even gave Setzer a healing shiv and left him vulnerable to muddle to best utilize status protection relics. 

In the WoR, nothing has been quite that tough, but the Ice D, Tritoch, Pug-in-a-box, Yeti sequence was a slog.  Went in with 30 or 40 Phoenix Downs and used all of them.  Still have Ebots Rock, and Earth and Water D's (I'm in the Ancient Castle, but I don't have a good squad for the fight).  Gonna finish the WoR at these levels, then go up to 20/10 in Kefka's Tower.

I agree that Blackjack is OP, btw.

Is Blackjack legit stronger than the other spins, or is it just easier to hit?

Looking at the printme, Blackjack is basically equal to Black Omen in strength (45 power Blackjack to 48 power Black Omen), with the bonus that it sets Sap and, well...costs nothing, which makes it real good already.

Where it comes out ahead of the other spins is where it pierces defense. 75 power and 100 power (for Chocobos and Solitaire, respectively) sound great, except most enemies have enough MDef to make that worse than Blackjack.

I could probably lower the power a bit if it's warranted.

20 hours ago, SuperHario said:

Seeing as you're an experienced player, finding the game easy is no surprise.  Sounds like you need to try lower levels or some other constraint to give you a bit more of a challenge. 

* bites lip *

I probably did complain too much. Still have a nagging feeling that it's not wholly because I'm a vet.

3 hours ago, BTB said:

I could probably lower the power a bit if it's warranted.

BTB, have you considered making one of the Slots a ST attack?

You have very few degrees of freedom to make different the three Slots attacks. You can perhaps get a minor difference between a defense-respecting AoE vs. a defense-ignoring AoE, and that's it. Making one ST helps differentiate them better.

A harder (to code) idea would be to gate Blackjack behind Dullahan. The animation is actually the Falcon after all. This both gives you some more freedom to differentiate the Slots and is very aesthetic. Perhaps have Chocobop as the WoB AoE, Solitaire as an ST, and Blackjack as the WoR AoE? Blackjack would still need a nerf - perhaps 36 BPow is a good starting nerf?

Just based in the name alone, Solitaire as a single target attack is logical.  Having the Slots upgrade after acquiring the Falcon would be cool, too, but just comes down to the question of if anybody wants to try to code it.

If someone does want to make the attempt, you could use the vanilla bird/dragon slot icon pre-Falcon and replace with the airship after.  Maybe use the cockatrice animation as the attack, it could be similar in power to Chocobop and could have a chance of setting muddle, with the bonus of double damage to floating enemies.  Roulette would be a fitting name as the spinning wheel reflects the muddle status.

Hey, uh, you seem to lose the Float status when transitioning from tier-1 to tier-2, but not Rerise. Dunno about Safe, Shell, or Haste. A bit of an oddity. Biggest thing is it means I couldn't open with X-Quake on that horrible tier. Oh well, got Merton strats.

Oh, by the way, Gau can Leap in the Final Battle. Hoping to get the Kefka Rage.

Finished 1.8.6.

Making Rune Edge early WoR is actually a pretty good idea. It's not like it sees much sue where it's at right now, anyhow. I'll put that in the "1.8.7" pile along with a Blackjack nerf.

An earlier Mantra is a tougher sell... I agree it would be nice to have a healer other than Celes for Zozo, but healing is really the only thing she's bringing to the table there, anyway. Frankly, I'd be more keen on swapping Mantra and Aurabolt and maybe giving Aurabolt a little boost. If needed.

1 hour ago, BTB said:

Making Rune Edge early WoR is actually a pretty good idea. It's not like it sees much sue where it's at right now, anyhow. I'll put that in the "1.8.7" pile along with a Blackjack nerf.

W00T!!

1 hour ago, BTB said:

An earlier Mantra is a tougher sell... I agree it would be nice to have a healer other than Celes for Zozo, but healing is really the only thing she's bringing to the table there, anyway. Frankly, I'd be more keen on swapping Mantra and Aurabolt and maybe giving Aurabolt a little boost. If needed.

I'm really not impressed with Celes as a healer in Zozo. Mostly because of the Dadaluma fight & Dried Meats for OoB healing. Runic is useless in that fight, NoiseBlaster takes care of the Fighters quite nicely so there's not critical need for AoE healing, and Cure isn't the best answer to Jump, Elbow Drop, or Spoon. A Conjurer Rage + Healing Shiv combo is far better suited for Dadaluma than Celes. Also, again, I'd rather spend money on a Dried Meat stockpile for OoB healing, rather than Tinctures for Celes.

If you want Celes to have something besides healing for Zozo & IMF, the things you need are Poison (Zozo) and defense-ignoring (IMF). Poison is possible via her natural magic - axe Ice 2, maybe exchange Alexander's Demi for Remedy (Alex all ready teaches Quartr). As for defense-ignoring, I say the flails: undead killing flails are hugely redundant with Flametongue & Cure 2 anyways. It'd give vig Celes some immediate use. Also, Celes would have to choose between attack power (flails) or Runic guard (swords), so it's not a straight buff, it'd be more about opening up options. Which is something vig Celes might appreciate even in the FC - unlike Terra, she's all ready got Ice/Bolt access, so this allows vig Celes to play differently from mag Celes in the WoB. (Rune Edge WoR is still great. Thank you!! ^ _ ^ )

Again, the important thing to remember is that, the more healing resources become available to the player, the less valuable Mantra becomes. After the IMF, it's competing with Go Fish, Terra, and Gau's shiny new Rages. Even Locke's & Edgar's Cure 2 puts up hard competition at this point. Also, you'd only really gain the Sealed Cave & the IAF. Aurabolt is more valuable for the former, so...one boss sequence ain't gonna make-or-break Mantra here.

Guess another option is for stam Sabin to learn Chakra earlier.

Here's the official changelog for 1.8.7 1.9.0 (coming soon eventually):

 • Added new hacks which allow stamina to influence counter-attacks and the possibility of "true knight"
   characters taking hits for healthy allies (critically-wounded characters are still always protected)

 • Fixed a bug where stamina would not protect against status ailments set by enemy "special" attacks

 • Added a hack to condense the in-battle spell menu (removes all empty spaces)

 • Fucked around with the spells that each character learns again (highlights: Relm gets Life and Stop,
   Mog picks up Haste, Celes learns Demi much earlier now, and Warp is again pushed back to the WoR)

 • The Life spell now revives to 250~500 HP instead of 1/4 maxHP; Phoenix Downs now revive to 1 HP

 • Raised Cyan's base stamina; lowered the power of the Dragon and Eclipse bushidos to compensate

 • Raised the chances for the Dragon bushido to set Stone from 50% to 66%

 • Raised the power of the Aurabolt blitz and swapped the levels at which it and Mantra are learned

 • Edited the GP Toss formula to do 50% more damage (note: edited Katanasoul's stats to compensate)

 • Lowered the power of the Blackjack and Solitaire slot spins

 • Lowered the cost of several spells, including Demi, Rasp, Dispel, and SleepX

 • Lowered the hitrate of several magical attacks to help make magic evasion more useful

 • Reworked & rebalanced swords to offer more (and better) choices for vigor-built characters

 • Swords that consume MP for critical hits now respect the "1/2 MP costs" effect of the Gem/Soul Box

 • Spears now inherently possess the "may guard allies" property instead of random counter-attacks

 • Adjusted the properties of the Wind Slash and Aero procs from the Kazekiri and Mutsunokami

 • Removed the Kagenui's speed boost and slightly adjusted the boosts on Shadow's other weapons

 • Changed Setzer's dice to boost stamina instead of magic and vise-versa for his other weapons

 • The Morning Star and Kusarigama now ignore defense instead of being anti-undead

 • The Demonsbane is now anti-undead in addition to holy-elemental

 • Raised the proc rate of anti-undead weapons from 25% to 50%

 • Fixed a bug where using items on undead characters would randomly kill them

 • Renamed the Diva Brush to Dali Brush and the Magic Brush to Monet Brush

 • Changed the animation of several weapons; also swapped the animations of the two "Blizzard" attacks

 • Corrected the Stormfang menu description

 • The BatPwr of the Soul Sabre and Omega Weapon now display correctly in the item menu

 • The Soul Sabre/Blood Sword are no longer ignored by the "Optimize" routine; the Omega Weapon now is

 • Switched the Colosseum opponents/prizes for the Masamune and Kagenui (and a few others)

 • Celes now starts with an Iron Cutlass instead of a Mythril Bolo

 • Gogo can now use Throw even if Shadow is dead

 • Interceptor now sets Sap

 • Lowered Golem's defense from 192 to 128

 • Made several changes to the Battle of Narshe

 • Made an important update to Atma Weapon's script

 • Fixed a bug in the Soul Fire script (Wrexsoul fight)

 • Enabled/disabled random encounters on a few maps for better consistency

 • Aquilas no longer have any MP as they do not use any attacks that use it

 • Phunbaba and Doom Gaze now give 10 spell points when defeated as other bosses do

 • Fixed a bug where it was not possible to run from all of the enemies in the New Mines

 • Rewrote Gau's tutorial to match how Leap now functions; also added a new line of dialogue for Gau

 • Added more screenshots, boxart with cart label, and enemy graphics to the unlockme image gallery

---

http://btb2.free.fr/mods/ff6/Readme.txt
http://btb2.free.fr/mods/ff6/Printme.xls

So after some testing on the 'Slumber missing Chimera' issue, these were the following conclusions:

1. It's not just Chimera, it also failed on Intangir.  Both Chimera and Intangir are categorized as large sprites.  I speculate slumber will miss on any large sprite enemy.

2.  It's not just Slumber, Raven's Nevermore also misses.  Nevermore is also a sleep monster special.

3.  It's not the attack animation, Molest uses the same animation as Slumber, but still hits.  Changing Slumber's attack animation didn't stop it from missing.

4.  MY ROM EDITOR FIXED THE PROBLEM.  This is an important one.  Switching Slumber from Sleep to something else, and then back to sleep, caused the problem to be fixed.  Meaning it's not a problem with the sleep effect per say, but some bizarre problem with the patches.

I tested several other status ailments by changing Slumber's effect with FF3usME; but considering point number 4 I can't say those tests mean anything about the unedited patched rom (because FF3usME fixed sleep's problem, it could have simply fixed any other unknown problems).  So we'd want to check other rages that inflict status ailments with monster specials.

Molest hits Intangir though, so Blind isn't bugged.

EDIT:  This is beyond my technical ability, but here's a thought.  

So the rom editor fixed the problem when I switched slumber from sleep and back again.

Something changed in that process; but by all rights the rom should be identical to the unedited patched rom.

Therefore, if the unedited patched rom was compared to a "fixed" rom that's been fixed by FF3usME, any memory addresses that differ between the two have a high likelihood of being related to whatever problem is causing this.

EDIT 2: Electric Boogaloo

So Think tried hex comparing the sleep and back again change, and nothing came of it.  But I realized FF3usME was remembering all the accumulated changes I had made because I never closed the rom editor during the testing process.  Which means it reapplied all the accumulated changes when I edited the freshly patched rom.  Nevertheless, something I changed allowed Slumber to put Intangir to sleep.  So here's what I remember changing last night.

1. I changed Intangir's AI to do Nothing, Nothing, Nothing on its regular turns

2. I removed all of Intangir's status resistances

3. I changed Slumber's extra effect to a lot of different status ailments to see if those missed too

4. I changed Slumber's animation to the hammer strike to see if the animation was the culprit

I think that's everything.  Something in that list allowed Slumber to hit after I returned the Extra Effect to Sleep.

Spitball for Auto-Cover Mechanics:

Current

• Only Defends Wounded Allies, which, IIRC, is allies at less than 1/8 or 1/16 their total HP. Allies you want Cured up very quickly, so auto-cover has very little time to work, or you're trying to play crazy FF5 shenanigans of having one guy tank the whole team's attacks and praying you don't get hit with a big AoE nuke.

Ideas

• Cover simply guards allies a certain fraction of the time. Yeah, it's random, but if two of your other allies are frail, odds are, your concentrating physical blows on the bulky tank who can take the hits. Perhaps if you Defend, you get better odds of guarding other allies.
• Raise the Wounded HP threshold. Same as current, maybe more usable. Not to keen on it, just throwing it out there.
• Cover allies whenever you Defend. Simple, straightforward, no randomness. Probably op - Golem & Image all ready exist alongside Safe after all. >_>

EDIT:

Discussing it with seibaby & dn with chat, adding on a little more to the idea:

• Cover randomly guards allies anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 the time, but the bodyguard always take damage as if they were in the front row.
• Cover does not work with Defend. Even if you Defend, when Covering an ally, you take damage as if you weren't Defending.
• To compensate, Image is nerfed to 1/2 chance to disperse upon being struck, not 1/3.
• Also to compensate, Golem's defense is nerfed down from an almighty 192 down to 96 or 128. (Alternatively, since the new Cover essentially is Golem, in a way, Golem could also become "Sets Safe on Party.")

Was Gau's WOR recruitment changed? If I remember right you only had to fight an encounter on the veldt with an empty spot in your party get him to show up again, but uh, he's not showing up for me.

On the surface, it just sounds like some bad luck to me.
Gau doesn't always show up when you're trying to get him on the Veldt, I wanna say once or twice I've had it happen where he didn't return to the party until about 5 to 8 battles later while Veldt grinding. (Though this was before the Leap change.)

So, just letting everyone know what's gone on in the last few days... there's been some discussion in Discord regarding covering and counter-attacking. More to the point, tying them to stamina to remedy the issue that stamina and vigor presently have very poor synergy, which is an issue for someone like Celes who has an option to raise them both with the same esper. Her "Dark Knight" build currently favors Crusader ELs straight up over Phantom, which is generally seen as the *only* useless esper that any character has.

To this end, we've proposed the following formula changes:

Counter-Attack% = 25 + (Stam/128)
Cover% (Healthy Ally) = (Stam/192)
Cover% (Near-Fatal Ally) = 100% (Unchanged)

This is meant to synergize with the defensive options that a stamina-built character will likely favor whilst also remaining attractive to offensive builds. The minimum counter-attack rate, for example, is roughly equivalent to its current value of 50%. Maxing it out is actually extremely difficult to do when you factor in the requirement for equipment that offers counter-attacks (none of which boosts stamina), so don't let that formula throw you off. And cover is a straight-up buff as it will retain all of its vanilla functionality.

was it considered to make between Cover% (Healthy Ally)  and Cover% (Near-Fatal Ally)  a gradual transition instead of a simple binary check?

e.g.: cover% = 100 - ( (100 - (Stam/192) ) * ally HP %)
so at full health he takes the full "penalty" to the cover chance, at 50% only half the penalty and at 1 HP you get 100% cover

Think mentioned that it was possible, but in the interests of not needlessly complicating things I've opted to keep it simple.

Found a small description error, Stormfang's description still states that it randomly casts Mute even though it was changed to cast Bolt awhile back.


edit: Derp, should've double checked the recent changelog before posting

That's in the 1.8.7 changelog already.

So... next order of business is the Life spell. A frequent observation I've made whilst watching streams is that players lean heavily on it even in cases where a Phoenix Down would be better due to the shorter command delay and the fact that the Life spell often doesn't restore enough HP to survive a single hit. Any kind of buff to the Life spell is very difficult because setting it to the point where surviving the next hit is a guarantee renders Life 2 essentially useless, but it should be a more attractive option than Phoenix Downs. It needs to be powerful int he early game while remaining a decent option in the late-game that is ultimately eclipsed by Life 2 and the Defibrillator.

Nowea pointed out to me that Life needn't necessarily restore a fractional amount of HP, which put me on the right path. But rather than tie it to magic power like the Defibrillator and horn in on its territory, I decided it would be most prudent if Life were to instead restore a *static* amount of HP - something that no other forms of revival do. Dn has offered to see if he can program in a static range for us to use, which we figured should be between 250 and 500 HP. This makes Life a very powerful revive when you first get it, but its usefulness will wane (although not entirely) as HP totals grow higher in the endgame.

EDIT: changelog updated

Changelog updated again

On 8/23/2017 at 0:52 PM, BTB said:

This makes Life a very powerful revive when you first get it, but its usefulness will wane (although not entirely) as HP totals grow higher in the endgame.

remain amazing throughout an LLG.

ftfy

One last thing to bring up because it hasn't really been discussed is GP Toss. After comparing numbers with the community and looking at Setzer's other builds, it was determined that GP Toss's formula needs a slight alteration to remain competitive.

CURRENT FORMULA:

GP Tossed = Stam * 10
Dmg = (GP Tossed * Lv) / (3 * (# of targets + 1))

PROPOSED FORMULA:

GP Tossed = Stam * 10
Dmg = (GP Tossed * Lv) / (2 * (# of targets + 1))

TL;DR

It's a 50% damage boost

6k GP Toss ahoy!

So, filling out the character information in our subforum gave me a really in-depth look at the characters that I haven't had in quite some time, and well... one thing leads to another, yadda yadda, I fucked with the spell list again:

http://btb2.free.fr/temp/espers.jpg

Highlights: Relm learns Life (old news) and gets a debuff with Stop, Mog now learns Haste, Celes learns Demi early enough for it to be useful, Warp is pushed back to the Fenrir (and therefore the WoR), and the new Bserk crew is Terra and the Figaro Bros.

As this pushes the update into "requires a new game" territory, that means the upcoming release will be 1.9 rather than 1.8.7. Commence with the "last update until 2.0" jokes.

Hyped up for Haste on Mog. Shame I've all ready decided on Mogoon instead of X-Mog for my next run, but oh well.

On 8/24/2017 at 9:37 AM, BTB said:

Changelog updated again

(Also updated the Printme & Readme links)

So, because I apparently just can't stop fucking with things... a casual thought popped up during routine Discord discussion involving the upcoming changes that tie stamina to cover and counter. Given these changes, I figured it would make sense to make cover the standard spear property rather than counters. All said and done, this leads to some very... interesting changes for Edgar. 

Brainstorming ways for various characters to use new Cover & Counter mechanics:

Spears getting cover pairs with Mogoon well.  Moogle charm and the +50% HP spear in the back row makes him a decent defensive asset while losing nothing on offense.  Inherent haste from Palidor makes him damn potent too.

Changelog and documentation updated with the new change.

For the Life, spell, I'd say 500 does it well. In the early game, it effectively acts as Life 2 for the start. It also saves on healing items, particularly Dried Meats which are very important early on. This is balanced by the fact that Life takes MP.

By the time they reach IMRF, it's most of a full heal, but the player will start to notice (from the perspective of a less experienced player) that it no longer fully heals (HP early on is closer to 300, so only then will they notice) and will have to follow it up with items to get by.

Later on, when health is much higher, and Life 2 is available, Life will still be a handy choice, but still leaves the opportunity to get one shotted (if your max HP is looking like 1300) by a decent attack, but not necessarily ANY attack.

Probably some holes in it, but hey.

What are HP values like for the mid-WoR? For a team taking on, say, Narshe, how much Life revives for could affect how useful Life 2 is.

I think it might make sense to give the Muffler the Cover Allies ability now, no?

Also, I played a couple patches ago and ran into a problem where I wanted to test out different builds but the respec was prohibitively expensive. I kinda felt locked out of the mod's features without heavy grinding, unless there's an encounter somewhere that rewards a ton of money and no experience that I couldn't find. Ignore this if the cost has been changed in the past couple of updates.

Super unlikely wishlist item: A version of this mod that keeps the original Woolsey translation intact (except for things like changing Gau's rage explanation) so I can finally recommend this mod as the definitive version of the game. (Not looking for a debate on this, I know it's been done to death, and I know it's a lot of work to bring back the old translation, I just really wish the option was there so I could recommend this romhack to people who haven't played through FFVI before)

Unless it has been changed in the latest update resetting your ELs cost 25K the first time and 100K afterwards. Expensive but not to the point of being completely prohibitive IMO, but how many times do you really want to respec anyway in one playthrough?

I know for a fact there are some encounters that have a high gold-to-EXP ratio, but I don't recall where to find them. Someone will probably mention it later.

1 hour ago, Reiker said:

I think it might make sense to give the Muffler the Cover Allies ability now, no?

Also, I played a couple patches ago and ran into a problem where I wanted to test out different builds but the respec was prohibitively expensive. I kinda felt locked out of the mod's features without heavy grinding, unless there's an encounter somewhere that rewards a ton of money and no experience that I couldn't find. Ignore this if the cost has been changed in the past couple of updates.

Super unlikely wishlist item: A version of this mod that keeps the original Woolsey translation intact (except for things like changing Gau's rage explanation) so I can finally recommend this mod as the definitive version of the game. (Not looking for a debate on this, I know it's been done to death, and I know it's a lot of work to bring back the old translation, I just really wish the option was there so I could recommend this romhack to people who haven't played through FFVI before)

There's a forest north of Jidoor with a Mover x3 encounter. This encounter gives a LOT of GP, for relatively little (maybe no?) EXP and EP. Grind that if you wish to respec many times.

That said, I wouldn't try to play every build in one playthrough. It's not just the cost & time spent grinding. You'll also miss out on how different builds plays the WoB, early-WoR, or different WoR dungeons.

3 hours ago, Reiker said:

I think it might make sense to give the Muffler the Cover Allies ability now, no?

This was discussed and decided against.

Also, I have made an open offer to share the source dialogue with anyone who desires to re-translate BNW back to the Woolsey version.

Is there any other piece of Umaro-equip that could maybe get the Cover Allies ability tacked on to it? I've always liked Umaro as a character, but I've never really utilized him as a party member in this game for obvious reasons. I'd love to try to go the Big Dumb Bodyguard route in my 1.9 playthrough, but I still don't think it's going to be worth it due to having to sacrifice a relic slot for the Knight Cape. The problem is that Umaro is just so one-dimensional he has to be quite powerful to even begin to compete against all the other playable characters for one of those 12 party slots.

What was specifically decided against was giving Umaro any kind of inherent cover, as that would pigeon-hole his equipment setup due to his incredibly high stamina. Without it inherent, deciding to tank and spank with him is a choice that you have to specifically gear out for (and sacrifice the Rage Belt to do).

Yeah, I guess my point was that Umaro isn't nearly powerful enough to somehow become overpowered with inherent cover + the Rage Belt. I'll experiment with him a bit in 1.9 but I'd like to see him become an actual viable choice, since even in the final dungeon some characters have to sit behind on the airship (and Umaro is usually the #1 contender for bench warmer).

The cover changes seemed like a brilliant way to do this (single player RPGs always fail when trying to designate a "tank class" character) but if you have to sacrifice a powerful item on an already iffy character...

Rage Belt having auto-counter was considered. That would mean Umaro's set-up is Rage Belt + Knight Cape, nothing else. (Except for rare Blizzard Orb strats). Sounds powerful, but I'd rather test out how Umaro utilizes the cover/counter changes.

So, even though I've complained a few times about the mg.eva stat in this hack, I've never actually sat down and crunched the numbers for various builds. I have corrected that. I have run true evade numbers on mg.eva (and, why not, def, mg.def, and eva) for "all" builds, assuming 120% spell accuracy as the standard. (Most spells are either 120% or never miss. I did include true evade numbers for 100% and 80%).

https://pastebin.com/ZEiCGDzP

Highlights:

• Even a 0% mg.eva character still has a 30% chance to dodge Meteo. Lol.
• A lot of builds don't have a lot of true mg.eva (if any!) despite what the in-game numbers might say.
• 22 mg.eva is required to gain even 1% true magic evade for most spells (120%).
• Because of the above, Edgar, Cyan, setzer, and Umaro have 0% true evade, except in certain circumstances / set-ups.
• Most high mg.eva set-ups include Force gear or Hides. These builds, obviously, have little need of mg.eva.
• Only Locke, Shadow, & Relm can actually get respectable true mg.eva without also boosting their mg.def to ridiculous levels.
• Dropping the "standard" spell accuracy from 120% down to 100% seems to mostly boost low/medium mg.eva set-ups.

So I skipped Shadow for Sabin's scenario to see how much harder it is, and just got my 2nd ghost.
...I see what you did there.

By the way, this has been bugging me for awhile since vanilla. WHERE are these guys' faces?! When I was a nearsighted kid I thought the purple dot was their nose and the gold chain was a creepy smile, which made them look like weird smiling blobs that took Human damage for some reason.

I always thought those white dots were their eyes, with them having some kinda facial mask that covers the nose and mouth area. The red thingy being a jewel or something similar. If you squint slightly, it look slike they have only one eye with a red iris.

Also, inb4 anyone mentions mistaking Gogo's eye-slit for a mouth.

So I guess the brown part is their face? I'm still gonna just see them as smiling purple blobs.
Also a big WUT at Gau's Leap not ending battle any more and him returning immediately. Super useful, but I just stood there like a lox waiting for the fight to end lol. And omg the exchange at Crescent Mountain

The inn guy at Nikeah worries me with his "clean" beds...

Went up against Fidor x1/Trooper x1 in the Narshe battle. Trooper used HasteX and Fidor countered him. Was that intended? o.o;

1 hour ago, TimeSpaceMage said:

So I guess the brown part is their face? I'm still gonna just see them as smiling purple blobs.
Also a big WUT at Gau's Leap not ending battle any more and him returning immediately. Super useful, but I just stood there like a lox waiting for the fight to end lol. And omg the exchange at Crescent Mountain

The inn guy at Nikeah worries me with his "clean" beds...

Went up against Fidor x1/Trooper x1 in the Narshe battle. Trooper used HasteX and Fidor countered him. Was that intended? o.o;

'eh, it's a thing.

"The Empire's Imperial system is flawed. Up here, we use metric."
...that's pretty fucking funny.

Suggestion:

Give Terra float when she goes into Esper form.  It's part of the lore that she can fly when an esper.   Balance wise, it seems like a minor buff.

While you're at it, have it heal Imp too :v

Really appreciating the save point right before Dadaluma. That part was a bitch without save states.
Oh, Mystery Egg has Merit Award's effect? ...and nothing has the Heavy Gear bit set. Thanks for the troll guyz.

Yeah, you can't figure out what it does by looking it up in FF3USME anymore.

...Well played, good sir. Wow, that's really hard-coded.
OTOH, I didn't know the editor pulled up every byte in the item table until now.

Oh, almost forgot. Shadow missed himself with a Smoke Bomb while blinded. How do you even miss a smoke bomb?

-The new Bank and Esper Equip Bonus systems are really fun!
-Really like the new line where Locke now tries to help Danchou relax. I took Cyan this time and really like the way he talks too.
-Okay after warning Danchou, I swear my character just skidded to the left a tile.
-Atma Weapon was "defeated by a phantom who was able to dispel its power"? Is that a hint to cast Dispel on it? >.>
-Wasn't expecting the healing lady in Vector to have new dialogue. Kinda FF5 Spoof-y, but nice. Also the inn o.O;;
-Huh, so that's where Vicks went. Wonder where Wedge is?
-Wait, how does Terra "remember it all" when she was just a baby? (Well okay, she left when she was 2. That's more reasonable for remembering how her parents met.)
-When Arvis mentions the new equipment in Narshe, he says they intercepted a shipment "bound from Albrook". You must mean "bound for Albrook."
-Lol @ Terra quoting Derpy :v
-Found some totally sweet ninja stuff. (I've always wanted to say that.)
-So after the Battle on the Bridge, is there a way you could change the espers flying out to ones the player couldn't have? I always thought it was weird seeing a second Shiva and Zoneseek.
-I like the line where Gestahl admits to being weary and asks for a break.
-Cyan: "We will wait here and watch for signs that mark the extraordinary."
Edgar: "...does he ALWAYS talk like this?"
Sabin: "Yeah, pretty much."

@Franklin_WI were you running 1.8.5 or 1.8.6? I ask because one of the changes in 1.8.6 should have made running quite a bit easier.

"Oh, almost forgot. Shadow missed himself with a Smoke Bomb while blinded. How do you even miss a smoke bomb?"

Well, if you're already blind yourself, it's difficult to capitalize on a a maneuver that blinds your opponents.

"Really like the new line where Locke now tries to help Danchou relax. I took Cyan this time and really like the way he talks too."

Credit to @Bishop for re-doing all of Cyan's lines.

"Atma Weapon was "defeated by a phantom who was able to dispel its power"? Is that a hint to cast Dispel on it? >.>"

"-Wasn't expecting the healing lady in Vector to have new dialogue. Kinda FF5 Spoof-y, but nice. Also the inn o.O;;"

That line is me venting some frustration at people who pronounce names from this game wrong.

"-Huh, so that's where Vicks went. Wonder where Wedge is?"

Same place he always was? >.>

"-Wait, how does Terra "remember it all" when she was just a baby? (Well okay, she left when she was 2. That's more reasonable for remembering how her parents met.)"

Shush. You're not supposed to notice the plot hole.

"-When Arvis mentions the new equipment in Narshe, he says they intercepted a shipment "bound from Albrook". You must mean "bound for Albrook.""

No, I mean bound *from* Albrook to the front lines where the Empire's soldiers are fighting. There's little sense in shipping equipment to and from the same continent when there's only one port town on it >.>

"-Lol @ Terra quoting Derpy :v"

So few people notice that one

"-So after the Battle on the Bridge, is there a way you could change the espers flying out to ones the player couldn't have? I always thought it was weird seeing a second Shiva and Zoneseek."

It's always bugged me, too, but the game's graphics code is a fucking nightmare.

"-I like the line where Gestahl admits to being weary and asks for a break."

I did this to make it more obvious that breaking is the "correct" choice.

9 hours ago, BTB said:

@Franklin_WI were you running 1.8.5 or 1.8.6? I ask because one of the changes in 1.8.6 should have made running quite a bit easier.

1.8.6, I'm pretty sure. I just looked at the first post in this thread to compare the changelog to my experience, and since Gau could leap in non-Veldt areas and Locke got free turns after stealing, I think it had to have been 1.8.6. I can't say what 1.8.5 was like for comparison, but trying to run often took so long that it resulted in more damage to my party than standing my ground.

Well, the difficulty running thing is a side effect of nATB and allowing speed to affect your starting ATB did help alleviate that problem from the tests I've seen... your complaint is noted.

Similarly, boss HP is an ongoing thing that we look into and tweak as necessary based on player feedback.

Finally, I have a standing offer to anyone interested in actually doing a more "vanilla" script where i will gladly provide the source dialogue for them to work with. I've had a few bites so far, but no serious takers.

Might I invite you to vote in the MVP thread if you haven't already?

On 9/8/2017 at 5:59 PM, BTB said:

"-Huh, so that's where Vicks went. Wonder where Wedge is?"

Same place he always was? >.>

Uh... huh. Guess I'll keep looking then.

"-When Arvis mentions the new equipment in Narshe, he says they intercepted a shipment "bound from Albrook". You must mean "bound for Albrook.""

No, I mean bound *from* Albrook to the front lines where the Empire's soldiers are fighting. There's little sense in shipping equipment to and from the same continent when there's only one port town on it >.>

"Bound from" just sounds really awkward. I figured they were resupplying the Weapon shop there, but that does make more sense.

"-So after the Battle on the Bridge, is there a way you could change the espers flying out to ones the player couldn't have? I always thought it was weird seeing a second Shiva and Zoneseek."

It's always bugged me, too, but the game's graphics code is a fucking nightmare.

I figured there's a good chance they hard-coded the IDs of which espers to use, on account of how the hell would they do those scenes without doing that? Intuition tells me it would load the ID, then load the gfx into memory, then use scripting to describe its movement.

 

Not sure where to post this, didn't want to crap up the character specific threads.

On the Sabin thread you have Mantra listed as level 15 and Aura Bolt as level 20. In my current 1.8.6 playthrough I received Aura Bolt at 15. I'm not sure if this is a bug with the game, or you just messed up on the character guide.

In 1.9, Mantra and Aurabolt will be swapped.

Btw, for all it's worth Wikipedia spells poutine with an "e".

EDIT: 69 replies... aww, yeah.

A couple fights where I thought I should have been able to Leap with Gau but wasn't able to:

2 Jinn + Antares battle (Cave to the Sealed Gate). I was able to get the Jinn rage by Leaping in the Jinn + Zombone battle, however.

Ninja scripted fight (Cave to the Sealed Gate). I can kinda understand this one since it's not a random battle, but I thought I was being smart by getting the Ninja rage before the Floating Continent. Feels like it should be a neat little bonus for taking Gau here, and it's not that long before you can get the rage naturally, anyways.

As a rule of thumb, if a formation includes a non-rageable enemy (Antares) it's not leapable. There are some formations that are only leapable enemies that can't be leaped. With leap anywhere it might be worth making those formations leapable...

I don't think any scripted fight can be leaped in.

Btw, if Kefka burned Thamasa then how come all of the buildings are fine? :v

https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/thread-3532-post-34975.html#pid34975

Possible 1.8.6 bug:

When you attack with the Switchblade and it procs Steal, you can attack again immediately as if you used the Steal skill w/ Locke.

That's intentional.

Since I haven't posted it in awhile, the changelog has been updated.

On 9/18/2017 at 6:27 AM, BTB said:

https://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/thread-3532-post-34975.html#pid34975

 

Oh yeah, I saw that! I meant to link that awhile back.

Btw off topic, but since ya'll love challenging games: there's a sale on the 3DS e-shop until the 30th. One of them 50% off (to $10) is Yumi's Odd Odyssey, aka as the Umihara Kawase series. It's a wire platformer that's easy to learn and tough to master; very popular for TAS runs. Figured you guys might be interested.

There were a couple of weird glitches sadly I wasn't able to get a video or screenshot

1) Atma Weapon used Gravity Bomb, but the attack was named as Discord

2) In the battle against Tentacles, one of them tried to use Discard with no-one grabbed, then it used Meteor and then the remnant tentacles used two attacks this turn... I had to use Seraph to avoid this glitch

I'm guessing this has been reported before, but just to keep it in mind for 1.9 version

Both of those sound like a bad patch job.

Your dedication to this mod is still amazing to see. 

Some call it dedication, some call it madness.

It's only crazy if you fail and you keep trying. Mod is wildly succeeding, in my opinion. You don't get to escape to an asylum just yet, I'm afraid.

By the way, why'd you guys change the life and phoenix down the way you did? To make the potions healing to percentages more useful? Or some other balance change I can't wrap my head around right now.

Life was to make the spell itself more useful; 1/4 max HP still usually resulted in a character getting knocked right back down as soon as they got up. This makes Life effectively equivalent to Life 2 in the early game and keeps it at least mildly relevant in the late-game - the Phoenix Down change was just to drive this point home.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the answer.

So,m I was having a look over the new changes and I realized that I have the new "Scimitar" weapon set to the same BatPwr as the Full Moon - which is available earlier. I also realize that dual Boomerangs are the current standard for early-game power, and thus deemed it necessary to give a power boost to the early swords on the whole.

See new settings here: http://btb2.free.fr/ff6/Printme.xls

Will it go into effect on next update?

Yep

9 hours ago, BTB said:

So,m I was having a look over the new changes and I realized that I have the new "Scimitar" weapon set to the same BatPwr as the Full Moon - which is available earlier. I also realize that dual Boomerangs are the current standard for early-game power, and thus deemed it necessary to give a power boost to the early swords on the whole.

See new settings here: http://btb2.free.fr/ff6/Printme.xls

FWIW, I like the name "Mirage Vest" better than "Stealth Suit."

...yeah, Stealth Suit is a terrible name.

Back to yon drawing board, then.

Or I could just ask @Rynzer. He's the one that ends up naming all of our shit, anyway >.>

I didn't see this mentioned earlier, will this update break saves from 1.8.5? I can never tell with these based on change log alone.

1.8.5 saves won't work, correct.

My suggestion was Dashing Suit! I think its really good! 

Alternatively, the idea of Ninja Suit for the final light armor and moving Dark Gear down has merit, too. It'd be something like Dark Gear, Gaia Gear, Stealth Gear, Ninja Suit. 

I demand Sonic Suit or Sonic Shirt.

I, um... how do I put this...

No >.>

As was stated on Discord, I actually do like the name Mirage Vest. My only reason for wanting to change it is that Vests are a class of armor that all characters can equip while the Mirage Vest is the highest tier of "light" armor, so I wanted to pick a consistent-ish name.

Of course, now you just have me thinking about what would happen if everyone could use the Mirage Vest.

Just change it to Mirage Gear then? Mirage Shirt? Mirage Coat? Mirage Cloak? Mirage Garb? 

I do like the Mirage part, it's a cool word and if we don't need to change it from vanilla it couldn't hurt to keep. If the Vest part is the issue, just change that. 

Maybe you should think in reverse? Mirage Vest is a fine name. Maybe swap the names of Gears & Vests? So: Karate Gi, Ninja Vest, Gaia Vest, Dark Vest, Mirage Vest for the evasive armors. Then, the light armors are Mythril Gear and Diamond Gear? Could find some other name besides Gear, if you really wanted to.

...spitball: change Diamond Kite to the third shield in the line of Buckler -> Targe -> ???. Something like 25/25 defenses, same evades (10/10), no speed loss, no elemental properties. Gives the low HP characters (Gau, Strago, Relm, Gogo) a proper WoR evade+ shield to equip. Could even do 30/30 defenses too: better overall defenses than elemental guards (20/30 defenses with 0/10 evades), but elemental guards have stat+3 and elemental absorption. Pretty sure Strago will still want Spd+3 more than Def+10 or Eva+10, but it's a legit alternative option now. As is, Diamond Kite is basically "Buy this for Daryl's Tomb, then toss it aside for better shields."

Mirage gear is fine, none of the other proposals seem great and no reason to change the rest of the names.  Ninja suit sounds terrible, like a Halloween costume.

A bigger item name issue for me is the Magic Brush, which doesn't follow the other two named brushes of famous artists (Dali and Ross).  Dali should be the magic brush, since his paintings have a magical quality to them, Ross is fine for the haste brush since he did his paintings in 30 min.  

A older painter, preferably renaissance, should provide the name for +5 stamina brush since you want an artist whose work has stood the test of time, but there aren't many good options considering only 6 letters will fit.  Vinci brush ain't bad, but that's his birth city, not really his name.  Monet brush could work, plus his work feels rather 'safe', with peaceful landscapes frequently being depicted.

I have no objections to Monet Brush.

So, just letting the group know that we're still alive over here, just been rather busy lately.

As we've been waiting for the next update, I've been pondering an oft-repeated suggestion from @thzfunnymzn to swap the EL bonuses on Tritoch and Maduin. This will have an overall positive effect on Mog as it gives him back his +2 stamina esper, thus allowing him to meaningfully hybridize stamina levels with vigor. The only concerns would be 1) Mog's healing dances may be somewhat OP with access to a +2 stamina esper, and 2) Terra's magic esper gets pushed back to Tritoch.

My knee-jerk reaction is that there are worse things that Terra's magic build can invest in than early MP levels from Carbunkl. In fact, I would dare say that extra MP is much more valuable to her in the early game than +1 magic is. I don't like the idea of her only magic esper being pushed *so* far back, though... even though she was deliberately given only a +1 magic esper since her magic is plenty powerful enough on its own.

Thoughts from the community?

Also, following some discussion in chat, I'm going to make some slight statistical alterations to the Hobos in Zozo to prevent the occasional double Acid Rain from fucking up your day like it currently does.

I thank ya.

Some stay dry and others feel the pain...

(Also, the Tritoch/Maduin thing was discussed at length in chat and was decided against unless someone else can provide a *very* compelling reason to the contrary)

On a separate note... since Stealth Suit has been vetoed, I'm still looking for a different name for the Mirage Vest the drops "Vest" since vests are equippable by everyone and this is instead the top of the line for "light" armor. Here are some more suggestions, most of which are clearly inspired by Circle of the Moon:

-Night Suit
-Soldier Garb
-Fatigues
-Zero Suit (lulz)

I really like mirage in the name, so I'm biased there but I'll spitball some ideas.

Mirage Shroud. Mirage Mantle. Mirage Cloak. Veiled Garb. 

A) Give Mog access to Odin? He already has access to Doom and the other Poison spells, so the spells make sense for him, so does the +2 Stamina boost.

B) Man I'm kinda impartial to the name Mirage Vest. I don't think it's that confusing that it has different equip restrictions from other vest items. Plus, Mirage Vest is kind of a staple item that's used across several games in the series.

If it has to be changed, maybe just call it "Mirage"? Kinda like the "Minerva." Or Mirage Suit. I think people would be more confused about why an iconic FF item had its name changed slightly than over the whole vest thing tbh.

I would want to avoid Cloak on the sole basis that we already have a cloak as a relic. That said, Mirage Suit or Mirage Gear are both acceptable candidates.

EDIT: Mog getting Odin would be *way* OP. MT death attacks are much stronger in BNW than anyone gives them credit for, and they are thus balanced by only being available to the two slowest characters in the mod.

Yeah to be fair I probably don't use X-Zone / Instant-death attacks enough. I'd suggest Stray, but then that'd break the rule of having no more than 2 characters having access to the same Esper.

12 minutes ago, Reiker said:

I don't think it's that confusing that it has different equip restrictions from other vest items. Plus, Mirage Vest is kind of a staple item that's used across several games in the series.

...

I think people would be more confused about why an iconic FF item had its name changed slightly than over the whole vest thing tbh.

I agree with this. Have we gotten any actual questions/comments about the Mirage Vest distribution? Seems pointless to change it unless it's causing a lot of confusion.

Nobody has commented on it, no. It's just something I wanted to change for the sake of consistency.

Well, it seems one way or the other, we'd be breaking some form of consistency. So I'd vote for the consistency of keeping the name as is.

That's fine with me, then.

I'll upload a new ROM with the name reverted and a few dialogue changes I made to the Beginner's School in response to some of the LPs I've been watching when I get home, and that's about it for the loose ends for me.

He /does/ exist...

Thematically, it kind of makes sense for Maduin to be Stamina +2 since stamina helps Terra survive in her Esper form.  An added benefit is it might help the Atma Weapon get some use in the WoB. 

As to how this affects Mog, the two dances where it makes a big difference are wind song and forest suite.  But wind song is just the hold A for randoms dance, so who really cares about that.  Where it matters more is Harvester; since this also clears statuses, maybe it has to be nerfed a bit.

Separate thought on the topic of item names, what if the Mithril and Diamond Vest became 'Sash'.  The vanilla Power Sash is now the Power Armor, so Sash is unused, and this would make the Mirage Vest the only item using that name.

Edit: The entire 'light' armor line could have unique names: Karate Gi, Dark Shroud, Ninja Gear, Mirage Vest.  

If you want to be consistent in this regard, Mask should not be used by both Tiger and Ninja, nor should Hood be shared by Dark and Cat.  Tiger Mask could become Tiger Turban.  Cat Hood could become Cat Bonnet, giving it a bit more of a feminine and juvenile quality, which then justifies why only Relm and Gau are able to equip it.  

On 10/24/2017 at 9:05 PM, BTB said:

So, just letting the group know that we're still alive over here, just been rather busy lately.

As we've been waiting for the next update, I've been pondering an oft-repeated suggestion from @thzfunnymzn to swap the EL bonuses on Tritoch and Maduin. This will have an overall positive effect on Mog as it gives him back his +2 stamina esper, thus allowing him to meaningfully hybridize stamina levels with vigor. The only concerns would be 1) Mog's healing dances may be somewhat OP with access to a +2 stamina esper, and 2) Terra's magic esper gets pushed back to Tritoch.

My knee-jerk reaction is that there are worse things that Terra's magic build can invest in than early MP levels from Carbunkl. In fact, I would dare say that extra MP is much more valuable to her in the early game than +1 magic is. I don't like the idea of her only magic esper being pushed *so* far back, though... even though she was deliberately given only a +1 magic esper since her magic is plenty powerful enough on its own.

Thoughts from the community?

Apparently, I missed this entire conversation happening in chat.

Something major I wish to add to the discussion is that I didn't conceive of this idea purely as swapping the two bonuses. Even after looking through the chat discussion, there are two major corollaries missing:

• Tritoch, as Terra's magic esper, would be Mag+1 / MP+15
• Mog's Dances could be shifted over to keying more off stamina than magic. (In ??? way)

The former gives Terra an actual reason to build her magic, outside of an endgame respec for Ultima spam. Terra not having a magic build for the WoB, mechanically, is trivial - to my limited knowledge, mag Terra really isn't all that great in the WoB anyways. That early on, the benefits from HP+30 and MP+25 heavily outweigh the minor extra damage that Maduin will give to Break. Mag+1 / MP+15 is still low magic growth, but with MP growth attached to it, mag Terra has a bit more to her name besides "Ultima-slinging with lots of stamina." Also, its aesthetically more pleasing for Tritoch to give Magic and for Maduin to give Stamina to Terra. Stamina Tritoch doesn't work quite as well aesthetically. (Stamina +2 is pretty pointless early on, I grant.)

The latter...is another can of worms. Without opening that can, stam+2 mostly means that vig Mog can get some slight improvement to any Song / Suite Dance that he attempts. Oh, I guess it also gives Punisher vig Mog some extra counterattacks too. So, counter Punisher Mog can be either vig or mag.

On 10/25/2017 at 9:50 AM, SuperHario said:

If you want to be consistent in this regard, Mask should not be used by both Tiger and Ninja, nor should Hood be shared by Dark and Cat.  Tiger Mask could become Tiger Turban.  Cat Hood could become Cat Bonnet, giving it a bit more of a feminine and juvenile quality, which then justifies why only Relm and Gau are able to equip it.  

I'm against changing Cat Hood, since it's appeared with that name (or as Cat-Ear Hood) in multiple games.

I've been away from this thread - and site in general - but I'm aching to start a new BNW run anytime soon. Is 1.8.6 the most recent version for now, or is a new update scheduled to be released soon?

1.8.6 is the most current version. 1.9 is mired with a nonfunctional beta until Synchysi can get a new one out.

So, something else that's come up from watching LPs is the encounter rate. After discussing things in Discord, it was proposed to make an adjustment that, in simple terms, raises the minimum number of steps you can take without triggering a battle while leaving the overall rate unchanged. Seibaby has coded this change and it will be present in the next Frankenbeta patch he puts out. If I could get some testing on that, it's one less thing Synchysi will need to do when he puts out a proper beta.

I'm actually working on the next RC this weekend. I'm in the process of combing through the patches posted on this forum to see which need updating, so if he just wants to send it to me, that'd be fine.

He's on it.

Here ya go.

A hack for Aquatic Caves was added the other day.

Edit by Admin: Moved to main release thread by request of BTB - Hart-Hunt

On 10/28/2017 at 8:32 PM, BTB said:

1.8.6 is the most current version. 1.9 is mired with a nonfunctional beta until Synchysi can get a new one out.

With this in mind, if I wanted to begin a new playthrough do you think it's worth it to wait a few weeks until 1.9 or is it several months out? 

Always a supporter of your project!

The current 1.9 beta seems to be good to go. The only significant bug is that the game hangs when Relm is recruited, and I'm pretty sure @seibaby can whip up a quick fix if Synchysi doesn't put out a new RC in the next few days.

I'm waiting on a few fixes - the Relm life hack among them - before putting out the next release candidate.

On 11/2/2017 at 1:06 PM, TimeSpaceMage said:

A hack for Aquatic Caves was added the other day.

 

Edit by Admin: Moved to main release thread by request of BTB - Hart-Hunt

I support adding this into to BNW.

12 hours ago, Synchysi said:

I'm waiting on a few fixes - the Relm life hack among them - before putting out the next release candidate.

You just need to change the $66 at CB/F0B9 to $68 instead, since you changed the event command pointer to $68.

Yeah, I've got that fixed. I thought there was something else you were working on - a fix for Cover Knight, I think.

12 hours ago, thzfunnymzn said:

I support adding this into to BNW.

It would be much more elegant to, say, take one of the rooms in Ebot's Rock and edit it into an actual underwater room.

Unfortunately, map editing is not our strong suit. @Lockirby2 is the person I'd consult about that.

2 hours ago, Synchysi said:

Yeah, I've got that fixed. I thought there was something else you were working on - a fix for Cover Knight, I think.

Ah yes. I've done some work on Cover Knight v9. Not at computer right now, but I will post it later tonight. You'll have to edit the defines because free space requirements are changed, but otherwise it's ready to go.

So, for the next RC...

• The game will no longer crash when Relm is recruited
• The Zephyr Cape will now case Haste on low HP (instead of whatever it does now)
• Dog Block will be disabled while covering
• The Soul Sabre's BatPower will no longer be hidden in the extended equipment info screen and it and the Blood Sword will no longer be ignored by the optimize routine

This *may* get put out tonight, otherwise it may be a little bit.

Saw an interesting re-arrangement of the three scenarios on romhacking .net.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3717/

Not at all saying that this should be done in BNW. I merely thought it was interesting enough to post here.

That looks super interesting. Might actually look into a run through of that

If it doesn't break BNW, I might actually do so as well. Looks very interesting.

Having Terra pick up Gau is actually interesting. Ties into her looking to the orphans of that town on the Veldt whose name eludes me.

On 11/6/2017 at 10:58 AM, BTB said:

It would be much more elegant to, say, take one of the rooms in Ebot's Rock and edit it into an actual underwater room.

Unfortunately, map editing is not our strong suit. @Lockirby2 is the person I'd consult about that.

Unfortunately, I only did overworld stuff for ROTDS.  I could probably learn how to create indoor maps as well, but anybody could arguably do just as good a job.  It's a whole different ballgame because the indoor maps use multiple layers, and the tiles interact quite differently.

Because Ebot's Rock's rooms are mostly on the same map, and it's randomly chosen whether the rooms have passageways between them, you couldn't just take one of the rooms and make it watery.  You could add in another map for 2.0 with some of Madsiur's expansions, and we could make a new room (or set of rooms) on that map.

Alternatively, we could make a clone of the original map.  Then we could set the event code to have a 50% chance of sending the player to the flooded version of the map (which would presumably have the Serpent Trench palette and possibly a ripple effect), and a 50% chance of sending the player to the normal version of the map.  I'm not sure if that would enhance the mazelike effect of the place, or come off as a lazy/transparent trick.  It would certainly require less effort, and I don't think it would require applying expansions to duplicate a map (if you want to avoid that).

PowerPanda from FF6Hacking was working on the scenario changes.  I liked his thought process on it, so I suspect the result is good, although I haven't tried it.

So, in the post you mention a donation by selbaby.  Does that mean you're accepting Paypal donations or something?  I'm afraid I don't really have any use for a repro cart, and it would bother me that I couldn't put the newest version of BNW on it when you release them anyhow.  Is there somewhere I can just throw a bit of money your way?

Any "donation" from Seibaby I ever spoke of was referring to the work he has put into this project (unless we're talking about the community donation project we set up to send DN a care package). We don't really take in donations... though I can't in good faith turn down any willing contribution towards my "help my broke girlfriend take her cats to the vet" fund.

Oh, sorry.  I guess I didn't read the post enough.  Still, if you'll take it, I'm happy to regardless of the reason.  I'll PM for more info and to not spam this thread.

Yo, where can I find the changelogs for past updates? I feel silly for not taking the time to figure it out but I just gotta know, as a stalker of the old forums - I remember this thing about esper on-equip bonuses that caught my eye and I wonder if it actually became a thing at some point? No mention of it in the latest patch, at least..

I first played BNW well over a year ago and I never got around to commenting on some things that bugged me most - while I absolutely LOVED the long boss fights and how challenging they can be (pls don't start nerfing them, I know there has been talk of them having too much HP, which I disagree with) there were 2 enemies in particular that either are actually weaker than in vanilla or I just got really really unlucky (or lucky, depending on how you look at it).

Firstly Intangir - was my version bugged or is he not supposed to be way stronger than other enemies at that point in the game? It felt weird when he just died like anyone else. Totally killed that *oh sh1t* feeling that you got in vanilla upon meeting this mega behemoth out of nowhere. I always loved that about FF games, the sense of exploration when you found rare epic monsters hidden in some corner of the world that were hard to take down, but maybe gave something extra nice if you managed to figure out how to beat them. 

The other being Doomgaze. I was psyched to see how strong he'd be in BNW - he's one of the two enemies hailed as pseudo-superbosses on FFVI wiki, the other being the scrapped Kaiser. I couldn't hold it in my pants when I started looking for him, expecting something along the lines of emerald/ruby/omega weapons from later entries - only to beat him during the second encounter without any difficulty. I must've gotten really unlucky or something, maybe my setup just happened to be super strong against him. I tried to make it harder for myself, too: I had only finished one WoR dungeon prior to Doomgaze, so I was kinda hoping for him to utterly humiliate me. Alas, no. Any plans to buff him up to superboss levels maybe someday? Pretty please?

Sorry for the random rant, but it's telling that nothing else comes to mind as I recall the things that I didn't like and wanted to ask about. Truly a magnificent experience playing your mod - keep it real guys!

Past version changelog: http://btb2.free.fr/mods/ff6/Versions.txt

Esper equip bonuses were added in 1.8; they were the main feature.

Since DoomGaze holds Relm's only real means of contributing offensively, we couldn't really make him superboss-level powerful. As far as specific design goes, he's the boss that most warrants shopping for both Diamond and Crystal gear to reduce the damage from his attacks.

Intangir was never intended to be a hard enemy to kill; just a grinding post for magic points.

The only justification I can see for making Doom Gaze harder is to prevent Relm from getting Flare & Meteor too early so that Sketch can shine for a little bit longer. I'm betting most people would rather not rely on Sketch for a chunk of the WoR, let alone the fact it's hard to predict where or where not Sketch would be useful.

Cheers for the fast reply. 

I had totally forgotten about which esper he gave and how essential it was for some characters. I suppose it's unavoidable to keep him relatively weak as long as there's a critical item behind him. I take it it hasn't been a point of consideration to move the esper elsewhere/change other stuff to allow for a harder Doomgaze? I mean, it'd be rad after all, wouldn't it?

1.9 seems to be worth waiting for. It's been on my mind for so long to rerun this thing. How far into the beta are we?

I wonder if my two cents would mean anything here but...mayhap we could allow earlier spells available through brushes? If you wanted Relm to contribute offensively without using sketch and boost Doom Gaze to a "superboss" level you could probably just give some spells via brushes or any other item you would think could be necessary; I did have some troubles taking Doom Gaze down early but in all honesty i felt i had a harder time in v.1.8.5 than the recent versions...is it just me? Anyhow, it is not impossible nor that hard to take Doom Gaze on early...(TBH i had more troubles with Tiamat...goddamn Meteo!)

It is actually not necessary to give Relm another means of contributing offensively, but i felt that maybe i should at least suggest this.

I don't like the idea of buffing DoomGaze, because I don't like the idea of getting obliterated by a random encounter while using a mode of transportation that normally isn't supposed to have random encounters at all. 

That said, the idea of making one of the legendary demons sealed away long ago into a powerful enemy does appeal to me. Maybe for a future content release, DoomGaze and Phunbaba could be made to simply run away to gather their strength when defeated, instead of outright slain? Perhaps they fled because they weren't taking it seriously enough, and were far more wounded than they expected to be and so retreated to temporarily heal up. Then you can either go to a new dungeon, or a new part of an old dungeon, where they retreated to in order to recover and prepare for the next battle.

But right now, I see no reason for DoomGaze or Phunbaba to be anything other than what they are, since they're gates to actual content at present.

I thought randomly running into him wasn't a thing anymore? Well, I assumed since there's the shortcut option.. 

I for one have always loved randomly running into scary freaking enemies in games and getting my ass handed to me. Maybe people just prefer their games predictable and perfectly "fair" like that, without surprises. 

But indeed, it just boils down do how more superbosses would be awesome to see, one way or another.. Doomgaze and Phunbaba come to mind first as the prime contenders for that.

Woah, I actually really like the idea of the 3 story rewrite, taking part of Sabin's quest and adding it to Terra's to equal out the length of each. I also like the idea of Locke getting Shadow, giving you another option for the Battle of Narshe, since you can get Shadow right after for the Save Terra/ Zozo walk anyway. The only issue I can think of is this would naturally remove the Mr Thou scene, and tie Gau to Terra instead of Cyan & Sabin, who's one of the better written character interaction trios in the game. Still, I'm curious if they add a scene to compensate for Terra & Gau... might have to try this out later! 

So I've been reading up on some past changelogs, and apparently the auction house was recently disabled from the game for the time being? Can someone at least ease my mind that the Espers normally obtainable here are not missable in anyway, or WoB exclusive?

Cheers!

The espers were moved; the guy blocking off the auction house will tell you where to.

On 11/9/2017 at 10:15 PM, thzfunnymzn said:

If it doesn't break BNW, I might actually do so as well. Looks very interesting.

Having Terra pick up Gau is actually interesting. Ties into her looking to the orphans of that town on the Veldt whose name eludes me.

Since I haven't seen anyone else post on here about having tried Divergent Paths with BNW, just thought I'd chime in and point out they don't mesh.

If you apply BNW first, the Whelk fight is either unwinnable, or at least unreasonably lengthy. I seem to recall seeing BTB mention somewhere that many bosses don't actually die at 0 HP, but are scripted to terminate when their HP reaches a certain threshold – I'm curious if this could have something to do with why Whelk just keeps on tanking hits (seemingly) forever. Whelk also announces "BAD TOUCH! I NEED AN ADULT!" before each time it hides in its shell...

If you apply BNW second, Whelk is no problem, but then the boss fight in the "defend Terra" sequence is super weird – he countered Locke's steal attempt with a coupe of Esper summons (that he didn't have enough MP to cast), and then countered any other attacks with a double Tentacle (sometimes MT Tentacle for a party wipe). Only way to get past this is to fluke out on a good Dance with Mog, or maybe get a couple of lucky crits in a row. Even if you get past this, the game eventually locks up when you talk to the guard at the entrance to Figaro Cave after Kefka's attack on Figaro Castle.

Regardless, it seems like Divergent Paths is less self-contained than the developer alleges in its readme, and definitely not BNW-compatible.

EDIT: it occurred to me that the breadth of BNW's modification may actually be the reason for these incompatibilities. For example, if BNW's Whelk/Marshal boss scripts now utilize any locations in memory that used to be utilized by something in the 3-scenario portion of the game in vanilla, and DP starts changing things in those locations in memory, then yeah, obviously things aren't gonna go as expected.

That's not really that surprising. BNW uses a LOT of the available free space in the rom, so if Divergent Paths needs to expand it's reach into any of that same free space, something is bound to crack open. It's a little sad, though; if you could have gotten through the route split itself, that would have lent itself to playing BNW, swapping to DP for the route split, then swapping back to BNW to avoid the least amount of bugs. Sounds like that's not really much of an option, though. 

Well, DP claims to make all its modifications within the same space as the sequence of events from the Returners' hideout through to regrouping in Narshe in vanilla. But BNW seems to do some serious reorganizing of spells/monster specials and enemy AI, so all DP would have to do is change an enemy's behavior  (for example, making the Barren Falls piranha frenzy less likely to steamroll an underlevelled Terra/Banon) to maybe introduce weirdness after both patches are applied.

The route split mod & BNW both modify the events in the route split. That's more than enough for a conflict to occur in programming and for stuff to happen.

I fully expected that to be the case. Was putting out a fool's hope that it wouldn't. Oh well.

I really do like the idea from a story-telling perspective. As hilarious as it is to show off how awesome Sabin is compared to everyone else, it's bad form from a serious perspective to give Sabin so much whilst the other two scenarios are so thin in comparison. Locke's scenario isn't too bad. It's mostly how thin the Terra/Edgar scenario is compared to how meaty Sabin's scenario is. I do like how they cut off the Sabin (now Figaro) scenario after Doma. It makes the Figaro scenario nice and neat; it's the story of Cyan & Doma, that's it.

I echo artemi's sentiments on losing the trio of Sabin, Cyan, and Gau. Kind of a shame. Though this alternative does mean that Terra has a pre-established connection with Mobliz before the WoR.

Gonna go ahead and repost this since 1.9 is right around the corner:

 • Added new hacks which allow stamina to influence counter-attacks and the possibility of "true knight"
   characters taking hits for healthy allies (critically-wounded characters are still always protected)

 • Fixed a bug where stamina would not protect against status ailments set by enemy "special" attacks

 • Added a hack to condense the in-battle spell menu (removes all empty spaces)

 • Fucked around with the spells that each character learns again (highlights: Relm gets Life and Stop,
   Mog picks up Haste, Celes learns Demi much earlier now, and Warp is again pushed back to the WoR)

 • The Life spell now revives to 250~500 HP instead of 1/4 maxHP; Phoenix Downs now revive to 1 HP

 • Raised Cyan's base stamina; lowered the power of the Dragon and Eclipse bushidos to compensate

 • Raised the chances for the Dragon bushido to set Stone from 50% to 66%

 • Raised the power of the Aurabolt blitz and swapped the levels at which it and Mantra are learned

 • Edited the GP Toss formula to do 50% more damage (note: edited Katanasoul's stats to compensate)

 • Lowered the power of the Blackjack and Solitaire slot spins

 • Lowered the cost of several spells, including Demi, Rasp, Dispel, and SleepX

 • Lowered the hitrate of several magical attacks to help make magic evasion more useful

 • Reworked & rebalanced swords to offer more (and better) choices for vigor-built characters

 • Swords that consume MP for critical hits now respect the "1/2 MP costs" effect of the Gem/Soul Box

 • Spears now inherently possess the "may guard allies" property instead of random counter-attacks

 • Adjusted the properties of the Wind Slash and Aero procs from the Kazekiri and Mutsunokami

 • Removed the Kagenui's speed boost and slightly adjusted the boosts on Shadow's other weapons

 • Changed Setzer's dice to boost stamina instead of magic and vise-versa for his other weapons

 • The Morning Star and Kusarigama now ignore defense instead of being anti-undead

 • The Demonsbane is now anti-undead in addition to holy-elemental

 • Raised the proc rate of anti-undead weapons from 25% to 50%

 • Fixed a bug where using items on undead characters would randomly kill them

 • Renamed the Diva Brush to Dali Brush and the Magic Brush to Monet Brush

 • Changed the animation of several weapons; also swapped the animations of the two "Blizzard" attacks

 • Corrected the Stormfang menu description

 • The BatPwr of the Soul Sabre and Omega Weapon now display correctly in the item menu

 • The Soul Sabre/Blood Sword are no longer ignored by the "Optimize" routine; the Omega Weapon now is

 • Switched the Colosseum opponents/prizes for the Masamune and Kagenui (and a few others)

 • Celes now starts with an Iron Cutlass instead of a Mythril Bolo

 • Gogo can now use Throw even if Shadow is dead

 • Interceptor now sets Sap

 • Lowered Golem's defense from 192 to 128

 • Made several changes to the Battle of Narshe

 • Made an important update to Atma Weapon's script

 • Fixed a bug in the Soul Fire script (Wrexsoul fight)

 • Enabled/disabled random encounters on a few maps for better consistency

 • Aquilas no longer have any MP as they do not use any attacks that use it

 • Phunbaba and Doom Gaze now give 10 spell points when defeated as other bosses do

 • Fixed a bug where it was not possible to run from all of the enemies in the New Mines

 • Rewrote Gau's tutorial to match how Leap now functions; also added a new line of dialogue for Gau

 • Added more screenshots, boxart with cart label, and enemy graphics to the unlockme image gallery

---

http://btb2.free.fr/mods/ff6/Readme.txt
http://btb2.free.fr/mods/ff6/Printme.xls

Updated the Build Guides and Reference Text. Biggest new thing is Terrato Sabin has his own build now. I'm sure BTB is rolling his eyes at me.

Here's a complete dipshit question...what does it mean when your ATB bar turns green?

And the dipshit answer: You are in Reraise status.