Shadow Hearts: Covenant NTSC - Godslayer v9.05

Hello NGPlus community,

I am happy to say I have finally finished working on my Hardtype for Shadow Hearts: Covenant. This one is called "Godslayer". It's been a project with lots of changes over the years.

To know more details you can read the messages on this thread or leave a question. I'll be more than happy to answer them. I will possibly make full list of changes at some point or I won't.

I hope you will enjoy this mod. This mod is for the NTSC version of the game. I'm not sure if it works in PAL version (probably not). Use PPF-O-Matic to patch your original disc images with the zip's PPF files. Also make sure to make backups of the original images.

Here's the download link for the mod. This is the most complete version of the mod. Check out my description of what was changed for this in my newest message on this thread.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/8o8w6nsft1wk720/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v9.05.zip

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Here are the previous versions if you wanna try them out:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/gxrzuvcmgs32ral/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v9.00.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/c0r0zif3konkg1k/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.95.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dlmkwc5jpoypxfg/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.85.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dptbo0b06ft31ot/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.75.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ur8lyktpv67eifv/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.70.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/9sudvsfc6rch7ow/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.60.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/xpop95uul3oxv53/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.55.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/i1jhrhogaeudzfh/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.40.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/g9ixh36wjvuwcqg/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.35.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/g5eukfmqqj5gj3q/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.30.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/yhyqlha15j3au4j/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.20.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/z6v7s7zagbly1ou/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.15.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ylbfxfk122deovm/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.05.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/i1ezn4eo6pl9c2z/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v8.00.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/vkidwda0xlugr1n/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.75.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/nqmmnxbpdsgnaul/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.70.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/7m93z45jligswgz/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.60.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/f0o8qq54iqytlf4/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.55.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/p3hdskwn140iua1/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.45.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/kz82crpmur6nqwh/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.4.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/v5tzcrejwcsfah7/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.35.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/u5zjelhpd9odaui/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.3.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/k1mm12tn16e2n1y/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.25.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/f65y9g25gsaplyz/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.2.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/citysu5crfxwc1s/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.15.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/u2116b2raek83gn/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.1.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/jtkg0uhxbcg7iqf/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v7.0.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/soqsig1kanesg8b/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v6.50.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/xmj09aekjzlrg4m/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v6.05.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/81ku3njybp6z9ej/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v6.0.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/wrchwh6n8z8g0m9/shc_ntsc_godslayer_5.0.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/474p08uwbmbmvcm/shc_ntsc_godslayer_4.1.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ss331qh92q7r430/shc_ntsc_godslayer_4_0.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/12wxjhbqy8t10nv/shc_ntsc_godslayer_3_33.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/87efruu9nv3dsws/shc_ntsc_godslayer_v3.0.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/b5pydcf299wxydi/shc_ntsc_godslayer_2.55.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/a114iy67r7fc7ea/shc_ntsc_godslayer_2.5.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3zikj6pu0b2pp8h/shc_ntsc_godslayer_2.1.7z

http://www.mediafire.com/file/166nky22t170yrh/shc_ntsc_godslayer_2.0.7z

https://www.mediafire.com/file/3rok98jrzuxwasl/SHC_NTSC_GODSLAYER_v1.0.7z

Can't wait to try it out! thanks for this!

Hey no probs! If you have any questions you can leave them here.

Hey! Thank you so much for doing this! I love the Shadow Hearts series and was hoping some kind of hard mode mod would come out for Covenant. Excuse my ignorance as I'm new to emulating and mods, but the NTSC version is the NA version, right? Because when I ran the modded NA version nothing seemed to be different in Apoina Tower. All the enemies had the same stats and damage.

Edit: Oh, ok... It's working now for whatever reason. Revenant just kicked Karen's ass in the air for 10 damage instead of 4. Yikes, haha. Gonna be streaming this at twitch.tv/shaggysir!

Double edit: I just finished grinding for Castor and Pollux. Got everyone up to level 9. I swear I'm going to make a compilation of Gepetto getting one-shot. Poor guy can't catch a break.

Thank you very much SirShaggy for giving my mod a shot. I hope you have fun time with it. The bosses can get tough later on and if you need any help let me know. Also if you have any criticism or anything else regarding it I would like to hear too.

Edit: Also I'm a bit worried that nothing happened when you applied the patch the first time. Did you happen to patch using the patch for wrong disc first? Even if the patcher says everything went well it might've patched the wrong disc's data into disc 1. This might change how the game behaves. If this is what happened I recommend deleting the isos you patched and repatching the original iso images of the game again, just in case. This doesn't mean you have to start over the game. You can continue from your last save point with no changes.

SirShaggy and the rest of you guys who have been giving this mod a go: I'm terribly sorry about the first half bosses having million turns. I apologize to all of you for the frustration. I'll be working on the version of the mod where the bosses have fewer turns but I can give no deadline to anything. I got lots of stuff going on in my life so only time will tell when I'll be finished with the new version. But I will be making it at some point.

-zedorfed66

Hey Zed! I've been having a really fun time going back through the game with your hard-mod! It's been a really interesting change so far. Some criticism though...

First, the enemy Ekimmu in the Paris underground section has too much AGI and INT for the damage it can put out with Hail Beak. It usually goes first and Hail Beak hits for 90% of everyone's health at that point (100% if you're Gepetto... RIP). If you're surprised and it uses Hail Beak on everyone as they're grouped up, it's pretty much game over. I had to grind quite a bit before Blanca would have his turn ahead of it, but up until that point I had to run away after almost every fight and heal. Honestly, I would lower both its INT and AGI by a fair amount.

Second, as you stated, the bosses have a lot of turns. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the way that they get them consecutively a lot of the time does feel a little cheap. Especially for...

Lenny. Holy crap, Lenny is a friggin brute. He gets 5 turns in a row and all he does is use his physical attack. I know that it's a hard mod, but this boss is terribly designed in general. All it is is face-tanking and healing his damage, so when you beef up his damage and turns the only strategy this early on in the game is to be able to face-tank more and pray. There are no good buffs or specials to use, so all I can do is grind and hope he targets the right people. And this becomes a bigger problem when there is no dungeon before Lenny. You go right from Rhonda Mines to him, and I don't think the experience in the Rhonda Mines is scaled correctly for the hard mod because I normally get about 100 exp per encounter, which was the norm in the previous dungeon, the Wine Cellar.

Lastly, just a suggestion... Tankier enemies would be cool. Having different enemies act as "tanks" that you have to combo or specifically use physical/magical attacks to get down, rather than just giving them more agility/damage would be a cool way to spice things up. They did this with certain enemies like Otheon by giving them more HP than normal enemies, but there are very few enemies in the game that are resistant to physical or magical damage based on their VIT and POW stats. Having enemies be tankier in general also allows for more strategy, as it adds variety to the enemy types in battles and allows for more combos. Of course, the other offensive stats might need to be adjusted for certain "tankier" enemies but it helps lean away from the "who one-shots who first" strategy that a lot of the random battles boil down to, and that's not a problem with your mod so much as the game in general. Just something that would be nice to see.

So pretty much, Ekimmu OP, Lenny OP, and balancing different enemies around taking damage instead of delivering it would be cool. Aside from that, it's been a lot of fun and I want to thank you again for putting so much work in to create this mod! I'm gonna grind for Lenny now, haha. Merry Christmas!

P.S. There's a Shadow Hearts discord that was recently started up and the owner would love to find out how you change around enemy stats. He's been doing a lot of work on his own looking through game files and trying to translate the Director's Cut. Here's the link if you're interested.  https://discord.gg/ez2VK2

Hey,

Thank you very much for constructive criticism. I guess we can all learn from eachother. This is the first time someone has criticised this mod and it is much appreciated. Before I address the rest I would like to give you hints how to make the game easier for yourself based on what I saw in your stream videos. You didn't buy the best defence accessories, which in itself is pretty much a must otherwise you will get one-shotted randomly. Also elements are crucial factors. If you have a character with fire element and he/she is hit with water enemy he takes more damage than normal. You might want to have a team of earth element when fighting Lenny since he is earth element. All of your party members should have crest magic that can hit multiple enemies so you can thin out enemies faster.

The Paris underground tunnel is hard I admit. It is recommended that your party is level 5 when fighting Arachne, the boss before entering Paris. When you are lvl5 the underground tunnel isn't that hard as long as you heal your party to full health before entering battles. When watching your video I noticed you didn't heal your party members to completely full health (it takes 2 cure spells instead of 1). It is imperative that you do since even 1 hp matters in low levels. You are right, Ekimmu has the highest agility in that dungeon and hits hardest, especially characters with water element. It would've helped if you had earth dress for gepetto as your first dress choice since the Rat enemy is earth element and there is no wind element to counter earth dress. But this is something you couldn't have known. I had to learn the game almost completely again as I went on with the modding. However the Ekimmu enemy is equal with Yuri on lvl8, which also is the lowest level to take the boss. Also you will not get 1-shot on lvl8 as long as you have the best defense accessory equipped and Cornelia doesn't have that damned fire dress on :DDD

Lenny is pretty much equal to the Rhonda Mine's boss in strength. You can survive Lenny by having Sorm as Yuri's fusion, have Joachim on your party (since he is earth element) and have earth dress on Gepetto (yes i'm sorry you couldn't have known). When you have those 3 the boss becomes more than manageable at lvl14. I admit having bosses with 5 turns in row is stupid. I guess I just wanted to make the bosses hard no matter what. I am working on a new version of the mod to address this. I made the wine cellar enemies hand a bit more exp, cash & soul so grinding wouldn't become as dull (there are some other dungeons where I have done the same). Also I just noticed the 'Barghest' enemy in Rhonda mines has a bit too low agility (21 instead of 23), I will be fixing that too in my update of this mod.

I am terribly sorry to all of you for having to go through the early bosses. I make these mods so they would be challenging yes, but also to be enjoyable. I worked on this mod for a year so I thought it would be complete but as it is I will be looking into it more. Thank you SirShaggy for understanding :DDD and merry christmas to you too.

-zedorfed66

Not a problem! Happy to do so. To be honest, I was expecting to be incredibly tight on cash but now that I'm thinking about it, I've got plenty from the grinding so I should be upgrading as much as possible. Question: Have elemental properties always been on basic attacks? I used to think so when I was first played but somebody told me it's only when you use an elemental "edge" ability. I know it's definitely the case in the mod. Yeah, I figured I'd need Joachim and Yuri to tank as many hits as possible after seeing my first attempt fail miserably. Once one of the others go down I can't get them back up before Lenny gets his turns in.

I'm overly cautious and stupidly frugal with using healing items in games, which is my downfall in the early game when I'm not sure if I'll have enough money (even though I know deep down that I'll be fine). Honestly I was thinking about Castor (and Grail Gazer) when I got Fire Dancer. Didn't even think about the Ekimmus, and I'm not used to having to strategize defensively in Shadow Hearts haha. Yeah, it wasn't a problem once I got the levels in to kill it before it could Hail Beak, but it kind of lead to a situation where I had to grind if I wanted to properly get through the dungeon (or in my case make a dash to the end before grinding, and use save states if I got surprised like a filthy pleb). Fire dress = worst first choice haha. I actually had to switch him back to the default dress. Never done that before.

He's quite a bit stronger, simply because he sometimes gets 5 turns instead of Grimlock's usual 4 (5 if you count the occasional Gale) and his attacks generally do about 20% more damage on your already squishiest people. Using Joachim and Sorm and praying that they soak up hits or the damage is evenly spread is the main strategy, but the biggest problem with this boss is just the fact that he gets 5 turns as soon as the battle starts. If he kills someone within these 5 opening turns, the fight is basically over. You can't expect to heal through his damage and find time to get in hits if you're down a member. I just did a test fight after grinding and buying better accessories to see if I could kill him and I barely could, and only because he didn't kill someone on the opening turns or focus Karen/Gepetto down for whatever reason. Also, at the very end my berserk Karen was nice enough to throw a pure leaf onto Yuri (who was about to go berserk himself) and the hard hit from Yuri's combo killed him with the the extra 1 damage from hitting a wall... Yeah, haha. Granted, I'll be the first to say that I'm not playing the best and am being a "no coral accessories and all technical ring" elitist, but it is quite a difficulty/RNG spike going from Grimlock straight to Lenny. Gonna start the stream back up later today and see if I can kill him again and make some progress.

It's all good! It's mostly the design of this boss being bad in the first place, coupled with the fact that it's early on and there aren't many options in terms of abilities. Things should get much better when the game starts adding in more party members, special abilities, and buffs. Again, I really appreciate all the work you put into this. You've given me an excuse to go back, relive my childhood, and replay one of my favorite games of all time. So thanks!

Nope this mod does nothing to the mechanics of the game. And thanks, I hope you will like the changes. You are not completely off base with Cornelia's dresses since the first 4 dresses to get are earth, light, fire and water. I also recommend doing the wolf bouts since they give blanca very useful abilities. "Aurora" is no longer op ability with this mod, it becomes your best friend later on.

Wow... So I was right all those years ago. I thought I noticed a difference. The update for the Lenny fight really does help. It cuts down on the randomness when you only have to take two turns into account. The fights after Lenny/Andre have been much more strategic and interesting, especially Grail Gazer! Arc Cure and manipulating turn order has spiced up the boss fights and made them more manageable, but they're still very challenging. I'm guessing that Blanca will pretty much be necessary in the later content given how powerful Aurora is. I just started up the solo St. Marguerite section with him. This part of the game always scares me...

I'm glad it's become better. Yep Blanca is pretty much the late game beast with Yuri. St. Marguerite can be a bit tough and you might need to get some extra levels before the boss. As for Blanca's section you might need to be sneaky and avoid the fights. If you do everything right there will only be 1 random fight (when you search one of the rooms for key, can't find it and a guard comes in). But that is manageable fight since there is only 1 enemy to fight. 

Now that you are getting closer to going to Petrograd I would like to give you a small summary of important stuff. I would not like you to fuck things up just cause you didn't know.

Believe or not there are some cheap save points coming up where you can't reach shops and you are forced to do a boss battle. The first one is in the glass palace, second one in the battleship when you change continents and 3rd one (the cheapest) when there is a save point on the foreigner's graveyard with no escape from the boss. There might be more, so I highly recommend starting using several saves as you go. 

2nd, if you only can use some of those pedometer steps to get Pure Extracts. There are some bosses coming up that may take your characters' sp to to high negative that you can't cure with a single Pure Root. This can happen for the first time in Terada boss in the battleship Mikasa if Yuri doesn't have Stand on some character and he/she is hit with Rapid Fire (30 consequent hits = -30 sp). If you have plenty of steps before leaving for Russia it wouldn't hurt getting some Mana Extracts in the mix as well. The Extracts are just a precaution since you can't leave Japan right away when you get there.

Clear all possible wolf bouts before fighting Night Queen. Do this before the game locks you in Russia just before the boss. If you did everything right you should get the 'Comeback' ability after beating the zombie dog in the gallery of the dead. There are some missable ones, one that is often missed is in Domremy after talking with one of the villagers. This becomes available at some point before going to the gallery of the dead (i'm sorry I can't remember when). The other one is the alien dog in Petrograd (which only shows up if you have passed enough bouts).

As for Yuri's high fusion fights, you are able to have 3 Soul Drops before changing continents. It's important to get them all. The fusion monsters now vary in strength and some can't be beaten very early. When you reach the shop in Idar Flamme and are able to buy Root items (be sure to get 99 of them since this is the only place where you can get them before leaving Europe) you are set for taking on Earth, Light and Dark high fusions. You can only beat those 3 for the time being. 4th one will be Water fusion, 5th Fire and the last one Wind can be beaten before the Queen's Garden (later in the game).

Filling the solomon key pages is a big help in getting new abilities to the crests so if there are some pages that aren't missing any crests I recommend placing them. And last but not least you will need to have 'Spikes' equipped for everyone starting from Petrograd. Otherwise even the normal enemies will maul you harder than you can ever imagine

Uhh, what else? I really hope I didn't forget to mention anything too important. Nope, I think that's about it. I will keep testing the later bosses and updating the mod as I see fit.

Good to know! I think my final setup will be Yuri, Karin, Lucia, and Blanca then. The difficulty spike can definitely be felt, but the last couple areas were very easy in terms of random encounters so I'm all for it. I got thrashed by the boss so now I'm grinding up some (thanks for the generous experience btw haha). I kind of like how the mod actually forces you to stealth in the Blanca section.

Damn, thank you for this! I would have probably gotten myself stuck and needed to reload way back. I'm going to be staying on top of sidequests as much as possible, and cash in on those Pure Roots like you suggest. Hopefully, I won't make things too difficult for myself. Might keep going tonight if I can clear St. Marguerite. Looking forward to seeing how the difficulty affects the latter half of the game!

Hey no probs! My final party was Yuri Karin Blanca and Joachim but I'm sure it can be done with multiple combinations. I used Joachim since he has 999 HP on default on lvl99. And i just updated the mod so I recommend you d/l it right away. I made changes to later bosses and tweaked Andre and Janus. Also Godhand does a bit lower damage. But not that much it would make it an easy encounter.

Joachim is probably the better choice honestly since he's a better physical attacker than Karin and he can take hits like a pro, but I just enjoy Lucia and her later oils. I'm actually boosting up Karin's physical damage with seals to make her into my secondary fighter with Yuri. Not optimal, but it's more fun for me. I'll do that! I actually beat Godhand with ease due to some very lucky Slow debuffs from Yuri.

Yep you did well on Godhand. Joachim's weakness is that he can change to bat uncontrollably and that he has the lowest intelligence (funny). Karin is good all around but lacks the edge in everything. She's simply the middle road. I have barely ever used Lucia's Oils but I'm sure they will help you out in at least some points. From now on you will need to keep casting Yuri's earth fusion's Stand ability to nullify the sp damage from enemy attacks. This is more important early on and in bosses where they can hit you multiple times. The Terada boss fight in Japan's first dungeon can be a nightmare if you don't keep Stand on at all times (you will probably require few Pure Extracts here). You will not be needing Spikes in any wolf bout fights but you can if you think you can use it to your advantage. You will be required to use at least Arc Gale buff in the upcoming boss fights. Otherwise the bosses simply leave you behind. Also you should reserve enough Soul so you can level your upcoming lvl3 fusions to at least lvl5 (I think they learn the important Arc abilities at lvl5). And your lvl3 Fusion's level will be the same as your lvl2 one so you will not lose any Soul by powering your lvl2 fusions before acquiring the lvl3 one.

True, I had to wait for Joachim to get out of bat form when I was grinding so he would be able to survive a hit. Karin is quite a beast right now since I gave her +6 strength/luck from seeds, even though Joachim could have used them too but... Ya know... Aesthetics. Also I just realized that Lucia's oils don't scale with stats and the only one worth using would be the one for guaranteed crits so... Crap. Well I guess I wasted those seeds on her, haha. Ah well. Stand + Spikes is amazing, I never used spikes in the original game so I had no clue they could be so broken. I was wondering why my level 2's weren't learning anymore abilities... Totally forgot they were attached to the level 3 fusions. Thanks for the tips!

Night Queen is ROUGH. Damn, that was intense haha.

Lol. In Russia the game beats you :DDD. Actually you can beat this mod without applying any seals so you're not fucked or anything. And yeah that Night Queen boss can be a bit of a step up since from that moment on you are expected to use the Arc buffs.

That's good to know! The seals definitely make a difference though, especially on Karin who is taking over physical attacking for Yuri. The Mother Filarias and Asmodeus were just as intense, if not more! Making my way towards Astaroth, and then onto Disc 2!

I hope you like the mod so far. Personally I'm not happy with some of the bosses and I'm planning to release a new update at some point. Like I wasn't happy with the early bosses having too many turns. I'm really unprofessional with this. Here I was thinking I was finished with the mod until I see someone else play it and I see all the mishaps. Oh well. I'm really greatful for you playing it though. I'll make the final boss extra hard for you :DDD

I've been having a lot of fun. It got a lot better once I got out of the early game, but again, that's a problem with the early game's lack of variety and strategy rather than the mod itself. Hey, I'm more than happy to help! I did my own "hard" playthrough of From the New World where I never upgraded armor, used arc buffs, or bought the "coral" items and found that it was a lot more challenging and fun. I love Shadow Hearts, but the combat like most RPG's is easy and formulaic once you know what you're doing which really takes away from the fun. Challenges like this are a dream come true. Haha, looking forward to it!

Hey, I updated the mod, be sure to get the newest version asap (v2.5)! I made some very good changes to many of the bosses, added more intelligence to them since they seemed to lack that and put some of the bosses agility down a bit.

I'm glad you are having fun btw. I've been watching your playthrough. You're a great guy and I wouldn't want you to get fucked the way you need to start the game over. Make more saves so you can continue from them if the game locks you to endless game over. The game is really good but the designers thought the game was so easy it wouldn't hurt if you had to fight a boss unprepared. Make sure you create save on the battleship just in case you are not high enough level for Tsukiyomi. Basically you should be if you had evenly leveled party but if you need to change party for Tsukiyomi and some of them are way lower level he might fuck you over big time.

I give you my best to your efforts with the mod.

Aw, thank you man! I'm glad you could make it to the stream yesterday! I should be ok as far as saving myself into a dead end now. I'll probably keep going with it tonight.

Hey it's fine  I'm glad to be of help. I made a mini-update on this mod. This could be the final update, who knows. I upped the final boss' agility and I'm now happy with it. I also increased the exp, cash and soul rewards for the Koshoki enemies at the Nihonbashi park. I don't see anything else that should be patched but I'll do so if I encounter something that I want to change in the future.

I'm pretty excited just to see how fast the final boss is going to decimate me haha. My first week of classes is just about over and then I'll have three days off to do nothing but stream.

Lol the final boss is gonna be really hard but not impossible. You are not required to have any seals on anyone. As long as you have Dark Seraphim and are 99lvl you can survive any situation the boss throws you in as long as you do the right thing and hit perfects. Hitting perfects is less important when you're "in the clear". Making million save states is not a sin, it's merely a way to save yourself from too high frustration. I see you're having trouble with the 2nd Garan fight. You may be too low level or u may want to switch dark dress gepetto in. When you have lots of dark elements in the fight he uses Bright Banish instead of more deadly magic. But when you have him cast Bright Banish you will need to keep Stand on, otherwise your guys will go crazy.

Oh YEAH! I forgot about Dark Seraphim and his broken For Everyone buff. Wow, that's going to be interesting if I can get that off with Lucia's oil... Hitting perfects might become a problem especially with my lack of coral items. I'll try to honor my code of not using them but we'll see... My Garan fight did not go well, mostly because I kept screwing up my rings. I was really out of it when I was fighting him last stream and ended up getting tilted after screwing up Yuri's ring for the 30th time that day haha. I'll probably give it another go next time I stream and grind a bit if need be. That's a good point about Bright Banish! It really is a weak spell in comparison to all the other ones. Thanks!

No prob. I think Bright Banish does more damage than the other lvl3 magics when hit a single enemy but its weakness is that it becomes weaker once it hits multiple opponents. You will be needing Coral Pendant on the final boss since it has significantly more health and you pretty much will want to be using the Key items.

It seems weird just from a mechanical standpoint to have a spell that not only has a very small AoE but also does reduced damage to multiple targets... Oh. Well, time to swallow my pride and start using those coral pendants then haha. Is there an order I should do the sidequest dungeons in?

I agree the Bright Banish spell is really inferior to the others regardless of doing more damage to single enemy. The right order for the dungeons is: Tiffauge's Castle -> Dollhouse -> Black Forest -> Neam Ruins Underground. The Dog Shrine is pretty much ok to do at any point after Dollhouse.

Ok cool thanks! Mecha Lord fight went really well. I put Anastasia in to take its picture and she ended up face-tanking almost every single hit so the entire battle came down to reviving Anastasia over and over and over again as it punched her across the room haha. Only the Queen's Garden left and then I'll start the optional dungeons! Not too far off from the end now.

Hey. I've been watching how you just plow through the bosses. I never thought the technical ring would be so op. I had this mod totally balanced towards the normal ring but it seems the bosses require way more hp for those who choose to play the game with technical ring. I found the multipliers i like and I'm gonna up the hp of almost all of the bosses in the game. I'm sorry if the low hp of the bosses ruined the experience a bit. Update is coming for those who haven't walked over the bosses yet :DDDDD

Nevermind. I really don't know if I wanna optimize this mod for technical ring since it will kinda destroy the experience when playing with normal ring. Sorry to those who prefer the technical ring.

Aw, no need to apologize! It's my fault for breaking the game haha. Honestly, Technical Ring by itself is a nice boost, but technical ring WITH with Lucia's strike oil (with 99 strike expansions...) is completely busted. It's an extra 29% bonus on strikes, including buffs. If you balanced around that the game would be insanely hard for normal ring users. I think I'm going to switch to normal ring for the rest of the game cause I feel like I'm cheapening the late-game experience.

Don't feel that way. You may want to switch back to technical ring at least at the final boss cause it's really hard. Then again the seals may help a bit, not sure. I'm just glad you have played the mod that far :DDD

I guess it doesn't matter too much now that I'm 99% of the way done with the game haha. Damn, it's just hit me that I'm already at the end. It's been great to go back and experience this game again after so many years. I just might edit and put my playthrough up on youtube. Maybe not the whole thing since that would require a lot of editing and tons of bandwidth, but we'll see how the reception is (if there is any anyway). If anything, it'll make a good excuse to practice editing.

The smaller enemies in the Neam Ruins part 2 are insanely fast! I think you might want to adjust them a little cause running into the 6-stack of them can be an instant game over since they all go first. Then again, I think this might be the hardest dungeon in the game right? I probably should have done the Dog Shrine first...

Hey. After watching your vid I did some gameplay on the 2nd part of Neam Ruins and unfortunately I gotta say the enemies are just right. You are expected to have your party about 90 levelled when exploring the 2nd part of the ruins. When Kurando is lvl90 he will get first turn over the little guys and he can use his light element to take out multiple of them before they get a turn. You have been able to get by lower levelled cause of the seals. You might be able to take on the final boss less than 99 levelled if you play it right. Then again it wouldnt hurt to be maxed out. The dog shrine enemies are just as fast as the ones in neam ruins underground so it doesn't really make a difference much. However the final dungeon enemies are faster than the rest so they should be able to always get a turn first unless the seals somehow made you super fast (i doubt it).

You are free to put the playthrough on youtube of course. Lots of the bosses were altered after you passed them but it'll still make a good show regardless :DDD

Ahhh, I thought that might be the case. I figured I was a bit underleveled as it was but having Kurando and Anastasia, who were SUPER underleveled, in the party really made the difficulty jump. I power leveled a bit offscreen last time I played and got Yuri and Blanca to 90 so that's perfect! I'm planning to stream the finale tomorrow if everything works out!

Thanks! Maybe it'll bring some more players your way. <3

Thanks, I appreciate it. The Man Festival is totally optional since it will only give boost to Joachim that he doesn't even need. Once you beat Orobas you should have all the crests in the game unless you have missed some from previous dungeons. In order to get Solomon crest you will need to have every single crest collected and placed in the solomon board thing and of course beat Solomon. The Solomon crest is not required either tbh but you WILL need Dark Seraphim. I don't remember if you need all crests in order to obtain it. I hope not

I've done it! I beat the game! Holy crap dude, I can't believe it's over... Man this has been a blast and I'm real sad that after 60+ hours of playing through this game there really is nothing left. This was such a fun trip down memory lane, and it wouldn't have happened if it weren't for your mod. Thank you so much Zed! Now it's on to other games (first playthrough of Mass Effect 2 coming up), but I shall return with From the New World in the future! Of course I'll be playing my own poor man's "hard mod" of it as well, if you haven't come up with one by then haha.

Glad you enjoyed it. I don't like using Mind's Eye or Oils myself so the later half bosses can be taken down maybe a bit too fast. I totally neglected some elements in the game, mainly the HP of the bosses could be adjusted better. Then again I don't think I'll be editing this mod any further. For someone like me it's pretty much perfect. I love the first 2 Mass Effect games btw. The first one is a bit hard to be beaten on harder modes but the 2nd is pretty good while playing with the highest difficulty. As for the 3rd Shadow Hearts game, it's a hard case for me. I don't like it much anymore. I beat it several times before but I just can't get into it anymore. The whole America setting turns me off. And I think the developers of these JRPGs implemented the games so they could be beaten without using lots of elements in the game. Like FFX feels good when only applying HP, Str and Mag upgrades (it's still a bit easy that way). A big hat raise to Atlus though. Their games are pretty much perfect when either using worst armors or certain armor up to certain point. 99% of JPRGs are dumbed down and can be revived with hard mods. Shin Megami Tensei 3 and Persona 3 on hard modes are legitimate challenges though if you ask me.

This was actually my first time ever using Lucia's oils for real and... Yeah, they're totally broken haha. To be honest, I think if I had to do it over again, I wouldn't use the Mind's Eyes. I messed up so many damn rings because of those things. I think the mod is in a great spot. Even when I was using the strongest combinations in the game the bosses still had some challenge. I started up ME1 instead cause everyone was telling me I should play it first before jumping into ME2. The combat is clunky but I really like all the worldbuilding.

Honestly, From the New World is a guilty pleasure of mine. I used to hate it, but I've gotten used to its wacky antics and it has the best gameplay in the series. The setting is definitely a huge departure which I think works in some ways and falls flat in others. Some locations were very unique and really showed off the Shadow Hearts universe in a brand new setting, but I wish there were more dark locations to go and less pirate ships and area 51... In my From the New World playthrough I'll be using all the worst armor and not using any arc buffs. I might not use Mind's Eyes either this time. Also there won't be any broken oils. Last time I played the game that way and it was actually a nice little challenge, especially towards the end.

I know what you mean. So many RPG's are easy to beat even without using everything in your arsenal. We need more hardmods in the RPG community. Hmm, I've never tried a HP, Str, and Mag only run of FFX. That sounds interesting. Do you still pick up Accuracy and Agility? SMT3 is a great example of a challenging JRPG (Matador can kiss my ass), and Persona 3 is another good one despite the fact that some bosses can be pretty cheap. Digital Devil Saga is a favorite of mine. Plenty of challenges without it ever feeling unfair.

I think I still applied accuracy. But I'm pretty sure I made a strict rule of not applying any agility. It's been a while. Still I couldn't beat the final boss of FFX with those rules. But then again it's been a while. I'm pretty sure he is beatable if used everything 100% correctly. I wish I had applied agility when I was at the final boss' front door haha. The First Strike mod on weapons is a total must. I remember I couldn't survive in the omega dungeon though so everything probably can't be beaten in that challenge. The 2 DDS games are really good too. Try beating those without using the combination abilities. DDS1 won't be "that easy smt spin-off" anymore. 

Actually I think ME1 is better game than ME2. ME2 is still great though. I guess the whole "full-humor cutscenes" in SH3 really turn me off the most hahaha. It's so cringy. I remember having the same issue when I used to like the game. I still think Mao and Frank are great characters though. I got huge problem with Johnny.

Aaah ok. He must be beatable somehow since people have done no sphere grid runs before. Probably just takes a ton of preparation and some really busted item/Mix combinations. Is DDS1 considered easy? I thought it was pretty challenging but I did play it when I was younger so. DDS2 was definitely harder, probably because I did a Luck/Agility run. I'm liking ME1 but the combat feels so clunky and the Mako is a friggin bouncy-castle haha. It's a great game with some amazing world buiding but I think I'll enjoy ME2 as a whole more.

Totally agree. The humor in SH3 is so misplaced and unfunny at times. The first two games were funny because it contrasted with the dark serious tone of the plot. SH3 isn't dark at all so the constant humor just feels like a stupid attempt at being "random xD". Haha, honestly, Frank and Mao are my biggest complaints in the game. Too many joke characters. Mao has a nice personality but it's ruined by the fact that she's a cat for no discernible reason whatsoever. Imagine how much cooler she would be if she was an actual human female drunken-fist-using mafia boss. And then Frank... His entire character is a joke. There's nothing serious to take away from him. I don't mind characters like Joachim being set up to be funny, but at least Joachim was semi-serious about things and had some good back and forth between the other characters at times (Joachim/Anastasia). Frank is just there to shout a ridiculous one-liner every now and then while everyone is ignoring him. If these characters were given some sense of believability (Mao not being a cat) and their personalities were balanced to be a bit more serious at times (Frank being able to hold a conversation with the others on the team) I think it would round out the cast a lot better.

And I also think that's why Johnny comes off as a pretty "meh" character. I quite like Johnny actually. It's refreshing to have a dorky average kid as the main character and he has some moments throughout the game that show him to be pretty mature and confident when he needs to be. The problem as I see it is that Johnny is surrounded by a giant drunk talking cat and an insane German ninja. The game puts him in the role of the straight-man going "Hey guys, look at that! Isn't that random? xdddd" constantly. With such a light-hearted and goofy main character I don't think the game really needed three joke characters, especially Frank and Mao. If the cast acted more like mentors to Johnny on his quest, letting him play up the naive dork role while they taught him life lessons along the journey, I think the cast would feel much less like a walking circus bumbling around aimlessly and more like a coherent group of outcasts working as a team to stop Lady.

/end rant

I guess I had gotten a bit absorved in the whole joke-after-joke thing that's going on that I kept finding Johnny and the summoner lady irritatingly different. I agree that they could've taken different angle. What's interesting is SHC was supposed to be dark just like the first Shadow Hearts game but players complained that SH1 was too scary so they toned it down. Also, Yuri was supposed to be the villain. Lol. That FFX challenge was "no agility, magic def or def upgrades. I also didn't use Rikku's mixing or overdrive at all. Rikku is still important character since she is much faster than the rest. I'm still convinced that the challenge can be beaten even without Rikku's op mixing. People that say DDS1 is easy are probably those that play Atlus games all the time. DDS1 is a bit easier than DDS2. DDS2 has 3 of those "badass" bosses in the story that are tougher than the rest and the enemies are maybe a little more punishing. I thought ME1 had a better overall atmosphere which made me like it more. Then again it's been a while since I played those games.

They really do play up the silliness way too much. I mean you go from wandering around area 51 looking for clues on one guy's whereabouts, to getting sidetracked by being captured by a child pirate on your way to South America, to getting sidetracked AGAIN by mob fights in Las Vegas. The story and pacing is all over the place. To be honest though, I do like Johnny and Shania as characters. Just wish they had more meaningful dialogue together or with the others. Were they actually going to make Yuri the villain? I thought it was that the marketing team was just trolling everyone by advertising Nicolai as the main lead. Daaamn... That's quite a challenge. Wouldn't be surprised if it could be done though since some people really know how to break FFX using the bare minimum. I've played a lot of Atlus games and I thought DDS1 was a pretty fair challenge. Then again, it was one of my first. Most of the fights come down to having the right setup of abilities to exploit weaknesses and protect your own so if you know what's coming up it's not bad. DDS2 definitely had some harder fights. That big green dude with a bunch of mouths near the end comes to mind... I really liked ME1. It had amazing atmosphere, writing, and world-building. Have to say though, happy to be moving on to ME2. The mechanics have not aged well at all. I was rushing through the Mako and combat sections to get to the cutscenes.

Hello NGPlus community.

This may come as a surprise but I've been changing things a bit in this mod and have come up with version 3.0.

When I first released this mod I thought I had polished things enough when that actually wasn't the case. I have matured as a modder and look things a bit more realistically instead of just buffing the hell out of the enemies.

The changes I made with v3.0 in a nutshell:

- Normal enemies deal less damage (no more crazy one shotting). That still doesn't mean I made them too weak. They still do damage they just don't do THAT much. In addition to that most bosses have increased HP values (this includes the wolf bout enemies). I also decreased experience, cash and soul gained in Paris subway dungeon. Also Neo Astaroth has a bit better agility, and the first 2 bosses are a bit slower but hit harder. Little changes here and there.

I hope I didn't ruin anyone's fun with this mod with the previous versions. If you still have an itch for this game give my updated mod a try!  

Awesome,this hack is very amazing,thanks for your sharing!

On 21.5.2018 at 6:11 AM, jack5881 said:

Awesome,this hack is very amazing,thanks for your sharing!

Hey no probs! I hope you are having fun playing my mod.

I beat the mod! It took 90 minutes for Yuri to punch the final boss with Eternal Key and the weakest weapon, lol.

Overall, good work, although I think changing the order/difficulty of the sidequests would be good. Neam Ruins was probably the most annoying one, since it had the hardest enemies, hardest navigation, long times away from a save point (I played on a real PS2, so no save states), and the games forces you to use two characters that may be severely under leveled. In my playthough, I think was naturally around 67 to 69 on my mains and around 54 on my offs by the time I finished the other sidequest dungeons, so there was a lot of grinding to do. Alternatively, making it easy to grind just before Neam Ruins would also be fine.

Additionally, if you use Rage + Energy Charge + Mind's Eye + Third Key on technical ring (Lucia's 100% crit is actually unnecessary), you oneshot bosses, so maybe the post-game bosses need more health.

On 19.6.2018 at 8:49 PM, elltacko said:

I beat the mod! It took 90 minutes for Yuri to punch the final boss with Eternal Key and the weakest weapon, lol.

Overall, good work, although I think changing the order/difficulty of the sidequests would be good. Neam Ruins was probably the most annoying one, since it had the hardest enemies, hardest navigation, long times away from a save point (I played on a real PS2, so no save states), and the games forces you to use two characters that may be severely under leveled. In my playthough, I think was naturally around 67 to 69 on my mains and around 54 on my offs by the time I finished the other sidequest dungeons, so there was a lot of grinding to do. Alternatively, making it easy to grind just before Neam Ruins would also be fine.

Additionally, if you use Rage + Energy Charge + Mind's Eye + Third Key on technical ring (Lucia's 100% crit is actually unnecessary), you oneshot bosses, so maybe the post-game bosses need more health.

Out of the optional dungeons the Neam Ruins is supposed to be done last. Also this mod is scaled to normal ring. Using Technical Ring is basically the easy mode if you are good at hitting the strike areas. I'm gonna release a new version of this mod in a bit.

Hello again. It's me with a new version (v3.33) of the mod. In v3.33 I have disabled the option to buy the Spikes accessory. I've been trying to make the normal enemies more exciting and the Spikes accessory works directly against it, not giving the enemies the chance to combo. There are also other things that I don't like about Spikes. Guarding becomes meaningless, enemies' status effects don't register, the Mutant Apes don't have Spikes equipped, making the Shoki enemies one shot them (it shouldn't be that way) among other things. With v3.33 I also upped the normal enemies' HP so the player can't one shot enemies unless they use right elements. There are also enemies that are tankier than some others so you can no longer one shot them. I'll be focusing on other projects now that I got this patch out. Thanks for all support guys. I'll be updating this mod if I see something's amiss, but I'm pretty confident with how the mod is at this point.

Yeah, I would agree with removing spikes also because the buff management was brutal if an ally died and the the first dungeon of Disk 2 was really brutal because enemies had 9x or 15x hit so without spikes, you'd die, and with spikes you would go berserk, along with probably underleveled party members.

I also remember there were cheesy strategies involving the AI on late game bosses because they had an ally and they would prioritize forming a combo formation with them instead of attacking you, so if you left the enemy alive, they would waste about half their turns.

Oh, even if you cannot one-shot enemies, Gathering into AOE into AOE into AOE still would work very, very well.

On 3.9.2018 at 8:40 PM, elltacko said:

Yeah, I would agree with removing spikes also because the buff management was brutal if an ally died and the the first dungeon of Disk 2 was really brutal because enemies had 9x or 15x hit so without spikes, you'd die, and with spikes you would go berserk, along with probably underleveled party members.

I also remember there were cheesy strategies involving the AI on late game bosses because they had an ally and they would prioritize forming a combo formation with them instead of attacking you, so if you left the enemy alive, they would waste about half their turns.

Oh, even if you cannot one-shot enemies, Gathering into AOE into AOE into AOE still would work very, very well.

Yep you are right. However you don't get the 'Gathering' spell until very late in the game. I hope you like my mod for this game. I'm working on From the New World right now. It's gonna be my next completed project. After that I'm probably gonna do the 1st Shadow Hearts to complete the trilogy.

Hello fellow Godslayers.

It's me with a somewhat important update to this mod. I've done some precise testing on the enemies' power levels and found out more monsters could one shot the party members than I initially thought. What I did with v4.0 was lower the enemies' physical damage so they won't be able to one shot anyone if they happen to get a lucky critical strike as long as the player is not too far from the set level.

In addition I adjusted their magic power based on their physical stats. The magic damage they deal is pretty much the same as before. These changes are not made to remove challenge from the mod, but only to balance things out and make the game more enjoyable. I also balanced the early bosses based on the changes I did to the random encounters. None of the bosses after 'Mother Filaria' were altered, with the only exception the 'Fuujin & Raijin' boss near the end. They have slightly lower physical damage now. With that said they will combo you to death if you don't have defense up.

Also, the 'Gigafilaria' gatekeepers now have slightly lower hp, so those that can deal high damage will be able to one shot them.

Give my updated mod a try if you feel like it. I will now be focusing on From the New World where I will be making changes to the normal enemies similarly as I have done here.
 

So are castor and pollux supposed to be so buffed up in this or do i have a bug or maybe i'm supposed to grind some levels? i got there with everyone at level 7, and first attempt each of of them took 3 turns consecutively(6 consecutive total), comboing and killing off two characters without much trouble before i got a single turn, leaving me with only yuri and karin. after yuri and karin take their turns, they again had 6 turns which was basically a game over. tried another time and it was a little better it was more like 4 turns at the start and then 4-6 turns after my characters got a turn, which was still pretty brutal. i think even if i had all my characters spamming luck talisman/healing items/cure they'd still be out damaging all my healing.  When i get some more free time i will try again after hitting level 8. I took the water dress on the logic that hail breeze is the best level 1 spell and i though I't give gapeto a bit of an edge in the boss fight since I could focus down the water one with karin's fire sword arts, yuri's fire fusion rage, and gapetto using the fire crest magic, blanca healing.  

edit 1: as a side note, one of my first subway encounter was an with an enma(?) with like 5 rats i think too. and i think they all got to go before i did. was incredibly painful Heh. it seemed alright after that, with only one more particularly brutal "you are surrounded" encounter

Edit 2: wow, what a difference a level(8) makes. that little extra hit point buffer and probably one or two extra turns i gained made all the difference in the world.

On 1.8.2019 at 2:03 PM, vhatever said:

So are castor and pollux supposed to be so buffed up in this or do i have a bug or maybe i'm supposed to grind some levels? i got there with everyone at level 7, and first attempt each of of them took 3 turns consecutively(6 consecutive total), comboing and killing off two characters without much trouble before i got a single turn, leaving me with only yuri and karin. after yuri and karin take their turns, they again had 6 turns which was basically a game over. tried another time and it was a little better it was more like 4 turns at the start and then 4-6 turns after my characters got a turn, which was still pretty brutal. i think even if i had all my characters spamming luck talisman/healing items/cure they'd still be out damaging all my healing.  When i get some more free time i will try again after hitting level 8. I took the water dress on the logic that hail breeze is the best level 1 spell and i though I't give gapeto a bit of an edge in the boss fight since I could focus down the water one with karin's fire sword arts, yuri's fire fusion rage, and gapetto using the fire crest magic, blanca healing.  

 

edit 1: as a side note, one of my first subway encounter was an with an enma(?) with like 5 rats i think too. and i think they all got to go before i did. was incredibly painful Heh. it seemed alright after that, with only one more particularly brutal "you are surrounded" encounter

 

Edit 2: wow, what a difference a level(8) makes. that little extra hit point buffer and probably one or two extra turns i gained made all the difference in the world.

Hey, thanks for giving my mods a go  yep you are supposed to be 8 levelled before that boss. And since both of them are able to use magic it's better to have Gepetto with the non-elemental dress. That's actually the first boss that has significantly higher agility. You will be needing enough Thera items in the bosses to come along with Talismans (in late bosses you have powerful healing magic so that's not as prevalent then). I suggest you keep several save files just in case for there will be segments in the game where you're trapped on boss and can't buy items before beating them (one wouldn't necessarily notice these points in the game since the game is so easy). Let me know if you need help on anything. I'll be glad to help ;P

@zedorfed66 quick question: Can you use this mod with a undub version of the game?

6 hours ago, ronlyn said:

@zedorfed66 quick question: Can you use this mod with a undub version of the game?

Hey again Ronlyn. I hope your weekend is going smoothly.

There might be a way if the version is NTSC-U. It all depends whether the code sections are in exact same places in the game images. Even if they're not you should be able to paste the edited changes into the undub version if both the original and undub version are same region (in this case NTSC-U). However in order to do so you will need to compare the 'orig. unmodded Covenant' and 'unmodded undub Covenant' to find the changes between them. I think you will need a program called "delta maker" in order to do this. Once delta maker has created you a file that is used to change 'orig. unmodded Covenant' into 'unmodded undub Covenant' you can do that even with the 'orig. modded Covenant'. The change that occurs will not affect the modded values, and even if they're not in same places in the code they will be moved automatically. I think the program you need is delta maker. I have been modding FFX International undub and I'm able to transfer the modded values the same way between the 2.

Edit: I think the program is called "delta patcher". Haven't been using that in a while but if you need help in this matter I can get more deep into it.

I plan on playing the new version of your mod and this time I will try to avoid using technical ring!

However, can you give me a spreadsheet or list of recommended levels for each boss? 

I felt as if I might have been under leveled on my previous playthrough and there were some difficulty spikes that might have been avoided if I was properly leveled.

2 hours ago, elltacko said:

I plan on playing the new version of your mod and this time I will try to avoid using technical ring!

However, can you give me a spreadsheet or list of recommended levels for each boss? 

I felt as if I might have been under leveled on my previous playthrough and there were some difficulty spikes that might have been avoided if I was properly leveled.

Hi and thanks for giving my mod a whirl!

Here are the optimal levels to take on the bosses in their respective dungeons:

2          Apoina Tower
5          Ardennes Forest
8          Paris Subway
12        Wine Cellar
14        Rhondda Mine
17        Manmariana Island
18        S.G. Headquarters
20        Neam Ruins
25        St. Marguerite
29        Winter Palace
31        Mirror Palace
33        Gallery of the Dead
35        Hermitage
39        Idar Flamme
42        Apoina Tower 2

45        Battleship Mikasa
49        Otherworld
51        Nihonbashi
56        Hojo Research Lab
59        Purgatory
63        Immortal Mountain
64        Azabu Kamiyashiki
68        Queen's Garden

72        Tiffauges Castle
78        Doll House
86        Black Forest
86-89   Dog Shrine
92        Neam Ruins Underground
99        The Vessel

If I recall correctly all optional content can be done at least 92 levelled. After that it's simply the leveling in 'The Vessel' before taking on the final bosses.

Thanks for the quick reply for information!

Now that I'm looking at these levels, I'm pretty sure I was very under leveled, being somewhere between 5 to 15 levels under leveled for most of the game. However, I don't have save history, so I don't know for sure how under leveled I was, so I could be wrong. When I replay, I'll try to gain about the same amount of EXP and find out how under leveled I was on my first playthrough.

2 hours ago, elltacko said:

Thanks for the quick reply for information!

Now that I'm looking at these levels, I'm pretty sure I was very under leveled, being somewhere between 5 to 15 levels under leveled for most of the game. However, I don't have save history, so I don't know for sure how under leveled I was, so I could be wrong. When I replay, I'll try to gain about the same amount of EXP and find out how under leveled I was on my first playthrough.

It happens: I am playing the first one with Imbroglio installed and I got my ass kicked so hard until I got @zedorfed66 to hand me over the level suggested per place. How much did you enjoy this mod? I'm practically at the end of the first one (With A LOT of critic to be honest) and would be nice to have something to push me on the finish line and into the next game in the trilogy

On 12/27/2019 at 10:10 PM, ronlyn said:

It happens: I am playing the first one with Imbroglio installed and I got my ass kicked so hard until I got @zedorfed66 to hand me over the level suggested per place. How much did you enjoy this mod? I'm practically at the end of the first one (With A LOT of critic to be honest) and would be nice to have something to push me on the finish line and into the next game in the trilogy

I played his 3.0 version of his mod. It was pretty difficult, which isn't surprising since I was underleveled.

I overall enjoyed the mod because it felt like the mechanics were incredibly focused on managing buffs (agility up and defending sp cost down being mandatory, along with multiplicative buff stacking being the best way to achieve damage), healing (due to the really high incoming damage from a boss as they would usually get about 4 or 5 turns for every 5 to 6 turns that I have, after agility up), and somehow finding the time to do damage. Deciding what to do on my turn was pretty difficult (Heal? Buff? Am I healthy enough so that I could do some damage?) and the game was really rewarding when I would win by playing smarter.

There were definitely times though that because I was underleveled, the game was unreasonably difficult. The most notable time was sometime on Disk 2, where you have to fight a boss after doing something like a minute or two of mob fights with the Mutant Apes. That boss went three times before I went and would AOE me to death; I had to switch to the base game to get past that because I'm pretty sure you can't fight random encounters before that boss during that event, so I couldn't grind.

EDIT: Oh yeah, due to surprise attacks in the early through mid game, dying to a random encounter was a matter of when, not if, due to them killing you before you have a turn to go. So that's something you have to be okay with. It's mitigated when you get an accessory that prevents ambushes, but the final dungeon's enemy agility is high enough that that can still happen.

Also, the balance of the characters isn't very good, but I'm pretty sure zedor didn't rebalance the characters from vanilla, so it's not their fault.

4 hours ago, elltacko said:

I played his 3.0 version of his mod. It was pretty difficult, which isn't surprising since I was underleveled.

I overall enjoyed the mod because it felt like the mechanics were incredibly focused on managing buffs (agility up and defending sp cost down being mandatory, along with multiplicative buff stacking being the best way to achieve damage), healing (due to the really high incoming damage from a boss as they would usually get about 4 or 5 turns for every 5 to 6 turns that I have, after agility up), and somehow finding the time to do damage. Deciding what to do on my turn was pretty difficult (Heal? Buff? Am I healthy enough so that I could do some damage?) and the game was really rewarding when I would win by playing smarter.

There were definitely times though that because I was underleveled, the game was unreasonably difficult. The most notable time was sometime on Disk 2, where you have to fight a boss after doing something like a minute or two of mob fights with the Mutant Apes. That boss went three times before I went and would AOE me to death; I had to switch to the base game to get past that because I'm pretty sure you can't fight random encounters before that boss during that event, so I couldn't grind.

EDIT: Oh yeah, due to surprise attacks in the early through mid game, dying to a random encounter was a matter of when, not if, due to them killing you before you have a turn to go. So that's something you have to be okay with. It's mitigated when you get an accessory that prevents ambushes, but the final dungeon's enemy agility is high enough that that can still happen.

Also, the balance of the characters isn't very good, but I'm pretty sure zedor didn't rebalance the characters from vanilla, so it's not their fault.

Happy new year everyone!

I'm glad you also found positives to my mod. If I recall correctly I changed lots of stuff with the random encounters between v.3.0 and 4.0. Now they shouldn't ever be able to one-shot you to game over screen if you have the best equipment and enter new dungeons in the recommended levels of the previous ones. Final dungeon enemies shouldn't be able to now either (they're still super fast though). You can level at Nihonbashi park before fighting the boss (it's not unusual to miss this).

8 hours ago, zedorfed66 said:

Happy new year everyone!

I'm glad you also found positives to my mod. If I recall correctly I changed lots of stuff with the random encounters between v.3.0 and 4.0. Now they shouldn't ever be able to one-shot you to game over screen if you have the best equipment and enter new dungeons in the recommended levels of the previous ones. Final dungeon enemies shouldn't be able to now either (they're still super fast though). You can level at Nihonbashi park before fighting the boss (it's not unusual to miss this).

Happy new year!

Honestly, I'm okay with randomly dying to random encounters.

It sounds kinda stupid, but you can deal with randomly dying to random encounters by changing the way you navigate the dungeon. By emphasizing save points while doing dungeons (most Shadow Hearts 2 dungeons are not very big and save points are fairly common), you can make incremental progress by going back to the save points after doing a puzzle or getting an important item.

Navigating dungeons was then pretty scary and you get the risk/reward of either going further into the dungeon for a save point or items and possibly dying vs. retreating for a save point. So, there was a lot of tension and fear while moving through the dungeon because I could randomly die. And whenever I reached a save point, whether a new one or while retreating to a save point (because you can still die on your way back), there was always a breath of relief and happiness.

I also appreciate that the dungeon design in Shadow Hearts 2 was a little unrefined at times, so save points were actually kinda unpredictable when they would actually show up, making reaching a new save point surprising and relieving, rather than "oh, I'm pretty sure it's time for a save point? Yup, there it is."

So when I got the accessory that prevented back attacks, although the game was more fair, the tension of going through the dungeons disappeared. (But at the same time, that occurred around the time I was able to start oneshot bosses with buff stacking, so it was also okay because then after struggling through the game for so long, it felt incredibly powerful being able to go through dungeons and bosses without breaking a sweat while being incredibly underleveled.)

Alright cool, that's very useful to know that I can grind in Nihonbashi Park. This is also weird to say, but even though I missed that you could grind and ended up finding the boss unreasonably difficult, it was still fun switching to the base game, getting like 4 to 6 turns to the boss's 1 turn and messing with the boss into a super overkill buff stacked oneshot was also fun. The feeling was like "lol, the base game is really, really easy (and I might've been overleveled for the base game), so that's the reason why I'm playing on hard mode." Partly because of not actually finding it unfun and partly being pretty sure that I was underleveled was why I didn't mention it originally. I was okay with it being unreasonable for me.

I think that unlike other players, I tend to appreciate jankiness and unrefined gameplay because it tends to give a sense of unpredictability, wonder, discovery, and cleverness whenever you figure out a way around the jank. And a lot of times, when players complain about unfair or unrefined mechanics, there are usually ways to play around and avoid the issue. Me included, apparently, with the Nihonbashi park encounters, lol.

Finally, just because a design can make you feel annoyed, frustrated, cheated, angry, or even bored at times, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad design. If art is about making you feel emotion, why aren't those valid emotions to make you feel? A game that makes me feel those "negative" feelings is definitely more interesting than a game that always tries to make you feel good emotions.

So yes, I really enjoyed my time with your mod, including the unenjoyable or unreasonable parts of it. That's why is why I want to replay it, especially on the new version to see how things change. Will I like it as much? Will I find new things to like? Even if I like the new version less, it's still okay because it will probably clarify my feelings on why I like the previous version more, even though the new version is very likely better.

Sorry for this long post, I feel like maybe that you got the impression that the things I mentioned were "bad" (and to be fair, the things I mentioned were phrased as issues with the mod), but that's not how I feel at all.

Also, my posts from 2018 are probably not representative of how I feel now after 1.5 years of expanding what I think "good" is.

21 hours ago, elltacko said:

Happy new year!

Honestly, I'm okay with randomly dying to random encounters.

It sounds kinda stupid, but you can deal with randomly dying to random encounters by changing the way you navigate the dungeon. By emphasizing save points while doing dungeons (most Shadow Hearts 2 dungeons are not very big and save points are fairly common), you can make incremental progress by going back to the save points after doing a puzzle or getting an important item.

Navigating dungeons was then pretty scary and you get the risk/reward of either going further into the dungeon for a save point or items and possibly dying vs. retreating for a save point. So, there was a lot of tension and fear while moving through the dungeon because I could randomly die. And whenever I reached a save point, whether a new one or while retreating to a save point (because you can still die on your way back), there was always a breath of relief and happiness.

I also appreciate that the dungeon design in Shadow Hearts 2 was a little unrefined at times, so save points were actually kinda unpredictable when they would actually show up, making reaching a new save point surprising and relieving, rather than "oh, I'm pretty sure it's time for a save point? Yup, there it is."

So when I got the accessory that prevented back attacks, although the game was more fair, the tension of going through the dungeons disappeared. (But at the same time, that occurred around the time I was able to start oneshot bosses with buff stacking, so it was also okay because then after struggling through the game for so long, it felt incredibly powerful being able to go through dungeons and bosses without breaking a sweat while being incredibly underleveled.)

Alright cool, that's very useful to know that I can grind in Nihonbashi Park. This is also weird to say, but even though I missed that you could grind and ended up finding the boss unreasonably difficult, it was still fun switching to the base game, getting like 4 to 6 turns to the boss's 1 turn and messing with the boss into a super overkill buff stacked oneshot was also fun. The feeling was like "lol, the base game is really, really easy (and I might've been overleveled for the base game), so that's the reason why I'm playing on hard mode." Partly because of not actually finding it unfun and partly being pretty sure that I was underleveled was why I didn't mention it originally. I was okay with it being unreasonable for me.

I think that unlike other players, I tend to appreciate jankiness and unrefined gameplay because it tends to give a sense of unpredictability, wonder, discovery, and cleverness whenever you figure out a way around the jank. And a lot of times, when players complain about unfair or unrefined mechanics, there are usually ways to play around and avoid the issue. Me included, apparently, with the Nihonbashi park encounters, lol.

Finally, just because a design can make you feel annoyed, frustrated, cheated, angry, or even bored at times, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad design. If art is about making you feel emotion, why aren't those valid emotions to make you feel? A game that makes me feel those "negative" feelings is definitely more interesting than a game that always tries to make you feel good emotions.

So yes, I really enjoyed my time with your mod, including the unenjoyable or unreasonable parts of it. That's why is why I want to replay it, especially on the new version to see how things change. Will I like it as much? Will I find new things to like? Even if I like the new version less, it's still okay because it will probably clarify my feelings on why I like the previous version more, even though the new version is very likely better.

Sorry for this long post, I feel like maybe that you got the impression that the things I mentioned were "bad" (and to be fair, the things I mentioned were phrased as issues with the mod), but that's not how I feel at all.

Also, my posts from 2018 are probably not representative of how I feel now after 1.5 years of expanding what I think "good" is.

That's interesting. I kinda wanted to make a super hard mod at first but my thoughts have changed a bit. The way Shadow Hearts games are balanced making the enemies "balls-to-the-walls" hard would only work in some dungeons and some dungeons would be super easy compared to them. Also the normal enemies' stats would be higher than bosses and I didn't want that. And if I made bosses an overkill I couldn't make them faster or they'd totally annihilate the player party. I learned stuff after modding all 3 Shadow Hearts games and made similar changes to normal encounters and bosses alike.

The games are all kinda similar in a way and I like the combat in all of them so it was important for me to make the mods as perfect as possible in my own vision. The normal encounters are naturally harder in the 1st Shadow Hearts game simply cause it has different battle system. Then again in that game the bosses are simpler so it kind of balances things up. I think the 3rd game has equal challenge with bosses and normal encounters. In Covenant I think the bosses are more challenging than normal foes.

Hi again.

So I decided to make a better 2020 and release version 4.1 of this mod. It only changes the 'Koshoki' enemy's HP back to the original. I pondered for a long time whether it was worth updating this mod just for 1 change but here we are! Have fun.

@zedorfed66 big question, how you can see if the mod was successfully installed? I just went and beat Castor & Pollux and I don't think it's supposed to be that easy (for the record, castor got decimated and by my calculations he had the same hp as vanilla and with everyone at lvl 7)

1 hour ago, ronlyn said:

@zedorfed66 big question, how you can see if the mod was successfully installed? I just went and beat Castor & Pollux and I don't think it's supposed to be that easy (for the record, castor got decimated and by my calculations he had the same hp as vanilla and with everyone at lvl 7)

Hey again.

They're supposed to have 6x their original agility so you should definitely see the difference. You could reinstall the mod on original game image just in case.

Edit: This mod was designed for NTSC-U version of the game and it may not work with undub. Also I think if the game image is not original (modded in some way) the mod may not install.

If you have hex editor you can check if the mod was installed correctly by looking at the value in address 0x31888B9E it should be "48" instead of "0C" as in 72 instead of 12. That's the agility for Castor.

Hey again dear NGPlus community.

I created a new version of this mod for those who're craving more challenge from it. v5.0 is not only a more hardcore take on the mod, but I also got things done for it more correctly to my liking and things look more cohesive now.

Here's a rundown of what was changed in 5.0:

-Final dungeon enemies' health multiplier is now *2 instead of *1.5.

-Enemy physical damage increased (significantly at times) with magic damage balanced with the PD multipliers. You will be required to cast Arc Shield and Arc Barrier on bosses this time around.

-Normal encounter enemies' agility increased the way they're no longer scaled to Yuri, but to the party member with highest agl value. After looking more closely at the agl values I was able to figure out how the optional dungeons' enemies were meant to be handled, thanks to looking at the agl value of Kurando instead of Yuri.

With these changes now the recommended levels for following dungeons are as follows:

Tiffauges Castle: 72

Doll House: 79

Dog Shrine: 81

Black Forest: 86

Neam Ruins Underground: 93

'Guardian' boss can still be done right after 'King Tamakos'. 'Dark Seraphim' and 'King Solomon' bosses can be done right after clearing Neam Ruins Underground.

14 hours ago, zedorfed66 said:

Hey again dear NGPlus community.

I created a new version of this mod for those who're craving more challenge from it. v5.0 is not only a more hardcore take on the mod, but I also got things done for it more correctly to my liking and things look more cohesive now.

Here's a rundown of what was changed in 5.0:

-Final dungeon enemies' health multiplier is now *2 instead of *1.5.

-Enemy physical damage increased (significantly at times) with magic damage balanced with the PD multipliers. You will be required to cast Arc Shield and Arc Barrier on bosses this time around.

-Normal encounter enemies' agility increased the way they're no longer scaled to Yuri, but to the party member with highest agl value. After looking more closely at the agl values I was able to figure out how the optional dungeons' enemies were meant to be handled, thanks to looking at the agl value of Kurando instead of Yuri.

With these changes now the recommended levels for following dungeons are as follows:

Tiffauges Castle: 72

Doll House: 79

Dog Shrine: 81

Black Forest: 86

Neam Ruins Underground: 93

'Guardian' boss can still be done right after 'King Tamakos'. 'Dark Seraphim' and 'King Solomon' bosses can be done right after clearing Neam Ruins Underground.

Welp, good thing I didn't plan to tackle this before my Trails in the Sky the 3rd LLG (Gotta publish my SC LLG run now that I think about it). 

13 hours ago, ronlyn said:

Welp, good thing I didn't plan to tackle this before my Trails in the Sky the 3rd LLG (Gotta publish my SC LLG run now that I think about it). 

I'm glad you're showing interest. I hope you enjoy it if you plan to try it at some point.

Wow, I was taking a trip down memory lane here and you're still updating this mod! Hey again Zed! It's Shaggy, the dude who streamed your mod a couple years ago. I got the Shadow Hearts fever and was thinking of doing another playthrough of Covenant at some point. How's your FtNW modding coming along? That's another one I played through doing my own ruleset of no armor/buffs/keys, which is a nice challenge in the later fights. A couple of my viewers liked the playthrough so much they've been asking me when I'll show them Covenant so of course I'm treating them to watching me get my ass kicked with your mod haha. Can't wait to see the changes you've made! Hope you've been doing well man! Good to see you're still putting good work out. 

9 hours ago, SirShaggy said:

Wow, I was taking a trip down memory lane here and you're still updating this mod! Hey again Zed! It's Shaggy, the dude who streamed your mod a couple years ago. I got the Shadow Hearts fever and was thinking of doing another playthrough of Covenant at some point. How's your FtNW modding coming along? That's another one I played through doing my own ruleset of no armor/buffs/keys, which is a nice challenge in the later fights. A couple of my viewers liked the playthrough so much they've been asking me when I'll show them Covenant so of course I'm treating them to watching me get my ass kicked with your mod haha. Can't wait to see the changes you've made! Hope you've been doing well man! Good to see you're still putting good work out. 

Hey, good to hear from you Shaggy. It's been a while eh. I hope you've been feeling good and healthy in these testing times.

I've made a goal of making these mods as perfect as I possibly can. I keep coming back to them once in a while cause I love these games so much. And sometimes I find stuff that I want to change for myself and others. I've also made mods for Shadow Hearts 1 and FtNW if you wanna check them out. I also released a mod for Final Fantasy VIII a while ago. I need to play through that game more to test it out some more.

On 5/20/2020 at 11:54 AM, zedorfed66 said:

Hey, good to hear from you Shaggy. It's been a while eh. I hope you've been feeling good and healthy in these testing times.

I've made a goal of making these mods as perfect as I possibly can. I keep coming back to them once in a while cause I love these games so much. And sometimes I find stuff that I want to change for myself and others. I've also made mods for Shadow Hearts 1 and FtNW if you wanna check them out. I also released a mod for Final Fantasy VIII a while ago. I need to play through that game more to test it out some more.

Dealing with some life stuff, but I'm not doing too bad! Thanks man!

I really appreciate the amount of work you put into these! I'm really excited to see the improvements you've made. Ah man, I will definitely be checking out your other mods! I play FtNW every couple of years. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. Never played FFVIII myself! Heard the junction system was really janky. I'll take a look at it and see if anyone has videos out of what it's like. Gonna start my Covenant playthrough here real soon! Same place, twitch.tv/shaggysir if you ever want to watch!

15 hours ago, SirShaggy said:

Dealing with some life stuff, but I'm not doing too bad! Thanks man!

I really appreciate the amount of work you put into these! I'm really excited to see the improvements you've made. Ah man, I will definitely be checking out your other mods! I play FtNW every couple of years. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. Never played FFVIII myself! Heard the junction system was really janky. I'll take a look at it and see if anyone has videos out of what it's like. Gonna start my Covenant playthrough here real soon! Same place, twitch.tv/shaggysir if you ever want to watch!

I'm glad you're doing well. FF8 was my childhood game and my favorite in FF series. I've also played through 7, 9, 10, 12 and the 13 trilogy but I find 8 to be the easiest to pick up. The junction system can be annoying but it's also the game's way of getting stronger since leveling alone also levels the enemies. It feels more rewarding in hard mod when you get access to better junction magic since you really need it against the enemies that have been modded stronger. At the same time I can understand if the system puts off lots of players. I hope you enjoy the mods and if you have any questions or anything you can message on these boards. Thanks for the invite, I'll be checking out your progress if you choose to tackle them.

10 hours ago, zedorfed66 said:

I'm glad you're doing well. FF8 was my childhood game and my favorite in FF series. I've also played through 7, 9, 10, 12 and the 13 trilogy but I find 8 to be the easiest to pick up. The junction system can be annoying but it's also the game's way of getting stronger since leveling alone also levels the enemies. It feels more rewarding in hard mod when you get access to better junction magic since you really need it against the enemies that have been modded stronger. At the same time I can understand if the system puts off lots of players. I hope you enjoy the mods and if you have any questions or anything you can message on these boards. Thanks for the invite, I'll be checking out your progress if you choose to tackle them.

Hey maybe I'll have to give it a shot sometime! I love me some hard mods. X and XII are my favorites. I'm actually finishing up my FFXII Struggle for Freedom (hard mod) run right now! I sure will man! I think I'm gonna see if my viewers are around and start on it tonight!

Edit: Oh I forgot to ask, will the 5.0 version have an excessive amount of grinding in between bosses? I see you labeled it as a more hardcore version of the mod and don't know if I should do the previous version to save my sanity.

5 hours ago, SirShaggy said:

Hey maybe I'll have to give it a shot sometime! I love me some hard mods. X and XII are my favorites. I'm actually finishing up my FFXII Struggle for Freedom (hard mod) run right now! I sure will man! I think I'm gonna see if my viewers are around and start on it tonight!

Edit: Oh I forgot to ask, will the 5.0 version have an excessive amount of grinding in between bosses? I see you labeled it as a more hardcore version of the mod and don't know if I should do the previous version to save my sanity.

You are more required to be on the recommended levels in 5.0 cause the bosses hit harder. Either go with 5.0 or 4.1. If you only can i recommend going with 5.0 since it's more complete. On 4.1 you could beat the bosses earlier levels but the wolf bouts and fusion battles couldn't be done immediately cause they're more strictly locked to the recommended levels. So it's kinda weird mix. I definitely prefer how things are in 5.0 cause I enjoy the grinding but it's different for everyone. I'm glad you're enjoying XII btw. I also like FFX and XII.

9 hours ago, zedorfed66 said:

You are more required to be on the recommended levels in 5.0 cause the bosses hit harder. Either go with 5.0 or 4.1. If you only can i recommend going with 5.0 since it's more complete. On 4.1 you could beat the bosses earlier levels but the wolf bouts and fusion battles couldn't be done immediately cause they're more strictly locked to the recommended levels. So it's kinda weird mix. I definitely prefer how things are in 5.0 cause I enjoy the grinding but it's different for everyone. I'm glad you're enjoying XII btw. I also like FFX and XII.

Gotcha! I will go ahead and give 5.0 a shot and if the grinding is a bit too excessive I'll probably switch to 4.1. Don't think my viewers would be interested in seeing me grinding for too long, otherwise I would. XII has really grown on my over the years. Just like FtNW honestly. Now they're two of my favorite RPG's.

37 minutes ago, SirShaggy said:

Gotcha! I will go ahead and give 5.0 a shot and if the grinding is a bit too excessive I'll probably switch to 4.1. Don't think my viewers would be interested in seeing me grinding for too long, otherwise I would. XII has really grown on my over the years. Just like FtNW honestly. Now they're two of my favorite RPG's.

In v4.1 I thought I'd have the duels as reward for being patient with leveling while the bosses can be done on lower levels. Maybe I should make a "perfect" low level mod that still requires correct inputs. I think it'd be cool for those who don't care to spend so much time on leveling. I'll be looking forward to seeing what you think about the mod.

On 5/24/2020 at 2:34 PM, zedorfed66 said:

In v4.1 I thought I'd have the duels as reward for being patient with leveling while the bosses can be done on lower levels. Maybe I should make a "perfect" low level mod that still requires correct inputs. I think it'd be cool for those who don't care to spend so much time on leveling. I'll be looking forward to seeing what you think about the mod.

Ahhh gotcha! A "perfect" low level mod would be cool to save on grinding time but I totally understand that that would be a ton of work. I started my playthrough yesterday and got up to Castor and Pollux! Forgot how tough those two were. Got up to level 8 so I'm gonna take them on again next time! Has the exp in the subway been adjusted? Maybe I'm just a casual but 20 exp for each fight seems pretty low considering it takes about 300 to get to level 8.

2 hours ago, SirShaggy said:

Ahhh gotcha! A "perfect" low level mod would be cool to save on grinding time but I totally understand that that would be a ton of work. I started my playthrough yesterday and got up to Castor and Pollux! Forgot how tough those two were. Got up to level 8 so I'm gonna take them on again next time! Has the exp in the subway been adjusted? Maybe I'm just a casual but 20 exp for each fight seems pretty low considering it takes about 300 to get to level 8.

I'm not sure if I'm gonna commit to making a "low level" mod. It would alter pretty much everything I've had set in this mod. For example the recommended levels all work with 1.5 multiplier for agility for Yuri and 1.65 for Blanca/Kurando. There are also multipliers that go for hp, str and mag stats. If I'd change the recommended levels below what they are now things would get messed up. I thought I'd increase the exp gained in battles but that wouldn't work well either cause some of the dungeons are longer and the exp that is given to the characters now is just right the way you get to explore everything and not get over leveled. Then there are some dungeons where you get to the end fast but have to grind for an hour. Basically there's grinding in every area. Some just go more naturally while exploring. I adjusted the exp for every area the way you'll need to be leveling for about an hour in each area. There may be exceptions in later dungeons.

The subway dungeon gives og exp since it's kinda a long one and you get plenty of exp if you explore everything.

Basically this mod is not very good for streaming unless your audience wants to get bored with the grinding. And from what I gathered that was your concern too. I'm sorry about that. I still hope that you enjoy it.

1 hour ago, zedorfed66 said:

I'm not sure if I'm gonna commit to making a "low level" mod. It would alter pretty much everything I've had set in this mod. For example the recommended levels all work with 1.5 multiplier for agility for Yuri and 1.65 for Blanca/Kurando. There are also multipliers that go for hp, str and mag stats. If I'd change the recommended levels below what they are now things would get messed up. I thought I'd increase the exp gained in battles but that wouldn't work well either cause some of the dungeons are longer and the exp that is given to the characters now is just right the way you get to explore everything and not get over leveled. Then there are some dungeons where you get to the end fast but have to grind for an hour. Basically there's grinding in every area. Some just go more naturally while exploring. I adjusted the exp for every area the way you'll need to be leveling for about an hour in each area. There may be exceptions in later dungeons.

The subway dungeon gives og exp since it's kinda a long one and you get plenty of exp if you explore everything.

Basically this mod is not very good for streaming unless your audience wants to get bored with the grinding. And from what I gathered that was your concern too. I'm sorry about that. I still hope that you enjoy it.

One option could be ajust the bonus exp You get for doing good in battle (no damage, high combo count) to both reduce grinding time and give an incentive to git gud with the timings

1 hour ago, zedorfed66 said:

I'm not sure if I'm gonna commit to making a "low level" mod. It would alter pretty much everything I've had set in this mod. For example the recommended levels all work with 1.5 multiplier for agility for Yuri and 1.65 for Blanca/Kurando. There are also multipliers that go for hp, str and mag stats. If I'd change the recommended levels below what they are now things would get messed up. I thought I'd increase the exp gained in battles but that wouldn't work well either cause some of the dungeons are longer and the exp that is given to the characters now is just right the way you get to explore everything and not get over leveled. Then there are some dungeons where you get to the end fast but have to grind for an hour. Basically there's grinding in every area. Some just go more naturally while exploring. I adjusted the exp for every area the way you'll need to be leveling for about an hour in each area. There may be exceptions in later dungeons.

The subway dungeon gives og exp since it's kinda a long one and you get plenty of exp if you explore everything.

Basically this mod is not very good for streaming unless your audience wants to get bored with the grinding. And from what I gathered that was your concern too. I'm sorry about that. I still hope that you enjoy it.

Yeah it would really throw off your system... You'd really have to redo everything from the ground up. I see what you're saying about the exp rate it's really hard to balance around dungeon size and exp earned, especially because you want to keep it fair that each dungeon gives progressively more exp. Makes me wonder what an exp multiplier would do for the experience and how much would be too much, you know, but trying to casualize a hard mod seems like a pretty counter-intuitive concept haha. I'm curious what the agility multiplier does and how that effects the enemies. Would bumping agility with seals be detrimental in the long-run because of that?

Ah ok. I thought I got through it pretty fast. I must have missed some areas.

Ah, it's all good man! I knew what I was getting into going in. From what I remember from last time the grinding slows down a bit in the later parts of the game, so I'll just power through for now. If it gets to be too much I'll probably cut myself a break and run with technical ring to makes things a little "easier" for myself.

15 hours ago, ronlyn said:

One option could be ajust the bonus exp You get for doing good in battle (no damage, high combo count) to both reduce grinding time and give an incentive to git gud with the timings

I don't personally see that as a good thing to do. I often get ring perfects in the normal encounters and if I'd get extra exp for every time that happens I would get way too much xp. There are already rewards for doing well in the fights and I don't like the idea of changing them.

14 hours ago, SirShaggy said:

Yeah it would really throw off your system... You'd really have to redo everything from the ground up. I see what you're saying about the exp rate it's really hard to balance around dungeon size and exp earned, especially because you want to keep it fair that each dungeon gives progressively more exp. Makes me wonder what an exp multiplier would do for the experience and how much would be too much, you know, but trying to casualize a hard mod seems like a pretty counter-intuitive concept haha. I'm curious what the agility multiplier does and how that effects the enemies. Would bumping agility with seals be detrimental in the long-run because of that?

Ah ok. I thought I got through it pretty fast. I must have missed some areas.

Ah, it's all good man! I knew what I was getting into going in. From what I remember from last time the grinding slows down a bit in the later parts of the game, so I'll just power through for now. If it gets to be too much I'll probably cut myself a break and run with technical ring to makes things a little "easier" for myself.

Don't feel like a cheater unless you use actual cheats. I want my mods to be enjoyable so using any of the rings or applying Seals is more than ok. This is a pretty tough mod at this point afterall :D.

Hello once again, and it appears I have another wall of text! I've completed this mod again on 5.0. Again, thanks for all of the hard work. Shadow Hearts: Covenant has some great gameplay and options, but the base game being pretty easy means that you don't have to use any of it.

As compared to 3.0, the last version I played, this version is a lot less janky and more consistent without Spikes. The random encounters are a lot more interesting, having to match elements and differing enemy types, but they also take a lot more time now, and random encounters can get kind of repetitive. Still, as compared to other JRPGs of the era, they are some of the most interesting I've played, even if repetitive.

Since there was talk about a low level version, I went ahead and tried completing 5.0 under leveled, making sure to record my levels (and gameplay) as I played. If you use all the mechanics the game has to offer, including Technical Ring, Seals, Replacement Men, Element Matching, and, of course, Lucia. Before St. Marguerite, I was about 1 level under leveled, if that, and afterwards, about 10% to 20% under the recommended level, depending on how long the dungeon was beforehand.

With this playstyle, not much extra grinding was done for bosses. I would explore the level normally, and by the time I reached the boss, if I could get a level by doing 2 fights, I would, otherwise, I'd go for the boss. For endgame, instead of grinding for levels, I grinded for speed seals and Ashura's Earrings for HP, both of which you get from the same pit fight. I think grinding for speed seals might be faster than levels, and I personally found doing its boss fight more interesting than doing more random encounters.

By the way, being 10% to 20% underleveled can be super rough at times, but it's doable. At this amount of underleveled, it feels like a decent amount of things that are supposed to be a 3 shot turn into a 2 shot, and things that can be a 2 shot can turn into a 1 shot, along with an even more massive turn advantage bosses and enemies will have. I think it's intended for bosses to start with 2 turns before you go? When underleveled, bosses will get 3 turns before you go, which can be quite rough: one of the boss fights I managed to turn around and win started with a full team wipe, lol.

The main thing you could do to make it "proper" for low levels is make the first fight with Kurando a bit easier, since that was a hard wall I couldn't pass without grinding. Reducing damage/agility/or amount of the enemies would all be fine, if it's possible, but I understand if you don't want to also adjust their stats because they're also used in the first dungeon of Disk 2 or because it's more work.

A nice quality of life thing for low level runs would be to increase, perhaps greatly, the EXP gained from bosses. I haven't actually checked all bosses to verify this, but it seems like a boss fight is worth around 3 to 5 random encounters? Considering the length and difficultly of a boss compared to a random encounter, it could probably be increased without causing players to become overleveled. My gut feeling would be to go with 2x, if that's something you want to bother with.

While I'm talking about EXP, I think The Vessel could give more EXP? It seemed like they give similar EXP to the other final areas, but The Vessel's random encounters take a lot more time since the enemy will always go first, their higher HP, and they actually apply status effects.

If I were to play this again, I think I'd do it without Yuri and keys. Yuri's damage output with keys and buff stacking gets silly, and Yuri's final fusion makes healing, buffing, and random encounters really easy. Even before endgame, Yuri makes random encounters really easy since you can still get Libertis before Astaroth, and if you dump all of the speed seals on Yuri, he can go before the enemies. I think without Yuri and keys, Spikes and Mind's Eye might also might be fine (on characters other than Joachim)? That seems fun to try. I would do it on New Game Plus, mostly for better access of AOE buffs because you don't get duplicates other than Yuri until endgame.

Lucia's Strike Oil is pretty balanced on low level if she goes 3rd or 4th. You need buffs on to live at all, but you also need the buffs off when you cast Strike Oil'ed buffs because the game doesn't let you reapply buffs, so you have to wait for an opportunity to actually cast super buffs. Additionally, sometimes the extra protection of the super buffs doesn't actually change the amount of hits before you die, anyways. A 1 shot might turn into a 2 shot with technical ring buffs, and it still might be a 2 shot with super buffs. And the Strike Oil uses Lucia's turn, and sometimes, you need buffs or healing immediately. It also doesn't do anything if she immediately dies afterwards, and she's fairly squishy too. Reapplying super buffs is also a big pain if someone dies, since you need to wait for Lucia's turn + someone else's again, especially if it was Lucia that died. The damage dealt is also pretty unnecessary, doing 20k to 30k with a Mind's Eyed Third Key, when bosses have 10k in endgame. At the same time, if you're able to apply a super Arc Gale and survive, that's like a victory condition on its own, which is a lot easier to do if she goes first.

I recorded my entire playthrough, so if there's anything you want to see or know, I can pull it up, like a more detailed description of my levels when completing bosses. This was a blast to go through again, and I think Shadow Hearts: Covenant has my favorite combat system of a JRPG when played with your hard mode. I have yet to play From the New World, but I think I'll take a break from the Shadow Hearts series and hard modes for a while. I want something easier with a more developed story next, lol.

9 hours ago, elltacko said:

Hello once again, and it appears I have another wall of text! I've completed this mod again on 5.0. Again, thanks for all of the hard work. Shadow Hearts: Covenant has some great gameplay and options, but the base game being pretty easy means that you don't have to use any of it.

As compared to 3.0, the last version I played, this version is a lot less janky and more consistent without Spikes. The random encounters are a lot more interesting, having to match elements and differing enemy types, but they also take a lot more time now, and random encounters can get kind of repetitive. Still, as compared to other JRPGs of the era, they are some of the most interesting I've played, even if repetitive.

Since there was talk about a low level version, I went ahead and tried completing 5.0 under leveled, making sure to record my levels (and gameplay) as I played. If you use all the mechanics the game has to offer, including Technical Ring, Seals, Replacement Men, Element Matching, and, of course, Lucia. Before St. Marguerite, I was about 1 level under leveled, if that, and afterwards, about 10% to 20% under the recommended level, depending on how long the dungeon was beforehand.

With this playstyle, not much extra grinding was done for bosses. I would explore the level normally, and by the time I reached the boss, if I could get a level by doing 2 fights, I would, otherwise, I'd go for the boss. For endgame, instead of grinding for levels, I grinded for speed seals and Ashura's Earrings for HP, both of which you get from the same pit fight. I think grinding for speed seals might be faster than levels, and I personally found doing its boss fight more interesting than doing more random encounters.

By the way, being 10% to 20% underleveled can be super rough at times, but it's doable. At this amount of underleveled, it feels like a decent amount of things that are supposed to be a 3 shot turn into a 2 shot, and things that can be a 2 shot can turn into a 1 shot, along with an even more massive turn advantage bosses and enemies will have. I think it's intended for bosses to start with 2 turns before you go? When underleveled, bosses will get 3 turns before you go, which can be quite rough: one of the boss fights I managed to turn around and win started with a full team wipe, lol.

The main thing you could do to make it "proper" for low levels is make the first fight with Kurando a bit easier, since that was a hard wall I couldn't pass without grinding. Reducing damage/agility/or amount of the enemies would all be fine, if it's possible, but I understand if you don't want to also adjust their stats because they're also used in the first dungeon of Disk 2 or because it's more work.

A nice quality of life thing for low level runs would be to increase, perhaps greatly, the EXP gained from bosses. I haven't actually checked all bosses to verify this, but it seems like a boss fight is worth around 3 to 5 random encounters? Considering the length and difficultly of a boss compared to a random encounter, it could probably be increased without causing players to become overleveled. My gut feeling would be to go with 2x, if that's something you want to bother with.

While I'm talking about EXP, I think The Vessel could give more EXP? It seemed like they give similar EXP to the other final areas, but The Vessel's random encounters take a lot more time since the enemy will always go first, their higher HP, and they actually apply status effects.

If I were to play this again, I think I'd do it without Yuri and keys. Yuri's damage output with keys and buff stacking gets silly, and Yuri's final fusion makes healing, buffing, and random encounters really easy. Even before endgame, Yuri makes random encounters really easy since you can still get Libertis before Astaroth, and if you dump all of the speed seals on Yuri, he can go before the enemies. I think without Yuri and keys, Spikes and Mind's Eye might also might be fine (on characters other than Joachim)? That seems fun to try. I would do it on New Game Plus, mostly for better access of AOE buffs because you don't get duplicates other than Yuri until endgame.

Lucia's Strike Oil is pretty balanced on low level if she goes 3rd or 4th. You need buffs on to live at all, but you also need the buffs off when you cast Strike Oil'ed buffs because the game doesn't let you reapply buffs, so you have to wait for an opportunity to actually cast super buffs. Additionally, sometimes the extra protection of the super buffs doesn't actually change the amount of hits before you die, anyways. A 1 shot might turn into a 2 shot with technical ring buffs, and it still might be a 2 shot with super buffs. And the Strike Oil uses Lucia's turn, and sometimes, you need buffs or healing immediately. It also doesn't do anything if she immediately dies afterwards, and she's fairly squishy too. Reapplying super buffs is also a big pain if someone dies, since you need to wait for Lucia's turn + someone else's again, especially if it was Lucia that died. The damage dealt is also pretty unnecessary, doing 20k to 30k with a Mind's Eyed Third Key, when bosses have 10k in endgame. At the same time, if you're able to apply a super Arc Gale and survive, that's like a victory condition on its own, which is a lot easier to do if she goes first.

I recorded my entire playthrough, so if there's anything you want to see or know, I can pull it up, like a more detailed description of my levels when completing bosses. This was a blast to go through again, and I think Shadow Hearts: Covenant has my favorite combat system of a JRPG when played with your hard mode. I have yet to play From the New World, but I think I'll take a break from the Shadow Hearts series and hard modes for a while. I want something easier with a more developed story next, lol.

Hey elltacko,

The mod can be beaten on lower levels for sure if you keep farming for the Seal items. The recommended levels are for those that don't use Seals. I didn't design this mod to be beaten on low levels but I'm glad if you managed in doing so and enjoyed it. I felt upping the exp gained from bosses hit the grinding experience and in cases would make the player be higher level than intended so I decided not doing so. Final dungeon exp is 2x of the og which is the same as the other late dungeons which is ok in my opinion. I hit level 100 pretty quickly when i entered it a bit over 90 levelled. It may be harsher experience low leveled but once again I didn't design this mod with low level challenge in mind. If I changed something that's already there it would also affect the mod when playing without Seals.

I'm sure playing through this mod can be tiring and I hope you find something relaxing and nice in change

Hi folks, it's been a while. I've been secretly working on version of this mod where significantly less grinding would be required. It would kinda replace the versions before v5.0 as a more cohesive lower level version. It's still kinda underway and I take a risk announcing it at this point. But I decide to do this for people interested in this mod to be aware that v5.0 is not the last version. As long as nothing too unforseen happens I'll be releasing this at some point. If everything goes well I'll be thinking of doing the same for SH1 and SH3. But this is a long term modding goal. I hope everyone has been well lately btw. It can be hard but as long as we think positively and look into the future we can make things work out in the end. See ya!

Thanks for your work on these game Zerdorfed!  I am very interested in your versions that take less grinding. I played your SH1 mod and I liked it but in the interest of time, I cheated and gave myself 3 sets of Monk Earrings for the EXP increased and I still felt like I was grinding a lot longer than I preferred just be able to scrape by in most of the boss battles no matter what strategies I tried.

On 21.4.2021 at 9:41 PM, tacticalcraptical said:

Thanks for your work on these game Zerdorfed!  I am very interested in your versions that take less grinding. I played your SH1 mod and I liked it but in the interest of time, I cheated and gave myself 3 sets of Monk Earrings for the EXP increased and I still felt like I was grinding a lot longer than I preferred just be able to scrape by in most of the boss battles no matter what strategies I tried.

Thanks for your interest. It's a bit trickier to get the enemies' Agl multipliers right cause they need to be specific for the areas now instead of same multiplier. I'll get this right, I just need lots of testing and I'm currently playing through the game. I actually like being on lower level. You gotta have better control on how you use Cash and Soul energy is lower so you need to do right stuff with the Fusion power upping too.

Hey Zed! Glad and AMAZED to see you still hard at work on this mod! I've kind of put my current playthrough on hiatus because of the excessive grinding, and can't wait to try the latest version! Any ETA on when you might have it ready? Hope you've been doing well and taking care of yourself man!

3 hours ago, SirShaggy said:

Hey Zed! Glad and AMAZED to see you still hard at work on this mod! I've kind of put my current playthrough on hiatus because of the excessive grinding, and can't wait to try the latest version! Any ETA on when you might have it ready? Hope you've been doing well and taking care of yourself man!

Hey Shaggy. It's more than fair if you don't want to continue with the v5.0. It is kinda excessive I agree. I've been working on the new version at least some time everyday but it's still gonna take a lot of time, I'm sorry about that. It was risky for me to announce it so early but I also saw it as necessary to let people know I'm still trying to improve the mod. I've been thinking of making Seals give nothing since apparently you can farm the Seal items from the Solomon trials and make your party members excessively strong making you able to take on the Fusion battles earlier than intended which I don't like. Basically I'm learning stuff about the stats mechanics even now so I'll be able to make the newer version better than v5.0 in many ways other than having to grind less. I want to make this new version as complete and good as possible when it comes out so it's still gonna take time, I'm sorry about that.

You too man. Hope you've been well. We have to cope in there. Pretty much all we can do

Hi guys. This is a good day. It's the 17th of June. My birthday and I'll be glad to do the gifting. This is it, the release of v6.0! 

This is the new version of the mod I promised. This could be considered the ultimate version since it has so many changes that improve it for the better.

You no longer need to use as much time for level grinding while the bosses and random encounters should still remain interesting. There will be more leveling required in optional dungeons, but these dungeons also give more Exp, Cash and Soul.

Earlier random encounter enemies now deal less damage but are still agile to the current level. Early bosses should be more challenging now having twice the agility but with og attack power and magic. There are power adjustments to bosses and other enemies all around and agility levels are more accurate to the recommended levels. I'll make a list of the new recommended levels for each area in next message.

Another change I made is that you can no longer sell the best equipment. You also can't sell the equipment that would sell for 10 Cash. Those accessories are usually valuable and can't be reaquired, that's why I made them unsellable as well. Hit and Strike Area Expands are still sellable since they were in another segment of the code I didn't care to touch. Basically just make sure you don't sell them xd.

I've made the decision to remove the ability to up stats using Seal items as they're farmable and can potentially hurt the experience. Basically the Seal items now do nothing when used. Of course one can still use them in original and then turn the mod back on.

I wonder if I forgot something? Maybe not. I'll make a list of the new recommended levels for next message.

Have fun with the mod people!

Here's the recommended levels at the end of each area in the game for the newest release (v6.0):

2         Apoina Tower
4         Domremy
5         Ardennes Forest
7         Paris Subway
10        Wine Cellar
12        Rhondda Mine
15        Manmariana Island
16        S.G. Headquarters
18        Neam Ruins
21        St. Marguerite
24        Winter Palace
25        Mirror Palace
27        Gallery of the Dead
28        Hermitage
32        Idar Flamme
35        Apoina Tower 2

38        Battleship Mikasa
42        Otherworld
43        Nihonbashi
46        Hojo Research Lab
49        Purgatory
53        Immortal Mountain
56        Azabu Kamiyashiki
59        Queen's Garden

66        Tiffauges Castle
69        Doll House
72        Black Forest
77        Dog Shrine
84        Neam Ruins Underground
99        The Vessel
 

Some more info to make things more clear:

Fusion battles go as follows: Earth, Light and Dark before the bosses in Idar Flamme (do Earth and Light here so you get Arc Shield and Arc Barrier. After Rasputin go get 3rd Soul Drop to do the Dark battle). Water before Terada in Mikasa, Fire before Kouenki in Inugami Village and Wind before the baby boss in Queen's Garden. After clearing the main story boss in Queen's Garden you can immediately take on 'Guardian' there. You can take on 'Kouenki 2' immediately after beating 'Garan 3'. Dark Seraphim, King Solomon and Man Festival can be done after clearing the boss in Neam Ruins Underground. I did the final boss at around 95 level so it can be done before lvl 99 but it still hits hard so maxing out is the best course of action.

v6.05 is tiny update that changes Rhondda Mine's enemies' str & int multipliers from 1.4 & 1.68 to 1.3 & 1.56. This prevents Lambton Worm from one shotting Blanca with lucky crits. Sometimes I miss something like this and come back to update my previous projects. I've also started working on less grindy and better version of my SH1 Imbroglio mod.

Thank you so much Zed, and happy very belated birthday man! I will definitely start the Covenant streams up again very soon with this new "grind-free" version of the mod.

On 13.7.2021 at 8:12 PM, SirShaggy said:

Thank you so much Zed, and happy very belated birthday man! I will definitely start the Covenant streams up again very soon with this new "grind-free" version of the mod.

Hi again Shaggy. Give it a go when you feel like it. I'm just happy people are giving my mods a go  and thanks. I didn't plan to release it on my bday it just happened to go right.

Hey! I was to say Thanks for the SH1 mod. I played through it and enjoyed the hell out of it. Even though it made me stress a lil bit LOL. I'm playing through this one as well. People on twitch asked me why I put myself through this LMFAO

17 hours ago, itsRaddas said:

Hey! I was to say Thanks for the SH1 mod. I played through it and enjoyed the hell out of it. Even though it made me stress a lil bit LOL. I'm playing through this one as well. People on twitch asked me why I put myself through this LMFAO

I'm glad you've found enjoyment amidst all the brutality. I still need to make a peace with my Shadow Hearts demons before I can rest in peace. I now focus on my SH1 mod again while pending help for my ff8 project on another forum. Hope you like my new SH:C edition too btw. Haven't gotten any comments on it yet so I don't know what people think about it.

I'll be sure to leave some feedback as soon as I can Zed! New semester at college just started so things are really hectic at the moment. To be honest, I might replay through the game if grinding is no longer necessary. It's been a long time since I've streamed it and I think switching to the newest version now would leave me kind of overpowered... Ah well, can never get enough Shadow Hearts, honestly.

5 hours ago, SirShaggy said:

I'll be sure to leave some feedback as soon as I can Zed! New semester at college just started so things are really hectic at the moment. To be honest, I might replay through the game if grinding is no longer necessary. It's been a long time since I've streamed it and I think switching to the newest version now would leave me kind of overpowered... Ah well, can never get enough Shadow Hearts, honestly.

Hey Shaggy, hope things will go right for you with the studies. There will be extra grinding required at the optional dungeons, but it's still way less than in v5.0 since the dungeons give 3x the exp instead of 2x. Manmariana Island enemies give 3x exp so getting 3 levels there should go pretty well with the exploring. I hope you like the new changes I made and that you enjoy the mod more overall.

Oh wow, it's very exciting to see that there's a new update, Zed! It amazes me that you're still able to improve the mod! I'll definitely play it when I have time -- Shadow Hearts 2 + this mod is still my favorite combat system.

I was sort of surprised that you upped the EXP in general -- it seemed like from the last feedback, you were against it. As for seals, I used them to compensate for being lower level, which I thought was fun in itself because it was one of the few ways to permanently "customize" your party members towards a build. Of course, putting them (and especially the agility ones) on Yuri is the most powerful choice, but I think it's also fun to non-optimally put them on other characters, especially to compensate for other challenges/playstyles.

In terms of having a more consistent difficulty curve for players, it makes sense to remove it (especially with the increase of EXP), but it does sadden me a bit to see it go because it comes at the cost of player expressiveness. (Of course, they're still usable by loading up vanilla, but it feels significantly more "cheaty" to do so.) I like your philosophy on Technical Ring, in which if you want to use it to make the mod easier, it's all good, but it's not required to win. The mod was still definitely difficult enough even with using everything available to me. 

When I play the newest version, is there any specific feedback you would want? Was it useful for me to document my levels before the bosses? Should I document random encounter "one shots," like how you lowered the damage of Rhondda Mines so Blanca doesn't get one shotted? See if I can still get Libertis before Disk 2 if I use everything available to me? I'm still thinking of playing it without Yuri and Keys (to limit physical damage stacking, big fusion into 3 combo, and Dark Seraphim, all things that are out of scope for a mod to do) but on new game plus, just for extra copies of the AOE buffs that Yuri would otherwise have.

Also, out of curiosity, what team do you use? And how far do you buff stack for damage? Do you just stop at Rage? Or do you go all the way with Keys + Energy Charge + Mind's Eye? I ask because that makes a huuuuggggeeeee difference in damage output.

On 11.9.2021 at 8:59 AM, elltacko said:

Oh wow, it's very exciting to see that there's a new update, Zed! It amazes me that you're still able to improve the mod! I'll definitely play it when I have time -- Shadow Hearts 2 + this mod is still my favorite combat system.

I was sort of surprised that you upped the EXP in general -- it seemed like from the last feedback, you were against it. As for seals, I used them to compensate for being lower level, which I thought was fun in itself because it was one of the few ways to permanently "customize" your party members towards a build. Of course, putting them (and especially the agility ones) on Yuri is the most powerful choice, but I think it's also fun to non-optimally put them on other characters, especially to compensate for other challenges/playstyles.

In terms of having a more consistent difficulty curve for players, it makes sense to remove it (especially with the increase of EXP), but it does sadden me a bit to see it go because it comes at the cost of player expressiveness. (Of course, they're still usable by loading up vanilla, but it feels significantly more "cheaty" to do so.) I like your philosophy on Technical Ring, in which if you want to use it to make the mod easier, it's all good, but it's not required to win. The mod was still definitely difficult enough even with using everything available to me. 

When I play the newest version, is there any specific feedback you would want? Was it useful for me to document my levels before the bosses? Should I document random encounter "one shots," like how you lowered the damage of Rhondda Mines so Blanca doesn't get one shotted? See if I can still get Libertis before Disk 2 if I use everything available to me? I'm still thinking of playing it without Yuri and Keys (to limit physical damage stacking, big fusion into 3 combo, and Dark Seraphim, all things that are out of scope for a mod to do) but on new game plus, just for extra copies of the AOE buffs that Yuri would otherwise have.

Also, out of curiosity, what team do you use? And how far do you buff stack for damage? Do you just stop at Rage? Or do you go all the way with Keys + Energy Charge + Mind's Eye? I ask because that makes a huuuuggggeeeee difference in damage output.

Well yeah I replayed the mod again and felt it was too grindy this time around and took the advice. This version of the mod is basically the best version with everything better and more together. Characters have their pros and cons and using Seals just removes that balance. Of course I can understand those who want to use them, it was just my decision to remove their effect. Having the best Fusions before the end of disc 1 is way overkill for this mod imo. You can still do that but not while my mod is on.

You can leave feedback on the mod if you want. I'm not really expecting anything though. Just have fun xd. In bosses I use the party members best suitable for them (with everyone equally leveled). I use all the buffs that work well for the bosses. Gale, Shield, Barrier, Rage is the basic deal for many bosses. In wolf bouts I often use Gale and Shield. As for the bosses that use Energy Charge I only use Gale and Rage. Using Energy Charge can be a waste unless you're sure you are able to attack on next turn. Basically I use that only on the pit fights since they're easier and I can destroy fast. I don't use Mind's Eye since I like seeing the strike areas. And Keys take turns away so you gotta be careful not to overdo it. I think I started using 3rd Keys in King Solomon and the bosses after that.

On 9/11/2021 at 1:59 AM, elltacko said:

In terms of having a more consistent difficulty curve for players, it makes sense to remove it (especially with the increase of EXP), but it does sadden me a bit to see it go because it comes at the cost of player expressiveness. (Of course, they're still usable by loading up vanilla, but it feels significantly more "cheaty" to do so.) 

Wait, does this mean you can switch between Vanilla and Godslayer on one save? I was thinking about playing this mod, but having to restart the game was going to be disheartening. On top of not being sure what the difficulty was going to be like.

On 26/09/2022 at 10:01 AM, macanu said:

Wait, does this mean you can switch between Vanilla and Godslayer on one save? I was thinking about playing this mod, but having to restart the game was going to be disheartening. On top of not being sure what the difficulty was going to be like.

I believe everything i've changed are the type of changes that get rechecked and changed immediately when loading a memcard save. savestates are different though. I think even the Asmodeus Crest price gets rechecked whenever loading a save. I'm not entirely sure about that though and if you find something opposite i wish you could inform on it here. Have fun!

On 9/27/2022 at 11:03 AM, zedorfed66 said:

I believe everything i've changed are the type of changes that get rechecked and changed immediately when loading a memcard save. savestates are different though. I think even the Asmodeus Crest price gets rechecked whenever loading a save. I'm not entirely sure about that though and if you find something opposite i wish you could inform on it here. Have fun!

Thank you, does this info apply to your Shadow Hearts 3 mod too?

On 30/09/2022 at 6:05 AM, macanu said:

Thank you, does this info apply to your Shadow Hearts 3 mod too?

Yes since that mod is even more simple than Covenant one. I simply altered enemy stats in that one. I'm terribly sorry about the stop to my modding efforts. There's room for improvements in these. Competitive online games keep taking all my freetime right now. I'd like to get back to modding again at some point.

This is somewhat important announcement from me:

I'll be getting back to modding after being sucked into the toxic soup that is the popular online games. I'll not be stopping them or anything but I'll be putting at least 1 hour everyday for my modding efforts from now on. It really wakes me up after looking up my mediafire stats. You guys are really downloading my mods. I feel like I have responsibility to perfect them as long as I'm still interested in the games and I still can. Thanks for all the interest you've shown in my creations over the years. I'll start working on my Shadow Hearts 1 improvement mod and then get to SH: FtNW.

I take back my previous statement. My life's not in the state where I can assure I'll be able to keep up the pace with regular modding and testing. Therefore regardless how I see my mods pique interest I'll not be able to assure their progress. I'm very sorry but my life's in that kinda state without going into details.

Well I was working on new version afterall. And got it finished too! v6.50 is important quality of life update to my Covenant mod. Here's roughly what was changed:

- Tanky random encounter enemies (the ones that would take 3-4 turns to finish) have gained extra 25 agility, making them formidable monsters that're not simply health sponges anymore. This change makes sense since these enemies take space from 3 squishier enemies.

- With the change to tank foes The Mutant Apes have gained some stats. It also serves to show the player that these guys are serious. This change takes place after beating Terada and playing through the training lab section.

- Now dungeons from 'Wine Cellar' to 'Otherworld' give 2x exp, soul and cash and 'Nihonbashi' to 'Vessel' 3x. In previous versions there were some places in between that gave more but that's not the case anymore.

- Quality of life changes to enemy stats to make them better overall (random encounter enemies and bosses).

- The recommended level for the Paris Subway Tunnel boss is back to 8. I feel it's better this way to gain more cash to buy some items before the boss.

- Seals are back! I felt it was a bit rough choice to disable them. However the game balance may be broken if they're farmed and used too much. However it's player's choice entirely.

That's about it. I hope you enjoy this new version people!

Hello NG+. I have started working on better version of this Covenant mod that will have improvements that should make the mod even better. Here are some things I'm gonna change:

- Add more health and agility to the "semi tank" random encounter enemies. This is kinda the same treatment I made to the full tank enemies in previous update. They won't have as high health and agility as full tanks since there can be 3 of them in battle max where the limit for full tanks is 2. Semi tanks and full tanks will give 1.5 x more cash and a bit more soul power. On disc 1 you'll be able to level fusions more thanks to the soul increase. On disc 2 all enemies will give slightly less soul power so you'll end up with less soul than before in endgame.

- Make wolf bout foes more personalized with stats based on their background. Idk why I made all wolves follow the same formula all these years. But this will change in the coming patch.

There might be other changes too but these are on my mind atm. I know I'm slow and I apologize for that. But I'm trying to make these mods as good as I can. I'll continue with the rest of Shadow Hearts 3 after I've finished with Covenant. I have no estimate on when I get this released. I got hard times in life here and there but I try to focus on this whenever I can. Thanks for playing through my mods btw, that means a lot to me!

Hello there, big update here.

v7.0 has lots of changes that make this mod better. I try to summarize in nutshell:

- Semi-tank random encounter enemies gain hp and agility due to there being max 3 of them in battle. I did the same thing to the full tank enemies in previous update. With this change full tanks still have more health and agility thanks to there being max 2 of them in battle at the same time.

- Soul power gains rebalanced with disc 1 enemies generally granting more while disc 2 foes much less. With this change you will have more soul power at the end of disc 1 than before and less in endgame.

- Wolf Bout enemies are now different from one another based on their personality and background. So different buffs work better in different fights.

- Exp and cash amounts rebalanced. Now all dungeons from Wine Cellar to Queen's Garden go with 2x exp. Optional dungeons give exponentially more exp with the right order to do them being Tiffauges Castle -> Dollhouse -> Black Forest -> Dog Shrine -> Neam Ruins Underground. Final dungeon goes with 4x exp and increased soul power. All semi and full tanks give 1.5x the exp multiplier amount of cash. So if exp is 2x the cash amount is x3.

- Bosses and wolves hp increased a bit so they don't go down too fast. Also random encounter enemies agility increased by some on disc 2.

- The accidental sell prevention of unpurchasable weapons, armors, items and accessories is better now with only hit area and strike area expands being sellable.

I'm confident with this working out that's why I'm releasing this now even though I haven't tested all the way yet. I'll make possible changes in the future as I go along with my playthrough.

v7.1 is smol update that will make the wolves in St. Marguerite stronger (random encounter wolves and the 2 bosses). That is a special dungeon where I had to set the strength of enemies lower cause dev had set them higher than usual for some reason. I also had lowered the wolves stats which wasn't necessary so this is a fix to that.

v7.15 is another mini update that ups St. Marguerite Island foes hp a bit to compensate for going with slightly lower strength multiplier. Wolf random encounters hp remains the same cause their str multiplier is a bit higher.

I'm sorry for bombarding with these patches but the island needs a lot of attention and I gotta get this right cause there probably won't be new updates in a while. v7.2 simply lowers Stray Wolf's magic to same multiplier as the other enemies. There! It's done.

Back again with small update. v7.25 decreases Petrograd's alien wolf's speed since I thought it was a bit too fast and also increases its attack and magic cause I tested the wolf with worse armor instead of that one you get from Goreme Valley. Dumb me. Another change is that Great Gama 2 is meant to be done after collecting Cure Plus magic from Goreme. His speed goes down but strength goes up to create slightly different experience from the 1st fight. I need to work my way to Gama 3 cause in my save I don't have Cure All and there's no way to go back at that point. It's no biggie though cause he also goes with the stats he has rn.

Wrestling update. This should be last one in a while. Great Question goes with slightly higher str and bit slower agl. Great Gama 3 str down and agl up. So the 3rd fight is a speedy boi. He's meant to be done after the Koshoki and Shoki ordeals in Nihonbashi when also Eleanor bout becomes available. This should complete the Gama saga for the time being.

I guess Amon needed a slight reform afterall. v7.35 lowers Amon's magic so it hits for less than half health with The End if Barrier is in place. To compensate the lowering he gains a bit more speed. Most things should be right in this mod but there might be some little changes here and there and I'm gonna always upload new version of the mod right away since my life is uncertain right now.

v7.4 lowers Peryton enemy's hp and ups the agility some. I had set its health higher and agility down cause there's always only that enemy type in the Hermitage dungeon. However these enemies cast defense spells so they go well with the default health multiplier for the story enemies. With this change they're insta'd with perfect Bright Crimes when their Barrier is up.

Hi people. First message in a while that's not related to new released patches. I'd like to give my insights on my playthrough of Godslayer mod after starting over from the beginning to test out the new changes. 

Now that I've leveled to 32 in Idar Flamme and are ready to take on the bosses of that dungeon I feel the Soul power amount for Yuri is pretty much perfect with the change I made to it in v7.0. Before taking Mother Filarias Yuri's 3 Fusions that're gonna be lvl 3 using the Soul Drops (Eartth, Light and Dark) are leveled to 8 which is the level they learn the Arc spells in. All other Fusions are leveled to 5 which was the level they learned their lvl 2 attack spells. The remaining Soul amount after leveling is a little over 300 which is not enough to level any to lvl 10. At lvl 10 the Fusions learn their most powerful attack spells which are good to be the disc 2 stuff.

With that said I'm happy with how things have gone in my playthrough. I suspect very little changes if not at all moving forward cause I've tested the bosses before and the random encounter foes basically go with same form from one another.

Hellllooooo! I'm back to my Covenant playthrough after the enemy soul power amount changes and am currently at Hojo Lab where I found out the Beetle Walker enemy has too much health for one shots. v7.45 makes it have the og hp amount instead of the 1.2x raise I have on most squishy enemies. With this change that enemy is one shot with Evil Summoning magic or Joachim's Artem Buster ability when hit perfect. I'm sorry I hadn't patched this before. Everything before this point should be fine with the previous patch. I'll continue my playthrough of Covenant. The soul amounts look perfect so far but I still need to play to the end to get final confirmation.

Hello again with another small update. v7.55 drops Terada's strength and ups his agility a bit. This makes him less of a jank and his strength multiplier is now same as most other bosses on disc 2. Andre's (disc 1 boss) agility receives a small drop to reflect the stats of the other bosses to make it more complete.

Z

Hi, Zed! Thank you so much for working hard over the years in creating and updating this mod. I remember falling in love with this game years and years ago and it’s really cool seeing someone put the time in to make it a little tougher. I’m really happy that I came across @SirShaggy’s YouTube series and I plan on now playing this mod for the first time.

3 hours ago, CeeLewis said:

Hi, Zed! Thank you so much for working hard over the years in creating and updating this mod. I remember falling in love with this game years and years ago and it’s really cool seeing someone put the time in to make it a little tougher. I’m really happy that I came across @SirShaggy’s YouTube series and I plan on now playing this mod for the first time.

Hello CeeLewis. Hope you'll have lots of fun with the increased difficulty! The descriptions of these mods can be a bit deceiving as these are actually ongoing mods and I'm updating them if I see something I want to change. I recently made changes to the soul power amounts and am currently on another playthrough to test it fully.

33 minutes ago, zedorfed66 said:

Hello CeeLewis. Hope you'll have lots of fun with the increased difficulty! The descriptions of these mods can be a bit deceiving as these are actually ongoing mods and I'm updating them if I see something I want to change. I recently made changes to the soul power amounts and am currently on another playthrough to test it fully.

I’m sure I will have a blast!  Just from the few videos I watched on @SirShaggy’s channel I can tell I’ll actually have to use my brain a fair bit haha.

Good to know! I know you have had many revisions throughout the years so I apologize if I’m asking old questions, but before I begin my playthrough, is there a recommended fusion unlock order for Yuri (and I guess Cornelia too)? I remember wayyy back in the day, I would just unlock the fire fusion and just energy charge cheese my way through everything haha. I’m assuming I won’t be able to do that with this mod. ?

I also saw you posted a recommended-level per area guide a few versions back. I’ll be using that as a general guide as well, unless you believe it needs updating?

6 hours ago, CeeLewis said:

I’m sure I will have a blast!  Just from the few videos I watched on @SirShaggy’s channel I can tell I’ll actually have to use my brain a fair bit haha.

Good to know! I know you have had many revisions throughout the years so I apologize if I’m asking old questions, but before I begin my playthrough, is there a recommended fusion unlock order for Yuri (and I guess Cornelia too)? I remember wayyy back in the day, I would just unlock the fire fusion and just energy charge cheese my way through everything haha. I’m assuming I won’t be able to do that with this mod. ?

I also saw you posted a recommended-level per area guide a few versions back. I’ll be using that as a general guide as well, unless you believe it needs updating?

Hello again! The recommended levels have changed a bit. Here they are:

2         Apoina Tower
4         Domremy
5         Ardennes Forest
8         Paris Subway
10        Wine Cellar
12        Rhondda Mine
14        Manmariana Island
16        S.G. Headquarters
18        Neam Ruins
21        St. Marguerite
24        Winter Palace
25        Mirror Palace
27        Gallery of the Dead
28        Hermitage
32        Idar Flamme
35        Apoina Tower 2

38        Battleship Mikasa
41        Otherworld
43        Nihonbashi
46        Hojo Research Lab
49        Purgatory
53        Immortal Mountain
56        Azabu Kamiyashiki
59        Queen's Garden

65        Tiffauges Castle
68        Doll House
74        Black Forest
79        Dog Shrine
89        Neam Ruins Underground
99        The Vessel

Note that optional dungeons now give exponentially more exp with the newer updates. As for Cornelia dresses, the recommended order is Earth, Light, Fire, Water. It's recommended to pick up Earth fusion for Yuri first so he has protection vs the Ardennes boss. In Covenant when attacking enemies with basics only strength matters so Earth element is good with Yuri with it's good strength stat. I also like having Puera early so I can have the Raise Up magic. When facing bosses it's often good strat to pick same elements as the boss to minimize the damage taken.

EDIT: forgot to mention the lvl 3 fusion battles are meant to be done in order:

Before Idar Flamme bosses: Earth & Light. After Idar Flamme bosses: Dark. Before Mikasa boss: Water. Upon reaching Inugami Village: Fire. Before Queen's Garden boss: Wind.

v7.60 is a small update that lowers Towd's hp a bit (the tank enemy in Purgatory). It's one of those few enemies that don't go with same rule as the others.

Hi again. v7.70 has few small changes:

Tengu hp down and agl up a bit. Tengu exp and cash down. Mutant Snail agl up.  Titanium Soldier hp down and agl up.

I still have things to better in my covenant mod and am working on it as I go on my playthrough. I suspect bosses to be just right though, it's just some other stuff that may need attention. Most importantly I want to make the final dungeon a leveling spot for Dark Seraphim like I did for Tirawa in From the New World.

It seems I nerfed Tengu's exp and cash amounts a bit too much in previous patch. With v7.75 they grant a bit more.

Hello again. Here I release another patch for this mod. v8.00 has few changes that I'm gonna release now which I still need to test out but I think they're pretty much spot on:

- Optional dungeon exp & cash down (For some reason Neam Underground dungeon enemies gave more exp than the 1st tier of final dungeon so this also takes care of that).
- Amon & Neo Amon levelling requirements doubled. Jutendouji & Dark Seraphim levelling requirement tripled (this has to do with having to level up the final fusions in late game so the abundant soul energy isn't lying in inventory just for show).

I'll be back with more updates if needed as I enter the optional content soon.

Looks like the lvl 3 Wind element Fusion battle is very hard/impossible before the boss of Queen's Garden. The stats themselves align correctly which is why I don't want to change them. It's just the fact it uses Gale and Agility Down physical make it highly rng deal at lvl 59. I suggest trying that fusion fight at the end of next dungeon (Tiffauges Castle) instead if you're having hard time.

v8.05 is mini patch that lowers the lvl 3 Wind fusion battle's strength and magic so it can be done at the end of Queen's Garden before the baby boss.

Hello! v8.15 plays around the final dungeon enemies a bit. Since I lowered the exp of optional dungeons the final dungeon enemies need a bit adjusting. All final dungeon enemies gain more strength and magic. 1 shottable enemies gain a bit health and their agility is lowered. Tanks and semi tanks remain pretty much the same save for the upped offense.

I'm sorry for making so many of these small patches. I wasn't completely happy with the changes to the final dungeon enemies. v8.20 ups squishy and semi tank enemies health to make them good in my vision for the final dungeon. The patch also ups those enemies exp & cash rewards accordingly. Full tank enemies remain untouched.

Hello again! I've always thought of Karin as insignificant character gameplay wise so here is a patch for her. v8.30 doubles her personal skills' power making her important character instead of some middleroad redhead adventurer. Those skills cost slightly more mp now too cause of the power raise. I continue my way through optionals but I may need to do more than 1 run and change stuff if the soul power amounts don't align with my plans.

With Karin's upped abilities Joachim's Deaththrone Hammer needed to be strengthened to compete with Karin's Geuschbenst. v8.35 doubles that ability's power with it now being a bit more powerful than Geuschbenst but with Artem Buster being a bit less powerful than lvl 3 Heurvelk and Bullenfogel.

I've been playing through Tiffauges Castle and 2x exp is too little. v8.40 turns the optional dungeon exp and cash back to what they were before the change. Final dungeon exp and cash amounts get a raise as well to reflect the other dungeons. More fine tuning might be coming with new updates.

Hello! I'd like to overview my current modding progress with Godslayer.

I've been stuck in Tiffauges Castle dungeon trying to figure out how to set the correct soul power amounts. But I think I'm getting some progress soon. Looks like I'll probably have to further up the 4 later fusion monsters' levelling requirements (Amon, Neo Amon, Jutendouji, Dark Seraphim) and also up the soul rewards for the battles in the optionals.

One thing I noticed with Neo Amon is that it's levelled above 10 when getting him even if Amon is only lvl 10. It's probably cause game registers Neo Amon's parameters automatically after getting Amon in disc 1. Since more soul amount is used on Amon the game forces Neo Amon to go above lvl 10. It should be fixed when getting Amon for the first time with the upped Neo Amon requirements. But I only recommend using time on testing that after I've settled with right requirements for both Amon and Neo Amon.

Hi, here's another patch for the mod. v8.55 lowers Tiffauges Castle enemies agl a bit and also lowering that dungeon's suggested level before the boss to lvl 64. Doll House's enemies agl decreased some. Another change is Kurando's Hell's Light now does significantly more damage making it have a bit better output than Moon's Rainbow. It now costs 80 mp. Amon and Neo Amon now require 3x the og soul amount for levelling. Jutendouji and Dark Seraphim 5x the og amount. All optional dungeon enemies give more soul power. Final dungeon enemies give even more. The things that have to do with soul power go into this update automatically as I deal with them and I'll be changing things around if required.

Update on Neo Amon: looks like it automatically corrected itself after using it in battle making him level 10 like Amon and having proper stat uppies. Big kudos to the developer of these games for having such a flexible system and also being coded so well.
 

I probably should've made Hell's Light cost 96 MP instead of 80 since it does more damage than Moon's Rainbow. I'll make that change in next update.

Hellos! v8.60 ups Fuujin and Raijin's strength and magic as an answer to upped enemy stats in final dungeon. The other change is Kurando's Hell's Light now costs 96 MP since I made it more powerful than Moon's Rainbow.

Hey. I didn't pay attention to Kurando's Moon's Rainbow having an epic animation with music going off for a while before the spell goes off. So I'm gonna make it the more powerful ability again. But Hell's Light still did a bit too little damage compared to other ones with 64MP usage. So I'm gonna revert it back to costing 64 MP while having a bit more power than og. I'll make this change for next patch.

Hello. A small update: v8.70 ups the health of those optional bosses that were going with 1.5 hp multiplier to 2. The Great Question hp multiplier lowered to 1.8 from 2 to be like the other Gama bosses. Kurando's Hell's Light now costs again 64 MP with lowered power. It's still a bit more powerful than in og to compete with the power of other 64 MP costing spells.
 

Hi again peeps. 

v8.75 is continuation to previous patch. It increases the hp of Fuujin & Raijin and the final boss enemies since it felt right to me.

I'll still be continuing my optional dungeon run to see that the soul power amounts i've set go right.

Hello! Time for some more patchings.

v8.85 changes Kurando's Star's Shadow healing skill. It now restores full hp, 200 mp and 20 sp to 1 ally. It just felt like too much mp costing full heal since the ailment cure at the point you get Kurando is kinda trivial. So now it doesn't cure ailments so there will be more usage for status restoring items and magic in late. Another change is Extract items and Third Keys now cost 5 x the og cash amount (same change I made in From the New World).

Also I'm happy to see the soul amounts seem to be going just right. After beating Nemeton Underground you should have a bit over the amount to level all fusions to max to take on Dark Seraphim.

Hello fellow slayers. Just a little note of my playthrough progress.

Looks like I'll have a little over 200 soul power left after I've beaten Orobas, King Solomon and leveled all fusions to max. So Dark Seraphim and Third Keys are meant for the final dungeon bosses since they have higher hp.

I know raising the cost of Extracts and Third Keys can feel like much but you'll accumulate way more money with the upped amounts from random encounters. And I don't like the idea of having millions sitting in there just for show unless I've been doing extra leveling. Having Pedometer on with Tripled steps helps in getting those Mana Extracts for 500 which is a good save.

I think I'll keep going with the rest of the sidequests and final dungeon to see everything's gucci. I'll also want to start new playthrough of SH1 and check up on things after I'm done with Covenant. Another one is FF8 which i'll also need to revisit at some point.

Hello. Another short note about the sidequests.

I just did some testing and looks like Dark Seraphim can be fought immediately after getting Kurando's best fusion. And the fusions don't even need to be maxed out either. I had all Yuri's elemental monsters and Kurando's both fusions at lvl 9 with only Amon and Neo Amon at lvl 10. And I believe he is also beatable immediately after Dog Shrine even if it feels a bit better after Orobas. And yes Third Keys at least are recommended in that cause of his heals. I say that here cause I mentioned in my last message that they should be saved for last dungeon bosses alone. What I Mention here are all just recommendations and I don't want to lead people astray either. I hope as many people are enjoying this mod as possible.

Hello! This might be the last patch for Covenant since I've tested everything at this point including the final boss. v8.95 doubles the amount of soul power from final dungeon enemies from previous patch making them give approx. 72 a battle. Other changes: 

- King Solomon's str decreased slightly
- Peach Bat's hp and agl increased

I'll check some last things in final dungeon and if there's nothing else to add I start my fresh Shadow Hearts 1 run to see everything's sound in that mod. Might be a while before I make updates on that since it's supposed to be pretty complete mod.

Supermegaultra fast update! v9.00 makes Extract items and Third Keys cost 3x the og amount instead of 5x from before. I think it's better this way.

Last but not least: v9.05 ups the cash rewards of Takemikazuchi and Takaokami. These are considered squishy enemies but since in final dungeon their hp is upped so much I feel it's better they go with tank and semi-tank cash formula which is exp multiplier x 1.5.