Brave New World 2.0 - Beta Thread

Hey, there everybody. As most of you are aware, Brave New World 2.0 has been in development for awhile. And now, the beta is finally here. This is a thread specifically for the testing process and to track the bugs that occur. If you are interested in playing the 2.0 beta please hop into our Discord and request the tester role - you'll be notified when the beta is released and the role can be used to report issues/concerns and communicate with the other testers. Otherwise, the CURRENT STABLE VERSION OF BRAVE NEW WORLD IS STILL 1.9.

CURRENT BETA VERSION: RC-27-Bro --- (check the pinned post in Discord for a link)

(NOTE: editing the ROM in FF3usME disables all custom event scripting within a certain range at the end of bank CC, causing game crashes - DO NOT EDIT THE ROM in usME)

MAJOR BUGS:

• The vigor/stamina variance formula breaks at 85, leading to characters taking much more damage than intended (fixed in RC-27-Bro - will require re-testing in RC-28)
• Intangir's (AKA "SrBehemoth") mid-battle switch can crash the game if the "esper" spell select is being loaded at the same time (fixed in RC26)
• Tier 3 in the final battle has the incorrect stats, making death mostly an inevitability (fixed in RC-25)
• RC-22/23: The fight ends prematurely during Intangir's transition to Intangir Z (fixed in RC-24)
• If Intangir is imped when transitioning to Intangir Z, the latter's sprite will not properly load and can cause softlocks (can't be duplicated)
• RC-21: Steal does not seem to be working properly (fixed in RC-22)
• RC-19: Mind Blast is looping for every possible status, making any boss that uses it (Atma Weapon) essentially unbeatable (fixed in RC-21)
• RC-19: the Imperial Camp sequence is (practically) unwinnable due to Soldiers having corrupted stats (fixed in RC-20)
• Cleave and X-Zone were very buggy and could potentially softlock the game (fixed in RC-18)
• Rages are not listed alphabetically in battle and some are not displaying out of battle (fixed in RC-18)
• Sap damage is much lower than it should be on player characters (fixed in RC-18)
• RC-15 would crash if the Imp effect was ever applied (fixed in RC-16)
• RC-14 was missing an important piece of code for bosses (fixed in RC-15)
• RC-13 was cursed (solution: skipped ahead to RC-14)
• All outgoing damage from players is ~10% higher than it should be (fixed sometime between RC-11 and RC-13)
• Items are sometimes not dropping from enemies as they should (fixed in RC-13)
• Unusuable "dummy" items randomly populate in the player's inventory (fixed in RC-13)
• Damage/healing numbers occasionally/frequently do not show up (fixed in RC13)
• There appears to be some pretty heavy lag after most/all attacks (fixed in RC13)
• The third fight with Ultros is unwinnable due to an error in his script (fixed in RC-12)
• Game just crashes in battle for no reason (RC-9 only; fixed in RC-11)
• Blackjack (the slot result, not the airship) crashes the game (fixed in RC-11)
• Enemies do not seem to be taking extra damage from fire elemental weaknesses (elemental mixing hack removed from RC-9; re-added in RC-14)
• The game softlocks after any battle after obtaining espers (RC-7 only; fixed in RC-8)
• Game is randomly(?) softlocking after battle (fixed in RC-7)
• Terra softlocks the game in the intro flashback sequence (fixed in RC-7)
• Regen ticks are very low (fixed in RC-7)
• The crane battle never ends, thus softlocking the game (fixed in RC-6)
• XP gains are lower than they should be, significantly so at higher levels (fixed in RC-6)
• "Slots" crashes the game when used (fixed in RC-5)
• Whatever the fuck is going on here (fixed in RC-5)
• Damage is VERY low (ex. Dadaluma) in some cases (fixed in RC-5)
• The in-battle status display is incorrectly reporting several statuses (Muddle -> Rerise; Shell -> Stop; Haste -> Sap) (fixed in RC-5)
• If you save at the point after the minecart ride and relaunch the game entirely, everyone gets innate slow (fixed in RC-5)
• Characters seem to be taking much lower damage in battle than intended (fixed in RC-4)
• Melee counter-attacks are not correctly targeting the attacker (fixed in RC-4)
• Drain effects are not working properly (fixed in RC-4)
• Goggles (possibly other status relics) are not blocking the intended statuses (fixed in RC-3)

MINOR BUGS:

• The "unequip imp" in the scenario select screen is sometimes not being hidden when a scenario is selected (may be fixed in RC-28... or the game might explode)
• Some formations will look weird as pincer attacks (all fixed - thanks, Hero)
• Magic attacks have an effective 1% miss rate against enemies (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Intangir Z and Prometheus do not have Sketches assigned (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• SlowX has the incorrect targeting flags set (fixed in RC-27-bro)
• Jackpot and Stray are not correctly targeting dead allies (fixed in RC-27-Bro - will require re-testing in RC-28)
• Multi-elemental attacks (i.e. Giga Volt - Wind/Bolt) are not dealing half damage if one of the two elemental are resisted (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Aurabolt/Empowerer are not doing halved damage from the back row as intended (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• When the Rage status is removed via a Green Cherry, status resistances are not properly recalculated (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Dragon (the Bushido) does not have the correct rate for random petrification (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• The Witch enemy's special attack is improperly flagged and will thus always miss (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• The Ragnarok equip bonus (+25% magic output) is not functioning (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Stamina dodging for MT attacks does not appear to work as intended (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Grav Bomb always misses on non-floating targets (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Seraph is not properly blocking the "Zombie" status (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Fenrir incorrectly adds +1 M.Evade (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• X-fight is disallowing MP auto-crits (i.e. Daryl's Soul cancels the special effects of the Viper Darts) (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Carbunkl, Seraph, and Phoenix are incorrectly giving 20 MP per EL instead of 25 (Carbunkl) or 15 (Phoenix/Seraph) (fixed in RC-27; Ph/Se are giving 14 MP, fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• The random encounter rate sometimes skyrockets right after the Mine Cart Ride for about eight battles (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Edgar, please, not in front of the children (should be fixed for good in RC-27-Bro)
• Brushes re-target to enemies instead of friendlies on death (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• The Demonsbane and Tarot "kill undead" procs are not using the correct animation (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• The Chainsaw and Ichimonji/Zantetsuken death procs are not using the correct animation (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Kaiser's script has a nested conditional that is causing problems (fixed in RC-27)
• Lakshmi doesn't appear to do anything during her turns (fixed in RC-27)
• The Kagenui has the incorrect stats before recruiting Shadow (purely visual bug; fixed in RC-27)
• Puff Goo incorrectly hits itself when blinded (fixed in RC-27)
• Manticores do not have MP to use Aqualung in the Colosseum (fixed in RC-27)
• Face and Short Arm (final battle, Tier 1) have swapped positions (fixed in RC-27)
• The solution to the Tombstone Puzzle in Daryl's Tomb is backwards (fixed in RC-26)
• The in-battle "Rage" scrollbar stops one quarter of the way down the window (fixed in RC-26)
• Mudcrabs are not properly flagged to not appear on the Veldt (fixed in RC-26)
• ??? is not properly flagged to ignore defense (fixed in RC-26)
• Intangir Z is dropping 2 Kagenui's (fixed in RC-26)
• Behemoth/Diablos are incorrectly vulnerable to Bserk (fixed in RC-26)
• Chimera/Manticore/Sphinx are incorrectly vulnerable to Sleep (fixed in RC-26)
• Scan will sometimes spit out garbage after appropriate scans (could not replicate)
• Ultima hits itself with Full Force (fixed in RC-25)
• The "unequip" NPC in the scenario select screen does not unequip Cyan after Sabin's scenario (fixed in RC-25)
• Final Kefka's script has an error causing his counter-attack routine to cease after the first cycle (fixed in RC-25)
• The "Blind" status is causing the "Jump" command to do half damage from the back row (fixed in RC-24)
• Imped enemies are not properly reverting to their original sprites when cured (LeetSketcher's hack was not working; removed for now - RC-28 will have a fix for Tonberry/Master T)
• RC23: the Noiseblaster is (randomly?) Chainsawing enemies to death (fixed in RC-24)
• Bouncy Balls do 0 damage (fixed in RC-24)
• An error in their scripts cause Asura and Isis to never enter their final attack phases (fixed in RC-24)
• Landslide will still inflict the "Slow" status on floating targets that it misses (fixed in RC-23)
• The "Hobo" line of enemies may attempt to use a Tonic on dead allies instead of properly re-targeting (RC-23 has healing items re-target on death)
• The Soldier rage has Cure 2 as the uncommon attack instead of the common (fixed in RC-23)
• There is a small error in the Sphinx enemy script that affects its behavior (fixed in RC-23)
• The Diablos enemy in Kefka's Tower is using the incorrect targeting for Cyclonic (fixed in RC-23)
• Inferno's arms are less aggressive than intended due to a scripting error (fixed in RC-23)
• Incorrect dialogue appears in the Guardian and Final Kefka battles (fixed in RC-23)
• There is a small error in Kaiser's script which may make it more difficult for players to figure out how to fight him (fixed in RC-23)
• The "unequip" NPC in the scenario select screen appears on the same tile that Mog spawns on (fixed in RC-22)
• The Tzen relic shop has the wrong wares in the WoR (fixed in RC-22)
• The Tentacles will not correctly update the position of characters when grabbing them and will drop them off to the top left of the screen (fixed in RC-22)
• The chest that should contain Setzer's Viper Darts instead contain a second Tarot (fixed in RC-22)
• Tentacle B has the wrong elemental settings (fixed in RC-21)
• 024 does not properly respond to having Dispel cast on it (fixed in RC-20)
• The Atlasphere enemy is not correctly updating its AI (fixed in RC-20)
• The Royal Jacket still blocks fire damage (fixed in RC-20)
• RC-19: a certain zone in the (WoR) Serpent Trench has no enemy encounter data (fixed in RC-20)
• The Haste status (invisibly) cycles through with the Safe/Shell/Reflect statuses (fixed in RC-19)
• MP damage is incorrectly triggering melee counters (fixed in RC-19)
• The select button acts as L/R for multi-targeting (vanilla behavior, but it conflicts with the HP/ATB view hack; fixed in RC-19)
• Exploder is randomly targeting the entire party when Gau rages Bomb and is also doing the wrong amount of damage (fixed in RC-19)
• The Bserk spell animation is slightly buggy (fixed in RC-19)
• Green-D's timed attack is misspelled (fixed in RC-19)
• Antlion's special attack is not correctly flagged to deal no damage (fixed in RC-19)
• The 777 Slot spin has the incorrect name (fixed in RC-19)
• Lv. 9 Mages, Didalos, and Phunbaba have no Sketch attacks assigned (fixed in RC-19)
• Tiny Tims have no common steal set (fixed in RC-19)
• Banshees have the incorrect status immunities (fixed in RC-19)
• The Mantra formula is broken (fixed in RC-18)
• The Monet and Dali brushes have the incorrect spells (fixed in RC-18)
• The armor shop at Thamasa sells two sets of Gold Armor (fixed in RC-18)
• The 7-7-7 Slot spin is not targeting live characters as it should (fixed in RC-18)
• Chesticle incorrectly drops two Frostgores (fixed in RC-18)
• The guest in the Wrexsoul fight incorrectly spawns on top of a Soulblazer (fixed in RC-18)
• A bug in Zone Eater's AI causes it to hit itself under certain circumstances (fixed in RC-18)
• Mind Blast was causing issues with turn order after being used (hack removed from RC-17 for debugging)
• Chesticle has no MP to cast its spells (fixed in RC-17)
• One area of the Serpent Trench has the wrong pack assigned and another zone near Kefka's Tower has none at all (fixed in RC-17)
• The "Empty" inventory command did not work in RC-16 (fixed in RC-17)
• Shadow initializes with 999 MP (fixed in RC-13- will require a new save to be effective)
• The 3x Wasp formation is improperly flagged as leapable (fixed in RC-13)
• Bedevil (dance step) is missing the "redirection" flag (fixed in RC-13)
• Terra's attack in the flashback sequence has no name (fixed in RC-12)
• Fire Dance engulfs the targets in a cleansing warmth that soothes their wounds (fixed in RC-12)
• Two NPCs in the Beginner's School are calling the wrong captions (fixed in RC-12)
• Terra uses weird/wrong attacks in the flashback sequence with Kefka (fixed in RC-11)
• Terra and Celes learn several incorrect spells through leveling (fixed in RC-11 - will require a new save to be effective)
• The Rizopas fight can be trivialized by paralyzing with Suplex (fixed in RC-11)
• “Gauge: Off” config setting doesn’t work in battle (maxHP shows briefly, then switches to ATB gauge as default) (fixed in RC-9)
• The new save point in the Ancient Castle has no assigned sprite (basically: it's functional, but invisible) (fixed in RC-9)
• Weird graphical errors with the Bushido meter flashing (fixed in RC-7)
• The second (new) save point in the Cave to the Sealed Gate does not work (fixed in RC-7)
• The Apocyllumina event is broken due to a blank caption where a choice is supposed to be made (fixed in RC-7)
• Fanfare music plays in Terra’s flashback after killing soldiers (fixed in RC-7)
• Cyan cannot equip Crusader; can equip Alexandr instead (fixed in RC-6)
• Ghost Rings/Ribbons do not protect against Stop as they should (fixed in RC-6)
• Empty enemy formations appear in the Serpent Trench (WoR) and Cave to Figaro Castle (fixed in RC-6)
• The Magitek menu (appears in the first fight) has a bunch of "???????" options (fixed in RC-5)
• Antlions (enemies outside Figaro Castle) have no regular battle script (fixed in RC-5)
• The Shell spell sets Stop instead of Shell (fixed in RC-5)
• Fire Dance (Blitz) does nothing (fixed in RC-5)
• The special attack on Gau's "Soldier" rage does nothing (fixed in RC-5)
• Kefka uses the wrong line if beaten at Narshe via an alternate win condition (fixed in RC-5)
• When Giants use Magnitude on death, the targeting is incorrect (fixed in RC-5)
• The armor shop at Narshe starts selling Antidotes post-IMTRF (fixed in RC-5)
• Banon is wearing a "dummy" item instead of armor (fixed in RC-4)
• Zeigfried is dropping a "dummy" item after he dies (fixed in RC-4)
• Several NPCs in Mobliz are exhibiting... odd behavior (fixed in RC-4)
• Spirit Claws are randomly casting Stop instead of Slow (fixed in RC-4)
• Characters with the "Vanish" status may have it randomly removed for no reason (fixed in RC-3)
• Terra, Biggs, & Wedge do not properly have the MagiTek status in the game's intro (fixed in RC-3)
• The config menu is displaying the wrong version (BNW 1.9.0) (fixed in RC-2)

NOT BUGS:

• All of the special MagiTek commands are gone except for Tek Laser and Heal Force
• Whelk dies in one round; there's no need to drag this fight out to "teach" players about ATB
• The ATB bar no longer turns yellow when full; rather, the design of the end-caps will change
• Enemies beyond the ones outside of Narshe/Figaro Castle no longer counter Steal by murdering Locke
• You no longer wear MagiTek armor in the third segment of Cyan's Nightmare
• The Cranes have no death animations (RC-24 adds text boxes to indicate that they have been disabled)

KNOWN ISSUES (WILL NOT BE FIXED):

• Banon will show up in the back row if Wedge was placed in the back row during the opening sequence
• Rizopas can be skipped entirely if the last Piranha is killed with a counter-attack
• The "shop preview" hack looks a little wrong for tools and causes some slowdown
• Enemies will not counter dual-wield melee attacks if one of the weapons involved ignores row OR if the last weapon strike procs a spell
• The new save point at the Ancient Castle is grey for some reason
• Certain enemies can die individually under certain circumstances instead of simultaneously; can be annoying if they appear in large groups (*)
          *This is fixable but requires scripting space; therefore, only the most egregious cases will be addressed; please post any that you think need it

BALANCE ISSUES:

• Character ATB bars start half-full in back/pincer attacks, which is actually a stealth buff to slower characters (fixed in RC-27-Bro)
• Blackjack (the Slot spin) is a little overpowered against most randoms (RC-27-Bro lowers its power back down to what it was in 1.9)
• Many random encounters in the mid-WoR are a little too easy to steamroll with AoE damage (RC-27-Bro bumps up enemy HP in some places)
• The Autocrossbow's low hitrate makes it scale poorly in the later game (Schematics now also set it to perfect accuracy - I have no idea when this got added in)
• Shadow is a tough sell for Zozo because of the hiring cost (RC-27-Bro lowers his asking price to 1,000 GP)
• May need to edit the scripts of the "Rain Man" line to make it more obvious when their AI has been changed (declined)
• Intangir's tendency to counter with Meteo can be bad if the RNG is streaky (dealt with... sort of)
• The "Robot" line of enemies respond extremely negatively to being hit by an elemental weakness (declined)
• May want to (slightly) increase the HP of the "Jinn" line of enemies (declined; the Blackjack nerf addresses the possibility of OHKOing Jinns)
• Sun Bath/Harvester are very weak when regular enemies use them (addressed in RC-27)
• The Nightshade/Belladonna enemy group is too easily disabled by hitting an elemental weakness (addressed in RC-27)
• The Ninja / 2x Dactyl formation on the Floating Continent has too much AoE damage (RC-26 lowers Dactyl's magic power)
• Atma/Ultima counter Raid/Osmose/Empowerer as they would any other MP damage (addressed in RC-26)
• Dullahan's S.Cross does a lot of damage (RC-26 lowers Dullahan's magic power)
• Enemies on the Southern Continent are overtuned (Wyvern and Chickenlip are nerfed in RC-24)
• Kaiser can be (somewhat) cheesed through a particular strat (fixed in RC-24)
• Heartfire casts Regen on itself, but cannot be sapped (fixed in RC-24)
• Ultros 2 may need lower HP (declined)
• The Flan rage needs nerf (RC-23 changes the secondary attack from Life 2 to SlowX and move the Flans to after the Ifrit/Shiva battle)
• Celes can be back-attacked during her solo segment of the WoR (addressed in RC-21)
• Back attacks and pincers are still very overpowering even without taking extra damage from behind (RC-21 increases party's starting ATB in pincer/back attacks)
• All incoming magical damage is lower than it should be (this was an error with in my damage calculator, RC-19 adjusted enemy magic power to compensate)
• Shiva and Ifrit use Ice 3 / Fire 3 too frequently (addressed in RC-6)
• The Telstar fight is a PITA (addressed in RC-11)
• The Phantom monster-in-a-box in Locke's scenario (addressed in RC-5; further edited in RC-6)

NEW FEATURES:

• RC-27-Bro: Celes/Edgar/Setzer/Sabin to re-average to level 18 in the WoR, everyone else to 21
• RC-23: Healing items now re-target on death
• RC-26: Enemies that can counter ANY attack no longer counter Scan

Quote

[2:17 AM]BTB: @Julford in the thread works

RC4 - The Shell spell sets Stop instead of Shell.
(Fixed in RC-5)

The following glitch should be resolved. 

Alright, so this is a fun one. It seems that if you equip an Esper while on the Airship, any character with an Esper equipped will get +25% HP. This will persist when the Item Menu is opened, but reset when the Skills menu is opened or after a battle. Here's a terrible video, back to testing.

Ok, to sum up: 

ETA: The rabbit hole goes deeper.

Would love if another beta tester could confirm any of this I'd love that.

And deeper...

Another addition:

Nowea has confirmed the basic premise here. 
(Fixed in RC-5)

World of Ruin, Serpent Trench occasionally has encounters that are empty. South Figaro Cave, last room before Figaro Castle, has the same issue for every encounter I had in it.
(Will be fixed in RC-6)

In addition, something seems to break for XP upon reaching level 20. An encounter with Celes/Sabin granting 525 total XP only took her from 121 xp to level to 108 xp to level. 
(Added to bug list)

Some formations have monsters partway off the screen during pincers. One example: FC 3x Djinn formation
(Will need to start a section documenting all weird pincer formations - keep these coming)

This reads awkwardly. Not sure I have a better solution. 

NPC in the Beginner's School second room. "Spears and some relics allow characters to guard their allies from physical attacks, but only if they are in the front row."

It reads awkwardly. I can't think of an equally brief way to word it
(Rewritten in RC-6)

Same room of the BS. "Weapons and/or shields..."

The "/or" seems unnecessary. 
(Will be rewritten prior to final release; waiting to see if GrayShadows gets the hack out)

3 minutes ago, ff7hero said:

This reads awkwardly. Not sure I have a better solution. 

 

It sounds ambiguous as to whether "they" is referring to "characters" or "allies", I guess. Maybe change to "...allows you to guard your allies...but only if you are in the front row."

"Front Row Characters with spears, or some relics, can guard their allies from physical attacks."

Interacting with airship controls in RC5 (WoR) hardlocks the game.

(Synchysi: This is caused by the usME issue mentioned below.)

Cranes do not die. When enough damage has been dealt (About 5k give or take 1k, I was not keeping careful track of the numbers), they simply become untargetable and continue attacking as normal. When both are dead you can no longer use any command that defaults targetting to the enemy (Fight, Fire 2, Autocrossbow), cannot move a cursor to any enemy (Cure 2 and try to move left/right), and if you use a skill that attacks the opponent without showing a targetting cursor (Blackjack for example) the spell aborts when trying to cast.

EDIT 2 THE PRE-SEQUEL: Hero confirmed that RC4 has the same Cranes issues, so I broke down and looked at the script for Crane. You have the battle set to end when VAR036 is 3, but when a Crane dies it either sets the VAR to 0 (If Crane 1) or 1 (If Crane 2), so the battle continues with no way to end it.

FURTHER ABYSS-STARING EDIT:

Julford: Untargetable is not working how you assumed, the game still treats the cranes as alive and triggers Magnitude

Julford: Because of that you never see half this script, so even if you were incrementing VAR036 properly it would still never reach 3
(Will be fixed in RC-6)

EDIT: Whole reason I'd loaded up that save file: The party no longer has auto:slow at the start of battle after loading from the IMTRF save point after the mine cart. Also, Slots no longer consumes all reality when used.
(Good to see that got fixee in RC-5)

RC4 (due to RC5 hardlocking at airship) As soon as one of the doors changed this happened. Getting a random encounter fixed it. Movement did not seem to be altered, only graphics.

I'll just use this one post and edit it for things I've found throughout the RCs from now on in regards to edits, bugs, and so forth.
 

It doesn't seem to be the airship itself that's broken: saving ANYTHING in USME seems to break events. I just took RC5, edited the formations after 60 to mostly be pincers, saved it, and the resulting rom softlocks at the first red save point in the Narshe mines and after the cutscene after the whelk fight.

Edit: Turns out editing anything in USME breaks all event scripting lol

Edit by Synchysi: For clarification, usME breaks most custom event scripting within a certain range. Vanilla events are still intact, aside from where they were directly modified - which is why even seemingly vanilla events will crash the game.
(Added to bug list)

Game freezes here during the first Terra flashback on RC5. If I was forced to guess a why, I'd wonder if it has to do with the "???????"s being gone from the MagiTek menu.
(Will be fixed in RC-6)

I will do my best to keep these items up to date as I work through the RCs. Apologies up front if any of these items are already present in 1.9, or are too nit-picky to be useful at this stage.

Script/Text Typos and Suggestions
Status Menu: Still calls magic evade “MBlock”
(Status menu redesign is still pending/up in the air, and the label changes along with it)

Arvis to Locke: “She needs our help and we may need her’s” --> no apostrophe in “hers”
(Are you sure? I see an apostrophe here.)

Beginners School: “it’s particularly reccommend” to do this for the “base” weapon… --> typo
(Will fix)

Beginners School: “Observe enemy behavior and learn whether it’s better to attack them directly or by disabling them before they can hurt you.” --> “...to attack them directly or to disable them before they can hurt you”
(Will fix)

Beginners (room 2): “Doing so cost a turn, however” --> should be “costs”
(This whole line will be rewritten before the final release)

Beginners (room 2): “Characters in the front row take more physical damage from physical attacks and deal less damage with their own.” This is not true.
(Well, fuck... that's one hell of a typo)

Before Kefka arrives in Figaro: “A general of the Empire has requested an audience of you” --> “an audience with you”
(Technically, this one is Woolsey's fault. Will fix.)

Edgar, after Figaro submerges: There’s a cave east of here --> This is misleading, since the cave is South by Southeast from where you gain control of the Chocobo
('eh... might fix this, idk.)

Bugs (maybe?)
“Gauge: Off” config setting doesn’t work in battle (maxHP shows briefly, then switches to ATB gauge as default) (RC4)
(Bug confirmed)

Bushido charging numbers (after 1) look wrong -- lighter, flickery (RC5) [I'm using OpenEmu on MacOS, which uses SNES9x]
(Known bug as of now; Synchysi has an idea about the cause, but not sure about a fix)

Killing Kefka (Imperial Camp) w/ Suplex bypasses “waiter” dialogue (RC5)
(BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - keeping it)

Fanfare music plays in Terra’s flashback after killing soldiers (RC4)
(Bug - will fix)

Sabin joins with no headgear (RC5)
(Intended)

Trillium appears to use Raid to counter non-ranged physicals, but does not counter Locke using Butterfly+Boomerang. I would have expected the counter to trigger unless both weapons were long range (RC5)
(Not being fixed; combining short and long-range weapons is suboptimal in most cases, so this is a "feature".)
 

7 hours ago, Bropedio said:

Arvis to Locke: “She needs our help and we may need her’s” --> no apostrophe in “hers”
(Are you sure? I see an apostrophe here.)

I think there's the point. "Her's" is an incorrect form of "hers".

Yeah, I realized that when my spellchecker rejected the former >.>

'tis fixed now.

RC10, Bushido works but cyan explodes. Using the provided save 19, IAF. Espers obviously have been unlocked

Edit: This is RC10-2

Cyan's build at level 19

Iteration One ( killed enemies via counter and then Dragon Bushido). First screenshot is dark because I paused the game to take it. Both times I've fought Leafer formation, reraise was learned and the same glitched graphics happened. Also, after the rerise text appears, it require a button press to move to crash.

Iteration two (Cyan killed with regular attacks and counters). Unlike the previous iteration, no button press is required. The game crashes without a button press after the "Status: Beserk" appears. Also while it is part of the emulator, this is when I noticed the FPS counter was dancing by squishing and then reverting back to normal, not sure if that is important or not, so I'll include it here. Also the bugged out screen changes regularly, and music continues to play in the background.

Iteration 3 (Using Sabin lv 19 with no equipment or relics, only attack)

Iteration 4 Sabin against a formation that I already did with Cyan.

Iteration 5, A full party (Terra lv 20, Edgar lv 20, Locke lv 21, Celes lv 17) all without equipment or relics. This time the text box is blank but auto exits like the Beserk text did. Oddly the FPS counter on SNES9x does not do the squishy dance, it just stays squished down. Music continues to play.

edit: Tossing espers on everyone changes nothing.

Iteration 6 (Going back to nake Sabin and seeing if his character slot changes anything. Didn't seem to change much, the glitch bomb graphics might be a bit different but it's hard to tell. I don't think it has anything to do with what's causing the problem though.

Iteration 7, using the save 11 post Narsh Kefka battle. Only equiped kotetsu to Cyan. Use soldier rage. The Fail message with move on to GP without a button press. Battle ends normally afterwards.

RC8, Blackjack is crashing the game. All other abilities seem to be fine, Solitaire/Chocobo/GoFish/!Jackpot all worked properly, even the random summons seemed to be working. Attempting to use Blackjack causes the glitched mess below, which lasted about two minutes with fast forward held. I could still use Terra's menu during this period, and once the "spell animation" ended damage was done. Saw exp and gp screens (Including Terra leveling to 12 and getting Regen), but the game hung on the black screen after battle with no music playing.

Further testing required to see if the same happens in RC5, when Slots were first fixed.

EDIT: The same thing is happening in RC5, so it seems to be an issue with whatever was done to fix it then and had just gone unnoticed. Blackjack caused the same distortion in my test there (Osteosaur in Daryl's Tomb, who is a real bastard for a random btw), with the map distorting the same way and lingering animation effects in the same spot. Combat continued in that case as the monster hadn't died, I eventually had to run away and the game froze on the black screen again.
 

Screenshots and comments below

EDIT 2: Terra naturally learns Stop at level 16, is listed in the Printme as Slow. She has no other method of learning Slow, but can learn Stop through Carbunkl esper. She's also missing Imp entirely, which should have been learned at level 8.

EDIT 3: Further investigating, Terra is learning Mute at level 8 instead of Imp, and Celes is missing Slow from her spell list in a save just before IMTRF (level 17), though he has Ice 2 instead.
(Confirmed bugs; will be fixed in RC-10)

I want to document an issue we noticed in the elemental mixing patch that would break elemental weakness if a target had both a resistance (+1) and two weaknesses (-1, -1). After the first DEX, the zero flag would be set, causing the loop to break before handling the second weakness.

The bug can be resolved by adding 2 to the BRA arg, so the loop repeats at the LSR, two bytes after the BEQ.

Edit to clarify: This bug would only affect attacks with 3 or more elements, so it is unlikely to manifest unless more such attacks are added. As it is, Tritoch is the only attack that would be affected (I think), and only if the target had resistance to one of the elements and a weakness to the other two.

Fought Brown-D for some damage numbers. This was my team. Numbers are from RC8. I'm assuming that Brown-D's Water weakness is working.

Here's some numbers:

Small Potential Spoilers for Brown-D Fight

A note on the Damage Calculator:

Is Gogo supposed to be holding a Mythril Knife and nothing else when recruited?

(Yep. Also good catch on the damage calc thing. I'll fix that at some point.)

Nastidon uses Absolute 0 on itself.
(Fixed for RC-10 along with several other enemies with the same targeting issue in their scripts)

Posting some quick Zozo numbers BTB requested in the Discord last night. I ended up doing minimal testing with the 42 magic setup, as the numbers were clearly high enough to do the job.

Lvl 11 Edgar
30 magic:
Slamdancer: 526 - 580
Hobo: 540 - 594
Junkie: 352 - 396

37 magic:
Slamdancer: 654 - 694
Hobo: 628 - 668
Junkie: 420 - 452

42 magic:
Slamdancer: 684 - 718
Hobo: 682 - 768
Junkie: 472 - 498

Damage test from the Baran Falls Piranhas:

Level 12 Sabin, Front Row:

-Gear: Spirit Claw x 2, Bandana, Karate Gi, Knight Cape, Black Belt

-Stats: 63 Vigor, 288 BatPwr

-Damage per Strike: 212 - 233

To be clear, there was only one instance of 233 out of around 12 total attacks for the entire chain (he got off a lot of counters from Black Belt). They were mostly 220 or lower.

Confirming and posting that the Crane's sap ticks are breaking 255. Just saw a 270 tick.
(We now have an explanation for this; it's tied to the enemy variance formula)

RC8

Pic : Battle started with this formation, 1 bird, 1 dog on the right, nothing on the other side.
(Can someone start compiling a list of b0rked pincers? Thanks.)

Gained EP pre zozo in a pre emptive side attack battle with Fighter/Poison Vine/ Buzzard enemy combo. Only time so far it's popped up.

The EP display fix was reverted a while back, so that part at least is a known bug. I know the fix, I just need to get the other stuff sorted out first.

Terra's attack in the flash back doesn't have a name. She also doesn't move at all during the scene.
(Fixed in the next RC)

The wolves in the Captain battle don't seem to have names.
(No fucking clue on this one. Anyone got a screenshot?)

Here's my uneditted thoughts from my playtest session tonight.

Banon is automatically in back row, but game still says "I hope you put him in the back row."
(Confirmed; won't fix)

Cainen reports that Ultros 3 is broken. He doesn't respond to Sketch with the greatest line in BNW. 
(I see the problem and fixed it)

And Fire Dance is set to heal. 
(Confirmed bug - fixed for next RC)

Shadow's MP is still fucked up in RC11. 
(Will be fixed for next RC)

Got one of these weird looking Pincer formations :

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/160253567012306945/550755700163477506/Final_Fantasy_III_USA000.png

Here's a screenshot of the no-name wolves:

RC12, Damage not posting.

In this formation, damage to Edgar (position 1), and damage to Locke (Position 2) do not post damage. They are however losing life. Not though, that if Edgar is in the third position and blocks someone it will post damage. Also visual glitch, Locke is appearing in front of Edgar.

Visual Glitch. Edgar appears under Locke... Until he dodges with the red cape animation, which sets him infront of locke.

It seems to happen AFTER Edgar blocks an attack? In a fight against two Scrappers he started correctly infront of Locke, blockedand attack for Terra, and then ended up under Locke. After further testing, the battles seem to start with Edgar in the correct position; when he blocks for an ally he ends up behind Locke, and then when he evades something he goes back to the front.

Also, more failure. I'm wondering if this is unique to me because it happened or RC10-2 for me as well.

I've got text going over Locke's head here.

Also some display wonkiness where damage wasn't displaying on a giant after he was stolen from twice. (the second one was a switchblade proc)

Edit: Now i'm getting a lack of damage display on both player characters and enemies seemingly at random. The damage is still being taken, but the numbers aren't popping up. I've tested this with different encounters in different locations and the damage display is still turning invisible at random no matter where I am or what I'm fighting.

I'm also seeing lag after attacks from characters and enemies. After any action they just stand there for a second like something is about to proc. It's more noticeable on player characters since they have animations but the enemies are doing it too. It's especially noticeable if a character dual wields and attacks twice because there's a big pause between their attacks.

I've also started a new game since the file I was using was from an older patch, and these problems still persist, so I don't think that has anything to do with it. And I've tried toggling the backgrounds on and off, but it didn't affect it.

I'm using snes9x if it matters.

After certain battles, I've ended up with either 99 or 55 Dried Meats in my inventory, and sometimes 99 or 55 Slim Jims too.  I've had it happen multiple times after the battle in Narshe with Terra Biggs and Wedge in front of the item shop (first the two dogs, then the two guards), and also noticed it after the fight with the two Magitek armors Kefka sends after you during the first Figaro sequence after getting Edgar.

Edit: forgot to mention: this is on RC-12

Mind Blast is a clusterfuck.

A pretty bad one.

Items getting janky, basically it gets one item from the list and an extra out of memory then multiplies it by 255... I think. RC-12. Also I'm testing out some of the damage jank it it affects the top PC's rather than the bottom ones.

The damage jank looks to me like its based on the slot the PC is in, the top 2 characters don't show any damage values after they're attacked. For now I'm gonna leave it here and edit this later after more tests.

Edit: So I can confirm that its the slot of the PC's he/she is in to make the damage values not show.

3 hours ago, JohnFuklaw said:

I'm also seeing lag after attacks from characters and enemies. After any action they just stand there for a second like something is about to proc. It's more noticeable on player characters since they have animations but the enemies are doing it too. It's especially noticeable if a character dual wields and attacks twice because there's a big pause between their attacks.

To add onto this, the lag appears to roughly be "wait until damage/healing text vanishes, then continue". It causes some lagginess for everything, but is most noticeable when dual wielding.

Example during DW: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/160253567012306945/550888223077826571/2019-02-28_21-52-42.mp4

Another from RC-12:

When using select to swap between the gauge and Max HP during battle, it's slow to react or doesn't switch sometimes.  I'm not sure if I'm supposed to hold select to see the non-config view, or if select is supposed to toggle them (for what it's worth, I'd prefer holding to a toggle).

Also (Nowea caught this, not me), if you hit select while you're selecting the target for a spell, it'll act as if you tapped R and go from single-target to multi-target.  This apparently won't allow for anything game-breaking (e.i. it won't let you cast a ST spell as MT).

44 minutes ago, Cross said:

Items getting janky, basically it gets one item from the list and an extra out of memory then multiplies it by 255... I think. RC-12. Also I'm testing out some of the damage jank it it affects the top PC's rather than the bottom ones.

For this one, testing with a battle at the start. If Biggs/Wedge use a Magitek command it's writing %5 dried meat into the inventory. If Terra uses anything or if anyone defends/row then it's adding %5 Slim Jims. Some discord chat is saying they're getting items as soon as the battle starts, personal testing hasn't had an item show up until after one of the PCs does something

ETA: personal testing on RC12-a, others on base RC12

5 minutes ago, Nowea said:

For this one, testing with a battle at the start. If Biggs/Wedge use a Magitek command it's writing %5 dried meat into the inventory. If Terra uses anything or if anyone defends/row then it's adding %5 Slim Jims. Some discord chat is saying they're getting items as soon as the battle starts, personal testing hasn't had an item show up until after one of the PCs does something

I'll check this out later... this is kinda bad. Not EXTREMELY game breaking, but still, free items are hard to pass.

Update on the Dried Meat glitch, it get's worse: in the fight in Figaro with the two Magiteks, i got "%5" dried meats added to my inventory, AND "Dried Meat" showed up as a Tool in Edgar's Tool command (which when used, has Edgar fall back and die).

30 minutes ago, mewannabetatest said:

Update on the Dried Meat glitch, it get's worse: in the fight in Figaro with the two Magiteks, i got "%5" dried meats added to my inventory, AND "Dried Meat" showed up as a Tool in Edgar's Tool command (which when used, has Edgar fall back and die).

Doubling down on this... if you sell all the bugged dried meats, at the start of the battle you'd get a %5 amount of the item but no more slim jims.

Edit: well, every battle has different items to produce... hooray!

12 minutes ago, Cross said:

Doubling down on this... if you sell all the bugged dried meats, at the start of the battle you'd get a %5 amount of the item but no more slim jims.

Yeah, I just tried reproducing it a couple times and it didn't work if I had dried meats in my bag before the fight, I was only able to get it to happen if I sold all my dried meats beforehand

Here's a link to an SRM saved right before the magitek fight (Dried Meats are already sold from inventory: just go talk to Locke in the right tower, and then the Figaro burning sequence will start afterwards)  https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/160253567012306945/550934832881074186/FF3BNW.srm

The damage display bug and the mystery item bug seem to be related. I think the subroutine being called at C2/63A9 may be incorrect.

	c263a9 jsr $a7dd     [c2a7dd] A:0700 X:000e Y:0001 S:15e4 D:0000 DB:7e nvmXdIZc V:151 H: 104 F:37
c2a7dd rol $6028,x   [7e6036] A:0700 X:000e Y:0001 S:15e2 D:0000 DB:7e nvmXdIZc V:151 H: 144 F:37
c2a7e0 lda $11a3     [7e11a3] A:0700 X:000e Y:0001 S:15e2 D:0000 DB:7e NvmXdIzC V:151 H: 206 F:37

3 Wasp formation incorrectly flagged as veldt formation, gives a rage that does nothing but grant flight and take blank actions.

Also, Bedevil does nothing.  Landed it on Atma several times and it didn't restore anything despite not being able to miss.

Quick update: I know the fix for the missing damage numbers, and it seems to fix the lag as well. It'll be corrected in RC13, which I'll put out after I get home from work this afternoon.

I was unable to duplicate the dried meat issue. If the above doesn't fix it, I'll look more into it.

Edgar being killed by bugged meat...  to replicate this sell all of the first bugged meat that you get from Narshe, don't buy any more meats, enter the battle with that and you'll have bugged dried meat that can't be used other than via Tools.

Here's another hour's worth of playtest ramblings:
 

Ran into another weird one here:

It looks like dadaluma's script is broken. It was normal at first, but after a while he started exclusively snapping into a slim jim and jumping every single turn. I'm playing RC12b2 btw

Edit: He broke the loop when i quit taking the same actions, specifically I think its because I kept putting sap back on him with the drill

(I'm guessing you were attacking pretty aggressively in this fight and were doing so almost exclusively with the "Fight" and "Tools" commands)

11 hours ago, mewannabetatest said:

Another from RC-12:

When using select to swap between the gauge and Max HP during battle, it's slow to react or doesn't switch sometimes.  I'm not sure if I'm supposed to hold select to see the non-config view, or if select is supposed to toggle them (for what it's worth, I'd prefer holding to a toggle).

Also (Nowea caught this, not me), if you hit select while you're selecting the target for a spell, it'll act as if you tapped R and go from single-target to multi-target.  This apparently won't allow for anything game-breaking (e.i. it won't let you cast a ST spell as MT).

It *is* a hold -- I expect that cases where it's slow to react/not reacting are related to a delay in the screen-redraw, because I hooked the swap directly into the existing window refresh rather than forcing a refresh itself. I'll take a look at this when I can -- I probably won't have any coding time until Sunday, between work and life -- but I suspect this will be less of an easy fix than getting it to swap in the first place.

Per Nowea on Discord, select also MTs in vanilla, so that's not new behaviour, but it's an easy fix once I have time to sit down and see where it does that.

Who needs Sabin, anyways?
(Fixed in RC-15)

Things you should ask Cainen about:

-Blind seems to be halving Jump damage
(Confirmed, but would like more testing)

-Banshees are interacting...oddly with Sketch. 
(Definitely needs more testing to determine root cause)

-Shadow murdered Edgar for casting Bserk on him. 
(Can't replicate. Will open a bug if it can be.)

-Landslide Slows characters with Float. 
(Confirmed bug)

This is all I know. Ask Cainen for details on Discord ;p

[caption #621]
[Image] and [Clear] and make it impossible for physical attacks to hit you

(Fixed in next RC)

Opening the out-of-battle Rage menu is crashing RC17
(Should be fixed as of RC-18)

The unequip Imp during the scenarios still appears on the scenario select map when the scenarios conclude.  He also doesn't get hidden when you select a scenario, unlike the other map actors. (RC 17)

When in Narshe with Edgar Terra and Banon:  Banon+Clawglip = potential cheap wipe.

Clawglip spams Rock each turn when he's the last enemy standing (which inflicts Confuse on everyone), and at this level Banon's thunderrod is instadeath on any party member if it procs and casts Thunder2 (and if that's himself, you're fucked even if Terra and Edgar are still alive).  The only way to not die this way is to hope Terra or Edgar attack & unconfuse a party member who's ATB is higher than the Clawglips before Banon wipes the party, or to run, but a player who hasn't noticed that Banon has a Thunder2 proccing weapon might not realize that Banon can one-hit kill people when he's confused until it actually happens (luckily for me, he only killed Terra and Edgar and I was able to get him to run before he could kill himself).

There's a formation of Clawglip and 3 Mechanix; Mechanix have low HP and Edgar and Terra both have strong MT attacks (AC and Fire), so there's a decent chance of Clawglip being the last alive with this formation especially.

An easy fix could be to add confuse immunity to codpiece (dunno if codpiece is available to players later in the game and if adding confuse immunity to it would be undesired), or to swap one of Banon's equipment/relics with something that has confuse immunity.

^This happened to me too, but I liked it

Not sure if a bug, but when you kill the Bombs in the burning house with a sweeper, they die one by one, which is kind of neat the first time, but mildly annoying the 10th time you sweep six of them
(What kind of sweeper? Aqualung OHKOs them and they won't explode if you take them down to 0 HP)

Chimera enemy might need an Mpower nerf, Aqualung hits the party for ~300, Fireball hits the party for ~250 and sets sap on everyone, and he pretty much spams those the entire fight, while being very hard to kill (immune to Fire which is Terra's main attack, had to resort to using Break which her which is such an MP drain) and immune to Stop. Back attacks are particularly deadly, would open with Aqualung + Fireball and be either a wipe or near a wipe before the party got a turn.
(If only Terra had a spell that might make those fights easier...)

I fucking love early Holy Wind.
(I'm guessing it helps with Ultros 3?)

Ultros 3 may need an Mdef buff? Locke with just a Thief Glove and an Elec Sword was swinging for 1000 + 1500 procs, Morphed Fire 2 was hitting for 2500, Strago Fire Rod was hitting for 2k, he went down in like two rounds.
(Intended. Most players are not really able to go all-out offense with all three characters like that, and using Strago's rods for damage is something very few new players think to do.)

Random thought: What if there were an option in the config menu for text boxes to be full immediately instead of scrolling?
(I do not think this is mechanically possible)

Levels:
Vargas: All 8
Ultros 1: T/S/E 9, Banon 10

Only other note prior to Locke's scenario is that Repo Men are pretty deadly during Banon's route. Three enemies capable of outspeeding you and throwing Step Mine could easily mean an unavoidable Game Over. Luckily they seemed to be focus firing Terra with those, so that was kind...

Gau's Exploder is not functioning as intended.

Further notes on Exploder: Used it against 3 Stray Cats and it correctly hit just the enemy and Gau. Then against 2 Liches and a Sewer Rat all by itself and it continued to work fine...

One last note: I got the same encounter and started Raging Bomb against the same enemy and it behaved as normal. Still no multiplier on the damage though...

Really last note, at least on Exploder: Exploder derps if it's number of targets becomes 1 after it's queued. I'm pretty sure.

Few new bugs to report

While fighting number 128 gau somehow lost the auto-haste and auto-regen he had from his relics (i think when he died, i wasn't paying attention) and i actually summoned kirin and he still didn't have regen on him.

Also the encounter rate skyrocketed after the mine carts, i'm getting a fight every two or three steps in vector now.

On a side note: IMTRF is definitely the best part of WoB so far, it's challenging and a few of the bosses are even kind of brutal, especially 128 with that net.

8 hours ago, Deschain said:

Not sure if a bug, but when you kill the Bombs in the burning house with a sweeper, they die one by one, which is kind of neat the first time, but mildly annoying the 10th time you sweep six of them
(What kind of sweeper? Aqualung OHKOs them and they won't explode if you take them down to 0 HP)

Meaning they just die one at a time.  Nothing to do with whether they explode or not.  When OHKO'd they will die one at a time instead of all at the same time.

It did this in 1.9 as well, nothing new.

51 minutes ago, JohnFuklaw said:

[...] i actually summoned kirin and he still didn't have regen on him.

This would need more clarification, because depending on the order of events it's vanilla behaviour.  When you confirm skills that target everything, the game only targets the currently alive, valid targets.  If gau was dead when you confirmed the Kirin summon, and was then revived, he would not have been one of the "targets" of the summon.

The encounter rate spike after the minecart is a mystery bug that's been around for several versions of BNW.

Intro through Sealed Cave (RC-18) -- selected notes

Balance
Shiva/Ifrit did not use much Fire 3 and Ice 3, though they were scary nonetheless.
Ultros 2 was no problem (Locke/Sabin/Edgar)

Maybe Bugs
Haste status has close to no effect on ATB speed. I don’t recall if it was this useless in 1.9.
(It hasn't changed since 1.9, but it is different from vanilla - the nATB system makes even small changes to speed very pronounced)
(By the way... if you get a chance, would you mind having a look at the aura cycling code? We're trying to figure out why Haste still shows up there.)

It’s probably just bad luck, but the Soldier rage seems like ⅔ attack, ⅓ Cure 2

(It's bad luck)

In IMTRF, I had imp-ed a Templar. He cast Remedy on himself, and his sprite stayed as an Imp
(Well, fuck. I'll add a note for everyone to test this out more thoroughly)

If Scan’s initial target dies before casting, it does not re-target the next enemy. Is this intended?
(Yeah, status spells on the whole don't retarget on death. It was that way in vanilla, too.)

Looks like if the Healing Shiv’s target dies before attack, it re-targets an enemy, rather than a PC
(This I'm not sure is fixable. Worth mentioning as a known issue.)

No death animation or fanfare or anything happened at the end of the Cranes battle
(Yeah, it just ends like the Tritoch battle does. I'd like to figure out a good way to indicate death on the Cranes, but that will take AI space that I don't have)

When Jumping with dual-wielding Edgar, only one weapon attacks (is this expected behavior?)
(Jumping and DW do not mix. Don't do that.)

Intangir's mid battle switch can crash the game. I don't know exactly what I did here, but maybe I panned up into the Esper menu during the short pause between phases and this caused a crash. Details here: www.twitch.tv/cecil188/clip/WanderingSlickRadicchio4Head

Some more notes on my playthrough of RC-18 (up to the Sealed Cave)

Battle Balance

Cave to S Figaro (1): Terra wipes everything with MT Fire before any enemy behavior is seen.
Mt Koltz: Trilium bane counters are great. Area feels dangerous, enemies are interesting.
Lete River: Autocrossbow + Suplex take out everything very quickly
Cave to S Figaro (2): Celes MT Ice wipes everything except for Bears
Phantom Train: Shadow MT Shuriken w/ Power Glove wipes most enemy packs. Conjurer's Dark spell is a one-hit kill for any PC not at MaxHP
Zozo: Dadaluma’s Slim Jim usage seemed more fair. Gau seems like a huge detriment on the team for this fight, unless he has the Conjurer rage (which is still not very reliable).
IMTRF: Things are starting to get more difficult (a good thing). The holy immunity of many enemies here makes Sabin a lot less appealing.

Money Balance

S Figaro (1): I had 9000 GP, enough to buy whatever I wanted (except the dragoon relic)
Narshe (after Kefka): I had just enough GP to equip Sabin/Edgar/Cyan/Gau (including Tools)
Jidoor: Only enough GP for 3 or 4 new items (note: I took the Chocobo from Colosseum guy)
Post-Zozo: Still not enough GP for most upgrades, even after walking to Kohlingen and back. Buying Golem or Zoneseek is out of the question.
Tzen/Miranda: Not enough GP for upgrades. I’m selling Phoenix Downs and TInctures to buy some new armor (note: I took the Chocobo from Tzen to Miranda, but I walked back to Vector)
Pre-Sealed Cave: Just enough GP to buy Golem and Seraph. Sold some more items for Zoneseek. No GP left over for upgrades in Narshe (or Tzen, Miranda).

Maybe Bugs

I think I recall BTB mentioning that the Mt Koltz guard during Locke’s scenario had a joke dialogue, but in my game he says “The empire has taken control here”
Nevermind, I found the joke. Was looking in the wrong place.

Pincer Attacks

I saw the already-reported Buzzard/RedWolf(2) outside Kohlingen.
In Zozo, the Hobo/Junkie(3) pincer fit on the screen, but the right-most Junkie was close enough to the edge that stealing from him placed Shadow off the screen. I can add a screenshot later tonight. Edit: I was wrong about the enemy pack. I added a screenshot of the formation below.

Some Checklist Items

Shop preview hack looks great, it’s my favorite new feature by far
Spell dots look great too, and they seem to display when appropriate
Can confirm Safety Glove procs Safe on critical HP
I saw at least one enemy counter a counterattack
At least some bosses have rewarded Exp (I did not monitor all bosses carefully, though)
Hints about beating bosses -- I thought I saw an NPC suggest that I deplete MP for MagiMaster (or I could be crazy). I took that approach, which seemed to prolong the battle rather than make it easier.

(Are you sure you mean MagiMaster and not 024?)
Whoops. Yeah, 024.

(The hint was that Dispel can make it reroll its weakness, not to MP mill it >.>)
I probably was just not paying enough attention. On a related note, my Celes did not have Dispel at all during the IMTRF. I didn't take her to Zozo, so she was only Lvl.10 when I went in. She learned Slow before 024.

Subjective Opinion

ATB Colors
The ATB colors seem wrong to me. Green mean “Go”, but it also means “Tranquil”. Red means “Stop”, or it means the speakers are turned up to 11. The following scheme would feel more natural to me:
Red (Hot) Haste, Blue (Cold) Slow, Pink or Yellow Stop

Esper Legend (unchanged from 1.9, I assume)
This is a small gripe about exposition, but to me, it weakens the mythology/themes of the game in a significant way. Ramuh, when describing the War of the Magi, says the ancient magic-infused human soldiers are now known as "MagiTek". This seems to suggest that MagiTek isn't a new development, but is just a resurrection of ancient power. I always thought of MagiTek as part of the industrialization of the world, something very recent, and due entirely to Cid's genius. The ancient war of the Magi would not have included modern technology or science -- more likely, the war would have precipitated when ancient humans discovered Magicite itself, and used it the same way the player does.

Here's my thoughts from another chunk of the game.

On 3/3/2019 at 5:36 PM, JohnFuklaw said:

Also the encounter rate skyrocketed after the mine carts, i'm getting a fight every two or three steps in vector now.

This happened in 1.9, maybe earlier too. Usually it's an encounter every step though, until eventually you reach a tile where it goes back to normal.

Finally got Espers.

It's probably a minor issue for the strange looking pincer formations, but here's one I ran into.

(These are the kinds of things I'm after. Will fix.)

RC19: Stray is healing living party members but isn't doing anything to dead ones
(Added to buglist)

Confirming what Deschain reported about Grenades dying one-by-one after being simultaneously killed.

Confirming Deschain's reports about Stray. Heals the living, no visible effect on the dead.

And that was totally it. Nothing to see here, move along. 

RC19 - Level 10 on both Sabin and Shadow. See the video I linked in Discord for my stats and items.

Had a fun fight against the 2x Templar, 2x Soldier pack at the end of the 'chase Kefka' sequence in Imperial Camp. I threw a total of five multi-target Shuriken against the pack and, while the two Templar died in one shot each, the Soldiers stayed alive. Even with Sabin using three Pummels, I was only able to kill one of the two remaining Soldiers before my evasion gave out and the party wiped. I was able to survive the fight a grand total of once out of five attempts, and only because Shadow was able to perfect dodge/get enough Interceptor procs.

I tested this fight on RC18 and was able to clear the encounter with a single Shuriken throw, so whatever is weird is specifically so in RC19.

During the Number 024 fight, Dispel didn't appear to make him wall change (he never countered Dispel with Wall Change, and he would sometimes attack once or twice before eventually Wall Changing), which folks in Discord are saying is a bug.

This was on RC19

(Well, shit... I flat-out forgot to include that in his script. I'll fix it for RC-20)

An update about the Grenades slow death, it looks like this occurs because they died to a water/ice attacks.

I saw the same thing happen when I killed some Bombs with Aqualung during a rage/lore/dance grind, and I remembered them not dying slowly when I killed them with multi-target Shurikens.  So I tested if a Gau's Sandstorm would cause them to die slowly, and it did not.

https://discordapp.com/channels/160240476883124225/160253567012306945/552542277541822511

Taking a glance at the battle script for Bombs and Grenades, I see that there's a check to see if Bombs where attacked by water/ice, which sets a flag.  I suspect that killing them with a water/ice attack causes them flag to be set one by one, which prevents them from dying simultaneously.

(Assuming you're correct, then adding a conditional to check if they're alive before setting the flag should fix that.
UNFORTUNATELY... making this same concession for every possible instance of this will take up way more space than I have, so we can only address the most egregious cases.)

A few minor or nitpicky things, most of which probably aren't worth addressing:

Learning of Cyan's Dream's MagiTek's removal made me post in disapproval.

Thanks to seibaby for testing insights:

Being Blinded while Jumping causes Jump to respect row; this is the cause of dealing half damage in this circumstance(proc damage is affected as well).

Normal damage without blind was ~650, Front Row+Blind was ~650, Back Row+Blind was ~325. (Dark) Proc was about 3100 Normal, 1400 Blinded(wasn't paying too close attention to normal proc, might have been less than 3100, either way, it probably falls within variance).

11 hours ago, Endarire said:

Learning of Cyan's Dream's MagiTek's removal made me post in disapproval.

The alternative is every fight taking forever because your regular attacks have been replaced with Tek Laser.

Can I ask why Fire, Bolt and Ice Beams were remove to only leave Tek Laser and Heal Force ?

They served no real purpose. There was no point to them, not even from a flavor standpoint, since no OTHER MagiTek armor ever used those attacks. 

On 24/02/2019 at 3:16 AM, BTB said:

• Shadow initializes with 999 MP (fixed in RC-13)

I got this on RC 20 litteraly just recruit him before going to Thamasa open the menu and saw he has 999MP Max.

Just now, Nesouk said:

I got this on RC 20 litteraly just recruit him before going to Thamasa open the menu and saw he has 999MP Max.

When did you start your save file? The problem was related to his MP being affected whenever certain attacks were used, so it could have been affected long before you ever reached him.

RC19: Ran through sealed cave with Terra/Edgar/Gau/Sabin in that order, after sealed cave, gau adopted interceptor. (This might have been to a save editor to fix Shadows MP, Will return to this on a fresh RC in the future).

Balance thoughts:

~RC11
Nashe to Returners Hideout
Everything was pretty simple. Edgar ACBs, terra heals/fires, Locke stabs, Sabin Flexes. No weird wipes that I can remember to countering. No damage seemed really off.

Split Scenarios
Sabin's scenario damage felt maybe a tad high? Considering Sabin and Shadow can be pretty paper early they can get hit with good damage against enemy groups that have more offensive set ups or stronger counters. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, the player at this point should be realizing counters/AI changes without ever being told about them.
I don't remember any such difficulty in Locke's and Terra's scenarios. Both seemed easier than Sabins by a good margin. Might be worth looking into.

Narshe to zozo
Game starts picking up a bit here giving you some choices. I tried using chars I don't typically use, and it paid off. Gau might actually need a small nerf on some of his rages. Leafer makes most battles pretty trivial. Gold starts becoming a major concern for a hoarder like me. I'd pretty consistently turn off xp for a bit to get my gold up just to grab extra stuff. I think it could get buffed up a bit without making it too overabundant. Zozo was pretty simple. Using Gau and Locke to clear/steal supplies, Celes for healing, Sabin to finish up anything. Dadaluma seems to be in a good place.

~RC 16/19
Opera to Cranes
Cyan, Gau, Locke, Celes. Gau carries, Cyan thous, Locke steals/dual wields, Celes supports. Visited both towns before going to vector for some supplies and equipment. Farmed some GP with xp off to afford just about 1 of everything. Had to be a bit conservative with certain enemy combos. Would generally take a battle or two to feel out counters/ais and go from there. Factory might feel a tad easier than over world battles as mentioned by someone in I believe the discord. Shiva/Ifrit weren't bad at all. N.24 wasn't bad with abusing his human weakness. Minecart and boss was a tad annoying. Cranes were much easier than I remember way back when.

Sealed Cave to Thamasa
Terra, Gau, Edgar, Sabin. Gau teams up with Sabin and Edgar for clear. Terra supports. Gau finally starts to feel balanced a bit here. Sabin starts to really come into his own. In the future I'll probably run someone else instead of Edgar here. Hardest part was the "boss battle" added. Thamasa was no issue at all. Overworld feels about as hard as the burning house and mountain. Had no issues at Ultros. Health could maybe come down a small bit to not over extend the fight.

Air battle / FC
Celes, Gau, Sabin + Shadow
The gauntlet getting up wasn't too bad. Ultros and Chupon were IMO harder than the air boss. FC is a mixed bag. Every single enemy has the chance to down you if you're not prepared for this or play lazily. I personally like it, the game suddenly feels like it's letting you know "This is the challenge, this is where the game starts. The gloves are off, figure it out!" Maybe it was my party, equip, esper levels, but that's how it felt. Having said that, everything has some kind of counter. Statuses suddenly become very effective now that there's challenge and your party isn't quickly wiping out encounters. Atma weapon was bugged during my attempt of it, causing the whole party to get multi statused badly. As I was writing this out that's been fixed. Even with the statuses with some save stating was able to just barely squeak out a victory.

That'll be all for now. Been collecting people in WoR and haven't had any big issues so far, will try to wrap that up before the weekend and then will attempt another play through with different set ups and taking more comprehensive notes.

 

11 hours ago, Cecil188 said:

Thanks to seibaby for testing insights:

Being Blinded while Jumping causes Jump to respect row; this is the cause of dealing half damage in this circumstance(proc damage is affected as well).

Normal damage without blind was ~650, Front Row+Blind was ~650, Back Row+Blind was ~325. (Dark) Proc was about 3100 Normal, 1400 Blinded(wasn't paying too close attention to normal proc, might have been less than 3100, either way, it probably falls within variance).

This information should make the issue much easier to fix.

Instagir is impable, this causes the sprite to not load properly on swtich. If his sprite isn't loaded, slow and bumrush will black screen and soft lock the game (Not in vid).
(Added a potential fix to RC-22 - needs testing.)

On 2/24/2019 at 2:16 AM, BTB said:

• Intangir's (AKA "SrBehemoth") mid-battle switch can crash the game if the "esper" spell select is being loaded at the same time (this may be a vanilla bug... needs testing)

I'm unable to replicate this in vanilla (if I'm doing it right). I tried it a couple of different ways:

• Opening esper menu right before death of the first SrBehemoth and leaving it open
• Opening esper menu just as the second SrBehemoth appears
• Opening and closing esper menu repeatedly during the transition time

I was always able to clear the fight normally.
(Yep, this looks like a bug specific to 2.0. I've informed Madsiur, as he created the hack that is responsible.)

Quote

So basically steals are wonky, Cainen tested it out and found out that positioning of the enemy seems to be key. This bug involves you stealing from any enemy that has steals and when you successfully steal the item it just shows "Doesn't have anything!" but even after that failed steal Locke gets a free turn, which means you stole something.

Cainen:

Quote

Yes

Steal is actually going through

...and then it unfucked itself in the middle of a fight.

wut.

Hmm

Slot 1

enemies

Stealing from slot 2 does not screw up

which is how i know i got a multiguard

hmm, okay

slot 3 is also broken

The "couldn't steal" message is definitely being overwritten by it no matter what though

1 hour ago, Cross said:

So basically steals are wonky, Cainen tested it out and found out that positioning of the enemy seems to be key. This bug involves you stealing from any enemy that has steals and when you successfully steal the item it just shows "Doesn't have anything!" but even after that failed steal Locke gets a free turn, which means you stole something.

Regarding this bug, I just want to document that it is game-breaking during Locke's scenario. He can't steal clothes from Merchants. You will have to revert to RC-20 to get past that segment.
(This narrows things down a LOT since it means that the steal bug is RC-21 only and RC-21 only changed one thing.)

I know this isn't exactly a new issue, but death immunity isn't functioning right for me.

I've got seraph equipped to celes and she's still getting zombie'd by plantpires

Kagenui still procs even if Shadow misses (RC21).

Also Cecil reported the same thing happens to missing with Sketch: Sketch misses but still happens.

Going to see if it happens with anything else.

Also, Opinicus's Surge hits for 600-700 to the whole party so it's pretty brutal on turn 1. 

So I had to restart my all game might as well give proper full feedback anyway :

Narshe :
-Fight on Magitek Armors including Whelk are all Tek Lasers spam, you can almost do the all section with fast forward activate, but that's fine.
-Terra alone is as straightforward as before Fire MT when there is rat and normal attacks for the Repo Man.
-Rescuing Terra section is really easy, even the boss fall pretty quickly.

Figaro to figaro's cave :
-Not having Bio Blaster is good the early is finally not a Bio Blaster spam ^^
-Mobs on World Map are fine as first area mobs nothing special to talk about.
-Figaro's cave mobs however are all getting one shot by MT Fire, there's really no point doing anything else.

South Figaro mob fight :
-Rhyhorn are the first worth using Noiseblaster for me.
-The Foamies die quickly with Fire (their counter with Harvester is interesting tough)
-The Mechanix ae take care of by Edgar's Autocrossbow and MT Fire

Mount Koltz :
-Trillium have an interesting counter (Raid) however in a fight with only 2 of them Locke is made completly useless in this formation.
-Tusker getting confuse when hit by fire weakness is a nice mechanic and they have enough HP to make it worth it.
-Vaporite doesn't seem to do anything special outside of blowing up.
-Condor need to be taken off first to avoid Gale Cut. 
-Scrapper are made easier once we get the Butterfly for Locke
-Getting a Stout Spear for Edgar in this place now is neat, altough it makes Edgar quite hard to kill with HP+25% considering Edgar already have good option in back Row (Jump and Autocrossbow)
-Vargas is very easy just Noiseblaster the Bears, MT Fire and attack until they die and for Vargas Locke does good damage with Butterfly and Edgar does good with Jump, Terra on heal duty.

Lethe River :
-Nautiloid's MT Tentacle spam can kill Banon quite easily especially if he is already damage from a previous battle (since we can't heal out of battle in that section), making fight with 2 Nautiloid potentially scary.
-Albatross are more a help to us than anything else just have to confuse them and eventually they wil Fireball on them and their allies.
-Exocite aren't dangerous
-Ultros just Pummel to Sap him and then Fire with Terra, Attack with Sabin, Jump with Edgar and Health with Banon it's almost possible to just hold the validation button until he die with that ^^

Stop here for now.

[caption #619]
Statuses affecting a character's speed are indicated by color changes to their ATB bar.<EOP>
Green  = [Haste] (Speed up!)
Yellow = [Slow] (Speed down!)
Red     = [Stop] (Hammer time!)<EOP>
Glowing auras surrounding a character indicate defensive statuses (if more than one is present, they will cycle).<EOP>
Yellow = [Safe]
Green  = [Shell]
Blue    = [Rflect]<EOP>
[Safe] and [Shell] raise your defense against physical and magical attacks, respectively.<EOP>
[Reflect] repels most magical attacks that don't forcibly aim for more than one target, but may break when it does so.<EOP>
It also does not work on spells randomly cast from weapons or [Reflected] off another target

[caption #812]
There used to be ships sailing to the southern continent_ but that was before the Empire took control

Both of these captions are missing a period.

(You're playing an old RC; these were both fixed awhile ago.)

Tzen does not sell the Hyper Wrist in the WoR.
(Fixed in RC-22)

Bouncy Balls do 0 damage.
(Added to bug list)

Polarity seems to only have a graphical effect, and does not change the actual row of the target.
(Likely got fixed with the RC-22 shit. Can someone confirm?)

Steal often doesn't display that the enemy has been relieved of an item, but the Steal command is still perfectly functional anyways.
(Confirmed fixed in RC-22)

12 hours ago, Bropedio said:

Regarding this bug, I just want to document that it is game-breaking during Locke's scenario. He can't steal clothes from Merchants. You will have to revert to RC-20 to get past that segment.
(This narrows things down a LOT since it means that the steal bug is RC-21 only and RC-21 only changed one thing.)

Oh, so that's what you meant.

On 2/23/2019 at 9:16 PM, BTB said:

• The "unequip" NPC in the scenario select screen appears on the same tile that Mog spawns on (fixed in RC-4; RC-22 should hide him when a scenario is selected - needs testing)

He still isn't hiding when selecting a scenario.

Isis' Love Token doesn't actually do anything in RC22.  It gets applied to an ally but they never block attacks for Isis.
(Can't replicate, even on Cainen's end at this point. RC-23/24 will introduce some improved mechanics for Love Token, however, so this is something worth keeping an eye on.)

I killed a bunch of Zozoians. Here's some numbers.

Bug #1: Scan will sometimes spit out garbage after appropriate scans.

Bug #2: Demonsbane and Tarot don't play the X animation on an instant kill proc.

I'm guessing this might be a vanilla bug, but on the Thamasa continent, I came across a formation of an admantite and 2 cephalids in a Side Attack, and if Locke (who's in the topmost slot, which put him on the top right) attacked the cephalid on the right, he'll turn around and face backwards after his first attack lands (dunno if dual wielding makes a difference or not- one time his first weapon procced, and he turned around before the proc effect began).  He'll stay facing backwards until he's given another command.  I'm guessing this has to do with the X coordinates of the attacking unit and the enemy, since it didn't happen when Locke attacked the other two monsters, or when Strago attacked that right cephalid.

Also, there's a formation of three cephalids where one of em is off screen in a pincer attack.  This was all in RC23 btw

Short batch of notes from Opera House to just before Vector.

More, now up to Cranes

PS: New Threat has a feature that lets you skip long pointless cut scenes, specifically the entire Kalm flashback. Any chance you could set up an event to skip the Maduin sequence?

One more thing. Melee counters check the left hand. Full Moon/Scimitar trips them, Scimitar/Full Moon doesn't.

Calling on beta testers to be on the lookout for wonkiness with RNG. I have no hard data, but it feels like the RNG is streakier in 2.0 than it was in previous patches.

Some things to be on the lookout for (although I'm sure there are many others):

Enemies targeting the same character multiple times in a row with an attack that's supposed to be randomly targeted.

Mog dancing the same steps multiple times in a row.

Gau using the same rage attack multiple times in a row.

Really hard to test this because, you know, randomness is random. But there have been a number of similar reports in the Discord (like Cecil getting Vanish 9 times in a row), and I know vanilla's RNG is streaky and Think's RNGood patch is supposed to fix it to make it less streaky, so it makes me concerned that his patch is being overwritten or interfered with somehow.

For the record, the RNG update patch is still being applied, and I detected no conflicts with it from other patches. So if something is going on with the RNG, it may be that Think will need to trace it and see if something is getting wonkified.

On 24/02/2019 at 3:16 AM, BTB said:

• Edgar, please, not in front of the children (fixed in RC-23)

Seems to be back in RC24b1 with even a meat armor this time :

I got Cyan blocking a fire 3 from a tap dancer with his sword.

Moveover, it's a fire 3 that was cast on locke, and cyan is covering him to block it.

Got a little more playing in.

Continuing on feedback did the 3 scenarios in that order : Terra --> Locke --> Sabin

Terra's scenario :
-Nothing to report here all I have said about Lethe River in previous post still apply, I just want to say that I like the Storm Belt description being more accurate that's a good thing.

Locke's scenario :
-I found that equipping 2 Boomerang with Locke safer than 2 Daggers but it's your call (I actually want to give a fair shot to Boomerangs this time I never use them that much in previous playthrough ^^).
-The monster in the box for the Magic Cube is kind of annoying, basically if he manages to pull off his Doom before putting Runic and Doom hit he is a pain in the ass, otherwise he is manageable
-Trooper can be counter with Runic, the dogs are annoying as they attack 2 times in the row but Ice is good against them.
-In Figaro's Cave the Rays are easily dealt with Ice, Primodite are more resistant but nothing special about them outside of Rock, didn't encounter any bears.
-Hell Angel is a Runic and Locke's attack spam with occasionnal healing via Locke using Items nothing special here.

Sabin's scenario :
-Shadow can destroy any mob with Shuriken (I guess this is fine as Shuriken are a ressources and it basically introduce how they work).
-Sabin's Spirit Claws make fights in Soul Train easy.
-For Soul Train he is easily defeated by either Cyan spamming Mindblow with Ghost Ring equipped or Sabin wearing Power Glove and Ghost Ring attacking with his Spirit Claws.
-Nothing special to say about Rizopas he is like previous version El Nino hit hard but after we retaliate from it the fight is easily done.
-Gau Rage farm time XP
-For Underwater section Gau can either defense with Soldier Rage or kill thing with Leafer or Crawler's Rages, Sabin and Cyan of spamming Suplex and Dispatch, the most dangerous mob is the snake being able to Stop.

Narshe's battle :
-As already mention Gau is MVP and one-shot everything with Magnitude the team that have him doesn't need anything else offense wise, and so on the second team I put Edgar, Cyan and Sabin together they clean thing easily.
-For Thanatos Terra, Edgar, Sabin and Cyan team : Fire 2 + Attack with Spirit Claws + Jump + Dispatch = Good Bye sir thank you for coming
-For Kefka Celes is in Runic, Gau in Soldier Rage for Cure 2 and Locke steal until he steals the Tiara and Kefka runs away like the coward he is ^^

For Zozo's section I'm gonna use Celes, Gau, Edgar and Cyan.

Minor display bug that’s worth documenting but probably not fixing:

A character will get their turn before the ATB bar is completely full as indicated via the new animation.

Towards the end of the Ultima fight he started countering himself with "Full Power" without any good reason. Not exactly sure what triggered it. RC24 Patched on a different fresh new rom. Only oddness that has come up so far since switching roms.

(Enemies hitting themselves is a very common bug caused by the lack of a targeting opcode inside of a condition wherein the enemy is checking itself, which affects targeting. It's an easy fix.)
(Please report these.)

14 hours ago, Mishrak said:

Minor display bug that’s worth documenting but probably not fixing:

A character will get their turn before the ATB bar is completely full as indicated via the new animation.

On the same type of ATB display when getting back attack, preemptive attack or Pincer one of the characters ATB is shown empty before being instantly fill.

Anyway continuing :

Zozo (team : Edgar, Cyan, Gau and Celes) :
-Edgar and Gau are MVP for that part, Edgar cause of Bio Blaster and Noiseblaster and Gau because of powerfull AoE and support rages.
-Despite not having Slow Dadaluma was easy thanks to the Vanish statut, his only attack that can go through Vanish Shockwave was barely use, also turns out Edgar does more damage on him buy Jumping rather than Bio Blaster (Bio Blaster still usefull to kill the fighter), Gau has the Sewer Rat rage, Cyan spam Dispatch and Celes is on support.

Opera (team : Stam Locke, Stam Gau, Vigor Edgar) :
-About Ultros 2, well the hardest part is Fireball setting sap which can be annoying to deal with, Gau's Albatross rage does over 1000 with Fireball, Edgar jump for around 800 damage and Locke does good damage with Full Moon.

Vector continent and Magitek Factory (team : Stam Locke, Stam Gau, Vigor Edgar and Magic Celes) :
-Did go buy Trident for Edgar at Nikeah and Mystery Veil for Celes.
-Monsters on World Map can be deal with Noiseblaster for the most part, but some have to dealt with quick in order to not take powerfull AoE like Firestorm in the face.
-Got one of each Elemental Swords could be handy.
-For Magitek Factory's mob Gau's Rain Man is insane here XD, Edgar's Noiseblaster, Bio Blaster for humans, Celes performs well with Bolt 2 and healing and Locke I just equip him with Elec Sword and also got a good RNG and manage to steal like 4 or 5 Stat Hats.
-Shiva and Ifrit are a really good improvment compare to previous version, I like how they are both here at the same time, the biggest threat are Fireball setting Sap, Snowball setting Slow and Shiva's Ice 3, it can be tough.
-Number 024 well the challenge depend of which element he takes, not really can go against the rule with this team, on the thee's sadly not much I can do if he goes Earth or Holy but I could deal damage with other element.
-Number 128 Gau's Rain Man rage is good here, also Vig Edgar can jump with the Trident nearly 3000 damage XD, Locke with Elec Sword can also deal great damage the poor dood didn't last very long XD.
-As for the Cranes... even if I'm alone I'm gonna stand by my point : I don't like this new version of the fight, the old one was way better and more interesting, this is the only fight that so far feel like a serious downgrade compare to previous versions, and don't give me excuses about it being tuned down due to being at the end of a long section, in 1.9 you get all the tool necessary to deal with this fight in the Magitek Factory and even get a healing Save Point right before it (not to mention that they don't even have the bonus damage for attacking in the back anymore) so really for me it's an uneccessary nerf. Anyway Gau set Float then goes Rain Man and Edgar Jump with Trident, Locke attack with Elec Sword heal if necessary and Setzer either heal or use Blackjack, very easy fight nothing to add.

https://clips.twitch.tv/ProudNeighborlyIcecreamMikeHogu

Tier 1 seems to use Meteo whenever the heck it wants.

Before I post my ramblings, I need to note that Guardian killing Leo leads to a game over.

Continuing and finishing the WoB :

Sealed Cave (team use : Mag Mog, Stam Sabin, Vig Cyan, Stam Terra) :
-Plan to use Vig Terra but I wanted to increase her survivability, so for I'm putting some point in Unicorn"s EL and will spend the rest on Bismarck's EL later.
-Shoat Mog is true MVP for the entire cave, including Centurions, Love Sonata's Moonlight and Elf Fire destroy everything on sight and for Centurion Poison is really good.
-Sabin's Aurabolt is also very powerfull here reaching some crazy damage for mob fight.
-Cyan's Mindblow is always a great Undead killer ^^.
-For Centurion spamming Dispatch with Cyan, attacking with Poison Claws with Sabin and using Poison with Mog make short work of them.

Find the Espers (team use : Stam Terra, Stam Locke, Stam Strago) :
-For the burning house Icebrands on Locke and Terra and Aqualung does the job.
-Heartfire might be the easiest boss of the game, Ice 2 proc, Shiva, Aqualung there's so much we can do to destroy that guy.
-For mob fight not much to say except Adamantoid can easily kill strago especially if getting caught in a Pincer Attack.
-Also Cover/Counter with Blood Sword is a quite good way to keep Locke alive.
-Ultros 3 don't last long beetween Elec Sword/Flametongue's Proc, Strago's Blaze...etc... there is just a lot of way to exploit his weakness, ST Tentacle and El Nino can hit hard tough.

IAF gauntlet (team use : Hybrid Celes, Stam Sabin, Magic Setzer) :
-I always found the Airships gauntlet before Ultros to be the hardest part and this is still true, the fact that all fights are Pincer is annoying but they can deal some serious damage especially Rotor Gun who could one-shot Setzer and almost one-shot the others, thank god they don't have any AoE at least.
-Ultros IV El Nino is still the most dangerous attack but a good Cure 2 solve the thing, this team has Safe and Haste so MT Tentacle isn't an issue and with Slow I have the advantage in speed, Setzer can stick being a free heal. Once Chupon comes the fight gets easier as mention on Discord when Ultros does MT Tentacle Celes and Sabin who had both a Black Belt where both countering at Chupon, and Ultros love using this move to bad for Mr Chupon didn't get much time to shine.
-IAF fight just after is easy altough Diffuser can hurt, Setzer's Blackjack is really strong and Celes's Bolt 2 to take care of the missiles, once the body is alone he shouldn't last for long.

Floating Continent ((team use : Hybrid Celes, Stam Sabin, Magic Setzer, Vig/Stam Shadow)
-Gargoyles's counter with Quake was a surprise it almost got me the first time, but it's good source of MP for Celes if use correctly.
-Ninja + 2 Dactyls is the worst ennemy formation for me both hits hard and both has AoE 2 Firestorm/Aero can be deadly if the Ninja decide to Ninja Wave, this is encounter is especially annoying if getting in a Pincer Attack.
-RNG didn't make me encounter a single Behemoth so I couldn't test them, Djinni and Brainpan are easily defeated with Aurabolt and Blackjack, just stay in Float for Quake and Lifehaver.
-Colossus is easily deal with Vanish only Avalanche can hit.
-Now for the big boy Atma Weapon : Got a decent RNG on Mind Blast not much crippling statut effect, Celes with Icebrand and Mystery Veil was performing really well with Sabin (Aurabolt dealing 1200-1300) they were the main source of damage (also with Ocean Claw and countering Sabin can potentially heal himself if he get targetted), Shadow could deal good damage with Sakura's Proc but I only had one (I overestimate Kazekiri's Proc), Setzer's Blackjack deals a lot of damage but most of the time he was stuck healing, Float and Haste are the 2 main buffs to keep up. Once we hit the second phase Flare Star was a close call for Setzer (5HP short) but others character are good, Mind Blast is the biggest threat as well as Flare, Glare and Rasp are also annoying. In any case still one of the highlight of BNW one of the best boss fight of the mod.

So WoB finish now time for WoR.

Potential Balance issue : Dullahan's S.Cross might be to powerfull if you haven't buy Wall Rings in Thamasa and didn't invest HP EL or/and have a character with Hero Ring (HP+25%), Dullahan might end up hard to deal with as none of the character for this fight have Shell (unless getting lucky with 3 BAR Summoning Zoneseek), Wall Ring are no longuer accessible at this point and the only equipment that reduce Fire Damage is Tiger Mask which only Sabin can equipped. Anyway continuing with WoR.

Also on the subject of Aurabolt : I'm wondering if it not being affected by the Row, isn't better that way actually, Stam Sabin is good in the back row allows to feel his role as a support with Mantra and Chakra, Aurabolt being an offensive option for when he can get the time attack, I mean every other character have at least one good option in the Back Row so why not Sabin ? 

Celes alone :
-Just to mention mob fight can be troublesome, especially Lunarises as they can combo Black Fang and 2 regular attack (hitting Celes 3 times in total) and you can encounter 2 of them, I didn't have trouble cause I had a somewhat bulky Celes but I imagine someone running a squishy build Celes might have some trouble here.
-Once Sabin join it becomes a lot more manageable.

Phunbaba (Team : Hybride Celes and Stam Sabin) :
-His Body Check hurt quite a lot even with Safe, without safe he can one-shot Stam Sabin with it. As such Safe and Float are necessary to win this fight. Damage wise Sabin's Aurabolt and Flametongue with Celes are strong.

Figaro's Castle :
-For Mob fight just asking for the Robots what trigger their Exploder ? Cause they have Explode on me for over 740 damage AoE which is quite a lot, making them pretty dangerous.
-Tentacles weren't to bad, Bolt 2 AoE then ST on the Tentacle weak to it, Sabin had Ocean Claws and was focus on the bottom left who is weak to water then Aurabolt for attack, Edgar.... was kinda useless to be honnest.

Daryl's Tomb :
-Well Zombie dungeon so of course Jumping with Fire Lance, Aurabolt, Flametongue are all valuable here Setzer makes himself usefull with Blackjack.
-Chesticle hits pretty hard with Plasma but he is a glass canon and die pretty fast from Edgar's Jump and Celes attacking with Flametongue.
-Dullahan is the big one because of his S.Cross as mention earlier being really powerfull, had to play it quite safe in order to beat him thank fully Edgar and Sabin can both deal good damage rapidly with Celes and Setzer healing any incoming damage in case S.Cross happen. I also an MP Kill is a good strat with Celes and Edgar casting Rasp (would be better with Magic Build for both but hey Celes dealing over 500 MP Damage with Rasp and Edgar over 300 is quite good already).
EDIT : Actually retesting Rasp's strat is actually pretty good on Dullahan even with Hybride Build Celes can deal around 700MP damage and Edgar over 300 meaning they can kill Dullahan in 5 turns (assuming all Rasp hit).

Minor Glitch I was in a Veldt Mudcrabs appear, Gau could Leap so I leaped but no Rage cause this isn't 1 of the 64 Rages available according to the Printme, I wonder if their is other formations in which Gau can Leap despite having no Rage to learn from it.

Intangir and Intangir Z are dropping 2 Kagenuis instead of 1.

So continuing :

-Phunbaba : Good boss nothing to add, not to hard, not to easy, I guess I got a godlike RNG tough as he only eject 1 character and it was the least usefull one XD.

Veldt's Cave (Team : Vig Terra, Vig Edgar, Stam Gau, Magic Setzer) :
-Not to much problem with Random most of them are weak to Fire which I can easily exploit and can be Confuse which both Edgar and his Noiseblaster and Terra with Muddle can do.
-1 Mob worth mentionning is Manticore can be annoying due to having no weakness, but Imp is good as well as Gau Spirit Rage for Demi and Quatr.
-Tonberry in the box was tanky but Terra's Fire 3 and Edgar's Double Jumping with Fire Lance make short work of him.
-For Intangir well I played this fight wrong I thought like much other bosses he would be immune to everything but Slow and Sap, turn out I could have Imp him, would have help cause because of the Meteo counter being quite often, Gau was just keep dying and was pretty much useless for this fight, so my main damage was Terra with Morph Icebrand.
-For Intangir Z much easier than Intangir as Fire is a weakness I can easily exploiting Jumping with Fire Lance, Lich's Rage Elf Fire and Terra's Fire 3 they made short work of him.

Owzer's Mansion (Team : Vig/Stam Shadow, Vig Terra, Stam Gau, Magic Setzer) :
-Gau's Malboro rage is really great here against Dahling and Souldancer Bad Breath crippling them and Bio Blaster killing them. Also Belladona Rage for Moonlight against Nightshade, otherwise Spirit Rage for good fractionnal damage, Gargoyle for Sun Bath (make sure to cast Float before), Locust for Mirage...etc... all good support option.
-Shadow's Damage with Kazekiri aren't to bad with Cover/Counter set up he can actually deal a lot. Vig Terra can stay in the Back Row with throwing weapons and Mag Setzer is Blackjack spam and good healer (Go Fish ! Healing Gau even when he is in a Undead is really handy).
-Worth mentionning however 2 Dahling + 1 Nightshade in Pincer attack can be quite deadly if the 2 Dahling decide to open with MT Ice 2/Ice 3 and Nightshade throw a Starlight in the mix.
-As for Chadarnook he is more annoying than hard to be honnest, his phantasm is annoying as it makes Terra's Morph unusable as she would take 170 damage per tick and it bypass Auto-Regen, counter with Bolt 2 make it so that I have to either Shell or Reflect character which want to attack other than that his most dangerous attack is Flash Rain (except for Gau thank to the Storm Belt), damage wise Gau's Lich rage is pretty good here with Elf Fire and thanks to Setzer's Go Fish I can heal him perfectly fine, even without Morph Terra still does good damage with Flametongue and for Shadow Sakura's Break proc is strong, so basically Haste X, Shell on Shadow and Gau and then offensive with Setzer on support.

Relm Sketching Chakra on a Scrapper yields a blank ability bar.
(I have no idea. Likely related to the Blitz index. Does it show up properly when Gau uses it? Will probably just remove Chakra from the Scrapper Sketch attacks and call it.)

and IAF is hiding his damage. You can see it in this picture.
(Yeah, it's a layering issue and this has always happened, even in vanilla.)

Sketching Giant in Zozo doesn't do anything, didn't find any other case of Sketch not doing anything so far.
(This one is weird, since Giants do have Sketch attacks set. Can someone else verify this report?)
(EDIT : Retesting seems I was mistaken don't know why, I was pretty sure it did nothing but after testing it works no problem (it must have done nothing but regular physical at that moment and I was focus on something else))

Behemoths are currently Berserkable in RC25 and also there was a large no encounter section of the veldt.  BTB has likely fixed them but posting for posterity.
(Yep, already slated for fix in RC-26)

Idk

(Think has given us a lead to work with; I'll pass it along to Synchysi or someone else)

Got to WoR, notes here.

Got another weird Pincer formation at Kefka's Tower.
(Weird... I SWEAR I've seen that one show up normal before. If someone has time, bug me on Discord to test some re-positioning of these things.)

On 3/13/2019 at 4:47 PM, Cecil188 said:

https://clips.twitch.tv/ProudNeighborlyIcecreamMikeHogu

Tier 1 seems to use Meteo whenever the heck it wants.

Just to clarify for those who can’t watch: this is using Meteo after it’s dead.

Discord Roundup:

• Puff Goo are currently scripted to kill themselves with Glare if they are blinded.
• Tier 1 Face and Short Arm have swapped positions.

Went through all the permutations of the tombstone puzzle, got some funky results.  Notably X followed by N brings up a blank text box. 

There's also a consistent pattern where a permutation that starts with N always returns a result ending with I, a permutation starting with I always returns a result ending with N, a permutation starting with E always returns a result ending with X, and a permutation starting with X always returns a result ending with E.

So being a while I haven't update but here we go.

Mount Zozo (Team : Phantom Shadow, Speed/Mag Relm, Stam Gau, Stam Strago) :
-Admitaddly not an awesome team has all 4 are quite fragile, but it did somewhat works.
-Relm's Fire is good at cleaning these bears, she also has good healing, Shadow Kazekiri Proc are strong enough t be useful, Strago can apply Statut effect with Bad Breath and Gau can do all sort of thing ^^.
-Didn't fight Purple-D directly and save him for later tough, as I feared the team might be to underlevel for him.

Narshe up to Tritoch (Team : Vig Cyan, Phantom Shadow, Speed/Mag Relm and I forgot who was the fourth character ^^")
-Nastidon and Werewolf are easily cleaned with Relm's Fire 2, and can be Muddle by Cyan's Flurry. The Reaper isn't to threatning either.
-Inside the cave, Relm can Sketch Warlock for Dark which one-shot them, hot Wheels and Low Rider can be annoying due to Tired hitting quite hard and Exhausted but they are less dangerous than they were in 1.9 where they could cast Fire 3 and Ice 3. Never encounter an Io.
-Tritoch is basically a free fight, Relm can sketch for free Fire 3 (which he is weak to), Shadow can just spam Fire Scroll and Cyan stay on support since Tritoch has a very high physical defense.

Gogo's Cave (Magic Mog, Stam Sabin, Vig Cyan and Magic Relm) :
-Zone Eater isn't to bad with good use of buff, altough they sure take their time using Engulf.
-Most dangerous formation in 2 Tapdancer and 1 Shinobi especially if they open with MT Fire 3 and Ninja Wave, but getting Sage Stone with Mog make the encounter a lot easier as Mog can just Mute the 2 Dancers.
-Nothing noticeable for the other encounter.

Phenix Cave (team 1 : Hyb Celes, Vig Edgar, Magic Mog and Vig Cyan; Team 2 : Vig Terra, Stam Strago, Stam Sabin and Gogo.)
-Mob fight in Phenix Cave aren't to bad, just don't let these Anemone cast Discharge, also Weedula inflicting Zombie are annoying.
-As for Red-D I fought him with Team 1, I struggle a lot but this is completly my fault, forgot S.Cross was now impossible to dodge which is what I was relying in previous playthrough, as such I was poorly prepared with only Flameguard as Fire Protection, still beat him nonetheless but these mistakes make the fight considerably harder.

Umaro's Cave (team use : Stam Locke, Gogo, Spd/Mag Relm, Mag Mog)
-Mob fight are easy, expect the bird that can cast Aero can be dangerous if we don't have Wind Protection, the biggest issue here is managing Relm MP as no monster in this cave has MP, quite annoying.
-As for Umaro, Image is REALLY important for this fight so I used Gogo with Throw and Mog with Desert Aria to hopefully get it on everyone fast, then it's Locke attacking with Flametongue, Gogo with Fire Scroll and Relm with Fire 2.

Cyan's nightmare (team use : Stam Locke, Magic Setzer and Gogo) :
-Don't have much to say about the Random at this point, they are manageable with good use of offensive option and statut effects.
-Now for the Magus Brother (I like to call them like that ^^), I'm happy that I have take Locke for this fight cause they have some good loot to steal especially the Lazy Armor, otherwise they aren't hard, once I stole Gogo attack with Hornet's Rage (3x attack) with Punisher equipped (Punisher's Proc with 3x Rage are insane here XD), Setzer alternate between Blakjack and healing and Locke attack with Atma Weapon eventually the one that fly will die battle is given at this point.

-Wrexsoul : this one went really REALLY poorly, ended up in the longest fight of the game, but this is completly completly my fault for the following reasons :
Reason 1 : I didn't know you could kill the Soulblazers to end the fight.
Reason 2 : I thought he would be weak to Fire like in 1.9 but I was wrong he was weak to water which screwed up my entire plan.
Reason 3 : I didn't have Rasp, apparently Rasp makes him stay on the screen longuer, had I knew that this fight would have gone way better.
So yeah I'm not gonna talk about this boss cause basically all my trouble come from me screwing up so entirely not the mod's fault ^^".

At this point I respec Celes for a pure HP Build with Crusader.

Purple-D (team use : Stam Locke, Gogo, Magic Setzer and I don't remember the fourth character) : In my opinion the easiest Dragon, Wind protection are easily available making his attacks are not really dangerous, Gogo can just Rod Rage with Thunder Rod for over 5000 per proc, Locke deals good damage with Elec Sword and Setzer is still on the support a really easy Dragon here.

Brown-D (team use : Vig Cyan, Stam Sabin, Stam Gau and Magic Mog) : The biggest threat here is Meteor, outside of that most of his attack can be avoided with Float, I used Mog in Snowman Jazz for potential Image thank to Mirage and Ice Rabbit but also for over 5000 damage Surge, Cyan attack with Tempest, Gau just stay on support and Sabin is on support with some Pummel to set Sap and Aurabolt when he can.

Silver-D : Is almost free cause I had 2 Iceguards and Snow Muffler with Gau, so Yeah he doesn't have really strong attack outside of Ice attacks he really isn't much of threat.

Ancient Castle (Team use : Vig Edgar, Stam Strago, Phantom Shadow and Vig Terra) :
-Master Tomberry is easily killed with Fire Scroll spam, Jumping with Fire Lance, Vig Terra with Flametongue and Strago use Blaze.
-For the mob fight of the cave watch out for Tsunami and Shrapnel they really hurts thankfully the mobs aren't to resistant.
-In the castle mobs seems easier than better especially the ones that could cast X-Zone no longuer seems to cast it, so that a big annoyance less for me.
-Katanasoul is easy outside of Slayer and GP Toss toward the end of the fight which can be problematic.
-Blue-D wasn't to bad I had some trouble set things cause Shadow was keep dying due to having no Water resistance (while Edgar and Terra had Gold set and Strago had Gator Hide), once set however a Berserked Shadow with Orochi + Kagenui is deadly to him as is edgar's Jump.

Fanatic Tower (Team : Crusader Celes, Mag/Spd Relm, Stam Strago and Magic Mog) :
-Earlier mob fight seems the same as in 1.9, later Mobs feels less annoying (especially LV9 Mage who were absorbing all element but Holy in 1.9 and Flare who was hitting like a truck in 1.9 is more reasonable now).
-White-D has some nasty move having both Flare and Holy as well as Meteor and being able to heal himself with Holy Wind (as well as speeding himself up) but Shell, Reflect and Runic are all good tools for that as for Damage Strago with X-Dark and Mog by Jumping with Punisher are the best option here.
-Magimaster is well pretty much the same as before, except now he throws Elixir when we Scan him so we have to wait for him to attack to guess his weakness, which I think is actually good other than, the fight is entirely dependant of what element he picks, but overall he doesn't hit to hard so at least staying alive isn't to hard.

-Kaiser : OK let me get this straight, I didn't understand how this fight works, apparently you're suppose to be able to avoid Ultima except in my case it never worked, even by understanding that hitting him with Element change his moveset and delay Ultima, and doing what I was told to do on Discord it never worked I was always getting wiped by Ultima, so at the end I just decided to screwed that gimmick and brute force him, I respec Locke, Terra and Cyan to get Phenix Cyan, Stam Terra and Stam Cyan with Crusader Celes all 3 are able to tank Ultima, so then I just brute force him. I don't know if his gimmick is just confusing as fuck or if I was doing something wrong but YEAH. (I respec Cyan, locke and Terra again aterward).

As for Warring Triad :

-Myria : Was the hardest for me he hits quite hard, has Overcast to inflict who is a pain in the ass, has Flare Star and Mind Blast, overall a tough but fun fight for me which I enjoy.
-Asura : The easiest, the only attack that prevent this boss from being a pushover is freaking Meteo if it wasn't for Meteo hitting quite hard Asura would no doubt be the easiest boss of Kefka's Tower as all of his other attacks pose no threat at all.
-Isis : This one is more of a war of attrition than anything due to having to deal with her Love Token and Charm gimmick it can be a long fight, she doesn't hit to hard outside of Holy so the only thing is really being able to deal with her before the fight get to dangerous.

And finally for the final battle :

My team : Phantom Shadow, Crusader Celes, Magic Setzer (with some Seraph) and Stam Strago

For every tier : I start buff with Regen X, Haste X, Shield and Shell.

Tier 1 : I just Focus on the one that use Meteo (Short Arm until it get fix), with Strago casting X-Dark on it, Celes attacking with Illumina and Shadow with Mutsonokami's Proc (they hit really hard), once Meteo is out of the way it bacame way more manageable, I then kill Long Arm cause Avalanche as death hit quite hard, then finish with Face which Quake is on no consequence due to Float.

Tier 2 : No time buffing Shadow attack Tiger or Tools (they are the one that can explode), Strago spam Black Omen and Setzer spam Blackjack while Celes heals with (also Celes was fucking MVP here if she hadn't cover Shadow like 4 time in a row when Hit died Shadow would have died and I woul probably have it an Exploder in the face), this Tier is just a matter of killing it as fast as possible.

Tier 3 : Girl is top priority, she absorbs Wind so Mutso's Proc are useless but no worries Ninja Star are here for hitting her with 6600 damage, Strago X-Dark for over 10k damage, Setzer's Blackjack and Celes stay on support, once Girl is down this tier is easy, didn't saw Merton this time, Quasar can hit hard but I have the time to heal).

God Kefka : Just full buff at the beginning, then Celes stays in Runic most of the time to counter his spells, I make perfectly sure to be at full health and that he just act so that I can be sure that I won't hit a Goner as a counter followed by an AoE, also only attack 1 by 1 to avoid 2 potential Goners. I just take him down slowly but safely and I got him first try.

The rightmost Djinni is partially offscreen if you get pincered by 3

On 3/12/2019 at 6:46 AM, JohnFuklaw said:

I got Cyan blocking a fire 3 from a tap dancer with his sword.

Moveover, it's a fire 3 that was cast on locke, and cyan is covering him to block it.

So I just need cover items on this, right? Is there anything else (special) on your setup? I'm gonna reproduce this when I get to that part.

The 2x Cave Stuff, 1x Drifter encounter in the cave to Figaro jail might be too deadly. You just have Celes and Sabin, neither of them are particularly fast, Flash Rain hits for ~225-250, Aqualung hits for ~200, Pointy Stick one-shots. I have a stam Sabin with dual Hell Claws/Power Glove and he can't one-shot any of them, and Vigor Celes with Blood Sword/Falchion/Power Glove can't either, and they are too slow to take them out individually with disables.

(This is a good example of an encounter that gets very deadly if fought carelessly. Cave Stuff does not use Aqualung unless it has taken damage, so only one enemy at a time should be using AoEs if fought optimally.)

Carbunkl ELs give 20 MP instead of the 25 it states in the description
(Confirmed & added to bug list)

I'm fighting Manticore in the Colosseum and it tries to cast Aqualung and gets the "Needs MP" message

6x Fuzzy pincer has 2 on the left and 4 on the right

Part 1
Part 2

Recording my second run of BNW 2.0.
Also in part 2 at 6:00 I get a random encounter and at the end of it I get EP despite obviously not having espers yet.

In the 3 Boxxy + Mephisto pincer, 1 Boxxy is on the left, everything else is on the right

Another weird Pincer :

Brontosaur is about 2/3 off screen.

Dragon has a success rate of 170 when it's intended to be 128. Note that I haven't downloaded RC 27 yet, I'm making the(rather safe assumption) that it wasn't fixed in RC 27.
(Added to bug list)

Blind appears to be affecting the accuracy of Aurabolt and Dragon: https://discordapp.com/channels/160240476883124225/160253567012306945/559438628409966606
(This has always been the case. It's intentional.)

I wouldn't be surprised if Blind is affecting all Blitz and Bushido abilities, so I'm going to try testing some others like Mindblow and Empowerer.
EDIT: Mindblow and Empowerer don't seem to be affected, neither does Fire Dance or Mantra.  Can't test the other Blitzes/Bushidos since I don't have them yet.
(It's just the two single-target stamina-based ones. Mindblow and Empowerer are not affected - even though Empowerer really SHOULD be.)

After an MP crit (with illumina) mp available to the char does not seem to get properly updated in the magic list. When trying to cast you will get "not enough mp" message. Cycling through characters and reopening the list does not fix this.
(This is a known bug from vanilla and one that's unlikely to be fixed here; I'll need to add it to the known issues list)

Part 3

Should mention that I mostly don't edit, I record everything in case something happen that I haven't/couldn't notice and for testing purpose balance wise I think it's better to record everything I do.

Prometheus has a blank skill that does nothing on sketch

On 3/22/2019 at 8:40 AM, Cross said:

So I just need cover items on this, right? Is there anything else (special) on your setup? I'm gonna reproduce this when I get to that part.

It was as plain a build as cyan could have, no weird items, just a standard c/c set up

Probably a known issue and probably a vanilla issue. 

Part 4
Part 5

Continuing doing Sabin's story and Narshe's battles, did the Rage farm off-screen cause no interest in watching that -_-, also make some mistakes for Narshe's batte (forget to give Relic to Celes for instance) but ot went well ultimately.

Are you guys planning on fixing the ME bug? Or is it unfixable or something? That would be a shame.

Not only is it unfixable, I'm really not sure how it never cropped up in the past.

Damn, that's a disappointment.

Had Terra with 2 Stamina, Strago with 128. Sand Storm failed to Blind Terra despite her only having 2 Stamina(tested 4 times, chances were 1/16777216 of this happening by circumstance). Strago was killed, and Terra was Blinded by the next Sand Storm, to confirm she wasn't immune to Blind. I suspect the Stamina save needs to be failed by all party members before it will apply to any of them(at which point it will apply the status to all of them barring immunity to the status).

Similar yet different: Set four characters to 1 Stamina. Grav Bomb missed 5 times in a row. Applied Float, Grav Bomb connected the next attempt. Seems Grav Bomb misses on non-floating targets.

"Balance Notes" or something, "Early WoR"

Muddling Banshees seems to break their Rasp. They flash, the game says "[dot]Rasp" and nothing happens.

Disregard, they must have Muted themselves.

On 4/5/2019 at 11:11 PM, Reiker said:

Are you guys planning on fixing the ME bug? Or is it unfixable or something? That would be a shame.

On 4/5/2019 at 11:16 PM, BTB said:

Not only is it unfixable, I'm really not sure how it never cropped up in the past.

Would a way around this be:

1. Make a copy of the rom.

2. Edit one of the roms in usME.

3. Copy and paste the changed offsets to the other rom using Windhex or something?

Is that even possible. Just thinking outside the box here.

That is possible and that's what I've been doing. When I say it's not possible to fix the problem, I mean it's not possible to eliminate the need for that workaround.

Continuing my recorded run :

Part 6

Going up to Zozo, not to much trouble tough some situation can be dangerous in Zozo, not doing a fast Dadaluma kill like I could in 1.9 but he is make so much easier with a Vanish set up.

Part 7

And Opera part, did very poorly against the rats (I hate being on timer it always stress me out ^^"), Ultros was a fun fight, Gau is kind of tricky to keep alive but he does his job.

I recently played the 2.0 version of BNW on stream to show what my thoughts were as I played it, and since I'm done with it (didn't finish, will explain later), I thought it'd be good to reflect on and summarize my experience/impressions of the mod.  For a one line summary, I think what I'd have to say is, "It's terribly imbalanced."

I don't mean "imbalanced" as in "overpowered."  I mean there's a fundamental lack of balance.  This shows up in everything, including the game's script.  I am not a fan of filling a mod with references as I find it distracting and not entertaining, but I understand different things appeal to different people.  Similarly, I don't find vulgarity interesting or entertaining, but I get some people may.

My problem with the changes to game's script is not that the changes made to it were necessarily bad.  What bothers me is the changes usually feel out of place.  While playing, I'd feel like I was playing FFVI at some points, playing a cheesy fourth wall breaking satire in others, and playing a preteen fanfic filled with vulgarity for the sake of vulgarity in others.  Any one of these might work on its own, but the constant shift between them is jarring.

The same can be seen with the substance, rather than style, of some of the changes.  Most notably, Celes's emo sequence feels entirely out of place (though not as bad as I seem to recall in previous version of hte mod).  Celes's character in the mod seemed basically the same as in vanilla up until the FC, at which point she suddenly became very, very different.  The change seemed to last for 20 minutes and never mattered again.  On top of this, there was a random boss with cheesy Dark Side dialogue added into the FC sequence... for reasons?  Changes like this made the mod constantly feel tonally dissonant.

During my playthrough, I often referred to the mod as seeming "schizophrenic."  A better term might have been "bipolar."  Like with the dialogue, I felt like the game's difficulty had huge swings in variance.  Time and time again, I found things like enemies dealing 25 damage to one character with a single-target attack then dealing 100 damage to all four characters.  Similarly, it was not uncommon to have a character one-shotted by one attack and barely even hurt by another.

I don't want to bog this post down with numerous examples, but I do want to give an example that shows how this goes beyond single units/battles.  When I got to Zozo in 1.9, I ragequit because of the counterattacks.  2.0 made the dungeon much more pleasant, and I managed to beat it with some challenge but nothing too great.  Even Dadaluma, who people warned me about, didn't feel too difficult.  (My only true struggles in it were due to my own mistakes.)

After that, I went and fought Ultros who initially didn't seem too bad.  Then he used Acid Rain and killed one character immediately then killed another character after the first Sap tick happened.  My Ultros was immortal though due to Stamina + Auto-Regen so I still won.  I then wound up at the SC, and I almost immediately party wiped to Firestorm.  I then had to spend ~30 minutes grinding just so my party's levels would be high enough for my characters to have enough HP to survive a single round of combat.  (I was told the expected level for the SC was ~14 yet I got there at ~10.5.)

I don't want to bog this down by focusing on that issue too much, but I want to stress it was the schizophrenic nature of the difficulty of hte mod was the single largest factor for me not enjoying things.  It got to the point where 95% of the "difficulty" of the mod felt like it was either, "You got super punished by something you couldn't have known about in advance" or, "You got one-shotted by something because you didn't have enoguh HP."  And when things weren't difficult, they often felt tedious.  Countless boss battles found me finding a pattern of actions I could repeat to stay alive without risk of death then sitting there repeating them for 5, 10 or even 15 minutes.

A final example was in character power.  I don't mean that as one character being inherently stronger than another.  What I mean is the lack of level reaveraging meant I almost always felt a few characters were stronger than the rest, by a large margin.  I actively tried to swap other characters into my party to get weaker characters trained up, but I always felt I was too gimped if I didn't bring along at least two of my strongest characters.

This is a shame because the best part of the mod (for me) was the differences between the characters.  I liked that using one character instead of a different character felt far more impactful than it did in vanilla.  The raw differences you get in stats/abilities/equipment before getting espers is nice, and after you get access to ELs, things get even better.  Even characters like Gau, who have limited equipment/esper options (one esper for all of WoB is sad), still manage to have a lot of options to explore due to things like a Rage list with lots of varied options.

I like the increased variety, and I wanted to explore it more.  The problem was I felt like I couldn't.  Trying to rotate characters in and out of the party often just didn't seem like an option.  In the WoR, I always felt like if I wasn't bringing at least a couple of my strongest characters with me, I'd lose.  In the WoB, I felt like I couldn't afford to experiment as I never had the GP for the equipment for four characters, much less GP I could spend testing out other characters/builds.  (An idea was floated in the Discord server which would help this problem, increasing the sellback rate of items.  I really hope that is implemented as it would make WoB experimentation feel not-terrible.)

Tied to this, I get why level reaveraging in vanilla could cause problems (I don't think that many people LLG to min/max, but rewarding that playstyle is odd), but I don't get why it's removed from BNW.  When I recruited Umaro, he joined my party at level 26, and I immediately found use for him.  But other characters joined at 18 (Gogo and 19) which made me feel like I couldn't use them as they had too little HP to survive anything.  

I get level reaveraging rewards the player for waiting to recruit characters.  I'm not sure that's necessarily bad (as there is a real cost in not having access to them), but it would be better than having characters join in the WoR at level 18, possibly with no ELs.  Some other solution might be better.  i don't know.  I just know I constantly felt punished, heavily, for trying to switch which characters I used.  That's especially true since so many enemies have attacks that feel like HP checks, saying, "If you have X HP, I'm easy, otherwise you're screwed."  The worst part is the game creates a vicious cycle where not using characters because they'll die means they'll likely die when you use them, making it harder to get them XP to level up, meaning they'll keep dying.

Before I move on, I want to state something explicitly.  This summary has much more text discussing negatives than positives.  This should not be taken as me thinking there aren't good things about the mod.  There are.  The reason I don't discuss them in much depth is I felt like other things constantly prevented me from experiencing things which were good.  For instance, I like the new Rage system (and being able to leap anywhere) a lot more than Vanilla's, but I didn't get to delve into it as I didn't use Gau in the WoR at all because I was afraid he'd die constantly with his low level and small HP pool.

Part of why I bring this up is I didn't finish BNW.  I wanted.  I really did.  The problem is I killed all 8 dragons.  That meant I was forced to fight the new Kaiser Dragon before I could fight the last few bosses.  I couldn't beat him.  I know he has some sort of gimmick.  I was even given a couple hints about it.  I couldn't figure out how things worked though.  I figured out it had something to do with him attacking based on the elements you used (and killing you with Meteor -> Ultima if you messed up), but... yeah.  I couldn't get passed him so I had to quit.  Not only was banging my head against him trying to figure out the gimmick not enjoyable, without using savestate, you'd have to go through multiple rooms and several random encounters after every death to get back to him.  (Why is there a save point right after him rather than right before?!)

If the fight were entirely optional, I could maybe forgive the gimmicky nature of it.  It's not though.  The only way to skip it is to intentionally ignore content by not killing one of the eight dragons.  That's a strange cost to pay, and it has to be paid before the user even knows what the battle against the Kaiser dragon is like.  Had I known in advance the battle would be gimmicky and non-skippable like that, I'd have skipped one of the dragons.  I didn't though, and as a result, I couldn't finish the playthrough.

The point is the limited amount I talk about the good aspects of the mod shouldn't be taken as representative of how much/little there is good about it.  Instead, it should be taken as a reflection of how limited my ability to experience those good options seemed.

By the way, I am sure my experience with BNW would have been different if I played through it several more times.  However, I've beaten two previous versions of the mod, and I talked to people as I did this playthrough.  I still felt horribly knowledge-gated.  There were plenty of battles which became easy once I understood how they worked that wiped my party the first time I encountered them.  I don't find that to be an enjoyable experience.  I like knowledge being rewarded, but being rewarded doesn't require changing a battle from, "Game over" to "Trivially easy."  Similarly, I don't feel it is "difficult" to have enemies one-shot a character, or even the entire party, before you get an action.  That normally happened mid-battle, like when I used a single Sonic Boom at the start of a battle on my way to the Ancient Castle, only to watch enemies do 3x AoEs in a row and wipe my party (that formation then proceeded to never be a threat again as I learned not to leave the one type of enemy alive but damaged).  Not always though.  There were many times battles would start and a character would die before I got a single action.  Sometimes I'd lose 2 or 3 before my first action of the battle.

My impression is if I played through the mod enough times to become truly knowledgeable about it, there'd be nothing in it that was remotely difficult.  I think that's unfortunate.  To me, that makes it feel like the player is not being rewarded for knowing things, but rather, is being punished for not knowing things.

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text.  It's difficult to summarize 20+ hours of thoughts from streaming succinctly.

I Feel like the huge problem here is this, toi can't really play BNW as you would play a typical FF by that, I mean FF are quite user friendly in the sense that it's kind of easy To brute force your way through, and just grind whenever you have trouble, this is sadly the general mindset of FF. BNW encourage to try stuff around and reward player to analyse and try things out.

For instance you mention being wipe by Firestorm, while it's true it is a powerfull move at this point of thé game, it is never use on the first turn and thé mob that does it is vulnérable to all statut effects which you should try when playing bnw, meaning you could for instance summon siren and Berserk them or if you have Edgar confuse them, to avoid the attack and this is thé case for a lot of potential wipe in random.

That being I do agree for Kaiser and this gimmick being kind of hard to get right with the fact that once he appears you are force to fight him, which can be frustrating, and some bosses being easy except for one attack that can screw your day.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

For instance you mention being wipe by Firestorm, while it's true it is a powerfull move at this point of thé game, it is never use on the first turn and thé mob that does it is vulnérable to all statut effects which you should try when playing bnw, meaning you could for instance summon siren and Berserk them or if you have Edgar confuse them, to avoid the attack and this is thé case for a lot of potential wipe in random

They can't Firestorm first action, but they can Firestorm before you take an action.  As for status ailments, with the right characters in your party, it's easy to shut those guys down.  It's easy not to have such a party though.  And even if you do, the design of, "Use a status ailment first action or die" is not good.  It doesn't reward you for playing differently than in vanilla.  It says play one way or lose.

For the record, it was said repeatedly in the Discord server that it wasn't intended to be like this.  There was a near universal consensus that Firestorm is too powerful/my levels were too low, and that's why I was dying.  If my characters had been level 14 like BTB said was expected for the area, I wouldn't have needed to rely solely on a first-round status ailment to survive those battles.  Given that, I'd say this wasn't an example of me playing wrong.

For the firestorm in SC i specifically mention Siren because Celes can summon Siren and she is force for this part so you have her by default, that being said I never being hit by Firestorm before being able To act even on Pincer and ambush. But yeah Firestorm is indeed quite powerfull at this point of the game, especially if underlevel like you were.

9 hours ago, Nesouk said:

For the firestorm in SC i specifically mention Siren because Celes can summon Siren and she is force for this part so you have her by default, that being said I never being hit by Firestorm before being able To act even on Pincer and ambush. But yeah Firestorm is indeed quite powerfull at this point of the game, especially if underlevel like you were.

Knowing to equip Siren to Celes and summon it first action would definitely help, but that's the exact sort of knowledge gate I was referring to.  It's one specific option with nothing to suggest it to you in advance (or even anything in game telling you what it does).  If you know to use it, that's great, but in a "blind" playthrough it'd be difficult to expect a player to discover.  It's not like a person can try several different things in the battle to see what works.  Dying after one action doesn't allow for that, and using Siren requires being equipped with something before the battle even begins.  I died to the battle several times while trying to find a solution, but the deaths came too quick for me to figure anything out.  And while knowing how to beat the battle may make it easy enough (assuming I don't tie before taking an action, which happened a couple times during my stream), a small amount of knowledge should not take a battle from "Game over" to "Easy win."  Or at least, that's how I feel.  If people think I'm just playing bad because I don't like insta-wiping first round of combat, so be it.  The reality is outside of seven or eight battles, I had an easy time with the mod.

As for being underleveled, I still don't know how I was.  I never ran from battles, and I picked up almost every piece of loot there was.  I did ride a Chocobo from Kohligen to Zozo (with a pit stop in Jidoor), but I don't see how that could have gotten me 3-4 extra levels.  If I was underleveled, I think the reason is the XP curve needs some work in that part of the game.  There's no way riding a chocobo for that sequence should have set me that far behind.

Actually it does kolinghen To Zozo isn't a short trip, so of course skipping mean à lot less random battle and less XP skipping an entire section mean skipping some levels.

And this what I Said about having the wrong mind set, in a JRPG such has BNW you should try everything at your disposal and if you can't beat something, then you should try a different way and not expecting that everything will be given to you, not doing that and you end up grinding, this is something that Vanilla FFVI don't do cause it's so easy you can just brute force everything, so from what I see most of your complains is just you jumping into this mod expecting it To be played like vanilla FFVI.

And while Siren is one specific option, it's certainly not the only option. Locke can dual wield Full Moons, which I hear is sufficient. Locke can use either Bolt 2 or Bolt in conjunction with Celes to take one out. Celes is guaranteed to have either Ramuh or Siren equipped, Siren effectively guaranteeing that they're shut down and Ramuh either one-shotting them or getting really close(I did a calculation assuming level 10 with absolutely no Magic boosting equipment except for a Magic Cube, and I calculate it does 861 damage, which is sufficient). Regardless, Bolt 2 as well would certainly kill one. Aside from that, Celes and Edgar potentially have access to Bserk. Edgar can use NoiseBlaster or Drill in conjunction with Locke/Celes's Bolt. Cyan likely has access to Flurry. Sabin has access to Suplex, which admittedly randomly targets, though I suspect he could get close just by punching them down, certainly with Locke/Celes's help via Bolt. Sabin and Gau potentially have access to Imp and/or Sleep. Gau likely has access to either Wind Slash, Air Blast, Fireball, x3 Special, Rock, Plasma, Sand Storm, Antlion Rage(both options are fantastic), Eye Goo Rage(both options are fantastic), Chickenlip Rage if taken on a detour around the continent, or Rain Man Rage on subsequent battles.

The point is, while any specific option may not be obvious/possible to an arbitrary player, one of them should be, either through being a fan of Noiseblaster, experimenting with Rage and enjoying Air Blast, or doing the "hold A and pray" strategy with Sabin. Given that nothing else there is super powerful, it should become evident that taking them out first is a good strategy. Does that mean they shouldn't be nerfed? No. However, is it necessary to nerf them to be able to progress? Absolutely not.

On another note, the EXP required to get from level 10 to 11 is twice that of the requirement for getting from level 11 to 12, with the aim of sort of regulating character levels to some degree. Thus, the trip from Bob->Zozo via Chocobo may do more than you(and I) initially assume. It's a tad easy to get characters "stuck" at level 10 as a result of this EXP curve, though once you get past that, the EXP requirement doesn't reach that point again until going from level 15 to 16, so getting from 11-15 is a tad easier than anticipated.

On 4/29/2019 at 9:08 AM, zz1000zz said:

They can't Firestorm first action, but they can Firestorm before you take an action.

This is the second time I've seen you mention enemy behavior that, by design, should be impossibly fast. There is no way that the battle timer can reach 20 before your party takes an action, even during back/pincer attacks, and if this ever does happen it would be considered a bug to be looked into.

19 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Actually it does kolinghen To Zozo isn't a short trip, so of course skipping mean à lot less random battle and less XP skipping an entire section mean skipping some levels.

And this what I Said about having the wrong mind set, in a JRPG such has BNW you should try everything at your disposal and if you can't beat something, then you should try a different way and not expecting that everything will be given to you, not doing that and you end up grinding, this is something that Vanilla FFVI don't do cause it's so easy you can just brute force everything, so from what I see most of your complains is just you jumping into this mod expecting it To be played like vanilla FFVI.

Except I beat Zozo with ease despite having ridden a chocobo like that.  I considered the possibility riding the chocobo would cause me problems with being underleveled, thinking I might have to leave Zozo to fight battles because of it.  Not only did that not happen, I had very little difficulty with Zozo.  People had warned me Dadaluma would be hard, yet I beat him on my first try without even meaning to (I planned to fight him once to see what the battle was like so I could prepare, yet I found the battle easy).  I even brought this issue up during my stream, saying if I were underleveled because of riding the chocobo, why was Zozo easy?

If the mod wanted me to be a higher level at that point, that's fine.  It did nothing to suggest that prior to that point though.  If the mod wants me to rely heavily on status ailments to deal with random encounters, that's fine too.  But again, the mod did nothing to suggest that prior to that point.  And it doesn't do anything to suggest that after that point either.  This is what I talked about in my summary, calling the mod imbalanced.  No matter how much one may think the way I played was bad, I had an easy time of the mod up until Ultros/SC.  After that, my only difficulties in the WoB were Shiva/Ifrit because of not knowing how to time Runic to catch Ice 3/Fire 3, the mine cart ride (not the boss, just the randoms) and one enemy on the Floating Continent (Behemoths, because of not knowing how to play around their Meteor).  I find it difficult to swallow the idea it was entirely because I play dumb that things were easy 95% of the time yet soul-crushingly difficult the other 5%.

If battles in BNW are supposed to be like this, where you can get a game over for failing to neutralize/kill an enemy extremely quickly, that'd be one thing.  They aren't though.  That doesn't happen in ~98% of random encounters.  The only other enemy I can think of like that was the Pterodactyls on Lete River (I can't remember if that was changed for 2.0).  I don't understand how one could reconcile, "This is normal and how the mod is designed, you're just playing wrong" with, "This doesn't happen anywhere else in the mod."

Side note, I don't know why you compare this to vanilla in terms of grinding.  The only time I grinded in the entire mod was at the SC, where you say my levels were low because I rode that chocobo.  In other words, the only time I grinded was to get back to the point I was supposed to be.  My mentality the entire playthrough, except this point where you say I was very underleveled, was to find options that'd let me overcome obstacles without having to grind.  Given that, talking about a mentality that encourages grinding confuses me.  (The fact I beat things while underleveled only seems to further suggest grinding wasn't a go-to strategy for me.)

8 hours ago, BTB said:

This is the second time I've seen you mention enemy behavior that, by design, should be impossibly fast. There is no way that the battle timer can reach 20 before your party takes an action, even during back/pincer attacks, and if this ever does happen it would be considered a bug to be looked into.

I saw someone else question this, and a person in Discord suggested something that made sense.  I checked, and they were right.  I conflated Firestorm and Fireball because I remembered dying before taking an action and I remembered dying in one attack to Firestorm. What I was actually remembering being able to kill me before taking a single action was 2x Fireball or Fireball + Acid Rain.  

7 hours ago, Cecil188 said:

And while Siren is one specific option, it's certainly not the only option. Locke can dual wield Full Moons, which I hear is sufficient. Locke can use either Bolt 2 or Bolt in conjunction with Celes to take one out. Celes is guaranteed to have either Ramuh or Siren equipped, Siren effectively guaranteeing that they're shut down and Ramuh either one-shotting them or getting really close(I did a calculation assuming level 10 with absolutely no Magic boosting equipment except for a Magic Cube, and I calculate it does 861 damage, which is sufficient). Regardless, Bolt 2 as well would certainly kill one. Aside from that, Celes and Edgar potentially have access to Bserk. Edgar can use NoiseBlaster or Drill in conjunction with Locke/Celes's Bolt. Cyan likely has access to Flurry. Sabin has access to Suplex, which admittedly randomly targets, though I suspect he could get close just by punching them down, certainly with Locke/Celes's help via Bolt. Sabin and Gau potentially have access to Imp and/or Sleep. Gau likely has access to either Wind Slash, Air Blast, Fireball, x3 Special, Rock, Plasma, Sand Storm, Antlion Rage(both options are fantastic), Eye Goo Rage(both options are fantastic), Chickenlip Rage if taken on a detour around the continent, or Rain Man Rage on subsequent battles.

I tried to have Sabin kill enemies there quickly to avoid the issue, it did not work.  I didn't try using the Fight command, but that's because I couldn't exploit weaknesses at that point.  Summoning espers with Celes is something I hadn't considered, partially because I forgot, partially because the mod doesn't tell you what they do.  That definitely could have helped though.  As could Muddle, since I think someone in my party had access to it, but I naively thought it was single target like in vanilla so I didn't learn it.  The fact I didn't have Full Moons for Locke hurt.  I wish I would have bought them, but when I saw them in the store, my comment was I had no idea how good they'd be, and I couldn't afford to spend GP just experimenting with things.  (This is one of the big examples where an increased sellback rate for items would have helped as I could have bought the Full Moons to try them out in Zozo with Celes and not felt bad if I had to sell them.)

8 hours ago, Cecil188 said:

The point is, while any specific option may not be obvious/possible to an arbitrary player, one of them should be, either through being a fan of Noiseblaster, experimenting with Rage and enjoying Air Blast, or doing the "hold A and pray" strategy with Sabin. Given that nothing else there is super powerful, it should become evident that taking them out first is a good strategy. Does that mean they shouldn't be nerfed? No. However, is it necessary to nerf them to be able to progress? Absolutely not.

There are definitely options.  If I had been willing to sit through a dozen game overs trying to figure things out, I probably would have found them.  That's incredibly frustrating though.  Not because game overs are unacceptable, but because I was easily beating random encounters just before this.  And the random encounters immediately after this didn't give me any problems either.  It's not like I was having trouble in the mod overall.  It was that I'd run into seemingly random difficulty spikes, often followed by the difficulty seeming to drop back to where it had been before.  That's why I didn't focus on the mod being too difficult.  It's why I focused on saying things were imbalanced, or inconsistent.  I'm not saying, "Waah, the mod is too hard!"  I'm saying, "It's frustrating 3% of battles in this mod give me game overs while 97% pose no challenge at all."

3 hours ago, zz1000zz said:

Except I beat Zozo with ease despite having ridden a chocobo like that.  I considered the possibility riding the chocobo would cause me problems with being underleveled, thinking I might have to leave Zozo to fight battles because of it.  Not only did that not happen, I had very little difficulty with Zozo.  People had warned me Dadaluma would be hard, yet I beat him on my first try without even meaning to (I planned to fight him once to see what the battle was like so I could prepare, yet I found the battle easy).  I even brought this issue up during my stream, saying if I were underleveled because of riding the chocobo, why was Zozo easy?

Since then I watch that part on your stream so first off you wren't actually undererlevel see my current playthrough :

Part 8

This was actually close to your LV, I should have record a bunch of Random Battles in SC if I knew someone would thought they were so hard, so the thing is I did money grinding with this party (with EXP disable to prevent overleveling), not even playing optimally against SC's mobs, I even hit Firestorm and guess what :

-Never got hit by Firestorm nefore being able to take actions as you claim even on Pincer or back attack
-Everyone here could survive a Firestorm, so even if get hit by one I could still finish the fight without dead characters, and I was using Vig Locke and Gau probably the 2 frailest characters at this point.

And so I watch a little your stream and sorry to say but this is exacty about having the wrong mind set and I don't even know where to begin :

-First off Gau you were still using Albatross's rage while a bunch of other Rage would be better, you know I agree that testing all Rage is an ass but that's why the Printme is given with the mod and contains what Rage can do.
-Second you notice on you first battle that the Wyverns are the big annoyance here, so why on earth are you not focusing on them ? Also Switchblades + Thief's Glove I don't know why you did that and I don't really care the point is this is useless and I don't know how someone would think this is usefull.
-Third : You are slow on your fight especially the first ones where you take quite a lot of time to act at all.

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If the mod wanted me to be a higher level at that point, that's fine.  It did nothing to suggest that prior to that point though.  If the mod wants me to rely heavily on status ailments to deal with random encounters, that's fine too.  But again, the mod did nothing to suggest that prior to that point.  And it doesn't do anything to suggest that after that point either.  This is what I talked about in my summary, calling the mod imbalanced.  No matter how much one may think the way I played was bad, I had an easy time of the mod up until Ultros/SC.  After that, my only difficulties in the WoB were Shiva/Ifrit because of not knowing how to time Runic to catch Ice 3/Fire 3, the mine cart ride (not the boss, just the randoms) and one enemy on the Floating Continent (Behemoths, because of not knowing how to play around their Meteor).  I find it difficult to swallow the idea it was entirely because I play dumb that things were easy 95% of the time yet soul-crushingly difficult the other 5%.

Except these 5% being soul-crushingly difficult are for what I can see entirely your fault, on that subject while it doesn't imply to heavily rely on Statut Ailments, and to be fair relying on Statut Ailments isn't mandatory, you would think a J-RPG player that going into a mod would at least play around with them, and I guess you will say to me the same excuse as someone who was playing New Threat another mod where Statut Effect can be good saying to me "Trying status effect is an hass", and you know what that's bullshit to me cause this is basically the exact same thing as finding ennemies elemental weakness you try everything until something works, moreover just like Elemental weakness BNW standardize statut effect every ennemies of the same type are susceptible to the same statut effects so once you spot something that work, every other ennemy of the same type are more than likely to be susceptible to the same statut effect.

Quote

If battles in BNW are supposed to be like this, where you can get a game over for failing to neutralize/kill an enemy extremely quickly, that'd be one thing.  They aren't though.  That doesn't happen in ~98% of random encounters.  The only other enemy I can think of like that was the Pterodactyls on Lete River (I can't remember if that was changed for 2.0).  I don't understand how one could reconcile, "This is normal and how the mod is designed, you're just playing wrong" with, "This doesn't happen anywhere else in the mod."

Well I reconcile with you were failing to deal with that ennemy, cause clearly as Cecil, Nowea and I pointed out there was a ton of option and not only statut effect, that you didn't even consider, and that's a fail on your part no matter how much wall of text you write to try pretend the opposite.

One thing to note is that 5% of the encounters being "soul-crushingly difficult" is that those were the encounters *you* found difficult. In comparison, most of the stuff *you* found difficult were things that I found trivial, whereas some things that beat me the first time around were things that you have never mentioned and thus I assume you had no difficulty with. The idea here is that there aren't specific randoms that are overtuned(necessarily), but instead randoms that counter the setups that we're running, and as long as we run different setups, we will find different encounters difficult. The trick is to be able to handle *everything* in an area passably well, instead of being able to handle some things very well and some things poorly. In this instance, having Sabin/Gau as your damage dealers worked poorly, as Locke and Celes have the more consistent options against them. However, against the other randoms, (Gau's)Fireball and Sabin's Fire Dance worked well. Furthermore, I watched portions of the fights, and characters were sitting idle at times. While Sabin's claws were indeed insufficient on their own, I never stated that they would be sufficient; they *would* be sufficient when paired with other characters working in conjunction with him.

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 If I had been willing to sit through a dozen game overs trying to figure things out, I probably would have found them.

And this brings me to my other point: It is possible to know what works well ahead of time, through several manners. The first is that you've already fought the Albatross. This lets you be aware of options such as Sabin's Suplex, Edgar's Noiseblaster, and by extension, Cyan's Flurry, as well as Imp susceptibility from experience using it with Terra. Given that Albatrosses are problem enemies in themselves, it's reasonable the player would have felt encouraged to use status ailments there to aid them, and thus not unreasonable to expect that *something* status related was used against them on the Lete River. The second is the tutorial house, which I assume you visited. There, you will learn, among other things, that flying enemies are susceptible to Bolt. And thus, now the majority of the strategies listed above are fully within access without suffering a single death.  There's also the note within the tutorial house that scrub enemies are typically vulnerable to plenty of things unless it's undead, which now allows you to include Bserk and Sleep as viable strategies. And while there's no way to know that these would work ahead of time, it certainly wouldn't take many attempts to ascertain that they do.

54 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Since then I watch that part on your stream so first off you wren't actually undererlevel see my current playthrough :

Well, a number of people said the expected level was ~14, including BTB.  If the guy creating the mod says the expected party level is ~3 levels higher than what I have, I'm inclined to think I'm underleveled.

56 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

-Never got hit by Firestorm nefore being able to take actions as you claim even on Pincer or back attack

I already posted to explain what I was remembering and how it wasn't Firestorm.  I'm all for correcting errors like this one by me, but it'd be nice if you'd acknowledge I corrected it before correcting it yourself.

57 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

-Second you notice on you first battle that the Wyverns are the big annoyance here, so why on earth are you not focusing on them ? Also Switchblades + Thief's Glove I don't know why you did that and I don't really care the point is this is useless and I don't know how someone would think this is usefull.

I explained exactly why I used that setup during my stream.  I even explicitly said I thought it was a bad setup but didn't see what weapons I had that could be better so I went with the Switchblades for the stat boosts.  When I found the Thief Glove, I said it seemed redundant, but that the stat boosts made it seem like one of my best choices.  Now, perhaps that reasoning is flawed and I had a better option (something you also fail to mention is I eventually switched one of the Switchblades for a shield and the relic for one which offered MDef instead of evasion), but being derisive about a decision without examining the explanation given for that decision is a waste of everyone's time.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

-Third : You are slow on your fight especially the first ones where you take quite a lot of time to act at all.

I can't see what you are talking about.  I don't think I executed commands slowly.  I spent a lot of time waiting to execute commands, but that was because of things like time being paused so there was no upside to inputting commands rather than waiting (especially since checking for counterattacks is a thing).  Sometimes I also didn't act with a person because I was saving their action.  But aside from maybe two battles where I had switched to a different character slowly (or ones where I had just given up), I can't see what you're talking about.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

Well I reconcile with you were failing to deal with that ennemy, cause clearly as Cecil, Nowea and I pointed out there was a ton of option and not only statut effect, that you didn't even consider, and that's a fail on your part no matter how much wall of text you write to try pretend the opposite.

This doesn't reconcile anything.  As I pointed out, I had an easy time with random encounters the way I played before the SC.  I had an easy time with every encounter on the SC except for ones with Wyverns.  I had an easy time with every random encounter in the 90 minutes after this.  Whether or not there is a better way to beat this one random encounter than I discovered doesn't change the fact no other random encounter required such effort in the two hours before or two hours after this one.

If you think the difficulty of that enemy is good, that's fine.  My question then is, why aren't any other enemies in this part of the game as difficult?  Nobody has said a word about that, despite the fact I've repeatedly stressed I"m not saying the mod is too difficult, merely that certain enemies are extremely difficult relative to the things around them.  Could I have experimented with various things, finding a solution after five or six game overs?  Perhaps.  Perhaps it'd have taken a few more.  But guess what?  There was no incentive for me to put that sort of work into any other random enemy on the SC.  Nor in Zozo.  Nor in the IMRF.  If the player is supposed to do that for enemies, okay.  Then why don't they have to for other enemies?

Now for a segue.  In Discord, an issue came up because people told me the Kaiser dragon's Ultima shouldn't deal as much damage as I remembered it dealing.  My understanding is Stamina is supposed to be the only thing which reduces the damage from Ultima so characters with high Stamina should be able to tank the attack better than others.  My experience doesn't fit that, and from the sounds of things, there may be a bug involved.  I'm including two screenshots of the damage I took from Ultima with a party of Terra (50 Stamina), Relm (37), Celes (44) and Sabin (103):

Sabin took 1,550 damage in both cases, as well as a dozen other test cases I performed.  As far as I could tell, the damage never varied on Sabin by even a single point.  On the other characters, it could vary by 150 or more.  Sometimes the damage on other characters would be slightly higher than the damage on Sabin, but often, Sabin would take the most damage.  It seems Stamina may not be working as intended against Ultima (and maybe other attacks).

For more further info either for Vig or Stam the variance break at 86, until 85 it successfully reduce damage of defense ignoring attack once we hit 86 we take more damage in Kaiser Ultima case we jump from around 1200 with 85 Stam to over 1600 with 86.

For physical I tested on Zorothian's Shrapnel Edgar took 103 with 85 Vigor then jump to 142 with 86.

Just to add to what Nesouk said, we also tested this with attacks that don't ignore defense with the same results.  This seems to be a bug with all damage.

To quote my theory(which I have significant confidence in) from Discord for the sake of clear documentation:

"(Damage * [225 - (Vigor or Stamina * 3/4)] / 225) + 1

This is the reduction factor for the low end of Stamina variance. Of note here is the factor of 3/4. At 85 Stamina, this factor reduces it to 63.75. At 86 Stamina, this factor reduces it to 64.5. I highly suspect that this reduced factor is overflowing once passing 64(which is 2^6), and causing issues.(edited)

If it is indeed overflowing, the floor becomes higher than the ceiling, and may account for the complete lack of variation."

FWIW, I believe the problem was confirmed to be that 86 * 3 is 258, which has overflowed by 2.  The division by 4 only happens after the overflow.  A possible solution would be to divide by 4 first then multiply by 3.  That has the downside of certain Stamina/Vigor values doing nothing in the formula due to rounding, but that'd be a minor matter compared to the current situation.  (And it would only matter in the damage reduction formula, Vigor and Stamina would work as they currently do for all other things.)

Looking at the formula, you can factor out the 3 to make it:

(Damage * [75 - (Vigor or Stamina /4)] / 75) + 1

this doesn’t solve the rounding problem, but it saves a few bits.

To solve the rounding problem, factor out the /4 to get:

(Damage * [300 - (Vigor or Stamina)] / 300) + 1

Can this work with the 300? Or is 256 the max for formulas?

This formula is a Synchsyi fix so it may take a bit to actually happen unless someone like Bropedio drops a fix on us. Nice find. 

So continuing my playthrough

Part 8

Magitek factory part, cut out the money grind to buys Ocean Claws for Sabin and Tiger Mask for him and Gau as well as getting Rage for Gau (mainly Rain Man), I did poorly against Ifrit and Shiva yeah, Number 024 give me some bad element weakness once he got to a good one (Bolt in this case) he goes down quickly, the train section isn't to bad Number 128 goes down quickly with Gau's Rain Man Rage, Sabin attacking with Ocean Claws and Locke with Elec Sword.
The Cranes are still the very big disappointment of this section and I still think they were better before and wish we revert them to their previous gimmick.

Part 9

Sealed Cave : I tried to limit myself with Blackjack spam, well it's a Zombie dungeons so Cyan's Mindblow is a good undead killer as is Magic Edgar once he learn Rasp, the Centurions fight is fairly easy keep using Poison attack and they spend most of their time using Remedy also Cyan's Dispatch is good here.

Part 10

Burning house is the easiest section of the game, once Strago learn Ice (not even Ice 2) he can one shot the Grenades, and Heartfire is still the easiest boss of the game and can potentially be 2 shot if one play Magic Strago and Maduin Terra and summon Shiva and Bismarck XD.

I'm a big fan of BNW and played through 1.8 and 1.9 several times over the past few years. I wanted to help with the 2.0 beta and waited later until a stable release was available.

My first notice of the enemy behavior was during Mt. Koltz with Condor's Gale Cut and Trillium's Raid. Overall, I liked the changes with enemies that forced my (aka the player) to  explore what actions forces what counters and also useful applications of status conditions.

After completing the scenarios, the unequip imp was centered in the black screen that told of the upcoming battle in Narshe. I took Shadow, Celes, Edgar, and Gau to Zozo. I found Gau's Hornet Rage to be my best choice this early, a boosted physical with the Storm Belt plus float and haste was too good to pass up, and having Image never hurt. Dadaluma proved an enjoyable fight: Shadow and Gau adding Image to my party helped, along with Edgar's Bio Blaster to clear out the lackeys. I finished Zozo with my characters around level 12-13, and I rarely ran  from fights.

Cyan and Sabin came along to Vector, as I like switching around my party to use characters that I previously left behind. Sabin and Cyan were already almost over the Level 10 exp bump at the Battle of Narshe, thanks to their longer scenario I'd guess. Spent some time gaining ELs while getting Golem and newer equipment. GP was strained some points when coming to new town, especially arriving at the SC. i don't mind this too much, as it just means the player needs to better manage their resources, and nothing's prohibitively expensive in the WoB. Vector is one of my favorite parts of the game, so I liked the change to the Ifrit and Shiva battle. I did have increased random fights after the mine ride, but I saw this issue posted before and don't think it's too problematic with the close restore point.

Took Terra, Gau, Mog, and Setzer through the Sealed Cave and had some problems at first with the boss fight there, but was made possible after adjusting equipment. I found most problematic fights could be solved by readjusting my party's gear instead of grinding levels. To that end, boss exp is a nice quality of life change too. Nothing really of note until after reacquiring the Blackjack and exploring before the FC. I did find the Cactaur enemy rewards 10 EP when it runs away, which I don't think is intentional as Doom Gaze had the same problem fixed.

I took Siren Edgar, Siren/Seraph Celes, and Kirin Cyan to the Floating Continent with levels 17-18. Wiped in some FC fights, especially to Gargoyle's Quake which taught me to keep my party floating. I don't mind the increased difficulty, as the FC is the endgame of the WoB and the player should be familiar with enemy behavior by now. For Atma, I tried draining his MP first to try a new approach, having Shadow run support. Cutting him off from Flare, Rasp, etc. did help the second phase. Celes with Ice 2 and Cyan with Dragon whittled away his HP. I do think replacing Edgar would've made this fight and the FC easier though, as Cyan and Celes can rasp just fine.

For WoB, my ELs were focused as such:

Terra – Unicorn & Carbunkl, Stamina focus to help with Morph and plan for her to wield Atma later.

Locke – Ramuh & Kirin, Kirin helps when dodging fails and the increased stamina wasn't wasted, as he usually dual-wielded with the Scimitar.

Edgar – Siren, planned to have him Rasp Atma but I generally went with a Golem build in past playthroughs.

Sabin – Golem, the right claws hit hard and I find Golem the first/second best summon (with Seraph also in the conversation). More HP makes Golem more worthwhile.

Cyan – Kirin, often had Knight Cape equipped with a counter katana, my primary C&C in the WoB.

Celes – Siren & Seraph, planned to taking her to FC to rasp and her magic skillset is great for this dungeon.

Shadow – Phantom, he's a ninja!

Gau – Stray, often had him with Storm Belt, Black Belt and a strong physical Rage. Cephalid, Hornet, and Templar were my preferred Rages in the WoB.

Mog – Maduin, I like improving his chances of dancing well, rather than boosting his magic damage potential higher with more Shoat.

Setzer – Shoat & Seraph, Slots are great and I understand nerfing Solitarie.

Strago – Carbunkl, planned to have him use Wind Breaker later, so setting him up for it. I do having Carbunkl's equip bonus be auto-Regen, since it improves Strago's Holy Wind and works well with Terra too.

Relm – Ifrit & Zoneseek, I like having a speedy healer, even if her damage isn't as high as pure Zoneseek, having more chances to hit her improved proc rates for brushes is okay too.

Finished the WoB after roughly 16 hours, but I did talk to everyone again, which I normally skipped doing in previous runs. 

I'll be finishing up Kefka's Tower over the weekend and will talk of my WoR experience then.

Bropedio has pushed out a patch that fixes a lot of the current RC27 issues.  See the pinned messaged in Discord.

Let's continue :

Part 11

Up to Ultros 3, not an hard fight, as for the monsters nothing noticeable, altough I have an hilariously bad luck for learning Raid which I did off-screen ^^.

Part 12

Floating continent time, well probably not the best team, that section before Ultros and Chupon is the hardest part due to being constantly on Pincer Attack we always take a lot of damage and basically have to heal between every single fight, Ultros and Chupon and IAF are really not that bad after this long section of Pincer Attacks, also Chupo is made easier by the fact that when Ultros attack all counter goes to Chupon this allow to kill really fast especially since Tentacle can be counter ^^.
Onto FC random encounter are all manageable, keep Float for Gargoyle (also they are a good source of MP), Confuse the Brainpan and Ninjas, Berserk the Dactyla, Cure to death the Djinni...etc... however last time I did 2.0 I didn't encounter a single Behemoth because of luck, and I've to say they can no longer be berserked make them really annoying because of that eternal RNG move that is Meteo, only way to avoid Meteo being basically to kill them instantly which I think is not reliably possible with my team, well I can survive at least one Meteo so I manage.
As for Atma Weapon, I got a pretty good RNG here he wasn't to trolly, decide to let Shadow in the back Row throwing Shurikens for once Mog with Ice Rod being the highest damage output possible for my current team follow by Cyan and Celes (she was more of an healer tough).

So yeah end of WoB didn't record the next section and saving Cid section cause these are just story sequence so no interest at all.

Sand worm give 5 Spell Points when he run away after getting Imped.

On 5/2/2019 at 8:43 AM, SuperHario said:

Looking at the formula, you can factor out the 3 to make it:

(Damage * [75 - (Vigor or Stamina /4)] / 75) + 1

this doesn’t solve the rounding problem, but it saves a few bits.

To solve the rounding problem, factor out the /4 to get:

(Damage * [300 - (Vigor or Stamina)] / 300) + 1

Can this work with the 300? Or is 256 the max for formulas?

I'm not sure about 300 working with the division subroutine, but I thought I'd describe the approach I took, in case anyone is interested:

The existing approach calculates the low end first, then the high end. Then it finds the difference between them, gets a random value from 0...diff, and adds it to the low end. That yields the multiplier (out of 225) for variance.

Looking at the low/high end formulas, it's possible to simplify the representation of the random diff:
(255 - Stat) - (225 - 3/4 * stat) ---> 30 - 1/4 * stat

So for my approach, I calculated the random diff first, then subtracted it from the high end, which is simpler to compute. The main benefit being that we never have to compute the low end at all.
 

Diffuser is not just Lightning elemental, but Earth elemental as well. Seems weird, not sure if intended.

It's not intended.

On 5/9/2019 at 6:41 PM, Bropedio said:

(255 - Stat) - (225 - 3/4 * stat) ---> 30 - 1/4 * stat

After looking at the documentation for clarification as to how the variance is implemented with a random number selected between [Low...High], a simple approach (effectively using your calculation) is:

High = 255 - stat

Low = 225 - stat + stat/4 (i.e, 3/4 = 1-1/4)

Want to document in case I forget: Formation odds are off due to the 10-step battle RNG modification. Should be an easy fix, but as of now, the chance of seeing any given formation in an area is listed below. The only significant problem is that the rarest encounter formation is roughly 40% less likely to appear than intended.

A: 33% (expected 31%)
B: 34% (expected 31%)
C: 21% (expected 19%)
D: 12% (expected 19%)

Shokan line of enemies die at 0 MP despite not being undead.

Three Cephalid pincer, the right most Cephalid is half off the screen

Finished my beta experience of RC-27 a little later than expected...

No major difficulties during the beginning of the WoR. I saved the first Phunbaba fight until later though. Did notice the difference in enemy behavior until Figaro Basement, so didn’t try blitzing through as in previous runs, as I almost wiped once or twice in the Figaro Cave.

After gaining the Falcon, dragged Cyan off the mountain and picked up Gau. Then hunted down some Rages in the WoR, with Mantodea being my go-to offensive rage for Gau in randoms. Next stop was to pick up Relm and Strago, as I left them last previously so wanted to use them earlier. I had difficulty in Owzer’s Basement but I think that has to do with me rushing to a later dungeon early.

But that does bring up my first point regarding enemy difficulty post-Falcon but before Kefka’s Tower. I liked the progression of foes and your character abilities throughout the game, but it was somewhat linear too. But the nonlinear and open-ended nature of the later WoR made it feel that I was underleveled or overleveled for some areas: Owzer’s Basement and Triangle Island, in particular. I know this has been addressed before, with wanting to reduce the effectiveness of later AoE attacks in general. My concern is for newer player frustration in encountering difficulty spikes, albeit gradual, if they wander to a new area.

After getting the Thasma Duo and Terra, I headed to the Phoenix Cave for Locked and skipped the Red Dragon. Relm sketched Intangir Z but the skill had a blank name, Strago blocked whatever the effect would’ve been however. My party was wiped during the first fight with Hidon but I think that was a preparation problem on my part. After changing equipment and adjusting my strategy, I pulled through and finished the last dungeon. I enjoyed the changes to the other dungeons but also Locke’s new dialogue about treasure after completing the Phoenix Cave :-)

I saved the Dragons until last and maybe my experience with them was easier than anticipated because my party was getting ready for Kefka’s Tower. The Brown Dragon especially seemed too easy, with only using G-Force once: is it on a timer or a reaction? Maybe I didn’t trigger it as often if so, but maybe he should be more liberal with swatting down pesky floating heroes.  

In outfitting my three parties for Kefka’s Tower, I noticed Edgar couldn’t equip the Hero Shield. What was the decision behind that? I decided to leave Gogo and Mog behind for the Tower: Gogo because he joined at Level 21 when my average was 24 or 25, and Mog because somebody else has to draw the short straw. My party’s levels were 28-30 and ELs 19 or 20, but I did backtrack dungeons to fight the Dragons and find missing Rages & Lores, so they’re maybe slightly higher. My previous playthroughs had all but my most frequent characters stay at 20 EL even through the tower because of the exp spike there. But the Boss Exp, especially the Goddesses, helped everyone get past it.

Thoughts on character ELs and builds at the end:

Terra - Kept boosting her HP and Stamina, hitting hard with Morph, Atma and Power Glove.

Locke - Threw some Ifrit into the mix with Ramuh and Kirin, probably not optimal but hit hard often enough and countered occasionally too.

Edgar - Focused on a hybrid build with Palidor and Golem, I do believe that going Golem in WoB then respeccing into Siren later in WoR would’ve better for my playstyle. Maybe I just need to try jumping with swords though, heard the bonus to proc damage is nice.

Sabin - Focus on Golem with some Terrato, planning to try his Stamina build next time though.

Cyan - Respecced away from Stamina to Vigor+HP, always enjoyed how much better he became from Vanilla and may like slicing and dicing things up with him too much.

Celes - Respecced to Phantom and HP. Magic Celes s.comerved well up to the Airship but always found her C+C builds more appealing in the endgame.

Shadow - Focus on Phantom and trying to maximize Mutsunokami change to Stamina.

Gau - Kept him on a Stray build. Used Mantodea and Troll throughout the end. Troll’s high damage and Refract was nice, plus using the Black Belt with his high Stamina.

Mog - Didn’t really use him except to recruit Umaro. Want to focus on him in a later run.

Setzer - Seraph and Shoat, laughing all the way to the Bank with his surviability.

Strago - Windbreaker helps his Stamina build and gives him a different playstyle from his Magic self. I’d like to try Windbreaker with Relm later but want to keep Shadow around too.

Relm - Split between Ifrit and Zoneseek. Prefer speed in my healers but her damage wasn’t bad with Flare and Meteor.

Umaro - Umm… smash? Kept the Skull Cap on and usually had Blizzard Orb, Black Belt or Life Bell.

Gogo - Never used because of his low level and planned to have him sit out KT anyway.

My first try at Kefka’s Tower had the parties of:

Party 1 - Strago / Sabin / Setzer / Edgar

Party 2  - Locke / Celes / Shadow / Umaro

Party 3 - Cyan / Terra / Gau / Relm

I talked to the man in Albrook about Kaiser and figured I needed to cover all the elements. Strago and Sabin with Stormfangs do that, then decided to have Edgar and Setzer for support. The other parties were balanced out between Haste-X users, keeping Gau and Umaro seperate and balancing out DPS and healing.

Ultima was a fun boss, with Umaro’s Blizzard wrecking havoc. Inferno had a weird quirk where Net reflected off Cyan holding Crusader, which I’m not sure if it’s intended or not. I may have been under the false impression Reflect only bounced Runicable spells. Prometheus had a blank sketch that Terra blocked, so a similar issue to Intangir Z.

I <3 the concept of the Kaiser Dragon and have to say it was the highlight battle of the playthrough. I realized something was up when he wasn’t using Wallchange and his attacks were switching up elements. Ultima killed me the first time but I assumed that I could do better after guessing at his pattern. Except that my party just couldn’t keep up elemental coverage and/or recover quickly from Ultima. So I exited the Tower and reformed my parties. Terra, Celes, Edgar and Strago made it past Kaiser with little difficulty. Equipping the Minerva and Multiguards and using only Ice, Fire and Bolt spells made the battle much more manageable (Edgar was running out zapping everyone with the Mana Battery). My main concern is that some party line-ups just may not be able to defeat Kaiser, which could be frustrating for new players who overlook the hint in Albrook and have to run through the tower again.

My other parties were Cyan / Shadow / Relm / Umaro and Sabin / Locke / Setzer / Gau. The Warring Triad were enjoyable fights too: Isis is always a fun game of charm & berserk tag. I actually defeated Kefka and the Tiers on my first try. Previous playthroughs had me die at the second tier or sometimes when Kefka followed up Goner too soon. I believe the hardest section of the final battle is the start of the second tier though, as so much damage and/or status conditions are thrown at your party that getting caught in a cycle of revive and recover may occur. It is certainly doable though, and being the endgame I’m not sure difficulty is the issue, just the abruptness when the second tier starts.

All in all, thanks for the mod and can’t wait to play 2.0 when it’s officialy released :-)

Some pictures from my playthrough: final party equipment and two skewed pincer formations.

Party comp was a concern when coding Kaiser, and I realized that every possible party has access to at LEAST four elements.

Morph is increasing the restoration of items when used on characters other than Terra.

Prometheus' Sketch is empty.

When you kill Beetles with an AOE, not only do they die one by one, but they do it over time. My Sabin killed them at once with a Fire Dance and his ATB was 3/4 full by the time the last one died.

Androids in the Guardian fight counter lightning with full party Exploder (and sketching against them causes it to happen)

Is there still a discord? The discord link takes me to the ngplus discord and I don't see anything in the categories related to BNW.

17 hours ago, Echoherb said:

Is there still a discord? The discord link takes me to the ngplus discord and I don't see anything in the categories related to BNW.

Yes. If you haven't yet speak up in the discord and get a red or orange name to give you a role.

Noticed the Buzzard Fighter formation on the way to Zozo looks like it's off center to the right when you side attack them.

As well, i'm not sure if Quickfill is the culprit but it seems like a character will accrue some more ATB when initially hit with a successful stop before actually stopping the bar completely. 

http://www.twitch.tv/fathlo23/v/436972013?sr=a&t=7503s

Celes gets countered in this fight, gets stopped, and you can see her get about a sixth of her bar back before it actually seems to set in. 

So as someone who hasn't played since 1.6, kindly take this as a review from someone who is not wholly familiar with BNW.

I just finished the Sealed Gate, and so far everything seems more or less pretty solid. I remember feeling really frustrated in the early game of 1.6 and I just don't feel that here. It's not easy enough where I can just attack through it with no problems, but not difficult enough that I don't want to start it up.

Regarding each individual character, it's important to note that, as I stated above, I'm speaking to purely how each character performs in the WoB.

Celes felt largely useless outside of Cure, Slow, and Runic in the IMTRF. There were a lot of situations where I just didn't know what to do with her because there was nothing to Runic and no point in using Cure because everyone was topped off.

Edgar was awesome in the beginning, but started to taper off just after Zozo and at this point his primary use feels like Remedy and Slow. Unless of course I want to slap a Dragoon Seal on him and turn him into a Dragoon, which I did.

Sabin, full disclosure, I stopped using after his scenario, but it wasn't because he was bad. Rather, his function at the time -- Sap setter, tons of damage, counterattack -- were just filled better by other characters like Cyan and Locke.

Locke is someone I was a fan of originally but is kind of tapering off now. He's fast, he has Life, he has Cure 2, which makes him a pretty decent healer at the moment. He can also get in your face and deal some damage, but he's still no Cyan or Sabin, even with straight Ramuh levels, which relegates him to healer duty. Not sure how I feel about this.

Cyan is a god among men. He has Cure 2, Life, Regen, deals tons of damage, has a really high counter rate, has a move that heals him and restores his MP as well as setting Sap, as well as an AoE and really just a kit that can deal with any situation. He has been my MVP since I got him because he's just so good. No matter what the situation, he has an answer for it due to the versatility of his Bushido and Spell kit and the sheer magnitude of his damage.

Terra currently feels like Celes without Runic, which definitely doesn't do her any favors. Right now she feels like Celes only worse.

Gau I really haven't used much, but he was a champion in his scenario, so there's that!

Something else I want to mention, both from my own experiences and from looking at the character breakdowns, is that it feels like offensive magic just doesn't matter outside of elemental sniping. Almost every offensive build you see is hard up for Vigor because it's physical. It feels like there's no real diversity there. And maybe this is just my own ignorance talking, maybe the WoR will be completely different than I'm imagining it and I'll be completely wrong. But from what I've seen, I kind of doubt it.

All in all, it's been a blast so far, and later on today I'll (hopefully) be finishing up the WoB.

One last thing I want to mention, particularly in regards to Cyan, just to drive home my point that he is a god among men: in the Sealed Gate cave, he got hit by Discord. Discord is Bserk and Muddle. Cyan had the Kazekiri. It procced.

Over 1000 damage to everyone. Cyan had the highest HP at 800 and some change. I was laughing for about 5 minutes.

Hey everyone! A bit off-topic, but I just started playing 1.9.0 and noticed that using a Phoenix Down as an imp will revive a character with 0 HP. I think it's pretty funny but wasn't sure if that was intended. Figured I'd mention it in case it's still in.

1 hour ago, SarahShinespark said:

Hey everyone! A bit off-topic, but I just started playing 1.9.0 and noticed that using a Phoenix Down as an imp will revive a character with 0 HP. I think it's pretty funny but wasn't sure if that was intended. Figured I'd mention it in case it's still in.

While not intended, it's a harmless side effect to the Imp effect and a known issue

It's fixed in 2.0

deleted

Gonna go ahead and lock this up since we've wrapped up every reported bug and all that's left is known in the Discord. For the few remaining undelivered features in the current beta, please see the changelog thread (still pinned).