Final Fantasy Hacktics

Welcome to the Shrike Patch! This is a mod for Final Fantasy Tactics A2 that aims to make the game more fun and engaging. Features include:

- Combat has been heavily rebalanced to be swingier and burstier. Most of the game's abilities, enemies, jobs, and equipment have received changes to make combat more exciting.

- Enemy gear and ability sets have been massively expanded and their stats and levels improved to make the fights more engaging. This isn't a kaizo hack that aims to kill you in the tutorial, but you'll need to pay attention to what you're doing. In addition, all non-Hume characters now have elemental weaknesses and resistances to consider.

- The Thief, Tinker, Scholar, and Moogle Knight jobs have received extensive reworking to make them more fun and reliable to use.

- AP and gold costs have been slashed dramatically across the board, and gear sells for more of its base value. In addition, which gear teaches which abilities has been shuffled around extensively to give you access to fun toys earlier than normal. Related, it has been made much easier to obtain loot via use of the Thief class, which makes the bazaar much less frustrating.

WHAT'S NEW?

HIGH-LEVEL CHANGES:

- It's the patch of the Moogle! Moogles received buffs across the board, both in stats and abilities. Of particular note are buffs to the Juggler, Moogle Knight, and Fusilier. In addition, the Moogle inherent bonuses were changed to be less bad, no longer crippling their attack stat.

- The Scholar received a complete reworking, and the White Mage, Arcanist, and Fencer received some sizeable improvements as well.

- The base stats and stat growths of all jobs and monsters have been completely recalculated from scratch. Special thanks to ScarletMagi for her help with the math and balancing on this. A lot of the weaker and slower jobs got stronger, as did most monsters, whereas a few of the high-end jobs and monsters got a touch weaker. Raptors and Lanistas are also now more focused on their role as tanks and less on their role as physical bruisers. Due to the stat changes I recommend starting with a new file for this patch, but if you really want to keep using your old file it should work.

- Mid-to-late game weapons with few or no abilities on them gained substantial buffs to their stats to make them more exciting to obtain, and make endgame gearing more interesting. All weapons and armor have had their gil costs recalculated based on their stats and rarity.

- Abilities were moved between weapons to smooth out when you have access to which skills, and some abilities were given AP cost adjustments. Passives are available to more jobs and they're available on much earlier gear. Some very powerful abilities like Geomancy have become rarer and more exclusive, while other key abilities like Dual Wield and Halve MP are now available to more units. The basic stat boosting passives like Attack UP and Magick UP have been made much more numerous and accessible, being spread mostly across the intermediate jobs and put on more common gear. And a couple of passives (Immunity and Maintenance) were removed entirely.

- Reduced the difficulty of late-game story missions and made serious nerfs to the difficulty of Lord Grayrl, The Cat's Meow, The Eastwatch, Lanista's Pride, Ravager, and Banbangaa! This should make it possible to do them earlier and unlock the advanced classes more easily. They're still challenging fights, I just toned down the absolute insanity like Magick Frenzy Dual Wield Ninjas and max evasion Monks with Bishop spells and Halve MP. I also made smaller difficulty adjustments to many, many other fights. I'm still in the process of doing more fight editing, but it's taking a really long time and I didn't want to hold the next update hostage for eighteen months while I dig through all of them.

KNOWN BUGS:
- Random encounters with the Bangaa Brotherhood are locked to levels in the 30s instead of scaling to the player.
- Two of Vaan's abilities, Crime Spree and Jackpot, do not function.
- Steal Life and Feeding Frenzy do not show HP gained by the user (visual bug only; HP is still restored.)
- Forbidden Lore does not show MP gained by the user (visual bug only)
- Vicious Clash does not show damage taken by the user (visual bug only)
- Swarmstrike sometimes does not display damage numbers for all of its hits (visual bug only)
- Power Within does not display buff to Move (visual bug only)

WHITE MAGE:

White Mages were suffering with the global increase to the MP cost of healing abilities, so I decided to swap out Arise for Benediction. This new spell has very long range and no MP cost, giving White Mages something proactive and useful to do while they're charging up for their spell turns. (I *may* have stolen this basic idea from ScarletMagi's Final Fantasy Tic-Tacs mod >.>) Turbo MP felt like a bad fit for them since their MP costs are already really high, so I replaced it with Regenerate as a nod to the original FFT.

o No longer learns Arise; now learns Benediction instead.
o No longer learns Turbo MP.
o Now learns Regenerate.

+ Benediction: MP Cost 0; Range 7; adds Regen and buffs Resilience of one ally, increasing their resistance to negative status conditions.
+ Cure, Cura, Curaga: Base healing increased by ~50%.


BLACK MAGE:

Geomancy was too powerful an ability to have on a base job. I made it appropriately more exclusive; now Humes and Moogles can't learn it at all, and it's restricted to late-game Nu Mou and Gria.

o No longer learns Geomancy.


THIEF:

I'm honestly not sure why Waylay didn't already deal the same damage as Strongarm. Now you won't have to deal less damage when you're farming gil. I also gave Thieves Gil Snapper, mostly for flavor. Safeguard has been removed from the game entirely since the gear stealing and destroying abilities have been removed from almost all enemies.

o No longer learns Safeguard.
o Now learns Gil Snapper.

+ Waylay: Base damaged buffed by ~50% (Now deals the same damage as Strongarm)


ARCHER:

Concentration has been bumped from the basic ranged jobs to the more advanced ranged jobs.

o No longer learns Concentration.


PALADIN:

Like several other healing abilities, Bright Halo got a bit overnerfed by last patch's global healing MP cost increase, so it's getting a buff to its throughput.

o No longer learns Reflex.
o Now learns Defense UP.

+ Bright Halo [Nurse]: Base healing buffed by ~50%


FIGHTER:

o Now learns Attack UP.


BLUE MAGE:

Immunity, like Safeguard, has been removed from the pool of passives.

o No longer learns Immunity.


HUNTER:

Vital Shot was a mediocre dice roll of an ability that I never really found myself using, so I figured I'd give Hunters a new ability in its place. Seal Evil is a more powerful anti-undead tool than Silver Arrow, and is a reference to Mustadio's similar ability from FFT.

o No longer learns Vital Shot; learns Seal Evil instead.
o No longer learns Regenerate or Attack UP.
o Now learns Concentration.

+ Seal Evil: Petrifies undead enemies (checks evasion instead of resilience) and cleanses undead graves.


ILLUSIONIST:

o Now learns Magick UP.


NINJA:

o Now learns Reflex.


SEER:

+ Cura: Base healing buffed by ~50%


WHITE MONK:

I was unhappy with how Chakra was working out, so I threw in the towel and changed it back into a healing and status dispelling option; it also got a higher MP cost but greater potency, to match the other healing abilities.

o No longer learns Reflex.
o Now learns Regenerate.

+- Chakra: MP Cost 12 > MP Cost 16; Base Healing buffed by ~100%; no longer restores MP; now cleanses all debuffs.


DEFENDER:

Vicious Clash was one of several abilities that was reworked from an earlier ability with a high AP cost, and then never got its AP cost adjusted, so I bumped it down quite a bit. Absorb Damage also felt much more useful on Defender than on Trickster.

o Now learns Absorb Damage.

+ Vicious Clash: AP cost reduced


BISHOP:

o Now learns Magick UP.

+ Cura: Base healing buffed by ~50%


GLADIATOR:

o Now learns Attack UP.


MASTER MONK:

Unscarred has been moved to Dragoon. It doesn't fit Master Monks very well since they like to mix it up in melee and have a pretty potent self-damaging attack.

o No longer learns Unscarred.
o Now learns Reflex and Charged Attacks.


TRICKSTER:

Tricksters got quite a few new reaction abilities, including the extremely powerful Replenish MP which helps defray their relatively high MP costs. It's also nice to put on Bishops and Templars.

o No longer learns Absorb Damage.
o Now learns Critical: Haste, Gil Snapper, and Replenish MP.


DRAGOON:

Dragoons get Unscarred instead of Master Monks because I feel like it plays nicer with their Jump ability. Lancet felt really clunky with an MP cost - you were barely getting any MP back with it until the extreme late game. After some testing I realized that it doesn't need one. Its melee range does a lot to keep it balanced.

o Now learns Unscarred.

+ Lancet: MP Cost 10 > MP Cost 0


TEMPLAR:

I wanted to lean more heavily into Templar's identity as an anti-mage job, so Evade Magick seemed like a natural fit for them. Final Judgment now deals Holy elemental damage as well. I also fixed a bug where it couldn't be used if the caster was in the AOE.

o No longer learns Attack UP.
o Now learns Resistance UP and Evade Magick.

+ Final Judgment [Soul Sphere]: Now deals Holy damage; now deals magic damage instead of physical; fixed a targeting bug.


CANNONEER:

o Now learns Concentration.


BEASTMASTER:

Beastmasters now have a pretty nice pool of passives and reactions which are available on very early gear, which should help with the way Nu Mou often had empty passive and reaction slots until way too late in the game. It also makes the early Beastmaster dip to unlock Sage feel less onerous, because you'll be picking up some useful stuff along the way.

o No longer learns Immunity.
o Now learns Reflex and Defense UP.


ALCHEMIST:

Transmute was hard-coded to suck, so I decided to just replace it altogether. Alchemists get early access to Mirror Items now, which fits thematically and gives them some more versatility. Alchemists now also gain Ribbon-bearer. This leaves Seeq as the only ones who can't wear Ribbons at all, and given that the most reliable way to handle a rampaging Berserker or Lanista is status effects it'll likely stay that way.

o No longer learns Safeguard or Magick UP.
o Now learns Ribbon-bearer.
o No longer learns Transmute; now learns Mirror Items instead.


SAGE:

Blind and Rasp felt out of place on the Sage's move set, so I replaced them. Final Judgment is a big upgrade to Rasp in terms of MP damaging spells, and fits with the Sage's theme of high cost wide AOE spells. Arise is now exclusive to Sages, no longer being learned by White Mages. Healing Light [Esunaga] has been greatly improved, now being a smart-targeting healing spell and anti-undead tool in addition to cleansing status.

o No longer learns Rasp; now learns Final Judgment instead
o No longer learns Blind; now learns Arise instead
o No longer learns Reflex.
o Now learns Evade Magick and Resistance UP.

+ Scathe: AP cost reduced
+ Esunaga: Now called Healing Light; now restores HP in addition to cleansing status effects; damages undead and banishes undead graves in area.
+ Final Judgment [Soul Sphere]: Now deals Holy damage; now deals magic damage instead of physical; fixed a targeting bug.


TIME MAGE:

o No longer learns Evade Magick.
o Now learns Pierce.


ARCANIST:

The Arcanist's level-based spells were unique and it pained me to simplify them, but this is for the best. Arcanists have a couple of reliable darkness-based attacks now. They also gained a strong but short-ranged AOE haste ability. Syphon got some substantial buffs because it's more situational than I initially realized - you need to have an enemy with a big stockpile of MP for it to do anything too crazy. They also get access to Turbo MP now, which restricts the ability to Nu Mou.

o No longer learns Pierce.
o Now learns Turbo MP.

+- Lv. 3 Dark: Now called Dark; base damage nerfed by ~66%; Target All > AOE 1, Range 4; Targets Level Divisible by 3 > Targets Anybody
+- Lv. 5 Haste: Now called Umbral Wings; Target All > Target Self + Adjacent; Targets Level Divisible by 5 > Targets Anybody
+- Lv. ? Shadowflare: Now called Shadowflare; MP Cost 18 > MP Cost 26; base damage buffed by ~66%; Target All > Single Target, Range 4; Targets Level Divisible by ? > Targets Anybody
+ Syphon: MP Cost 12 > MP Cost 0; Drains 25% of damage dealt > Drains 100% of damage dealt


SCHOLAR:

The Scholar got completely reworked, Tinker-style. Ever since I removed the elemental absorption from the majority of gear way back in the first version of this patch they were just trash Illusionists with a few gimmick spells. Now they're a proper endgame job. Their elemental spells no longer target all allies and enemies; instead they are now wide AOE spells that do better than smart targeting. Not only do they not damage allies, but they apply mass buffs. Mad Scientist got a boost to its AOE and also grants random debuffs to enemies in the area. Throw any of these into a huge melee and watch the fireworks. Study has been reworked into a free debuff that makes enemies more vulnerable to spells of all kinds, which gives you something constructive to do when you're not using MP. Forcefield [Force] got its MP cost reduced so that you can use it on your first turn and still have 16 MP for your big spells on the next turn. And Natural Selection was replaced with Forbidden Lore, a powerful MP charging option. To top it all off, they get access to the insanely strong Geomancy passive, which they learned by studying Geomancers. I initially wanted to restrict the ability only to Gria, but ultimately decided that it makes a nice endgame capstone for Nu Mou as well. They're your big magic guns, after all.

o No longer learns Natural Selection; now learns Forbidden Lore instead
o Now learns Geomancy.

+ Forbidden Lore: Drains 25% of the user's max HP in order to gain MP equal to 25% of the damage dealt.
+ Force: Now called Forcefield; MP Cost 6 > MP Cost 4.
+ Study: No longer reveals loot and items; now debuffs Resistance and Resilience with perfect accuracy.
+- Earth Dragon Tome: Now called Earth Dragon Scales; MP Cost 28 > MP Cost 16; Targets All > AOE 2, Range 4; damages enemies and buffs allies' Resistance in area.
+- Rime Bolt Tome: Now called Glacial Wall; MP Cost 28 > MP Cost 16; Targets All > AOE 2, Range 4; damages enemies and buffs allies' Defense in area.
+- Thunder Flare Tome: Now called Cacophonous Storm; MP Cost 28 > MP Cost 16; Targets All > AOE 2, Range 4; damages enemies and buffs allies' Attack in area.
+- Umbral Ghost Tome [Shadow Shade Tome]: Now called Whisper From Beyond; MP Cost 28 > MP Cost 16; Targets All > AOE 2, Range 4; damages enemies and buffs allies' Magick in area.
+ Mad Scientist: AOE 1 > AOE 2; now grants random buffs to allies and random debuffs to enemies in area.


FENCER:

The Fencer has been slowly drifting toward more of a magic knight job and I've decided to just embrace it. Their abilities are slightly stronger and deal elemental damage but have MP costs. Swallowtail in particular got a substantial buff, closer in power to the Paladin's Storm of Vengeance. Manastrike can now be used in conjunction with dark absorption to restore MP. The only thing to get an undiluted nerf was Checkmate because, uh, did you know that Doom is actually a really good status effect? Imagine my surprise.

+ Swarmstrike: Non-elemental > Wind Elemental
+- Featherblow: MP Cost 0 > MP Cost 4; Non-elemental > Wind Elemental
+- Swallowtail: MP Cost 0 > MP Cost 14; Half Accuracy > Normal Accuracy; Non-elemental > Wind Elemental
+ Manastrike: Non-elemental > Dark Elemental
- Checkmate: MP Cost 14 > MP Cost 16


GREEN MAGE:

The Green Mage loses Absorb MP mostly because I needed something to give to Elementalists, who had no passives or reactions at all.

o No longer learns Absorb MP.
o Now learns Resistance UP.


RED MAGE:

Magick Counter is a much better reaction ability than Sticky Fingers, and makes a ton more sense for this job.

o No longer learns Sticky Fingers or Magick UP.
o Now learns Magick Counter.

+ Cure: Base healing buffed by ~50%


ELEMENTALIST:

The Elementalist was one of the few jobs in the game with no passive or reaction abilities of any kind, so I spread things out a little bit to give them a new toy to play with. I also buffed Earthsalve and Whiteblaze's output, since they were falling off really hard in the midgame.

o Now learns Absorb MP and Magick UP.

+ Earthsalve: Base healing buffed by ~33%
+ Whiteblaze: Base healing buffed by ~50%


SUMMONER:

I fixed a bug that was causing Phoenix to always deal 0 damage.

+ Phoenix: Now properly deals damage.


SNIPER:

Sniper had two abilities that got reworked from gear rending abilities, and as such had really high AP costs for no good reason. Fixed now. They also get Concentration, since it got moved up onto advanced ranged jobs from intermediate ones. Death Strike felt like a natural fit for them as well, and is pretty good with Doubleshot.

o No longer learns Regenerate.
o Now learns Concentration, Death Strike, and Attack UP.

+ Ebon Arrow and Masterstroke: AP cost reduced


SPELLBLADE:

I wanted to give the Spellblade some options for a build that doesn't rely on Blood Price, and Doublehand pairs with their stat spread pretty nicely to make them strong physical attackers.  Of course, they have an even better option in that regard now, because...

o Now learns Doublehand.


ASSASSIN:

Turns out Viera can actually learn Dual Wield (giving it to anybody else besides them and Humes will crash the game.) How could I not? Enjoy! Critical: Vanish is also pretty great for the fragile Assassins, ambush predators that they are.

o Now learns Critical: Vanish and Dual Wield.


ANIMIST:

Animists are the most defensive of the basic Moogle jobs, building into Moogle Knights, so they get a suite of reaction abilities that should help them in that niche. They get Regenerate right from the start of the game, which should help with how fragile early Moogles can be. Evade Magick and MP Shield are learned later, but combined with the Moogle Knight's new acquisitions should give you a wealth of options for Moogle builds.

o No longer learns Archer's Bane.
o Now learns Regenerate, Evade Magick, MP Shield, and Resistance UP.


MOOGLE KNIGHT:

I needed to increase Moogle damage, and buffing Moogle Knights was a no-brainer. The damage on their main attacks was kinda pathetic. Combined with their stat boosts they hit much more solidly now. They also get somewhat early access to Absorb Damage, which can help them tank more effectively. And I couldn't resist giving them Dragonheart - it just feels right for them. I also reworked Unstoppable [Moogle Aid] a little bit, making it a stronger tanking tool at the expense of its status healing potential. This way it's not just an exact copy of Chakra. It also got another, more referential rename.

o No longer learns Critical: Haste.
o Now learns Absorb Damage, Dragonheart, and Defense UP.

+ Blade of Peace: AP cost reduced; Base damage buffed by ~100%
+ Blade of War: Base damage buffed by ~100%
+- Unstoppable [Moogle Aid]: Now called Determination; no longer removes status effects; now reduces damage taken by half until next turn.


JUGGLER:

I was really unhappy with where Jugglers were at. They're one of my favorite jobs and for some reason I can't fathom I nerfed the absolute bejeezus out of them. Time for a correction. Dagger Toss and especially Molotov Cocktail got their raw damage output drastically increased. Ring Toss and Ball Toss got unique updates; if they connect they now have a chance to critically hit and apply an extra status effect. I did drop Ring Toss's base effect from stop to immobilize, however, both because a free stop spell was pretty overpowered and there really isn't anywhere further to go from stop anyway. Having both Gil Toss and Juggle [Weapon Toss] was redundant, because they're both ways to turn your spare endgame gil into damage. I kept the more interesting of the two and replaced Gil Toss with the Trickster's Traumatize, which Jugglers can capitalize on beautifully now that they can inflict multiple status effects at once. And Smile Toss is now a free haste spell that has a chance to critically hit and quicken the target. This allows it to be stronger without the guaranteed infinite loops of the old version. (NB: Allies with higher resilience will have a lower chance of getting quickened, so keep that in mind.)

o No longer learns Gil Toss; now learns Traumatize instead.
o No longer learns Sticky Fingers.
o Now learns Critical: Evasion UP and Attack UP.

+ Dagger Toss: Base damage buffed by ~100%.
+ Molotov Cocktail: Base damage buffed by ~150%.
+- Ring Toss: Now inflicts Immobilize instead of Stop; has a chance to critically hit and also Stop the target.
+ Ball Toss: Has a chance to critically hit and also Addle the target.
+ Smile Toss: Now adds Haste instead of a random buff; has a chance to critically hit and also Quicken the target.


FUSILIER:

As part of the general effort to increase Moogle damage output, Fusiliers got some buffs. Fireshot, Boltshot, and Iceshot can now be used in two concurrent turns after a charge turn, which helps round-over-round damage output a lot. Stopshot and Charmshot now deal the same damage as the other status shots, so you're penalized less for fishing for your big status effects.

o No longer learns Concentration.
o Now learns Archer's Bane.

+ Fireshot, Boltshot, Iceshot: MP Cost 16 > MP Cost 14
+ Stopshot, Charmshot: Quarter Damage > Half Damage


TINKER:

Tinkers now get acess to both Absorb MP and Halve MP, neither of which Moogles previously had access to. This should really help your Animists, Black Mages, Tinkers, and Fusiliers in the late game.

o No longer learns Regenerate or MP Shield.
o Now learns Absorb MP, Halve MP, and Magick UP.


FLINTLOCK:

Protect Cannon and Shell Cannon didn't feel like they were worth the Prime turn, so I replaced them with Barrier Cannon and Haste Cannon. Barrier Cannon is still a little meh, but you might have some use for it time to time. Haste Cannon is quite a bit more useful. Teleport Cannon is now perfectly reliable, given that it is both niche and fun to use. I swapped the damage numbers on Ether Boost and Blowback, but gave Blowback recoil based on its damage dealt instead of the user's HP, which should make it a little more dangerous to use all the time.

o No longer learns Protect Cannon; now learns Barrier Cannon instead.
o No longer learns Shell Cannon; now learns Haste Cannon instead.
o Now learns Concentration.

+ Barrier Cannon: Adds Protect, Shell, and Regen to the target.
+ Haste Cannon: Adds Haste and Regen to the target.
+ Teleport Cannon: Half Accuracy > Perfect Accuracy
- Ether Boost: Nerfed base damage by ~20%
+- Blowback: Buffed base damage by ~20%; 20% HP Recoil > 25% Damage Dealt Recoil
+ Ether Cannon: AP cost reduced


BERSERKER:

Vicious Blow, like the Hunter's Vital Shot, just wasn't all that fun or interesting to use. I replaced it with Savage Beating, a low-accuracy spike damage attacking move in the vein of Beatdown or Sneak Attack. Ground Shaker, Thump, and Thrash [Furore] were doing utterly obscene damage. Berserkers have really good attacking stats as it is, and they didn't need a free Earth Render on top of it. This nerf should bring them more in line with other fighting classes. They still hit plenty hard, they just won't be reliably threatening to one-shot squishy units for free any more.

o No longer learns Vicious Blow; now learns Savage Beating
+ Thump AP cost reduced

+ Savage Beating: Weapon attack; Half Accuracy; Double Damage; has a chance to inflict Immobilize on hit
- Ground Shaker: Base damage nerfed by ~33%
- Thump: Base damage nerfed by ~33%
- Thrash [Furore]: Base damage nerfed by ~33%


RANGER:

Ranger traps are fun and interesting, so why not make them easier to use? (Okay, to be honest this is just another thing I'm swiping from Triangle Strategy.)

o Now learns Resistance UP.

+ Sten Needle, Silence Gas, Mana Leech, Love Potion: Range 2 > Range 3


VIKING:

Vikings now get Absorb MP and Halve MP so they can keep up with your other casters better in the late game. Tsunami also became more generally useful at the cost of some of its flavor.

o No longer learns Safeguard or Absorb Damage.
o Now learns Charged Attacks, Absorb MP, Halve MP, and Magick UP.

+ Tsunami: No longer requires the user to be standing in water.


LANISTA:

Absorb Damage was moved from Vikings to Lanistas because it feels more on theme for them.

o Now learns Absorb Damage and Defense UP.


RAPTOR:

Raptors traded in Counter for Blink Counter, since they have a knockback theme now. They also get Absorb Damage instead of Reflex because they're supposed to be lacking in the evasion department. Tank also swapped from Ravagers to Raptors, since Ravagers can no longer equip heavy armor. Raptors are now solidly the defensive job, while Ravagers focus on offense.

o No longer learns Counter, Reflex, or Safeguard.
o Now learns Tank, Blink Counter, Absorb Damage, and Defense UP.


RAVAGER:

Ravagers lost Strikeback for the same reason Raptors lost Reflex. Critical: Berserk is pretty bad and I don't expect you'll ever actually use it, but for pure flavor reasons I felt like it fit.

o No longer learns Tank, Strikeback, or Defense UP.
o Now learns Critical: Berserk, Death Strike, and Attack UP.


GEOMANCER:

Geomancers now have nearly exclusive access to Geomancy, with Scholars being the only other job to get it. Not only does this make a ton of obvious sense, but it's way less broken for them than it is for, say, Paravirs. This will give those finnicky geomancy spells enough punch to be well worth the hassle of using them.

o No longer learns Critical: Evasion UP.
o Now learns Regenerate, Charged Attacks, and Geomancy.


SKY PIRATE:

A couple of Sky Pirate abilities are still broken and I have absolutely no idea what I did. I'm sorry. At least know that when I get these abilities working again they'll have somewhat more generous effects.

+ Jackpot: Now steals double gold four times instead of three.
+- Crime Spree: Instead of stealing one piece of L4 loot, double gold, and one consumable item, now steals double gold and three pieces of L4 loot.


BARD:

Hurdy now gets fighter movement instead of caster movement, since Bard is a hybrid job. I also cut the cost of Nameless Song in half, and fixed a big that was causing Hide to not work.

+ Move 3 > Move 4

+ Hide: Now properly functions.
+ Nameless Song: MP Cost 12 > MP Cost 6


SHELLING:

When I took most of the gear rending abilities out of the game I missed one. Shellings will no longer spike your blood pressure at random points.

- Munch: No longer destroys gear; now deals damage and debuffs Defense.


WEAPONS AND ARMOR:

Mid to late game weapons with no or few abilities got substantial boosts to their stats to make them less disappointing to obtain, and to make late game gearing more fun and intersting. In addition, knightswords and books got some small buffs to differentiate them from each other better. The White Hat, White Robe, and a couple of other high end robes got some buffs as well. Resistance gear in general got better, since it's a less appealing stat than the others. Detailed information on weapon and armor buffs is included in a text file.

COMPLETE CHANGES:










MORE DETAILED INFORMATION IN INCLUDED TEXT FILES!

Special thanks to Lennart, DeSgeretjin, bcrobert, AGodDangMoose and any others I'm not aware of for developing the excellent tools I used to make this patch. Likewise, special thanks goes to Kuro for helping me iron out some problems I was having and answering my newbie questions.

So, in my opinion FFTA2 is a good game. Unfortunately, there are a few things about it that drive me a little bit crazy. It's not really that the game is too easy, it's that there's a lot of interesting potential that goes untapped. It's a game about exploring lots of cool builds but a couple of first-order strategies crowd everything else out.

When I discovered that there were excellent modding tools available for the game, I got an itch I couldn't ignore: could I make a version of the game I'd enjoy replaying more? One where a lot more strategies were viable and interesting? I couldn't rest until I figured it out.

I want to state up front that this is not a difficulty patch, or at least is not intended to be. Yes, it is harder than the base game, but I'm not trying to make a Kaizo hack here. I want the game to be enjoyable in both Normal and Hard mode, and cater to both kinds of player. The goal here is to optimize for fun.

A zip file with the patch and some notes is attached. Please note that my information is not exhaustive; I wasn't perfectly assiduous in my note-taking. I'll be happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability.

WHAT'S DIFFERENT?

For starters, I rebalanced all of the stat values and growths in the entire game, as well as most of the abilities. I tried to give different jobs and monsters different reasons to exist: strengths to leverage, weaknesses to exploit, choices to make, etc.

I tried to create a wider gulf between offensive, defensive and support jobs. I allowed units like Assassins, Snipers, Summoners and Cannoneers to do their thing, but balanced them out by making them easy to one-shot if they get caught out. As a result, positioning matters a whole lot more, and defensive jobs like the Paladin, Defender and Lanista see their stock rise considerably.

I added or altered a lot of MP costs. The game actually has an interesting MP system but doesn't use it as much as it could. I tried to explore a broader range of MP costs and make stronger use of MP breakpoints. My goal was to allow powerful abilities to exist, but to effectively limit how often they could be used.

On the same note, I neutered MP restoration across the board. I didn't remove it from the game, but it is now much less effective at trivializing the cost of spells. The only exception is the Cannoneer's Ether Shell, which appears to be hard-coded. (If I'm mistaken and somebody knows how to fix this I'd be very grateful if you let me know.)

I also play with evasion and accuracy much more than the initial game does. Jobs now have inherent evasion values, and Moogles, Gria and Seeq have evasion bonuses or penalties across the board. This makes fights more exciting and swingy, and alows for things like physically frail Thieves and Assassins that rely on their evasion instead of their HP to get by. I understand some people find this kind of RNG completely unpalatable, and to them I'm sorry. They are probably not going to find this patch very enjoyable.

To compensate for the increased evasion, I made the tools to fight it stronger. High-accuracy abilities like Blitz, Featherblow and Take Aim now deal full damage instead of half. This gives jobs like Fighter, Gladiator, Fencer and Archer a niche at taking out stuff like Assassins and Jugglers. Likewise, enemies gained more pronounced typing. I'll let the player discover this on their own (there's some fun surprises in there, let me assure you.)

I played around a lot more with elemental reistances and weaknesses. I gave a lot of monsters elemental interactions that didn't exist before. I tried to keep things consistent across types; plant enemies are weak to fire but absorb water, winged enemies are weak to wind but resist earth, etc. In addition, player characters interact with the system now, too. Bangaa are weak to ice (due to being cold blooded), Gria are weak to wind (due to their wings), and Seeq resist ice (due to their thick blubber.) It's not Pokemon now, but I felt that the system was underutilized in the base game, and I feel playing around with elemental effects makes the game more interesting.

I also changed almost every single piece of gear in the entire game. I cut the amount of stats gained from gear across the board so that players no longer easily outscale monsters as the game goes on. I also lowered the effectiveness of defensive gear across the board, especially as regards the resistance stat; this makes faffing around with MP more rewarding since spells are now more generally useful. Clothes and hats now grant very low defensive bonuses but boost other stats, while heavy armor almost exclusively is used for its high defense and robes for their high resistance. Many accessories had their stats shuffled around. Boots now all grant at least one point of Move, for example.

As for weapons, I flattened the attack growth curves quite a bit. This is a game where gear is used mostly for learning new abilities, and yet the base game gives weapons and armor a progression like it's a straightforward RPG. I kept some of this intact to keep a sense of growth and progression and maintain the excitement of new gear drops, but I limited weapons and armor to specific breakpoints to keep things more manageable from a stat growth standpoint. Gear now has effective upsides and downsides, and different kinds of weapons serve different purposes. This makes gearing up more interesting while the player is not learning new abilities, and allows for different kinds of builds as the game progresses.

And on that note, I cut AP costs across the board. This is a really psychotically grindy game after the player unlocks the Auction House, and I don't think it's fair to assume every player wants to use Bonus AP 3 in every single fight. This also cuts down on the dead time where units are stuck in the "wrong" class on the way to something else, as well as the early game doldrums when your whole party is stuck as Soldiers, Black Mages and Thieves. The only job I was unable to do this for was the Bangaa Warrior, since the editor I was using kept mistaking their skillset for the identically-named Soldier skillset. (Once again, if anyone knows a fix for that I'd be very grateful.)

I reimagined the Tinker. It now hands out AOE buffs and debuffs in a big area instead of its original design. I actually think the OG Tinker is pretty interesting from a purely theoretical standpoint, but uh... did anybody actually use them?

I reversed the baffling decision to put all of the key Animist abilities on gear locked behind late-game missions. Tail Wag, Sheep Count and Catnip now show up on much earlier weapons, while 100% Wool got pushed to the Conch Shell.

Special jobs also got some work. Hurdy and Penelo's abilities now cost MP but affect your whole team like the Bard and Dancer from the original Tactics. Vaan's skillset got some buffs, mostly because I feel sorry for him. I didn't bother with Al Cid because I've never even unlocked him. If there's enough demand maybe I'll revisit the idea. Also, the Heritor got a few buffs but no major overhaul. I'm planning to revisit it at some point.

And lastly, although this is not a balance or challenge patch, I did nerf some first-order strategies to make player choices a little more interesting. Hi-Potions and X-Potions now heal for less. Mirror Potion/Hi-Potion/X-Potion now check resilience instead of evasion. MP restoration is nerfed across the board (although I also nerfed MP damage by half to compensate a little.) Absorbtion shenanigans got nipped in the bud through the nerfing of elemental shields and robes. The Ravager's abilities are now balanced through accuracy nerfs to sell the feeling of a devastating but wild berserker. The Raptor's crushes deal half damage. The Juggler's abilities now have a range of 3, and Smile Toss grants Haste instead of Quicken. Super high-range weapons like guns, cards and hand-cannons got various nerfs to make them less totally busted.

There's probably a little more that I missed, but that's the gist of it.  Feel free to explore the patch and peruse my notes. I welcome feedback.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Here's some stuff I'd love to do but either haven't found the time or haven't figured out quite yet. If anybody knows some of this stuff I'd welcome some guidance:

- I've heard you can turn the Keeper job into a playable job? Because I have this idea for a new Gria job...
- I want to put Blue Magic abilities on weapons. I'd keep them learnable the old way and give them high AP costs, so there would still be a point to all the rigamarole, but as it stands acquiring Blue Magic is such a pain in the ass that it's not really worth it.
- I'm planning to do more shuffling of which weapons teach which abilities like I did for the Animist, but that's going to be a big project.
- I want to make Hi-Potions and X-Potions more expensive. Does anybody know if there's a way to change their cost?
- I'd love to alter the amount restored by Ether Cannon and change Warrior JP costs, but unfortunately if they can be changed I can't figure it out.
- I'd like to alter a lot of unit names, but boy oh boy are there a lot of them to alter by hand. I'll probably grind this out over time.
- Likewise, I want to mess with enemy formations, but for right now I'm leaving them as the base game until I can develop a comprehensive game plan.

The patch and my notes are linked below. Eagerly awaiting any responses!

I am 99% done with a mod I've been plugging away at for about two months now.  I was doing a final playtest run before starting a writeup so I could upload it to the forums when I ran into an absolute disaster of a bug.  For some reason my Seeq and Gria can't learn anything; their abilities all show up as Soldier abilities and cost 0 AP.  I ran into this bug earlier when I tried messing around with which weapons teach which abilities, so I reverted to a previous version and haven't touched that sort of thing since.  I'm also 100% positive I didn't have the bug in my latest revision before this one.  What could have caused this?  Is it fixable?  I'd be crushed if I came this far just to blow up at the finish line...

So my first patch is entering pre-Alpha bug testing.  It's nothing spectacular, but as I look back on the past six months I find myself wishing I had known a few things when I started.  Well, there's no good reason everybody has to muddle through the same mistakes I made, I say.  I'm going to list everything I can think of that I wish I'd known then that I know now, adding more as I think of them.

What I'd really like is for this thread to turn into a collaborative effort between the less experienced members of the site to help lift each other up and improve our skills.  Are you a greenhorn and you just figured out something that's been vexing you for a couple of days?  Throw it on the list.  Sometimes what seems obvious to a skilled, experienced member of the community is exactly the trick that a newbie is struggling to find.

Without further ado, and in no particular order...

THE FORUMS

1. Always check the date on any forum post.  This is important to avoid necrobumping, but it's important for another very important reason:  the tools have changed a lot over the years.  Things that were once completely impossible are now trivially easy.  If you find yourself reading about how, say, it's impossible to change the skills in the Dragoon's skillset, that just means you haven't read about Raven's Workbooks yet (http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=7271.0).

2. You'll get answers for your questions a lot faster if the title of your thread is extremely detailed and descriptive.  The people that genuinely want to help you still have their eyes roll into the back of their head when your thread is titled "HELP!!!!" or "Patching question."  Likewise, when you're describing your issue give all of the information that you reasonably can.  It's not enough to say that you're having a crash bug.  What emulator are you using?  Does the crash happen at the same time every time, or is it random?  What ASM hacks are you using?  People love to help, but they don't love to drag information out of you bit by bit to solve your problem.

FFT PATCHER

1. Here's something I would have loved to know when I started out:  some abilities and formulas are hard-coded.  What this means is that you can't alter some of the things they do just by picking it from a dropdown menu.  Weapon formulas, for example, can only be altered by ASM hacking.  The knight's breaks and Zalbag's Destroy Sword skills are the same way; you can't control what stat or equipment they break just by changing a formula.  If you want a melee skill that breaks the target's shield, you need to re-use the Break Shield slot.  If you want two melee skills that do it, you're kind of out of luck as far as I know.

2. This is more of a visual concern, but some attack animations are single-target only.  This means that if you set, say, the Preach skill to target an area instead of one person, it will only animate and show the Faith increase on one target (although it will actually function on all targets in the range).
( http://ffhacktics.com/smf/index.php?topic=4830.0  Here is a good collection of the spell animations for reference. If you watch through them you can see which ones will display on multiple units and which won't. -Celdia )

BALANCE NOTES

1. There are a couple of ways to make the AI tougher without any ASM hackery.  Primarily, I'm going to talk about three.  The first is, if you're designing custom skillsets, to make the skillsets varied.  Think about how many more options, say, a Monk has than an Archer in vanilla FFT.  The more abilities the AI has to work with, the broader their threat.  The second is, when adjusting JP costs, consider that the AI gets JP to spend based on its job level.  Players can grind and grind all day for a 5000 JP Bahamut summon that obliterates the entire screen, but the AI never will.  My personal rule of thumb is to make the sum total of every class's abilities cost less JP than it takes to reach level 8 in that class, so that you can set the AI to master a class at will.  The third is that you can only set one job for the AI to have learned, but it will gain abilities from every sub-class that you set.  For example, let's say that you need to be a level X Wizard to unlock Summoner, and you're putting an enemy Summoner on the field.  If the job requirement for Summoner is level 4 Wizard, the enemy Summoner will have many more JP to spend on Wizard abilities than if the job requirement for Summoner is level 2 Wizard.  Boiled down:  The harsher your job requirements, the more powerful the AI becomes.  The laxer your job requirements, the more powerful your players become.

2. You should know going into your patch what kind of difficulty level you're shooting for.  Keep this in mind with every change you make.  Even something as simple as giving each enemy in the game up-to-date equipment makes the whole experience much tougher.  The balance question is deceptively difficult due to all of the things that factor into it, such as:  when updated equipment for each job becomes available, how much new equipment costs, how potent new equipment is, how hard new jobs are to unlock, what kind of equipment a job can use, how much JP new abilities cost, the MP cost of spells and abilities, whether abilities have a charge time and how long, how much guidance your help messages give to the player, how powerful different jobs are in relation to each other, how high a job's growths are, how powerful monsters are and how powerful special characters are.

• It's easy to get carried away crafting fun new equipment, but unless you carefully consider how all of your gear stacks together you can easily annihilate your patch's balance.  Try to think about gear in terms of whole sets instead of individual pieces.


• In addition, you must consider a job's equipment restrictions and its stat multipliers together when determining how powerful you want to make the class at any one thing.  If a Knight can only equip heavy armor, that fact alone is increasing their Hit Points.  Consider carefully how much of a Hit Point multiplier is necessary in addition to the armor bonus.


• Likewise, think about what behavior your choices are incentivizing on the part of the player.  Giving jobs good stat growths, making monsters easy to fight and giving your abilities high JP costs are all choices that incentivize level grinding.  Conversely, causing enemy levels and equipment to scale in story battles disincentivizes level grinding, as it makes it hard for the party to keep up.


• Something to always keep in mind is that you must be wary of exclusivity.  By this, I mean be very careful with things that players can have that the computer can't and vice versa.  Special characters, unique jobs, Zodiac monsters and rare items that can't be bought in stores can all cause problems if they are not handled with care.


• When it comes to testing your game's balance, all the math in the world is no substitute for sitting down and playing through the game or, better yet, having several people do so.


• The most important bit of advice I can give:  Any monkey can crank things way up or way down.  The best game balance works in moderation.

BUGS AND CRASHES

1. Always, always, always back up your materials.  Make a backup before you do anything.  It's simple, it's easy to forget, and not doing it can and will cost you months of work.  There is no "undo" button short of going back and fixing what you changed manually.

2. Always patch to a fresh disc image with a fresh patch.  Failing to do so will result in a bunch of weird bugs, like being able to attack in two directions at once with a 4-direction attack.

3. This is a classic. Is one or more of your sprites in a battle or event a glitchy mess?  There's two major reasons for this.  First, you may be running up against the sprite limit.  If I remember properly, the limit is 16 sprites on screen at once and 9 unique sprites on screen at once.  That includes guests.  This means that, in a battle with no guests or NPCs, you can have up to four different kinds of enemy; in a battle with one guest or NPC, you can have up to three different kinds of enemy, etc.  While editing the ENTD, pay attention; they always run right up against the sprite limit, so adding more class variety than already exists will cause glitches.  The second thing that can cause sprite glitches is altering a sprite that takes a special action in a cutscene.  My favorite example is the thief in Dorter Trade City who throws his hat on the ground.  If you alter the Thief sprites, that guy is gonna look messed up.  For the most part, fixing this is a huge pain in the ass if you're not a skilled pixel artist.  Either learn to live with it or simply don't alter any sprites with special animations.  (Note:  Changing Ramza's sprite is a good way to trigger this stuff.  So learn to love the buttpants.)

4. Something I had to learn the hard way.  If your game is crashing mid-battle, it's most likely a conflict with your ASM hacks.  The best way to troubleshoot it is to patch the game with no ASM hacks, then add them back on one at a time until the crash occurs.  Then test with just that ASM hack and each other hack individually until you find out what is causing the crash.  Yeah, it's a lot of work.  Welcome to bug testing.

More to come...

After my latest build, my game hangs up during the tutorial fight at Orbonne.  Initially it happened every time Fukes got his first turn, before he acted.  This occurred about a dozen times, even after I fiddled with some of the things I had changed (mostly cosmetic sprite changes and changes to classes that aren't even in the battle).  I made a fresh image of my FFT disc and patched completely new, started again.  Now, instead of hanging at the beginning of Fukes's turn it hangs at the beginning of the Knight's turn right after his.  This is extremely disheartening; I'm a handful of ENTD edits away from alpha and now I've got a crash bug on my hands.

Any ideas?

Hey, sorry for the long silence.  I'm still plugging away at my patch.

I've heard that it's possible to replace Byblos with a different character.  I'm familiar with changing character classes in general; I changed Ramza's chapter 4 sprite and I altered the skillset, stats and growths of literally every special character.  I'm having some trouble with Byblos, though, since I want to replace him with a human character instead of a monster and he shares a sprite with the Apandas.  I know that I can change his gender and such in the ENTD, but I'm not sure how to proceed from here.  Is there an unused spritesheet that I can overwrite?  Failing that, I have a couple of unused generic classes; could I use one of those spritesheets?  Will just setting a different gender and spritesheet even work?  I'd really appreciate a step-by-step on this one, but even a point in the correct direction would be nice.

I'm still plugging away at my patch, and I think it's getting close-ish to a playable demo.  I've run into a small problem, though, and although I'm pretty sure there's no way around it I thought I'd ask anyway.

I replaced the Mediator class with a General class.  The General class skillset is similar to Talk Skill, except instead of modifying Brave and Faith it adds buffs like +1 PA and +1 Speed to allies in small AOEs.  However, when I modified the Praise skill to have effect 1 and tested it out in a battle, the ability animation/effect/whatever only showed up on one of the multiple allies I had targeted, and it only showed the little "PA +1" animation on that target.  After the animation played it showed text boxes informing me that each ally I targeted actually gained the increased PA, so this is just an animation issue.

Is there any way to get the animation to play for each individual target, or do I just need to choose a different animation?

So I've just started messing with the workbooks.  I understand how they work on general principle, but I'm a little confused by Xifanie's Generic Skillset Fix.  My understanding is that this is generally used to overcome the problems with modifying skillsets such as Jump, Throw or Draw Out.  As I understand it, the way this is done is to modify the values next to the desired skillsets, causing the effected skillset to "mimic" another skillset.  My main question is, what exactly does this mean?  If, say, I input 05 next to Throw, will Throw have the exact same skills in it that Basic Skill does regardless of what it says under the Throw skillset in FFTPatcher?  Or does it simply mean that I can edit Throw the same way I could edit Basic Skill?

My second, tangentially related question, is if the former is true, are there any "unused" skillsets that I could feel free to use as fodder for modifying the troublesome skillsets?  I think Balmafula's Arc Witch has been used as an example before, as has Teta's Magic.  Are there any others?

EDIT:  This got answered in the PJIRC chat by FFMaster.  It turns out it's way easier than I was imagining.  Simply set the value next to the troublesome skillset to a more agreeable one, apply the ASM, and then change the skillset to Default in FFTPatcher.  Then you can treat the skillset like any other (Math Skill is one exception; the abilities in the set all ignore reflect).  Thanks FFMaster!

My apologies if this was answered in a different thread.  I really did try looking before I made a new topic.

So I'm working on a little personal vanity patch, changing several generic classes to custom generic classes and rearranging the job tree accordingly.  Part of my patch's general thrust is that I'm making healing slightly tougher, for example having the cure spells only target one square.  One of the things I did was change Chemists to Alchemists (yeah, I know, zero points for originality) and push them far down the job tree, buffing items a bit to compensate but only having them appear in shops in later chapters of the game.  My idea was to have *three* base level jobs, essentially Squire, White Mage and Black Mage.

So I opened FFTPatcher and fiddled around with the job requirements, making Chemist require 3 Black Mage, 4 Enchanter and 4 Illusionist.  I patched the ISO without a problem, fired up the game and the tutorial battles went off without a hitch.  However, after I checked my formation screen at Gariland I discovered that all of my units had unlocked level 3 Black Mage, 4 Enchanter, 4 Illusionist and 1 Chemist, with several hundred unspent JP in each job.  It appears that at least your starting units are set to have Chemist unlocked no matter what the requirements are.  Since Chemist is one of the jobs whose skillset can't be altered without all sorts of weird effects, this puts me in the usual bind.

Anybody know if there's a way to make it so that starting generics don't have Chemist unlocked by default?

EDIT:  Just to be clear, new generics purchased from the soldier office do not share this quirk, just the generics you are given for free at the start of the game.

EDIT 2:  Solved it.  For posterity's sake, you can edit your starting generics in ENTD #188 in FFTPatcher.