FFTA2 Shrike Patch - Version 1.2

[SpaceCowboy321]

I'm around halfway through now, just after getting to Fluorgis.  Still really enjoying it overall, though I'm getting close to the point in the game where my interested starts falling off, so we'll see how much longer I go.  However, below are just a few more minor issues I've some across.

• This is just a suggestion, but I think you should maybe restore the text of your main post to how it was in version 1 and put the updates below that in a changelog or something.  Or at least I think you should include some sort of a general summary of what your rom hack is in your main post, like you did for version 1.  That way new people who discover it will know what it is and general idea of what kind of changes you've made.
• The Moogle Knight's Blade of Peace doesn't deal any damage, even against enemies weak to holy damage.  It's also locked to 1 range instead of weapon range, but maybe that's intended.
• This might be a limitation with how the abilities are coded, but it seems like any ability that debuffs stats also bypasses reaction abilities.  I think that is fine for the Rend abilities since those don't do that much damage, but it makes abilities like Moogle Knight's Blade of War and Sniper's Ebon Arrow very powerful.  I don't think it's insanely overpowered, but it can make some boss fights pretty trivial.  Essentially a guaranteed debuff with no counter that also does decent damage.
• Fencer's Checkmate doesn't seem to be doing dark damage.  If I use it on an enemy that absorbs dark damage, it still damages them.  If I use Nighthawk on the same enemy, it heals them as expected.
• I know I'm probably in the minority on this, but I actually liked the abilities being spread out across the weapons more.  It made it always feel like there was something to work towards.  Also, since you almost always want to be learning an ability at this point of the game, it means I almost never use the weapons with no abilities, which seems like around 1/4 of them.  I just find myself disappointed when I can unlock something new in the bazaar and it doesn't have an ability.  Not a big deal, just personal preference I guess.

[Hyatt]

I think there are some missing abilities. I haven't done a thorough review, but using a cheat to get all equips, I couldn't find any weapons that teach Shadowstick for Fencers or Angelsong for Bard. Those abilities are also missing in the readme files, but I wasn't sure if that was a typo and they were still available but unlisted.

For suggestions, I kinda agree with the above commenter about feeling let down by the higher level weapons without abilities. What I'd suggest, though, rather than spread abilities back out, you could buff the ability-less weapons. Maybe give them immunities or something.

I also think stealing needs some more tweaks. Strongarm's damage is probably too high, it should probably be something more like half damage. I also think Thieves should get a steal that's more akin to Bishop's Collect Tithe, that doesn't damage but can be used at range. The Thief class should be the best at stealing all around and IMO stealing at range is better than stealing plus damage, if you're looking just to farm. It'd also be nice to have an ability that lets you target higher level loot.

For later added features, I would definitely vote for reducing or removing restrictions on recruiting units of advanced classes. I like unlocking classes in general, but not being able to recruit them right away is super frustrating. The quests for Geomancer, Ravager, and Lanista come way too late; the second page is already over half full by the time you can do them in the unmodded game.

ETA: Vaan's Crime Spree doesn't seem to work. It gives the question marks for hit chance and damage and doesn't steal anything. Jackpot is the same.

ETA: A running list of missing abilities:
Shadowstick for Fencer
Angelsong for Bard
Rush for Gladiator
Rest for Defender
Summoner is not missing any abilities, but even with all 8 mastered, the job isn't marked as mastered
Vitals Shot for Hunter
Iai Blow for Parivir
Quicken for Time Mage
Smite of Rage for Berserker
Blind for Green Mage
Syphon for Arcanist
Deathscythe for Beastmaster (readme says Black Quena teaches it, but in game it teaches Zombie instead)

[peen]

even use xdeltaUI I still cant patch it T^T

[Shrikesnest]

Thank you guys so much for the detailed feedback and testing! Also, oh shit, those missing abilities are an extremely large problem. That's going to take a little fixing. Unfortunately I'm swamped at work right now; summer is an extremely busy season for me. I'll try to hammer out a fix as quickly as possible.

[Hyatt]

Thanks for looking into fixing it! I've put my playthrough on hold until the abilities are added, but I have mastered most of the jobs and listed every absence I found. I think Geomancer is the only one I haven't mastered. I also wasn't checking the reaction or support abilities to see if there were any missing, since there wasn't a nice visual note in-game if they'd all been mastered.

[anniejazz]

Commenting to say I love this mod. 130ish quests done right now, 2/3rds of the way through the story. Your hack has become my main "before bed" game, and my favorite way to play FFTA2! I do have some thoughts on it though, if you don't mind me sharing:

There's too many weapons with nothing to learn on them. The changes you made to the loot system are phenomenal, completing the bazaar and farming for loot is incredibly fun with how much you get from stealing, and all the different classes that can do it add the right amount of spice. Unfortunately, now that I'm getting into the A tier of weapons there's just nothing on these really cool looking weapons, and the stats on them rarely wow me for how coveted they are. I don't really like the idea of spreading learnsets out more, so maybe you could have them learn some reaction/passive abilities races don't normally get, like dual wield on Vierra or something. Or you could just straight buff the stats if that's not possible.

Next, I feel like Moogles are in a pretty terrible spot. The characteristics you gave the races are really cool and help diversify shared jobs in a fun way, but Moogles, main those bonuses really suck. You don't really run into a lot of magick users in the game, so the +15 Base res and +2 growth doesn't really come in handy as often as you think, especially when you consider the fact they also have -10 base HP and -1 HP growth. Sure they're great evasion tanks with the buffs to that, but my Hume Thief can reach 89% evasion with flee, and that's plenty for me considering they don't have to deal with the -5 Base attack and -1 growth the moogles have. That attack nerf really hurts when all but 2 of your jobs do physical damage. Speaking of jobs, idk what's up with the moogle knight but blade of peace is dealing no damage, and everything else besides Ultima on that job deals pitiful damage. Jugglers don't really have much to do besides run around dodge tanking, loosing quicken really hurt this job and it doesn't have much else to make up for it. With how you reworked thief, I'm sure you could figure out something really cool for this job to do instead of being a smile bot. Finally the 2 Gunner jobs aren't really worth the investment. Fusilier is like a bad black/green mage. The debuffs rarely hit, and the elemental bullets cost too much MP considering they're single target. The increased damage is nice, but it's not really enough to make it worth 16 MP. Flintlock takes a lot of setting up for not much reward. Outside of Ether Boost and Ether Cannon, the rest of the abilities aren't great. Shell and Protect cannon should be merged into barrier or maybe scrubbed entirely, considering the green mage can drop Barrier on 5 of your units on turn 1. Moogles are my favorite race, so I just wish they were as good as the rest of them here.

Finally, I do hope some of the bugs brought up earlier in the thread get patched at some point, it really sucks that there's missing abilities. Overall amazing hack though, I love it and hope to see an update come out soon before my playthrough is over!

[Shrikesnest]

Commenting to say I love this mod. 130ish quests done right now, 2/3rds of the way through the story. Your hack has become my main "before bed" game, and my favorite way to play FFTA2! I do have some thoughts on it though, if you don't mind me sharing:

I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I'm also super excited for more feedback. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.

There's too many weapons with nothing to learn on them. The changes you made to the loot system are phenomenal, completing the bazaar and farming for loot is incredibly fun with how much you get from stealing, and all the different classes that can do it add the right amount of spice. Unfortunately, now that I'm getting into the A tier of weapons there's just nothing on these really cool looking weapons, and the stats on them rarely wow me for how coveted they are. I don't really like the idea of spreading learnsets out more, so maybe you could have them learn some reaction/passive abilities races don't normally get, like dual wield on Vierra or something. Or you could just straight buff the stats if that's not possible.

I've gotten this feedback from a couple of people and I think the way I'm going to go with it is to just buff the stats of any weapons that don't have abilities on them. It would be cool to spread stuff like Dual Wield around, but unfortunately it's hard coded to only work with Humes. I really wish there was an easier way to do more stuff with passive abilities in general, because I'm not happy with how most of them are, but it's a bit beyond me right now. I'll just hand out some stat boosts to make the rarer weapons that don't have abilities on them more exciting to get.

Next, I feel like Moogles are in a pretty terrible spot. The characteristics you gave the races are really cool and help diversify shared jobs in a fun way, but Moogles, main those bonuses really suck. You don't really run into a lot of magick users in the game, so the +15 Base res and +2 growth doesn't really come in handy as often as you think, especially when you consider the fact they also have -10 base HP and -1 HP growth. Sure they're great evasion tanks with the buffs to that, but my Hume Thief can reach 89% evasion with flee, and that's plenty for me considering they don't have to deal with the -5 Base attack and -1 growth the moogles have. That attack nerf really hurts when all but 2 of your jobs do physical damage. Speaking of jobs, idk what's up with the moogle knight but blade of peace is dealing no damage, and everything else besides Ultima on that job deals pitiful damage. Jugglers don't really have much to do besides run around dodge tanking, loosing quicken really hurt this job and it doesn't have much else to make up for it. With how you reworked thief, I'm sure you could figure out something really cool for this job to do instead of being a smile bot. Finally the 2 Gunner jobs aren't really worth the investment. Fusilier is like a bad black/green mage. The debuffs rarely hit, and the elemental bullets cost too much MP considering they're single target. The increased damage is nice, but it's not really enough to make it worth 16 MP. Flintlock takes a lot of setting up for not much reward. Outside of Ether Boost and Ether Cannon, the rest of the abilities aren't great. Shell and Protect cannon should be merged into barrier or maybe scrubbed entirely, considering the green mage can drop Barrier on 5 of your units on turn 1. Moogles are my favorite race, so I just wish they were as good as the rest of them here.

I find your argument compelling. Looking over things, it looks like I gave Moogles the short end of the stick (pun very much intended) which is unconscionable. The struggle I have with them is that I want to make them useful without just jacking up their damage numbers to Bangaa or Nu Mou territory, so I'm trying to keep them good in a support role.

Right now I'm working on getting the missing abilities added and fixing Blade of Peace, so that'll be the next patch. But in the next real content patch I'll take a pass at all of the Moogle stuff and see what I can do. I'm very open to suggestions, and I'll keep in mind the ones you've already made. Right now I'm planning to change their shared attribute modifiers and buff Jugglers, Fusiliers, and Flintlocks. I might buff the base stat numbers on Moogle Knights, too.

Also, I'm curious as to whether or not you've tried Tinkers and if you have any feedback on them in particular. I think they're the one Moogle job that's actually in a pretty good spot, but I'd love to know what the players think about it.

Thanks again for the feedback! I hope to have that patch for the missing abilities out soon! I haven't been able to work on this project for months but I'm finally messing around with it again, so hopefully more updates coming in the near future.

[SoloCross]

Dual Wield can actually work with Viera as well, but that's about it. (This does mean that Viera can use the animations for the Paravir's elemental sword skills too)

[Shrikesnest]

Dual Wield can actually work with Viera as well, but that's about it. (This does mean that Viera can use the animations for the Paravir's elemental sword skills too)

Wow! I was unaware of this, and I kind of want to play around with it now. Dual Wield makes a lot of thematic sense for Viera. Do you know how it interacts with Doubleshot? Do you get four attacks or just two?

[Shrikesnest]

The 1.1.2 update is out! Just fixed Blade of Peace and Checkmate, and added in all of the abilities that were missing. I've got some more stuff in the works, too, but I wanted to get this fix out as quickly as possible since those missing abilities were kind of a bummer.

[Disith29]

Hi, Im new here. Downloaded your rom like a week ago and I am totally hooked now (first romhack I ever played and like 5y since vanilla run). I am around lvl 22 hard run and just beat the sand ant boss. Here are my thoughts so far:

1. You made Thief amazing, maybe too good. I loved him in ffta1 but in 2 he was just useless. I always hated using the attack command but now half my team uses strongarm instead. I also love that no class has to default attack unless silenced now.

2. Thanks to the Thief, rushing the weapon tree feels very very good. It made me focus more on early classes (that are now way way more interesting) intead of hopping all the time. I wish I had another moguri and another viera, but I am getting only nu mous...

3. I think that the skill that steals money is sometimes busted. You can steal ~500x3 from wild beasts but I just beat Red who was giving me ~7000x3. I am not sure if this was abusable in the original game tho, never used thief at this point.

4. I like how you changed combat but I feel like White mage got nerfed because of this. It does not have time to do anything early game and heal at 12 seems impossible to fit. I just unlocked holy but it costs too much mana for now to be relevant. I wish there was a smaller holy spell to fit in this class.

5. I never liked bangaa but now the one I have is very good. Slow as expected but when he gets to mele the job gets done. I just got a second one and wanna try the ranged classes. I never recruited a second bangaa in the original game.

6. Got tinkerer and illusionist super early but the skills I have cost too much mana for now. Fights are not finished but decided after 3-4 rounds. They will probably start to be relevant after I find any mana related support.

I also have some noob questions. I am sorry if this is common knowledge:

1. I see some texts changed ingame but others seem unchanged. Also job requirements displayed with (y) seem to not be updated. Did I mess up with the patch or is this normal?

2. How do I update the patch from .1 to .2? Directly to the original Rom? Or should I use the one with .1?

3. Will the save be compatible if I update the version?

Thats all for now. Thank you very much for your efforts. I will post again if I see anything else interesting in the midgame.

Edit: I was thinking that my problems with white mage, illusionist and tinkerer could be solved with mana potions. I will check it when I have some spare time. I do not even remember if I have mana potions, never bothered using items before in this game except for first quests and endgame. If they are available I will be able to buy lots of them thanks to the Thief

[Shrikesnest]

Hi, Im new here. Downloaded your rom like a week ago and I am totally hooked now (first romhack I ever played and like 5y since vanilla run). I am around lvl 22 hard run and just beat the sand ant boss. Here are my thoughts so far:

Hi! I'm glad you're enjoying yourself. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

1. You made Thief amazing, maybe too good. I loved him in ffta1 but in 2 he was just useless. I always hated using the attack command but now half my team uses strongarm instead. I also love that no class has to default attack unless silenced now.

2. Thanks to the Thief, rushing the weapon tree feels very very good. It made me focus more on early classes (that are now way way more interesting) intead of hopping all the time. I wish I had another moguri and another viera, but I am getting only nu mous...

It pleases me to know that the thief is doing its job. Just a note, which kind of units you can recruit depends on location and time of year. There's a Rumor in the pub called New Recruits that gives you hints, otherwise you can just look it up. (If you're already read the Rumor it will appear in the Clan Notes section of the Clan Info menu.) Recruiting more Viera in the early game requires you to have completed the quest called The Moon Seal. Otherwise it's just a matter of passing time at Lezaford's cottage until the time of year when Moogles and Viera are available.

3. I think that the skill that steals money is sometimes busted. You can steal ~500x3 from wild beasts but I just beat Red who was giving me ~7000x3. I am not sure if this was abusable in the original game tho, never used thief at this point.

This is a weird interaction with those particular fights. The amount of gil you steal is based on the enemy's level, so it scales throughout the game. The various color king fights are against one really high level enemy, so they give a ton of gil. It's pretty exploitable, but since those fights can't be repeated I'm not too worried about it.

4. I like how you changed combat but I feel like White mage got nerfed because of this. It does not have time to do anything early game and heal at 12 seems impossible to fit. I just unlocked holy but it costs too much mana for now to be relevant. I wish there was a smaller holy spell to fit in this class.

Yeah, the increased cost of healing spells did hit the White Mage particularly hard since that's half of their ability list. I kind like the idea of cutting Holy's MP cost and power so that it's more of a mid-range spell than a top-range one, but I'm not sure it'll work out; it's tricky to balance around the late game passive ability that cuts MP costs in half.

5. I never liked bangaa but now the one I have is very good. Slow as expected but when he gets to mele the job gets done. I just got a second one and wanna try the ranged classes. I never recruited a second bangaa in the original game.

6. Got tinkerer and illusionist super early but the skills I have cost too much mana for now. Fights are not finished but decided after 3-4 rounds. They will probably start to be relevant after I find any mana related support.

Yeah, those are definitely high MP cost job classes. The Tinker is a bit like a Summoner, except instead of doing tons of damage they inflict status conditions. They're actually really powerful; they only get to use their abilities once or twice a fight but hitting half the enemy team with Blind or the entire friendly team with Haste is so back breaking that they really only need to do it once.

Illusionist is a victim of its infinite range. The fact that you can park one in a distant corner the enemies can't reach and just spam your illusion spells means that they need to be pretty expensive. They're also heavily balanced around stuff like the Half MP passive and the Seer's Recharge. This is definitely a job that gets way stronger in the late game.

I also have some noob questions. I am sorry if this is common knowledge:

1. I see some texts changed ingame but others seem unchanged. Also job requirements displayed with (y) seem to not be updated. Did I mess up with the patch or is this normal?

The deal here is that the text editor program I'm using doesn't give me access to all of the text in the game. So I updated all of the job descriptions with the new job requirements, but unfortunately the game is drawing on some other text that I can't edit when you check job requirements in the job change menu. It's something I could probably fix if I knew more about hex editing, and it's something I definitely want to do because it's extremely frustrating. For now, you'll have to rely on the included Job Requirements text file.

2. How do I update the patch from .1 to .2? Directly to the original Rom? Or should I use the one with .1?

My recommendation is to always patch from a fresh ROM. Sometimes weird errors can accrue if you repeatedly patch the same ROM.

3. Will the save be compatible if I update the version?

Yes, it should be.

Thats all for now. Thank you very much for your efforts. I will post again if I see anything else interesting in the midgame.

Edit: I was thinking that my problems with white mage, illusionist and tinkerer could be solved with mana potions. I will check it when I have some spare time. I do not even remember if I have mana potions, never bothered using items before in this game except for first quests and endgame. If they are available I will be able to buy lots of them thanks to the Thief

Ethers are intentionally pretty rare. Also, unfortunately, they don't restore much MP on their own; this is because there is a passive ability that doubles the amount restored by healing items, so I have to balance around that. If you can get an Alchemist or Ranger with Item Lore, though, Ethers might help solve your mana problems. There's also some later-game stuff like Half MP, Recharge, Syphon, etc. that will help make MP costs easier to reach as the game goes on.

Thanks so much for all of your feedback! Please do let me know if you think of anything else or come across anything that's troubling you!

[Disith29]

Thanks for your answers! It was very helpful, I'll try to get a magick viera soon.

I am a bit confused with the patch tho. I have applied the 1.1.2 to the same vanilla rom I did with the 1.1.1 (I am a bit paranoid while storing stuff) but does not look like anything changed.
First thing I did was look for Djinn Flyssa but it still has no skills. Black Quena also teaches Zombie, Ghost and Mist's Embrace.
Maybe it does not work if I already had the item?

[Shrikesnest]

Thanks for your answers! It was very helpful, I'll try to get a magick viera soon.

I am a bit confused with the patch tho. I have applied the 1.1.2 to the same vanilla rom I did with the 1.1.1 (I am a bit paranoid while storing stuff) but does not look like anything changed.
First thing I did was look for Djinn Flyssa but it still has no skills. Black Quena also teaches Zombie, Ghost and Mist's Embrace.
Maybe it does not work if I already had the item?

Actually it looks like there was a problem with the patch. I must have accidentally uploaded the wrong file. It should be fixed now if you redownload the patch and apply the new one.

[Disith29]

Have not played yet but I applied the new patch and checked Djinn Flyssa and it now teaches Shadowstick correctly so I confirm it is the correct version now. Thank you very much .

[Bonesy]

Does this run off the European or USA version of the game? I'm pulling a XD3 invalid file error with the version of the patch posted here on the USA version.

EDIT: I forced it to patch with another patcher and the starting White Mage had no equipment on.

[anniejazz]

Also, I'm curious as to whether or not you've tried Tinkers and if you have any feedback on them in particular. I think they're the one Moogle job that's actually in a pretty good spot, but I'd love to know what the players think about it.

I love the tinker! my early game strat was to protect my tinker/fusilier mix until he could get a red spring off for the whole team. It does kinda feel like the job is carried by red spring and moogletron though, as gigantic debuff spells with no smart targeting tend to be a lot harder to use than a smaller spell from a green mage. Overall still one of my favorite classes from the hack. I think Thief and Flintlock are also in pretty good spots.

[anniejazz]

As I've been experimenting with late game builds I've started to realize the Nu mou jobs are very samey. I think this is more of a problem with the base game, but I haven't played vanilla in ages so I can't say for sure.

Scholar feels like a terrible illusionist, spending an absurd amount of mana to damage every unit, even your own, isn't great. Maybe there's some way to revamp this class? My pie in the sky idea is to make it like a nu mou version of the summoner with large area spells with smart targeting. I don't know how feasible it is to change a class that drastically though. Also study just has to go. IDC what it gets replaced by, it's just not very useful with how thieves have been changed.

Sage and Alchemist kinda blend together for me, especially since you swapped their spells around. I also am not a big fan of the transmute change. If I'm gonna go for gold drops I'm gonna grab my sniper or my fusilier/thief and get gold from long range. Maybe make it so transmute turns enemies into ethers and rarely elixers or the crystals? That'd give us a good way to farm them. And maybe sage could learn some sort of earth spell like sandstorm instead of blind, would make more sense than a random debuff spell.

I feel like Arcanist needs jesus or something. Those level whatever spells are so cheeks. I feel like this Job should be the undisputed king of giant explosive magick. Would it be possible to give it access to nightshade abilities like dimensional rift and turn this thing into the final unlock for nu mou? Also maybe it could learn blood price, I know it works with nu mou since Twiegel has it in one of the house bowen quests early on.

Also a little thought on the white mage, I do think the increase in MP costs really makes it unviable till late game. I just had my thief dodge tanking and running potions to people for healing. Honestly I'm not sure what I'd do with this one, maybe cure could be 10 MP instead, that way they can get heals off every turn, but in exchange they won't be able to save any MP up.

BTW I could have sworn blue magick was able to be magick frenzied in vanilla, but it won't let me. Is that some kind of bug? also no matter what I try, Hurdy's Hide doesn't work. Crime spree is broken as well, which is an absolute shame considering how bangin it would be. 3 loot, 3 items, and 3 gil drops? YES PLEASE.

[Shrikesnest]

As I've been experimenting with late game builds I've started to realize the Nu mou jobs are very samey. I think this is more of a problem with the base game, but I haven't played vanilla in ages so I can't say for sure.

Nu Mou are really frustratingly constrained by some things that are hard-coded into the game. They have a very limited pool of weapons available, and giving them anything else crashes the game. This combined with the fact that all of their stuff is magic-focused except for Beastmasters puts them in a really tight box. They pretty much all just cast big spells and/or bonk with sticks when they're out of MP. I really wish I could do more with them. I wanted to give Beastmasters bows soooo badly.

Scholar feels like a terrible illusionist, spending an absurd amount of mana to damage every unit, even your own, isn't great. Maybe there's some way to revamp this class? My pie in the sky idea is to make it like a nu mou version of the summoner with large area spells with smart targeting. I don't know how feasible it is to change a class that drastically though. Also study just has to go. IDC what it gets replaced by, it's just not very useful with how thieves have been changed.

I like the idea of giving the Scholar the Tinker treatment, cuz like, yeah, Scholars are a pretty dead class. And Nu Mou can only really do the huge AOE thing with Meteor currently, so they'd have at least a little bit of a niche. I'll look into if it's possible. I also like the idea of replacing or reworking Study. I'll give it some thought.

Sage and Alchemist kinda blend together for me, especially since you swapped their spells around. I also am not a big fan of the transmute change. If I'm gonna go for gold drops I'm gonna grab my sniper or my fusilier/thief and get gold from long range. Maybe make it so transmute turns enemies into ethers and rarely elixers or the crystals? That'd give us a good way to farm them. And maybe sage could learn some sort of earth spell like sandstorm instead of blind, would make more sense than a random debuff spell.

I really wish I had that fine-tuned a control over what Transmute gives you. That would be sweet. Unfortunately it's a hard-coded table. Its utility is mostly in being an instant remove effect that just gives you a little bonus on top. I agree it's one of their more niche spells.

I'm not against replacing Blind, since it is a bit of a weird outlier on the Sage's spell list. It's just hard to find a spell that the Nu Mou don't already learn to replace it with. I wish I could just put Quake or Sandstorm on a weapon (I really, really want to put Blue Magic on weapons) but they're not indexed for it. I don't really have an Earth spell to teach them besides Poison or Bio, and those are the Alchemist's thing.

I feel like Arcanist needs jesus or something. Those level whatever spells are so cheeks. I feel like this Job should be the undisputed king of giant explosive magick. Would it be possible to give it access to nightshade abilities like dimensional rift and turn this thing into the final unlock for nu mou? Also maybe it could learn blood price, I know it works with nu mou since Twiegel has it in one of the house bowen quests early on.

Unfortunately I can't put Nightshade stuff on weapons to learn, because that is an incredibly sweet idea. I really wish I could do that now. I agree that their level-based spells are kinda junk even with buffs, but their gravity-based spells, Drain, and Syphon are all really good. This is another case where I really wish I could just make entirely custom spells or change the animations on skills. What I might be able to do is just turn them into normal spells e.g. Dark, some kind of Haste, and Shadowflare. And that I could work with. I have to check to see if those weird targeting modes are hard-coded into the abilities or something I can switch off.

Giving them Blood Price is kind of terrifying. I mean, I kinda wanna do it, because that sounds rad. But Blood Price is extremely broken, and I have to be really careful about what spells the Viera can learn because they have access to it. I feel like giving it to the Nu Mou, who have access to stuff like Meteor, Gigaflare, and Drain, would be utterly insane.

...but I'm still going to try it out and test. I could put it on some late-game enemies to make it sorta fair. And it would retroactively make Tweigel make sense.

Also a little thought on the white mage, I do think the increase in MP costs really makes it unviable till late game. I just had my thief dodge tanking and running potions to people for healing. Honestly I'm not sure what I'd do with this one, maybe cure could be 10 MP instead, that way they can get heals off every turn, but in exchange they won't be able to save any MP up.

My current attitude on this is that anything that heals has to cost more than 10 MP, so that it can't just be spammed every turn. I really want to give healing abilities to the enemies, but if healing is cheap enough to spam it makes fights extremely frustrating and boring, and kinda breaks the enemy AI besides.

I agree this kinda wrecks the White Mage but I'm not really sure what to do about it. I'm not super happy with the Arise spell being in the game at all, so maybe I could swap it out with a different spell? I'm just not sure what thematically fits the White Mage, would plug the hole in their early-game usability, and wouldn't just make them a better Black Mage. The other thing I could do is, say, drop Holy to 18 MP and reduce its power commensurately, so that you'd have a decent attack to use every other turn. I'm worried about this, though, because I'd either have to substantially weaken Holy or deal with the fact that you could cast it every turn after learning Half MP. I also feel like making the White Mage an attack bot works against what they're supposed to be about. I suppose I could maybe teach them Aurablast instead? But that would be redundant with the Fighter; I try not to double up like that.

But I probably have to do something about them, because they're pretty clunky right now.

BTW I could have sworn blue magick was able to be magick frenzied in vanilla, but it won't let me. Is that some kind of bug? also no matter what I try, Hurdy's Hide doesn't work. Crime spree is broken as well, which is an absolute shame considering how bangin it would be. 3 loot, 3 items, and 3 gil drops? YES PLEASE.

I think the only Blue Magick that works with Magick Frenzy is Quake. And I honestly have no idea what's going on with Hide, Crime Spree, and Jackpot. I'm trying to fix them but they're just not working and I have no idea what I broke.

(Also, Crime Spree is just one piece of loot, one item, and one double gil drop. I can't actually cram any more loot into the ability than that in the editor.)

[anniejazz]

Dang it really sucks to hear the editors are so limited. I wouldn't have guessed considering how much you've been able to squeeze out of it with the tinker and thief reworks.