FFT Monster Tactics

[Emmy]

This hack brings a new twist to gameplay: Human population is dying out, and monsters have taken over the land.  Many humans also mysteriously turn into monsters as the plot progresses.  Ramza and Agrias are the only 2 permanent playable humans.  It is a challenge hack, in the sense that after a certain point in the game, my imagination is no longer limited by "this will be too hard" and instead is whatever interesting thing I think of, so long as it's determined to be a fair challenge. 

Total changes are far too much to list (also would include too many spoilers), but a basic run down:

1.  Humans can't be hired anymore.  Monsters are recruited via random battles (they appear as guests and join automatically, provided that you end the battle before the guest unit crystalizes).

2.  Monsters themselves are rebalanced to be a valuable addition to the party.  They have much better stats, multiple innates (innate status, r/s/m, immunities, etc), and an actual moveset (4 moves on most).

3.  Every encounter remade.  These remakes include enemy only classes, general shenanigans, etc.

4.  Tooltips improved to list relevant flags, innates on anything, etc.  Bar repurposed to be a beginner school/in game readme.

**Edit**  For those of you interested, you can now get it here:

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2921/

[Jumza]

spoiler: Beginning to Sweegy Woods

I've decided that in my downtime I'll be doing this. I don't want there to be too many parts to it though (because that takes way more effort), so I'll be going through it in large parts (like this 1 hour one).

Pretty good so far! I'm looking forward to expanding the variety of the monsters I have though, I want more choices!

I tried to change the resolution on the video to make it better quality, but I ended up with black bars on either side. Next part I'll continue to mess with it.

Also I believe that you've changed Delita and Algus' starting jobs to something other than their own, because they have access to duplicate skillsets for their base jobs (as you can see in the video at some point).

EDIT:

spoiler: Post Dorter to Cellar of Sand Mouse

Camtasia borked and I lost my Dorter footage. Which sucks because it was very frustrating and it's kind of amusing to watch me start over 3 or 4 times. Eventually I caught a new chocobo and did the battle (though Jo Mama ended up crystalizing, so he was short lived and never got to be seen in a video :/).

[Eternal]

I started playing this and it's really fun so far! Some things I've noticed. Thus far I just started Chapter II.

CHAPTER I NOTES:

-Agrias' Holy Knight job name doesn't display in the menu.
-Pisco Demons and Juravises seem pretty OP.
-Pisco Demons don't have updated formation sprites.
-Aqua Rake's description is retained from Vanilla except for Range/Vert/Etc.
-Tentacle should probably be flagged as Direct.
-Goblins seem rather useless.
-Eye Gouge's description neglects to mention that it also inflicts Confuse/Immobilize/Etc.
-Defensive tactics don't really seem to be emphasized- everything feels like one giant damage race.
-Your battles are waaaaay too Time Bomb heavy.
-Algus being vulnerable to Poison = yay~

EDIT: You may want to switch Holy Sword's statuses back to Separate or Random, I forget which it was. Holy Sword, with a status set as All or Nothing, will ALWAYS make that proc land, meaning Split Punch's Death will always proc.

[Emmy]

spoiler: Beginning to Sweegy Woods

I've decided that in my downtime I'll be doing this. I don't want there to be too many parts to it though (because that takes way more effort), so I'll be going through it in large parts (like this 1 hour one).

Pretty good so far! I'm looking forward to expanding the variety of the monsters I have though, I want more choices!

I tried to change the resolution on the video to make it better quality, but I ended up with black bars on either side. Next part I'll continue to mess with it.

Also I believe that you've changed Delita and Algus' starting jobs to something other than their own, because they have access to duplicate skillsets for their base jobs (as you can see in the video at some point).

EDIT:

spoiler: Post Dorter to Cellar of Sand Mouse

Camtasia borked and I lost my Dorter footage. Which sucks because it was very frustrating and it's kind of amusing to watch me start over 3 or 4 times. Eventually I caught a new chocobo and did the battle (though Jo Mama ended up crystalizing, so he was short lived and never got to be seen in a video :/).

Large videos are fine, thank you for recording.

Delita/Algus were turned into regular squires (not sure if i need their job slots for special enemies later), but it's nice to know that their vanilla skillset slots appear to be hardcoded in and probably the job slot too, so I'll use that slot last/only if necessary.

Chocobo riding is just as it is in vanilla.  Sorry

I started playing this and it's really fun so far! Some things I've noticed. Thus far I just started Chapter II.

CHAPTER I NOTES:

-Agrias' Holy Knight job name doesn't display in the menu.
-Pisco Demons and Juravises seem pretty OP.
-Pisco Demons don't have updated formation sprites.
-Aqua Rake's description is retained from Vanilla except for Range/Vert/Etc.
-Tentacle should probably be flagged as Direct.
-Goblins seem rather useless.
-Eye Gouge's description neglects to mention that it also inflicts Confuse/Immobilize/Etc.
-Defensive tactics don't really seem to be emphasized- everything feels like one giant damage race.
-Your battles are waaaaay too Time Bomb heavy.
-Algus being vulnerable to Poison = yay~

EDIT: You may want to switch Holy Sword's statuses back to Separate or Random, I forget which it was. Holy Sword, with a status set as All or Nothing, will ALWAYS make that proc land, meaning Split Punch's Death will always proc.

-Agrias' Holy Knight job name doesn't display in the menu. -Pisco Demons don't have updated formation sprites. -- Not sure what you mean by these 2 comments.

-Eye Gouge's description neglects to mention that it also inflicts Confuse/Immobilize/Etc. -You may want to switch Holy Sword's statuses back to Separate or Random, I forget which it was. Holy Sword, with a status set as All or Nothing, will ALWAYS make that proc land, meaning Split Punch's Death will always proc. -- Bugs, probably caused by trying to free up room for other moves I wanted to make/not changing them elsewhere as I should have.  Will be fixed in the next version. 

**Edit** ROFL just checked Eye Gouge, looks like it currently is casting Roulette's effect. <_<  Just fixed it.

-Your battles are waaaaay too Time Bomb heavy. -Defensive tactics don't really seem to be emphasized- everything feels like one giant damage race. -- A few early battles will change anyway to better reflect what later game battles are like.  I just need to decide what to put in the early/mid game battles that I do decide to change, and test them to make sure they're at an appropriate difficulty level for the portion of the game they're in. Difficulty in early/mid game is going up for a more stable curve, mostly due to the current game's sharp difficulty increase at late ch2/2nd sharp increase at Velius and the loleasy maps that seem out of place like Goland Coal City.

Balance issues - I'm not going to OCD about balance for a mod for a game where the original creators thought Math Skill was a good idea, but at the same time I am aware that some things seem better than others overall and balance could always be better.  A lot of this has to do with some moves being universally useful (revival, healing, positive statuses), while other moves are more niche (silence only being good vs. things that are vulnerable to silence and are hampered by it, etc).  I am in the process of tweaking things, mostly to provide more interesting options overall and to make different strategies viable.  Goblins are likely to get a buff at some point (no one uses them right now, and I've only had specific use for the 3rd tier's niche for one late game battle so far), just need to decide what exactly to do with them.  Pisco/Juravis were absolute utter trash in earlier versions of the game, glad they seem good now; but going to see how it plays out with other players/into the later portion of the game before deciding on what/if any changes to make.

-Algus being vulnerable to Poison = yay~ -- I've done this on purpose, along with 2 other early bosses, due to 1. their classes get used as mooks for later game bosses, 2. I want players to try things they didn't do in vanilla since it's still early game.  Might change this, might put in a random other boss into mid game who is vulnerable to poison instead, who knows?  Late game is mostly bosses due to all the "assassinate x" missions, and i know I need to find a way to transition into this a bit better.

Thank you for playing/commentary.

[Eternal]

I'm at Lionel now, and I actually kinda rescind what I said about Goblins. They hit pretty hard and aren't really bad, but they need a way to access the normal Attack command to best utilize Dual Wield. Perhaps with more Move/Speed/Evasion, they could fill a niche role of being a pseudo-glass cannon.

In regards to Agrias (and hume Mustadio), the Holy Knight/Engineer names just don't display in battle under their name or in the menu. In regards to Pisco Demons, the formation sprite in the menu isn't the same as their in-battle sprite.

Some Chapter II Notes (I'm up to Lionel Castle Gafgarion):

-Leg Aim seems to completely outclass Arm Aim.
-I want more mods with Tentacle Queen Ovelia.
-I got a Platinum Sword from a random fight, I think Araguay Woods (maybe Zirekile) and it completely crushes everything. I haven't tried it with Agrias yet.
-Speaking of Agrias, I'm disappointed that she isn't a Lamia. You jerk.
-And on the topic of Lamias, the Lamia in the Save Mustadio fight was annoying. Not so much hard, just annoying. It's fast and flat-out wouldn't die. Just felt like a damage sponge and not so much a challenge, unlike many of your other enemies.
-Silence actually saved my ass at Barius Hill. Screw Merton. To death.
-Can Woodmen get a slight buff? I feel like instead of Quake it needs a healing skill. Other than Medic Chocobos, there's no real good healer yet. Baatezus (or whatever they're called) are probably the best so far, but fill far too many roles (save for buffing/debuffing). I would like to see Quake traded off for Spirit of Life or even just Cure.
-I love the idea of Gafgarion as a Dark Elemental. I need to find a way to use that somewhere.

Ultimately, I'm having a lot of fun but am getting really frustrated with certain fights. I'm hoping the difficulty evens out, not because it's tough, but because my options always feel so limited compared to the enemy. I'll have more feedback once I beat Dark Elemental Gaffy and Queklain (who I'm dreading)!

[Emmy]

**Version 1.18**

1.  Swordskill proc bug (where some abilities always proc and some don't) fixed.  Eye Gouge now sets Berserk + Darkness.  Blind bug (where Blind sets Roulette's effect) fixed.

2.  Some status effect accuracies tweaked. 

3.  Added bar entries on Reaction abilities (must start a new chapter to see this change).

4.  Nuclear bombs lose Ignite, gain Shock.  Succubus lose Ignite, gain Sleep.  Ignite is now a lot rarer in general as a result.

5.  Several battle changes.  (some nerfs, some buffs, some just variety)

6.  Ha-Naga gets lower HP and Damage Reduction.

Patch: http://jmp.sh/4qGTgfY

[Jumza]

spoiler: Thieves Fort

Fun times! Got a mystic chocobo after the battle too. Also updated to 1.18

Edit:

spoiler: Lenalia Plateau

I get stomped, but then saved by some surprise conversation. I lost a few monsters in this fight but I caught new ones after, so it works out. I imagine that in battle gauntlets I'll want to fill up my formation screen so that I can go through with a full party and not have to worry about monsters crystalizing.

[Emmy]

**Version 1.19**

1.  Sprite limit glitch in Dorter 1 fixed.

2.  Pillow Fight now properly flagged as magic, no longer ignores defense.

3.  Zombie enemy added to Poeskas lake and several randoms.  They are physically offensive with several proc moves.  They use a recolor of the vanilla Priest sprite that makes them look undead.

4.  Dragon breath weapon on standard elemental dragon (Fire, Ice, Lightning) is now a non-elemental physical attack with a proc corresponding to their element.  This makes them more useful vs. things that resist elemental damage.

5.  Poeskas Lake encounter in progress!

Patch: http://jmp.sh/HqfyWFq

I get stomped, but then saved by some surprise conversation. I lost a few monsters in this fight but I caught new ones after, so it works out. I imagine that in battle gauntlets I'll want to fill up my formation screen so that I can go through with a full party and not have to worry about monsters crystalizing.

When I test story battles, I consider it a reset if any of my units crystallize.  For a blind run on gauntlets it's probably best to fill the formation with a variety of different types of things, keeping in mind universal utility moves such as revival and healing, fight specific utility such as stat breaks and dispel, and offensive capabilities.  It is possible to not have what you need even so, which is why i highly recommend multiple saves in case you need to backtrack. Randoms aren't fully tested (in the sense of every combination of everything that could appear there), but several people have requested tougher randoms so the random #2's and upwards have several special enemy classes and higher levels.

[Jumza]

spoiler: Fovoham Plains

This one took a few tries. I thought it would be so much easier but Wiegraf is a huge pain. He does 208 damage to Delita in one hit! He doesn't even need to have 2 swords, one is enough to murder our poor peasant friend.

I really thought that would go faster and I'd get to finish chapter 1 this weekend, but it'll have to wait till later.

[Emmy]

**Version 1.20**

1. Fixed a couple bugs in ch 2 where Agrias/Mustadio sometimes appear without class names.

2. Poeskas Lake battle finished. It's about as hard as Finath River imo.

3. Elmdor and the Assassins have updated classes. Like in vanilla, they're good enemies to steal from. But their capabilities are now increased... Good luck. ^_^

4. Nuclear bomb at Zeakden now properly flagged as immortal.

5. Unit quotes! These aren't fully complete yet, but now the recruitable unit from pathetic randoms sometimes say something if you tooltips their name in formation. This means their names are preset (if you don't like these names, as always there's the Name Change office). Some of these quotes are serious, some not so much. Some are hints to the player.

Patch: http://jmp.sh/B4ddStp

[Jumza]

spoiler: End of Chapter 1

[youtube]NXNry0_EO9o[youtube]

And that's the end of chapter 1. I hope I have enough monster diversity to beat up the guys in the Dorter 2 fight.

[Emmy]

**Version 1.21**

1.  More unit quotes added.

2.  Ability rebalances.  Main purpose of these is to remove garbage that I know no one in their right mind ever uses (like demi and the tier 1 wizard spells), to reduce redundancy (does summoner really need 12 spells that deal damage as its only effect?), to make the skills themselves more balanced or interesting in the context of the mod, and to fulfill niches that are currently not being filled.  The following changes have been made so far:

a.  Wizard: Loses Fire/Ice/Bolt 1.  Remaining basic elementals renamed.  Nanoflare is now instant, still has low damage output as per the description.  Gains Giga Flare - non-elemental, slow, single target, top tier damage spell.  All spells are reflectable.

b.  Summoner: Loses Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, Salamander, Lich.  SPELLS NO LONGER SMART TARGET!  What this means is all spells now hit both enemies and allies, so positioning and/or party composition are now important.  Damage output is now comparable/slightly greater than high tier wizard elementals.  Moogle buffed to be worth using.  All spells ignore reflect.

c.  Tree group: First tier loses Quake, gains Full Bloom (AOE PA based heal).  Second tier has Quake/Odd Soundwave.  Third tier now has Natural cure in place of Revive, along with Full Bloom and Good Bracelet (randomly inflicting positive statuses).  MP growth/multipiers adjusted on 2nd/3rd tier.  What this means:  First and third tier are now slow/immobile/bulky healers with no offensive presence whatsoever outside of their physical attack.  Third tier outclasses the first, but is a unique character in ch 4.  Second tier can still revive, but is a considerably more offensive character and is now attractive to the AI for formulas such as Ignite and difference.

d.  Dragons:  Physical attack is now range 1/vertical 3, PAM -10.

e.  Smart targeting removed from Aqua Rake, Bio, and a couple other attacks.

f.  Morbol: 2nd tier loses Reraise, gains Good Bracelet.

g.  A couple items received better procs.

Patch: http://jmp.sh/Y1OuGj4

[Emmy]

**Version 1.22**

1. Assassins + Elmdor/Zalera encounters added. Elmdor is relatively easy to assassinate if you don't want to steal from him/his squad, very difficult to do the full steal from. Zalera is one of those weird hard to balance bosses. If I give him too much in terms of AOE moves, he easily becomes the hardest battle in the game. But if given less, he's probably the easiest boss in ch 4. I settled on a difficulty level somewhere around where Velius is - easier than most of ch 4 but still appropriate for the part of the game it's in. Hey, at least he's not pathetic like in vanilla!

2. Adramelk concept up. Battle is hard - the implications of how the AI treats his innates along with the nature of the fight in general turns it into a weird battle in general. And yes - you still get to beat Dycedarg's elder brother before the fight!

3. Due to some oddities with how the game treats reaction abilities triggered by physical moves, Squids are given Barrier as their 2nd priority move (over Fear), and Skeletons are given Fear as their 2nd priority move (over Barrier). Can anyone confirm why the game seems to be triggering the physical trigger reaction abilities as first priority moves, regardless of what order I place them in? I will likely make other similar changes because of this.

4. Angel of Death/Ghost of Fury enemies added to a few random encounters (non-???).

Patch: http://jmp.sh/fcGs2qn

[Emmy]

**Version 1.23**

1.  Squid group given Counter Magic as a secondary ability over Barrier.  No clue what is going on with Barrier but it seems to be incompatible with any other reaction ability.

2.  Meliadoul's moveset changed.  She is now a tad easier but a lot more interesting.

3.  Murond Holy Place sequence made.  First battle can be tricky.  Second battle is a regular assassination mission, a tad tougher than the others that have been in the game so far.  Zalbag is unique.  Due to the unique nature of the fight, movesets might be tweaked in future versions to guarantee that it's a fair challenge.

4.  Blackguard, Eladrin, Monarch enemies added to random battles.  Generic Eladrin and Monarch use the Male Squire and Female Time Mage sprites for now as filler since I don't have a unique sprite for them.

Patch: http://jmp.sh/tlqes1i

[Emmy]

1.  Fixed a couple mispointed sprites and wrong side enemies in a couple random battles.  Notably: A Cthulhu Priest that mistakenly had a Time Mage sprite, a +15 lv tree mistakenly a guest, stuff like that.

2.  Mad King enemy added to a couple random battles.  This is a joke enemy that is akin to playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey with explosives...

3.  Zalbag encounter is complete!  This development fixes his unique AI from vanilla/other mods that makes him abuseable in a rather interesting way that you'll have to see for yourself..

4.  Kletian's zodiac changed to Cancer.

5.  Book Storage 4 complete.  It's more hilarious than it is hard...

6.  Taiju now has 6 moves, new skillset replaces previously buggy moves it had before.  There is a visual bug where viewing it in status makes it appear to have things it doesn't actually have, but when you use the act command it disappears.  No clue what is causing this bug.  However since I figured out how to do this and the bug is purely visual, additional moves on some of the more mediocre monsters is now an option for future versions of the game.

Patch: http://jmp.sh/LYMOwUW

[gatebuster202]

Emmy, is this patch up to date in the last post? I planned on playing through the patch tomorrow. Well as far as I can get anyway.

[Emmy]

Most up to date versions can be found via my website: https://monstertactics.wordpress.com/

It's on 1.31 as of last update. 

[Repent]

Hello all, i recently started playing monster tactics v.1.42 and noticed some small issues. First the random battles are not random at all. In fact i only find and exact same species of monster with the exact same name. Also i am at  the woods battle and cant seem to win. I am an avid fftactics player and have dreams of doing something like this one day, but just wanted to point out some small flaws i have ran across. Other than that, this is a GREAT idea and i will continue to play. Thank you for this and please keep up the good work.!!!

[Emmy]

All battles are set to have the same species of monsters recruitable in the battle. By that I mean, Fireworks are only recruitable in Sweegy East, nowhere else. The "pathetic" battles (Random #1 in Patcher) have all been set to give a set name to that recruited unit (so that you can tooltips the name in Formation for a quote), and have a max of 4 enemy units at party lv -random. Since you are still in ch 1, you will only see pathetic randoms.  These randoms are included so that the player can always find a spot where they could get an easy recruit or grind for abilities, while the later randoms are for those who desire more challenging randomly generated battles.

Sweegy Woods is the first battle where the difficulty starts to pick up.  First 3 battles are easy on purpose because the player can't actually prepare for them in any way, and still needs to get used to mechanics.  Difficulty of the game as a whole is harder than most mods.  Don't feel discouraged! It's meant to be a challenge.

[LaithXero]

So! I've been doing this for a while. Might as well share it. Hope you enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnAy229cjNg&index=1&list=PLO4PtwdL3Wauw7OvAcDnsVfonChsqiAiE

So far, it's up to Rofel in Orbonne, with sidequests such as the Colliery, Nelveska, and Zarghidas done.