New Mod – Ansehelm's FFT Expansion Open Beta! (PSX)

[Ansehelm]

Edit: 4/4/22 - New update

Hey y'all!
So I've been working on this project, on and off, for quite some time.  It's a vanilla mod, which was originally heavily inspired by the old 1.3, but has deviated substantially therefrom, and draws inspiration from a variety of other mods, such as Celdia's patch and FFT+, with a generous dose of my own imaginings.  The main draw of the mod is that it adds a plethora of new content much as an "expansion pack" would in other game series. It features a wide variety of invitable new characters and monsters, and the addition of many new items, many of which do more than was possible in vanilla.  While it by no means complete and polished, I've got a fairly workable, fully playable version of the mod here and ready for some initial playtesting.

spoiler: Monster Reference:

https://ibb.co/pLJDK8P

spoiler: Item Sets Bonuses:

https://ibb.co/sg9nTLt

spoiler: Basic things to know about the mod:

-It is built on FFHacktics' The Lion War mod, and as such contains most of TLW's content (although Ashley Riot has been replaced).  It employs many of the "latest and greatest" developments in FFT, such as Glain's Bench hack, and Pride's excellent Item Attribute rewrite, and Xifanie's Synth Shop.

-It is intended to be fairly high difficulty overall, although this is somewhat tempered by powerful units and items that become available to the player.  In particular, battles involving shrine knights may be quite difficult.

-Monsters are generally stronger and more useful than in vanilla.  Especially the later tier monsters such as behemoths and dragonkin have excellent stats and multiple strong R/S/Ms.  Monsters such as chocobos are now more useful as transportation due to increased move stats, and the removal of the Move+3 Ability from most human units. 

-Enemy units in all encounters are around the player's highest level, and most of them have decent abilities and R/S/Ms to make for challenging battles.

-Many of the exploits that made Vanilla absurdly easy have been tweaked or removed.  For example, you can no longer raise BR/FA sky high (although events can increase brave slightly, as in Vanilla), Blade Grasp is not available to most units, and the enemy will target your transparent units.

-Money is much more scarce, and you likely won't become a Gillionare, but rather will have to spend judiciously, steal, or sell old items to thrive financially.  The "bonus gil" reward based on level has been entirely removed, and the gil reward for a battle depends on the units in it.  Monsters nearly always seem to lack purses, and will yield no gil, except in a few rare "monster hunt" battles where a particularly ferocious beast nets a sizeable bounty.  Human units generally carry small amounts of gil, although thieves, sky pirates, shrine knights and nobles have been known to carry fat wallets from time to time.  This does not scale with level, so a Lv99 Squire won't yield more money than a Lv10.  Propositions are the easiest way to make money 

-It introduces many new monsters, some of which can be invited, and others which cannot.  In order to make room for some of the new classes, I had to consolidate the old Goblin, Morbol, Uribo, and Panther classes.  These units still exist in the game as single units, but cannot be tamed (honestly, who wants a big slimy Morbol anyway?)

-Although it is intended to be reasonably well balanced, balance is not necessarily the highest priority at all times.

spoiler: Missable Content:

There is a large amount of new units and items in the game, and not all of them will fall into the player's lap as a matter of course. Here are the unit/items that are possible to miss:

-There is an adventurer who can join your party if you find him in a rare battle approaching Zigolis Swamp from the west.

-A Kreuzritter with a unique name can be invited at the first Zalmo Battle.  There are other Kreuzritters in the game, but this is currently the only one that can be invited.  The Kreuzritter has an ability with a higher hit rate than the standard Invite (very low hit rate in this mod), so I recommend getting him to make inviting other special characters easier.  This unit is very powerful, but has very limited movement, unless mounted on a chocobo or lesser dragon.

-The library at Orbonne holds many artifacts besides just the zodiac stone.  One of the Rune Knights in the first battle can be invited
-The 2nd library battle (with Izlude) features a guest unit (Valkyrie), but also has 2 valuable move-find items: The first is in the corner near where your units start, and the other item is right in front of the doorway in the opposite corner of the map. 
-The third library Battle (Wiegraf) features a generic knight that has a special skillset in the 2nd slot.  He can be invited and can change jobs, but never replace his second skillset, because you won't be able to get it back. 

-Bed Desert holds two legendary artifacts buried alongside the ancient palace within the sand. 

-The apanda family can now be invited and lay eggs, and there are 3 classes.  They are inviteable in their typical Celia/Lede battles, and in some rare battles.

-The Byblos in the Elidibs battle has been replaced with a new guest unit that can join.

spoiler: Known Bugs:

-Zalera does not float in his battle (TLW legacy issue)

-Some abilities are used both by humans and monsters, and sometimes the monster animation isn't a good match.  IIRC there is an ASM that fixes this that I will likely apply (Medium priority), but for now, if you see a monster that has a somewhat wonky animation while using an ability, don't report it as a bug.

-At least on one recent runthrough, many plot events feature units walking in place at the end of the event,  instead of standing still (high priority to fix this).

-In general, some of the sprites have mild imperfections.  For example, the Tonberry sprite (provided on the FFhacktics site) has a few pixels floating above the unit in its dead pose.  Other units have somewhat wonky singing/charging animations, or similar extra pixels that display during certain actions.  The Giant Spider does not yet have a portrait graphic, and other sprites that I created may not necessarily live up to the highest artistic ideals.  If you see something like this, know that I am generally aware and will be working on it, and don't report it as a "bug" - save that for larger issues that affect gameplay.

spoiler: Known Limitations:

I don't think these are bugs per se, but there are things I'm mindful of that may be improved in the future:
-Eventing/introductions have not been done for several characters, including the Royal Cavalier, Wolf of Mibu, and the Yuguo Woods guest. As of now, they join your party without any backstory or explanation, but I will likely add some exposition to this in the future. 

-Although this hack is built using The Lion War as a base, it does not employ the extra job hack, due to conflicts with other ASMs.

spoiler: Hints:

-Propositions are the way.  Special units can go on propositions, and they are the easiest ways to make money, and to get JP without grinding.

-The Unit Bench is useful not only for breeding monsters and having more characters in your party, it is also useful if any character in your party (besides Ramza) is overlevelled relative to the rest of your party.  Nearly all enemy levels are based off the highest unit in your party, but will not count your high level units that are Benched.  Just be sure to spend all possible JP before benching, since units will lose all unspent JP in the Bench.

Onion Knights are very difficult to unlock, but have excellent growths, can equip nearly every item, and have strong support abilities.

spoiler: Credits

The Lion War Team (TLW Resources 1.06 were used). Here are the credits:
TLW Staff
----------

Elric
Attack.out Rebuild, Spreadsheet & GUI
Worldmap Rebuild
WotL Event Additions & Fixes
Mod Organization
Vanilla Event Fixes and Jumps
ASM Setup, Application & Testing
Sound Novel fixes and Implimentation
Bugtesting

RavenofRazgriz
Initial Attack.out Rebuild, Spreadsheet & GUI
Initial Worldmap Rebuild
Sidequest Changes & WotL Implimentation

Xifanie
ASM - Altima Teleport
ASM - Event Instruction Upgrade Hack
ASM - Extra Abilities Effects Hack
ASM - Map 120 Edits
ASM - Unit Restriction & Guests in Randoms
New Game Plus Work (not yet complete)
Squashing some bugs

Angel/Toshiko
De-WotLize Dialogue in WotL Event Ports
Translated & Fixed Sound Novel Images
Title Screen & Lead-in frames from WotL Movie to Title Screen

Pride
ASM - Rumor Edits
ASM - ARH Lite - TLW Edition

Choto
ASM - 1E4 & 1E5 Become Adeptness & Sturdy
ASM - Barrage & Weapon Strike Rewrite
ASM - Extra Generic Class

Glain
ASM - Bravestory Fix
ASM - UWEntries

Twinees
Sprite Fixes & Edits

Valkirst
New Ashley Riot Sprite

FFMaster
WotL Opening & Intro Movie Ports

Nyzer
WotL Event Fixes

Celdia
Allowing merge of her ISIA patch for Consolidation.

Retrotypes
Several event fixes.

Bugtesters
Nyzer
HebrewToYou
Blue
Ansehelm
NinjaWeazel
Retrotypes

Also uses ASMS by Glain, Xifanie, Emmy, Choto, Pride, RavenofRagriz, and others (I will double check and add).
Image Credits:

Werewolf
Kagebunji, Twinees, Nippon Ichi Software

Wolf
Wolfran

Lady Frimelda
Zozma, Twinees, Smash

Cecil Dark Knight
CidIII Mando

Alucard
Kyousukeee, Smash

Cavalier, Male
Smash

Cannoneer
Jon, Smash, (help from Mav, Jimmyjw88, Kagebunji, Smash)

Tonberry
Kagebunji, Square-Enix

Titan
Kagebunji, Square-Enix

Elidibs
Zozma, Luiakyn

Viking Female
Lijj

Agrias (Ponytail)
Lydyn, Zozma

Tamara
Zozma

Dragon-man
Conman

Tortoise
Kagebunji, Square-Enix

Lamia
Kagebunji, Square-Enix, Smash, Mav, Twinee

Male Rogue
R999, Lijj

Male Samurai
Lijj

Female Berserker
Twinees

Succubus
Kagebunji, Twinees

Blue Mage Male
Kagebunji, Mando

Flan
Choto, Lijj

Frankensprites()
Anji Sprite based on Zozma's Berserker Sprite
Panther Knight portrait based on Lijj's Wolf Knight Portrait.

Title Screen Art by Puruco

Bugtesters for FFT Expansion:
Aiolon

Feel free to chip in with your impressions, critiques, comments, bug reports and so forth. I will probably see this thread at least every 2-3 days, at least initially.

[Aiolon]

Hello there. I downloaded your mod and i have finished chapter 1.
Here is what i have to share so far.

First of all: Congratulations. I apreciate a vanilla mod that goes beyond the typical rebalancing and makes use of more complex tools and ASMs. Also, i applaud you for messing with the monstrous bitch that it is the ENTD.

i enjoyed it... most of it. I have read that you are aware of many bugs and that you are not planning to make adjustments to the balance. That is fine. It is your patch. But i'm stil going to leave my personal comments and some of my experiences as well as some bugs that i ran into.

About Balance:

spoiler

Okay. this is what i think, please do not take it personal.
I understand that you intended the thing to be more difficult. but im going to the point. Balance is a disaster.

you mentioned its not intended to be a balanced patch so that is alright. but while some battles are pretty easy (all battles where you have to defeat the boss are particularly easy) other battles are beyond ridiculous on how unfair they are.

The first battles were really long. Squires are very powerful. instant Regen, Instant raise skill with high success%, Instant massive heal all of these without MP costs. it was ok at first but it is so tedious to have to constantly pile on a dead body so it doesn't get revived instantly by the enemies because it really feels like every one can revive with either wish (Squire) or phoenix down (Chemist) this was particularly annoying if you wanted to have an enemy turn into a crystal or treasure chest, cause 1 mistake and boom, they are back alive.

The woods are incredibly hard. all the enemies are faster than you (heck, the dogs attack twice before your guys have finished their round), they have more range than you, deal way more damage than you (Guaranted 2 shot), have way more HP than you and the bombs in particular are pure bullshit.
Unless you spammed the heck out of mandalia plains random battles the woods battle is almost unwinnable. none of the other fights took more than 2 tries but this one took me like 6 and i only won cause of the RNG.

The game becomes more balanced for the player as you progress and unlock new jobs and new "Cheap tactics" Steal heart is particularly overpowered considering almost every enemy can 1 shot your guys. knights are particularly overpowered in terms of damage.
i had to cheese my way to victory by having 2 wizards learn Mjollnir and equipped them with a thunder wand... easy 120+ dmg for a lv 10 unit.
let units drop treasure chests or steal from them and get a flail then proceed to hit people for 80+ damage with 100% chance to hit. things like those that pretty much killed the whole difficulty thing and the game quickly became a race to one shot each other.
I kid you not. I charmed the wizard on the Algus battle at fort Zeakden. Ramza went in turn 1 and charmed her. her turn begins and charges a spell. she finishes the charge, ICY METEOR. proceeds to 1 shot Algus for 200+ damage and win the battle instantly. Here is where i dropped the game for now.

so TLDR
First half of chapter 1: Everyone revives everyone and it becomes a race to see who can revive death party members faster (Squire is OP)
The Woods Battle: Insanely hard and almost unwinnable unless you grind.
Second half of chapter 1: Everyone 1-2 Shots everyone and it becomes a race to see who can 1 shoot the oposing team faster. battles are lost or won extremely fast to the point where everytime i lost it was a full party wipe. not even 1 of my units turned into a crystal. the battle pretty much ended before that happened.

I really liked some aspects of the game such as the low cash grinding and some jobs and equipment look pretty interesting. but when it comes to balance it left a bittersweet experience for me.

Here is the list of Bugs i found through chapter 1. you are probably aware of some of these.

- Poison Knife inflicts Blindness instead of Poison
- Monsters reaction skills will not be previewed when you target them. this one is particularly annoying. workaround is to read their description
- Found a book weapon called Art of War at the woods via Move find Item. Description says it can be equipped to wizard and priest but it cannot be equipped by these jobs.
- Cupid Strike says it inflicts charm, Instead, it lowers the target's Bravery.
- Algus comes equipped with 2 Crossbows at Fort Zeakden but only attacks with one of them (Probably forgot to check 2 swords for the crossbow)

[Ansehelm]

Hey, thanks for trying it out, and for taking the time to respond.

and that you are not planning to make adjustments to the balance.

To clarify, my statement to that effect was largely to pre-empt demands from entitled players who have little idea of the work that goes into making a mod.  While my overall concept of balance (which is not fully revealed until all the little details are worked out) is unlikely to change, there will be many small changes that I will make to the mod before I consider it to be fully in line with my vision.  So let's look at what we've got, piece by piece. 

The first battles were really long. Squires are very powerful. instant Regen, Instant raise skill with high success%, Instant massive heal all of these without MP costs. it was ok at first but it is so tedious to have to constantly pile on a dead body so it doesn't get revived instantly by the enemies because it really feels like every one can revive with either wish (Squire) or phoenix down (Chemist) this was particularly annoying if you wanted to have an enemy turn into a crystal or treasure chest, cause 1 mistake and boom, they are back alive.

I agree that squires have too many strong abilities without enough of a cost.  On the one hand, abilities like wish are extremely useful, and almost necessary for the player to have easy access to, since it's an alternative to phoenix downs early on when you can't always afford to drop the cash for 4 or 5 in a single battle.  On the other hand, I know that it's annoying when the enemy has the same recourse.  A partial retooling of the Squire abilities is in the works, although I don't want to go too far, since I've increased the squire level required for knight.  The easiest solution is that I'll probably increase the cost of some of their abilities, add a mana cost to their heal, and reduce the frequency of enemies with "basic skill" or "item" equipped.  I'll probably add a cost to "defy pain" in that, while it provides healing, it cancels out any active positive statuses.

The woods are incredibly hard. all the enemies are faster than you (heck, the dogs attack twice before your guys have finished their round), they have more range than you, deal way more damage than you (Guaranted 2 shot), have way more HP than you and the bombs in particular are pure bullshit.

You're absolutely right.  I had done the woods battle before, but had made some last minute changes to monsters that I didn't think would be that impactful...but I replayed it a few days ago, and that battle was a nightmare, even for me, and I'm the mod creator.     For the record, I did not intend for it to be nearly that difficult.  To be honest, once you beat that derpy battle, you've probably seen the worst of it until Riovanes or somewhere in chapter 4...  The mod is intended to start off somewhat intense, but not too difficult, and slowly ramp up over the first couple chapters (by which time the player will have access to lots of characters and abilities).  Anyway, I'm going to make chapter 1 easier by making Delita +3 lvl in all battles, as well as upping the level requirement for higher damage weapons like spears and flails to be wielded by knights, and am going to rework some of the monster abilities, especially Lava ball.  Giving bombs that ability was a bad idea without first lowering their MP Growths/Multipliers substantially first, so I'll either scrap that ability, or adjust their stats accordingly. 

As for the Algus battle, it's not meant to be difficult as long as you have units that can range Algus.  Unlock most mini-bosses, Algus doesn't have a unique job class with Def Up/MDef UP, etc, so he's meant to be the arrogant pushover that he is, and the battle should be one of the easiest of Chapter 1.

Thanks for the bug reports as well, I'll add those to the list and start looking into them. 

I have an update I've been working on that should see release in 2-3 days.  It addresses some of the bugs, and most of the egregious balance issues from Chapters 1 through 3, and will include more tips and info.

[Ansehelm]

Update time! I've "flattened the [difficulty] curve" somewhat in the first chapter, giving the player more of an opportunity to ease into the mod, and have addressed most of what I consider the major balance issues in the early chapters, including some changes based on the feedback I received.

spoiler: Bug Fixes and Balance Improvements

Bug Fixes:
-The majority of monster reactions now display correctly on targeting (Dragon Spirit is the only one I've noticed that doesn't, but...dragons have it.)
-Unit MA, PA, and Speed stats are no longer bugged and now always show accurate values on the overland view.
-Poison knife now correctly inflicts poison.
-Royal Tonberry family now correctly has CT Save instead of Speed Save
-Removed Art of War from Sweegy Woods Move-Find
-Spellbooks can now properly be equipped by Wizards, Priests, and others as listed in description.
-Fixed identity/event bug if Rad is brought to Golgorand Execution Site Battle
-Fixed identity/event bug if the Royal Cavalier is brought to the first Zalmo fight.
-Cupid's Strike now works properly

Battle Fixes:
-Delita (Squire) is now Party Level +3 in all battles where he appears, is controllable, and has more skills unlocked.
-Slightly decreased the number of enemies with revive abilities in the ENTD
-The Yuguo woods guest begins the battle alive, and will join your party if he stays that way (or doesn't crystallize/treasure)

Balance Fixes:
-Lesser Dragons (mountable) given 2 more move, from 7 to 9.
-Chocobos given 2 more move, from 8 to 10
-Dragon Knight's Midgar Swarm is no longer learnable with JP
-Midgar Swarm now has an MP cost.
-Olan's Galaxy Stop hit rate improved slightly.
-Increased the enemy levels at which knights appear equipped with high powered weapons like spears and flails, thus reducing "one-hit wonders" at low levels.
-Bomb MA growths/multipliers reduced so that they deal more reasonable damage when using human abilities (lava ball)
-Pounce damage reduced, but may proc: dead.
-Dragon Knight MA increased.
-(Human) Breath attacks range increased from 2 to 3, now cost 7 MP each.
-Tornado damage reduced by more than half.
-Song and Dance CTs increased slightly to compensate for Speed reduces CT hack.
-Squire's Heal ability no longer cancels berserk and stop, now costs 7 MP.
-Squire's Wish ability now costs 12 MP
-Aqua, Ice, and Thunder Soul have +1 range (4) and cost 5 MP
-Steal heart hit rate reduced slightly

And a few dozen other fixes and changes that affect later chapters.

So check it out! New version has replaced the old in the original post

[Aiolon]

Hi there. Halfway through chapter 2 here. just finished barius Hill.
I brought you some more bugs and oddities i ran into. will not speak of the balance yet since i haven't finished the chapter but maybe these could be adressed in the meantime.


- Thunder Wand procs Icy meteor instead of chain lightning
- Birds and Turtles still have hidden reaction abilities.
- Dunno if intended but there is a wannabe goblin at the save boco araguay woods battle. has cool looking gaffgarion sprite. and speaking of wannabe goblins...
- There is a random Battle at araguay woods where you fight an army of chocobos. there is a guest goblin with a female knight sprite. prettiest goblin i've ever seen.
- Same thing in Mandalia plains. there is a Goblin chief followed by an army of Hot female goblins using female chemist sprite (they look buggy). EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. again, Don't know if this is intended but this is very bizarre
- Zirekile Falls breaks the amount of allowed sprites and turns the fight into a buggy mes. there are so many weird things in this battle that i honestly don't know what is intended and what is not.
- Royal Cavalier Description states he has Innate Meatbone slash. yet he comes equipped with Critical quick in battle. giving Innate reaction abilities to human units NEVER works.
- Coral Sword Is lightning elemental instead of Water as stated in the description. also, no matter how many times i tried i was never able to proc its magic attack.
- Archer's Timed strike is weird. It always seems to deal less damage than a normal attack? no matter the charge time, my normal attacks were dealing 76 damage while timed strike always dealt 58. how does it work?
- Chemists are able to learn "Soft" but the item "soft" is missing. in battle, even if the ability is learned the option will never show and i haven't obtained or seen the item in game so far. and yes, i only found out because i needed it and there was nothing i could do about it.

---- THIS ONE IS DEBATABLE ---
- There is a high chance that if you pick "Save Mustadio" option in the Zaland fight you can end up losing instantly.
If mustadio does not start the battle equipped with a green beret or an item that increases his speed. He will pretty much get killed before gets a turn to nope the fk out of there. This is a HUGE FLAW. it causes an unavoidable lose for the player. Okay sure, you can choose not to save him or get lucky rng and have him come with the right equipment to get the hell out. There is a workaround, but for the better quality of your mod i think something should be done about this.
Player shouldn't be punished for trying to save his life. . . or maybe yes cause mustadio sucks.

That is all for now. i will add other bugs i find once i finish the chapter.

[Ansehelm]

Ok, thanks for the feedback, I'll look into these. A few notes:

- Dunno if intended but there is a wannabe goblin at the save boco araguay woods battle. has cool looking gaffgarion sprite. and speaking of wannabe goblins...
- There is a random Battle at araguay woods where you fight an army of chocobos. there is a guest goblin with a female knight sprite. prettiest goblin i've ever seen.
- Same thing in Mandalia plains. there is a Goblin chief followed by an army of Hot female goblins using female chemist sprite (they look buggy). EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. again, Don't know if this is intended but this is very bizarre

This is not intended. I was aware of this bug, but hadn't added it to the bug list yet.  As far as I can tell, it happens when the unit using the goblin's slot appears in any encounter that has a guest.  There's nothing about the way I set the unit or those fights up that should cause this, so my best guess is that it has something to do with unknown hardcoding of the slot the goblin used.  This is medium priority since it's not game-breaking, but I think I can fix it fairly soon.

- Zirekile Falls breaks the amount of allowed sprites and turns the fight into a buggy mes. there are so many weird things in this battle that i honestly don't know what is intended and what is not.

I'll fix this, but it should be the only "bug" in that battle.  The other issues you might have noticed are that the (normal) cavalier unit's death pose looks very similar to its critical pose, but that's an issue best addressed by the original sprite creator (although I may get to it down the road), or the fact that the royal cavalier appears in that battle without introduction (but I already referred to this in the "limitations" section).

- Chemists are able to learn "Soft" but the item "soft" is missing. in battle, even if the ability is learned the option will never show and i haven't obtained or seen the item in game so far. and yes, i only found out because i needed it and there was nothing i could do about it.

Maiden's Kiss cures petrify as well as frog, as stated in its description.  Soft has been repurposed into a completely unrelated item, but I guess I forgot to update the "ability" description to match. Easy fix incoming.

- Royal Cavalier Description states he has Innate Meatbone slash. yet he comes equipped with Critical quick in battle. giving Innate reaction abilities to human units NEVER works.

He does have meatbone slash, and it should work properly (try it by going into a random battle and having your own units attack him at 1 range).  I use an ASM in this mod that *should* improve the way reactions work in such cases, and I've just tested this one myself.  As for whether he's a human, well, that's another matter that will be addressed in the next patch (apparently a couple of the unused or enemy-only jobs have some unusual hard-coding).

---- THIS ONE IS DEBATABLE ---
- There is a high chance that if you pick "Save Mustadio"

I'll give him some speed gear.  IIRC there is no brave penalty for choosing not to save Mustadio (and whether he is impossible to save depends you being exactly at the level at which enemy units cross the threshold into 1 higher speed), but I agree there's no reason to punish players for not knowing this. 

I would recommend pausing your playthrough until I get the next patch out - I've recently done a replay of CH2 as well and there are a couple small but significant things I want to improve, in addition to fixing most of what you've mentioned here.  It'll be a small update, but it will have important fixes (like making sure Mustadio spawns in the Zigolis battle with "Seal Evil" learned, instead of leaving that up to chance) It will be out sometime tomorrow.

[3lric]

There is no hardcoding with the goblin slot. Must be a derp elsewhere

[Ansehelm]

Very possibly, but the slot I'm currently using for "goblin" is 3D/Undead Knight, since I replaced the goblin family with another monster.  Could be other shenanigans afoot, but if so it's probably a simple fix.

[3lric]

Very possibly, but the slot I'm currently using for "goblin" is 3D/Undead Knight, since I replaced the goblin family with another monster.  Could be other shenanigans afoot, but if so it's probably a simple fix.

Yeah that slot is completely fine to use. Undead bit is just job related, and only breaks the tutorial and yuguo and cemetary battles with zalera. But TLW fixes those with the special snowflakes hack, which freed up space for those sprites to be easily used.

On the other hand, if you arent using the included special snowflakes hack...

[Ansehelm]

Yeah that slot is completely fine to use. Undead bit is just job related, and only breaks the tutorial and yuguo and cemetary battles with zalera. But TLW fixes those with the special snowflakes hack, which freed up space for those sprites to be easily used.

On the other hand, if you arent using the included special snowflakes hack...

I was using in the first version, and would have liked to continue using it, but unfortunately SS conflicts with Pride's Item Attribute Rewrite hack, which is pretty central to my mod, and AFAIK there's no way to resolve that conflict. As such my workaround to free up undead units was to make a generic "death shade" job that can be used with any sprite, rather than different jobs for "undead knight, undead wizard, etc," or applying a set of statuses via SS.  I've tried this and it seems to work well enough, but I'm having this particular goblin issue.  Gonna check it out now

[Ansehelm]

New update in the original post. It solves most of the issues Aiolon mentioned, and I consider it to be generally satisfactory from Chapters 1-3 (and probably decent in CH4, although I haven't yet had time to comb through that with this update). Barring any major gamebreaking issues, the next update should be out in about a week or so, and should come fairly close to wrapping up this mod to the point that I may move it to the "completed mods" forum.

spoiler: Bug and Balance Fixes

Bug Fixes:
-Fixed issue where goblins would appear as other unit types.
-"Soft" ability name has been changed to correctly match the item that replaced it.
-Fixed Zirekile Falls Sprite Limit
-Fixed Barius Valley Sprite Limit
-Coral Sword is now correctly Water Elemental
-Timed strike should now always deal more damage than a normal attack
-Thunder Rod proc fixed to match description

Balance changes:
-Martial Arts attack boost reduced from 50% to 25%
-Zodiac Compatibility: Good/Bad is reduced to +/- 12.5% and Best/Worst compat is +/- 25% (Rfh's ASM hack)
-Attack Up/Magic Attack Up Reduced to 25% boost (nates1984's ASM)
-MA multipliers reduced somewhat for magic classes.

Battle changes:
-Mustadio should now always have Seal Evil learned in Zigolis

[Aiolon]

Hey there. Just finished chapter 2 using the lastest version and i gotta say i enjoyed it way more than the first version of chapter 1.

Balance wise the story battles feel way more balanced and less frustrating. you still get outnumbered and enemies are still overpowered af, but the player has access to better skills and strategies. the only battle that i had to rely on RNG was golgorand.
Since the enemies are so stupidly powerful their crystal drops include an absurd amount of skills. my ramza mastered lancer at job lv3 (thank you onion knights) so i guess that could be considered a reward for the effort.

Now. I didn't bring Random battles the last time because they are fully optional since you use the wonderful Smart Encounters Hack. but i like to have many units at my disposal so i don't overlevel too much while grinding and stealing from enemies on random battles so this time i decided to jump into more of those. well...
Rant ahead.

spoiler

... is there any particular reason for random battles to be insanely difficult and some of them downright imposible to win by the time you unlock them? (Bariaus hill battles, Zeklaus, Mandalia South, and many others)
it makes grinding feel way more limited since i have to stick to the "easy battles" that won't wipe my enitre team in the first 2 rounds. There is really no strategy to some of these that can save me. Monsters are way way too overpowered. That is my only complain.

that being said. as much as i dislike 1.3 inspired patches im truly enjoying this one. been a while since the last time i got to chapter 3 in a vanilla mod. So i brought you some more bugs i found to help you make it better and more enjoyable.

Gameplay Bugs

spoiler

- Coral Sword is now water element but it procs Mjollnir.
- Bombs do not appear to be weak against water element as stated on their description. can you verify?
- Mustadio's Leg Aim skill displays a buggy animation that renders the ability useless regardless of Hit%
- Mustadio's Mosfungus Bomb skills is WRONG, very wrong  :lol: but i loved how wrong it was. (it procs a skill that deals over 200 dmg)
- Lamia's Life drain ability casts freaking Flare on all of the players Party a Random number of times in full map AOE range... this one is bad. idk if it is intended that way and the text is the wrong one but holy hell i sure enjoy to get my party wiped from an enemy standing on the other side of the map.

Text Bugs

spoiler

- Choco Esuna is capable of removing almost every status effect but description only lists a couple of them.
- Toughskin (Purple Turtle) Does not list "Damage split" as an innate reaction on its description. reactions are still hidden.
- Entangle has an empty quote message (Harmless bug)
- Lamias come equipped with a movement ability called "MiW" that lacks description.
- Flails do not list Knight as Job that can equip the item.

Graphical Bugs (i only included the ones i consider important)

spoiler

- Female Monk uses custom monk sprite and portrait on formation screen but it appears as vanilla sprite/portrait during battles.
- Thunderbird appears as a purple chocobo on formation but if you bring one into battle it appears as a regular chocobo? weird bug but i also noticed the thunderbirds the player finds during random battles not only appear as the purple chocobos but they often have no names.
- When the player targets Boco (not sure if this is the same with all chocobos) "Choco Cure" will be previewd as a reaction skill.(i am starting to understand how the monster reaction madness bug was born  :lol: (3rd skill slot = Reaction) hence why many special snowflake monsters are missing reaction previews. there is nothing in that slot. But i could be very wrong so ignore me please.)

That is all for now.

[Ansehelm]

Once again, thanks for the feedback, and glad you're liking it so far.  Chapter 3 is the most new-content heavy section of the mod, with 6 extra joinable units, I hope you enjoy that as well, although as usual, I'd wait a few days for the latest update. 

Regarding bugs:

- Thunderbird appears as a purple chocobo on formation but if you bring one into battle it appears as a regular chocobo?

This is a known bug with all monsters currently in this mod, and is listed in the "bugs" section. It's the result of one of Xifanie's hacks I used to make more monster palettes available, but it's not worth breaking all the other monsters for.  This should be fixed in the next update in a few days, and I've been able to address just about everything else you've mentioned.

As for the difficulty of random battles, I'll look into those as well.  Some of them are meant to be fairly difficult (like the Goblins + Guest Chemist in Mandalia North), but are meant more as late-game battles to keep things interesting even when you have a strong party.  I may switch the order of some of those battles (so that the more difficult ones are the last ones unlocked), but feel free to call out any other battles you find are too difficult beyond any reward they may bring.

[3lric]

I use the palette hack in Jot5 for more palettes and never had an issue. You made sure you set it up right, yes? Also the last 2 palettes cannot be used as the chests and crystals from them will freeze the game...

I wouldnt simply say its because of Xifanie's hack. The hack works fine as long as you read its description... you shouldnt be able to recruit monsters who are outside the first 3 palettes, unless you have a way to edit the UW to allow for that

[Ansehelm]

You're probably right; I'll have to look into it to figure out exactly where it's going wrong since it's possible that I'm using an old version of one of the hacks, or mixed something else up.  I currently use 2 hacks that relate to this, "Activated Paletted Portraits for Special Units," and "Sprite Hack (special units, generic humans, and generic monsters."  I'm aware of the limitation on using the last 2 palettes (although you could use them on enemy units with the "Immortal" flag, or as a boss unit).  I had a thread where I asked related issues in the past, and if I can't get it working, I can bring it up there.

[3lric]

You're probably right; I'll have to look into it to figure out exactly where it's going wrong since it's possible that I'm using an old version of one of the hacks, or mixed something else up.  I currently use 2 hacks that relate to this, "Activated Paletted Portraits for Special Units," and "Sprite Hack (special units, generic humans, and generic monsters."  I'm aware of the limitation on the last 2 (although you could use them on enemy units with the "Immortal" flag, or as a boss unit).  I had a thread where I asked related issues in the past, and if I can't get it working, I can bring it up there.

Indeed, i think the issue is more with allowing recruitment of those units, since we dont have a good way of 100% remapping them using their 4-6th palette like that, to properly show up in formation as well as in battle.

[Ansehelm]

Update time again. This one comes later than anticipated since I was down with the 'rona for the past week or so, but it has a lot of minor bug and balance fixes, including a fix for Malak's evtchrs, and at least an interim solution for the in-party monster colors behaving oddly.

spoiler: Changes

General/Balance Fixes:
-Izlude's HP/Speed multipliers reduced slightly
-Updated Kreuzritter immunities.
-"Convert" fixed to have higher hit rate than Invitation
-Acid Rain damage and AOE reduced
-Monsters occasionally having blank names fixed.
-Bombs are now correctly weak against water
-Coral Sword now procs Aqua Soul
-Leg Aim should work correctly
-Fixed Mosfungus Bomb
-Fixed Life Drain ability
-Made Stasis Sword evadable. Holy Explosion is not evadeable, but has higher MP cost
-Updated Choco Esuna description
-Updated Spear and Flail wield descriptions
-Quote box removed from "Entangle, Subdue" abilities
-Chocobo Gun damage increased

Graphical Bug Fixes:
-Fixed Malak Event scenes
-Fixed Female Monk Sprite
-No longer using the palette hack for monsters (still using Xif's hack for generic and special humans).

Battle Changes
-More units in random battles changed to "randomly present" instead of "always present," leading to more (easy) variation in battles.
-Guests at Yuguo given R/S/Ms.

Update in the original post.

Hopefully in the next day or so I'll add a "Hints" section that will help players better navigate the unknown areas of this mod.

[Abandoned Hall]

Im currently playing your mod, too
And just like Aiolon said, some random battles are beyond winnable. One that comes into my mind is the one at Bariaus Hills, with Giant Birds literally outspeed every single character and killing them in 1 single hit before I even had a chance to have a turn. Im currently at the end of chapter 2, and stucked on Goug Machine City, with a terrible battle to win. Besides all that ranting, I do appreciate your mod, some battles are quite interesting, and new enemies are fun too, like the Flan ones.  Will look foward to your project.

[silenthill27]

Long time lurker here, this mod sounded really awesome, wondering what the status is like - Are random battles still crazy? I know this is considered a work in progress still, how much of the game is playable?

[Ansehelm]

Long time lurker here, this mod sounded really awesome, wondering what the status is like - Are random battles still crazy? I know this is considered a work in progress still, how much of the game is playable?

Great question, and well timed.  After an unexpected months-long hiatus, I've gotten back to work, and a new update should be live within a day or so.  Overall I've made CH 1-mid 2 significantly easier, and have switched a lot of the hardest random battles such that it's still possible to roll them, but they only appear late in the game.