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Let's Play Final Fantasy Tactics: Celdia's Complete Patch Celdia's Complete Patch is a full gameplay overhaul of Final Fantasy Tactics, with new jobs, equipment, abilities, and enemy layouts. There's no changes to the story (which given the standard for romhack story changes, is a good thing), so the focus here will be entirely on the gameplay. So what's this then? Well, I'm going to be playing this. Blind. Yes, really. I've heard decent things about the hack, and the general overview seems interesting. As of this writing, I've played through the Orbonne and Gariland fights just to make sure nothing was broken and to see if I'd like to proceed with this. Since you're reading this, I'll leave it to you to figure out what my decision was. I was inspired by, in part, cosmicPostman's ongoing blind LP of Advance Wars showing me that a blind SSLP can in fact work and be entertaining. So what does blind mean? I know nothing about this hack going in, other than a couple of snippets I read in the download link's post (most of which I've forgotten) and what I've seen thus far (which is, as mentioned, Orbonne and Gariland). I am, however, really experienced when it comes to the base game of Final Fantasy Tactics. That big guide on GameFAQs with all of the mechanics down to precise numbers and formulae? I have way too much of that memorized. Not all of it, but too much. So what does this mean for me, the poor reader subjecting myself to your words? That means NO SPOILERS for anything in Celdia's Complete Patch, whether it's the current version or an older one. Not even under spoiler tags. This should not be difficult, but we'll see. One can only undergo the process of new discovery once. It means if it has not shown up on screen, don't talk about it. At all. Hypotheticals about what has changed from vanilla is fine, so long as you haven't actually played the hack. It means that if it's not displayed in an accessible manner to me, don't talk about it. For example, generic jobs I've fought but don't have access to (and so can't see their ability sets or equips) should be discussed only in context of what has been seen onscreen. "Accessible manner" also refers to mechanical details the game doesn't say, such as formulae or any special conditions (e.g. vanilla's Galaxy Stop missing units with the same zodiac sign as the caster). I find figuring those things out fun, after all, and if I'm tragically wrong that's its own humor. As a general rule for jobs, if I haven't done a writeup on them or have explicitly shown off someone using them, don't talk about anything other than what's been shown off. Also, not knowing things going in stops me from over analyzing and planning as opposed to playing, which would result in slower updates. Spoilers just mean you're hurting your own free entertainment, is what I'm saying. I don't need advance knowledge from any posters: I could get that on my own if that's what I wanted. Conversely, it is open season for spoilers on the original Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm going to be assuming familiarity with the game. If you haven't played it, do so! FFT is one of the all time greats. I'd personally say it's to strategy RPGs what Chrono Trigger is to the classic JRPG. If you haven't played and and can't, don't want to, or just need a refresher, I recommend Orange Fluffy Sheep's LP. So are you going to stop beginning these hypothetical reader questions with "so"? No. Table of Contents A note to those catching up via this or in the Archives: the Job Overviews were interspersed with the regular updates, but I have them separated out here for the sake of organization. The Job Overviews are all spoiler free, so don't be afraid to look up a job we encounter without stressing that you'll stumble on something you shouldn't. Chapter 1: The Meager Update 1: Orbonne Monastery Update 2: Magic City Gariland Update 3: Mandalia Plains Update 4: Sweegy Woods Update 5: Dorter Trade City Update 6: Random Battle in Mandalia Plains Update 7: Zeklaus Desert Update 8: Random Battle in Sweegy Woods Update 9: Random Battle in Zeklaus Desert Update 10: Thieves' Fort Update 11: Lenalia Plateau Update 12: Lenalia Plateau, Part 2 Update 13: Fovoham Plains Update 14: Fovoham Plains, Part 2 Update 15: Fort Zeakden Chapter 2: The Manipulator and the Subservient Update 16: Dorter Trade City 2 Update 17: Dorter Trade City 2, Part 2 Update 18: Random Battle in Fovoham Plains Update 19: Random Battle in Mandalia Plains 2 Update 20: Araguay Woods Update 21: Zirekile Falls Update 22: Zaland Fort City, Part 1 Update 23: Zaland Fort City, Part 2 Update 24: Zaland Fort, City, Part 3 Update 25: Random Battles in Araguay Woods and Zirekile Falls Update 26: Bariaus Hill Update 27: Zigolis Swamp Update 28: Goug Machine City Update 29: Bariaus Valley Update 30: Golgorand Execution Site Update 31: Golgorand Execution Site, Rematch Update 32: Golgorand Execution Site, Round 3 Update 33: Gate of Lionel Castle Update 34: Gate of Lionel Castle, Rematch Update 35: Inside of Lionel Castle Chapter 3: The Valiant Update 36: Gallione Grand Tour Update 37: Goland Coal City Update 38: Goland Coal City, Part 2 Update 39: Goland Coal City, Part 3 Update 40: Back Gate of Lesalia Castle Update 41: Underground Book Storage Second Floor Update 42: Underground Book Storage Third Floor Update 43: Underground Book Storage First Floor Update 44: Grog Hill Update 45: Yardow Fort City Update 46: Yuguo Woods Update 47: The Road to Riovanes Job Overviews Job Overview 1: Starter Jobs (Warrior, Alchemist, and Green Mage) Job Overview 2: The Next Level (Demagogue, Gunslinger, Cannoneer, Red Mage) Job Overview 3: Where Things Get Complex (Champion, Brawler, Bandit, Hawknight, Enchanter, and Sorcerer) Job Overview 4: Paint Me Like One Of Your French Homemakers, Master Bruce (Homemaker and Butler) Job Overview 5: Special Topics on Special Characters with Special Jobs (Hero, Holy Knight, and Engineer) Job Overview 6: The Final Fantasy (Dragoon, Tactician, Mageknight, and Vanquisher) Job Reassessment 1: Green Mage Rosalie_A fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Feb 16, 2022 |
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Feb 1, 2019 03:58
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On the Holy Text of quote:Instant is one of the most beautiful things you can hear in FFT Celdia posted:Our Speediness, Instant be thy name, thy AT come, thy action done, in thought as in completion, give us today our immediate beatings, forgive us our lethargy as we forgive those slowly acting before us, save us from the state of charging and deliver us from charge times, for the moment, the speed, and the Now are yours, now and now again, Farlem. 
Rosalie_A fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Mar 10, 2021 |
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Feb 1, 2019 03:58
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Update 1: Orbonne Monastery And so our tale begins.  Right off the bat we can see a difference: it appears Rad is dressed like a Blue Mage. Could that be because he's a Blue Mage? Spoiler alert: Yes. Speaking of spoilers, this is your reminder: we're going to be focusing on the gameplay and my blind reactions to it. Say whatever you want about vanilla and its story (I sure will be), but keep mum about anything from Celdia's Complete Patch that hasn't been covered yet.   We begin the battle proper and can notice a few differences. For one, the lineup appears to be a bit different: there's only two enemies. Secondly, Alicia and Lavian have gotten a bit of a makeover. Lastly, Gafgarion is now a "Mercenary". Oh and we can control him. I guess that's a thing too. From what I can tell, this appears to be a global change: in the next battle, we're able to control Delita, so I imagine all Guests will be under our control.  As we can see, there's a whole new set of equipment as well. I won't be going through it all because that's boring for everyone involved (and I won't remember any of it anyway), but I will look at some abilities.  Some. I don't believe any original job remains in CCP, and so there's a lot to see. I'm only going to focus on what we can use immediately and learn about the others as we encounter them.  Mercenary is basically a reskinned Dark Knight. Heartseeker Blade and Soulseeker Blade are just Night Sword and Dark Sword but with an MP cost, and so still really good. As befitting their names, they still require a sword (or, according to the tooltip, a sword or magic sword, whatever those may be). Venom Strike and Gunk Bomb are a bit more interesting:   I'll be transcribing or summarizing most of these, but it's worth showing that these all have new and complete descriptions. A quick refresher on what you're seeing here: Range is the number of tiles away from the caster, and "Weapon Range" means the range of the equipped weapon: 1 for swords and such, 2 for spears, a lot for bows and guns. While in vanilla FFT weapon range attacks were limited to Battle Skill, Charge, and Snipe this obviously isn't necessarily the case here and so it's worth tracking to identify potential synergies. Effect is the number of tiles outward from the target that are hit. An effect of 1 means a single target attack. For reference in vanilla FFT, a normal spell had an effect of 2, while lower tier summons had an effect of 3. Higher tier summons and Meteor had an effect of 4, which is why they were so awesome. The exception here is a range of Auto, which self-targets. In that case, just pretend Effect is one less (so 1 is self, 2 is self and adjacent tiles, and so on). Finally, the important one: Speed. Speed is represented here as a value that gets added every tick until it hits 100 and fires, but it's worth noting this isn't how FFT represents it internally. As far as the code is concerned, Venom Strike has what's referred to as a CTR (Clockticks Till Resolution) of 3, so when everyone's CT has increased three times, Venom Strike will fire. On a given clocktick, abilities fire and then units get their turn (it's a bit more complex than that), and so figuring out when a slow ability was safe to use would be difficult if the game didn't do those calculations for you for everything. Everything except Jump, that is. I have no idea if anything else is going to be stuck in Jump's horrifically user-unfriendly limbo, and so I'm making sure we all understand how this stuff works so there's no need to info dump later. Most importantly, I'll be judging abilities based on their CTR, not their listed speed, so it's good to know how that will work. At a CTR of 3, Venom Strike is amazingly fast, but it being a slow ability means this speed is mostly wasted on a fast character like Gafgarion, since in those intervening clockticks, chances are the entire enemy team will get a chance to move until late in the battle when CTs get more staggered after various partial and full waits. Meanwhile Gunk Bomb is just Throw Stone's nerdy cousin. On demand instant cast chance of Slow is really nice, except that this is in Gafgarion's moveset so we won't get to really enjoy it much.  With a new class comes a new description. I'd say that this is an accurate description for Gafgarion.  Similarly, here's the description for Ruthlessness, the Mercenary job command. Gafgarion also has Green Magic, but Green Magic doesn't have By the way, just as in vanilla, the "special" jobs have only a unique action ability set: the reaction, support, and movement abilities are all the same. I'll cover them when we get to Ramza.     Agrias is unchanged on the surface. Her skillset, however, isn't. Holy sword still has Stasis Sword and Holy Explosion, though both now have MP costs and elements. Stasis Sword is now Ice and Holy elemental, and Holy Explosion is now Holy elemental as well. In vanilla these were assigned elements for the AI's use but the abilities themselves took on the element of the caster's equipped weapon; thus the well-known exploit of using a Chameleon Robe on Wiegraf: he wouldn't use Lightning Stab because the AI thought it was Holy element despite his sword being non-elemental. Stasis Sword being Ice is, if monsters stick to their vanilla elemental affinities, amazing anytime Goblins pop up. She also has Crushing Blade, a renamed Crush Punch, now Holy and Earth (!!) elemental. I imagine this was to make it clear the move required a sword if one didn't look at the tooltip. Given that I know of at least one hack that removed Crush Punch's sword requirement in order to match the name, I appreciate the textual consistency. Earth is interesting. It was a fairly rare element in vanilla, without many things caring about it. I look forward to seeing how relevant it is here. She also picks up Mustadio's Seal Evil, now with an MP cost and range of 5 isntead of a weapon range.   Finally, Holy Sword gets rounded out with Aura and Lay on Hands, what appear to be a renamed Cure and Revive, although with a much needed point of vertical reach in the latter's case. (Vanilla monks: invincible and all powerful provided you never fought on hills, staircases, or vaguely uneven cobblestones) Given Agrias's position in vanilla as a worse Cid who got ribbons, perfumes, and about twenty story battles more screentime (and who managed to be worse even with that), I rather like rounding out her skillset with some flavorful utility. She can lay down the hurt, offer support, and slaughter undead, all in one skillset, leaving a secondary open for other options. While we won't get to use her for a bit, I think I'll be happy when she does join.  Lavian and Alicia are as generic as ever. So generic, in fact, that I only took a picture of one of them. Their class is Champion, described as "Holy warriors that stand tall on the battlefield. their skills let them terrify foes into sumission and bolster allies", which is pretty snazzy sounding. Champion appears to be the Knight with an actual moveset, containing a renamed Chakra and an array of supportive moves including the ability to grant Reraise (!!). Being a generic job, I'll cover this one in more detail when I can make use of it myself.   That's right! Rad finally has something to distinguish him apart from a complete lack of personality or relevance. As FFT had Blue Mage style learning built into it (most notoriously with Ultima and Zodiac), this is a pretty natural addition. Making it a special job helps limit some of the attendant insanity of trying to teach things to multiple characters, while also keeping it from being a worry during Chapter 1 when there's so much else to deal with and learn.  Choco Cure and Self-Destruct, renamed. It's not the most impressive start, but poles are all the offense you'll ever need for a while, at least from a vanilla perspective. Train Beast is Invitation for monster units only, with a range of 4 and a matching CTR. Decently fast, but I have no idea on its hit rate. If it's anything like vanilla Invitation, it's probably hilariously and painfully low. And I'll use it anyway. But let's face it. All of these jokers aren't going to matter until Chapter 2. No, who we're really here for is...  RAMZA! Character-wise, one of the best protagonists in the series, and indeed a lot of gaming. The hack's creator seems to agree:  Prologue Ramza is actually a different character from the one we end up controlling later on, which is why none of his levels or learned abilities end up mattering, and we don't get his equipment. It also means we get awesome 70/70 Ramza instead of the 60/59 Brave and Faith we have here. I guess in flavor seeing Delita renews his spirit or something? Or maybe he just eats all his gear and that buffs him up. Who knows? Ramza here is a Virgo, my IRL Zodiac sign. It's what I first used for him out of habit, but then it become my preferred general usage sign: you get Neutral compatibility on just about every difficult boss in the game, keeping you from being locked into any sort of strategy.  Ramza's equipment options are broad. While we still don't know what a Magic Sword is (though we'll see a Whip soon), that is indeed every class of armor in the game. In vanilla heavy armor and helmets were horribly outclassed by hats, robes, and clothes due to the stat boosts and special abilities of the second group being far more useful than the raw HP of the first. I don't know how true that will hold here in CCP, but it doesn't matter! Ramza gets it all! In vanilla my preference for Ramza was as a healer/supporter, but with him having a new special class I'll likely be leaning on that as I go forward.   Not that I expect doing so to be difficult. Ramza's Heroics skillset doesn't have a new description and talks about these strange creatures known as "Squires". His skillset is pretty basic, too. Chakra is, from the description, vanilla Chakra and Cleanse is Basic Skill's Heal if it was actually good: two more Range and a bunch more statuses healed at a brisk CTR of 3.  I wasn't kidding about a lot more statuses. Vigor and Ardor are Accumulate on crack: for the price of two clockticks of charge time, you get +2 PA or MA, respectively. This alone, I think, will justify the price of admission on Heroics. You get two useful supportive abilities that if you don't need mean everything's going well, and whatever your plan with your secondary is you can boost it. With Ramza we'll now cover the generic set of Reaction/Support/Movement (R/S/A) abilities replacing the Squire's set.  For a Reaction ability we have Counter. True fact: Nine out of ten FFT players agree that Counter should have been the Squire's in the first place, with Counter Tackle relegated to the garbage pile. The tenth disagreed with my unscientific approach to polling.   For Support we get Equip Shield and Grey Soul. The first is identical to vanilla, while the second removes all weaknesses and resistances to elements. Since elemental properties are not progressive (you either are/are not weak/resistant/nullifying/absorbing) this appears to be an odd way to get around the downsides of some equipment. Without knowing what I'll be putting on I can't say how useful it'll be but at 200 JP it's hardly a pain to keep on hand. Notably absent is Gained JP UP, which was a pretty terrible ability from a design standpoint. Before anyone yells, that reason you're yelling? That's why it was bad from a design standpoint. Forcing the already overburdened Support ability slot to choose between current power or future growth was never a fun choice.  Finally our Movement ability is a renamed Jump+1. It exists, I suppose. Move+1 was always the "one right choice" of the early game movement abilities, so I shall not miss it in favor of making actually interesting decisions. All in all, the Hero seems to be solid and a worthy successor to the Uber-Squire of vanilla.   Our foes are only two in number, showing off some of what we have to look forward to. Lezales is a Champion just like Lavian and Alicia. It's only just now I noticed both his and Fukes' very solid 10% Character Evasion, so I went back and checked everyone else's. Rad, Alicia, and Lavian also have 10% (which seems to be the standard, but still more than the baseline 5% of vanilla), while Gafgarion and Ramza have 15%, raising the Hero in my estimation. Agrias has 25% C-Evade. That's, at bare minimum, a 25% chance to dodge any physical attack from the front. That's a Holy Knight buff I can get behind. Right, our enemies. Lezales looks to be fairly vanilla, with the Demagogue's Speechcraft as a secondary (which we'll examine in more detail when we train up one of our own). He's also a Pisces. As a male Pisces he's got Worst compatibility with the male Virgos Ramza and Gafgarion, so that pile of HP is going to live even longer. Fukes is a Green Mage. Green Mage isn't new to Final Fantasy per se, being introduced as a skillset in Final Fantasy 12 with it becoming a class proper in Final Fantasy Tactics: A2. Green Mage is intended as the Red Mage's more frontline-inclined sister, with an emphasis on supportive and status spells. Where the Red Mage's signature style is flinging Fire and Cure from the backlines with the ability to stab things as needed, the Green Mage stands just behind the fighters with Protect and Poison and proceeds to smash things with a hammer. Green Mage here, just looking at Fukes, is a bit less smashy. That said, that Whip he's carrying looks pretty snazzy:  6 power and 4 range. I don't know which damage formula it uses, but I'd imagine either the standard PA*WP or the knife/bow fomula of ((PA+SP)/2)*WP. That's either a base of 24 or 30 damage: not bad for a ranged attack. Pretty nice weapon, I'd say. In addition to Green Mages, the Whip can be equipped by Alchemists, Vanquishers, Butlers, and Homemakers.  Not making that up, by the way. I have no idea what those latter two entail but they're either going to be really awesome or really terrible. Time will tell. I'll examine Green Mage more when I can actually use one, but I feel pretty excited for it. White Magic and Black Magic were amazing skillsets in FFT that got horrifically gutted in the transition to Tactics Advance, so if the already solid Green Magic gets that treatment in reverse I'll likely be in love. Those are the only two enemies. Which, let me tell you, is a welcome change from when I first tried FFT 1.3 and needed ten tries to get past this map. CCP seems to instead want me to play the game, which is an approach I approve of. After all that setup, the battle proceeds about how you'd expect when it's a 5v2.  We still have spell quotes. I didn't see it on this run, but in my test to make sure the hack didn't crash horribly, Gafgarion got his quote for Heartseeker Blade, and the name was changed properly. It's a minor thing, but I appreciate it. The programmer in me appreciates that changing Night Sword into Heartseeker Blade in an already built game is likely non-trivial, so props go to either the hackers or the original FFT coders (depending on how the quotes were originally implemented). Both Rad and Lezales have Speechcraft as a secondary. So when Lezales does a thing and most of the board ends up like this:  ...then investigation is in order. Speechcraft appears to be a set of nondiscriminatory AOE status abilities that continually fire in some demented combination of vanilla's Draw Out, Treant monsters, and Song/Dance. Which by the way when I put it like that, sounds really cool.  Lezales unleased this one here, Power Word: Stun. I see the author is a D&D fan and-HOLY poo poo THAT'S LOCALIZED GALAXY STOP! That would be insane except for that slight downside of blowing yourself up with it.  Yep. If you look back, Lezales nailed himself with Stop (thus preventing more Power Words from firing) and his buddy with Don't Act.  From there, victory is even more of a foregone conclusion than before.  Which I speed along by Stasis Swording two of my allies in an attempt to burn Lezales down. Well, it's okay, it's not that much da-  -mage. Right. Well, we weren't gonna need Gafgarion anyway. In fact, I do it a second time.   With the predictable results of Stopping Ramza. Poor Lezales also gets his own Stop refreshed. Since clearly I'm just addicted to murdering my own allies, let's do it a third time.  At this point, poor Rad is nearly on death's door, and I get an idea.       ooh, right, we had a job we were doing. That's not gonna be good for our annual evaluation.   Sounds like you've got your mind made up. Really though, blame Rad. He blew up half the people who were supposed to be guarding her. NEXT TIME, ON CELDIA'S COMPLETE PATCH:  Middle-aged Cadet Listens to Rumors, But Still No One Listens to Him
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Feb 1, 2019 03:58
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What's wrong with your FAAAAAAAACE?! Actually, I know exactly what is wrong here. Having followed a few threads on Final Fantasy Hacktics, the number of good portrait artists who can match the vanilla portraits (see: whoever did the Blue Mage portrait) is exceedingly rare, with everyone else falling on a sliding scale of kitbashing existing FFT characters to make new faces (like our poor squire who appears to be the result of a transporter accident involving no less that Beowulf and other indeterminate matter), or so off model that they look like actual pieces of DeviantArt refuse. I'm rather digging the new items and custom icons for most of them though.
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Feb 1, 2019 05:19
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Rad finally gets his revenge for all those thousands of playthroughs where he gets kicked off the team seconds after this fight.
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Feb 1, 2019 05:34
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This is really cool. It's been ages since I last played FFT, and I have never heard of this overhaul. It looks really nice, because it does the one thing a FFT overhaul should do: Improve/modernize the gameplay. As you said, there's no reason to mess with Tactic's great story. You've already mentioned some fields where the design decision were suboptimal (JP up or +1 mov being the Right Choice, heavier armors being generally inferior, the elemental system not making full use of all elements, etc.), so it's encouraging that the hack seems to improve in those areas. I also really appreciate that this is a SSLP, because some games are just not cut out to be LPed in video format. Also, I've always had a weak spot for Agrias, so her being buffed makes me happy.
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Feb 1, 2019 06:05
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...Okay, this looks cool as hell. I'm excited to see where this goes!
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Feb 1, 2019 06:15
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I'm intrigued. Looking forward to see where this goes!
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Feb 1, 2019 10:14
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I admit, I saw FFT hack and expected the worst. Thankfully, from this chapter alone at least, this is clearly not 1.3 and actually looks like a really interesting hack. I guess I'll be following blindly as well.
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Feb 1, 2019 12:22
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Glad to see people are at least interested. After the next update I'll start doing some overviews of the jobs available thus far and what I think of them.
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Feb 1, 2019 17:15
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FFT is one of my favorite game and this hack look interesting.
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Feb 1, 2019 17:36
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Update 2: Magic City Gariland And now we leave the realm of Champions and Mecenaries. The Gariland generics are a bit changed in this hack: while the basic allotment is the same, they all have a fixed 65 Brave and Faith. Corresponding to vanilla's four Squires and two Chemists, split evenly along gender lines, we get four Warriors and two Alchemists. They also have some different weaponry: the female Warriors come with a Crossbow and an Axe, while one of the Alchemists is sporting a whip. Aside from tantalizing hints at class names we likely won't see for hours, there are only two items of interest hidden in the status screens.  First, the Crossbow has a chance to trigger the Sunder Shield ability. This appears to be a renamed Shield Break. This is pretty interesting: a Break skill when used against an empty equipment slot just does a regular attack instead. So we've got a chance to do twice as much damage against an enemy without a shield.  Secondly, dear god that portrait. I mean it's not bad or anything, but when you consider that everyone here is supposed to be a military academy cadet in their mid-to-late teens, it's kind of off-putting.  The actually important second item of interest. As mentioned, Ramza still has his 70 Brave/Faith, and he's got a couple of unique items equipped. The Hide Caps and Peasant Frocks the others have equipped are just generic filler items, but Ramza's Training Vest is a bit special: it has an innate Move-JP UP. Secondly, those Red Shoes are also special, but a bit less so: they're just renamed Battle Boots.  To be fair, they're renamed Battle Boots who are very aware of how stylish they are.  In the end, I take in the two Alchemists, Pado of the terrifying portrait, and the crossbow Warrior. Really, though, I could have made the same mistake everyone did the first time they played this game and not deployed anyone past Ramza, because....  There's only three enemies.   Like I mentioned last update, we get to control Delita. He comes with the same Training Vest Ramza has. He is also an actual Squire, with Basic Skill and everything.  Although something looks a bit different...   Our enemies include two Bandits. They seem to be our Thief analogues, but with a broader weapon set. That Steel Claw there is a bit interesting.  +10 Brave is neat. Is that already reflected on his stat sheet? Additionally, the description states it can be used by Bandits, Brawlers, and Dragoons; those latter two are likely our Monk and Lancer analogues. I wonder what the damage formula is? It has an attack power so it can't be the barehanded (PA^2)*(Brave/100) but what's the point of giving an attack power boost if you're just going to be PA*WP? It could use the Knightsword's PA*WP*(Brave/100) but the attack power doesn't look high enough to account for that. We'll have to see once we've got our claws on one of our own. There's a pun to be made there, but I can't quite place it. The bandits themselves claim they require Level 3 Gunslinger to unlock, so that's cool. In vanilla the job requirements were only listed if you hit Select in the job change wheel, so you had to have the job unlocked to see what you needed to unlock it. This is a welcome change. In addition to the two bandits, we have a Homemaker.   ...umm, that's not how an aide-de-camp works. I still have no idea what the job does, as Demi Moore's only actions here will be to knife Ramza in the back and then die. I have no idea how to unlock Cannoneer and Red Mage, but hopefully they're cool.  Delita's Basic Skill holds the standard set of R/S/A (Counter, Equip Shield, Grey Soul, and Leap if you somehow forgot) and three action abilities. Bandage appears to be a free unlimited use 20 HP heal (a mini-Potion, in other words), while Pacify is a ranged ability with a CTR of 3 that removes Confusion, Berserk, and Charm. Vigor is identical to Ramza's, giving PA+2.  Speaking of Ramza, he appears to have lost Chakra and Cleanse in favor of Bandage and Pacify. I think we'll just be upgrading into them when we get to Chapter 2, as Chakra and Cleanse seem to be strictly-better versions of these two, and I'm pretty sure that Ramza's classes upgrade in place, keeping the same slots learned.  Bandage in actionish. I don't actually use it here because duh but I appreciate its existence.  "Also a Beoulve"? In addition to what, an anime fan? In that shot, we can see that the Homemaker has advanced up to the nearby house. Ramza proceeds to walk up and slash her.  Crossbow Warrior shoots Bruce the Bandit for half his HP. Delita...   ...finishes the job. Take note of the Move-JP UP of the Training Vest: for some of you, this might be the first time you're seeing the ability in action. I know it was for me.  The Homemaker knifes Ramza in the back for a good amount of damage, but Pado doesn't take kindly to that kind of behavior.  Only he's allowed to knife people in the back for a good amount of damage.   One of my Alchemist decides to hit and run, while the other decides to pretend to be a Belmont.  Specifically Richter from Smash Ultimate when I'm playing as him, complete with attempted trick shot and attendant failure. I was curious if whips would work like spears do, where they'll hit the first target in front of them regardless of the chosen square. Of course, being on a bit of elevation didn't help the experiment. Whoops.  The non-Bruce bandit tries to flee, but Ramza chases him down and runs him through like the stone cold killer he is.  Dude, check your privilege. Which, to be fair, he does later.  Fewer enemies means less loot. Blah.  Oh never mind, that's fine. The hell's a Mop Handle, though?  I think I have more questions than answers.   Zodiac Compatibilty chart courtesy of Professor Daravon. Reproduced under no license at all. Except where prohibited by law, all rights reserved. TM.  So since that was a pretty short fight, instead we'll talk about team construction. The Soldier Office lets us rename our human units now, so that's a nice bonus, but will it be useful? Ramza is a Virgo. That means he has Good compatibility with Capricorn and Taurus, Bad compatibility with Sagittarius and Gemini, and Best/Worst with Pisces. Capricorn, Taurus, and Virgo are all Good with each other and the first two are Neutral with Pisces. Pisces is Good with Cancer and Scorpio, and bad with Sagittarius and Gemini. The absolute worst thing you can have in FFT is a bunch of units with bad compatibility and low Faiths, as you'll basically cut out half the game's supportive abilities. We want to avoid that. I've personally never found the benefits of low Faith to be worthwhile, as you're usually hurting your own chances of supportive stuff like Haste missing. To avoid this, we want our supportive ability users to be at least neutral with everyone, preferably better. The first question is how many "support" characters do we want? Having one means we can just go with a female Pisces and take a bunch of other people who are Best/Good with that sign. If we want two, though, then we're forced to have one of them be neutral with either the other supporter or Ramza, or to give up on Best compatibility with Ramza. The argument could be made that I have no idea what to expect, and so I should just make everyone Good with each other so I'm not locked into a particular plan. That sounds nice and all, but I can't control everyone's Zodiac. Agrias is Cancer, Rad is Capricorn, and Mustadio is Libra. There's also Rafa, Malak, Cid, Meliadoul, Beowulf, and Reis, but since they won't be around until Chapter 4, I'm not stressing them right now. For the record, though, they're Pisces, Gemini, Scorpio, Capricorn, Libra, and Pisces respectively. That Gemini in particular sticks out like a sore thumb: it'll be impossible to have a team member with better than Neutral on both Ramza and Malak, and of the bunch Malak is easily one of the least used so I wouldn't mind seeing how he shakes out in CCP. Agrias's Cancer makes her Good with Ramza and a hypothetical female Pisces. Rad's Capricorn puts him in the Good compatiblity triangle with Ramza, while Mustadio is Bad with Rad and Agrias. While they don't have special jobs, let's not discount Lavian and Alicia. Lavian's Aries puts her at Best with Mustadio at the cost of Bad with Agrias and Rad, while Alicia is a female Pisces, and we know how great that is. Just from what we've seen in the Prologue, we know that Agrias and Rad are going to see some use just because they're new and shiny. This puts them at Good with Ramza and Good/Neutral with a female Pisces. Since Alicia has a respectable 62 Faith, she can serve in that role just fine, saving me the effort of recruiting one. Lavian is Bad with Agrias and Rad, but considering how much I Stasis Sworded my own teammates in the first fight, this is probably a good thing. She's only neutral with Alicia, but with 61 Faith I'm not too worried about success rates. Rad is similarly Neutral with Alicia, but he's got 67 Faith, so again we're likely fine. So am I actually considering going with Rad, Alicia, and Lavian as party members? Well, why not? No one ever uses them, and with a Virgo Ramza they slot right in. Add in Agrias and we've got a solid five unit core. I'll probably switch people around in randoms and whatnot as well, and who knows what will happen when we get to Chapter 4. Maybe this hack makes Meliadoul good? Eh, let's not get too crazy. Now what does this mean for Chapter 1? It means I'll just run with the Garliand generics and ditch them after Chapter 1. It never made sense, lore-wise, for them to still be around as of Chapter 2 anyway. Maybe I'll kick them out, maybe I'll crystalize them and see about saving some JP. We'll see. It's a shame though: I appreciate being able to rename them as well as the guaranteed 65 Brave/Faith, but their day is not today. NEXT TIME, ON CELDIA'S COMPLETE PATCH:  The joke's on you Delita, I get to control you.
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Feb 1, 2019 17:49
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This is really interesting. I like the reshuffled abilities because, it seems like they've really tried to cut out some of the useless bullshit abilities. Trasson posted:...finishes the job. Take note of the Move-JP UP of the Training Vest: for some of you, this might be the first time you're seeing the ability in action.
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Feb 1, 2019 18:26
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It's interesting to see that this hack seems to be making the game easier so far? I don't consider the original FFT to be particularly difficult in the first place  . Then again, we've only seen the first two fights so far, and the last time I played all the way through FFT was around 20 years ago.At the very least, the ability to control Guest characters is pretty welcome, because it means Algus is no longer suicidal. Re: Party members and astrological compatibility - I say do what you want. Both because I have no idea what's coming up and because all this Zodiac poo poo is going way over my head. Just, we're "stuck" with Ramza all game (unless this hack changes that, but you said there were no plot changes), so I feel it's best to work with him rather than characters we won't have for another... uh... bunch of hours.
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Feb 1, 2019 18:45
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Commander Keene posted:It's interesting to see that this hack seems to be making the game easier so far? I don't consider the original FFT to be particularly difficult in the first place I think it's less making the game easier and more just getting past the boring opening battles before you can actually make and build a team. I haven't done the fight yet, but I had to step into Mandalia to get that "On the Next Episode" shot, and there were a good number of enemies there. Orbonne and Gariland give you an idea of what's to come while not delaying the part you're actually looking for.
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Feb 1, 2019 18:55
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Remind me, what do Brave and Faith do again?
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Feb 1, 2019 19:44
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Epicmissingno posted:Remind me, what do Brave and Faith do again? Lots of things, but to summarize very quickly: Brave is your chance of using a reaction ability (75 Brave implies 75% of Counter kicking in, for example), your damage with bare hands / knight swords / katana, and your chance of finding items with the Move-Find Item ability (lower is better here). If it drops below 10 in a battle, the unit gets Chicken status and flees. If it drops below 6 after a battle, the unit leaves the party. Faith is the formula for magic damage and status and magic gun damage. So high faith means you cause more magic damage, but also take more. More to the point, if your target has lower faith, they have less chance of being damaged (or healed with healing magic). If it goes above 94 after a battle, the unit leaves the party. Much much more here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/15053
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Feb 1, 2019 19:56
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Brave affects the effectiveness of the unit's physical attacks, their resistance to physical damage, and the effects of some abilities based upon Brave (such as Blade Grasp). Additionally, at <10 Brave, a unit gains the "Chicken" status effect, their sprite changes to that of a chicken, and they run from everything. Faith is the same as Brave, except for magic attacks (and healing/support spells), and I don't think there's a magic equivalent to Chicken, although a low-Faith character is basically immune to spells for all intents and purposes.
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Feb 1, 2019 19:59
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Epicmissingno posted:Remind me, what do Brave and Faith do again? Brave is straightforward, you almost always want your characters to have it maxed out. It determines the percentage chance of some (all?) reaction skills triggering, and your damage potential with some weapons. More is better. If a character's brave dips below a certain threshold they will turn into a literal chicken and involuntarily run around in fear for a while passively regenerating brave until they're over the chicken threshold. Low brave characters will abandon your party permanently if they stay below that threshold long enough. The one case where you want low brave is when using the movement skill Move-Find Item. When you move to a tile that has an item on it with that skill equipped, you can find either a common item or a rare item, and the chance of finding the common one is equal to your brave score. Once you get one item outcome from a move-find, you're permanently locked out of getting the other, so in vanilla FFT you had to have a coward on your team to get rare gear. Faith is more complicated. Your character's strength *and* vulnerability to magic both scale with faith. The higher the faith, the stronger their magic ability is, but the more effective magic is against them, too. Low faith characters are nearly immune to magic but also worthless with it. There's a special character later in the game whose magic scales inversely with faith, though. Also, if you have a character whose faith stays above a certain threshold for too long, they'll leave the party permanently kind of like the low brave thing. edit: god drat it
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Feb 1, 2019 20:00
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Note that the base game includes a really silly and grindy way to change your dudes' Brave and Faith scores permanently. No idea if it's still around in this hack, but I would hope not.
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Feb 1, 2019 20:01
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megane posted:Note that the base game includes a really silly and grindy way to change your dudes' Brave and Faith scores permanently. No idea if it's still around in this hack, but I would hope not. there's nothing silly about YELLING
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Feb 1, 2019 20:07
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What everyone else said, but the short versions to keep in mind are that: --Brave is the percentage chance for most Reaction abilities to fire. --Brave is a percentage multiplier for (in vanilla) barehanded, Katana, and Knightsword attacks. --Faith is a percentage multiplier from both the caster and the target on most magical abilities. That last one is a bit special. For damaging attacks (e.g. black magic) the base formula is MA * Q, where Q is the base power of the ability. So Fire has a Q value of 14: with an MA of 5 you get 70. However, this is multiplied by both the caster and target's Faith. So if both the caster and target have a Faith of 50, you get 5 * 14 * 0.5 * 0.5, which comes out to 17.5, which gets truncated down to 17. For status effects, instead the formula is MA + Y for the chance of success, and then that sum is multiplied by both the caster's and the target's Faith divided by 100. Since MA rarely gets very high (20 being an amazing score for most of the game) while the base success rate Y values in vanilla don't go below 100 and are usually closer to 200 or more, Faith has a far larger impact on status effect spells than MA does. Since Faith tends to lie between 40 and 75 for most units, then one can observe that the multiplier to the base success rate could be anywhere between 0.16 and 0.5625. Going by vanilla's Protect spell, with a Y value of 200, that's the difference between a 16% and a 100% success rate on neutral compatibility (before accounting for MA, which could add a point or two). Factoring in Zodiac compatibility, a 40 Faith unit with 10 MA casting Protect on a Best compatibility target with 40 Faith results in (200 * 1.5) + (10 * 1.5) * 0.4 * 0.4, or a 50% success rate. Meanwhile a 70 Faith caster with 0 MA on a 70 Faith target at Worst compatibility will give (200 * 0.5) + 0 + * 0.7 * 0.7, or a 49% success rate. Put another way, for status effect spells, good Faith on both sides can be worth as much as the difference between Best and Worst compatibility. The ostensible downside with Faith is that having high Faith means you're more likely to be affected by negative status effects, but the rare times you'd run into that you can just apply Shell or Innocent. Meanwhile, there's no equivalent method in vanilla to compensate for low Faith in an emergency: you can apply the Faith status, but that itself is subject to the Faith multipliers to success rate. Paradoxically, the fastest way in vanilla to avoid the problems of having high Faith is most accessible when you have high Faith. We'll see how CCP addresses things.
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Feb 1, 2019 21:08
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From a mini-max perspective, there's basically zero reason to ever intentionally have low Brave outside of your one dedicated Item Finder Guy. There *are* ways to make a low-Brave character completely viable (one reaction ability just increases evade, which isn't modified by Brave), but there's no particular reason to do so outside of Item Find. Faith can be handled in a lot of different ways. I personally like keeping it somewhere near the middle or a little higher for most of my guys (say like 50-65 or so). If you crank Faith super-high, you make a glass cannon mage with crazy damage but is always at risk of getting one-shotted by an enemy spell. On the flip side, if you dump it to a super small value, you end up with a character who's basically immune to magic but who's a pain in the rear end to heal/revive. (This is all from vanilla of course; no idea how CCP handles it) MagusofStars fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Feb 1, 2019 |
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Feb 1, 2019 22:54
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Doesn't a faithless character still get full benefits from items? Still means you have to build arouns that, but...
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Feb 1, 2019 22:57
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marshmallow creep posted:Doesn't a faithless character still get full benefits from items? Still means you have to build arouns that, but... They do, but that's a point more in favor of Item than low Faith. Item can restore HP/MP, revive the dead, and heal statuses. There's nothing to replicate Haste, Protect, or Shell. Haste alone is a dealbreaker: nothing, and I mean nothing, is ever as good as "whatever you were doing, but 50% more often". Almost done with the job writeup for the three (yes, three!) starter jobs, so expect that sometime in the next ten hours. After that we'll have a small break over the weekend while I play ahead some and get some screenshots, and then we'll get Mandalia Plains on Monday.
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Feb 1, 2019 23:11
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I genuinely love the hell out of this patch I had a great time playing. It's a lot of fun and has a lot of cool stuff and ideas. I'm looking forward to seeing your thoughts and reactions on it, because whenever I ask about hacks of this game, I get directed to LFT and 1.3, and I feel this one flies under the radar, which is such a shame.
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Feb 1, 2019 23:30
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Job Overview 1: Starters An Academic Look into the Arts of the Warrior, the Alchemist, and the Green Mage That hoity-toity line up there already tells us the largest change. Vanilla FFT has Squire and Chemist as the beginning points of the physical and magical jobs. Here, rather than two branches, we have three. Warrior is obviously the physical branch, so I guess Green Mage is the magical and Alchemist is the oddball? I personally always found it rather funny that the magical jobs were unlocked by the most stat-agnostic job in the game, so I think that's changing here. Anyway, we're not here for my random thoughts. Fighting games have tier lists, TCGs have decklists -- in an LP of a class based RPG, all anyone cares about are the  JOB OVERVIEWS, so let's get to it.As a prelude, note that everything listed and discussed is based on my own observations. That's why, for example, you won't see any discussion of Speed. Everyone right now is at level 1, and so there hasn't been any chance for Speed growths or multipliers to kick in and thus everyone has 6 Speed. Equipment is also based on what I can or have seen; for example, I have no idea who can equip guns (though something tells me the Gunslinger is a safe bet).   Warrior A fighter skilled in the basics of martial combat, and with various weapons Equips: Knives, Swords, Axes, Crossbows, Shields, Hats, Light Armor, Accessories. Action Ability Set: Maneuvers Warrior Job command. A varied set of skills to aid in combat. Action Abilities: Bandage: "Heal an ally's wounds with first aid." Range 1, Effect 1. Heals 20 HP when CCP's Potions heal 40. Eh. Shield Bash: "Smash an opponent with your shield, granting a high chance of knocking them back. Special: Chance of Knockback, Requires Shield equippied." Range 1, Effect 1. Probably just a renamed Dash, but we'll see how much damage it does later. Charge: "Wait a short time to strike with greater precision, dealing more damage with physical weapons. Special: Less effective with Magic-based weapons." Weapon Range, Effect 1, CTR 5. Charge+something. According to the known issues list, you can charge this on a tile and then move away without breaking the charge, so that's funny. Skullcrack: "Deliver a distracting blow that can interrupt casting." Weapon Range, Effect 1. Deals MP damage and cancels Charging and Performing. The first actually new move, and an interesting one it is. Given our adventures with Power Word: Stun in the Prologue, this might actually be useful. Rally: "Become a living rally point for your forces." Self-target range, Effect 2, CTR 9. Grants a random pick of Regen, Protect, and Shell to allies in the range. Nameless Song and Kiyomori's odd love-child. Provoke: "Enrage a target with a slew of insults." Range 5, Effect 1, CTR 4. Inflicts Berserk. Seems hilariously useful. Reaction Abilities: Counter: "Counter with physical attack." Probably unchanged from vanilla. Support Abilities: Equip Shield: "Equip a shield regardless of Job." also probably unchanged from vanilla. Grey Soul: "Nullifies all elemental weaknesses and resistances." Makes the user weak to all elements and resist all elements. In other words, exactly what the description says. Whether or not it's useful depends on what gets thrown at you, I suppose. Movement Abilities: Leap: "Lets you jump just a little bit higher." Jump+1. Yawn. Discussion Bandage is unexciting, and Shield Bash might be useless. Charge could be pretty nice but Archers weren't exactly stomping all over vanilla and I don't see that changing. No, where it's at is Skullcrack, Rally, and Provoke. The former can shut down any incoming casts (and synergizes well with their innate ability to equip Crossbows), and the latter can just shut down an enemy mage, period. One of them individually would have their trouble spots, but the two together make a potent combination. Rally's pretty boring but 9 CTR will still fire before the user's turn comes around again so you'll be able to get everyone in position for one or two rolls of the dice before you need to switch to some other move. Stat-wise, Warrior seems to have a strong physical lean, and in other news water is rated most likely to be wet in a SurveyMonkey poll. Seriously though: Pado the male Warrior has 6 PA at level 1. 6! That's two more PA than a male Squire in vanilla gets, although it's at the cost of MP. While I imagine the number will grow with levels somewhat, a starting point of 1 MP doesn't give me high hopes for hybrid builds. For the record, a female Warrior starts with 4 PA, so that's a pretty significant difference. Both genders also have much higher HP than anything in the other jobs. Finally, the Warrior also inherits the Squires 4 movement, so that's nice. All in all, the Warrior looks to be a solid starting job. While I expect later jobs will be more exciting to use, I can see bringing Maneuvers along for the utility, and the crossbow usage is a nice bonus. Vanilla crossbows were never bad, it's just that Archers were categorically awful and if you were gonna use a support slot for a ranged weapon, Equip Gun was more useful.   Alchemist A chemist who creates both helpful and harmful concoctions for use in battle. Equips: Knives, Whips, Hats, Light Armor, Accessories. Action Ability Set: Alchemy Alchemist Job command. Uses chemical compounds to heal ills and cause sickness. Action Abilities: Potion: "Medicine that restores HP. Deals damage to the undead. Restores 40 HP." It's an item. Without Throw Item, this is range 1 only. Not terrible, but not exciting either. 40 HP also isn't super great, but at least it isn't immediately outclassed like vanilla. Vitae Tonic: "A special tonic that preserves life but it has lethargic side-effects." Inflicts Slow and Reraise. Yes really, Reraise. I can forgive the lack of X-Potions and Elixirs with that. Phoenix Down: "Mysterious feather revives dead units. Disappears after one use." Revives dead units. Still the lazy player's solution to figuring out how to make Raise not miss all the time, this might be more useful now as I don't have a Raise caster at the moment. Tincture: "Medicine that restores MP. Restores 30 MP." With no Hi-Ethers or Elixirs in sight at the moment, this is less of a second wind for your casters and more of an emergency battery. Star Curtain: "A silk shroud imbued with magic that protects from magical attacks." Adds Shell. See below Light Curtain: "A silk shroud imbued with magic that protects from physical harm." Adds Protect. I'm going to talk about both of these together, since Protect and Shell are so linked. FFT is one of their stronger outings, cutting damage and success rates by a third. Being able to apply this at range instantly is incredibly powerful. Panacea: "A simple medicine that removes ailments." Heals Blind, Confusion, Berserk, Poison, Sleep, and Silence. It's a necessary evil. Remedy: "A powerful cure for dangerous ailments." Heals Undead, Petrify, Vampire, Curse, Frog, Don't Move, and Don't Act. Am I going to be hit with those enough that I'm going to want someone to heal them? Or is this just a Don't Act/Don't Move healing item that has some edge uses. Grease: "A viscous fluid used to lubricate machine parts." Inflicts Blind. Now we get to the offensive side of things. Blind is funny in FFT: because it doubles evasion rates of the target, it gets stronger as the game goes on, but its presence as a non-damaging non-incapacitating status means you'll most likely encounter it in the early game. Venom: "A fast-acting paralytic poison." Inflicts Poison and Don't Move. Ranged instant (hopefully) 100% effective Don't Move? CCP really knows how to save a skillset as I scroll down, huh. Phantom Vial: "Bottled essence of a ghost, magically contained." Inflicts Float and Undead. The interesting thing is if this is Undead as in just invert healing, or if this also includes the 50% chance of reraise on each death counter. Adrenaline: "A guaranteed 'feel good' medicine. Side effects may include loss of temper." Inflicts Berserk, Regen, Haste. I'm sure nothing bad could result from this. Mosfungus: "A powerful poisonous mushroom. Once ingested, death is guaranteed." Inflicts Death Sentence. If the fight with Dycedarg doesn't involve him using this, I'll be so disappointed. Reaction Abilities: Auto Hi-Potion: "Quickly quaff a Hi-Potion when attacked." Auto-Potion, but limited to Hi-Potions. At 70 Brave, this is an average of 70 HP healed per attack. That might not hold up in endgame, but it'll certainly hold up until then. Soul Shield: "Physical damage is converted into magic damage. MP is lost instead of HP, but only for how much MP you have left." It's MP Switch, but not on a job that actually uses MP this time, making it much more appealing. Support Abilities: Maintenance: "Makes all of your worn equipment immune to Sunder and Steal skills." Still vanilla. Still boring Throw Item: "Allows you to throw items at a distance." Also still vanilla. Movement Abilities: Move-Find Item: "Find any hidden items at your destination." Boring. Discussion In vanilla, Chemist was a pretty garbage class that was kept from Archer-tier by only two things: Item and guns. I throw some shade above, but a tuft of Phoenix Down is usually good enough for most purposes; after all, the only hit point that matters is the last one. Wait, what about Auto-Potion? What, Auto-Potion's great. Yeah, so why aren't you counting that in the Chemist's favor? Because this is FFT and you should only examine things in the contexts they're required to be in. You can have Auto-Potion without being a Chemist, and you can be a Chemist and not have Auto-Potion. Being a Chemist means you automatically get Item, and you automatically get Throw Item on top of that. A Chemist combined reliable ranged offense using guns with excellent healing and support. Unfortunately, a Priest could do all that and better. A vanilla Chemist was a scholar of white magic who couldn't hack it in the real world. Alchemist seems to address a lot of these issues. The core part of the skillset is still there: you can heal HP and status at range. While I don't know yet if Alchemist gets guns, whips are certainly nice. The real value is in the status inflicting concoctions. If you can't figure out how to abuse instant-cast Berserk or Undead I don't even want to know you. The even better tricks are more subtle: using a Vitae Tonic on the enemy you're killing last, or a Mosfungus on a vulnerable unit (as the AI will tend to ignore a unit "marked for death" in favor of applying effort where it won't be wasted). Alchemy as a skillset is a little less exciting. I mean, Phoenix Down is Phoenix Down, you know? The status inflicting options are less interesting in melee range; like is that really the best thing to do with your action a lot of the time? That's not to say throwing a Light or Star Curtain on yourself as you move upfield is bad. It just feels like filler. Useful filler, but filler. CCP seems to agree with that assessment, by the way. Everything but Vitae Tonic, Remedy, Venom, Phantom Vial, Adrenaline, and Mosfungus is 0 JP to learn. That means that, provided you have the item, an Alchemy user can always be assured to have a decent selection at hand. Raise your hand if you've ever set Item on someone in the early game and then realized you didn't have the JP for Phoenix Down. Item supply brings me to another point. As nice of some of these effects are, I don't yet know how accessible they'll be. For all I know, Mosfungus is a rare Poach from a rare monster, and I don't even know if Poach is still in. The AI, cheating bastards that they are, won't have this issue. The RSA set of Alchemist is basically identical to Chemist. Auto-Potion has been changed to only use Hi-Potions, which is a nerf for the player but a buff for the AI. Since Auto-Potion would always use the lowest valued potion in inventory, the AI would only ever get 30 HP off of it, while the player could use X-Potions for five times that number. Soul Shield is kind of nice, but every time that would trigger I could have Auto Hi-Potion fire for 100 HP, so a unit needs more than 100 MP to make Soul Shield mitigate more damage, and to also not have need of that MP. Eh. The rest is vanilla and boring. Auto Hi-Potion is great, don't get me wrong, but as mentioned above, it can be taken independently of the rest of the job. I've spent so much time talking about the skillset that I've barely mentioned the class, but what is there to say? You're not likely to run Alchemist for any reason other than Alchemy, at least from what I can tell. If Alchemy is good enough to use, it's probably good enough to run the actual class and not use up a valuable Support ability slot. That said, there is an edge case I've seen that I'll cover in a future update, but suffice to say the decision isn't quite as clear-cut as I'm making it sound. But seriously, Mosfungus? Too soon.   Green Mage Versatile mages that use a variety of magics. Many of their spells have resorative side-effects. Equips: Staves, Knives, Whips, Hats, Light Armor, Accessories. Action Ability Set: Green Magic Green Mage Job command. Contains a wide variety of magical spells. Action Abilities: Force Armor: "White magic that creates magical armor to deflect physical attacks." Range 4, Effect 2, 4 MP, 3 CTR. Causes Protect. Force Shield: "White magic that creates an invisible shield of force that dampens the effect of magical attacks." Same stats as Force Armor, but for Shell instead. Like the job description says, these also restore a bit of HP along with their effect. It doesn't seem to be much, but it's a nice little bonus. Renew: "White magic that slowly restores health." Range 4, Effect 2, 6 MP, 3 CTR. Regen isn't the most exciting of statuses, but it's the strongest healing Green Magic will ever touch. Curiously, despite this and Force Armor having the same listed Effect range in the tooltip, this radiates two tiles out versus Force Armor's one. I had thought that part of the tooltip was derived from the values assigned to the ability, but maybe not. Mute: "Mystic magic that suppresses all sound around a target." Range 4, Effect 1, 10 MP, CTR 4. Inflicts Silence. This would be far more exciting if all three starting jobs didn't have the ability to cause Berserk. Blind: "Mystic magic that conjures shadows to blind a group of units." Range 4, Effect 2, 8 MP, 4 CTR. Inflicts Blind. This usually went ignored on the Oracle because Life Drain was better in most cases. Maybe it'll be more useful here. Levitate: "Time magic that warps space and causes units to float a short distance above the ground." Range 4, Effect 2, 9 MP, CTR 4. Causes Float. Boring. Lullaby: "Mystic magic that puts victims to sleep." Range 4, Effect 2, 14 MP, CTR 5. Inflicts Sleep. With Mimic Daravon not sitting one branch of the job tree over, this is likely to see use. Sleep is still one of the most absurdly strong statuses in FFT thanks to the combination of usually fighting enemies with similar amounts of durability that don't have a boss list of immunities. Osmose: "Mystic magic that steals spiritual energy from another creature and gives it to you. Special: Drain 33% of the MP from one unit." Range 4, Effect 1, MP 2, CTR 2. I could take or leave this until I saw how much MP healing the Alchemist didn't have. Accelerate: "Time magic that speeds up units under its influence." Range 4, Effect 2, 12 MP, CTR 4. Causes Haste. OH MY GOD IT'S HASTE WOO! ahem. Decelerate: "Time magic that makes actions slower by warping time." Range 4, Effect 2, 8 MP, 4 CTR. Inflicts Slow. Not nearly as exciting as  HASTE but still a solid tool to have.Immobilize: "Time magic that paralyzes the legs of those it affects." Range 4, Effect 2, 7 MP, CTR 3. Inflicts Don't Move. Still awesome, along with... Disable: "Mystic magic that halts the actions of its victims." Range 4, Effect 2, 10 MP, CTR 5. Inflicts Don't Act. It's like instant death, but it takes them a while to realize how dead they're supposed to be. Plague Cloud: "Black magic that slowly kills anything within range." Range 4, Effect 2, 8 MP, Speed 25. Inflicts Poison. Poison sucks, moving on. Second Life: "White magic that guards against death." Range 4, Effect 1, 10 MP, 6 CTR. Causes Reraise. One starting job granting Reraise is nice. Two makes me worry for the long term health of my units. Zombify: "Mystic magic that corrupts living flesh into undead." Range 4, Effect 1, 13 MP, 6 CTR. Inflicts Undead. Eh. Just tag them with Disable. Enrage: "Mystic magic enrages the target into attacking blindly." Range 4, Effect 1, 13 MP, 6 CTR. Inflicts Berserk. I love the esoteric status effects as much as anyone, but why do all three starting jobs get Berserk? Reaction Abilities: Bane: "Counter attacks with various effects depending on the battlefield." Probably just a renamed Counter Flood, which was one of the best Reaction abilities in the game, so I approve. Support Abilities: Warding: "Begin battle with magical protection." Start the battle with Protect and Shell. Now this is interesting. I can see a lot of value for this in the Gafgarion and Wiegraf fights specifically, but 1/3 less damage taken for the first 32 clockticks of battle only goes up in value as the game goes on and units get faster and faster. Movement Abilities: Levitation: "Use persistent magic to float 1h over the land." Always on Float and immunity to Don't Move. Vanilla Float was basically useless. Adding in Don't Move immunity doesn't necessarily make Levitation top tier, but at least I won't be embarassed to take it now. Discussion Everything I wanted and then some. Protect, Shell, Haste, Slow, Don't Act, Don't Move, Regen, and Reraise all in one, while Osmose keeps you going. What's not to love? Well, damage for one. The Green Mage has excellent MA (6 on a level 1 female) and gets staves, and so can put out respectable damage in a pinch. They have terrible HP (mid twenties at level 1), and while 10% character evasion is nice, without shields to pair it with we're talking only a ten percent chance to dodge a physical from the front. A physical that will likely hurt, because I'll repeat: terrible HP. As a magic user, they want to have high Faith, which also leaves them open to enemy magic. There's only so much Shell can do, after all, and they don't get Reflect. All of that, though, is about Green Mage. Green Magic, though? Green Magic is amazing. It's the one stop shop for almost any supportive status you want. The only difficulty is resisting taking more than one user of it. There's Haste and fourteen other abilities that might not be Haste but are still varying levels of awesome! Green Magic is highly unlikely to disappoint. Unless you only learn Plague Cloud and don't use anything else. That said, if you want my honest opinion (as opposed to my heretofore blatant lies) a skillset with Plague Cloud and nothing else is still better than vanilla Battle Skill and Charge, and I'd compare it favorably to Basic Skill. As a donator of abilities to poach, Bane is definitely on the high end of my picks. Counter Flood on a large majority of terrain results in a 12% chance or so for any attacker to either be killed or effectively so, and unless Bane isn't actually what it appears to be, I'll be quite happy with it. Warding and Levitation are niche, but nice. I appreciate having them around, even if I'm not sure they'll see much use. After all, gotta spend that JP on Green Magic. So that's the three starting jobs! Although, with my planned team setup, it's really only two starting jobs, isn't it? Ramza, Rad, and Agrias will all have their own replacement for Warrior, so Warrior is itself Alicia and Lavian's special job as far as I'm concerned. I'll also revisit some of these evaluations in the future once we've seen more. For all I know Vitae Tonic isn't buyable or Mossfungus is 2000 gil a pop, or Alchemist can get Excalibur. Huh, those are all Alchemist stuff I'm expecting to change. We'll have to see if reality matches my expectations.
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Feb 2, 2019 04:09
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Like I said, I'll be playing the next couple of battles over the weekend and posting The Exciting Adventures of Algus in Mandalia Plains by Monday evening (which time zone's evening? Whatever makes you most unhappy, I suppose). As an appetizer, I will say this: it seems the gloves are off. One Bandit, one Alchemist, and four Warriors against our plucky squad of 4 plus Delita and Algus. To get some discussion going over the next couple of days (and to get onto another page for those forlorn souls still on 56k. You know who you are), I'm going to pose some questions to you, the readers. Yes, that's right. Now that I've entertained you, it's your turn to entertain me. It's called flipping the classroom, except there's almost no resemblance at all! What sort of path would you like to see Ramza travel? I'm going to delve into Hero, of course, but there's more jobs than that out there. Focus on Hero and the offensively-minded punch-jobs? Delve into Alchemist and learn the secrets of being a trickster hero who wins through cheap tricks and guile instead of honorable combat? Or maybe he ought to study the secrets of the Green Mage, and learn that the place the leader is most effective might not be out front? What special character are you most interested to see CCP's take on? For me, it's Meliadoul. Probably the most offensively bad of all the specials, she combined the worst of Agrias (female PA multiplier, not being Cid) with the worst of Cid (not being around for most of the game) and has the audacity to join after him. It's a real shame, too, as she's the only character on your team with a personal connection to Vormav. Save the animals or kill the animals? I have no idea what discussion on this might mean as far as Celdia's Complete Patch is concerned, but if the best way to occupy your weekend is to argue the merits of saving the Etecoons and the Dachoras in a charity speedrun of Super Metroid, then by all means amuse yourself.
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Feb 2, 2019 04:20
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Bring Ramza down the offensive magic path in honor of my first playthrough that made him a Black Mage with Iaido. Also, eagerly awaiting to see how Cid is balanced/busted.  Save the Animals
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Feb 2, 2019 04:29
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Since Ramza has to be around all the time, I'd say that the offensive punchy jobs would still be his best bet. As for special characters... Rafa and Malak will need a serious overhaul to be at all useful, but the changes to special classes so far seem promising. Perhaps the Blue Mage here will be better than FFXIV's take on it... The animal question does raise another point: How much have the beast units changed? Will Boco be a special chocobo with abilities even better than Choco Meteor?
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Feb 2, 2019 04:35
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Everyone always has different ideas on what to do with Rapha and Marach so I'm looking forward to that.
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Feb 2, 2019 05:08
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This looks pretty cool. I'm interested to see how this differs from the original. Also... I prefer punch-jobs. Plus, I've seen too many magic user Ramzas. I'd also like to see what you can do with Rafa and Malak. And sure, save the animals.
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Feb 2, 2019 08:02
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I say split the difference and have spellsword Ramza. Mostly because I love spellswords. Also, see what you can do with the Sith Lord pair of Darth Rafa and Darth Malak.
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Feb 2, 2019 08:23
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Punchy Ramza is cool. Can be a pure physical class or some hybrid like a spellsword, but the main focus should be to hit people in the face. I'm most interested in Mustadio to be honest. Seal evil going to other classes? I wonder what he gets in exchange. I'm also curious how Orran and Cloud shape up.
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Feb 2, 2019 08:40
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I'd be curious to see Ramza go down the Alchemist path myself, if that ends up being the support-oriented oddball classes. His story arc defines him as more support than a fearsome warrior anyway. Or really whatever ends up interesting and/or hilarious. I'm mostly interested in the late C4 characters who are kinda overshadowed by the time you get them. I'm also curious how they're gonna handle Cid and the non-human special characters.
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Feb 2, 2019 12:31
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1.) I'd like to see a support-based Ramza, because that path seems like it's probably changed a lot and would be interesting to see how to use. 2.) Special character-wise, I'd like to see Byblos. I used him in his appearance battle, was completely disappointed by him, then straight up dismissed him. If you're going to give the player a new character at the end of the difficult bonus dungeon, he's going to have to be really good to be viable and vanilla Byblos wasn't even remotely at that level. 3.) I'm going to interpret "save or kill animals" as whether or not you should 'save' monsters by recruiting them and using them as team members. So yes, save them, because most of the monsters were disappointing to use in vanilla, so maybe they've been improved.
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Feb 2, 2019 12:54
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This looks really good, I'm glad it is built off of the original release, because every time I look at WotL it irritates me. Only thing that I might not like is the equipment names are a bit too purple prosey for me, but still nowhere near as bad as FFXII or WotL. I too think support Ramza might be the best choice, he can sit back and milk battles for JP which will make it easier for others to get going too with the spillover. A lot of good choices to see in more detail, but I'll request the one good one that seems to get overshadowed: Reis. Bunch of insane passive abilities as a Dragonier and incredibly broken specials for dragons.
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Feb 2, 2019 13:12
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Trasson posted:What sort of path would you like to see Ramza travel? 1. I got a better idea. Punch mage built entirely around 'roiding out with Adrenaline. Cast Adrenaline Shot into your vital organs, then cast Fist directly into the vital organs of the enemy. 2. Honestly, with what we've seen for all the characters, I'm sure every special has something incredibly unique. I'm most excited for Beowulf and Worker 8 though. 3. Animals are our friends and I'm sure they've got some crazy bullshit we'll want to turn on the enemies.
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Feb 2, 2019 13:24
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Punch Ramza best Ramza. I'd like to see Rafa and Malak because of how awful they were in the original game. The new classes look really neat so I hope they get that kind of makeover too. Save the animals, blind speedruns are dumb. Plus, I'm interested in how monsters might be changed too.
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Feb 2, 2019 15:33
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Celdia's gonna be tickled pink when she finds out someone's LPing her patch here.
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Feb 2, 2019 22:59
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