Final Fantasy VI: Divergent Paths

[einlanzer]

Thanks for the helpful replies! Regarding Stamina - I'd be willing to bet it was a bug and that it was actually intended to reduce the HP drain of Poison and slip rather than increase it. That alone wouldn't make it awesome, but it would make it better. For Leo's sprite, I ran into issues trying to update it with FF3USMe, so I doubt a straight import would work, but that's okay it's no biggie.

The only other thing that occurred to me that I wanted to mention was just a few thoughts regarding Terra's scenario if you are working on another version:

- The massive amount of XP given in the piranha fight can be effectively lost if you finish the fight with just Banon, which guarantees Terra will be underleveled for the Narshe fights since there's nowhere to "grind" for levels in Terra's scenario.

- the serpent trench was always breezy but feels like a non-event especially with the reduced encounter rate. I think I had like 4 encounters for the entire span of the trench. This kind of spoils the pacing of Terra's scenario IMO as it ends very abruptly.

I'd maybe suggesting reducing the XP given in the piranha fight, and instead update the Serpent Trench to both have more encounters and grant more XP per encounter. Either beef up the frequency of encounters and/or add encounter tables to the interior cavern portions (where you could have repeat encounters to XP grind a bit if you wanted since that isn't an option in the Veldt)

Alternatively (or in addition), you could just add XP to the Veldt encounters. Personally, I never really saw the point of not having the monsters there grant XP.

That's it!

[PowerPanda]

The Serpent Trench actually doesn't have random encounters. They're all scripted. I tried removing the "on the Veldt" flag for the Serpent Trench, but it caused problems if you did a 2nd trip through the Serpent Trench later in the game.

If Terra is underleveled for the Narshe battle, then you just have to survive the 1 battle. When you get her back later, the game auto-levels her to the party average.

[einlanzer]

Just thought I'd let you know I set up a new random encounter table using the monsters from the serpent trench and enabled random battles within the caves. It makes a pretty big difference, effectively doubling the # of encounters you are likely to have and providing a means to do some XP grinding if desired within Terra's scenario. I think it helps even out the pacing and makes the trench feel like more of a proper "dungeon" although it is still definitely on the short and easy side.

I also managed to recolor Leo's sprite using his existing palette in a way I'm pretty happy with by swapping around where some of the colors were used, i.e., moving the tan to his primary skin color and the brown to his accent color. I also changed his hair color to black/brown like Cyan's and changed the light green in his outfit to yellow/gold. It helps him look more unique/distinctive and come closer to matching his concept art.

Still having great fun playing through this especially with Relm's updated Sketch, heh.

[PowerPanda]

Be sure to test that graphical swap with poison and berserk, which are supposed to change the skin color. Those are common "gotchas".

I may look at the serpent trench again if and when I revisit this mod. I know a lot more about swapping around flags than I used to, so I might be able to make it work to gain experience during the serpent trench segment.