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About this mod
Implements gameplay modifications and a Hard Mode
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
This mod provides a way to distribute and implement changes to the .wdb game files along with several game-play modifications. Included with the base files are the following game changes. (Note: this mod now updates both the English and Japanese audio files, and beginning with 2.3.5 this mod will work with Steam versions that only provide Japanese audio files.)
Tier 3 Weapon Level Increase - Tier 3 weapons can now be increased in level to 125 (base game 100).
Improved Catalog Drop Rates - The drop rate increase for equipping the Collector's and Connoisseur's catalogs have been increased. The collector's catalog now doubles the common drop rate (from +50%) and the connoisseur's catalog increases the rare drop rate to +50% from +10%. For reference, trapozohedrans will still be difficult to acquire from 'toises as the drop rate for a 5 star battle will only increases from 5.5% to 7.5%.
High CP Crystarium Nodes - The Crystarium has been modified in the 9th and 10th stages to open some nodes for some high CP nodes. The intent of this change is prevent the maxing of the Crystarium and losing CP when either grinding at the end of the game or trying to max your weapons (CP limit of 999,999). This mod combines adjacent "like" nodes (str & str, or HP & HP) into a single node freeing up the 2nd one. These new nodes are high CP, low attribute nodes and are not meant to be game breaking. Cost is 20,000 CP per stat point and 4,000 CP per HP. Total additional CP required to max the Crystarium is increased by 22 million for a total additional stat increase of 600 points (breakdown between strength and magic is dependent on the character) and 2,500 HP. All of the modified nodes are outside the normal progression path so it is possible to complete the equivalent of the original Crystarium without ever acquiring one of these nodes.
Vanille: Higher Magic - This mod converts 200 strength into 200 magic in the upper levels of Vanille's Crystarium (and also reduces her total HP by 50).
Lightning: Synergist Change - This mod shifts some of Lightning's synergist (enhancer) role abilities. It doesn't give her any new ones, only moves existing ones, mainly Haste is acquired earlier. Lightning is almost always used in my party and I thought this might provide a different dynamic for game-play if she acquired Haste earlier. As the synergist role is a secondary role, it won't affect the early to mid level game-play.
Strike Abilities - There are two options with dealing with the Ravager -strike abilities to minimize the alternating animation between a -strike ability and a magic ability and to minimize the chance the Ravager runs in close to the enemy and gets hit from AOE attacks. The first lowers the chain increment base from 10.0% per attack to either 9.8% attack. 9.8% will prevent the character from using -strike abilities on all enemies except those with weaknesses to physical or a single elemental weakness. For enemies with no elemental weaknesses or multiple weaknesses, the Ravager will just cycle between magic attacks. The second option lowers it to 8.8% which is sufficient to prevents the character from using -strike abilities against enemies with only a single weakness (Cactaur for example). At this point, the lower chain increment doesn't really affect game play as the AI will not normally choose the -strike ability for most situations.
Normal Drop Rate - Modifies the normal drop rate multiplier based on the battle star rating of the combat. Ratings of 0 through 2 stars remain the same, while ratings of 3 or higher are increased up to 2x.
Paradigm Shift - Modifies the paradigm shift animation times enabling a shorter delay when changing. Shorter paradigm shift also doesn't reset the camera.
Running Speed - Increases the characters running speed by 15%. This percentage was chosen as faster speeds will cause the camera to lag behind. Note that changing the characters running speed can make avoiding encounters easier. The actual animation doesn't change, only the distance travelled with each step.
Hard Mode:
The hard mode option is a series of mods designed to make the Final Fantasy XIII combat more challenging. Each individual mod changes one aspect of the game and they can be installed or uninstalled independently of one another, even during a single play-through. Some mods may have multiple options to customize the difficulty.
Faster ATB: This mod increases the ATB regeneration rate for most (all?) enemies. This enables the enemies to attack faster causing more damage as well as the increased ability for spell casting or interrupting character actions. This should affect all aspects of combat throughout the game but should impact combats with multiple enemies more than a single enemy and potentially encourage more use of slow or slowga. There are two options for this mod, a +30% rate and a +50% rate. Note that enemies do not attack 30% or 50% faster, this only increases the ATB recharge rate. Animation time for the attack is not included so the actual rate increase will be variable, but less. The +50% rate increase should be similar to a constant Haste on the enemies, although a real Haste may also have an increased animation speed as well.
Chain 600: This mod limits the chain gauge to a maximum of 600% from 999.99%. This will reduce the maximum amount of damage the characters can deal in a single attack, potentially by 40%. It also changes the increase in the chain gauge when an enemy is staggered reducing it from 100% to 60%. This mod will affect Bosses, enemies with higher HP or lower chain resistance more than others. This may also encourage the use of the Sabetuer role, particularly the abilities deprotect and deshell or the Synergist role with the abilities haste, faith and bravery. Enemies that originally stagger at values above 600% have been modified to stagger 550% with an increase in chain resistance to compensate for the lower stagger value.
Enemy HP: This mod increases the HP of enemies, mainly those with low HP). There are two flavors to this mod.
Option 1: Enemies with low HP get roughly a 50% increase (very low, <500, may get even more), while enemies close to 100,000 HP will have virtually no increase.
Option 2: Increases the percentage increase from 50% to 75% for low HP enemies. Enemies at 100,000 HP will see a 25% increase, decreasing to 10% at 1,000,000. All enemies above 1,000,000 get a constant 10% increase.
The intent of this mod is to make the "mobs" of weak enemies more of a challenge, but will also impact enemies that improve their attacks as their HP is reduced, as it gives them additional time. For Option 2, it also has the potential to eliminate some of the common "kill" methods that require enemies to be defeated in a single stagger, as the increased HP will make that more difficult. This will affect the early and mid part of the game (chapters 1-10) more than Gran Pulse, Eden and Orphan's Cradle where many of the enemies have HP nearing or exceeding 100,000. Typically if you have a strategy to defeat an enemy, having more HP will not make the battle harder, just longer with a lower chance for a 5 star rating unless the enemies meet one of the criteria above.
Higher Stats: This mod increases the Strength and/or Magic of the enemies. Enemies that clearly favor one stat over the other will get a higher increase to the favored stat and no increase to the other while enemies that are fairly well balanced will see a lesser increase to both stats. There are two options to this mod.
Option 1: Favored stat gets a 20% increase, balanced stats see a 15% increase.
Option 2: Favored stat gets a 35% increase, balanced stats get a 25% increase.
The intent of this mod is to enable all enemies to hit harder, causing more damage, or use spells to greater effect hopefully promoting paradigms other than Commando (Attacker) or Ravager (Blaster). This should affect all aspects of the game, weak as well as strong enemies. However, for very strong enemies, it might make them impossible if they can one-shot the party. If this is the case, please provide feedback and I can adjust the values for individual enemies.
Stagger 25: This mod reduces the stagger time maximum by 25% from the original 45 seconds. This will limit the amount of damage that can be caused while the enemy is staggered as well as the amount of time that can be spent maximizing the chain gauge before paradigms such as Cerberus are initiated.
Vercingetorix Poison: This mod increases Vercingetorix's resistance to poison. It doesn't eliminate it, but its intent is to make poison less of a primary kill method and more of a "tool" to eliminate this unliving. With this mod, it is expected that the party will need to be more actively involved in doing damage as it will not always be possible to immediately "stick" a poison debuff and then "ride out" the attacks. This change can be done anytime you wish a more difficult battle on Mission 64.
Fewer Char HP: This is my least favorite of the "Hard Mode" mods as it stifles character development by reducing the HP gain in the Crystarium by about 20% in the first 8 levels. Levels 9 & 10 are not as greatly affected so the by the end-game, HP is reduced by only about 10%. My recommendation is not to use this one unless all the other "Hard Mode" mods do not provide enough difficulty. The reason levels 9 & 10 are omitted from this mod is to make it 100% compatible with Crystarium mod that adds additional high CP nodes.
The following is a guideline to help implement the type of "hard mode" experience you wish to have.
Harder "Normal" Mode: Faster ATB 30%, Chain 600, Enemy HP Option #1. This will provide more challenging combat requiring more healing, but for the most part, the strategies used during the regular play through will not need to be changed.
Easy "Hard" Mode: "Harder Normal Mode" plus Higher Stats Option #1. This will most likely cause more character deaths and require Phoenix Down or the ability "Raise" unless strategy changes are made during some combats (like using Protect, Debrave/Defaith or a Sentinal)
"Hard" Mode: Chain 600, Stagger 25, Enemy HP Option #2 and either Faster ATB or Higher Stats at the harder setting with the other at the lower setting. This should require some strategy changes on a decent number of the mid to harder level battles.
If that is not challenging enough, use them all! I would like feedback on what ones you've used and what you thought. Which mods were effective, which ones weren't. The mods with multiple options were set based on a guess of what would be effective without making battles unwinnable and not any extensive testing.
Tier 3 Weapon Level Increase - Tier 3 weapons can now be increased in level to 125 (base game 100).
Improved Catalog Drop Rates - The drop rate increase for equipping the Collector's and Connoisseur's catalogs have been increased. The collector's catalog now doubles the common drop rate (from +50%) and the connoisseur's catalog increases the rare drop rate to +50% from +10%. For reference, trapozohedrans will still be difficult to acquire from 'toises as the drop rate for a 5 star battle will only increases from 5.5% to 7.5%.
High CP Crystarium Nodes - The Crystarium has been modified in the 9th and 10th stages to open some nodes for some high CP nodes. The intent of this change is prevent the maxing of the Crystarium and losing CP when either grinding at the end of the game or trying to max your weapons (CP limit of 999,999). This mod combines adjacent "like" nodes (str & str, or HP & HP) into a single node freeing up the 2nd one. These new nodes are high CP, low attribute nodes and are not meant to be game breaking. Cost is 20,000 CP per stat point and 4,000 CP per HP. Total additional CP required to max the Crystarium is increased by 22 million for a total additional stat increase of 600 points (breakdown between strength and magic is dependent on the character) and 2,500 HP. All of the modified nodes are outside the normal progression path so it is possible to complete the equivalent of the original Crystarium without ever acquiring one of these nodes.
Vanille: Higher Magic - This mod converts 200 strength into 200 magic in the upper levels of Vanille's Crystarium (and also reduces her total HP by 50).
Lightning: Synergist Change - This mod shifts some of Lightning's synergist (enhancer) role abilities. It doesn't give her any new ones, only moves existing ones, mainly Haste is acquired earlier. Lightning is almost always used in my party and I thought this might provide a different dynamic for game-play if she acquired Haste earlier. As the synergist role is a secondary role, it won't affect the early to mid level game-play.
Strike Abilities - There are two options with dealing with the Ravager -strike abilities to minimize the alternating animation between a -strike ability and a magic ability and to minimize the chance the Ravager runs in close to the enemy and gets hit from AOE attacks. The first lowers the chain increment base from 10.0% per attack to either 9.8% attack. 9.8% will prevent the character from using -strike abilities on all enemies except those with weaknesses to physical or a single elemental weakness. For enemies with no elemental weaknesses or multiple weaknesses, the Ravager will just cycle between magic attacks. The second option lowers it to 8.8% which is sufficient to prevents the character from using -strike abilities against enemies with only a single weakness (Cactaur for example). At this point, the lower chain increment doesn't really affect game play as the AI will not normally choose the -strike ability for most situations.
Normal Drop Rate - Modifies the normal drop rate multiplier based on the battle star rating of the combat. Ratings of 0 through 2 stars remain the same, while ratings of 3 or higher are increased up to 2x.
Paradigm Shift - Modifies the paradigm shift animation times enabling a shorter delay when changing. Shorter paradigm shift also doesn't reset the camera.
Running Speed - Increases the characters running speed by 15%. This percentage was chosen as faster speeds will cause the camera to lag behind. Note that changing the characters running speed can make avoiding encounters easier. The actual animation doesn't change, only the distance travelled with each step.
Hard Mode:
The hard mode option is a series of mods designed to make the Final Fantasy XIII combat more challenging. Each individual mod changes one aspect of the game and they can be installed or uninstalled independently of one another, even during a single play-through. Some mods may have multiple options to customize the difficulty.
Faster ATB: This mod increases the ATB regeneration rate for most (all?) enemies. This enables the enemies to attack faster causing more damage as well as the increased ability for spell casting or interrupting character actions. This should affect all aspects of combat throughout the game but should impact combats with multiple enemies more than a single enemy and potentially encourage more use of slow or slowga. There are two options for this mod, a +30% rate and a +50% rate. Note that enemies do not attack 30% or 50% faster, this only increases the ATB recharge rate. Animation time for the attack is not included so the actual rate increase will be variable, but less. The +50% rate increase should be similar to a constant Haste on the enemies, although a real Haste may also have an increased animation speed as well.
Chain 600: This mod limits the chain gauge to a maximum of 600% from 999.99%. This will reduce the maximum amount of damage the characters can deal in a single attack, potentially by 40%. It also changes the increase in the chain gauge when an enemy is staggered reducing it from 100% to 60%. This mod will affect Bosses, enemies with higher HP or lower chain resistance more than others. This may also encourage the use of the Sabetuer role, particularly the abilities deprotect and deshell or the Synergist role with the abilities haste, faith and bravery. Enemies that originally stagger at values above 600% have been modified to stagger 550% with an increase in chain resistance to compensate for the lower stagger value.
Enemy HP: This mod increases the HP of enemies, mainly those with low HP). There are two flavors to this mod.
Option 1: Enemies with low HP get roughly a 50% increase (very low, <500, may get even more), while enemies close to 100,000 HP will have virtually no increase.
Option 2: Increases the percentage increase from 50% to 75% for low HP enemies. Enemies at 100,000 HP will see a 25% increase, decreasing to 10% at 1,000,000. All enemies above 1,000,000 get a constant 10% increase.
The intent of this mod is to make the "mobs" of weak enemies more of a challenge, but will also impact enemies that improve their attacks as their HP is reduced, as it gives them additional time. For Option 2, it also has the potential to eliminate some of the common "kill" methods that require enemies to be defeated in a single stagger, as the increased HP will make that more difficult. This will affect the early and mid part of the game (chapters 1-10) more than Gran Pulse, Eden and Orphan's Cradle where many of the enemies have HP nearing or exceeding 100,000. Typically if you have a strategy to defeat an enemy, having more HP will not make the battle harder, just longer with a lower chance for a 5 star rating unless the enemies meet one of the criteria above.
Higher Stats: This mod increases the Strength and/or Magic of the enemies. Enemies that clearly favor one stat over the other will get a higher increase to the favored stat and no increase to the other while enemies that are fairly well balanced will see a lesser increase to both stats. There are two options to this mod.
Option 1: Favored stat gets a 20% increase, balanced stats see a 15% increase.
Option 2: Favored stat gets a 35% increase, balanced stats get a 25% increase.
The intent of this mod is to enable all enemies to hit harder, causing more damage, or use spells to greater effect hopefully promoting paradigms other than Commando (Attacker) or Ravager (Blaster). This should affect all aspects of the game, weak as well as strong enemies. However, for very strong enemies, it might make them impossible if they can one-shot the party. If this is the case, please provide feedback and I can adjust the values for individual enemies.
Stagger 25: This mod reduces the stagger time maximum by 25% from the original 45 seconds. This will limit the amount of damage that can be caused while the enemy is staggered as well as the amount of time that can be spent maximizing the chain gauge before paradigms such as Cerberus are initiated.
Vercingetorix Poison: This mod increases Vercingetorix's resistance to poison. It doesn't eliminate it, but its intent is to make poison less of a primary kill method and more of a "tool" to eliminate this unliving. With this mod, it is expected that the party will need to be more actively involved in doing damage as it will not always be possible to immediately "stick" a poison debuff and then "ride out" the attacks. This change can be done anytime you wish a more difficult battle on Mission 64.
Fewer Char HP: This is my least favorite of the "Hard Mode" mods as it stifles character development by reducing the HP gain in the Crystarium by about 20% in the first 8 levels. Levels 9 & 10 are not as greatly affected so the by the end-game, HP is reduced by only about 10%. My recommendation is not to use this one unless all the other "Hard Mode" mods do not provide enough difficulty. The reason levels 9 & 10 are omitted from this mod is to make it 100% compatible with Crystarium mod that adds additional high CP nodes.
The following is a guideline to help implement the type of "hard mode" experience you wish to have.
Harder "Normal" Mode: Faster ATB 30%, Chain 600, Enemy HP Option #1. This will provide more challenging combat requiring more healing, but for the most part, the strategies used during the regular play through will not need to be changed.
Easy "Hard" Mode: "Harder Normal Mode" plus Higher Stats Option #1. This will most likely cause more character deaths and require Phoenix Down or the ability "Raise" unless strategy changes are made during some combats (like using Protect, Debrave/Defaith or a Sentinal)
"Hard" Mode: Chain 600, Stagger 25, Enemy HP Option #2 and either Faster ATB or Higher Stats at the harder setting with the other at the lower setting. This should require some strategy changes on a decent number of the mid to harder level battles.
If that is not challenging enough, use them all! I would like feedback on what ones you've used and what you thought. Which mods were effective, which ones weren't. The mods with multiple options were set based on a guess of what would be effective without making battles unwinnable and not any extensive testing.