Amazing video! I look forward to seeing the next one. EDIT: Though it's rather unfair that enemy aeons' Overdrives don't delay their turns, whereas yours do.
Glad to see you continuing. Yeah Isaaru was never going to be too hard sicne it's more made to get you into teaching and using aeon abilities... and just for safety I decided to make it so all fights can be won baseline as well, so no matter what you decide to teach it's only uphill from there. Also kinda cool to have you showcasing the underwater encounters a bit; they're of course tuned to be ridiculously strong on purpose since you only get 1-2 encounters inbetween those two save spheres anyways so I felt I could go a bit crazy with them ^^ they remain vulnerable to about every status in the book so I don't see it ever being a place to get stuck in. Evrae Altana actually wasn't my own idea but came from a friend of mine and was ultimately the first boss concept of the entire mod that was truly fleshed out fully; was quite a trip into figuring out more of how the AI works in order to realize it (took some trickery finding how to manipulate the party's Doom counter). I'd say it's the second most unique fight concept in the mod after Crazy Anima and I do love how many little things of the combat system work so well with it; even the fact that CTB healing becomes CTB damage on Zombies plays a role in this fight. Which is poetic because voidling's Haste/Slow Lock fight against OG Evrae Altana is how I learned about that entire mechanic to begin with myself.
Yeah the underwater fights are pretty insane unless you want to spend your resources, but it's just one/two fights so you can still sometimes squeeze through with a bit of luck even without items. Isaaru definitely felt undertuned, but I can understand the idea of making it always be possible no matter how you spend your Ability Distillers -- don't want people getting stuck here with no way to progress if they only have one save file and teach the wrong abilities. Still, I would have liked it to be a bit more difficult. Ifrit auto-loses to Slow as shown in the video, Ixion doesn't deal enough damage to be very threatening (healing spell or NulShock should make this easy enough) and Bahamut having only 20k HP makes him easy to take down even without any additional abilities. Altana's Mega Doom is a gimmick that I very much enjoyed and of course it definitely reminded me of voidling's Slow/Haste delay loop strat. Cool to see it incorporated as an actual game mechanic that doesn't get much spotlight in (nearly) any other challenge run.
In my playtrough I tried to minimize encounters, so I use less items. BUT we know, in vanilla, encounters should upgrade Aeons stats, so in my experience it was some minor downside of trying to just speedrun from boss to boss, even using distillers for abilities. Staying near save sphere and grind should make it even easier, if it's not changed in the mod(didn't check).
@@BlitzAce469 For the record, Ixion got a pretty significant buff in the latest version 1.6 now, I micromanaged the numbers to make it still just BARELY beatable without teaching anything, but ultimately now he deals far more damage with his physicals and heals for way more with his Thundaras (mainly by having much lower MDF which also makes Magic damage more effective against him). Should feel a lot more threatening while still being perfectly reasonable if you teach stuff. Bahamut hasn't been buffed yet cause I couldn't make up my mind on how to do it, but might see a rework at some point too.
@@Karifean Good stuff. I would still like Isaaru to be quite the hardcore fight, but I guess that's unreasonable without a repeatable source of Ability Distillers in case the player screws up.
@@yogg-saron thanks, I appreciate it. Altana is a really fun concept indeed, I love the living/zombie contrast with the regular Evrae too, with the theme being outspeeding/outslowing the boss.
@@Karifean post game included, admittedly I got through alot by abusing slow + threaten, but still had a blast figuring out how to play out each fight. Seraph nearly stumped me, took many attempts and the win really came down to the wire, wish i had recorded it was epic
@@padonkluft Damn that combo really ended up a lot more abused than I anticipated/hoped it would. Still, grats on clearing the mod ^^ it still contains a solid few fights that can't be cheesed by that too badly. Will say it has been a bit of a headache trying to find a way to nerf the combo without just making bosses immune to Threaten all over again (and IMO Threaten alone is generally not OP without Slow). Nesouk brought up the idea of making Slow unable to target allies but then that breaks the Evrae Altana fight in this very video so that's sadly no good. Ah well, probably will have to stay as it is and keep it as a learning experience.
@@Karifean Don't know if it's too RNG, but maybe give enemies a percentage chance each turn that passes to break out of threaten, scaled to how strong they are? RNG like this isn't amazing but it adds a downside to an otherwise very consistent strategy. Or just increase the base resistance or multiplier after each successful threaten (again, could be scaled based on the strengths of the bosses) so that is slightly harder to land, or at least can't be consistently abused throughout a fight?
@@nakodares5982 Nah getting multiple procs isn't even the problem, multiple procs are beyond broken, a single Slow+Threaten is enough to invalidate a lot of bosses the way I've designed them. I think there's just no pretty way to do it. I think I'll just have to bite the bullet and add some Threaten immunities even if it sucks. I can still have a good few bosses vulnerable to it, but it'll be a more common sight to have end/postgame bosses immune to it, rather than that just being a choice few exceptions.
Pleased you're back on the Blitz, really enjoyable and interesting episode. It is tough to manage this life with a full time job and other stuff, I can also vouch for that 👍🏻 Another excellent video and enjoyed watching each and every fight. @Karifean continues to impress with this challenge mod, especially Evrae Altana. I did expect Issru to have 5 aeons, but guessing that is not possible? Good luck with Altana - surely the strat is to kill off each of your characters, or 1 or 2? To remove doom? Or did I miss a new mechanic? Good luck also with Highbridge and Natus. The changes for those are going to be insane I imagine.
@@jikGeek thanks for your support as always man, glad to see you enjoyed it. Definitely a lot of changes here, always fun to navigate. Re: Altana, you may have missed the pop up message at the start of the fight saying all reviving is disabled for the fight -- if a character dies, it's permanent (until after the fight). The only way to win is to have Altana's Doom run out before the team's. I am also looking forward to Natus, always one of the more interesting battles in challenge runs.
@@BlitzAce469 yes, you are right Blitz, I did miss the message. Playing it on the phone cooking dinner haha 😄 buzzing for Natus, to see what juicy mechanics are at play. Immune to poison I imagine + you are forced to fight across all 3 phases, I imagine how this will go? Round 1 - maybe similar to Seymour #1? Round 2 - insta shattered or multi break 🤔 Round 3 - triple flare maybe or using ultima? Up first I suppose is Highbridge. Which is tough. Good luck
GG for Isaaru yeah he is pretty easy, I actually didn't know Ifrit was susceptible to Slow outside I figured the same strat of putting Nulblaze before throwing a Diamond Dust to get the overdrive free, only difference without Slow is having to make sure his next turn after that isn't Meteor Strike, Ixion is made easy with Nullschock for his overdrive which is the only threat, for Bahamut I personnally took Shiva and teach her Dispel ^^. Didn't have to much issue with underwater random encounter, at this point I went crazy with Wakka and give him a weapon with Darkstrike, Silencestrike and Slowstrike needless inflicting all these statuts at once is crazy usefull for mob fights (and even prove usefull for many boss fights as it extend the duration of the Buster statut effect from 1 to 3 turns), I also think I had make a weapon with Poisonstrike with Rikku or was using her Poisontouch not sure but she was setting Poison, eventually later in the run I pretty much gave her a weapon with Poisonstrike, Zombiestrike and Sleepstrike to team with Wakka as mobs shut downer.
@@nesoukkefka1741 Yeah, Isaaru was certainly a little underwhelming and could easily be made a bit more difficult IMO without any issues. I understand Karifean's point about not wanting to "soft lock" players who waste their Ability Distillers on useless abilities and then get stuck against Isaaru, but man I just wanted him to be harder :p Nulshock would have been a great idea for Ixion, but Cura worked just as well in mitigating Thor's Hammer (and in the winning attempt I didn't even use it). For Bahamut I guess you could use Dispel but Aerospark just seemed like a better choice. Have you finished the mod at this point or not yet?
@@BlitzAce469 Think Dispel was better personnaly, cause it's Rank 3 whereas Aerospark is Rank 4, use Nullschock cause this basically remove the need to spend a turn healing and keep charging the Overdrive, but in the end yeah this fights were design to be beatable without teaching abilities. I've finished the mod a couple of weeks ago, altough I haven't post all of my boss videos yet, I've shared my progress and feedback with Karifean while I was doing my run along the way, from what I read many fight have been tweaked already especially in post game base on my and other players feedback, so curious how it will turn out for you XD
Amazing video! I look forward to seeing the next one.
EDIT: Though it's rather unfair that enemy aeons' Overdrives don't delay their turns, whereas yours do.
Glad to see you continuing. Yeah Isaaru was never going to be too hard sicne it's more made to get you into teaching and using aeon abilities... and just for safety I decided to make it so all fights can be won baseline as well, so no matter what you decide to teach it's only uphill from there. Also kinda cool to have you showcasing the underwater encounters a bit; they're of course tuned to be ridiculously strong on purpose since you only get 1-2 encounters inbetween those two save spheres anyways so I felt I could go a bit crazy with them ^^ they remain vulnerable to about every status in the book so I don't see it ever being a place to get stuck in.
Evrae Altana actually wasn't my own idea but came from a friend of mine and was ultimately the first boss concept of the entire mod that was truly fleshed out fully; was quite a trip into figuring out more of how the AI works in order to realize it (took some trickery finding how to manipulate the party's Doom counter). I'd say it's the second most unique fight concept in the mod after Crazy Anima and I do love how many little things of the combat system work so well with it; even the fact that CTB healing becomes CTB damage on Zombies plays a role in this fight. Which is poetic because voidling's Haste/Slow Lock fight against OG Evrae Altana is how I learned about that entire mechanic to begin with myself.
Yeah the underwater fights are pretty insane unless you want to spend your resources, but it's just one/two fights so you can still sometimes squeeze through with a bit of luck even without items.
Isaaru definitely felt undertuned, but I can understand the idea of making it always be possible no matter how you spend your Ability Distillers -- don't want people getting stuck here with no way to progress if they only have one save file and teach the wrong abilities. Still, I would have liked it to be a bit more difficult. Ifrit auto-loses to Slow as shown in the video, Ixion doesn't deal enough damage to be very threatening (healing spell or NulShock should make this easy enough) and Bahamut having only 20k HP makes him easy to take down even without any additional abilities.
Altana's Mega Doom is a gimmick that I very much enjoyed and of course it definitely reminded me of voidling's Slow/Haste delay loop strat. Cool to see it incorporated as an actual game mechanic that doesn't get much spotlight in (nearly) any other challenge run.
In my playtrough I tried to minimize encounters, so I use less items. BUT we know, in vanilla, encounters should upgrade Aeons stats, so in my experience it was some minor downside of trying to just speedrun from boss to boss, even using distillers for abilities. Staying near save sphere and grind should make it even easier, if it's not changed in the mod(didn't check).
@@BlitzAce469 For the record, Ixion got a pretty significant buff in the latest version 1.6 now, I micromanaged the numbers to make it still just BARELY beatable without teaching anything, but ultimately now he deals far more damage with his physicals and heals for way more with his Thundaras (mainly by having much lower MDF which also makes Magic damage more effective against him). Should feel a lot more threatening while still being perfectly reasonable if you teach stuff. Bahamut hasn't been buffed yet cause I couldn't make up my mind on how to do it, but might see a rework at some point too.
@@Karifean Good stuff. I would still like Isaaru to be quite the hardcore fight, but I guess that's unreasonable without a repeatable source of Ability Distillers in case the player screws up.
Ayyy, a new episode, I was looking forward to it!
Also the Altana fight is such an amazing concept, very different from anything else in the vanilla game
@@yogg-saron thanks, I appreciate it. Altana is a really fun concept indeed, I love the living/zombie contrast with the regular Evrae too, with the theme being outspeeding/outslowing the boss.
Great to see your run continue, I finished the challenge myself between your last vid and this one, curious to see how you tackle the rest of it
Oh damn you already finished it as well, guess it's not like it's that long ^^ just the story or including the postgame?
@@Karifean post game included, admittedly I got through alot by abusing slow + threaten, but still had a blast figuring out how to play out each fight. Seraph nearly stumped me, took many attempts and the win really came down to the wire, wish i had recorded it was epic
@@padonkluft Damn that combo really ended up a lot more abused than I anticipated/hoped it would. Still, grats on clearing the mod ^^ it still contains a solid few fights that can't be cheesed by that too badly.
Will say it has been a bit of a headache trying to find a way to nerf the combo without just making bosses immune to Threaten all over again (and IMO Threaten alone is generally not OP without Slow). Nesouk brought up the idea of making Slow unable to target allies but then that breaks the Evrae Altana fight in this very video so that's sadly no good. Ah well, probably will have to stay as it is and keep it as a learning experience.
@@Karifean Don't know if it's too RNG, but maybe give enemies a percentage chance each turn that passes to break out of threaten, scaled to how strong they are? RNG like this isn't amazing but it adds a downside to an otherwise very consistent strategy. Or just increase the base resistance or multiplier after each successful threaten (again, could be scaled based on the strengths of the bosses) so that is slightly harder to land, or at least can't be consistently abused throughout a fight?
@@nakodares5982 Nah getting multiple procs isn't even the problem, multiple procs are beyond broken, a single Slow+Threaten is enough to invalidate a lot of bosses the way I've designed them. I think there's just no pretty way to do it. I think I'll just have to bite the bullet and add some Threaten immunities even if it sucks. I can still have a good few bosses vulnerable to it, but it'll be a more common sight to have end/postgame bosses immune to it, rather than that just being a choice few exceptions.
Pleased you're back on the Blitz, really enjoyable and interesting episode. It is tough to manage this life with a full time job and other stuff, I can also vouch for that 👍🏻
Another excellent video and enjoyed watching each and every fight. @Karifean continues to impress with this challenge mod, especially Evrae Altana.
I did expect Issru to have 5 aeons, but guessing that is not possible?
Good luck with Altana - surely the strat is to kill off each of your characters, or 1 or 2? To remove doom? Or did I miss a new mechanic?
Good luck also with Highbridge and Natus. The changes for those are going to be insane I imagine.
@@jikGeek thanks for your support as always man, glad to see you enjoyed it. Definitely a lot of changes here, always fun to navigate.
Re: Altana, you may have missed the pop up message at the start of the fight saying all reviving is disabled for the fight -- if a character dies, it's permanent (until after the fight). The only way to win is to have Altana's Doom run out before the team's.
I am also looking forward to Natus, always one of the more interesting battles in challenge runs.
@@BlitzAce469 yes, you are right Blitz, I did miss the message. Playing it on the phone cooking dinner haha 😄 buzzing for Natus, to see what juicy mechanics are at play.
Immune to poison I imagine + you are forced to fight across all 3 phases, I imagine how this will go?
Round 1 - maybe similar to Seymour #1?
Round 2 - insta shattered or multi break 🤔
Round 3 - triple flare maybe or using ultima?
Up first I suppose is Highbridge. Which is tough. Good luck
GG for Isaaru yeah he is pretty easy, I actually didn't know Ifrit was susceptible to Slow outside I figured the same strat of putting Nulblaze before throwing a Diamond Dust to get the overdrive free, only difference without Slow is having to make sure his next turn after that isn't Meteor Strike, Ixion is made easy with Nullschock for his overdrive which is the only threat, for Bahamut I personnally took Shiva and teach her Dispel ^^.
Didn't have to much issue with underwater random encounter, at this point I went crazy with Wakka and give him a weapon with Darkstrike, Silencestrike and Slowstrike needless inflicting all these statuts at once is crazy usefull for mob fights (and even prove usefull for many boss fights as it extend the duration of the Buster statut effect from 1 to 3 turns), I also think I had make a weapon with Poisonstrike with Rikku or was using her Poisontouch not sure but she was setting Poison, eventually later in the run I pretty much gave her a weapon with Poisonstrike, Zombiestrike and Sleepstrike to team with Wakka as mobs shut downer.
@@nesoukkefka1741 Yeah, Isaaru was certainly a little underwhelming and could easily be made a bit more difficult IMO without any issues. I understand Karifean's point about not wanting to "soft lock" players who waste their Ability Distillers on useless abilities and then get stuck against Isaaru, but man I just wanted him to be harder :p
Nulshock would have been a great idea for Ixion, but Cura worked just as well in mitigating Thor's Hammer (and in the winning attempt I didn't even use it). For Bahamut I guess you could use Dispel but Aerospark just seemed like a better choice.
Have you finished the mod at this point or not yet?
@@BlitzAce469 Think Dispel was better personnaly, cause it's Rank 3 whereas Aerospark is Rank 4, use Nullschock cause this basically remove the need to spend a turn healing and keep charging the Overdrive, but in the end yeah this fights were design to be beatable without teaching abilities.
I've finished the mod a couple of weeks ago, altough I haven't post all of my boss videos yet, I've shared my progress and feedback with Karifean while I was doing my run along the way, from what I read many fight have been tweaked already especially in post game base on my and other players feedback, so curious how it will turn out for you XD