Final Fantasy VI Randomizer

I've been playing this some more. I'm a bit curious what happens with Vargas if you don't have Blitz by then. I guess you could always kill him the regular way, but that could actually be a pretty serious challenge depending on what your Sabin looks like. As it happened, Edgar had Blitz in my game, so I finished him off without even waiting for Sabin to make an appearance.

So far I've collected a Flash and a Debilitator, but don't have anyone to use Tools. I also have the AutoCrossbow that Edgar sneaks into your inventory. It would be cool if that didn't happen until whomever has the Tools command joins. Not sure if that's practical, though.

I also just had another interesting monster-in-a-box encounter: Siegfried was hiding in a pot in the Returners' hideout. The weak one, fortunately. Even with just Terra, that was a manageable encounter. My Terra has Rage, by the way. She didn't start with anything particularly good. The most useful one is to put her in the front row and use Vector Pup for Haste and the occasional !Bite. Did you divide rages into tiers so that you don't start with anything too powerful, or did I just get unlucky?

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At the risk of turning this thread into my own personal Let's Play (feel free to tell me to stfu if you think I'm hijacking it), here are my notes through the return to Narshe. The Sabin scenario was pretty easy, since my Sabin is a mimic with good stats. Shadow has Lore. He started with Pep Up, Roulette, and Step Mine, all of which are utterly useless at this point in the game (and two of which are actually worse than useless). My Cyan has Dance, which is actually really convenient because he can learn everything except Earth Blues just by playing through the imperial raid. Strangely, the area outside Doma where you fight the Leader is considered a cave, and you learn Dusk Requiem there. Oh, and he's also got Mog's palette. So basically he looks like someone exsanguinated him and he's borrowing Ragnar's pink plate mail. Also, the space between his legs is bright red. Gau is an engineer, so I can also now use all the dope tools I've been collecting.

I thought the work-around of having Locke steal clothes by defeating enemies in his scenario makes sense. I was wondering how that would work, since he has throw instead of steal. Celes has Swdtech and bad stats, so she's basically Cyan from the regular game. Too bad.

The Imperial Raid was uneventful, aside from getting to learn the Snowman Jazz in the WoB, which was cool. Finally, the Gigantos in Arvis' clock is now pushing up the daisies. Although he was still capable of one-shotting most of my characters with his !Throat Jab, he had no way of killing my Locke or Sabin once they each used an Inviz Edge. Defeating him caused both Sabin and Locke to instantly level from 13 to 15 and netted me a not-so-useful Hardened dirk.

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Continuing on, the next problem I encountered is a lack of healing in Zozo. Between the SlamDancers and HadesGigases magic attacks, my Tonic supply from Sabin's scenario was quickly exhausted. None of my characters has healing magic (the only one who can heal at all is Cyan using an appropriate dance). Further, none of the shops in Jidoor, Kohlingen, or Figaro sells any healing items. Luckily, the armor shop in Narshe sells Dried Meat, so I stocked up on 99 of them and headed all... the... way... back. Dried Meat in tow, Zozo posed little difficulty.

Finally, Espers. What do we have here...? Well, Kirin is great, teaching Bio (x12), Osmose (x7), and Cure (x18) (finally, healing!). Stray gives me Bolt 2 (x5) and Stop (x8). Siren allows access to Life (x9). Also the game really wants me to learn Rasp and Slow, which each appear on multiple espers at high rates. Aside from their spells, it looks like the level-up bonuses for Espers haven't been randomized. Hopefully that gets added in a future version.

This is really cool.

Incidentally, I just got wtfpwned by a Gigantos hiding in Arvis' clock. Okay then, starting over...

That wasn't supposed to be setup that way... this will for sure be changed in the next version, if it's not already out there.

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EDIT:
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big post

Feel free to make it a mini-LP, I love reading about it!

Yeah, you can finish off Vargas early if one of the first three has blitz. I'm okay with this TBH. If nobody has blitz, you will find his HP has been reduced to accomodate that. It should still require some thought if your Sabin is bad, but should be beatable in most cases (even the Umaro Sabin case.)

Rages aren't divided into tiers, but there's only a small set you can begin with, basically ones comparable to the ones you start with in the normal game.

lol at Shadow's starting lores. That is just too perfect.

Honestly the lack of healing items seems to be the only balancing factor for the otherwise too-easy beginning game. However, I'd usually just run from everything in Zozo (or at least the HadesGigas) to save myself from having to heal so much.

As for esper bonuses, I thought about randomizing them, but there really should be a certain progression for them IMO. I may just get rid of them altogether, they kind of make the game really easy. Not sure how most players would feel about that. On the one hand, less micromanaging, on the other hand, maybe some weaker players need the bonuses? I don't know here, I'll have to think on it.

"That wasn't supposed to be setup that way... this will for sure be changed in the next version, if it's not already out there."

What do you mean? that you'll try to cancel this kind of Ambushes? that type of surprises are one of the main reasons that may convince me to use the randomizer, if you remove them it's quite improbable that i may be still interested...
Even because i saw my bro playing that and he almost finished in 2 days... for the whole game we hoped to find something like an Illumina, or find someone like the true Siegfried in an early chest, but he barely found 6 monster in a chest who were normally beatable in that point of the game:

You should definitively rise the chances to make appear a monster in a box
and, if you can do that, classify enemy formations in tiers too and try to randomize them... that would be an amazing upgrade!!

Thanks, Dessyreqt. I agree that the lack of healing items added some helpful challenge, although hiking across the continent twice in search of healing items while fighting all the battles got me a little over-leveled. For the record, I also agree with Tenkarider to an extent that the Gigantos ambush wasn't the worst thing in the world. I thought it was pretty funny personally, and it has made me just a little nervous every time I open a chest (or other treasure). But I think it would be fine if you smoothed that out a bit, too. I also think some randomization of monster formations would be really cool, but that seems like a much more ambitious project so it's up to you if you want to try and find a way to make it work. Lastly, on the esper bonuses, I wouldn't mind having them removed entirely. I think probably if someone's in to FF6 enough to find this program, they can handle the game without inflating their mag pwr using espers. As it is, I'm not bothering with trying to optimize my stat gains from them.

So, back to the mini-LP.

The Opera House was anti-climactic. Ultros 2 lacks immunity to Stop, which I already had easy access to via Stray. Setzer has Mog's palette, so he looks bizarre. On the southern continent, there was finally a shop that sells Potions in Tzen. I could also buy RunningShoes there, but could only afford one pair. Maranda has Hawk Eyes for sale. Nothing else of interest in the shops. The magitek research facility was a breeze; almost nothing in there could survive a single Flash. The bosses went down in a couple rounds each as well, and I never even saw Shiva. Kinda sad, as I'm used to playing mods with increased difficulty. Maybe I need to run from battles for a while to let the game catch up with my levels a bit. Finally Setzer joins the party. He has sketch, which makes me wonder if this version has the sketch bug fixed. Also, what about other bugs? The new Espers help fill out some of the spells I was missing, but the only really notable addition is Cure 2.

I spent some time getting Terra rages on the Veldt. She now has a fairly ordinary complement of WoB rages, minus Marshal, who steadfastly refused to make an appearance. I also got the Gigantos rage early, which is pretty solid with Magnitude8 and inherent Safe status. Mog joins the party as well. He comes with Runic and some natural magic, although nothing I can't already learn. He also comes at a high level, as usual. Actually I don't think the level factors are randomized. Also added Sraphim, Golem, and Zoneseek to the pile. That gives me access to Reflect, but no other new magic. New shops in Narshe have nothing of interest.

On to the Cave to the Sealed Gate. Not difficult. Ings' Lifeshaver can be threatening since I lack steal (and thus access to Gaia Gear), but all of my characters except Terra can reliably one-shot them. Terra did manage to land a 6000 damage hit with a !CatScratch that triggered the "randomly thrown" property of the Hawk Eye, kind of a variant on Wind God Gau, I guess. For all the treasure in here, I didn't get anything good. Boo. But, hey, at least I have 5 Coin Tosses now. Back to Vector for the chat with Gestahl. Not much different here, save for chests, which weren't notable. The treasures in the imperial base also proved disappointing. I think this might be a function of the item tiering: I definitely got a lot of good items earlier than usual, but for now it seems like I am not seeing any items the next tier up. Off to Thamasa. First order of business: get Shadow a usable Lore. Chimera +2 Cephaler formation doesn't want to show up, but finally does, and I learn Aqua Rake, which might (hopefully?) come in handy on the Floating Continent later. For now, I unequip Shadow since the game unkindly declines to do so for you.

Overall the game has been fun and totally playable so far, albeit a little too easy ever since I got magic and healing ceased to be such a problem (but that's more of a problem with the original game than anything to do with the randomization)... Hopefully the difficulty increase at the floating continent will bring things back into balance a bit.

Well... rising monsters in the chest makes more thrilling/exciting to press x when you find them... the cool items are really rare to appear

One of the most redundant rare loots were coin toss and ribbon(limitated to few characters due to the randomizer)... that spoiled part of the fun, besides in WoR, the 8 dragon weapon drops tends to unnecessarily appear in the chests, i believe my bro collected 5 pearl lances and some boss in the chests disappeared forever...?

The most unbalanced thing was the snow muffler equipable to almost anyone, beat Sr. behemoth and go to the colosseum = the game is done.
I suggest to block randomize on the snow muffler.

I wonder how feasible a LLG would be with the randomizer...

The chances are predictable: random!

For example my bro found moogle charm in a chest, equipable for everyone.

All right. The Mansion in Thamasa was a breeze with Locke throwing Water Edges. Strago has steal, which is nice to finally have. Sadly his equipment options aren't great. I set him up to use the Atma Weapon with Mug, which is good enough to be useful. Pretty much steamrolled through the cave to the espers' gathering place as well. The hardest part there was actually getting Abolishers to show up so I can encounter them on the Veldt later if I want. Ultros is still vulnerable to stop, even though you could easily get it from Golem in the normal game by now... Chest containing a Tabby Suit still contained a Tabby Suit. Not sure if randomly the same or not randomized.


Chupon is also vulnerable to stop, but for whatever reason Ultros isn't this time. Easy either way. The Air Force battle was slightly challenging, mainly because I kept flubbing my Blitzes. Ended up throwing some Bolt Edges which took care of him nicely. Party for the Floating continent is Celes (SwdTech), Sabin (Mimic, Tools, Throw, Magic), and Edgar (Blitz) along with Shadow (Lore). At least Shadow has Aqua Rake now, but I'm mostly using him as a Genji Glove user with two Hawk Eyes in the back row. The Floating Continent was a bit more challenging, but NoiseBlaster really does a number on a lot of those enemies. Atma rolled over. During the escape sequence, the one chest there had another Gigantos in it, which ate up a good 45 seconds of my timer. Still had plenty to go at the end, though.

So we're on to the WoR now. I always let Cid die. Nothing against the guy, but it just seems like Celes' story is more powerful that way. Not much new in the Albrook shops, but at least one of them sells potions even though those are starting the slide into obsolescence. I did pick up an extra Mystery Veil there as well, as this was my first chance to buy them and they are equippable by most of the party. I'm also swimming in gold pieces now so there's little reason to conserve. So now, Tzen... the shops are pretty good. I can buy Pearl Rods, though they are quite expensive. Zephyr Cape also makes its first appearance in the shops.

So, about that collapsing house. That was a fun challenge, mainly because I refused to settle for anything less than (1) collecting every treasure and (2) not running from any battles. There were a few significant obstacles. First, Celes could not equip anything that gave her protection against petrification. Second, there was yet another Gigantos monster-in-a-box in there. Third, Scorpion battles were taking way too long. I solved the last problem by giving her two Hero Rings and optimizing her equipment for magic power, which just baaaarely put her over the top for being able to consistently kill a pack of Scorpions with one spell. This also had the fortuitous effect of allowing me to one-shot Gigantos with Bio. As for the Hermit Crabs, I relied on invisibility obtained through the Phantom summon (I don't have the spell Vanish) in order to avoid their petrifying counterattack (this also made sure Gigantos couldn't hurt me, though it wasn't necessary there). I did have to recast Phantom once thanks to a Drain spell from a pm stalker, and I had to use an Ether to replenish my MP near the end, but after perfecting my strategy, I did successfully complete the house without skipping any chests and without running from any battles with about 45 seconds to spare.

Btw, I also had one run from before I perfected the strategy where I left the house at exactly 0:00. Although it showed Celes outside in Tzen for a fraction of a second, it still switched to the scene of Sabin not being able to hold the house up anymore and was game over. Add that to the list of bugs in this game imo.

Lol Gigantos must really hate you

All right, so after a bit of a break, I made some more progress today. "Detour" to Mobliz to pick up Fenrir. He teaches Haste2, which is useful, and also Float, which I previously lacked. Now is when I notice that I never was able to learn Bolt. No big loss there. Moving on, everything progressed pretty normally up until I beat the tentacle boss in the Figaro engine room and went to recover my Soul Sabre. Lurking inside that suit of armor was another ambush, and this time it wasn't even Gigantos! It was Allo Ver, instead. He didn't put up much of a fight so now I have some Tiger Fangs. Only Edgar can equip them immediately, which seems appropriate since he knows Blitz. In Kohlingen, we meet Setzer again. No big deal. Also can purchase Enhancers here; too bad not many can equip it. Daryl's Tomb was a breeze. No monster-in-a-boxes either. With the airship, our first stop is Duncan, where Sabin training with Duncan somehow teaches Edgar Bum Rush. Weird. Next, might as well grab Palidor. He teaches Life 2 (x6) and Bolt 3 (x2). The Bolt 3 learn rate leaves a bit to be desired, but that is nice. Plus we can abuse Cactrots now.

After quickly picking up Gau, we head to Narshe. Mog joins back up, but still no Moogle Charm. Ice Dragon is a little annoying, mainly because Mog's magic defense is a pathetic 88. But with two characters spamming Bum Rush for 7500 a hit, he doesn't last long. Tritoch bites the dust in similar fashion. Cool, s/he/it teaches Fire 3, Slow 2, and Flare, all at a decent rate of x6. We'll have Celes work on that since she likes to spend most of her time casting magic anyway. While here, why not pick up Umaro? Nothing too interesting in his cave other than Terrato, which teaches X-Zone (x2), Life 3 (x5), and Quick (x2). Those are some nice spells to add to the arsenal. How about Umaro? Well, he's just like himself, uncontrollable as usual. But you can set his equipment at least. Also, he's... orange. Yeah. He doesn't look quite as strange as Setzer/Cyan with Mog's palette, but he tries. Next up? Hmm, not sure, maybe a visit to Señor Behemoth?