Catastrophe Mode!

[Terriko]

This mode is hard, unbeliveably hard! Has anybody else played on catastrophe mode? If so what do you think? Hate it? Love it? I am in between just because I didn't expect it to be harder than nightmare mode. Note I am playing on Hard Catastrophe. If anybody cares to see my pain of this mode I have recorded myself. Watch it, or not your choice. I don't care if you do or don't. I am here to just get opinions on the mode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pFy5r5p3U8

[Erpy]

Yeah, I finished the Nightmare + Catastrophy combo this week. Wasn't quite as hard as I was expecting it to be. Catastrophy mode starts off harder than normal mode since you can't heal in battle and especially on higher difficulties each new enemy you encounter hits very hard. But after gaining a few levels or getting better armor, that damage becomes managable very quickly.

But even though catastrophy mode starts off harder, it might actually be easier than normal mode in the long run. First of all, capla waters are kind of useless as items in this mode (they cure all status effects and refill all your magic gauges to the max, but you get anti-status effects accessories soon enough and you can't use capla waters in the middle of a boss fight anyway which is the only time you can't afford to just stand around and let your magic gauge refill on its own), but they serve two important secondary purposes.

First of all, the fact that you can get a capla water before even leaving the first island means you can get the emel mallet accessory as soon as you enter Port Rimorge for the first time. That means that gathering emel and upgrading your swords is easier from the get-go.

You can also sell them. They sell for over 4000 bucks a piece and sell for nearly 7000 bucks a piece at Croix' stand if you hold off on selling them until after you've bought everything in Rose' store. (which is what I'd like to do) This means you can get some short-term advantage at the start of the game by getting armor you're not supposed to have yet if you don't mind losing out on some extra cash in the long run.

The importance of the ability to buy attack and defense seeds in catastrophy mode, particularly the latter, cannot be overstated. At 25000 a seed, this is quite reasonable at the end of the game, unlike the 80000 you need for a life seed on Nightmare. Due to experience scaling, levelling up past level 50 is quite tedious and levelling up past level 53 is ridiculous since you get single-digit experience per enemy even in the final dungeon. The amount of cash the enemies drop never gets scaled, so a player in catastrophy mode can always go and grind for some extra cash and buy a few more seeds, effectively circumventing the limit the scaled experience forces on you.

So this mode is harder at first, but easier near the end.

[Terriko]

Originally posted by Erpy:

Yeah, I finished the Nightmare + Catastrophy combo this week. Wasn't quite as hard as I was expecting it to be. Catastrophy mode starts off harder than normal mode since you can't heal in battle and especially on higher difficulties each new enemy you encounter hits very hard. But after gaining a few levels or getting better armor, that damage becomes managable very quickly.

But even though catastrophy mode starts off harder, it might actually be easier than normal mode in the long run. First of all, capla waters are kind of useless as items in this mode (they cure all status effects and refill all your magic gauges to the max, but you get anti-status effects accessories soon enough and you can't use capla waters in the middle of a boss fight anyway which is the only time you can't afford to just stand around and let your magic gauge refill on its own), but they serve two important secondary purposes.

First of all, the fact that you can get a capla water before even leaving the first island means you can get the emel mallet accessory as soon as you enter Port Rimorge for the first time. That means that gathering emel and upgrading your swords is easier from the get-go.

You can also sell them. They sell for over 4000 bucks a piece and sell for nearly 7000 bucks a piece at Croix' stand if you hold off on selling them until after you've bought everything in Rose' store. (which is what I'd like to do) This means you can get some short-term advantage at the start of the game by getting armor you're not supposed to have yet if you don't mind losing out on some extra cash in the long run.

The importance of the ability to buy attack and defense seeds in catastrophy mode, particularly the latter, cannot be overstated. At 25000 a seed, this is quite reasonable at the end of the game, unlike the 80000 you need for a life seed on Nightmare. Due to experience scaling, levelling up past level 50 is quite tedious and levelling up past level 53 is ridiculous since you get single-digit experience per enemy even in the final dungeon. The amount of cash the enemies drop never gets scaled, so a player in catastrophy mode can always go and grind for some extra cash and buy a few more seeds, effectively circumventing the limit the scaled experience forces on you.

So this mode is harder at first, but easier near the end.

Hey that is great advice! Thanks will definatly make this a breeze to go through. I never bought any seeds on my first playthrough like a doof. But I will definatly get the Emel Mallet! Thanks this helped a lot