Unlearn ability?

[kennygnu]

It's a fairly straight forward idea. For the Monster Arena late game grind, you eventually clear the entire sphere grid on all characters and even start using Clear Spheres to eliminate any node that doesn't give 4 points in an attribute, to replace them with ones that do.

I have started a few monster arena grinds in the past and would usually learn abilities indiscriminately on all characters. Setting cursor to memory helps navigate this sea of abilities.

But in my latest playthrough I resisted the urge to learn anything except essentials. I even went through Lulu's sphere grid never picking up Fira/Firaga etc, but just skipped straight from the lowest level elemental spells she starts the game knowing, to learning Demi, Flare and Ultima and I really appreciate how slimmed down her spell selection is in the menu.

My only wish is that I could deactivate those initial abilities on characters. Auron didn't learn a single Break ability until I reached Full Break, but he still starts knowing Power Break.

Yuna's white magic list is quite bloated by default as well, with Cure and four Nul abilities.

Does anyone know a mod that lets you just deactivate an ability on the sphere grid? Or just selectively hide them in the combat menu?

[Hinnyuu]

Farplane can do this. It can manipulate the activation of any node for any character, including unlearning abilities (though it can't delete the node itself).

I've done what you're suggesting before, many years ago. It's visually clean but I found the use value limited, since FFX doesn't press you for time (fully turn-based) and more often than not you'll use a repeat option anyway so the memory cursor sticks you in the right spot to begin with.

But you can do it with Farplane, no problem.

[kennygnu]

Originally posted by Hinnyuu:

Farplane can do this. It can manipulate the activation of any node for any character, including unlearning abilities (though it can't delete the node itself).

I've done what you're suggesting before, many years ago. It's visually clean but I found the use value limited, since FFX doesn't press you for time (fully turn-based) and more often than not you'll use a repeat option anyway so the memory cursor sticks you in the right spot to begin with.

But you can do it with Farplane, no problem.

Thanks. I'm trying to install it now.

I can open a window that says 'select game process' but then there are no options or context menus. What am I doing wrong?

Never mind. I figured it out. Thank you so much for the link. This is exactly what I'd hoped for. Just so neat to be able to deactivate old defunct abilities.

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by kennygnu:

Thanks. I'm trying to install it now.

I can open a window that says 'select game process' but then there are no options or context menus. What am I doing wrong?

Farplane manipulates the game data as you're playing. Run the game, load your actual save, then run Farplane - it'll change your data on the fly.

[kennygnu]

Thank you for the help. After some clicking around I was able to figure it out.

Success. Now my abilities have been edited. It took me a moment to realize I had to both deactivate the node on the sphere grid and within the character's listed abilities.

[kennygnu]

One extremely irritating glitch seems to have occured now. I disabled Dark Attack on Waka. Now Kimari keeps getting that ability no matter how many times I go back into Farplane and turn it off. It ALWAYS keeps turning back on for him no matter what I do. Even when I turn it off and immediately exit the game.

[Hinnyuu]

Originally posted by kennygnu:

One extremely irritating glitch seems to have occured now. I disabled Dark Attack on Waka. Now Kimari keeps getting that ability no matter how many times I go back into Farplane and turn it off. It ALWAYS keeps turning back on for him no matter what I do. Even when I turn it off and immediately exit the game.

That's strange, I can't remember seeing this. But it's been several years. Maybe the default abilities always have to be assigned to someone? You could check and see if something like e.g. Power Break also behaves like this.

If not, then I guess that could just be a glitch. Tools like this aren't infallible.

[kennygnu]

Provoke and Aim have somehow swapped places on my sphere grid. I did not edit either of those nodes.

This and Kimari keeps getting Dark Attack no matter how frequently I tab back into Farplane and turn it off. I tab back into the game and within seconds, I check his sphere grid and his abilities and Dark Attack is listed again.

Now I am starting to regret using Farplane...

[kennygnu]

Re-enabling the ability on Waka does not seem to fix it. I am stuck now. Dark Attack enables on Kimari the second I exit the sphere grid. I check back immediately and the skill is enabled for him.

Now it seems to have just resulted in my save file being corrupted like this. I can't even disable it and immediately exit Farplane. It still re-enables if I do that.

It's spreading. Now Riku has Dark Attack too...

Checking their steam page the description reads:

EDIT:
4 August 2017

As many of you suspected, the tool is no longer under development. It should still mostly function for the most part.

If anyone wishes to take over development, please contact me.

That should have been a clue for me. Farplane has been abandoned for 8 years now and my attempt to use it has now corrupted my characters with no hope of changing things back.

[Hinnyuu]

Well that sucks. Sorry to hear it. I hope you made a separate backup save beforehand? Always a cardinal rule when manipulating data or messing with a save.

Since the tool is so old it's possible that a game update shifted memory values and some things are no longer accurately mapped. That's an unfortunate possibility with these things.

Most other tools are probably in danger of the same, as this is a fairly old game at this point. Most community projects aren't maintained indefinitely.

[kennygnu]

I did not make a separate backup save, no. I got too brave and saw the edits taking immediate effect and was happy, so I just saved on the same game file again.

I have to abandon that save file now. Lesson learned.

I still have another much older save file where I've begun setting up characters with decent stats for the monster arena and I have been more liberal with activating ability nodes there. I just have the cursor set to memory and that works.

So fair warning to anyone else out there who are tempted to do what I did:

Do NOT use Farplane. It will shuffle nodes on your sphere grid and randomly enable abilities on characters that should not have them.

Now I'm so discouraged I have to put the game away for a while and focus on something else.