Final Fantasy IX: Alternate Fantasy

[Tirlititi]

Hi there!

Final Fantasy IX: Alternate Fantasy is a mod aiming to increase the difficulty and, above all, to give a new fresh experience of FF9 for those who already know the game well.
In the new version you can also recruit Beatrix in the party.

Download/Install:

Since v6.0, Alternate Fantasy must be installed using Memoria's Mod Manager.

Install or update Memoria by downloading and running Memoria.Patcher.exe from its Github:
┌─────────────────────┐
§ Memoria Engine mod[github.com] §
└─────────────────────┘

Note that, for now, Alternate Fantasy must have 'priority' over the Moguri mod if you use both of them.

Below are a couple of screenshots detailing the installation process step by step.

https://i.imgur.com/HgqDJ0W.png
Download and run Memoria.Patcher.exe

https://i.imgur.com/ABxhce9.png
Hopefully the patching process goes fine
If your game is not installed in the standard Steam directory, or in a external hard drive, try moving the patcher to your game directory before running it

https://i.imgur.com/X2Qsqfk.png
When launching the game, the "Install Mods" button opens Memoria's Mod Manager

https://i.imgur.com/tRuVxJ1.png
Download "Alternate Fantasy" from the catalog

https://i.imgur.com/OrYHYTK.png
Don't forget to activate it after installation
In most situations, the Moguri Mod should be moved to the bottom of the list (this is because Moguri Mod 8.3.0.0 packs a couple of assets that are duplicates of the game's default assets; placing it at the bottom has no impact or very small impacts on Moguri's features)

The mod fully works in any of the official languages of the game (English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish and Italian).

Also, if you use Hades Workshop, the HWS source file can be downloaded from my dropbox folder[www.dropbox.com] (it's in the archive "AF and PCP source files.zip").

What are the modifications?

A lot of them. Most are gameplay related but a few of them are also about the screenplay. There are two kinds of scenario-related changes:
1) A few dialogs that were suppressed during the game's development are put back in this mod. It includes the dialogs from the "Hidden Dialogs" patch plus a few others for which only the texts were kept.
2) As Beatrix can be permanently recruited after getting the airship (optional), cutscenes are changed from this point onward to include Beatrix in them.

Here is a list of the dialogs suppressed by the developpers and put back:
• An extra dialog between Puck and Vivi over Alexandria's roofs, unmissable
• A small line in the ATE "Time To Escape", missable
• A few Steiner lines to ask for Magic Sword, unmissable
• An extra line about Vivi's grandpa in front of Ice Cavern, unmissable
• An extended dialog between Steiner and Morrid, unmissable
• An extra ATE in Cleyra's cathedral, missable
• A few lines in Pinnacle Rocks, after the first meeting with Ramuh, unmissable
• An extra minigame in the occupied Linblum Castle, unmissable
• A couple of lines in the base level of the occupied Linblum Castle, unmissable
• A couple of lines at the Dragon's gate right after, missable
• A couple of lines to setup a rescue plan with Mog, unmissable
• An extra minigame when controlling Vivi in Alexandria for the 2nd time, missable

Also, there are 4 new bosses that can be fought at the end of the game.
For that, speak to Hades after defeating Lich and obtaining a Pumice: he will challenge you with new fights.
• The 3 Black Waltzes fighting together
• The 2nd opus of Tantarian, available only if you defeated it in Alexandria's Castle
• Meltigemini, with pieces of real twins inside
• The 4 Guardians fighting together

And Excalibur II can now be acquired by two different methods:
1) Reach and beat Hades in less than 14 hours,
2) Get all the collectable treasures of the game (there are 4 little mistakes allowed) to obtain the highest treasure rank.
Including a few Mimics, that makes 404 unique treasures to find.
The list is the same as in vanilla (for the locations at least) and can be found in this topic[gamefaqs.gamespot.com].


Gameplay-wise, there are a lot of changes. The battle system has been reworked, always with the aim of having more balanced mechanics and open to diverse strategies.

Here is a list of these changes: it is more or less written in decreasing order of importance, which allows you to stop reading whenever you don't want to know any more.


Changes in the abilities

An extended description of each ability can be found in this spreadsheet[docs.google.com].

In particular:
• Some abilities are short-ranged, meaning that they are influenced by the character's row [in vanilla, only the attack command is] and back attacks. They also can't be used against out-of-range enemies.
• Some abilities can deal critical strikes [in vanilla, only the attack command can], which doubles their damage.
• Some abilities use the properties of the character's weapon, which includes its element (if the ability has an element, both are taken into account) [in vanilla, only No Mercy, Stock Break and Shock does that], the bonus given by killer abilities and the weapon's status if the supporting ability Add Status is enabled [in vanilla, only the attack command does that].

• With Bandit enabled, stealing all the 4 items of an enemy cannot take more than 10 attempts:
The super-common item is stolen at the 1st attempt,
The common item is stolen for sure after 1 unsuccessful steal,
The rare item is stolen for sure after 2 other unsuccessful steals,
The super-rare item is stolen for sure after 3 other unsuccessful steals.
When Master Thief is also enabled, only 1 unsuccessful steal can be done between each successful steals (so all the items are stolen after 7 attempts maximum), and the most rare items have the priority.
When Bandit is not enabled and the first steal's random check fails, the counter of unsuccessful steals is not increased [as in vanilla, the first random check is "Random(0, Caster's level + spirit - 1) ≥ Random(0, Target's level - 1)" ; this check is bypassed by Bandit].
Zidane can still steal items with luck, in which case the counter of unsuccessful steals neither increase or reset.

• The trance of any ally can be manually triggered using Zidane's Transcend skill provided that the gauge is already at 50% at least.
• Beatrix has a double-cast Seiken + White Magic trance.
• Quina's trance has changed to Double Blue.
• Scan cannot miss anymore [in vanilla, it misses against most bosses and several special enemies],
• Summons are special for 3 reasons:
1) As in Vanilla, their power increases with the number of jewels that you own (except for Odin for which it is a penalty), up to a +49 bonus [+99 in vanilla],
2) Their power increases each time you cast them, up to 50 times for a bonus of +50,
3) The first time you cast a summon in a battle, it gets priority over the other commands: it is summoned before the other commands in queue, even if the ATB gauge was filled after. When Dagger and Eiko are both in the battle, summons get priority once for both of them.
• Stellar Circle 5 and Meo Twister increase the critical rate on the enemies, adding a 33% chance to the default critical chance (non cumulative).
• Gravity damage are now effective against all the enemies, including bosses. Their power is divided by 4 against bosses [in vanilla, Gravity spells always miss on most bosses].
• Using a Soft on a stone-type enemy cuts its current HP in half. It deals 1/8 of a boss's current HP against a boss instead [in vanilla, using a Soft on a stone-type enemy immediatly kills it]. WARNING: there is a Ragtime Mouse question about "Does a Soft kill an Epitaph?". That question should be answered by considering only how it works in vanilla, not in the mod, so the answer is true. I'll change that question into something else next time I'll update the mod.

Note that some weapons get a special power bonus with the Attack command (thief swords and knight swords are empowered by spirit, rackets are empowered by speed and Save The Queen is empowered by level). As in vanilla, this bonus only applies when using the Attack command.

Supporting Abilities

Auto-Shell, Auto-Protect, Cheat Fate (immunes against Doom) and Fidget are added to several characters.
When Fidget is activated, the character changes row everytime s/he attacks.
Bright Eyes, Restore HP, Reflectx2 and Gamble Defence are removed.
Accuracy+ now immunes against Blind [in vanilla, physical attacks cannot miss with Accuracy+ even under Blind, the only effect of which is then to remove the character's evasion against enemy attacks].
Protect Girls triggers anytime [in vanilla, it triggers only under 50% of Max HP].
Cover triggers under 50% of Max HP [in vanilla, it triggers only under 17% of Max HP (yellow HP)].

The way that most damage modifiers work has changed:
• When accumulated, the damage bonuses give +50%, +100%, +125%, +150%, +162%, +175%, etc... (the theoretical limit is a bonus of +200%, which is 3 times the base power),
• For Steiner's trance, these bonuses are doubled to +100%, +200%, +250%, +300%, +325%, +350%, etc... [in vanilla, Steiner's attack command gets a +200% bonus instead of the usual +50% given by Trance; it is not the case anymore],
• The damage penalties cancel damage bonuses,
• If there are more damage penalties than bonuses, the damage are halved that many times.
Damage bonuses include Killer abilities, elemental equipment boosts, target's elemental weaknesses, Berserk or Trance, target's Sleep, target's Mini, back attack, special supporting abilities (High Jump, Concentrate, Power Throw) and MP Attack (Attack command only).
Damage penalties include Mini (for most of magic attacks), short-ranged attacks from back row, multi-targeting a spell that can be single-target, target's elemental resistances, target's defend, target's shell or protect.
Critical strikes (damage x2), summon short forms (damage x0.67) and physical attacks under Mini (damage drastically lowered) are not concerned by the above.
[In vanilla, the damage are multiplied by 1.5 for each bonus instead, except that killer abilities, elemental boosts, weaknesses and resistances are applied no more than once each.]

Fixed Return Magic non working on Necron or behaving differently than in the PSX version of the game (multi-target spells are now multi-target returned).

Statuses

The duration and speed of statuses has been reworked.
They are now independant of the fighter's spirit, except for Doom and Gradual Petrify (the more spirit you have, the longer it takes).
Haste and Slow respectively decreases and increases the status duration and respectively speed up and slow down the ticks of Poison, Venom and Regen.
[In vanilla, the more spirit you have, the longer statuses last, except for Doom and Gradual Petrify that are running faster with higher spirit. The ticks of Regen are also faster while the ticks of Poison and Venom are slower.]

Blind makes the target selection unreliable, for both the enemies and the player characters:
https://i.imgur.com/k6HEQDa.png
In this situation, Garnet is blinded:
- single-targeting Vivi or Zidane will be unreliable (either one can be aimed at in the end) because they are both on Garnet's right side,
- single-targeting oneself is reliable,
- single-targeting Quina is reliable because s/he is the only one on Garnet's left side,
- single-targeting any enemy is unreliable (any enemy can be aimed at in the end),
- multi-targeting is reliable.

Float gives a +30% evasion bonus against physical attacks if the attacker doesn't float.
Remedies cure Poison, Venom, Silence, Blind, Stop, Mini, Gradual Petrify, Confuse, Heat and Freeze [in vanilla, it doesn't cure Confuse, Heat and Freeze].
Phoenix Pinions cure Doom (they also cost and sell cheaper).
Vanish is efficient against more attacks (all the short-ranged physical attacks).
Defending protects against many negative statuses: Silence, Blind, Confuse, Berserk, Sleep, Heat, Freeze and Gradual Petrify.
Confuse triggers a back attack bonus half of the time [in vanilla, only back attacks at the start of battles and running away can trigger a back attack bonus].
Silence drastically lowers trance increase.

Poison and Doom can now be inflicted to several bosses.
For Poison, the damage per tick on bosses is 1/64 of Max HP instead of 1/16.
For Doom, a boss doesn't die at the end of the countdown but looses 1/5 of its Max HP instead.

Heat and Freeze last only a short time. Freeze lasts 1.5 times longer than Heat.
Vanish and Sleep last longer.
The ticks of venom are 1.5 times slower than the ticks of Regen or Poison [in vanilla, they are 2 times slower].

Steiner's Break abilities can be used against bosses but are less effective [in vanilla, they are just as effective as usual]:
• Power/Magic Break: bring to 80% of the boss's normal stat, instead of 67%.
• Armor/Mental Break: bring to 67% of the boss's normal stat, instead of 50%.
These can be used again if the enemy somehow changes its stat through a special ability.

Enemies

Reasonably increased the stats of enemies and made them harder through their AI.
The Max MP of the enemies have been drastically lowered in order to get emptied in a decent amount of time through MP damage.

Changes to the party's abilities reflect on the enemies' abilities.
More statuses are inflicted by enemy attacks and spells.
More abilities can be critical strikes, especially the physical attacks [in vanilla, a non-missable physical attack, like Ark's Boomerang, doesn't have critical] or the breaths.

The class of several enemies has been changed. Enemies are not automatically "birds" as soon as they are floating or flying, and there are more "humanoids".
Classification is less restricted by gameplay constraints [in vanilla, a few bosses are not "stone" or "zombie" despite the evidence because it would mean a free win; it is no longer the case].

Ragtime Mouse's questions are modified.
Quina may eat humanoids [in vanilla, they are non edible, like most bosses].

Miscellaneous

A few chests have a changed content. In particular:
• The Dragon's Hair and the Kain Lance are switched, making Dragon's Hair only available in late game,
• The Tiger Racket is only available after the return of the mist and seeing a cutscene with Quan (this specific optional cutscene is thus delayed),
• Several Hammers can be obtained; Hammers can be used by Vivi, Eiko and Dagger to improve their strength,
• Several acclaimed prices in Treno's Auction House have a delayed availability (Dark Matter in particular).

The elemental weakness given by pieces of equipment are now given in their description [in vanilla, they are hidden].
The Cotton Robe money trick was removed (they sell a bit less).
A couple of weapons can be used by several characters (for instance, Dagger can use the... dagger).
The ultimate weapons give a big boost to main characteristics (Strength, Magic, Speed and Spirit).
A few minigames have been tweaked.


Note about the version "Beatrix-only"

That version is meant to provide additional content without changing the difficulty or the gameplay of the vanilla (non-modded) game. It includes:
- Recruitable Beatrix (with cutscenes, abilities, trance etc.),
- Hidden scenes cut by the devs,
- The optional stuff that Hades offers (4 extra bosses and their rewards; the extra bosses are slightly easier since they inflict less statuses, but their damage and HP are the same as in the main version of the mod),
- Thunder Slash fix (that's the only non-optional gameplay aspect I kept in that version).


Enjoy !

[HippeusOmega]

Originally posted by Tirlititi:

Reminder: this mod works properly only if you set the language to English (US). A few bugs happen when you don't, but it's not always obviously bugged.

Ran into a glitch I think with Daeoc's mod based on your mod. I beat the festival with Zidane and said I unlocked Free energy but gave me Thievary. But when Freya won I didn't get it again. Is that a win condition based on winning with Zidane?

Also HadesWorkshop keeps crashing on me when I attempt to load it up for some reason. I don't know if its cause I already have Daeoc's Beatrix mod installed or not. But its been tempermental.

[Tirlititi]

Yes, the Free Energy thing is normal, though unintended. It's a side-effect of keeping the "hidden scenes" of Alternate Fantasy. To disable it, you'd need to import Daeoc's .hws in Hades Workshop, go to "Tools -> Mod Manager" and untick the related field (something like "Lindblum Castle/King's Room").
That's not a big deal since Thievery's power is gradual and it's not OP to get it so soon.

Hades Workshop is intended to open only non-modded versions of the game (you then open the mods separatly). The audio quality fix is totally harmless for HW and it shouldn't matter whether you use it or not, but the Memoria mods are incompatible.
If it crashes even when no mod is installed, then that's quite a problem and that probably means your game files are too different from mine (like, the datas of spells are encoded differently). I hope it's not that because I already made HW flexible about it and I'm not sure if I can go even further in that area.

[HippeusOmega]

Originally posted by Tirlititi:

Yes, the Free Energy thing is normal, though unintended. It's a side-effect of keeping the "hidden scenes" of Alternate Fantasy. To disable it, you'd need to import Daeoc's .hws in Hades Workshop, go to "Tools -> Mod Manager" and untick the related field (something like "Lindblum Castle/King's Room").
That's not a big deal since Thievery's power is gradual and it's not OP to get it so soon.

Hades Workshop is intended to open only non-modded versions of the game (you then open the mods separatly). The audio quality fix is totally harmless for HW and it shouldn't matter whether you use it or not, but the Memoria mods are incompatible.
If it crashes even when no mod is installed, then that's quite a problem and that probably means your game files are too different from mine (like, the datas of spells are encoded differently). I hope it's not that because I already made HW flexible about it and I'm not sure if I can go even further in that area.

I usually have Freya win anyhow for the coral ring. Major differences I can thinking in version difference on why it crashes is I use a reshade to get widescreen which I deleted the 32-bit folder for. Thing is it didn't before. Not sure if I'm loading the game wrong or something.

[Tirlititi]

Hum... you need the 64-bit folder for HW (x64) but not the 32-bit folder (x86).
Specifically, you need the files "resources.assets" and "Assembly-CSharp.dll" that are in those folders. They are carbon copy between the 64 and the 32 bits, though. But the path HW uses is with "x64".

[kronerm]

having an issue where i cant progress past the fight with baku during the play! Game wont let me control anyone and the damage floating numbers keep appearing. Any way to fix this?

[Tirlititi]

There are two solutions I guess :

1) Uninstall the mod (replace the modded files by the backup of the original ones, or download the game again),
download Hades Workshop[forums.qhimm.com],
open it and open your game with it (FF9_Launcher.exe),
"Open Mod" on the .hws file contained in the .zip (let everything ticked),
once everything's loaded, "File -> Save Steam Mod" : it will create modded files,
replace your game files by the newly created ones.

The problem is that there are several versions of the game around here, some with bugs, some without, distributed seemingly randomly for some reason... Doing all the things above will compile files compatible with the version of the game that you received.

It might be that Hades Workshop crashes when you try to open your game (see HippeusOmega's bug above). In this case, only the solution 2) remains :/

2) Uninstall the mod for that fight and re-install it afterward. Pulsedrivedaylen had the same problem apparently and only this fight was buggy.

I would like to know why Steam finds it amusing to give different games to everyone ><
Especially since there are some that are bugged and some that are not...

Sorry for the troubles.

[HippeusOmega]

So with Beatrix having support abilities does she learn them like the rest of the group through gear? Or does she have them already to equip with magic stones? Sorry about questions related to her. Just got back to Disc 2 and curious.

[Tirlititi]

Yep, she learns it through gears.

[HippeusOmega]

Originally posted by Tirlititi:

Yep, she learns it through gears.

That is so sweet! I remember on PS1 you'd have to gameshark abilities onto her.

[kronerm]

Thanks Tilititi! Also, for Excalibur II treasure requirements, does this include completing the jump rope and race mini game? Is there a guide to getting all treasures? Just dont wanna miss anything if key items are counted.

[Tirlititi]

Originally posted by Shirayuki474:

What's the deal with this re-added mini game on disc 3?

It's a mini-game you can play at the Square of Alexandria. You have to go back and forth to bring balloons of different colors to a kid.

@Kronerm : There's no guide in my knowledge, but there's the treasure list in a gamefaqs topic (Terence did it) :
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/197338-final-fantasy-ix/53291707?page=1
The reward for the Nero Family quest is missing from that list, though I'm confident that's the only one.
Getting Excalibur II didn't become easy by any means: a few of these treasures are very tricky to get. It just doesn't require rushing the game anymore.

[kronerm]

awesome, good to know I dont have to do the jump rope game haha, all the other minigames are fun but that one is brutal. Last question, I'm not sure the install worked properly, im on the first boss (plant brain) and my steiner is able to do 440 damage with his fire sword, I have not leveled up at all. Should he be doing this much damage with the mod? Thanks!

[LightChaosman]

Definitely a nice mod.
Attempting a PG run, buts its very tough. (Staying lvl 1, getting all treasures, no time limit).
Succesfully completed an EIIPG run of the vanilla before attempting this.

I made two alterations to the mod to allow this. Since Beatrix will be playable I removed the EXP from the forced Bandersnatch & Mistodon fights, where she normally absorbs the EXP in a PG.

The second alteration was a temporary one, which allowed me to gain 2 milion gil once I reached Lindbulm. (At this point chocobo h&c usually becomes available, meaning that u could obtain this money by grinding a few hundred hours there. Needless to say, that doesn't sound like a fun way to pass time)
This money is nescesay to keep the flow of potions & phoenix downs incoming, of which a lot are required...

Some bosses really required some ingenious tactics to take down, especially ones which can 1HKO your entire team.

Currently stuck at the fight against Amarant. He keeps increasing in attack power, which means you need to dish out a lot of damage quickly... which is easier said than done without lucky 7.
It is definitely possible, since theoretically, Amarant could miss 100 times in a row, but this is ofcourse not the strategy I'm currently trying.

Some other pains were BW1, Gizamaluke, Hilgigars and Soulcage.

[kronerm]

Also, I downloaded the beatrix before mod with support abilities + hidden scenes, does this not have any of the gameplay changes in it?

[kronerm]

hmmm appears the regular mod works with the gameplay changes but the beatrix mod listed here doesnt change anything