Final Fantasy conservative bugfixes There are other comprehensive bugfix patches out there, but they make too many aesthetic changes for my taste. I wanted something more conservative, so I could enjoy the bugfixed game while preserving the nostalgia factor. What this patch does: SIMPLE BUGS Most of the basic, well-documented bugs have been fixed. Credit to the gamefaqs contributors for finding and documenting these: 1. Caravan Landing Bug Unpatched: The Airship can land on the Caravan square in the desert. Patched: The Airship can't land on that square. 2. House Bug Unpatched: Using a house doesn't restore MP until after the save prompt. Patched: Using a house now restores MP before the save prompt. 3. Black Belt Armor Bug Unpatched: The game checks whether the Black Belt has a weapon equipped when determining whether they should receive their "unarmored" bonus to damage resist. Patched: The game checks whether the Black Belt has armor items equipped. 4. Evasion Bug Unpatched: If the attacker's hit% is greater than the target's evade%, there is a greater chance of missing when the target is asleep/stopped. Also, hit% over 88 doesn't give any better chance to hit, so Chaos's 200 does no better than GrNAGA's 88. This is also what makes 3 RUSEs so powerful, it reduces any enemy's chances to just under 1%. Patched: Fixed. Sleep/Stop don't reduce hit chance under those circumstances, and enemies with high hit% don't have their values clamped until AFTER modifiers like ruse are considered. 5. HEL2 Effectivity Bug Unpatched: HEL2 functions as HEL3 in battle. Patched: HEL2 always functions as HEL2. 6. LOCK/LOK2 Bugs Unpatched: LOCK always misses. LOK2 actually raises enemy evasion instead of lowering it. Patched: Fixed. 7. Weapon Data Bug Unpatched: Weapon category/element attack values are never loaded. Weapon index is incorrectly used for critical values instead. Patched: Fixed. 8. Running Bug Unpatched: When a player character attempted to flee battle, the game looked at the wrong values for flee chance. Patched: Fixed. 9. Mute Bug Unpatched: Mute prevents using potions and items. Patched: Mute only prevents spellcasting. 10. Enemy Attack Bugs Unpatched: Enemies use their category/element as a category/element attack, and the warrior's category/element attack as the category/element to attack. Weapon elemental attack is used as elemental weakness when magic is cast. The player class is used as the creature type when magic is cast. Patched: Fixed all of these. 11. Status Attack Bug Unpatched: Enemies that apply status effects upon hit can apply those status effects even on missed attacks. Patched: Only successful hits can apply status effects. 12. Target-All Caster Bug Unpatched: Enemy-cast target all-allies spells (e.g. AFIR) don't hit the caster. Patched: Enemy-cast target all-allies spells (e.g. AFIR) hit all allies. 13. Poison/Regeneration Bug Unpatched: Poison damage was useless against enemies. Patched: Fixed. 14. Waking Bug Unpatched: Enemies always wake during their next activation. Patched: Sleep affects each enemy as it does each player character: every round, a random number is selected from 0 to 80. If that number is less than MaxHP, the character wakes. 15. Enemy Suicide Bug Unpatched: If an enemy kills itself (because it was Confused), the battle won't actually end until either one of your warriors tries to attack or cast magic on an enemy or the round of battle ends. Patched: Battle immediately ends. 16. Nondescript Altars Bug Unpatched: you can talk to the EARTH and WATER altars, but not FIRE or WIND. Patched: Fixed. 17. Ribbon Name Bug Unpatched: The Ribbon’s name has an extra space in it, which causes it is interfere with shop menus Patched: Extra space removed. 18. TMPR Bug Unpatched: TMPR has no effect. Patched: Fixed. Now works as intended. COMPLEX BUGS I consider these to be bugs, though the problems and their solutions are more open to interpretation than the simple bugs. 1. Magic Defense Bug Unpatched: Magic Resistance increases upon level up are strange. Fighters start with low MR but gain 3 per level, meaning they outstrip everyone else by level 7 or so. Mages start with the highest MR but only gain 2 per level, so they fall behind by the time you actually encounter magic-using enemies. And Black Belts infamously gain 4 per level until the class change, at which point they drastically *downgrade* to 1 point per level. Some reward. Patched: Fighters gain 2 MR per level, and Mages gain 3 MR per level. This is in keeping with D&D-like RPG conventions: fighters are strong against physical but weaker against magic, and mages are weak against physical but stronger against magic. (In practice, fighters often do well against magic attacks regardless, due to elemental-resistant armor) As for Black Belts and Masters, it seemed clear that they were either intended to upgrade from 1 to 4 at the class change, or they should always get 4 (as MR gains don't change for any other class). This patch makes Black Belts and Masters both get 4 MR per level. That keeps this class consistent with the others and doesn't incentivize rushing toward the class change. 2. Turn Order Algorithm Unpatched: The turn order algorithm is skewed toward making the monsters act first, and this doesn't appear intentional. It's simply a consequence of the fact that monsters are loaded into the list first, and the shuffle algorithm isn't very good at shuffling. Patched: The stock shuffle algorithm is replaced with a standard one-pass shuffle, which better randomizes turn order. 3. Intelligence Bug Unpatched: The Intelligence stat is tracked, but never actually used for anything. Black Mages lose out most of all, as Int is their primary stat. Compared to a Red Mage, Black Mages only gain Int (a useless stat), gain about one spell charge per level per day, and gain access to a few high-level spells (most of which are fairly useless due to low hit chance). In exchange, they lose weapons and armor, lose hitpoints, have lower attack values, and can't cast white magic. Patched: Intelligence increases chance for spells to roll on the high end of the damage (or healing) scale. Higher Int also contributes to the effectiveness of SABR, LOCK, and FEAR. CONVENIENCE FIXES As a conservative bugfix patch, I tried to limit these to just a few minor things. 1. Respond Rate Default Unpatched: Default battle message speed is 1. This is extremely slow. Patched: Default is 7. You can still change it to whatever you want. 2. Party Order Sorting Unpatched: Poisoned characters are sent to the bottom of the party lineup. Patched: Poisoned characters stay put. Stone and death still send characters to the bottom. 3. Multi-item Purchasing Unpatched: Consumable items must be purchased one at a time, advancing through three menus each time (buy -> select item -> confirm). Patched: Consumable items may be purchased in stacks of ten. 4. Multi-item Using Unpatched: Each time you use a potion, you are returned to the item screen. Patched: You return to the "who needs it?" screen after using a potion. This makes drinking mulitple antidotes or multiple heal potions much less irritating. 5. Magic Resist Display Unpatched: The game tracks characters' magic resistances but doesn't display them anywhere. Patched: Each character's magic resistance will be displayed on their status screen.