[RM2K3] ANY 2K3 BATTLE TIPS OR POINTERS?

noooo pull up


All the algorithms are set in stone so if you want to know what the numbers do and how they relate to each other in battle check out Craze's Rm2k3 Numbers Guide. His suggested attribute multipliers aren't possible with the official RM2k3 release right now since they cap at 1000% or so.

Battle events aren't needed to make a battle system but 2k3 isn't robust at all and battle events are the main way to try and expand on it. For example if you want a scan skill you'd make a scan skill that when used turns on a switch. Then a battle event listens for that switch being set and dumps out the enemy stats via a battle event. Adding more special effects like this means more pages of battle events and that means copying and pasting them a lot and praying they worked (I think the official release added something to help with the c/p'ing).

Some dumb 'gotcha!'s of 2k3 (from memory, some of the terms may be wrong):
State/Conditions whose priority is more than ten points below the highest priority on a battler are dropped. So for example if you have Poison at priority 20 and paralyze at priority 50 if a battler has poison then hit by paralyze 2k3 will drop the poison state due to the priority difference.

A 'turn' for stuff like poison damage or battle events is when any battler takes a turn. Watch out for making poison something like 10% per turn because of this.

The battle layout has the three options for your battle UI and you can't mix 'n match them. One shows enemy names, one allows having transparent windows, and one shows facesets in battle I think?

Enemies share an ATB based on their agility. Enemies with the same agility score all act at the same time. Watch out for adding too many enemies with the same agility because it'll translate into a huge damage spike and the battle UI will shit itself for a sec.

Too many battlers makes 2k3's ATB slow down, like to a crawl at times. The official release might've helped with their tweaks to the ATB speed though so look into this at least.

I reviewed a blog I made about how much I hate 2k3 and found more! Again from memory and I might be wrong on some details:

- The battle UI only shows one state on your characters: The highest priority one. Adjust the priorities of your status effects accordingly. I personally put ones that disable actions like sleep, paralyze, etc. highest, then HP damage ones like poison, then debuffs, then buffs, then HP regen effects, then automatic states from equipment.

This was with the enemy name battle UI, the transparent one might do it differently. I don't think the faceset one even shows status effects names?


- 2k3 buffs and debuffs multiply stats by x2 and /2 respectively. It's fucking nuts, and x2 agi is the greatest buff in any 2k3 game due to hilarious action economy abuse.

- There's some hidden properties you can give weapons or skills when you configure the animation like multiple attacks. It's weird and buried, dont' forget about it!

- Enemies won't use a move on themselves if it only inflicts a state, even if that state is supposed to be a buff! To get around this I make self-buffs give resistance to an attribute that is never used.

- Always play on Wait. Active can die in a fire.

The way elements work in RM2K3 is extremely complex and dumb.

Short version: there are "weapon" and "magic" elements. Magic elements are normal elements. Weapon elements work like magic elements plus they also require the character to be wielding a weapon that has the same element. The idea here is that "magic" elements are things like fire/ice/lightning and "weapon" elements are things like bow/sword/lance, so that you can make lance skills require a lance. Despite the name, you can also give a magic element to a weapon, such as making a fire-elemental weapon.

If a skill (or weapon) has both a weapon and a magic element, then the two elements are multiplied together. So a fire-elemental lance-elemental skill will do 300% damage to an enemy that takes 200% fire damage and 150% lance damage. If a skill (or weapon) has two magic elements, or if it has two weapon elements, only the higher value is used - so if you make a fire+holy skill, the enemy has to be immune to both fire and holy in order to be immune to the skill.

A lot of tricks use weapon elements for weird things that they're not designed to do, since elements are the only way in RM2K3 to increase or decrease damage by a percentage. For example, if you want protect/shell abilities, you will need to use weapon elements to accomplish that. I wrote a tutorial on that.

Regarding battle events:
Yeah, you will need battle events for many of your skills, if you want them to do things that aren't basic skill functions. What makes it bad though is that in RM2K3 you can't call common events during battles, so every skill has to be pasted as a battle event into every single enemy group. If you change the skill later you have to copy the change into every enemy group. Fun times.

Well, you kind of can, if a battle event calls the common event. You still need a battle event for every skill though. A skill can't directly call a common event, and parallel processes don't run during battle.

Also, half of the event commands that are usable in battle events aren't available in common events, and two thirds of the event commands that are usable in common events will cause the game to crash if you try to run them in battle. So if you do that, be careful that you only use the event commands that are available in both places.

I remembered another! An enemy's regular attack doesn't have an element. If you're trying to use attributes / elements for anything that enemies can throw at you (like a buff that reduces damage from physical attacks) then never use the enemy normal attack. I just made every action an enemy can perform a skill and had shit like Punch and Kick or whatever do 1 base damage, 10 atk influence (this pretty much makes it do the regular attack damage calculation), and physical attribute damage.

author=LockeZ
Well, you kind of can, if a battle event calls the common event. You still need a battle event for every skill though. A skill can't directly call a common event, and parallel processes don't run during battle.

Also, half of the event commands that are usable in battle events aren't available in common events, and two thirds of the event commands that are usable in common events will cause the game to crash if you try to run them in battle. So if you do that, be careful that you only use the event commands that are available in both places.

If you use a Battle Event to call a Common Event, you can use Key Input Processing to detect keypresses during battle and set up a timer to see how fast player can tap keys, detect combos, and even recreate a Timed Hits system!

never, ever do this

GreatRedSpirit

Craze
yeah but skills can't critical so you'd also need to make critical hits an actual skill for enemies to use

tl;dr WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS, UNITY. YOU HAVE SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR

They also can't miss so shit like blind is useless on enemies!

well you could force enemies to use a lower hit rate copy of a skill if they're blinded

ace has ruined me

You can't make something that checks for status?

Weird. A super boss in one of my RPG Maker 2003 projects specifically check if the player apply the Reflect buff to the party and if the party does, it will automatically use a special attack on its turn that remove the Reflect status on top of dealing heavy damage.


Likewise, been using common events quite a bit to switch characters on the fly during combat.

And status accuracy actually work like this: base skill success rate x target's vulnerability rate.

On weapons, there is an additional multiplier as to have the weapon not do this all the time.


Likewise, skills can be set to turn on switches instead of using any built-in effects as to call battle/common events.


Generally, though I did run into some annoying limitations, I've generally been able to work with it quite well.