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Boss Tiering

There are 49 boss formations (42 before the Rift, plus 7 in the Rift/Void, not counting the final boss) in FFV. The 42 before the Rift are considered a boss check for key items (check the boss locations page for such bosses), except for a few removed (for example, the guardian Gargoyles fight locations do not yield a boss check, they only guard a dungeon's exterior). Bosses are given both a Tier and a Rank based on their original location. Each location's original HP is preserved, then undergoes a series of changes to its new boss upon randomization, including stats and AI of the new boss.

Tiers are an integral part of this system. There are the following parameters per boss location:

  • Tiers: 1 through 4

Tiers represent major shifts in boss location power. When a boss changes tiers (e.g., from Tier 1 to Tier 2), it will change its AI movepool to reflect this change. A simple example is Shiva, who will cast Ice2 in a Tier 2 location, but will cast Ice3 in a Tier 3 location.

As of v0.79, Ranks represent the individual location where the newly randomized boss will assume. Stats are scaled from 0 - 100% from their rank 1 location (WingRaptor) to their rank 49 location (Necrophobe). Every boss in the vanilla game is assigned both a Tier and a Rank, roughly in order of how the base game progresses.

As part of randomization, every boss at every tier is given specific AI and stats. For example:

Boss Tier AI Magic Power Stat
Shiva 1 Ice1 0
Shiva 2 Ice2 0
Shiva 3 Ice3 10
Shiva 4 Ice3, Snowstorm 20

The following is an example of how boss location randomization might occur:

  • Ifrit's location will be replaced with Catastrophe. Catastrophe will become an easier boss to reflect its new location at Ancient Library
  • Ifrit's location in Ancient Library is a Tier 1, Rank 8 boss location, with 3000HP
  • Catastrophe, although originally a Tier 4, Rank 46 boss, will now assume the role of a Tier 1, Rank 8 boss, and be placed at Ifrit's location
  • Catastrophe will now take its Tier 1 stats (which are much less than its original), and take its specific Rank 8 stats
  • Catastrophe will now take its Tier 1 AI (which is much less aggressive than its original)
  • Catastrophe will now have 3000HP, the same as Ifrit's location
  • Now, Catastrophe is a feasible fight to tackle at the Ifrit location in Ancient Library, and Ifrit will be placed elsewhere

You can refer to the boss locations explanation page, and for more details refer to the spreadsheet of statistics per boss tier here. You can easily look up the above example by finding Catastrophe in the “enemy_name” column, and Ifrit in the “loc_name”, which represents Catastrophe's stats at Ifrit's location.

Progressive bosses

“Progressive bosses” is an optional setting upon randomization. The purpose of this setting is to give power to bosses that appear in Worlds 1 and 2, but have key items that are locked behind World 2 and 3. For example, say the Walse Tower Key is in World 3. Any player that would get this key, would then go back to the Galura location and fight a very easy boss in World 1. With this setting, the Galura location will get a huge boost to its Rank and HP because the randomization engine identifies that although Galura is in World 1, the requirements to get to Galura are in World 3, and thus the player should be much stronger by then.

  • If a World 1 location has key item requirements in World 2, that location will get a +10 rank bonus and have 15000 HP at the location
  • If a World 2 location has key item requirements in World 3, that location will get a +10 rank bonus and have 30000 HP at the location
  • If a World 1 location has key item requirements in World 3, that location will get a +20 rank bonus and have 30000 HP at the location
  • The max rank for this system for any of the affected World 1/2 locations is Rank 40 (which is still Tier 3)
  • This setting is only applicable for World 1 locked seeds
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