Item refinement flowchart or map?

[Saber]

tents cost 750 with haggle, and 1000 without. Its best to do this with all of tonberry's Abilities learned. Then the results are like this :

100 tents (75000 Gil) = 25 mega potions from recovery med-RF.
Then the 25 Mega-P's sell for 187500 gil.

So you get a 112,500 dollar profit.

[BG-57]

So about 7 rounds of that to afford 100 HP-J scrolls, 70 for 100 Str-J scrolls. Seems cost-effective, at least for the former.

This is one of the FFs where stat maxing is feasable. Pity then that junctioning makes it redundant.

[Saber]

It takes a long time but when you have nothing less to do in the game it kind of makes sense. I do strongly urge people to do a low level challenge and get Cactaurs level up + abilities along with Bahamuts 4x ability thing. That way you can load up on strength, magic, vitality, and spirit level up bonus. HP is the least of your worries as the HP up 10 items are cheapest. On my last playthrough I only got Irvines and Rinoa's stats maxed. All my other characters were great but those two had 255 all around.

[Rantz]

Don't forget about refining Cottages as well as Tents. Whereas Tent->Mega-Potion refining is 4:1, Cottage->Mega-Potion refining is 2:1, increasing your net profit to 352,500 gil each go if you refine both.

[BG-57]

I used Lvl Up bonuses whenever the oppurtunity arose. But I tried stat max farming for 5 or 6 hours before I decided it wasn't worth it.

[dpcollier128]

Update:

I've started from scratch... again. Trying a method of building the trees in both directions for each item then I "connect" any item branches that I have already formed. I hope that this method will cut down on intersecting refinement graphics.

I still can't find a way to export the images of my progress on this site so it fits within the image size restrictions. It seems that any coherent section of the work that is descriptive of such progress has proven too large. I'll see what I can do to export some visual progress, but after I've made more extensive progress on the trees.

[BG-57]

How does it look? Are you color coding?

The most complex diagram I've seen in biology is this of the central metabolic processes of a cell:

Maybe it can be useful.

[dpcollier128]

O.o lol wow! That is a complex piece of work right there. No it doesn't really help me in the conventional sense, but I sure get a kick out of it.
Sadly, the legibility of that chart seems to have suffered for being so complex I would still have to break up my final work into several sections and somehow link them all together.

And yes, I will be color coding the final work for refinement methods (e.g. F Mag-RF vs. Card Mod etc.), item types (e.g. Magic vs. Cards vs. Medication vs. random assortments of Resources etc.), and using the beginning and end point graphics for methods I could possibly project what type the item is refined from/to using that refinement ability.

[dpcollier128]

Update:

I have recently started school again (college classes) and I'm trying to get back to the project as much as possible (between classes and raiding in another game you might know of ).

I have also recently started from scratch on a different method to the trees, going through the trees to find "filler" items in the trees in an attempt to find self-contained areas with more definite beginning and ending points.

Self-contained trees will most likely need to be put into their own subgroups, as the branches of the main trees are enormous. The filler items are items that don't really fit in with the other item types I have classified for the chart: magic, ability scrolls, medication, and ammo & tools (in the same group).

As of yet, I find an extended, searchable excel spreadsheet to be the most efficient and uncomplicated form for the game's refinement system; seeing as the number of items you can produce and re-produce are so convoluted.

I will continue to post updates as things happen to this project.

PS: I vaguely remember the policy on double posting... but can't remember exactly what it was. Is it alright if I post updates like this?

[Rantz]

Double posting is fine when it's for progress updates and the like, don't worry!

[dpcollier128]

...Damn. It's been a while. Sorry for the blatant necromancy.

My computer has been out of commission for a bit, so I had to put off this project while I got that fixed.

I'll try to do as much work as I can between school and various other things, but a more graphical chart may not be in the works until after I get a concrete spread completed (possibly with the Excel spreads I already have).

[dpcollier128]

Hah! All hail dpcollier128, the thread necromancer!

I'm finally back on this project. For a while there, I thought I should just submit my comprehensive excel spreads as a guide/resource for the game... but not many places accept that type of file.

I played around some more with an old Adobe Illustrator version... files became a bit too big. Then, I got the idea to just draw the thing on a bitmap! It was such a simple idea; that I didn't know why I hadn't thought of it sooner. I just open up paint, draw the lines as small as possible, and see that it's good. Not really quick but effective.

Almost no problems with file size... though I still feel that some splitting of the chart will need to be done. It's gonna be messier, but more compact than my original idea, but I think it'll work well enough.

Been off to school... and back to summer again. Shame I didn't think to reopen this thing til I started school back up again, but there ain't much to do for games this summer/fall yet... so I hope I'll get some of it done before the next big thing comes out.

Here's a key for the initial design, from a chart that's a work in progress... might need a bit more descriptive key before the end tho:

FF8_RfFlow_Magic01.png

PS: the font (aside from the numbering) isn't hand drawn; it's called .Dialogue 9. Don't know where I got it but it works so well!

[Jiro]

I really like the layout, and the font is neat, so thank you for sharing the name!

I suppose thread necromancy is allowed in this instance, so work hard