Ni no Kuni The Jet Black Mage

NI no Kuni: The Jet-Black Mage
NI no Kuni: The Jet-Black Mage
General
Author	Zkarts, Pleonex, Anjiera
Type	Translations
Version	1.0
License	Mixed
Last Updated	2018/12/11
Links
	Patch + Savegame Download
	Website

On December 9th, 2010 Level-5 and Studio Ghibli released the first game in the Ni no Kuni franchise, Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madōshi, for the Nintendo DS. The game came with a massive 352 page tome that was required to play the game, which ended up being the reason the game was never brought to audiences outside of Japan.

On December 9th, 2018 a plucky group of fans released the first fan-translated version of that same game, titled “NI no Kuni: The Jet-Black Mage” in English, following a Spanish translation several years prior. The fan translation comes with an even bigger 372 page book that is required to play the game, and which ended up being the reason that the game was released in December and not in the spring of 2018.

Installation

Game information
Japanese title	二ノ国漆黒の魔導士
English title	Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn

ROM information
File	Ninokuni - Shikkoku no Madoushi (JP).nds
CRC32	68B796B1
MD5	F0E3027B9E97618732B4F2D4298AD0CF
SHA-1	DFAAA4DC03BBB59F010B9146A720B24CFC7738EB
SHA-256	7C78318AE93BD5639E592BE98B22114E2160C54397F7BFFF5E1BFE61B54A4F3C

Use xdelta UI to apply the patch.

User guide

Custom User's patches

Restored ARM7 patch:

English patch v1.0 with restored unpatched ARM7.bin (fix sleep-function).
To apply on a Japanese clean ROM.
Tested on R4i Gold 3DS RTS Plus with 1.64 wood on a DSi XL.

Icon patch:

Translated game icon and title patch.
To apply on an already English patched ROM (original or restored arm7).

RetrogameFan v1.0 patch:

English patch v1.0 for Flashcarts using YSMenu 7.0.6 firmware, apply on a clean japanese ROM.
Do not add the icon and title patch. update your flashcart to YSmenu 7.0.6.

Link to the thread containing the other language translation projects.

Savegame

OK7MO prepared a savegame with all DLC unlocked at the first save point at the start of the game.

Progress note:

These are for clean new game only.
These savegame files are not useful to you if you already started the game and have any story progress.
If you never played, you are encouraged to first watch the introduction by selecting "New Game" and reset the game when you can walk with Oliver in his bedroom, then load the provided savegame to continue from the same place.

It works with:

The official patch, the restored ARM7 patch, and previous team's spanish translation patch too.
Not tested with retrogameFan patch.

Be sure to read the readme about available gazette and the two different save files.

Running on emulators

It has been tested on Drastic (Android) and DeSmuME (Windows), but since this is such a beast of a game you have to tweak the settings a bit.

Frame Skip:

Limit Framerate checked.
Auto minimize skipping checked.
Number 4 checked.

Emulation Settings:

Enable Advanced Bus-level Timing checked.
Nothing else checked.

3D Settings:

SoftRasterizer.
Unrealistically High Color Interpolation checked.
Enable Fog checked.
Enable Edge Marking checked.
Enable textures checked.
Depth comparison threshold 0.
Enable Line Hack checked.
Nothing else checked.

Sound Settings:

Synchronous selected.
Synch method P.
Direct Sound Interface.
Buffer Size 5880.
Linear interpolation.

Display Method:

Direct Draw HW.

Cheats for faster progress

For cheat codes to help you get through your playtest faster, the only recommended ones are the ones that max out the stats on the 3 members of your party.

It is best to wait until you actually have 3 party members, though, which is after you get the Imagen from your heart, Mite. These are Action Replay cheats, which you'll need to indicate in Desmume's Tools > Cheats menu. This will put HP and MP at 999, character level at 99, and speed / attack / defense / etc stats all maxxed at 999 as well.

You won't be able to 1-hit-kill every boss in the game, but you will be able to do it for most battles until near the end of the game.

If you don't want max, note that anything ending in 63 means set the value to 99 (hex 63 == dec 99), and 3E7 means 999 in decimal, so you can adjust your stats downward from max if you just want a leg up but not a gigantic advantage.

Even putting your level at 20 and stats at 200 or so should be good for the first few hours of the game without it being a total cakewalk.

Max party member #1:

2214AE33 00000063 
1214AE18 000003E7
1214AE26 000003E7
1214AE1A 000003E7
1214AE28 000003E7
0214AE1C 03E703E7
0214AE20 03E703E7
1214AE24 000003E7

Max party member #2:

2214AF23 00000063
1214AF08 000003E7
1214AF16 000003E7
1214AF0A 000003E7
1214AF18 000003E7
0214AF0C 03E703E7
0214AF10 03E703E7
1214AF14 000003E7

Max party member #3:

2214AF73 00000063
1214AF58 000003E7
1214AF66 000003E7
1214AF5A 000003E7
1214AF68 000003E7
0214AF5C 03E703E7
0214AF60 03E703E7
1214AF64 000003E7

Troubleshooting

These are not officially acknowledged by the translation team. They are some gathered reports from users in this thread gathered here.

General recommendation:

Always keep a backup of your savegames whenever you can, even if you never need to transfer your save (from flashcart to emulator, etc.).
In case the game has an unreported bug and you lose your current progress you won't have to restart the game from the beginning.

1) Sleep mode doesn't work.

Caused by:

This is caused by AP (anti piracy) check done by the game.
The game contains multiple flash cart detection which is not fully patched and creates issues with some flashcart.

Solution:

Use an emulator.
Try another flashcart.
Wait for next patch release with an AP fix.
Try another arm7.bin, Hephaestus made a modified patch with original arm7, you can try it but some flashcart might not work with it either.
Try reformatting your SD card to use a large block size (a Redditor claimed this alone solved it for them).
Don't close the console, always save and exit the game when you want to stop playing.

Possible AP encountered issues:

Your game won't even load, you will get a white screen before the main game screen.
If you get past that, you can still have problems about 40 minutes into the game. Your game will hang when you try to fight in any battle. Unfortunately there aren't any nice save points right before the first battle in the game, so even if you have saved often you will lose some game progress before finding out that the AP feature is screwing your file over. The save file will be good to go once the patch is fixed, but we don't really know when that will be yet.
The sleep hang that people are talking about here - this happened so much I forgot it was a problem with the patch and not the flashcard, so... we didn't even try to fix it until people started mentioning it here. Sorry for that, folks! We knew about it, but we got used to it after years and years of dealing with it.

2) patching error - Xdelta 3 error, couldn't patch etc....

Caused by:

Wrong xdelta version.

Solution:

Please use xdelta UI v1.1, not xdelta 3.

3) Different progress blocking bugs.

Possible issues:

In the dream world, you can't give the correct answer. The game is misinterpreting the 0 for an O letter.
The game freezes when performing the resurrection spell. (note: You don't need it to complete the game)
The game freezes when exchanging medals for prizes in Casino.

Solution:

The current workaround for all these 3 progress blocking bugs, until they are addressed into a future patch, is to complete these actions on the Spanish or Japanese ROM, then re-import the savegame to english game.
Another solution you can try is to use an emulator, another flashcart, the other game patch based on the one you are currently using (altered or original arm7 patch, see issue 1 above for links).

4) Whitescreen or Error number with flashcard using Ysmenu.

Caused by:

YSmenu header file is outdated, it doesn't have the patched game information.

Solutions:

Update your YSmenu version to 7.06.
Patch your clean Japanese ROM using the patch specifically created for YSMenu. (link provided in the user's patch section above).

5) Freeze at random location while playing.

Caused by: