Fun changes to abilities
- Commander Duosion/ Reuniclus
- Zero to Hero Carbink
- Honey Gather gathers honey every turn if possible. Honey provides 1.3x defense to bug types and is great when flung.
- Staring Contest: accuracy rises each turn (Watchog)
- Wonder Surge: on switchin, sets a bizarre room that swaps Attack for Defense, and Sp.Atk for Sp.Def (Sigilyph)
- Double Whammy: hits twice at full power against foes under 75% HP (Crabrawler)
- Infinite Wisdom: can use TMs and relearn its own moves during battle (Oranguru, Drampa)
- Opposite Day: Sets 5 turns of inverse battle on switchin (Inkay, Malamar)
General user stuff
- follower pokemon, HGSS dex with complete documentation, and other exceptional features from the RHH pokeemerald-expansion
- surfing, healing, cutting etc is a bit quicker
- Berries are revamped
- HM09 secret power has the functionality of nature power in altered emerald
Other
- A couple of new maps, one for a regi, and one for a spooky mansion in Petalburg Woods.
Notes
- Evolution methods are largely preserved, with some Gen 5 mons evolving exactly 10 levels earlier. Hisuian Mons use the Dawn Stone.
- Completing the pokedex unlocks popplio/rowlet/litten. Some bugs may have snuck in.
Changelog
V1.2.1
TIME
- The game now uses both fake RTC and real RTC: time passes at 5x speed while you’re playing, and 1x speed while you’re not.
- This change is incompatible with .sav files, which can contain RTC info in an old format that gets mishandled. I couldn’t work out a fix for the issue, but I didn’t really want to force our future robot overlords to mend it for me. If you have an old save file, your game might not load at all.
Before you patch to 1.2.1, you MUST do the following:
- Do not update your game.
- Open your game and create a large number of save states in various spots.
- Update your game.
- Move the game file to a new location, so your emulator doesn’t have a .sav or .sa2 file associated with it. Or just delete the corresponding .sav or .sa2 file.
- Load the created save states until you find one that crashes and sends you to the intro cutscene.
- From there, you can load your old savefile.
- Save the game.
- Done!
A Longer Postgame Collectathon
I’ve ported every single Pokémon change I made in my old binary hack, Altered Emerald.
- About 30 new postgame daily swarms with reworked mons from generations 1 to 3, ported direct from Altered Emerald.
- About 40 extra Pokémon are available in the wild, dotted around the battle frontier.
- Daily postgame encounters with Kecleon and Lapras. Conquer Groudon and Kyogre to get Castform from the weather institute.
- Postgame berry trees have a new encounter table with 7 exclusive Pokémon including a chance to encounter Munchlax
- There’s a postgame gacha machine in the game corner with 8 exclusive Pokémon
- A new stone shop. Now all stones can be obtained in infinite numbers
- 18 new moves, 3 new abilities
- New forms for Schooling Exeggcute and Disguise Sudowoodo
Quality of Life
- Pokenav calls have about a 10% chance to be spam calls from an insurance company that cause a Weakness or Blunder Policy to materialise in your bag.
- The intro cutscene is massively faster.
- Better sounds for sending out and recalling autobattlers.
- Pokémon make a splash noise when they bite while fishing
- Special daily encounters with: Mimikyu (Old House) Pyukumuku (round Dewford), Cryogonal (Route 137), Honedge (Route 135), Drifloon (by New Mauville), Salazzle (Magma Hideout), and Alolan Exeggutor (Route 128)
- A much more fun way to catch Wimpod.
- A one-off shiny Honedge.
New Abilities and Moves
Changes
Blaze, Overgrow, Swarm, Torrent
- These abilities now grant their bonus when “retaliating” – i.e. when switching in to replace a fainted Pokémon
Volt Absorb, Motor Drive, Lightning Rod
- Electric Terrain now triggers these abilities in much the same way Tailwind triggers Wind Rider.
- I thought Zekrom got kind of a bum deal compared to Reshiram because there are a good number of sun exploiters in the hack to choose from – lurantis, cherrim, deerling, lilligant, gigalith, heliolisk, and plenty of fast fire types. Now there are dedicated electric terrain exploiters in the form of Pachirisu, Zebstrika, Emolga, Raichu-Alola, and now stunfisk (Sand Veil -> lightning rod, lol), and Klinklang (Clear Body -> Volt Absorb).
New Abilities
Static Touch
- Contact moves have a 30% chance to paralyze the target. Pikachu line and Ampharos
Incendiary
- Attacks have a 50% chance to trap opposing targets in fire spin. Typhlosion, Flareon, Turtonator (replacing Drought)
Armor Tuning
- Being hit by a physical attack sharply raises Defense and lowers Sp. Def. Being hit by a special attack sharply raises Sp. Def and lowers Def. Corsola, Regis.
New Moves
- There are also about 18 new moves ported from Altered Emerald. Many of these are pretty simple – just stuff like a fairy-type bite move with a chance to flinch or give a dragon dance boost, or an ice move that maximises the Sp. Def of those it hits. But two of them are really fun and unique so I’ll mention them here.
Hoodwink (Rowlet, Shuppet, Munchlax, Sableye)
- Snatches any status move.
Miracle Coat (Mothim, Lumineon, Masquerain, Spoink)
- Reflects any attack with 100 or more base power, taking no damage and using it against the foe. Doesn’t rebound moves that are hitting multiple targets.
V1.1.0
Followers now detect items!
- A little exclamation mark will usually indicate they’ve spotted something, along with a ping or their cry. This works for any hidden item they walk over or bump into. I was surprised at how complex this is to code, but it plays really well. I recommend Luxray.
Shaymin
- Shaymin is now in the dex! It uniquely leaves a grass trail in some areas when you walk with it in the overworld. Once you’ve visited the flower shop and got the wailmer pail, you may meet it!
- You can get it at level 4, and its moveset has been tweaked accordingly – losing a couple of early TMs that would make it extremely strong, but learning Seed Flare at level 50, rather than 100. For the first time ever, it gives a reason to use Natural Gift.
- Abilities: Grass Pelt / (Natural Cure) -> Serene Grace / (Wind Rider).
- Get the Gracidea flower from the flower shop by planting 200 berries total since the start of the game
See Perfect IVs
- Once you’ve beaten the first boss in Gauntlet Island, you will be able to see if your Pokémon has 30/31 in an IV. The stat’s shadow will be gold. Stats with no shadow have IV 0. Gauntlet Island will let you hyper train your IVs and minimise them too (once you unlock that).
Evil Team Hideout Reworks
- There was no way I was leaving the most lukewarm section of Emerald untouched lol
Magma Hideout Sneak Mission
- These dorks have got quadcopter drones everywhere and if one spots you, you’ll be sent back to the start of your current room. Stealth mission!
Aqua Hideout Sneak Mission
- Not to be outdone, Team Aqua have done the same – drones are everywhere. Control your follower Pokémon to press the big red X buttons and deactivate the cameras!
Seafloor Cavern Follower Puzzle
- Team up with your follower to navigate a new room in Seafloor Cavern! You’ll need to work as a pair to get through 🙂
Rock Smash items
- Outside of routes, Rock Smash now has a 25% chance to drop items – or more. This uses the full suite of Gen 4 mechanics – e.g. serene grace makes the items better, and keen eye makes them more common. There are four item tables:
- Default
- Route 135/Mirage Tower (sand)
- Route 128 (ocean)
- Granite Cave
- Gauntlet Island
Postgame Gym Battles
- With a few AI tweaks to boot, I’ve now properly updated postgame gym leaders to serve as good grinding resource for Steven (all of them now cap out around level 65). This means the AI can now use a few of the custom moves more competently. It shouldn’t be using them before the postgame anyway – they’re for you, not for me! This game should now make it pretty easy to raise a postgame team, which paves the way for battle facilities.
Minor stuff
- There are no longer random surfing encounters except for in two small ponds (where overworld encounters spawn slowly) and in Victory Road
- Fixed night lighting and route 128 gfx.
- Improved / tweaked some maps
- Your followers can now walk in the daycare.
- Route 100 is bigger, with a couple more items accessed from Surfing. Sawk/Throh are found there, rather than 115, in an effort to get you using the gauntlet island challenge midway through the game.
- Deino has been moved to the Route 128 cave, which previously didn’t have any unique encounters. One of the blocking breakable rocks in route 111 no longer respawns.
- The Lilycove Lady’s event now gets reset daily, rather than on record mixing, and only needs doing twice rather than five times. I do not know where game freak was going with this.
Balance twiddling
- Brendan and May put up more of a miniboss fight in route 119 / lilycove
- Levelling is 50% faster in the first sections of Gauntlet Island.
- Freeze now uses Pokémon Champions mechanics (sure to defrost by turn 3). Because of how I did this, if one of your party is Frozen before the patch, it will get Frostbite instead.
- Moveset tweaks: stuff like the vanillish line getting access to Endure/Reversal to “sort of” exploit Weak Armor
- Sandblaster now sets sand and doubles power in sand.
Beam Refractor
- New ability for Boldore and Gigalith, replacing Thermal Exchange / Sand Force.
- Both physical and special moves always use the Attack stat
- In sun, bypasses charging turns (e.g. meteor beam) and recharging turns (e.g. hyper beam)
Crack The Suspect
- New move for Gumshoos, learned upon evolving, 30 power, normal type sound move. Confuses the foe and changes its ability to Wimp Out.
V1.0.3
- Often in Pokemon games you optimise for IVs, EVs, and natures in a shop, or in a menu. Here, you do it in a massive quest through an island packed with secrets, by squaring up against five wild bossfights.
- There’s some very short grass in the game now, and when you walk over this short grass you trample it. I really wound up liking this mechanic so I’ve put it all through the early sections and in Verdanturf. It is fun to do things and see the game respond to them.
- In addition to the speedup options, already available in the options menu:
- Mashing A or B skips wait times in battle.
- Mashing A or B makes the game run at 3x speed natively (the music will sound the same)
- Exp All is now in the game. It’s not recommended, but I can see it is worth adding. Works with the game’s autobattle feature.
- Held Items are returned to the player according to the following logic:
- If you entered battle with it, you exit battle with it (unless it’s a berry). Includes all consumables
- If you enter battle empty handed, and you gain an item, you always keep it, unless a copy of that item is held by a fellow party member. This allows item theft but ensures I can prevent cloning.
New moves
MITOSE (Solosis line, Manaphy, Phione)
- Sacrifice half your health to create a perfect copy of yourself, in your party! Lasts until the end of battle.
- I’ve been wanting to have an effect like this in-game since I was 12 or so 🙂
SHADOW CLONE (Marshadow)
- Sacrifice half your health to create a Marshadow that’s otherwise a copy of the foe – duplicating their moves. Lasts until the end of battle.
- Both these moves can be sketched. Good in the battle tower and any other battle facility where your starting party size is less than 6.
HOT COCOA (Snover line, Lopunny)
- The next time your side uses a move with a chance to have a secondary effect (e.g. 10% chance to flinch, 30% chance to paralyse), the chance is quintupled. Lasts until end of battle.
QUIVERING PALM (Sawk)
- 10 power, 80 accuracy. Impossible!? Could it be?? It’s the Quivering Palm technique! The foe will faint in 3 turns!
New Ability
LINGER (Phantump, Trevenant)
- Volatile, baton-passable effects (confusion, leech seed, curse, heal block, etc) persist when the foe switches or faints. (Stat changes also persist, but only when switching.)
- I ran a contest in r/stunfisk for theorymon Thursday and this won with an astonishing 3 upvotes. I couldn’t be happier – this ability is absolute gold. Thanks for the gold, kind stranger. Phantump and Trevenant have been reworked around it.
- STENCH/GLITZ LINK flinch chance now stacks with King’s Rock
- Moveset adjustments for the new moves, and some bug fixes too.
