Arkadius

Hey, I saw your posts coming in the past couple days and just wanted to say that it's really cool to see someone so invested in the run and to come up with a full essay of ideas, improvements and feedback. Unfortunately I am really busy with work atm so I don't have the time to try a bunch of your ideas out and do other testing. I will hopefully have more time soon. For now things that stand out are: - Natu with teleport, I considered teleport at some point but only thought of the Abra in 7th street which I then concluded was not worth it. I never considered Natu! This could be really big for sure. The only thing I think about it the pokemon party. If you have natu then you probably don't have Mightyena. Mightyena is used for strength and rock smash, but I suppose these moves can always be taught to either Nidoqueen or Sharpedo over Sludge Wave / Surf / Waterfall / Dive. Definitely see a lot of use for natu. - Wide lens, I was looking for ways to improve Serra and came across the wide lens at some point. Since it's not available before Serra I ditched the idea and never considered that it could be extremely usefull for HJK... Fuck Brick Break. Defenitely 100% usefull as well. Also considering the teleport strats, you would pass through the nature observatory. - Misty Terrain. Bobelle always said Misty Terrain would be OP, even back when we were literally doing runs to Shelly and you weren't even close to having it. I can defitely see a lot of use for this in combination with Prankster and the Amplified Rock. I don't think the sidequest with the daycare people will be worth it, however it could be done when going to the Coral Ward to meet Cain/Amaria and then going immediatly to the Factory afterwards. Getting the train candy on the Serra split is def 100% faster, I forgot about it in the last run I did. - Life Orb. Can def see this item becoming very usefull to make certain damage ranges perfect. Things to always consider though: The Reborn AI varies based on a lot of factors, including the stats of your Pokemon. Radomus is a perfect example, it is quite a weird fight. I've seen at least 6 variations to this fight, some of which I was unable to win at all. Awesome contributions, thanks a lot and cheers!

It's not a full evolution line but I've made some custom sprites over time for some of my favorites. Don't get me wrong though Reborn shinies are amazing, just wanted to change it up a little. No need to convince Ame at all, but if people like them feel free to add them on your own.

Thanks! Here's the backsprite as well:

If you want to you can add your own custom sprites in the game. If you open the folder where you installed Reborn, and look for the "Graphics" folder and then inside that folder the "Battlers" folder, you can find all the sprites being used by the game. I'd make a backup of this folder before changing anything. If you want a different sprite for shiny Ditto, you can change 132s.png (shiny ditto front sprite) and 132sb.png (shiny Ditto back sprite) in that folder. I did this for example in my casual playthrough with a few sprites, one of which being Volcarona: Regular (Reborn) shiny: Custom Shiny:

You can buy them in the grand hall, where you first picked your starter Pokemon and fought Cain and Victoria here:

In my opinion you shouldn't restart just because you read that another starter is 'better'. You should just play with your choice, in this case Rowlet, and continue the game. Surely certain starters make the game more simple and other starters can be more challenging, but it's not like you can't complete the game unless you start with Froakie or Torchic. You can always catch different pokemon and add them to your team. Just enjoy the game!

No, it does not influence the battles in Fiore Mansion. I am only referring to this fight: https://youtu.be/k-C6xBGTz2I?t=443

The only notable thing I've seen besides dialogue and relationship points is that if you give Titania the ice cream (any ice cream) she will aid you in the final Team Meteor double battle in the Water Treatment Center. In the speedrun I did I always give ice cream to Titania because she's a great help in that fight.

Okay so what you are experiencing is bad luck on the one hand but the field effect that Reborn features on the other. Florinia tells you about the field effects after the Mosswater Factory story (at the beginning of the game, before Julia's gym). The field effects impact battles in a lot of different ways: moves can be more powerfull, abilities can be active and other effects can be present. Take Julia's gym. You fight Julia on an Electric Terrain field effect. One of the effects of this field is that electric moves increase in base power by a factor of 1.5. Another effect is that grounded Pokémon may not fall asleep. This explains why your grasswhistle failed. You can see all the other effects of the field here: https://pokemon-reborn.fandom.com/wiki/Electric_Terrain You can also collect information about the field effects in the game. The Anorith in Shelly's gym is holding a telluric seed. Shelly is fought in a forest field. The telluric seed is activated in this field and boosts the holder's Attack and also applies Spiky Shield to the user. This is why you cannot attack it the turn that it is send out. I actually really like the field effects. It makes the battles way more interesting and complex. You can also try to devise a strategy in which you benefit from the field effect yourself. The sleep being so short is just back luck, I don't think that is influenced in any way by the field or something else. I would also say that the paralysis and the rock slide flinching is just back luck. I would guess that it is actually not as bad as you think it is, it's just that when you experience it in a negative way it stands out more which can cause some bias. The chance of 4 flinches in a row is (0,3)^4 = 0,0081‬, or 0,81% or about 1 in 123.46. This is not that unlikely.

You can always try the Grand Hall. There are some double battle trainers that spawn there. Note that this is dependent on the time of day as well as the day of the week on your PC. On Friday for example, at 18:55 local time, this trainer spawns. If I change the date on my PC to a saturday, these trainers will spawn: This is a double battle too.

You're in the right area, but he's not at the level where the Aron's are. He's in the corner on the level before going down those stairs to the Aron. You will find him behind a rock you need to rock smash. Maybe this video will help: https://youtu.be/JDeWWGvHseY?t=1060 If he's not there, then I do not know what to tell you. Maybe upload your save game so someone can check what's wrong.

This is for sure an issue in speedrunning. Certain communities tried dealing with the issue by having fixed frame rates and things like that. But at that point you're using third party software to influence the game. Using the speedup function is definitely not a TAS, because indeed, as you mentioned, the speedup is a developer intented tool. A TAS of Reborn would be interesting though, but I do not have the knowledge nor skill to make it. The solution imo would be to simply have two categories, with and without speedup. The issue is that computer hardware differences simply exist. Even if you do not use the speed up function, there will still be differences in the gameplay. On my old laptop, the Jasper Ward area would lag like crazy with the Pulse and everything there, even without speedup. On my new PC the area lags significantly less, again, without speedup enabled. So you would always keep that difference, despite of the speedup function. A frame counter could be more accurate assuming there's no frame rate lag. But even then, the player that has the worse PC will be be affected by the lag, make movement errors because of it and lose frames. I would stick with RTA timing. Reborn at a GDQ would on the one hand be amazing but on the other probably terrible because of the exposure it would get and the risk of shutdown... Maybe it can at some point be featured in the Pokemon Speedrunning Community Marathon. Thanks for the comments btw!

Here's the youtube playlist for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV1soDJJkbF9Iv40NuK8vrjSRJAsYFNvc I might do a commentary later on. @Vinnie I do use the speed up function, as explained in the 7h 11m 59s thread:

Hello everyone, I finally was able to complete another speedrun of Reborn. It is another segmented run like last time and the time before that. Segmented means that the speedrun is done in parts. Because of work and such single segment runs (start to finish without any break) were not viable to me. Instead, I decided to focus on doing another segmented run and really see how much I could improve the previous run I did, which completed episode 18 in 7 hours, 11 minutes and 59 seconds: https://www.rebornevo.com/forum/index.php?/topic/45015-pokemon-reborn-episode-18-speedrun-in-7-hours-11-minutes-and-59-seconds/ This run beat episode 18 in 6 hours, 26 minutes and 46 minutes, an improvement of about 45 minutes. Youtube Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV1soDJJkbF9Iv40NuK8vrjSRJAsYFNvc Because I wanted to see how much it could be improved, there were more resets between the segments. I also added a few segments (or split certain segments I suppose): - Aya until the Sirius fight in the Yureyu Building. This was done so that the Serra split would be shorter. Serra is one of the worst fights in the game. You have no good way of destroying the field and Blaziken only has physical moves, one of which is High Jump Kick... - Charlotte until the Blake Fight on Ametrine Mountain. This was done to split the Terra segment. Terra is an annoying fight. Luckily there's a better strat now in which Sharpedo only has to tank 1 thunderbolt of the Nidoking. - Terra until the Taka fight in the Water Treatment Center. This was done so split the Ciel segment, more specifically because of the chain battle at the Fiore Mansion. Overall I am extremely happy with this run. All the splits were really good. Execution, like movement and decision making was better all around. There were improved and more consistent strats. I think the only split I lost time on in comparison to the 7h 11m 59s run is the Charlotte split. This was mainly because of training sharpedo against wild encounters to save a rare candy. I will post a link here later on to the youtube playlist. Looking forward to E19! -Arkadius Splits: Julia split: 18:31 Florinia split: 39:52 Corey split: 56:19 Shelly split: 1:19:37 Shade split: 1:50:28 Kiki split: 2:09:44 Aya split: 2:27:58 Sirius MT split: 2:46:32 Serra split: 2:55:36 Noel split: 3:14:40 Radomus Split: 3:30:54 Luna split: 3:54:11 Samson split: 4:05:48 Charlotte split: 4:25:10 Blake split: 4:40:45 Terra split: 4:45:58 Taka split: 4:58.29 Ciel split: 5:11:18 Adrienn split: 5:31:50 Titania split: 5:43:28 Amaria split: 5:49:02 Calcenon City split: 6:13:07 Hardy & E18 Complete Split: 6:26:46

My view on this is as follows: the speedup function is an developer intended mechanism in the game. If it wasn't there, and you had to use cheatengine to speed up the game I would never allow it in a speedrun. Given the fact that it's present in the game and can be used without any form of external program needed in my view it's perfectly fine to use it in a speedrun. Using RTA (real time attack) timing is also perfectly fine. Originally the pokemon speedrunning community used to always time their games with the ingame timer. A few years ago the choice was made to switch from the ingame timer to a RTA timed runs. One of the reasons for this was the strange way the game rounded down or rounded up the ingame time. In pokemon yellow for example, the WR at some point was a 1:55 (1 hour and 55 minutes) while the RTA time was 1 hour, 56 minutes and 49 seconds. Reborn also round down to the minute. Even though at this point it is extremely unlikely that it matters, I believe RTA timed runs are better. It also allows people who have less time in real life to try and do a run. Forcing people to not use the speedup function results in 20+ hour runs. I would not be doing any more attempts at that point. But there is no one to stop you from doing a run without the speedup function, so if you want to do it go for it.

Open the folder where you installed Pokemon Reborn. In the Pokemon Reborn folder, open the Audio folder. Then open the BGM folder. It should be something like this. C:\Pokemon Reborn\Audio\BGM In the BGM folder find the following file: Atmosphere- Rush.mp3 This is the music that plays when you're on the bike. You can delete this file, and you will no longer hear any music when on the bike. You can also simply rename the file to 'xAtmosphere- Rush.mp3' and that'll do the trick as well. You can also replace the file with another song that you do like. Simply copy over any .mp3 file to the BGM folder and rename it exactly to 'Atmosphere- Rush.mp3'

Hello again, A little while ago I completed my first speedrun of episode 18 in 8 hours, 33 minutes and 7 seconds: Today I completed a new run in 7 hours, 11 minutes and 59 seconds: This is a segmented run, as it was last time. Segments that went really bad early on were reset this time (as a segmented run would normally do). This time might not be a good representation of a single segment run. I would like to do single segments runs, but I don't have 8 hours in a day to spend on it for the forseeable future. This is a really big improvement. I expected to save about 45-60 minutes. This time is really good. I was able to improve it by: - Better gameplay - Better ingame choices - Better movement - Better strats for hard fights - Rerouting certain time consuming parts Some interesting changes are definitely in the E18 content. The fight against Solaris has been significantly changed. Previously Nidoqueen was used with a lot of x items. Now basically the entire team is used and the only x item needed is 1 x defend. The Hardy fight also features a new strat: brick break along with 1 extra x attack. Brick is a lot more consistent and doesn't cause you to lose so much HP when you miss (which happens often in the rocky field). To compensate for lower base power an extra x attack is used. Nidoqueen is send out instead of Ampharos. Nidoqueen with x defend can tank a lot of moves, buying more time for Blaziken to get set up and sweep. E: Link to the speedrun route: https://mega.nz/#!5ARXWYyY!G_WdQjEJ3cfZW3IfHPHuk-FlV-GDHRTd8MPcSIklqjY E: Link to youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV1soDJJkbF9adcHKKNGT5V3ePAVrgdx3 Arkadius

I think the issue is a combination of the fact that you cannot manipulate the stats of your Pokemon (you can only reset for good stats) and my understanding that trainers in Reborn make different decisions based on stats. This combination makes the AI unpredictable. Take the Terra fight for example. When routing I came up with: · Main meowstic, use light screen (Nidoking uses Tbolt) · Switch out into Nidoqueen with a synthetic seed. (Nidoking uses Tbolt, it fails) · Use toxic spikes twice (Nidoking uses flamethrower/blizzard) · Switch in to Sharpedo (Nidoking uses flamethroer/blizzard) · X-special twice (nidoking uses Tbolt, with x special boost you survive both unless crit which is like a 22% chance iirc because of the glitch field) · Surf Nidoking etc In practise this seemed consistent. I tried with different attack/special attack stats. In this run though Nidoking used Amnesia when I send out Nidoqueen. This could be because Nidoqueen's defensive stats were too high, which made the AI think attacking was not a viable option, so it would use amnesia instead. And of course amnesia in the glitch field is amazing. So yeah this threw off the strats completely because sharpedo would not be able to tank amnesia boosted Tbolt. But things like this are almost impossible to prepare for. So it's more or less how you deal with it on the spot, which of course makes it quite challenging and therefore very interesting. Finally there is also just the RNG (randomness) that you cannot really do anything about. Thanks for your reply!

Hello everyone, I finally (thank you Christmas break) managed to complete another speedrun of Reborn, this time of E18. Before I completed a E17 speedrun in 7 hours, 46 minutes and 6 seconds. When E18 was released some changes were made that significantly impacted the speedrun route I had made for E17. A few months ago I had completed my reroute for E18. Since then I've some minor changes to the route and also improvised some new strats during the run (see below under downloads for a link to the v1.2 route). Now I’ve finally completed a full (segmented) run with the E18 route in 8 hours, 33 minutes and 7 seconds. The full run can be watched on Youtube: Edit: Link to youtube playlist Alternatively, find below a list of segments: This is a segmented speedrun, meaning I did not play for 8+ hours in a row, but completed the game in segments. For example, I played from the start until Julia, then from Julia to Florinia etc. From a speedrunning perspective, a segmented run would normally reset until the segment goes ‘perfect’, but I did not reset for perfect segments. I followed the route I created (see below) which consists of 19 segments: About the Run I think it’s a decent run. I expected it to be a lot slower than the E17 run because of the lack of X-items until after Ciel basically. But due to overall routing improvements and better strats the Amaria time in this E18 run is actually a few minutes faster than the E17 run. I think the largest timesave came from not grinding on route 3 as much, but instead fighting the Squirtle-trainer in the Grand hall. The power items also really helps with inconsistent damage ranges. Something notable is that I changed 3 natures in this run, which costs 9 heart scales. I had to use the mining kit for 1. Normally you would not pick up the mining kit. This is a timeloss, but ultimately I think it was a timesave due to the nature change. The E18 content is really cool. It feels bad to skip so much of the intriguing dialogue. The puzzle in the glass factory is super interesting, the chain battle is amazing and the strats went really well, the events in Agate city are great and finally Hardy’s gym is awesome. Some timelosses that now come to mind are catching poochyena, the Corey fight, the Shade fight, some trouble at the Kiki fight, bad RNG on the Bennett and Serra fights, also some dumb RNG on the arceus fight (psychic judgement roll on sharpedo lmao), the Charlotte fight, the Terra fight and the Hardy fight. Edit: another thing that is worth mentioning is that because certain ingame mechanics are affected by the realtime clock on your PC you need to keep track of this when doing a segmented run. For this run I set my PC time date to monday at around 7 am. Monday because the squirtle trainer appears in the grand hall and morning time because it will then not be nighttime when entering the Jasper ward where guards would battle you if it was nighttime. When finishing a segment I would note down the exact time on my PC. When starting the next segment I would set the pc time back to that time. Downloads Route: Pokemon Reborn E18 Speedrun route v1.2.pdf (31mb .pdf file) Thanks to Amethyst and to all who have helped to create this amazing game! -Arkadius

Hello everyone, With reference to my previous topic: E18... A big change, but completely justified, was made to move X-items from floor 2 to floor 8 in the department store. This caused a major reroute for the E17 route. It was a lot of fun though to see if all of the difficult fights that previously relied on x items were possible without them. Ultimately though, I had to route x items in. So during the run we pick up 6 stickers: - Jasper ward girl - Apophyl Academy tv girl - Lost guy in underground railnet - Injured teleported woman from spinel town in Chrysolia Forest - Agate city boy - Ametrine city MissingNo Another change that was made actually helpes the speedrun: pokemon that overlevel during a battle don't disobey until after the fight. This helped, especially with gym leaders. E18's content was a lot of fun to route. The first time I did the Espeon and Glaceon puzzle I was, well, puzzled. In the speedrun however it's easier because a lot of the puzzles to get certain items are skipped. The fights are really fun. The big battle against Cain & Shelly, Luna and Serra & Radomus was difficult, but the strats are pretty consistent. Another tough battle is Solaris in Agate City, but it has decent strats. At some point it should be examined if not fighting Taka at the Water treatment center is faster. Find the route here: Mega link, .pdf file, 29.7MB (or: https://mega.nz/#!VMBFTAxT!5lcBkJwV2w6EBckk3RaDCbHqH03P7e_QvGA1C0t3yLU ) I've only done 1 test run so far. Certain strats might not work because of differences in stats etc. So now I guess it's time for runs.. Maybe a segmented run again. We'll see -Arkadius

I usually look up sprites on bulbapedia or pokemondb Pokemondb offers us these female front male front female back male back These sprites are good, but they're small. So what I'd do is open them in photoshop and resize them. When resizing sprites, I always go with the ''nearest neighbour'' image scaling method. This keeps the hard edges. Here's the result and a comparison: Female front it seems this is still relatively small, here's a bigger one Female back Male front same as before, Male back As a free alternative to photoshop you could use a program called ''GIMP'' but I am not sure if it has the same options photoshop has.

Alright, that's probably because of the quality of the image you used. Let's compare: Your file is a bit smaller and not as sharp, so I'd recommand using another file.

What you can do is go to the folder where you installed your game, and then open the folder 'graphics' and then open the folder 'battlers' For me, this is the directory (this will most likely be different for you) C:\Games\Pokemon Reborn\Graphics\Battlers In the 'Battlers' folder. you will see all the images (or sprites as they're called) of all the pokemon in the game. Butterfree is #012. If you want to replace the shiny sprite with the original shiny sprite or a custom sprite, you can simply replace the file(s). Before making any changes, I would advise you to create a backup first. So in your case, replace 012fs.png, 012fsb,png, 012s.png and 012sb,png with your file. important: the file name has to be the same. E: I'll explain this a little better. Suppose your file is called ''butterfree_original_shiny_sprite.png'' If you replace 012fs.png with this file, it will not work, because the game doesn't know what to do with butterfree_original_shiny_sprite.png You have to rename butterfree_original_shiny_sprite.png to 012fs.png for it to show up in the game.

I finished a segmented run and recorded it in full, i'll be uploading those recordings to youtube. E: Here's a link to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV1soDJJkbF-rbEtaunfccBjGi4-8gWPT I completed the game in 7h 46m and 6 seconds, a lot faster than I expected originally. The endgame, from Adrienn > Amaria, felt really fast in particular. About the run Segmented meaning I did the run in parts, rather then do it all in 1 sitting, I couldn't find the time for that. Usually when speedrunners do a segmented run, they only accept perfect segments. I did not, because I wanted to emulate an RTA run as much as possibe. So every segment has only been recorded once. When it comes to timing the run, I used livesplit, a program that basically every speedrunner uses. I don't know how to do a run with paused in livesplit, so what I did instead was simply pause the timer at the end of a segment, then write down the time and start the timer from that time when starting the next segment. I recored with OBS. Because my laptop is quite old I captured the game in 640x360 30fps. Anything higher made the game very laggy. Another thing to note is that I set my date and time to monday, 16th of July 2018 at about 8 am. This was for a couple reasons: 1) the weather was clear at the start (no rain to hinder torchic's ember), 2) when it's not nighttime you don't have to fight a guard in the jasper ward and 3) a certain trainer's with 4 squirtle's spawns on monday in the grand hall which is used to level ampharos and meowstic at some point. Since this was recorded over the course of a couple days, I also kept track of the time on my pc when stopping a segment, so that I could set the time back to that specific point when starting the next segment. This way no weird weather of time of day effects happened ingame. How 'good' was this run? I'd say it is quite average. I made a lot of mistakes. RNG was not that bad although it felt like High Jump Kick was a 50/50 at times. Some fights were awful. I recall the aster and eclipse fight at route 3 to be horrendous. I think this was because Blaziken's stats were worse than other runs. Movement was terrible. This was the first time I recorded and played the game simultaneously and since my laptop is quite old the game was more laggy than usual which caused my movement to be horrendous. I also don't have a 2nd monitor so I had to check my route on my phone (the pdf file, see post #1). So when it looks like i'm doing nothing ingame, it's probably because I checking my notes. Definitely a lot of room for improvement. I don't think I will be doing another run, but maybe. I will be another segmented run though. It depends on when E18 comes out. Also I'm pretty sure this route would be obsolete once E18 comes out.