Pokémon Reborn Hardcore!

[IntSys]

Insanity Mode has been completed for the first time ever! If the Ciel glitch (Forcing me to fight her again right after beating her) wasn't a thing, this would've been a splendid finish, but eh, it's a finish nonetheless.

Ah, as for the promised feedback on balancing Insanity Mode, that'll have to be tomorrow. I'll also write a quick guide on how to beat Insanity Mode too.

[Commander]

So I thought you'd like to know this since we've all seen me bitching about the whole laptop crash I've been having for the past two weeks. I have a new hard drive installed and windows 8 is working perfectly. As for recovering data...it's going about molasses pace because A) There's about 400 GBs worth of data on there and B.) Windows 10 updates corrupted bits and pieces of my data.

What about hardcore? I'm sorry to tell you but it got corrupted. A few files just didn't properly work...for previous versions I kept on my laptop. The party system one is safe and all the data is on the new hard drive along with some of my written works. Still looking for my Nuzlocke stuff including that one fanfiction (now ya'll are gonna want to see me post stuff from years ago), but I have backups of 75% of that though it'd suck trying to recreate all those older entries from the game data. Hopefully I can find it on the hard drive.

I don't think I'm going to be doing another release of Hardcore pre E16 though. While I could use a backup or transfer software to get all the data out...there's some stuff I might not want. I'll worry about that in my own time. It's not that I won't be able to work on hardcore, it's just that retrieving data (then again not too much important stuff is on there other than stuff I won't be able to find...and my linked ps4 controller...again details). So yeah, that'll likely be my free time...downloading everything though that should all be back to normal within two weeks.

I also know of the Ciel glitch and while I'd love to fix it, it's really easy, let's not try and fry my laptop since it's gonna be downloading stuff for a long while and I have schoolwork to do (since I spent the last few nights fixing this shit up...like I have two hours of sleep). I could do it from this laptop but there's a couple of bugs fixed on the master version that aren't available through other means. E16 is also nearly on the way so my attention will be for setting that up (and fixing one of my big screwups). Please just run reborn 15 for any glitches in the meantime.

Since this will also likely be the last update until E16, I just want to say one more time thank you guys for all the support and not only passing my hopes to what this would become, but just blowing any expectations out of the water to want me to keep working on this. It has been quite a year...well over a year for this project and believe me the Commander back then, who had zero experience in game making, would get himself into this bloody mess. Now that I have the experience, I'm definitely sure I can make the next version better.

BTW guys, I know I'm cutting the randomizer due to problems as well as making TM breeding a full on feature of the game (aka it'll but a permanent feature instead of toggable). Party members are obviously going to be a new feature for E16, but I may or may not add to nostalgia mode (aka give everyone else alternate gym fights). The other ones on the possible chopping block are Insanity Mode and No-item run. If you guys like them please let me know but if they really aren't worth keeping, I might remove them which would make transferring easier.

Edit: My Nuzlocke stuff is safe now so YAY! I'll work on getting my pc games next since there's like 100 of them or something. Yeah...100 isn't that much of an exaggeration. (It's actually 100 GB worth).

[IntSys]

And here we go, the feedback on Insanity Mode:

Insanity Mode is basically a game of sweeps.

Starting from Florinia and all the way to Ciel, the player's goal is just simply find a way to sweep. But prior to Shelly, there's really no choice but to buy X-Items to assist you, and they're expensive, forcing players to grind for money using Meowth. This is a huge reason why Torchic is among the few viable starters for Insanity Mode - Speed Boost and Bulk Up saves you the money needed for X-Items.

Level Limiter is a must.

Not using Level Limiter makes sweeping RNG based, counting on whether your Pokemon obeys you this turn or not. Sure, you can prevent disobedience from ever showing by putting your sweeping Pokemon 5 levels lower than the cap or so, but this only makes it harder and sometimes outright impossible (ie. Solaris 1) to set up. With that said, Level Limiter is still a double-edged sword, forcing you to use Rare Candies to evolve your starters to their final form before Shelly.

The Early Game Bosses decide over 80% of a starter's viability.

The early game bosses are the worst as the resources your have are scarce. For example, Aster & Eclipse #1 lead with Level 25 Magmar and Electabuzz, a combination that obliterates Fern's team and almost everything in general, making those who picked a Grass starter rely on either the AI screwing up or trying to weaken them as much as possible with Baby-Doll Eyes.

Julia, Florinia, Taka & ZEL #1 and Corey are the other major bosses that hit the similar effects, especially the third one, which I'll elaborate right now.

Double/Tag Battles are especially difficult.

Double battles severely impede the player's ability to sweep, especially 1v2 battles (Although there are only two so far). The outcome of Tag Battles mostly hinges on whether your partner decides to be competent or not. Sometimes, they might not even be able to put in any sort of work. For example, Fern.

Luckily partners receive the 20% extra level boost, so they may be able to carry the entire fight for you sometimes.

Trick Room dominates outside of speed sweeping.

With the level boosts your opponents get, most of the time they're gonna outspeed you, even if it's just that Cradily of Florinia's. Using Trick Room mitigates half of the problem and is in fact very much viable in doubles.

The opponent's lead decides the match.

Instead of explaining why, I'll just lay down two examples and compare them together. Taka lead with Klefki starting from the fight against him on Azurine Island. The AI isn't smart enough to switch out Klefki once it has done its job, so it's easily set up upon. This makes every Taka battle trivial.

Bennett lead with Volcarona in the second fight against him. Volcarona, capable of decimating all Quiver Dancers and Blaziken, forcing me to grind a Blissey and brutally stall its PPs out.

Grinding Post-Agate is ridiculous.

With Clown Indra getting the 20% boost, his team can wipe the floor with you. The best grinding spot post-Agate is when Aya's tagging you on Route 3, and that's only temporary too.

How can everything be balanced?

Here are my suggestions:

1) Put a 50% Discount over X-Items in Obsidia Department Store pre-Corey.

2) Make Fern not a complete death fodder against Aster & Eclipse #1 by giving Lombre decent Water-type moves.

3) Don't let Taka lead with Klefki. It may sound like a good idea with human battlers, but alas, our AI isn't nearly as competent as actual humans.

4) Consider either making Level Limiter mandatory for Insanity Mode, or aligning the limiter caps to the gym caps for Insanity Mode only.

5) Consider removing the level boosts for Clown Indra only.

[DemICE]

yep, seems like insanity mode has done its namesake job on the user above me

[espeon860]

your getting rid of randomizer

[enu]

I don't really mind if you cut insanity mode. IntSys said quite clearly that it's a question of sweeping and in some cases X-items. I prefer strategy over sweeping so normal Hardcore is probably enough.

No-Items mod is a different story though. When I asked you to implement it I specifically said I'm planning to play it once E16 Hardcore is released (I want to enjoy the new move animations and other E16 changes). Getting it implemented early and then cut again in E16... please don't do that to me? :-)

[drevance]

I really like the no-item mode and I would love to see it stay. It's a shame about Randomizer, but I guess my question would be if we already have a file that is randomized and you remove it, will the file still be randomized? I haven't given Insanity a try but even if you do remove it I'm going to keep 1.51 just so I can run through it. I guess I'm indifferent on insanity mode?

That's awesome that you're going to make TM breeding permanent.

I think my favorite feature is the level limiter. By far, followed by no item. It just makes things nicer imo because it rewards better strategy. Example, can't abuse healing to curse up and sweep Kiki because can't heal etc. Plus we can use items outside of battle. The only question I would have is if it would effect mega evolution or not, but that's for possible E16 problems, not now.

Like I said earlier, I am looking forward to not only the E16 release but the party system that you've shown us and in general just what you decide to throw our way in the coming episode.

[Commander]

The only reason I'd cut no item is if nobody used it...which I have absolutely no idea on since I hear nothing on it. It'll only be a lot of work if Ame scrambled up the trainer locations (aka put the new orderlies somewhere in the middle). Nostalgia mode I'm getting a little bit on the Obsidia forest causing lag...which makes sense because that's adding six events on an already event heavy location. It might not be a feature but moreso just alternate fights.

As for insanity mode: would you guys rather it be something like 10% (or 5%) level increase and basically only give 10% of normal money so that you have to be very stingy on your money spending. 20% is way too high and I could see that with the first pulse growth being way overleveled. I could also give additional money to people who play that mode, but I'm not changing the prices on anything since...it's complicated.

As for the party system...the thing works pretty great though the pain in the ass is not due to 90% of how people will use it, but mostly that one guy who will try every glitch possible screwing up his game permanently. Got most of that taken care of except for one behemoth of an event that's taken 15 hours worth of work and is only halfway done and the map that's been the bane of my existence: Route 1.

Now I have two solutions for this problem:

1) I pretty much lower them all to level 1 since the player is the only one who can ride them (the party system would also be temporarily disabled). This is the easiest to program and get working.

2) I provide an temporary NPC partner who pretty much just owns a Tauros so that people can get across the route with ease. He will disappear after the quick riding Tauros becomes available. Not hard to do, but a little weird to implement.

3) People actually make the 4 overworld sprites I need (I mean you have 80% of it in front of you done) and I'd merely add it in so you can ride Tauros with those said party members (other party members would not have access to this feature).

I mean...I don't have much to give out for the third option (I only have about 1,500 rupees and I'm way over spending budget after getting this laptop fixed). I mean if you guys do all the spriting stuff (honestly I could probably do most of the overworld other than surfing), I could turn any of the coding stuff I did into free-to-use/tutorials or a custom trainer battle...or I could do something silly like change my name to Going Commando. (Yes, I'm that desperate).

[GalacticMarshmallow]

So I started playing CoM and am really enjoying it so far Just one problem, after I beat ZEL and Taka in the double battle, the game freezes. I managed to save it, but once I open the save file nothing happens and I can't move. Do I have to restart the game?

[enu]

The game should create backups automatically. You just need to find your corrupted savefile and replace it with some working backup file.

[drevance]

So I started playing CoM and am really enjoying it so far Just one problem, after I beat ZEL and Taka in the double battle, the game freezes. I managed to save it, but once I open the save file nothing happens and I can't move. Do I have to restart the game?

A quick "fix" might be that since you've already beaten Taka/ZEL double battle to load up regular reborn, move past the battle, save, and resume playing on Hardcore.

[GalacticMarshmallow]

A quick "fix" might be that since you've already beaten Taka/ZEL double battle to load up regular reborn, move past the battle, save, and resume playing on Hardcore.

Thanks, I'll give it a try

[Commander]

So I started playing CoM and am really enjoying it so far Just one problem, after I beat ZEL and Taka in the double battle, the game freezes. I managed to save it, but once I open the save file nothing happens and I can't move. Do I have to restart the game?

That's a CoM 1.5 glitch if heather gets stuck or something. I fixed that glitch in 1.51 which is uhhh somewhere in this thread. I know, we're all tired of not finding the most updated version in the OP. I know and we'll fix that for 16.

[GalacticMarshmallow]

That's a CoM 1.5 glitch if heather gets stuck or something. I fixed that glitch in 1.51 which is uhhh somewhere in this thread. I know, we're all tired of not finding the most updated version in the OP. I know and we'll fix that for 16.

Alright I'll download CoM 1.51 and try to beat Taka and ZEL again. Thanks for the help

[Commander]

So any interesting news...well...don't bother trying to get you saves modded for the mystery egg. Not because it's axed but because many of you will be giving me lots and lots of complaints because your precious "Volcarona" or "Axew" isn't in the game anymore. It's horribly unbalanced in Reborn to the point everybody is requesting that it gets changed to so-and-so Pokemon. It's still worth doing, just not worth requesting to get it changed.

I also finished one of the new fights for 16, and this has been one that's been asked and requested...a lot since the early stages of Hardcore especially due to changing a certain someone that gets plenty of love hate from the design change. That's all your gonna get out of me though. As for fights in E16, I plan on adding roughly 20 new ones plus whatever is added for E16 obviously.

But yeah here's the breakdown of the releases as they'll go:

Reborn Hardcore E16 (no modificiations other than battles)

Reborn Hardcore + CoM + Features (Same as above with all the stuff in the current release plus everything I talked about)

Reborn Hardcore Party System (Everything above along with the party system)

The party system is probably my most ambitious project outside of CoM. Since Ame did a complete overhall of the game...I gotta redo quite a bit so I'm likely going to add 400 or so lines of text/missable dialogue which that takes a long while. There's also the possibility Radomus could be a partner and since here at hardcore we don't stop at good enough, I will add all of his overworld costumes in which will be in a submenu. Backsprites...not so much. I do have a prediction that we'll be partnering up with someone (and if we battle a certain gym leader...I'll have to do them too) new so that'll take time to develop.

And yes Commander does have a good guess what's gonna happen in E16 which is why he's delaying the party system a bit

[espeon860]

commander do you know where corey pokemon are at

[Commander]

commander do you know where corey pokemon are at

Croagunk is located in Citrine Mountain and Skuntank is located in Ametrine Mountain. Why do you ask?

I know what you're really asking however you'll have to ask someone other than me to find what you're looking for.

[espeon860]

I mean the ones in hardcore like nidoqueen for example

[gryson]

is the event with the liitle kid and drifloon changed? (3th department sticker)

i have beaten the drifloon, but i cant find the kid anymore (normaly there's the event with the venipede but there's nothing happening)

and when i go the the mom she says he isn't back yet

[Commander]

I mean the ones in hardcore like nidoqueen for example

Nidoqueen replaced Nidorina (iirc you can get it before a certain event) however the thing below might be what you're looking for.

is the event with the liitle kid and drifloon changed? (3th department sticker)

i have beaten the drifloon, but i cant find the kid anymore (normaly there's the event with the venipede but there's nothing happening)

and when i go the the mom she says he isn't back yet

I'll just say that the Drifloon got pushed back until after you visit Corey's body which activates the event. I did that so it'd be easier to do the Corey event. The Venipede is a glitch and should not be there though.

[Commander]

I looked into the Venipede Error, but it seems to have been evented correctly. Either all of them or none of them should have shown up after beating the Drifloon to save the kid (the event itself is unlocked after Shade takes Corey's body). Since people have done the event it indeed works correctly.

In other news CoM Altered Path is making quite a bit of progress. All the big fights are done and completed however, there's still quite a bit of eventing left which will start when E16 has the official release however everything I can get done now is done. How the altered path will work is that each leader is replaced with an unofficial leader such as Fern replacing Florinia, Sigmund replacing Julia etc. You can also choose between a few fights if there were 3 leaders of said type such as Poison and Fighting. Just note that the type order will remain the same as CoM. Like CoM this will be updated each episode as we fight certain characters.

I also want to mention this now, but after we reach and defeat the champion in the main story, another mode called XCoM will be unlocked. XCoM follows the rules of the X-league where there are no restrictions on any of the bosses meaning they can use any Pokemon of their type. The player will have to defeat CoM or CoM Altered Path to unlock this mode. Only one leader of each type will appear in this mode so I'd kind of like it if people slowly vote or suggest who to bring. Every Reborn leader is allowed including Corey and Kiki and they will use their respective field effect they used in the CoM. I'll make a poll before that comes up, that won't be likely for a year (or two).

Something else I have which is going to be going on for a long while is a little contest of mine. Back in the old times, we had a create-a-team thread which I shut down due to the amount of work (let alone I didn't approve of it) consuming my time. Now I have six fights that I'm not really sure what to do with. So I'm just gonna throw a contest to allow Rebornians to create them. This contest will last from today until two weeks after the community release of Reborn E16. Basically to enter all you need to do is PM me a team of six following this template:

Field Effect: [None is also an option]

Type of Battle: [singles of Doubles]

Pokemon 1 [species name]

Ability: [Ability]

Item: [Hold Item]

[Move 1]

[Move 2]

[Move 3]

[Move 4]

(Repeate this for Pokemon 2-6)

These are also the restrictions:

1. You may only have one non-Uber Legendary (ie Heatran, Celebi, Articuno, etc)

2. You may only have one mega on your team

3. While there is no item restriction, I prefer only using one item up to 3 times

4. Fakemon and Gen VII Pokemon are not allowed

5. You may not use a Species more than once on a team

6. You are allowed to use the unreleased field effects if you so wish

7. The Pokemon will be in the mid to upper 80s so design the team around those levels

If you want to participate, all you have to do is send a PM to me. Just note I'm looking more for creative or interesting sets instead of pure difficulty. So if you throw a team of Dragonite, Garchomp, Salamence, T-tar, Heatran, Metagross, Gyarados you probably won't be picked as I'm more likely to pick someone who uses a lesser used or overlooked Pokemon designed very well or used in a creative way. Anyone is able to enter, but please don't post your app here. I'm highly likely to lose it.

[GalacticMarshmallow]

So I'm battling Shade right now, and his Golurk isn't affected by Muddy Water. Is this because it gains additional electric type damage?

Edited October 3, 2016 by GalacticMarshmallow

[Guzam]

So I'm battling Shade right now, and his Golurk isn't affected by Muddy Water. Is this because it gains additional electric type damage?

Yes.

If I were you, I'd go study most of the field effects in Reborn so that you don't have to ask the questions here, but it's fine either way because someone will always answer.

[GalacticMarshmallow]

Yes.

If I were you, I'd go study most of the field effects in Reborn so that you don't have to ask the questions here, but it's fine either way because someone will always answer.

Alright, thank you

[Commander]

So I'm battling Shade right now, and his Golurk isn't affected by Muddy Water. Is this because it gains additional electric type damage?

The confusion like stems from the lack of context with the field affect. Muddy Water and surf pick up electricity making them Water/Electric. Many field effects do this, but just remember that Hardcore uses the same base engine so 9/10 times it's going to relate to Reborn and not just Hardcore.

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Just a heads up for contestants that I recieved all the entries and jotted them down in a doc. We're still a ways away, but I'm always glad to see what creative things people can come up with.

So in other news, I began playing Pokemon Reborn: Fernquest edition to test out the difficulty balance of this addition. Surprisingly with Set and No-item it's really difficult. So difficult due to a certain someone Corey that it created some additional bonus content to look forward to. Believe me I'm having both a blast and pulling my hair out doing these tests (and we also added more experience for Episode 1 so yay!) Anyways here's the annoucement y'all want:

You might have noticed in a certain status update (if anyone reads those anymore) that I posted something about Fern's team using a Pokemon Fern's never had on any of his normal teams...this is what's called a bonus or hidden mon. All character will have 2 hidden mons which can only be found by playing as that character. This is also to make up for not doing altered dialogue (there will be some for these, but I'm not redoing 1,000 lines of text per episode until the final release).

Unlike a certain Haunter the we all can't seem to find (I'm changing the requirements for him so it's not missable), these won't be so obscure compared to that. You do have to go out and look for some though since I don't hand them to you on a silver platter.