The Gameplay Update

So let’s kick off with a bang, Hisui and Generation 9 will be introduced in Episode 7. This might have already been obvious but it’s about time we confirm this. Initially for EP7, we were only going to focus on introducing Hisuian mons into the fray, but with the increased length of development due to circumstances, Gen 9 will now also be added. Which means they will be spread out across the region, teams will be revamped to accommodate for these little creatures, new events, the whole stick when it comes to introducing a whole new batch of mons into the game.

When it comes to encounters and team building, the OGs will remember that I was the original team builder/balancer when I initially joined Desolation back during EP5 development, and since then my role developed to now being the lead. With that in mind, I no longer have the capacity to focus on the story while doing mapping, sidequests, overseeing the project, and then encounters/team building. So this role has now been passed over to Dred and Omens, who have been working hard in figuring out where all these fellas will be going and updating teams to accommodate them. I will still be making the final call but they have free reign to go crazy, and trust me, I’ve been handed many detailed Google Docs already by Omens regarding Gen 9 and Hisui placements, so I think these two are the best ones for the job. 

On top of that, Ruby and Omens have been collaborating in creating some shinies for Gen 9! 

Here’s a little sneak peek at some of these shinies, as a treat.
 

Yes, they're on a white background, deal with it

 As you know with Desolation, we have our own custom Mega Evolutions in the game in which some are currently obtainable for the player, while others… maybe at some point? One of the main problems that we discussed or that was felt in some battles was that, with how strong we made some of our Megas, some fights in the game felt like it was 5 mons + this busted Mega. Prime examples being Waldenhall and Scarlett, who’s Mega Luxray and Mega Cinccino respectively were slightly overtuned. Another example was Mega Mightyena, in which in EP6, we decided to change its ability to Dark Surge, allowing Darkness Field to be set up for a few turns, one of the main reasons for this was to make it feel more unique compared to well, how a lot of our Megas have felt, overpowered attacking demons. 

With that said, I worked alongside Omens to adjust the stats for our custom Megas to not only tune them to be… less silly, but to also give a bit more personality so they don’t all feel quite the same. So here are a few of the changes we have made to some of our Megas.

Mega Mightyena

EP6  |  EP7

70   ->  70
125 ->  120
70   ->  85
60   ->  70
70   ->  85
125 ->  100

Ability: Dark Surge (Updated)
 

Mega Cinccino

EP6  |  EP7

75   ->  75
135 ->  110
110 ->  115
55   ->  70
75   ->  85
120 ->  115

Ability: Skill Link
 

Mega Luxray

EP6  |  EP7

80   ->  80
145 ->  135
99   ->  89
95   ->  100
79   ->  104
125 ->  115

Ability: Strong Jaw

We will be going through and testing how these updated Megas feel through internal testing and then Alpha/Beta testing (once we eventually get there) and continue to adjust them as we see fit. But hopefully with these initial tunings, they will still feel strong but the fights will become a lot more enjoyable, we shall see.

If you have played Rejuven-yes, we yoinked another one of their features (sharing is caring folks, but nah we asked and it was all good LOL). Anyways, one thing you might have noticed within the fangame space over the last several years is the increased number of “boss mechanics” being implemented. Desolation already has some “boss fights” in terms of our Rogue Mons in which we made them feel like big bad boss fights by increasing their level based on where you would fight them in the game. We know there is an oversaturation of these fights in which we are looking to limit them moving forward. Besides the point, Bosses have now been implemented into the game, this means that specific fights will now be enhanced and provide a new unique gameplay experience than before. 

Oh hey, new Perfection Umbreon Sprite reveal!

If you are familiar with how these boss mechanics work in Rejuvenation, then you can skip this part, but if you would like a refresher or do not have a clue about how these work, let me break it down for you.

Bosses are set up differently compared to other trainer battles, they have an increased HP stat and “shields”. Shields are the number of HP bars you would have to go through in order to defeat a boss, this is indicated on the right of the HP bar with a filled in “red square”, the number of red squares equal the number of shields. When you reduce a shield’s HP to zero, this is known as a “shield break”, what’s special about these shield breaks is that the fight then enters the next stage where specific effects come into play. The boss might get a stat boost, change the weather or field, or maybe they even call in backup to give them a hand?

The SOS Boss Bar is a WIP, yes it is scuffed and currently just Rejuvenation's (thx Jan <3)

Just to note, none of the screenshots above with Umbreon being a Boss is final, we were testing different ways to revamp Lilith’s fight in EP5… including Umbreon’s name (big up Yumil for getting these implemented), but this should give you a good idea of what to expect moving forward with Desolation. This might be the feature I’m the most excited for getting implemented, as there are a lot of unique things we can do, and I hope you enjoy the additional challenge as well! We will continue to test and balance these fights as we progress, and overall hopefully make the gameplay experience enjoyable for all players.

To finish off this section, I want to make a few comments as we had some discussions with our Patrons regarding the feature. When it comes to Desolation’s difficulty, this is something that I will always make sure is not as hard as our counterparts in Reborn and Rejuvenation, however it will still have challenging battles. The story comes first, and if people are quitting the game due to being unable to get past a certain boss fight, then we aren’t hitting our goal in making the game accessible for all players.

 Boss Mechanics will be reserved for very specific fights; Rogue Mons as I mentioned will now begin to utilise Boss Mechanics, and there will also be some cases within EP7 that fights will be “Boss Fights”. We have some interesting ways to utilise these mechanics and I hope that these will provide not just a unique gameplay experience, but help you become further immersed within the story. We will make sure through our testing periods that battles throughout the game continue to go by our standards in terms of difficulty, but I do hope that you all look forward to this feature! 

 If you have played Rejuvenation… which I would imagine most of you have, then around V13 release (unless it was 12) they introduced “Field Overlays” into the game. With the concept of field effects across the Rebornverse games, Pokemon having the ability to completely overwrite fields really, turns specific fights in the game upside down without much room to function. A lot of the fights that I’ve designed in the game are able to play around if fields changed throughout the battle using specific moves, an example being Jarred’s fight in EP6 switching between Water Surface and Underwater. But switching that field completely to… Psychic Terrain, completely makes that fight become a cake walk. Thus Overlays were introduced, making the Terrain Moves/Surge Abilities create a “Field Overlay” that provides some of the benefits of the field, while not overwriting the current field that’s in play, meaning fights don’t fall flat the moment the player changes things up.

 Pretty neat right? Well we have now implemented this into Desolation for EP7. This is the joys of having a shared codebase across all three games, we all get to share the benefit of the work the teams put into the scripts, which is being updated weekly and I can’t thank them enough for all the hard work they put in, you guys are legends. Anyways, what this means is that, Dark Surge now produces a Darkness Field Overlay instead of overwriting the field to Darkness. 

We’ll cover the ability pop up later on in this post.

 Our beloved Mega Mightyena has gone through many changes over the course of the last several Episodes… Darkness Overlay will not be a “stage” overlay like Darkness Field is, instead it will play off unique stat buffs to the Overlay, Overlays are meant to be “weaker” versions of the fields as a whole, so adding in the stage function would be a bit much, and a coding nightmare.

Ah fields, one of the core unique features that set out the Rebornverse of games from the rest of the fangames out there. With all three games sharing fields while also having their own unique fields, this is something that has been really fun to develop and come up with our own field effects.

As you would know for EP6, we revamped a bunch of our custom fields as we felt they were extremely bareboned. Cloud and Darkness Field didn’t have much going for them prior with Darkness being a glorified Dark Crystal Cavern before we decided to turn it into what it is today, a stage field that the player can use to their advantage. For EP7, we re-evaluated our custom fields and decided to tweak them a bit, primarily Cloud Field. I won’t go over all the changes to Cloud Field in this post but as we plan to use this field outside of… just Aderyn’s Gym, it has undergone some significant changes that now plays gives it more depth and allows for some unique strategies. I’ll give a little teaser for now, weather. 

Besides updating older fields, for today’s post I wanted to do a little reveal for a new field coming to EP7, introducing Arsenical Weald (name may change, don’t ask how long it took for us to decide on this name…).

You can probably guess by the mushrooms that this field will be present in Astraciel. Mushrooms can be quite poisonous if you just go ahead and pick them out in the wild, so you can imagine that Poison type mons look to thrive on this field, your Amoongus will be having the time of their life battling here. 

 Outside of Poison types getting an increased damage boost, Fairy and Grass types also see a boost here, while Fighting and Ground types may have a bit of a harder time as normal. The field is designed to play around those with a magical “aura” to them, boosting specific abilities and moves that if you are not prepared for, may catch you off guard! And in general… watch out for those Mushrooms you have lying around. 

This is as much information as you will be getting for now on Arsenical Weald, more may be revealed later down the line… Or once EP7 is released, we will see on that front.

 So one benefit of having a shared codebase with the Rebornverse is being able to all benefit from optimisations to the scripts and new features being added to the game, allowing us to easily port them over to each game without much stress. Like shown above with Overlays and Boss Mechanics, we now have a new feature added to the game, Ability Boxes. 

They do what the gif shows, when an ability activates a visual pops up on the screen. Massive shoutout to Lucent for working on these, and for the script team in general in getting these setup ready for us to use in game, not much more to say about this, just a cool little additional UI feature :)

In our previous post (not… the Caz announcement), we revealed Drifblim’s Drinkery, a new addition to the farming town known as Fairbale. In that post I hinted towards drinks here having special effects, with some people speculating that these might be similar to certain contracts available in Rejuve. And to that I say, you would be somewhat correct!

 These few drinks that are available at a price will provide specific overworld buffs for the player. The one above allows the player to encounter wild encounters with guaranteed maxed IVs stats while another spicy cocktail may grant the player a higher chance to find a shiny! Might mean you won’t have to spend all your credits on those Cellia Sparkles…

These won’t be cheap however, so choose wisely when you would like to invest that cash money into gaining some of these buffs. Who doesn’t love a cheeky Whiskey with the Feta Cheese on the rocks… (do not ask why I said that, if you know, you know.).