Commander

Previously on Pokemon Rejuvenation: (...It'd be a miracle if she survived for this long.) So if you guys are wondering "Commander, what's taking so long to make updates on this?" Well first off I juggle quite a bit in my life which we could really go into but right now I'm in Summer classes which ends in a little bit, but there's a ton of other stuff going on as well. There's also the move going on where I have to move stuff plus my job as well. The really big thing though is that I'm working on Hardcore since there's a mound of stuff to get through before the final release and I try to chip away at it while I can. And one thing I want you guys to know is that just because there are long periods that this isn't updated doesn't mean I've abandoned it. August is where things'll pick up so please be patient until then. Without further ado: Chapter 9: Caving In (Ren, my boy, you pretty much summarized what everyone was thinking) So huh? I guess I missed Venam spitting more nonsense which Ren calls her out on. (Yes, Ren. About one month's timeframe. Though Venam, you look good for being one month older) Seriously, I always though Ren was a decent character around this part and sure he could get on your nerves, but not really. I'm going to bring Fern up for a moment. Fern acts like an immature little prick which goes well as he doesn't handle situations well. Ren on the other hand shows that he actually cares and it reflects that. There's one thing that always bugged me, but that's the writer's fault and not Ren as a character we'll get into later. That's a full rant topic though. And then we meet this guy...which is new: (Wait a minute, I recognize you. I thought you jumped off a bridge. Wait until I tell Ame the good news you're alive.) (Do you not see me hiding behind Ren?) (I think that fall did some brain damage to you. Just a little bit) (But you're still the same old leader we know and love) (Such as jumping off a bridge) But all that mumbo jumbo was fancy for this: (Just like every male driving to some place new) But what if Melia was a responsible driver and made the right turn: (Yes, Ren) (.......Excuse me while I facewall over in the corner there) (Why thank you. I took my Elementary School very seriously) I'm not going to deduct any points off the Mr. Cloaked Gym Leader over there since well his logic is very sound. Ren's logic is also very sound under normal circumstances as well. You know what the problem is though. This is Melia we're talking about. The girl who literally escaped an entire raid as well as evaded one of Xen's highest ranked admins all due to a single power. She has the ability to freely teleport and pretty much do anything. Unless team Xen literally had the entire city not only on lockdown, but an entire very powerful group right there and ready to launch dozens upon dozens of Pokemon there, Melia could just make a disguise to last long enough to get to the Pokemon Center, heal her Pokemon and teleport to Goldenwood City or wherever. Other than that, I think the scene was really good and I really liked it. And a different note: (Just how I like 'em) I'm probably not going to use Meditite, but I pretty much abused that thing when the level of BS in the game spiked. Like bloody hell. But then I kind of realized I forgot to do something: (What can I say? I have a thing for purple haired chicks) Yeah...that brings me back to the Rejuv TMs. The new TMs imo are kind of a why bother. Low Sweep is a pretty good move for the early game as it allows bulky fighting types to drop a dangerous Pokemon's speed so something else can come in and kill it. Poison sweep is kind of worthless as poison types want to either hit really hard, set up, or stall. This does not accomplish any of these and Poison really isn't a good offensive typing most of the time. Fields do wonders for it though. But I would've had no problem with leaders not giving out TMs over Jan's whole runaround as you're there to earn badges to get stronger. (Spiders. Why did they have to be Spiders?) But...I kind of wish you could capture the Joltik as it's kind of a tease which from Reborn got old very quickly. The number of Murkrow and Starly from that game drove me up the wall as I literally clicked every single on of them hoping it was the event one. That was painful. Joltik also really isn't that good of a Pokemon and is only okay when it evolves so...I don't see why it wasn't a very, very rare Pokemon to capture. Gonna skip this part as it's nothing much other than this: (Where else do you think? The ceiling?) You know what bothers me. The fact that they act like it is so far down when it is literally a single staircase below. And it's not even like it's that hard of a fix to fix since it's just adding a map that consists of stairs or a spiral of them. Yeah, I do some mapping and I know something like that isn't hard. And suddenly we see Zetta...again (Even all this time, you still remember my name. Thanks, pal.) (Meanwhile I room far, far away, a certain developer is saying the same thing) (And Melia. Can't forget about Melia. My brain suffered enough from her already) But insert more Zetta being Zetta commentary here. (Darn. I really did think you were Michael Jackson's brother) Suddenly, I'm imagining Zetta dancing to Smooth Criminal. I could totally see him doing that. Anyways, Melia...since that's what this is about (Well she's clearly not here) (...Excuse me, I need to be alone for a minute) But yeah basically this is how I feel right now: But due to a certain overused cliche which originated in Superhero comic books, a person ain't dead unless you have the literal body and a grave. It applies to literally almost every work out there. I'll even admit I use this cliche with a character, but that was actually to make a character look suspicious and the audience to start wondering about him. And thinking about it, I'm pretty cut and dry about death. If someone is stated to be dead, they are dead. But... (I don't even wanna know where he stored the body) ... (.....The girl has a very big ketchup fetish) (...With a statement like that, I don't think a Pokemon is the culprit of her 'murder') (Hey man, all I was doing is catching Shadow Pokemon. You're the one who wanted to show off and lost) But I'm going to get to the blood stains there in a minute. (If that didn't happen, Melia and Venam wouldn't be friends. Just think about that) (I'll take the blame for this one. Guilty as charged) (No, I'm pretty sure I'm late) (This is something I'm glad I was late for) But where have I seen that line before: But okay before we get into the battle I want to make something clear. Zetta's logic is very...not sound. I mean it's clear he's not very smart, but a person even with that much blood loss could survive. Heck, I've lost a ton of blood (I'd say a gallon almost) and I was still fine. And while a Pokemon could've killed her, the Pokemon found in this place, including the one behind Zetta. Very few Pokemon eat bones and often leave excess behind. Mightyenas I believe is the only Pokemon to not do this and the ONLY Pokemon to be able to fit this as if a Pokemon swallowed her whole, they wouldn't leave a bloody bag behind as it would've had to be ripped off. Only issue with this is A) Mightyena don't live in caves and B. It'd take way too long before Team Xen would show up and notice her dead body before it was completely rid of. Now if you really wanted to through players through a loop, Ren could've said something like "Just because she lost a lot of blood doesn't mean she's dead" or something like that and Zetta could say "I thought the same thing, but then I found this" before throwing one of Melia's arms on the ground. That'd throw players through a loop as people would debate if she's really dead or not. Now onto Zetta who I picked Venam to fight as my partner: I'm just going to make a picture thing this time though ('cause I'm 2 Legit 2 Quit) While this is a 2 v 1 battle, I think that team is a little bit ridiculous as seen by my levels I'm barely even in the 20s. The upcoming gym leader isn't even in the mid 20s on some of his Pokemon. The Pokemon themselves are fine and workable, but it would've been better if there wasn't anything ridiculous like Play Rough Persian which was a really? moment. So pretty much Venam was putting in all the work while my Pokemon were fodder since they got 1-2 shot. Those were not weak Pokemon given to him and Absol is actually stronger than type: Null in a sense. Just think about that for a moment. But seriously, bad battle design for a mid-boss even though it's a 2 vs 1. (Says the man with an Illegal Persian, Absol, and pseudo(ish) legend) (I wonder how the bag didn't get sucked in) (Judging by the red on the wall, I'd say Ruby Cave) (Never seen a black Joltik before? What are you, racist?) I also love how when Ren touches the Joltik it just goes poof and wish I screen capped that as that is golden dialogue since it makes so little sense. But anyways, I never really liked the dimensional rift segments. The summoning of a demon from a gate always sounded more menacing and definitely brought more tension than going into its den. But there's not much to talk about before the fight since well this is more or less a back to back fight with an interlude which is pretty uneventful. (Maybe all it needs is a hug) (Seriously, how does Jan expect my levels to be that high right now?) (I also love how it's a normal Galvantula at the start) (What's even better is that it's smaller than the Joltik) The tiny Galvantula always bothered me so much, but the Joltik on top bothers me even more. But alas, I can't complain unless Jan changes the sprite entirely to make it look more menacing. Minor gripe though. There isn't much to talk about from memory as it was mostly Venam poisoning all the Pokemon and mine more or less constantly dying. This was mostly due to being super underleveled and having a weak team to take it on. But AI mess ups are the only reason I won. Gotta love them. (Told ya all he needed was a hug) And with the DG down, we get out of the dimensional rift. (We probably should move that bag before I get bloodstains on my coat. I don't need that filth on me) (Given that Zetta has no Pokemon left and it takes time to summon a dimensional Pokemon I'll...) (...I swallowed my pride the minute I dressed like this) (......Her name has something to do with the moon. I wonder what that could relate to) (I would, but Melia's dead. I guess Zetta will do though) (You must have some really fine tastes in men then because he is anything but monotone) (The same thing I do: the salt and tears of thy mortal enemies. And the playerbase) (And you wonder why she doesn't have any friends) And then Zetta is bye-bye a go-go (We're teenagers. Ignoring people is in our blood) (Which is why you throw it in the washing machine) (I wish that were true, but even when she's dead she never goes away.) (So basically you're saying to let them to do whatever the heck they want) And then Crescent leaves. An no, we aren't even close to getting done with this scene. (I'm only in it for the Shadow Pokemon) (Are we seriously not going to do anything with that bag?) (I'd do that to but uhh...I'd probably be taken in for questioning about the missing Professor and his family) (I mean she has a togepi with the power to do anything. We couldn't have stopped her even if we tried) (Something with this is bothering me but we'll get back to it later) (All Crescent did was get rid of annoying people. She did nothing wrong). (I feel like I'm the third wheel in a love story right now) (...Considering what you home town is...it's going to take more than man-power to fix that screwup) Okay we're finally done but before I talk... (Hey, it's not like she was going to be using any of this stuff anyways.) But after relooking at this scene, I can't put it any other way than saying it was...pretty bad. This whole scene was more overdramatic than a game series where a total of 5 people died across 7 games. And dying is a very huge deal in those games. It's just way too in your face that Melia is dead but spoiler alerts I knew then and I know already that she isn't dead. It's an obvious cliche which just makes this worse. Even Crescent pretty much accepted Melia is dead without any questions or denial. Which makes this honestly a really, really bad death scene. You want to know the icing on the cake. One character did act the way they should over a death like this. It wasn't Ren or Venam. It was Zetta. He was so distraught and angry in which all he could do is lash out on the people closest to blame. He screwed up and it costed them their most important piece. Honestly, I think he acted a bit too tame because depending on the organization, you could be killed for a screwup like that. But he did his role fine. Venam and Ren we're barely even phased by losing one of the closest people in their life. They blame Team Xen for her death but as Zetta said it wasn't their fault. She got her own damn self killed. But now I get to talk about death 'cause trust me I've used it and I've used it many times. I'm a firm believer that when someone close to you no longer exists, you feel nothing but pain and more pain. You question your every decision and may straight up be very, very destructive to your being. Do you think Ren or Venam acted like that? And you don't just get over it instantly either. There's a reason why I save use death sparingly as it's a very effective tool. And then Crescent rubbing the fact Melia is dead to our faces kind of was overkill at that point. But bloody hell. I know I never really liked it, but remove the Dimensional Galvantula and there's not much good left. Did I talk about the Dimensional Pokemon changes as I don't feel the whole enter the rift flows as well as the old method. Erhm...back to the plot: (Well there was a low outcome of success to begin with. Probability sucks.) (Pretty sure Ren already told me this) (That's also the sign you've spent way too much time around Shade) And also someone else I forgot about: (...Why did you think it was a good idea to fight here?) (......Excuse me while I run into a wall and hope it kills me) That remark makes zero sense. Zero. Unless your hospitalized, you should be able to grab your balls and throw them at the enemy. But if she really hurt her rib cage and was having a hard time speaking, that'd make sense why she couldn't really battle. << But she's bloody talking just fine (Something tells me Karrina really did lose and is afraid to admit this guy is superior) (I forgot how strong this guy was) (Like he is really, really strong) (And his ace should be nicknamed Disappointment) This wasn't a really hard fight tbh and Zetta makes it look super easy with that ridiculously OP team. I'd say this is fine for an optional boss though. Not much else to talk about. (Apparently praising people gives headaches. You really can kill people with kindness). Thankfully that should be the last of the haxed OP 2nd stagers in this cave..... (OH COME ON!) Did I mention this is on normal mode? I hope I did because there's a lot of work needed here. Anyways, I was going to throw a silly little thing at the end, but then I saw a comment somewhere about the love letter quest. I don't really talk about homosexual since there's really not much to talk about. My personal rule is to not include it unless it helps develop a character. That's fancy for don't remove it if it's there, but don't force it in either. You really don't see too many homosexual characters in gaming. I know Anelace from the LoH Skies games is debatable given she hides it pretty well, but that's has little to do with her overall character. Though thinking about the term character development, I'm actually going to in the recap talk about why Ren is the most developed character of the cast so far bar one. See y'all next time.

You know what bothers me with this. You're asking for help yet you're calling what we do easy. While a functional one is easy to implement for a level cap, a well made one is not quite so easy (especially when you have some caps that aren't badge based). Just look up Insurgence's coding and use that one as a base since that one is purely badge based and has the 1 exp thing. There's a very, very good reason why they have Pokemon earning 1 exp when they hit the cap. All I'm going to say since it's "relatively easy" to do. Also using as a base =/= copy and pasting it. It's seeing how something works in order to figure out how to create and meet your own needs. I won't go into it any deeper as KisuoX gave you what you need. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- @KisuoX Just out of curiosity, what exactly can the change the trainer look turn player into. I'm assuming that we're talking about the protag sprites since well I do have a funny story. You see, you can manipulate the sprite that's shown online to look like someone else (like Shelly) which I'm not sure was changed since the beta since I haven't tested it. So if you change the trainer type, it will display that trainer pic to the opponent as long as it exists in the base Reborn (Champion Cynthia won't show up to the opponent for example). I'm assuming the trainerlook is only the protagonist sprites, but I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you did more and/or were considering it.

That...is very convenient XD. I'd say that would help out quite a bit in terms of translating since you could always store it somewhere else to use it again. Sometimes I forget about some of the feature debug mode offers such as the battle log, but imo that log is only useful if the AI is really screwing up. Only thing that trying this would screw up is text flow.

I think you are missing the idea behind localization. The actual implementation of all this stuff is probably less than a quarter of the work. Yes it's still work but the least important part. There are two types of translations: a literal and a localization. Literal is taking the text word for word to translate it. Localization takes the text and makes changes to it so people of the language understand and it reads more thoroughly. It also changes the pop culture references to something they'll click with better. I don't know what characters are supported with RPGMAKER, but it shouldn't be too difficult to localize all that stuff as it is mostly edits to the PBS which could be done easily and become open source. As for character names, that is an interesting scenario. All league leaders are names based around their type so I'd say keep it, but changes to names should revolve around that idea. But yeah, I'm telling you guys to consider getting what you can get done now ie translate the text so that you aren't overwhelmed. 50 percent of the new content in HC for E16 was built during E15. I'm actually working on E17 content during my free time right now. But so you guys understand better: In two or so years on the final release, would you rather be able to have five people a couple days after be inserting text into the game all at the same time or would you be trying to find a team who understands both languages to translate everything and try to insert it into the game all at once and making sure it is correctly translated and no grammar errors. The former already has that done except for replacing the text in the game.

If you want to take the Hardcore trainer files and use them in a combined mod you can, but uhhh Hardcore really isn't an easy mod to combine with and is more or less only add-on friendly since I had to do quite a number of in game events and a few custom scripts. Don't let the game difficulty be a reason to not include it. Some people may actually like that and it doesn't really harm me in any way.

Focus SASH works 100% of the time but is consumed. Focus BAND works 10% of the time but is not consumed. As for Power Herbs are for two turn moves like Sky Attack, Solarbeam, and Geomancy. There aren't too many moves that function that way. I don't think there is an error here, but a slight misunderstanding of how those items work. As for the focus band, it is like sturdy, but it could be even up to 20 times before it even activates so that shouldn't be too surprising. I definitely know Power Herbs work as I've had opponenets use them in a few scenarios.

...Inside of battle you can't select your bag, but that's about it. If you can't access your bag from the menu screen, I'd try to redownload the mod as I've tested it numerous times and never heard of this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Just a small update that I've made it up until Adrienn in terms of eventing which is actually a pretty good chunk. Once I finish eventing all of the leaders of the Altered Path, I'm going to begin testing those and making sure they work properly as well as some fight adjustments. It's slow, but we're getting somewhere.

When giving them their Pokemon, I made sure not to miss ones that appeared in either Reborn or Hardcore and when giving them to the player they have their Hardcore stats unless they do not appear in which they have their reg Reborn stats.

If you guys want to get started on a translation though, I'd suggest actually working on an excel document to translate the game as many translators and localization teams use those before physically working on implementing them into the game. It is possible that there will be edits in the text as Ame revises the game, but most of those revisions already happened. The actual implementation though will have to wait until E19 or the final release as it does require A) A mapper with the skills to spot and replicate changes Ame has done on previous maps or B. completely redoing the entire translation with each episode.

Uhhh...I'm going to take a wild guess since it's not on the OP that feature wasn't included in the updated release of the mod. KisuoX probably could explain that way better since well, his mod. Something important though is that when you are reporting something, it can save modders and game developers hours by giving more details about what happened. Did you get an error/crash? Did it not affect your game at all? ie the feature does nothing. It also gives a significant increase in chances that the error you're experiencing will be fixed. Okay now I see the newer post and uhhh.... Pretty sure that was something for E15. I think KisuoX was the one who created that, but we do have other modders in this community so I cannot be sure. That though does not mean it's part of the newer mod or even going to be updated. How to get that to work might be an off topic discussion so...yeah... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It's good to see you back in action though and I'm glad you were able to update your mod to the current episode as it does have some very handy features users may like. I can't think of anything to try and add for the mod since the big thing this episode is weather "features". Ah, I got a simple one people may or may not. You know how in I think Gen V there was a feature where you could register a team to be used online for I think quick battles. It's just something so that way when I'm grinding up Pokemon or something and someone online wants to battle I don't have to rearrange my team.

That uhhh sucks so much. We all know I use postimage for stuff and it hasn't disappointed me yet. But I'd honestly just go with Deviantart at this point. I wouldn't even pay a single cent to share images since imo it would be like having to pay Google every time you search for something. At least it is just images and doesn't affect the actual game.

That's a little backwards. Episodes 1-12 took I'd say two years. 13 and 14 took a year. 15 took a year. And 16 took a year and a half. Episode 11 is where a lot of revisions and fixes happened as well as the addition of Gen VI. Future episodes added a lot of content, but E16 is the one I refer to as the one that tried to kill us all. I guess @Amethyst would know better than I would since well...I hear rumors she's in charge of the project.

Let me put it this in a way you can understand. I've been in the Reborn Community for 4 years and Ame has been working on the game for I think 5 years now. Might be 6. Do you honestly think she's going to quit after all that time when there's only one more year of development left? Maybe a bit longer but still, you get the idea. There's a dev blog which she updates every centurary if you ever want to keep track.

...I want you to sit down a minute in my shoes. I've had experience in both hacking and RPGmaker and can honestly say that Pokemon Essentials, while not the best system, is a gift that let us go beyond what we could do before with Pokemon. Do you really think Pokemon Reborn could be done using hacking? Anyways, I guess what I should state is that you're in the wrong community if you are expecting a high quality, massive game with little flaws all for free. Lag is going to happen with RPGmaker (and even some massive RPG games you pay for in the store). As for non-rpgmaker, there are some, but there's really not much to dig for since Pokemon Essential is kind of the base engine for all fan-games. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I guess I should state my own little gripes about fan-games. Actually, it's the fact that they are more or less the same (bar like a couple). There's a custom silent protag, 8/18 gym leaders who are fought in order in which the crime organization intervenes along the way. Gym leaders are all mono type users and most maps are more or less linear unless there are HM spots for sidequest or exploring later. I could say stuff about the story, but it's Pokemon. Nobody picked up an official Pokemon game and said it was the best story ever which sets a very, very low bar for story.

Yeah...if you guys really, really want me to add it in, I can use the NPC in HCHQ to add those Pokemon in since I kind of forgot to edit a little event to add them. But yeah, it was a slight mess up.

they're onto me

If you receive one of the hidden mons, you will get a message reading "A new Pokemon was added to [Name]'s roster." As for Fero, I haven't added in hidden mons to him, but I do know what one will be. But yeah, he will get two mons in E18. If people want to make suggestions about his team please feel free, but the original 6 are staying more or less. But yeah, I know there's a lot of confusion regarding this, but I'm working on a little something to kind of more or less solve this issue without taking away the fact they are hidden and are still going to be hard to find. That'll be my next massive project after Altered Path. But we aren't in the future and for now, I'll at least give you guys where one of them is so that you kind of understand how the system works a little bit better DO NOT read if you don't want to know the location: This will apply to all the automatically added Pokemon as well such as Fern getting Ferroseed and Grovyle after beating him. So yeah, I'm going to fix this mess, but for now let's let this guide more or less be our little solution. (Very little is going to change here, but how it is presented will be changed). But just know that I'm working on it. As for the Egg and trade "glitches" how about we just call that a feature. It's one of those thing on the very, very bottom of my list to fix.

Oh shi...I forgot about this topic. I guess Ame covered more than I would, but I kind of agree to disagree. I'll at least break sidequests down first before going into a bit more detail. So one thing that I really think people should realize that having too much in a game isn't necessarily a bad thing. Reborn has a lot of things to do, but trying to do everything every time (cough*route 1*cough) would get tedious so being able to breeze through the game in a second playthrough should be fun or at least not stressed to do sidequests. Rejuv I feel like I had to sidequest since well the HC thing is there and it's the only way to get good stuff. Reborn is kind of designed to do whatever you want. There's a plot that you have to follow, but you can choose to go a different way and I think I always loved how the first area was a big old place called Peridot Ward that overwhelmed me, but I dug around and saw all these little things that I wouldn't appreciate in a normal game. That's just how Reborn is designed is to explore the city so you can get stronger, not because you need to. But now I'll divide sidequests into three sections: 1. Story Sidequests: These sidequests are the ones players almost always want to get to learn more about characters. Interesting enough, most of these are very subtle and only a couple add a lot of context, but they don't have a big emphasis so I could see them being easily missed. While these do expand your knowledge, or even make your more confused, missing them is not a big deal as I have a feeling the story will explain itself for many of these moments, but not in as much detail. You learn very little of characters outside the main story tbh, but you do learn a lot about them in the main story. 2. Sub-story/Exploration Quests: You ever think about the Aqua Gang quests or how when you first flew back to neo-Reborn you explored the Geyser Area. There are certain quests or things you can do. A lot of these net you quite a few rewards so often they are the things people recommend to players and many of them are even fun. Very few of them are sub story which is why I condensed them as they are mostly about exploration. If you talk to NPCs, they help push you to explore the world a bit more. 3. Event Pokemon: If you look at the obtainable Pokemon, there are some that are just more or less you find the Pokemon to capture them. Honestly these are the whatever quests since only completionists or collectors really go for them. I don't mind them except for weather Pokemon. I really didn't like that concept too much before and E16 really hasn't helped with that. This is just kind of something to do on the side and often you'll randomly notice them. Did you notice a certain word I said there? Explore. Nothing in Reborn forces you to do anything other than to move the plot forward. It's a really nice freedom I feel Pokemon has started to forget about and it gets worse every gen. So yeah, I don't really expect a lot of people to be doing sidequests or exploration since Pokemon more or less kind of is pushing away from that. If you don't like exploring you can enjoy the game still, but you do miss out on a lot of stuff that make Reborn, Reborn really. But yeah I found every Pokemon and sidequest by myself other than two things, one of which I would've found playing a new game and the other was Lapras. And Beldum, but ain't nobody able to figure that out by themselves. Point is that Reborn is designed to kind of play how you want which is something which was rare, but is coming back in style with Nintendo switch. Let me rephrase this in a way that will make more sense: You are punishing players for being more invested in the game. You are then forcing players to play a certain way if not only a specific way taking away many of their freedoms. A game that bosses me around does not work out that much except in action packed games where there's so many different ways you can go about even the simplest of objectives. In a game with limited movement and a genre known for grinding, that...does not mix well. Look to do anti-grinding incentives (like Reborn's disobedience) before straight up punishing them hard for doing stuff. But the bigger thing is why have sidequests and make them if don't want people to do sidequests. We actually got two sidequests this episode that gave some very, very deep and interesting storytelling. Actually, 3 counting Corey. I don't think there will be that many in the Desert, but Agate City definitely could have quite a few possibilities as well. As for the level 50 thing...oh boy this topic. You see, most people are far from the peak of their strength, but to get even higher requires you to grind a "low" level mon using trainers with really high levels or wild Pokemon with really low levels which making sure you don't level your own Pokemon too high so you don't have to worry about the level cap. And fights so far have not been that bad and honestly I've gotten through the pre-field days with a team that I got more or less since the start of the game so I never felt the need to swap my Pokemon out. And I still really don't (and heck no to trying to rotate Pokemon). It's actually around level 50 where the experience curve gets really bad as you're short on exp and it's really hard to level up. Maybe it's changed a little bit since I started but by the time I hit Luna, her mons were 10 levels above mine.

I think the main issue there isn't the fact that NPCs don't react to the player using different characters. I did a little bit with the gift mons NPCs, but honestly, that's something better done when Reborn is finished and on its final version though I'd probably make that an open source project since it'd at least double the amount of dialogue in the game (though that does not mean every NPC has to interact with every Party Member). But if you want to know their locations: A couple people have found both of Fern's, I think someone found Aya's first one, but yeah the best hint I can give is to not think too hard about where they're located as when you recruit a character, they can have a full team before fighting the following gym leader. Fern's are very useful, Victoria's are really, really useful if you want to do a run purely as her. Cain's are eh since he has really good mons. One of Shelly's is super broken and the other is a depends on what you want to use it for. Aya's are kind of bad (except the hard to get even where she gets one really good one though I may change that event entirely). Cal's are both good, but only one is worthwhile to train. One of Julia's is really, really good for her, but she already has a solid team. Florinia's is hard to say as it's one of her only options that can do something. But yeah, I'm probably going to be revamping the hidden mon system so that it's not merely a treasure hunt. Yes, some of them will still be hidden, but a number of them are going to disappear so don't worry if you can't find them. That's E18 talk though as E17 is all about the shift to Gen VII and finishing up the main protag stuff.

Thinking back on E15, I think I moved the guy from that position but forgot to in this release. Just as an FYI there really isn't that much you're missing out on so if you miss it it's not that big of a deal. Anyways there's not much of an update, but because of a certain discord discussion, a certain someone said they would make a certain backsprite of a certain character, but since a certain someone is really picky he decided to end up making his own backsprite of a certain someone which ended up with that certain someone making this: Now before you get your hopes up, no she is not going to be a party member just because I have a sprite. Will I find a use for it? Probably, but yeah, if anyone randomly wants to use this in their runs or something feel free. Anyways, tune in next time as commander finds more ways to torture himself.

So it's almost been about a week since I gave that announcement about the Altered Path getting worked on. I'm still on the mapping stages, but while I'm not going for super impressive (literally it was originally more or less going to be one giant map with doorways and sings to label the leaders) I think this is at least a bit more appealing. Once this is released, I kind of want to know which style you prefer as I'll do that for XCoM. That's still a long ways away. In terms of mapping though, I'm actually almost done. All that's left is the H4 rooms which two were done initially and one is a copy and paste map which means that there is only one more map for me to do \o/ though I have no idea what to do for it. After that comes eventing 200 or so events and then battle testing. Fun times. But if I do get this finished and tested, you bet your butt I'm releasing it before E17 since well...I have to redo a lot of stuff, but thankfully the bulk of it will just be fights. Anyways I already have two but if you used a team in either Reborn or Hardcore and made it into the end, could you send it to me with info such as moves, nicknames, items and abilities? I've got 3/4 trainers left with blank teams and this would kind of be a cool way to give some players a little bit of appreciation for playing the mod. While it is a first come, first serve, I do take some factors in so feel free to PM me even if you know more than 3 people submitted something. No rules regarding this one other than to having to have your original starter. Anyways, I guess I can talk about HC E17 and beyond plans in a little bit more detail. While I don't plan on adding much to E17, there is still stuff that's going to be added or continues such as: -A new Lucky Egg sidequest to replace the current method to obtain it (based on a certain quest in LoH series) -A continuation of the Mega Ring Quest -A continuation of the Z-ring Quest (Yes, you can start these quests in E16) -A new sandbox battle mode for Party Members -An Added Hint Guy for Party Members and their Hidden Mons -2 new fights added for E17 areas -Improve and fix how party members are recruited (ie any mons you normally would miss would be obtained still bar a few) While I can't promise this will happen in E17, I do have a little something planned exclusively for party members I'm probably going to call Party Missions (creative name, I know). This little project of mine is going to take a while, but when it's done I think it'll really help redeem the lackluster content the current party system has. I haven't decided the rewards yet, but completing each mission will net you something.

My best advice for using Sandbox mode is to first create a save to the Hardcore game otherwise you will miss a couple features like No Item or Randomizer. Transfer that save back into the Regular Reborn folder, then run sandbox mode to make any adjustments (as long as it doesn't mess with any switches or variables you're safe) then you can freely transfer it back to Reborn Hardcore. As long as you save on CANON maps of Reborn you are safe when hopping from mods. And I realized I just stated what you just said...whoops. It's much safer than hopping back and forth between older and newer versions of Reborn.