I don't know where the board about the potential uses of shards in this game went, so I figured I'd just post this here.
Last night, I had a brilliant idea for what we could use the shards found during mining for. Then I got the idea for a potential Trade NPC, and an Easter Egg to go with the trade guy. So Imma just going to get right on it.
Imagine it: A pokemon black market. Maybe a few stalls selling rare goods, all fenced in and guarded by a couple of criminals and mightyena sprites. Maybe you have to defeat some of the criminals or prove that you're with the Magma/Aqua gang in order to obtain entrance or something.
Now, some of the other stalls could sell evolution items or rare berries or something, but the biggest stall could have this guy with four cages: inside each one the sprite of a shiny mew, a Celebi, a Jirachi, and a Victini.
If you have enough shards, you can purchase one of these rare, illegally caught legendaries from the sales man. Maybe he later goes and turns the shards into crack or something, I dunno, but for some reason, he'll trade you legends for shards. I'm going to set up a certain number of required shards here, but feel free to play with the numbers.
50 blue shards: Shiny Mew (Because shiny mew is blue. Regular mew for blue shards made less sense to me at four AM.)
50 green shards: Celebi
50 yellow shards: Jirachi
50 red shards: Victini
This idea got me thinking though: what about the last cute mini-legendary, Shaymin? Well, I came up with a good trading scenario for Shaymin.
So you find this guy standing around in the black market area. When you talk to him, you learn that his girlfriend dumped him, and in order to get back at the bitch, he kidnapped her beloved Shaymin and is looking to replace it with a worthless magikarp.
Now here's the creepypasta Easter Egg that you can throw in if you like: If you return to the black market after trading with the guy, you find that he is no longer there.
A gym leader or two later, you stumble across a little house in a town. Inside, you find a young woman at the sink and a Gyarados nearby. If possible (I don't really know what the extent of video-game making is. ) you can make the floor and the Gyarados's mouth all red and stuff. When you talk to the girl, she welcomes you into the house, and tells you not to mind the mess. Then she gives you some made-up excuse about how she was making spaghetti, and the sauce boiled over while she wasn't looking and exploded all over everything. However, if you read her diary--which could be on the kitchen table, or on a table in another room or something--you can read her latest diary entry, which will go something akin to this:
"FINALLY! After weeks of training that magikarp, it finally evolved into Gyarados! It's not my precious Shaymin, but it'll have to do. I'm going to make that asshole ex of mine regret ever losing my precious Shaymie-waymie."
So yeah, that's the kind of stuff that goes through my head when I'm suffering from Insomnia at four in the morning.
If Amethyst reads this, thank you for making such an awesome pokemon spin-off game for us teens and adults, and Good luck with future episodes.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pass out from sleep deprivation. =_=