Feng Lei

I... do not do well with sidequests, so I can't help with the emerald, apologies. I would love to know how. Probably would help if I deciphered the braille texts and stuff. And I has my own question: how do I enter into High Roller fights in the fight club? Or is that even possible? I have as yet not gotten much cred but rumors about me. What do I do? How long must I fight these same trainers over and over?

Arceus would never be that incompetent or cruel.

Yeah, I should clarify that I don't want Ttar to fail for the sake of failing, I just want him to do a basic run of Reborn. But if he really truly has more fun playing nuzelocke... though honestly I don't really see how he could on the first playthrough. It creates too much stress. But I guess he does get the adrenaline rush of pressing that Tiki button. Yeah, I always miss the field effect guides too. I still have never found the circus guide. Though I do recall in my first playthrough I did in fact collect most of them somehow.

I'm trying to remember. What did she have before Araquanid? Was it the steel Warmadam. I still recall having some awful times anyway before finally getting that Illumise down. (Although I seem to recall her returning it in several of my earlier attempts. Somehow AIs always work better when they know they face me. )

Though really, regardless of what is relied on, Shelly still is a nightmare. And I wouldn't have it any other way, honestly.

Shelly is the surprise nightmare for sure. She hit me and my idiot belief Blaziken would carry the day like a ton of brick, and that was when she was weaker. Now with Araquanid, yeah, she'll fix him.

That fanart almost feels like the poor Tangrowth is asking for help... because the Pulse does drain the life away... And yep, Gulpin is the only reason I survived that first Tangrowth battle. Never even knew what EVs were hardly until Reborn and had rusted battling skills to carry me. Had I not played Black Version sometime earlier and been introduced to Acid Spray, I would have been doomed. . . And TTar is much more enjoyable than the Pentaop. It is really, really nice when there's only 1 screen. His picture of Saruman's meme was funny and so true! A friend of mine who still hasn't played Reborn kept insisting that she wants to nuzelock it and I was like "No! Stop! Don't!". But to be honest Reborn is much easier than E16, at least I feel that way about it now. And TTar is being smart so far. He may just go through most of the gym leaders unscathed. The biggest question will be if his Blaziken faints at or before a certain Queen of Hax. And if not her, then of course the Foire Mansion may be the moment that all Nuzelock's die. Or do they all die there? Surely there's some who've actually beaten all four trainers at once.

I think it's been pretty obvious since E16 and the Devon Corp incident that Lin has been plotting our moves and at least since Taka watching over us... so chances are she was monitoring the entire Glass Factory incident the whole while and immediately chose to capitalize on such a useful ability as controlling the abyss.

And a password "Hardcore" or "Redux". Commander doesn't like bragging but Redux deserves to part of the official package. Oh, and maybe, just maybe, perhaps from a really awesomely torturous sidequest, you could have one that says, "It's a Secret to Everyone" or perhaps "Sandy" to activate the Sandbox. Or maybe one that lets you join or don a Team Rocket costume... and receive "benefits" for doing nefarious deeds, like passing gold nuggets out to kids on one of the bridges. Or other stuff. As an aside, the more I think about it, the disturbingly attracted I am to Gigantimaxing. I despise the concept, but since my nephew will be going insane over gigantifying pokemon, and my role-play with him has already featured giant body-slam/countering Wobuffets, and Reborn featured Gigantification first (Steelix).... I wouldn't mind it. Just use the existing giant Steelix sprite and give it some buffed stats a la Pulse and you're done? (My experience in coding is in the negative numbers. The more I learn, the worse I get at it). Oh, and I am one of those people who was making region varient pokemon before I even knew what pokemon really was (was one of the 90s kids who did it from the start, just about). Considering how awesome were the Pulse mons, I would absolutely freaking FREAK over some regional variants. Think of it. Tourmaline Arbok. Appphyl Aegislash. Ametrine Arcanine. Reborn Eevee. 7th Rattata. The naming schemes are incredible. Could even make that a password. (Aloha, Alola), or something. So people could choose to have them in-game or not. Or you know... ooh. U ThInK A sSsSsSeCrEt iS mAyBe PuLsE??

I would love it if one password happened to be "Redux".

Sooooo. I beat the Gauntlet. But I did not fight Henry or anyone new? The Pokemon were different. And harder, especially Cain and Shelly, but in the end I switched to my Rock team and it did prevail with all the fury of the ancient world. And I feel like there was supposed to be more? I went back to an old backup save and talked to Henry again, but this time asked him to undo what I had done, and he gave some speech about activating the event by talking to him... which I had made certain to do when I first played through the gauntlet. So did I manage to do the harder gauntlet or did I mess up somewhere? And when I say "made sure to do this when I first played", I mean talk to him. But the initial time I said "no" don't undo what I'd done. And so I assumed I'd activated it there. Also, thank you Commander, Redux was amazing. It was just as hard as I expected. It would have broken me if not for my rocks +revival herbs*. Many of those. But not so many as one would expect. Twin Aerodactyl power is something else. Also, I fought Hardy. Thank you for giving him a trick room team. It was brutal. Exactly as deadly as I envisioned. If only it had been a tripple battle and I could see just how his original strategy worked. But the fight was intense. I loved how the Lunatone seemed to know when to shift dimensions to normal so that he always went faster. The Master fight was half joke, half nightmare. His Alolan Dugtrio did the work for me. I very, very heavily suggest and request that thing be replaced by standard Dug with Arena Trap. Or something else. quaking his own Mega Tyranitar was just a little too easy to exploit. Especially with Aerodactyl and protect wielding pokemon. My only other suggestion is make sure his Kabutops has either weak armor/life orb or something similar to assist it in sweeping. Was it even using an item? I know it would only do some much because Kabutops, but still. . . Overall, fantastic. It was grueling and terrifying in a good way. Amaria was the best gym battle. All 30 of her team was one heck of a gauntlet. Kind of disappointed the other two gym leaders (Radomus and Serra didn't have 12 on them so I had to fight 24 of their team, honestly.) Funny how the strongest of all those thirty still turned out to be that blasted Seismitoad. I was like, ".... just. die. already. Please." Funny how I won most of my fights in my first Reborn playthrough with mostly Seismitoad as my winning ace. Until I discovered Minimized Stored Power Clefable. As one who really enjoyed your Rejuvenation playthrough/critique, might I suggest... heck, I'll just be honest and say request, since the effect's the same - suggest, ahem, that you play through Desolation? *This post was funded in part by Meganium Medical Group Inc. (MMGI) The contents of this post do not necessarily reflect MMGI opinions or endorsements concerning controversial topics. But it does endorse its products. By them today in a Ward near you.

*Pulls out hair* My Dusclops will find you... Oh, and The Amaria fight is something I've dreamt of for a long, long time. Thank you for making my dream come true! Now I just have to figure out how to beat her. I actually did very well with just my Lanturn and Cradily. You know what? I think maybe all this time Amaria's despair is merely an unaddressed subconscious fear of Cradilies. It must have been painful living with Florinia, waking up to sensing that prehistoric monstrosity's primal hunger for modern seafood radiating from that ball. Its no wonder she's broken beyond repair.

So. Immediately after posting, I found the construction worker and got Mannie his job. Then got Archer to Hardcore. But. I... can't find the last person for the job requests. Commanderrrr, I mean, DefinitelyAme said somewhere without people, but there are a very large number of places that are even more isolated than Train Town, and there's no new NPC in Train Town. So, help again? And please tell me where specifically in Byxbysion this person may be, should they be in that awful place. Gives me nightmares just thinking about it if that's the place.

Yep, me again. So. I found the guy at the train station, but then a certain fun character tells me that gang members are looking for work. After searching dutifully for such gang members at all hours of the day everywhere, I decided the reference was to the Team Aqua/Magma job app search. But. I have gotten everyone done but the guy in the elevator (Doing Team Aqua, by the way), and can't seem to find the one application he needs. Not sure why. Did this on my own before. Before I continue with that, I must ask: is this even what A Certain Fun Character referenced? Because Archer will be the only one left and he goes to Silph last I checked... the Reborn App doesn't give me the option of handing it out either. And I see no other gangful looking people around but Aqua and a few Magma grunts who insult my beautiful pixelated eyes.

Forgive this ignorant one. But what is Armadia levels anymore mean? Armadia specifically?

I would prefer the brutal version of Glass Gauntlet. It was too easy last time I played it in Vanilla Reborn for the... goodness, probably fifth time. Where is the cut-off point for completing the quest to get Brutal Glass?

Oh no, I do enjoy the the Redux mod, Commander! In fact, I have been loving the gym leader fights. (for some reason the masters aren't hard as the doubles for me, but that's me). It's just I'm not exactly sure how to trigger the HCHQ quest and I recall there was a mention of it being locked out sometime in the future if I did not go ahead and do it. But glad to hear I can go on and keep playing no worries. I was so sure I'd have to trek through the whole region looking for someone. The thought of the front desk guy or Jonathan being somewhere hard like Byxbision... *Shivers*

I just returned to the city and am ready to enter Devon. And Jonathan is missing. But I have no idea where to find him at all. And researching areas I've been to many times in my various playthroughs... not my cup of tea anymore. Especially when I lack the time.

So, I tried to control myself, but it was for naught and ended up quitting Redux for a while do to work. But... I need some hints (rather significant ones) for how to unlock the hardcore building so I can fight the trainers there again. . . because it has become clear to me that I am simply not going to search the region for missing persons without clues. I am really, really bad at it, apparently. To this day all I ever found was the Shelly-lookalike, and that only after the city was refurbished. I'm just bad at noticing. And I do tend to actually be multitasking while playing, so there's that added draw from my attention as well. Any help in this sidequest would be appreciated. Hopefully I have not missed it. I recall there was some kind of deadline point where if I didn't find someone it would be impossible to complete?

Ah, I figured there was one more step I was missing. Shame, but I am not going through all that again! Anyway, thanks a bunch! Now I can rest easy.

So, as someone all but totally ignorant of programming of any kind, it behooves me not to bother, but... I tried to basically do something similar as this mod, being inspired by it, for personal use. And so I tried to somehow edit the levels of certain pokemon, mostly gym leader mons just to make them a little harder, and also to buff some of the weaker mons that don't get much love (even though I don't use them). And failed. I've pretty much abandoned the idea, but I still want to know why what I tried didn't work, and what to do correctly. There's no chance of me going back through all that trouble and doing it, so please don't missinterpret me trying to hijack the mod. As for what I did, I recall getting the PBS file for Reborn, the RPG maker that is supposed to be used for it... and tried modifying the pokemon stats in notepad. After that I booted up Reborn in RPG maker. It did not work too well. Or at all, for that matter, especially since opening in RPG maker started me from the beginning. Also, I did another step between all this, where I made a new project in RPG Maker and titled it Reborn, and copied the files for Reborn from the main game to the documents folder. It's been a while, so I'm not sure exactly in what order I did all this, but I recall following steps given by others, and one poster on this site (a post I can no longer find. I think it Icecream Sand Witch?). And also steps online elsewhere, though most were cheat hacks that had nothing or little to do with my aim. I even made a custom shiny Mega Beedrill..

The only time I ever chose to use Debug was my playthrough of Rejuvenation. There was some kind of error during the cutscene between Neved and Melia at Blacksteeple. When It went back to me, I was in Merianette's avatar. And I thought it was part of the game. Don't judge, please. It's Rejuv. Body-swapping at that point felt normal and entirely plausible. So, I spent all the way up until Angie playing as this little blonde girl named Jonah. I didn't figure it out until Angie walled me and left me in hopeless defeat. I did not realize I could actually leave the tower around her, and was under the impression I was literally trapped there with no hope of changing my pokemon roster. Funny, I could always almost beat her, but for one full 15 hour stint, I failed miserably. Finally, I got a debug menu, and then switched out my avatar and did something about my team (Which did nothing but make the problem worse, and I was determined not to cheat with a weird team addition. Though I think I did add one mon since I'm pathetic with sidequests and had at that point only 5 or so active mons. Quagsire and Lunatone alone carried my team, and it just wasn't going to work in the face of the cold truth. My team was not winning, and I was under the impression I was stuck until after I already used debug) *Shakes head*

I felt almost exactly the same way, Commander, surrounded by all those bratty teenage girls getting into a cat fight. I don't have a problem with a largely female cast, but these characters all have such utterly flawed personalities, and none of them have improved at all. Well, Saki was always kind of a... enigma to me. She felt like a more mature version of Terra before getting her hair dyed. Let her ty-dy her hair, giv'er some suspenders and let her replace her iron mallet for a wooden, and we have Terra's secret identity exposed. No wonder she done went crazy and moved to Agate Circus. As to the battle, I definitely believe Melia shouldn't have been included. It was an easy enough fight as it is. And yep, my fight, too, had the Metagross doing exactly squat. Overall, the Crawli segment was definitely worse, though. This one was irritating as all hell, but it did NOT last forever, from what I recall. And Amber grew on me as a troubled character who really, really needed a friend in her life who wasn't any of those girls. Who wouldn't get messed up with them? Valerie just walked right out without a care. Another is a blonde 10 year old genius who somehow aged rapidly and has a demanding personality (It really is a blonde thing, I guess. Melia basically acts just like a certain family member I know.), and another is a violent delinquent who threatens the life and property of everyone within geographic proximity to her. Ouch. And her mom is trying to be loving and supportive... in all the wrong ways. Or has been a little TOO much so. But yes, Amber is really a great character to delve into. You know what would have made things better from my POV? Here's a random brainstorm: Have THIS be where the boat was towed for repairs. It makes more sense to me that they'd send everyone right up to the luxury resort rather than some random dockyard outside a life-threatening jungle. I mean, really? Then we could have had the Amber segment. The plot could be rearranged to streamline events. Have a gym badge axed for using Magma Drift (Still an awesome move, tbh). Have everyone readying for Amber's party, only for Venam to arrive by breatstroke to cause chaos. Amber runs off to the cave, and Venam pursues to torment her. You follow. Only, when you reach the Sharpedo Cove, you see neither girl. Instead, it is hailing. Dozens of posters start drifting down amidst the wintry spell, and one lands atop you and teleports away. You pick up a flyer floating in the surf and read about Angie, and lo and behold, it is addressed to you! Le Silent Type! Angie is challenging you to face the Cold Truth, as she has invited the two naughty girls to do so ahead of you. Upon returning to the resort, we find Telsa in a tizzy over the posters, in near tears about Amber being on them along with Venam, encased in ice! Resolved to save her daughter lest she suffer Nancy's fate, Tesla and the M&Ms (Melia and Minions) join together to storm into the frozen side of the frozen island and rescue their frenemies! But then a horde of Deoxys swoop down, delivering a message from Angie through brute force that the invitations were for Commander, and Commander ALONE to face her. The others are not yet prepared to face the Truth's touch. And so you fight your way all but alone into Angie's domain to rescue the rascals. In all this, Nim would have already been captured, preferably right after first running aground, and Crawli wouldn't have been introduced yet. Back to Angie, she gets the Popsicle treatment. Along the way, you find that Crawli had been frozen in her dungeons after being tricked into abandoning his Ranger siblings for Turkish Delight, where he was then led into Angie's Tower and turned to stone frozen. You now have badges for Magma Drift, and Crawli is free, along with Venam and Amber. But where O where can that TM be? You return to the resort and find Madelis finishing her roundup of the heroes, who were exhausted by fighting the Deoxies +hordes of Xen grunts. You part ways with informing that she took the TM Magma Drift with her from Tesla and Amber's mansion, or wherever it was, and there's like, probably no other one out there. Hah! And then, after successfully obtaining Magma Drift, you and Aelita follow suit, finish the mountain mission, and then return to face Crawli in his gym. Only, Crawli is not there. And so, you learn about the hidden cove in Sheridan. Aelita actually knows about this place, so you hop on over, but not before she warns about how the Elder always said that area was cursed from Garufan magic, and that no one should be there at all. Lo and behold, you get to the hidden Sheridan wetlands to find machinery, and perhaps some tunnels leading to the Garufan ruins with Groudon. We explore, and find connections to Madelis' Shadow Pokemon Palace with cool plumbing and awful door service, only to find Ren helping Nastasia do something at the ruins. Maybe Garufan related? Or perhaps just collecting damaged remains. Scenes play out in an order appropriate for above changes (maybe remove the Groudon and instead have Natowl kill the Elder when she saves you all from her fire pokemons' fury, since this time she's not interested in letting you get away! The Elder dies, triggering a spell on Aelita or perhaps fulfilling some Garufan blood-ritual inadvertantly activated by messing around those dangerous ruins, and Nastasia is forced to retreat. Aelita faints afterwords unconscious. From there, you go back to fight Crawli, who apologizes for having been useless thus far (he didn't go to the volcano because he was still suffering from hypothermia or just feared going in with bug types, or maybe needed to check out those suspicious activities his dad reported going in Sheridan Wetlands. Could be funny seeing Rorrim.B explain how he knew about that secret hideout, after all.... And then move on from there to wherever. I don't recall much after Terajuma because that's when I totally ran out of game investment and basically just gave up making sense of it. How does that flow? Does it sound more concise than the current version? Apologies, brainstorm rant over. I just can't resist when the urge strikes. Commander does this to me, apparently.

Thanks! Funny how I missed most of the easier ones but did well with the more obscure quests.

I would love to see you continue, simply because your insights are often whitty and thoughtful. And also instructive. So know at least that one person is learning something about storyboarding and game design while reading about a game they did not like. Specifically, I had tons of issues with Rejuvenation, and it's extremely nice to read this run and watch a more subject-knowledgable person dissect the problems it has in it. Funny, I actually was about to force myself to replay Rejuv, couldn't find the game, and found Desolation instead. Best game on here, almost. It's not quite Reborn, but it has the potential to eclipse it. If you want to do a run like this for any game, I'd suspect Desolation is a good choice. It would be interesting to read your thoughts on it and its flaws and strengths. Although I was at least hoping you'd reach Angie. Angie scarred me in many ways. It would be nice to see your reactions to her.