Yumil

1), Yes, there is a "better" decision. is rewarded by the game, and, to be blunt, the game will find a way to sidestep your decision if you don't. To argue in Nova's favor, I'd say reading the full diary is supposed to get the point across that regardless of ulterior motives, Nova effectively pulled Shiv out of his depression, even if it was just a ploy to get to him, something Shiv (and Aurora too) is explicitly grateful for, and while Shiv may be shady, so far, he's the least evil of the three. There's also the fact that while nova is unquestionnably not a great person, Aurora has done quite a number of things to be the greater of the two evils, considering she's pretty much a yandere and a psycho killing people for minor slights by the time you meet her. I'd also the argue the choice isn't really what you present it as. It's not a matter of forgiving nova or condemning her, it's a matter of letting her die or not. The latter doesn't necessarily imply blind forgiveness, and the former is, at the very least, not very cool, and at worst, complicity for murder because of how it's framed, which is pretty immoral regardless of the circumstances. 2) C) is the outcome that's rewarded by the game and is flat out optimal, as it softens a check later in the game to make sure you get the good ending. you can get it without it, it's just harder, but the implication is pretty clear. Outcomes A and B will also lower your affinity with Shiv to diverse extents, but that's more secondary.

He was a bit of a roadblock for me but he was just reborn-level to me. Starter was Protean Greninja, for the record, but I don't remember him doing anything noteworthy in that fight. If memory serves, the two mons who really made a difference in that fight for me were raichu and most importantly, Fluffly Bewear, who's available in the wild right before addenfall. I struggled more on the flying leader before him, and on the electrical gym leader right after. To generalize to other feedback i've seen from people, struggling on tristan is far from unheard of, but he's rarely THAT harder than the rest.

Mandatory : Nope. Worthwhile : Yeah. Not by much, but a bit. They'll give you back all the credits you gave them down the line at some point plus five more for your trouble. You don't lose much outside of that though so it's also fine if you don't feel like it.

Thanks ! Was able to test and managed to get the red piece. Managed to get a gif in the process, added it to the guide : https://gph.is/g/Z2pwbXD Also, here's your save back with the red piece because i mean, why not, worst case scenario you don't have a use for it but i lost like three minutes tops. Got you back to the silver rise beamer grid where you where. burned up the two max repels on the way, and used a dusk ball to catch a drifloon I found on the way, figured I might as well since he's pretty rare (5%) and you didn't have it. Game.rxdata

Insight is what's referred to the "A feeling of curiosity washes over you" prompts you sometimes get while in the dreamscape. There's nine of them you can get in total, and you need all nine of them to get the good ending, or Quick rundown of the prompts : if you want a longer explanation for any, check the guide and ctrl-f for "prompts" to get quickly to each of them.

Just to be sure : A) are you circling the rock formation, not the outer wall of the room ? B) Are you straying from the formation at any point outside of necessary turns ? C) Are you walking back at any point during the thing ? Doing so would fail the attempt. D) Are you reading the writing before each attempt ? I checked with caz, there's not unknown variable in the process I'm not aware of, so either there's an unknown bug in the code, or I'm not properly communicating the information. if you still have trouble with the thing, could you send me your savefile of the game ? i'd like to record a gif of doing the proper thing so it's clearer in the guide, but I don't feel like replaying Deso up to that point right now.

Yes, I assumed the Original poster meant Poke Candy, since they're clearly the same thing with a different name. That, and I have no idea why you'd want pokesnax if not for doing exactly what poke candy does. Also, I had it confirmed with caz you can't get pokesnax in this game outside of pickup through old versions, which is clearly an unintended leftover from reborn. Reverse candies are pretty useful as far as i'm concerned, because reaching the level cap also stops EV gains, so it was pretty useful for EV training.

Pretty sure you can just buy them from Redcliffe town, either to the mart or to the lady who also sells the paints to make your mons shiny.

use a link stone on it while it holds the item.

Huh. Seems no one else has done it at the time of this writing, so I guess I'll open up the thread for people to post their opinions and feedback on Starlight Divide's demo. So, uh, for starters, Congrats to you guys for making this demo, since from what i've followed, it means a lot to you guys. I was mostly only in it in a "let's see what they've been putting Reborn on hold for" way, but I've had a pleasant surprise and I'll probably follow starlight's development from there. This post is probably going to end up resembling a doorstopper's worth of nitpicks by the time I'm done writing so here's the TL;DR : I liked it and there's a lot of potential there, but it's still rough on some pretty important aspects of the gameplay. Here's the detailed version more or less sorted in bullet points. -Aesthetic and Music : great job on those fonts, pretty much nothing to complain about. You've hit it out of the park as far as i'm concerned. -Gameplay : I think you've had a really great idea for the concept of this game. I've been playing quite the dose of fire emblem and X-COM games over the years and the premise of a t-rpg that throws away everything involving dice rolls to replace it with a rythm game mechanics is REALLY SOLID. Like. I'm kinda surprised it has taken this long for someone to come up with the idea, in hindsight, because it has the potential to solve SO MANY frustrations people have been having for years with RNGesus. As for the execution of the premise, I think you have something pretty solid in the core ideas. I like that your units can take quite a beating thanks to the mechanics, as it encourage you to not turtle up and rewards you for being agressive but not reckless, and that even though perfectly blocking attacks in the back seems basically impossible, putting some effort in the dodge really makes the difference between taking chip damage and losing half of your health. I'm overall positive on the huge chasm there can be between trying to brute-force your way out of some situations and making smart use of your units - I've had an overall dreadful time dealing with the two beast ennemies in a timely fashion, probably because I didn't approach the situation the right way, but then I put Karus in a chokepoint to prevent the other enemies from pitching in and HOLY SHIT THIS MAN JUST KILLED THREE PEOPLE JUST BY PARRYING. and then again on to the next turn. I also really liked taking a look at the stats of the boss and going "wait a second, what's up with the piss poor magical defense, what happens if I use Ice Sha- OH HE FUCKING DIES, THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS". Making use of the positionning and the specialities of the characters feels very rewarding, and combined with the lot of different mechanics in the rythm game it already makes the game feels very rich in situations and depths, and that's really great. Although, it might be a bit TOO rich for an intro. Of course, this is a demo so it makes sense to want to showcase a lot of things, but for a tutorial I felt a bit overwhelmed by how much stuff was thrown my way. But that aside, On that font, that's about as close to a straight bullseye as I could honestly think of. So. Congrats for that. I do however have a lot more nitpicks in the technical aspects of things. So, for starters, I've encountered this graphic bug you can see in the attached image, where the menu opens up mid-cutscene and overlaps on the text. I'm pretty sure it comes from me closing the menu too fast and exiting the map immediately after, or something to that effect, but it doesn't want to go away, so my only option to not miss 70% of the dialogue of the cutscene was to kill and reload the game. Nothing very problematic, happened once in like my two hours of playtime, probably easy to fix. I do take a bigger gripe against the framerate, or rather the stuterring, though. It runs smooth for the most part, but you can really feel it stuterring at various points, be it opening the menu/loading a save, finishing one character's action and trying to move to the next too fast, or even sometimes during battles, and I probably don't have to explain why something that's timing-based like a rythm game absolutely needs to be as spotless as possible on the framerate, lest it becomes an endless source of frustration for the player. For the record, my computer isn't a toaster. It's a laptop with an I5 8th gen, a 1050X and 8 gigs of ram, and everything's on a SSD. I don't think I'm being unreasonable in saying something like that ought to be able to get a flawless framerate on the game considering it's scope. I'm guessing this is a lingering problem from rpg maker's terrible-ass performance due to being a very old engine, and I understand very well this is probably going to be an absolute pain of a problem to fix, not something easy, buuuut I really hope you'll be able to fix it over time or it probably is going to hold the game back in it's quality. (To your defense, I realized after playing the game that I was running it with integrated graphics rather than through the graphic processor, so maybe that explains it. But on the other hand, while I don't feel like replaying the whole demo to see if it significantly improves the stuttering, I've played a couple turns just to check and found it didn't solved the problem, and I'm guessing the problem is more on the processor side, but that's just my guess.) For that matter, I seem to have noticed than unlike landing hits, which seemingly doesn't have this, missing a hit seems to prevent you from hitting the button back again immediately, which tends to mean in practice that missing a strike often means missing the next, whic aggravates the occasionnal stutter A LOT. i'm not sure if this is intended or not, I'm guessing it is, but just in case I'm putting it there. Which leads me to another thing, which might just be me overthinking it, but I feel like it's not a super good idea to have the beat start at the other end of the screen, have it fast forwards toward you really quick and then slowing down for the rythm section, because it tends to throw off my timing on the second strike. Maybe I'm just bad and making up excuse for that, it's a pretty real possibility considering I couldn't be good at Crypt of the Necrodancer to save a life, but. I feel like just making the beat start at the middle of the screen would be a better way of handling it. It would also give you a preview of what you should expect for the timing, which would save us an instant of thinking about it mid-rythm. I have a more minor nitpick to pick with the preview system. Imo, it kinda falls under the same problem Codename S.T.E.A.M., another tactical game made by the devs of Fire Emblem, encountered with it's gameplay. The preview does tell you how many hits you can get in and how many damage they will inflict, but the problem is that those numbers are then modified by several factors it doesn't take into consideration, which quickly renders the preview a very obsolete way to estimate the damage you will inflict. Critical hits are the most obvious one, since landing those is semi-reliable, but there's also Star's damage incrementing on each consecutive hit on Ice shard and shoooting, and I think it's possible to get in scenarios where you attack, the enemy retaliates, but you get a parry, so you get additionnal damage. Obviously fixing this is a non-trivial problem, but I think there's pretty simple ways to convey way more useful info to the player for not too much effort than currently : notifying the player on whether or not there's a chance to get parries during your attack, whether you have a specific modifier for this move like the increasing damage of Star seems like no-brainers. I'm not sure of how feasible it is for the next one, but a thing that at least sounds very smart in my head would be : store how often the player manages to land a critical hit for each different possible critical timing / how many time they missed so far, so you can give them an estimate of whether or not relying on critical in a given situation is a good idea or not. It might also be a fun incentive at improving on the timing, but I'm probably getting ahead of myself. On a different matter, I appreciate giving the button prompts, but I assume they're based on an XBOX controller and they don't seem to recognize I'm not playing with that. I've had a mildly terrible time looking at my ps4 controller and speding several seconds wondering to myself which button was X and Y whenever I tried to use an Art. We could really use button prompts that match the controller you're using, or at least something more generic. Although, I've been able to play the game pretty much without issues with a ps4 controller without having to plug in the thing that makes my computer believe it's an xbox controller in the first place, so props to you for supporting the controller in the first place. Last nitpick, in a "we REALLY need this feature in PLEASE" way : please let us toggle the aggro range of the enemies like in Fire Emblem. I assume you guys are familiar with the idea since I feel a couple of interface elements feel straight out of fire emblem, but frequenting Pokemon Desolation's Discord has taught me to not assume something isn't a coincidence, soooo just in case, modern games of the FE series let you toggle the aggro range of all the enemies at the press of a button, and highlighting specific enemies let you toggle their specific aggro range independently of the overall aggro range, and it's a bit of a godsend to help positionning your units when preparing for an attack. I'm not joking in saying that not having this here already caused me a couple of fumble on positionning because I assumed the aggro range was further than it actually was despite double-checking and wasted a couple turns in the demo. Alright, that's it for the gameplay. Last thing, in the plot department : While I like it, I really like the dialogue writing you have going there, and the plot concepts seem pretty promising, the mood of the game felt a bit too... Forceful, maybe, for an introduction ? That's not necessarily the right word, but, like, between the rapist misoginyst guard and the embodiment of lust who's throwing around lines that would definitely be right at home in hentai, it feels a bit too much. I've kept that for last because I'm pretty aware it's a very subjective and minor thing compared to the rest, and that I can't quite put the right words in what exactly I'm thinking, and it's not like I'm against the overall premise of the characters either, but I can't help but think it could use just being a tad less... straw-man-y ? I dunno, that's probably not the right word, either. Unidimensionnal ? Eh. I keep going back at Forceful, but I'm not sure if it is veyr clear either. I guess that what I'm trying to say is that I'm not against talking about sexual violence in games, but throwing this much at me as the game's first impression is mildly off-putting. But yeah, that aside, pretty curious to see where the plot is going, and the cast seems likeable enough to me, although i'm getting Titania vibes from Star in the "one day you're gonna have to learn that shooting at your problems isn't going to solve them" way. Then again, I loved Titania's arc overall, so I'm not complaining. Best of luck for future development, in any case, and thanks again for your work !

Double-Posting (Sorry about that), but I figured I might as well do the sensible thing and post the whole modpack here. Probably should have done that sooner, in fact. Most of the mods should work with no difference from reborn, but be aware that BagSortByType can't process the items exclusive to Desolation and won't sort them (not really an issue outside of the Rare Items pouch). Do let me know if other mods don't behave properly. SWM_modular_modpack_v66_E18.4_Deso_Edition.rar

ItemRadar flat out doesn't work - I've had it confirmed by Caz that they plan on fixing it in the next release. It won't crash your game, but it won't do anything for now. you've been warned. Here are the mods. Let me know if NoTMXNeeded and UnrealTimeClock work, as I haven't tested them myself. (I know for a fact the other three does). Also don't forget to save the pictures too. SWM - NoTMXNeeded.rb SWM - UnrealTime.rb SWM - WildEncounterRates.rb SWM - ItemRadar.rb SWM - ShowStatBoosts.rb SWM - TypeBattleIcons.rb SWM - UnrealClock.rb

Nah, don't worry about that, it's fine ! Besides, if it works out for you, foot in my mouth for me. If the option's actually viable it gives scoli some diversity. Also, I totally forgot baton pass would pass on the speed boost too, so that's my bad, I could actually see baton pass being very worth it to use.

nah, SMW mods have a built-in check that prevents them from working on anything that isn't the latest version of Reborn. I assume the idea behind it is to make clear the people making the mods do not have any responsibility for whether or not they work on games that are not Reborn. Anyone who knows some basics in code can remove that check to at least give the mods a chance to work. In fact, I've recently had to do that for all mods in the SMW pack for someone on the Deso discord, so I do have the files around, so if you need something, hit me up and i'll pass you the files.

Thanks, I fixed it !

That's french to you, that's how they spell Toxic. Apparently I still haven't integrated the correct spelling after 300 hours of english only fangames. That aside, maybe that's just me wholly underestimating rollout+defense curl (it's really possible, mind you, I'm not particularly experienced with Pokemon Strategy), but it feels like a lot of moves for a gimmick that doesn't ultimately amounts to much. Like, looking at the numbers, I can see the appeal of the rollout defense curl combo, but I can't help but feel like this is a "win harder" set. The only kind of team this set beats is a team you already had the tools to crush anyway. Scolipede doesn't have that much physical bulk, looking at it. Sure, if you get in defense curl first you can bring up the defense to a respectable level, but because of how PVE works (enemies being regularly ahead of you on the level side, perfect IVs being a pain to acquire while the AI has them, limited item selection), Scolipede can get outspeeded by other fast mons until speed boost kicks in, or just taken down by prority moves, and scolipede just doesn't have the bulk to take two good hits and live, even at +1 def. Even so, Scolipede still has a base 60 HP, and that's really bad for a mon who's going to take at least two hits just to get in the groove (defense curl + the first rollout that's gonna hit at 60 base power, unstabbed). Like. I run a donphan in my team who has double that HP stat and 120 defense, making it bulkier on base than Scolipede after a defense curl, and it will still go down in two good hits. I know the comparison isn't perfect, but my point is that I have some trouble believing you would be able to set this combo up consistently to warrant using it, and more importantly, to use it in situations that really counts. There's also the problem of rollout locking into itself and ground type moves being entirely negated by flying types and Levitate mons. sure, you can just switch out after getting the KO, but then that resets the whole combo, which limits the ideal scenario where it lets you sweep half a team with it. Similarly, rollout has 90% accuracy. While this is fine for the overwhelming majority of moves, the fact rollout has to repeat itself uninterrupted for the damage multiplier to remain means that a single failed roll can drop the whole combo dead on the ground. I got majorly screwed over by that fact in the early game when rollout is venipede's only decent move. Sure, you can argue I was just unlucky, but the fact your combo has a 10% chance to crumble entirely every turn even when nothing else is going wrong adds just another layer of unreliability on it. I'm also unsure of whether Baton pass would really be worth it as wasting a move slot on. I dunno how long you plan on spamming defense curl so maybe passing like +6 Defense would be pretty okay, but it goes back to the issue of consistency : I have a hard time believing the opponent isn't just going to KO scolipede before it reaches + 3 defense, on average, and passing +1 def isn't really impressive. Plus, while using rollout, you can't decide to just use baton pass : you're switching immediately after the KO when the game gives you the option (so no baton pass), or you stay there and keep rolling. Situations where rollout naturally ends, and your opponent cannot kill you in retalation, and you can baton pass to someone else are way too niche to warrant a move slot, so I gotta ask : what's the case where you have a use for baton pass ? Because I'm not seeing it. -------------------------- To talk about Protect, I find two uses to it that are pretty good. First, it gives you the first speed boost for free, at which point you can safely assume you outspeed everything outside of priority. It came clutch during at least two critical lategame fights for me. I said earlier Scolipede can occasionally take a hit, but the problem of a bug/poison type is that when you try to use the bug typing to check psychic types, the psychic types checks you back, and you REALLY don't want to find out you're actually the slower one of the two mons. Second, it synergizes well with toxic : Provided you survive the turn you use toxic, you can just use protect to get another free turn of toxic buildup for your opponent. Before getting mega horn, Steamroller's 30% chance of flinch can take this even further by flinching the opponent, giving you another two turns to live while toxic builds up, since it lets you reuse protect afterwards. While it is not flashy, it's a really great tool to deal with almost any mon, which makes it very consistent and versatile. If Substitute was available as a TM, I'd teach it to Scolipede so it can reliably stall anything and everything the rest of the team isn't properly equipped to deal with. Mega Horn alone is more than good enough for just hitting stuff really hard, and poison tail is respectable throughout most of the game, only falling behind in the late game, and I don't really see a move that require just one slot in the moveset to be useful that would be better than this one, outside of maybe putting back steamroller to flinch my opponents, but I appreciate the occasionnal fairy-type check poison tail provides.

My final moveset for scolipede was this : Mega Horn Protect Toxik Poison Tail Scoli clearly hits harder on the bug side than the poison side right now, but I find some pretty good value in abusing toxik on problematic mons, since protect means a free speed boost and scolipede after one speedboost outspeeds basically everything. Before Mega Horn came along, it's main bug move used to be Steamroller, and bug Bite before that. it's not amazing but considering this is the early game/midgame 50-60 base power on the stab isn't awful. Overall I'd say that while the little guy could definitely use a better poison stab, they've been a valuable asset throughout the whole run, and megahorn oneshots two of the most problematic mons of the final boss while having speed advantage so that's a pretty good plus in my book.

haven't seen it specified in the top post, so : Wynaut isn't actually available in the wild, Wobuffet is, that's a mistake on the availability chart. Source : Caz on his discord.

Uh, Probably ? I mean, I'm pretty sure it IS on a google doc in the first place ? or you mean, like this : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZnX8PFf5YOT46w9Et2pfXZissBQSgQBP/edit ? I'm not too familiar with gdocs so I wasn't sure whether that link made it possible for other users to edit it or not.

didn't it got moved further in the old factory from ceilia north instead of the power plant ?

a non-trivial bit of the SWM module works just fine, from experience - WildEncounters works, BagSortByType works (well, except for items exclusive to the game, obviously), EggWaitingIcon from the AMB module also works, so does AutoHook from DBX, for those I personally tested. ItemRadar doesn't work though (it does for exactly one item, the spice powder early on in the game, everything else is a no). Neither does ShowStatBoost or TypeBattleIcons, those two cause the game to crash, to my regret. I wouldn't mind trying my hand at porting those, but I'd need a basic crash course in modding- I can edit the WildEncounterRates to skip over the requirements of the smoke ball just fine, but I can't guess what variable name I have to call to get the items for ItemRadar.

I dunno about that bug in particular, but you could always just restore a backup of your save. If you don't know where that is, just search for game.rxdata in your computer, right clic => open folder.

Gible and Scyther are Hard No for now. There's a couple starters to get : you can trade a Treecko in blackview in exchange of a Jynx, there's a Squirtle in the sewers in Ceilia central to the Northwest, and there's a Turtwig in Ceilia North in the Fox Hideout if you look at the right place. Any other starter is at the choice at the start or bust.

Not sure about the rest but shouldn't you have Aerial Ace to teach Empoleon to replace Peck, since it's a Plot-mandatory TM ?

Yes. Yes it does.