Matt.

I think Falirion's points are completely valid and I fall into the group of people most affected by this change (i.e. people who only play on Intense mode). Despite this, I think removing Intense mode is absolutely the right decision. It is very unfortunate that you guys (Jan especially) have been receiving messages like that from others, especially considering the game is provided to us for free. I think (and would hope) those people make up the minority of our group. Falirion is right - I hope people in general don't assume every member of a certain group is terrible due to the existence of a few "bad apples" (applies to life in general, not just Pokemon). But again, I agree that removing Intense was the right decision. Zumi already boiled it down. Health and happiness takes priority, and the devs being excited to work on the game versus being annoying but slogging through it just to finish it would be apparent in the final product. Plus, the workload reduction could lead to other cool features being able to be implemented. I don't think my future enjoyment of the game will be reduced despite me enjoying the challenge of Intense and the more difficult "meme" or similar mods. As stated, there's the password system, and that's where I think there's a lot of room for potential and why I will still enjoy the game after Intense is gone. We can give opponents 252/31 in every stat, ourselves 0 IVs in every stat, and do additive or multiplicative enemy level adjustments. Sure, these on their own might not seem as "organic" as a traditional hard mode, but as I said there's a lot of potential for even more difficulty adjustment passwords and also more difficulty password packs aside from the existing "easymode" and "hardmode" passwords. I have some ideas for these but don't want to make this post longer than it already is. The last thing I want to say related to this is that I think it would be great if passwords were a bit more fleshed out to the player. Instead of "Would you like to enter any passwords?", it could say "There are many passwords you can enter to customize the game to your liking, including adding quality of life features and making the game easier or harder. Would you like to enter any passwords?". Then there would be 3 options of "Yes", "No", and "More Info", where "More Info" breaks the 4th wall and says "You can enter multiple passwords if you'd like, and you can enter passwords during the game. You can see a list of passwords at this site." This way it's clear what the passwords are for and that we have a lot of control over how we experience the game. As always, thanks to the devs for all of the hard work on the game and for regularly giving us updates! It's really appreciated, even if it doesn't seem like it sometimes.

AP: Signature moves:

Chapter 15! This probably won't be my last post because patches came out after I had began posting, so some stuff had changed. Axis High Sliding Puzzles: Corrections: Suggestions:

Chapter 14, dive stuff, mints, and RP. Mints: Relationship Points: Corrections: Suggestions:

Chapter 13 and fly stuff. Corrections: Suggestions:

Stuff in chapters 11 through a bit of 13 so far: Corrections: Suggestions:

Here's some stuff in Chapters 8-10. Corrections: Suggestions:

I wrote up instructions for the Garufa Statue Puzzles. Putting them in a separate spoiler to avoid clutter. Garufa Statue Puzzles Corrections: Suggestions:

Like my last post, I've been taking notes as I do my playthrough, so I'll periodically make posts here as I continue to make more progress. Same deal as last time. Thanks! Corrections: Suggestions:

Thanks for all of your work on this guide and updating it so quickly for V13! I am referencing the version you updated yesterday. I've split my comments so far into two categories. "Corrections" are things in the guide that I believe are incorrect, and "Suggestions" are quick notes to add which I think will improve the guide. At the beginning of each bullet point, I've included a few words in quotations. Use CTRL+F in the guide on these quotations to jump to exactly where I'm talking about. Corrections: Suggestions:

I think these are all great changes! To me, switching over 100% to a hard cap (and having an NPC at the start of the game tell you that you can use Rare Candies to bypass hard caps and Common Candies to get back to obedience - a lot of people don't know about this mechanic) would be ideal, but the Exp All working on a hard cap is a step in the right direction. Repeatable trainers giving Exp Candies is a nice bonus to shorten the grinding process. Of course, the effectiveness of these repeatable trainers is diminished if people don't even know they exist, and I do agree that a lot of people don't know about the Grand Hall trainers or Indra. Is there a plan to make these trainers more apparent to the player? Are more repeatable trainers going to be added? Overall though, very happy about this update! Thanks for all the work on improving the player experience.

Here's a map I made.

Regarding the mechanism by which players change their difficulty level: currently, players get one free change, and every change after costs a couple shards. After a certain point in the game, the player loses their ability to change their difficulty level (excluding Debug, but you know what I mean). Is there an overall benefit to this system over giving the player more freedom, or even ultimate freedom, i.e. allowing them to change their difficulty level for free nearly whenever they want (or just when they're in a Pokemon Center)? This is what I want to discuss, and I'm not sure that the answer is yes. It seems the main arguments for the current system are that we don't want to make things too easy for or spoil the player, we want the player to choose their difficulty level wisely and experience the consequences of their decisions, and by taking the difficulty changing mechanism away after a certain point, we want the player to stick with the difficulty level they chose and challenge them to complete the rest of the game that way. And I completely understand these arguments - I enjoy doing restrictive challenge runs and playing intentionally difficult games, and there definitely is such a thing as giving too much to the player. It may be more helpful to look at the reverse question. Suppose that this whole time, players could change their difficulty level whenever they wanted for free, and this was the norm that everyone was used to. Then suppose that you asked everyone, "Would Rejuvenation be a better game if after your first change, you had to pay for it, and after a certain point you couldn't change your difficulty level anymore?" I suspect most people would say no. Of course, this is natural as obviously people don't like having capabilities taken from them, but isn't the ultimate goal to maximize playerbase enjoyment? The motivation for this is that players quitting the game out of difficulty-related frustration is not ideal. Of course, you can't (and probably even shouldn't) cater to everyone. But would the player be hurt by being given additional freedom in changing their difficulty? I don't think so. If they wanted to challenge themselves, they would just not change their difficulty level. And is a player who never changes their difficulty hurt by other people having more freedom to change their difficulty? Again, I don't think so. Curious to see what others think about this subject. Regardless, thanks to the devs for all of the hard work - Rejuvenation is a fantastic game and I'm looking forward to V13!

Maractus: Automatically sets a layer of Spikes when Maractus is hit by an attack (or contact attack) Cramorant: Gulp Missile is always active

I would like to entertain the idea of a method to enable/disable level caps on Casual difficulty only. If this isn't feasible from a technical standpoint, then instead I would like to entertain there being no level cap, again for Casual difficulty only. Before you say this is ridiculous or pointless, please hear me out. I realize that Casual is already significantly easier than Normal, with boss fights only having 4 Pokemon, lower levels, weaker Pokemon, and less competitive sets. I also understand that level caps are an integral game mechanic to prevent tons of overleveling and to set a "pace" for the game. And I realize that Casual not the most popular of the difficulty choices. For the record, I think the devs did a great job with Casual. They went above and beyond to even make alternate difficulty levels. The whole point of it was to make Rejuvenation accessible to a wider audience, and Casual certainly nailed that. So seriously, great job. I just think removing (or adding the ability to remove) level caps on Casual would further aid in that goal. A lot of people have never played Pokemon before or play Pokemon extremely casually, and for this reason, they still find Casual to be quite difficult. You, the person reading this post, is (almost certainly) astronomically better at Pokemon than the average person, which is why it can be hard for us to put ourselves in others people's shoes (for instance, look at all of the top comments on this video - I know the average Rejuv player is better than the average Pokemon player but you get my point). Essentially, I know that there are still a number of people who find Casual to be too difficult, and I feel that Casual should err on the side of "too easy" rather than "too hard", based on what it's supposed to be in the first place. I know that the devs already did this, and I also know that we can't accommodate everyone. I just think the mode as it is, with this extra feature, would make it perfect.

absolute madlad I'm talking about both you and Gyarados Even though I know turn-for-turn how you beat Erick, it will always be amazing. You thoroughly proved that Gyarados is completely busted, but also had to be really clever to pull this off. Congrats!

Related to the above, I experienced a very weird situation with Silvally Crest in the G/Z fight. I was on regular 12.2 with debug. In particular, I was using Falirion's personal scripts file that has 12.2, the strength bug fix, debug, and mod support. I was using Rift Aelita as my Pokemon (in my attempt to solo run Rejuv. Not sure if me using this whack mon has anything to do with it but might as well mention it). On Turn 1, Zetta spent the turn using the Silvally crest. A text box popped up saying "Zetta used Silvally crest" and then he didn't use an attack on that turn. This happened a while ago so my memory might be a bit foggy, but I jotted down notes about this fight right immediately after it finished and that's what my notes say, and those notes match what I remember happening.

All of your (and everyone else's) hard work is very appreciated! Your health is more important than getting new verisions out a month earlier. One thing that I've found really helpful to stay sharp and motivated during these tough times is to try to find the willpower to get regular exercise. The hardest part is making the decision to do it, but after you start doing it then it's a breeze. You don't realize how sluggish your mind and body are until you get the blood flowing. And even if you want to look at it from a raw mathematical standpoint, the increase of efficiency and productivity during the rest of the day as a result of exercise far outweighs the time spent exercising. Speaking of which, typing this out has made me decide to go for a run right after I'm done with this post. As far as puzzle ideas go, I'll admit this is taken from Pokemon XD, but I always thought the Battle CDs concept was cool. If you don't know what those are, they're simulated battles where you're given a specific Pokemon/couple of Pokemon, and you have to battle a specific Pokemon/couple of Pokemon in a singles or doubles battle. These battles require a you to figure out the right strategy/sequence of moves in order to win, and it essentially turns the battles into puzzles to find the right solutions. What's great about these are that they require you to use mechanics that you don't normally see, such as using Gust to hit a Pokemon during the Fly turn. Here is example of one of them (this was before Ghost-types were immune to Shadow Tag): Making these battles occur on all sorts of fields would add a lot of variety. You could easily come up with creative puzzles, such as requiring the player use a move to change the field as the "solution" to win the battle. Again, thanks for all of the work, and I'm off to go on that run! Edit: Making a late edit here so this might not even be seen but here's an example of a cool puzzle you could do. Your pokemon: https://pokepast.es/aedffbfac3828006 Your opponent: https://pokepast.es/f2aa387f6b433283 Field: Cave Field Solution:

This thread has lots of spoilers of boss fights. For a while, I've been wondering if it's even possible to complete a "true" solo run of Rejuvenation on Intense. After tons of attempts and a long grind, I can finally say that the answer is yes (in a way - let me explain). Falirion completed a Gyarados solo run. In Rejuvenation, there are tons of double battles and they tend to crash the game if you only bring one Pokemon. To get around this, he is bringing two Gyarados for double battles. I wanted to do a counterpart to that - during double battles, rather than giving myself a second copy of my Pokemon, I would give myself a Level 1 throwaway Pokemon to make this a "true" solo run (at least, as true as it can get given the limitations of the game). My run is not "more legitimate" than his because as you'll see, I had to use a Pokemon that is beyond stupidly overpowered in order to do it, and despite how disgustingly broken this Pokemon is, the run was still barely completable. Completing a "true" solo run of Intense Rejuvenation is so difficult that none of the regular Pokemon can do it. Arceus is nowhere near good enough of a Pokemon to do it, even if you give yourself all of the plates (I tried). I am almost certain that the other best Pokemon (Primal Groudon/Kyogre, Mega Rayquaza, Mega Mewtwo X/Y, Xerneas, etc.) are not able to do it either (for example, how would a single Mega Rayquaza beat Angie?). There are just too many hard double battles that you have to essentially 1v6. Using debug, you can actually use a lot of the alternate forms that you fight against in the game, such as Goomink, rift Pokemon, and so on. This was the key to completing the run - finding the perfect Pokemon that is on a similar level to Eternamax Eternatus, and using a combination of insane strategy, grinding, and required luck to win. The Pokemon Rules Moveset Major boss fights and how they were beaten Attempts with other Pokemon Thank you to Moto for providing me with a modified Scripts file that caused Dufaux to not revert back to a regular Froslass after every battle, but to Form 1 instead! This happens because Dufaux (and others) are coded as Mega Evolutions. This saved me tons of headache and time. Thank you to Falirion for creating tons of resources such as the Intense Teams List, bouncing ideas off of, and also coming up with the clever strategy of going into the fight asleep so that I couldn't be statused on the first turn. And thanks to all the Rejuvenation devs! I wouldn't have done all of these attempts if I didn't enjoy the game so much. Overall, despite this being a gruesome endeavor, it was a lot of fun!

I'm sure a decent number of people are aware of this, but it's very relevant to this thread. There are lots of little hints and nuggets over at Jan's Tumblr, where he answers fan-submitted questions. Just today, there were a couple responses from him that are quite topical: Perhaps this question was even motivated by the "Is the Interceptor the MC or the human being behind the computer screen" discussion that happened recently in this thread. A lot of people independently come to the conclusion that in the origin story that Nymiera tells you in her house, the Man and the Woman are Vitus and Nymiera, but this confirms it (the Woman part, at least) and adds a bit more flavor to Nymiera's character. (Also, it wasn't until I was replaying the game recently that I realized it was "Nymiera" and not "Nymeria".) I know that Jan knows that his responses are being watched carefully. He needs to not spoil anything major in his answers, but in addition to this, he has had many oppotunities to answer questions in such a way that would cause people (see: the people posting in this thread, which is a group that I am now a member of) to spiral down the Theory Rabbit Hole as he sits back and laughs. If I were in Jan's position, I certainly would have been tempted to take some of those opportunities.

I think this is a great update! The quest cards are fantastic. With all of the potential sidequests in Rejuvenation, this is a nice way to keep track of what you're doing and overall looks pretty professional and clean. And the notifications of how good of an option you chose is a very appreciated touch. I was definitely one of those people who wanted to really make sure I was making the correct choices in that regard. It also makes sense that an action that can have a noticeable effect on the future state of the game would have some indicator that it is such an action. Suggestion: in the title of the quest cards, also list where they're from. For example, instead of "Quest 01: Snatched Pokemon!", maybe put "East Gearen Help Quest 01: Snatched Pokemon!". I know this is longer and you'd have to shrink the font size a little for it to fit on one line, but it's less vague, and helpful if somebody is doing quests from multiple towns' Help Centers simultaneously. Question 1: are these only going to be for the Help Center quests? Or is there going to be one for every sidequest (as there are plenty of sidequests that don't stem from the Help Centers)? Question 2: because there are quest cards, I'm guessing there's going to be a new Quest Log in the CyberNav, correct? If so, would it list only quests you've accepted so far, or would it also list other potential quests (not limited to the Help Centers) that the player could start? Thanks for all of your work and again this looks amazing!

Didn't realize that about the egg moves, thanks! That is fantastic and I'll edit all of the sets. And I think Nature Power is worth a mention. Good point about some opponents having illegal EV spreads, but unfortunately that's hard to account for.

Thanks for the reply! - Yeah, Swords Dance is worth it if you have other Sticky Web support. If not, you need Sticky Web on Ariados because it's such a good move for your team overall. - I completely agree with you that Recover is a fantastic move, but I have fewer recovery moves on these sets compared to competitive sets due to the fact that this in-game, and you can use potions. Same for Roost on Oricorio. - Agree about Dedenne and Empoleon - Nasty Plot was an oversight on Hypno, but what you said about Signal Beam is why I didn't include it. Sure, you hit them, but they often outspeed and KO you anyway. - Didn't realize that the RM could teach transfer-only moves - Ice Punch is weaker than Ice Fang on Feraligatr due to the Crest boost.

Crests are powerful items which provide large and unique buffs to certain Pokemon. Here are my recommended movesets for each crest Pokemon. Shoutouts to Falirion for compiling the Crest effect guide and all of the Rejuvenation devs for the great game! Check out the Item Location Guide to see where to get each Crest (you can't get them until near the end of V12). The intention of this is not to replace the Crest effect guide, but rather to explore the viability and uses of Crest Pokemon. One thing to consider is the concept of opportunity cost. By holding a Crest, you cannot hold another item. Therefore, you should consider the benefits of a Crest not in a vacuum, but compared to another item you might want to hold. Also, we do have data on some Crests that are currently unobtainable by the player as of V12 (e.g. Silvally), but I will not be including those for now. This post can be updated as more Crests are released. Anyway, here are all of the Crests available for the player to use in Rejuvenation. Ariados Bastiodon Beheeyem Castform Cherrim Claydol Cofagrigus Darmanitan Dedenne Dusknoir Empoleon Fearow Feraligatr Glaceon Hypno Infernape Leafeon Ledian Magcargo Meganium Oricorio Rampardos Relicanth Seviper Skuntank Spiritomb Stantler Torterra Typhlosion Whiscash Zangoose