[Would a rejuv nuzlocke be possible?]

The new rejuv AI is highly predictable, even in doubles, since with a very few number of exceptions (sucker punch 50/50s, in doubles when you lead with two pokemon that are identical in everything, probably a few others I'm missing), given the same game state, the AI will make the same play. If you play this game enough, and pay attention to how the AI behaves, it's certainly possible to get to the point where you can predict the vast majority of the AIs play. I'm far from the best player and I can predict like, 80%+ of the plays the AIs make from knowing their sets and without doing calcs (this is a rate that's far higher than that of any other pokemon game, official or fanmade, that I've played, because this game's AI is really really predictable once you're used to it).

 

As others have said, this game has already been nuzlocked on intense on the current version (on the first nuzlocke attempt). It's certainly a hard challenge, but it's extremely not true that any bad rng or unlucky crit will instantly end the run. 

[2021 Winter Revel Nominations]

8. @MatthewRatford/Matty

[a long rambly essay about intense]

 

(I realize that intense mode is being discontinued in v13.5. This post isn't really meant to be an argument to Azery/Jan etc about whether it should be removed or not. I've been meaning to write this post for some time, and don't really want it to go to waste, so here it is now.)

 

This essay is sort of rambly and probably doesn’t have a super clear thesis or point. I suppose it is somewhat of a defense of intense mode against accusations of being “unfair” or “too hard,” but that’s not really meant to be the central focus of the essay. I suppose it is just me rambling about design. Maybe someone will find it interesting. 

 

Spoiler

First, let’s take a step back and examine the question of how is it possible to make a good, “hard but fair” singleplayer pokemon experience. There’s a few major advantages the human player has over the AI that we must account for: 

1. The player is capable of bringing whatever pokemon/items/movesets/EV spreads etc. to each fight, with knowledge ahead of time of their opponent’s pokemon/moveset/items/EV spreads etc. This means that the player can always bring a team with pokemon that are favored against their opponents, and can benefit from the field effects much better than their opponents do. Hypothetically, the player can even construct entire teams of 6 from scratch perfectly selected with the perfect movesets/items/EV spreads to counter each opponent, but this is super overkill as even doing something like keeping a box with a rotation of 15 pokemon gives the player huge advantages. 

2. The player is much much smarter than the AI. The new AI is admittedly pretty intelligent and does a lot to prevent the player from running over them that the AI on older versions of the game would be totally incapable of doing, but the point still remains that there is much the player can do that is totally impossible for the AI.  

3. The player can play each fight over and over again. This means that after a few attempts, the player can basically figure out what the AI’s next move from a given game state, since given the same game state, the AI’s actions are basically deterministic. (This is basically only true because of the removal of rolls from v13, a very good decision I commend the devs for making.) This means that you can basically always make the best play possible against the AI after a few attempts of seeing what is going on, instead of just blindly guessing in the dark about what the AI is going to do.

4. There’s another major advantage the player has, the ability to soft reset ad nauseam until RNG goes incredibly in the player’s favor, but I am going to ignore this point, since it’s bad design to make fights that require good RNG to win. (A side note: I do think that in many cases, when people are stuck on fights, instead of trying to utilize advantages 1/2/3 by building a team that’s better against the opponent, or switching up movesets etc, they just try to get better RNG on fights by repeatedly soft resetting. This is a crutch that tends to lead to unenjoyable game experiences, especially since as you play more and more, you’ll start to have to rely on better and better rolls and will have to spend longer and longer SRing. Unless you’re playing some super insane challenge run, basically everything in the game is doable without too much RNG, and I think you will enjoy the game much, much more if you try to develop consistent strategies on fights, instead of immediately resorting to getting better RNG. This is why I don’t really have an issue with the 1.1x/1.32x accuracy boost on intense; it is generally good game design to make it so the best options are also the most fun, and rerolling fights for moves missing is both generally not really that great of a strat and also terribly boring, so making it so it isn’t even an option for the player anymore is perfectly justifiable and also good design.) 

 

From this list, it’s pretty clear that the player has some pretty massive advantages over the AI that must be compensated for. If you’ve played intense, you probably have a good idea of how this is done. A non-exhaustive list of advantages the AI has over you include:

• Higher level pokemon

• Teams built to synergize well with fields

• Pokemon currently inaccessible to you 

• Better moves/custom signature moves that tend to be really strong

• Better items

• EVs over the 510 cap 

• Crests inaccessible to you

• Mega evolutions inaccessible to you 

• Megas with held items

• Multiple megas

• More seeds than you have access to 

 

If you want to understand how difficulty in intense Rejuv functions, then you must realize that battles between you and the AI are fundamentally asymmetric. You and the AI both have major advantages over the other that are very, very different. It doesn’t really make that much sense to directly compare your current accessibility to pokemon/TMs etc to the opponents, and say therefore X fight is unfair, because the entire basis of the game’s difficulty is the fact the AI has much better things than you do. It’s similar to the apples to oranges metaphor, you can make comparisons between the two, but you probably won’t be able to draw much insight from the comparison. 

 

 

A fairly common criticism of intense is that many of the advantages given to the AI violate the “traditional rules” of Pokemon. I will defend this next:

 

The reason why Pokemon Rejuvenation is my favorite game is not just the battles or the story or the characters, it’s the totality of the experience and the fact that aspects of the game like the battles and story and characters are interconnected. Characters have teams that feel like a genuine reflection of themselves and their personalities, and change in a manner that reflects their development as a character. This is only possible because of doing things like giving the AI these “rule-breaking” advantages. It’s simply not possible to have Ryland have Torterra as his ace or Zetta to have Silvally as his ace unless Torterra/Silvally are given some advantage they don't have in vanilla games since fundamentally, neither of them are that great of Pokemon. There is a different universe, where intense difficulty is about as difficult as it is now, but there is no violation of the “traditional rules'' of the game. In this universe, fights in the current later half of the game have you facing off against entirely teams full of pseudolegendaries and legendaries, and the pokemon variety fight against is highly limited, since it is necessary to maintain the difficulty. In this universe, while the difficulty remains, all the “heart” of the battles is gone. Instead of facing off against the thematic and varied teams of each character we have come to know and love, we get repetitive fights against the same old 100 or so strongest pokemon. If you’re playing this game solely for the battles in themselves, you might not care about this, but if you care about any of the (excellently done) “storytelling through battles and gameplay” at all, you should be thankful the devs had the foresight to make the decision of not necessarily sticking to the “traditional rules.”

 

Another common criticism of intense is that it pigeonholes people into using hyper-specific teams, with very little room for error or non-optimal options. I find this to be basically totally wrong. There is a lot more room for error than most people probably think there is. Much of the perception of difficulty is highly subjective, so it is a little bit difficult to offer super concrete evidence for this claim. I think the best way to do is to offer a description of what is possible on intense: 

• A monotype for each typing has been completed. The vast majority of them have been done without resorting to using duplicates, and without abusing “cheese” (destiny bond/counter/metal burst/mirror coat etc.) or using seeds. This includes some of the most skewed matchups in the game, such as monopsychic vs E15 Geara or monofighting vs Souta. 

• The game has been nuzlocked on intense. The person who did it, Matty, did so successfully on his first attempt.

• The game has been completed with 0 IVs and EVs on every pokemon. 

• The game has been completed using no more than 3 pokemon on each fight. 

• The game has been completed using only Little Cup pokemon. Many of the hard fights in it, including E15 geara and Souta were done with less than 6 pokemon. 

• The game has been completed only using pikaclones. 

• A bit over a half of the game so far (up to Valarie in the Bad Future arc, last time I checked) has been completed without any pokemon fainting. 

 

There’s definitely a large number of challenge runs done on v13 intense that I’m missing from this list, but I think it does give a pretty good idea of what is possible on intense. Given that it’s possible to place a large number of restrictions on an intense run and have it still be very possible to complete, it’s pretty clear that there is a lot you can get away with at intense difficulty. 

 

I’d also like to talk about fields for a moment, specifically about changing fields. For the most part, the ability to change fields highly limits the design space of battles. If you’ve ever tried to design your own battles on a changeable field, you’ve probably realized this. You’ll realize that it is almost impossible to construct a team on a given field if the given field can be changed just by the click of the move. This is true even though most opponents do have moves that can change the field back. This is because for most fights, it is much easier to just get a field change to stick than defeating an opponent by building a team that beats their team on their field.   From the changes made to fields in v13, it’s pretty clear to me that the devs are moving away from the system of “fields as easily changeable” into a system where you’re expected to fight on a specific field for each fight and to make use of that field the best you can. Already, in v13, many of the more oppressive field effects have been nerfed, especially effects which nerfed all moves of a certain type (for example dark type moves are no longer halved on haunted field). I think this is a very good step in the right direction, the existence of field changing acted as sort of a “safety valve” for some of the more oppressive field effects, by getting rid of those oppressive field effects, having field changes is no longer necessary. 

 

A postscript about the game's "difficulty curve":
 

Spoiler

This section isn’t really central to any of the defenses of intense difficulty, so I’m leaving it here at the end as a postscript: I think a common source of complaints about intense arises from its “difficulty curve,” which I will discuss in this section. For intense to offer a consistently difficult experience, as the player progresses through the story and gains access to more pokemon and better items, the gap in strength between what the player currently has access to and what opponents have should get larger and larger. This is because, despite the fights being relatively more advantaged against you as you progress through the story, you also have access to far more options to help you close that gap through intelligent play. I think another source of frustration with regard to the intense difficulty curve is that what I will call the game’s “difficulty style” transitions throughout the game. 

• At the beginning of the game (start up to like Narcissa), difficulty is mostly from the opponents having stronger moves than you and stronger pokemon from you. Some opponents have fully evolved pokemon, but many don’t. The strongest pokemon you have access to in this stage is your starter and pokemon that have really good early game learnsets. Pokemon don’t have actual EV distributions. 

• In the early mid-game (beating Narcissa up to Z/G), your opponents still have pokemon much better than yours, but movesets start to catch up a little. Earlygame powerhouses that rely on having really good early game learnsets have fallen off. Trainers begin to have actual EV sets (Valarie has 3 pokemon with actual EVs, all pokemon in Z/G have real EV sets). Some trainers might have slightly illegal EVs on their aces.

• In the later mid-game (Amber to Souta), availability of good pokemon catches up a lot. Movesets have almost entirely caught up, with the exception of some missing TMs and some AI-exclusive signature moves. This is also the point where you start to get access to a lot of good items, mostly through sidequests and the GDC department store. Some trainers have illegal EVs on pokemon other than their aces. The game starts relying a lot more on things like seeds and illegal EVs as a source of difficulty. 

• In the later game (post-Souta), you have access to the vast majority of non-legendaries and access to the weaker megas. At this point, there’s almost no way to make the game difficult just through opponents having better things (unless you want to give them all legendaries), so you’ll see a lot of opponents with many pokemon that have 252x4 or 252x5 EVs and some megas with held items.

 

I think that the transition from later mid-game to late game (and to a lesser extent from early mid-game to later mid-game) causes people a lot of trouble. At that point in the game, the player has access to a massive amount of options, and the difficulty reflects that, but most people will find being able to properly teambuild and brainstorm strategies much much more difficult when you have access to 700 pokemon instead of 200. The fact that “better pokemon/better items/better moves” is no longer the dominant mode of difficulty can also cause people many issues. In particular, conventional hyper-offense as a strategy will really struggle when it comes to fighting pokemon with 252/252/252 bulk EVs. There’s not really a point in the game where brute-forcing with hyper-offense is ever the best strategy, but the fact that its viability falls off a cliff late game is another common source of frustration. 

 

I think the heterogeneity in fights rejuvenation has is one of its best features. There’s many things that contribute to this, from the difficulty transitions I’ve mentioned above to the really, really great fight design it has. It keeps the player on their toes and means that you really do have to work hard and think of clever strategies, no matter what point in the game you are at. 

 

 

 

[Recover on Aevium Milotic]

Snorlax got lovely kiss from like one event in 2003, which technically makes it legal 

[13.5 Status Discussion Thread]

3 hours ago, Nooooooo said:

No plans to add it in elsewhere? Damn, that's unfortunate.

According to something Zumi said in the wiki discord, aevium-Feebas will be available for realsies in the spooky forest to the east of Sashila (which is postgame content).

[Does the passive of a field works when it's overlay ?]

Are you using something that isn't grounded? The psychic terrain anti-priority only prevents grounded pokemon from getting hit. 

[Question about Marianette (Spoilers v13)]

Ana is "Hope" (although I think it's slightly buggy and she tries to call you Snow once before calling you the correct one) 

[The MC's Past [V13 SPOILERS]]

I believe (but I might be misremembering), but if you F12 and look at the location during the Melia/Emma encounter, you'll see that's it's called Zeight. This, in conjunction with Melia's dialogue about the obelisk calling out to her at the end of v13, heavily suggests a connection between Melia and the interceptor.

[v13 soundtrack hidden audio (spoilers)]

In the description for Huey's Nightmare Realm song on youtube, Zumi notes that there's a hidden message about one of the characters (which is presumably Rune)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBN4Q02M10U 

 

Has anyone managed to figure out what the message is yet? 

 

[Pokemon Desolation Community V5 In-Game Tiers]

I'll share a few thoughts on some Pokemon I used in my playthrough:

 

Vivillion: A solid early game mon and an incredible sweeper midgame once it gets quiver dance, compound eyes-boosted sleep powder and bug buzz (and later, compound eyes-boosted hurricane). Since it's a bug that evolves incredibly early, it's quite strong early game with a 410 BST at level 12 (you might think it gets destroyed by the fire gym, but I found it to be the second best pokemon on my team after rockruff in the fight.) It falls off somewhat after, until it gets all the tools it requires to sweep, which given the weirdish level pacing of desolation, happens pretty quickly. It is somewhat sleep turns dependent on sweeping, but with a small amount of luck, it has one of the highest highs of any sweeper. I'd put it in A. 

 

Panpour/Simipour: The two things simipour has going for it is that it (in the form of panpour), learns scald at lvl 22 and acrobatics at lvl 31 (although both are only as panpour, having to delay evolution to get acrobatics is definitely annoying), which are two good moves that are really strong at that point in the game. (It's also one of the best pokemon for thief+recycle+fling cheesing, but I'm not even sure if that's in Desolation). I'd put it in D. 

 

Alolan-Muk: An incredibly strong typeline, solid stats, and a very strong level up movepool. The primary downside is that it comes pretty late in the game (I believe it is in the Cellia sewers, although my memory is a little hazy). Probably belongs in B. 

 

Decidueye: One of the better starters, with a very good level up moveset, with access to good priority and U-turn (although U-turn is definitely a lot worse than it is in competitive). It gets nasty plot by level up, which is also a really good enabler for a special or mixed set, but isn't nearly as good as it is in other games since there is no access to shadow ball yet, so you're stuck with omnious wind for special ghost STAB. Downsides are that it gets kind of destroyed by the first gym, and it's hidden abilities aren't that great. I see it as a B.