HirsuteMonkey

If you don’t mind me asking, which were the ones you really liked?

First of all, thank you for replying with constructive criticism and new ideas, I’ll try to address all of them. For Aurorus, Aurora Veil may be powerful, but it’s still on an Aurorus. It’s painfully slow, vulnerable to Stealth Rock and other entry hazards, and has six weaknesses to extremely common attacking types, including two quadruple weaknesses, and its resistances are to relatively uncommon attacking types except for Flying. Essentially, the difference between this crest and just slapping a focus sash on Snow Warning Aurorus is that one gets a giant chunk of its health taken off the instant it goes into battle, then uses Aurora Veil right before fainting, and the other has a chance to actually participate in the battle somewhat instead of making it a 5-vs.-6 match. For context, running the damage calculations even with Aurora Veil up, pretty much any Steel- or Fighting-type move is going to OHKO Aurorus. The counterplay options here are plain as day. Even the weak Mach Punch from Leftovers Hitmontop or Life Orb Clefable’s Meteor Mash takes away nearly 70% under Aurora Veil, and nothing Aurorus has, not even Refrigerate Hyper Beam, can OHKO them back, even with hail, before they finish the job. Then there’s Brick Break to consider, and Psychic Fangs. Aurora Veil is powerful without being overbearing or eliminating reasonable counterplay options, which is exactly what I’m after when it comes to crests. You have to consider the opportunity cost involved in deciding to use a crest. In this case, the crest is no more powerful than a Life Orb, which is what Cacturne is usually saddled with, and you can’t hold an item while holding a crest. The crest benefit here is that Cacturne’s HP isn’t getting sapped every turn, which is kinda like a defensive boost by comparison to its usual operating procedure. I don’t mind the idea of your crest, as it fits with the cactus theme, but Cacturne isn’t supposed to be a wall. Even with boosts, its defenses are too low and it’s far too slow. It’s not getting any better at doing its job as a wallbreaker, in other words, because in this game the added speed and power is generally preferred for frailer mons to net OHKOs and 2HKOs so that it doesn’t have to take more hits than are necessary, since defensive investment usually isn’t capable of overcoming the difference between taking one hit and two. So your crest might be much more situationally useful than, say, just getting a Life Orb or Choice Band. Ditto is already used to win hard fights and beat 1 on 1 sweepers by using a Choice Scarf. But this only really applies to hyper-offense setup sweepers, because Imposter copies their boosts. Essentially, what this does is still allows Ditto to break speed ties with non-Scarfed sweepers and usually KO them, just as it does with a scarf, but then allows it to use other moves instead of being locked in afterwards. It’s versatility at the cost of speed. However, the usual Ditto limitations still apply. It’s still got horrendous HP, and only 5 PP per move. Copying a wall, cleric, or tank is pretty much an instant loss condition for Ditto, as it gets no HP recovery from an item and less HP than them by default, and can easily be stalled out on any healing moves. If your opponent has no way to deal with an essentially item-less, slightly faster version of their own setup sweeper, then more the fool them. They should have invested in a Hazer, Phaser, Unaware mon, decent wall, decent tank, stall mon, type advantage, revenge killer, priority user, terrain setter, or any number of the other myriad reasonable counterplay options against bog standard hyper-offense or setup strategies. Tailwind only lasts for three to four turns, and by definition some of that time is going to be spent with an Emolga of all things on the field. Its stats are absolutely pitiful, and it’s weak to Stealth Rock. Even with Adaptability, Emolga isn’t going to be hitting very hard off of base 75 offenses, either. It’s a glass cannon—if you could even call it a “cannon” with such low offenses—and pretty much anything will take it out, particularly when it lacks a Focus Sash. Auto tailwind is a really great boon, yes, but the disadvantage is that you’re still filling up a teamslot with an Emolga, rather than something that can take a hit. For instance, even with the crest, Emolga is never gonna win against something as pedestrian as an Abomasnow unless it gets an Air Slash flinch. Ice Beam or Blizzard are instant KOs, and even Ice Shard takes off more than 50% after Hail. Ah, I really like this idea! Sure, since it already has an evasion boost in Snow Cloak, why not. I’d take off the accuracy boost as well, though, and just leave it as Serene Grace and Disguise. Principally, though, I don’t share your disdain for RNG—actually, I think it makes things more exciting. Damage rolls can go die in a fire, though, and I’m glad this latest version does away with them. A fine idea, very fitting and it might just give people an excuse to actually use Rollout. It’d have to be in the place of giving Golem Solid Rock, though, since crests really ought to do as few things as possible. Instead of using Defense Curl to double the power of Rollout, imagine Golem taking advantage of Sturdy and its stronger Special Defense in order to set up a Rock Polish and use Rollout instead! That would escalate quickly. I’m all in favor of rebalancing Rejuvenation’s field effects, which eliminate far too many reasonable counterplay options in my opinion and are particularly punishing to monotype teams, but I have no problems with the game’s current terrain effects. Except maybe Psychic terrain, but that’s just sour grapes on my part. Anyway, I really like your idea, though. Flash upon using electric moves plays right into Lanturn’s whole schtick. Wish I’d come up with that idea… though I suppose the Volbeat and Illumise crests are somewhat similar. What happened to you not liking RNG, though? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love this idea, but it seems out of character for someone who dislikes evasion and accuracy and whatnot to suggest. That’s fine, I suppose, though it might be more complicated to implement on a technical level than simply restricting it to Dark moves. “Boosts underhanded moves” might be a good descriptor, and might as well extend it to Feint and Faint Attack as well. Fair. I was mostly thinking of it from the perspective of the opportunity cost of lacking Leftovers, but I forgot Mantine does have Roost. I really disagree that having limited barriers on entry are overbearing, at least in Rejuvenation, for a variety of reasons. First off, Rejuvenation is supersaturated with various field effects, insta-buff seeds, and fast, powerful boss mons that make more defensive strategies much less viable than they ordinarily would be. In a setting where so, so many opponents get turn-one 50% boosts to their offenses and defenses from Seeds, in addition to whatever field effects that might be in play, permitting a 50% boost for purely defensive options on a very limited number of otherwise unviable mons seems justified to me. Second, Mr. Mime is just plain bad at its original role as the barrier mon due to power creep. HP and defenses in the 40s are just not acceptable, particularly when there are many mons that outspeed or have priority, as well as barrier-breaking moves. Wasting a turn setting up screens, probably depending on a focus sash or dumb luck in the process, means that Mr. Mime would otherwise be a liability on the team compared to the many, many bulkier screen-setters like Aromatisse, Cresselia, Meganium, and Uxie. Third, there’s also the fact that Rejuvenation throws an unpredictable mix of singles and double battles at the player, which means that if your team is overly optimized for one role, it suffers in the other. My crests for Mr. Mime and Oranguru are designed so that more singles-oriented teams can have a better weapon against bespoke, doubles-optimized teams, without having to waste too many team slots or moveslots doing so. It’s particularly valuable when the player is teamed up and has no control over the (often severely disadvantaged) NPC team as well, which is doubly punishing for monotypes and singles-oriented teams. Onix wasn’t always a pre-evolution, and I think it’s even more different from Steelix as Phione is from Manaphy, and Phione gets a crest, though obviously that’s a more complicated relationship. Besides, do I need to have a need or a reason to fix something so blatantly wrong for the sake of a fandom-specific meme? Rejuvenation is not always a super-serious endeavor—look no further than Grigus, that maid dancing the Charleston, or Knife Corsola. Will you begrudge me a bit of whimsical weirdness? That still seems a bit OP to me, considering Oranguru’s offensive stats, and I wanted to do something with Oranguru’s doubles focus and its unique move, Instruct. I suppose I could leave off the defense boost, but then it has no benefit in singles. See the dilemma? Maybe, but don’t forget that Dynamicpunch has low PP and confusion has been nerfed so that you only hit yourself 1/3 of the time instead of 1/2 the time like in older generations. Plus, y’know, it still won’t do Poliwrath much good against the likes of Crobat, Togekiss, or Duskclops. Indeed, pretty much any ghost with Will-O-Wisp is guaranteed to neuter Poliwrath, since it now can’t miss. Then there’s the fact that Poliwrath is dependent on rain for that, and weather can run out or be changed quite quickly. Sure, that makes sense. It does learn things like Air Cutter and Hurricane, after all. Might just be a fundamental difference in opinion on that score. I don’t mind RNG, and I think Spinda needs all the help it can get. Hm. That seems a bit overly complex for a Crest, which should do one or two things at most. If it could be shortened down to a few key points, maybe, but I’d also like to see confusion play into things somehow because that’s Spinda’s whole schtick. Protean seems a bit out of the blue for Spinda, except insofar as Spinda is erratic and unpredictable. I could see an argument for giving Wigglytuff Fluffy or Fur Coat. Stockpile, I’m more “eh” on. That seems more the province of gluttonous Pokémon, even though Wigglytuff does learn it, whereas it and its pre-evolution are more famous for singing. Anyway, thanks again for your ideas, I really liked some of them. Can I take it that the ones you didn’t comment on you liked, or at least didn’t have a problem with?

By all means, feel free to steal as many as you like. I’m particularly optimistic about the potential of the Dunsparce, Seaking, Sudowoodo and Unown crests. If I may ask, how is it you’re going about creating this mod? I’m unfamiliar with the particular process of how to create new items, though I’m sure examining existing items will help me figure out how to kludge the crests together.

Jan’s pre-V13 crest idea thread is now closed, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop coming up with new crest ideas for future releases, or creating them as mods to be distributed amongst ourselves. My goal is to create a mod adding the following crests to the game, possibly after beating some kind of Crest-themed boss gauntlet, but I have zero experience with modding in RPGmaker, so any tips or pointers would be much appreciated. When creating new crest ideas, these five priorities should be kept in mind: 1. Crests should be interesting, unique, and thematic to the specific Pokémon they’re for. A flat stat buff is boring and should be implemented sparingly or conditionally, if at all. This is a great opportunity to make the Pokémon better fit their designs, lore, and/or accomplish the roles they were always meant for, and so shouldn’t be squandered on something too mundane. 2. Crests should restore balance, not destroy it. Stat creep, megas, move power, move availability, and competition from similar mons has ruined the viability of many Pokémon over the generations. Crests should not be OP or eliminate all reasonable counterplay options lest they make that problem worse! 3. Crests should distinguish too-similar Pokémon from each other, not try to one-up the less commonly used one over the more popular competitor. 4. Crests can be used on powerful Pokémon too, but only if they change the strategy or style of play rather than serve as an unambiguous buff to their power—i.e. the currently-implemented Darmanitan crest that forces Zen mode, or the Infernape crest that swaps offenses and defenses. 5. Crests should be limited. These should not be seen as Mega Stones or Ash-Greninja forms that the whole party can enjoy, they should be a helpful or surprising gimmick to enable strategy and organic difficulty, or at best save a Pokémon from complete unviability. As such, nearly every existing Crest does only one or two discrete things. Very few do three things (Meganium crest reduces damage and heals, plus extending those two things to allies), and only one—the Druddigon crest—arguably does four (boosts fire moves 30%, boosts dragon moves 30%, heals from sun, and heals from fire). Crests should try to do the simplest change possible to get the desired effect. Without any further ado, here’s a list of proposed crests along with the strategic reasoning and lore-based flavor behind the decisions: Arbok Crest—applies free Coil upon entry, Bite moves apply Wrap effect. Coiling, biting and constriction are all snake-themed and gives Arbok a nice niche as a trapper. Works well with both Shed Skin and Intimidate, but HP and special defense are still low and entry hazards wear down repeated attempts to switch. Armaldo Crest—Gains Water-type STAB and Rain Dish effect. Armaldo strikes me as being a Water/Bug type like Golisopod before it got fossilized, so this crest aims to take advantage of Armaldo’s plethora of water moves. Its already-extant Swift Swim is fantastic for patching up its base 45 speed, and dovetails with Water STAB—its other stats are just fine on their own, and don’t really merit a buff. The drawback of this Crest is that outside the rain, you’re probably better off just giving Armaldo a Choice item. Aurorus Crest—creates an Aurora Veil on entry, Snow Warning always active. Rock/Ice typing is a massive liability, but with this crest, many of its weaknesses are ameliorated—as long as the hail stays up. Aurorus has great defenses, but where this really shines is on Doubles hail teams in combination with Aurorus’ freedom to go with Refrigerate instead of Snow Warning. Hyper Beam becomes a tactical nuke when given Ice typing and Refrigerate-boosted. Beautifly Crest—auto Quiver Dance on entry, drain moves boosted 1.5x and hit Defense rather than Special Defense. This patches Beautifly’s atrocious speed and special defense, and takes advantage of its surprisingly decent offenses to become a mixed attacker. Volcarona this most certainly ain’t, but it’s got a small draining niche in line with its surprisingly vicious Pokédex entry. It’s baffling this thing doesn’t get Leech Life, considering its surprisingly decent attack stat and the fact it’s said to fly into a rage and stab prey with it’s proboscis to drain their body fluids. Bouffalant Crest—Speed +1 when crossing below 50% health, grants Rock Head. Buffalo are terrifying tanks when enraged, and a Speed-based Berserk plus recoil immunity turns Bouffalant into a real vengeful nightmare when the chips are down. Recoil immunity makes for a potent combination with Reckless. Cacturne Crest—grants Quick Draw ability, boosts offenses 30%. Cacturne has pitiful speed and defenses already even without its usual Life Orb recoil, severely hampering its usefulness as a mixed wallbreaker. This gives the Life Orb boost without the HP hit, and the random 30% priority chance of Quick Draw plays into its cool, desert desperado vibe. It’s still a frail glass cannon, however, and slow more often than not. Corsola “Crest”—Changes to Knife Corsola form, Steel-type added to each contact move. Physical attacks scale to defense, Hustle still works when applicable. Rejuvenation’s hilarious, stabby contribution to Corsola lore demands representation in this “crest,” which, rather than Garufan magic, is really just giving Corsola a knife. Plus, scaling Attack to Defense makes a great deal of sense to anyone who has ever felt how incredibly hard and jagged actual coral is. Corsola’s low base stats are mitigated by easier EV consolidation into defenses. Balance is still maintained, however, in that Corsola’s speed and typing both remain horrible. Cradily Crest—Sandstorm upon entry. Cradily was always meant to be an annoying, impossible-to-dislodge barnacle, but power creep has largely left it behind, and it suffers from Four Moveslot Syndrome something fierce. Sandstorm and its special defense boost ameliorates that greatly, but Cradily still has to beware of others that also take advantage of the sandstorm like Excadrill. Cryogonal Crest—deals back fainting contact damage, beam moves boosted by 1.3x. Cryogonal’s high special defense and pitifully low defense plus its ice typing baits all sorts of physical attacks, and this crest punishes foes for “shattering” it by essentially giving it a version of Innards Out that takes advantage of Cryogonal’s surprisingly decent HP. Beam moves are also boosted, because Cryogonal is literally an ice crystal, and light refraction is part of that whole schtick. Delibird Crest—Ice weaknesses become resistances, +10% stat boost for every ally Santa’s little helper needs all the help it can get, so having more friends is a must. Delibird’s horrid typing and stats are both ameliorated here, but there was a big deficit to begin with. No base stat over 65 means that even with a maximum of a +60% omniboost, Delibird still needs to Hustle to really punish all the naughty children. Ditto Crest—Speed +10%, regardless of form Ditto’s a fantastic counter to OP mons and boosted sweepers, but that HP stat really inhibits it. Here, Ditto is given just enough speed to break speed ties, without being restricted to a single move by a Choice Scarf, making it much more versatile at the cost of a strong held item boost. Dunsparce Crest—ignores enemy stat boosts, and status moves go first. Few have been hit harder by power creep than the Land Snake Pokémon. However, its generation-mate Quagsire has similarly terrible stats and still manages to make it all the way up into Übers sometimes, thanks to Unaware allowing it to blithely ignore the massively prevalent boosts and OP setup moves that have relegated Dunsparce to obscurity. Dunsparce lacks a 4x weakness and is slightly more bulky on the special side, though, so getting in on Unaware plus the addition of Prankster (savior of the even more stat-deprived Sableye and Volbeat) allows it to compensate for loss of Leftovers and abuse its fantastic status, setup, and support movepool, including Yawn, Baton Pass, Glare, Roost, Rest, Agility, Coil, Calm Mind, Amnesia, Rain Dance, and Sunny Day. With Serene Grace, it can have its own unique niche that consolidates Unaware’s counter-setup role with the anti-stall role of other Serene Grace users, or serve as a dedicated Baton Passer. Dustox Crest—Free Quiver Dance on entry, “not very effective” moves boosted. Essentially a variation on Beautifly’s crest. Dustox is a bulkier kind of setup sweeper, though, and requires Iron Defense to take up a moveslot for that, meaning it’s often left with just Bug Buzz and maybe Toxic or Sludge Bomb for offense, which coming off of 50 base special attack and a Quiver Dance or two isn’t a lot to show for the effort involved. Tinted Lens ameliorates that disadvantage, making Dustox into something akin to a tankier Venomoth. Emolga Crest—Sets up tailwind on entry, gains Adaptability. Emolga likes switching, and aiding its teammates with Tailwind ties in nicely with that. Adaptability helps it make the most out of its limited offenses and movepool as well. Froslass Crest—boosts evasion and accuracy +1, applies Serene Grace. This elusive, elegant Youkai-inspired Pokémon is known for freezing unlucky travelers, and what better way to do that than with accurate Blizzards that have twice the chance of freezing? Froslass has mediocre stats except speed, though, so even with Snow Cloak active under hail, she’s a glass cannon. Furret Crest—grants Simple, contact moves inflict Taunt on opponent. This Pokémon’s sole niche for a while now has been switching around and Tricking choice items on unsuspecting opponents, and that’s not possible with Crests, so inflicting Taunt (or possibly Encore, if that can be implemented) from contact moves is the next best thing, particularly in conjunction with priority. Simple also makes setup with Coil, Agility, and/or Amnesia a breeze, patching Furret’s poor stats and making it akin to Swoobat, who has similar offensive stats. Unlike Swoobat, though, Furret can Baton Pass its boosts—if it’s fast enough to do so before being taken down. Girafarig Crest—Parental Bond. Girafarig has two heads, but the second one is a bit slow, so it needs a little help realizing it can attack in tandem. This idea was brought to you by Radical Red, and is one of the more clever buffs they’ve given out. Golduck Crest—Psychic STAB and resistances. Gen 1 was already lousy with psychic domination, but it remains an enduring mystery why on earth “Guardian-of-the-Sea” Lugia merited a Psychic typing it basically never uses, while Golduck did not. This rectifies that, and gives Golduck’s Jack-of-all-trades stats a leg up with some hefty Psychic-type power and resistances. If your team is hurting for some Cloud Nine to deal with all the crazy weather flying around, this makes Golduck a more attractive option. Golem Crest—Special Defense is calculated off of Defense, gains Solid Rock. Golem was originally Rhydon’s competitor, with access to Explosion and higher speed. Rhyperior left it in the dust, though, and this Crest aims to rectify that—not by increasing Golem’s offenses past Rhyperior’s, but by enhancing Golem’s bulk, which was always its strongest asset. Now its defenses aren’t a complete joke any longer, allowing it to do things like Rock Polish, Sucker Punch, and/or Counter. Gourgeist Crest—applies Big Root, explodes upon defeat (actual Explosion, not Aftermath). Smashing this pumpkin no longer carries zero risk. Gourgeist is relatively simple—it likes to Leech Seed, and it likes to explode, and this crest only enhances those roles. It better watch out for those Ghost types, though! Heatmor Crest—gains Tough Claws, accuracy boosted upon entry. An underappreciated fact about anteaters is that while their jaws are incredibly weak, their claws can and do kill things many times their size. Many of Heatmor’s favorite moves appreciate an accuracy boost as well. Hitmonchan Crest—Parental Bond exclusively for punching attacks. Not much to say about this, except to watch out for the surprise left jab after that right haymaker! Synergizes well with Iron Fist and Power-Up Punch, plus gives weak priority moves that extra oomph to take care of weakened opponents and Focus Sashes. Perhaps more importantly, it also frees Hitmonchan from reliance on Close Combat. Its HP is horrendous enough as it is without its defenses getting lowered, and Hitmonchan doesn’t need any assistance dying quicker than it already does, thankyouverymuch. Illumise Crest—grants free Flash upon entry (basically an accuracy-based Intimidate), gains electric STAB and resistances. This poor lightning bug got a +30 base stat boost and a fantastic ability from Gamefreak in reparations for being awful, but she could still use all the help she can get. Auto-Flash and electric resistances helps her survive, and the STAB is appreciated for coverage—particularly when her role is often that of a Rain setter, which pairs nicely with a good Thunder. This makes her less of a passive hole in the team, but beware the loss of Damp Rock. Lanturn Crest—Defense +1, Electric Terrain upon entry Often seen as a clerical pivot or special wall, Lanturn can now take on a more active role with Electric Terrain’s boosts and a less terrible physical bulk. This thing will drop the metaphorical toaster in the bathtub when opposing other bulky Water-types, and prevents the likes of Wailord, Walrein, and Dewgong from Resting. Lickilicky Crest—Free Stockpile after attacks. Belch can be used always, applies Swallow after using a non-damaging move. You don’t get to be as round as Lickilicky without having stockpiles of food, after all. Basically a twist on the Swalot Crest, but instead of Spitting Up, it’s in service of making Lickilicky a more durable cleric or setup sweeper. Liepard Crest—Dark moves are guaranteed to crit if Liepard moves first. Liepard is the Cruel Pokémon, and it strikes from stealth, when its enemies least expect it. Getting the drop on foes is the recurring theme here, and so is the superficial similarity to Persian’s whole schtick. Ludicolo Crest—Gains Dancer. Dance was always in Ludicolo’s soul, though until now it tragically lacked the ability to dance with a partner on the battlefield. Now, it can dance to its heart’s content. Rain Dance in particular allows it to outpace the competition and shoot off powerful hydro pumps, or heal itself. It also forms a dangerous doubles combination with various moths and butterflies, which can set up the duo’s Quiver Dance and dish out accurate Hurricanes that send those pesky Bug-types packing, while Ludicolo douses problematic Fire- and Rock-types. Luvdisc Crest—free Attract on entry, +6 special attack. When Akuwa town and its aquarium were emptied, all that remained were cheap, useless Magikarp—and one very lonely Luvdisc. No one, absolutely no one, wanted it. Luvdisc had always been better at romance than battle, and accepted that trade-off as a fact of life, but this was the last straw. Distraught, the Rendezvous Pokémon turned to the Dark Arts, seeking out a witch in the realm of dreams and pleading with her to grant it both power and love, which the witch, taking pity on poor Luvdisc, agreed to, crafting it a mighty crest to inspire love at first sight, and raise its power to the absolute peak. The price? A heart scale, of course, which is seemingly the only thing anyone ever wants from Luvdisc—probably because they’re the chief ingredient of highly unethical love potions. The drawback? It’s still Luvdisc, and even with two massive advantages that have zero downsides… it’s Luvdisc. This is basically a more luck-dependent, special-attacking version of Belly Drum Azumarill. Maractus Crest—Needle moves boosted 1.5x and apply spikes. Maractus is slow but already has Chlorophyll, so this crest is designed to give it some cactus-themed role consolidation as a hazard setter and mixed attacker. Though its special attack is higher, its attack is above average, and the boost to needle attacks like Needle Arm and Pin Missile gives it the extra oomph to be a true mixed attacker. Mantine Crest—Lightningrod, Aqua Ring. Electric coverage is pretty ubiquitous on special attackers, which puts Mantine in a rather awkward position as a special wall. This crest turns the tables on that 4x weakness, and the special attack boost granted from switching in to an enemy’s electric attack or taking an ally’s discharge can quickly make Mantine a very scary special attacker in its own right—so long as it avoids physical rock moves. Mothim Crest—free Quiver Dance on entry, and contact moves apply the Bug Bite effect. Acrobatics is full-powered despite holding crest. According to the Pokédex, Mothim loves sweet things and is a roving food thief, and with this crest he is faster and harder-hitting in order to snatch up his opponents’ berries. Mr. Mime Crest—sets up Reflect upon entry, prolongs shield effects Mr. Mime’s ostensible role as a barrier expert is undermined by his abysmal HP stat and defense, but not any longer. Mr. Mime now creates Reflect on entry and shields last 8 turns, dramatically improving his usefulness, particularly against priority moves. Now, even if a Bullet Punch still knocks it out before he can use a move, he’ll have given the team a lasting benefit. Onix Crest—functions as an Eviolite that also doubles Attack. Onix is notorious for being a colossal, intimidating stone snake that has an attack stat which is worse than a Sentret’s and on par with a Wurmple. Of all the Gamefreak decisions that categorically should not be, this is perhaps the greatest among them. Onix still isn’t that viable even with a crest, owing to its horrendous typing and HP, but at the end of the day a terrible sin against common sense has been rectified, and that? That is enough. Oranguru Crest—Defense boosted 30%, granted Power Spot (+30% offensive boost to allies). Oranguru’s typing is an instance of one step forward, one step back. Its lower physical bulk and speed makes setting up things like Reflect or Trick room more difficult, as many of its super-effective counters are physical. This crest bolsters Oranguru’s longevity and Power Spot boosts Instruct from being a gimmick to being a genuine menace, particularly with powerful Trick Room-influenced spread moves like Wailord’s Water Spout or secondary effect spread moves like Dunsparce’s Rock Slide. The downside is that Oranguru is ho-hum in Singles and loses out on Leftovers recovery. Pachirisu Crest—survives once on 1 hp per battle, creates Ion Deluge on entry. In honor of the 2014 VGC World Champion Pachirisu, perhaps the unlikeliest Pokémon World Champion victor the game has ever seen, this Pachirisu crest uses its Ion Deluge effect to give the squirrel an easier time abusing Volt Absorb by converting normal moves to electric. The guaranteed Focus Band effect creates one last opportunity to help the team with a Super Fang, Follow Me, or Nuzzle, or even fake out the opponent with a Protect. Parasect Crest—Effect Spore is always active and happens 100% of the time, but instead of status, causes the opponent to become both confused and disobedient (disobedience cured upon fainting or switching out). Allows survival on 1 HP once per battle. In the annals of unfortunate typing, Bug/Grass has to be among the worst. To make matters even worse, Parasect is abysmally slow, frail, and its only good stat is Attack… which it has only lackluster moves for. It does, however, have an outstanding ability in Dry Skin, and sports one of the best moves in the game—Spore—and anyone who has ever been around puffball mushrooms knows that the slightest touch sends those spores everywhere. This crest gives Parasect the ability to do what it was always meant to—cause its opponents to trip balls. Persian Crest (Kanto)—Critical hit rate raised 2 stages, Dark STAB and resistances. No one needed to have the hideous Alolan Persian around to confirm that Persian would have been a Dark-type had it existed in Gen 1. Sadly, its niche as a crit-machine died with Gen 2’s mechanics change, condemning Persian to obscurity forever. This crest rectifies both of these things, and alongside Persian’s normal STAB and Technician, gives Fake Out potentially one heck of a sting, despite Persian’s below-average base 70 attack. Poliwrath Crest—No Guard. Poliwrath would be one seriously dangerous tadpole if it could ever manage to hit anything. Now, it can lay waste with its best moves, Dynamicpunch and Hypnosis, and the whole world trembles before its Atlas-like might—or it would, if there weren’t still things like Insomnia Hypno, Noctowl, and Vital Spirit Electivire running around. Qwilfish—Contact moves deal half damage back. Explosion moves halve defense. This spiteful blowfish means business, and will punish all attempts to throw hands. Then, when it’s had enough, it can go out with a bang. I love this little sea-mine, it looks so angry all the time. Sandslash Crest—reduces efficacy of super-effective moves, boosts relevant weather evasion even when not the ability it has. Works on Alolan variant as well. Both Ground and Ice/Steel typing leave much to be desired, and with such poor HP, Sandslash needs a little edge to really distinguish itself. For this crest, I’m just imagining that hyper-trained Sandshrew from the anime, all grown up. Seaking Crest—Grants Water Bubble. It is a travesty that Game Freak never granted Seaking the move Fishious Rend, so this crest compensates by giving Seaking something even better—Araquanid’s Water Bubble, which doubles all Water damage and prevents burns. Slow Seaking may be, but it already has a higher base Attack stat than Dracovish (albeit lacking Strong Jaw) and access to both Swift Swim and Agility, so the potential to sweep is definitely there. Even a special set with Lightningrod may be viable, particularly in doubles paired with Dry Skin/Parabolic Charge Heliolisk. Waterfall may not be the one-hit KO move that Seaking’s horn is famous for, but with Water Bubble it would definitely put the crown back on Seaking. Shedinja Crest—Magic Guard, special attack and attack switched. Now, only super effective moves will hit Shedinja, turning it into a potent anti-stall mon rather than just a hyper-situational guaranteed counter. However, the drawback of switching special attack and attack is that it means no more focus sash mulligan, and no more boosting up with Swords Dance or Hone Claws and sweeping through teams with Shadow Sneak anymore (unless you want to do so very, very slowly). Instead, you have to use Shedinja’s acceptable but boost-less special movepool and status moves. Also, that means special walls that can deal with Toxic or Will-O-Wisp, like Magic Guard Clefable, can and will get Shedinja to struggle… which is a death sentence for the poor undead bug. Shiftry Crest—grass moves boosted 1.3x and given Flying subtype. Shiftry learns Razor Wind, in keeping with its Pokédex entry about whipping up gales with its fans, but that move has always been terrible, so this crest gives Shiftry something far more fitting instead—a flying subtype for its grass moves, making switching into them much more dangerous, particularly for the fighting-types Shiftry usually fears, and it might help put bugs into Sucker Punch range. Shiftry’s almost always holding a Life Orb or Choice Whatever anyway, so a 1.3x boost to the power won’t go amiss, either. Shuckle Crest—Solid Rock, recovers 1/8 HP per turn. Shuckle’s status as a brick wall has gotten many holes punched through it over the generations. Boosting moves are much faster. Coverage is rife. Base power and accuracy of moves has been steadily rising. Choice items and life orbs are everywhere. More OP mons are lurking about. Megas and Z-Moves tear holes through anything. What’s a Shuckle to do? Become even harder to kill, of course! Spinda Crest—Evasion +3, foes automatically confused upon entry (both their entry and Spinda’s). Spinda has been gifted with some seriously amazing moves, not to mention synergy with one of the best abilities in the entire game, Contrary. However, that’s all undermined by its utterly appalling base stats, which make the likes of Furret look mighty by comparison. This crest amplifies Spinda’s drunken staggering to truly incredible levels, making it all the more confusing and much more difficult to hit. If it gets lucky, Spinda will manage to get off Trick Room and/or a few Contrary boosts from Superpower, after which even the joke Pokémon might just become dangerous. Sudowoodo Crest—Given Grass-type resistances (overriding Rock weaknesses) and STAB. Sudowoodo’s crest has raised its arborescent mimicry to brobdignagian heights of verisimilitude. Sudowoodo doesn’t know what that means, but why should it? It’s just a simple tree, nothing to see here! Meanwhile, Cradily (which is also not a plant, yet somehow gets the type) is green with envy that Sudowoodo should get outstanding Grass resistances to Electric, Ground, Water, and Grass, with none of the many Grass weaknesses. Or maybe Cradily’s just green normally. In any case, Sudowoodo is now actually able to be what it was always meant to be… a tree. It still has to look out for Steel and Fighting-types, though. Sunflora Crest—gains Drought, Solar Power always active Here comes the sun! Finally, an automatic sun-setter Pelipper equivalent for all your grass-monotype needs. Even if Sunflora has Chlorophyll, Solar Power will still be active too, turning this smiley-faced sunflower into a holy terror on the battlefield. Bats and birds will still rain on its parade, though… Tropius Crest—>50% HP, every turn randomly grants benefits of Occa Berry, Yache Berry, or Coba Berry. <50% hp, randomly grants effects of Sitrus Berry, Custap Berry, or Starf Berry. Tropius’s crest turns its three neck-bananas into an unending bounty of the best Berry effects—the only drawback is that unlike the berries, the bananas all look the same, making the effect of eating one random, and Tropius can only eat one per turn! The random effect changes when the battle turns against Tropius. Unfezant Crest—Attack raises 1 stage below 50% HP, special attacks calculated off of Attack stat. If Unfezant has an abundance of one thing, it’s attitude, and now its special attacking prowess can match its swagger. Beware Heat Waves and Hurricanes coming off of a 115 attack stat! Unfortunately, Unfezant is still quite frail on the special side, but its attacks hit even harder when the chips are down, so that last, spiteful Quick Attack might just take down weakened or frail special attackers like Alakazam. Unown Crest—applies Wish upon entry, plus grants Imposter. Where the Ditto crest encourages more fast-paced tactics, the Unown crest encourages team support and more defensive play. Ditto and Unown both share the exact same unfortunate HP stat, which doesn’t change during transformations, but Unown’s power to grant wishes comes in handy for ameliorating that somewhat. Why Wish and Imposter, specifically? Because Unown (or groups of them, at least) grant wishes and can create fake Pokémon in the cutscenes, of course. Well, that and there’s no real way to make Unown less painfully boring with just a crest and not, y’know, any moves besides Hidden Power. Volbeat Crest—Flash upon entry, electric STAB and resistances. Volbeat’s crest is the same as Illumise’s, but the different stat distribution and different movesets can encourage different roles. Volbeat, for example, has Tail Glow, and can attempt to sweep rather than trying to set up weather or take out isolated opponents. Baton Pass is also a more pressing priority with such a great boosting move at his disposal. Wailord Crest—defenses +1, Liquid Voice effect Where Wailord often gets stuck with a Choice Scarf and used as a tactical nuke with Water Spout, only to be let down by its low speed and defenses, this crest allows it to either pump out powerful Water Spouts for longer, possibly with Trick Room support, or lean into its bulk and pursue more conventional whalesong with moves like Echoed Voice and Hyper Voice, the latter of which, in addition to being a more reliable spread move than Water Spout, also gets a nice STAB boost and typing now. The defensive boost also lets it use Curse, Amnesia, and Rest more comfortably. Wigglytuff Crest—Critical hit rate raised 2 stages, sound-based moves boosted 30%. What more can be said here aside from YOOM…TAH! (For those that didn’t catch the reference, that’s Guildmaster Wigglytuff’s war cry. He is a terrifyingly powerful character in Mystery Dungeon. He is also extremely silly.) Wishiwashi Crest—forces school form constantly, applies Clear Body This thing would be absolutely terrifying if it weren’t so slow and HP-deprived, and this crest does a bit to ameliorate that. Trying to lower the stats of a giant fleet of Wishiwashi shouldn’t have a noticeable effect on all of them, after all. Wormadam Crest—Magic Bounce, Protean. Wormadam in all her various forms are completely forgotten, thanks to horrible typing on most of them and being too weak and slow to do much, even with one of the best moves in the game, Quiver Dance. Now, she can be as diverse anti-hazard lead. Anyway, that’s the last of them! If anyone has any addendums or suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Most helpful of all would be to point to where I can learn how to make these things into a mod, though.

Yep. I had this problem as well, said no but she got the team anyway. Or harder, depending on the team you’re stuck with. You can’t even change out items on the team… much less optimize the roster for Angie. Or, y’know, teach them any moves or anything.

I love the crests, and I love this review. In a game where generational power creep has destroyed so many interesting strategies, and only the most overpowered (and therefore the least deserving) mons get ludicrous +100 base stat total mega forms, crests have enormous potential to be a great equalizer. To expand on this review, so far I’ve only gotten the chance to play around with the Ledian crest of all things, and it is absolutely goddamn hilarious. Iron fist Power-Up Punch can OHKO Patience the Snorlax like a chump. Combined with Bulk Up/Baton Pass/Speed Boost Blaziken, and Ledian becomes a genuine menace. It’s still balanced, though, in the sense that there are so many OP moves out there that unboosted Ledian can maybe survive a neutral physical hit two out of three times, assuming it’s like a Quick Attack or something. Pair this thing up with a Rage Powder Amoongus or an Unaware/Friend Guard Follow Me Clefable/Clefairy, and it’d get very boosted very fast. There are so many crests that still need to happen, though. I’m in the late game and my Dunsparce’s Coil/paraflinch strategy is falling off in usefulness, so a crest would go a long way in fixing that rather than relegating it to a more passive role as a Stealth Rock, Magic Coat, and Counter user, or a baton passer. I think an evasion boost (free Minimize) plus a Prankster effect would be fantastic for the little troll. Likewise, things like Seaking, Jumpluff, Golduck, Arbok, Wailord, Delibird, Furret, Emolga, Keckleon, Lapras, Mothim, Spinda, Mightyena, Sudowoodo, and Wigglytuff all deserve more love.

And this right here sums up the problem. Your options for countering things usually boil down to the following: 1. Using an expansive roster of painfully boring OP Über-tier mons instead of your favorites. 2. Go full Edge of Tomorrow on the bosses with countless resets to figure out the optimal strategy and then pray to RNGesus for victory. 3. Cheese like no one has ever cheesed before, using absurd filth like evasion boosting, Shedinja, imposter Ditto, Destiny Bond x5, Perish Song, and so on. 4. Try to beat the boss at their own game, using their field effect against them, which usually entails your team being completely useless in most other situations. 5. Laboriously grind up a series of hyper-specific hard counters and then put them in the box after the fight on the off chance they’ll come in handy later. The problem is the field effects. They’re not able to be countered or destroyed nearly as easily as in Reborn, and unlike in Reborn, there’s little feeling of give-and-take. In Reborn, it felt like the fields were an advantage in total, but had the possibility to be subverted into an advantage on your side. In Rejuvenation, the field effects are staggeringly OP and made to eliminate all but a tiny handful of niche counters against a particular bespoke team. If I had any skill whatsoever in modding the game, I’d severely scale back the field effects for normal mode, making them much more like Reborn’s. More ways to alter them, less broken Seeds, less drastic buffs and debuffs (things like 1.2x or 0.8x effectiveness instead of 1.5x, 0.5x, and complete immunities, not to mention accuracy modifiers like always-hit Hypnosis), and more moves being logically boosted or hindered by interacting with the fields. Reborn’s fields had a diverse variety of move interactions, and now it’s often down to a bare handful in Rejuvenation. Credit where it’s due, though: signature moves are a fantastic idea, and generally they’re well-implemented (if you ignore the brokenness of the field effects themselves). Those can stay or even be expanded upon as far as I’m concerned. Those and crests. There can never be enough crests.

Your two options appear to be to grind and EV train specific counters for every boss fight, including this one, or to use Debug mode to skip that gargantuan time sink. The hyperspecific-counter grinding is atrocious and I’m only playing on normal! These fields are really, really unbalanced, and not in a fun way. Reborn’s was better, even though it’s not as good in general as Rejuvenation. Then, of course, you can also get lucky, for example sweeping Adam and his surprise reverse field with a Dunsparce, killing Giratina with a Jigglypuff’s immunities, or taking out 2-vs-1 battles with the impenetrable thickness of Unaware Quagsire. Usually, though, things aren’t that easy. And let’s not even get into the perennial aggravation of having to play with an NPC’s team…

So, in Nightmare City, I lost against the identical Aelita team due to my unfamiliarity with how the game mechanics worked for that fight—I thought it was like one of those chess games where the other player mirrors every move you make exactly, and played as such, and the AI absolutely suckered me as a result, giving me a 4-6 loss. Ah, well, funny but live and learn. it gets better, though, because then I woke up… as Aelita. I can’t go back to the Nightmare City through sleeping, and all the other characters call me Aelita, and I have her trainer card, all her battle and overworld sprites, none of my money… all of which just makes it funnier, but the less funny part is that it had been a while since I saved, and I also am stuck with Aelita’s Pokémon team, which to put it charitably, sucks swamp water. My PC mons are still accessible, but I want my goddamn Dunsparce and Blaziken back. Plus, that Mawile was a posthumous gift from Nancy!